1.
Carl Sagan
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Carl Edward Sagan was an American astronomer, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, science popularizer, and science communicator in astronomy and other natural sciences. He is best known for his work as a science popularizer and his best known scientific contribution is research on extraterrestrial life, including experimental demonstration of the production of amino acids from basic chemicals by radiation. Sagan argued the now accepted hypothesis that the surface temperatures of Venus can be attributed to. Sagan published more than 600 scientific papers and articles and was author, co-author or editor of more than 20 books. He wrote many science books, such as The Dragons of Eden, Brocas Brain and Pale Blue Dot. The most widely watched series in the history of American public television, the book Cosmos was published to accompany the series. He also wrote the science fiction novel Contact, the basis for a 1997 film of the same name and his papers, containing 595,000 items, are archived at The Library of Congress. Sagan always advocated scientific skeptical inquiry and the method, pioneered exobiology. He spent most of his career as a professor of astronomy at Cornell University and he married three times and had five children. After suffering from myelodysplasia, Sagan died of pneumonia at the age of 62, Carl Sagan was born in Brooklyn, New York. His father, Samuel Sagan, was an immigrant garment worker from Kamianets-Podilskyi, then Russian Empire and his mother, Rachel Molly Gruber, was a housewife from New York. Carl was named in honor of Rachels biological mother, Chaiya Clara, in Sagans words and he had a sister, Carol, and the family lived in a modest apartment near the Atlantic Ocean, in Bensonhurst, a Brooklyn neighborhood. According to Sagan, they were Reform Jews, the most liberal of North American Judaisms four main groups, both Sagan and his sister agreed that their father was not especially religious, but that their mother definitely believed in God, and was active in the temple. During the depths of the Depression, his father worked as a theater usher, according to biographer Keay Davidson, Sagans inner war was a result of his close relationship with both of his parents, who were in many ways opposites. Sagan traced his later analytical urges to his mother, a woman who had extremely poor as a child in New York City during World War I. As a young woman she had held her own ambitions, but they were frustrated by social restrictions, her poverty, her status as a woman and a wife. Davidson notes that she therefore worshipped her only son, Carl and he would fulfill her unfulfilled dreams. However, he claimed that his sense of wonder came from his father, in his free time he gave apples to the poor or helped soothe labor-management tensions within New Yorks garment industry
2.
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (book)
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Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, A Search for Who We Are is a 1993 book by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan. In the final chapters, they examine primates in detail, comparing the details between anatomically modern humans and the extant species most closely related to them, shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, A Search for Who We Are
3.
Sergei Parajanov
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Sergei Parajanov was a Soviet film director and artist of Armenian descent who made significant contributions to Soviet cinematography through Ukrainian, Armenian, and Georgian cinema. He invented his own style, which was totally out of step with the guiding principles of socialist realism. This, combined with his lifestyle and behaviour, led Soviet authorities to repeatedly persecute and imprison him. Although he started professional film-making in 1954, Parajanov later disowned all the films he made before 1965 as garbage, after directing Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors Parajanov became something of an international celebrity and simultaneously a target of attacks from the system. He was imprisoned until 1977, despite a pleas for pardon from various artists, even after his release he was a persona non grata in Soviet cinema. It was not until the mid-1980s, when the climate started to relax. Still, it required the help of influential Georgian actor Dodo Abashidze, in January 1988, he said in an interview, Everyone knows that I have three Motherlands. I was born in Georgia, worked in Ukraine and Im going to die in Armenia, Sergei Parajanov is buried at Komitas Pantheon which is located in the city center of Yerevan. Parajanov was an member of the Georgian social scene. Parajanov was born Sarkis Hovsepi Parajaniants to artistically gifted Armenian parents, Iosif Paradjanov and Siranush Bejanova, in Tbilisi and he gained access to art from an early age. In 1948 he was convicted of acts with a MGB officer named Nikolai Mikava in Tbilisi. He was sentenced to five years in prison, but was released under an amnesty after three months, in video interviews, friends and relatives contest the truthfulness of anything he was charged with. They speculate the punishment may have been a form of retaliation for his rebellious views. In 1950 Parajanov married his first wife, Nigyar Kerimova, in Moscow and she came from a Muslim Tatar family and converted to Eastern Orthodox Christianity to marry Parajanov. She was later murdered by her relatives because of her conversion, after her murder Parajanov left Russia for Kiev, Ukraine, where he produced a few documentaries and a handful of narrative films, Andriesh, The Top Guy, Ukrainian Rhapsody, and Flower on the Stone. He became fluent in Ukrainian and married his wife, Svitlana Ivanivna Shcherbatiuk, also known as Svetlana Sherbatiuk or Svetlana Parajanov. Shcherbatiuk gave birth to a son, Suren, in 1958, andrey Tarkovskys first film Ivans Childhood had an enormous impact on Parajanovs self-discovery as a filmmaker. Later the influence became mutual, and he and Tarkovsky became close friends, in 1965 Parajanov abandoned socialist realism and directed the poetic Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, his first film over which he had complete creative control
4.
Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky
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Mykhailo Mykhailovych Kotsiubynsky, was a Ukrainian author whose writings described typical Ukrainian life at the start of the 20th century. The popularity of his novels led to some of them being made into Soviet movies. He grew up in Bar, Vinnytsia region and several towns and villages in Podolia. He attended the Sharhorod Religious Boarding School from 1876 until 1880 and he continued his studies at the Kamianets-Podilskyi Theological Seminary, but in 1882 he was expelled from the school for his political activities within the socialist movement. Already he had been influenced by the awakening Ukrainian national idea and his first attempts at writing prose in 1884 were also written in the Ukrainian language, Andriy Soloviyko. From 1888 to 1890, he was a member of the Vinnytsia Municipal Duma, in 1890, he visited Galicia, where he met several other Ukrainian cultural figures including Ivan Franko and Volodymyr Hnatiuk. It was there in Lviv that his first story Nasha Khatka was published, during this period, he worked as a private tutor in and near Vinnytsia. There, he could study life in traditional Ukrainian villages, which was something he often came back to in his stories including the 1891 Na Viru and the 1901 Dorohoiu tsinoiu. During large parts of the years 1892 to 1897, he worked for a commission studying the grape pest phylloxera in Bessarabia, during the same period, he was a member of the secret Brotherhood of Taras. He moved to Chernihiv in 1898 where he worked as a statistician at the bureau of the Chernihiv zemstvo. He also was active in the Chernigov Governorate Scholarly Archival Commission, after the Russian Revolution of 1905, Kotsiubynsky could be more openly critical of the Russian tsarist regime, which can be seen in Vin ide and Smikh, both from 1906, and Persona grata from 1907. Fata Morgana, in two parts from 1904 and 1910, is probably his best-known work, here he describes the typical social conflicts in the life of the Ukrainian village. About twenty novels were published during Kotsiubynskys life, several of them have been translated into other European languages. Because of a disease, Kotsjubynskyj spent long periods at different health resorts on Capri from 1909 to 1911. During the same period, he visited Greece and the Carpathians, during the Soviet period, Kotsiubynsky was honoured as a realist and a revolutionary democrat. A literary-memorial museum was opened in Vinnytsia in 1927 in the house where he was born, later a memorial was created nearby the museum. The house in Chernihiv where he lived for the last 15 years of his life was turned into a museum in 1934, the house contains the author’s personal belongings. Adjacent to the house is a museum, which opened in 1983, containing Kotsiubinsky’s manuscripts, photos, magazines, several Soviet movies have been based on Kotsiubynsky’s novels such as Koni ne vynni, Dorohoiu tsunoiu and Tini zabutykh predkiv
5.
