SUMMARY:

This is a contribution to the forum “Conceptualizing National Modernism” inspired by the publication of the new book by Galina Babak and Alexander Dmitriev, The Atlantis of Soviet National Modernism: The Formal Method in Ukraine (1920s–Early 1930s) (Moscow: NLO, 2021). Boris Gasparov comments on two themes raised in the book: the role of the linguist Alexander Potebnja’s scholarly legacy and a revision of the core–periphery explanatory model as applied to Ukrainian modernist culture.