The Rosokhach Group

In the early 1970s, an underground youth group from the village of Rosokhach in the Chortkiv district of Ternopil region was active—“The Rosokhach Group.” The history of this underground organization clearly demonstrates how patriotic youth joined the resistance movement in the 1970s.

A company of friends from the village of Rosokhach listened to foreign broadcasts, like Radio Liberty, through the noise of jammers. Earlier, before there was “Liberty,” they listened to the radio station “Vyzvolennia” (Liberation). There were many people in the village who did not attend the official church; they listened to broadcasts from the Vatican. But the youth were more interested in political reports. Increasingly, there were programs dedicated to the political life of Ukraine. It was from there that the young people learned about figures such as Kandyba, Lukianenko, Svitlychny, Chornovil, Sverstiuk, and many other dissidents. As Mykola Marmus recalls: “They were often talked about then; it was interesting to hear about their fate, about what happened to them. Then, of course, it became known that they were arrested. There was an overwhelming feeling that people were fighting somewhere. Later, in conversations with the guys, it almost came to arguments, like, ‘Here we are, not going anywhere, not doing anything—while somewhere people are fighting, so let’s do something too.’”.

So, they decided to do something. In 1970, they rewrote and distributed letters from an unknown author, in which the destruction of the graves of the soldiers of the Galician Army in Lviv was called vandalism. They also distributed “anti-Soviet” poems, sometimes pasting them up. At the same time, Mykola Marmus recorded a speech on a tape recorder calling for a struggle for Ukraine. And when the young people were leaving the cinema in the evening, Mykola and his friends would turn the tape recorder on loudly so that everyone could hear.

The boys collected patriotic books, songs, poems, photographs, and so on.

Then the friends even made a seal: they copied it from Ukrainian banknotes of 1918. It depicted a trident, a Cossack with a rifle, and on two sides was written “Ukrainian State.”

The group’s next act was revenge for the destruction of the graves of Ukrainian soldiers: “It affected me strongly, and we thought that if this grave is not needed, then the one in the village to the unknown Soviet soldier is not needed either. And later two boys went and damaged the monument in retaliation for the destruction of the grave.”.

  Volodymyr Marmus wrote an oath that began with the words: “Before the image of the Holy Mother of God, before the faces of my comrades, I solemnly swear to faithfully serve Ukraine, to fight for its independence...” and ended with: “If I betray, may the hand of a friend wipe me from the face of the earth.” Nine boys took the oath: Volodymyr and Mykola Marmus, Petro Vitiv, Petro Vynnychuk, Volodymyr Senkiv, Andriy Kravets, Mykola Slobodyan, Mykola Lysyi, and Stepan Sapelyak.

On the night of January 22, 1973, the group carried out an action in Chortkiv: four blue-and-yellow flags were raised and proclamations were hung for the 55th anniversary of the proclamation of the Fourth Universal of the Ukrainian People’s Republic in Kyiv. The proclamation said:

“Dear Comrades! Today marks 55 years since the day when the independence of the Ukrainian state was proclaimed in Kyiv by the IV Universal of the Central Rada. This historic act demonstrated the will of the Ukrainian people, their age-old striving for independence. However, today’s official Soviet historiography tries to present this event in the eyes of our generation as anti-people. This gross distortion of historical reality is condemned with indignation by the progressive public. It is condemned by everyone to whom the interests of the nation are dear.

Dear comrades! Let us worthily meet this significant date, which is rightly considered our national holiday!

Long live a free Ukraine!” This was written with poster pens on wallpaper.

In addition to the proclamation, slogans were hung: “Freedom for Ukrainian patriots!”, “Shame on the policy of Russification!”, etc.

The response of the watchman of the cinema, above which one of the flags was hung, to the KGB officers’ question about where the flag came from was very characteristic: “I don’t know. I came, sat down in the evening, looked up—your flag. In the morning, I look up—our flag.”.

The members of the group were actively preparing to go into armed underground resistance. They collected weapons: two pistols, a carbine, and a sawn-off shotgun. The boys trained in the forest on how to use the weapons. But then the arrests began. Stepan Sapelyak was arrested first, on February 19, 1973..

At the end of the year, a trial took place. Under Articles 62 and 64 of the Criminal Code of the UkrSSR, V. Marmus was sentenced to 6 years in strict-regime camps and 5 years of exile; M. Marmus and S. Sapelyak were given 5 years in a corrective labor colony and 3 years of exile; V. Senkiv and P. Vynnychuk received 4 years in a corrective labor colony and 3 years of exile; N. Slobodyan and A. Kravets got 3 years in a corrective labor colony; P. Vitiv and M. Lysyi were not tried..