Announcer for Ukrainian Radio since 1953, priest since 1990. The quintessential voice of Ukraine.
From a peasant family. His father, Todos Trokhymovych (b. 1902), an agronomist, went to war in early 1944 and went missing in action in August. Two of his uncles, Yukhym and Kuzma, were executed by firing squad in 1937. When German occupiers organized the exhumation of graves of communist terror victims in Vinnytsia in 1943, his mother and he, like many relatives of the deceased, went to identify their loved ones among the hundreds of NKVD victims.
His mother, Varvara Leontiivna Bohdan (1897–1973), was artistically gifted and participated in a drama club in her youth. “Mama sang all the songs to me,” her son recalls. But at school, he could not listen to the song about Stalin, “From Beyond the Hills, the High Hills,” because a childhood sense of an unjust, and at the time incomprehensible, wrong remained with him.
He knew collective-farm work from an early age: from the age of 14, he carried daily reports on the progress of the work 12 km to the raion center, and from the Orativ station, he carried the mail. In 1947, he graduated with honors from the seventh grade in the neighboring village of Velyka Rastivka and enrolled in the geology department of the Lviv Mining and Fuel Technical College. He attended theaters in Lviv and admired the actors’ performances.
In 1950, he transferred to the Kyiv Mining Technical College. He participated in amateur arts at the Kyiv City House of Teachers.
In 1952, he enrolled in the Faculty of Geology at the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. After his first year, he won a competition to become an announcer for Ukrainian Radio, where he began working on August 1, 1953. His soft, velvety baritone voice was heard all over Ukraine. He began mastering the professional skills: the craft of oral informational and journalistic broadcasting and the art of artistic microphone speech for a multi-million audience.
B. considers the celebrated Yuriy Shumsky, Rostyslav Ivytsky, Polina Niatko, Dmytro Zhuravlov, and Irakli Andronnikov to be his teachers, and the leading announcer of Ukrainian Radio, Honored Artist Andriy Yevenko, to be his “godfather” on the radio.
He transferred from the full-time geology program to the correspondence department of the Faculty of Philology at Kyiv State University, from which he graduated in 1959. He married Valentyna Nesvit on February 18, 1958. Their daughter, Olesia, was born in 1958, and their son, Platon, in 1973.
While working at the radio, he taught expressive reading and speech culture at the Kyiv Pedagogical Institute; as a lecturer for the “Znannia” (Knowledge) society, he gave lectures on the art of oratory throughout Ukraine. With the assistance of Nadiia Dmytrivna KOVALENKO, an inspector-methodologist of Ukrainian language and literature at the Ministry of Education, he gave lectures on the art of spoken language as an element of pedagogical skill at institutes and teacher qualification courses and participated in the creation of a phono-anthology of Ukrainian literature. He found true masterpieces in the archives, and the voices of the luminaries of Ukrainian art began to be heard in schools.
In 1963, as a leading announcer for Ukrainian Radio, B. spoke at the All-Ukrainian Conference on Speech Culture, held by the Institute of Linguistics of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR and Kyiv State University. He said, among other things, that the state had no master in the linguistic domain and that the norms of speech culture were not being observed in the media, in the press, or in public speeches. To this, Academician I.K. Bilodid responded that there were, of course, some successes and some less successful aspects, but that it was wrong to generalize in such a “dissident-like manner.” Maksym Rylsky, however, said that he heard nothing “dissident-like” in B.’s speech, but rather felt a deep concern for the language. Matviy Shestopal, an associate professor at the Faculty of Journalism, also spoke in his support. Nevertheless, B. was banned from the microphone and transferred to the position of literary editor in the music broadcasting department. From then on, he had the reputation of a “Ukrainian bourgeois nationalist.” However, he was eventually allowed to read again, first on the third, then the second, and finally the first program.
