Myroslav Irchan

Return to Ukraine Irchan returned to Ukraine at a time when Stalin’s repression of artists, academics, and gifted individuals in all fields was intensifying.

Irchan moved to Kharkiv, at that time the capital of Soviet Ukraine. The city had writers’ organizations and publishers, and he had friends here in the writing community.

Arrest and death In 1934, he was one of many writers arrested by the State Political Administration. His wife and daughter joined him in Omsk, Siberia, though it is unclear whether Zdenka did this voluntarily. In a letter she wrote to a friend in Winnipeg, she says, “Please do not send me anymore newspapers, and notify New York to do the same thing, because they are causing me unpleasantness. Some day I will write more. Greetings to all. Zdenka.” But nothing more was heard.

Thirty-four years after Irchan's official rehabilitation in the Soviet Union, which was the result of Khrushchev's report revealing the criminal activity under Stalin's direction, the detail of Irchan's fate was made public. Irchan was interrogated by Pavel Postyshev who is considered to be one of the principal architects of the famine of 1932–1933, known in Ukraine as Holodomor. Irchan was accused of “belonging” to the nationalist Ukrainian counter-revolutionary organization, which worked to overthrow Soviet rule in Ukraine by military means. It now seems he was shot with so many other Ukrainian intellectuals on 3 November 1937 at Sandarmokh in Karelia.

Personal life In 1921, Irchan married a Czech woman called Zdenka. Irchan and Zdenka had one daughter.