KARAS, ZYNOVIY SEMENOVYCH (born March 9, 1929, in the village of Zhuriv, Rohatyn Raion, Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast – died March 4, 2014, in the city of Kolomyia, Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast)
Member of the OUN, teacher, priest of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, and Prosvita activist.
Zynoviy’s father was a gymnasium graduate, a Sich Rifleman, and a prosperous farmer. Political discussions were held in the home in front of the children, so from childhood, Zynoviy knew about the OUN’s struggle for an independent Ukraine. In 1939, he was a witness to the deportation of Poles to Siberia, followed by the Ukrainian intelligentsia and peasants.
Under Polish rule, Zynoviy completed three grades; after the seventh grade, he entered a Lviv gymnasium but did not finish. He had to witness much blood, mangled bodies, and suffering. In 1944–45, he endured Soviet terror by day and Polish terror by night. At 15, he took up arms for the first time, and at 16, he participated in a battle against the Bolsheviks. In 1945, he joined the youth wing of the OUN and never severed his ties with the underground. His poems were published under the pseudonym “Perelesnyk” in underground publications, particularly in the journal “Na Chatakh” (“On Guard”).
In 1945, he entered the Rohatyn Pedagogical College, graduating in 1948. Despite pressure and the threat of expulsion, he did not join the Komsomol. He taught for three years in the Horodenka region, but as his relations with the district Komsomol committee soured, Karas enrolled in the correspondence department of the Ivano-Frankivsk Teacher’s Institute in 1951 and returned to his native region, then the Bukachivtsi Raion. Now married, he was given a job at a school but was required to join the Komsomol. Karas yielded for the first time, a decision he greatly regretted.
In 1954, he decided to move with his wife to join her exiled relatives in Kazakhstan, in the “Seryi Klyn” (Gray Wedge) region, in Kustanai. To justify himself to his own conscience, he enrolled in correspondence courses at the Leningrad Theological Seminary. He began working in a Kustanai church, where his wife’s uncle was the rector. In August 1954, in Alma-Ata, Metropolitan Nikolai Mogilevsky ordained Karas as a priest of the Russian Orthodox Church. He quickly gained popularity, and the church began to be attended by young people, especially Ukrainians who were being released from camps into exile without the right to return to Ukraine, as well as settlers from the time of the Stolypin Reform. He traveled extensively through the villages of Seryi Klyn. He conducted the Divine Liturgy in Church Slavonic, delivered sermons in Russian, and in Ukrainian villages, in Ukrainian. There, he learned about the horrific history of the region: mass executions, and how the Kazakhs had died of starvation in 1933.
An underground OUN organization effectively began to form within the Ukrainian diaspora of Seryi Klyn. However, since the entire society was riddled with KGB agents, Karas was arrested on September 27, 1957. He was incriminated for Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism. Speaking Ukrainian, correcting the linguistic mistakes of his interlocutors, and “singing Ukrainian songs” were considered crimes. The investigation also uncovered the transfer of a typewriter to the underground and the possession of books brought from Ukraine, which an expert examination by the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR classified as nationalistic. On January 10–11, 1958, the Kustanai Regional Court, under Article 58-1A of the RSFSR Criminal Code, through Article 17, sentenced Karas to 10 years of imprisonment for “aiding in treason against the Motherland,” under 58-10 Part 2 for “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda using national and religious prejudices,” under 58-11 for “organization,” and also for “theft of state property.” The “theft” turned out to be transplanting a yellow acacia tree closer to the church from a piece of church land that had been partitioned off for a vocational school.
During the investigation, he spent three months in solitary confinement. “Very sincere” Christians—Russians and Germans—testified against him. He was incautious enough to file a cassation appeal, for which he was held for three months in a huge cell with common criminals in a brutal environment. The cassation court dropped the charge under Article 58-11 and reclassified Article 58-10 Part 2 to Part 1, but the 10-year sentence remained.
He was transported via the Novosibirsk prison to Taishet, to zone 601. In the early spring of 1958, he was transferred to woodworking plant No. 019. The work was overwhelming. The Ukrainians arranged for him to be a record-keeper. There, for the first time, he met UPA centurion Myroslav SYMCYCH. He was again returned to the woodworking plant in zone 601. He worked on a milling machine, on the construction of a pioneer camp, and then, without days off, digging potatoes, where it was especially hungry. When it started to rain, the prisoners demanded their promised day off. The guards beat them, sent some to prison, and returned the rest to the camp, where they were given “three months in a punishment cell with subsequent assignment to a penal regime,” Karas among them.
