Volodymyr Vynnychenko

Volodymyr Vynnychenko

Volodymyr Kyrylovych Vynnychenko (Ukrainian: Володимир Кирилович Винниченко, July 26 1880 – March 6, 1951) was a Ukrainian writer, playwright, artist, political activist and revolutionary, politician and statesman. Vynnychenko is recognized in Ukrainian literature as a leading modernist writer in prerevolutionary Ukraine, who wrote short stories, novels, and plays, but in Soviet Ukraine his works were proscribed, like that of many other Ukrainian writers, from the 1930s until the mid-1980s. Prior to his entry onto the stage of Ukrainian politics, he was a long-time revolutionary activist, who lived abroad in Western Europe from 1906-1914. His works reflect his immersion in the Ukrainian and Russian revolutionary milieu, among impoverished and working-class people, and among emigres from the Russian Empire living in Western Europe.