25 Facts About Volodymyr Vynnychenko

Volodymyr Vynnychenko's works reflect his immersion in the Ukrainian revolutionary milieu, among impoverished and working-class people, and among emigres from the Russian Empire living in Western Europe.

Volodymyr Vynnychenko was born in a village, Vesely Kut, in the Kherson Governorate of the Russian Empire, in a family of peasants.

Volodymyr Vynnychenko's father Kyrylo Vasyliovych Vynnychenko earlier in his life was a peasant-serf who moved from a village to the city of Yelisavetgrad, where he married a widow, Yevdokia Pavlenko.

Volodymyr Vynnychenko successfully took the test in the Zlatopil gymnasium from which obtained his attestation of maturity.

In 1900 Volodymyr Vynnychenko joined the Revolutionary Ukrainian Party and enrolled in the law department at Kiev University, but in 1902 or 1903 he was expelled for participation in revolutionary activities.

In 1902 Volodymyr Vynnychenko published in "Kievskaya starina" his first novel "Beauty and strength", after which he became known as a writer.

When trying to return to Russian Ukraine with revolutionary literature, Volodymyr Vynnychenko was arrested and jailed in Kiev for two years with a threat to spend the rest of his life in katorga.

In 1906 Volodymyr Vynnychenko was arrested for a third time, again for his political activities, and jailed for a year; before his scheduled trial the wealthy patron of Ukrainian literature and culture, Yevhen Chykalenko, paid his bail, and Volodymyr Vynnychenko fled Ukraine again, effectively becoming an emigre writer abroad from 1907 to 1914, living in Lemberg, Vienna, Geneva, Paris, Florence, Berlin.

In 1911 Volodymyr Vynnychenko married Rosalia Lifshitz, a French Jewish doctor.

From 1914 to 1917 Volodymyr Vynnychenko lived illegally near Moscow throughout much of World War I and returned to Kiev in 1917 to assume a leading role in Ukrainian politics.

Volodymyr Vynnychenko's political awakening arose, he claimed, at the intersection of social and national experience.

Volodymyr Vynnychenko demanded respect and recognition for Ukraine and Ukrainians as a nation.

Volodymyr Vynnychenko believed that it was not enough to change structures of power in freeing the Ukrainian nation.

Volodymyr Vynnychenko was authorized by the Central Rada of Ukraine to conduct negotiations with the Russian Provisional Government, 1917.

Volodymyr Vynnychenko was offered to return, form a cabinet and redesign the Second Universal to petition a federal union with the Russian Republic.

Around then, Volodymyr Vynnychenko's government established an economic agreement with the government of the Belarus People's Republic through the Belarus Chamber of Commerce in Kiev.

However, Volodymyr Vynnychenko's was replaced as well by the Socialist-Revolutionary government of Vsevolod Holubovych.

The revolt was successful and Volodymyr Vynnychenko returned to the capital on December 19,1918.

Volodymyr Vynnychenko formed the Foreign Group of the Ukrainian Communist Party, which was mainly made up of other former members of the Ukrainian Social-Democratic Party, to promulgate this position.

In June 1920 Volodymyr Vynnychenko himself travelled to Moscow in an attempt to come to an agreement with the Bolsheviks.

Volodymyr Vynnychenko spent 30 years in Europe, residing in Germany in the 1920s and then moving to France.

In 1934, Volodymyr Vynnychenko moved from Paris to Mougins, near Cannes, on the Mediterranean coast, where he lived on a homestead type residence as a self-supporting farmer and continued to write, notably a philosophical exposition of his ideas about happiness, Concordism.

Volodymyr Vynnychenko died in Mougins, near Cannes, France in 1951.

Volodymyr Vynnychenko has not been as popular as Mykhailo Hrushevsky as a political figure, but is widely known as writer; his work was adapted for screen numerous times since the 1990s by Dovzhenko Film Studios directors.

Volodymyr Vynnychenko's archives are housed in Columbia University, New York City and supervised by a commission of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences.