IVAN SEMENOVYCH BOTSIAN (born October 23, 1932, in the village of Mala Tatarnivka (now Malosilka), Berdychiv Raion, Zhytomyr Oblast).
Mathematics teacher. While serving in the army, he wrote a letter about the situation of the Ukrainian people, concluding that Ukraine must leave the USSR.
Born in January 1932 to a family of peasants who had recently become collective farmers, his official birthdate was recorded as October 23, 1932. His father, Semen Prokopovych Botsian (1910–1972). His mother, Marta Petrivna Horiacha (1908–1970).
He survived the famine of 1932–33. Once, corpse collectors wanted to take him on their cart to the cemetery, but his brother stopped them. In 1946–47, they starved again. In the fields with his brother, he would dig up foul-smelling, rotten, frozen potatoes, from which their mother baked thin pancakes. As a teenager, he worked in logging, trimming branches. This is how the physique of the young socialist generation was formed.
In 1951, he enrolled in the Berdychiv Teachers’ Institute, graduating in 1953 with a degree in physics and mathematics. He was assigned to the Olevsk Raion in Zhytomyr Oblast and taught at a school in the village of Khochyno.
In 1954, he was drafted into the army. He served in a unit of the Pskov airborne division, military unit 93626, in the town of Ostrov-3. There were many Ukrainians there, including fellow graduates of the Berdychiv Teachers’ Institute, such as Viktor Lypynsky from Chudniv Raion in Zhytomyr Oblast, Ivan Kasianchuk, Ivan Feshchuk from Koziatyn Raion in Vinnytsia Oblast, and others. In their free time, “brotherly groups” of fellow countrymen would gather, which later became “trust groups” created within the service units. They reminisced about the past, their poverty, and pondered the cause of the Ukrainian people's misfortune.
At that time, in 1956, the press was publishing the results of the five-year national economic plan for each republic and the Union as a whole. Botsian was interested in this. He made a comparative analysis of the production output of Ukraine versus the all-Union total. It became clear that Ukraine, despite its relatively small territory, was “contributing” about half of the total production to the all-Union fund, and even more for certain indicators. Based on this data, he prepared a letter with conclusions about the causes of the famine and the need for an independent, sovereign Ukrainian state. This letter was passed to Ivan Feshchuk, who served in a neighboring company of the same regiment, for reproduction, i.e., for recopying.
Later, Feshchuk returned three copies of his version to Botsian but kept the original text. They discussed the leaflets in the “trust groups” of their units, and sent some to friends. Botsian, for instance, sent one to his fellow villager Oleksiy Vlasiuk in Liepāja (Latvia), where he was doing his military service.
At the time, there were no military actions or unrest. However, in the fall of 1956, the military unit was clearly preparing for some event: weapons were readied, parachutes were packed. The soldiers were told nothing. They thought there might be some unrest in Ukraine or the Baltics. Botsian addressed his friends: “Boys, we took an oath to defend our homeland from an enemy if it attacks our state. We don’t see a war. But if they want to use us against our own people, well, we are not punishers. If we don’t shoot at our own people, we will not be violating our oath.”
These were the events in Hungary. Botsian wanted to contact Ivan Feshchuk. But someone said he had been sent to haul timber. A few days later, Botsian noticed that pages had been torn from his training log for cadets, as he was serving in the regimental school. Soon after, at the end of December 1956, Botsian was transferred to another company, where he stayed for only one day. The next day, the battery commander told Botsian he was summoned to the regimental headquarters and that he was to escort him there. They arrived at the headquarters, where “special officers” were already waiting. Major Kotov, a KGB investigator, ordered Botsian to take off his greatcoat. A sergeant tore off his shoulder boards. They conducted a search. The major showed Botsian a manuscript confiscated from Feshchuk. “And is this yours?” he asked. “I wrote that it might be better for Ukraine if it were independent. That right is written in the Constitution.” “Where were you trained?” Kotov insisted that Botsian was an agent trained by a hostile power’s residency, demanding he reveal his contacts, friends’ addresses, and so on. This went on from morning until late evening.
