Hryhorii Kochur

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  1919–1988

  Mykola Lukash

  Polyglot translator

  In 1973 he asked to go to prison in place of his convicted friend Ivan Dziuba, and became known as the Ukrainian Don Quixote. Mykola Lukash translated Faust, The Decameron and Don Quixote itself from about 20 languages, without ever once being allowed abroad.

  Writer, Scientist

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  1895–1964

  Maksym Rylskyi

  Poet, translator of Pan Tadeusz

  He was arrested on his birthday: on 19 March 1931 Maksym Rylskyi turned 36. A Neoclassicist poet and translator of Mickiewicz and Pushkin, after prison he had to become an “official” poet. Of the Kyiv Neoclassicists, he alone lived through the terror while staying in Ukraine.

  Poet, Writer

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  1890–1937

  Mykola Zerov

  Poet, translator, Neoclassicist leader

  Two Latin words, “Ad fontes!” (“To the sources!”), became his slogan in the argument over where Ukrainian literature should go. Mykola Zerov, a sonnet poet and translator of Roman poetry, led the Kyiv Neoclassicists. He was shot at Sandarmokh in 1937.

  Poet, Writer

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  1929–1992

  Ivan Svitlychnyi

  Sixtiers literary critic and poet

  Stus, Symonenko, Drach and Horska all gathered in his small flat on Umanska Street in Kyiv. Ivan Svitlychnyi, a critic, poet and translator, was one of the leaders of the Sixtiers, and it cost him more than 11 years in prison, labour camps and exile.

  Writer, Poet, Human rights defender

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  1935–1963

  Vasyl Symonenko

  Poet of the Sixtiers

  He wrote an “Obituary for a Corncob”, a satire on the Soviet system that spread through samvydav. The poet and journalist Vasyl Symonenko published only one collection in his lifetime and died at 28, but his poems became one of the sources of the Sixtiers’ resistance.

  Poet

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  1928–2014

  Yevhen Sverstiuk

  Essayist and critic of the Sixtiers

  The main evidence against him in court was a book about someone else’s novel. Yevhen Sverstiuk, an essayist of the Sixtiers, was sentenced to 12 years in camps and exile for his samvydav writing, and in independent Ukraine he led Ukrainian PEN and edited the newspaper Nasha Vira.

  Writer, Human rights defender

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  1931–2022

  Ivan Dziuba

  Sixtiers critic and dissident

  In a hall of 800 seats he spoke up about secret arrests, one of the first public protests against repression in the USSR. Ivan Dziuba, a Sixtiers critic and author of Internationalism or Russification?, later became minister of culture and a Hero of Ukraine.

  Writer, Human rights defender

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  1938–1985

  Vasyl Stus

  Poet and human rights defender

  The KGB seized and destroyed more than 600 of his poems, and he kept writing. Vasyl Stus, a poet of the Sixtiers and a member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, died in a Soviet camp, leaving Palimpsests, a peak of modern Ukrainian poetry.

  Poet, Human rights defender

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  1899–1984

  Borys Antonenko-Davydovych

  Writer and guardian of the language

  A book on how to speak Ukrainian well was written by a man the Soviet state took away to labour camps and exile for 23 years. Borys Antonenko-Davydovych survived, came back to Kyiv and stood by the younger dissidents.

  Writer, Human rights defender

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  1929–2023

  Dmytro Pavlychko

  Poet who wrote the words of Two Colours

  “You’ve written a Banderite song!” So the KGB greeted Two Colours. Its author, Dmytro Pavlychko, a poet of the Sixtiers, joined the UPA as a teenager, was jailed at 16, saw a whole print run of his book destroyed, and in 1991 became one of the authors of Ukraine’s Declaration of Independence.

  Poet, Statesman

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