Taras Shevchenko

Taras Hryhorovych Shevchenko (Ukrainian: Тарас Григорович Шевченко; Russian: Тарас Григорьевич Шевченко, romanized: Taras Grigoryevich Shevchenko; 9 March 1814 – 10 March 1861) was a Ukrainian poet, writer, artist, public and political figure, folklorist, and ethnographer. He wrote poetry in Ukrainian and prose (nine novellas, a diary, and his autobiography) in Russian.

Born to a poor family of serfs during the period of Russian rule over Ukraine, in his youth Shevchenko demonstrated a talent for art, which allowed him to become a fellow of the Imperial Academy in St. Petersburg. After his return to Ukraine, he joined the emerging national movement. Exiled to Central Asia due to his association with the Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius, Shevchenko continued to create art and poetry despite prohibitions, and his figure attained fame among the liberal-minded circles of the Russian Empire. Freed from exile after the onset of liberal reforms of Alexander II, Shevchenko was prohibited from settling in Ukraine and died in Saint Petersburg.

His literary heritage, in particular the poetry collection Kobzar, is regarded to be the foundation of modern Ukrainian literature and to some degree also of the modern Ukrainian language. The significance of Shevchenko's creative genius for the Ukrainian and wider Slavic culture has led some to compare his figure to that of Robert Burns.

Taras Shevchenko was born on 9 March [O.S. 25 February] 1814 in the village of Moryntsi, Kiev Governorate, Russian Empire, about 20 years after the third partition of Poland wherein the territory of Ukraine where Shevchenko was born was annexed by Imperial Russia. He was the third child after his sister Kateryna and brother Mykyta; his younger siblings were a brother, Yosyp, and a sister, Maria, who was born blind. His parents were Kateryna Shevchenko (née Boiko) and Hryhoriy Ivanovych Shevchenko, former subjects of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth who became serf peasants, working the land owned by Vasily Engelhardt [uk], a nephew of the Russian statesman Grigory Potemkin. According to Shevchenko's biographer Oleksandr Konysky, Hryhoriy's original surname had been Hrushivskyi (Ukrainian: Грушівський), and the name Shevchenko (denoting descent from a shoemaker, Ukrainian: Швець, Shvets) was applied to the family due to one of their ancestors being active in the trade. Hryhoriy and his father themselves worked as wheelwrights.

In 1816, the family moved to Kyrylivka (modern Shevchenkove [uk]), another village owned by Engelhardt, where Taras's father and grandfather had been born. The boy grew up in the village. Once, he went looking for "the pillars that prop up the sky" and got lost. Chumaks (travelling merchants) who met the boy took him back to the village. From 1822, Shevchenko was sent to a school, where he was taught to read and write. His teacher was the precentor of the village church, whose nickname was "Sovhyr". He was a harsh disciplinarian, who had a tradition of birching the children in his class every Saturday.

On 1 September [O.S. 20 August] 1823 Kateryna Shevchenko died. The widowed Hryhoriy, left to look after six children aged from thirteen to four, had little choice but to remarry. He was married to Oksana Tereshchenko, a widow from Moryntsi, who had three children of her own.

To my son Taras I leave nothing. He will not be an ordinary man: he will turn out either someone very great, or a great scamp, thus in either case my legacy will be of no account to him.

When Hryhoriy Shevchenko became a chumak, Taras travelled twice with his father and his older brother away from his neighbourhood and, for the first time in his life, on to the open steppe. Hryhoriy died from a chill on 2 April [O.S. 21 March] 1825, and for a period the children's stepmother ruled the family, treating Taras and those siblings still at the family home with great cruelty, until she was expelled by their grandfather, Ivan Shevchenko. For a period Taras lived with his grandfather and his father's brother Pavlo, and was made to work as a swineherd and a groom's assistant. At the age of 12, he left home to work as a student assistant and a servant for a drunkard named Bohorsky, who had replaced Sovhyr as the village precentor and teacher and was even more violent than his predecessor. One of Shevchenko's duties was to read psalms over the dead. He was treated still more violently by Bohorsky once the boy's stepmother became his mistress.