He ended up in a penal camp in Vikhorevka, deep in the taiga. The water there was foul-smelling and bitter, and the balanda (thin soup) was made from spoiled animal lungs. Bread was the only salvation. However, they were not taken out to work. Karas was held in the so-called “Black India”—among common criminals, in filth, smoke, and an atmosphere of profanity. He had to go out in 50-degree-below-zero frost, caught a cold, and developed a tuberculous process. Karas was transferred to a Ukrainian barrack, where he met Petro Duzhy and Yevhen HRYTSYAK. There, at least, the psychological atmosphere was good. Karas was moved to camp 410, where he was a barrack cleaner and boiled water.
In the spring of 1960, as part of an entire transport, Karas was moved to Mordovia, to the 5th penal camp. The brigade made bricks by hand. Karas saved himself by completing drafting assignments for a free foreman, which got him lighter work, and he treated himself with plants whose medicinal properties he knew: strawberry, nettle, dandelion, and birch buds.
With the end of his penal regime in the autumn of 1960, Karas was transferred to camp No. 1 in the settlement of Sosnovka, where believers of various denominations were gathered. Despite the provocative efforts of the administration, there were no interfaith conflicts there. Here, Karas first met the Metropolitan of the UGCC, Yosyf SLIPYJ, and priest Pavlo VASYLYK (later Bishop of Kolomyia-Chernivtsi), with whom he became friends. Karas was in charge of a warehouse, sent information to the outside world through drivers, and maintained contact with other zones. In 1963, the regime was tightened; Yosyf SLIPYJ, as a recidivist, was transferred to a particularly strict regime in the 10th camp, and Father VASYLYK was sent to prison.
Karas assembled cases for radio clocks. In 1963, production in the 1st zone was reprofiled from woodworking to metalworking. Machines were brought in, and locksmiths and turners were gathered from all the camps. Here were Levko LUKYANENKO, the HORYN brothers, Ivan HEL, Valentyn MOROZ, Danylo SHUMUK, and Panas ZALYVAKHA.
In 1966, Karas was transferred to camp No. 11 until the end of his term.
He was released on September 27, 1967, and arrived in Kolomyia, where his family was already living. Although he had graduated from a vocational school in the camps with qualifications as an electrician and a turner, finding work was difficult. He got a job in a medical equipment repair workshop and completed specialized training in this field in Kharkiv. For more than 20 years, he worked in a hospital, servicing X-ray and physiotherapy equipment, as well as equipment in operating laboratories.
He was never free from KGB surveillance. His superiors were summoned to the KGB and reprimanded because Karas was correcting the language of young nurses. In 1986, the KGB conducted a final search of Karas’s home, confiscating a great deal of literature, audiotapes, and educational documents. He was detained at the KGB for three days.
He first appeared in public in 1986, organizing a literary evening for Borys Hrinchenko with the participation of a medics' choir, in which Karas had sung for many years. He subsequently organized many such evenings. He began to be published. His first article was commissioned by the Kolomyia City Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine—about the UGCC.
In 1990, he plunged into public work and was elected a deputy of the city council of the first democratic convocation. He stood up for the UGCC. He published hundreds of articles, delivered hundreds of lectures and reports, organized the Christian Intelligentsia Club, and gave lectures in the People’s House every Sunday after the evening Divine Liturgy, mostly on matters of faith. He organized celebrations for the Feasts of the Sich Riflemen and the Feasts of Heroes. On Easter, May 5, 2002, he was the victim of a thuggish attack on the street and was wounded.
Member of the Prosvita Society. Member of the Prosvita Society.
From September 1993, he was the editor of the newspaper “Khrystyianskyi Visnyk” (“The Christian Herald”) of the Kolomyia-Chernivtsi Eparchy of the UGCC.
At the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian War, Father Zynoviy donated the money he had saved for an operation and treatment to the Ukrainian army, and he himself passed away on March 4, 2014.
Bibliography:
KHPG Archive: Interview with Father Zynoviy Karas in Kolomyia, March 22, 2000. https://museum.khpg.org/1202835984
Horyn, Bohdan. Ne tilky pro sebe: dokum. roman-kolazh: u 3 kn. Knyha druha (1965–1985) [Not Only About Myself: A Documentary Novel-Collage: In 3 vols. Book Two (1965–1985)]. Kyiv: Univ. vyd-vo PULSARY, 2008 – pp. 249-250.
Mizhnarodnyi biohrafichnyi slovnyk dysydentiv krain Tsentralnoi ta Skhidnoi Yevropy y kolyshnoho SRSR. T. 1. Ukraina. Chastyna 1. [International Biographical Dictionary of Dissidents in the Countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the former USSR. Vol. 1. Ukraine. Part 1.]. Kharkiv: Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group; “Prava Liudyny,” 2006. – pp. 282–285. https://museum.khpg.org/1128061412
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. 285–286; 2nd ed.: 2012. – pp. 315–316.
Vasyl Ovsiyenko, Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group. Corrected by Father Zynoviy on July 24, 2004. Final reading on August 9, 2016.
Photo by V. Ovsiyenko, March 22, 2000.
