ЗАСУДЖЕНИЙ ДО СТРАТИ: ВАЖКА ДОЛЯ УКРАЇНСЬКОГО ГУМОРУ В ОСОБІ ОСТАПА ВИШНІ
SENTENCED TO DEATH: HARD LINES OF THE UKRAINIAN HUMOR IN LIFE OF OSTAP VYSHNIA

Summary/Abstract: The article is a logical continuation of the research that reviewed the childhood and adolescence of the outstanding Ukrainian humorist Ostap Vyshnia in the previous magazine volume. The study is about the hard lot of the artist, who was condemned by the Soviet authorities for participating in mythical pro-Ukrainian organization (union). We collected and analyzed the facts of the author's mature life, his vision of the events at the time, and memories of friends and family. This period has defined the way everything happened in writer's life until his death. The totalitarian machine launched the terrible extermination mechanism of the Ukrainian intelligence and the elite. The artist was part of that target. Ukrainianization "revealed" all Ukrainian oriented intellectuals, "the upper crust". The authorities undertook to destroy Ukrainian nation. This period marked Vyshnia's establishment as an artist and formation of a set of specific only to him writer's qualities. To better understand the resonance of the times mentioned in the reresearch, one should know that Ostap Vyshnia's name was the second by importance after Taras Shevchenko for Ukrainian peasantry of that time. Certainly, this could only cause dissatisfaction of the government, that arrested the writer in the mourning year for Ukraine, 1933. December 25, 1933 the humorist was charged with counterrevolutionary activity and terrorism, including attempt to attack comrade Postyshev during the October demonstration, and was illegally repressed. December 26 1933 Ostap Vyshnia was arrested; February 23, 1934 the court has determined the sentence - the execution, and on March 3rd the decision has been changed to a decade of imprisonment. Only in 1955 (a year before his death) Ostap Vyshnia was officially rehabilitated by the judicial authorities. Camps significantly undermined the writer's health, but he did not leave literary work until the last days of his life.

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