NESTOR THE CHRONICLER, b ca 1056, d ca 27 October 1114 in Kyiv. Famous medieval hagiographer and chronicler; saint in the Ukrainian church. He entered the Kyivan Cave Monastery at 17 and was a hierodeacon under Hegumen Stefan of Kyiv (1074–8). He participated in the ceremonial disinterment of the relics of Saint Theodosius of the Caves in 1091. He was one of the most educated men in late 11th- and early 12th-century Kyivan Rus’, renowned for his knowledge of theology, history, literature, and Greek. Nestor wrote the lives of Saints Borys and Hlib and Saint Theodosius of the Caves in the 1080s, and he supplemented and continued the text of the Rus’ Primary Chronicle (written in 1093), and completed its redaction, known as Povist’ vremennykh lit (The Tale of Bygone Years), ca 1111–13...

HAGIOGRAPHY. Biographies, tales, and legends about saints, including accounts of miracles performed by them, particular episodes from their lives, and their martyrdom. These writings are among the most important monuments of old Ukrainian literature. Original works written in Ukraine include the Lives of Saints Borys and Hlib and the Life of Saint Theodosius of the Caves, both by Nestor the Chronicler, the beautifully composed Tale and Passion and Glorification of the Holy Martyrs Borys and Hlib, and the Life of Prince Mstyslav I Volodymyrovych. The lives of Saint Volodymyr the Great, Saint Princess Olha, Mykhail Vsevolodovych of Chernihiv, and Boyar Fedir have come down to us only in later redactions. The Kyivan Cave Patericon is an important monument of hagiographic literature...

KYIVAN CAVE PATERICON. A collection of tales about the monks of the Kyivan Cave Monastery. The original version arose after 1215 but not later than 1230 out of the correspondence of two monks of the monastery—monk Simon (by then the bishop of Suzdal and Vladimir) and monk Polikarp, who used the epistolary form as a literary device. The letters contain 20 tales about righteous or sinful monks of the monastery based on oral legends and several written sources, such as the Life of Saint Anthony of the Caves and the Kyivan Cave and Rostov chronicles, which have not survived. Most of the original text deals with events of the 11th century. It varies from brief accounts of particular facts (Poemen and Saint Kuksha) to novella-like or novel-like narratives (‘Moses the Hungarian’ and ‘Theodore and Basil’)...

SLOVO O POLKU IHOREVI. An epic poem of the late 12th century written by an anonymous author. Its subject is the unsuccessful campaign mounted in the spring of 1185 by Ihor Sviatoslavych, prince of Novhorod-Siverskyi, against the Cumans. Its central theme is the fate of the territories of Kyivan Rus’. In addressing that theme the author condemns the various princes for their feuding and their selfishness at the expense of the general good. Particularly rich in poetic tropes (epithets, similes, metaphors, metonymy, hyperbole, and personification), the work suggests a sophistication indicative of a rich tradition of folk and martial literature with highly developed poetics. The original manuscript perished in the Moscow fire of 1812. The want of an original allowed a number of critics to consider the work a falsification of a later date. The majority of scholars, however, believe it to be authentic...

POLEMICAL LITERATURE. Publicistic and literary writings on religious and church issues and on national politics. In Ukraine and Belarus polemical literature dates back to the religious denominational struggles of the 16th and 17th centuries, especially those in conjunction with the 1596 Church Union of Berestia, but also those that were part of the general European processes of the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation. Initiatially the leading role in the polemics on the side of the Orthodox was assumed by writers associated with the Ostrih Academy, including Prince Kostiantyn Vasyl Ostrozky himself. Along with the Ostrih polemicists, Ivan Vyshensky, the most outstanding publicist in Ukrainian literature, stepped into the fray against the Catholics. The leading Uniate polemicist was Ipatii Potii. Meletii Smotrytsky first directed his polemics against the the Uniates but then changed his allegiance, and figured prominently as the author of several treatises against the Orthodox. Polemical works were also written by the Orthodox metropolitan of Kyiv Petro Mohyla...

SMOTRYTSKY, HERASYM, b ? in Smotrych (now in Dunaivtsi raion, Khmelnytskyi oblast), d October 1594. Writer and teacher; father of Meletii Smotrytsky. He was secretary at the Kamianets-Podilskyi county office and in 1576 was invited by Prince Kostiantyn Vasyl Ostrozky to Ostrih, where he became one of the leading activist members of the Ostrih intellectual circle. In 1580 Smotrytsky became the first rector of the Ostrih Academy. He was one of the publishers of the Ostrih Bible, to which he wrote the foreword and the verse dedication to Prince Ostrozky. The dedication is one of the earliest examples of Ukrainian versification (nonsyllabic) and is somewhat reminiscent of Ukrainian dumas. Smotrytsky's polemical works against those betraying the Orthodox faith and a satire on the clergy have been lost. Only his book, Kliuch tsarstva nebesnoho (Key to the Heavenly Kingdom, 1587), which is the first printed example of Ukrainian polemical literature, has survived...

POTII, IPATII, b 12 April 1541 in Rozhanka, Podlachia region, d 1613. Churchman and Uniate metropolitan of Kyiv. The son of a nobleman, he was raised at the Polish royal court, and attended a Calvinist school. After attending Cracow University he entered the service of King Sigismund II August. Potii was continually involved in religious affairs. Having adopted Calvinism, he reconverted to Orthodoxy in 1574. At the initiative of Prince Kostiantyn Vasyl Ostrozky he was made bishop of Volodymyr-Volynskyi and Brest in 1593. As bishop he began formal negotiations with Roman Catholic representatives, and in 1595 he was sent to Rome as a representative of the church in Ukraine, to set forth its confession of faith before Pope Clement VIII. He returned to lead the sobor that culminated in the Church Union of Berestia. After the proclamation of the union Potii was one of its leading supporters, both in defending it against Orthodox opposition and in seeking equal rights with Roman Catholics in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth...

VYSHENSKY, IVAN, b ca 1550 in Sudova Vyshnia, Galicia, d after 1620 in Mount Athos, Greece. Orthodox monk and polemicist. He passed some of his youth in Lutsk and was connected with the Ostrih Academy scholars. Ca 1576-80 he entered a monastery at Mount Athos. There are 15 known works by Vyshensky: seven epistles, six treatises, a dialogue, and a story. His most important works were directed against the Church Union of Berestia and were written in the late 1590s. In 1600–1 he prepared a collection of the 10 works he had written by then and sent it to the Lviv Dormition Brotherhood. Vyshensky's writings stand out among Ukrainian polemical works of the 16th and 17th centuries by virtue of both their literary merit and their ideological content. He did not simply reject the Uniate church and Catholicism. Grounded in Byzantine asceticism, he sharply criticized temporal life and the entire church hierarchy and secular hierarchy and urged a return to the simplicity of old Christian brotherhood in order to bring about God's Kingdom on earth...

SMOTRYTSKY, MELETII, b 1577 in Smotrych, Podilia, d 27 December 1633 at the Derman Monastery, Volhynia. Philologist, churchman, and polemicist; son of Herasym Smotrytsky. He studied at the Ostrih Academy; the Jesuit college in Vilnius; and, from 1605, in Leipzig, Nuremberg, and Wittenberg. In 1608, he returned to Vilnius to teach at the Orthodox brotherhood school. There he wrote his famous defense of the Orthodox church, Trenos... (Threnos..., 1610). He is believed to have served as a professor and rector of the Kyiv Epiphany Brotherhood School in 1618-20. In 1620 he was consecrated archbishop of Polatsk. During the next three years he wrote several polemical tracts. Smotrytsky travelled to Constantinople and the Holy Land, and after his return he joined the Uniate church, in 1627. In 1627–8 he negotiated with Yov Boretsky and Petro Mohyla in an attempt to re-create a united Ruthenian church in union with Rome but under its own patriarch...

