Poet, translator from Estonian and other languages. Distributor of samizdat.
Born into the family of writer Serhiy Zavhorodniy (March 19, 1908 – August 19, 1994), who headed the Dnipropetrovsk regional branch of the Writers’ Union from 1948 to 1960 and from 1966 to 1968. His father escaped the “Great Terror” of 1937 by fleeing to Irpin with the manuscript of his novella *Anton Nahnybida*, where Yuriy Yanovsky gave the work a positive review. By 1939, almost the entire writers’ organization had been annihilated. His mother, Yevhenia Merkuriivna Petryshyna-Zavhorodnia (January 6, 1912 – February 4, 1997), was a journalist.
Oles grew up in the village of Liubomyrivka, Verkhniodniprovsk district, and started school in the village of Krynychky in 1947. He witnessed people swollen from hunger walking and collapsing. From 1949, he lived in Dnipropetrovsk and attended a Ukrainian-language school. Oles, like his older brother Hennadiy, displayed national consciousness from an early age under the influence of his Ukrainian intellectual parents. In 1961–62, his student brother was accused of creating an organization, but the authorities limited their response to prophylactic measures.
In 1957, Oles graduated from secondary school and worked as a general laborer in a nursery, then as a lathe operator at the Dnipropetrovsk Pipe-Rolling Plant. His first poems were published in the local press in 1957–58.
From 1960 to 1965, he studied in the Ukrainian department of the Faculty of Philology at Dnipropetrovsk University.
In 1962, as a second-year student, Oles was impressed by his maternal uncle, Volodymyr, who had been captured unconscious by the Germans during the war, was held in the American occupation zone, liberated, and then imprisoned for 10 years in the Vorkuta mines. He said, “I have read Solzhenitsyn, but I have seen things more terrible than what Solzhenitsyn describes.” With the end of the “Khrushchev Thaw,” the “tightening of the screws” began, which was also noticeable at the faculty.
In 1963, Zavhorodniy met Ivan SOKULSKY, who had transferred from Lviv University to Dnipropetrovsk University and was a member of the Volodymyr Bulaienko literary studio at the university. Zavhorodniy was greatly impressed by his participation, along with SOKULSKY, in a group of carolers in Kyiv in January 1965.
In the summer of 1964, Zavhorodniy traveled to Kazakhstan with a student construction brigade, observed the life of the Kazakhs, and began to think more deeply about the state of his native language. It was rarely heard in the city, and at the Faculty of Philology, only the Ukrainian language and literature were taught in Ukrainian. At one meeting, Zavhorodniy said, “What kind of philology faculty is this? We are graduating from university, but our terminology is Russian, we are not organically mastering our native language, and our heads are a mess.”
When the film *Son* (The Dream), in which Ivan Mykolaychuk played the role of T. Shevchenko, was removed from cinemas, Zavhorodniy and a group of students went to the regional committee of the CPU with a letter of protest. An official told them, “You would be better off keeping quiet, otherwise you will have trouble.”
After graduating from university, he worked for a district newspaper in Vasylkivka, then for various multi-edition newspapers. He was already trailed by the “tail” of a nationalist.
In September 1965, at a creative seminar near Novomoskovsk, Zavhorodniy, along with others, actively distributed Vasyl SYMONENKO’s “Diary” and the article “On the Occasion of the Trial of Pohruzalsky.” In October, he was taken by car directly from his editorial office to the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast KGB Directorate. There were threats: “You are being investigated under Article 62.” He endured several interrogations. Someone informed on him for reading Ivan Koshelivets’s book *Contemporary Literature in the Ukrainian SSR*. He was interrogated about this at the republican KGB in Kyiv. He was fired from his job. He worked for factory newspapers, and was jobless for a month, two, or even three at a time. Often, he would arrange for a job, only to be turned down a few days later.
