Vasyl Stus
Vasyl Stus | |
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Василь Стус | |
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Vasyl Semenovych Stus (Ukrainian: Васи́ль Семе́нович Стус; January 6, 1938 – September 4, 1985) was a Ukrainian poet, translator, literary critic, journalist, and an active member of the Ukrainian dissident movement. For his political convictions, his works were banned by the Soviet regime and he spent 13 years in detention until his death in Perm-36—then a Soviet forced labor camp for political prisoners, subsequently The Museum of the History of Political Repression—after having declared a hunger strike on September 4, 1985. On November 26, 2005, the Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko posthumously awarded him the highest national title: Hero of Ukraine.[1] Stus is widely regarded as one of Ukraine's foremost poets.
Biography
Vasyl Stus was born on January 6, 1938, into a peasant family in the village of Rakhnivka, Haisyn Raion, Vinnytsia Oblast (modern Ukraine) (province), Ukrainian SSR. The following year, his parents Semen Demyanovych and Iryna Yakivna moved to the city of Stalino (now Donetsk). Their children joined them one year later. Vasyl first encountered the Ukrainian language and poetry from his mother who sang him Ukrainian folk songs.
After secondary school, Vasyl Stus entered the Department of History and Literature of the Pedagogical Institute in
After his military service, Stus worked as an editor for the newspaper Sotsialistychnyi Donbas (Socialist Donbas) between 1960 and 1963. In 1963, he entered a Doctoral (
In 1965, Stus married Valentyna Popeliukh; his son, Dmytro was born in 1966.
On September 4, 1965, during the premiere of Sergei Parajanov's film Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors in Kyiv's Ukrayina cinema, Vasyl Stus took part in a protest against the arrests of Ukrainian intelligentsia. As a result, he was expelled from the Institute on September 30 and later lost his job at the State Historical Archive. After that, he worked on a building site, a fireman, and an engineer, continuing his intensive work on poetry. In 1965, he submitted his first book Circulation (Круговерть) to a publisher, but it was rejected due to its discrepancy with Soviet ideology and artistic style. His next book of poetry Winter Trees (Зимові дерева) was also rejected, regardless of positive reviews from the poet Ivan Drach and the critic Eugen Adelgejm. In 1970, the book was published in Belgium.
On January 12, 1972, Stus was arrested for "anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda". He served a five-year sentence in a labor camp, and two-years in exile in Magadan Oblast.
In August 1979, having finished his sentence, he returned to Kyiv and worked in a foundry. He spoke out in defense of members of the
“In Kyiv I learned that people close to the Helsinki Group were being repressed in the most flagrant manner. This at least had been the case in the trials of Ovsiyenko, Horbal, Lytvyn, and they were soon to deal similarly with Chornovil and Rozumny. I didn’t want that kind of Kyiv. Seeing that the Group had been left rudderless, I joined it because I couldn’t do otherwise … When life is taken away, I had no need of pitiful crumbs. Psychologically I understood that the prison gates had already opened for me and that any day now they would close behind me – and close for a long time. But what was I supposed to do? Ukrainians were not able to leave the country, and anyway I didn’t particularly want to go beyond those borders since who then, here, in Great Ukraine, would become the voice of indignation and protest? This was my fate, and you don’t choose your fate. You accept it, whatever that fate may be. And when you don’t accept it, it takes you by force … However I had no intention of bowing my head down, whatever happened. Behind me was Ukraine, my oppressed people, whose honour I had to defend or perish". (“Z tabornoho zoshyta" [“From the camp notebook"], 1983).
