Vasyl Hryhorovych Chumak ( uk, Васи́ль Григо́рович Чума́к; – 21 November 1919) was a Ukrainian writer and communist revolutionary.
Biography
Vasyl Hryhorovych Chumak was born on 7 January 1901 in the town of
Ichnia,
Chernigov Governorate. His father was the Cossack-descended Hryhorii Semenovych Chumak, while his mother was Anastasiia Petrivna Chumak (
née
A birth name is the name of a person given upon birth. The term may be applied to the surname, the given name, or the entire name. Where births are required to be officially registered, the entire name entered onto a birth certificate or birth re ...
Marchenko), of landlord stock.
The family held six
desiatiny of land in the region, including a bakery and a bread factory.
Chumak undertook his early education at a religious school, before studying at Ichnia's high school between 1910 and 1914.
He next studied in
Horodnia, where he finished
gymnasium in 1918.
After graduating he travelled to the Ukrainian capital of
Kyiv, where he joined the
Borotbists
The Borotbists (Fighters) (1918–1920) was a left-nationalist political party in Ukraine. It is not be associated with its Russian affiliated counterparts - the Ukrainian Party of Left Socialist-Revolutionaries (Borbysts) and the Ukrainian Commu ...
.
As a Borotbist, Chumak was secretary of the party's journal, ''Artwork'', and he also worked in the All-Ukrainian Literary Collegium of the
Ministry of Education of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.
Following the takeover of Kyiv by the
White Army Chumak began organising a pro-communist resistance organisation, alongside . The two were soon arrested, and, while attempting to escape from captivity, were both shot to death. Following the Soviet capture of Kyiv, both of their bodies were reburied in a mass grave on Anosov Square (now the
Park of Eternal Glory
The Park of Eternal Glory () is a park in Kyiv, Ukraine. It is located between Lavrska Street and the Dnipro Descent, and is surrounded by the Old Kyiv-Pecherska fortress, and the .
Areas
* Alley of Heroes
* Memorial of Eternal Glory
** Tom ...
).
Works
Chumak's works, first created in 1917
and encouraged by his interest in the writings of
Taras Shevchenko,
took on a
romanticist and revolutionary character, and he wrote in several forms, including prose, stories, essays, literary criticism, and published articles. In his poetry, Chumak was an
impressionist
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage ...
, and through his works expressed support for Ukrainian independence and communism. Following Chumak's death, a poetry collection was released under the title ''Prelude'' ( uk, Заспів, translit=Zaspiv, link=no).
Chumak was responsible for the establishment of several journals, as well as the Ichnia branch of the
Prosvita society.
Legacy
Ukrainian literary critic wrote in the 1920s that Chumak, alongside Mykhailychenko,
Vasyl Ellan-Blakytny, and , comprised a group he described as "the first braves", responsible for the development of Ukrainian communist literature. Chumak's works were banned from the early 1930s as part of a broader crackdown by the government of the
Soviet Union on the Borotbists. In the 1950s he was rehabilitated, and his works were again permitted.
Notes
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Chumak, Vasyl
1901 births
1919 deaths
20th-century Ukrainian writers
Borotbists
Poets from the Russian Empire
Political activists from the Russian Empire
Prosvita
Rebels from the Russian Empire
Ukrainian communists
Ukrainian revolutionaries