70th anniversary since the birth of Nina Matvienko
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Nina Mytrofanivna Matviyenko (Ukrainian: Ніна Митрофанівна Матвієнко), a Ukrainian singer, People's Artist of Ukraine.
Matviyenko was born on 10 October 1947 in village of Nedilyshche, Ukraine. In 1968 she entered the vocal studio of the Ukrainian State Folk Choir named after Hryhory Veriovka and soon became a soloist. In 1988 she received the Shevchenko National Prize, a Ukrainian State prize named after Taras Shevchenko. Her repertoire includes numerous Ukrainian folk songs. She has performed on television in numerous films and on radio.Listen to her sinng and performing in this great cossack film based on the novel by Hohol, 'The Lost letter' |
70th anniversary since the birth of Sofia Rotaru
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Sofia Rotaru (born 7 August 1947), (Ukrainian: Софiя Михайлівна Ротару is a former Soviet and current Ukrainian pop singer.Rotaru, nicknamed "Bukovinsky Solovey" ("the Nightingale from Bukovina"),emerged in 1966 as a pop folk star in the movie Solovey iz sela Marshintsy (Nightingale from Marshyntsi) in the Romanian and Ukrainian-speaking world after she changed her music style from folk to pop music with Chervona Ruta.As a Crimean resident, she refused Russian citizenship following Russia's annexation of the peninsula
http://www.sofiarotaru.com/ |
75th anniversary of the Ukrainian insurgent army
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In many ways, the current invasion of Ukraine and annexation of the crimea is part of a recurring theme in Ukrainian history: The 300 year old tug-of-war between European Ukraine and the Asiatic Russians. Such was the cause of the Ukrayins’ka Povstans’ka Armiya (UPA). Also known as the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, the group was one of the Second World War’s most peculiar resistance movements in that it received no support from the Allies and battled both Soviets and Nazis alike.
The UPA emerged in 1942 as one of several partisan armies in German-occupied Ukraine. At its peak, the faction claimed nearly a quarter of a million followers. Fiercely nationalist, the group’s raison d’être was to establish a free and independent Ukrainian homeland. While it directed much of its energy to combatting the Axis invaders, the UPA always kept its eye on what it considered the real enemy: the communists. |
And as the fortunes of war on the Eastern Front shifted in favour of the Soviets, the army suspended hostilities against the Germans to fight off the resurgent Red Army. After the war, the UPA would be the last European resistance group to lay down its weapons. In fact, it continued its struggle against the Soviets well into the 1950's. The Ukrainian insurrection would eventually claim more than 35,000 Soviet lives, making it twice as costly to the U.S.S.R. than the Afghanistan War
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