1985: A LOOK BACK: Stus: dead in labor camp (12/29/85)

1985: A LOOK BACK

Stus: dead in labor camp

The saddest news coming out of Ukraine this year was the tragic death of Ukrainian poet and Ukrainian Helsinki Group member Vasyl Stus, who died in a labor camp as a result of emaciation following a long history of stomach and kidney problems.

Considered by many as one of the greatest contemporary Ukrainian poets and literary critics, Mr. Stus was serving the fifth year of a 10-year labor camp term, which was to be followed by five years' internal exile, on charges of "anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda." He died on September 4 at the age of 47.

Mr. Stus' poetry and literary reviews frequently appeared in Soviet periodicals until 1965, when he was expelled from the Taras Shevchenko Institute of Literature, Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, for publicly protesting the 1965 arrests of Ukrainian intellectuals.

In January 1972, during the second wave of arrests of Ukrainian intellectuals, Mr. Stus was himself arrested and charged with "anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda." He was subsequently sentenced to five years in a labor camp and three years of exile. He completed this sentence in August, 1979 and after returning to Kiev, he joined the Ukrainian Helsinki Group in the fall. He was arrested for the second time on May 14, 1980, and sentenced once again for "anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda" - to 10 years in a labor camp and five years' exile. His sentence would have been completed in May 1995.

Although Soviet authorities confiscated and destroyed some 600 of Mr. Stus' poems and translations, some of his works have reached the West through underground channels. His poetry has been published outside the USSR in the collections "Winter Trees" and "A Candle in the Mirror."