"He had the Cossack spirit, and he died like a Cossack." In memory of defender and musical instrument maker Serhii Pavlichenko

Serhii Pavlichenko crafted his first bandura in 1992. No one knows for sure how many musical instruments he made during his life. He hand-made all kinds of traditional Ukrainian stringed instruments – banduras, kobzas and torbans (types of lute), lyres, and gusli (zithers).

A hurdy-gurdy made by Serhii is heard in Oles Sanin’s 2023 historical film Dovbush. Paul McCartney and Gary Moore also bought his instruments.

Serhii felt strongly that his musical instruments should ring out with dumas (sung epic poems dating back to the 16th century) and psalms, reviving the memory of the itinerant Cossack bards known as kobzars. [Kobzarism is a symbol of Ukrainian national culture, the invincibility and freedom-loving nature of the Ukrainian people, and the purity of their spiritual thoughts – ed.] He wanted his instruments to produce the best sound possible! 

Serhii loved Kholodnyi Yar. He organised Cossack campaigns. He took part in the significant events of the Ukrainian struggle – from the Revolution on Granite (1990) to the Revolution of Dignity (2013-14). He joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine during Russia's full-scale invasion. He was a sniper.

Serhii was killed in action near the village of Zhuravka in the Pokrovsk district, Donetsk Oblast, on 5 September 2024. He would have turned 56 on 8 November.

This piece was prepared by Memorial, a memory platform that tells the stories of fallen soldiers and civilians killed by Russia. You can read all the stories from the series Creators of Kobzar Culture Who Died for Ukraine in a separate special project.

His grandfather was a guide for a blind lyre player

Serhii was born in the town of Korsun-Shevchenkivskyi in Cherkasy Oblast, central Ukraine. He enjoyed reading from an early age. At school, he loved history, geography and literature.

Serhii's grandfather had been a guide for a blind lyre player. He told his family about it in the 1990s when Ukraine became independent. His grandfather played an important role in Serhii's interest in the history of Ukraine and its revival.

On finishing school, Serhii went to serve in the army. After his military service he went to Kyiv, where he planned to study civil engineering. But he changed his mind and joined together with other like-minded people to create a movement that would advocate for independence for Ukraine.

"They founded the Trakhtemyriv Kut brotherhood (also known as the Sincere Fraternity)," says Serhii’s daughter, Liudmyla Pavlichenko. "The fraternity was engaged in ethnographic, historical and reconstruction activities.

In 1990-1991, they made the first film about Vasyl Chuchupaka, the otaman (leader) of Kholodnyi Yar. For that purpose, my dad re-established the Black Cossacks and took part in the first Cossack campaign in Cherkasy Oblast."

"Serhii, Vladyslav Paskalenko and I met in the Sincere Fraternity," says Serhii's friend Ruslan Naida. "We created a local history hut. We travelled around Ukraine a lot and collected ethnographic artefacts. While looking for stories about the Haidamaks, we came to Kholodnyi Yar: it was thanks to Serhii that people began to respect it again." [The Haidamaks were Ukrainian Cossack paramilitary groups of peasants and impoverished noblemen, formed to resist Polish control in right-bank Ukraine after the Treaty of Perpetual Peace in 1710 – ed.]

They made their first journey on horseback in 1990, riding from Kyiv to Serhii's hometown of Korsun-Shevchenkivskyi.

"We had a big council during this trip, as was traditional for Cossacks. We were given Cossack names – I was called Ostap, Vladyslav was called Arsen, and Serhii was called Hrytsko the Parrot. Are you wondering why? He loved beautiful clothes, and we used to sew everything using patterns: zhupans (traditional fur-trimmed men's outer garments), sharovary (wide-legged trousers), hats. Once Hrytsko sewed a hat and couldn't find a peacock feather to decorate it. So one day he went to the zoo, climbed into a cage, and plucked two bright feathers. That's why we called him Parrot," his friend recalls.

