Vasyl Stus

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Vasyl Semenovych Stus (Ukrainian: Василь Семенович Стус; January 8, 1938 - September 4, 1985) was a Ukrainian poet and publicist, one of the most active members of Ukrainian dissident movement. For his political convictions, his works were banned by the Soviet regime and he spent 23 years (about a half of his life) in detention.

Vasyl Stus was born on January 8, 1938 into a peasant family in the village of Rakhnivka, Vinnytsia Oblast (province), Ukraine. Next year, his parents Semen Demyanovych and Iryna Yakivna moved to the city of Stalino (presently Donetsk). Their children joined them one year later.

After the secondary school, Vasyl Stus entered the Department of history and literature of the Pedagogical Institute in Stalino (nowadays Donetsk University). In 1959 he graduated from the institute "with honours". Following graduation, Stus briefly worked as a high school teacher of Ukrainian language and literature in Tauzhnia village of Kirovohrad Oblast, and then was conscripted to the Soviet Army for two years. During the study and military service he started to write poetry and translated into Ukrainian more than a hundred verses by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Rainer Maria Rilke. The original copies of his translations were later confiscated by KGB and they were lost.

After the military service, Vasyl Stus worked as an editor in the newspaper "Sotsialistychnyi Donbas" ("Socialist Donbas") in 1960-1963. In 1963, he entered a Doctoral (PhD) program at the Shevchenko Institute of Literature of Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in Kiev. At the same time he published his selected poetry.

In 1965 Stus has got married; his son, Dmytro was born in 1966.

On September 4, 1965 during the opening of the Sergei Parajanov's movie "Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors" (Ukrainian: Тіні забутих предків, Tini zabutykh predkiv) in Kiev "Ukraine" cinema Vasyl Stus took part in a protest against arrests of Ukrainian intelligentsia. For the protest participation, on September 20 he was expelled from the Institute and later lost his job at the State Historical Archive. He then worked in a few places as a building constructor, a fireman, and an engineer, continuing his intensive work on poetry. In 1965 he submitted his first book "Circulation" ("Круговерть") for publishing, but it was rejected due to discrepancy with Soviet ideology and artistic style. His next poetry book "Winter Trees" ("Зимові дерева") was also rejected, regardless of positive reviews from a poet Іvan Drach and a critic Eugen Adelgejt. The book was published in 1970 in Belgium.

On 7 September 1972, Stus was arrested for "anti-Soviet activity". He served a 5 year sentence in a labor camp, and two more in exile in the Magadan Oblast. He returned to Kiev in 1978, but was arrested two years later and received a 10 year sentence for "anti-Soviet activity".

Vasyl Stus died of beating on September 4, 1985 in a Soviet forced labor camp for political prisoners "Perm-36" near the village of Kuchino, Perm Oblast, Russian SFSR.

[edit] References

• "Vasyl Stus: Zhyttia yak Tvorchist" (Vasyl Stus: Life as Creation), by Dmytro Stus. Kyiv: Fakt, second edition, 2005. 368 pp. -- A biography of political prisoner and writer Vasyl Stus by his son.
• Kostash, Myrna. "Inside the Copper Mountain" The Doomed Bridegroom: A Memoir. Edmonton: New West Press, 1998. pp 34-70.

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