Officer, teacher, writer.
From a family of peasants: his father, Nykyfor Havrylovych (1889–1970), was a participant in World War I, knowledgeable about horse breeding, gardening, and horticulture; his mother, Mariya Serhiyivna (1890–1974), knew many songs and composed them herself. In his childhood, Prokopenko survived the famine: a third of his native village died out. Already in his teens, he understood that the authorities were criminal: they had organized the famine. His testimony was published in the book *33-y: holod. Narodna knyha-memorial* (*The 33rd: Famine. A People’s Memorial Book*, 1991).
In 1941, he graduated from secondary school with a “gold” certificate and entered the Sevastopol Naval Artillery School. From 1941 to 1942, he defended Sevastopol, then served in the Far East and participated in the war with Japan. He was awarded military orders and medals. He continued his studies in Lenkoran, on Lake Baikal, and in Vladivostok. From 1945–1950 and 1954–1957, he served in the coastal artillery of the Navy in Chukotka, Sevastopol, the Kuril Islands, Kamchatka, and Poti. He joined the CPSU in 1952. His first publications of poems appeared in 1944 in the Pacific Fleet newspaper *Boyevaya Vakhta* in Russian translation.
In 1945, Prokopenko was traveling from Vladivostok to Chukotka. On the ship, he met Iryna Mykolaivna Sheludyakova, a native of Yesenin’s region, who had graduated from the Higher School of Polar Workers in Moscow and was heading further North. In Provideniya Bay, Prokopenko declared: “Either you stay here with me, or I'll jump overboard right now, where a school of sharks is following the ship.” He paid the “kalym” (bride price): he reimbursed the state for Iryna’s scholarship. In 1946, their son Pavlo was born, and in 1948, their daughter Natalka.
Prokopenko always felt himself to be Ukrainian. Ever since Sevastopol, he carried with him a 1925 edition of a *Russian-Ukrainian Dictionary*. He spoke Ukrainian with the sailors and promoted them to positions. He taught his Russian wife the Ukrainian language: she wrote 3 books for children in Russian and 11 in Ukrainian, and translated from Russian and Slovak.
Having earned his military pension, Prokopenko retired from active service in 1960 with the rank of major and returned to his native region. He worked as a quality controller at the Southern Machine-Building Plant. One day, he discovered Ukrainian embroideries among the “wiping materials.” He picked them out and showed them to the workers: it was probably the clothing of repressed Galicians. He collected materials about the famine of 1932–1933. His mother told him honestly; others were afraid. This became known to the KGB and party members, and the “re-education sessions” began. He was transferred from the rocket workshop to the tractor workshop as “unreliable.”
In 1960, Prokopenko enrolled in the correspondence department of the philology faculty at Dnipropetrovsk University. The vice-rector asked him: “Why are you going into philology, to the Ukrainian department? There's a physics-technical faculty. The country needs physicists.” Prokopenko replied: “Because I love the Ukrainian language. Fifteen years of my life have been erased. After the war, I'm not doing what is needed.” A year later, the vice-rector praised Prokopenko: “You are a true philologist.” He graduated from the university with honors in 1966. He taught Ukrainian language and literature at an evening school from 1964 to 1977.
In 1965, he wrote a letter to Oles Honchar, in which he expressed concern for the fate of the Ukrainian language, writing about the decline in its teaching and the assimilation of Ukrainians. In 1966, he received his first severe warning from the KGB for “nationalistic manifestations in his pedagogical and literary activities.”
At the university, Prokopenko met Ivan SOKULSKY at a literary group, and the poet Mykhailo CHKHAN, with whom he became friends. Once in 1968, returning from Pavlohrad from a “Poetic May” event, Prokopenko sang “Shche ne vmerla Ukrayina” (Ukraine Has Not Yet Perished) on the bus with M. CHKHAN (Prokopenko knew the text variant and melody from his mother). Others joined in. The next day, KGB agent A. Tutyk passed on a message: “Go and tell Chkhan and Prokopenko that prison has been crying for them for a long time.”
When the campaign to denigrate O. Honchar’s novel *The Cathedral* began in 1968, Prokopenko wrote an article titled “The Air, Water, and Bread of the People,” in which, contrary to the slanderers H. Dihtyarenko and the “philosopher” I. Moroz, he argued that O. Honchar had written the truth. He took the article to the editor of the newspaper *Zorya*, Petro Orlyk. The article ended up “under the control” of the first secretary of the regional committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, O. Vatchenko, who on May 30, 1968, handed it over to the investigative department. It was neither published nor returned. Instead, a party meeting at school No. 37 considered Prokopenko’s personal case, dismissed him from his position as deputy secretary of the school’s party organization, and proposed to expel him from the party. He was accused of writing an “ideologically harmful poem,” “The Black Days of Baturyn and Kodnia,” and of maintaining contact with the prophylactically warned O. ZAVHORODNIY, I. SOKULSKY, and M. Romanushko. At the district party committee commission, its members shouted: “He's a nationalist in general, even his language isn't from Dnipropetrovsk.” The secretary Shchekoturov added: “Even his appearance is nationalistic.” This was about his long mustache. However, the first secretary insisted: “We will not expel Prokopenko from the party—he has a military background.” They issued a “severe reprimand with a warning.” This fact was mentioned in the “Letter from the Creative Youth of Dnipropetrovsk.”
