Mykhailo Yalovy

Mykhailo Yalovy () (June 5, 1895 - November 3, 1937) was a Ukrainian communist poet-futurist, prose writer, playwright. He is considered to be one of the leading figures of the Executed Renaissance.

Brief biography

Early years and the Revolution
Yalovy was born in 1895 in the village of Dar-Nadezhda, Kostiantynhrad uyezd, in the Poltava Governorate (today Kharkiv Oblast), into the family of a volost scribe. He had two brothers Kostiantyn and Hryhoriy. His general education he obtained in Myrhorod gymnasium in 1916. After that he enrolled in the Medical Department of the Kiev University of Saint Vladimir. There he completely is dove into a revolutionary activity becoming a member of one of the most influential of that political lifetime party of socialist-revolutionaries (essery or SR).

Since the beginning of the February Revolution he returned to Kostiantynhrad (today Krasnohrad) where he headed a revolutionary committee. Later he was elected to the Executive Committee of the Kostiantynhrad Council of Workers' and Peasants' Deputies. After the left wing of essery split in 1918 as a separate party of Borotbists he became their one of the most distinct members. He took active participation in issuing of newspapers Borotba (Struggle) and Selianska bidnota (Poor peasantry) for the last of which he became a director. About at the same time he also works as a chief editor in the newspaper Peasant and Worker, the instructional-agitation locomotive of the Head of Central Executive Committee of Ukraine Hryhoriy Petrovsky.

He provides active underground work in Odessa and Kherson region. There he was organizing a fight against the German occupational forces and Hetman-followers. In 1919 as part of the Borotbist delegation he visited Halychyna.

Creative work and activism
In 1920 Yalovy enrolled into the CPU(b). For sometime he was located in Moscow as a representative of the Ukrainian government. In 1921 together with Mykahilo Symenko and Vasyl Aleshko created the Strike group of poet-futurists in Kharkiv. Together with Oleksa Slisarenko and Mykola Bazhan Yalovy became a member of Hart in 1925, later the same year with several members of Hart he creates VAPLITE becoming its president.

In 1926 Yalovy published an article Saint-Petersburg's kholuystvo (kholuystvo is a derogatory Russian word for ignorance) in the defense of the national Ukrainian culture that was triggered by another article of the Leningrad magazine Zhyzn isskustva (#14), Self-determination or chauvinism?. On November 20, 1926 he was fired together with Mykola Khvyliovy from the editorial collegiate o
f Chervony Shliakh by the order of the Politburo of Central Committee Communist Party of Ukraine (bilshovyks). Later him, Dosvitny, and Khvyliovy left VAPLITE in order to save the organization, but at the end it was forces to dissolve on its own.

Arrest and imprisonment
Mykhailo Yalovy was arrested on the night of 12/13 May 1933 during the search of his apartment by the agents of GPU Ukrainian SSR.

On 31 May 1933 he was excluded from the CPU(b) on the grounds that he had infiltrated its ranks with the aim of creating a counter-revolutionary fascist organization that had the goal of overthrowing the Soviet government. Yalovy was accused of spying for the Polish consulate, of Shumskizm, and of preparing to assassinate the first secretary of CPU(b) Pavel Postyshev (Kharkiv-city and oblast). He refused to acknowledge  himself guilty of these crimes.

Yalovy was sentenced to 10 years in correctional-labor camps (ITL, part of GULAG).

Execution, burial and rehabilitation
A few years later, during the Great Purges, Yavlovy was summarily sentenced on 9 October 1937  at a session of the extrajudicial, special NKVD troika of the Leningrad Oblast to be shot  at one of the killing field-burial grounds in Karelia. The execution, a bullet to the back of the head in front of a ready dug trench, took place a few weeks later on 3 November 1937 in Svirlag OGPU (Lodeynoye Pole). Other data indicate that Yavlovy's final resting place may be among the thousands shot and buried at Sandarmokh near Medvezhyegorsk.

After Stalin's death, Yavlovy and the many thousands of other victims condemned to die by the extrajudicial troikas were rehabilitated. On 19 June 1957, the conviction was annulled by the Military tribunal of Leningrad Military District (LVO) because there were no charges to answer.

See also
Chervony Shliakh

Works
 Need to be chewed out. — 1920.
 (Collection of poetry) Tops. — Kyiv—Moscow—Berlin: Golfshtrem, 1923.
 (Comedy) Cathy's love, or construction propaganda. — Kharkiv, 1928.
-+** (Novel) Golden Fox-kits. — Kharkiv: Knyhospilka, 1929. (II ed. — Kharkiv: Knyhospilka, 1930.)
 Selected works / Organization, foreword, footnotes, and commentaries of Oleksandr Ushlakov. — Kyiv: Smoloskyp, 2007. ()

Bibliography
 Encyclopedia of Ukrainian Studies (10 volumes) / Chief editor Volodymyr Kubiyovych. — Paris, New-York: Molode Zhyttia, 1954—1989.
 Maystrenko, Ivan. History of my generation. Memoirs of a participant of revolutionary activities in Ukraine. — Edmonton, 1985.
 Ushlakov, Oleksandr. Greetings, Yulian Shpol! («Драстуй, Юліане Шпол!») // Yulian Shpol. Selected works. — Kyiv: Smoloskyp, 2007.

External links
 Golden fox-kits at University of Toronto website
 Biography at the website Ukrainian life in Sevastopol
 Biography at the website Library of the Ukrainian literature

Category:1895 births
Category:1937 deaths
Category:People from Sakhnovshchyna Raion
Category:People from Poltava Governorate
Category:Ukrainian communists
Category:Ukrainian poets
Category:Futurist writers
Category:Great Purge victims from Ukraine
Category:Ukrainian people executed by the Soviet Union
Category:Soviet rehabilitations