Valeriy Marchenko was a poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

, journalist

Journalist

A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...

, translator, and member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group

Ukrainian Helsinki Group

The Ukrainian Helsinki Group was founded in November 1976 to monitor human rights in Ukraine. The group was active until 1981 when all members were jailed....

.

Marchenko was born into an educated family. His grandfather, Mykhaylo Marchenko, was the first Soviet

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 dean of the University of Lviv.. His mother was a teacher of literature..
Valeriy Marchenko completed the Kiev

Kiev

Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....

 Academy of Arts and worked in the newspaper Literary Ukraine (Ukrainian: Літературна Україна) as a translator. He translated into Ukrainian from Azerbaijani

Azerbaijani language

Azerbaijani or Azeri or Torki is a language belonging to the Turkic language family, spoken in southwestern Asia by the Azerbaijani people, primarily in Azerbaijan and northwestern Iran...

 and Polish

Polish language

Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...

. His speciality was Azerbaijani-Ukrainian literary relations.

On June 25, 1973, Marchenko was arrested and charged with Anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda, mainly for three articles he wrote, as well as his efforts to publicize Ivan Dziuba

Ivan Dziuba

Ivan Dziuba is a Ukrainian literary critic, social activist, dissident, Hero of Ukraine, academic of National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, the second Minister of Culture of Ukraine , Head of the Committe for Shevchenko National Prize .Co-Chief of Editorial Board of the Encyclopaedia of Modern...

's work Internationalism or Russification?

Internationalism or Russification?

Internationalism or Russification? is a book by Ukrainian writer and social activist Ivan Dziuba, written in September-December 1965.-History of writing:...

in Ukraine. On December 29, 1973, Marchenko was sentenced to 6 years imprisonment and 2 years exile.

Activity during Incarceration

During his incarceration in the Soviet prison system, Marchenko worked as archivist for everything he saw. He collected and published personal accounts about the daily life of prisoners, interviews, and essays.

He also translated many works into Ukrainian, such as the United States Declaration of Independence

United States Declaration of Independence

The Declaration of Independence was a statement adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, which announced that the thirteen American colonies then at war with Great Britain regarded themselves as independent states, and no longer a part of the British Empire. John Adams put forth a...

, as well as works by Robert Burns

Robert Burns

Robert Burns was a Scottish poet and a lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland, and is celebrated worldwide...

, Voltaire

Voltaire

François-Marie Arouet , better known by the pen name Voltaire , was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion, free trade and separation of church and state...

, and Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...

 .

Second Arrest

On October 23, 1983, Marchenko was arrested a second time and again charged with Article 62 of the Soviet penal code, Anti-Soviet Agitation and Propaganda.
Marchenko was declared a dangerous offender, and was sentenced to ten years imprisonment and five years of exile

Exile

Exile means to be away from one's home , while either being explicitly refused permission to return and/or being threatened with imprisonment or death upon return...

.
He was held in terrible conditions, where he became ill. Because of international pressure for the freedom of journalists, he was allowed to move from the camp to a hospital. However, it was already too late.

On or about October 7, 1984, Valeriy Marchenko died in a Leningrad hospital. He is buried in the village of Hatne, in the Kiev Oblast

Kiev Oblast

Kyiv Oblast, sometimes written as Kiev Oblast is an oblast in central Ukraine.The administrative center of the oblast is the city of Kyiv , also being the capital of Ukraine...

. Today, in Kiev school Number 175, there is a museum devoted to the life and work of Valeriy Marchenko.