Spirit of restlessness

Yurii Lavrinenko is an intellectual, critic and literary critic. Comrade of Yurii Shevelov, student of Oleksandr Biletskyi. Author of investigations about Pavlo Tychyna, Vasyl Ellan-Blakytnyi, political history of Ukraine. It was through his efforts that the legendary anthology “The Shot Renaissance” was published in 1959.
A critic with the temperament of a publicist. A publicist with critical tools. He writes about Franko and Skrypnyk, Lesia Ukraiinka and Khvylovyi. He discusses with Czesław Milosz, reflects on Ukraine's ties with the East and recreates the true spirit of the Ukrainian cultural renaissance.
Lavrinenko's life included Uman and Kharkiv, Germany and the USA. There were arrests and exiles: he was repressed, but he was able to survive. With the move to New York, he moved away from politics, but not from intellectual work. He edited Ukrainian newspapers, worked on Radio Svoboda.
Yurii Lavrinenko forever remained who he really was: a critic from the Kharkiv 1920s who carried the romanticism of Vitaism to other formats and geographical latitudes.