Chaikovsky, Mykola
Entry updated 25 May 2025. Tagged: Author.
(1887-1970) Ukrainian teacher, mathematician and author of Fantastika who in 1918 he wrote one of the first works of Ukrainian sf, Za syly sontsia ["By the Power of the Sun"] (written 1918; 1925). Its hero is Mykhailo Rozdvyanskyi, a brilliant engineer-physicist (see Scientists), inventor (see Invention) and aeronaut (professor of Kyiv Engineering Academy and director of the First State Aviation Plant). Rozdvyanskyi discovers novel "omega rays" and invents ways to harness solar energy (see Power Sources) through photovoltaic "black glass". The story is set in the Near Future in independent Ukraine; the plot involves attempts by Luddites to delay his progress, as well as traitors and foreign spies (even "Japanese hypnotists") attempting to steal Rozdvyanskyi's secrets. It culminates with a Sahara expedition on a colossal Airship.
Za syly sontsia is notable as the first sf novel published in the Ukrainian language (the tsarist Ems Ukase law of 1876 forbade the publication of books in Ukrainian, thereby forcing local pre-revolutionary authors to write and publish in Russian). Written at the end of World War One in the short-lived West Ukrainian People's Republic, when Ukraine was fighting for statehood, it channels the spirit of Ukrainian nationalism and patriotism, notably through its vision of an independent and scientifically advanced Ukraine. The former, however, was likely the reason the book was published only seven years later, in Lviv (then in Polish Western Ukraine), and noticed only by a few Western Ukrainian critics. Lack of any translation into Polish made it effectively invisible in Poland itself, while Soviet-era critics largely ignored it for ideological reasons owing to its vision of Ukraine as an independent nation. As such, it was effectively sidelined during the formative stage of Ukrainian sf in the 1920s and 1930s, and rediscovered by critics and scholars decades later, after the fall of the USSR and the emergence of Ukraine as an independent state. It is now considered a pioneering, if arguably not very influential, early work of Ukrainian sf.
His other work of direct sf interest is the Futures Studies essay Tekhnika zavtrishn'oyi dnyny ["Technology of Tomorrow"] (1926). also published in Lviv.
After World War One, Chaikovsky chose to settle in the USSR, where he became a teacher and researcher, and luckily survived a decade in a Gulag. [PKo]
Mykola Chaikovsky
born Berezhany, Russian Empire: 2 January 1887
died Lviv, USSR: 7 October 1970
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