Dotsenko, Rostyslav Ivanovych

DOTSENKO, ROSTYSLAV IVANOVYCH (born April 19, 1931, in Kyiv—died October 24, 2012, in Kyiv).
Translator, literary critic, political prisoner (1953-63).
His family of four lived in a 15-square-meter communal apartment in the city center, not far from the NKVD headquarters on Instytutska Street. From an early age, Slavko heard talk of arrests and executions. In a Russian-speaking environment, he was consistently a Ukrainian speaker from childhood. During the German occupation, he saw the national flag and coat of arms. He read widely, including Olena Teliha’s journal “Litavry” and the newspaper “Ukrainske slovo.” During the famine year of 1947, he transferred to School No. 92, named after I. Franko, located in the building of the Pavlo Galagan Collegium.
In 1950, Dotsenko graduated from secondary school and entered the Ukrainian department of the philological faculty at Kyiv University. This was a time of rapid intellectual growth for the talented young man, and at the core of this growth was the national idea.
He was arrested on February 14, 1953, in the last wave of Stalinist terror, on charges of conducting “anti-Soviet propaganda” and distributing the works of “bourgeois-nationalist” writers M. Hrushevsky, V. Vynnychenko, S. Yefremov, and others. His classmates Hrytsko Voloshchuk and Mykola Adamenko, who had been arrested slightly earlier, were tried in the same case. In the spring of 1953, they were sentenced by the Kyiv Oblast Court under Article 54-1, Part 2; Dotsenko specifically received 8 years of imprisonment in corrective labor camps, with confiscation of property.
From 1953 to 1956, he served his sentence in the Kuneyev camps (Kuybyshev oblast) during the construction of the Volga Hydroelectric Station. There, in the spring of 1955, a dozen young political prisoners (mostly Ukrainians) formed the “Group of Revolutionary Marxists.” Dotsenko was a co-author of its program and statutory documents, in which the CPSU was described as a “reactionary party of the fascist type.” The group was exposed, and in April 1956, its members (A. Sukhodolsky, R. Dotsenko, D. Mazur, D. Pisarev, D. Slobodyan, B. Hubaidullin, V. Cherepanov, A. Stasishkis, A. Miroshnichenko, A. Agbalov, and others) were arrested and, in September, sentenced. Dotsenko, specifically, received another 7 years under Articles 58-10 and 58-11 of the RSFSR Criminal Code (“anti-Soviet agitation” and “organizational activity”). He served this new sentence from October 1956 to May 1957 in Sovetskaya Gavan (Khabarovsk Krai); and from June 1957 to April 1960 on the Taishet railway line (Irkutsk oblast).
In captivity, he knew Metropolitan Josyf SLIPYJ, Stepan Bandera’s lawyer Volodymyr Horbovyi, insurgent Petro Duzhyi, writer Sviatoslav KARAVANSKY, and lawyer Levko LUKIANENKO, and he was friends with Yuriy LYTVYN. He actively communicated with scientists, philosophers, and artists—political prisoners of various nationalities—learning foreign languages from them and engaging in self-education.
He was released in April 1963. With a certificate confirming the annulment of his first conviction, he was able to be reinstated at Kyiv University. Having served 10 years, Dotsenko, as he recalled, “unexpectedly dove from the Mordovian hemp into the Kyiv Sixtiers movement, where he gladly met Ivan SVITLYCHNY, Ivan DZIUBA, Lina KOSTENKO, Alla HORSKA, and many, many other outstanding personalities of those clearly renaissance years.” In 1964, he married a former political prisoner, mathematician Nina VIRCHENKO. Their daughters, Maria and Olena, were born.
