Early life Vasyl Stus was born on January 6, 1938, into a peasant family in the village of Rakhnivka,
Haisyn Raion,
Vinnytsia Oblast,
Ukrainian SSR (modern Ukraine). The following year, his parents Semen Demyanovych and Iryna Yakivna moved to the city of Stalino (now
Donetsk). Their children joined them one year later. Vasyl first heard the
Ukrainian language and poetry from his mother who sang him Ukrainian folk songs. After 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 honors. Following graduation, Stus briefly worked as a high school teacher of the Ukrainian language and literature in the village of , in
Kirovohrad Oblast, and then was
conscripted into the
Soviet Army for two years. While studying at the university and during his military service in the
Ural Mountains, 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 the
KGB and were lost. 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 (
Ph.D.) 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.
Dissident activities and first arrest On September 4, 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 January 12, 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. “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).
Second arrest and trial On May 14, 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. 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.”
Death and burial where Stus died on 4 September 1985 Vasyl Stus died after he declared hunger strike on September 4, 1985, in a Soviet
forced labor camp for political prisoners
Perm-36 near the village of Kuchino,
Perm Oblast,
Russian SFSR, where he had been transferred in November 1980.
Danylo Shumuk reported that the commandant, Major Zhuravkov, committed suicide after the death of Stus. The immediate cause of Stus's death has never been cleared. In the Kuchino camp, out of 56 inmates kept there between 1980 and 1987, eight died, 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,
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. ==Legacy==