On May 14, 1980, prior to the
Vasyl Stus died after he declared hunger strike on September 4, 1985, in a Soviet
In August 1990 the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union canceled Stus' verdict and the case was closed due to lack of evidence.[2]
Legacy
In 1985, an international committee of scholars, writers, and poets nominated Stus for the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, but he died before the nomination materialized.[11]
On 19 November 1989 the remains of Vasyl Stus,
In January 1989, the first non-governmental Vasyl Stus Prizes were awarded for “talent and courage". This Prize was set up by the Ukrainian Association of the Independent Creative Intelligentsia, and is awarded every year on the poet's date of birth in Lviv.[13] In 1993 Stus was posthumously awarded the Taras Shevchenko State Prize for Literature.[13]
On 8 January 2008, the National Bank of Ukraine issued a commemorative coin dedicated to Vasyl Stus[9] and on 25 January 2008 Ukrposhta issued a stamp in his memory.[10]
In December 2008, a group of current and former students of the
After it was taken over by the pro-Russian rebels during the
Stus is highly regarded among intellectuals in Ukraine.[21][22]
Dozens of streets all over Ukraine are named in Vasyl Stus's honor, and the
Vasyl Stus's second trial was discussed on The Rachel Maddow Show in May 2017.[24]
In October 2020, a Ukrainian court banned the distribution of Vakhtang Kipiani's book, The Case of Vasyl Stus, following a complaint by Viktor Medvedchuk. Medvedchuk was Stus' court appointed lawyer.[6]
In March 2021, the Court of Appeal of Kyiv overturned the decision of the court of first instance to ban the publication[25] and almost completely satisfied the complaint of the Vivat publishing house and the author of the book Vakhtang Kipiani.[26] The first-instance court's ban on the distribution of the book and the use of Medvedchuk's name was also lifted. The publishing house announced its readiness to print a new edition of the book. Medvedchuk was fined 140,000 hryvnias as compensation for the publishing house's costs for handling the case. Medvedchuk did not appeal this court decision within the prescribed period, and thus it is considered final and entered into legal force.
Awards
- Antonovych prize (1982)
Bibliography
Poetry Collections
- ”Kruhovert’” (Круговерть) (1965)
- ”Zymovi Dereva” (Зимові Дерева) (1970)
- ”Veselyi Tsvyntar” (Веселий Цвинтар) (1971)
- ”Palimpsesty” (Палімпсести) (1971—1977, published 1986) - The fifth collection of Stus’s poetry. Released in New York in 1986 after the death of the author.
Poetry in English translations
- "The Lord Has Started Being Born Within Me" in Poetry London, Spring 2022, Issue 101. Translated by Alan Zhukovski.
- "A Stranger Lives My Life and Wears My Body" in Poetry International. Translated by Alan Zhukovski.
- "This Pain Is Like the Wine of Dying Throes" in The London Magazine, February/March 2019. Translated by Alan Zhukovski.
- "You're still alive. You’re at the very bottom…" in The Poetry Review, Vol. 112, No. 4, Winter 2022. Translated by Alan Zhukovski.
- "I cross the edge..." in Ukrainian Literature. A Journal of Translations, Volume 4, 2014. Translated by Artem Pulemotov.
- "So many words; they are like crippled ghosts!" in World Literature Today, March 16, 2022. Translated by Artem Pulemotov.
- "I wandered through the city of my youth..." and "One-thousand-year-old Kyiv" in Apofenie. Translated by Bohdan Tokarsky and Uilleam Blacker.
- "Here's the Sun for You" in Asymptote, June 6, 2023. Translated by Bohdan Tokarsky and Nina Murray.
Further reading
- Tokarsky, Bohdan (June 2020). "Thriving in Isolation and Beyond: The Empowering Poetry of Vasyl Stus". Los Angeles Review of Books.
- Stus, Vasyl (July 1977). "The case of Vasyl Stus. Persecuted poet". S2CID 140510564.
- Svitlychna, Nadia (February 1986). "The death of Vasyl Stus". S2CID 146189322.
- Kostash, Myrna (1998). "Inside the Copper Mountain". The doomed bridegroom: a memoir. Edmonton: New West Press. pp. 34–70. ISBN 978-1896300382.
- Стус, Дмитро (2005). Василь Стус: життя як творчість [Vasyl Stus: life as creativity] (in Ukrainian). Kiev: Факт.
- Pavlyshyn, Marko (Winter 2010). "Martyrology and literary scholarship: the case of Vasyl Stus" (PDF). The Slavic and East European Journal. 54 (4): 585–606. (PDF) from the original on May 5, 2016.
- Achilli, Alessandro (2013). "Vasyl' Stus and Russian culture: a complex issue". Australian & New Zealand Journal of European Studies. 5 (2): 37–44.
