Engineer. Resistance movement participant. Public figure.
Born in Kharkiv into a working-class family. In 1961, he graduated from the Kharkiv Civil Engineering Institute. He worked as a construction foreman and a civil engineer at PrombudNDIproekt.
At the age of thirty, he identified as Ukrainian, restored the letter “i” in his surname (his parents had been spelling it with an “-ov” ending), and switched to speaking Ukrainian in his daily life, which he mastered perfectly.
On June 21, 1972, he was arrested while typing I. DZIUBA's work “Internationalism or Russification?”, which he had received from A. ZDOROVY. He was accused of “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda.” Also incriminated were manuscripts from 1968 titled “History Develops in a Spiral...” and “Wł. Gomułka Has Views on Freedom of Speech...”, as well as a 1971 manuscript, “Notes on the Famous Semicentennial Jubilee,” where the USSR was called an empire, a copy of an article from the journal “Ukraina” (Prague–Berlin, 1923) made on an “Era” copier, diary entries, excerpts from the works of V. Belinsky with his critique, several letters, and conversations. K. was accused of slandering Soviet reality by criticizing the nationalities policy of the CPSU and the socialist economic system.
K. successfully demanded that the preliminary investigation and trial be conducted in Ukrainian. On October 13, 1972, he was sentenced under Article 62, Part 1 of the Criminal Code of the UkrSSR to 5 years of imprisonment in strict-regime camps. The cassation court upheld the verdict without changes.
He served his sentence in zone 35 in the Urals and zone 19 in Dubravlag (Mordovia). He actively participated in political prisoners' protest actions against the arbitrariness of the camp administration, sending statements and letters of protest to international organizations and government agencies. In 1974-75, he demanded political prisoner status, appealing on this matter to M. Podgorny, the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. On October 22, 1976, K., along with 13 other political prisoners, protested the confiscation and destruction of the works of creative individuals (V. STUS, S. SHABATURA). On January 12, 1977, together with political prisoners of various nationalities, he marked the 5th anniversary of the start of a new wave of repressions in Ukraine with a hunger strike. He was subjected to punishment.
After his release in June 1977, K. was placed under administrative surveillance for 1 year, which was later extended for another six months. As soon as the surveillance was lifted, he went to V. OVSIYENKO’s trial in the Zhytomyr region. In December 1977, he was summoned for questioning in the case of L. LUKYANENKO, and in September 1980, in the case of A. Zinchenko. Searches were conducted at K.’s residence. For a long time, he was unemployed. Speaking exclusively in Ukrainian, he had conflicts at work. He worked as an engineer at Pivdendiprosakht, and from the summer of 1989, as a group leader and chief project engineer at the Ukrproektrestavratsiia institute.
From 1988, he was a member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Union (UHU), then chairman of the oblast organization of the Ukrainian Republican Party (URP). He was a deputy of the first convocation of the Kharkiv Oblast Council, where he served as secretary of the education commission. He was a candidate for People's Deputy of Ukraine in the first convocation and in January 1992 during supplementary elections, but they did not take place.
He lives in Kharkiv. He has a son, Bohdan.
Bibliography:
“The Trial of I. Kravtsiv.” Suchasnist, 1978, no. 7/8, pp. 184-189.
“Verdict of the Judicial Collegium in the Case of I. Kravtsiv.” A. Rusnachenko, The National Liberation Movement in Ukraine: 1950–1990, pp. 532-536.
[Collection of materials]. Samostiina Ukraina, 1992, no. 1 (22), January.
V. Ovsiyenko. “The Ascetic.” The Light of People: Memoirs and Publicistic Writings. In 2 books. Book 2. Kharkiv: Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group; Kyiv: Smoloskyp, 2005, pp. 74-76.
Kravtsiv, Ihor Ivanovych // The Resistance Movement in Ukraine: 1960–1990. An Encyclopedic Guide. Foreword by Osyp Zinkevych and Oles Obertas. Kyiv: Smoloskyp, 2010, pp. 345-346.
KRAVCIV IHOR IVANOVYCH