Mykhailo Mykhailovych Kotsiubynsky (; 17 September 1864 – 25 April 1913) was a Ukrainian author whose writings described typical Ukrainian life at the start of the 20th century. Kotsiubynsky's early stories were described as examples of an ethnographic realism; in the years to come, with his style of writing becoming more and more sophisticated, he evolved into one of the most talented Ukrainian impressionist and modernist writers. The popularity of his novels later led to some of them being made into Soviet movies.

Life

Kotsiubynsky grew up in Bar, Vinnytsia region and several other towns and villages in Podolia, where his father worked as a civil servant. He attended the Sharhorod Religious Boarding School from 1876 until 1880 and continued his studies at the

Kamianets-Podilskyi Kamianets-Podilskyi (, ; ) is a city on the Smotrych River in western Ukraine, western Ukraine, to the north-east of Chernivtsi. Formerly the administrative center of Khmelnytskyi Oblast, the city is now the administrative center of Kamianets ...

Theological Seminary, but in 1882 he was expelled from the school for his political activities within the populist movement. Influenced by the awakening Ukrainian national idea, Kotsiubynsky started his first attempts at writing prose in 1884 with the Ukrainian language story ''Andriy Soloveiko'' (Ukrainian: Андрій Соловейко). This first attempt by the young author was met with skepticism, and he did not make new attempts at writing for several years.

Early work and research

From 1888 to 1890, Kotsiubynsky was a member of the Vinnytsia Municipal Duma. In 1890, he visited Galicia, where he met several other Ukrainian cultural figures including Ivan Franko and Volodymyr Hnatiuk. It was there in

Lviv Lviv ( or ; ; ; see #Names and symbols, below for other names) is the largest city in western Ukraine, as well as the List of cities in Ukraine, fifth-largest city in Ukraine, with a population of It serves as the administrative centre of ...

that his first story ''Nasha Khatka'' (Ukrainian: Наша хатка) was published. Later Kotsiubynsky worked as a private tutor in and near Vinnytsia. There, he could study life in traditional Ukrainian villages, which was something he often came back to in his stories including the 1891 ''Na Viru'' (Ukrainian: На віру) and the 1901 ''Dorohoiu tsinoiu'' (Ukrainian: Дорогою ціною). During large parts of the years 1892 to 1897, Kotsiubynsky worked for a commission studying the grape pest

phylloxera Grape phylloxera is an insect pest of grapevines worldwide, originally native to eastern North America. Grape phylloxera (''Daktulosphaira vitifoliae'' (Fitch 1855) belongs to the family Phylloxeridae, within the order Hemiptera, bugs); orig ...

in Bessarabia and

Crimea Crimea ( ) is a peninsula in Eastern Europe, on the northern coast of the Black Sea, almost entirely surrounded by the Black Sea and the smaller Sea of Azov. The Isthmus of Perekop connects the peninsula to Kherson Oblast in mainland Ukrain ...

. During the same period, he was a member of the secret Brotherhood of Taras. In 1898 Kotsiubynsky moved to Chernihiv, where he worked as a statistician at the statistics bureau of the Chernihiv zemstvo. He also was active in the Chernigov Governorate Scholarly Archival Commission and headed the Chernihiv

Prosvita Prosvita (), since 1991 officially known as All-Ukrainian Prosvita Society named after Taras Shevchenko () is an enlightenment society aimed to preserve and develop Ukrainian culture, education and science, that was created in the nineteenth cen ...

society from 1906 to 1908.

Death

Due to heart disease, Kotsiubynsky spent long periods at different health resorts on

Capri Capri ( , ; ) is an island located in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the Sorrento Peninsula, on the south side of the Gulf of Naples in the Campania region of Italy. A popular resort destination since the time of the Roman Republic, its natural beauty ...

from 1909 to 1911. During the same period, he visited Greece and the Carpathians. In 1911 he was granted a pension from the Society of Friends of Ukrainian Scholarship, Literature, and Art that enabled him to quit his job and solely concentrate on his writings, but he was already in poor health and died only two years later.

