THE UCCA REMEMBERS VASYL STUS
04 August 2010
Twenty-five years ago, Ukraine lost one of its greatest literary talents and a brave and determined patriot, Vasyl Stus. On September 4, 1985, after 23 years of inhumane Soviet imprisonment, Vasyl Stus, renowned Ukrainian poet and publicist, and one of the most active and determined members of the Ukrainian dissident movement, died in a Soviet prison camp.
Born on January 6, 1938, in Vinnytsia Oblast, Vasyl spent his childhood in Donbas after his family moved there in 1940. He studied philology at the Donetsk Pedagogical Institute, and his first poems were published in 1959. After graduation, he worked as a teacher in the Kirovohrad Oblast, served in the army and taught Ukrainian language and literature in Horlivka, Donetsk Oblast. In 1963 Stus began graduate studies at the Institute of Literature in Kyiv, during which time he took an active part in the rich literary life of the time by writing poetry and critical articles, many of which appeared in journals. In 1965 he was expelled from the institute for taking part in a protest meeting that denounced the secret arrests and closed trials of members of the Ukrainian intelligentsia and was forced to work at various menial and unsatisfying jobs. He continued to write poetry, literary criticism and appeals protesting the restoration of the personality cult, Russification and the denial of freedom of thought, and as a result, in 1972 was arrested with other dissidents writers – Ivan Svitlychny, Yevhen Sverstiuk, Ihor and Iryna Kalynets - and sentenced to five years in a Soviet labor camp and three years' exile. He spent his imprisonment in Mordovia and his exile in the notorious and brutal Soviet concentration camp of Kolyma. He returned to Kyiv in 1979 and soon joined the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, a human rights organization. Eight months later, he was arrested again and this time sentenced to 15 years (10 years' imprisonment and five years' exile).The circumstances of his second incarceration in the strict-regime camp in the Perm Oblast were unbearable. He was allowed no visitations, was continually harassed by the authorities and due to the harsh and inhumane conditions in the camp, his health deteriorated drastically. Perhaps worst of all for Stus was his inability to smuggle out a single line of his writings. His letters and all of his writings were confiscated by the authorities, and because of his political convictions, his works were banned by the Soviet regime. He died a brutal and lonely death in solitary confinement during a hunger strike and was buried at the camp cemetery in a grave marked only No. 9.
On November 19, 1989, his remains were interned at Baikove cemetery in Kyiv along with those of his fellow inmates Yurii Lytvyn and Oleksa Tykhy, who had died in 1984. On November 26, 2005 he was posthumously awarded the title Hero of Ukraine.
Vasyl Stus will always remain a symbol of the strength of the human spirit in its struggle for freedom and righteousness. His love for Ukraine is translated into his many writings and poems which endured and continue to inspire Ukrainians throughout the world.
May God rest his soul.
