5 Hryven The Executed Renaissance. Mykola Khvylovy

Mykola Khvylovy — born Mykola Fitilev — was the most prominent voice of the Ukrainian literary renaissance of the 1920s, and his 1925 pamphlet posing the question "Away from Moscow?" made him a direct target of Soviet ideological pressure. He shot himself in 1933, on the same day his close associate Mykhailo Yalovyi was arrested, an act widely read as political protest. Stalin reportedly said of his suicide: "This bullet was aimed at the Party."

The "Executed Renaissance" — Rozstrilyane Vidrodzhennya — refers to the generation of Ukrainian writers, artists, and intellectuals systematically eliminated by Soviet repression between the late 1920s and 1930s. Khvylovy's is among the handful of cases where the victim chose the timing himself.