A funny story happened during the trip, which at the same time shows the depth of Serhii's beliefs.

Just imagine: it’s the Soviet Union, and three carts with twenty horses and about forty Cossacks are being tracked by the police the whole way.

"And it was perestroika, and national ideas were starting to take hold. We entered a village, and there were red flags on almost every gate," Ruslan says. "Serhii pulled out his sabre and started cutting them down. He sat in the saddle waving his sabre right and left until he reached the end of the street! The locals were shouting ‘What are you doing?’ ‘Why did you establish communism here?’ Serhii shouted. And they said to him: ‘Son, we put the flags up so the workers would know who’s paid for the gas supply to the yard.’"

He always had the sharpest chisels and axes

Serhii met a kobzar teacher, Heorhii Tkachenko. He taught him how to make authentic banduras and kobzas. He told him about Mykola Budnyk, in whose kobzar workshop they made instruments and revived the kobzar tradition.

"I had been making my bandura in this workshop for a month in 1991, when one day Serhii came in with his friend Ostap and his cousin Vasyl Muzyka," Serhii’s friend Yurii Kocherzhynskyi recalls. "They brought a design for a bandura from the historical museum.

In November the workshop moved to Irpin, but we continued to work together. We used to go to the forest to collect wood and chop it. It was a whole science, and we learned together. Budnyk would show one person something, and another something else, because he wouldn't be able to teach all of us. And we shared this knowledge with each other."

Mykola Budnyk showed Serhii how to sharpen his tools. And he always had the sharpest chisels and axes. They were always shining.

"When someone takes someone else's sharp chisel and uses it, it eventually becomes blunt. Hrytsko used to get very angry about this, and once he made a suitcase out of wood and wrote ‘Hrytsko's, do not touch’ on it. And all the wooden boards said: ‘Hrytsko's, do not touch’. Someone once came into the studio and said: ‘Where is your Hrytsko Do-not-touch?’ And then we started calling him that in the workshop," says Mykola Budnyk.

​​Translators, philologists and dissidents used to meet in that workshop. Yurii Kocherzhynskyi says it was like attending an "invisible (underground) university".

And it was at the workshop that Serhii met his beloved Halyna.

"It was at a St Andrew's Day vechornytsi [a traditional Ukrainian gathering for young people with music, songs, jokes and rituals]. Later they got married. They had a daughter. Serhii ran the house and would cook delicious borshch," Yurii Kocherzhynskyi recalls.

Later, the family moved to Korsun-Shevchenkivskyi, where the couple had a son, Myroslav.

"Mum always supported Dad and tried to make folk instruments popular because she believed this was vital for the revival of Ukrainian culture," Serhiiʼs daughter recalls. "Dad gave me and my brother a lot of freedom and supported us in all our endeavours. He always used to correct us when we used Russianisms and tried to ensure we knew a pure Ukrainian language. Dad had a large library and taught us to read from an early age. As a father, he was perfect: he spent a lot of time with us, played with us, made us toys. When I was a kid, he used to make me breakfast. He loved cooking, and every year he’d bake paskas [Ukrainian Easter bread] at Easter."

Serhii used to go to church. He followed Ukrainian traditions. He enjoyed outdoor activities with his family. He was very interested in spearfishing, and he would swim in the river when it was cold.

"My first winter swim with Dad was at the age of three, under a waterfall in the mountains," Serhiiʼs daughter recalls.

"He climbed a tree and hung musical instruments on it like decorations on a Christmas tree"

Serhii had a great respect for traditions in the crafting of musical instruments.

"He did things the way Budnyk taught us, the way our ancestors did them," says Ruslan Naida. "When crafting, it is better not to use any power tools – you should even chop logs by hand. The spoon and the back plate had to be made of wood from a tree that was struck by lightning and felled. Then the sound was better."

