Taras Hryhorovich Shevchenko was born to serfs in Moryntsi, in central Ukraine, on March 9, 1814. On December 25, 1845, the poet and painter wrote "My Testament":
When I am dead, then bury me
In my beloved Ukraine,
My tomb upon a grave mound high
Amid the spreading plain,
So that the fields, the boundless steppes,
The Dnieper's plunging shore
My eyes could see, my ears could hear
The mighty river roar.
When from Ukraine the Dnieper bears
Into the deep blue sea
The blood of foes ... then will I leave
These hills and fertile fields --
I'll leave them all and fly away
To the abode of God,
And then I'll pray... But till that day
I nothing know of God.
Oh bury me, then rise ye up
And break your heavy chains
And water with the tyrants' blood
The freedom you have gained.
And in the great new family,
The family of the free,
With softly spoken, kindly word
Remember also me.
Yesterday
 Ukrainian premier Vitaly Massol resigned on March 1, 1995.
Poet Anna Akhmatova died on March 5, 1966 at age 76. She was born Anna Andreyevna Gorenko, near Odessa in 1889, but wrote under a pseudonym. A sample of her work:
"Our sacred craft has existed
For thousands of years...
With it, luminous even in darkness is earth.
But no poet has ever insisted,
Through laughter or tears,
That there is no wisdom, no age, no death."
Director and filmmaker Mark Donskoy was born in Odessa on March 6, 1901. Remembered for his adaptation of texts by Russian writer Maksim Gorky and the film "Heart of a Mother," he died in 1981.
 On March 10, 1944 Ukrainian author David Vogel died in Auschwitz at age 52. Among his works: "How Can I See You, Love," "I Saw My Father Drowning," and "There Is a Last, Solitary Coach."
On March 16, 1939 Hungary annexed the republic of Karpato-Ukraine.
 On March 19, 1993, Dnipropetrovsk native Oksana Bayul won the World Ladies Figure Skating Championship in Prague. She received her first ice skates from her grandfather when she was three, because she was too young to take ballet. Oksana took to the ice. She now lives in New Jersey, produces a line of skating clothes and performs in U.S. ice shows.
 Grigory Kozintsev was born in Kiev on March 22, 1905. The director of Shakespearean plays, including Hamlet and King Lear, was an important figure in post-revolutionary art circles. Kozintsev was one of several co-founders of the influential experimental theater group, FEX (Factory of the Eccentric Actor). He died in 1973.
Ukrainian mobs massacred Jews in Seredino Buda on March 22, 1918.
Yesterday
 On March 20, 1914 piano prodigy Sviatosiav Richter was born in Zhytomyr. Richter is widely regarded as one of the finest Soviet pianists. His father, Theophile, was an organist and gave the young Sviatoslav his early musical training, though Richter was essentially self-taught and developed his exceptional technique by playing whatever music he liked. By the age of eight, he was playing Wagnerian opera scores, and had the ability to memorize any music at sight.
Richter's first competitive victory came in 1945, during the All-Union Contest of Performers. The jury was headed by Dmitri Shostakovich, and Richter took first prize. Shostakovich later wrote: "Richter is an extraordinary phenomenon. The enormity of his talent staggers and enraptures. All the phenomena of musical art are accessible to him." Richter went on to win the Stalin Prize in 1949, as well as numerous other official and unofficial awards from the Soviet government.
Richter's last concert was in Lubeck, Germany, in March 1995, at the age of 80.
He died in Moscow on August 1, 1997.
 Karol Szymanowski, a Polish-Ukrainian composer, was born October 6, 1882, on his family's estate in Tymoszowka, Ukraine. He is best known for the Stabat Mater, and in 1932 the opera King Roger. In April, 1936, he experienced his greatest popular success when his ballet Harnasie was presented at the Paris Opera and was highly praised by critics. He died shortly after a move to a sanatorium in Lausanne on March 24, 1937, at the age of 54.
March 28, 1854 - During the Crimean War, Britain & France declare war on Russia
 Rosina Lhevinne was born in Kiev on March 28, 1880. She went on to become a professor at the Juilliard Graduate School in New York and one of the great piano teachers. She taught a whole generation of modern-day greats, including Van Cliburn, Adele Marcus, Sascha Gorodnitzki, Daniel Pollack and Martin Canin. She died in 1976.
On March 30, 1856, Russia signed the Peace of Paris, ending the Crimean War.
 Soviet Marshal and Inspector-General Semjon Timoshenko died at age 75 on March 30, 1970. (Born in Furmanka, Ukraine in 1895, he served in the civil war of 1918-20 as a cavalry commander and subsequently rose in the Soviet army. He commanded Soviet troops in their final victorious offensive in the Finnish-Soviet War (1940). In May, 1940, he succeeded General Voroshilov as commissar for defense and held that position until it was assumed by Joseph Stalin in July, 1941. Having replaced Marshal Budenny on the southern front, he led the recapture (Nov., 1941) of Rostov-na-Donu from the Germans and helped in the relief of Moscow. Later he commanded on the northwest front (1942), in the Caucasus (1943), and in Bessarabia (1944). After the war, he served as chief of the Belorussian military.
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