Lisovy, Vasyl

Lisovy, Vasyl [Лісовий, Василь; Lisovyj, Vasyl’], b 29 August 1937 in Stari Bezradychi, Obukhiv raion, Kyiv oblast, d 20 July 2012 in Kyiv. Philosopher and dissident. After graduating from Kyiv University (1961), he taught logic and esthetics at the Ternopil Medical Institute (1962–6) and then returned to Kyiv for postgraduate studies. In 1970 he received his candidate's degree and became a research associate of the Institute of Philosophy of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR and a lecturer at Kyiv University. The articles Lisovy published in 1970–2—three on ordinary language, one on the history of logic, and one a critique of scientism—reveal a perceptive and original thinker. After sending an open letter to the CC CPSU protesting the wave of arrests of Ukrainian writers and artists in early 1972 and calling for greater openness and democracy, he was arrested on 6 July 1972 and sentenced in November 1973 to seven years in a labor camp of Mordovia and three years' exile in the Buriat Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic for anti-Soviet ‘agitation and propaganda.’ In 1980 he was sentenced to an additional year of imprisonment for ‘parasitism.’ He was released in 1983, but he was not permitted to work in philosophy until the beginning of 1990, when he was reinstated in his position at the Institute of Philosophy. He became head of the Institute in 1997. He taught philosophy at Kyiv University (1996–9) and the Kyiv Mohyla Academy National University (1998–2002).

[This article was updated in 2013.]