Taras Shevchenko was a prolific Ukrainian poet and artist whose work expressed a deep love for Ukraine and its people, and this depth is reflected in his emotive and vivid portrayal of their oppression and impassioned calls for a brighter future through liberation. In the 19th century, Ukraine was under tsarist russia’s control, which suppressed Ukrainian cultural expression and subjugated the peasantry. 

His early experiences of serfdom as an exploitative tool of the imperialist state informed his work throughout his career. His work was repeatedly repressed for its expression of anti-monarchist and revolutionary sentiments, but he continued to persevere as an artist despite facing censorship, detainment, and exile. 

Though few of his works were able to be published during his life, he ultimately produced 237 poetic works, 9 novellas, an autobiography, a journal, and several plays [1]. Shevchenko has long served as a symbol of the Ukrainian fighting spirit, and his relevance to the Ukrainian people has prevailed nearly two centuries later. 

Early Life

Taras Shevchenko was born on March 9th, 1814 in the village of Moryntsi, now modern-day Ukraine, into a peasant family [1]. He began his education under the stewardship of a deacon as a young boy, and in his teens was brought under the service of Pavlo Engelherdt [1]. Young Shevchenko showed great promise as an artist, drawing sketches and writing poetry in his free time [1]. 

On one occasion, he was caught drawing Matviy Platov, a famed Cossack general, by candlelight, but was later caught and whipped for presenting a fire hazard to Engelherdt’s home [2]. This anecdote would prove to become a highly symbolic characterization for his later years, as he was creating art in the dark with a political muse and was ultimately punished for doing so. 

Shevchenko’s talents couldn’t be denied, and he was sent to the painting master Vasiliy Shiryayev in 1831[1]. It was during this time that he developed and honed his craft, which would later earn him acclaim among prominent cultural circles that helped elevate his fame as an artist.

Shevchenko often visited the Summer Garden, where he wrote his early poems and practiced drawing statues [2]. It was there that he became an acquaintance of painter Ivan Soshenko and was brought into his circle of prominent painters and intelligentsia members, who would later pool their money to free him from his serfdom in the spring of 1838 [2]. 

That same year, he gained acceptance to the Imperial Academy of Arts after the Association for the Encouragement of Artists approved his drawings. He excelled under the instruction of Karl Bryullov during his residency and was awarded the Silver Medal three times for his paintings [1].

A Poet of the People

Though he began his career as a painter, Shevchenko is best known for his lyric poems. His works stood out not only for their artistic finesse, but also their firm grasp on the realities of the Ukrainian peasantry’s hardships. He depicted real Ukrainian tragedies, from their lives as serfs to their conscription and needless deaths in russian wars [3]. As his paintings and poetry spread, they were renowned among Ukrainians for their authentic reflection of their troubles and appeals to their aspirations for liberation from russian domination [5]. 

A main focus of his work was the oppression of the Ukrainian nation as a whole, but many notable pieces specifically tackled the social order of serfdom and the aristocracy as a system of subjugation. He was critical of oppression in all its forms and often reflected on the evils of greed and exploitative power dynamics. 

He was unique among his contemporaries for rejecting imperialism as a whole, rather than making simple critiques of a faulty system [3]. Not only did he speak of rebellion in the poems he produced, but the production itself was also a rebellion against the suppression of Ukrainian culture [3]. 

He was the first Ukrainian literary figure to be recognized internationally when he was acclaimed for his first publication of poems in “Kobzar” (“The Bard’s Book”) released in 1840 [5]. Kobzars were transient folk performers in/of Ukrainian culture [5]. Kobzar became an apt nickname for him; his entire literary body was his song, and he travelled worldwide through the dissemination of the written word. 

His approach influenced later generations of Ukrainian artists both thematically and stylistically [3]. He was a pioneer in Ukrainian literature, not just for his fearless condemnation of russian domination but also for his influence on its syntax, structure, and vocabulary [3].

His Work

Early in his career as an artist, he leaned toward Romanticism, but after gaining his freedom from serfdom in 1838, there was a marked shift in the content and tone of his work as he tackled the issues of injustice and oppression in tsarist Ukraine [4]. 

He describes this change in a letter to the editor-in-chief of “People’s Reading”: “‘About my first literature experiments, I can tell the only thing: they started at the Summer Garden during moonless nights. Ukrainian harsh muse avoided my taste, perverted by my school life, in landlord’s hallway. But when the breath of freedom brought my feelings back to the innocence of the first years of my life. It embraced me by the foreign side’” [2].