In 1965, Dotsenko graduated from the university while working in the foreign literature department of the State Literary Publishing House of Ukraine (from 1964, the “Dnipro” publishing house). He translated several dozen works of foreign literature, including preparing a 12-volume edition of Jack London (1969-72), and his translations of Oscar Wilde’s novel “The Picture of Dorian Gray” (1968), James Fenimore Cooper’s “The Last of the Mohicans” (1969), and William Faulkner’s “The Reivers” (1972), as well as short stories by Mark Twain and Edgar Allan Poe, were published. His article “The Swift Current of Language and the Stagnant Pool of Dictionaries,” on the state of Ukrainian lexicography, published in the journal “Vitchyzna” No. 12 in 1966, was reprinted by the London journal “Vyzvolnyi shliakh” No. 2 in 1967.
The next wave of arrests in 1972 also affected Dotsenko’s fate: he was pressured to testify against I. DZIUBA, M. LUKASH, and H. KOCHUR. He was threatened with a new arrest. He and his wife were openly surveilled, summoned for “conversations,” subjected to public and secret searches, their apartment was bugged, and provocations were staged against them. After refusing to cooperate with the KGB, Dotsenko was fired from his job at the “Dnipro” publishing house in 1973, and his translations were no longer published. His wife was forced to resign “of her own free will” from her teaching position at Kyiv University. In 1974, after a long search for work, Dotsenko managed to get a job at the “non-ideological” Republican Agricultural Library. He worked “for the drawer.” He compiled a Russian-Ukrainian and an English-Ukrainian dictionary of proverbs and a collection of world poetry about language.
In the 1980s, when it became possible to be published again, dozens of works by English and Irish writers appeared in his translation, including William Faulkner’s “The Hamlet” (1983, with V. Kornienko), Charles Dickens’ “Great Expectations” (1986), Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone with the Wind,” novellas and short stories by Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, Jerome K. Jerome, Frank O’Connor, Walter Scott, and others, as well as collections of Irish folk tales and English and Irish proverbs and sayings. Despite long bans on publication, Dotsenko’s name is inscribed in the brilliant cohort of Ukrainian translators from English, Irish, American, Polish, French, and other literatures.
With the weakening of the totalitarian regime, Dotsenko dedicated himself to creative work from 1988 onwards. He translated from English the literary studies of George S. N. Luckyj, “Between Gogoľ and Ševčenko” (1998), and George Y. Shevelov, “Prolegomena to the Study of the Language and Style of H. Skovoroda” (1998). His creative output includes many articles on linguistics, folklore, translation, a bibliography on the history of Ukrainian printing, political repressions, the Holodomor, and more.
In the last years of his life, Dotsenko focused on preparing and publishing the works of repressed writers. He authored a series of biographical essays titled “Ukraine without Ukrainians”—about writers and public figures who were victims of political repression (O. Konysky, M. Khvylovy, A. Krymsky, M. Zerov, Yu. Lypa, O. Teliha, Yu. LYTVYN, and others). He compiled a collection of works by L. Hrebinka, “Joy of the Black Earth” (1990), L. Lyman, “Memory” (2002), and Yuriy LYTVYN, “On the Blades of Lightning” (2009). He promoted the works of O. Teliha, O. Kurinny, O. Hryhorenko, Ye. Yavorivsky, H. Mazurenko, P. Karpenko-Krynytsia, O. Tarnavsky, and M. Tarnavska in periodicals.
Dotsenko’s numerous translations and literary articles were published in the Ukrainian and foreign press. He is the author of about 2,000 semi-aphoristic “Thoughts Against the Night”—philosophical and accusatory reflections on occupation regimes.
In 1986, Dotsenko was admitted to the National Writers’ Union and was a founding member of the All-Ukrainian Society of Political Prisoners and Repressed Persons (1989). He was a recipient of the M. Rylsky Literary Prize (1993) and the M. Lukash Prize (2000). He was awarded the Order “For Merit” III degree (2007).


Bibliography
1.
At the Decline of an Age and the Dawn of Hope. An Interview with Hryhoriy Kochur // Ukraina. 1989, April 23, No. 17 (1681). pp. 0-3.
