The bandura-playing engineer
Soiree in memory of Mykhailo Teliha held in Kyiv
The contemporary bandurists Taras Sylenko, Vasyl Lytvyn, Taras Kompanychenko, Yaroslav Chornohuz, and Mykola Lytvyn entertained the guests who gathered at the Teachers’ House in Kyiv.
Who was Mykhailo Teliha? Why do we remember his wife, the famous writer Olena Teliha, but not him?
He was born on Nov. 21, 1900, into the ancient Cossack family of Yakiv Teliha, the otaman of the Kuban Cossack village of Okhtyrska. One of Mykhailo’s classmates played the bandura and introduced him to Mykola Bohuslavsky, who not only taught Teliha to play the bandura, but also sparked his interest in the history of Ukraine. Later Bohuslavsky recommended another teacher to Mykhailo: Yakiv Derevianko, a Cossack from the Cossack village of Pashkivska. He taught Teliha “The Song of Morozenko,” “The Zaporozhian March,” and other compositions.
The young bandurist’s progress was stunning. In the summer of 1916, when Teliha learned that Vasyl Yemets, the founder of the First Kuban School of Bandurists, was living in Gelendzhyk, he covered about 40 kilometers on foot just to hear this master play.
When the revolution broke out in 1917, a free Great United Ukraine appeared in Teliha’s imagination. “Soon the Kuban National Council was established,” he wrote. “How many fine speeches were made during the sessions of that council! What glorious plans were made! What excitement erupted around the national question!” In the summer of 1917 Ukrainian Studies courses for teachers were launched in Katerynodar. The Kuban National Council invited teachers from the Ukrainian mainland to teach them, and a decision to Ukrainize all the schools was passed.
Certain progress was achieved in this area. School instruction in Ukrainian was introduced in Teliha’s village as early as fall 1917. In 1918 the first Ukrainian gymnasium was opened in Okhtyrska thanks to the efforts of Kuzma Bezkrovny, a member of the Legislative Council. “The Kuban region has begun to flourish splendidly,” Teliha wrote. This state of affairs did not last long. The vicious Muscovite predators encircled the Kuban region and pressed as hard as they could.
Teliha decided to leave for Ukraine, where the “great Ukrainian state was being forged!” The first concert of the Kobzar Choir was performed in Kyiv on Nov. 3, 1918, in the crowded Bergonier Theater (today: the Lesia Ukrainka Theater). Until 1925 Teliha was held in an internment camp in Kalish. Then he moved from Poland to Podebrady, Czechoslovakia, to study forestry at the Ukrainian Economic Academy headed by Rector Ivan Shovheniv, the father of his future wife Olena Teliha, the well- known Ukrainian poetess and public figure.
Both Olena and Mykhailo were members of Vasyl Avramenko’s dance group in 1925- 27. Their friendship evolved into love, and Yevhen Pohoretsky, an Orthodox priest, married them on Aug. 1, 1929, in the Evangelical Church of St. Nicholas in Podebrady. The Telihas moved to Poland in 1929, after Mykhailo completed his studies at the academy. In Poland he worked as a land surveyor in the village of Zelazna- Rzadowa.
In 1941 Olena joined the OUN expeditionary groups and returned to Kyiv to organize literary activities there. She headed the Writers’ Union and became the editor in chief of the Litavry literary weekly. Soon Mykhailo joined her.
In 1942 he was shot by the Nazis together with other members of the Writers’ Union headed by Olena.
