Ivan Bagrjany

Ivan Bagrjany – literary pseudonym of Ivan Pavlovich Lozovyaga (September 19 (October 2) 1906 – August 25, 1963) – Ukrainian writer.

I. B. was born in Okhtyrka (now Sumy region) in the family of a worker. He studied in local primary schools, in 1920 he tried to get a professional technical education – first a locksmith, then a ceramist. Without graduating from these schools, he worked as a worker, visited the Crimea, Kuban, Kamianets-Podilskyi. In 1926 he entered the Kyiv Art Institute, but studied there for a short time, because he was forced to earn a living at the same time.

On April 16, 1932, I. B. was arrested in Kharkiv and accused of "counterrevolutionary agitation," as evidenced by his works of art. On October 25, 1932, he was exiled to the Far East.

There is uncertain evidence that he tried to escape, was caught and imprisoned in the camp. It is certainly known that on June 16, 1938, he was arrested for the second time (again in Kharkiv) and even sentenced to death. He was released by decree of April 1, 1940, and the writer, exhausted by torture, settled in his native Okhtyrka. There he was caught in the beginning of the German-Soviet war and there he spent the first years of German occupation.

With the approach of the Soviet "liberators" I. B. moved to Kyiv in 1943, in 1944 – to Lviv, where he joined the OUN, participated in the creation of the Ukrainian Main Liberation Council. As Soviet troops approached, he moved on to Slovakia and Germany. The end of World War II found him in Bavaria, where he acquired the status of "displaced person".

In Germany, I. B. founded the Ukrainian Revolutionary Democratic Party (1946), which he headed from 1948 to 1963. In 1948, this party supported the creation of the Ukrainian National Council, and I. B. was for some time chairman of the presidium of this organization.

I. B. died in New Ulm (Germany) and was buried there. Many details of his biography remain unclear.

I. B.’s first attempts at literary work date back to his time at school. In 1924 he joined the Okhtyrka branch of the «Plug» (Plow) Writers’ Organization. In the conditions of Soviet Ukraine it was impossible to be simply a writer, it was necessary to belong to some writers’ organization. Therefore, in 1926, arriving in Kyiv, I. B. joined the "Workshop of the Revolutionary Word" – a group of Ukrainian writers, which the Communists persecuted and closed in 1929.

At this time, I. B. acted as a poet, author of several poems, and prose writer, author of short stories. His creative path was interrupted by the repression suffered by all members of the "Workshop of the Revolutionary Word."

The second period of I. B.’s work began in Lviv in 1944. In the following years his most important works appeared – great novels, as well as dramas and poems. In 1946, I. B. published a pamphlet, Why Don’t I Want to Return to the USSR?

The works of the writer persecuted by the authorities have not been fully preserved, some are known by name only from later mentions. What I. B. managed to publish in Soviet Ukraine was banned and confiscated, and what he printed in emigration was not allowed in the USSR. Selected works by I. B. are published in independent Ukraine, but there is still no systematic collection of all his creative heritage.

M. Zh., May 10, 2022