DOTSENKO, ANATOLIY MYKHAYLOVYCH (born April 2, 1965, in Uryupinsk, Volgograd oblast (Russia), according to another source—on the khutir of Kotovsky, Luhansk oblast—d. July 7, 2007, Moscow). Journalist, correspondent for Radio Liberty and Deutsche Welle.
Adopted by Raisa, a Russian woman, and Mykhailo Dotsenko, a Ukrainian from Zelenyi Klyn (Amur oblast, Russia); their family lineage traces back to Luhanshchyna.
Anatoliy spent his childhood in Moscow, in Zhytomyrshchyna, and in Novosibirsk, where his father served. Despite not being ethnically Ukrainian and attending Russian schools, Anatoliy identified as a Ukrainian from his teenage years. His grandmother had the greatest influence on him. As early as 1981, after the 9th grade, during a military drill in Novosibirsk, Anatoliy declared to his classmates and superiors that Ukraine should secede from the USSR to protect its national culture and language.
In 1983, while a sophomore at the Novosibirsk Medical Institute, at a Komsomol meeting with 400 students, in the presence of faculty and “internationalist soldiers,” he loudly spoke out against the Soviet aggression in Afghanistan. This resulted in his expulsion from the institute and persistent suggestions from the dean to “undergo a psychiatric evaluation.” His parents saved him by taking him to Moscow. While studying at the Biology Faculty of Yaroslavl University in 1987, he, along with Ukrainians from Nikopol, Khust, and Zhytomyr, created the “Vidrodzhennia” (Revival) society, which aimed to promote Ukraine's secession from the USSR through propaganda.
At the end of his third year, in 1988, he was expelled for anti-Soviet propaganda among students. He returned to Moscow and immersed himself in the human rights movement. In the late 1980s, he became a member of Valeriya Novodvorskaya’s “Democratic Union” and participated in the DS’s first rallies. He began to create a Ukrainian youth movement. From 1988, he was a member of the Slavutych Ukrainian Language Society. In 1988, he met with V. CHORNOVIL, which led to the establishment of the Moscow branch of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group.
In 1989, he took an active part in the formation of the Moscow Rukh “Slavutych” (officially established on November 1, 1989, later operating as the OUNRukh). The core of these organizations consisted of Ukrainian students and postgraduate students of Moscow universities. He received literature from the Ukrainian diaspora and transported it to Kyiv, from where it spread throughout Ukraine. In January 1989, Dotsenko was detained in Kyiv and deported by train to Moscow without any of his belongings. On this occasion, he gave an interview to the Ukrainian service of Radio Liberty. On August 6, 1989, through Marichka Halaburda-Chyhryn from Belgium, he received an offer to become a correspondent for Radio Liberty in Moscow. This was the “golden hour” of Dotsenko’s journalistic activity: until the end of 1993, he covered all the most critical political events in the USSR from a Ukrainian perspective.
Dotsenko’s motto was the words of Borys Hrinchenko: “Only work will tear us from bondage! Let’s get to work, brothers!” Relying on ubiquitous Ukrainians, Dotsenko organized a correspondent network from the Baltics to Zelenyi Klyn. This network later became the basis for the UHG’s Ukrainian network “Radio Respublika” under the leadership of S. NABOKA, with the participation of Svitlana Riaboshapka and Yuriy Plokhynsky. From May to October 1989, Dotsenko supported the Committee for the Defense of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church and participated in organizing a hunger strike on the Arbat demanding the legalization of the repressed Church. During the Congress of People’s Deputies of the USSR (1989-91), he covered the activities of democratic deputies from Ukraine, including V. Yavorivsky and R. Bratun. In October 1990, he was one of the organizers of the Congress of Ukrainian Youth of the USSR, which took place in Moscow. In 1990-91, together with Moscow Ukrainians and M. Halaburda-Chyhryn, he went on several long tours across Ukraine, awakening the Ukrainian provinces to fight for independence. He spoke at numerous rallies.
On Pentecost Sunday, June 3, 1990, he was baptized. In October 1990, he covered the unveiling of the first monument to Stepan Bandera in Ukraine in Staryi Uhryniv. For about six months, he headed the bureau of the UTSIS—the information service of the OUN-B—in Kyiv. He covered the student hunger strike in October 1990, the arrival of Patriarch Mstyslav in Ukraine in November 1990, the arrest of S. KHMARA on November 17, 1990, and his trial, organizing protests by the Moscow Rukh outside the USSR Prosecutor's Office for Khmara's release. He participated in all political actions in both Moscow and Kyiv.
