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Ostap Vyshnya

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In this name that follows Eastern Slavic naming customs, the patronymic is Mykhailovych and the family name is Hubenko.

Ostap Vyshnia
Native name
Остап Вишня
BornPavlo Mykhailovych Hubenko
(1889-11-13)13 November 1889
near Hrun, Russian Empire (now Ukraine)
Died28 September 1956(1956-09-28) (aged 66)
Kyiv, Soviet Union (now Ukraine)
Occupationwriter
CitizenshipRussian Empire, Soviet Union
Period1919-1956
Genrehumoresque, feuilleton

Pavlo Mykhailovych Hubenko[1] (Ukrainian: Павло Михайлович Губенко; 13 November [O.S. 1 November] 1889 – 28 September 1956), better known by the literary pseudonym of Ostap Vyshnia, was a Ukrainian writer, humourist, satirist, and medical official (feldsher). Nicknamed by critics as the Ukrainian Mark Twain and the Ukrainian Printing King; His fame was said to have competed in early Soviet Ukraine with only Taras Shevchenko and Vladimir Lenin.[2]

Early life

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Soviet postal envelope of 1979 with portrait of Ostap Vyshnya
Ukrainian coin portraying Vyshnya

Pavlo Hubenko was born in a large peasant family of 17 children on 13 November 1889 in the khutir (farmstead) Chechva near the small town of Hrun, in Zinkiv uyezd, at the time in the Poltava Governorate of the Russian Empire. Today his place is in Sumy Oblast while Zinkiv is a city in Poltava Oblast, both in Ukraine. He studied in elementary school in Zinkiv, later enrolling into the Kyiv military-nursing school, which he finished in 1907.[3] He worked as a nurse in the Army and then at the surgical department of the South Western Railway hospital. He finally managed to take the tests to enroll into the Kyiv University in 1917, but later (1919) dropped out of it and was fully overtaken by journalism and literary works. In 1919, he was captured by Bolsheviks while being in the Ukrainian Army and heavily sick of typhus. Remarkable is the fact that he also served as the chief of the medical-sanitary directorate of Ukrainian Ministry of Railways (Transport). Until 1921 he spent time in Kharkiv's prison till the complete end of the Civil War. During the times of Directorate of Ukraine he became known for his phrase: Inside the wagon - Directory, under the wagon - territory. In 1933, he was sentenced to ten years in a forced labour camp.[1] Vyshnia was one of the few representatives of the Renaissance group who survived the execution.[4]

Career and repression

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Hubenko's first published work, Denikin's Democratic Reforms, appeared on 2 November 1919 in the newspaper Narodna Volia under the pen name P. Hrunsky.

Several satirical articles were also printed in this same newspaper by the young writer. His period of regular publication began in April 1921, when he became a journalist with the government newspaper News of the All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee (Ukrainian: Вісті ВУЦВК). The pen name Ostap Vyshnia first appeared in The Peasant Truth on 22 July 1921, in the feuilleton Odd Fellow, Really!.

In 1933, he was sent to the labour camps for ten years, imprisoned in various Gulag camps. He was able to return to his literary career only in 1943. He was rehabilitated in 1955.

  • Ostap Vyshnya in 1928
    Ostap Vyshnya in 1928
  • Ostap Vyshnya in 1925
    Ostap Vyshnya in 1925

Death

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Ostap Vyshnya died on 28 September 1956 in Kyiv. His funeral reportedly filled Khreshchatyk street.[5] He is buried at the Baikove Cemetery.

Works

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Hard Times (translation into English of best humour & satire spanning his whole career), published 1981, transl. by Yuri Tkacz, Bayda Books, Australia

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b Vyshnia, Ostap (5 June 2018). Hard Times. Glagoslav Publications. ISBN 978-1-911414-80-3.
  2. ^ Finnin, Rory (1 March 2022). Blood of Others: Stalin's Crimean Atrocity and the Poetics of Solidarity. University of Toronto Press. ISBN 978-1-4875-3701-2. He was Ukraine's "Mark Twain," the "king of the Ukrainian print-run," whose fame, it was said, rivalled only two others in early Soviet Ukraine: Taras Shevchenko and Vladimir Lenin.
  3. ^ Усі письменники і народна творчість: довідник (in укр). Київ: Майстер-клас. 2008. pp. 48–51. ISBN 978-966-471-096-8.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link)
  4. ^ Kowal, Pawel Mink, Georges Reichardt, Iwona Reichardt, Adam (30 November 2019). Three Revolutions: Mobilization and Change in Contemporary Ukraine II. BoD – Books on Demand. p. 299. ISBN 978-3-8382-1323-1.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  5. ^ Fowler, Mayhill C. (1 January 2017). Beau Monde on Empire's Edge: State and Stage in Soviet Ukraine. University of Toronto Press. ISBN 978-1-4875-0153-2.
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