Mykhailyna Khomivna Kotsiubynska (18 December 1931 — 7 January 2011) was a Ukrainian literary critic, translator, and active participant of the Sixties movement.
[1] Kotsiubynska graduated from the Faculty of Philology of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv (1949-1954) with a major in "Ukrainian language and literature", and took the post-graduate course there.
Under the leadership of academician Oleksandr Biletskyi Kotsiubynska defended her PhD thesis Shevchenko's Poetics and Ukrainian Romanticism.
Since 1992, Kotsiubynska was a senior researcher at the Department of Manuscript Funds and Textology of the Institute of Literature named after Taras Shevchenko, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
Kotsiubynska was an active participant in the Sixtiers movement, a non-conformist group of the Ukrainian intelligentsia that resisted the Soviet occupation in a non-violent way.
[6] She participated in the protest after watching Serhii Parajanov 's film Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors in the "Ukraine" cinema against the arrests of the Ukrainian intelligentsia in 1965.
[8] In 1972 Kotsiubynska was regularly interrogated by the KGB of the Ukrainian SSR, in particular, in the case of Vasyl Stus, whom she gave a high profile at the court.
She sent a letter of protest to the head of the Communist Party of Ukraine Volodymyr Shcherbytskyi, demanding the release of Nadiya Svitlychna from arrest.
Kotsiubynska did not sign a joint letter of repentance with Zinovia Franko, fabricated by the KGB authorities, which was supposed to discredit the Sixtiers movement.
[7] Yevgen Sverstyuk, Ivan Svitlychny, Yuriy Badzyo, and other members of the Sixtiers movement united in the Creative Youth Club had an exceptional influence on her.