Freedom-to-Write Committee
Vasyl Stus Freedom-to-Write Award
The Vasyl Stus Award recognizes a writer who has been persecuted for the peaceful expression of his or her views, and whose courage in the face of censorship and oppression has been exemplary. The award comes with a $500 honorarium and honorary membership to PEN New England. The Vasyl Stus Award is named in honor of the poet who became a leading voice of his generation, and who was also the last Ukrainian writer to die in the Soviet Gulag.
Vasyl Stus was expelled from the Institute of Literature of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in 1965 because of his protests against the secret arrests and closed trials that were becoming prevalent in Soviet Ukraine. He was arrested in 1972 and sentenced to five years of strict-regime labor camp followed by three years of exile.
Rearrested in 1980 for having joined the Ukrainian Helsinki Group while in exile, he was sentenced to 10 years of strict-regime labor camp and five years of exile.
A man of uncompromising principles, Stus refused to kowtow to the regime and was subjected to constant persecutions, which finally were responsible for his death.
After facing repeated refusals and bureaucratic impediments, family and friends received permission to transfer his body to Ukraine from Perm. On November 19, 1989, a procession of over 30,000 mourners attended the interment of Stus and two other dissidents, Oleksa Tykhy and Yurii Lytvyn, at the Baikove Cemetary in Kyiv. The event became a manifestation of national solidarity and an expression of censure of the repressive Soviet regime.
Although he continued to write while he was incarcerated, the KGB systematically confiscated and destroyed his work. Some poems survived and were smuggled out to the West, where Stus's poetry appeared in several collections: "Zymovi Dereva" (Winter Trees, 1970), "Svicha v Svichadi" (A Candle in a Mirror, 1977) and the posthumous "Pamlimpsesty: Virshi 1971-1979 Rokiv" (Palimpsests: Poems of 1971-1979).
The first collection to appear in Ukraine was an underground samvydav collection, "Povernennia" (The Return), which appeared in 1990. Final "acceptance" came also in 1990, with the publication of the first official edition of his poetry, "Doroha Boliu" (The Road of Pain).
In 1992, two collections were published in the Ukraine: "Vikna v Pozaprostri" (Windows into Beyond-Space), containing his poetry, articles, leters and diary excerpts, and "Zolotokosa Krasunia" (The Golden-Braided Beauty), containing Stus's poetry fround in the KGB archives.
Traditional in form, Stus's poetry began as "lyricism of actuality," in the manner in which the poets of the 1970's responded to the realities of the day. Content prevailed over form, message over myth, and the satire found in the poetry of the 1960's often turned to scorn, anger, and abuse. The poetry written behind bars, however, is more serene; it expresses a longing, a philosophical contemplation of life, nature, man the prisoner, and man the jailer, and reveals Stus's attempt to come to some synthesis with respect to the contradictions of the human experience.
Vasyl Stus Award Winners
- 1998 Recep Marasli
- 1999 Ferida Durakovic
- 2000 Daniel and Philip Berrigan & Alejandra Marcela Matus Acuna
- 2001 Mehrangiz Kar
- 2002 Grigory Pasko
- 2005 Ali Al-Domaini
- 2006 Shi Tao