Abstract Submitted to the Young Researchers Conference “On Ukraine” in Wrocław¶

Oleh Shynkarenko has submitted an abstract to the 10th International Conference of Young Researchers “On Ukraine Interdisciplinarily at the University of Wrocław”, organised by the Students’ Scientific Circle of Ukrainian Studies of the University of Wrocław. The conference will take place on 20–21 May 2027 at the Institute of Slavic Philology, University of Wrocław, Poland. The proposed 20-minute paper is titled “Counter-Revelation: Oles Berdnyk between Techno-Communist Utopia and Mystical Rebellion”.

The paper traces how Oles Berdnyk moved from the Soviet techno-optimism of his late-1950s stories, such as The Ways of the Titans (1959), through Children of Infinity (1964), where machines give way to human psychic potential, to The Star Corsair (1971), where a realised technological utopia becomes an image of spiritual death. After the scandal around the novel, Berdnyk’s works were no longer printed from 1972, he was expelled from the Writers’ Union in 1973, and his books were removed from libraries in 1976. In the same year he co-founded the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, which he headed from 1977.

The paper reads this break as a “counter-revelation” rather than a materialist critique of the system: Berdnyk keeps the utopian energy of Soviet thought but moves it from matter to spirit, through cosmism, the noosphere and the programme of “alternative evolution”. A comparison with Volodymyr Savchenko shows two exits from the crisis of techno-communism: information theory and New Age messianism.

Abstracts are accepted until 15 February 2027; the results of the selection are expected after that date.