MAKOVIICHUK, HRYHORIY TROKHYMOVYCH (b. January 30, 1935, in the village of Ivcha, Lityn district, Vinnytsia region)
Worker, participant in the Ukrainian resistance movement.
From a poor peasant family that suffered under both German and Russian occupiers: both took their grain. His mother, Maryna Yakivna Pshenychniuk (1915–1953), worked on a kolkhoz (collective farm), and his father, Trokhym Onykiiovych (1907–1998), a tractor driver, fought in the war from 1941 to 1945. In 1950, he was run over by a tractor. His mother ran to the hospital in the district center, and on the way, she was told that he had died. This caused her to fall seriously ill. However, even after this, she was still required to meet the minimum number of labor-days. Hryhoriy, as the eldest son, had to care for his mother. With difficulty, he finished the 9th grade in 1953. In the same year, his mother died prematurely from hard labor, poverty, and illness. His father, disabled by the tractor accident, could not care for the children (Hryhoriy was 18, Volodymyr 16, and Yevhen 14), and they scattered.
Makoviichuk trained as a molder in Odesa and as a painter in Moscow. From there, he was conscripted into the army in 1955. He served in the Leningrad region until December 1958. After demobilization, he was sent to Moscow, where he was not registered, so he returned to Ivcha.
He did not want to work on the kolkhoz for “tallies” (labor-days) and, in the spring of 1959, went to the Donbas, working at mine No. 20-20-bis in the Shakhtarsk district. In the spring of 1960, he moved to Kremenchuk and worked at the Stalin Road Machinery Plant. Due to low wages, he returned to his homeland, managed to register in the village of Yakushentsi near Vinnytsia, and lived in the village of Tyazhyliv, near the “Zahotzerno” grain procurement combine, where he temporarily worked as an electrician for a meager salary. He went to Shakhtarsk and got a job as a water pumping station operator at mine No. 30-31. In May 1963, he returned to Kremenchuk and got a job at KrAZ (Kremenchuk Automobile Plant). To get housing faster, he moved to the oil refinery in August 1964.
On October 10, 1964, he married Valentyna Hnativna Riznyk (b. 1939). In 1965, their son Vitaliy was born. Due to poor health, Makoviichuk moved to the road machinery plant in August 1966, but the Kremenchuk People's Court ordered his family to be evicted from the housing they had received from the oil refinery. He had to return to the refinery, where he worked as a metalworker. Due to an allergy to petroleum products, which doctors mistakenly diagnosed as eczema, he had to leave for KrAZ in 1968, where the working conditions were also difficult for him. He moved to the wheel plant and eventually returned to KrAZ. On January 6, 1973, his wife gave birth to their daughter Oksana. The lives of the mother and child were in danger; instead of helping, the midwives mocked the suffering woman until Dr. V.B. Lytvynenko intervened.
After modifying his radio receiver for shortwave, Makoviichuk began regularly listening to foreign radio broadcasts from 1968, recording some on a tape recorder and retelling the content to his acquaintances. After the arrests of 1972, he began writing leaflets by hand and posting them in the city. They discussed repressions against Ukrainians, the famine of 1933, and the arrests of the intelligentsia—essentially, what he managed to hear on the radio.
On January 31, 1973, Makoviichuk was summoned “for a minute” by the workshop supervisor, A.O. Skorokhod—it turned out to be for three years. The expensive tools left at his workplace were immediately stolen, and Makoviichuk was paying for them for a long time.
During a search of his home, KGB officers found magnetic tape recordings of radio broadcasts about repressions, excerpts from V. CHORNOVIL's book “The Trouble with Intellect” and I. DZIUBA's “Internationalism or Russification?,” from Y. SVERSTIUK's article “A Cathedral in Scaffolding,” and others. They found drafts of seven leaflets that he had posted in November 1972, as well as drafts of complaints to higher authorities about abuses by enterprise administrations and letters demanding a pension for his aunt, who had worked hard her whole life on the kolkhoz.
On May 22, 1973, Makoviichuk was sentenced by the Poltava Regional Court under Part 1, Article 62 of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR (“anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda”) to 3 years of imprisonment in strict-regime camps. Conversations about the famine of 1932-33 and repressions were also incriminated as slander. “You're lucky you're a worker, or they would have given you the maximum...” At the trial, only negative character references were read, and the testimony of relatives was falsified.
After the trial, his wife Valentyna was forced to pay the court costs. Alternatively, she was offered a divorce, in which case, they said, he would pay them himself. She was denied medical care. Until his wife recovered and returned to work, the family lived only on meager savings and his mother-in-law's pension (12 rubles), who died a month before Makoviichuk's return. His son was blackmailed at school, and his daughter was forced to speak Russian in kindergarten.
