Mykhail Semenko () or Mykhailo Vasyliovich Semenko (; 31 December 1892 – 23 October 1937) was a Ukrainian poet, and a prominent representative of the Ukrainian Futurist movement of the 1920s. He is a leading figure of the Executed Renaissance — a generation of Ukrainian poets, writers, and artists persecuted by the Soviet regime. He founded the futurist groups '' Aspanfut'', '' Komunkult'', '' Nova Generatsiya'', and '' Kverofuturism'', known to the English-speaking reader as Panfuturism. Mykhail Semenko edited a couple of almanacs and the journal ''Nova Generatsiya''. As a poet Semenko was focues on the urbanistics. Semenko was an active participant of the movement that sought to break with the official Soviet cultural policy at the onset of the 20th century. His dissident art led him to establish

avant-garde In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable ...

groups in

Kyiv Kyiv, also Kiev, is the capital and most populous List of cities in Ukraine, city of Ukraine. Located in the north-central part of the country, it straddles both sides of the Dnieper, Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2022, its population was 2, ...

and

Kharkiv Kharkiv, also known as Kharkov, is the second-largest List of cities in Ukraine, city in Ukraine.

. He established these futurist groups as an alternative to Russian Cubo-Futurism. Along with several Ukrainian intellectuals, he was arrested in 1937, sentenced to death and shot in Kyiv on 23 October 1937. In the 1957 he was rehabilitated by the Communists themselves.

References

Sources

* Юрій Лавріненко. Розстріляне відродження: Антологія 1917–1933. — Київ: Смолоскип, 2004.
Encyclopedia of Ukraine. Semenko, Mykhailo
* 1892 births 1937 deaths People from Poltava Oblast Ukrainian male poets 20th-century Ukrainian poets Ukrainian avant-garde Ukrainian Futurism Great Purge victims from Ukraine Soviet rehabilitations Soviet poets {{Ukraine-poet-stub