The Union of Ukrainian Youth of Halychyna (Galicia)

In the winter of 1972, in the Ivano-Frankivsk region, young workers and students, all born in 1948, decided to form an underground organization called the “Union of Ukrainian Youth of Halychyna” (SUMH). The initiator and leader of its creation was Dmytro Hrynkiv. The organization also included Ivan Shovkovy, Roman Chuprey, Mykola Motryuk, and Dmytro Demydov. Each member of the organization was obliged to recruit new people, and during its existence, the number of members reached 12. In the minds of these young men, a nationalist consciousness clashed with what they had been taught their entire lives: “socialism is the only path to communism.” Because of this, the organization was built on the principles of the OUN, but the members of the Union envisioned Ukraine as an independent socialist state, similar to Poland.

The Union was engaged in collecting information about the activities of the UPA, searching for illegal literature, and also weapons. They even found a carbine, a small-caliber rifle, a sawn-off shotgun, and two construction pistols. Each member of the group had a pseudonym. Hrynkiv gave tasks to the group members in writing, taking into account their abilities.

At that time, he was the head of the DOSAAF (Voluntary Society for Assistance to the Army, Air Force, and Navy) committee at the enterprise where he worked, and therefore had the opportunity to teach members of his group to shoot at illegal gatherings in the mountains.

In the autumn of 1972, members of the SUMH laid a wreath with a blue-and-yellow ribbon at the monument to Oleksa Dovbush in Pechenizhyn on the anniversary of his death.

The members of the Union intended to establish contacts with other similar organizations, with foreign countries, to acquire a typewriter for distributing samizdat, and to agree upon and approve a program at a general meeting. But they did not have time to realize these intentions. The idea arose to make a seal for the organization. The engraver Taras Stadnychenko, whom Hrynkiv approached, informed on him to the KGB. Having received warning signals, they convened a meeting specifically for the “snitch” where they simulated the organization’s dissolution. But this only hastened the arrests, which began on March 14, 1973.

In August 1973, a trial took place at which Dmytro Hrynkiv was sentenced to 7 years in a strict-regime corrective labor colony and 3 years of exile, Ivan Shovkovy and Dmytro Demydov each received 5 years, and Mykola Motryuk and Roman Chuprey each received 4 years in Soviet concentration camps.