Draft:Valentyna Stus (Popelyukh)



Valentyna Stus (Popelyukh) - was born in Cherkasy (Ukraine) on June 19, 1938, the wife of the dissident Vasyl Stus. He has a son, Dmytro Stus, a Ukrainian writer and general director of the Taras Shevchenko National Museum in Kyiv.

Childhood and youth
Valentyna was born in Ukraine in the city of Cherkasy on June 19, 1938. Father Vasyl Karpovych had a parish education, was a kind and wise man, a jack of all trades. Mother, Olga Hryhorivna, loved the theater, tried her hand at the Cherkas Workers' and Peasants' Theater when she was young. The German-Russian war, the evacuation to Ufa became a tragedy. On the way, the family was crossing the Volga on a barge, at that time a German bomb fell on a sandbag near little Valya. After finishing school, the woman enrolled in the correspondence department and worked in the design bureau of the Kyiv Mechanical Plant named after O.K. Antonov. The woman worked at the same place for more than 50 years. Valentyna considered herself a non-public person, so she rarely communicated with the press. However, in 2008, the "Word of Enlightenment" publication was still able to interview a woman on the occasion of her husband's 70th birthday. "It was in the subway. Suddenly someone - time! - put his hand on my shoulder and ran further up the escalator. I think: what else? Well, run, run. She went downstairs, got on the platform, and already forgot about it. I approach the train, I look - he is walking with a book, reading. Well, I think, well, let him read. I went ahead in some carriage, I'm going for myself. I go to the gate. I look around - he is standing, smiling. That's how they met. He lived nearby, in the Academy town, in a dormitory. I came to study at a graduate school. We have not met before...". Even at that time, the KGB employees of the Soviet Union were interested in Vasyl because of his pro-Ukrainian position, rebellious views and friendship with other sixties. Because of Stus's political position, the KGB offered the girl's father to invent a reason for the marriage not to work out, but the man was unable to do anything. Vasyl and Valentyna signed on December 10, 1965.

Marriage and further life with Vasyl Stus
Valentyna became Vasyl's only love, but their happiness did not last long. They were married for 20 years, of which only 7 years lived together, Vasyl Semenovych spent the rest of the time in camps. Vasyl drew attention to himself on September 4, 1965, during the premiere of Sergei Parajanov's film "Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors" at the "Ukraine" cinema in Kyiv, taking part in a protest. Stus, together with Ivan Dzyuba, Vyacheslav Chornovol, Yuriy Badz, called on party leaders and the population of the capital to condemn the arrests of the Ukrainian intelligentsia, which became the first public political protest against mass political repressions in the Soviet Union in the post-war period. He was expelled from graduate school for participating in this action. The first arrest took place on January 12, 1972. He served his sentence in Mordovia and the Magadan region. The entire term of imprisonment was spent in Mordovian camps. Most of the poems that Stus wrote in the camp were confiscated and destroyed, only a few were released through letters to his wife. In his poems, Vasyl wrote about his love for Valentyna and for Ukraine. "You and I, Valu, are already in history - so let's be worthy of our mission..." In 1966, a son, Dmytro, was born. Valentyna says that she argued with Vasyl mostly about her son's upbringing, because Stus held, in her opinion, "extreme" views - he believed that his son should be like him, especially when the dissident returned from the camps. Vasyl tried to raise his son through letters. In his letter dated September 3, 1973, Vasyl repeatedly mentioned the very first meeting with his beloved: "Here is the time. And more than once, wandering alone, I turn the pages of life. I remember you. In the subway, for the first time. In the forest - with the summer wind and rain, where you are like a panther..." In her interview, the woman noted that Vasyl supported her and did not let her lose heart. When she first came to see Vasyl, she thought: "This can't be. Vasyl is behind bars! Absolutely positive man. It's a dream." - the woman remembers In May 1980, he was arrested again, recognized as a particularly dangerous recidivist, and in September sentenced to 10 years of forced labor and 5 years of exile. He refused the lawyer appointed to him, Viktor Medvedchuk, trying to defend himself on his own. Viktor Medvedchuk was approved as a lawyer, despite the accused's numerous protests. The trial was held behind closed doors. The famous writer, human rights defender, public figure and friend of Vasyl Stus Yevhen Sverstyuk recalls: "When Stus met with the lawyer assigned to him, he immediately felt that Medvedchuk is a person of the Komsomol aggressive type, that he does not protect him, does not want to understand him and, in fact, is not interested in his case. And Vasyl Stus refused this lawyer" Together with her son, Valentyna Popelyukh was engaged in transferring most of Vasyl Stus's manuscripts to the Institute of Literature named after Shevchenko after the independence of Ukraine.

Death
Valentyna outlived her husband by 37 years and died on March 25, 2022 in the Kyiv region at the age of 84. The woman died in the midst of a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, and on March 26, 2022, she was buried to the sound of sirens and explosions from heavy weapons. Valentyna's daughter-in-law announced the tragic news on her social networks: "Valya will forever remain in the memory and heart of her son, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, sister and nephews... She is so kind. So fragile. We believe that her soul is with Vasyl - in peace, love and tranquility."