Vasyl Chumak


Vasyl Hryhorovych Chumak was a Ukrainian writer and communist revolutionary.

Biography

Vasyl Hryhorovych Chumak was born on 7 January 1901 in the town of Ichnia, Chernigov Governorate. His father was the Cossack-descended Hryhorii Semenovych Chumak, while his mother was Anastasiia Petrivna Chumak, of landlord stock. The family held six desiatiny of land in the region, including a bakery and a bread factory.
Chumak undertook his early education at a religious school, before studying at Ichnia's high school between 1910 and 1914. He next studied in Horodnia, where he finished gymnasium in 1918. After graduating he travelled to the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, where he joined the Borotbists. As a Borotbist, Chumak was secretary of the party's journal, Artwork, and he also worked in the All-Ukrainian Literary Collegium of the Ministry of Education of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.
Following the takeover of Kyiv by the White Army Chumak began organising a pro-communist resistance organisation, alongside. The two were soon arrested, and, while attempting to escape from captivity, were both shot to death. Following the Soviet capture of Kyiv, both of their bodies were reburied in a mass grave on Anosov Square.

Works

Chumak's works, first created in 1917 and encouraged by his interest in the writings of Taras Shevchenko, took on a romanticist and revolutionary character, and he wrote in several forms, including prose, stories, essays, literary criticism, and published articles. In his poetry, Chumak was an impressionist, and through his works expressed support for Ukrainian independence and communism. Following Chumak's death, a poetry collection was released under the title Prelude. Chumak was responsible for the establishment of several journals, as well as the Ichnia branch of the Prosvita society.

Legacy

Ukrainian literary critic wrote in the 1920s that Chumak, alongside Mykhailychenko, Vasyl Ellan-Blakytny, and, comprised a group he described as "the first braves", responsible for the development of Ukrainian communist literature. Chumak's works were banned from the early 1930s as part of a broader crackdown by the government of the Soviet Union on the Borotbists. In the 1950s he was rehabilitated, and his works were again permitted.