Yulii Garbuzov

Yulii Garbuzov was born on September 23, 1941 in the city of Yenakiyevo, Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine. His grandmother, Desiron Stefania Emiliivna, came from Liege, Belgium to Donetsk at the age of 17, where she married Yulii's grandfather, Oleksii Yukhymovych. In 1937, Oleksii Yukhymovych was repressed, and his grandmother was forced to abandon her siblings and stay in Ukraine. Yulii's mother, Maria Andriiivna Garbuzova, and his father, Viktor Oleksiiovych Garbuzov, both were doctors. After the outbreak of World War II, in 1941 Viktor Garbuzov fought in the 19th Army of the USSR Armed Forces, which was encircled and almost completely captured by the Germans. After that, Victor was considered missing. Maria, pregnant with Yulii, was sent by Viktor to Yenakiyevo to his grandmother Stefania Desiron, where Maria worked as a doctor after giving birth. Later, Maria Garbuzova was assigned to the village of Babanka in Cherkasy oblast, as a doctor for 33 neighbouring villages. Since Maria had to visit patients around the clock, she used to leave her son with her Polish neighbours. This helped Yulii learn Polish. Working as a village doctor allowed Maria and Yulii to avoid the postwar famine. However, she wished for Yulii to go to a city school. That is why, after the war, Maria found a new job as a sanitary inspector in Zaporizhzhia, where she and Yulii moved to, and where in 1947 Yulii started attending school #5. In 1958, after finishing high school, Yulii Garbuzov enrolled in the Bachelor's program at the Radio Faculty of Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute. After graduation, he worked as a lecturer at the Transceivers Department of the Kharkiv Aviation Institute in 1968–1971, and then as a lecturer at the Department of Radio Engineering Fundamentals of his alma mater KhPI. In 1971, by order of the Minister of Higher Education of Ukraine, Yulii was transferred to the Kharkiv Institute of Radio Electronics, now the Kharkiv National University of Radio Electronics (NURE). Here, in 1984, he defended his PhD thesis on Radio Engineering and Television Systems and began working as an associate professor at the same department. He taught theoretical disciplines such as «Signals and Processes in Radio Engineering» and «Theory and Application of Digital Signal Processing». He worked on classified research papers, which are now known only in narrow circles and remain under restricted access. His grandmother's stories about his family roots had a profound impact on Yulii, awakening in him a desire to learn more about his distant relatives. In a letter to Radio Liberty, he described his search for his family as follows: «... Then she (grandmother) was forced to give up on her brothers and sisters who lived in Liege. Before she died, in 1959, she made me promise to find her Belgian relatives at the first opportunity and ask them to forgive her. I fulfilled her request only in 1989.» • Illustration — Yulii Garbuzov at the monument to the former concentration camp where his father is buried. As Yulii had promised his grandmother, he was able to track down his distant relatives, the Desirons, with whom he corresponded from time to time. In 1989, Yulii Garbuzov managed to visit them in Liege. For a long time, Yulii's father was considered missing, and only in 2003, according to Red Cross documents, it became known that he had been captured in the German concentration camp Stalag 326 since 1941, where he was tortured to death in 1943. In 2010, Yulii came from Kharkiv to visit his grandson, Vadim Garbuzov, in Vienna. At that time, Vadim and his dance partner, Katrin Menzinger, were participating in the Holland Masters competition in Arnhem, the Netherlands. While the dancers were at the competition, Katrin's parents drove Yulii to the Dutch border with Germany, from where Yulii travelled to the concentration camp's memorial to visit his father's grave. After finding the concentration camp and talking to the worker at the memorial, where his father's body was resting, Yulii was unable to find Viktor Garbuzov's name on the plaque. Yulii Garbuzov retired in 2009, which allowed him to devote more time to writing and publishing his works, as well as attending literary events in Kharkiv. After his retirement, he also worked as a translator for several translation agencies in Kharkiv (French, Polish, German, Ukrainian, and Russian). The writer died on December 28, 2016, of heart failure and lymphocytic leukemia and was buried in Kharkiv, at the cemetery 13.

Yulii's eldest son described his views as follows: «Above all, my father was an anti-communist and a Ukrainian patriot. Throughout my childhood, he listened to Western radio broadcasts on his old Spidola receiver. Later, I started listening too — he would let me use the radio. I remember stations like Voice of America, De Deutsche Welle (German Wave), and Radio Free Europe (Radio Liberty). Since the years of Perestroika, he mostly spoke Ukrainian with me and his grandson, Vadim, while continuing to speak Russian with my mother. His Ukrainian was quite advanced — I believe his knowledge of Polish helped. From him, I learned Polish songs and proverbs...» Yulii Garbuzov was deeply affected by Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2014. His socio-political views were based on conservative values and family traditions. Among religious denominations, he favored the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church. Yulii considered his readership to be primarily Russian-speaking, which is why he wrote most of his works in Russian — to increase their popularity. According to his wife, he was one of the first to deliver university lectures in literary Ukrainian after the collapse of the USSR. Despite his strong political views, Yulii preferred to spend time at home, did not join political organizations, and did not engage in political activities.

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• Garbuzov Yulii. Non-Invented Story (I editorial award). — St. Petersburg: «Kaleidoscope» Publishing, St. Petersburg, «UFO», № 6, 1999. • Garbuzov Yulii. The power of desire. — Kharkiv: «Unknown world», № 5(27), 2001. — pp. 34–39. • Garbuzov Yulii. The power of desire. — Kharkiv: Kharkiv Bridge. Literary almanac. Poetry and prose, № 6., 2012. — p. 131. • Garbuzov Yulii. A night at the coffin with the dead. — Kharkiv: Kharkiv Bridge. Literary almanac. Poetry and prose, № 4. – Kharkiv: ООО «С.А.М.», 2010. — p. 122. • Garbuzov Yulii. Der Wolf am Vorposten (I. readers choice award, «Privan», Canada). — Canada: «Privan», 2007. — p. 25. • Garbuzov Yulii. Universal equations. — Kharkiv: Novels, short stories. – Kharkiv: «S.А.M.» JSC, 2012. — p. 462. • Garbuzov Yulii. Book counter. — Kharkiv: Kharkiv Bridge. Literary almanac. Poetry and prose, № 9. – Kharkiv: Exclusive, 2015. — p. 127. • Garbuzov Yulii. Book counter. — Dnipro, Literary web portal, «Rare bird», Dnipro, 2015. • Garbuzov Yulii. The taste of halva. — Kharkiv: Kharkiv Bridge. Literary almanac. Poetry and prose, № 5. – Kharkiv: «S.А.M.» JSC, 2011. — p. 152. • Garbuzov Yulii. Signature (A chapter from «Rye and tares»). — Kharkiv: Man. Destiny. Epoch... Literary almanac: Maidan, 2014. — pp. 16–19. • Garbuzov Yulii. Fables of Old Gordey. — Kharkiv: Kharkiv Bridge. Literary almanac. Poetry and prose, № 7. – Kharkiv: Exclusive, 2013. — p. 123. • Garbuzov Yulii. Magic fog. — Kharkiv: Kharkiv Bridge. Literary almanac. Poetry and prose, № 8. – Kharkiv: Exclusive, 2014. — p. 134. • Garbuzov Yulii. Wild boar. — Kharkiv: Kharkiv Bridge. Literary almanac. Poetry and prose, № 10. – Kharkiv: Exclusive, 2016. — p. 138.