At the aforementioned seminar, Zavhorodniy heard from Pavlo Tychyna that there was not a single translator from the Estonian language in Ukraine. Zavhorodniy had become interested in Estonian as a child in Liubomyrivka, where an Estonian student from an agricultural academy named Jan was doing his internship. The foreign language fascinated him, sparking a desire to master it. He learned it on his own. Later, as a student, he studied French, Spanish, and Polish, and translated from them.
He wrote poetry, but no collection could be published in Dnipropetrovsk. Local literary officials said, “He cannot be published—he has subtexts.” However, in 1968, a small collection of poems, *Radaiu liudiam* (I Rejoice in People), was published by Molod publishing house in Kyiv.
His father was constantly harassed because of his sons, being told, “Let him dry his bread for prison.” In 1968, when the campaign against Oles Honchar’s novel *Sobor* (The Cathedral) began, he was dismissed from his position as head of the regional branch of the Writers’ Union. Although Zavhorodniy had no connection to the “Letter of the Creative Youth,” investigator Zhyvoder interrogated him at the prosecutor’s office, asking if he had noticed any psychological deviations in I. SOKULSKY’s behavior. His father advised him, “To avoid going to prison here, go to Estonia.” Dmytro Pavlychko arranged with the Estonian Writers’ Union for a creative exchange of young writers between Ukraine and Estonia. In May 1968, Zavhorodniy left for Tallinn. At the time, regional committee secretary O. Vatchenko shouted at a bureau meeting, “The older one has slipped away to the Caucasus, and the younger one is engaging in Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism in Estonia.”
Zavhorodniy immersed himself in textbooks. He lived in dormitories, and in 1969, the Estonian Writers’ Union secured a room for him. For a time, he worked as a dispatcher at the main post office, then traveled with students to collective farms to help with the harvest. He lived in Estonia intermittently until 1972 and was registered there until 1974.
By the end of 1968, Zavhorodniy’s first translated publications appeared. He contributed to the newspaper *Literaturna Ukraina* and to the radio. Since 1969, he has lived exclusively by his literary work, becoming a true intermediary between Estonian and Ukrainian literatures. His translations of works by Juhan Saar, a collection of *Estonian Proverbs and Sayings* (which editors supplemented with self-made proverbs about Lenin and the Party), A. H. Tammsaare, J. Kross, M. Traat, E. Raud, E. Vetemaa, E. Niit, and others were published in Ukraine. In 1976, he was awarded the Juhan Smuul Prize for his translation of Paul Kuusberg’s novel *One Night*, *Estonian Folk Tales*, and *Kalevipoeg*. When Zavhorodniy went to receive the prize, his neighbors were questioned about his behavior and whether he drank excessively.
On July 4, 1970, he married Tamara, a girl from the Poltava region who was studying at the philology faculty. She had also attended the literary studio where Ivan SOKULSKY was a regular. They tried to interrogate her in connection with his first case. His wife was very important in Zavhorodniy’s development as a creative individual; she proofread and retyped his translations. She has an excellent command of the Ukrainian language, translates from Polish, and worked at the “Promin” publishing house for 22 years.
One day in 1977, his wife, father, mother, and Zavhorodniy himself were summoned to various institutions. In the evening, they discovered drilled holes in their apartment: it was blatant blackmail with listening devices.
Zavhorodniy became a member of the Writers’ Union in 1979, having already published 10 translated books.
The KGB repeatedly offered Zavhorodniy the chance to write a denunciation against “Ukrainian bourgeois nationalists.” But he never wrote a single word. The examples of those who had written such articles served as a warning: they declined as creative individuals, took to drinking, and perished. In 1984, after a denunciatory article in the newspaper *Zorya*, where he was labeled a “Ukrainian bourgeois nationalist,” he considered writing a justification. His wife Tamara then threatened him with divorce. At a meeting of the writers’ organization in 1984, Zavhorodniy spoke quite sharply, but he was not expelled from the Union. However, his manuscripts were removed from publishing houses and journals.
