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Alla Horska (Ukrainian artist, dissident, native of Yalta)

Alla Horska (18 September 1929, Yalta — 28 November 1970, Vasylkiv) was a Ukrainian artist of the sixtiers generation, a monumentalist and dissident, and a native of Crimea. She belongs among the iconic figures who embody the connection of Crimea with Ukrainian culture.

Overview

Alla Horska was born on 18 September 1929 in Yalta, in the family of Oleksandr Horsky, director of the Yalta Film Studio, and died tragically on 28 November 1970 in the town of Vasylkiv in the Kyiv region. She was a Ukrainian artist of the sixtiers generation, worked in easel and monumental painting (mosaics, stained glass), and also became one of the active participants of the dissident movement. Although her childhood was spent outside Ukraine (in Crimea and russia), as an adult she consciously switched to the Ukrainian language and actively joined the national-cultural revival. Her biography is regarded as an example of a Crimean Ukrainian, a compatriot of whom supporters of the idea of Ukrainian Crimea can be proud.

Key Details / Subtopics

  • Childhood (Yalta, Moscow, Leningrad): Born in Yalta into the family of the director of the Yalta Film Studio. From Yalta the family moved to Moscow, and later to Leningrad, where the war caught up with them. Alla and her mother survived two hungry blockade winters, and in the summer of 1943 moved to her father in Alma-Ata. Her entire childhood up to the age of fourteen was spent either in Crimea or in russia; her brother Arsen died at the front as a volunteer.
  • Move to Kyiv and education: At the end of 1943 the family moved to Kyiv, where her father headed the film studio (later named after O. Dovzhenko). From 1946 Alla studied at the Kyiv Shevchenko State Art School for gifted children (graduated in 1948 with a gold medal), then at the painting faculty of the Kyiv Art Institute. In the summer of 1952 she married the artist Viktor Zaretsky; in 1959 she was admitted to the Union of Artists.
  • Ukrainization and dissidence: In the summer of 1961 a sketching trip to the village of Hornostaipil in the Kyiv region prompted the couple to switch to the Ukrainian language. Alla took lessons from Nadiya Svitychna (together with Halyna Sevruk and Liudmyla Semykina) and joined the creative youth club "Suchasnyk" (Contemporary). She took an active part in the commission for collecting materials about Stalinist repressions — together with the poet Vasyl Symonenko and the director Les Taniuk, including during a trip to Bykivnia, the site of mass burials of victims of the repressions.
  • Murder and funeral: A few days before her death she filed a protest to the Supreme Court of the Ukrainian SSR regarding the sentence handed down to the historian Valentyn Moroz. She died on 28 November 1970 in Vasylkiv, where she had gone to the home of her father-in-law Ivan Zaretsky; her body was found in a cellar. The circumstances point to KGB involvement. The funeral took place on 7 December 1970 at Berkovets Cemetery in Kyiv.
  • Creative legacy: She worked on mosaics and stained glass (the mosaic panel "The Banner of Victory, or the Relay Race," 1969; the stained-glass window "Shevchenko. Mother"). The stained-glass window "Mother," created in 1964 by Alla Horska together with Liudmyla Semykina, Opanas Zalyvakha, Halyna Sevruk and Halyna Zubchenko, was destroyed by order of the party leadership. Her paintings are preserved in Ukrainian and European museums.
  • Connection with Crimea: A native of Yalta, a Crimean Ukrainian. Despite having left Crimea as a child and having mastered the Ukrainian language as an adult, her figure is regarded as an example of the sprouting of the Ukrainian idea and as a compatriot of whom supporters of Ukrainian Crimea are proud.