Lytvyn, Yurii

Lytvyn, Yurii [Литвин, Юрій], b 1934 in Barakhty, Vasylkiv raion, Kyiv oblast, d 5 September 1984 in Kuchino, Perm oblast, Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic. Journalist, poet, dissident, and political prisoner. He was sentenced on false charges five times and spent a total of 20 years in labor camps. In 1955, after he had served two years of a sentence, the sentence was revoked, but he was imprisoned again that year for allegedly having organized an anti-Soviet group in the labor camp. After being released in 1965, he returned to Ukraine and became active in the human rights movement. In 1974 he was sentenced to three years for ‘slandering the state.’ He joined the Ukrainian Helsinki Group in 1978 and contributed articles to its underground bulletin. In spite of a severe stomach ulcer and thrombophlebitis, he was given three years in December 1979 for ‘resisting authority’ and an additional 10 years’ imprisonment and 5 years’ exile in 1982 for anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda. He died of unknown causes, probably of illness, in Perm Camp 36–1. His verses on prison life, titled ‘Trahichna halereia’ (The Tragic Gallery), have not been published. His remains were transfered (with those of Vasyl Stus and Oleksa Tykhy) to Ukraine and interred in Kyiv on November 19, 1989.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]