Ukrainian linguist, methodologist, and professor.
His parents—Tykhon Trokhymovych (1901–1994) and Anastasia Yosypivna (née Cherkas, 1905–1993)—were native inhabitants of the northwestern (Brest-Pinsk) Polissia region, who are ethnically Ukrainian in language, customs, and anthropology, but were transferred to Belarus by the Kremlin's will and forcibly registered as Belarusians.
Before the war, Horbachuk attended a primary Polish school, which became Belarusian in September 1939. During the German occupation, he completed the seventh grade in Bereza-Kartuzka in 1943. He read many books by Polish authors, but what most prompted his national self-identification were T. Shevchenko's *Kobzar* and I. Krypiakevych’s *A Short History of Ukraine*. In August 1944, when submitting documents to the eighth grade of Bereza Secondary School No. 1 (a Belarusian-language school), he registered himself as a Ukrainian.
From 1945 to 1948, insurgents from the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) often stayed at his parents’ home, bringing their literature with them. Conversations with them, especially with the sub-district leader Konoplenko, strengthened his sense of Ukrainian identity and determined the young man's future national and political orientation.
In 1947, Horbachuk graduated from school with a medal and enrolled in the Faculty of Philology at Ivan Franko University of Lviv, although he also had an aptitude for mathematical disciplines. He became friends with Yevhen SVERSTYUK and Ivan Denysiuk. In 1952, he was assigned to the Zholobkiv Secondary School in Shumsk Raion, Ternopil Oblast. The following year, he entered postgraduate studies at the Ukrainian Scientific Research Institute of Pedagogy.
From 1956, he worked at the Mykolaiv Pedagogical Institute. During a department discussion about the conduct of a Ukrainian literature lecturer named Kalnauz, he pointed out that Kalnauz spoke Russian to students even in the classroom. This earned Horbachuk the label of “nationalist.” At the end of the academic year, he was “downsized.” Through the Ministry of Education, he managed to be reinstated, but at the Horlivka Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Languages. The head of the department, Oleksa Masiukevych, reported to the KGB that Horbachuk held nationalist views on the origin of the Ukrainian language. Two “experts” from the Donetsk KGB meticulously “investigated” his ideological character by questioning students and lecturers. After this, the institute's administration created a hostile atmosphere around Horbachuk, and he was forced to resign “of his own volition” in June 1958. The department head at the Zhytomyr Pedagogical Institute, Teodor Baimut, hired Horbachuk on an hourly basis, gave him a positive reference for his dissertation defense in May 1959, but even after that, he did not dare to hire him as a full-time staff member.
In September 1959, Horbachuk was hired through a competitive process as a lecturer at the Vinnytsia Pedagogical Institute. While visiting the library of the Academy of Sciences in Kyiv, Horbachuk would meet with Y. SVERSTYUK. In January 1960, they visited a former postgraduate colleague, Ivan Benedyktovych BROVKO, then an associate professor at the Taras Shevchenko Kyiv State University, at his apartment in Pushcha-Vodytsia near Kyiv. At the end of May 1960, unexpectedly, in the midst of the academic year at the institute, Horbachuk was hastily taken away for military drills in the town of Khmilnyk. There, about a month later, KGB officers—Kalashnyk from Kyiv and Sobko from Vinnytsia—pulled him into a special room in the barracks and assailed him with threats and intimidation, demanding that he tell them what he knew about the “hostile activities of the Ukrainian bourgeois nationalists BROVKO and SVERSTYUK.” Failing to get the desired result, they took Horbachuk to the regional KGB department. To confuse and “break” the interrogated man, they quoted excerpts of statements made at the apartment, claiming that BROVKO had told them everything, implicating his interlocutors. “So you believe Brovko’s testimony?!” —“We believe ourselves!” was the response. It later became clear how they had obtained their information: a listening device had been installed in the empty apartment next to BROVKO’s.
Despite the warnings, Horbachuk renewed his contacts with I. BROVKO and Y. SVERSTYUK after some time. From Yevhen, he received *samizdat* literature, including Vasyl SYMONENKO's “Diary,” Ivan DZIUBA's “Internationalism or Russification?”, Ivan Koshelivets’s book *Contemporary Literature in the Ukrainian SSR*, and poetry by L. KOSTENKO, M. KHOLODNY, and others, which he shared with trusted colleagues and students.
In September 1966, Horbachuk transferred to the Kirovohrad Pedagogical Institute. In the autumn of 1968, he was summoned to the regional KGB regarding testimony from a certain Sorokin (from Vinnytsia) that Horbachuk had given him I. DZIUBA's work to read. He argued that it was slander. However, a year and a half later, a teacher named Hryshchenko from Smila, Cherkasy Oblast, who was caught with a photocopy of I. Koshelivets’s book, confessed that he had received it from Horbachuk. This time, his denials were not accepted. He was frequently summoned for “prophylactic talks,” until finally, in August 1972, in his absence, he was dismissed from his job, allegedly on the “recommendation of the party bureau.” Incidentally, at that bureau meeting, a KGB officer read out Horbachuk's “explanatory note,” in which he denied the incriminated connections with dissidents, anti-Soviet conversations, and dissemination of banned literature.
Thus began his wanderings through various authorities. He sequentially sent documents to apply for positions in Nizhyn, Hlukhiv, Berdiansk, Donetsk, Novozybkov (RSFSR), Mozyr (BSSR), and Tyumen (RSFSR). He received rejections. Only with the help of Dmytro Kravchuk, the vice-rector of the Sloviansk Pedagogical Institute in the Donetsk region, was he able to find a job there in September 1973. He became an associate professor in 1964 and a full professor in 1990.
