Raul Chilachava © Anda Krauze

Raul Chilachava [Georgia]

Raul Chilachava was born in 1948 in Chitatskari in the Zugdidi region of Georgia. In 1970 he graduated from the Faculty of Journalism of Tbilisi State University, after which he worked in Kyiv, including as editor of the republican edition of the Ukrainian Soviet Encyclopedia. From 1972 he was a correspondent of the newspaper Komsomolskoye Znamya in Kyiv, and in 1974 he moved to a teaching position at  Taras Shevchenko State University. In 1975 he became a member of the Writers’ Union of the Ukrainian SSR. After the restoration of Ukraine’s independence in 1991, he became deputy chairman of the Committee on Nationalities in the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine. From 1993 to 1998 he held the post of Deputy Minister of Ukraine for Nationalities and Miratsi. In 2001 he was appointed first deputy chairman of the National Committee on Nationalities and Migration. In December 2005, he entered the diplomatic service and took up his post in the Latvian capital of Riga as Ambassador Plenipotentiary and Ambassador Extraordinary of Ukraine to the Republic. He held this position until 2010. Raul Chilachava – Doctor of Philology, Professor, Academician of the National Academy of Sciences of Georgia, Honorary Doctor of the National Academy of Latvia, Honored Artist of Ukraine.

 Raul Chilachava is the author of more than 120 books of essays, translations (from Ukrainian into Georgian and vice versa), journalistic works and two monographs. Writes in Georgian and Ukrainian. He published two author anthologies of Ukrainian poetry “August” (2001), “100 Ukrainian Poets” (2014).

His first collection of poems in Ukrainian “Sapovnela – a flower of happiness” (Sapovnela – a flower of happiness) was published by Molod Publishing House in 1972. Many other publications followed, in 2012 two volumes of a collection of Georgian poems by Raul Chilachava in transcriptions of famous Ukrainian poets and his Ukrainian poetry and translations from Georgian into Ukrainian appeared under the title “Light of the Self of the Star ” (t. The Light of a Lonely Star). The collection of poems by Raul Chilachava “Formula of Destiny” was awarded the highest national prize of Georgia named after Shota Rustaveli in 2021. His poems are full of philosophical reflections on the meaning of human existence and also reflect his reverence for his native Georgia, on the one hand, and Ukraine, where he lives and works, on the other. “Without Georgia I am a plane tree without roots, without Ukraine I am an ash tree without a crown,” reads one of his sonnets.

Raul Chilachava has received numerous awards, including the Order of Merit (1998, Ukraine), the Order of Honor (2006, Georgia), the Three Star Order (2008, Latvia), the Certificate of Merit of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine “For Special Services to the Ukrainian People” (2003). , winner of about 20 International Literary Awards. Raul Chilachava now lives in Georgia.