Ivan Mykolaichuk
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Ivan Vasylyovych Mykolaichuk was a Ukrainian soviet actor, producer, and screen writer from Ukraine. He is best known for playing the Hutsul Ivan in Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors and he received the Komsomol prize of Ukraine in 1967, and the title of Meritorious Artist of the Ukrainian SSR in 1968. He posthumously received the Taras Shevchenko prize, Mykolaichuk was born in a village of Chortoryia in Western Ukraine during World War II in a family of peasants. Ivan graduated from a school of the neighboring village of Brusnytsia. In 1957 he finished the Chernivtsi Music College and in 1961 he graduated from the theater-studio of the Chernivtsi Music-Drama Theater of Kobylyanska, on August 29,1962 Ivan married an actress of the theater Maria Karpiuk. In 1963-65 he studied in the Karpenko-Karyi Memorial Kyiv Institute of Theatrical Arts, during those years Ivan debuted in the Leonid Osykas movie Dvoye. His films were controversial and suppressed by the Soviet authorities, sometimes his films were banned from being screened by the KGB. The movie, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, that received the Gold Prize of the 7th Moscow International Film Festival in 1971, was perceived almost as an attack by nationalistic forces. Mykolaichuk died in August 1987 at the age of 46 and his house in Chortoryia, Kitsman Raion, Chernivtsi Oblast, has since been turned into a museum. He left a legacy on Ukrainian film. Many consider him to be the greatest actor in the history of Ukrainian Cinematography and he also inspired other Ukrainian artists, actors, singers and writers who were searching for their Ukrainian identity in the Soviet era
6.
Larisa Kadochnikova
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Larisa Kadochnikova is a Ukrainian and Russian actress. She appeared in Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, a 1964 film directed by Sergei Paradjanov, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors has been viewed as one of the most vivid and gratifying films of Soviet cinema as well as an exceedingly unorthodox one. The storyline revolves around two separated lovers caught in a family feud, the film created a stir worldwide, being praised for its direction, cinematography and soundtrack, among other aspects. Media related to Larisa Kadochnikova at Wikimedia Commons Larisa Kadochnikova at the Internet Movie Database
7.
Myroslav Skoryk
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Myroslav Skoryk is a Ukrainian composer and teacher. His music is contemporary in style and contains stylistic traits from Ukrainian folk traditions, Myroslav Skoryk was born in what was then the Polish city of Lwów, now the western Ukrainian of Lviv. His parents were educated in Austria at the University of Vienna and subsequently became educators. His father was a historian and an ethnographer, while his mother was a chemist, although his parents did not have special musical training, his mother played piano and his father played the violin. Skoryk was exposed to music in the household from an early age, No less important was the fact that in his family was a well-known diva of the 20th century – Skoryks great aunt was the Ukrainian soprano Solomiya Krushelnytska. In 1947 Skoryks family were deported to Siberia, where Myroslav grew up, between 1955 and 1960 Skoryk studied at the Lviv Conservatory, and there he received training in composition and theory. Skoryk’s final exam piece was a Cantata Vesna, on verses of Ivan Franko for soloists, mixed choir, in 1960, Skoryk enrolled in the postgraduate research program at the Moscow Conservatory where he studied with the composer Dmitri Kabalevsky. During this time, Skoryk composed music in a vast array of styles, symphonic, chamber, and vocal. Some works from this include the Suite in D Major for Strings, Sonata No.1 for Violin and Piano. His Burlesque came to be a work in piano competitions, most notably the Vladimir Horowitz Piano Competition in Kiev, Ukraine. Skoryk graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in 1964 and took a job at the Lviv Conservatory where he remained until 1966. Shortly after, he accepted a position at the Kiev Conservatory where he said, Along with teaching composition classes, the subject of Skoryk’s dissertation, which he completed in 1964, concentrated on Prokofiev’s music, its title reads Osoblyvosti ladu muzyky S. Prokofieva. Skoryk also wrote a book, Struktura i vyrazhalna pryroda akordyky v muzitsi XX stolittia as well as numerous articles, notable students include the composers Osvaldas Balakauskas, Ivan Karabyts and Yevhan Stankovych, as well as Hanna Havrylets and Bohdana Frolyak. In 1996 Skoryk lived for a time with his family in Australia and received Australian citizenship, Myroslav Skoryk is a composer, pianist and conductor. 2014/music/44857 Skoryk, Myroslav Mykhaylovych in Grove Music Online, accessed 1 September 2015
8.
