Insurgent, member of the OUN. Participant in the Norilsk Uprising. Served 31 years, 2 months, and 25 days in captivity (1948–1979).
From a farming family. His mother, Demchuk Sofia Andriivna (1900–1977), was from the village of Nevirkiv. His father, Yakiv Antonovych Kurchyk (1897–1984), from the village of Adamivka, bought a farmstead from a German colonist in 1933, one and a half kilometers from the village of Kharaluh, which he named Nadiia (Hope). Mykola graduated from a Polish seven-grade school in the village of Velyki Mezhyrichi. He attended a Soviet school for another two years. During an exam on the “constitution,” he asked why the Ukrainian SSR did not secede from the USSR. He received a failing grade and was not issued a document for his 9-year education. He returned to his father’s farmstead. On an OUN assignment, from 1941 to 1943, he taught history in a school in the neighboring village of Koloverty.
During the German occupation, Kurchyk became an active member of the underground youth organization “Sich.” In the summer and autumn of 1943, he underwent a three-month military, medical, and propaganda training at the headquarters of “UPA-North,” which was located in the Kharaluh farmsteads, and joined the OUN. The headquarters was commanded by Klym Savur (Dmytro Klyachkivskyi). The ataman of the “Polissian Sich,” Taras Bulba-Borovets, also visited there. On January 14, 1944, Kurchyk took an oath of allegiance to Ukraine. He chose the pseudonym “Vernyvolia.” He went underground with a false passport stating his year of birth as 1928—to avoid being drafted into the Soviet Army. The young Sich members tracked informers, destroyed communications, and wrote and passed on *hrypsy* (secret messages) about troop movements, but they were not allowed to engage in combat independently.
After the wounding of General Vatutin on February 29, 1944, the NKVD carried out raids in the Rivne region. On March 12, Mykola was recognized by a “strybok” (a member of a Soviet extermination battalion), Zygmunt Żukowski. The NKVD seized him, kept him tied up on the floor in Kharaluh for three days, and severely tortured him for a month in the district center of Velyki Mezhyrichi, but they did not obtain proof of his service in the UPA. He was taken to the Rivne prison, then to the Lviv prison. In September 1945, along with eight hundred suspected youths, he was transported to the city of Bila Tserkva. It was announced that the Soviet government had forgiven them and was drafting them into the army. They were plagued by drill, hard labor (haymaking), and the youths were literally going blind from hunger. Kurchyk survived because his mother brought him money for bread, milk, and pastries. Realizing that he could be exposed in Ukraine, he bribed a clerk to sign him up for service in the occupation forces in Germany. He served in the city of Fürstenwalde, then in Berlin.
Kurchyk arranged with his colleagues from the Ternopil region, Mykola Starepravo and Vasyl Bondarchuk, to escape to the American occupation zone. German women acquaintances informed the Americans of their intention. On January 21, 1948, they surrendered to the American command. But the Soviet command announced on the radio that three soldiers had shot officers and deserted. The trusting American command handed over the fugitives to their former allies after 6 hours.
They were held in the casemates of the Berlin prison. It was a hermetically sealed, damp cell where the prisoners’ air was cut off, they were deprived of sleep through lengthy interrogations, and they starved. Kurchyk broke out in boils. In 8 months of investigation, the trained, strong Volhynian turned into a skeleton covered with skin. He was accused of “treason to the motherland” under Article 58-1b of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR and “espionage.” All three firmly stuck to the story that they had gone into the city, met and caroused with two German women, who turned them over to the American command. The case was sent to Moscow. During the re-investigation, the accused openly stated that they had indeed wanted to escape to the West.
A military tribunal—a “troika”—reviewed the case on August 27, 1948, in a few minutes and sentenced them to death. But since the death penalty had been abolished in 1947, it was commuted to 25 years of imprisonment and 5 years’ deprivation of civil rights with confiscation of property. They were held in the former German concentration camp Sachsenhausen in Berlin. Kurchyk was even in the cell where Stepan Bandera had been held. He suffered from hunger. He weighed 52 kg (down from his former 80).
