IEU'S FEATURED TOPICS RELATED TO THE LITERARY CULTURE OF UKRAINE

NESTOR THE CHRONICLER (Nestor litopysets), 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. The original has not been preserved. Most scholars (eg, Dmytro Abramovych, Mykhailo Braichevsky, Dmytro Chyzhevsky, Mykhailo Hrushevsky, D. Likhachev, M. Priselkov, Omeljan Pritsak, Aleksei Shakhmatov, Mykhailo Vozniak) consider Nestor the Hagiographer and Nestor the Chronicler to be one person. Some (eg, Evgenii Golubinsky, P. Kazansky, Aleksei Sobolevsky), however, believe they are different persons...

HAGIOGRAPHY (LIVES OF SAINTS). 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. By the 11th century there were already many translations of Greek and Latin hagiographic writings, individual lives of saints, patericons (collections of episodes from lives of monks), reading menologies (collections of lives and sermons arranged according to the church calendar, not for liturgical use but for daily reading), and prologues or synaxaries (collections similar to menologies but with abridged lives). 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, Mykhailo Vsevolodovych of Chernihiv, and Boyar Fedir have come down to us only in later redactions. Fragments of the Life of Saint Anthony of the Caves and the Life of Prince Ihor Olhovych have been preserved in the chronicles. 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 to novella-like or novel-like narratives. Most of the tales tend to be antisecular in tone and favor a strict, ascetic life. Nevertheless, some do testify to the decline of monastic life (some monks, for example, own property). Besides chronological data about the monastery, the text contains a wealth of historical and cultural information about monastic and secular life. Because of its relatively simple style and its rich vocabulary, as well as its masterly characterization of individuals by means of dialogue, prayer, and 'internal monologue,' the patericon is one of the outstanding works of Old Ukrainian literature...

HOMILETICS (SERMONS). The art of religious discourse and preaching of sermons, homilies, and catechetical instruction. It has been practiced in Ukraine since its Christianization in the late 10th century, when it was employed to propagate the new religion. Slavic homilies were initially introduced from Bulgaria; new ones were then locally created or translated from the Greek. The oldest extant Rus' sermon is the panegyrical 'Slovo o zakoni i blahodati' (Sermon on Law and Grace, 1051) by the eloquent Metropolitan Ilarion, the first non-Greek metropolitan of Kyiv. The work has had an important influence on Ukrainian and other Slavic literatures. Other famous Rus' preachers were Hegumen Moisei of the Vydubychi Monastery, the author of 'Pokhvalne slovo' (Sermon of Praise, 1198), and Bishop Cyril of Turiv (d 1182), who freely dramatized events from the Gospel. Alongside didactic sermons, describing the duties of monks, condemning paganism and social inequality, and exhorting the faithful to observe the church's teachings, a genre of Byzantine rhetoric dealing with the fine points of theology was fostered. Homiletics in Kyivan Rus' evolved until the Mongol invasion and the sacking of Kyiv in the mid-13th century, after which it was continued on a lesser scale in the Principality of Galicia-Volhynia, which was less affected by the invasions from the east...

SLOVO O POLKU IHOREVI [The Tale of Ihor's Campaign]. 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 Rus'. In addressing that theme the author condemns the various princes for their feuding and their selfishness at the expense of the general good. The poem was written in an epic lyrical style. The historical subject matter is interspersed with dreams, laments, nature's reaction to the hero's fate, monologues of princes, and other motifs and devices. Particularly rich in poetic tropes (epithets, similes, metaphors, etc.), the work suggests a sophistication indicative of a rich tradition of folk and martial literature with highly developed poetics. The language of the work is the contemporary Rus' literary language, similar to that of the chronicles, but with a marked increase in the incidence of the vernacular. A wide range of scholars, particularly Mykhailo Maksymovych, demonstrated connections between the Slovo and Ukrainian folk poetry. 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...

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, coupled at times with an escape from surrounding reality into an idealized past or into a world of fantasy. Certain elements of romanticism, especially those which emphasized the value of the folk, such as Johann Gottfried von Herder's notion of the importance of folklore in the development of literature, encouraged a resurgence of interest in folklore and history. The study of both resulted in a general reawakening of Slavic peoples, including the Ukrainians. The first manifestations of the influence of romanticism in Ukraine were the publications of Ukrainian folk songs...

