On October 6, 2026, an international interdisciplinary scientific-practical conference "Ring the veche bell!": Olena Teliha and the Ukrainian liberation struggle throughout the 20th–21st centuries" will be held in Kyiv, dedicated to the 120th anniversary of the birth of the Ukrainian writer, public figure, and participant in the national liberation movement Olena Teliha.
Organizers of the event – Taras Shevchenko Institute of Literature of the NAS of Ukraine and the Olena Teliha All-Ukrainian Women's Society .
Issues to be discussed at the conference:
- the life, creative and public activity of Olena Teliha; new and newly discovered aspects of her heroic biography, her comrades and brothers-in-arms, contemporaries and teachers; features of her creative legacy in the context of modern historical science, culture, and literary studies;
- the activities of the OUN Cultural Office during World War II; historical and cultural circumstances of the emigration literary process of the 1920s–1940s;
- the reflection of the Ukrainian resistance movement in the artistic works of the 20th century, as well as those written during the current Russian-Ukrainian war;
- national identity and Ukrainian literature in the context of the national liberation movement of the 20th century;
- cultural national resistance in the existential dimension of Ukrainian art, particularly during the current Russian-Ukrainian war.
The organizers invite literary scholars, historians, culturologists, art historians – researchers, teachers, and graduate students to participate in the conference.
Working languages: Ukrainian, English.
Format: hybrid.
To participate in the conference, please fill out the fill out the application and send an abstract and keywords of the presentation to the organizing committee: o.teliha2026@gmail.com by September 25, 2026
Information letter
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Olena Teliha is a prominent figure of the Ukrainian national liberation movement of the mid-20th century, a talented writer who, among the cohort of artists of the "Prague School", alongside Oleh Olzhych, stands out for her especially active, energetic, even "revolutionary" or militant life stance. She was constantly immersed in the whirl of Ukrainian émigré life in Poděbrady, Prague, Warsaw, fully feeling both its allure and its threatening challenges. She "burned with the struggle for Ukraine's future". However, her creative biography remains somewhat mythologized to this day and requires constant clarification based on archival and rare sources.
For Olena Teliha, political and artistic reality, as well as the everyday life of a woman and wife, existed on the same plane, together embodying the goal and meaning of the existential being of a person who became a "whole era" in our history. Sovereign spiritual independence of each individual and the entire nation as a whole, aristocracy of spirit, uncompromising defense of her Ukrainian identity, faith in the prospect of building an independent Ukrainian state – these are the main values Olena Teliha professed. It is no coincidence that Dmytro Dontsov called her the "poetess of fiery borders" – this was fully manifested in her poetic work, journalism, critical reviews, as well as in her active life activities, in relationships with comrades, friends, colleagues, and opponents.
These Olena Teliha’s features were especially clearly and significantly manifested in the early 1940s when she united mainly young writers in the Union, which she headed, in occupied Kyiv, helping them survive; when she edited and directed the literary weekly "Litavry," which was very dangerous under the new occupation. She did not leave Kyiv, was arrested along with her husband, like-minded people, and was executed in February 1942. However, she left us an "eternal glow of impulse," which has always been important throughout the long struggle of Ukrainians for their Independence and has become especially relevant now – in the decisive time of the current Russian-Ukrainian war.
Information is provided by the Taras Shevchenko Institute of Literature of the NAS of Ukraine