MOHYLA, PETRO, b 10 January 1597 in Moldavia, d 11 January 1647 in Kyiv. Ukrainian metropolitan, noble, and cultural figure; son of Simeon, hospodar of Wallachia (1601–2) and Moldavia (1606–7), and the Hungarian princess Margareta. After his father’s murder in 1607, Mohyla and his mother sought refuge in Western Ukraine. He was tutored by teachers of the Lviv Dormition Brotherhood School, and pursued higher education in theology at the Zamostia Academy and in Netherlands and France. After his return to Ukraine he entered the military service and fought as an officer in the Battle of Cecora (1620) and Battle of Khotyn (1621). In 1621–7 he received estates in the Kyiv region and became interested in affairs of the Ukrainian Orthodox church. In September 1627 a dietine in Zhytomyr chose Mohyla to succeed the late Zakhariia Kopystensky as archimandrite of the influential Kyivan Cave Monastery...

RUTHENIAN TRIAD (Ruska triitsia). A Galician literary group named after the number of the predominant members, Markiian Shashkevych, Yakiv Holovatsky, and Ivan Vahylevych, which existed in the late 1830s, while the three were students at the Greek Catholic Theological Seminary in Lviv. Since the group came into being during the period of Romanticism, it retained the predominant interests and features of that movement--an interest in folklore and history and a striving for Pan-Slavic unity. Its Slavophilism was noticeable in the use of Old Slavic pseudonyms: Ruslan by Shashkevych, Dalibor by Vahylevych, and Yaroslav by Holovatsky. The group founders as well as other young people united around them were engaged in collecting folk oral literature, studying the history of Ukraine, and writing their own verses and treatises. They emulated the Ukrainians under Russian rule, and were especially influenced by Ivan Kotliarevsky's Eneida (Aeneid)...

SHASHKEVYCH, MARKIIAN, b 6 November 1811 in Pidlyssia, Zolochiv circle, Galicia, d 7 June 1843 in Novosilky Lisni, now in Buzk raion, Lviv oblast. Poet and leader of the literary revival in Western Ukraine based on the vernacular. He graduated from the Greek Catholic Theological Seminary in Lviv in 1838 and worked as a priest in the rural Lviv region. During his studies he met Yakiv Holovatsky and Ivan Vahylevych, with whom he formed the Ruthenian Triad. He also organized nationally conscious Ukrainian young people to work for national and cultural revival in Western Ukrainian lands, particularly to reintroduce the use of spoken Ukrainian language in writing and sermons. Their efforts resulted in the preparation of collections of folklore and the publication of the almanac Rusalka Dnistrovaia (1836). The almanac had a decisive effect on the revival and development of Ukrainian literature in Galicia...

HOLOVATSKY, YAKIV, b 17 October 1814 in Chepeli, Zolochiv circle, Galicia, d 13 May 1888 in Vilnius. Noted historian, literary scholar, ethnographer, linguist, bibliographer, lexicographer, and poet. As a student he traversed Galicia, Bukovyna, and Transcarpathia collecting folk songs. In 1832, at Lviv University he, Markiian Shashkevych, and Ivan Vahylevych formed the Ruthenian Triad, which published the first Galician almanac in the vernacular, Rusalka Dnistrovaia (The Dniester Nymph, 1836), and played an important role in the Galician cultural revival. In 1843 he became a Greek-Catholic village priest. From 1848 to 1867 he was the first professor of Ruthenian (Ukrainian) philology at Lviv University. Influenced by Mikhail Pogodin's Pan-Slavist ideas, he became a Russophile in the 1850s. Dismissed from the university for his views, in 1867 he moved to Russian-ruled Vilnius to head the archeographic commission there...

VAHYLEVYCH, IVAN, b 2 September 1811 in Yasen, Stanyslaviv circle, Galicia, d 10 May 1866 in Lviv. Romantic poet, philologist, and ethnographer of the Galician revival. While studying at Lviv University and at the Greek Catholic Theological Seminary in Lviv, he associated with Markiian Shashkevych and Yakiv Holovatsky, and the three of them formed the Ruthenian Triad. Because of his populist activities, cultural nationalist views, and correspondence with scholars in the Russian Empire, he suffered harassment by the church and Austrian civil authorities. During the Revolution of 1848–9 in the Habsburg monarchy he supported a democratic Polish-Ukrainian political federation. Later that year he left the Uniate church in protest against the church hierarchy's sanctions against him and converted to Lutheranism. Ostracized by most Ukrainians and by the church, he was unable to find steady work until 1862, when he was appointed city archivist in Lviv...

RUSALKA DNISTROVAIA (The Dniester Nymph). The first Ukrainian literary and folkloric almanac published in Galicia. It was compiled by the Ruthenian Triad (Markiian Shashkevych, Yakiv Holovatsky, and Ivan Vahylevych) and printed in Buda, Hungary, in December 1836. The almanac consisted of folk songs recorded in various places in Galicia, with an introduction by Vahylevych; poetry and prose by the Triad's members and their translations of Serbian folk poetry; texts of lyrical and heroic poetry from a 15th-century manuscript, with an introduction by Shashkevych; Holovatsky's note on manuscripts in the library of Saint Basil's Monastery in Lviv; and a review of a book of Ukrainian wedding rituals. In the manifesto-like preface Shashkevych stressed the beauty of the Ukrainian vernacular and folk oral literature and provided a list of the most important contemporary publications of literature and folklore in Russian-ruled Ukraine...

SHEVCHENKO, TARAS, b 9 March 1814 in Moryntsi, Zvenyhorod county, Kyiv gubernia, d 10 March 1861 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Ukraine’s national bard and famous artist. Born a serf, Shevchenko was orphaned when he was twelve and grew up in poverty and misery. He was taught to read by a village precentor and was often beaten for ‘wasting time’ on drawing. At the age of 14 he became a houseboy of his owner, P. Engelhardt, and served him in Vilnius (1828–31) and then Saint Petersburg. Engelhardt noticed Shevchenko's artistic talent, and in Saint Petersburg he apprenticed him to the painter V. Shiriaev for four years. Shevchenko spent his free time sketching the statues in the capital’s imperial summer gardens. There he met the Ukrainian artist Ivan Soshenko, who introduced him to other compatriots, such as Yevhen Hrebinka and Vasyl Hryhorovych, and to the Russian painter A. Venetsianov. Through these men Shevchenko also met the famous painter and professor Karl Briullov, who donated his portrait of the Russian poet Vasilii Zhukovsky as the prize in a lottery whose proceeds were used to buy Shevchenko's freedom on 5 May 1838…

Shevchenko, Taras

KULISH, PANTELEIMON, b 8 August 1819 in Voronizh, Chernihiv gubernia, d 14 February 1897 in Motronivka, Chernihiv gubernia. Prominent writer, historian, ethnographer, and translator. He was born into an impoverished Cossack-gentry family. After completing only five years at the Novhorod-Siverskyi gymnasium he enrolled at Kyiv University in 1837 but was not allowed to finish his studies because he was not a noble. He obtained a teaching position in Lutske in 1840. There he wrote his first historical novel in Russian Mykhailo Charnyshenko, or Little Russia Eighty Years Ago (2 vols, 1843). Mykhailo Maksymovych promoted Kulish's literary efforts and published several of his early stories. His first longer work written in Ukrainian was the epic poem ‘Ukrana’ (1843). In 1843–5 Kulish taught in Kyiv and studied Ukrainian history and ethnography. There he befriended Taras Shevchenko, Mykola Kostomarov, and Vasyl Bilozersky; their circle later became the nucleus of the secret Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood...

