Ukrainian underground

Ukrainian underground was a movement in Ukraine's Soviet period within Soviet nonconformist art from the late 1950s through the early 1990s. This art form was banned by several totalitarian countries of Eastern Europe and the USSR. It was also known under other names, such as unofficial art, nonconformist, and dissident art. It ended due to the Perestroika reform movement, which led to Ukrainian independence in 1991. After the Soviet Union collapsed, similar counter-cultural processes developed under the names of "alternative" or "marginal" art. The avant-garde ideas of underground art were picked up and developed by the next generation of the Ukrainian New Wave.

"Underground," in this context, refers to creativity that is directed towards self-expression of the individual or artistic groups, in contrast to the philosophical, ethical, and aesthetic codes of the mainstream.^[1] Ukrainian underground literature was published by the authors themselves and these dissident publications were known as samizdat. Underground music was performed for a small number of listeners.