Ukrainian language
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Ukrainian /juːˈkreɪniən/ is an East Slavic language. Written Ukrainian uses a variant of the Cyrillic script, historical linguists trace the origin of the Ukrainian language to the Old East Slavic of the early medieval state of Kievan Rus. After the fall of the Kievan Rus as well as the Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia, the Modern Ukrainian language has been in common use since the late 17th century, associated with the establishment of the Cossack Hetmanate. From 1804 until the Russian Revolution, the Ukrainian language was banned from schools in the Russian Empire and it has always maintained a sufficient base in Western Ukraine, where the language was never banned, in its folklore songs, itinerant musicians, and prominent authors. The Ukrainian language retains a degree of intelligibility with Belarusian and Russian. The first theory of the origin of Ukrainian language was suggested in Imperial Russia in the middle of the 18th century by Mikhail Lomonosov and this theory posits the existence of a common language spoken by all East Slavic people in the time of the Rus. Another point of view developed during the 19th and 20th centuries by linguists of Imperial Russia, like Lomonosov, they assumed the existence of a common language spoken by East Slavs in the past. This general point of view is the most accepted amongst academics worldwide, the supporters of this theory disagree, however, about the time when the different languages were formed. Soviet scholars set the divergence between Ukrainian and Russian only at time periods. During the time of the incorporation of Ruthenia into the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and this point of view is, however, at variance with some historical data. In fact, several East Slavic tribes, such as Polans, Drevlyans, Severians, Dulebes, White Croats, Tiverians, notably, some Ukrainian features were recognizable in the southern dialects of Old East Slavic as far back as the language can be documented. In contrast, Ahatanhel Krymsky and Alexei Shakhmatov assumed the existence of the spoken language of Eastern Slavs only in prehistoric times. According to their point of view, the diversification of the Old East Slavic language took place in the 8th or early 9th century, Ukrainian linguist Stepan Smal-Stotsky went even further, denying the existence of a common Old East Slavic language at any time in the past. Similar points of view were shared by Yevhen Tymchenko, Vsevolod Hantsov, Olena Kurylo, Ivan Ohienko, according to this theory, the dialects of East Slavic tribes evolved gradually from the common Proto-Slavic language without any intermediate stages during the 6th through 9th centuries. The Ukrainian language was formed by convergence of tribal dialects, mostly due to a migration of the population within the territory of todays Ukraine in later historical periods. This point of view was supported by George Shevelovs phonological studies. During the 13th century, when German settlers were invited to Ukraine by the princes of Galicia-Vollhynia and their influence would continue under Poland not only through German colonists but also through the Yiddish-speaking Jews. Often such words involve trade or handicrafts, examples of words of German or Yiddish origin spoken in Ukraine include dakh, rura, rynok, kushnir, and majster
9.
Ukrainians
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Ukrainians are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Ukraine, which is by total population the sixth-largest nation in Europe. The Constitution of Ukraine applies the term Ukrainians to all its citizens, also among historical names of the people of Ukraine Rusyns, Cossacks, etc. can be found. According to some definitions, a descriptive name for the inhabitants of Ukraine is Ukrainian or Ukrainian people. Belarusians and Russians are considered among the bloodline of Ukrainians, while Rusyns are another closely related group, the ethnonym Ukrainians became widely accepted only in the 20th century after their territory obtained distinctive statehood in 1917. People of these territories were usually called Rus or Rusyns, the Ukrainian language appeared in the 14th – 16th centuries, but at that time, it was mostly known as Ruthenian, like its brothers. In the 16th – 17th centuries, with the establishment of the Zaporizhian Sich, however, the ethnonym Ukrainians and the linguonym Ukrainian were used only occasionally, and the people of Ukraine usually continued to call themselves and their language Ruthenian. This official name did not spread widely among the peasantry constituted the majority of the population. Ukrainian peasants still referred to their country as Ukraine and to themselves, in areas outside the control of the Russian/Soviet state until the mid-20th century, Ukrainians were known by their pre-existing names for much longer. The modern name