"Dad made banduras, kobzas, lyres, torbans, gusli, gudoks and other instruments," Serhiiʼs daughter recalls. "He created Mazepa's torban for the Baturyn Museum, based on drawings that had been preserved in Germany. Paul McCartney bought two instruments from him – a bandura and a kobza – and Gary Moore ordered a bandura from him."

A hurdy-gurdy made by Serhii was played in the film Dovbush, directed by Oles Sanin.

Serhii’s instruments can also be found at the Buda farm in Cherkasy Oblast and in the collection of former president Viktor Yushchenko.

"There was an exhibition by traditional craftspeople, and Yushchenko’s motorcade – he was president at the time – was supposed to pass somewhere nearby," Yurii Kocherzhynskyi recalls.  "A friend said to Serhii: he’ll be driving past here, and he wonʼt even see it [the exhibition]. So Hrytsko climbed a tree and hung instruments on it like decorations on a Christmas tree. Then, he told me, the motorcade stopped and Yushchenko got out, chose the ones [musical instruments] he liked, and bought a few."

Serhii was always learning. He cared about symbolism and was interested in how to decorate instruments so that they would have a more authentic, ancient spirit. Before he glued the top plate to the back plate, he would sign it to say who made the instrument and when.

"I have a five-string wing-shaped gusli made by Serhii Pavlichenko. Now it's a memory of him," says Ruslan Naida.

Serhii could work anywhere – in the kitchen or outdoors, while fishing.

"Dad never sought fame in the modern sense," Serhiiʼs daughter says. "What mattered to him was that his instruments should produce the best possible sound, and that dumas and psalms should ring out on them again, restoring the memory of authentic kobzarism. Not many people in his hometown might have known about him, but outside of the town, he was well known among kobzars, historical reenactors and historians."

Serhii only played dumas at home when inspiration struck, because his main interest was crafting. His favourite song was "Hey, I Had a Horse", based on a poem with Cossack motifs by the Ukrainian Romantic poet Yakiv Shchoholiv. He played songs about a Cossack sotnyk [a military officer rank], about Sava Chalyi, a member of the Haidamak movement, about Colonel Morozenko of the Korsun regiment.

Serhii worked on his musical instruments to the end. Two days before leaving for the front, he was hurrying to finish a kobza for a young kobzar.

"He was always there when people were fighting for change"

Serhii was always there when people were fighting for change: the Revolution on Granite, the Orange Revolution, the Revolution of Dignity.

"At the last one [the Revolution of Dignity], he was with the Black Cossacks. We were at the Maidan on the night of 18-19 February [2014] too, repelling assaults. Serhii suffered a minor injury then," Ruslan Naida recalls.

When the full-scale Russian invasion began, Serhii Pavlichenko, the master craftsman of folk musical instruments, joined Ukraine’s territorial defence forces. He later joined the 58th Separate Motorised Infantry Brigade named after Hetman Vyhovskyi.

He had the rank of junior sergeant. He was a sniper in the third division of the second platoon of the first motorised infantry company.

"The war didn’t change him. When he came home, it was as if nothing had happened; he checked all his musical instruments and did his usual stuff," Serhiiʼs daughter recalls. "Dad only came home after being injured. He said it was like fighting with a shadow because you hardly ever see the enemy – just endless drones, mortars and gas. He also talked about the everyday aspects, and reminisced about his brothers-in-arms who had been killed."

Serhii spent his entire combat career on the front line.

He was killed on 5 September 2024 in a battle near the village of Zhuravka in Donetsk Oblast.

His family was informed of his death the following day. On 13 September, he was buried in the Avenue of Heroes in Korsun-Shevchenkivskyi.

"When we went to the funeral, we recalled all the good times and sang his favourite songs. Serhii had the Cossack spirit, and he died like a Cossack. It is the greatest honour for a Cossack to die in battle," says Ruslan Naida.

Serhii's friends would like him to be made an honorary citizen of Korsun-Shevchenkivskyi and for a street to be named after him.

Translation: Yuliia Kravchenko, Violetta Yurkiv

Editing: Teresa Pearce