Vasyl Semenovych Stus is a Ukrainian poet of the sixties, translator, publicist, prose writer, thinker, literary critic, literary critic.
Place of Birth, Education
He was born on January 6, 1938 in the village of Rakhnivka, Haisyn district, Vinnytsia region in a family of peasants. He was the fourth child in the family.
In 1940, the family moved to the city of Stalino (now Donetsk), where his parents got a job at a chemical enterprise. From 1944 to 1954, Stus received secondary education at the city’s school.
In the period from 1954 to 1959, he studied at the Stalin Pedagogical Institute, where he received a degree in Ukrainian Language and Literature.
In 1963, he entered the postgraduate course of the Taras Shevchenko Institute of Literature of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (UkrSSR) with a degree in Theory of Literature and moved to Kyiv.
In September 1965, during the screening of Serhiy Parajanov’s film “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors” in the capital’s cinema “Ukraine”, Stus took part in a protest action. Together with Ivan Dziuba, Vyacheslav Chornovol and Yuriy Badz, he appealed to the party leadership and residents of Kyiv to condemn the arrests of representatives of the Ukrainian intelligentsia. Due to his participation in this protest, he was expelled from graduate school.
Early period
After completing his studies at the Stalin Pedagogical Institute, Stus began working as a teacher in a secondary school in the village of Tauzhne, Kirovohrad region. During 1959 – 1961 he served in the Soviet army, after which from 1961 to 1963 he taught Ukrainian language and literature at secondary school No. 23 in the city of Horlivka, Donetsk region.
Later, he worked as an underground slab worker at the Oktyabrskaya mine in Donetsk, and also held the position of literary editor in the newspaper “Socialist Donbass”.
In the period from 1966 to 1972, he held the position of senior engineer in the design bureau of the Ministry of Industry of Building Materials of the Ukrainian SSR.
In 1964, he handed over his first poetry collection called “Whirlwind” to the publishing house “Youth”. “Circle” was planned to be published in 1965, but censorship forbade its publication. Despite favorable reviews, the authorities also refused to publish the second collection – “Winter Trees”. However, it was published in samizdat.
In general, Stus’s early poetry traces the themes of loneliness, doom and tragic perception of the world.
In open appeals to the Writers’ Union, the Central Committee of the Communist Party and the Verkhovna Rada, Stus openly criticized the political system and condemned the arrests of Ukrainian intellectuals. In the early 1970s, he joined the human rights movement. His civic position, along with his literary activities, became the basis for his arrest.
On January 12, 1972, Stus was arrested for the first time. He was in a pre-trial detention center for 9 months. During his imprisonment, the collection “Time of Creativity” was written.
Exile
In early September, the Kyiv Regional Court charged the writer with anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda, for which he was sentenced to 5 years in prison with subsequent exile for 3 years. He spent the entire term of his sentence in the camps of Mordovia, and later in the Magadan region. A large part of the poems written by the poet during his imprisonment were confiscated and destroyed, and only a few of them were released through correspondence with his wife.
In 1977, a collection of his poems “Candle in Candle” was published abroad.
In 1977, after his release, Stus was sent into exile in the village of Matrosovo, Magadan Region, where he worked in gold mines until 1979.
In 1978, the writer was accepted into the international PEN club.
In the fall of 1979, after returning to Kyiv, he joined the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, which advocated for human rights. Despite his undermined health, the writer was forced to earn a living in factories.
After returning to Kyiv, Stus renounced Soviet citizenship.
In May 1980, he was re-arrested as a “particularly dangerous recidivist.” This time, the court sentenced the poet to 10 years of forced labor and 5 years of exile.
During his stay in the camp , the administration confiscated and destroyed a collection of about 300 poems. In response to the cruel treatment of political prisoners, Stus repeatedly went on hunger strike. In January 1983, when he tried to pass a notebook with poetry outside, he was placed in a punishment cell for one year.
On August 28, 1985, Stus was again sent to a punishment cell – this time due to the fact that while reading a book in a cell, he leaned his elbow on the bunks. In response, he announced an indefinite dry hunger strike. He died on the night of September 3-4, 1985. According to the official version, the cause of death was cardiac arrest.
Stus’ reburial took place in 1989. He was buried at the Baikove cemetery in Kyiv.
Vasyl Stus: interesting facts
Here are some interesting facts from Stus’ life:
- known not only as a poet, but also as a translator. He translated works from English, German, French, Italian, Spanish and Slavic;
- for a certain period there was a possibility that he could become a winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. The Ukrainian diaspora made efforts to nominate his candidacy, but did not have time to complete all the formalities;
- Stus spoke exclusively Ukrainian. His contemporaries recalled a case when in the university cafeteria he was reprimanded because of the language of communication, urging him to speak “normally”. This caused a conflict that ended in a fight;
- during his stay in the camp, Stus was wounded by a sharpener. At first, the administration of the colony refused to provide medical care. Only after the hunger strike of Iryna Kalynets and Nadiya Svitlychna, who were also imprisoned, the poet was still helped.
A 2,000-hryvnia banknote featuring a portrait of Stus
On September 4, the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) will issue a new 2,000-hryvnia banknote. The front of the note will feature a portrait of Stus.
The issue date was not chosen at random. It was on September 4, 1965, during the premiere of the film “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors”, that Stus, Chornovil, and Dzyuba spoke out against the arrests and repression of the Ukrainian intelligentsia. Exactly 20 years later, the poet died in a Soviet maximum-security camp.
The reverse side of the banknote will feature the building of the Faculty of Philology at Donetsk National University, where Stus studied.
Next to the poet’s portrait will also be a peregrine falcon from the legendary Mariupol mural by Alla Horska.
Marital Status
In 1965, Stus married Valentyna Vasilievna Popeliukh.
On November 15, 1966, the couple had a son, Dmytro, who later became a literary critic and researcher of his father’s work.