Romanticism

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. 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. 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. Through these men Shevchenko also met the famous painter and professor Karl Briullov, who donated his painting as the prize in a lottery whose proceeds were used to buy Shevchenko's freedom on 5 May 1838. Soon after, Shevchenko enrolled in the Imperial Academy of Arts and studied there under Briullov's supervision. In 1840 his first poetry collection, Kobzar, consisting of eight Romantic poems, was published in Saint Petersburg. It was followed by his epic poem Haidamaky (The Haidamakas, 1841) and the ballad Hamaliia (1844). After graduating from the academy of arts in 1845, Shevchenko became a member of the Kyiv Archeographic Commission and traveled widely through Russian-ruled Ukraine in 1845 to sketch historical and architectural monuments and collect folkloric materials. In 1844 and 1845, while he was in Ukraine, he wrote some of his most satirical and politically subversive narrative poems that contributed to Shevchenko's popularity but also made him a target of tsarist persecution...

KULISH, PANTELEIMON, b 8 August 1819 in Voronizh, Chernihiv gubernia, d 14 February 1897 in Motronivka, Chernihiv gubernia. Prominent writer, poet, historian, ethnographer, translator, and intellectual. He was born into an impoverished Cossack-gentry family. In 1837 he enrolled at Kyiv University but was not allowed to finish his studies because he was not a noble. He obtained a teaching position in Lutsk in 1840. There he wrote his first historical novel in Russian Mykhailo Charnyshenko, or Little Russia Eighty Years Ago (2 vols, 1843). His first longer work written in Ukrainian was the epic poem 'Ukraina' (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. In 1845 Kulish was invited to teach at Saint Petersburg University, where he finished in Ukrainian his major historical novel, Chorna rada, khronika 1663 roku (The Black Council, a Chronicle of the Year 1663). The Imperial Academy of Sciences granted him a scholarship to do research abroad. In 1847 he Kulish set out for Prague, but en route he was arrested by the tsarist police in Warsaw for belonging to the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood, which had been uncovered at the time. After two months in prison he was exiled for three years to Tula. In 1850 he was allowed to return to Saint Petersburg. There he established a Ukrainian printing press and, after being allowed to publish under his own name, issued two splendid volumes of Zapiski o Iuzhnoi Rusi (Notes on Southern Rus', 1856-7), a rich collection of Ukrainian folklore, ethnography, and literature in which he introduced a new orthography (Kulishivka)...

KOSTOMAROV, MYKOLA, b 16 May 1817 in Yurasivka, Ostrohozke county, Voronezh region, d 19 April 1885 in Saint Petersburg. Historian, publicist, and writer. In 1837 he graduated 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 ukrains'koho narodu (Books of the Genesis of the Ukrainian People) and 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), Kostomarov formulated the society's program and basic ideas: Christian piety, democratic republicanism, a Ukrainian national renaissance, Ukrainian messianism, and Pan-Slavic federalism. In 1847 he was arrested along with the other members of the society and sentenced to one year's imprisonment, followed by exile. Until 1856 he lived in Saratov. Three years later he moved to Saint Petersburg, where he was appointed to the Chair of Russian History at the university. Because of his political involvements he had to resign his university position in 1862. From then on he devoted himself exclusively to research. He wrote a number of fundamental works on the history of Ukraine in the 16th-18th centuries. In his studies Kostomarov argued for the national distinctiveness of the Ukrainian people and the uniqueness of their historial development, which, unlike for the Poles and Russians, was manifested in the Ukrainian freedom-loving, democratic, and individualistic spirit...

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, Mykola Savych, and Taras Shevchenko. The basic documents in which the ideas and program of the society are formulated are Knyhy bytiia ukrains'koho narodu (Books of the Genesis of the Ukrainian People) and Ustav Slov'ians'koho tovarystva sv Kyryla i Metodiia. Holovni idei (The Statute of the Slavic Society of SS Cyril and Methodius: Its Main Ideas), both written by Kostomarov, and a memorandum to the statute written by Vasyl Bilozersky. These documents and the society's activities were deeply influenced not only by the ideas of the Ukrainian renaissance of the first half of the 19th century, particularly by Istoriia Rusov (History of the Rus' People), but also by European romanticism. The Decembrist movement and Pan-Slavism also had some influence on the society's outlook...

