Vasyl Volodymyrovych Barladianu-Byrladnyk was born on August 23, 1942, in the Ukrainian village of Shybka, Grigoriopol District, Moldova, on the Dniester River. He passed away on December 3, 2010, in Odesa.
On March 3, 1945, his father was repressed as the son of Andriy Huly-Hulenko, a General-Khorunzhy of the Army of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, and perished in the uranium mines of Mongolia.
In 1964, Vasyl graduated from the Odesa School of Military Correspondents, and in 1970, from the Faculty of Russian Philology at Odesa University. As an art historian, from 1966–1969, he interned at museums in Moscow, Leningrad, and Western Ukraine, as well as at the Prague National Gallery. From 1971–1972, he studied Romanian and Bulgarian Studies at the universities of Bucharest and Sofia. He mastered a colossal amount of literature, possessed a phenomenal memory, and acquired encyclopedic knowledge. From December 1969 to May 1974, he headed the Department of Art History at Odesa University and taught the history of world and Ukrainian art, classical European literature, ethics, and aesthetics at the Odesa Institute of Marine Fleet Engineers. He researched Ukrainian folk and professional art, as well as the medieval literary, artistic, and religious ties between Ukraine and Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, Italy, and the Romanian lands. He prepared a dissertation titled “The Image of Man in the Painting and Literature of the Second Bulgarian Empire, 1118–1396,” but he was not destined to defend it. In December 1970, at the “Ukraine-Bulgaria” International Conference in Odesa, he delivered a report titled “Renaissance Features in the Painting of the Second Bulgarian Empire and Ukraine-Rus’,” which immediately attracted the attention of the KGB. He wrote a monograph on the life and work of the Ukrainian artist Mykhailo Zhuk and articles on Ukrainian-Romanian-Bulgarian relations.
His poems were published in Russian starting in 1960, but from 1965 onward, only in Ukrainian. This transition to his native language led to a creative explosion that resulted in the collection “Sew the Banner Quickly, My Wife.”
Under the pseudonym Yan Drubala, he wrote articles for samvydav on the history of the national question in the Russian Empire and the USSR and maintained contact with many dissidents and patriots, notably with Nina Strokata-Karavanska.
Barladianu’s persecution for his patriotic and scholarly convictions began in May 1972. During a KGB interrogation on January 28, 1974, he was accused of Ukrainian nationalism. On March 11, he was expelled from the Communist Party of the Soviet (CPSU), and on May 5, he was dismissed from his job at Odesa University “without the right to work in the ideological sphere,” meaning in academic and teaching positions. He was later dismissed from the Museum of Folk Architecture and Life in Kyiv. While searching for work, he wrote the monograph “The Artist Mykhailo Zhuk” (still unpublished). In May 1976, Barladianu found a position as a senior researcher at the Odesa Museum of Western and Eastern Art. He published his scholarly articles under the names of friends.
On June 16, 1976, during a search of Barladianu’s apartment, the KGB confiscated the collection of patriotic poems “Sew the Banner Quickly, My Wife,” the autobiographical novella “There Will Be No Compromise,” and many scholarly and publicist articles on the political situation in Ukraine and the history of the national question. As a result, in September, on the orders of the KGB, he was dismissed from the museum without the documents required for employment.
In December 1976, Barladianu gave Mykola Rudenko, the head of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group (UHG), a copy of his statement addressed to the Odesa regional prosecutor protesting persecution based on national motives, as well as the article “To People of Goodwill” and the autobiographical essay “But How Else?” The Russian text of the essay was published in Paris in 1977, with a second edition appearing in his 1979 book *Woe from Wit*. Barladianu also distributed UHG materials.
He was arrested by the Odesa prosecutor’s office on March 2, 1977. At the time of his arrest, he declared an indefinite hunger strike, which he ended at his familys request after his trial, held from June 27–29, 1977. He was sentenced to three years of imprisonment in a general-regime labor camp under Article 187-1 of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR (“slander against the Soviet state and social system”). His scholarly works and drafts were also included in the indictment. Barladianu did not admit guilt. Friends and relatives were barred from the trial. A teacher, Hanna Holumbiievska, came to the courtroom with flowers, but she was not allowed to give them to the defendant. She read a statement refusing to testify.
