On April 4, 1918, almost all of Kyiv gathered at St. Sophia Cathedral to see off the writer Ivan Nechuy-Levytskyi on his last journey. The Ukrainian Central Rada ordered a luxurious hearse drawn by four horses for the funeral, but people carried the coffin in their arms. Few of the participants in the crowded and magnificent procession guessed that the writer had lived the last years of his life in poverty, and died in a shelter alone.
107 years after the death of Ivan Nechuy-Levytskyi, Ukrainians saw a photo report from his funeral for the first time. The unique photos were taken by an unknown photographer of the Sich Riflemen. These images were preserved as photonegatives on glass and, together with the photo archive of the Sich Riflemen, ended up in the Ukrainian Museum and Library in Stamford, where they were found and digitized by the American researcher Vasyl Lopukh.
The Last Work of His Life
In 1917, Ivan (Semenovich) Nechuy-Levytskyi and Bishop Oleksiy Dorodnitsyn began translating the Orthodox prayer book into Ukrainian. This was not the writer’s first translation of spiritual works. In 1903, a complete translation of the Bible into Ukrainian was published in Vienna, which Nechuy-Levytskyi helped Panteleimon Kulish to do.
Sometimes Bishop Oleksiy would visit Ivan Semenovich, and the writer would visit him. “The bishop sent for him such a shabby carriage that the poor old man would languish on his back for several days, but he still rode,” Maria Grinchenko recalled in her memoirs about Ivan Nechuy-Levytsky, with whom the writer often consulted during the translation of the prayer book.
— And how would you translate “guardian angel,” — Ivan Nechuy-Levytsky asked Maria Grinchenko.
— And how did you translate it?
— Guardian angel. Is it really beautiful?
— Beautiful.
Writer and translator Maria Grinchenko was Ivan Semenovich’s neighbor. They lived in neighboring houses in Dionysius Lane near the Pokrovsky Monastery in Kyiv. Once Nechuy-Levytsky visited her with Bishop Oleksiy with an unexpected request: “It’s Vladyka and I coming to you. We’ll ask you to replace me when I die. Vladyka will continue to translate liturgical books into Ukrainian, so we’ll have to consult from time to time. So don’t refuse!”
Maria Grinchenko responded to the offer very reservedly, because she didn’t like the bishop right away. Ivan Semenovich was happy: “Oh, you see, Vladyka! Here it is! I told you that I wouldn’t leave you alone and would find a replacement for you. And I did. Now it won’t bother me anymore.”
After some time, Maria Grinchenko saw a prayer book in Ukrainian that had already been published in a Kyiv bookstore. She immediately bought two copies: for herself and for Ivan Semenovich. When she got home, she saw that Bishop Oleksiy had not mentioned a single word about Ivan Nechuy-Levytskyi helping him prepare this publication. The woman hid both copies so that the neighbor would not know that the prayer book had already been printed. Nechuy-Levytskyi never found out about this.
After some time, Maria Grinchenko saw a prayer book in Ukrainian that had already been published in a Kyiv bookstore. She immediately bought two copies: for herself and for Ivan Semenovich. When she got home, she saw that Bishop Oleksiy had not mentioned a single word about Ivan Nechuy-Levytskyi helping him prepare this publication. The woman hid both copies so that the neighbor would not know that the prayer book had already been printed. Nechuy-Levytskyi never found out about this.
Feelings of imminent death
Ivan Nechuy-Levytskyi and the widow of the writer Borys Grinchenko, who lived with her mother in the house next door, became friends. Ivan Semenovich visited them, and Maria Grinchenko helped him in every way. To support the elderly writer, the woman knocked on the doors of the UNR ministry, demanding that Nechuy-Levytsky be granted a state pension, but to no avail. She managed to beg 300 rubles from Serhiy Yefremov. Although Ivan Nechuy-Levytsky criticized Yefremov for his articles, namely for the grammar of the Ukrainian language and the style of presentation of materials, the academician respected Ivan Semenovich and considered him a living genius, so he collected donations from friends for the writer.
In 1917, Ukrainian publishers began to contact Ivan Nechuy-Levytsky with a request to grant them permission to print his works. Maria Grinchenko, who already had experience in signing contracts with publishers, advised the writer on how to conclude agreements. Then Ivan Semenovich had an income. The writer dreamed most of all of new clothes, because what he wore was already completely old, and sometimes even had holes in it.
Ivan Semenovich lived alone in his Kiev apartment. The almost 80-year-old writer became absent-minded and forgetful, weak and sickly. Several times he put a kerosene lamp on the table so that it fell and broke, miraculously the apartment did not catch fire. Or once he fell out of bed at night and wandered around the house, bumping into furniture. Once, getting up from a chair, Nechuy-Levytsky got up several times before he finally got up and said:
— Oh, I guess something will happen soon.
— What will happen, Ivan Semenovich?, — asked Maria Grinchenko.
— But I guess I will die soon, I am not sad at all.
Once Ivan Semenovich left the dining room, slipped, fell, and hurt his leg. A few days later he could no longer get out of bed. His relatives sent him to the hospital near St. Sophia Cathedral.
Occupation in a hospital bed
In December 1917, the Bolsheviks, who had seized power in Petrograd, declared war on the only legitimate body of power in Kyiv – the Ukrainian Central Rada. Incited by Bolshevik populist agitation, armed gangs of soldiers and sailors set out to capture Kyiv. On February 5, 1918, the Russian occupiers began an assault on the capital of the UNR. For three days, bloody street battles raged in the city center.