VOVCHOK, MARKO (pseud of Mariia Vilinska), b 22 December 1834 in Ekaterininskoe, Orel gubernia, Russia, d 10 August 1907 in Nalchik, Caucasia. Writer. In 1851 she married Opanas Markovych, who had been a member of the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood, and moved from Orel to Ukraine. From 1851 to 1858 she lived in Chernihiv, Kyiv, and Nemyriv and studied the Ukrainian language and Ukrainian traditions and folklore and wrote Narodni opovidannia (Folk Stories), which was published in 1857. It met with immediate acclaim in Ukrainian literary circles, particularly from Taras Shevchenko and Panteleimon Kulish, and in Russia (it was translated into Russian and edited by Ivan Turgenev). In 1859, after a short stay in Saint Petersburg, Vovchok moved to Germany. She spent some time in Switzerland, England, and Italy but stayed the longest in Paris. In 1862 a two-volume edition of Narodni opovidannia was published, and individual works were published in journals in Russia and the Austrian-ruled Galicia. From 1867 to 1878 Vovchok lived in Saint Petersburg, where owing to the prohibition against the Ukrainian language she wrote and translated for Russian journals. From 1878 Vovchok lived in Subcaucasia, and in 1885-93 in Kyiv gubernia, where she continued her work on Ukrainian folklore and a dictionary. At the beginning of the 1900s she renewed her contact with Ukrainian publishers. Elements of realism appear mainly in her short stories about Ukrainian peasants living under serfdom and about the difficult plight of women. Other works continue the tradition of ethnographic romanticism and are typified by strong characters and willful heroes...

KONYSKY, OLEKSANDER, b 18 August 1836 at Perekhodivtsi khutir, Nizhyn county, Chernihiv gubernia, d 11 December 1900 in Kyiv. Writer, lawyer, scholar, and community leader. A leading member of the secret Poltava Hromada, he helped organize Sunday schools, prepared textbooks for them, and initiated the creation of the Poltava Literary Society. Much of his time was also devoted to Ukrainian-language publishing. He lived from 1866 in Katerynoslav and from 1872 until his death in Kyiv. As a member of the Kyiv city council, he tried to get Ukrainian introduced into the city's schools. One of the patrons of the Shevchenko Society in Lviv, he initiated its transformation into the Shevchenko Scientific Society in 1893 and bequeathed 10,000 rubles to it. As a writer, Konysky used over 100 pseudonyms. In his day his poetry (he was an epigone of Taras Shevchenko) was very popular. His more than 50 short stories and novelettes had more lasting value. They dealt with peasant life and tribulations and the social and national oppression of Ukraine. In some novelettes he depicted the problems encountered by the Ukrainophile intelligentsia. Konysky also wrote many literary studies, including a fundamental biography of Taras Shevchenko. In Soviet scholarship Konysky was denigrated as a 'nationalist,' and his works were not published from the late 1920s until 1986...

SVYDNYTSKY, ANATOLII, b 13 September 1834 in Mankivtsi, Lityn county, Podilia gubernia, d 18 July 1871 in Kyiv. Writer, community activist, and folklorist. He began his activities as a member of the clandestine Kharkiv-Kyiv Secret Society, which set itself the task of struggling with the tsarist regime, disseminating forbidden literature, and establishing Sunday schools. During that period he wrote a number of lyric poems against arbitrary rule and national oppression. After the tsarist ban of all Ukrainian publications he published a number of articles and stories in Russian in the newspaper Kievlianin. The novel Liuboratski is considered to be Svydnytsky's major work. It is a chronicle, to a large extent autobiographical, of the downfall of the Liuboratsky family of clergymen over the course of three generations. It is set in the Podilia region, which was dominated by the Polish aristocracy, tsarist oppression, and the inimical official Orthodox clergy. Its far-reaching range of subject matter prompted Ivan Franko to designate the work as the first realist novel in Ukrainian literature. In both form and content Liuboratski serves as a transition between the prose of Hryhorii Kvitka-Osnovianenko and Marko Vovchok and the later epic realism of Ivan Nechui-Levytsky and Panas Myrny. However, the novel had no immediate influence on contemporary writers because it was published for the first time only in 1886, 15 years after the author's death...

