Former editor-in-chief of Odesa Film Studio tells about underground exhibitions of the 70s

Odesa in 1970, with underground exhibitions, censorship, and fear of speaking Ukrainian - 95-year-old poet Stanislav Stryzheniuk recalled writers' apartments, closed artistic circles, and summonses to party offices.

Intent presented the second part of the interview with the artist, and he still asks uncomfortable questions about monuments that need to be removed and renamed.

A former head of the Department of Culture, he remembers the exchange of theaters with Lviv and friendship with artists such as Mykhailo Bozhii, Alla Krykun, Hennadii Harmyder, the Kryzhevsky family, as well as meetings and conversations with Lina Kostenko, Pavlo Tychyna, Oles Honchar, Maksym Rylskyi, Borys Necherda, and Mykola Vingranovskyi. In his words, Odesa appeared not as an architecture but as a living organism-a city of people, stories, and losses, where poetry was a way to survive and not betray oneself.

In May 2021, at the Odesa National Scientific Library, Stryzheniuk presented the book "Judgment Day. Dramatic Cossack Thought in Three Parts, dedicated to Hetman Mazepa. In 2024, a new book "Peace. Love. Memory". It includes both old poems that have not yet been published and those written during the full-scale invasion.

Кирило Бойко