OBITUARY: Petro Odarchenko, literary scholar, linguist, 102 (04/09/06)

OBITUARY: Petro Odarchenko, literary scholar, linguist, 102

by Yaro Bihun

WASHINGTON - Petro Odarchenko, a prominent scholar of Ukrainian literature and a linguist, died here on March 12. He was 102. All who knew him and his life's work addressed him as Prof. Odarchenko even though the university lecture hall had not been the setting for his professional life for more than 60 years, and even then, in the terrible Soviet 1930s, repression, imprisonment and exile afforded him precious little time for that as well.

Today he is known and respected for the 12 books and some 650 articles he wrote for numerous Ukrainian periodicals in the West and in Ukraine. He did so by pursuing his life's work after coming to the United States in 1950 - mostly in the evenings and on weekends, while employed professionally in other areas, and full-time after retiring in 1973.

He was a frequent contributor to the Ukrainian-language-usage feature "Mova pro movu" in Svoboda.

Prof. Odarchenko's first book, on the norms and style of the Ukrainian language, was published in 1946 in Germany; his last, an autobiography, titled "I am 100," was published in Ukraine in 2004.

In between, there were more books on the Ukrainian language, books about his two favorite writers, Lesia Ukrainka and Taras Shevchenko, literary criticism and a bibliography.

The book cited as his most important contribution to the study of Ukrainian literature was one he did not write but edited: "Lesia Ukrainka: Chronology of Life and Creative Work," which was authored by the famous writer's sister, Olha Kosach-Kryvynyuk (1877-1945). This 920-page definitive study of Lesia Ukrayinka was published in 1970 by the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the United States (UVAN).

Prof. Odarchenko was a member of UVAN and the Shevchenko Scientific Society, and he was a recipient of numerous awards for his scholarly work from these two institutions and the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, which presented him with an honorary doctorate in 2003.

Petro Vasyliovych Odarchenko was born in 1903 in Rymarivka, a village in the Poltava region of Ukraine. He received his secondary education in Hadiach, where he developed his interest in Ukrainian literature. There, he lived in a house once owned by the 19th century writer and political activist Mykhailo Drahomanov and got to know the writer Olena Pchilka, who also lived in that house.

He began his higher education in 1920 at the Poltava branch of Kharkiv University and finished his graduate work and wrote his thesis on Lesia Ukrainka at the Nizhyn Institute of History and Culture in 1928. There he began what would become a short-lived and intermittent career as a teacher and scholar.

He was arrested in 1929 for "belonging to a counter-revolutionary organization with the goal of bringing down Soviet rule and establishing an independent Ukraine." After six months in prison, he was exiled for three years to Kazakhstan. A similar arrest-exile routine was repeated in 1933, after which, in 1937, he began moving from city to city, looking for, and sometimes obtaining, teaching or research work.

Under German occupation, he returned to Kyiv, but in 1943 he left Ukraine forever by way of Warsaw, Vienna and post-war Germany, finally reaching the United States.

As was the case with many Ukrainian immigrants with professions not easily adaptable to comparable employment in this country, Prof. Odarchenko first found work in a button factory and later at a train station, on the midnight clean-up crew, which happened to also include the Ukrainian poet Todos Osmachka.

In 1952 Prof. Odarchenko came to Washington, where for two years he worked for the Library of Congress and afterward, until his retirement in 1973, as a writer and editor at the Voice of America.

Prof. Odarchenko died nine days after his wife of 75 years, Maria Derhacheva Odarchenko, passed away on March 3 at the age of 97. Both were buried at St. Andrew Ukrainian Orthodox Church Cemetery in South Bound Brook, N.J.

They are survived by two sons: Alexander Odarchenko of Kingston, N.Y., and Paul Odarchenko, with his wife, Lonny, and daughter Julie, of Potomac, Md.

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