Pluh

Pluh. An all-Ukrainian peasant writers' union based in Kharkiv, with branches throughout Ukraine, founded in 1922 by Hryhorii (Heo) Koliada, Andrii Paniv, Serhii Pylypenko, Ivan Senchenko, and Ivan Dniprovsky. Other members included Sava Bozhko, Dokiia Humenna, Hryhorii Epik, Andrii Holovko, Ivan Kyrylenko, Oleksander Kopylenko, Vasyl Mynko, Petro Panch, Vasyl Mysyk, Pavlo Usenko, and Nataliia Zabila. Its stated aim was to ‘educate its members and the broad peasant masses in the spirit of proletarian revolution and to draw them into active creative work in this vein.’ With that goal in mind, its chief ideologue, Pylypenko, made an orientation to the masses the principal objective for the whole organization. His doing so resulted in sharp polemical exchanges with Mykola Khvylovy in the Literary Discussion of 1925–8. Khvylovy was harshly critical of the organization's provincialism and simplistic didacticism. In the course of the discussions many members left Pluh. Usenko, along with other Komsomol writers, departed to form Molodniak. A. Dyky, Kyrylenko, Zabila, and others joined the All-Ukrainian Association of Proletarian Writers. In 1931, in connection with the new collectivization drive, the organization changed its name to the Proletarian Collective-Farm Writers' Union. A year later, by decree of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine, issued on 23 April 1932, the union was dissolved. Its leaders were either shot or imprisoned (Bozhko, Epik, Volodymyr Gzhytsky, Paniv, Pylypenko, and others). Its official organ was the journal Pluzhanyn, renamed Pluh in 1928.

Ivan Koshelivets

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]