CYRIL AND METHODIUS BROTHERHOOD. Secret society established in December 1845–January 1846 in Kyiv at the initiative of Mykola Kostomarov. The aim of the society was to transform the social order according to the Christian principles of justice, freedom, equality, and brotherhood. It proposed a series of reforms: (1) abolition of serfdom and equality of rights for all estates, (2) equal opportunity for all Slavic nations to develop their national language and culture, (3) education for the broad masses of the people, and (4) unification of all Slavs in the spirit of the Slavophilism of the time in a federated state in which Ukraine would play a leading role. Kyiv was to be the capital of the federation and the seat of the all-Slavic diet. Among others, the following individuals belonged to the brotherhood: Kostomarov, Vasyl Bilozersky, Oleksander Navrotsky, Mykola Hulak, Dmytro Pylchykov, O. Petrov, Panteleimon Kulish, Opanas Markovych, Yurii Andruzky, Ivan Posiada, M. Savych, and Taras Shevchenko…

KOSTOMAROV, MYKOLA, b 16 May 1817 in Yurasivka, Ostrohozke county, Voronezh region, d 19 April 1885 in Saint Petersburg. Historian, publicist, and writer. He graduated from the Voronezh gymnasium and then in 1837 from Kharkiv University. From 1844 to 1845 Kostomarov taught history at the Rivne and at the First Kyiv gymnasiums. In 1846 he was appointed assistant professor in the Department of Russian History at Kyiv University. That year, along with Vasyl Bilozersky, Panteleimon Kulish, Mykola Hulak, Taras Shevchenko, and others, he formed the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood. In Knyhy bytiia ukraïns'koho narodu (Books of the Genesis of the Ukrainian People), Ustav Slov'ians'koho tovarystva sv Kyryla i Metodiia: Holovni idei (The Statute of the Slavic Society of Saints Cyril and Methodius: Its Main Ideas), and two proclamations, Kostomarov formulated the society's program and basic ideas: Christian piety, democratic republicanism, a Ukrainian national renaissance, Ukrainian messianism, and Pan-Slavic federalism...

ROMANTICISM. An artistic and ideological movement in literature, art, and music and a world view which arose toward the end of the 18th century in Germany, England, and France. In the beginning of the 19th century it spread to Russia, Poland, and Austria, and in the mid-19th century it encompassed other countries of Europe as well as North and South America. Romanticism, which appeared after the French Revolution in an environment of growing absolutism at the turn of the 19th century, was a reaction against the rationalism of the Enlightenment and the stilted forms, schemata, and canons of classicism and, at times, sentimentalism. Paramount features of romanticism were idealism, a belief in the natural goodness of the individual person, and, hence, the cult of feeling as opposed to reason; a predilection for the more ‘primitive’ expressions of human creativity as being closer to the fundamental goodness of the person and, hence, an enthusiasm for folk art, poetry, and songs; a belief in the perfectibility of the individual person and, hence, a predilection for change and the espousal of ‘striving’ as a mode of behavior; and a search for historical consciousness and an intensified learning of history (historicism), coupled at times with an escape from surrounding reality into an idealized past or future or into a world of fantasy…

RUSSIAN AND UKRAINIAN POPULISM. Ukrainian and Russian populists idealized the people (narod), which, practically speaking, meant the peasantry. Populists believed that their theories reflected the interests of the peasantry, and that it was their duty to try to help them. Russian populism, as ideology, was socially more radical and utopian than Ukrainian populism. Idealizing peasant traditions, especially communal farming, Russian populist thinkers believed that the peasant commune could serve as the foundation of a future socialist Russia. Ukrainian populists were involved primarily in cultural and educational work. The Cyrillo-Methodians were the first to formulate a populist political platform based on social and national emancipation, albeit couched in religious and romantic terms. In 1862, Volodymyr Antonovych, leader of the khlopomany, issued a typically populist manifesto in which he called on the nobility to renounce their privileges and work for the benefit of the people among whom they lived, the Ukrainian peasantry...

NECHUI-LEVYTSKY, IVAN (pseud of Ivan Levytsky), b 25 November 1838 in Stebliv, Kaniv county, Kyiv gubernia, d 15 April 1918 in Kyiv. Writer. Upon graduating from the Kyiv Theological Academy (1865) he taught Russian language, history, and geography in the Poltava Theological Seminary (1865-6) and, later, in the gymnasiums in Kalisz, Siedlce, and Kishinev. He began writing in 1865, but because of Russian imperial censorship his works appeared only in Galician periodicals. His works about the lives of peasants and laborers established him as a master of Ukrainian classical prose and as the creator of the Ukrainian realist narrative. Nechui-Levytsky was the first to provide fictional characterizations of various classes of the Ukrainian intelligentsia, ranging from students and teachers to high-ranking members of the Russian civil service. Against a background of colonial repression and thoroughgoing Russification Nechui-Levytsky sought to depict the stirrings of national consciousness in the Ukrainian intelligentsia...

MYRNY, PANAS (pseud of Panas Rudchenko), b 13 May 1849 in Myrhorod, d 28 January 1920 in Poltava. Writer. He worked in various government offices and eventually achieved the rank of full government councilor (1914). The works of Taras Shevchenko had the greatest influence on the formation of Myrny's worldview, artistic preferences, and ideology. His early literary attempts included poems, dramas, and short stories. His best-known work is the novel Propashcha syla (The Ruined Strength), also titled Khiba revut’ voly, iak iasla povni? (Do the Oxen Bellow, When Their Mangers Are Full?, 1880). The work can be characterized as a sociopsychological novel-chronicle; it covers almost a hundred years in the history of a Ukrainian village, from serfdom to the postreform era. In it Myrny depicts social oppression, internal strife between different social groups, the tsarist legal system, the harsh life of a soldier during the time of Tsar Nicholas I, police violence, and spontaneous protests against lies and injustice...

HRINCHENKO, BORYS, b 9 December 1863 at Vilkhovyi Yar khutir in Kharkiv county, d 6 May 1910 in Ospedaletti, Italy. Prominent public figure, educator, writer, folklorist, and linguist. For 10 years he taught in elementary schools in Kharkiv gubernia and Katerynoslav gubernia. In 1894 he settled in Chernihiv, where he organized there the largest publishing house in Russian-ruled Ukraine, which published 50 popular-educational books despite severe censorship. In 1902 he moved to Kyiv, where the Hromada of Kyiv entrusted him with the task of compiling a dictionary of the Ukrainian language. Hrinchenko's literary work was directly linked with his journalistic work and was to a large extent subservient to it. In his realistic short stories and novelettes he depicted Ukrainian peasant life while raising urgent social questions, the attitude of the intelligentsia to the peasantry, the education and denationalization of the rural population, and the relation between nationalism and radicalism or socialism...

STARYTSKY, MYKHAILO, b 14 December 1840 in Klishchyntsi, Zolotonosha county, Poltava gubernia, d 27 April 1904 in Kyiv. Writer and theatrical and cultural activist. Orphaned in childhood, Starytsky was raised by his uncle, the father of Mykola Lysenko. He studied at the Poltava gymnasium (until 1856), Kharkiv University (1858-60), and Kyiv University (1860-6). Starytsky was first published in 1865. An important part of his literary legacy is his poetry on social issues, which is characterized by populist and patriotic motifs, glorification of the Ukrainian past, and protests against tsarism. Starytsky made a considerable contribution to Ukrainian theater and dramaturgy. In 1883 he headed the first Ukrainian professional theater and in 1885 founded a new troupe with young actors. He wrote several original dramatic works as well as librettos for many of Mykola Lysenko's operas. During the last years of his life Starytsky wrote several historical novels on Ukrainian themes in Russian and Ukrainian...

