Pavliuk (Yavir), Antin

Pavliuk (Yavir), Antin [Павлюк, Антін; Pavljuk; pseud. A. Yavir], b 25 December 1899 in Rasnyky, Ostroh county, Volhynia gubernia, d 1937 in a GULAG concentration camp. Writer. During Ukraine’s struggle for independence (1917–20), Pavliuk served as captain in the Army of the Ukrainian National Republic. From 1922 he lived in Prague, where he edited the literary miscellany Sterni (The Stubble Fields), headed the left-wing writers’ group Zhovtneve Kolo, and contributed to Western Ukrainian and Soviet Ukrainian literary journals. In 1932 he emigrated to the USSR as a member of the Zakhidnia Ukraina writers’ group. He was arrested in August 1937 during the Yezhov terror and perished in a Siberian labor camp. Pavliuk wrote several poetry collections: Sumna radist' (Sad Joy, 1919), Zhyttia (Life, 1925), Osinni vyry (Autumn Vortices, 1926), Bil' (Pain, 1926), Pustelia liubovy (The Wasteland of Love, 1928), Polyn (Wormwood, 1930), Reliquaire (1931), and Vatra (The Bonfire, 1931). He also wrote Neznaioma (Uryvky iz zapysnyka) (The Unknown Woman [Excerpts from a Notebook], 1922; dedicated to Klym Polishchuk) and translated the poetry of Guillaume Apollinaire into Ukrainian and Ukrainian poetry into Russian.

[This article was updated in 2021.]