In March 1949, Kurchyk was put on a transport. On May 1, 1949, he arrived in the city of Kingir, Dzhezkazgan raion, Karaganda oblast, Kazakhstan, for the construction of a copper smelting plant. He had the number SO-948 on his back, chest, leg, and cap. His name was no longer needed. Kurchyk immediately joined the leadership committee of the Ukrainian community. He participated in the struggle to separate criminal prisoners from political ones.
His parents only learned that their son was alive after a year and a half, as only two letters a year were allowed. To avoid being transported to Novaya Zemlya, from where no one returned, he hid in the utility yard behind some boxes. When the transport left, he came out of hiding. He was punished with the solitary confinement cell.
In mid-1950, as a regime violator, he was transferred to a camp in the city of Spassk, nicknamed the “Valley of Death.” Cripples and sick people from all over Kazakhstan were brought there to die. Six months later, 5,000 prisoners were transported to the Pavlodar oblast to build the city of Ekibastuz and open-pit coal mines. There, Kurchyk was thrown into the BUR (reinforced-regime barracks), then into a strict-regime barrack. In December 1951, he was transferred to a brickyard in Spassk, where a criminal case was opened against 31 prisoners. But the investigation was soon dropped because an uprising had broken out in Ekibastuz. The penalty prisoners were moved to the Dolinskoye directorate of Karlag, Churbainurinsky raion, to a reinforced-regime zone, for the construction of a mine.
At the end of September 1952, he was transported by the Yenisei River to Dudinka, to the 5th camp of the Norilsk “Gorlag.” The transport lasted 28 days. A month later, he was in the solitary confinement cell of the 4th camp. A sergeant opened the door and announced: “Comrades! Our great leader, Comrade Stalin, has died!” To the prisoners’ friendly shouts of “hurrah,” the guard slammed the door and responded with a shot at the light bulb above the door. A ricocheting bullet wounded one prisoner. The outraged cellmates broke down the door. The camp commander himself came to pacify them, promising to release them from the cell the next day.
After several incidents where guards fired into the zone without warning, the 5th Norilsk camp went on strike. Strikes began simultaneously in all Norilsk camps, even the criminal ones. The copper smelting plant stopped, and the construction of the city ceased. The regime weakened, and the prisoners hardly worked. They marched in formation under Ukrainian commands and sang Ukrainian songs.
On May 3, 1953, after a work shift, about 350 prisoners gathered near the 14th barrack at the edge of the camp and called out to the women entering their zone. Some had acquaintances, even sisters, there. When they all sang together, the head of security demanded they disperse. They did not obey. Then a sergeant snatched a submachine gun from a soldier and fired a burst. Three prisoners fell next to Kurchyk, one of them (Kovalchuk) was killed. The prisoners rushed to drive the guards and authorities out of the zone.
The head of Gorlag, Major Semenov, having reinforced the outer guard with machine gunners, gathered 200 officers, and through slits in the “zapretka” (forbidden zone) of the 5th camp, they entered the zone accompanied by two fire trucks. The prisoners cut the hoses. A cry rang out: “Drive them out of the zone! Just don’t kill them!” Some officers had latrine buckets put on their heads, and their epaulets were torn off. The snitches fled along with the officers. The guards on the towers fired into the air, demonstrating solidarity with the political prisoners. Thus, the operation failed.
The political prisoners created an international strike committee, which set up its own guard and allowed only a doctor into the zone. The committee stated that it would negotiate only with a representative from Moscow. Within 11 days, Beria’s deputy, General Serov, arrived in Norilsk. The strike committee put forward demands:
— release underage political prisoners, invalids, and the sick;
— review court cases;
— remove numbers from clothing;
— do not lock premises and barracks at night;
— remove bars from windows;
— allow visits with relatives and loved ones;
— allow letters to be written as needed, not just twice a year;
— shorten the workday from 12 to 8 hours;
— pay wages twice a month, and in difficult working conditions (mines, stone quarries, hazardous industries)—weekly;
— do not cut hair;
— allow civilian clothing to be worn in both living and work zones;
— supply food to both the kitchen and the camp store on par with civilian canteens, and not of second-rate quality, as before.
