Repressed for ties with the OUN underground. Member of the underground organization “Obyednannia” (Unity) in Inta, Komi ASSR; he distributed its leaflets in Ukraine.
From a peasant family. Education: 7 grades.
For his connection with the OUN underground, he was arrested in 1951 and sentenced in 1952 by the Military Tribunal of the MGB troops of the Stanislav oblast to 10 years of imprisonment under Article 20-54-1a of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR and Article 58-10, Part 1 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR.
He served his sentence in “Minlag”—the Mineral Directorate of Camps—in the city of Inta, Komi ASSR. In the summer of 1956, he was released early by a commission of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.
Even before his release, he became a member of the underground nationalist organization “Obyednannia” (Leader Yaroslav Hasiuk), taking an oath and paying membership dues. Organizationally, he was connected with Bohdan Khrystynych, Volodymyr Leoniuk, Andriy Kushka, and Anatoliy Bulavsky.
After their release, Slabina and A. Bulavsky settled in the city of Oleksandriia, Kirovohrad oblast. Slabina worked as an electrician in a construction and installation directorate. His mother, Anna Slabina (née Vytvytska, b. 1908), moved in with him. Since “Obyednannia” decided to conduct an active struggle against the CPSU using propaganda and exposé methods, it organized the printing of leaflets in Inta.
In October 1957, “Obyednannia” member Kyrylo Banatsky left Inta for Ukraine. He carried with him about 1,200 leaflets, one titled “Citizen!”, written by Vasyl Buchkovsky, and another, “To the Kolkhoznik!” (authored by V. Buchkovsky and V. Leoniuk). They were printed on a press set up by V. Buchkovsky. Here are their texts:
“CITIZEN!
Have you drawn the conclusion of what the October coup of 1917 gave to the Ukrainian people?
It liquidated the freedom gained by the peoples after the overthrow of tsarism, crushed the young Ukrainian People’s Republic, bringing your people a slavery even worse than the tsarist one; it led to the death of your best brothers and friends, to the decline of Ukrainian culture, and to the destruction of your well-being.
Do you agree to continue enduring the Bolshevik yoke?
Ukrainian revolutionaries. 1957.
Read this and discreetly pass it on.”
The second leaflet:
“Freedom for nations! Freedom for the individual!
TO THE KOLKHOZNIK!
To continue supporting the numerous hordes of internal and foreign freeloaders, your communist exploiters have placed another demand before you—to catch up with the USA in the production of meat, milk, and butter.
Remember: the meat, milk, and butter you produce is not for the Ukrainian people, not to improve your well-being, but to strengthen the Moscow-Bolshevik prison of nations;
Ukraine is being used as a raw material base, from which the colonizers export everything, leaving the people on the verge of starvation;
neither you, nor your family, nor your descendants can satisfy the insatiable throat of the voracious enemy;
only in its own, economically and politically independent state will the Ukrainian people fully enjoy the riches of their native land and the fruits of their labor.
Therefore, stand under the banner of the struggle for the freedom of Ukraine and for a just social order.
Enough of enduring the Kremlin’s yoke! Enough of being slaves! The Ukrainian people, like all peoples, have the right to independence.
It is time to tell the Moscow-Bolshevik invaders: Get out of Ukraine!
Long live the Ukrainian Independent and United State—the only guarantee of peasant freedom!
Ukrainian revolutionaries. 1957.
Read this and discreetly pass it on.”
In October 1957, K. Banatsky arrived from Inta in Oleksandriia and gave A. Bulavsky over 700 of these leaflets for distribution. A. Bulavsky gave 400 copies to Slabina, and a few dozen to Fedir Malyshevsky and A.G. Syskov. (The latter two later claimed they destroyed the leaflets, so they appeared as witnesses in the case).
On the night of November 3-4, 1957, Slabina distributed 100-120 leaflets in the settlement of Khrushchev (now the city of Svitlovodsk) and in the village of Taboryshche, in the area of the Kremenchuk Hydroelectric Power Plant construction, near the city of Oleksandriia. At the same time, on the night of November 4-5, Hryhoriy Riabchun and Stepan Olenych distributed 80 such leaflets in the village of Adzhamka, Oleksandriia district, on the territory of the Lenin and Sverdlov kolkhozes.