In 1976, Oleksa TYKHY visited Horbachuk at the institute, ostensibly for a consultation regarding his *Dictionary of Linguistic Corruptions*. After getting acquainted, they met occasionally. On one occasion, Oleksa left a typescript with Horbachuk for him to review, a work which KGB officers later questioned him about, calling it the “Book of Quotations.” (This was the work *The Language of the People. The People*). Sensing impending danger, they agreed on what they would say about each other in the event of an investigation. This was very helpful: on March 23, 1977, Horbachuk was summoned for questioning at the Donetsk KGB Department. Horbachuk replied that he and TYKHY had discussed nothing other than the *Dictionary*, on which Tykhy had tried to involve him as a collaborator. He was not even called to the trial, which took place from June 23 to July 1, 1977. However, Melnikov, the head of the investigative department of the Donetsk KGB, ended a “conversation” in Sloviansk with the words: “In my practice, this is the first time that a person like you is not in prison!”
In 1984, Horbachuk was elected head of the Ukrainian language department, and from 1994 until his retirement in 2003, he served as the dean of the philology faculty at the Sloviansk State Pedagogical University. During the years of independence, he organized the research group “Southern Sloboda Ukraine” at the faculty, established the “Library of Ukrainian Literature Abroad,” and founded the almanac *Yevshan*, which became a platform for talented youth. He also established ties with the Ukrainian diaspora, which provided assistance to high-achieving students. He took an active part in the work of the “Prosvita” society and the Society of the Repressed, and received a letter of thanks from the Chairman of the All-Ukrainian Brotherhood of OUN-UPA (1995).
Horbachuk was an Outstanding Educator and a member of the Union of Journalists of Ukraine. He had over 100 scholarly publications, including about 20 books and brochures on Ukrainian linguistics and language teaching, such as *The Composition and Types of a Simple Sentence* (1959), *Methods of Teaching the Ukrainian Language: A Bibliographic Index* (Parts 1-2, 1971-78), *Types of Dictations and Methods of Conducting Them* (1989), *Esperanto-Russian-Ukrainian-English Dictionary* (1994, co-author), *Syntax of the Standard Ukrainian Language* (1995), and *The Colors of the Ukrainian Language* (1997). He authored about 150 articles in newspapers and journals on socio-political topics, including the situation of Ukrainians in the Brest region and the insurgent movement.
From 2003, he lived in Irpin, near Kyiv. He and his wife, Lidia Dmytrivna, had two sons: Mykola (b. 1959) and Dmytro (b. 1968).
Bibliography:
“Son of the Donetsk Land: A Memoir of Oleksa Tykhy.” In: *He Who Was Not Broken in Spirit: Materials of the Scientific Conference Dedicated to the Memory of Oleksa Tykhy*. Druzhkivka, 1994, pp. 10–17.
“About a Friend—Across the Distance of Years.” In: *A Heart Warmed by Goodness: For the 80th Anniversary of I. B. Brovko*. Kyiv, 1995, pp. 16–21; 2nd ed.: *A Heart Warmed by Goodness: For the 90th Anniversary of I. B. Brovko*. Kharkiv: Folio, 2005, pp. 61–66.
“Tragic Pages of History [Review of M. Potupeyko’s book *In the Clutches of Death*].” *Kozatskyi Krai* newspaper, 1996, no. 1, January.
“In Memory of Those Innocently Murdered by Famine.” *Yevshan* almanac. Sloviansk, 2004, pp. 46–53.
“Passport Belarusians of the Brest Region.” *Nad Buhom i Narwoju* [On the Bug and Narew] [Poland], 2004, no. 4, p. 33.
*Thirty Years in the Donbas (Diary Entries). 1973–2004*. Sloviansk: Drukarskyi Dvir, 2010, 218 pp.
*The Ukrainian Insurgent Movement in the Brest Region in the Mid-20th Century. Memoirs, Materials, Correspondence*. V. T. Horbachuk. Kyiv: M. P. Drahomanov NPU Publishing House, 2012, 214 pp.
II.
Leonyuk, V. “Horbachuk V. T.” In: *Dictionary of the Brest Region*. Lviv: Afisha, 1996, p. 104.
*Sloviansk: Who’s Who*. Sloviansk: Kantsler, 2001, p. 143.
*To You, World... Ukrainian Literature of the Brest Region*. Kyiv: Ukrainian Center for Spiritual Culture, 2003, pp. 352–359.
Lashchenko, S. “How Brest Insurgents ‘Gave’ Ukraine a Professor of Philology.” *Nad Buhom i Narwoju* [Poland], 2004, no. 5, pp. 25–26, 29.
Piven, V. “Many Happy Returns! On the Occasion of V. T. Horbachuk's Jubilee.” *Yevshan* literary and arts almanac. Sloviansk, 2004, pp. 3–4.
Khomenko, B. V. “Horbachuk, Vasyl Tykhonovych.” *Encyclopedia of Modern Ukraine*. Vol. 6. Kyiv: Institute of Encyclopedic Research of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, 2006, p. 192.
Lashchenko, S. “The Order of ‘Nationalist of the Borderlands’ Would Have to Be Awarded to Many...” *2000* newspaper, no. 42 (338), October 26, 2006.
Romanko, V., Piven, V. “Our Greetings to the Founder of ‘Yevshan’: On the 80th Birthday of Vasyl Horbachuk.” *Yevshan*, Sloviansk, 2009, no. 14, pp. 4–5.
Vasyl Ovsiienko, Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, February 18–June 14, 2011.
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HORBACHUK VASYL TYKHONOVYCH