Detachable Subdivision
"Rivne Professional College of
National University of Life
and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine"
February 20 marked the 120th anniversary of the birth of Ukrainian writer, publicist, and journalist Ulas Samchuk (1905-1987).
Ulas Samchuk was born in the village of Derman in the Rivne region into a wealthy peasant family of Oleksiy Antonovich and Nastasya Ulyanivna Samchuk. Today he is recognized as one of the most prominent Ukrainian writers of the 20th century. Foreign researchers called him the “Ukrainian Homer,” indicating that he opened up a hitherto unknown Ukraine to the world. Ulas Samchuk is the author of sixteen novels, including the trilogy “Volyn”, “The Mountains Speak”, “Maria”, the collections of stories “The Avengers”, “Paradise Found”, a number of novels, stories and articles. He was one of the first to tell the world about the tragedy of the Holodomor of 1932-1933. In the 80s, there was talk of nominating Ulas Samchuk for the Nobel Prize for “Volyn”, but, unfortunately, the matter was not fully resolved.
Ulas Samchuk was fascinated by history and literature since childhood, especially since his birthplace encouraged him to do so – the Dermansky Monastery, whose abbot was once the famous polemicist Meletii Smotrytsky, has long been a kind of intellectual center. It was here, in the four-class upper primary school, which operated at the Dermansky Svyatofeodorivka Teachers' Seminary, that 12-year-old Ulas began his studies. Later, there was the Kremenetsk Ukrainian Mixed Private Gymnasium named after Ivan Steshenko.
Before graduating from high school, Ulas Samchuk was drafted into the Polish army (the garrison of the city of Tarnów), but he deserted from the army and fled to Weimar Germany, where he worked in the city of Beuthen as a hired hand for a burgher - delivering iron to mines and ironworks. As a free student, he attended lectures at the University of Breslau, studying German.
Ulas Samchuk's first story, "On Old Paths," appeared in 1926 in the magazine "Spiritual Conversation" in Warsaw, and from 1929 he began to collaborate regularly with "Literary and Scientific Bulletin," "Dzvony" (magazines published in Lviv), "Samostyyna Dumka" (Chernivtsi), "Rozbudovaya Nation" (Berlin), and "Surma."
In 1929, Ulas Samchuk moved to Prague, which at that time was one of the centers of Ukrainian scientific and cultural and artistic life in exile, entered the Ukrainian Free University, and joined the Student Academic Community. However, he never managed to graduate from any higher educational institution, so he had to master most of the sciences on his own. He was fluent in German, Polish, Czech, Russian, and to a lesser extent, French.
In 1933, the artistic and psychological story "Maria" was born - the first work of fiction about the crime of the Holodomor (published in 1934 in Lviv).
In 1937, on the initiative of Yevhen Konovalets, the Cultural Reference Bureau of the Ukrainian Nationalist Leadership, headed by Oleh Olzhych, was created. The center of the Cultural Reference Bureau was Prague, and one of the main institutions was the Section of Artists, Writers, and Journalists, headed by Ulas Samchuk.
He was a participant in the turbulent events in Carpathian Ukraine in March 1939, and was even imprisoned for a time.
In 1941, as part of one of the OUN (Melnyky) detachments, which also included Olena Teliga, Oleh Olzhych, Ivan Rogach, and Oleh Shtul, he crossed the Ukrainian border. He returned to Rivne, where he headed the publication of the newspaper "Volyn", which soon became all-Ukrainian. The writer believed that in those difficult times the Ukrainian people should not be "wordless" and should create their own information field. At the same time, Symon Petliura's younger brother Oleksandr worked in "Volyn". The newspaper published articles and poems by Yevhen Malanyuk, Oleh Olzhych, and Olena Teliga. Ulas Samchuk also organized the publication of the children's magazine "Orlenya" in Rivne.
At the same time, legal Ukrainian publications that were published in Ukraine during the Nazi occupation were obliged to adhere to the rhetoric of the Third Reich, in particular, regarding Jews. More details about this can be found in the studies of Roman Mykhalchuk and Maksym Gon.
After the war, Ulas Samchuk emigrated and lived for some time in Germany, where he was one of the founders and head of the literary organization MUR (Artistic Ukrainian Movement). After moving to Canada in 1948, he was the founder of the Organization of Ukrainian Writers "Slovo", the World Congress of Ukrainians.
The writer died on July 9, 1987. He was buried in Toronto.
Lyudmila BURYACHYNSKA,
Headmistress of the BIT
