Yaroslav Halan

Yaroslav Oleksandrovych Halan (Ярослав Олександрович Галан, party nickname Comrade Yaga; 27 July 1902 – 24 October 1949) was a Soviet Ukrainian anti-fascist writer, playwright, publicist, member of the Communist Party of Western Ukraine since 1924, killed by nationalist insurgents in 1949.

Yaroslav Halan was born on 27 July 1902 in Dynów to the family of Olexandr Halan, a minor post-office official.

As a child he lived and studied in Przemyśl.

He enjoyed a large collection of books gathered by his father, and was greatly influenced by the creativity of the Ukrainian socialist writer Ivan Franko.

At school, Yaroslav's critical thoughts brought him into conflict with priests who taught theology.

At the beginning of the First World War his father, along with other "unreliable" elements who sympathized with the Russians, was placed in the Thalerhof internment camp by the Austrian authorities.

Eventually Galitzia was taken by the Russians.

During the next Austrian offensive, in order to avoid repressions, his mother evacuated the family with the retreating Russian army to Rostov-on-Don, where Yaroslav studied at the gymnasium and performed in the local theatre.

Living there, Halan witnessed the events of the October Revolution.

He became familiar with Lenin’s agitation.

Later these events formed the base of his story Unforgettable Days.

While in Rostov-on-Don, he discovered the works of Russian writers such as Leo Tolstoy, Maxim Gorky, Vissarion Belinsky, and Anton Chekhov.

Halan often went to the theatre.

Thus his obsession with this art was born, which in the future determined his decision to become a playwright.

In the 1920s, Halan's creative activity also began.

After the war Halan returned to Galitzia (annexed by Poland), where in 1922 he graduated from the Peremyshl Ukrainian Gymnasium.

He then studied at the Triest Higher Trade School in Italy, and in 1922 enrolled in the University of Vienna.

From 1924 he proactively participated in the underground national liberation movement, which in the Ukrainian lands of the Second Polish Republic (except of Glitzia being under OUN influence) was headed by the Communist Party of Western Ukraine (CPWU).

He joined the CPWU when he was on vacation in Peremyshl.

Later, while studying in Kraków, he was elected a deputy chairman of the legal student organization Życie (Life) ruled by the Communist Party of Poland.

In 1926 he transferred to the Jagiellonian University of Kraków, from which he graduated in 1928 (according to some sources he didn't pass the final exams ).

Halan then began working as a teacher of the Polish language and literature at a private gymnasium in Lutsk.

However, ten months later he was banned from teaching due to political concerns.

In his student years Halan became active in left-wing politics.

While at the University of Vienna he became a member of the workers' community Einheit (Unity), overseen by the Communist Party of Austria.

In 1927 he finished work on his first significant play, Don Quixote from Ettenheim.

From 1927 to 1932, along with other communist writers and members of the CPWU, he worked for the Lviv-based Ukrainian magazine Vikna, being a member of its editorial board, until it was closed by government censors.

Living in the Polish-controlled city of Lviv, Halan frequently had to earn money by translating novels from German into Polish.

For the first time he revealed the venality of nationalistic and chauvinistic parties in his play 99% (1930).

The theme of class struggle and condemning segregation were actualized in the plays Cargo (1930) and Cell (1932), calling for united actions and class solidarity of Ukrainian, Jewish and Polish proletarians.

Halan's play 99% was staged by the semi-legal Lviv Workers’ Theatre.

On the eve of the premiere, Polish authorities launched a campaign of mass arrest against Western Ukrainian communists, sending them to the Lutsk prison.

As the theatre's director and one of the key actors were arrested, the premiere was on the verge of failure.

Despite risks of being arrested, the workers continued rehearsing, so that the play was presented with a delay of only one day.

About 600 workers attended the premiere; for them, it was a form of protest mobilization against repression and nationalism.

Halan was one of the founders of the Ukrainian proletarian writers’ group Horno.

In 1932 he moved to Nyzhniy Bereviz, the native village of his wife, located in the Carpathian mountains, close to Kolomyia, and kept working on his own plays, stories and articles there.

In the village he spread communist agitation among peasants, creating cells of the International Red Aid and the Committee for Famine Relief.

Without opportunities to find work, he lived in the countryside until June 1935, when he was summoned by the CPWU to return to Lviv.

Halan was denied Soviet citizenship in 1935.