The Kaidashev family

The story “The Kaidash Family” by Ivan Nechuy-Levytsky creates a myth of Ukrainian society at the end of the 19th century. In this expanded and revised edition, compiler Mykhailo Nazarenko helped reconstruct the full version of the story. The text is being published in this form for the first time.

The uncensored version begins not with a familiar description of the village of Semihory from school, but with a sense of doom: the author calls the entire Dnieper region a cemetery, “where Ukrainian will is buried under countless graves.” The quarrels of the Kaidash family show the tragedy of a village in which parents traumatized by serfdom raise children who are also unable to break the cycle of violence. Collages by Lera Sxemka help to reinterpret the story and add modernity to a classic work of Ukrainian literature.