Valentyn Rechmedin

Who was Valentyn Rechmedin?

Valentyn Ostapovych Rechmedin, 12 February 1916 – 6 June 1986 was a Ukrainian journalist and writer.

He grew up in the village of Andrushivka in present Pohrebyschenskyi Raion, Vinnytsia Oblast, where his father was a teacher.

After studies at Uman Cooperative Technicum he started his career as a journalist in 1934 at Molodyi Bilshovyk in Vinnytsia. In 1939 he started to work at Vilna Ukraïna and later at Leninska Molod in Lviv.

Valentyn remained in Ukraine also after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941. Later he became active in the Soviet partisan movement in the Vinnytsia area. In his partisan group he edited its Partyzanska Pravda. After the war he was awarded the Order of the Red Star.

After World War II he moved to Kiev where he worked at the newspapers Radianska Ukraïna, Literaturna Ukraïna and Kultura i zhyttia and the magazine Vitchyzna.

Valentyn started to write novels after the war. The stories were often based on his own experiences during the war. He always wrote in the Ukrainian language, but several books have been translated into Russian.