HRABETS, LIUBOMYR OMELIANOVYCH

HRABETS, LIUBOMYR OMELIANOVYCH (born September 15, 1942, village of Sloboda, Kolomyia district, Ivano-Frankivsk oblast)
Lviv Conservatory student, organizer of an inter-university student choir, teacher, public figure.
Born in the city of Lubaczów (now in Poland), but registered as a native of the village of Sloboda in the Hutsul region. His father, Omelian Petrovych (1911-1944), was the commander of the UPA group “Pivden” (South). His mother, Halyna Yulianivna Tarnovetska (1916-2006), was arrested in 1948 and sentenced to 25 years as the wife of a UPA colonel and for sheltering a pregnant woman who was in hiding. Liubomyr was raised by his aunt Mariika, while his brother Nestor was raised by their father’s family. His mother returned in 1956, gathered her children, and married a former insurgent, Volodymyr Zhuk, who became a father to Liubomyr.
He finished school in the village of Kovalivka, Kolomyia district. In 1961, he graduated from the Kolomyia Pedagogical School and worked in the Kovalivka village school as a teacher of music and physical education, and as a senior pioneer leader. He taught the church choir and went caroling with them.
In 1963, he enrolled in the correspondence department of the conducting faculty at the Lviv Conservatory. He took the position of head of the organizational sector of the Lviv tourist club “Karpaty.” He then transferred to full-time studies. For a time, he lived with the composer Vasyl Barvinsky, a former political prisoner, as Hrabets’ mother and Barvinsky’s wife had been friends in the labor camps. Hrabets was elected secretary of the Komsomol organization of his faculty.
The conservatory students initiated the first public caroling in Lviv—it lasted from Catholic Christmas to Epiphany. For a television appearance, they received a certificate from the Central Committee of the Komsomol of Ukraine, which served as a protection against police harassment. Students Yosyp Holik, Yurko Nahirnyi, and Orest Ivakhiv proposed creating an inter-university student choir under the aegis of the Lviv City Komsomol Committee. High school students also sang in it. Hrabets became one of the choir's leaders. They gathered for rehearsals at the conservatory and then went out to squares and parks, where many young people would join them. There were provocations. Samvydav circulated within this circle: Vasyl SYMONENKO's “Diary,” poems by Ivan DRACH and Lina KOSTENKO, and articles by Ivan DZIUBA.
In 1965, Hrabets suggested to his friends that they travel through the mountains in the summer and give concerts. The city Komsomol committee provided financial assistance. The group's leaders—Hrabets, Y. Holik, Y. Nahirnyi, and O. Ivakhiv—developed two programs: one for reporting to the Komsomol authorities, and another for the concerts. Their first performance was at the unveiling of the Franko monument opposite the university. In the summer of 1965, the group of 60 people traveled from Chornohora down the Cheremosh River, giving concerts in villages, and sometimes even for a single shepherd. They performed only in Ukrainian stage costumes and accepted no pay, though they did not refuse food.
On the Feast of the Transfiguration, they arrived in the village of Sheshory, Kosiv district, where a monument to Taras Shevchenko was to be unveiled (actually, restored, as the original monument was destroyed by Hungarians during the war). A new one was made by Kyiv sculptor Ivan HONCHAR and architect Hryhoriy Kovbasa at the request of the village community, with the assistance of Yaroslav HEVRYCH. The head of the village council, Volodymyr Mykhailiuk, envisioned the unveiling as a “celebration for all the mountains.” But on the eve of the event, he was detained by the KGB in Kosiv. Dozens of buses were turned back by the police at the turnoff to Sheshory, and scheduled bus services were canceled. People walked to Sheshory. Viacheslav CHORNOVIL spoke at the monument, and Tetiana TSYMBAL recited Shevchenko’s poems.
An instructor from the Kosiv district Party committee, Balanda, tried to direct the student group to the local club, but people, persuaded by Hrabets, refused to go. The instructor had to allow a concert at the monument. Within minutes, the villagers decorated the stage with flowers, carpets, embroidered towels, headdresses, and a portrait of Taras Shevchenko. When the concert ended, the villagers gave flowers to the students. They laid them at the foot of the unveiled monument, and several thousand people sang the "Testament," followed by other songs, including insurgent ones.