The administration met some of the domestic demands (they removed locks and bars, allowed one letter a month, etc.). A new strike was brewing. On July 7 or 8, Kurchyk received an assignment from a member of the strike committee, Horoshko, to contact the women’s zone. He threw a note over and quickly received their agreement to support the strike.
About a month later, the 4th camp decided to support the demands of the 3rd hard-labor camp. About 120 prisoners went out to the work zone but did not start working. About a hundred sergeants, armed with rifles and clubs, were brought into the zone. The prisoners were herded into a two-story building. Kurchyk, with several prisoners, repelling the attack, found himself on the roof. One tried to stab him with a bayonet. Another hit him on the neck with a club. Regaining consciousness, Kurchyk saw that he was being dragged by the legs to be thrown from the height, but he caught one of the attackers by the leg. The reprisal was stopped by a woman’s scream.
They wanted to lead the rebels out of the work zone into the living zone. Kurchyk and a Lithuanian called on them to lie down and not go. A colonel ordered the two of them to be taken under separate guard; they were beaten and placed face down under submachine guns. The column of prisoners was led into the tundra. From there, shouts were heard: “If you shoot these two, we will destroy your hostages.” An officer lifted Kurchyk’s head: “Look how big the Soviet Union is!” But all that was visible was the “Medvezhiy Ruchey” (Bear Creek) camp. They were let back into the column.
The rebels were dispersed to different camps. Severely beaten, Kurchyk was in a group that was transported a month later down the Yenisei to Krasnoyarsk, where they were all sentenced to a year in prison. They rioted, breaking the bunks. They were taken to Vanino Bay and sent to Magadan on the steamship “Gvardeyets.” This transport lasted 2 months and 7 days.
Kurchyk served his sentence at the “Kholodnyi” (Cold) mine, 500 km from Magadan, where the temperature reaches -65 degrees Celsius. (Serhiy Korolyov had been imprisoned here earlier). Kurchyk spent 4 months here. In March 1954, he exposed a “stukach” (informer) named Kartashov. The Russian committee sentenced him to death. Although Kurchyk did not participate in his execution, on April 16, 1954, the Magadan court sentenced him to death under Article 59-3 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR, accusing him of creating a “bandit group” that eliminated prisoners who had “embarked on the path of correction.” After 42 days, the death sentence was commuted to 25 years of imprisonment in special-regime camps and 5 years of deprivation of rights. A commission of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet in May 1956 did not release Kurchyk or reduce his term because his criminal article was not subject to any amnesty.
He served his sentence in the camps of the Magadan oblast. He completed courses as a milling machine operator and worked in the Timoshenko gold mines. In the village of Matrosova, Tenkinsky raion, where Vasyl STUS would later serve his exile, he converted barracks into dormitories for “Komsomol members.” When civilian clothing was allowed, he bought a suit and a camera. He has preserved some of the photos to this day. In 1957, he was in the “Vetryany” (Windy) camp.
On October 26–27, 1958, all political prisoners of the Kolyma region were transferred to the transit camp “14th Kilometer” near Magadan, then by plane to Khabarovsk, to Taishet, to the village of Anadzoba, where they were placed in a special isolation ward. In April 1959, he was sent to Vikhorevka, Bratsky raion, Irkutsk oblast. Here he met Hryts Pryshliak, Petro Duzhy, Mykhailo SOROKA, and Dr. Volodymyr Horbov. The latter wrote a statement to the UN, which Kurchyk glued into the cover of a notebook and brought out to freedom many years later.
On Easter 1960, Kurchyk arrived by transport in Mordovia. In December, he was in the settlement of Sosnovka, where he knew Anton Oliynyk, Anatoliy LUPYNIS, Andriy Turyk, Dmytro Syniak, and Ihor KICHAK.
In connection with a reform of the regimes, on March 30, 1961, the Zubovo-Polyansky court declared Kurchyk a particularly dangerous recidivist. Until March 1969 (7 years), he was on a cell-based regime in the settlement of Udarny. Here he knew Metropolitan Josyf SLIPYJ. Later, he was in Sosnovka, in Barashevo, Tengushovsky raion, where he and Mykola Budulak-Sharygin raised the UN flag.
