Volodymyr Vynnychenko
This article needs additional citations for verification. (October 2009) |
Volodymyr Vynnychenko | |
---|---|
Володимир Винниченко | |
Hetman of Ukraine) | |
Succeeded by | Symon Petliura |
1st Prime Minister of the Ukrainian People's Republic | |
In office June 28, 1917[1] – August 26, 1917 | |
President | Mykhailo Hrushevsky (speaker of Central Rada) |
Preceded by | position created |
Succeeded by | Vsevolod Holubovych |
Secretary of Internal Affairs | |
In office June 28, 1917 – January 30, 1918 | |
Prime Minister | Himself |
Preceded by | position created |
Succeeded by | Pavlo Khrystiuk |
Personal details | |
Born | Vesely Kut, Kiev University | July 28, 1880
Signature | |
Volodymyr Kyrylovych Vynnychenko (Ukrainian: Володимир Кирилович Винниченко; July 28 [O.S. July 16] 1880 – March 6, 1951) was a Ukrainian statesman, political activist, writer, playwright and artist who served as the first prime minister of the Ukrainian People's Republic.[1][2]
As a writer, Vynnychenko is recognized in Ukrainian literature as a leading
Early life
Vynnychenko was born in a village, Vesely Kut (today – Hryhorivka,
In 1900[
In 1906 Vynnychenko was arrested for a third time, again for his political activities, and jailed for a year; before his scheduled trial, however, the wealthy patron of Ukrainian literature and culture, Yevhen Chykalenko, paid his bail, and Vynnychenko fled Ukraine again, effectively becoming an émigré writer abroad from 1907 to 1914, living in Lemberg (Lviv), Vienna, Geneva, Paris, Florence, Berlin. In 1911 Vynnychenko married Rosalia Lifshitz, a French Jewish doctor. From 1914 to 1917 Vynnychenko lived illegally near Moscow throughout much of World War I[4] and returned to Kiev in 1917 to assume a leading role in Ukrainian politics.
Ideas about the Ukrainian nation
Vynnychenko’s political awakening arose, he claimed, at the intersection of social and national experience. Writing in his diary in 1919, he recalled that “from the time the landowner Bodisko beat my father on his estate, fooled him, exploited him, chased him from his plot into the field, where I was tending livestock, from that moment I already took into my soul the seed of hatred for social exploitation, for Bodiskos of all types.” Other youthful experiences added feelings of national humiliation and anger to these social emotions. He recalled, for example, how, as a gymnasium student, teachers and other students (“young gentlemen”) treated him as a “little muzhik” [peasant] and a “little khokhol” [a derisive term for Ukrainian].[5][6] Vynnychenko demanded respect and recognition for Ukraine and Ukrainians as a nation. In 1913, he published in Russian an “Open Letter to Russian Writers” that criticized the “unconscious” tendency in a great deal of Russian literature to stereotype Ukrainians and others. The Ukrainian characters who appear in Russian literature, he argued, are much like the stereotypes of Jews and Armenians that Russians also have “a weakness for.” “Always and everywhere [in Russian literature] the ‘khokhol’ is a little stupid, a little cunning, a little lazy, melancholic and sometimes good-natured.” These stereotypes are “shameful” not only for Ukrainians whose equal humanity is not recognized but for Russian writers themselves and Russian literature.[7]
During the First World War, which brought fighting and occupation onto Ukrainian lands, Vynnychenko rhetorically wondered why our “brother” Russians show little concern with the suffering of Ukrainians? Why does “the love among Ukrainians for their own nation [narod] and sorrow for its fate elicit…wrath, indignation, and feelings of spite, or, at best, sarcasm or indifference?” The answer, he argued (writing in Russian, so again addressing Russians as much as Ukrainians), is that Ukrainians are becoming strong and aware as a nation, and “they fear us.” But nothing can stop the development of Ukrainian “consciousness,” he declared, which is already manifest in its intelligentsia. “Just as you cannot stop the formation of clouds, arising from the earth and returning to it, so it is impossible to stop the formation of a nationally conscious stratum in a people. We emerge from the raw earth, from the soil, from the depths of our nation, and we again return to it, and we again arise.”[8]
Vynnychenko believed that it was not enough to change structures of power in freeing the Ukrainian nation. Liberation demanded changes in people’s mentalities and values, in their moral and spiritual lives, in their selves. A true revolution needed to be, Vynnychenko insisted, all-sided, all-embracing, universal liberation (vsebichne vyzvolennia). To explore and promote this vision, he examined in his fiction questions of sexuality, emotion, will, and character. Ultimately, the point was to ask the most important question: how to realize a fully human and fully free personality, especially in the face of the crushing conditions and legacies of unfreedom?[9]
Head of first Ukrainian government
After the February Revolution in Russia in 1917, Vynnychenko served as the head of the General Secretariat, a representative executive body of the Russian Provisional Government in Ukraine. He was authorized by the Central Rada of Ukraine (a de facto parliament) to conduct negotiations with the Russian Provisional Government, 1917.
