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). Tamara Gundorova believes that formalism was only one of many strains in Ukrainian modernism and certainly not the most important one. As to the relationship between Ukrainian and Russian formalists, she sees not a hierarchy and dependency but a dialogue between different positions within a common heterogeneous cultural sphere.