Writings

At the age of 12, young Mykhailo fell in love with a 16-year-old girl, and in order to attract her attention, he decided to become a "great man", and for this began to read books with special zeal. Under the influence of works by

Taras Shevchenko Taras Hryhorovych Shevchenko (; ; 9 March 1814 – 10 March 1861) was a Ukrainian poet, writer, artist, public and political figure, folklorist, and ethnographer. He was a fellow of the Imperial Academy of Arts and a member of the Brotherhood o ...

and Marko Vovchok he developed the desire to become a writer. Kotsiubynsky started his literary activities in the genre of ethnographic realism, influenced by Ivan Nechuy-Levytsky and populist ideas. Starting with the late 1890s, however, he started evolving into one of Ukraine's most prominent modernist writers. After the Russian Revolution of 1905, Kotsiubynsky could be more openly critical of the Russian tsarist regime, which can be seen in ''Vin ide'' (Ukrainian: Він іде) and ''Smikh'' (Ukrainian: Сміх), both from 1906, and ''Persona grata'' from 1907. ''Fata Morgana'', in two parts from 1904 and 1910, is probably his best-known work. Here he describes the typical social conflicts in the life of the Ukrainian village. Kotsiubynsky's work for the first time in Ukrainian literature engaged in deep study of psychology and included elements of impressionism,

expressionism Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...

, neorealism and other literary trends of the time. About twenty novels were published during Kotsiubynsky's life. Several of them have been translated into other European languages.

English translations

English translations of Mykhaylo Kotsyubynsky’s works include: * Short stories, “On the Road” and “The Unknown One” (Tr. from Ukrainian by Roma Franko.); * "Fata Morgana" (Tr. from Ukrainian by Arthur Bernhard.).

Personal life and family

Serving as an ordinary clerk in the statistical department of the Chernihiv administration, Kotsiubynsky always went to work with a flower in a boutonniere. In January 1896, Kotsiubynsky married Vira Ustymivna Kotsiubynska (nicknamed "Deisha"; 1863–1921). One of his sons, Yuriy Mykhailovych Kotsiubynsky (1896–1937), was the

Bolshevik The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, were a radical Faction (political), faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split with the Mensheviks at the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, ...

and the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...

commander during the 1917–1921 Civil War. Later, he held several high positions within the

Communist Party of Ukraine The Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU or KPU) is a banned political party in Ukraine. It was founded in 1993 and claimed to be the successor to the Soviet-era Communist Party of Ukraine, which had been banned in 1991. In 2002 it held a "unifi ...

, but in 1935, he was expelled from the party. In October 1936, he was accused of having counter-revolutionary contacts and together with other Bolsheviks have organized a Ukrainian

Trotskyist Trotskyism (, ) is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Russian revolutionary and intellectual Leon Trotsky along with some other members of the Left Opposition and the Fourth International. Trotsky described himself as an ...

Centre. The year after, he was sentenced to death and executed. He was rehabilitated in 1955. Yuri had a son Oleh. His daughter, Oksana Kotsyubynska, was married to Vitaliy Primakov. The fate of his other children, Roman and Iryna, is not known. His niece, Mykhailyna Khomivna Kotsiubynska (1931–2011), was a Ukrainian philologist and literary specialist. She was an honorary doctor of the Kyiv Mohyla Academy.

Legacy

During the Soviet period, Kotsiubynsky was honoured as a ''realist'' and a ''revolutionary democrat''. A literary-memorial museum was opened in Vinnytsia in 1927 in the house where he was born. Later, a memorial was created nearby the museum. The house in Chernihiv where he lived for the last 15 years of his life was turned into a museum in 1934; the Chernihiv Regional Literary-. The house contains the author’s personal belongings. Adjacent to the house is a museum, which opened in 1983, containing Kotsiubinsky’s manuscripts, photos, magazines and family relics as well as information about other Ukrainian writers. Several Soviet movies have been based on Kotsiubynsky’s novels such as ''Koni ne vynni'' (1956), ''Dorohoiu tsunoiu'' (1957) and ''Tini zabutykh predkiv'' (1967). In 1970 Dovzhenko Film Studios made a feature biographical film "The Kotsyubynsky Family".

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Kotsiubynsky, Mykhailo 1864 births 1913 deaths Writers from Vinnytsia People from Vinnitsky Uyezd Ukrainian novelists Ukrainian male short story writers Ukrainian short story writers Prosvita Writers from the Russian Empire