Poet and Writer Petro Ruh's Biography

The poet and writer Petro Ruh (Petro Victorovich Orlov) was born in 1970 in Yevpatoria, where he spent his childhood and adolescence. Then he moved to the mountain village Prokhladnoye (Bakhchisaray district).

He has been writing poems since he was seven, and since then his poems have been published.
After occupation Crimea by Russia in 2014 he leaved Crimea. He founded the Hryhorii Skovoroda East European Publishing Company Ltd. He was the President of that Publishing Company. 02.03.2015 he was resigned from the post of the President of the Hryhorii Skovoroda East European Publishing Company Ltd voluntarily in connection with his decision to join the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to protect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine from aggression from the Russian Federation.

Since 04.02.2015 to 13.04.2016 he took part in hostilities as a soldier of the Ukraine Army in Donestk region.

In 2017-2018 he was a member of the Anticorruption Commission of the Public Council at the Shevchenkivskyi District State Administration in Kyiv. In 2018 he was the Enthusiasts Council NGO Board Member.

Since 2016, he was the vice-coordinator and sance 2021 he is the coordinator of the Kyiv Shevchenkivskyi District Organization of the Mikheil Saakashvili New Forces Movement Political Party. He was a candidate for People's Deputy of Ukraine, included in the electoral list of the Mikheil Saakashvili New Forces Movement Political Party at the special elections of People's Deputies of Ukraine on July 21, 2019.

He devotes himself to literary, teaching and socio-political activity.

From 2021 until the full-scale invasion of the Russian army into Ukraine, he was the head of the Chernihiv branch of the Simple Solutions and Results Office of the National Reforms Council under the Ukraine President, founded by Mikheil Saakashvili.

Since February 24, 2022, he has been fighting against the Russian army as part of the Chernihiv territorial defense force. 

Petro Ruh's wife Olena also writes poetry. Some of her poetries were published in her author books, some in general poetry collections of the married couple.

Petro Ruh's bibliography: uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Орлов_Петро_Вікторович#Бібліографія

Education:

• Secondary school: with honors
• The Maharishi Vedic University (2 years full-time): yoga teacher
• Kyiv National Linguistic University (Faculty of Oriental Studies, full-time): philologist-orientalist

Additional education:
Acadamy of Public Diplomacy of the Crimean Tatar People (with the support of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom)



Yesterday I was invited to the Levko Lukianenko Museum, which is going to open in Chernihiv, and was introduced to Mr. Petro Salnyk, who created this museum and will be its director. Mr. Petro almost from the doorstep offered me a job at the museum, that was quite unexpected for me, but told me to first write and bring him my ‘autobiography until the fourth generation’."Because here I don't need such patriots of Ukraine whose great-grandfathers were NKVD people," he said.

The offer to work at the Levko Lukyanenko Museum is an honor for me. So I decided to write my ‘autobiography until the fourth generation’. It is another matter whether Mr. Petro will like it. Because my great-grandfather was an NKVD member.

Actually, my personal biography can be read on Wikipedia, but the generations story is here:

As it's known, I was born on December 26, 1970 in Yevpatoria. My mother Natalia Petrivna, whose family name at the time of my birth was Orlova, was born on December 19, 1951, that's, as it can be seen from the numbers, she gave birth to me at the age of 19 years and 1 week. Her maiden name was Bambulevich. And her father (my grandfather) Petro Oleksandrovych Bambulevych and her mother (my grandmother) Olena Oleksandrivna Bambulevych were the people who raised and reared me.

I saw my father Viktor Borisovich Orlov only once at the age of 10, when he once came to rest in Yevpatoria and wanted to meet me. All I know about him: he was a native of Minsk, in Yevpatoria he served in the USSR Navy, was a champion of the USSR Armed Forces in boxing, during his military service he married my mother. That's all I know about him officially, and my only indirect idea about his personality developed in me from the fact that my grandmother, when angry with me, called me the spawn of Orlov.

My parents divorced a couple of months after I was born. When I was 6 months old, my mother left me to her parents, and she left Yevpatoria to settle her life in a better place, and 4 years later she married a Jew from Odessa, with whom she later emigrated to Israel.

