Vasyl Stus

Stus is widely regarded as one of Ukraine's foremost poets.

Vasyl Stus studied at Vasyl' Stus Donetsk National University. The recorded working language is Russian and Ukrainian. The field of work recorded is Ukrainian literature and literary criticism. Places of work recorded in the authority are Soviet Union. Work by Vasyl Stus is recorded in the collections of Vasyl Stus Collection, Prison on Lonskogo Street, Sixtiers Museum Collection and Smoloskyp collection (Museum-Archive and Documentation Centre of Ukrainian Samvydav in Kyiv). Distinctions recorded are Antonovych prize, Hero of Ukraine, Order of the State, Hero of Ukraine and Order of Prince Yaroslav the Wise, 5th class.

• Honorific Prefix — Hero of Ukraine • Name — Vasyl Stus • Born — 6 January 1938 • Birthplace — Rakhnivka, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union • Died — 4 September 1985 • Place of death — Perm-36, Kuchino, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union • Education — Donetsk National University • Occupation — poet • Citizenship — Soviet (until 1978) stateless (after 1978) • Movement — Sixtiers, Soviet dissidents • Known for — poems, human rights activism with participation in the Ukrainian Helsinki Group • Children — 1 (Dmytro) • Awards — * Antonovych Prize • Hero of Ukraine (posthumously) • Order of Prince Yaroslav the Wise, 5th class (posthumously) • Shevchenko National Prize (posthumously)

Vasyl Semenovych Stus was born on 6 January 1938 in the village of Rakhnivka, in Podolia (in the west of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic at the time) as the fourth and youngest child in a family of peasants. Prior to Vasyl's birth, the Stus family had, along with other peasant families throughout Ukraine, experienced the Soviet famine of 1930–1933. As landed peasants (kurkuls), the Stus family was subjected to local harassment and encouraged to join the kolkhoz in Rakhnivka, which they eventually did. In 1937, however, Stus's father, Semen, was given an offer to move to the Donbas, where there was a shortage of factory workers. After Vasyl's birth, Semen was joined by his wife Yilyna and their children, who moved to Stalino (now Donetsk), with the rigid, patriarchal social structure of rural Ukraine further encouraging the family's decision to move. Vasyl, however, did not initially join his parents and siblings, living in Rakhnivka with his grandparents as a child. Two years after his birth, Vasyl joined the rest of his family in Stalino. In Stalino, Stus received a Russian-medium education. His knowledge of Ukrainian primarily came from Ukrainian folk music, which he learned from his mother. According to literary historian Georges Nivat, Stus displayed significant aptitude in school, but his educational prospects were hampered by his family background, and he was barred from entering the faculty of journalism at Taras Shevchenko Kyiv State University in 1954. He instead studied at the Stalino Pedagogical Institute (now Donetsk National University), where he found a freer political climate. After graduating, he served in the Soviet Army for two years. In 1961, Stus was first published in the Literaturna Ukraina literary magazine. 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 program at the Shevchenko Institute of Literature of Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in Kyiv. At the same time, he published his selected poetry. In 1965, Stus married Valentyna Popeliukh; his son, Dmytro was born in 1966.

• Illustration — Monument on the site of a house in which Stus lived from 1965 to 1972 On 4 September 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 12 January 1972, Stus was arrested for "anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda". His essay "Fenomen doby (skhodzhennia na Holhofu slavy)" (A Phenomenon of the Times (Ascending the Golgotha of Fame)), dedicated to Pavlo Tychyna, was used as the main evidence at his trial. He served a five-year sentence in a labor camp, and two-years in exile in Magadan Oblast. Even in prison, Stus continued to write poetry, sending a handwritten book of verse to fellow dissident Nadiya Svitlychna. In 1978 the poet publicly renounced Soviet citizenship, claiming that being a citizen of the USSR equalled to slavery. In August 1979, having finished his sentence, Stus returned to Kyiv and worked in a foundry. He spoke out in defense of members of the Ukrainian Helsinki group (UHG). Stus himself joined the UHG in October 1979. • Illustration — The house in Chornobylska street, Kyiv, where Stus lived in 1979–1980 "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).