Vynnychenko resigned his post in the General Secretariat on August 13 in protest against the Russian government's rejection of the Universal of Central Rada. For a brief period he was replaced by Dmytro Doroshenko who composed a new government the next day, yet unexpectedly he requested his resignation as well on August 18. Vynnychenko was offered to return, form a cabinet and redesign the Second Universal to petition a federal union with the Russian Republic. His second government was confirmed by Alexander Kerensky on September 1.
It is often[clarification needed] claimed[by whom?] that the political mistakes of Vynnychenko and Mykhailo Hrushevsky cost the newly established Ukrainian People's Republic its independence.[citation needed] Both men were strongly opposed to the creation of the army[citation needed] of the Republic and repeatedly denied[citation needed] the requests by Symon Petliura to use his volunteer forces as the core of a would-be army (see Polubotok Regiment Affair).
After the
After the
Resignation
Vynnychenko, unable to restore order or to overcome his disagreement with Petliura,[3] stepped down on February 10,[3] 1919 and emigrated abroad. In a brief period in Vienna[3] in 1920, he wrote his three-volume "Rebirth of the Nation".[3] At the same time, at the end of 1919, Vynnychenko resigned from the Ukrainian Social Democratic Labour Party and formed the Foreign Group of Ukrainian Communists.[3]
Soviet Ukraine
He formed the Foreign Group of the Ukrainian Communist Party, which was mainly made up of other former members of the Ukrainian Social-Democratic Party, to promulgate this position. In June 1920 Vynnychenko himself travelled to Moscow in an attempt to come to an agreement with the Bolsheviks. After four months of unsuccessful negotiations, Vynnychenko had become disillusioned with the Bolsheviks: he accused them of
Exile
Vynnychenko spent 30 years in Europe, residing in Germany in the 1920s and then moving to France. As an émigré, Vynnychenko resumed his career as a writer. In 1919, his works were republished in an eleven-volume edition in the 1920s. In 1934, Vynnychenko moved from Paris to Mougins, near Cannes, on the Mediterranean coast, where he lived on a homestead type residence as a self-supporting farmer and continued to write, notably a philosophical exposition of his ideas about happiness, Concordism. Vynnychenko called his place Zakoutok.
During the German occupation of France, for refusing to cooperate with the Nazis, Vynnychenko was thrown into a concentration camp, which effected his health severely.[10] After the end of the war, he called for general disarmament and peaceful coexistence of the East and West.
He died in Mougins, near Cannes, France in 1951. Rosalia Lifshitz after her death passed the estate to Ivanna Vynnykiv-Nyzhnyk (1912–1993), who emigrated to France after World War II and lived with Vynnychenko since 1948.[11]
Legacy
Vynnychenko is still somewhat famous in Ukraine.[12][13] Vynnychenko has not been as popular as Mykhailo Hrushevsky as a political figure,[14] but is widely known as writer; his work was adapted for screen numerous times since the 1990s by Dovzhenko Film Studios directors.
Vynnychenko's archives are housed in Columbia University, New York City and supervised by a commission of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences.[4]
Films based on works of Vynnychenko
- 1921 The Black Panther
- 1990 Black panther and White bear (Oleh Biyma, Ukrtelefilm)[15]
- 1991 Sin (Oleh Biyma, Ukrtelefilm)[16]
- 1995 TV-series Island of Love: Episode 8 "Engagement" (Oleh Biyma, Ukrtelefilm) after the novel "Engagement"
Depiction of Vynnychenko in cinema
- 1939 Dmytro Milyutenko
- 1957 Truth (Viktor Dobrovolsky and Isaak Shmaruk, Dovzhenko Film Studios) by Heorhiy Babenko
- 1970 Peace to huts – War to palaces (Isaak Shmaruk, Dovzhenko Film Studios) by Vladislav Strzhelchik
- 1970 Kotsyubynsky family (Tymofiy Levchuk, Dovzhenko Film Studios) by Harijs Liepiņš
- 2018 Secret diary of Symon Petliura (Oles Yanchuk, Dovzhenko Film Studios) by Yevhen Nyshchuck
Bibliography
- Vynnychenko, V. Selected short stories. Longwood Academic, 1991. ISBN 9780893416423 (Book at Google)
- Vynnychenko, V. Rebirth of the Nation. (History of Ukrainian Revolution. March 1917 – December 1919). Vol 1–3. Kiev-Vienna: "Dzvin", 1920.
