51 Facts About Taras Shevchenko

Taras Hryhorovych Shevchenko was a Ukrainian poet, writer, artist, public and political figure, folklorist, and ethnographer.

Taras Shevchenko was a fellow of the Imperial Academy of Arts and a member of the Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius.

Taras Shevchenko wrote poetry in Ukrainian and prose in Russian, making him one of many iconic figures which belong to several Slavic language cultures.

Taras Shevchenko was the third child after his sister Kateryna and brother Mykyta; his younger siblings were a brother, Yosyp, and a sister, Maria, who was born blind.

Taras Shevchenko's parents were Kateryna Shevchenko and Hryhoriy Ivanovych Shevchenko, former subjects of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth who became serf peasants, working the land owned by Vasily Engelhardt, a nephew of the Russian statesman Grigory Potemkin.

From 1822, Taras Shevchenko was sent to a school, where he was taught to read and write.

Taras Shevchenko's teacher was the precentor of the village church, whose nickname was "Sovhyr".

Taras Shevchenko was a harsh disciplinarian, who had a tradition of birching the children in his class every Saturday.

Taras Shevchenko was married to Oksana Tereshchenko, a widow from Moryntsi, who had three children of her own.

When Hryhoriy Shevchenko became a chumak, Taras travelled twice with his father and his older brother away from his neighbourhood and, for the first time in his life, on to the open steppe.

Taras Shevchenko was treated still more violently by Bohorsky once the boy's stepmother became his mistress.

In February 1827, the 13-year-old Shevchenko escaped from the village and worked for a few days for a deacon in Lysianka, before moving on to Tarasivka.

At around this time, Taras Shevchenko experienced his first love, Oksana Kovalenko, as confirmed by a dedication he later wrote in the poem Mariana, the nun:.

Taras Shevchenko's duties included driving the priest's son to school, and transporting fruit to markets in Burty and Shpola.

In 1829, Taras Shevchenko was part of Engelhardt's retinue that travelled to Warsaw, where his regiment was based.

Taras Shevchenko boxed the boy's ears and ordered him to be whipped.

Taras Shevchenko's servants, including Shevchenko, were later expelled from the city, forced to leave Polish territory under armed guard, and then made their way to St Petersburg.

The summer nights were light enough for Taras Shevchenko to visit the city's Summer Garden, where he drew the statues.

Taras Shevchenko participated in the painting of the Bolshoi Theatre as an apprentice.

Taras Shevchenko was allowed to receive drawing and watercolour painting lessons from Soshenko on weekends, and when he had spare time during the week.

Taras Shevchenko made such progress as a portraitist that Engelhardt asked him to portray several of his mistresses.

Taras Shevchenko introduced him to other compatriots, such as the writer and poet Yevhen Hrebinka, the art historian Vasyl Hryhorovych, and the Russian painter Alexey Venetsianov.

Briullov took an interest in Taras Shevchenko, praising his work and indicating a willingness to take him on as a student.

However, as a serf, Taras Shevchenko was ineligible to study under Briullov at the Academy, who requested his freedom from Engelhardt.

Taras Shevchenko met with prominent Ukrainian writers and intellectuals Yevhen Hrebinka, Panteleimon Kulish, and Mykhaylo Maksymovych, and was befriended by the princely Repnin family, especially Varvara.

In 1844, distressed by the condition of Ukrainian regions in the Russian Empire, Taras Shevchenko decided to capture some of his homeland's historical ruins and cultural monuments in an album of etchings, which he called Picturesque Ukraine.

Taras Shevchenko again traveled to Ukraine where he met with historian Mykola Kostomarov and other members of the Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius, a clandestine society known as Ukrainian-Slavic society and dedicated to the political liberalization of the Empire and its transformation into a federation-like polity of Slavic nations.

Taras Shevchenko was arrested together with the members of the society on 5 April 1847.

Taras Shevchenko had mocked her frumpy appearance and facial tics, which she had developed fearing the Decembrist uprising and its plans to kill her family.

Taras Shevchenko was tasked to sketch various landscapes around the coast of the Aral Sea.

Taras Shevchenko was then sent to one of the worst penal settlements, the remote fortress of Novopetrovsk at Mangyshlak Peninsula, where he spent seven terrible years.

In 1857, Taras Shevchenko finally returned from exile after receiving amnesty from a new emperor, though he was not permitted to return to St Petersburg and was forced to stay in Nizhniy Novgorod.

In May 1859, Taras Shevchenko got permission to return to Ukraine.

Taras Shevchenko intended to buy a plot of land close to the village of Pekari.

Taras Shevchenko spent the last years of his life working on new poetry, paintings, and engravings, as well as editing his older works.

Taras Shevchenko died in Saint Petersburg on 10 March 1861, the day after his 47th birthday.

Taras Shevchenko was first buried at the Smolensk Cemetery in Saint Petersburg.

However, fulfilling Taras Shevchenko's wish, expressed in his poem "Testament", to be buried in Ukraine, his friends arranged the transfer of his remains by train to Moscow and then by horse-drawn wagon to his homeland.

Taras Shevchenko is considered to be "the founder of the revolutionary democratic trend in the history of Ukrainian social thought" and a utopian socialist.

Taras Shevchenko was strongly influenced by ideas of the Polish revolutionary movement contained in the works of authors such as Adam Mickiewicz.

Critical of the historical Polish attitude to Ukrainians in his early poems, later in his life Taras Shevchenko started calling his compatriots for solidarity with Poles in their fight against the Tsarist regime.

Taras Shevchenko advocated for the unification of the Slavic peoples on a democratic basis.

Taras Shevchenko came out of the people, lived with the people, and not only by thought, but by the circumstances of life, was closely and bloodily connected with the people.

Taras Shevchenko was one of the most active participants in a secret political organization in Ukraine, the Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius and headed the revolutionary nucleus in it.

Taras Shevchenko was associated with a group of Petrashevists who, in their plans for a peasant uprising, hoped to use his revolutionary activities in Ukraine.

Taras Shevchenko did not consider the existing social system to be unshakable, he was convinced that the serf system would be destroyed everywhere due to the development of the steam engine, a technique that would "devour the landlord-inquisitors", and that the most important role in a radical change in social life would be played by the masses.

Taras Shevchenko strove for art that is both national and realistic, and for that he earned the praise of Chernyshevsky and the Russian itinerant painter Ivan Kramskoi, who drew the poet's famous portrait after his death.

Taras Shevchenko's battle poetry, which spread underground, was a sharp weapon in the fight against serfdom.

Taras Shevchenko produced portraits, compositions on mythological, historical, and household themes, architectural drawings, and landscapes, using oils on canvas, watercolour, sepia, ink, and pencil, as well as etchings.

The first statue of Taras Shevchenko, unveiled in Romny in October 1918, was constructed in the waning days of the Hetmanate, but many such statues were built in the Soviet Union.

Monuments to Taras Shevchenko have been put up in other countries.