A Drop of Grief

Vladimir Butenko is a modern writer, poet, publicist, bard from Stavropol; author of 14 books; laureate of many literary awards, including “Day of Victory” (1995), named after Semyon Babaevsky (1996), for the best prose work of the journal “Our Contemporary” (2011); twice awarded the governor’s prize (2005 and 2007); awarded the Order “For the Revival of Cossacks.”

The main problem of his work is the fate of the Cossacks.

V. P. Butenko was born on 30 May 1952 in the hamlet of Dar’evka, in the Rodionovo-Nesvetaisky District of the Rostov Region, into a family of rural teachers. His paternal grandfather, Nikita Yakovlevich, was taken from the Novocherkassk Cossack shelter and adopted by the Butenko couple, who gave him their surname. The writer’s father, Pavel Nikitich, a participant in the Great Patriotic War, went through it to the very last salvos of Victory, fighting in battles for the Caucasus, in Karelia and Norway, for which he was awarded many military honors. His mother taught V. P. Butenko to read and write. And it was his father—an capable musician—who sparked his interest in playing the balalaika and guitar. A distinct world of Don nature, Ukrainian and Cossack songs, the original and courageous characters of hamlet residents, as well as folktales and works of Russian classics, awakened in him an early interest in literary and musical creativity.

Vladimir Butenko “published” his first poem in the twelve-year-old school handwritten magazine “Podsnyezhnik.” While studying at the Stavropol Medical Institute, he attended the literary group at the newspaper “Molodoy Leninets,” led by the poet Aleksandr Mosintsev. For seven years Butenko worked as a dentist in the settlement of Tselyne in the Rostov Region, and then returned to Stavropol. Here his first books were published—“Winter Bonfire” (1983), “Hamlet Wells” (1984), “Waiting for a Friend” (1987)—which allowed Vladimir Butenko to become, in 1988, a member of the Union of Writers of the USSR.

Over three years (from 1989 to 1992) the writer headed the almanac “Stavropolye,” in which, for the first time, a peripheral publication had the courage to publish a chapter from A. Solzhenitsyn’s epic “The Red Wheel.” The almanac once again introduced readers to the name of the remarkable Russian writer from the region, I. Surguchyov, printing several of his little-known works.

In the 1990s V. P. Butenko worked on Stavropol radio as one of its editors. As a poet and musician, he toured the cities of southern Russia, gave concerts in Moscow, and took part in the “Slavic Bazaar” festival in Vitebsk.

He performed his songs in various venues. He released 5 solo magnetic albums.