Honoring Vasyl Stus

The National Bank of Ukraine will honor Ukrainian author and dissident Vasyl Stus on its new 2,000-hryvnia note. The new bank note, which will enter circulation in September, features Stus’s portrait on the front. The Philology faculty building at Donetsk National University, Stus’s alma mater, is depicted on the back. During a press briefing on the new note, National Bank Governor Andriy Pyshnyy said that the writer is “a symbol of the unbreakable Ukrainian spirit and the embodiment of personal responsibility to the nation, the state, and future generations.” 

Other prominent Ukrainian authors the National Bank of Ukraine has commemorated include Ivan Franko, Taras Shevchenko, and Lesia Ukrainka on the 20-, 100-, and 200-hryvnia notes, respectively. The bank has also honored painter Ivan Padalka and writer Maik (Mykhailo) Johansen on recent commemorative coin releases to recognize their contributions to Ukrainian culture.

Vasyl Stus

Considered one of Ukraine’s foremost poets, Stus was also a translator, literary critic, and journalist. He was a leading figure in the Sixtiers movement (a group of Ukrainian dissidents who challenged Soviet orthodoxy). Stus was arrested numerous times for his pro-Ukrainian stance. The Soviet regime banned his works, and he spent 13 years in Perm-36, a Soviet labor camp for political prisoners. He died after declaring a hunger strike on September 4, 1985. Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko posthumously awarded Stus the country’s highest national title, Hero of Ukraine, on November 26, 2005.