Oles Honchar
Encyclopedia
Oleksandr Terentiyovych Honchar (April 3, 1918, near Katerynoslav
Dnipropetrovsk
Dnipropetrovsk or Dnepropetrovsk formerly Yekaterinoslav is Ukraine's third largest city with one million inhabitants. It is located southeast of Ukraine's capital Kiev on the Dnieper River, in the south-central region of the country...

 – December 12, 1995, Kiev
Kiev
Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....

), was a Ukrainian
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...

 and Soviet writer and public figure fighting for the reinstatement of the Ukrainian
Culture of Ukraine
Ukrainian culture refers to the culture associated with the country of Ukraine and sometimes with ethnic Ukrainians across the globe. It contains elements of other Eastern European cultures as well as some Western European influences. Within Ukraine, there are a number of other ethnic groups with...

 culture in the Soviet society after its abolition by the establishment.

Early years

According to several encyclopedias Honchar was born in the village of Sukhe in Kobelyaky uyezd, Poltava Governorate
Poltava Governorate
The Poltava Governorate or Government of Poltava was a guberniya in the historical Left-bank Ukraine region of the Russian Empire, which was officially created in 1802 from the disbanded Malorossiya Governorate which was split between the Chernigov Governorate and Poltava Governorate with an...

 which is not very accurate. The documents from the regional archives of Dnipropetrovsk Region
Dnipropetrovsk Oblast
Dnipropetrovsk Oblast is an oblast of central Ukraine, the most important industrial region of the country. Its administrative center is Dnipropetrovsk....

 tell that he was born in family of factory workers in a village of Lomivka that just before the World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 was incorporated into the city of Dnipropetrovsk
Dnipropetrovsk
Dnipropetrovsk or Dnepropetrovsk formerly Yekaterinoslav is Ukraine's third largest city with one million inhabitants. It is located southeast of Ukraine's capital Kiev on the Dnieper River, in the south-central region of the country...

. His mother died when he was three, while his father perished on a job site earlier in 1918. Being left parentless he was taken by his maternal grandparents to live in the village of Sukhe, near Kobelyaky (today in the Poltava Region
Poltava Oblast
Poltava Oblast is an oblast of central Ukraine. The administrative center of the oblast is the city of Poltava.Other important cities within the oblast include: Komsomolsk, Kremenchuk, Lubny and Myrhorod.-Geography:...

). Living with his maternal grandparents Oleksandr took their last name and, thus, became to be known as Oles Honchar (Oles is diminutive of Oleksandr).

Since 1925 Honchar studied first in his village (Sukhe) later in the village of Khorishky (today Kozelshchyna District). In 1933 he finished a seven-year school in the neighboring village of Breusivka. After finishing the school Honchar found a job with a local newspaper (Kozelshchyna District) "Expanded front". From 1933 to 1937 he studied journalism at the Kharkiv vocational school of Nikolai Ostrovsky
Nikolai Ostrovsky
Nikolai Alexeevich Ostrovsky was a Soviet socialist realist writer, who published his works during the Stalin era...

 (notorious for How the Steel Was Tempered
How the Steel Was Tempered
How the Steel Was Tempered is a socialist realist novel written by Nikolai Ostrovsky during Joseph Stalin's era. Pavel Korchagin is the central character.- Analysis :...

). After the study Honchar worked as a teacher in a village of Manuilivka (today Derhachi District) near Kharkiv
Kharkiv
Kharkiv or Kharkov is the second-largest city in Ukraine.The city was founded in 1654 and was a major centre of Ukrainian culture in the Russian Empire. Kharkiv became the first city in Ukraine where the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed in December 1917 and Soviet government was...

 as well as a journalist in Kharkiv Region
Kharkiv Oblast
Kharkiv Oblast is an oblast in eastern Ukraine. The oblast borders Russia to the north, Luhansk Oblast to the east, Donetsk Oblast to the south-east, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast to the south-west, Poltava Oblast to the west and Sumy Oblast to the north-west...

 newspaper "Lenin's shift". In 1937 he started to publish his first works, mostly short stories, through various republican publishers: Literary newspaper, Pioneeria, Komsomolets of Ukraine, Young Bolshevik.

World War II and first recognition

In 1938 Honchar enrolled into the Department of Philology of Kharkiv University
Kharkiv University
The University of Kharkiv or officially the Vasyl Karazin Kharkiv National University is one of the major universities in Ukraine, and earlier in the Russian Empire and Soviet Union...