FRANKO, IVAN, b 27 August 1856 in Nahuievychi (today Ivan Franko), Drohobych county, Galicia, d 28 May 1916 in Lviv. Writer, scholar, political and civic leader, publicist; like Taras Shevchenko, one of Ukraine's greatest creative geniuses. The son of a village blacksmith, Franko graduated from the Drohobych gymnasium in 1875 and began to study classical philology and Ukrainian language and literature at Lviv University. His first literary works were published in the students' magazine Druh, whose editorial board he joined in 1875. Franko's political and publishing activities and his correspondence with Mykhailo Drahomanov attracted the attention of the police, and in 1877 he was arrested along with Mykhailo Pavlyk, Ostap Terletsky, and others for spreading socialist propaganda. In 1878 he founded with Pavlyk, the magazine Hromads'kyi druh, which was confiscated by the authorities but resumed publication under the names Dzvin and Molot. In 1880 Franko was arrested again and charged with inciting peasants against the authorities. After serving a three-month term, he was released but was kept under police surveillance and was forced to discontinue his university studies...

Ivan Franko

MARTOVYCH, LES, b 12 February 1871 in Torhovytsia, Horodenka county, Galicia, d 11 January 1916 in Poharysko, Rava-Ruska county, Galicia. Writer, lawyer, and community activist. He completed his legal studies by correspondence at Lviv University in 1909 and worked as a clerk and legal assistant in various Galician towns. From 1898 he lived in Lviv and edited the radical newspaper Hromads’kyi holos. His first published work appeared in 1889, a story entitled ‘Nechytal'nyk’ (The Illiterate). He later published collections of stories and the novellette Zabobon (Superstition, 1917). He depicted the daily life of the Galician peasantry and small-town intelligentsia, particularly that of priests and teachers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He wrote in the realist style, with touches of impressionism and with occasional sharp satire directed at the rural bourgeoisie and the bureaucracy. He contributed to Dilo and other newspapers and journals. His works were translated many times, and a three-volume compilation of his works, edited by Yurii Hamorak, was published in 1943. Other editions of selected works have appeared in Ukraine since 1949...

CHEREMSHYNA, MARKO (pseudonym of Ivan Semaniuk), b 13 June 1874 in Kobaky, Kosiv county, Galicia, d 25 April 1927 in Kobaky; buried in Sniatyn, Galicia. Writer. Cheremshyna completed a law degree at the University of Vienna in 1906 and maintained a law practice in Sniatyn, where he was active in civic life. He began writing short stories as early as 1896 and published them in newspapers and journals. On the basis of regional origin, Cheremshyna is often placed together with Vasyl Stefanyk and Les Martovych in the 'Pokutia triad.' Yet Cheremshyna's stories are more like chronicles of local peasant life and lack the tension and force of Stefanyk’s works, as well as the humor and satire of Martovych’s. They reflect the dialectal traits of Pokutia and are marked by a rhythm and style reminiscent of folk laments or of folk epics. Two collections of his stories appeared during his lifetime. These have been followed posthumously by many selected and collected works, published in Galicia and in the Ukrainian SSR, including his last collection Verkhovyna (Highlands, 1929). Cheremshyna was also known for his translations of short stories from German, Czech, and Hungarian. In 1949 the Cheremshyna literary memorial museum was founded in Sniatyn...

PAVLYK, MYKHAILO, b 17 September 1853 in Monastyrske (now part of Kosiv), Kolomyia circle, Galicia, d 26 January 1915 in Lviv. Galician socialist figure and publicist; full member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society from 1900. He and Ivan Franko became close friends as students at Lviv University. Both of them contributed to the Academic Circle's organ, Druh (1874-7), and both became Ukrainophile socialists under the influence of Mykhailo Drahomanov's letters to Druh and the Polish-language newspaper Praca. Through his writings Pavlyk remained the principal Galician propagator of Drahomanov's ideas, which brought about his persecution (he was tried in court nearly 30 times), imprisonment (in 1877, 1878, 1882, 1885-6, and 1889), and ostracism. With Franko he edited (1878) the socialist journal Hromads'kyi druh and miscellanies Dzvin and Molot, all of which outraged the conservative Galician public and were confiscated by the police...

MAKOVEI, OSYP, b 23 August 1867 in Yavoriv, Galicia, d 21 August 1925 in Zalishchyky. Writer, journalist, and teacher. He attended Lviv University, from which he graduated in 1893. Varied work as an editorial assistant and a contributor to Dilo (1891), Narodna chasopys' (1892), and other newspapers prepared him for the position of editor of Bukovyna (1895-7). He was also one of the editors of Literaturno-naukovyi vistnyk (1897-9)...

LITERATURNO-NAUKOVYI VISTNYK (Literary Scientific Herald, or LNV). A monthly journal published in 1898-1906 in Lviv, in 1907-14 and 1917-19 in Kyiv, and in 1922-32 again in Lviv. It was founded on the initiative of Mykhailo Hrushevsky as the organ of the Shevchenko Scientific Society (NTSh), incorporating the journals Zoria (published by the NTSh) and Zhytie i slovo (published by O. Franko). LNV became the foremost literary-scientific journal of the day. The editorial board consisted of Mykhailo Hrushevsky (editor in chief), Ivan Franko, Oleksander Borkovsky, and Osyp Makovei...

LESIA UKRAINKA (pseud of Larysa Kosach-Kvitka), b 25 February 1871 in Zviahel, Volhynia gubernia, d 1 August 1913 in Surami, Georgia. Poet and playwright. Lesia Ukrainka achieved a broad education by self-tuition and knew all of the major Western European languages as well as Greek and Latin and the Slavic languages. She began writing poetry at a very early age. At the age of nine she wrote the poem 'Nadiia' (Hope), and her first published poems appeared in the journal Zoria in Lviv in 1884. Lesia Ukrainka began to write more prolifically from the mid-1880s. Her first collection of original poetry, Na krylakh pisen' (On Wings of Songs), appeared in 1893. However, she reached her literary heights in her poetic dramas. Particularly important among her works are the dramatic poems on the subject of prisoners in Babylon, which were meant to serve as symbols of the imprisonment of Ukrainians within the Russian Empire...

MYKHAILO KOTSIUBYNSKY, b 17 September 1864 in Vinnytsia, d 25 April 1913 in Kyiv. One of the finest Ukrainian writers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Expelled from the Kamianets-Podilskyi Theological Seminary in 1882 for his Populist involvement, he remained under police surveillance for the rest of his life. A self-taught intellectual, as a young man he was influenced by the works of Taras Shevchenko, Marko Vovchok, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Heinrich Heine, Emile Zola, Victor Hugo, and Guy de Maupassant. His earliest stories are examples of ethnographic realism and show the influence of Ivan Nechui-Levytsky and Populist ideas. In the late 1890s, however, his themes and subjects became more varied and his approach more sophisticated, and he evolved into one of the most talented Ukrainian modernist writers...

VOLODYMYR VYNNYCHENKO, b 27 July 1880 in the village Velykyi Kut, Yelysavethrad county, Kherson gubernia, d 6 March 1951 in Mougins, France. Writer, statesman, and politician. Vynnychenko began to study law at Kyiv University in 1901 but, owing to his expulsion in 1902 for 'revolutionary' activities, he never completed his studies. He was a member of the executive committee of the Ukrainian Social Democratic Workers' party and editor of its journal Borot'ba. In 1917 he was chosen one of two vice-presidents of the Central Rada and then the first president of the General Secretariat of the Central Rada, the autonomous government of Ukraine. Upon disagreeing with the pro-Entente politics of the Directory of the UNR Vynnychenko left for Vienna and finally settled in France where he devoted himself almost exclusively to his literary career...

