OLEH OLEKSIYOVYCH SOFIANYK (b. May 4, 1964, in Sevastopol).
Dissident. For refusing to serve in the Soviet Army and renouncing USSR citizenship, he was subjected to punitive psychiatry. An athlete-swimmer.
In 1977, while in the 7th grade of school No. 41, he began writing letters to the radio station “Deutsche Welle” and sending postcards with calls to fight against the existing system to addresses taken from a telephone directory. On October 13, 1977, he was detained by the KGB. Given his minority, he was given a prophylactic talk.
In 1979, Sofianyk and his friends created an underground group, the “Committee of Fighters for Freedom.” They distributed leaflets with calls for revolution. They ended with the slogans: “Down with the bloody tsardom of Brezhnev and Co.! Long live the revolution!”
On March 14, 1979, he was arrested by the KGB along with his friend Igor Sharts. He spent three days in a pretrial detention cell (KPZ), and a psychiatric examination found him sane, but since he was not yet 16, he was released into his parents’ custody.
In 1981, he graduated from school and worked at a factory for a year. In 1982, he entered the Sevastopol Instrument-Making Institute. On October 15, he was detained by the KGB in Moscow while meeting with employees of the US embassy, to whom he wanted to tell his story and ask for help to leave the USSR. After interrogation, he was expelled from Moscow.
Twice—in July and November 1983—Sofianyk was called up for military service. He fled from the assembly point in Simferopol. In December 1983, he was called up for the third time. He began his service in a construction battalion in Tula. On January 12, 1984, he publicly refused to serve for political reasons and on the same day was committed to the 12th ward of the Tula Regional Psychiatric Hospital. On February 8, a medical commission diagnosed him with “sluggish schizophrenia.” He was released in July 1984.
In 1985, Sofianyk was reinstated as a 2nd-year student at the institute. But life in the USSR was unbearable for him. In October 1985, he bought a ticket for the cruise ship “Moldavia” from Odesa to Batumi. He had an inflatable boat with him. On the night of October 24, between Sukhumi and Batumi, he jumped overboard with the intention of swimming to Turkey. The crew of a Yugoslavian ship heading to Novorossiysk wanted to pick him up. He refused. On the third day, he was detained by a patrol boat. He was held in the “Dranda” pre-trial detention center near Sukhumi and was transferred to Crimea. He was charged under Article 75 of the Ukrainian SSR Criminal Code, “Illegal exit abroad.” When asked by the KGB agents why he chose such a risky method of escape, he replied that it was better to die at sea than to live in the Soviet Union. In December 1985, he was committed for compulsory treatment to a general-type psychiatric hospital in Sevastopol. He was released in February 1987.
In October 1987, he was detained while trying to enter the French embassy in Moscow, where he intended to request political asylum. He was released on December 27, 1987.
In March 1988, he sent a statement to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR renouncing his Soviet citizenship for political reasons. On March 20, he was again forcibly committed to a general-type psychiatric hospital in Sevastopol. He was released in September 1988.
In October 1988, he joined the public organization “Freedom of Emigration for All” and collaborated with the newspaper “Ekspress-Khronika” of Oleksandr Podrabinek. In August 1989, he joined the “Democratic Union” party of Valeria Novodvorskaya and headed its Sevastopol organization. He has collected hundreds of stories about escapes from the USSR, which he intends to publish as a book: https://museum.khpg.org/1370526152.
He worked as a security guard in Sevastopol. He is the president of the informal group “Association of Former Political Prisoners.” He is an athlete involved in marathon swimming and the president of the “Dolphin” marathon swimming club. He completed his first marathon swim in 2002. His longest swims include crossing the South China Sea, a distance of 350 km. He has also swum across the Mediterranean, Marmara, and Caribbean Seas, and the Bosphorus Strait—both lengthwise and widthwise—together with journalist Roman Chernenko, and the Dardanelles Strait. He has completed marathon swims of up to 100 kilometers along the coast of Crimea. He is also known for swimming in cold water during the winter.
In July 2015, during the Russo-Ukrainian War, he refused to return from Ukrainian territory to Russian-occupied Crimea due to the threat of arrest by the special services of the occupying authorities. He relocated to the city of Marhanets, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.
Bibliography:
I.
KhHRG Archive: manuscript of O. Sofianyk’s autobiography.
The Movement for Freedom of Emigration. Defectors from the USSR and Victims of Punitive Psychiatry: https://museum.khpg.org/1370526152
II.
“The Champion Was an Entrepreneur, the Prizewinner—a Former Dissident.” // Panorama Sevastopolya, No. 38, 2002. – September 19.
Yuri Paramonov. “To Turkey on an Inflatable Boat. The History of Escapes from the Soviet Union Across the Black Sea.” // Panorama Sevastopolya, No. 45 (110), 2002. – November 13.
“The Lone Swimmer. Sevastopol Resident Oleg Sofianyk Plans to Swim Across the Kerch Strait and Then the Black Sea.” – Krymskoe Vremya, No. 136 (1980), 2004. – July 28.
International Biographical Dictionary of Dissidents in Central and Eastern Europe and the Former USSR. Vol. 1. Ukraine. Part 1. – Kharkiv: Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group; “Prava Lyudyny.” – 2006. – pp. 740-741. https://museum.khpg.org/1184517256
Natalia Akimova. “Oleg Sofianyk—A Swimmer with a Dissident’s Record.” // Pervaya Krymskaya, No. 204. – 2007. – December 14-20: http://1k.com.ua/204/details/2/1
The Resistance Movement in Ukraine: 1960–1990. An Encyclopedic Guide / Foreword by Osyp Zinkevych, Oles Obertas. – Kyiv: Smoloskyp, 2010. – pp. 619-620; 2nd ed., 2012. – pp. 703-704.
Vasyl Sadovsky. “On the Waves of Protest. Marathoner-Dissident Sofianyk Swam Across Sevastopol Bay in Support of the ‘Rise Up, Ukraine!’ Rally.” // Ukrayina Moloda, No. 58 (4498), 2013. – April 17.
“A Record Is Set! Oleg Sofianyk Swam Across the Black Sea”: September 5, 2011: http://meridian.in.ua/news/6648.html
“Marathon Swimmer from Sevastopol Oleg Sofianyk and His Partner from Moscow Swam Across the Red Sea in Five Days”: May 27, 2013: http://fakty.ua/164065-marafonec-iz-sevastopolya-oleg-sofyanik-s-naparnikom-iz-moskvy-za-pyat-dnej-pereplyli-krasnoe-more
Vasyl Ovsienko, Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group. June 20, 2006. Last updated July 23, 2016.
