INSPIRED BY A QUOTE FROMTIGER TRAPPERS
These words come from Tiger Trappers, a novel by Ukrainian writer Ivan Bahrianyi.
Written in hiding during the war and published in exile afterwards, the book tells the story of a young Ukrainian who escapes oppression and chooses freedom, dignity, and hope despite overwhelming odds.
For many Ukrainians, it has become a timeless reminder that courage is not only about surviving difficult times, but about staying true to your values.
ТИГРОЛОВИ
Tyhrolovy · The Hunters and the Hunted
Born Ivan Lozoviaha in 1906. Arrested in 1932 for the politics of his poetry and sent to the camps of the Far East, he escaped, was caught on the way home to Ukraine, and had three years added. Arrested again in 1938, he was released in 1940 after refusing to sign a confession. He died in Bavaria in 1963, having never returned.
A young Ukrainian named Hryhoriy Mnohohrishny throws himself from a moving NKVD prison train into the Far Eastern taiga. Half-dead, he is taken in by the Sirkos, a family of Ukrainian settlers who make their living hunting tigers. What follows is a story about survival, but more about refusing to be broken.
Bahrianyi wrote it in 1943, in hiding in occupied Ukraine. It was published in exile, and did not appear in print at home until 1991 — half a century travelling among people who had also left and could not return. It is read in Ukrainian schools now. The line on your pin is one of its most quoted.
Scanned from a copy the Boston Public Library gave away — it beat Agency to Boston by about seventy years.
Both are digitised copies held by the Internet Archive.
This was created as a small piece of Ukraine to share with the people I had the privilege of building Agency with.
