13 Facts About Mykola Bazhan

Mykola Bazhan was an academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, Distinguished Figure in Science and Technology of Ukrainian SSR, Distinguished Figure in Arts of Georgian SSR, People's Poet of Uzbek SSR.

Mykola Bazhan was a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and was elected to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Ukrainian SSR on several occasions at the party's congresses.

Mykola Bazhan was born in city of Kamenyets, an administrative center of Podolia Governorate, yet his youth years he spent in Uman, Kiev Governorate.

Mykola Bazhan's father Platon Artemovych Bazhan, a native of Poltava region, was a military cartographer and a veteran of the Ukrainian People's Army.

In 1923 Mykola Bazhan graduated from the Uman Cooperative College and moved to Kiev where he studied at the Kiev Cooperative Institute and in the Kiev institute of foreign relations.

Yet, in the same year Mykola Bazhan left the Futurist groups and joined VAPLITE, an artistic union affiliated with classic models of European culture and demanding literary excellence from its members.

In 1939 Mykola Bazhan was awarded the Order of Lenin for his translation into Ukrainian of the epic poem "The Warrior in the Tiger's skin" by the medieval Georgian poet Shota Rustaveli.

Mykola Bazhan found out about this, from a newspaper, while hiding from his imminent arrest in a city park in Kiev.

Mykola Bazhan was eventually told by Nikita Khrushchev that his arrest had been ordered, but Stalin was fond of his Rustaveli translation, and changed his mind.

In 1940 Mykola Bazhan joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and in the same year became a member of the Presidium of the Writers' Union of Ukraine.

In 1970 Mykola Bazhan was nominated for a Nobel Prize in literature, but he was forced by Soviet authorities to write a letter refusing his candidature.

From 1957 and until his death, Mykola Bazhan was the founding chief editor of the Main Edition of Ukrainian Soviet Encyclopedia publishing.

Mykola Bazhan was one of co-authors of the Anthem of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.