VASYL STEFANYK, b 14 May 1871 in Rusiv, Sniatyn county, Galicia, d 7 December 1936 in Rusiv. Prose writer. In the course of his studies Stefanyk became aquainted with Les Martovych and Lev Bachynsky, both of whom had an influence on his life: Martovych turned him to writing, and Bachynsky steered him toward community-political involvement. His first attempts to publish some of his introspective poetic prose in newspapers were unsuccessful, but in 1897 the terse narratives of scenes observed by Stefanyk appeared in Pratsia (Chernivtsi); they were followed by several novellas in Literaturno-naukovyi vistnyk (1898) and finally by Stefanyk's first collection of novellas, Synia knyzhechka (The Blue Book, 1899). With its appearance came immediate literary acclaim...

OLHA KOBYLIANSKA, b 27 November 1863 in Gura Humorului, Bukovyna, d 21 March 1942 in Chernivtsi. A pioneering Ukrainian modernist writer. A self-educated and well-read woman, her first novellen were written in German, beginning in 1880. Her travels and acquaintance with Lesia Ukrainka, Nataliia Kobrynska, Osyp Makovei, Ivan Franko, Vasyl Stefanyk, and Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky changed her cultural and political outlook, and she became involved in the Ukrainian women's movement in Bukovyna and began writing in Ukrainian. Many of her works--including the novels Liudyna (A Person, 1891) and Tsarivna (The Princess, 1895)--have as their protagonists cultured, emancipated women oppressed in a philistine, provincial society. Her works are known for their impressionistic, lyrical descriptions of nature and subtle psychological portrayals...

KHVYLOVY, MYKOLA, b 13 December 1893 in Trostianets, Kharkiv gubernia, d 13 May 1933 in Kharkiv. Prominent Ukrainian writer and publicist of the Ukrainian cultural renaissance of the 1920s. Born Mykola Fitilev, he graduated in 1916 from the Bohodukhiv Gymnasium. In Kharkiv in 1921, with Volodymyr Sosiura and Maik Yohansen, he signed a landmark literary manifesto Our Universal to the Ukrainian Workers and Ukrainian Proletarian Artists. After publishing two poetry collections, he switched to writing prose. Khvylovy experimented boldly in his prose, introducing into the narrative diaries, dialogues with the reader, speculations about the subsequent unfolding of the plot, philosophical musings about the nature of art, and other asides. In his brief period of creativity (less than five years) he masterfully depicted the revolution in Ukraine and the first hints of its degeneration, using a rich gallery of characters, most of them members of the intelligentsia...

Mykola Khvylovy

VAPLITE (Free Academy of Proletarian Literature). A writers' organization which existed in Kharkiv from 1925 to 1928. While accepting the official requirements of the Communist party, Vaplite adopted an independent position on questions of literary policy and supported Mykola Khvylovy in the Literary Discussion of 1925–8. Vaplite proposed to create a new Ukrainian literature based on the writers in its ranks who strived to perfect their work by assimilating the finest masterpieces of Western European culture. Joseph Stalin interpreted that goal as a betrayal of the aims of the Party and accused Khvylovy and Vaplite of working under the slogan "Away from Moscow." The association rejected the policy of mass participation in masovism proletarian writers' organizations, which were supported by the Communist party...

KULISH, MYKOLA, b 18 December 1892 in Chaplynka, Tavriia gubernia, d 3 November 1937 in Sandormokh, Karelia region, Russia. The most famous Ukrainian playwright of the twentieth century. After his mother's early death, Kulish spent most of his childhood in orphanages and charity homes. He studied history and philology at Odesa University, but his university education was interrupted by the outbreak of the First World War. He participated in the Ukrainian Struggle for Independence (1917–20), organizing a guerrilla regiment to fight the Russian Volunteer Army in Southern Ukraine. Kulish had joined the proletarian writers' group Hart in 1924, and after moving to Kharkiv he met many of the group's other members. One of them, the famous writer and polemicist Mykola Khvylovy, had a great impact on Kulish's writing and views. Kulish was also profoundly influenced by Ukraine's leading theater director, Les Kurbas, who staged several of Kulish's plays at his Berezil theater...

YOHANSEN, MAIK, b 28 October 1895 in Kharkiv, d 27 October 1937 in Kyiv. Poet, writer, translator, literary theorist, and linguist of German and Ukrainian parentage. Until 1917 he studied philology at Kharkiv University, graduating with a master's degree. Yohansen wrote in German and Russian until 1917, but only in Ukrainian after 1919. Originally a member of the Soviet Ukrainian proletarian writers' organization Hart, in 1925 Yohansen became a founding member of the literary group Vaplite. After the forced dissolution of Vaplite in 1928 by the Soviet authorities, he cofounded and actively contributed to the literary and art periodicals Literaturnyi iarmarok and Universal'nyi zhurnal. He was the only former Vaplite member to question publically the formation of the more populist literary organization Prolitfront, which he refused to join. Instead he founded the apolitical Techno-Artistic Group A, which was officially banned in 1930...

TYCHYNA, PAVLO, b 27 January 1891 in Pisky, Kozelets county, Chernihiv gubernia, d 16 September 1967 in Kyiv. Poet; recipient of the highest Soviet awards and orders; deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR from 1938 and its chairman in 1953–9; director of the Institute of Literature of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR in 1936–9 and 1941–3; and minister of education of the Ukrainian SSR in 1943–8. He graduated from the Chernihiv Theological Seminary in 1913. He enrolled at the Kyiv Commercial Institute, and while a student, he worked on the editorial boards of the newspapers Rada and Svitlo. His first collection of poetry, Soniashni kliarnety (Clarinets of the Sun, 1918; repr 1990), is a programmatic work, in which he created a uniquely Ukrainian form of symbolism and established his own poetic style, known as kliarnetyzm (clarinetism)...

NEOCLASSICISTS. A literary movement of the 1920s. The works of the Neoclassicists were anti-Romantic and antifolkloric. They sought universal themes and considered Ukrainian culture to be an organic part of Western European culture. The closest to what could be considered their program was set out by Mykola Zerov. 'We should,' he wrote, 'assimilate the highest culture of our times, not only in its latest manifestations, but also in its original forms.' From that commitment stemmed the demands the Neoclassicists made of a writer: (1) a comprehensive knowledge of the best works of Ukrainian literature; (2) a comprehensive knowledge of the achievements of world literature; and (3) poetic craftsmanship of the highest level. High art, in their view, could be conveyed only through clarity of thought and mastery of form. Their poetry, therefore, is characterized by balance, plasticity of image, and logical ordering of subject and composition. The main purpose of literature, as they perceived it, was esthetic...

ZEROV, MYKOLA, b 26 April 1890 in Zinkiv, Poltava gubernia, d 3 November 1937 in the Solovets Islands. Poet, translator, and literary historian. He studied philology at Kyiv University. He was a professor of Ukrainian literature at the Kyiv Architectural Institute (1918-20), the Kyiv Co-operative Tekhnikum (1923-5), and the Kyiv Institute of People's Education (1923-35). Zerov's literary activity, both as a poet and as a translator, was in complete harmony with his ideals and theoretical postulates. An avowed classicist and Parnassian, he became the leader of the Neoclassicists. He concentrated on the sonnet and Alexandrine verse and produced excellent examples of both forms. He translated numerous works of Latin poetry. He wrote literary criticism on contemporary Soviet Ukrainian literary works, articles on literary translation, and introductions to editions of Ukrainian classics. He was arrested in April 1935 and sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment in the Solovets Islands. On 9 October 1937 he was resentenced, to death by firing squad...

