Ivan Khlanta

Ivan Vasyliovych Khlanta was a Ukrainian folklorist, literary scholar, bibliographer, art critic and teacher who spent more than sixty years collecting the songs, tales and spiritual culture of Zakarpattia and of Ukrainian communities beyond Ukraine's borders. Born on 20 April 1941 in the village of Kopashnovo in Khust Raion, Zakarpattia Oblast, he died on 22 September 2026 at the age of 85.

He came from a large peasant family in the Carpathians. After graduating from the philology faculty of Uzhhorod State University in 1964 he completed postgraduate study at the M. T. Rylsky Institute of Art History, Folklore and Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and, in 1976, defended a candidate dissertation on the Ukrainian social and domestic fairy tale. In 2007 he earned a doctoral degree in art studies with a dissertation on the genre of spiritual song, its history and poetics in the Carpathian region. He also taught Ukrainian language and literature at School No. 6 in Uzhhorod and served in the armed forces earlier in life.

As a field folklorist Khlanta recorded more than 7,000 song texts and melodies across Zakarpattia, neighbouring Ukrainian oblasts and places where Ukrainians live compactly abroad, including Maramures and Banat in Romania, Ruski Krstur and Novo Orahovo in Serbia, and the Kuban. He authored or edited more than 120 books: collections of folk songs and fairy tales, literary and local-history studies, and bibliographies. Song volumes include Koly sobi zaspivaiu (1993), Zaspivaimo kolomyiku (1995), Koliadky (1998), Pisni Irshavshchyny (2005), Narodni pisni ukraintsiv Banatu (2009) and Pisnia nad Dunaiem (2014). Fairy-tale collections include Pravda i kryvda (1981), Mamyne sertse (1993), Molodylna voda (2013) and Kazky ta lehendy z-pid Khustskoho zamku (2016).

President Leonid Kuchma awarded him the honorary title Honored Artist of Ukraine in 2004. He was a member of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine from 2003, later of the National Union of Local Historians, and an academician of the Academy of Sciences of Higher Education of Ukraine from 2015. He held the medal For Valorous Labour (1970) and certificates from the ministries of education and of culture. Zakarpattia regional authorities and Ukrainian literary outlets confirmed his death on 22 September 2026, noting a lifetime spent turning village song and story into a printed archive for the present and the future.