Volodymyr Vladko

Volodymyr Yeremchenko (Ukrainian: Володи́мир Микола́йович Єре́мченко, 8 January 1901 – 21 April 1974), better known as Volodymyr Vladko, was a Ukrainian fiction writer, journalist and theatre critic. He was a member of the Union of Soviet Writers (1934).

Early life and education
Volodymyr was born in Saint Petersburg, in the family of a newspaper technician and a midwife. He received his primary education in a real school, and later he graduated from the Voronezh Institute of Popular Education. He was fluent in English and Latin. After losing his father at the age of 15, he started working as a copyist in various print publications.

His first publications date to 1917, when he began working as a reporter. In 1917-1919 he worked as a feature writer for the Voronezh Commune newspaper, and from 1919 to 1921, as head of the propaganda department of Tsentropechat in Voronezh.

Working at a newspaper in Leningrad and then in Voronezh, he signed his first publications as Vladimir Eremchenko. But a typographical error was made in the pages of one article: "Vlad" remained from the first word, and the ending "ko" from the second, leading him to adopt pseudonym "Vladko".

He moved to Kharkiv in 1921, where he worked as a literary employee of the editorial office of Kharkov Proletarian newspaper, a Ukrainian-language correspondent for the newspaper For Industrialisation and executive secretary of the Radio magazine.

Literary career
His first book Donbas – the land of gold, was released in 1930. He made his debut as a science fiction writer, with the story The Robots Go, which was awarded a prize at the all-Ukrainian competition in 1929. During that time period he released other books, including such titles as: The Wonderful Generator, Argonauts of the Universe, 12 stories, and Descendants of the Scythians.

In the late 1930s, he became a senior lecturer at the Department of theory and practice of the party press at the Ukrainian Institute of Journalism in Kharkiv. Later he worked as a literary employee of the editorial office of Socialist Kharkivshchyna newspaper.

His next works explored anti-fascist and anti-war themes. Aerotorpedoes turn back and The Gray-haired Captain took place during the Spanish Civil War, in which the main character attempts to fight against the dictatorship but all his efforts end tragically.

After releasing The Grey-haired Captain, Vladko fell silent for 15 years. During the Second World War, Vladko was a political commentator on the Taras Shevchenko Ukrainian radio station in Saratov. Subsequently, he became a special correspondent of the Radinformburo, an in-house correspondent of the Pravda newspaper, head of the Central Repertoire Committee of Ukraine, and head of the Ukrainian branch of Literaturna Gazeta (Literature Newspaper). In 1944, he became a member of the Communist Party of Soviet Union.

In 1956, Vladko returned to writing science fiction, writing the stories Borrowed Time, Purple Death, the collection Magical Stories, as well as reissuing The Gray-haired Captain.

Volodymyr Vladko's works have been translated into Belarusian, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Lithuanian, German, Serbian, Czech and Japanese. In particular, Argonauts of the Universe was published six times in Japan.

Vladko died on April 20, 1974, in Kyiv at the age of 73. He was buried at the Baikove cemetery.

Selected works

 * "The Iron Riot" ("The Robots Go") (1931, 1967)
 * "The Wonderful Generator" (1935)
 * "12 stories" (1936)
 * "Aerotorpedoes turn back" (1937)
 * "Argonauts of the Universe" (1935, 1956)
 * "Descendants of the Schythians" (1939)
 * "Grey-haired Captain" (1941, 1959)
 * "Borrowed Time" ("Savings Bank of Time") (1961)
 * "Magical Stories" (1962)
 * "Purple Death" (1963)
 * Works in five volumes (1970–1971)