Gzhytsky, Volodymyr

Gzhytsky, Volodymyr [Ґжицький, Володимир; Gzhyc'kyj], b 15 October 1895 in Ostrivets, Terebovlia county, Galicia, d 19 December 1973 in Lviv. Writer. After serving in the Ukrainian Galician Army in 1918–19, he moved to Kharkiv. He was a member of the writers’ groups Pluh and Zakhidnia Ukraina. The history of Western Ukraine is the subject of many of his works. His novel Chorne ozero (The Black Lake, 1929) provoked severe official criticism because it exposed Russian colonial policies towards other nations of the USSR. In 1934 he was sent to a GULAG concentration camp. He was released and ‘rehabilitated’ in 1956 and returned to Lviv. There he published, among other works, the prose collection Povernennia (The Return, 1958), the autobiographical novel U shyrokyi svit (Into the Wide World, 1960), and the novels Opryshky (Opryshoks, 1962), parts of which first appeared in the 1930s, Slovo chesty (Word of Honor, 1968), and Karmeliuk (1971).

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 2 (1988).]