Butkevych and Stus: Filling Oneself-with-One-Self

📅 March 10, 2025 | 18:45
📍 Pilecki Institute Berlin

Ukrainian human rights activist and journalist Maksym Butkevych was captured by russian forces in 2022 and remained a prisoner of war until his release in 2024. Throughout his captivity, he found strength in the poetry of Vasyl Stus, the Ukrainian poet and dissident who also endured years of imprisonment.

Join us at the Pilecki Institute Berlin as Butkevych reflects on how Stus’s poetry helped him to overcome isolation and hardship. Stus believed survival depends on human connection and the creation of meaning — an idea that profoundly shaped Butkevych’s experience.

“In captivity, I was helped by faith and the sense of purpose… I am who I am, and I can only unfold in others, as they unfold in me. We can survive only thanks to others and only in a world that we have created to survive. From what we know at this moment, humans are the only biological beings capable not just of creation but of creating daily and constantly. We create material, valuable worlds. We create meanings. The universe, through our eyes, acquires meaning and significance…”

The talk will elaborate on Butkevychs experience in captivity and Stus’ concept of Filling Oneself-with-One-Self — an idea that survival requires self-creation and relationships with others. Butkevych will also read Stus’s poetry alongside an exhibition about the Ukrainian dissident writer, who became a source of strength in his darkest moments.

 🗣 Event held in English, register here: LINK
🔗 Join us in person at the Pilecki Institute Berlin.