Melnychuk, Taras

Melnychuk, Taras [Мельничук, Тарас; Mel'nyčuk], b 20 August 1938 in Utoropy, Kolomyia county, Galicia, 29 March 1995 in Kolomyia, Lviv oblast. Poet. He studied at the Gorky Institute of Literature in Moscow, from which he was expelled for ‘political bad conduct.’ In 1972–5 he was imprisoned in concentration camps in Perm oblast, RSFSR. He was rearrested in 1979 and sentenced to four years’ imprisonment in the labor camp in Vinnytsia. Melnychuk wrote the poetry collections Nesimo liubov planeti (Let’s Bring Love to Our Planet, 1967), Chaha (1971, unpublished), Iz-za grat (From Behind the Bars, 1982, published in the West), and Kniaz' rosy (Prince of Dew, 1990). His verse is terse and his metaphors of humanity and Soviet Ukraine are acerbic.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]