Makoviichuk served his sentence in the Mordovian camp ZhKh-385/19, in the settlement of Lesnoi. He worked at a woodworking enterprise. There he met Ukrainian political prisoners (I. KRAVTSIV, K. MATVIIUK, Z. POPADIUK, L. STAROSOLSKY, M. SLOBODIAN, P. VYNNYCHUK, V. OVSIENKO) and participated in collective protest actions, including a hunger strike on Political Prisoner's Day, October 30, 1975. Makoviichuk was particularly impressed by the unbroken Ukrainian insurgents I. Myron, M. Zhurakivsky, M. Konchakivsky, R. Semeniuk, D. Syniak, and V. DOLISHNIY. He also communicated with political prisoners of other nationalities.
On January 18, 1976, Makoviichuk was transported by special convoy to the Poltava prison and was released on January 31, 1976. For a year, he was under administrative surveillance, closely monitored by informers and provocateurs. In 1979 and 1981, he was brought in for interrogations in the cases of D. MAZUR and V. OVSIENKO, but he did not provide the desired testimony.
As a highly skilled metalworker, Makoviichuk was rehired at his old job at KrAZ, but the head of the repair service of the tool management bureau and the workshop supervisor were instructed by the KGB to ensure that Makoviichuk was at his workplace repairing equipment during communist holidays. While other workers received bonuses for participating in demonstrations on holidays, Makoviichuk had to earn his. In 1995, he was laid off due to staff reductions. As a pensioner, he found work as a security guard.
Since 1989, Makoviichuk has been an activist in the Society for the Ukrainian Language and the People's Movement of Ukraine (Rukh). He participated in rallies, distributed campaign materials for democratic forces, and served on election commissions during all elections. After a stroke in 2001, he limited his activism.
Makoviichuk's wife died in 1984. His son Vitaliy lives in Kharkiv. Makoviichuk lived with his daughter Oksana in Kremenchuk until her marriage. Since 2004, he has lived alone.
Bibliography:
I.
Interview with H. Makoviichuk by Nastia Prosianyk, 1999. https://museum.khpg.org/1185658907
II.
Archive of the SBU in the Poltava region. – Case 17688-S, vol. 3. – Folios 261-262.
Tamara Prosianyk. “‘Svoboda’ Makoviichuku koshtuvala trokh rokiv uviaznennia” (“‘Freedom’ Cost Makoviichuk Three Years of Imprisonment”). – Information Bulletin, No. 3 (357), 2000. – January 21. (Kremenchuk).
Yuriy Danyliuk, Oleh Bazhan. Opozytsiia v Ukraini (druha polovyna 50-kh – 80-i rr. XX st.) (The Opposition in Ukraine [second half of the 1950s – 1980s]). – Kyiv: Ridnyi krai, 2000. – pp. 37-38.
Ukrainska Hromadska Hrupa spryiannia vykonanniu Helsinkskykh uhod: V 4 t. (The Ukrainian Public Group to Promote the Implementation of the Helsinki Accords: In 4 vols.) Vol. 1: Osobystosti (Personalities) / Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group; Comp. Y.Y. Zakharov; – Kharkiv: Folio, 2001. – p. 34.
Ovsiienko V. Svitlo liudei: Memuary ta publitsystyka. U 2 kn. (The Light of People: Memoirs and Publicistic Writings. In 2 books). Book 1 / Comp. by the author; Art design by B.Y. Zakharov. – Kharkiv: Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group; Kyiv: Smoloskyp, 2005. – pp. 46, 150; Book 2, 2005. – pp. 138, 312.
International Biographical Dictionary of Dissidents from Central and Eastern Europe and the Former USSR. Vol. 1. Ukraine. Part 2. – Kharkiv: Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group; “Prava Liudyny,” 2006. – pp. 415–418. https://museum.khpg.org/1184403866
Rukh oporu v Ukraini: 1960–1990. Entsyklopedychnyi dovidnyk (The Resistance Movement in Ukraine: 1960–1990. An Encyclopedic Guide) / Foreword by Osyp Zinkevych, Oles Obertas. – Kyiv: Smoloskyp, 2010. – pp. 397–398; 2nd ed.: 2012, – pp. 445–446.
KHPG Archive.
Vasyl Ovsiienko, Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group. May 18, 2006. Corrections by H. Makoviichuk on June 7, 2006. Last read on August 11, 2016.