NECHUI-LEVYTSKY, IVAN, 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 gymnasiums in various cities. He began writing in 1865, but because of Russian imperial censorship his works appeared only in Galician periodicals. He mainly wrote stories, in which he combined the styles of the novel and the folkloric narrative. 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 and their attempts to 'place first on the agenda the inevitability of national liberation.' Such is the theme of Khmary (Clouds, 1874), the first Ukrainian work of fiction to address this problem. In his numerous articles on Ukrainian theater and Ukrainian literature Nechui-Levytsky championed the idea of a national culture formed independently of outside influences, and asserted that 'Russian literature is useless [as a model] for Ukraine'...

MYRNY, PANAS (pseudonym of Panas Rudchenko), b 13 May 1849 in Myrhorod, d 28 January 1920 in Poltava. Writer. 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 soldiers, police violence, and spontaneous protests against lies and injustice. Myrny's second important sociopsychological novel, Poviia (Loose Woman, 1884), describes new social processes brought about by the reforms of 1861. Myrny also wrote some dramatic works and his most popular drama was Lymerivna (The Daughter of the Harness Maker, 1883). He is also known as the translator of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem The Song of Hiawatha and of William Shakespeare's King Lear into Ukrainian. Myrny markedly expanded the lexicon of the literary Ukrainian language and with his talent for rhythmic and melodious phrasing enriched Ukrainian syntax...

HRINCHENKO, BORYS, b 9 December 1863 at Vilkhovyi Yar khutir in Kharkiv county, d 6 May 1910 in Ospedaletti, Italy. Prominent public figure, writer, folklorist, and linguist. In 1894 he settled in Chernihiv, where he organized the largest publishing house in Russian-ruled Ukraine, which published 50 popular-educational books despite severe censorship. In 1902 he moved to Kyiv. His dedicated service to the populist cause began in the 1880s when the prospects of success appeared dimmest. It consisted mostly of journalistic and community work aimed at shaping, in Hrinchenko's words, 'out of the Ukrainian nation one nationally conscious, enlightened community' that would have access to all the achievements of culture and would overcome the gap between the common people and the intelligentsia. Hrinchenko's literary work was directly linked with his journalistic writings. 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. Hrinchenko was also a noted Ukrainian ethnographer. His interest in ethnography led him to collect material for the 68,000-word, four-volume dictionary of the Ukrainian language (1907-9) that he edited. Until mid twentieth century this dictionary was the fullest Ukrainian dictionary of its kind...

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). From 1867 he lived in Kyiv and worked with Lysenko; he wrote librettos for many of Lysenko's operas. Owing to official tsarist hostility to his work after the Ems Ukase was introduced, Starytsky was forced to emigrate in 1878 and live abroad for some time. He returned to Ukraine in 1880 and resumed his publishing activities and theater work. In 1883 he headed the first Ukrainian professional theater. In 1885 he founded a new troupe with young actors. 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. He also made a considerable contribution to Ukrainian theater and dramaturgy. His most notable plays are his social dramas and the play Oi ne khody, Hrytsiu, ta i na vechornytsi (Don't Go to Parties, Hryts!, 1892) that became very popular. His later historical dramas merit particular attention. 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, 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. During the first period of his creative work Franko wrote political poems, such as 'Kameniari' (The Stonecutters, 1878), 'Vichnyi revoliutsioner' (The Eternal Revolutionary, 1880), and 'Ne pora ...' (This Is Not the Time ..., 1880), which became patriotic anthems and influenced the outlook of a whole generation; the novels Boa constrictor (1878), Boryslav smiiet'sia (Boryslav Is Laughing, 1881), and Zakhar Berkut (1883). Later, besides his political and literary work Franko continued his university studies, first at Chernivtsi University (1891), where he prepared a dissertation on Ivan Vyshensky, and then at Vienna University, where in 1893 he defended a doctoral dissertation under the supervision of the eminent Slavist Vatroslav Jagic...

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...

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. His reading of the works of Ludwig Feuerbach and Charles Fourier contributed to his becoming an atheist and a socialist, and Ukrainian literature awakened in him a national consciousness and a desire to work for his people at an early age. In 1892-7 he was a member of the secret Brotherhood of Taras. Kotsiubynsky's earliest stories are examples of ethnographic realism, but in the late 1890s his themes and subjects became more varied and his approach more sophisticated, and he evolved into one of the most talented Ukrainian modernist writers. His most artistic works are 'Intermezzo' (1908), in which he depicted, using a combination of naturalism and impressionism, the healing powers of nature for a neurasthenic author; and Tini zabutykh predkiv (The Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, 1911), a psychological novella about Hutsul life that draws widely on pagan demonology and folk legends. His masterfully written, linguistically sophisticated works had a great influence on early-20th-century Ukrainian prose writers and poets (eg, Pavlo Tychyna)...

