Todos Osmachka

Todos (Teodosii Stepanovych) Osmachka (4 (16) May 1895 – September 7, 1962) – Ukrainian writer.

He was born in the village (in the modern Smila district of Cherkasy region) in the family of a village veterinarian. He studied at the church parish school in his village, and from 1907 at the Zemstvo school in the neighboring village Matusiv, which he graduated from in 1911. In 1915 he passed the exam for the title of Zemstvo teacher at the 1st Kyiv Gymnasium and began teaching in the village Bilozirja in Smila district, but very soon, in 1916 he was mobilized to the Russian army.

What did he do during the liberation struggle of the Ukrainian people? According to romantic legend, he fought in the army of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, even specifically – in . According to other (seemingly more probable) information, in 1919 the teachers’ union sent him to Kharkiv for a three-month course for instructors of labor education. In 1920 (1921?) he was for a short time inspector of the provincial department of public education in Kremenchuk (then – the provincial center).

In the same year, 1921, he entered the Kyiv Institute of Public Education (former university), but in 1923 he left school without completing the course. Some say – because of financial difficulties, others – because of political preferences (however, one does not exclude the other).

As early as the second half of the 1920s, anomalies appeared in T. O.’s behavior, which can be regarded as the beginning of mental illness. In 1930-1932, according to some sources, he lived in the Kuban, and according to others – in 1931 he lived with his uncle in the village Draganivka (now Chemerivtsi district of Khmelnytsky region).

During the 1930’s, T. O. tried to go abroad, made several unsuccessful attempts to cross the border illegally (the details of these attempts are contradictory).

The criminal Moscow occupation authorities liked to arrest T. O. One can read about his arrests in 1921, 1930, 1933, 1934, 1939, but others write only about the arrests on February 5, 1933 and April 11, 1934. Chekist psychiatric examinations recognized him mentally sick. T. O. himself claimed that he simulate mentally ill. Perhaps there was both a simulation and a real disease.

During the German attack on the USSR, T. O. was in the Kirillov Psychiatric Hospital and escaped from it when the Germans entered Kyiv (September 1941). In 1942, T. O. settled in Lviv, but for a short time. Before the onset of the Soviets, he emigrated to Bavaria, where he lived from 1945 to 1949. In 1949, when the camps of "displaced persons" in West Germany were liquidated, T. O. moved to the United States, in 1954 – to Canada (someone even say – without a visa), then returned to the United States.

But even overseas T. O. did not find peace. The mania of persecution held him tight, and Gepeva agents (from the GPU, so-called Main Political Directorate, the Moscow Secret Police from 1922 to 1934) were imaginated by T. O. everywhere. Many bitter details about this time of T. O.’s life were left in his memoirs by his friend Hryhoriy Kostyuk.

T. O. died in 1962 and was buried in a Ukrainian cemetery in Bound Brook, New Jersey, USA.

Thus, almost every detail of T.O.’s biography is presented differently by different biographers.

T.O.’s path in literature began in 1922, when the first book of his poetry, «Krucha (the bluff)», was published. At this time he entered the Kyiv literary community, the Writers’ Association. In 1924, the «Lanka (The link)» group emerged from this group, which also included T. O.

In 1925 the book of poems by T. O. «Scythian lights» was published, and in 1929 the book of poems «Klekit (The rattling)». In the 1930’s, due to constant persecution and the forced gossip caused by them, T. O. was almost unable to engage in literary work (however, he translated somewhat).

Only in 1942 in Lviv T. O. returned to literary work and find a new literary environment. Most of the writers of this group emigrated, formed the Art Ukrainian Movement (which included T. O. as well) in the camps of displaced persons, and later moved overseas. In 1943, a collection of poems by T. O. «To contemporaries» was published in Lviv, later a large poem "Poet" (1947), a collection of "Brushes of Time" (1953) and a collection of poetic works "From Under the World" (1954) were published.

In 1944, T. O. wrote his first major prose work – the novel "Senior Boyar", published in 1946. In 1951 he published the novel "Plan to the yard", in 1956 – the novel "Rotunda of the murderers", which became the last great work by T. O. The main character of the latter – the writer Ivan Brus – generously endowed with biographical features of T. O. himself.

In independent Ukraine, T. O.’s works are gradually returning to readers.

The portrait we present is taken from the album "Writers of Soviet Ukraine" [State Publishing House of Ukraine: 1928]

M. Zh., January 14, 2022