Career
He was an academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (1951), Merited Science Specialist of Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (1966), Merited Art Specialist of Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic (1964), People"s Poet of Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic. Bazhan was a People"s Deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union for two of five convocations (1946–1962), and the Supreme Council of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic for six of nine convocations (1963–1980). In 1943-1949 Bazhan was a Deputy Chairman of the Council of Minister (Commissars) of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Mykola Bazhan was born in city of Kamenyets, an administrative center of Podolia Governorate, yet his youth years he spent in Uman, Kiev Governorate. His father Platon Artemovych Bazhan, a native of Poltava region, was a military surveyor and a veteran of the Ukrainian People"s Army.
In 1923 Mykola Bazhan graduated from the Uman Cooperative College and moved to Kiev where he studied at a cooperative institute at first and later at an institute of foreign relations.
His first poem was published in Kiev in 1923 and his first book "Seventeenth Patrol" in Kharkiv in 1926. In 1940 Mykola Bazhan joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
In 1953-1959 Bazhan headed the Writer"s Union of Ukraine. During the "Khrushchev thaw", on July 2, 1956 he raised before the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine the issue of rehabilitation several repressed writers: Vasyl Bobynsky, Hryhorii Epik, Ivan Kulyk, Mykola Kulish, and many more.
From 1957 and until his death, Bazhan was the founding chief editor of the Main Edition of Ukrainian Soviet Encyclopedia publishing.
The publishing was not completed in his lifetime. The first edition was, however, as the initial Ukrainian Soviet Encyclopedia in 17 volumes was released 1959–1965. A second (and final, as events would develop) 12-volume work was released 1977–1985.
The enterprise was additionally responsible for a large number of other major Ukrainian reference works.
He died in Kiev in 1983.