Since Zavhorodniy, as a matter of principle, did not write “locomotives” (ideological poems), his poetry collections could only be published during the “perestroika” era: *Pereveslo* (The Hank) (1986) and *Iz podyvu i podykhu* (From Wonder and Breath) (1989). For his translation of Jaan Kross’s novel *The Czar’s Madman* and Eno Raud’s *Those Rascals Again...*, he was awarded the Juhan Smuul Prize for a second time. Twice, in the 1980s and 1990s, he traveled to Finland at the invitation of the Finnish Institute for Cultural Relations.
Zavhorodniy was an activist in the People’s Movement of Ukraine from its very first days. He was one of the organizers of demonstrations in Dnipropetrovsk. His wife Tamara sewed the city’s first national flags, including the flag that was first raised in the city near the T. Shevchenko Theater in July 1991. Zavhorodniy and a group of activists spent the night guarding it. Suddenly, the lights went out, and on the orders of Mayor Valeriy Pustovoytenko (later Prime Minister of Ukraine), they were dispersed by police officers, who toppled the flagpole, cut it into pieces, and took it away. The next day, Zavhorodniy declared a hunger strike in protest, which he maintained near the Shevchenko monument for two weeks.
He has published over 25 books of translations. In 2004, he published a collection of his own selected poems, which was awarded the “Blahovist” prize. Zavhorodniy’s poetry has been translated into Estonian, Azerbaijani, Lithuanian, Kyrgyz, Polish, Russian, Finnish, and Hungarian. He translates from Estonian, Finnish, Polish, Spanish, French, and Swedish.
He works as a literary editor for the regional pedagogical newspaper *Dzherelo*. He is the author of many articles on Ukrainian-Estonian cultural ties. In 1996, he was awarded the Maksym Rylsky Prize for artistic translation. He is compiling a dictionary of synonyms.
Zavhorodniy’s wife works as a leading editor at the “Sich” publishing house and at the private publishing house “Navchalna knyha.” Many historical works were first published in her translations.
The Zavhorodniys live in Dnipropetrovsk, but recently they have spent most of their time in the village of Yosypivka. Their daughter Olenka, born in 1981, is a bandura player and artist.
Bibliography:
1.
[About myself]. *Borysfen*, no. 7, 1992, p. 4.
*Radaiu liudiam: Poezii* [I Rejoice in People: Poems]. Molod, 1968, 60 pp.
*Pereveslo: Poezii* [The Hank: Poems]. Molod, 1986, 79 pp.
*Iz podyvu i podykhu: Poezii* [From Wonder and Breath: Poems]. Rad. pysmennyk, 1989, 111 pp.
*Zhyttia moioho ptakh. Poezii* [The Bird of My Life: Poems]. Lira, 2004.
2.
Starchenko, V. “Chas muzhnikh” [A Time for the Courageous]. *Prapor iunosti*, Jan. 25, 1990.
Hryshchenko, V. “Toi, khto z’iednuie movy” [He Who Unites Languages]. *Nashe misto*, Mar. 3, 1992.
*EESTI KIRJARAHVA LEKSIKON*, kirjastus “Eesti Raamat,” Tallinn, 1995, p. 566.
Kravchenko-Rusiv, A. “Svitylnyk dukhu” [A Lamp of the Spirit]. *Sobor*, Jan. 31, 1997.
Iryna Holub. A short sketch of the life and work of the famous Dnipropetrovsk poet and translator. / Dnipropetrovshchyna: Regional Information Portal. 2000.
Interview with Oles and Tamara Zavhorodniy on April 3, 2001.
Memoirs of O. Zavhorodniy. August 7, 2008 (typescript).
Vasyl Ovsienko, Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, April 8, 2008. Corrected February 15, 2009.
ZAVHORODNIJ OLEKSANDR (OLES) SERHIJOVYCH