Melnychuk, Yurii

Melnychuk, Yurii [Мельничук, Юрій; Mel'nyčuk, Jurij], b 7 May 1921 in Kamianky Mali, Kolomyia county, Galicia, d 12 August 1963 in Lviv. Communist propagandist. After the Second World War he studied at the school of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine and at Lviv University. After serving briefly as an editor at the Radianskyi Pysmennyk publishing house he was chief editor of the literary monthly Zhovten’ from 1951 until his death. Melnychuk published several scurrilous attacks on Ukrainian ‘bourgeois nationalists’ and the Ukrainian Catholic church, including Sluhy zhovtoho dyiavola (Servants of the Yellow Devil, 1958), Oblychchia bozhoho voïnstva (The Faces of God’s Warriors, 1961), and Pravdi sluzhyty (To Serve the Truth, 1962). He also published literary biographies of Yaroslav Halan (1953) and Oleksander Havryliuk (1955). Melnychuk is the subject of a 1980 biography by Y. Tsokh.

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