“Appreciate in an instant, in a second! Live in such a way that you have time to leave a trail behind you. He who smokes does not live. Lives – who sparks!” – Oles Horchar.
On April 3, 1918, Oles Gonchar (born Oleksandr Bilichenko) was born in the village of Lomivka, Ekaterinoslav province (now Dnipro region) in the family of Tetiana and Terentiya Bilichenko.
Oles Gonchar is a Ukrainian writer, publicist and public figure, Academician of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Hero of Socialist Labor, Hero of Ukraine, Laureate of the Lenin Prize, two Stalin Prizes of the second degree and the State Prize of the USSR.
In 1933-1937, Oles Gonchar studied at Mykola Ostrovsky Kharkiv School of Journalism, after which he worked as a teacher in the village of Manuylivka and a journalist in the Kharkiv regional newspaper.
In 1938, Gonchar entered the Faculty of Philology of Kharkiv University. In June 1941, he went to the front as a volunteer as part of the prominent Kharkiv student battalion (80% of student volunteers died in the battles near Bila Tserkva and Moscow). He eventually wrote the story “Man and Weapons” about the people of Studbatov.
In the battle for Kyiv, the future writer was seriously wounded, captured, escaped, returned to the front again, and after the end of the war, he received the Order of Glory, the Order of the Red Star and three medals “For Courage”, liberating Czechoslovakia.
After the war, Gonchar lived and worked in Dnipropetrovsk, then moved to Kyiv. With the beginning of development and the gaining of independence by Ukraine, he actively participated in public life, was the initiator of the creation of the Ukrainian Language Society and the People’s Movement of Ukraine.
The outstanding writer died on July 14, 1995 in Kyiv, where he was buried at Baikovo cemetery.
A few quotes from Oles Honchar:
“As long as there are lovers in the world, there is nothing to be sad about.”
“There will always be an Eskimo who will give instructions to the inhabitants of the tropics how to behave during the heat.”
“Art is perhaps the last refuge of freedom!”.
“There is such a thing – the drug of lust for power, the heroin of careerism… Grab it just once – and it’s gone… Lust for power – that’s the only thing that makes his eyes shine. He trades his own father for a career, he will destroy the cathedral, just to get a step higher.”
“After all, what is left for a person on this sinful earth, except for the smile of heaven and the grace of the sun? The smile of heaven is beautiful.”
By the way, where did the language test for lexical identification with the word “burner” come from?
Oles Gonchar in his novel “Perekop”, describing the events of the Civil War, told how the serdyuks checked the food parcels with this word: “Say: “burner”! Whoever utters “Palyanitsa” will be let go, and whoever “Palyanitsa” comes out, so here’s an amen: into the bag – and into the water. All of them were executed, all of them were abandoned in Psel.”
