Vyacheslav Bryukhovetsky, reviver of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, dies at 79
Ukrainian literary scholar, educator and People's Movement co-founder Vyacheslav Bryukhovetsky died on 12 November aged 79. Ukrainska Pravda has published an interview recorded with him in 2019 that never ran at the time.
Vyacheslav Bryukhovetsky, a Ukrainian literary scholar, educator, journalist and public figure, died on 12 November 2026. He was one of the founders of the People's Movement of Ukraine and honorary president of the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. He was 79. In 2019, the Ukrainian outlet Ukrainska Pravda recorded an interview with him for its "Core of the Nation" project, but it was not published then. The editorial team has now returned to the archive and decided to release it in his memory and in recognition of his contribution to building an independent Ukraine.
The idea of reviving the academy
Bryukhovetsky's name is above all linked to Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, whose revival he initiated. Asked in the 2019 interview why he had reformed it, he answered briefly: "Out of foolishness." He added that, with his experience today, he probably would not repeat it, because in 1991 he did not know what lay ahead, including a heart attack, pacemakers and heart valves.
Childhood and youth
Bryukhovetsky was born in 1947 in Dzaudzhikau, today's Vladikavkaz, in North Ossetia. His father had served through the entire war to Berlin and returned alive. The family left Ukraine after the death of his older brother, who on 1 May 1945 was killed by a mine in his grandmother's yard in Kaniv. Soon after Vyacheslav's birth they moved to Cherkasy, because shrapnel was still working its way out of his father's head and doctors advised living in Ukraine's climate. His parents were regarded as children of "enemies of the people", and the family was kept under surveillance.
At school he struggled with Russian, as the family spoke Ukrainian at home. He later studied at a food-industry technical school in Smila and served in the army in 1967–1968. In 1974 he entered the journalism faculty of Kyiv's Shevchenko State University, worked at the newspaper Literaturna Ukraina, and later moved into scholarship, becoming a postgraduate student at the Shevchenko Institute of Literature.
