Panas Yakovlevich Rudchenko is a Ukrainian prose writer and playwright, public figure.
Place of Birth, Education
He was born on May 13, 1849 in the city of Myrhorod in the Poltava region in the family of an accountant of the county treasury.
His father came from the family of a Cossack who took part in the war of 1812 against Napoleon. After the service, he received the rank of warrant officer, and returning to the Poltava region, he acquired a small estate in the village of Bilyky, Myrhorod district. Mother, Tetiana Ivanovna Hordynska, was the daughter of a local collegiate registrar.
In the period from 1858 to 1862, Rudchenko studied first at the Myrhorod parish, and then at the Hadiach district school. After graduation, at the age of 14, he began to work.
Career
Rudchenko began his career as a clerk in 1863 in the Hadiach District Court. The following year, he moved to the position of assistant accountant in the county treasury.
After a short work in Pryluky, he took the same position in the Myrhorod Treasury. This is how the first eight years of his service in small towns of the Poltava region passed.
It was during this period that Rudchenko took his first steps in literature and folklore. His creative searches began during the reforms of the 1860s in the Russian Empire, when, after the abolition of serfdom, there was a brief revival of public life.
Some of the folklore materials collected by Rudchenko were later published by his brother Ivan Bilyk in collections:
- “Folk South Russian Fairy Tales”;
- “Chumak folk songs”.
Since 1871, Rudchenko lived in Poltava, where he worked in the local state chamber, holding various positions. Although the bureaucratic service did not attract him, a conscientious attitude to work made it possible to achieve the rank of a full state councilor.
During this period, he began to seriously engage in literature, following the example of his elder brother Ivan Bilyk, who since the early 1860s published folklore materials in the “Poltava Provincial Vedomosti”, was published in the magazine “Osnova”, later published collections of fairy tales and songs, translated Turgenev’s works and published critical articles in the Lviv edition of “Pravda”.
Literary Work
Literary activity became a real inspiration and consolation for Rudchenko. In his free time, sacrificing rest, he worked in the evenings.
His first works – the poem “Ukraine” and the story “The Dashing Traveler”, signed under the pseudonym Panas Myrnyi – were published in 1872 in the Lviv magazine “Pravda”.
In the period from the 1870s to the 1880s, the writer worked actively, but due to the oppression of the Ukrainian language in the Russian Empire, his works were published mainly abroad or in the Dnieper Ukraine, so they remained little known to the general reader for a long time.
In 1874, the magazine “Pravda” published an essay “The Road from Poltava to Hadiachy” and the story “The Drunkard”.
Three years later, in 1877, his story “Evil People” was published in Geneva.
Back in 1875, Myrnyi, together with his brother, completed work on the novel “Do the oxen roar like a full manger?” and submitted the manuscript to censorship. However, due to the Ems Decree of 1876, which prohibited printing in Ukrainian, the work was not allowed to be published in the Russian Empire. The novel was first published in Geneva in 1880.
Only in the mid-1880s, Myrnyi’s works began to appear in prints in the Dnieper region. In 1883 – 1884, the first two parts of the novel “The Prostitute” and two stories from the cycle “As it is conducted, so it is lived” were published in the almanac “Rada”, which was published by the writer Mykhailo Starytskyi.
In 1886, a collection of his works “The Collector from the Native Field” and the comedy “Outwitted” were published in Kyiv.
At the same time, Myrnyi continued to be published in Western Ukrainian publications, where his works “Catches”, “The Tale of Truth and Kryvda”, “Limerivna” and the rehash of “Duma about Igor’s Army” were published.
The literary activity of the writer was closely related to his public position. Even in his young years, he joined the revolutionary liberation movement.
Starting from 1875, Myrnyi took part in the underground work of the Poltava circle “Union”. During a search of his apartment, banned political publications were found.
On the eve and during the First Russian Revolution, Myrnyi’s social activity increased significantly. In 1905, he began cooperation with the Poltava magazine “Ridnyi Krai”. In the works “To the Modern Muse”, “Dream” and “To the Exiled Brothers” he responded to the events of the revolutionary time.
When in 1914 the Russian authorities banned the commemoration of Taras Shevchenko, the writer issued a statement in which he strongly condemned these actions. Because of this, already in 1915, the police began to search for a “politically suspicious person” of Myrnyi.
Since Myrnyi did not seek publicity and tried to avoid problems in the service, he constantly adhered to secrecy. For a long time, his real name remained unknown to both the general public and the authorities.
After the establishment of Soviet power in Poltava, Myrnyi, despite his advanced age, continued to work in the Poltava provincial financial department.
Death/Fatalities
The writer passed away on January 28, 1920.
Marital Status
Mirnyi’s wife, Alexandra Mikhailovna Scheideman, was 14 years younger than him. They got married in 1889.
The eldest son, Victor, graduated from the Faculty of Law of Moscow University, but died in 1915 in the battles near Rivne.
The middle son Mykhailo first studied at the Warsaw Polytechnic, then continued his education at the Yekaterinoslav Polytechnic Institute. During the Civil War, he served first in the Volunteer Army, and later in the Red Army. In the following years, he became the director of the Myrnyi Museum in Poltava, which he managed from 1940 to 1961.
Son Yuri died in 1942 during the battles in the Caucasus.
The youngest son Leonid died after graduating from the gymnasium during the Soviet-Ukrainian war.
Panas Myrnyi: interesting facts
Among the interesting facts about the writer:
- at baptism, the writer was given the name Athanasius. In addition to him, the family had four more children – sister Oleksandra and brothers Ivan, Luka and Yuri;
- Myrnyi was not only a writer, but also a researcher of the Ukrainian language, its popularizer and translator;
- at the beginning of the twentieth century, he created a Ukrainian-Russian dictionary, which was never printed and remained in manuscript;
- the last years of the writer’s life were full of losses: his brother Ivan, his mother died, the eldest son Victor died, and his friends and literary brothers passed away – Mykhailo Starytskyi, Borys Grinchenko, Ivan Karpenko-Karyi, Mykhailo Kotsiubynskyi and Lesya Ukrainka;
- had a beautiful voice, sang beautifully, knew how to play the violin and was fond of the theater;
- The writer was noted for his calligraphic handwriting, which was valued in the clerical service.
