Product Code Database
Mykola Platonovych Bazhan (; – 23 November 1983) was a Soviet Ukraine writer, poet, highly decorated political and public figure. He was an academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (1951), Merited Functionary in Science and Technology of Ukrainian SSR (1966), Distinguished Figure in Arts of Georgian SSR (1964), People's Poet of Uzbek SSR.
In 1923 Mykola Bazhan graduated from the Uman Cooperative College and moved to Kiev where he studied at the Kiev Cooperative Institute (1921-1923) and in the Kiev institute of foreign relations (1923-1925). He was active in the Futurist literary movement, and his first poem «Ruro-marsh» («Руро-марш») was published in Kiev in 1923. Bazhan’s first book of poems, Seventeenth Patrol, published in Kharkiv in 1926, was markedly Futurist. Yet, in the same year Bazhan left the Futurist groups and joined VAPLITE, an artistic union affiliated with classic models of European culture and demanding literary excellence from its members. In this period, Bazhan developed a unique style combining features of Expressionism, Romanticism and Baroque art. The Buildings (1929) epitomized these literary ideas via complex imagery of a Gothic cathedral, a gate in the style of Ukrainian Baroque, and a Modernist house.
During the Great Patriotic War Bazhan became a military reporter and the editor of the newspaper For the Soviet Ukraine. In 1943 he published a book, Stalingrad Notebook, for which in 1946 he received the Stalin Prize. In 1953-59 Bazhan headed the Writers' Union of Ukraine. As head of the Union, in May 1954, at the beginning of the Khrushchev Thaw, he sent a letter to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, in which he raised the issue of publishing works and introducing creative biographies of Vasil Chumak, Myroslav Irchan, Mykyta Cherniavsky, Ivan Mikitenko, and Pilip Kapelhorodsky, most of which were killed or executed in 1937-1938, into the course of the history of Ukrainian Soviet literature. On July 2, 1956 he raised before the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine the issue of rehabilitation of several repressed writers: Vasyl Bobynsky, Hryhorii Epik, Ivan Kulyk, Mykola Kulish, and many more.
From 1957 and until his death, Bazhan was the founding chief editor of the Main Edition of Ukrainian Soviet Encyclopedia publishing. The publishing was not completed in his lifetime; the first edition was, however, released as Ukrainian Soviet Encyclopedia in 17 volumes in 1959–1965. A second (and final, as events would develop) 12-volume work was released in 1977–1985. The enterprise was additionally responsible for a large number of other major Ukrainian reference works. Bazhan also was one of co-authors of the Anthem of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. He died in Kiev in 1983.
Moisei Fishbein, a notable Ukrainian poet was Bazhan's literary secretary.
|
|