Under the Sign of Mykola Lukash // Ukraina. – 1988. – No. 50;
Let Us Remember Our Duty (About M. Lukash) // Ukr. mova i lit-ra v shk. – 1989. – No. 12;
Under the Insatiable Censor's Eye // Ukraina. – 1989. – December 10, No. 50 (1714). – pp. 20-22.
Reconqueror of Ukraine (About O. Teliha) // Starozhytnosti. – 1992. // No. 12;
Epiphany Over the Abyss (About M. Khvylovy) // Nar. haz. — 1993. — No. 50;
Especially Dangerous, Therefore Doomed to Obscurity (About the Sixtier poet O. Hryhorenko) // Ukraina. – 1993. — no. 12;
For Ukraine They Tortured Him Once (About L. Hrebinka) // Novi dni. – 1995. — No. 544. – pp. 10-12;
The Return of Halia Mazurenko // Kyiv. — 1997. — No. 5-6. — pp. 58-59;
Letters from Captivity (1953-1963). [Letters to M. Bilours] // He Simply Walks... A Collection for the Jubilee of Rostyslav Dotsenko. – K.: Zadruha, 2001. – pp. 132-269;
An Argonaut Who Bypassed the GULAG (About L. Chernov) // Dyvoslovo. — 2002. — No. 11;
Poetry of Life and Death (About H. Sokolenko) // Kyiv. — 2005. — No. 12. — pp. 75-83;
I Will Return to Ukraine... (About L. Drazhevska) // Berezil. — 2007. — No. 7-8. — 159-165;
A Farewell—Before Future Meetings (About O. Izarsky) // Nashe zhyttia. — 2007. — No. 11. — pp. 9, 10, 28;
Yuriy Lytvyn—Poet and Truth-Seeker Behind the Prison Wall of an Era: A Memoir-Reflection. — K.: Ukr. Center for Spiritual Culture, 2007. — 32 pp.;
An Overseas View of Ukrainian Figures: Vadym Lesych / Dyvosvit. — 2008. — No. 1. — pp. 24-25;
A Grateful Word About a Respected Man (About M. Soroka) // They Thought of Ukraine: A Collection. — T., 2009.— pp. 60-61;
Lytvyn, Yuriy. On the Blades of Lightning: Poems. Articles. Documents. Letters // Comp., author of foreword R. Dotsenko. — K.: Publishing House named after O. Teliha. 2009. — 496 pp.;
Bright Thoughts Against the Night. Aphorisms and Something Close to Them / R. Dotsenko. – Ternopil: Navchalna knyha – Bohdan, 2011. – 296 pp.
2.
Kontsevych, Y. “Generous Sprout of a Mighty Root…” // The Restlessness of Desires and Plans. – K.: Radianskyi pysmennyk, 1988.
Kochur, H. To Rostyslav Dotsenko—60 // Literaturna Ukraina, June 6, 1991.
Dotsenko, R. Letters from Captivity (1953-1963) // He Simply Walks: A Jubilee Collection. — 2001. – pp. 41-131; Bilours, M., Adamenko, M., Kaharlytsky, M., Kornienko, V. et al. He Simply Walks…
Resistance Movement in Ukraine: 1960 – 1990. Encyclopedic Directory. / Foreword by Osyp Zinkevych, Oles Obertas. – K.: Smoloskyp, 2010. – pp. 216-218; 2nd ed., 2012. – pp. 239-240.
Lukianenko, Levko: From the Darkness of Totalitarianism—to Luminous Eternity. In Memory of Rostyslav Dotsenko // Shliakh peremohy, No. 46 (3047), 2012. – November 14. – p. 6. http://www.istpravda.com.ua/columns/2012/11/7/99108/view_print/
Biographical information and photos: http://maidan.org.ua/2012/10/pomer-politvyazn-rostyslav-dotsneko-svitla-pamyat/ ; http://khpg.org/1351166679;
http://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/ (see here “Major Translations”)
Ovsiienko V. Two documents from the SBU State Archives: http://museum.khpg.org, in the “Research” section:
https://museum.khpg.org/1367604869