Mykola Shvachko

MYKOLA SHVACHKO (b. 1949, in Kharkiv – d. 1985, in Kharkiv)
Attempted to escape the USSR. A victim of punitive psychiatry.
He became critical of the Soviet system as a teenager. In 1963, at the age of 14, he tried to break into the French embassy in Moscow but was detained. In 1965, he decided to cross the border illegally, went to Georgia, to Batumi, but seeing how carefully the border was guarded and that it was practically impassable, he abandoned his plan and returned home.
He came to the conclusion that the only possible way to escape the USSR was to hijack a plane. To achieve this goal, Shvachko decided to obtain a weapon. In the summer of 1966, he attacked a factory guard and killed him, seizing his service pistol. That same summer, together with a friend, Shvachko went to Georgia to carry out their daring plan. On August 3, 1966, they bought tickets for the Poti–Batumi flight. In the air, threatening the crew of an AN-2 with a weapon, the daredevils demanded to fly to Turkey. But the pilots refused to comply and fought with the hijackers. The plane landed in Batumi, and Shvachko and his friend were arrested.
During the investigation, Shvachko stated that he hated the criminal Soviet regime and that at the trial, he would expose the communist system and its rulers. The investigator stated: if he confessed that he committed the crime for criminal motives, then prison, but if he insisted that he was a dissident, then a special psychiatric hospital for life. Shvachko refused such a deal, was declared insane, and sent to the Dnipropetrovsk Special Psychiatric Hospital on a special regime. He spent 9 years there.
In 1975, he was released and went to live with relatives in Kazan. He worked at a factory and got married, but his family life did not work out. After his divorce, he returned to Kharkiv and lived with his parents. He was a good friend of the dissident Oleksandr Shatravka. Together they went on seasonal work trips to Tyumen several times.
As before, Shvachko was under KGB surveillance. On public holidays, he was periodically confined in a psychiatric hospital. In late 1984, Shvachko was summoned to the Kharkiv KGB directorate and asked to testify against the arrested Oleksandr Shatravka. But Shvachko refused to testify against his friend. He was sent directly from the KGB to the Kharkiv regional psychiatric hospital. There he was injected with neuroleptics and severely beaten by orderlies.
Shvachko was released in March 1985. He was in a depressed state. Having neither the strength nor the desire to live on, a few days after his release, Shvachko threw himself under an electric train.
Author: Oleg Sofianyk
March 2013