In the morning, Hrabets, Olya Medynska, Yurko Nahirnyi, and Bohdan Antkiv (who later became the chief conductor of the L. Revutsky State Male Capella) were taken to the Kosiv district Party committee. Since the concert had been authorized by Party officials, they could only be accused of greeting people in the villages with "Glory to Jesus Christ." But they were forbidden from performing further.
A week after this uncontrolled event, the authorities officially unveiled the monument—with “amateur artistic performances,” flags, portraits of Lenin, hymns, and reports on “labor achievements.”
In September-October 1965, Hrabets was repeatedly summoned to Komsomol and Party bodies. He primarily defended his friends. In his dormitory room, he found planted film rolls containing samvydav. He called the students into the lobby and publicly burned the films.
After the arrests of Mykhailo HORYN and other Sixtiers, Hrabets collected money to resume the printing of samvydav. No one from the Lviv intelligentsia refused him.
In November, the reporting-and-election meeting of the conducting faculty was held, where Hrabets, as secretary of the faculty’s Komsomol organization, along with his friends, managed to convince those present that the traveling choir had committed no violations. Their book of comments and thank-you letters proved useful. But the bureau of the conservatory’s Komsomol committee still expelled him and Hryts Holik from the Komsomol. Others escaped punishment.
The acting rector, Yevhen Kozak (a former political prisoner), was forced to issue Hrabets a reprimand, but upon returning from leave, Rector Mykola Kolessa expelled him anyway. Hrabets went to the Central Committee of the Komsomol of Ukraine to seek justice, but to no avail. At the city Komsomol committee, he was ordered to leave Lviv.
He returned to Kolomyia and intended to move somewhere far away, as he had no hope of finding work as a music teacher. Professors Antkiv, Liudkevych, Vakhniak, and Kozak offered him recommendations to other conservatories in the USSR, but he accepted an unexpected offer from Eduard Lukasewicz, the director of Kolomyia School No. 1. He worked there as a teacher until 1990. He completed a degree (by correspondence) in the music and pedagogy faculty of the Ivano-Frankivsk Pedagogical Institute (1973).
Hrabets was a good teacher. He directed the school choir, ensembles of sopilka players and violinists, and a vocal ensemble, which repeatedly won all-Ukrainian and all-Union competitions. But the KGB continued to harass him, trying to recruit him as an agent. Hrabets categorically refused, even threatening to complain to Yuri Andropov and to report the pressure to the West.
“During my time as a teacher, I did not read a single sheet of illegal literature,” says Hrabets. “Only at the Ivanychuks’ home did I read a manuscript of ‘The Crane’s Cry.’ I didn’t even want to touch anything. Maybe that was wrong. I was aware that I probably couldn’t achieve much in politics, but I was also aware that I was a good teacher, and I wanted to do something in that role.”
From 1990-94, he worked as the deputy headmaster of the Kolomyia Gymnasium. During the first democratic elections, he was elected as a deputy to the city and regional councils. From 1994-1995, he was the head of the educational work department of the Ivano-Frankivsk regional department of education. He initiated patriotic expeditions to the Chornyi Lis (Black Forest), the creation of museums in schools, the tradition of lighting bonfires on the anniversary of the UPA where partisan units and hideouts had been located, and he promoted the development of the Plast scout movement. From 1995-2002, he was the director of the Kolomyia Industrial-Pedagogical College. From 2002-2004, he was the deputy mayor of Kolomyia, and since 2004, he has been the director of the Kolomyia House of Education.
He is a member of the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists (KUN) and the “Prosvita” society. He lives in Kolomyia. He is married. His son Omelian (1967) is a musician; his daughter Olesya (1977) is a philologist studying at the Academy of Public Administration; his second wife’s son Oleh (1976) is a highly skilled carpenter.


Bibliography:
Interview on March 20, 2000, in the city of Kolomyia.
The Hrabets Family // Khto ye khto na Ivano-Frankivshchyni [Who’s Who in the Ivano-Frankivsk Region] http://who-is-who.com.ua/bookmaket/xxif/2/15/1/html.

Corrections by L. Hrabets entered on January 15, 2010.