His exposure to both the harsh realities of serfdom and revolutionary events early in his life would influence his later work. As a young child, he saw and experienced the toll serfdom took on the peasants [1]. During his time with Engelherdt, he witnessed the cruelty of the russian nobles toward their serfs, which grew his hatred for what he believed was an inhumane system, with the powerful lording over the powerless [3]. He would often hear stories from his grandfather, who had borne witness to peasant rebellions, and would later bear witness to rebellion himself in 1830 when the Polish revolution against russia took root [1].

In that wee house, that Eden fair,
That I saw hell…There people slave
Without a let-up night and day,
Not even having time to pray.
In that same village to her grave
My gentle mother, young in years,
Was laid by toil and want and cares.
There father, weeping with his brood
(We were but tiny, tattered tots),
Could not withstand his bitter lot
And died at work in servitude!…
And we – we scattered where we could
Like little mice. I to school –
To carry water for the class.
My brothers slaved on the estate
And then, conscripted, marched away!
And you, my sisters! Fortune has
Reserved for you the cruellest fate!
What is the purpose of your life?
Your youth in service slipped away,
Your locks in servitude turn grey,
In service, sisters, you will die!

          – “If You But Knew” 1850, Orenburg, Translated by John Weir [1]

After he returned to Ukraine from St. Petersburg, he produced new poems and paintings, attracting the attention and gaining the acquaintance of many of the Ukrainian intelligentsia, and his work grew in popularity among prominent circles [1].  

He began to write more openly in sharp opposition to the tsarist regime, and his revolutionary, anti-monarchist sentiments became apparent, particularly in his long-form poems satirizing the regime’s oppression of Ukraine and entreating the people to rise up [3].

You love your brother as is writ
Within the Golden Rule?!
О damned by God, О hypocrites,
О sacrilegious ghouls!
Not for your brother’s soul you care,
But for your brother’s hide!
And off your brother’s back you tear:
Rich furs for daughter’s pride,
A dowry for your bastard child,
And slippers for your spouse.
And for yourself, things that your wife
Won’t even know about!
…
We’re civilised! And we set forth
To enlighten others,
To make them see the sun of truth….
Our blind, simple brothers!!
We’ll show you everything! If but
Yourselves to us you’ll yield.
The grimmest prisons how to build,
How shackles forge of steel,
And how to wear them!… How to pleat
The cruelest knouts!—Oh yes, we’ll teach
You everything! If but to us
Your mountains blue you’ll cede,
The last … because your seas and fields
We have already seized.

          – “The Caucasus” 1845, Pereyaslav, Translated by John Weir [1]

During his time in Kyiv, he met the like-minded members of the Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius and was later among those imprisoned when the arrests of the brotherhood began in 1847 [1]. In April of 1847, he was sent to St. Petersburg, where he covertly composed his collection of poems titled “In the Dungeon” [1]. 

As punishment for his scathing pieces, such as “The Caucasus,” he was exiled to Orenburg for the next several years [4, 1]. Per the orders of tsar Nicholas I, he was barred from creating any art, whether by writing or painting [1]. He launched his own clandestine rebellion by disobeying this part of his sentence, and spent his time in exile transcribing his “In the Dungeon” poems that he hid in his boot [1]. 

When he was caught, he was arrested yet again in 1850 and sent to Novopetrovsk under even stricter surveillance [1]. With his friends’ help, he returned from exile in 1857 [1]. The winter of 1857-58 in Nizhniy was a prolific time for him; he compiled his poems from exile into Bilsha kryzhka (“The Larger Book”) and produced many new ones [1]. His time imprisoned and exiled did not break his spirit or deter him from his protest through writing; it, in fact, emboldened him, as evidenced by his 1857 poem “The Half-Wit” and his 1859 poem “My Friendly Epistle.”

‘Twas in your Sergeant-Major’s reign
That close-cropped Corporal One-Arm
And drink-besotted Long-of-Arm,
Two NCO’s ruled […] Ukraine.
They did things grandly, truth to tell.
They robbed the people very well.
…
Oh fawning, cringing, dastard slaves,
The footstools of the tsar and tools
Of the drunk corporal! Ye aides
And lackeys of men who rule, 
Informer, philistines, not you
For truth and freedom can arise.
Not how to love, but crucify
Your brothers is your venal creed!
Oh treacherous, accursed breed,
When will you pass? When will we greet
Our own George Washington at last
With the new law of righteousness?
Oh, there’s no doubt that day we’ll see!
…
My shining star! My steps you guide
From prison and from exile far
Straight to the cesspool of the tsar,
And shine upon it, glowing bright
With an unearthly, holy light –
Life-giving light, and from the cess
His godless acts of wickedness
Rise up, before me row on row…
Oh tsar of wickedness and woe,
And persecutor of the right!
And as for You, All-Seeing Eye!
As You looked down, did You not spy
How throngs of saints in chains they drove
Into Siberia’s frozen wastes,
How tortured them ‘mid ice and snow,
And crucified! You did not know?