Vasyl Barladianu was held in camp OR-318/76 (in the village of Polytsi, Volodymyrets District, Rivne Oblast), where he worked in a stone quarry. He spent six months in a punitive confinement cell (a *kartser*, or punishment cell). Specifically, on January 13, 1980, he was put there for “failing to embark on the path of correction.” He declared another hunger strike. In total, over three years, he was on hunger strike for 13 months and 17 days. In captivity, he wrote the poetry collection “Between Humanity and Solitude,” two story cycles—“The Tablets of the Magus” and “Lessons of History”—and several articles exposing the Soviet regime. These were published in Paris in 1979 under the collective title *Woe from Wit*.
Three days before the end of his term, on February 29, 1980, Barladianu was transferred to the Rivne pre-trial detention center, where a new “case” was fabricated against him. On August 13, 1980, he was sentenced under the same article to another three years of imprisonment. The experts enlisted for the case, associate professor Maksimov of the Rivne Institute of Water Management and associate professor Leshchenko of the Rivne Pedagogical Institute, found “slander” against Soviet reality and the “friendship of peoples” in his poems and scholarly articles, although they confused the Mongol khan Mamai with the eponymous hero of Ukrainian folklore.
From November 4, 1980, Barladianu was held in camp no. 28 in the city of Snizhne, and from January 17, 1981, in camp no. 82 in the village of Hostre, Chervonoarmiiskyi District, Donetsk Oblast.
He was released on February 28, 1983. He worked as an electrician in Odesa. He wrote the novella “On the Way to Mother,” the historical drama “Ovid,” the poetry collection “To Oksana,” and a series of articles on the history of Ukrainian culture.
With the beginning of *perestroika*, Vasyl Barladianu once again became actively involved in the human rights and national liberation struggle. On September 6, 1987, along with fellow political prisoners Mykhailo Horyn, Ivan Hel, Zorian Popadiuk, Stepan Khmara, and Viacheslav Chornovil, he founded the Ukrainian Initiative Group for the Release of Prisoners of Conscience, which on September 8 joined the International Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners.
In September 1987, Barladianu joined the editorial board of the journal *Ukrainskyi Visnyk* (*Ukrainian Herald*, UV), which had been revived by V. Chornovil in August. He was also a member of the editorial boards of the journals *Kafedra* (*Cathedra*) and *Ukrainski Perspektyvy* (*Ukrainian Perspectives*), where he published a number of articles. On December 30, 1987, the entire editorial board of the *Ukrainian Herald*, including Barladianu, joined the Ukrainian Helsinki Group (UHG). On March 11, 1988, he was one of 19 members who signed the “Appeal of the UHG to the Ukrainian and World Public” regarding the revival of its activities. On July 7, 1988, the Group was transformed into the Ukrainian Helsinki (UHU). When the Ukrainian Republican Party was founded on its basis, Barladianu remained non-partisan.
In 1990, he visited Canada and the United States, giving lectures on the political situation in Ukraine. In Toronto, his essay collections “At the Gates of the State” and “Once More on Captivity” were published. He published dozens of articles in the press on political issues, including: “The Fifth Column,” “How to Untie the Moldovan Knot,” “How to Cut the Crimean Knot,” and “The History of Muscovite Banditry.”
In 1992, Barladianu returned to teaching at Odesa University, and in 1994, he lectured at the Theological Academy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kyivan Patriarchate.
In 1993, he edited the Chișinău-based journal *Ukrainski Perspektyvy*.
Vasyl Barladianu authored over a thousand scholarly and journalistic works in Ukrainian, Russian, Romanian, German, English, and French.
He was a member of the of Writers and the of Journalists of Ukraine. By a decree of the President of Ukraine on November 26, 2005, he was awarded the Order of Merit, III degree.
The “Dissident Movement in Ukraine” website (Museum of the Dissident Movement) contains a biographical entry, an interview with V. Barladianu, and a bibliography.