Botsian was put in a “voronok” (paddy wagon) and taken to the Pskov prison. Two days later, he was sent to Leningrad in a “Stolypin” railcar. He was held in solitary confinement for three months, until February 1957. The interrogations were mainly conducted by Major Kotov, though others, including a general, also came.
The final charges were “anti-Soviet agitation” and “nationalist activity,” under Articles 58-10 and 58-11 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR (1926 edition).
Botsian and Ivan Feshchuk were tried by a closed tribunal of the Leningrad Military District. They were threatened with execution, which would have been the sentence in wartime. The defendants refused a lawyer. They did not plead guilty. They referred to the Constitution, reasoning that they had lived in poverty their whole lives, which had led them to conclude that Ukraine should be independent to provide for itself. One soldier from Feshchuk’s company testified against him. Others, including a Russian soldier named Zarovny, said they had heard nothing criminal from the defendants. The verdict: Feshchuk received 7 years of imprisonment, Botsian 4 years in a strict-regime camp.
Botsian’s mother was informed through the village council that her son had been convicted of anti-Soviet activity.
He served his sentence in the camp ZhKh-385/7. There he met insurgents like Volodymyr Vasiuta from Sambir, Dmytro Rabyniuk, Yevhen Donichenko, Dmytro Oliynyk, Mykola Kinash, Mykhailo Zelenchuk, the poet Leonid Dnistrovy, and the composer Vasyl Barvinsky, among other interesting patriots. He learned a great deal about the insurgent movement there. There was a strike in the zone. The young prisoners with short sentences were kept away from the strike by the insurgents (Banderites), who generally looked out for them.
The camp had a woodworking enterprise that produced boxes for radios, and other items.
In September 1958, Botsian was transferred to ZhKh-385/19, in the village of Lesnoy, Tengushevsky Raion, Mordovian ASSR, where he taught mathematics to the prisoners. He was released in September 1959, after serving two-thirds of his term with time off for work.
He returned home on September 29. There were no mathematics teacher positions available in the Berdychiv, Korostyshiv, or Zhytomyr districts. Botsian told the HR inspector of the Zhytomyr Regional Department of Public Education that he had come from Moldavia. She glanced at his documents distractedly, overjoyed at finding a candidate, and sent him to the village of Syrnytsia in the Slovechne Raion.
A year later, he was offered the position of school principal in the village of Vovcha Sloboda. The children loved their teacher, and the people respected him. He did not talk about his imprisonment to avoid unnecessary gossip. In Vovcha Sloboda, he married Raisa Ivanivna Hadion, a doctor from the Cherkasy region.
In 1962, Botsian was fired for concealing his criminal record. He continued to work as a mathematics teacher in the village of Tkhoryn in the same district until 1965.
He sought work in Shpola Raion and in Rivne Oblast. At that time, political prisoners and insurgents Anton Oliynyk and Roman Semeniuk successfully escaped from a Mordovian camp. They were caught in Ukraine, and the address of Botsian’s parents, where the escapees had spent the night, was discovered. The KGB interrogated Botsian, asking how they got the address. He explained that in the camp, all letters were laid out on a table in the barracks, so they could have copied the address themselves. As a result, Botsian was denied work everywhere.
One day in early September 1957, Botsian was sitting in the reception area of the Zhytomyr Regional Department of Public Education. The principal of School No. 20, Ada Kulchytska, approached him and hired him on the spot because the school's teacher had been detained in a drunk tank the day before.
From 1984 to 1992, Botsian worked at the Institute for Teacher Professional Development. He retired but continued to teach mathematics at the school in the Zhytomyr prison until 2010.
He was rehabilitated in 1992. In 1996, the Hungarian Society of Political Prisoners awarded Botsian the Order “For the Homeland.”
His wife, Raisa, passed away in 2005. They have a daughter, Tetiana, born in 1970.
Botsian lives in Zhytomyr.
Bibliography
Interview with I. Botsian on June 27, 2017, at the “Hoverla” sanatorium in Morshyn.
This entry was compiled by V. Ovsienko on September 1, 2017, and corrected by Ivan Botsian on September 27, 2017.