• Illustration — KGB photo of Stus after his second arrest, 1980 On 14 May 1980, prior to the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow, he was arrested and received a 10-year sentence for "anti-Soviet activity". Viktor Medvedchuk, who was later influential in Ukrainian politics, defended Stus during this trial in 1980. In the closing speech from the defence Medvedchuk stated all of Stus' crimes deserved punishment; however, he also told the court that the defendant fulfilled his daily norm at the factory where he worked at the time, despite serious stomach problems. Stus' requests to get another public defender were dismissed by the court. In a 2018 interview with The Independent dissident Yevhen Sverstiuk recalled: "When Stus met with his appointed lawyer, he immediately felt that Medvedchuk was a man of the Komsomol-aggressive type, that he did not protect him, did not want to understand him and, in fact, was not interested in his case." Medvedchuk claimed he could not have operated differently: "Stus denounced the Soviet government, and didn’t consider it to be legitimate. Everyone decides their own fate. Stus admitted he agitated against the Soviet government. He was found guilty by the laws of the time. When the laws changed, the case was dropped. Unfortunately, he died."

In November 1980 Stus was transferred to a Soviet forced labor camp for political prisoners at Perm-36 near the village of Kuchino, Perm Oblast, Russian SFSR. According to his cellmate Vasyl Ovsiyenko, the camp functioned de-facto as a maximum security prison, surrounded by an electric fence and a 21-meter-wide safety zone; the inmates were forced to work in the prison building, only being allowed to spend one hour a day in a court measuring 2 to 3 meters, covered with barbed wire. Every prisoner was permitted to keep a maximum of 5 books in own cell, and inmates were regularly searched by prison guards, who forced them to undress upon leaving their cells. Violations of camp rules could be punished by up to 5 years additional sentence. As an "especially dangerous recidivist", Stus was allowed to send one letter per month to his family, but his writings were strictly censored by authorities due to being written in the Ukrainian language. He was legaly permitted to be visited by his family once a year, but in reality only one visit took place, as Stus refused to undergo the humiliating search procedure for a second time. Despite this, Stus used his time in imprisonment to receive French lessons from his cellmate Mart Niklus. On Stus's birthday in early 1983, his cell was searched, with handwritten notes being confiscated by prison guards. As a result of his protests, in February 1983 Stus was put into solitary confinement for one year. During that time, he continued to write, creating over 40 poems and translating 11 of Rilke's elegies, which he put into a notebook. Although most of Stus's works created in prison were destroyed by camp authorities, a small book written by him was transferred outside of the prison walls by fellow inmate Balys Gajauskas and published in the West under the title From the Camp Notebook (З таборового зошита). According to Ovsiyenko, the appearance of that publication could have eventually cost the imprisoned poet his life. Stus's imprisonment eventually gained publicity abroad, and in December 1984 German authors Heinrich Böll, Siegfried Lenz and Hans Werner Richter sent a telegram to Soviet general secretary Konstantin Chernenko, expressing their concern about Stus's health. However, no answer to their appeal was issued by Soviet authorities. Around the same time, a committee lobbying for Stus to be awarded with the Nobel Prize in Literature was established in Toronto under the leadership of Jaroslav Rudnyckyj.

• Illustration — The prison cell at Perm-36 where Stus died on 4 September 1985 Stus spent the summer of 1985 in one cell with Russian writer Leonid Borodin. During that time he was repeatedly put into solitary confinement on accusations of various violations. As a sign of protest, on 27 August Stus declared a hunger strike. According to fellow inmates, on the day before his death the poet complained of heart problems and asked for a doctor. Stus died in his cell in the night from 3 to 4 September 1985. The immediate cause of his death has never been cleared. According to the official version, the poet died of heart disease. Fellow prisoner Danylo Shumuk reported that the commandant, Major Zhuravkov, committed suicide after the death of Stus. In total, eight out of 56 inmates kept in the Kuchino camp between 1980 and 1987 died during imprisonment, including four members of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group. Camp authorities refused to transfer Stus's body to his relatives until the end of his term, and the poet was initially buried at the prison cemetery near the village of Borisovo. Only in summer 1989 was permission provided to Dmytro Stus to bring his father's remains to Kyiv, but bureaucratic hurdles forced the reburial to be postponed. Finally, on 19 November 1989 the remains of Vasyl Stus and two other Ukrainian political prisoners, Oleksa Tykhy and Yury Lytvyn, were brought back to Kyiv. After a memorial service at the Saint Sophia Cathedral, they were reburied at the Baikove Cemetery in a ceremony attended by more than 30,000 people. Mykhailo Horyn, Ivan Drach, Viacheslav Chornovil and Levko Lukianenko gave speeches over the graves. The funeral was ignored by most of the Soviet Ukrainian press, with only one article dedicating the event appearing in the newspaper Literaturna Ukraina. In August 1990 the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union canceled Stus' verdict and the case was closed due to lack of evidence.

• "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.

Vasyl Stus is recorded with the occupation human rights defender. Recorded with the occupation literary critic. Recorded as journalist, poet, human rights defender, translator and writer.

• "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.