Andrii Babiuk Dmitrovich

Biography

Andriy Babiuk was born on July 14, 1897 in the village of Pyadyky, Kolomyysky district (now Kolomyysky district) in Halychyna, in a poor peasant family. He graduated from the village school, then the 6th grade of the Kolomyia gymnasium, and in 1914 - the teacher's seminary in Lviv.

During the First World War, he served as an adjutant in the Legion of Sich Riflemen as part of the Austro-Hungarian army, and was the editor of the newspaper "Strilets". In 1919, in Kamianets-Podilskyi, he published his impressions of an eyewitness "Makhno and the Makhnovites" in the "Striltsia" library.

In February 1920, together with the First Galician Brigade of the SSS, he went over to the side of the Red Army. Member of the CP(b)U (1920). Until the end of the war, he was at the front as the head of the editorial board and commissar of the propaganda train, edited the newspaper for the Galician peasantry "Bolshevik".

After the end of the civil war, Irchan settled in Kyiv and for two years (1921-1922) worked as a lecturer at the school of red officers, one of the editors of the magazine "Halytsky Komunist", and was actively published in the press. In Kyiv, Irchan met his wife Zdenka and married her. She was the daughter of a Czech doctor, and when her parents returned to Prague in 1922, the young couple followed. In Prague, Irchan entered Charles University and participated in Ukrainian student activities. By then he was well known as a writer and continued to publish articles and stories, some of which were printed in North America.

In October 1923, he left for Canada, was published in the local Ukrainian press, edited the mass Ukrainian magazines "Worker" and "World of Youth", was the secretary of the overseas branch of the Union of Proletarian Writers "Hart".

In the summer of 1932, he returned to Kharkiv and headed the literary organization "Western Ukraine".

Death

Myroslav Irchan was arrested on December 28, 1933 in the premises of the Central Committee of the CP(b)U after a long conversation with Pavel Postyshev. Accused of belonging to a nationalist Ukrainian counter-revolutionary organization. On March 28, 1934, the judicial "troika" and the Board of the GPU sentenced the writer to 10 years in concentration camps.

He served his sentence in correctional labor camps on the territory of Karelia (Segezh) and in the Solovetsky prison. Here, together with Les Kurbas, he participated in the work on the plays "The Wedding of Krechinsky" by Oleksandr Sukhovo-Kobylin, "Aristocrats" by Mykola Pogodin, "Intervention" by Lev Slavin, "The Devil's Apprentice" by Bernard Shaw, etc.

On October 9, 1937, the "troika" of the UNKVS of the Leningrad region sentenced Irchan to the highest penalty in a fabricated case against 134 "Ukrainian bourgeois nationalists" who allegedly created the counter-revolutionary organization "All-Ukrainian Central Block" in Solovki and were to be shot (case No. 103010-37 r.). The sentence was carried out on November 3, 1937.

It was forbidden to publish Irchan's works, and already printed ones were removed from libraries. Myroslav Irchana was rehabilitated posthumously on April 3, 1956.

Creativity

Began composing songs from the age of 7. He made his debut with the short story "Meeting" in the Viennese newspaper "Svoboda" on October 30, 1914. The first collection of short stories "Laughter of Nirvana" was published in Lviv in 1918, signed with the author's real name.

Author of the plays "Rebel" (1921), "Unemployed" (1922), "Twelve", "The Family of Brushers" (both - 1923), "Former People" (1925), "Little Blacksmiths", "Underground Halychyna" (both - 1926), "Radio" ("Poison", 1928), "Platzdarm" (1931). The author of the feuilleton "Kamyanets Sunday (Impressions)" - published on September 11, 1921 in the newspaper "Chervona Pravda" (Kamyanets-Podilskyi).

Edition

• Laughter of Nirvana. — Lviv, 1918.
• Makhno and Makhnov residents: Impressions of an eyewitness. — Kamianets-Podilskyi, 1919. — 32 p. — ("Strilets" Library, No. 8).
• Rebel. — New York—Lviv—Kyiv, 1922.
• Unemployed. — Winnipeg, 1923.
• Twelve. — Kyiv, 1930.
• In the weeds. — Toronto (Canada), 1925.
• Ten years ago... - Kharkiv, 1930.
• Their pain. — Winnipeg, 1923.
• An unexpected guest. — Winnipeg, 1923.
• Underground Galicia. — Kyiv-Kharkiv, 1930.
• Radio. — Odesa, 1929.
• A family of scrubbers. — Winnipeg, 1925.
• Scrooge. — Winnipeg, 1928.
• Tragedy of May Day. — New York, 1923.
• Films of the revolution. - New York-Berlin, 1923.
• Carpathian night. — Winnipeg, 1924.

Interesting facts

The pseudonym of the writer, according to one version, comes from the name of the daughter of a priest from the village of Pistin, Iryna Arsenych, with whom he was in love.