Zahrebelny, Pavlo

Zahrebelny, Pavlo [Загребельний, Павло; Zahrebel'nyj], b 25 August 1924 in Soloshyne, now in Kobeliaky raion, Poltava oblast, d 3 February 2009 in Kyiv. Writer and community and political activist. His first published work appeared in 1949, and his first collection of stories was Kakhovs’ki opovidannia (Kakhovka Stories, written with Yu. Ponomarenko, 1953). In addition to other collections of stories he began writing novels, which were set during the Second World War and were mostly propagandistic. They included Evropa-45 (Europe-45, 1959; English translation 1977), Evropa: Zakhid (Europe: The West, 1961), and Shepit (The Whisper, 1966). Also propagandistic are his novels with contemporary settings, which are uneven and filled with seemingly irrelevant information: Den’ dlia pryideshn’oho (A Day for the Future, 1964), Z pohliadu vichnosti (From the Point of View of Eternity, 1970; English trans 1978), Perekhodymo do liubovi (We Turn to Love, 1971), Rozhin (The Acceleration, 1976), Levyne sertse (Lionheart, 1978), and others. Zahrebelny also wrote a number of historical novels in which history is rather freely interpreted, including Dyvo (The Apparition, 1968), Smert’ v Kyievi (Death in Kyiv, 1973), Ievpraksiia (1975), and Roksolana (1979). His best work is a historical novel in the form of a monologue, Ia, Bohdan (I, Bohdan, 1983), about Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky. In it he employs a rich lexicon and shows a mastery of style. Because it was a novel written under pressure of the official Soviet theme of the ‘unification of peoples,’ however, it suffers from historical falsification. Zahrebelny also wrote essays, plays, and screenplays. He was active in the administration of the Writers' Union of Ukraine, in which he served as first secretary (1979–86).

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Shakhovs'kyi, S. Romany Pavla Zahrebel'noho (Kyiv 1974)
Fashchenko, V. Pavlo Zahrebel'nyi: Narys tvorchosti (Kyiv 1984)

Ivan Koshelivets

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]