At the time he had a 6-month-old grandson in his arms, my grandfather was retired due to a disability, so he nursed me, reared me and brought me up. He died in 1983, and before that he was the closest, dearest person in my life.

So, my grandfather Petro Oleksandrovych Bambulevych, as I remember him, was a very handsome, refined, noble old man, who, as far as I noticed, was admired by women. He was born in 1907 in Vladivostok in the family of descendants of Polish nobles who were exiled there from Volhynia in 1864 for participating in the uprising of the Polish nobility against Russian rule. My grandfather's family was talented, so even after losing everything, even in exile, the Bambulevychs became an influential family in Vladivostok, holding high positions in government and army. My grandfather's father was Polish and mother was Ukrainian. My grandfather's mother sang him Ukrainian lullabies. Subsequently he sang the same lullabies to me. When Soviet power was established in Vladivostok in 1917, my grandfather was a 10-year-old boy who had only received primary education. Almost his entire family was shot, but he himself managed to escape and hid in China for a long time, working as a hunter in the taiga on the border with the USSR.

But he was not going to spend his whole life in the woods, seeing only Chinese people. In time, he returned to the USSR, went to military service, and on March 5, 1930, according to archival documents, he was arrested on charges of anti-Soviet agitation. He survived the Gulag. Then, when the war with Germany began, he was sent to the front, fought, reached Germany, returned as a hero, but in order not to get into the Gulag again, he went to the Far North, to Tiksi port on the Laptev Sea, where the NKVD didn't very pick on such people like him. There my grandfather met my grandmother, who was from Yevpatoria and after graduating from high school went to work in the north. And they loved each other and decided to get married.

My grandmother's father was a Yevpatoria NKVD officer named Oleksandr Vasylovych Semekha-Myronenko. My grandmother wrote him a letter telling him about my grandfather and asking for support. The fact is that Oleksandr Vasylovych helped people who found themselves in similar situations, and my grandmother knew this well.

My grandmother was a purebred Ukrainian. Her mother's maiden name was Shchehlenko, and the maiden name of her mother's mother was Shevchenko. She was born in Yevpatoria in 1919, attended the same school as then my mother and then me. But my grandmother studied the Crimean Tatar language at school, which, in principle, she knew without school, because the Crimean Tatar language at that time was the language of communication in the Crimea. Most of her friends were Crimean Tatars. Her name was Olena, but everyone affectionately called her Leila, because in that language environment it was more familiar and natural. I always heard her sisters, who were part of the family in which I grew up and raised, always called my grandmother Leila, even when she was old. She had two sisters: my aunt Nina and my aunt Tima. According to the documents, their names were Nina Oleksandrivna and Iryna Oleksandrivna. Why did everyone in the family call Iryna Oleksandrivna Tima? Because in fact she was Fatima, the youngest daughter of a friend of my great-grandfather, whom on the tragic night of the deportation of the Crimean Tatars on May 18, 1944, he took at his friend's request and made her documents according to which she was his own daughter.

Oleksandr Vasylovych responded to my grandmother's letter, “All right, daughter, come, I will do my best for you. I will have to change some documents of your fiancé so that the NKVD no longer picks on him. I will look after your living well in Yevpatoria." As he promised, so he did: according to the new documents, my grandfather became a Russian of proletarian origin with a clear past, not a Pole of noble origin from the Gulag, and the NKVD no longer picked on him. However, my grandfather sang me Ukrainian lullabies, which his mother sang to him when he was a child, and in the 70's he corresponded in Polish with his brother Oles, who also somehow survived and lived in Poland, in the city of Lodz with his wife Stakha.

I don't remember my great-grandfather. He said he would not die until he held his great-grandson in his arms. He always kept all his promises. He also kept this one. The day my mother brought me from the maternity hospital, he held me in his arms, blessed me for a happy life, smiled and died. All the people who knew him always told me only good things about him, and everyone in our family loved him very much. So I will never renounce my great-grandfather, former NKVD officer Oleksandr Vasylovych Semekha-Myronenko, and I will always make mention of him with love and gratitude in my ‘autobiography until the fourth generation’ wherever I am required to show it.