Vasyl Stefanyk (1871 -1936)

Vasyl Stefanyk was born on May, 14th, 1871, in the Rusiv village of the Ivano-Frankivsk region in the family of a wealthy farmer. After school he went to the Kolomyia gymnasium together with Les Martovych and Ivan Semaniuk who was later known as Marko Cheremshyna. During his studies there Vasyl participated in the activities dedicated to commemorating Taras Shevchenko; also, he was a member of the students secret society. This is how he described his times at the gymnasium: “We were the farmers’ children, and we took the last bench”. Later on his secret society membership led to him being expelled from the Kolomyia gymnasium and he had to finish his primary education at the Drohobych gymnasium where he met Ivan Franko. In 1892 he graduated from the Drohobych gymnasium and entered the Krakow University medical department. This was the time when Vasyl Stefanyk became fond of literature. Starting from 1897 his short stories are getting published. One more important fact from that period of his life is that he took part in the canvassing as a supporter for Ivan Franko at the elections to the Austrian Parliament. For that Vasyl Stefanyk was imprisoned for 13 days.
      In 1897 his first short stories (namely, “The Blue Book”, “The Pious Woman”, “Man Hard Up”) were published in the Chernivtsi newspaper named “Pratsia”. This laid the foundation of Vasyl Stefanyk’s way to establishing himself as a master of the socio-psychological short prose, best proofs to which are the following short stories collections: “The Blue Book’, “The Stone Cross”, “The Road”, “My Word”.
      In 1903 Vasyl Stefanyk visited those ethnical Ukrainian lands which at that time were part of the Russian Empire. As the most significant moments about this visit, worth mentioning are his presence at the opening of the monument to Ivan Kotliarevskyi in Poltava and his meetings with Lesya Ukrainka, Mykhailo Kotsubynskyi, Panas Myrnyi, Mykhailo Starytskyi and Borys Hrinchenko.
      From 1908 till 1918 Vasyl Stefanyk took the position of the Austrian Parliament ambassador in Vienna; the Austria-Hungary disintegration in 1918 put an end to his civil service.
      During the period of Ukrainian liberation struggle (1917-1921) Vasyl Stefanyk participated in the work of the Ukrainian National Council of the West Ukrainian Peoples Republic. He was able to witness the declaration of the Ukrainian lands reunification into a single unified state which took place in Kyiv on January, 22nd, 1919.
      Vasyl Stefanyk, Les Martovych and Marko Cheremshyna formed a creative union called “The Pokuttya Trio”.
      While residing in that part of Ukraine which was back then under the rule of Poland, Vasyl Stefanyk showed his deep interest for the course of events in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialistic Republic. The famous prosaic writer submitted his work to such Soviet magazines as “Vaplite", “Chervonyi Shliakh”, “Pluh”. His short story “Limit”, which was published in a magazine issued by Dmytro Dontsov and named “Literaturno-Naukovyi Visnyk”, appeared as a reaction to the literary discussion of 1925-1928 and was dedicated to Mykola Khvylyovyi.
      The people of Lviv and Kyiv celebrated the 30th anniversary of Vasyl Stefanyk’s creative work in 1926-1927. To honor this, Marko Cheremshyna wrote a sketch called “The Stefanyk’s peasants” in December, 1926, where he called Stefanyk “the poet of peasants’ despair”.

Vasyl Stefanyk died on December, 7th, 1936.

Vasyl Stefanyk’s sayings:
“I let my soul dissolve in peoples’ soul, and so I sank into despair…”
“I love peasants for their thousands of years of history and complicated life, for their culture… They are the ones I shall write for and about.”
“I pass peoples’ pain through my heart as through sieve, and it makes my heart bleed…”

Powerful laconicism, dramatic intensity of the psychological conflicts, the spirit of sympathy towards people suffering from social injustice – these are the main characteristics of Vasyl Stefanyk’s individual style.