derives from Ukrayina, a name first documented in 1187. Several scientific theories attempt to explain the etymology of the term, according to some new alternative Ukrainian historians such as Hryhoriy Pivtorak, Vitaly Sklyarenko and other scholars, translate the term u-kraine as in-land, home-land or our-country. The name in this context derives from the word u-kraina in the sense of domestic region, in the last few centuries the population of Ukraine experienced periods of Polonization and Russification, but preserved a common culture and a sense of common identity. Most ethnic Ukrainians live in Ukraine, where make up over three-quarters of the population. The inhabitants of the Kuban, for example, have vacillated among three identities, Ukrainian, Russian, and Cossack, approximately 800,000 people of Ukrainian ancestry live in the Russian Far East in an area known historically as Green Ukraine. According to some assumptions, an estimated number of almost 2.1 million people of Ukrainian origin live in North America. Large numbers of Ukrainians live in Brazil, Moldova, Kazakhstan, Poland, Argentina, Belarus, Portugal, there are also Ukrainian diasporas in the UK, Australia, Germany, Latvia, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Ireland, Sweden and the former Yugoslavia. Today, large ethnic Ukrainian minorities reside in Russia, Canada, Ukrainians have one of the largest diasporas in the world. The East Slavs emerged from the undifferentiated early Slavs with the Slavic migrations in the 6th and 7th centuries CE, the East Slavs were united in the Kievan Rus during the 9th to 13th centuries. East Slavic tribes cited as proto-Ukrainian include the Volhynians, Derevlianians, Polianians, and Siverianians and the less significant Ulychians, Tivertsians, the Gothic historian Jordanes and 6th-century Byzantine authors named two groups that lived in the south-east of Europe, Sclavins and Antes
10.
Hutsuls
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Hutsuls are an ethno-cultural group of Ukrainians, who for centuries have inhabited the Carpathian mountains, mainly in Ukraine and in the northern extremity of Romania. Hutsuls regard themselves as being part of the broader Rusyn ethnic minority and/or as Ukrainian highlanders, there are different versions for the origins of the name Hutsul. An explanation is that it comes from the Romanian word for outlaw, however these are obsolete and non-academic assertions. No valid theories have been proposed yet, the name is mostly an exonym, used by neighbouring groups and not Hutsuls themselves, although some have embraced it. Hutsuls inhabit areas situated between the south-east of those inhabited by the Boykos, down to the part of the Romanian segment of the Carpathians. Several hypotheses account for the origin of the Hutsuls, according to Romanian historian Nicolae Iorga, huțuli or huțani are denationalized Romanians. According to Ukrainian sources, some Hutsuls identify themselves as a part of Ukrainian ethnos, Hutsul is usually considered to be a dialect of Western Ukrainian with some Polish influences. However, some regard it as a form of the Rusyn language. Since the annexation of Transcarpathia by Stalin compulsory education has been conducted only in standardized literary Ukrainian, in recent times there has been a roots movement to keep the traditional Hutsul dialect alive. Along with other Hutsul traditions, as well as their songs and dances, Ukrainian Hutsul culture bears a resemblance to neighboring cultures of western and southwestern Ukraine, particularly Lemkos and Boykos. These groups also share similarities with other Slavic highlander peoples, such as the Gorals in Poland, similarities have also been noted with some Vlach cultures such as the Moravian Wallachians in the Czech Republic, as well as some cultures in Romania. Most Hutsuls belong to the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Hutsul society was traditionally based on forestry and logging, as well as cattle and sheep breeding, the Hutsuls are credited with having created the breed of horse known as the Hucul pony. One of the attributes of Hutsul males is their bartok. They use unique musical instruments, including the trembita, a type of alpenhorn, as well multiple varieties of the fife, or sopilka, also frequently used are the bagpipe, the Jews harp, and the hammered dulcimer. Sergei Parajanovs 1965 film Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, which is based on the book by Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky, every summer, the village of Sheshory in Ukraine hosts a three-day international festival of folk music and art. Two Hutsul-related museums are located in Kolomyia, Ukraine, the Pysanky museum, traditional Hutsul sounds and moves were effectively used by the Ukrainian winner of the 2004 Eurovision song contest, Ruslana Lyzhychko. The Romanian Hutsuls have a Festival of Hutsuls at the Moldova-Sulița village in Suceava county