. During his study he wrote such novella
Novella
A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...

s as "Ivan Mostovy", "Cherries bloom", "Eaglet", a story "Stokozove field". On his third year at university his study was interrupted by the World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 in June of 1941 when he volunteered into the Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...

 as part of a student battalion of the 72nd Guards Rifle Division. During the war he was a staff sergeant
Staff Sergeant
Staff sergeant is a rank of non-commissioned officer used in several countries.The origin of the name is that they were part of the staff of a British army regiment and paid at that level rather than as a member of a battalion or company.-Australia:...

 and later the first sergeant
First Sergeant
First sergeant is the name of a military rank used in many countries, typically a senior non-commissioned officer.-Singapore:First Sergeant is a Specialist in the Singapore Armed Forces. First Sergeants are the most senior of the junior Specialists, ranking above Second Sergeants, and below Staff...

 of a mortar
Mortar (weapon)
A mortar is an indirect fire weapon that fires explosive projectiles known as bombs at low velocities, short ranges, and high-arcing ballistic trajectories. It is typically muzzle-loading and has a barrel length less than 15 times its caliber....

 battery
Artillery battery
In military organizations, an artillery battery is a unit of guns, mortars, rockets or missiles so grouped in order to facilitate better battlefield communication and command and control, as well as to provide dispersion for its constituent gunnery crews and their systems...

. Being wounded twice Honchar also earned numerous awards including the Soviet Order of Glory
Order of Glory
Established on 8 November 1943, the Order of Glory was an Order of the Soviet Union. It was awarded to non-commissioned officers and rank-and-file of the armed forces, as well as junior lieutenants of the air force, for bravery in the face of the enemy.The Order of Glory, which was modelled...

. During that time wrote poems (collection of poetry "Frontlines poems") that were published in 1985 as well as starting to work on his important future novel "Guide-on Bearers".

After the war he resumed his studies in the Dnipropetrovsk University
Dnipropetrovsk National University
Oles Honchar Dnipropetrovsk National University is one of the leading establishments of higher education in Ukraine. It was founded in 1918. The first four faculties were history and linguistics, law, medicine and physics and mathematics....

 at the Department of Philology where he started to write the first part of his first major work, Guide-on Bearers "Alps". The novel was noticed by Yuri Yanovsky who being a chief editor of the magazine "Fatherland" at that time published it in 1946. He soon invited Honchar to Kiev
Kiev
Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....

 where Oles entered an aspirantura at the Shevchenko Institute of Literature of National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. In Kiev Honchar received an apartment (#65) in the specially designed Rolit building (68 Bohdan Khmelnytsky Street). Yanovsky becomes a kind of a mentor for the young writer who will extract a lot of creative lessons out of the communication with the maestro. Later in 1975 Honchar wrote a novel dedicating to him "Blue towers of Yanovsky". In 1947 Oles published a story "Earth is rumbling" about the underground movement of the Poltava Region
Poltava Oblast
Poltava Oblast is an oblast of central Ukraine. The administrative center of the oblast is the city of Poltava.Other important cities within the oblast include: Komsomolsk, Kremenchuk, Lubny and Myrhorod.-Geography:...

 as well as the second book of the novel "Guide-on Bearers" "Blue Danube". The novel which tells about the liberating mission of the Soviet Army
Soviet Army
The Soviet Army is the name given to the main part of the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union between 1946 and 1992. Previously, it had been known as the Red Army. Informally, Армия referred to all the MOD armed forces, except, in some cases, the Soviet Navy.This article covers the Soviet Ground...

 in Europe was noticed by officials and critics. The young writer received the recognition (Stalin Prize (1948)) of authorities, critics, and, the most importantly, public.

Further career and literature accolades

In 1940s and 1950s the writer continued to develop a war theme in his several novellas as well as publishing the last book of the Guide-on Bearers trilogy "Golden Prague". Along with his military theme there started to sound a new one, a peaceful life of people and the moral aspects of their relationships. Novellas and novels in that direction ("Mykyta Bratus", 1950; "Let a light burn", 1955) prepare the future peaks of artistry for Honchar in 1960-70s. The historical-revolutionary dilogy of Honchar "Tavria" (1952) and "Perekop" (1957) commemorating to the events of the civil war in the Southern Ukraine
Southern Ukraine
Southern Ukraine refers, generally, to the territories in the South of Ukraine....

 is being left as the weakest anemic work. Around that time Honchar was starting his public and journalistic activities. He was conducting some traveling abroad which resulted in books of very short stories "Meeting with friends" (1950), "China up-close" (1951). For his literal work in 1959 Honchar was elected a chairman of the Union of Ukrainian Writers (1959–1971) and a secretary of the USSR Union of Writers
USSR Union of Writers
The USSR Union of Writers, or Union of Soviet Writers was a creative union of professional writers in the USSR. It was founded in 1932 on the initiative of the Central Committee of the Communist Party after disbanding a number of other writers' organizations: RAPP, Proletkult, and VOAPP.The aim of...

