Ivan Dziuba

Ivan Mykhailovych Dziuba (; 26 July 1931 – 22 February 2022) was a Ukrainian literary critic, social activist, and Soviet dissident. Honoured as a Hero of Ukraine in 2001, Dziuba was an academic of National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, the second Minister of Culture of Ukraine (1992—1994), and head of the committee for Shevchenko National Prize (1999–2001).

Dziuba was the editor in chief of the magazine The Contemporary and during the 1990s was a member of the editorial boards of scientific magazines Kyiv Antiquity , Word and Time , Euroatlantic , and others. He was also the Co-Chief of editorial board of the Encyclopedia of Modern Ukraine.

Biography

Born into a peasant family, Dziuba spoke Russian language until 17 years of age. In 1932, his family, fleeing from the famine, moved from their home village to the nearby workers' village Novotroyits'ke for a short time. Later, they moved to Olenevski Quarry (now Dokuchaievsk), where Dziuba finished secondary school No. 1. He graduated from Donetsk Pedagogical Institute, and pursued postgraduate studies in the Shevchenko Institute of Literature. His work was first published in 1959.

As a representative of Ukrainian writers from the Sixtiers generation, in September 1966 Dziuba delivered a speech at an unsanctioned memorial meeting near the site of Babyn Yar massacre in Kyiv. He underlined the need to fight against antisemitism and called both Jews and Ukrianians for reconciliation. Viktor Nekrasov and Borys Antonenko-Davydovych also spoke at the event, as a result of which the KGB accused all three of "nationalism" and put them under increased surveillance.

At the end of 1965, Dziuba wrote his work Internationalism or Russification?, first published in London in 1968 and re-published in 1990 in the 5–7 issues of Motherland magazine (Ukrainian: Вітчизна), dealing with the problems threatening national relations in socialist society, which he sent to the Soviet Communist authorities. A special commission of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine inspected the text and decided that it was "lampoons on the Soviet reality, the national policy of the CPSU and the practice of communist construction in the USSR". Authorities accused Dziuba of undermining Soviet friendship of peoples, and fueling hatred between the Ukrainian and Russian peoples. In 1972, he was sentenced to 5 years in prison and 5 years in exile. Later, he asked for pardon and after 18 months in prison he was pardoned and hired to work at the newspaper of Antonov Serial Production Plant. In December 2022, a street in Kyiv was named after him.

Awards Order of Prince Yaroslav the Wise 5th class, 22 January 2022. Order of Liberty, 16 January 2009. Hero of Ukraine, 26 July 2001.