The occupation of Kyiv was witnessed by the sick and lonely Ivan Nechuy-Levytsky in a hospital bed. During the fighting, Maria Grinchenko did not leave her apartment. Then she herself fell ill, and when she felt better, she went to visit a neighbor. In the meantime, the occupiers had already begun to liquidate the hospital, and there were not only patients in the wards, but even beds. In the end, in one of the empty wards, she did find Ivan Semenovich, covered with his heavy red blanket.
— Are you feeling bad here, Ivan Semenovich? — Maria Grinchenko asked.
— It’s bad. There was a lot of shooting, they say a few shells fell in the yard. And then they started to take the hospital out: commotion, noise. It’s very cold. Now I’m left alone. I spent the night alone that night. It’s bad and cold, and it’s almost scary, — Ivan Nechuy-Levytskyi answered.
Hungry and Cold “Degtyarivka”
On March 1, 1918, the Ukrainian army entered Kyiv, the occupiers fled in panic. Thus ended the almost month-long occupation of the capital of the UNR. It was during the liberation of Kyiv from the Bolsheviks that Ivan Nechuy-Levytskyi’s sister and nephew decided to transport him to the so-called “Degtyarivka.” It was a complex of charitable institutions built with the funds of the Kyiv merchant Mykhailo Degterev. There was a free hospital, an orphanage, and a home for the elderly.
Maria Grinchenko wrote about “Degtyarivka”: “It was what in Ukrainian was called “shpital,” and in Russian, “bogadelnya.” And that “Degterivka” was such a “bogadelnya” that people in it were dying of both hunger and cold. I was horrified when I heard that terrible word and began to beg him not to go there, but to return home, and we would take care of him together. And he answered me all the same to all my persuasions: “No, you can’t. Both my sister and nephew said that he should go there.”
A few days after Ivan Semenovich was transferred to “Degtyarivka,” Maria Grinchenko was visited by a complaining sister. The woman said that it was cold for the writer to lie there, but that he was not hungry. Although his relatives did not leave him any money to support him, the sisters fed him.
On April 1, 1918, the sister from “Degtyarivka” came to Maria Grinchenko again. This time to inform her that Ivan Nechuy-Levytsky would die any day now. She lamented that none of the relatives had visited the writer, and that the deceased would not even have anything to wear.
A funeral at state expense
The main Ukrainian-language newspaper in Kyiv, “Nova Rada,” reported on its front page that Ivan Nechuy-Levytsky had passed away on April 2 at 10 a.m. His body was carefully transferred by his mourning sisters to the church-morgue on the territory of “Degtyarivka.” Academician Sergei Efremov, upon learning of Ivan Semenovich’s death, wrote a lengthy article about his life. He recalled that he had last seen the writer at the Christmas corner, on December 24, 1917, at the home of Archpriest Fyodor Durdukivsky. Serhiy Efremov was the son-in-law of Father Fyodor Durdukivsky, and Nechuy-Levytsky had studied with him at the seminary.
Maria Grinchenko informed the chairman of the Ukrainian Central Rada, Mykhailo Hrushevsky, of the writer’s death. She asked him to organize a state funeral at state expense. On the same day, Hrushevsky convened an extraordinary meeting of the Small Council of the Ukrainian Central Rada. The Council honored the memory of Ivan Nechuy-Levytsky with a minute of silence and decided to bury the writer at state expense and to take the deceased’s property under the protection of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, since according to his will it was the property of the Ukrainian State.
On April 3, the body of Ivan Nechuy-Levytsky was placed in a coffin and transported to St. Sophia Cathedral. This was done secretly, because the statesmen were ashamed that the outstanding Ukrainian writer died forgotten by everyone in “Degtyarivka”.
From the clergy, the organization of the funeral service was entrusted to a member of the Ukrainian Central Rada, the future Archbishop of the Kyiv Region of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, Archpriest Nestor Sharayevsky. The funeral was scheduled for April 4.
The funeral service in St. Sophia Cathedral was led by Bishop Nikodim (Krotkov) of Chyhyryn, second vicar of the Kyiv Eparchy, abbot of the St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery, with the consecration of 12 priests from the city of Kyiv. After the funeral, Bishop Nikodym gave a short sermon over the coffin, but as an ethnic Russian who was not interested in Ukrainian culture, he had little to say about Ivan Nechuy-Levytsky. Nikodym invited Father Nestor Sharayvsky to speak. He was one of the leaders of the Ukrainian Orthodox church liberation movement and personally knew the writer, who was a great authority for all pro-Ukrainian clergy, because in his works he exposed and condemned the Russification of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine. Father Nestor Sharayvsky led the procession of the coffin to the Baykovy cemetery.
reproach on that face, reproach for not looking after him, for not dying in his own house, but as a homeless, rootless bargeman, a “hospital grandfather,” — recalled the writer’s funeral by Maria Grinchenko.“I saw Ivan Semenovich already in Sofia, in the coffin: a withered, serious, even stern face, tightly compressed lips. And I, nervous, imagined
The funeral procession moved through Volodymyrska Street to the Baykovy Cemetery, the hearse was accompanied by writers, public and political figures. The officers and Cossacks of the UNR Army, who were then based in Kyiv, came to Ivan Nechuy-Levytsky’s funeral. Among them were the Sich Riflemen. Ivan Nechuy-Levytsky was buried in the central alley of the Baykovy Cemetery near the grave of the composer Mykola Lysenko.
Andriy Kovalev, candidate of political sciences, head of the public initiative “History of the UAOC”, “Local History”
