At the Opposite Side of the Heart

At the Opposite Side of the Heart is one of the most unusual and original works by Yuriy Smolych — a bizarre, multilayered novel in which two opposing protagonists share the same first and last name and repeatedly cross paths over more than a decade, experiencing extraordinary events together: from meeting aboard a steamship bound for Kyiv to death itself — though whose death exactly remains uncertain.

Both characters live through the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, meet again within the Petliura army, encounter one another in exile in Berlin and later return to Soviet Ukraine under amnesty, where their adventures become no less surreal. At times the author himself accompanies them, far from being merely a secondary figure in his own novel.

The text is filled with grotesque and irony, beneath which readers can already sense fear of the new regime and the looming totalitarian future about to reveal its full brutality. At the same time the author could not help but admire the momentum of industrial progress which, together with Ukrainization policies, created the illusion that a strong and prosperous Ukraine might still be possible.

It is futile to search the novel for the supposed criticism of Ukrainian nationalism or praise of Soviet power later attributed to it by Soviet literary scholars. After 1930 At the Opposite Side of the Heart was never republished.