Dmytro Pavlychko

Dmytro Vasylyovych Pavlychko (Дмитро Васильович Павличко; 28 September 1929 – 29 January 2023) was a Ukrainian poet, translator, scriptwriter, culturologist, and politician.

Dmytro Pavlychko was born on 28 September 1929 in a lumber worker family living in the village of Stopchativ near the Carpathian Mountains.

Today this place is near the town of Yabluniv in Kosiv Raion, Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast.

Between 1945 and 1946 he spent about 12 months in Soviet prison, after participating in the Ukrainian Insurgent Army at the age of 16.

Later Andriy Malyshko teasingly called Pavlychko a "Banderovite broth cook".

In 1953 Pavlychko graduated from Lviv University (Department of Philology), worked in "Zhovten" (now, "Dzvin") Magazine.

In his poetry works of Soviet period, first of which ("Love and hatred") was published in 1953, Pavlychko presented himself as publicist and civil activist, though constrained by that time censorship and compromising with existing rules.

After coming later to Kyiv he worked in the office of the National Writers' Union of Ukraine and in 1971–1978 as an editor at "Vsesvit" ("Universe") Magazine.

For that literary work, he was awarded the Shevchenko National Prize in 1977.

Besides writing his own verses, he also translated the poems of Dante Alighieri, Francesco Petrarca, Michelangelo, William Shakespeare, José Martí, and Nikola Vaptsarov, among others.

Many of Pavlychko's poems were used for songs, most popular and famous of which is "Two Colours".

In the 1990s Pavlychko was the ambassador of Ukraine to Poland and Slovakia.

Pavlychko was elected to the Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian parliament) from 1990 to 1999, as well as in 2005.

Pavlychko was an honorary Doctor of Science of Lviv and Warsaw Universities and professor of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.

In the late 1980s Dmytro Pavlychko was one of the founders of People's Movement of Ukraine, participated in the renewal of the Prosvita Society, organizing and leading the 500th anniversary of the Zaporozhian Sich celebrations in 1990, and taking an active part in the elaboration of the Act on Independence of Ukraine which was approved on 24 August 1991.

On October 24, 2019, the National Museum of Literature of Ukraine hosted an anniversary evening dedicated to the 90th anniversary of Dmytro Pavlychko, where the fifth and sixth (last) volumes of his memoirs Dmytro Pavlychko.

Memoirs" by Yaroslaviv Val Publishing House.

Pavlychko died on 29 January 2023 in Kyiv at the age of 93, and was buried on 31 January in his native village Stopchativ.