.

In 1960 there was published the novel "Person and weapon" which opened a new page in the artistry of Oles Honchar. The romantic-philosophical direction of the piece, the emphasis on intimate matters of life and death of a person, problems of indestructibility of morality of human spirit distinguish the novel that is based on the writer's recollections about the student volunteer battalion during the war times. The novel was awarded the newly created Shevchenko Prize in 1962. The second part of the dilogy, the novel "Cyclone" (1970) was written after a break. The theme received a sudden continuation where the aged hero from "Person and weapon" becomes a film director and shoots a movie about war. Intertwining of reality and staged scenes of present and recollections about the past as well as the very subject of cinematography reminds of Yanovsky's "Master of ship".

The novel of short stories "Tronka" (1963) was the first major work of Honchar commemorating to a contemporary peaceful life. Constructed in the form of an original "wreath of novellas" revealing different aspects of life of ordinary people, residents of the Ukrainian steppes, the novel paints a complete panorama of characters, images, situations. In "Tronka" for the first time in the Ukrainian literature
Ukrainian literature
Ukrainian literature is literature written in the Ukrainian language. Ukrainian literature had a difficult development because, due to constant foreign domination over Ukrainian territories, there was often a significant difference between the spoken and written language...

 was acutely posed the problem of Stalinism
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...

 eradication, the struggle of old with new. On the wave of the Khrushchev thaw
Khrushchev Thaw
The Khrushchev Thaw refers to the period from the mid 1950s to the early 1960s, when repression and censorship in the Soviet Union were partially reversed and millions of Soviet political prisoners were released from Gulag labor camps, due to Nikita Khrushchev's policies of de-Stalinization and...

 the novel was awarded the Lenin Prize
Lenin Prize
The Lenin Prize was one of the most prestigious awards of the USSR, presented to individuals for accomplishments relating to science, literature, arts, architecture, and technology. It was created on June 23, 1925 and was awarded until 1934. During the period from 1935 to 1956, the Lenin Prize was...

 in 1964.

Sobor and later career

A sad fate was destined for the next Honchar's novel Sobor (Cathedral, 1968). In comparison with "Tronka" the novel is much more closer to the traditional realism with broadly distinct positive and negative characters. The struggle for the revival of spirituality, for the historical memory of people as the foundation of decency in relationships between people is situated in the epicenter of story. The prototype of the cathedral in the novel served the Novomoskovsk Holy-Trinity Cathedral (Dnipropetrovsk Region
Dnipropetrovsk Oblast
Dnipropetrovsk Oblast is an oblast of central Ukraine, the most important industrial region of the country. Its administrative center is Dnipropetrovsk....

). The Dnipropetrovsk Region Communist Party leader Oleksiy Vatchenko recognized himself in the image of a negative character the soulless party member opportunist who deposited his father in a retirement home
Retirement home
A retirement home is a multi-residence housing facility intended for senior citizens. Typically each person or couple in the home has an apartment-style room or suite of rooms. Additional facilities are provided within the building, including facilities for meals, gathering, recreation, and some...

. Being a friend of Leonid Brezhnev
Leonid Brezhnev
Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev  – 10 November 1982) was the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , presiding over the country from 1964 until his death in 1982. His eighteen-year term as General Secretary was second only to that of Joseph Stalin in...

, Vatchenko requested a ban on the novel. The novel was published only in magazines, while the already printed copies of the book were confiscated and the translation to the Russian language
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...

 was suspended. Despite the attempts to protect the piece (articles of Mykola Bazhan
Mykola Bazhan
Mykola Platonovych Bazhan was a Soviet Ukrainian writer and poet. He was awarded the Stalin Prize ....

 and others) it was prohibited and the mentioning about it has ceased. The only thing that saved Honchar from further prosecutions was his position in the Writer's Union.

