Vasyl Stus. As Long As We’re Here, Everything Will Be Fine (Curatorial Text)

“As long as we’re here, everything will be fine” was an affirmation coined by Vasyl Stus in a letter to his friend Anatolii Lazorenko in 1962. It was a response to Lazarenko’s hesitation about the odds of the Ukrainian-speaking cultural environment in its confrontation against the so-called international, i.e., Russian-speaking, Soviet culture. Today, this appeal sounds literally like a call for those weary and despondent. Amidst turbulence, we are all looking for sources of strength and stability, and Vasyl Stus could be extremely supportive when it comes to warding off despair. Indeed, his legacy proves to be of great help as, over the course of the Russian-Ukrainian war, we observe a sharp spike in interest in the experiences his generation went through.

Overall, the life story of Vasyl Stus is widely known. He was born in 1938. In 1959, he graduated from the Donetsk Pedagogical Institute with a degree in Ukrainian language, literature, and history. In 1963, Stus moved to Kyiv to devote himself to literature. First got arrested by the Soviets in 1972 and spent five years in Mordovian labour camps, with subsequent exile to Kolyma. Got charged for the second time in 1980, and was sentenced to ten more years in camps and five years in exile. He died as a camp prisoner in the Urals on September 4, 1985. The most striking thing about this timeline is the chronological proximity of those milestones to our present. It is all that close that a historical figure is rather perceived as our contemporary, and the facts of his biography align with our own lives. Indeed, under more favourable circumstances, Vasyl Stus could be among us now. He could become “a drop in the ocean” as opposed to belonging to a “tiny speck” of outcasts that he was forced to.

Moreover, a fairly extensive Stus archive, including video and audiovisual pieces, has been preserved. So we all have a chance to listen to the living testimonies of people basically acting as mediators between the past and the present. The stories they shared laid the foundation for our project. We are not trying to recount the biography of Vasyl Stus, but rather focus on his ethical code, with the key concepts of kshtaltuvannia (Ukr. “shaping”), kvituvannia (Ukr. “blooming”), and samosoboiunapovnennia (Ukr. “self-fulfillment”) outlining the complex model of Stus’s behavior and creativity. His poetry, literary studies and journalism, translations, and prose—a diverse legacy—are challenging to fully comprehend without being aware of the context. Stus’s life and work are like a web interlaced and interdependent, for the moral values he proclaimed are inseparable from his deeds. All of it results in a unique personal experience that literary critic Tamara Hundorova aptly called zhertvoslov (Ukr. “selfless mouth”). The way Vasyl Stus ultimately managed to live up to his asserted principles is awe‑inspiring. Without a doubt, the artistic value of most of his texts matches the author’s personal virtues, the chief one being his truthfulness.

In an effort to “not fall prey to defile” and steer clear of hypocrisy and falsehood, Stus grew a thorn in the side of those in power as well as party‑approved literary functionaries. His close circle would find him hard-to-understand, and eventually, weighed down by solitude, he would stand up “alone against the whole world.”

Along with that, it is exactly this integrity of Stus’s personality that is the most captivating these days. His intellectual presence is in extreme demand at the ethical crossroads between good and evil we find ourselves at every day. We are continuously faced with a personal choice of enduring with dignity and moving on freely. For “as long as we’re here, everything will be fine.”

The curator of the project: Olga Melnyk

The exhibition “Vasyl Stus. As Long as We’re Here, Everything Will Be Fine”

will open at the Mystetskyi Arsenal (10–12 Lavrska Street) on 13 November 2025 and will run until 8 February 2026

Opening hours: 12:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. (ticket office open until 6:30 p.m.)