Nytchenko, Dmytro [Нитченко, Дмитро; Nytčenko; pseudonyms: D. Chub, Ostap Zirchasty], b 21 February 1905 in Zinkiv, Poltava gubernia, d 15 September 1999 in Melbourne, Australia. Writer and community figure; member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society. In the 1920s he worked as a journalist, and in the 1930s he graduated from the Kharkiv Pedagogical Institute and then taught in secondary schools. He was a member of the writers’ groups Hart and Prolitfront and began publishing under the name Nitsenko in 1922. Nytchenko wrote the collections Poeziï industriï (Poems of Industry, 1931) and Sklepinnia (The Vault, 1933) and the essay collection Na prykordonni (In the Border Area, 1932). In 1942–3 he was literary editor of the Kharkiv daily Nova Ukraïna. As a postwar displaced person in Germany he worked for the newspaper Ukraïns’ki visti and wrote the book on Taras Shevchenko, Shevchenko v zhytti (1947; 2nd rev edn: Zhyvyi Shevchenko, 1963; English translation: Shevchenko the Man, 1985). He emigrated to Australia in 1949 and played a central role in Ukrainian life there. He founded the Lastivka publishing house in the early 1950s, taught in Ukrainian schools, and headed the Ukrainian Central School Council (1954–62), the Australian branches of the Slovo Association of Ukrainian Writers in Exile and the Association of Ukrainian Writers for Young People, and the Ukrainian Literary and Arts Club in Melbourne. Under the pseudonym D. Chub he wrote stories for children, memoirs of the Second World War, V lisakh pid Viaz'moiu (In the Forests near Viazma, 1958; 2nd rev edn 1983; English translation: West of Moscow, 1983), and the story collection Stezhkamy pryhod (On the Paths of Adventures, 1975). He also compiled a Ukrainian orthographic dictionary (1968) and wrote a book on the elements of literary theory and stylistics (1975) for Ukrainian schools. He contributed many articles and humorous poems and sketches (under the pseudonym Ostap Zirchasty) to Ukrainian émigré periodicals and edited over 20 Ukrainian-Australian books, the almanacs Novyi obrii (New Horizon, 1954–88), and a book of 200 of Borys Antonenko-Davydovych’s letters (1986). Collections of his selected literary articles appeared in 1981 and 1982.

Roman Senkus

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]