DRAI-KHMARA, MYKHAILO, b 10 October 1889 in Mali Kanivtsi, Poltava gubernia, d 19 January 1939, Kolyma region, Siberia. Poet, linguist, literary scholar, translator. Drai-Khmara studied at the Galagan College (1906-10), Kyiv University (1910-15), and Petrograd University (1915-17). He became a specialist in Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Serbian literatures and the history of the Serbian and Belarusian languages. He was professor of Ukrainian studies at Kamianets-Podilskyi Ukrainian State University (1918-21) and at the Kyiv Medical Institute (1923-9). He began writing poetry in 1910, and in the 1920s was a member of the Neoclassicists. His early poetry was lyrical, emotive, and essentially symbolist. His later poetry combined symbolist elements with an increasing attention to form, language, and imagery reminiscent of Kyivan neoclassicism. He was first arrested in February 1933. Rearrested in September 1935, he was sentenced for 'counterrevolutionary terrorism' in March 1936 and perished in a Kolyma labor camp...

FYLYPOVYCH, PAVLO, b 1 September 1891 in the village of Kaitanivka, Kyiv gubernia, d 3 November 1937. Poet and literary scholar. Fylypovych studied at Galagan College and at Kyiv University (1910-5), where he later was a professor (1917-35). His first poems were published in Russian journals beginning in 1910. After the Revolution of 1917 Fylypovych switched to writing poetry in Ukrainian. In the 1920s he became a member of the Neoclassicists and published two collections of poetry. Fylypovych was an associate member of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences and secretary of its Historical-Literary Society. He made a major contribution to the comparative study of Ukrainian literature, particularly to the study of Taras Shevchenko and Ukrainian romanticism. Fylypovych was arrested in August 1935 during the Stalinist terror, presumably for his critical attitude to official Soviet cultural policies, and sentenced to 10 years in concentration camps. He died in a camp in the Ukhta-Pechorsk region of Siberia...

RYLSKY, MAKSYM, b 19 March 1895 in Kyiv, d 24 July 1964 in Kyiv. Poet, translator, and community activist. He studied at Kyiv University, initially in the medical faculty and later in the historical-philological faculty. Rylsky started to write early in life (he published his first poem in 1907), and by 1910 he had published his first youthful collection. His poetic talents reached full bloom with the publication of several poetry collections in the 1920s. Rylsky's lyric poetry grew out of the best achievements of Ukrainian poetry at his time, and out of his broad knowledge of world poetry, French writers in particular. He often used motifs and images from ancient mythology and adhered to classical forms, which practices linked him to the group of Neoclassicists. In many other respects, however, his philosophical and contemplative lyric poetry did not fit the narrow definition of Neoclassicism. Rylsky's apolitical poetry provoked fierce attacks from official critics. He was arrested in 1931, but then proclaimed his acceptance of the official Soviet view of reality....

KLEN, YURII (pseud of Oswald Burghardt), b 4 October 1891 in Serbynivtsi, Podilia gubernia, d 30 October 1947 in Augsburg, Germany. Writer, poet, literary scholar, and translator. After graduating from Kyiv University, he published in Russian a study on the latest analyses of poetic style (1915). Because he was the son of German colonists, he was exiled during the First World War to the Arkhangelsk region of northern Russia. Returning to Ukraine after the Revolution of 1917, he worked as a teacher in Baryshivka. There he renewed his friendship with the scholar and poet Mykola Zerov and began writing poetry in Ukrainian. Klen became one of the unofficial five-member group called the Neoclassicists. Although his poems began to appear in the periodical press beginning in 1924, his major contributions were his translations of German, French, and English poetry. In 1931 Klen managed to emigrate to Germany and taught Slavic literatures at the universities of Munster, Innsbruck, and Prague....

LYPA, YURII, b 5 May 1900 in Odesa, d 20 August 1944. Writer and publicist. He was a graduate of Poznan University (1929) and a physician by profession. From 1920 he lived in Poland and Galicia. He died serving as a physician with the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. His poetry began to be published in 1919 and several collections of his poetic works appeared. In 1929, together with Yevhen Malaniuk, Lypa established the literary group Tank in Warsaw and became the group’s main ideologist. His prose works include a novel, three volumes of short stories, and a collection of essays. He wrote a number of publicist works which were popular at the time and in which he outlined his so-called Black Sea doctrine; and numerous publicistic articles and essays of literary criticism. Lypa's ‘imperial’ concept was not well-founded but it was expounded in such a brilliant and stirring style that he became one of the most popular figures of his time in Galicia and among Ukrainian emigrants. His medical works were reprinted several times and enjoyed great popularity...

MALANIUK, YEVHEN, b 20 January 1897 in Novoarkhanhelsk, Olviopil county, Kherson gubernia, d 16 February 1968 in New York. Poet and political and community activist. He became an officer of the Army of the Ukrainian National Republic in 1917 and was interned in Kalisz, Poland, in 1920. He graduated from the Ukrainian Husbandry Academy in Podebrady in 1923. Toward the end of the Second World War he resettled in Germany, and then he emigrated to the United States. His poetry is one of the better examples of the literary resurgence of the 1920s and 1930s. He was a member of the vistnykivtsi, made up of literary contributors to Dmytro Dontsov's journal Vistnyk. His work was influential in emigre circles, in Western Ukraine, and in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, where he was under constant attack by official critics. The style and engaged content of his poetry emerged as a result of his generation's anger and frustration at Ukraine's subjugation, at the defeat of the struggle for independence (1917-20), and at the ongoing tragedy caused by Moscow's domination of Ukraine...

OLZHYCH, OLEH, b 8 July 1907 in Zhytomyr, Volhynia, d 9 June 1944 in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Archeologist, poet, and nationalist leader; son of Oleksander Oles. Olzhych emigrated from Ukraine in 1923 and lived in Prague, where he graduated with a degree in archeology from Charles University in 1929. After a brief lecture tour at Harvard University Olzhych helped found the short-lived Ukrainian Research Institute in America (Saint Paul, Minnesota) and edited its first collection of papers (1939). In 1929 Olzhych joined the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and headed its cultural and educational branch. After the split in the OUN in 1940, he went with the Melnykites. As second-in-command to Andrii Melnyk he represented the OUN leadership in Carpatho-Ukraine (1938-9) and took part in forming the Ukrainian National Council in 1941. Until his arrest and execution by the Gestapo, he directed Melnykite underground activities in Ukraine. Often relying on historical themes to illustrate the inalienable right of Ukraine to independent statehood, Olzhych's verse typifies the nationalist poetry between the two world wars...

TELIHA, OLENA, b 21 July 1907 in Saint Petersburg, Russia, d 21 February 1942 in Kyiv. Poet, publicist, and nationalist leader. Teliha emigrated with her parents to Czechoslovakia in 1922, where she studied at the Ukrainian Higher Pedagogical Institute in Prague. The intellectual milieu of the Ukrainian emigres after the failure of the Ukrainian struggle for independence (1917-20) and especially the Ukrainian student life in Prague in the 1930s had a profound influence on Teliha's development. From 1933 she contributed to the nationalist journal Vistnyk. In Cracow from 1939 to 1941, she headed the literary-artistic society Zarevo and together with Oleh Olzhych worked in the cultural sector of the Leadership of Ukrainian Nationalists. With the outbreak of the war between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union she moved to Lviv and then left with the OUN expeditionary groups for Kyiv in 1941. There she became editor of the literary weekly Litavry. When the Nazi regime closed down Litavry's parent newspaper, Ukrains’ke slovo, and replaced it with a pro-regime organ, Teliha refused to co-operate. She was arrested by the Gestapo and executed...

