In the program "Portrait," his friends and colleagues: sculptor Orest Yavorsky, writers Vasyl Chaban and Levko Riznyk share their memories of the national figure, poet, and Sixties activist Mykola Kholodnyi.
Mykola Kholodnyi was born on July 31, 1939, in the Chernihiv region. After studying at the Karilsk seven-year school, he entered the Faculty of Philology at Kyiv University, from which he was expelled for speaking at a discussion about Arsen Ishchuk's novel Verbivchany.
Mykola Kholodnyi continued his studies in Odesa after being reinstated in 1968. He protested, along with Lina Kostenko and Ivan Drach, in front of the Lviv Regional Court, where Myroslava Zvarychevska, Mykhailo Osadchyi, and Bohdan and Mykhailo Horyn were tried.
Mykola Kholodnyi's poems were published in Rome, Toronto, Paris, and the United States. For criticizing the policies of the Communist Party in the collection "A Scream from the Grave" he was evicted from Kyiv and later arrested in 1972 for anti-Soviet propaganda.
Since 1976, Mykola Kholodnyi lived in the town of Oster in the Chernihiv region. The American Biographical Institute recognized the poet as a Person of the Year in 1999.
He died in mid-February 2006 under unclear circumstances at his home.
The video includes fragments from Vasyl Chaban's private video archive.