Bacha, Yurii

Bacha, Yurii [Бача, Юрій; Bača, Jurij], b 13 May 1932 in the village of Kečkovce, Bardejov county, Czechoslovakia. Ukrainian poet, writer, scholar, and literary critic in Czechoslovakia and Slovakia. He studied at Bratislava University, worked as a translator in the Prešov Pedagogical Institute, and then pursued graduate studies at Kyiv University in 1957–60, after which he became a lecturer in literature at Prešov University. In the 1960s Bacha was a leading Ukrainian cultural figure in the Prešov region, where he published his poetry, short stories, and social and literary criticism in periodicals, such as Duklia, which he edited. His major work is Literaturnyi rukh na Zakarpatti seredyny XIX stolittia (The Literary Movement in Transcarpathia in the Mid-19th Century, 1961). After the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, Bacha was arrested and later imprisoned for two and a half years. After his release from prison he was forced to work as laborer. In 1990 he was rehired by the Prešov Pedagogical Institute and from 2001 to his retirement in 2002 he worked as professor of Ukrainian literature at this institute.

[This article was updated in 2014.]