ZUB, OLEKSIY POLIKARPOVYCH (born March 26, 1936, in the village of Yablunivka, Kostiantynivka raion, Donetsk oblast)
A naval submarine officer. Sent for psychiatric evaluation for his criticism.
His parents were peasants, later miners. From the 6th grade, Oleksiy kept a diary, loved literature, and wrote for newspapers. From childhood, he dreamed of becoming a sailor. In 1953, he graduated from secondary school and tried to enter the Sevastopol Higher Naval Engineering School of Submarine Navigation. The credentials committee did not admit him because he had been in occupied territory during the war. He only managed to enroll on his third attempt, in 1955. In the meantime, he worked as a coalface worker at the Gorky mine in Stalino (now Donetsk). He was injured in the leg by a piece of rock.
As a cadet, he trained on all fleets of the USSR: the Pacific (in Vladivostok), Northern, Black Sea, and Baltic. He graduated from the school in 1960.
In his fifth year, Zub was offered to join the CPSU. He said he was not ready. But when he, a senior lieutenant-engineer, was sent to the city of Polyarny, Murmansk oblast, as a deputy mechanic and commander of the electric motor group of a submarine, he had to agree after six months, as it was otherwise impossible to build a career.
During his training and service, Zub saw many shortcomings in the organization of service and witnessed the sinking of six submarines and, in 1955, the battleship “Novorossiysk.” The main reason was “storming”—working hastily to meet deadlines. The sailors worked at the limit of their abilities, and their fatigue led to errors, which resulted in accidents and disasters. Zub recorded all such incidents he witnessed in his diary. This diary ended up with the KGB. Zub realized that everyone on the fleet was being watched.
In 1964, the young communist Zub, with six months of party experience, spoke at a party conference of the fourth submarine squadron in the city of Polyarny. He described the shortcomings known to him and concluded that the zampolits (political commissars) were incapable of improving the service to avoid accidents; on the contrary, their actions were even harmful. For example, in Tallinn, a zampolit gave the command to finish submarine testing ahead of schedule, for Lenin’s birthday. The sailors worked for two months without a day off, getting up at 5 a.m. and going to bed at 11 p.m. As a result, one sailor fell asleep and caused an accident. The conclusion: the one-party system had exhausted itself; a two-party system was needed. Silence fell in the hall.
After the party conference, Zub was repeatedly summoned to the KGB department, then offered to get treatment at a neurological hospital. Feeling healthy, Zub agreed to a psychiatric examination but refused to take any medication. He underwent the examination at a hospital in Severomorsk. After three weeks, around October or November 1964, the head of the hospital—a colonel and a fellow countryman from Donbas—summoned him and said: “You were born lucky. If Khrushchev hadn’t been removed, you wouldn’t have gotten out of here.”
Zub’s military career ended at the age of 28. With his engineer-mechanic diploma, he returned to his native village of Yablunivka and became a mechanic in a kolkhoz auto garage. Later, the chairman offered him the position of chief mechanic of the kolkhoz. Since this was a nomenklatura position, it had to be approved by the secretary of the raion party committee. Zub confessed that he had been expelled from the party and dismissed from the fleet for criticism. “For what criticism? For slandering the party and the authorities, you get a pick and a shovel—and no leadership position! For the rest of your life, you must atone for your guilt before the party and the authorities.” The next day, the engineer-mechanic took a shovel…
A month or two later, he went to the city of Kramatorsk and got a job as an electrical engineer at the “Vesely” sovkhoz. But he was soon fired. He got a job in Yalta as an electrician on a tugboat, and later as an electromechanic. He was offered the position of a military educator at a vocational school. On the director's advice, he concealed that he had been expelled from the party. But after six months, he was exposed and fired. For nearly 30 years, Zub changed jobs many times, but never held even the smallest leadership position.
He joyfully welcomed the removal of Article 6 on the CPSU as the “leading and guiding force of Soviet society, the core of its political system, state, and public organizations” from the USSR Constitution by the Third Congress of People’s Deputies of the USSR on March 15, 1990.
With the onset of “perestroika,” Zub created the first informal association in Yalta, “Dobra Volia” (Good Will). He sought ways to join it with the NRU (People's Movement of Ukraine) when it emerged. The communists tried to discredit “Dobra Volia.”
In 1992, Zub became a member of the URP (Ukrainian Republican Party) and headed its Yalta city organization. He participated in the work of all URP congresses. He is a correspondent for the newspapers “Samostiyna Ukrayina,” “Krymska Svitlytsia,” and “Flot Ukrayiny.” He is involved in sports: rollerblading, and swims in the Black Sea year-round.
Bibliography:
KhPG Archive: Interview from January 21, 2001.
Vasyl Ovsiyenko, Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group. March 10, 2009.