In 1969, the issue of “lifting the party penalty” arose. They demanded repentance: “Write a statement that you've changed your view on *The Cathedral*.” – “I will never write that.” After long delays, the reprimand was finally lifted—without repentance.
The KGB tried to get Prokopenko to cooperate with them, in particular, to inform on Volodymyr SIRENKO, against whom a criminal “case” was being fabricated.
Only occasionally did Prokopenko manage to get into print. His first collection of poems, *Sunny Wind*, was published in 1979 by the “Promin” publishing house, so distorted by censorship that Prokopenko did not recognize it as his own. Throughout the 70s and 80s, Prokopenko prepared 10 collections of poems and submitted them to various publishing houses. All were rejected. He translated the Russian poet Dmitry Kedrin, but even the translations were returned from publishers due to the translator’s “unreliability.” His wife worked as the director of the writers' club and headed the children's literature section of the regional writers' organization; she had a dozen books but was not admitted to the Union of Writers of Ukraine because of her husband. She was finally admitted during *perestroika*.
Prokopenko left the CPSU in 1988. In connection with this, he and his wife were terrorized by unknown people with nightly phone calls and threats of violence. He was a member of the UGS (Ukrainian Helsinki Union) and the URP (Ukrainian Republican Party).
During *perestroika*, his works began to be published in journals such as *Borysten*, *Kuryer Kryvbasu*, and the newspaper *Vilna Dumka*, among others. Prokopenko was a member of the Writers’ Union from 1997. In 1998, at his own expense, he published a collection of poems, *A Lamp on the Windowsill*, and later, *The Flint of Poetry*, and a book of prose, *Spring Waters*. A book of translations from Dmitry Kedrin was published posthumously in 2005.
Prokopenko’s widow, the writer Iryna Prokopenko, a laureate of the V. Pidmohylny Prize, lives in Dnipropetrovsk. His daughter, Natalka Kozhumyaka, lives in the Far East with her husband, a construction engineer, since 1970. She and their two daughters, Daryna and Anastasiya, are philologists. The entire family is part of the Ukrainian community and communicates in Ukrainian.
Prokopenko is buried in Dnipropetrovsk.
Bibliography:
I.
*33-y: holod: Narodna Knyha-Memorial* (The 33rd: Famine: A People’s Memorial Book) / Comp. L. B. Kovalenko, V. A. Manyak. – Kyiv: Rad. pysmennyk, 1991. – pp. 195–197.
“A Variant of the National Anthem.” // *Borysten*. – No. 1 (7), 1992. – p. 5.
*A Lamp on the Windowsill: Poems*. – Dnipropetrovsk: Polihrafist, 1998.
KHPG Archive: Interview from April 4, 2001.
*The Flint of Poetry*. – Dnipropetrovsk: Polihrafist, 2002.
*Spring Waters: Stories, Essays, Novellas*. – Dnipropetrovsk: Navchalna knyha, 2003.
Kedrin, D.B. *Selected Works*. Translated from Russian by H. Prokopenko. – Dnipropetrovsk: Sich, 2005. – 174 pp.
Translations from Dmitry Kedrin. – Sicheslav-2. http://www.geocities.com
“‘The Ukrainian Kedrin — Must Be.’ Selected Correspondence. 1977–2005.” – Compiled by I. N. Prokopenko. – Dnipropetrovsk: Sich, 2006.
II.
“Letter from the Creative Youth of Dnipropetrovsk.” // Chornovil, V. *Works: In 10 vols*. – Vol. 3. (*Ukrayinskyi Visnyk*, 1970-72) / Comp. Valentyna Chornovil. Foreword by M. Kosiv. – Kyiv: Smoloskyp, 2006. – pp. 87-99.
Boyko, Leonid. “Witch Hunts in ‘Vatchyna’.” // *Vitchyzna*, No. 11–12, 1999. – pp. 119–120.
Kozhemyaka, Natalka. “When the Longing for Ukraine Overwhelms…” – *Sicheslav*. – No. 4 (14) 2007. – October. http://www.sicheslav.porogy.org
Prokopenko, Havrylo Nykyforovych. Material from Wikipedia – the free encyclopedia. http://ru.wikipedia.org
Prokopenko, Irina Nikolaevna. Material from Wikipedia – the free encyclopedia. http://ru.wikipedia.org
Prokopenko Havrylo Nykyforovych – Dnipropetrovsk. www.gorod.dp.ua
V. Ovsiyenko, Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, April 28, 2008.
PROKOPENKO HAVRYLO NYKYFOROVYCH