1. Vasyl Semenovych Stus was a Ukrainian poet, translator, literary critic, journalist, and an active member of the Ukrainian dissident movement.
12 Facts About Vasyl Stus
1. 2.
Vasyl Stus was born on January 6,1938, into a peasant family in the village of Rakhnivka, Haisyn Raion, Vinnytsia Oblast, Ukrainian SSR.
3.
Vasyl Stus first heard the Ukrainian language and poetry from his mother who sang him Ukrainian folk songs.
4.
In 1965, Vasyl Stus married Valentyna Popeliukh; his son, Dmytro was born in 1966.
5.
On September 4,1965, during the premiere of Sergei Parajanov's film Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors in Kyiv's Ukrayina cinema, Vasyl Stus took part in a protest against the arrests of Ukrainian intelligentsia.
6.
On January 12,1972, Vasyl Stus was arrested for "anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda".
7.
Vasyl Stus served a five-year sentence in a labor camp, and two-years in exile in Magadan Oblast.
8.
Vasyl Stus spoke out in defense of members of the Ukrainian Helsinki group.
9.
Vasyl Stus was found guilty by the laws of the time.
10.
Vasyl Stus died after he declared hunger strike on September 4,1985, in a Soviet forced labor camp for political prisoners Perm-36 near the village of Kuchino, Perm Oblast, Russian SFSR, where he had been transferred in November 1980.
11.
In 1993 Vasyl Stus was posthumously awarded the Taras Shevchenko State Prize for Literature.
12.
In October 2020, a Ukrainian court banned the distribution of Vakhtang Kipiani's book, The Case of Vasyl Stus, following a complaint by Viktor Medvedchuk.