Mykola Zerov

Who was Mykola Zerov?

Mykola Zerov was a Ukrainian poet, translator, literary scholar and critic. He was perhaps the most talented of the Neoclassicist movement of poets in 1920's Ukraine. Despite the populist and propagandistic impulses of Communism, the neoclassical movement stressed the production of 'high art' to an educated and highly literate audience. Zerov, particularly, eschewed contemporary politics in his poetry, focusing on aesthetic and historical classical themes under a tight and difficult poetical structure. This approach eventually proved fatal, as Zerov, along with many other Ukrainian writers of the period, was later sent to Solovki prison camp and later executed.