Trokhym Yefymovych Shynkaruk

TROKHYM YEFYMOVYCH SHYNKARUK (born 1931, Volyn – died 1981, Mordovia)
Resistance movement participant, poet.
Imprisoned for 25 years as a “leader of the UPA” (Ukrainian Insurgent Army), as stated in his sentence. In reality, as a young boy, he guided insurgents through the Polissian marshes. Strong-willed and resolute, he protected political prisoners from common criminals. From 1956, he was in the camps of Mordovia.
According to the testimony of L. LUKYANENKO, in 1962, a strike and a protest action against the intolerable regime were being prepared in camp No. 7. At the center of the action was Sh.: he was to carry out an assassination attempt against the inhuman foreman Shvedov, while LUKYANENKO and O. TYKHY were preparing leaflets explaining the motives for the strike.
Around 1970, Sh. was released. In 1971, he was arrested again and sentenced to 12 years of imprisonment in special-regime camps. He served his sentence in camp No. 1, in the village of Sosnovka, Mordovia.
On June 27, 1975, Sh. managed to smuggle out two appeals—one to the radio station “Radio Free Europe” with a request to broadcast his “Appeal to the Peoples of the World,” which called for the rejection of communist ideology, and another to UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim about the situation of Ukrainian political prisoners in the USSR.
After meeting him at the hospital in the village of Barashevo, Vasyl STUS said: “I would never have thought that within the steel-willed character of Trokhym Shynkaruk brewed such a talented poet and such a kind person.”
In 1981, common criminals provoked Sh. into a fight, as a result of which he was sentenced to death. He refused to ask for a pardon.
The poet Ivan HNATIUK posthumously published a small book by Sh. under his pseudonym, Marko Zatskovany (The Hounded).


Bibliography:
1.
Marko Zatskovany (Trokhym Shynkaruk). From the collection “The Treasury of My Soul.” [Foreword: Pavlo Kulyk]. Zona, no. 4, 1993, pp. 82-89.
Marko Zatskovany (Trokhym Shynkaruk). The Treasury of My Soul: Poems. Compiled and with an introduction by Ivan Hnatiuk. Chuhuiv: III Tysiacholittia, 2001, 72 pp.
2.
Lukyanenko, Levko. I Will Not Let Ukraine Perish! Kyiv: Vyd.-kulturol. tsentr „Sofiya”, 1994, p. 122.
Lukyanenko, Levko. From the Times of Captivity. Sosnovka-7. Kyiv: MAUP, 2005, p. 466.
Hnatiuk, Ivan. “A Monument on the Poet’s Unnamed Grave.” Zona, 1998, no. 13, pp. 222-224.
The Resistance Movement in Ukraine: 1960–1990. An Encyclopedic Guide. Foreword by Osyp Zinkevych and Oles Obertas. Kyiv: Smoloskyp, 2010, p. 726.