The term's origin is attributed to the Ukrainian émigré and literary critic Yuriy Lavrinenko, who published the anthology in 1959 in Paris with the support of Jerzy Giedroyc, a Polish writer and activist.
After the anthology appeared, the term "Executed Renaissance" gained widespread notoriety in Ukrainian public language.
Materials for the anthology were taken from contemporary periodicals, libraries and archives, such as the Archive-Museum of the Ukrainian Free Academy of Sciences, the New York Public Library's Department of Slavic Studies, and from private collections (Sviatoslav Hordynsky, Hryhorii Kostiuk, Volodymyr Miakovsky, Yosyp Hirniak, Oksana Burevii and others), and from handwritten copies.
Ina preface to the edition, Lavrinenko, its editor, wrote about principium and the technique of choosing: In this collected edition appeared only material, which had been publishing (rarely — only wrote) in Ukraine — mainly in USSR — for period 1917—1933 and which had banned and destroyed after 1933 due to new Moscow's course and turning Ukraine into colonial province.Lavrinenko noted that part of the banned works had been printed during the occupation of Eastern Ukraine—between 1939 and 1946 and between 1956 and 1958—but it contained some corrections.
Poetry was represented most fully: Firstly, because it "was in vanguard of contemporary literature;" and secondly, because "it is unpossible to cover even the most important examples of prose, drama and essay."