Olena Teliha

MOSENDZ, LEONID, b 20 September 1897 in Mohyliv-Podilskyi, Podilia gubernia, d 13 October 1948 in Blonay, Switzerland. Writer. A demobilized Army of the Ukrainian National Republic soldier, he fled to Poland in 1920. He returned to Lutsk in 1921, whereupon he was arrested by the Poles and sent to an internment camp in Kalisz. After his release he studied chemical engineering at the Ukrainian Husbandry Academy in Podebrady where he received a doctorate in 1931 and worked as a civil engineer in Bratislava, whence he fled in 1945 to the British zone in Austria. He died in a Swiss tuberculosis sanatorium. From the late 1920s Mosendz contributed poetry, prose, literary criticism, and book reviews to Ukrainian periodicals, including the journal Vistnyk. His unfinished novel The Last Prophet was published posthumously in 1960. The principal themes of Mosendz's works, including his publicistic pamphlets about the Prussian statesman Baron K. Stein (1935) and Mykola Khvylovy (1948), derive from his well-developed sense of Ukrainian patriotism...

Leonid Mosendz

STEFANOVYCH, OLEKSA, , b 5 October 1899 in Myliatyn, Ostrih county, Volhynia gubernia, d 4 January 1970 in Buffalo, New York. Poet. As an interwar emigre he studied at Prague University (1922-8; PH D diss on Amvrosii Metlynsky as a poet, 1932) and the Ukrainian Free University (1928-30). His poetry appeared in Ukrainian journals in Prague, Lviv, and Chernivtsi and was published in Prague in two collections. Although Stefanovych belonged to the 'Prague school' of Ukrainian poets, the voluntarism characteristic of the works of its other members is absent in his poems. His creativity was inspired by elegiac memories of Volhynia's landscapes, by Ukrainian historical and mythological figures, and by tragic events in Ukraine's past and present. Paganism (with erotic overtones) and, in his later poems, Christianity (often of the mystical variety) were dominant forces in his oeuvre. His style is notable for the originality of his poetic language, with its archaisms, neologisms, and unique use of syntax...

MUR. (Mystetskyi ukrainskyi rukh [The Artistic Ukrainian Movement]). An artistic-literary organization of Ukrainian emigres in Europe. It was founded on 25 September 1945 in Furth, Germany, on the initiative of a committee consisting of Ivan Bahriany, V. Domontovych (Viktor Petrov), Yurii Kosach, Ihor Kostetsky, Ivan Maistrenko, and Yu. Sherekh (George Yurii Shevelov). MUR organized three writers' congresses (1945, 1947, and 1948) as well as three conferences devoted to various aspects of literary activity. The head of the organization during its whole duration was Ulas Samchuk, and its membership numbered 61. The objectives of MUR were to gather Ukrainian writers scattered by the Second World War, to organize the publication of their works, and to become a center for creative dialogues among members representing various styles and literary aims. MUR managed to organize almost all of the noted emigre writers and provide them with a forum for discussion while it stimulated an interest in literature among the public at large...

SHEVELOV, GEORGE YURII (pseud: Yurii Sherekh), b 17 December 1908 in Kharkiv, d 12 April 2002 in New York. Slavic linguist, philologist, essayist, literary historian, and literary critic; full member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society since 1949 and of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1945. After studying under Leonid Bulakhovsky at Kharkiv University (candidate 1939) he lectured there in Slavic linguistics (1939-43). Having emigrated to Germany, he taught at the Ukrainian Free University in Munich (1946-9) and obtained a doctorate there (1949). He was also vice-president of the MUR literary association (1945-9). After settling in the United States he served as lecturer in Russian and Ukrainian at Harvard University (1952-4), associate professor (1954-8) and professor of Slavic philology at Columbia University (1958-77), and president of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences (1959-61, 1981-6). He was a founding member of the Slovo Association of Ukrainian Writers in Exile...

SAMCHUK, ULAS, b 20 February 1905 in Derman, Ostrih county, Volhynia gubernia, d 9 July 1987 in Toronto. Writer and journalist. Samchuk was educated at the University of Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland) and at the Ukrainian Free University in Prague (1931). His literary career began in 1926. He was editor of the Rivne newspaper Volyn’ (1941-3), and he fled to Germany in 1944, where he headed the literary-artistic organization MUR (1945-8). He emigrated to Canada after 1948 and became a longtime head of the Slovo Association of Ukrainian Writers in Exile. Samchuk's prose is deeply rooted in the 19th-century realist tradition. His novels are broad-canvas chronicles of the Ukrainian experience in the 20th century. Themes progress from the difficult national and cultural nascence in the trilogy Volyn’ (Volhynia, 1932, 1935, 1937), the devastating Ukrainian Famine-Genocide of 1932–33 in Mariia (1934), and the Second World War and forced Ukrainian labor in the trilogy Ost (East, 1948, 1957, 1982)...

KOSTETSKY, IHOR (Kostetzky, Eaghor G.; pen name of Ihor Merzliakov), b 14 May 1913 in Kyiv, d 14 June 1983 in Schwaikheim, West Germany. Writer, playwright, translator, critic, and publisher. He grew up in Kyiv and Vinnytsia. In the 1930s he studied stage directing and acting in Leningrad and Moscow. A postwar refugee in Germany, he was one of the founders of the writers' association MUR. In the 1950s and 1960s he edited an illustrated journal Ukraina i svit. He and his wife, the German poet Elizabeth Kottmeier, established the Na Hori publishing house in the mid 1950s and, over the period of twenty five years, published several dozen books, including some outstanding editions of the world literary classics in the Ukrainian translation. Kostetsky published prolifically during the late 1940s. His prose works combined traditional and modernist (expressionist, surrealist, dadaist) forms of expression. His experimental plays written in the 1940s anticipated many stylistic devices subsequently mastered by such dramatists as Samuel Beckett...

PETROV, VIKTOR (pseud: V. Domontovych, V. Ber), b 22 October 1894 in Katerynoslav (now Dnipropetrovsk), d 8 June 1969 in Kyiv. Writer, literary scholar, archeologist, and ethnographer; member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society. A graduate of Kyiv University (1918), from 1920 he worked for the Ethnographic Commission of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. During the 1920s he also worked as a literary scholar and writer and was close to the Neoclassicists. In 1941 he was briefly director of the Institute of Ukrainian Folklore of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. In 1944 he fled to the West. As a refugee in postwar Munich he was a professor at the Ukrainian Free University and a member of the editorial boards of the literary and art monthly Arka and the MUR collections. In 1949 he 'reappeared' in the USSR and worked at the USSR Academy of Sciences in Moscow. From 1956 he was a senior associate of the Institute of Archeology of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR in Kyiv and the custodian of its scientific archive...

KOSACH, YURII, b 5 December 1909 in Kyiv, d 10 January 1990 in Passaic, New Jersey. Poet, writer, and dramatist; nephew of Lesia Ukrainka. Kosach studied at Warsaw University and in Paris. After the war he lived in displaced persons camps in Germany and was an active member of the writers' organization MUR. In 1949 he immigrated to the United States. While in New York he began publishing a pro-Soviet journal, Za synim obriiem, which was notable primarily for its strident anti-emigre attacks. A prolific author excelling in the genre of the historical novel, he is also the author of several collections of rather average poetry, often marked by his interest in history and mythology. His dramatic works include Obloha (The Siege, 1943)--a dramatic poem--and the tragedy Diistvo pro Iuriia Peremozhtsia (Play about Yurii the Conqueror, 1947). By far the largest and most interesting body of work is Kosach's prose, written prior to his emigration to the United States...