When V. SYMONENKO’s poems appeared in samvydav, B. began to read them not only in a narrow circle of friends (for example, at the home of N.D. KOVALENKO) but also to a wide audience. For his performance at an evening in memory of V. SYMONENKO at the Institute of Oil and Gas, he had a four-hour “conversation” with the KGB.
When B. was invited to the admissions committee of Kyiv State University, he helped talented, nationally conscious applicants become students.
Despite official warnings, he participated in honoring T. Shevchenko at his monument in Kyiv on March 9 and May 22, read his works in student auditoriums, and conducted lessons and evenings in schools (in particular, together with Ye. SVERSTIUK at the invitation of Vira LISOVA and Vira Cherednychenko). He was invited to evenings organized by the Ukrainian intelligentsia. He lectured on the art of the living word to philology students. However, it sometimes happened that after a few lectures, he was no longer allowed to interact with students because “someone” saw “nationalist tendencies” in B.’s teaching.
In 1972, a new wave of repressions against the Ukrainian intelligentsia began. Since B. was acquainted with many of the repressed and had a reputation for being nationally conscious, which was felt in the subtext of the materials he read, Ivan Khropko, the deputy chairman of the State Committee for Television and Radio Broadcasting, suggested in April 1974 that he submit his resignation. He worked half-time as a stage speech teacher at the drama studio of the Ivan Franko Theater—he was fired from there as well. With two children to support, B. found no other solution than to schedule an appointment at the KGB and ask, “What should I do? I don’t know how to make shoes…” They replied: “We are not an employment agency. Go to the raion party committee.” The raion committee sent him, a non-party member, to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine. He signed up for an appointment at the First Secretary’s reception office. He was received by V. Shcherbytsky’s assistant, Leonid Kravchuk. The next day, B. was already working at Kyiv Oblast Radio: he was eagerly hired by Oleksandr Petrushenko, the head of the oblast radio committee at 6 Khreshchatyk Street. Upon learning of this, Mykola Skachko, the head of the republican radio committee, forbade B. from appearing at 26 Khreshchatyk Street. After the merger of these radio committees in 1977, the ban was lifted. In 1984, B. was awarded the title of Honored Artist of Ukraine.
In 1990, he was recognized as the best announcer of the year and awarded a special diploma.
It is understandable that under strict censorship, an announcer could not change anything in the text, but his attitude toward the message could be revealed in his intonation. And for this, they had complaints against him. All the more so because he remained outside the party, attended St. Volodymyr’s Cathedral, and took communion. When perestroika began and the Church of Saints Peter and Paul in Lviv was the first to leave the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate, B. began traveling there to hear the service in Ukrainian. “I felt like I was in heaven,” he recalls. At the age of 60, he asked the church’s rector, Father Volodymyr, “At my age, can I think about taking the path of serving the Lord?” He received the answer: “The moment you thought about it, you already have an affirmative answer—you can. There are no age restrictions. You have already taken the first step. Such a desire does not come just like that. It is a calling.”
He began to study the order of worship and rituals. On June 23, 1990, Bishop Vasyl ROMANIUK (later Patriarch of Kyiv and All Rus-Ukraine Volodymyr) ordained him as a deacon, and on July 26, he was ordained as a priest for missionary service by Metropolitan Ion Bodnarchuk.
When Patriarch Mstyslav (Skrypnyk) arrived in Ukraine in November of that year to head the restored UAOC, Father Petro became his secretary.
There was an immense amount of work: he consecrated churches, blessed large gatherings throughout Ukraine, and consecrated the national flag in Svitlovodsk during V. Yavorivsky’s election campaign. The consecration of the national flag on the morning of August 24, 1991, near St. Sophia’s Cathedral was a triumph. That day, it was solemnly carried into the Verkhovna Rada, which adopted the Act of Declaration of Independence. At 5:40 p.m. on September 4, it was raised above its dome. Today, this flag is preserved in a special reliquary in the museum of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine.