In works of his later period Honchar continued to raise the contemporary morale-ethical subject (novel "Your dawn", 1980), a subject of young searches romance (story "Brigantina", 1973). In 1980 he released the book "Writer's reflections" where he has summarized his artistic work. From 1962 to 1990 Honchar was a People's Deputy in the Supreme Council of the Soviet Union. In 1978 he was awarded the title of Academician and the membership at the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. With the fall of the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 Honchar was one of the creators of the Society of Ukrainian Language and the People's Movement of Ukraine
People's Movement of Ukraine
The People's Movement of Ukraine is a Ukrainian center-right political party...

. In 1990 he quit the Communist Party of Soviet Union. In 1991 Honchar released a new book "By that we live. On the path of Ukrainian revival". In 1992 the University of Alberta
University of Alberta
The University of Alberta is a public research university located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Founded in 1908 by Alexander Cameron Rutherford, the first premier of Alberta and Henry Marshall Tory, its first president, it is widely recognized as one of the best universities in Canada...

 recognized him as the honorary doctor. In 1993 Honchar received the recognition from the Intellectual Biographical Centre in Cambridge, England.

He also to be known as one who urged the president of Ukraine to rebuilt the St Michael’s Golden-Domed Cathedral
St. Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery
St. Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery is a functioning monastery in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. The monastery is located on the right bank of the Dnieper River on the edge of a bluff northeast of the Saint Sophia Cathedral...

 in Kiev which was destroyed by the Soviet authorities.

Awards and Prizes

Civil
  • Stalin Prize (1948), for the first two books of the novel "Guide-on Bearers" (1946-47)
  • Stalin Prize (1949), for the third book of the novel "Guide-on Bearers" (1948)
  • National Shevchenko Prize (1962), for novel "Person and weapon" (1960)
  • Lenin Prize
    Lenin Prize
    The Lenin Prize was one of the most prestigious awards of the USSR, presented to individuals for accomplishments relating to science, literature, arts, architecture, and technology. It was created on June 23, 1925 and was awarded until 1934. During the period from 1935 to 1956, the Lenin Prize was...

     (1964), for novel "Tronka" (1963)
  • Hero of Socialist Labor
    Hero of Socialist Labor
    Hero of Socialist Labour was an honorary title in the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact countries. It was the highest degree of distinction for exceptional achievements in national economy and culture...

     (March 31, 1978), for great achievements in development of Soviet literature, productive public work, and in regard to the sixtieth birthday of the writer Oles Honchar by the order of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the Soviet Union (Order of Lenin
    Order of Lenin
    The Order of Lenin , named after the leader of the Russian October Revolution, was the highest decoration bestowed by the Soviet Union...

     and medal of Sickle and Mallet)
  • USSR State Prize
    USSR State Prize
    The USSR State Prize was the Soviet Union's state honour. It was established on September 9, 1966. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, the prize was followed up by the State Prize of the Russian Federation....

     (1982), for novel "Your dawn" (1980)
  • Hero of Ukraine
    Hero of Ukraine
    Hero of Ukraine is the highest state decoration that can be conferred upon an individual citizen by the Government of Ukraine. The title was created in 1998 by President Leonid Kuchma and as of August 25 2011 the total number of awards is 265. The award is divided into two classes of distinction:...

     (2005), posthumously
  • Gold medal of Alexander Fadeyev
    Alexander Fadeyev
    Alexander Alexandrovich Fadeyev was a Soviet writer, one of the co-founders of the Union of Soviet Writers and its chairman from 1946 to 1954.-Biography:...

  • S.Nejman Prize (Czech Republic)

Military
  • Order of the Patriotic War
    Order of the Patriotic War
    The Order of the Patriotic War is a Soviet military decoration that was awarded to all soldiers in the Soviet armed forces, security troops, and to partisans for heroic deeds during the German-Soviet War, known by the former-Soviet Union as the Great Patriotic War.- History :The Order was...

    , I degree (1985)
  • Order of Red Star
  • Order of Glory
    Order of Glory
    Established on 8 November 1943, the Order of Glory was an Order of the Soviet Union. It was awarded to non-commissioned officers and rank-and-file of the armed forces, as well as junior lieutenants of the air force, for bravery in the face of the enemy.The Order of Glory, which was modelled...

    , III degree
  • Medal of Valour (Russia) (3 medals)
  • Medal for overtaking Belrin

External links

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