BARKA, VASYL (pseud of Vasyl Ocheret), b 16 July 1908 in the village of Solonytsia near Lubni, Poltava gubernia, d 11 April 2003 in Liberty, New York State. Poet, writer, literary critic, translator. An emigre from 1943, he lived in Germany, where he was active in the MUR literary association, before settling in the United States in 1949. Barka's orphic works require intuitive rather than logical comprehension. His poetry developed and grew in stature, from the early lyrical collections to the monumental 4,000-strophe epic novel in verse Svidok dlia sontsia shestykrylykh (The Witness for the Sun of Seraphims, 1981), addressed to the theme of reconciliation between 'man and the Creator.' His first novel, Rai (Paradise, 1953), deals with the Soviet 'paradise.' His second novel, Zhovtyi kniaz' (The Yellow Prince, 1962, 1968), about the Ukrainian Famine-Genocide of 1932–33, was translated into French (Paris 1981) and served as the basis for Oles Yanchuk's 1993 Ukrainian feature film Holod-33 (Famine-33)...

SHISTDESIATNYKY (also Shestydesiatnyky; The Sixtiers). The literary generation that began to publish in the second half of the 1950s, during Nikita Khrushchev's 'de-Stalinization,' and reached their literary peak in the early 1960s; hence, their name. The first representatives were Lina Kostenko and Vasyl Symonenko. Following their lead came a veritable proliferation of poets: Ivan Drach, Mykola Vinhranovsky, H. Kyrychenko, Vasyl Holoborodko, Ihor Kalynets, B. Mamaisur, and others. At first Vitalii Korotych was close to the group. The more prominent prose writers were Valerii Shevchuk, Hryhir Tiutiunnyk, Volodymyr Drozd, Yevhen Hutsalo, and Yaroslav Stupak, and literary critics, Ivan Dziuba, Yevhen Sverstiuk, Ivan Svitlychny, and I. Boichak. The shistdesiatnyky held their ‘literary parents’ responsible for Stalinist crimes, for adapting to a despotic regime, and for creative impotence (eg, Drach in 'Oda chesnomu boiahuzovi' [Ode to an Honest Coward]). In turn, some of the older writers, such as Pavlo Tychyna, Platon Voronko, Mykola Sheremet, and Mykhailo Chabanivsky, exhibited a hostile attitude to the experimentation and innovation of the shistdesiatnyky...

SYMONENKO, VASYL, b 8 January 1935 in Biivtsi, Lubny raion, Poltava oblast, d 13 December 1963 in Cherkasy. Poet, journalist, and dissident. He graduated with a degree in journalism from Kyiv University in 1957. Symonenko began writing poetry while a student, but because of the harsh environment of Soviet censorship he published little. Only one collection of his poetry appeared during his lifetime, Tysha i hrim (Silence and Thunder, 1962). His poetry, however, was popular and was widely circulated in samvydav, and it largely marks the beginning of the Ukrainian opposition movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Thematically, his verse consists of satires on the Soviet regime, descriptions of the difficult life of the peasantry, condemnations of Soviet despotism, and protestations against Russian chauvinism. Of particular importance is a cycle of poems in which the poet speaks of his love for Ukraine. In the first decade following Symonenko's death Soviet literary criticism attempted to paralyze the influence of his samvydav poetry, by suppressing it and simultaneously praising it as ‘irreproachably devoted to the Communist Party line...’

KOSTENKO, LINA, b 19 March 1930 in Rzhyshchiv, Kyiv oblast. Poet; one of the earliest and most outstanding of the shistdesiatnyky. Her first poems were published in the early 1950s. She published three poetry collections by 1961. Her collection 'Zorianyi integral' (The Stellar Integral) was ready for publication in 1962, but the censors judged it ideologically harmful and a departure from socialist realism and suppressed it. In 1965 and 1968 Kostenko signed several open letters protesting the arrests and secret trials of Ukrainian intellectuals. Her poetry was not published in Ukraine again until 1977, when her collection Nad berehamy vichnoï riky (On the Banks of the Eternal River) appeared. A novel in verse, Marusia Churai (1979) and the collection Nepovtornist' (Uniqueness, 1980) followed and earned its author the Shevchenko Prize in 1987. In 1987 Kostenko published her next collection Sad netanuchykh skul’ptur (Garden of Unthawed Sculptures). Her historical novel in verse Berestechko, originally composed in 1966, appeared in book form only in 1999. Kostenko's poetry consists primarily of intimate, lyric poems and 'social' poems on the role and responsibility of a poet, particularly in a totalitarian society...

DRACH, IVAN, b 17 October 1936 in Telizhyntsi, Kyiv oblast. Poet, screenwriter, and political leader. Drach studied at Kyiv University (1958-61) and completed advanced scriptwriting courses in Moscow in 1964. His works have appeared in print since 1959. Drach stood at the forefront of the Ukrainian literary revival initiated by the shistdesiatnyky. His early poetry was noted for its originality, fresh imagery, complex metaphors, philosophical meditation, neologisms, and varied rhythm. He was criticized sharply for his departure from the canons of socialist realism, especially in the poem 'Nizh u sontsi' (Knife in the Sun, 1961), and for the satirical poem 'Oda chesnomu boiahuzevi' (Ode to an Honest Coward, 1963). He compromised with the regime in the late 1960s, and this proved detrimental to the quality of his later work. In the 1970s and 1980s he traveled abroad as an official Soviet cultural emissary. In the late 1980s Drach emerged as a prominent political activist in Ukraine. As head of the Kyiv organization of the Writers' Union of Ukraine he was instrumental in forging the coalition that created the Popular Movement of Ukraine (Rukh)...

VINHRANOVSKY, MYKOLA, b 7 November 1936 in Bohopil, now part of Pervomaisk (Mykolaiv oblast), d 26 May 2004 in Kyiv. Writer, actor, film director, and translator. He graduated from the All-Union Institute of Cinematography (1960) in Moscow and has worked at the Kyiv Artistic Film Studio, where he played the lead role in Yuliia Solntseva's film Povist’ polumianykh lit (The Tale of Flaming Years, 1961). He wrote film scripts and directed the feature films Eskadra povertaie na zakhid (The Squadron Turns Westward, 1967), Bereh nadii (The Shore of Hope, 1967), Duma pro Brytanku (Duma about Brytanka, 1969), and Klymko (1984) and several documentaries. Vinhranovsky gained prominence in the early 1960s as a leading poet of the shistdesiatnyky. He published nine poetry collections, several books of short stories, the novel Nalyvaiko (1991), and, from 1970, several poetry books for children, for which he was awarded the Shevchenko Prize in 1984...

DZIUBA, IVAN, b 26 July 1931 in Mykolaivka, Volnovakha raion, Donetsk oblast. Literary scholar, publicist, and a former Ukrainian dissident and government minister; full member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (NANU) since 1992. Dziuba was one of the spokespersons of the shistdesiatnyky and expressed the aspirations of the postwar generation of Soviet Ukrainian writers to revitalize Ukrainian literature and liberate it from the influence of Russian literature. In the 1960s he became active in the movement against Russification and the persecution of the Ukrainian intelligentsia. Late in 1965 he completed his main work, Internatsionalizm chy rusyfikatsiia? (Internationalism or Russification?). In it he demonstrated how the Soviet regime had departed from the theoretical principles of Leninist nationality policy and had been Russifying Ukraine and destroying its society and intelligentsia under the pretext of internationalism. In January 1972 Dziuba was arrested and later sentenced to five years’ imprisonment; he was released after he wrote a public recantation of his views...