In October 1991, Father Petro left for Canada, where he studied at St. Andrew’s College at the University of Manitoba and served as a protopriest in various parishes of the Ukrainian diaspora in Ottawa, Montreal, Lachine, Welland, and Niagara Falls. There, he was cured of cancer and saved his eyesight.
In 2003, he returned to Kyiv and served in the Church of the Nativity of Christ in the Podil district and in the Church of St. John the Theologian (in the village of Shevchenkove, Zvenyhorodka Raion, Cherkasy Oblast). He still works at Ukrainian Radio.
His readings of Taras Shevchenko’s “Kobzar” and prose, Lina KOSTENKO’s novel “Berestechko,” Volodymyr Bilinsky’s “The Country of Moksel,” Yevhen Hutsalo’s “The Mentality of the Horde,” and Ivan DZIUBA’s monograph “Taras Shevchenko,” which were broadcast on Ukrainian Radio, and particularly on the spiritual revival channel “Radio Kultura,” are, by their scale and the volume of literary material, a truly benchmark of the art of dramatic reading, unparalleled—such monolithic audio canvases of complete works by various authors have been produced on the radio for the first time in history. Recently, recordings of the novels “Kholodnyi Yar” (The Cold Ravine) by Yuriy Horlis-Horsky and “Chornyi Voron” (The Black Raven) by Vasyl Shkliar, performed by the Honored Artist, have been released on disc. He dreams of recording all of T. Shevchenko’s works, performed in Shevchenko’s counter-atheistic spirit.
He lives in Kyiv. His daughter, Olesia, is a Doctor of Medical Sciences, a professor, and a pro-rector at the O. Bohomolets National Medical University. His son, Platon, is a pharmacist and a theologian.
Bibliography:
1.
P. Boyko. Questions on the Theory of Technical (Acoustic) Expressiveness in Oral Speech // Trybuna lektora, Nos. 10 and 11. – 1971. – October and November.
2.
A Path Inspired by the Word [interview] / P. T. Boyko, L. Taran. – “Ukrainska Kultura,” 2007, No. 8. – pp. 10-11.
Sirenko, Mykhailo. An Ordinary Magician. Sketches for a Portrait of a Friend. – Slovo Prosvity, no. 25 (506). – 2009. – June 25 – July 1.
Kupriy, Mykola. Sower of the Kobzar’s Word // Slovo Prosvity, No. 4. – 2010. – January 28 – February 3.
Kavun, Mykola. Lopatynka Gave Ukraine a Patriot with a Unique Voice… // Gazeta “Vinnychchyna,” No. 36 (22478) – 2010. – May 12.
Lysenko, Mykola. The Undervalued Word. // Literaturna Ukraina, No. 22 (5354). – 2010. – June 17.
Kolomiiets, Nataliia, and Svitlana Koronenko. On Faith in the Word. A Conversation with Protopriest, Announcer of Ukrainian Radio Petro Boyko on His 80th Birthday // Gazeta “Den,” No. 110. – 2010. – June 25.
International Biographical Dictionary of Dissidents in Central and Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union. Vol. 1. Ukraine. Part 1. – Kharkiv: Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group; “Prava Liudyny.” – 2006. – pp. 1–516; Part 2. – pp. 517–1020. Part 3. – 2011. – pp. 1021-1380; Boyko – pp. 1054-1059; https://museum.khpg.org/1315824409
The Resistance Movement in Ukraine: 1960–1990. An Encyclopedic Guide / Foreword by Osyp Zinkevych, Oles Obertas. – Kyiv: Smoloskyp, 2010. – 804 pp., 56 ill.; 2nd ed., 2012. – 896 pp. + 64 ill.; Boyko: p. 91.
Vasyl Ovsiienko, Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group.
Characters 10,328. BoykoPT. Last read on May 15, 2016.
BOYKO PETRO TODOSIOVYCH
BOYKO PETRO TODOSIOVYCH