Law student, poet, author of samvydav, entrepreneur, and philanthropist.
The Roketsky family traces its lineage to Bohdan Roketsky, a Berezhany colonel during the time of Bohdan Khmelnytsky.
His father, Yulian Roketsky, married Hanna Kliuba. Her nephew, 20-year-old Volodymyr Kliuba, joined the UPA. In 1946, along with three friends from his village, he fought a battle against NKVD officers, and when they ran out of ammunition, they blew themselves up with grenades in a kryivka (a secret bunker). Hanna and Yulian gave their son his name. Along with the name, they also passed down the spirit of patriotism and defiance.
From a young age, Volodymyr stood out among his peers for his compassion and readiness to help the suffering. He was a good student who loved literature and history. After graduating from Zavalivska high school, he was invited to teach literature at the eight-year school in the village of Poplavy.
In 1964, he was conscripted into the army and served for three and a half years in the navy in Severomorsk.
After demobilization in December 1969, he became a student in the preparatory department of the law faculty at Ivan Franko Lviv State University. Here, he befriended philology students Vasyl Isaichyk and Bohdan Roketsky—a fellow countryman and distant relative—as well as Danylo Kulyniak, who had been arrested at the age of 16 for creating the organization “Heralds of the Freedom of Ukraine.”
After becoming a student at Lviv State University, Roketsky transferred to the law faculty of Kyiv University. He often visited Lviv, where he was loved and remembered in the near-mythic image of a Hutsul lad with a bartka (a traditional ax) in hand.
He felt the KGB’s surveillance as early as his first year.
In Kyiv, he visited the Ivan Honchar Museum, had wide connections with the Kyiv Sixtiers, and distributed samvydav literature and his colleagues' poems.
On the anniversary of Taras Shevchenko's reburial, May 22, 1971, Roketsky recited Danylo Kulyniak’s poem “The Forest Is Being Cut Down” at Shevchenko’s monument in Kyiv, for which he was expelled from the university. He found work as a laborer at the Kyiv Special Construction and Installation Directorate of Communications No. 2 and lived in a workers' dormitory.
On December 31, 1971, he visited the dormitory of Bohdan Roketsky, who was working on the program and charter for an underground nationalist organization, “Kamenyar” (The Stonemason), and helped him edit the documents. Its founding members were the worker Mykhailo Hombkovsky, who was preparing to enter the journalism faculty, the worker Yaroslav Smaliuk, and the future journalist Vasyl Hanushchak. They formed the core of the “Kamenyar” organization.
With the beginning of a new wave of arrests, Roketsky was arrested on a Kyiv street on January 14, 1972. On January 18, Major Kasyanov, a senior KGB investigator in the Ternopil oblast, conducted a thorough search of his parents’ home in Nosiv. He confiscated even Roketsky's childhood notebooks. He was incriminated for poems, including D. Kulyniak's “The Forest Is Being Cut Down,” for which Roketsky claimed authorship; the unfinished novella “The Memory of Pure Springs”; the political pamphlet “A Congratulatory Telegram to the Ukrainian Government on the Occasion of the 315th Anniversary of the Ukraine–Moscow Bloodline,” and more.
During interrogations, Roketsky remained courageous and did not betray anyone. On June 6, 1972, the Kyiv Oblast Court, presided over by Yu. I. Matsko, sentenced him to 5 years in strict-regime camps under Article 62, Part 1, of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR for “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda.” He was sent to camp ZhKh-385/3-5 in the village of Barashevo, Mordovian ASSR.
Meanwhile, in the spring of 1973, an underground youth organization, the “Ukrainian National-Liberation Front” (UNLF, led by Zorian Popadiuk), and student circles in the history and philology faculties were uncovered in Lviv. Dozens of students were expelled from universities, and the young men were conscripted into the army. A student named Hryhoriy Khvostenko gave false testimony against many, including Roketsky. In connection with this, Roketsky was brought from Mordovia to Lviv in September 1973 to testify, in particular, against B. Roketsky, who had been arrested on March 28, 1973. But V. Roketsky did not betray anyone, and the “Kamenyar” organization was never exposed.
In camp ZhKh-385/3-5, Roketsky served his sentence alongside Vasyl Stus, Vasyl Lisovyi, and Boris Penson. After several punishments in a SHIZO (punishment cell), he was transferred by court order on June 22, 1975, to the prison regime in Vladimir Prison. There, he shared cells with Levko Lukianenko, Vladimir Bukovsky, and Zorian Popadiuk.
Before his release, he was transferred to Ternopil. On January 14, 1977, he returned to his parents in the village of Nosiv, severely exhausted: before his imprisonment, he weighed 95 kg, and upon his release, only 46 kg. He had a stomach ulcer and treated it with folk remedies.
While still in Mordovia, Roketsky memorized 50 poems by Vasyl Stus. After his release, he wrote them down and gave them to Mykhailna Kotsiubynska.
In the summer of 1977, he married Hanna Volodymyrivna, moved to the city of Berezhany, and, with difficulty, found a job as a warehouse manager in a mobile mechanized column (PMK). They had two sons.
The KGB surveillance only eased in the second half of the 1980s.
As the regime loosened, Roketsky proved himself to be an active citizen of Ukraine. At the end of the 1980s, he was one of the first in the region to go into business, supplying oil and petroleum products to the oblast and its districts. From his profits, he helped schools and kindergartens and initiated and invested in the creation of a memorial with a church on Mount Lysonia, where the Sich Riflemen had achieved glorious victories. The church in the hamlet of Sokolytsia was built primarily with his funds. When Roketsky learned that UPA fighters who died in a kryivka, including his cousin Volodymyr Kliuba, were buried in the cemetery in Stare Misto (near Pidhaitsi), he initiated the creation of a symbolic grave with a memorial sign. For his charitable activities and for supplying peasants with petroleum products during the 1994 sowing season, Roketsky was recognized as the Person of the Year of the Ternopil Oblast.
Roketsky was not a member of any party, but he was considered a model of honor and conscience. He was offered to run as a candidate for People’s Deputy and was guaranteed victory, but he would say, “Professionals should be working everywhere. And ‘a good guy’ is not a profession.”
He died on January 14, 1999. Thousands of people attended his funeral in Berezhany.
On November 3, 2007, a commemorative evening for Roketsky was held in Berezhany, where his numerous friends spoke. His literary works have not yet been collected and published.
Bibliography:
Kulyniak, Danylo. “Riativnyky chesti” [Saviors of Honor]. Molod Ukrayiny, May 20, 1991.
“Vyrok u spravi V. Roketskoho” [Verdict in the Case of V. Roketsky]. Molod Ukrayiny, May 29, 1991.
Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group Archive: Memoirs of Bohdan Roketsky and others about Volodymyr Roketsky, March 9, 2000.
Okolitenko, Natalia. “Sosnova hilka za gratamy” [A Pine Branch Behind Bars]. Personal Plius, no. 6 (258), February 14–20, 2008.
Liudkevych, Mykola. “Spovid pered Ukrayinoiu” [Confession Before Ukraine]. Zona, no. 24, 2008, pp. 186–203.
“Pamiati Volodymyra Roketskoho” [In Memory of Volodymyr Roketsky]. Zona, no. 24, 2008, pp. 203–204.
Kulyniak, Danylo. “A suddi khto?” [And Who Are the Judges?]. Narodna Shevchenkivska Premiia, http://ukrgazeta.plus.org.ua/article.php?ida=1309 (2007).
Compiled by Vasyl Ovsiienko, April 23, 2009. Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group.
ROKETSKYJ VOLODYMYR YULIANOVYCH