In 1972, Kurchyk was transferred to the Urals as part of a large transport (500 prisoners). In camp VS-389/36, in the settlement of Kuchino, Perm oblast, he befriended a new generation of political prisoners, in particular, Levko Lukyanenko, Ivan Svitlychny, and Yevhen Sverstiuk. He met the insurgent Ivan POKROVSKY, and Ivan Novak from the neighboring village of Zaliznytsia, who had spent the entire war in Kolyma and survived. Kurchyk stood guard while LUKYANENKO transcribed statements in tiny script for transmission to freedom. He was always at the center of events. For example, in 1973, when the situation worsened, he suggested going to summons from the authorities with witnesses. For participating in a strike over the beating of Stepan SAPELYAK (June 23, 1974), Kurchyk was returned to the special regime in Sosnovka (Mordovia) by a decision of the Chusovskoy district court on August 12, 1974. By prior agreement, L. LUKYANENKO signed his name to the “Appeal of the Ukrainian National Liberation Movement on the Matter of Ukrainian Independence” (1979).
Kurchyk spent the last two years in a camp in the settlement of Udarny. He was released on April 16, 1979. His brother Yevhen was waiting for him outside the gates. Although a KGB agent accompanied them all the way to Novohrad-Volynskyi, they met LUKYANENKO’s wife and sister at the station in Chernihiv. He brought a whole suitcase of letters to the Nadiia farmstead.
Kurchyk could not find work anywhere, and the police threatened him with imprisonment for “parasitism.” He did not join the collective farm, just like his father. With the help of a labor commissioner, he got a job as a tinsmith at a plastics factory in the city of Korets, Rivne oblast. When his father’s health declined, Mykola left his job in 1982, a month before retirement, returned to the Nadiia farmstead, and lived with his father on a 20-sotka (half-acre) garden plot. When his father died, his brother Yevhen (b. 1928) moved to the farmstead, and they have been running the farm together ever since. They used a kerosene lamp until deputy Chervoniy managed to get electricity installed.
Kurchyk organized the removal of the collective farm chairman and the village council head—for abuse of office. In connection with this, he had a lengthy court battle—he was accused of insulting the village council head. He assisted in the construction of a church in the village of Kharaluh, organized the erection of a monument on the grave of 35 UPA soldiers in Hurby, collected signatures for the ban of the Communist Party of Ukraine, traveled to the Cossack Glory Festival in 1990, participated in the Human Chain of Unity, and urged a priest to switch to the Ukrainian language, offering him a Holy Scripture received from abroad. He was a member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Union, and is now a member of the Ukrainian Republican Party.
Bibliography:
Kost Harbachuk. “Twice Sentenced to Be Shot.” *Dzerkalo tyzhnia*, no. 39 (464), October 11, 2003.
Levko Lukyanenko. *From the Times of Captivity: Memoirs and Reflections*. Book Three. Kyiv: Vydavnychyi dim “Svitlytsia,” “Skhidna proektsiia,” 2009, pp. 275-289.
Levko Lukyanenko. *From the Times of Captivity*. Book Four: *The Land of Moxel*. Kyiv: Feniks, 2010, pp. 172, 191-193, 202, 239-265, et al.
Levko Lukyanenko. *From the Times of Captivity*. Book Five: *The Obsessed*. Kyiv: Feniks, 2012, 400 pp., illus. (in print). On the KHPG website: https://museum.khpg.org/1339771552
“Rivne Resident, Twice Sentenced to Be Shot in the USSR, Awarded the UPA Order”: http://tsn.ua/article/print/ukrayina/rivnenchaninu-zasudzhenomu-do-rozstrilu-v-srsr-vruchili-orden-upa.html TSN, May 14, 2009.
Memoirs of Mykola Kurchyk: www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4uV-zWlg3Q
“The Unconquered from the Nadiia Farmstead.” Published November 2, 2011 | Author PoliskaSich http://poliskasich.org.ua/?p=158
KURCHYK MYKOLA YAKOVYCH