- Achilli, Alessandro (September 2015). "Vasyl' Stus and death: on the thirtieth anniversary of his death". Krytyka.
External links
- Vasys Ovsienko. The death of Vasyl Stus in Zerkalo Nedeli, September 7–13, 2002. Available in Russian Archived 2006-02-23 at the Wayback Machine and Ukrainian[permanent dead link].
- Vasyl Stus -- A Life Remembered
- Selected collection of poems by Vasyl Stus Archived 2005-12-18 at the Wayback Machine (in Ukrainian)
- Vasyl Stus Biography (in Ukrainian)
- The GULAG Museus at Perm-36 (a special labor camp for political prisoners where Vasyl Stus was retained)
- Вахтанг Кіпіані, Стус і Нобель. Демістифікація міфу Archived 2007-09-30 at the Ukrayinska Pravda, July 22, 2006 (in Ukrainian)
- Vasyl Stus Facebook Pro Vasyl Stus activist site (in Ukrainian and English)
- Ukrainian art songs on poetry of Vasyl Stus
References and footnotes
- ^ (in Ukrainian) Про присвоєння В. Стусу звання Герой України| від 26.11.2005 № 1652/2005 (tr. "About assignment of V. Stus of the title Hero of Ukraine from 26.11.2005 № 1652/2005")
- ^ Ukrayinska Pravda(23 August 2016)
- ISBN 978-0-87003-221-9
- ^ a b Ukrainian Dissident Hero Poet Vasyl Stus, What's On Kyiv
- ^ SHCHERBYTSKYY ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATED FOR THE FIRST TIME IN UKRAINE Archived 2018-08-11 at the Wayback Machine by Taras Kuzio, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (11 March 2003)
- ^ a b "Через згадки про Медведчука: суд заборонив поширювати книгу про Стуса" [Through riddles about Medvedchuk: the court forbade to distribute the book about Stus]. BBC News Україна.
- ^ "How Putin's best friend in Ukraine is staging an improbable political comeback". www.independent.co.uk. August 30, 2018. Archived from the original on August 11, 2022.
- ^ Toronto pays tribute to former Soviet political prisoner, The Ukrainian Weekly (October 19, 1997)
- ^ National bank of Ukraine
- ^ a b 70th Birth Anniversary of Vasil Stus, FSU Postage Stamps Catalogue
- ^ Vasyl Stus - His Life, the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (March 01, 1999)
- ^ Tykhy Oleksa (Oleskiy Ivanovych), Dissident Movement in Ukraine
- ^ a b Stus, Vasyl Semenovych, Dissident Movement in Ukraine
- ^ Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc opposing Vakarchuk's dismissal, Kyiv Post (24 June 2009)
- UNIAN(February 27, 2009)
- UNIAN(February 27, 2009)).
- ^ (in Ukrainian) Донецький національний університет відмовився від Василя Стуса, ZIK (February 17, 2009)
- Ukraine Todaywebsite, June 10, 2016.
- ^ Coynash, Halya (June 20, 2016). "Donetsk University Finally Named After Great Ukrainian Poet Vasyl Stus". Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group.
- ^ Cult of Stalin sweeps back into Ukraine's Donetsk rebel 'republic', The Daily Telegraph (19 Oct 2015)
- Sociological group "RATING"(2012/05/28)
- ^ Top 11-100 Archived 2013-03-24 at the Wayback Machine, Velyki Ukraïntsi ratinggroup.com.ua
- ^ "Kyiv selects new names for Soviet-linked metro stations". BBC. May 10, 2022. Retrieved May 10, 2022.
- ^ Rachel Maddow Show episode May 19, 2017, The Rachel Maddow Show (19 May 2017)
- ^ "Медведчук програв. Суд скасував заборону розповсюдження книги про Стуса | Громадське телебачення". hromadske.ua (in Ukrainian). March 19, 2021. Retrieved October 7, 2022.
- ^ Свобода, Радіо (March 19, 2021). "Медведчук програв апеляцію щодо книжки Кіпіані "Справа Василя Стуса"". Радіо Свобода (in Ukrainian). Retrieved October 7, 2022.