By the late 1980s, his Moscow apartment had become a kind of center for Ukrainianism in Russia. Many well-known Ukrainian figures came here, including V. CHORNOVIL and S. KHMARA. Prominent figures of the Ukrainian diaspora stayed with him, such as Bohdan Zaluha from Scandinavia, M. Halaburda-Chyhryn from Belgium, Kateryna Chumachenko (later Yushchenko) from the USA, and guests from Western Europe and Latin America. In August 1991, during the GKChP coup, Dotsenko, along with activists of the Moscow Territorial Association of Rukh (later OUN-Rukh), defended the Russian Government House under the blue-and-yellow flag, which contributed to the collapse of the empire and Ukraine’s independence.
He participated in the creation of the Ukrainian University in Moscow, the Center for Ukrainian Culture, the Association of Ukrainians of the Russian Federation (OUR), the Ukrainian Youth Club, and the Ukrainian library in Moscow, among other Ukrainian institutions. Largely thanks to his media coverage of the OUN-Rukh’s demands, this organization was granted premises on the Arbat for the Ukrainian Cultural Center under the patronage of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine. Dotsenko promoted the development of Ukrainian culture, education, and spirituality in both Russia and Ukraine. In particular, he purchased Ukrainian textbooks for students in Sevastopol. Together with Petro Perepust, he organized the supply of several hundred megaphones to the NRU and other public organizations, which were practically impossible to buy in Ukraine at the time.
At the end of 1990, Dotsenko moved to Kyiv and worked for Radio Liberty. His articles were published in many Ukrainian diaspora newspapers—"Shlyakh Peremohy,” “Svoboda,” “Ukrainske Slovo,” “Vilna Dumka”—as well as in the press of Ukraine and Russia. He wanted to live and work in Ukraine, but the pro-communist authorities and the SBU, even after the declaration of independence, pressured him, demanding information about close friends and former dissidents. Problems began: the authorities delayed granting him Ukrainian citizenship; his Ukrainian wife, born in Kazakhstan, was expelled from the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute in her third year due to her lack of Ukrainian citizenship.
Due to a conflict with the SBU, Dotsenko himself did not obtain citizenship and, accordingly, did not receive a foreign passport to take advantage of offers to study at several prestigious universities in Europe and the USA. Therefore, in 1995, he was forced to return to his parents in Moscow. He worked for the Ukrainian and Russian services of Radio Liberty, and later for the Ukrainian and Russian Deutsche Welle. As a journalist, Dotsenko made a significant contribution to the development of democracy in Russia. He was a convinced Ukrainian patriot, a courageous citizen, and a bright personality endowed with amazing energy and capacity for work.
The Russian authorities were dissatisfied with the activities of the Moscow Rukh delegation during the referendum in Tatarstan on March 21, 1992, on independence, and with Dotsenko's participation in the “Chechen Information Center” during the Russian-Chechen wars (1994–1996, 1999–2002) and after. Unknown persons repeatedly threatened Dotsenko with reprisal for his professional activities. Despite being in good health, he unexpectedly fell ill and died shortly thereafter on July 7, 2007. His friends suspect that his death was not from natural causes and may have been a poisoning. He was buried on July 11, 2007, at the Domodedovo cemetery in Moscow. He is survived by his daughter, Marichka (b. 1994), who was raised as a Ukrainian.
Bibliography:
Anatoliy Dotsenko has passed into eternity… Maidan-INFORM: 12-07-2007 18:57 // URL: http://maidan.org.ua/static/news/2007/1184255878.html; http://maidan.org.ua/static/news/2008/1184255878.html
Perepust, Petro. Work is the only thing that will tear us from bondage. “Ukrainians in Russia” website. October 3, 2007. http://kobza.com.ua/content/blogcategory/13/36/ - 180k
Halaburda-Chyhryn, Marichka. Instead of flowers on the grave of our colleague and comrade Anatoliy Dotsenko: http://marichka2.multiply.com/journal/item/35/35; http://marichka2.multiply.com/tag/docenko The Resistance Movement in Ukraine: 1960–1990.
An Encyclopedic Guide / Foreword by Osyp Zinkevych, Oles Obertas. – Kyiv: Smoloskyp, 2nd ed.: 2012, – pp. 238-239.
International Biographical Dictionary of Dissidents in Central and Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union. Vol. 1. Ukraine. Part 1. – Kharkiv: Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group; “Prava Lyudyny.” – 2006. – pp. 1–516; Part 2. – pp. 517–1020; Part 3. – 2011. – pp. 1021-1380: Anatoliy Dotsenko, pp. 1114-1117: https://museum.khpg.org/1290547366
Vasyl Ovsiyenko, Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group.
Last read on May 16, 2016.