Vasyl Nosachevskyi (22 March 1885, Berezna, Chernihiv province, now an urban-type settlement of the Menskyi district of Chernihiv region, last place of residence Dnipro, Krasna str. 14 - 17 August 1962, Dnipro; buried at Zaporizhzhia Cemetery) - Katerynoslav educator, artist, teacher. A victim of Russian occupation terror.
He lived in Katerynoslav since 1901. From June 1901 to October 1921, he served in the Ekaterinoslav State Chamber as a clerk, counting official, assistant to the mayor of the city of lower and higher salaries. (One of the leading positions in the state chamber was held by Fedir Ol.)
In the state chamber, Nosachevsky met his future wife, Anna Komarova (1895-1974). After the October Revolution, the Treasury Chamber was transformed into a financial department under the Provincial Executive Committee, and Nosachevsky worked there until the autumn of 1921 as the head of the stamp table. From November 1921 to May 1933, he worked as a legal adviser at the Bryansk factory.
From the spring of 1933 to September 1937, he was a legal adviser to the Dnipro regional branch of the Ukrainian Society for the Deaf and Dumb. In September 1937, he was arrested (more on this below) and returned to Dnipro at the end of the war. From February 1945 to June 1947, he worked as a legal adviser to the regional pharmacy department. After retirement, he worked as a teacher at the Dnipro Music School, and from November 1950 to February 1952, he was a bandura teacher at the Dnipro Central Children's Music School.
From an early age, he felt attracted to music and singing. In 1912-1916, he studied at the Yekaterinoslav Music School of the Russian Musical Society, majoring in vocals (this was confirmed after the war by the head of the school's educational department Natalia Wilpert). In 1919, he became a member of the trade union of "workers of the pen" (membership card No. 1616).
In September 1919, Nosachevskyi, as an artist of the drama troupe that performed in the Summer Theatre of the City Garden in Katerynoslav, played in a number of performances of the Ukrainian repertoire. He performed the roles of Petro in Kotliarevskyi's Natalka Poltavka, Andrii in Hulak-Artemovskyi's Zaporozhian Beyond the Danube, Lesko in Manko's Zaporozhian Treasure, and the investigator in Zakharenko's Sinner, among others.
In 1919-1921 and later, he was an artist at the Taras Shevchenko Ukrainian State Theatre (formerly the Coliseum) - this theatre was also called the Ukrainian Workers' Soviet Drama at the Gubnarosvit. He performed there in plays directed by H. Boyko - in the roles of Andrii in Zaporozhets Beyond the Danube, Lei in Hrynchenko's The Steppe Guest, Levko in May Night, Petro in Natalka Poltavka, and Khoma Brut in M. Kropyvnytskyi's The Eyelash based on Gogol.
In January 1921, he was involved in the preparation and celebration of the anniversary of the 1st Cavalry Army. The family archive has a certificate dated 26 September 1921:
"The bearer of this certificate, an artist of the Ukrainian State Theatre, comrade Nosachevskyi V.I., is being sent to the village of Surska Mykhailivna to organise a concert-lecture of Ukrainian songs...".
In the early 1920s, Nosachevsky performed in concerts of the M. Lysenko Artistic Chapel under the direction of Ivan Patorzhynsky (head of the choir S. Sahaidyn, assistant conductor P. Babenko). As a bandura player, Nosachevsky, in particular, performed the Ukrainian duma "Fate" (music by Hryhorii Kontsevych). Concerts of the chapel were also held on the stage of the Lunacharsky Bolshoi State Theatre.
Nosachevsky performed with great success as a bandura player at the traditional Shevchenko festival held on 7 March 1920 by the Prosvita branch in the village of Chapli, Novomoskovsk district (now a village in Dnipro).
"The kobzar's playing and his wonderful singing," reported a contributor to the "Spozhyvach", "captivated the audience, and until then our citizens had never heard kobza playing and could not take their eyes off the wonderful 30-string kobza and kept asking to play all the strings...".
A poster has been preserved that announced that on Saturday, 14 April 1923, the Proletarian Revolution Workers' Club Theatre would host a benefit performance of the Ukrainian artist and singer Vasyl Nosachevsky in the fantastic extravaganza The Winged Man based on Gogol (directed by Vovk). The announcement announced preparations for the staging of the famous plays In the Midst of the Storm and What Sawdust Rustled About.
In 1924, the Zankovetska Theatre toured the Lunacharsky Theatre in Katerynoslav, with Panas Saksahanskii, a coryphaeus of the Ukrainian stage, as its star. Nosachevsky was lucky enough to play with him.
On the occasion of the 105th anniversary of Kotliarevsky's Natalka Poltavka, this performance was staged by Saksahanskii. The opening speech was delivered by writer and Pluh member Maksym Lebid. The Sicheslavsk audience had the opportunity to see P. Saksahanskii in the role of Vybornyi and Nosachevskyi in the role of Petro. And in "Cossacks Beyond the Danube" (also staged by P. Saksahanskii), P. Saksahanskii played the role of Ivan Karas, and Nosachevskyi played the role of Andrii.
Teaching activity
In 1930-1935, Nosachevskyi worked as a teacher at the branch of the Kharkiv Music and Theatre Workshop in Dnipro. From April 1933 to September 1937, he worked at the Ilyich Palace of Culture of the Petrovsky Plant in Dnipro, where he led a bandura band. He promoted Ukrainian art, and in November 1936, as a member of the bandura band, he participated in the Republican Olympiad in Kyiv. Nosachesky maintained friendly relations with Professor D. Yavornytskyi. In 1935, when the latter turned 80, he invited Nosachevsky to his anniversary. In a lyrical tenor, the kobzar performed Taras Shevchenko's "Dumy My, Dumy My", songs about Baida, Karmalyuk, Morozenko, Suprun, and many others from his rich repertoire. Academician D. Yavornytskyi presented Nosachevskyi with his fiction book "For Another's Sin" with the following inscription: "To a sincere Cossack, a mustacheless kobzar V. Nosachevsky, so that the kobza may play and the soul may sing. D. Yavornytskyi". Nosachevsky recalled his meetings with D. Yavornytsky:
"Communicating with this encyclopaedist of the Cossacks, I was enriched spiritually, felt aesthetic pleasure."
