A new realism appeared in the twentieth century but this was significantly different from the older form that had been handled with so much success by Marko Vovchok and Levitsky. Its centre of gravity was different. Where the older authors had indulged in stories of peasant life that had the avowed intention of awaking the educated classes to a realization of the problems confronting the Ukrainian people, the new authors sought to give pictures of the conditions as they existed at that period when the old patriarchal order was definitely breaking down. There is not the constant harping on the theme that changes in the social order might produce important results. Rather there is a representation of people who have been broken by life and we are asked to look at them as they are in their misery and despair. It is definitely the underprivileged who are described. We are not told how or why they have become that way. The fact is that they exist and they form a sad spectacle for the keen observer. An atmosphere of fate broods over the whole and there is nothing that they or we can do to change their lot. Life has dealt them many blows. It has taken away their power of resistance and man becomes an individual, no longer one of a group that is bound together as a class, a family, or a member of society. He stands out by himself with his own problems with which he cannot grapple and if he has a family or friends beside him, they cannot do much to ease his solitude. We are born alone and we die alone and compared with those great truths, our petty human attempts to understand one another are doomed to futility, try as we will. Gone are the days when we feel that the peasant, the serf, has within himself abundant resources of mental and moral and physical strength. Gone are the days when we are led to believe that these oppressed and insulted people are the backbone of society and can be led and taught to live a better and a more abundant life. The tide has turned and is running strongly toward other phases of existence. If there is to be a brighter future, we cannot expect it to come from the actions of the impoverished, drunken, broken peasants. We must seek it elsewhere, if we can. The new style perhaps took its rise in French naturalism but it was certainly influenced by Dostoyevsky’s interest in broken souls, by the misunderstandings of Chekhov, and by the revolutionary heroes of Gorky. It was influenced to some extent by the teachings of Marxism and the growth of radical political parties which clustered around the factories and the cities.