          – “The Half-Wit” 1857, Nizhny Novgorod, Translated by John Weir [1]

Come to your senses! Human be,
Or you will rue it bitterly:
The time is near when on our plains,
A shackled folk will burst its chains,
The Day of Judgment is at hand!
Dnieper will speak across the land.

          – “My Friendly Epistle” 1859, Leipzig, Translated by C.H. Andrusyshen & W. Kirkconnel [1]

In 1859 he was permitted to travel to Ukraine where he hoped to spend the rest of his life, but by July he was arrested a third time for his continued seditious writing [1]. After his release, he had to stay in St. Petersburg and never got to settle in his beloved Ukraine [1]. Returning there was relegated to a lifelong dream, which he was only able to realize posthumously when his friends honored the wishes made clear in “My Testament” and transferred his body there after his death on March 10th, 1861 [1].

When I am dead, bury me
In my beloved Ukraine,
My tomb upon a grave mound high
Amid the spreading plain,
So that the fields, the boundless steppes,
The Dnieper’s plunging shore
My eyes could see, my ears could hear
The mighty river roar.
…
Oh bury me, then rise ye up
And break your heavy chains
And water with the tyrants’ blood
The freedom you have gained.
And in the great new family, 
The family of the free,
With softly spoken, kindly word,
Remember also me.

          – “My Testament” 1845, Pereyaslav, Translated by John Weir [1]

Legacy 

Shevchenko’s work would circulate throughout Ukraine long after his death, even in times of censorship and cultural suppression, and his memory continued to be honored on the commemorative Shevchenko Days [5]. Shevchenko Days have their origin in the efforts of his friends and intellectual contemporaries who arranged poetry readings and literary events in his honor in the late 19th century [5]. These commemorations had to take place covertly throughout much of the 20th century due to political and cultural restrictions, but later rose in scope and popularity after Ukraine regained its independence and became prominent cultural events in Ukrainian communities worldwide [5]. 

Shevchenko Days, as well as his art and poetry, are particularly poignant today after russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. As a new generation faces down the threat of russian occupation, Shevchenko’s work is a testament to Ukraine’s historical legacy of resistance and resilience.

Shevchenko’s life story is a lesson in endurance, in the harshest of times and circumstances. From his time as a serf to his periods of arrest and exile, he continued to write and never backed down from hard topics and observations that would be considered treasonous. Shevchenko’s story also demonstrates how art is a powerful medium. His censorship and multiple arrests for his work show that art presents an apparent danger to those in power. Using his wit as a weapon, his work spoke to the grievances and dreams of the people, and he wielded his art as a unifying and mobilizing force for change. 

In speaking of this period of russian-occupied Ukraine, Ukrainian writer Ivan Franko remarked in 1941 that Shevchenko “suffered ten years from russian militarism, but has done more for the freedom of russia than ten victorious armies” [2]. It is easy to spot the sharp criticism of an oppressive regime in his work; however, it is important to note that it also stressed the importance of hope and keeping hope alive throughout hardship. 

Shevchenko’s life and work embodied the lesson that it is not just courage and determination that are important to hold on to in adversity, but that hope is also a form of resistance. The following quote is his lasting reminder to all Ukrainians resisting russia’s new attempts to dominate the Ukrainian nation to perservere with hope and determination.

Come, my brothers, and embrace
Each your humblest brother.
Make our mother smile again,
Our poor, tear-stained mother!
With hands that are firm and strong
She will bless her children,
Embrace her helpless little ones,
And with free lips, she’ll kiss them.
And those byegone times will be
Forgotten with their shame,
And that glory will revive, 
The glory of Ukraine,
And a clear light, not a twilight,
Will shine forth anew…
Brothers, then, embrace each other, 
I entreat and pray you!

          – “To My Fellow-Countrymen, In Ukraine and Not In Ukraine, Living, Dead and as Yet Unborn My Friendly Epistle” 1845, Vyunishche, Translated by Vera Rich [1]