Rudenko, Mykola

Rudenko, Mykola [Руденко, Микола], b 19 December 1920 in Yurivka, now in Lutuhyne raion, Luhansk oblast, d 1 April 2004 in Kyiv. Writer, dissident, and political prisoner. A former managing editor of the Writers' Union of Ukraine’s (SPU) journal Dnipro (1947–50) and secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU) organization in the SPU, beginning in 1947 he published over 10 collections of indifferent poetry and a few books of socialist-realist prose and science fiction. Rudenko became involved in the Soviet human rights movement in the early 1970s and was consequently expelled from the CPU in 1974 and the SPU in 1975. In November 1976 he became head of the newly formed Ukrainian Helsinki Group. He was arrested for ‘anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda’ in February 1977, and in July of that year he was sentenced at a closed trial to seven years in labor camps in central RSFSR’s Perm oblast and the Mordovian Autonomous Republic, followed by five years’ exile in the Altai region in Soviet Central Asia. During his incarceration, 10 of his works were smuggled to the West and published there. They include the narrative poem Khrest (1977; trans: The Cross, 1987); the poetry collection Za gratamy (Behind Bars, 1980); a volume of physiocratic, pantheistic philosophy, Ekonomichni monolohy (Economic Monologues, 1978); the play Na dni mors'komu (On the Sea Floor, 1981); and a novel about life in Ukraine, Orlova balka (The Eagle’s Ravine, 1982). In December 1987 Rudenko and his wife, Raisa Rudenko, were allowed to emigrate to the West. They lived in the United States of America until 1990, when they returned to Ukraine.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]