LESIA UKRAINKA (pseudonym of Larysa Kosach-Kvitka), b 25 February 1871 in Zviahel, Volhynia, 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, and she wrote 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. Ukrainka's first drama Blakytna troianda (The Azure Rose, 1896) describes the life of the Ukrainian intelligentsia. In further dramatic works she developed a new genre for the Ukrainian literature, that of the 'dramatic poem.' Particularly notable are her dramatic poems on the subject of prisoners in Babylon, the destruction of Troy, or the deeds of early Christians, which were meant to serve, among others, as symbols of the fate of Ukraine and the imprisonment of Ukrainians within the Russian Empire. Her neoromantic drama Lisova pisnia (The Song of the Forest) treats the conflict between lofty idealism and the mundane demands of everyday life. Ukrainka also wrote prose works. Her literary legacy is very extensive, despite the fact that for most of her life she was ill and often was bedridden for months...

VASYL STEFANYK, b 14 May 1871 in Rusiv, Galicia, d 7 December 1936 in Rusiv. Prose writer. In the course of his early 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. Later, while he was a student at Cracow University, Stefanyk was befriended by the Polish doctor Waclaw Moraczewski and his wife, Sofiia Okunevska-Moraczewska, who aquainted him with contemporary European culture and literature and with the members of the Polish modernist group Mloda Polska. His first attempts to publish his introspective poetic prose were rejected by Ukrainian newspapers, but finally his first collection of novellas, Synia knyzhechka (The Blue Book), was published in 1899. With its appearance came immediate literary acclaim, and his stories were translated into Polish and other languages. However, discouraged by the criticism of the conservative Ukrainian public, Stefanyk fell silent and returned to literature only after 1916. His entire literary output consisted of 59 published novellas, most of them no longer than a couple of pages. In them he showed himself a master of the short story genre, characterized by a succinct and highly dramatic form used to capture single crucial moments in the life of a hero...

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; semiautobiographical elements and the influence of the writings of George Sand and Friedrich Nietzsche are evident. A neoromantic symbolist, she depicted the struggle between good and evil and the mystical force of nature (eg, the short story 'Bytva' [Battle]), predestination, magic, and the irrational in many of her stories of peasant life and in her most famous novels, Zemlia (Land, 1902) and V nediliu rano zillia kopala (On Sunday Morning She Gathered Herbs, 1909). Her works are known for their impressionistic, lyrical descriptions of nature and subtle psychological portrayals...

VORONY, MYKOLA, b 7 December 1871 in Rostov-na-Donu, Oblast of the Don Cossack Host, d (executed) 7 June 1938 in Odesa. Poet, journalist, and theater director. He studied at the Kharkiv and Rostov pedagogical institutes, but his studies were interrupted by his arrest for political activity. He remained under tsarist police surveillance for three years and then emigrated to study in Vienna and Lviv. In 1897 he returned to Russian-ruled Ukraine, acted in the troupes of Marko Kropyvnytsky and Panas Saksahansky, and joined the Revolutionary Ukrainian party. Vorony began writing poetry while he was still a student. He was one of the first Ukrainian modernists; his modernist manifesto of 1901 provoked a lively discussion. The almanac Z-nad khmar i z dolyn (From Above the Clouds and from the Valleys, 1903), edited by Vorony, was the first programmatically modernist literary collection published in Ukraine. In 1920-1 Vorony was a senior attache with the Government-in-exile of the Ukrainian National Republic in Warsaw. He emigrated to Soviet Ukraine in 1926, taught at the Kharkiv Music and Drama Institute, and worked as a screenwriter, critic, and translator in Kyiv. In 1934 Vorony was arrested by the NKVD and exiled for three years to Voronezh. He was rearrested in 1938 and sentenced to death by firing squad...

