Engineer. Printed and distributed leaflets against Russification.
His mother, Lidiia Hnativna Luhovska (1910–2001), was born in Yalta and grew up as an orphan in the village of Atyusha in the Chernihiv region. She was raised in Ukrainian traditions. His father, Yukhym Andriiovych Mykhalko (1907–1975), from the village of Altynivka in the Sumy region, came from a family of dekulakized farmers and was convicted in 1931 for possession of a weapon, serving his sentence on the construction of the White Sea–Baltic Canal. Mykhailo attended Russian-language schools No. 110 and 108 in the Demiivka district. His father took him to the grave of M. Hrushevsky at the Baikove Cemetery and told him about his works. Later, on memorial days, Mykhailo would bring yellow-and-blue Easter eggs to his grave.
In 1965, Mykhalko graduated from the Faculty of Agricultural Mechanization at the Ukrainian Agricultural Academy. The instruction there was conducted in Russian, but Mykhalko tried to master Ukrainian technical language. He became convinced that the Russification of Ukraine was ongoing and decided to fight against it. In 1978, he tried to submit proposals for the draft of the new Constitution. Neither the Moscow district executive committee nor the Kyiv city executive committee accepted them, as they had already reported completion ahead of schedule. With difficulty and misadventures, he submitted his proposals to the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR. None of them were accepted. He then began to print short leaflets and paste them around Kyiv, disguising them as advertisements: “For sale for 325 years: the fate of the Ukrainian people, its language, culture, and national interests. Ukrainians! Fight against Russification, do not let the Moscow colonizers destroy the Ukrainian language!”; “For sale: a typewriter for producing leaflets against the Russification of Ukraine”; “I will trade the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, V.V. Shcherbytsky, for P.Yu. Shelest,” and others. He mailed some of the leaflets to addresses of people he did not know. He printed appeals to well-known figures of Ukrainian culture.
Mykhalko worked as an engineer for ventilation equipment at the Kyiv SpetsRBU of the “Ukrrembudmaterialy” trust in the city of Irpin. He printed the leaflets on a self-made device, which he disassembled after use and hid its parts in different places. He often traveled on business trips across Ukraine, distributing leaflets on electric trains at their final stops, leaving them on desks in university classrooms, and placing them in mailboxes. One of the leaflets was titled “Letter of the Zaporozhians to the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, V.V. Shcherbytsky.” A special group was created in the KGB to find its author, and it operated for several years.
One night, Mykhalko painted over a huge poster with false political content with black paint on the street. He would engage in conversations with strangers, advising new recruits at the military commissariat of the Moscow district of Kyiv on how to behave to avoid being sent to the war in Afghanistan. Such conversations were later qualified as oral agitation and propaganda.
To popularize the Ukrainian language, he organized the production of enameled trays with Ukrainian proverbs: “Be patient, Cossack—you will become an ataman,” “He who drinks his fill rests under a fence,” “Bread is the father, water is the mother,” and others.
He was arrested on September 14, 1984, as he was leaving hospital No. 11. At the same time, during a search of his home, KGB agents seized part of the print run of the “Letter of the Zaporozhians…,” a letter to I. DRACH, leaflets, and 148 cartridges for a sporting weapon.
Mykhalko was charged under Article 187-1 of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR, “Dissemination of deliberately false fabrications that defame the Soviet state and social system,” and Article 222, Part 1, “Possession of ammunition.”
He was held in the pre-trial detention cell (KPU) in Irpin, and later transferred to the Lukyanivska SIZO.
On March 5, 1985, the Kyiv City Court, presided over by H.I. Zubets, sentenced Mykhalko to 3 years of imprisonment in a general-regime camp for “slander” and 2 years for possession of ammunition. On the instructions of the KGB, the Irpin People’s Court found violations in the processing of Mykhalko’s business trips and on January 6, 1987, sentenced him to 3 years and 6 months under Article 83, Part 2 (“theft of state property through fraud”) and Article 194, Part 1 (“forgery of documents”). Thus, the investigation and trials lasted 22 months, with the final sentence being 3 years and 6 months, as the shorter terms were absorbed by the longer ones. Mykhalko sees in this the hidden sympathies of the prosecutors and judges, despite the pressure from the KGB. A meeting of the staff at SpetsRBU, where Mykhalko worked, refused to condemn his activities, demanding to be familiarized with the texts of his leaflets.
Mykhalko served his sentence in general-regime camp No. YuA–45/75 in the village of Bilychi near Kyiv. Believing that much remained undone on the outside, he applied for a pardon: “I have understood my mistakes. I will not do this again.” But even in captivity, he continued to agitate among the prisoners, for which he was summoned several times by the colony’s chief, Colonel Yahodenko, who warned him: “Mykhalko, stop, or you will get a prison within a prison and will never be released.”
Mykhalko was released on October 16, 1987, under an amnesty in connection with the 70th anniversary of the October Revolution. He could not find work as an engineer anywhere. He got a job as a tinsmith at the Agricultural Academy, where he had once studied. This was in the Holosiieve Forest. When they began to cut down the forest in 1988 for construction, he organized an environmental movement to protect it, headed the public “Union for the Salvation of Holosiieve,” and became a member of the leadership of the Ukrainian Ecological Association “Zelenyi Svit” (Green World). In 1988, he was one of the initiators of the creation of the Green Party of Ukraine as an alternative to the CPSU (active since 1990). The Green Party of Ukraine and the association played a prominent role in the political life of Ukraine, accelerating Ukraine’s achievement of independence in 1991.
By a resolution of the Plenum of the Supreme Court of Ukraine dated January 31, 1992, Mykhalko’s conviction under Article 187-1 was annulled due to the absence of a crime.
In 2008, he was awarded the Order “For Merit,” III degree.
Bibliography:
Autobiography of Mykhailo Yukhymovych Mykhalko dated November 15, 2010.
The entry was compiled by V. Ovsienko on May 26, 2012.
Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group.
MYKHALKO MYKHAILO YUKHYMOVYCH