In January 1958, Slabina, on his own initiative, traveled by train from Znamianka station to Galicia, carrying 242 leaflets. A team of KGB agents boarded the same carriage and began a search on the moving train, explaining to disgruntled passengers that they were looking for money from a recently robbed bank. Instead, they found the leaflets on Slabina. He was detained. But Slabina improvised a cover story on the spot, claiming that he had received the leaflets from an unknown person who was supposed to come to him for further contact. He gave a fictitious agreement to cooperate with the state security organs, so he was not arrested but left at liberty in order to lead them to the “contacts.” According to B. Khrystynych, Slabina was most likely detained based on a denunciation by P.P. Bulavsky—the brother of A. Bulavsky. In January 1958, Slabina, contrary to the rules of conspiracy, had shown him the leaflets and some non-Soviet publications, and he informed the KGB.
Alarmed by this event, Slabina sent his mother, Anna, to Lviv to inform B. Khrystynych about the failure with the leaflets. But KGB agents on the train stunned the woman with a blow to the head, removed her from the train, detained her in a hospital, and returned her to Oleksandriia.
On the instructions of V. Leoniuk, Yosyf Drahomyretsky traveled to Slabina in Oleksandriia, and Slabina told him about the failure with the leaflets.
At the end of April 1958, someone distributed the same leaflets in the city of Sarny, Rivne oblast. K. Banatsky was detained with these same leaflets in Oleksandriia, and later A. Bulavsky in Bila Tserkva.
The incidents of leaflet distribution became widely known and caused a panic among the authorities. Since all the detainees had previously been in Inta, the KGB localized its search for the printing press there.
By early 1959, the KGB had enough material to arrest those involved in distributing the leaflets. On January 29, Slabina was arrested, A. Bulavsky on February 21, and H. Riabchun and S. Olenych on March 2. K. Banatsky had been arrested back in early 1958 (his 1952 sentence of 25 years was reinstated). All the arrestees were transported to the KGB Pre-trial Detention Center in Kyiv. The investigation was personally supervised by V. Nikitchenko, Chairman of the KGB of the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR.
During the investigation and trial, A. Bulavsky told everything he knew. Slabina managed to conceal from the investigation and the court a significant part of the organizational activities of both himself and his comrades, particularly B. Khrystynych, V. Leoniuk, and A. Kushka. In the court hearing, he stated that he did not consider himself guilty: everything he did, he did for the good of the Ukrainian people. He denied his involvement in “Obyednannia.” Leoniuk and Khrystynych also stated in court that Slabina did not even know of the organization’s existence. Therefore, the court had to drop the charge of organizational activity under Articles 1 and 9 of the Law on Criminal Liability for State Crimes, leaving only the charge under Article 7, Part II of this law, i.e., for conducting anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda in the form of distributing the said leaflets, and sentenced him to 7 years of imprisonment in a correctional labor colony without restriction of rights. He was also accused of possessing anti-Soviet literature, which he had retrieved from a hiding place in the village of Vytvytsia back in 1956.
The Judicial Collegium for Criminal Cases of the Supreme Court of the Ukrainian SSR (presided over by L. M. Chaikovskyi, with assessors H. Ya. Maryk and V. H. Tryshyn, secretary P. D. Kravets, and prosecutor I. Y. Yankovskyi) sentenced A. Bulavsky in the same case to 10 years (but due to his behavior during the investigation and trial, his sentence was soon reduced to 3 years); K. Banatsky to 7 years, but combining the remainder of his sentence from August 26, 1952, a term of 15 years was set for him; H. Riabchun and S. Olenych to 3 years.
Slabina served the first year of his imprisonment in the Taishet camps and was then transported to Mordovia. He served his sentence in full.
After his release, he returned to Oleksandriia. He was rehabilitated in 1992.
Bibliography:
Leoniuk, Volodymyr. “Na priu staie Obyednannia” [Unity Joins the Fray]. Zona, no. 6, 1994, pp. 163–180.
Rusnachenko, Anatoliy. Natsionalno-vyzvolnyi rukh v Ukrayini. Seredyna 1950-kh – pochatok 1990-kh rokiv [The National Liberation Movement in Ukraine. Mid-1950s – Early 1990s]. – Kyiv: Vyd. im. Oleny Telihy, 1998, pp. 63–72; 370-389.
Khrystynych, Bohdan. Na shliakhakh do voli. Pidpilna orhanizatsiia “Obyednannia” (1956-1959) [On the Paths to Freedom. The Underground Organization “Unity” (1956-1959)]. – Lviv, 2004, 416 pp.
SLABINA IOSYF VASYLIOVTCH