Marchenko, Valerii

Marchenko, Valerii [Марченко, Валерій; Marčenko, Valerij], b 16 September 1947 in Kyiv, d 7 October 1984 in a prison hospital in Leningrad, RSFSR. Journalist, writer, literary scholar, translator, Orientalist, dissident, and political prisoner; grandson of historian Mykhailo Marchenko. A talented and tenacious truth-teller, Valerii’s potential was unrealized since poor health and political persecution led to his early death, in tragic circumstances, at the age of 37.

Marchenko graduated from Kyiv University with a degree in philology in 1970, and during his studies he interned in Baku, where he studied the language and literature of Azerbaijan. From 1970 to 1973 Marchenko was a literary editor for the newspaper Literaturna Ukraïna. In addition to his editorial work Marchenko prepared a number of translations, into Ukrainian, from Polish and Azerbaijani, and wrote several essays devoted to Ukrainian literature and Azerbaijani literature and the Orientalist Ahatanhel Krymsky. In the late 1960s Marchenko also became an avid reader of samvydav, and prepared a number of critical essays circulated as samvydav.

During his work for Literaturna Ukraïna Marchenko was approached to act as an informant for the KGB, but refused to cooperate and was placed under KGB surveillance. Soon afterwards he was arrested, on 25 June 1973, and charged with writing nationalist and anti-Soviet samvydav essays, reading and distributing Ivan Dziuba’s Internationalism or Russification, and with ‘oral anti-Soviet agitation.’ On 29 December 1973 he was sentenced by the Kyiv oblast court to six years of imprisonment in strict regime labor camps and two years of exile in accordance with Article 62-1 of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR.

Marchenko was imprisoned in Perm strict regime camps No. 35 and 36, Chusovoi raion, Perm oblast, RSFSR, where he became an unofficial camp chronicler. He prepared information about the difficult conditions in which prisoners were detained, was the author or co-author of individual and collective protest statements, conducted several interviews with fellow prisoners, and wrote a number of essays. He also prepared translations from English into Ukrainian. Valerii’s mother, Nina Marchenko-Smuzhanytsia, played a central role in smuggling these and other materials out of the camps during the occasional visits which she, and other close relatives of prisoners, were permitted to make. Although Marchenko was in very poor health (he suffered from a severe case of nephritis, for which he did not receive appropriate medical treatment) he was forced to work in difficult conditions and was regularly punished for his participation in camp protests.

Marchenko served his term of internal exile (1979–81) in Saralzhyn, Aktobe oblast, Kazakh SSR. Here he wrote several essays, continued to translate works from English into Ukrainian, and actively corresponded with two members of Amnesty International, in Italy and the Netherlands. In May 1981 Marchenko returned from exile to Kyiv where, under constant surveillance, he worked as a laborer. Here he continued to write essays on a variety of topics, as well as appeals to the authorities protesting the lawlessness that prevailed in the Soviet Union and the treatment of former political prisoners. Marchenko also obtained and smuggled abroad, together with his own works, copies of official documents, from the Ministry of Education of the Ukrainian SSR, about the intensification of the study of Russian in Ukrainian schools. During this period Marchenko’s health continued to deteriorate, and a doctor warned Marchenko that if he was imprisoned again he would die.

Marchenko was arrested on 21 October 1983, and on the same day he announced that he was joining the Ukrainian Helsinki Group. The investigation into his case lasted three months, and he was charged, in accordance with Article 62-2 of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR and the equivalent criminal codes of the RSFSR and Kazakh SSR, with the production and distribution of documents ‘with the aim of undermining and weakening the Soviet state and social order.’ On 13 March 1984 the Kyiv Municipal Court found Marchenko to be a particularly dangerous repeat offender and sentenced him to 10 years in special-regime camps and 5 years of exile.

The process of transferring Marchenko from Kyiv to Perm Special-Regime Camp 36, Chusovoi raion, Perm oblast, RSFSR, took 55 days. Even healthy prisoners dreaded the very difficult conditions that accompanied such transfers and for Marchenko, severely ill at the time, this process thoroughly undermined his shaky health. Marchenko arrived at his camp destination on 27 May 1984 and soon afterwards, on 20 August 1984, he was transferred to a prison hospital in Perm because his kidneys were failing, and then to a prison hospital, in Leningrad, under the jurisdiction of the Medical Department of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs. During and after the trial Valerii’s mother emphasized that because of her son’s poor health he required special medical care and asked that she be regularly informed about his condition. She was consistently denied such information and after she managed, with great difficulty, to find out that her son was in a Leningrad hospital, she arrived there only to find out that he had passed away. Initially she was refused permission to bury Valerii in Ukraine, but she refused to leave Leningrad until she was granted such permission. Marchenko was buried on 14 October 1984, next to his grandfather’s grave in the latter’s native village of Hatne, Kyiv-Sviatoshyn raion, Kyiv oblast.

Valerii’s mother, Nina, devoted the rest of her life to her son’s memory. With the help of Semen Hluzman, one of Valerii’s best friends when he was first imprisoned, she compiled a volume entitled Tvorchist' i zhyttia (His Creative Work and Life, 2001), the most complete collection of Valerii’s essays and translations as well as official documents about his second trial and its aftermath. Lysty do materi z nevoli (Letters to My Mother from Captivity, 1994) provides valuable insights into Marchenko’s character, and important details about his life can also be found in the book Matinka Nina (Mother Nina, 2013). A collection of the letters which Marchenko wrote to and received from a member of Amnesty International based in Italy was published as Valerii i Sandra: Lystuvannia Valeriia Marchenka iz Sandroiu Fapp’iano (Valerii i Sandra: The Correspondence of Valerii Marchenko with Sandra Fappiano, 2010). A documentary film about Marchenko’s correspondence with a member of Amnesty International in the Netherlands, Khto Vy ie, mister Dzheki? (Who Are You, Mister Dzheki?), was first screened in 2002.

Ivan Jaworsky

[This article was updated in 2026.]