Новини
Director of Stus Museum publishes interview recounting childhood memories with Vasyl Stus
21 november 2023
A documentary interview including memories of Vasyl Stus, a Ukrainian dissident poet, was posted online. 93-year-old Dmytro Omelianchuk, Director of the Stus Museum in his native village of Rakhnivka, Vinnytsia Oblast, spoke about the uniqueness of the museum, and its valuable exhibits, and also shared his memories of Vasyl Stus.
Dmytro Omelianchuk personally knew the poet from childhood, as they lived next door. And already as a grown-up person, he set himself the goal to glorify a gifted and rebellious fellow countryman.
“Over the years, the museum has become not just a duty for me, but a vocation. And Vasyl Stus is a symbol of steadfastness and rebellion. Most of all, I remember the moment when Vasyl was gathering wheat spikelets in 1947, which was a hard and hungry year. He came here for the holidays. There was nothing to eat, so we went to get some wheat spikelets. But the village guard caught up with him, hit him on the back with a whip, made him drop the wheat spikelets, and Vasyl went home. And the next day, this field was ploughed. Such was the situation, such was the attitude to people and life,” recalls Dmytro Omelianchuk, Director of the Vasyl Stus Museum in Rakhnivka.
In 1990, Dmytro Omelianchuk started establishing the Stus Museum, planning that it would grow into a centre for the education and development of youth from all over Ukraine in the future. Over the years, he managed to collect over 600 unique exhibits, including Stus’s cradle, a vyshyvanka, a guitar, a gramophone, and other household and clothing items.
“Following the declaration of Ukraine’s independence, people started talking about Vasyl Stus as a brilliant poet, a dissident, and a fighter against the totalitarian regime. Earlier, they called him a career criminal who betrayed the Ukrainian people and the Soviet government, thus deserving his sentence. In 1990, the head of the regional Department of Internal Affairs, Lieutenant General Viktor Semenovych Tiazhlov, visited us in Rakhnivka and said: “The militia imprisoned Stus, and we want to rehabilitate him. Do you mind if we open a memorial room at your school?” I wholeheartedly supported this idea. That’s how we opened the museum and started collecting exhibits,” says Dmytro Omelianchuk.
The interview was recorded with the support of the MHP–Gromadi Charitable Foundation within the framework of the Saving Ukrainian Cultural Heritage project. Thanks to the Foundation’s financial support totalling UAH 100,000, it was possible to redesign the Stus Museum and provide it with new showcases, racks, and technical equipment.
In addition to the Stus Museum in Rakhnivka, the MHP-Gromadi Charitable Foundation supported five more museums: the Viacheslav Chornovil Estate Museum in the Cherkasy Oblast, the Mykola Leontovych Museum in the Vinnytsia Oblast, the Vasyl Symonenko Museum in Cherkasy, the Museum of Trypillia Culture in the Cherkasy Oblast, and the National Museum of Folk Architecture and Life of Ukraine in Kyiv. The Foundation will continue to restore and support Ukrainian museums to preserve unique artefacts and promote museum tourism among Ukrainians.
“We live in a time when Ukrainians are re-discovering their history, looking for answers to important questions in the traditions and rituals, trying to understand themselves by learning about their roots. Museums play a crucial role in this process, as they collect unique information, record important dates, and look for underlying causes. Moreover, this contribution is made not only by large national museums but also by small local ones, where you can sometimes find certain unique artefacts,” notes Tetiana Volochai, Director of the MHP-Gromadi Charitable Foundation.
A documentary interview about Vasyl Stus is already available on the MHP-Gromadi Charitable Foundation YouTube channel at.