Thirty-five years ago, on September 29, 1985, The Ukrainian Weekly ran a series of statements and commentaries following the death on September 4, 1985, of 47-year-old Ukrainian poet Vasyl Stus, who was imprisoned by the Soviets for his poetry and other writings, as well as for his activism as a member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group.
George Sajewycz, in a commentary published by The Washington Post, dated September 14, 1985, noted that Stus was “one of Ukraine’s most promising young poets.” Having died while in custody at the Perm-36 Soviet special-regime labor camp in the Ural Mountains, Stus’s fight for survival and impending death were preserved in the pages of his “Gulag Notebook” that was smuggled abroad. Mr. Sajewycz compared Stus to other notable fighters for human and national rights, including Andrei Sakharov, Anatoly Shcharansky and Bishop Desmond Tutu.