In the second half of the 20th century, the Russian government repressed and killed Ukrainian artists (and not only) who spoke out against it, exposed the crimes of the past, or simply showed the talent that was considered to be dangerous.
“We are nationalists from the cradle if mothers sing Ukrainian lullabies. That’s why we are re-educated in concentration camps”
Volodymyr Ivasyuk
Anyone who offers even the slightest resistance to censorship and the Russification of society, but who is not killed, ends up under investigation, in concentration camps, in exile, in forced “treatment” in penal psychiatric institutions, or at least under surveillance and constant oppression.
In 1962, director Les Tanyuk, artist Alla Horska, and poet Vasyl Symonenko, who were members of the Kyiv Club of Creative Youth, discovered the burial place of thousands of victims of Russian executions in Bykivna, well-known to local residents, and publicized this information.
“We trample both enemies and friends…
Oh, poor Yorkies, all for one last.
In the cemetery of shot illusions
There is no longer room for graves,”
— wrote Symonenko, shocked by what he saw, on this very day.
The murder of Alla Gorskaya by KGB officers was staged as if committed out of personal enmity by her father-in-law. Vasyl Symonenko died as a result of a brutal beating by the police. Les Tanyuk was forced to leave Kyiv.
State commissions in 1944, 1971, and 1987 made false statements that Bykivnya was a burial place for Nazi victims.
The murder of 30-year-old Volodymyr Ivasyuk, one of Ukraine’s greatest talents, a poet and composer of over 100 songs, was staged as a suicide.
In 1985, poet Vasyl Stus was murdered in a Russian concentration camp.
Since 2014, the list of Ukrainian creative personalities killed by Russians has been replenished with hundreds of new names.
Vasyl Slipak, Hlib Babich, Volodymyr Vakulenko, Viktoriya Amelina, Maksym Kryvtsov, Ilya Chernilevsky, Vadym Khlupyanets, Oleg Bobalo, Igor Mysyak, Artem Dovgopoly, Olga Pavlenko, Anton Derbilov, Bohdan Slyushchinsky, Natalia Kharakoz, Roman Barvinok-Skrypal, Serhiy Skald, Mykola Kravchenko, Oleksandr Snigurovsky, Pasha Li, Oksana Shvets, Volodymyr Strokan, Ivan Kuzminsky, Viktor Onysko, Serhiy Shkvarchenko, Artem Datsyshyn, Oleksandr Shapoval, Yuriy Kerpatenko, Danylo Podybaylo, Yaroslav Harkavko, Serhiy Burov, Iryna Osadcha, Yuriy Ruf, Oleksandr Berezhny, Serhiy Myronov, Vyacheslav Zaitsev, Serhiy Pushchenko, Nadiya Agafonova, Lyubov Panchenko, Artem Azarov, Yevhen Svitlychny, Maksym Ostyak, Davyd Yakushyn, Oleksandr Osadko, Mykyta Kalembet, Ihor Rygel, Andriy Maksymenko, Yevhen Gulevych, Yevhen Bal, Kostiantyn Starovytsky, Andriy Kaseniuk, Maksym Krasnokutsky, Vyacheslav Mishchenko, Serhiy Zakhlyupany, Andriy Hudyma, Oleksiy Khilsky, Viktor Gurnyak…
Poets, prose writers, directors, actors, cameramen, singers, translators, dancers, conductors, historians…
This is an incomplete list, with new names constantly appearing.
Poet, volunteer, paramedic Olena Gerasymiuk and writer, translator, one of the authors of the project “Your Underground Humanitarian” and, today a soldier of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Yevhen Lir are keeping a list of Ukrainian writers killed by Russia during the ongoing war. As of July 2024, it contains 95 names.