VOLODYMYR VYNNYCHENKO, b 27 July 1880 in Velykyi Kut, 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. In 1917 he was chosen one of two vice-presidents of the Central Rada and then the first president of the General Secretariat, the autonomous government of Ukraine. Upon disagreeing with the politics of the Directory of the Ukrainian National Republic Vynnychenko left for Vienna and finally settled in France where he devoted himself almost exclusively to his literary career. He began writing while he was a student, during which time he produced stories depicting the working-class milieu. In both his heroes and his themes he abandoned the former populist didactic piety for the more risque contemporary revolutionary life, which is often tinged with explicit sexual tensions and wry humor. His short stories were extremely popular as a result. In the 20 plays he wrote (many of them translated and staged in various theaters of Europe) he examined closely the frequent disparity between deed and 'noble word,' aim and moral code of the revolutionaties of his time...

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 Ukrainian intelligentsia. The characters' initial infatuation with the revolution ends in disillusionment. A later cycle of Khvylovy's stories consists of biting satires of insipid Soviet philistines and the transformation of former revolutionaries into bureaucrats and parasites. Khvylovy's suicide on 13 May 1933 became symbolic of his protest against the Stalinist terror in Ukraine...

Mykola Khvylovy

VAPLITE (Free Academy of Proletarian Literature). An elitist 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. Khvylovy was the actual leader of Vaplite; its official president was first Mykhailo Yalovy (Yuliian Shpol) and then Mykola Kulish, and its secretary was Arkadii Liubchenko. The ideas of Khvylovy and Vaplite came under vehement criticism not only from their literary rivals and key Soviet leaders of Ukraine but also officially from the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine, and Vaplite was forced to dissolve...

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 actively participated in the Ukrainian struggle for Independence (1917-20), organizing a guerrilla regiment to fight the Russian Volunteer Army in Southern Ukraine. Kulish moved to Kharkiv in 1925 where he met the famous writer and polemicist Mykola Khvylovy who 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. During his most productive and creative period as a playwright and close collaborator of Les Kurbas, Kulish abandoned the style and tools of traditional, realist dramaturgy. Instead, he experimented with expressionist and avant-garde writing, often combining it with elements of the Ukrainian puppet theater (vertep) and school dramas popular of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. His most important plays, such as The People's Malakhii (1927) or Sonata pathetique (1930), address the stark contradictions between Ukrainian national aspirations and Soviet reality...

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. Yohansen was arrested in August 1937, during the Yezhov terror. Soon after he was condemned to death by firing squad for belonging to a fictitious 'Ukrainian bourgeois-nationalist terrorist organization.' The sentence was carried out during the mass executions of political and other prisoners marking the twentieth anniversary of the October Revolution...

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. His first collection of poetry, Clarinets of the Sun (1918), is a programmatic work, in which he created a uniquely Ukrainian form of symbolism and established his own poetic style, known as kliarnetyzm (clarinetism). During the early years of the Bolshevik occupation of Ukraine, marked by terror, ruin, famine, and suppression of the national uprising, Tychyna maintained his position as an independent poet and quickly established himself as the leading Ukrainian poet. In 1923 he moved to Kharkiv and joined the organization Hart and, in 1927, Vaplite. His membership in the latter organization and his poem Mother Was Peeling Potatoes provoked harsh official criticism, and the poet was accused of 'bourgeois nationalism.' Soon after, Tychyna capitulated to the Soviet regime and began producing collections of poetry in the socialist-realist style sanctioned by the Party...

YANOVSKY, YURII, b 27 August 1902 on Maierove khutir, Yelysavethrad county, Kherson gubernia, d 25 February 1954 in Kyiv. Writer. From 1927 Yanovsky lived in Kharkiv, and from 1939, in Kyiv. He began publishing poems in Ukrainian in 1924, and after 1927 he wrote only prose. Yanovsky is considered, with Mykola Khvylovy (with whom he belonged to the elitist writers' organization Vaplite), one of the best neoromantic writers in Ukrainian literature in the first half of the 20th century. The sea, which he portrayed romantically, was his favorite subject, as is most clearly seen in his first novel, The Figurehead (1928). He subsequently published Four Sabers (1931), which was harshly criticized and was banned for a long time by the Communist authorities. In that novel he described in a Romantic manner the spontaneous popular movement in reborn Ukraine during the period of the struggle for independence (1917-20). Yanovsky returned to the same subject in The Horsemen (1935), although there, owing to the pressure of Stalinist censorship, he applied the official interpretation. The work is a finely wrought novel composed of short stories. Yanovsky's early prose works are classics of the Ukrainian literary rebirth of the first half of the 20th century...

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 vichnoi 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...