This year's Vasyl Stus Prize was awarded to Taras Vozniak, a culturologist, political scientist, founder of the Independent Cultural Journal “Yi,” and Director General of the B. Voznytsky Lviv National Art Gallery. The members of the jury announced the name of the winner during a solemn ceremony held on September 15 at the Taras Shevchenko National Museum.

The winner of the Vasyl Stus Prize received a cash prize and a statuette designed by designer Dmytro Pokrasion and sculptor Stanislav Kadochnykov.

The laudations – speeches about the prize winner’s contribution to the development of Ukrainian culture and our country in general – were prepared by Leonid Finberg, a culturologist and editor-in-chief of Dukh i Litera publishing house, and Andrii Pavlyshyn, a journalist, public figure, historian and translator.

“Our world is not just about people who sacrificed their lives for an extraordinary mission. There are other roles of people who respond to the challenges of today. Not with a short phrase, but with a comprehension of phenomena with the help of new knowledge. This is exactly Taras Wozniak’s contribution: he helps us to understand our present. Thanks to the magazine “Yi” founded by him, we do not even have a planet, but a galaxy. Each of the blocks he works with, such as philosophical, historical, local lore, covers the whole topic,” said Leonid Finberg, Dukh i Litera publishing house editor-in-chief and the Vasyl Stus Prize jury, during the award ceremony.

“When our statehood was being ruined, when it was destroyed and did not exist, there were always people-institutions who kept the phenomenon of Ukraine on themselves. We sincerely care about finding such people, their nature, their influence, their responsibility, their leadership. Vasyl Stus once said that a person should always feel the only duty – “to be a grateful son of the earth.” This is typical of the whole cohort of people of this type, who, as people-institutions, carried, carry and will carry Ukraine’s ability to self-reproduction, to development, to what will give us the feeling that we have a future. Taras Wozniak is one of such people,” said Oleksandr Savruk, Dean of the Kyiv-Mohyla Business School and a member of the jury of the Vasyl Stus Prize.

Let us recall, the Vasyl Stus Prize was founded in 1989 by the Ukrainian Association of Independent Creative Intelligentsia headed by Yevhen Sverstiuk (1928-2014). It is awarded annually to writers, artists, directors, musicians, cultural managers for their contribution to Ukrainian culture and the stability of the civic position.

Since 2016, Ukrainian PEN, Kyiv-Mohyla Business School and Dukh i Litera publishing house have taken on the task of continuing this initiative.

More than 70 Ukrainians have won the Vasyl Stus Prize in previous years, including Opanas Zalyvakha, Mykhailyna Kotsiubynska, Vasyl Ovsienko, Ivan Svitlychnyi, Yevhen Zakharov, Volodymyr Viatrovych, Mariia Burmaka, Sashko Polozhynskyi, Taras Kompanichenko, Telnyuk sisters, Oleksandra Koval, Serhii Zhadan, Borys Gudziak, Akhtem Seitablaev.

Candidates for this year’s Prize were nominated by a jury consisting of: Myroslav Marynovych, Chairman of the Jury, publicist, founding member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, Honorary President of the Ukrainian PEN; Akhtem Seitablaev, actor, director, director of the State Enterprise “Crimean House,” winner of the Vasyl Stus Prize for 2020; Andrii Kurkov, Ukrainian writer, President of the Ukrainian PEN; Bogumila Berdychowska, publicist, head of the scholarship department of the National Cultural Center in Warsaw; Olia Hnatiuk, researcher, professor at NaUKMA and the University of Warsaw, vice-president of the Ukrainian PEN; Yurko Prokhasko, essayist, translator; Oleksandr Savruk, Dean of Kyiv-Mohyla Business School; Eleonora Solovei, literary critic; Dmytro Stus, director of the Shevchenko Museum; Leonid Finberg, editor-in-chief of Dukh i Litera publishing house.

Ukrainian PEN is one of 146 autonomous national PEN centers. International PEN originated in 1921 in London. The organization is designed to defend the right of authors to freedom of speech, to promote the cooperation of intellectuals from different countries, as well as to support the development of literature and promote reading. Ukrainian PEN was founded in 1989 and is a co-founder of Vasyl Stus, Y. Shevelyov, Gongadze awards and Drahomán Prize.

Kyiv-Mohyla Business School [kmbs] is a school for leaders who seek change in themselves, their companies, the country, the world. Its creators, teachers and graduates believe that the breakthrough development of participants in the KMBS educational programs will lead to a quality leap in the development of companies, and hence our country and the world as a whole.

Photo by Olexandr Kulykov