- Vynnychenko, Volodymyr. Black Panther and Polar Bear. Translated into English by Yuri Tkacz. Melbourne: Bayda Books, 2020. ISBN 978-0-908480-46-3
References
- ^ Radio Free Europe(28 June 2017)
- ^ Volodymyr Vynnychenko: "I love the art of painting..." [dead link] (in English)
- ^ Cabinet of Ukrainewebsite.
- ^ a b c d e f Volodymyr Vynnychenko at Encyclopedia of Ukraine
- ^ Volodymyr Vynnychenko, Shchodennyk [Diary], vol. 1 (1911-1920), ed. Hryhory Kostiuk (Edmonton and New York, 1980), 353
- ^ Rudnytsky 1988, p. 428.
- ^ “Otkrytoie pis’mo k russkim pisateliam,” Ukrainskaia zhizn’ [Moscow], 1913, no. 10, in Volodymyr Vynnychenko, Publitsystyka, ed. Viktor Burbela (Kiev, 2002), 35-38.
- ^ “V chem nasha sila,” "Ukrainskaia zhizn’" 1915, no. 7, in Publitsystyka, 39-43.
- ^ Rudnytsky 1988, pp. 417–36.
- ^ ""Німці запропонували Винниченку стати головою уряду окупованої України"". Історична правда. Retrieved January 10, 2024.
- ^ An Article from the Ukrainian Weekly Dec.26,1993 (in English)
- Sociological group "RATING"(2012/05/28)
- ^ Top 11–100, Velyki Ukraïntsi Archived May 18, 2013, at the Wayback Machine
- ISBN 978-0-19-530546-3
- ^ Koskin, V. Oleh Biyma: I never allowed myself surrogates and leeways. "Demokratychna Ukrayina". 2011
- ^ Sin (1991) at the Encyclopedia of Cinema
Sources
- Bahrii-Pykulyk, R. Rozum ta irrattsiional'nist' u Vynnychenkomu romani. (Reason and irrationality in Vynnychenko's novel). New York: "Suchasnist'", 27, no.4 (1987): 11–22.
- Czajkowskyj, M. Volodymyr Vynnychenko and his Mission to Moscow and Kharkiv. "Journal of Graduate Ukrainian Studies", 1978, Vol. 3, No.2, pp. 3–24.
- Gilley, C. The Change of Signposts in the Ukrainian Emigration: A Contribution to the History of Sovietophilism in the 1920s. Stuttgart: "Ibidem", 2009. Chapter 3.
- Gilley, C. Volodymyr Vynnychenko’s Mission to Moscow and Kharkov. "The Slavonic and East European Review". Vol.84, 2006, No.3, pp. 508–37.
- Kostiuk, H. Volodymyr Vynnychenko ta ioho doba. (Volodymyr Vynnychenko and his era). New York: "UAAS", 1980.
- Panchenko, V. Budynok z khymeramy: Tvorchist' Volodymyra Vynnychenka 1900–1920 r.r. u evropeys'komu literaturnomu konteksti. (A building made of chimeras: the creative work of Volodymyr Vynnychenko 1900–1920 in the European literary context). Kirovohrad: "Narodne Slovo", 1998.
- Steinberg, M. D. "Overcoming Empire: Volodymyr Vynnychenko," in The Russian Revolution, 1905-21, Oxford University Press, 2017: 244-60.
- Struk, D.H. Vynnychenko's Moral Laboratory. "In Studies in Ukrainian Literature 1984–1985".
External links
- Works by or about Volodymyr Vynnychenko at Internet Archive
- Lashchyk, E. Vynnychenko's Philosophy of Happiness. "The Annals of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences". Vol. 16, No. 41-42 (1984–85): 289–326.
- ISBN 9780916458195.