Interestingly, Nosachevsky is named as the founder of the Katerynoslav "Prosvita" in a memo addressed to the secretary of the Dnipro City Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine Levitin "On the contamination of entertainment enterprises and the proliferation of ideologically unsupported repertoire" (February 1934) by the head of the GPU department Mironov and the head of the GPU secret political department Govlych.
Nosachevsky was described as:
"a Ukrainian, born in 1934, a lawyer by profession, head of the bandura band at the radio centre and the Palace of Culture, a Ukrainian nationalist, a former church singer of the autocephalous church, founder of the Yekaterinoslav Prosvita.
Arrest by the NKVD and exile
Nosachevsky was arrested by the NKVD on 8 September 1937. Nosachevsky was imprisoned for 27 months, until 20 December 1939. The investigators accused him of belonging to a mythical counter-revolutionary organisation, to which he was allegedly drawn by another musician, the director of the Zorya choir. Mykola Mits (1888-1937). Nosachevsky, who had been the director of amateur performances at the Palace of Culture since 1934, did know Mits and had sung in the choir for some time.
Nosachevsky did not plead guilty during the investigation, and the investigating authorities could not confirm the charges against him.
By the decision of the Special Meeting of the NKVD of the USSR of 11 October 1939, Nosachevsky was sent into exile in remote places of the USSR (Kazakhstan) for a period of five years, where he remained until October 1944. As Nosachevsky wrote in a complaint to the prosecutor of the Dnipro region in November 1956, demanding rehabilitation, "my arrest, detention and exile had a heavy impact on my health, official and social position, I was always persecuted, had many troubles and was not given work in my speciality."
Nosachevsky led a choir in exile and in Kazakhstan. The grandson's archive contains a diploma issued to Nosachevsky in the town of Stepnyak (now Kokchetavsk region of Kazakhstan). In July 1940, the jury of the 1st Regional Amateur Olympiad of the Akmola Regional Union of Gold and Platinum Workers "awards you a diploma for good leadership of the choir".
The case against Nosachevsky was reviewed by the Presidium of the Dnipro Regional Court on 26 February 1958. The resolution of the Special Meeting of the NKVD of 11 February 1939 regarding Nosachevsky was cancelled and the case was discontinued for lack of corpus delicti. On 24 November 1956, when Mykola Mits was being prepared for rehabilitation, Nosachevsky was interrogated (at that time he was working as a teacher at an evening music school). "I knew Mits from about 1934 until the day of his arrest (in August 1937 - M. Ch.) as the head of the Dnipro Regional Choir," Nosachevsky testified, "I was then the head of amateur performances at the Ilyich Palace of Culture and sang in the choir for some time. My relationship with Mick was normal, purely businesslike... I have nothing bad to say about Miec during my acquaintance with him". After this interrogation, Nosachevsky applied to the prosecutor for his own rehabilitation.
From November 1949 to 1 April 1952, Nosachevsky was the director of the bandura ensemble of the Dnipro Regional Philharmonic. He was dismissed from this position by the director of the Philharmonic, Torchyshnyk, by order of 18 March 1952. Later, Nosachevsky taught at an evening music school.
The above information is based on documentary materials, but at one time, some biographical information about Nosachevsky was recorded by folklorist Mykola Dolhov in the words of his daughter Natalka. We present them here. Nosachevsky's mother was a housewife, and his father was a carpenter at the school where they lived. The father sometimes worked as a shoemaker.
In 1901, the family moved to Katerynoslav, where Nosachevskyi, who was capable of knowledge, began to study. In the late 1930s, Nosachevskyi's family - his second wife, daughter, and son - lived at 1 Krutohirna Street (now 1 Rohalova Street). Then they were forced to vacate the apartment for the first secretary of the regional committee, Mendel Khataevych (after the war, Leonid Brezhnev also lived at this address), and the family was relocated to 14 Kirova Ave.
In the 1930s, Nosachevsky organised a trio of bandura players and performed together with Mykhailo Trubka (a Hupala educator of the same name) and Viktor Makovtsev. During the Second World War and the capture of the city by German troops, Trubka played the bandura before screenings in the cinema now known as Vitchyzna. After the war, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison for this. The fate of M. Trubka is unknown. After serving more than two years in a Dnipro prison, Nosachevsky was sent to a five-year exile in Northern Kazakhstan. There he made a zither and played it.
Return to Ukraine
After serving his exile, he intended to stay in Tomsk or Omsk (the latter was home to many Ukrainians). He led music groups in clubs. However, he went to Ukraine with the help of his brother, who returned from the war and wrote a petition for him to be summoned to Dnipro. From exile, Nosachevsky brought his zither with him to Ukraine.
Nosachevsky had a son, Oleh, and a daughter, Natalia (1925 - 1 July 2001). His son Viacheslav Nosachevsky became a professor at the Astrakhan Conservatory in 1994 and now lives in Krasnodar. His grandson Rostyslav Olehovych is a lawyer in Dnipro.
Nosachevsky was well acquainted and kept in touch with the former educator Prokop Yakymenko (1882-1966), a master of musical instruments. Nosachevsky's bandura is now kept in the Dnipro Historical Museum named after Dmytro Yavornytskyi.
