Worker, organizer of the Society for the Ukrainian Language and of Independent Trade Unions in the Dnipropetrovsk region. A victim of punitive psychiatry.
From 1956, he lived in the city of Marhanets. He studied at a Russian school (there were no Ukrainian schools in the city). The blatant Russification angered him, and his soul could not accept the hypocrisy and political indoctrination. He was held back in the eighth grade because he failed the Russian language exam. He completed 9 grades.
In 1968, he completed excavator operator courses. He took part in youth riots against police brutality.
He was not hired for a job in Marhanets, so he found a position in Ordzhonikidze at the Bohdanivsky quarry of the mining and processing plant (HZK) as an excavator operator’s assistant. He actively supported the economic demands of the workers.
From 1969-1972, he served in the city of Nizhny Tagil in the Urals in the Ministry of Internal Affairs troops, guarding facilities. He refused to serve in the convoy troops.
After demobilization, he worked as an excavator operator at the HZK in Marhanets. He refused to attend evening school, protesting against Russification and the imposition of communist propaganda. Once, in a café, he spoke out with criticism of the authorities, which became known to the KGB.
He moved to the Donbas, worked at the “Yuvileina” mine, and, along with other workers, demanded a wage increase. He then built gas pipelines in the North, working as an excavator operator, a pipe-layer operator, and a slinger for helicopter service in the Tyumen Oblast in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug. He also worked during the sowing and harvesting seasons in Northern Kazakhstan and Siberia.
He returned to Marhanets and in 1977 married Kateryna Stepanova. He worked as an excavator operator’s assistant at the Hrushivsky quarry of the Marhanets HZK. He built a house. When his daughter Iryna (b. 1980) and son Maksym (b. 1983) had to be sent to kindergarten and school, it turned out that in Marhanets, where 70% of the population are Ukrainians, there was no choice for children: not a single Ukrainian kindergarten and only one school on the distant outskirts of the city, in Horodyshche.
In August 1988, at the annual meeting of education workers in the city council hall, Ishchenko spoke on behalf of the parents, declaring: “I have no intention of being a translator into Ukrainian for my own children,” and called for the opening of at least one kindergarten in the city where children could communicate in Ukrainian, as well as a school with Ukrainian as the language of instruction. On January 3, 1989, the newspaper *Shakhtar Marhantsia* published his article on this topic, where it was stated, among other things, that he had collected 41 signatures from parents—workers of the Hrushivsky quarry—in favor of opening a Ukrainian kindergarten and school.
When the newspaper *Literaturna Ukrayina* published the charter of the "Society for the Ukrainian Language," Ishchenko traveled to the head of the regional TUM, S.M. Dovhal, in early January 1989 for recommendations on creating a branch in Marhanets. Dovhal advised him to seek help and support from the city committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine and the district executive committee. With a list of people wishing to create a TUM branch, Ishchenko went to the first secretary of the city committee, Viktor Ivanovych Berezovsky. In their conversation, he referred to Soviet laws and the resolution of the February (1988) Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU on the development of bilingualism. The secretary explained to Ishchenko in plain terms that he was an inferior person because he was Ukrainian, and that the party and the authorities would do nothing to support the Ukrainian language. Moreover, Berezovsky gave an interview to the all-Union magazine *Agitator* (No. 24, 1989), in which he attributed to Ishchenko demands to immediately switch all schools and official business to Ukrainian, and an attempt to control the authorities.
On May 1, 1989, Ishchenko, along with two young men, was the first in Marhanets to come out to a demonstration with yellow and blue flags. Surprisingly, they were not detained. He participated in the creation of a branch of the People’s Movement of Ukraine for Perestroika; he was a delegate to the Constituent Congress of the NRU on September 8-10, 1989, to which he traveled secretly, at his own expense, taking a vacation. After this, all delegates were placed under surveillance. Ishchenko was “processed” at the KGB department and terrorized by party officials.
At the initiative of the city committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, on September 17, 1989, a meeting with the public was held in the Marhanets city palace of culture regarding the creation of a TUM branch. The chairman, Berezovsky, stated that they wanted to create a TUM branch now, then they would want to create the Rukh (Movement), and it would eventually lead to people killing one another. The secretary put the question of creating a branch to a vote: only 13 were “for,” and three times as many were “against.” This, despite the fact that only three people were needed to create a branch, and no party could oppose it. A smear campaign began against the supporters of the TUM branch. They started to shy away from Ishchenko; Ukrainian language teachers withdrew their applications to join the Society.
At the Marhanets HZK, where Ishchenko worked, an open party meeting with 500 people was convened. Berezovsky spoke directly: “What kind of Society for the Ukrainian Language can there be? What's next, grab machine guns and head for the floodplains?” His “cronies”—rank-and-file communists—developed their secretary’s idea, calling Ishchenko a nationalist and a fascist. Ishchenko defended himself: “What are you saying, people? What are you talking about? I just stood up for my native Ukrainian language, nothing more—and you call me a fascist?” The meeting unanimously voted against creating the TUM branch.
That word “fascist” deeply wounded Ishchenko. That day at home, he had a heart attack, and his wife took him to the hospital. He was placed in intensive care and put on an IV drip. He woke up in the middle of the night—the IV bag was empty, no one was around. He felt weak and suspected that he had been injected with something. Without his knowledge or his family’s consent, he was transferred to the psychiatric ward, where he was kept locked up for 2-3 days with the “violent” patients, after which they began to “treat” him. For a week, he could not sleep. Within a month, psychotropic drugs brought him to a state where he could neither walk nor speak.
Oleh Matviyenko, a worker at the ore-repair plant, spoke out in defense of Ishchenko on November 26, 1989, at the first reporting and election conference of the D. Yavornytsky TUM. Radio “Svoboda” reported to the world about Ishchenko’s confinement in a psychiatric hospital.
In December 1989, Ishchenko was discharged from the hospital. He was placed in a profilactorium for a month. But when Ishchenko returned to his job, it turned out that he could not operate an excavator. He was then sent to the neurological department of the Dnipropetrovsk special psychiatric hospital (“Ihren”), where he stayed for another month. There, he was visited by the head of the regional TUM, Volodymyr Zaremba, who also spoke out in his defense in the press. Ishchenko was transferred to the somatic department, and they performed a head X-ray, after which he began to suffer from unbearable headaches. He was also visited by Ivan SOKULSKY at that time. Ishchenko felt so ill that he was already thinking about death, so he asked his wife to take him home. He suffered severely from headaches for several more months. His friends helped him financially.
Through willpower, yoga, physical exercises, and a healthy lifestyle, Ishchenko gradually regained his health and returned to public activity as a member of the TUM and NRU. He attended a conference of independent trade unions in Lviv, and in 1993-95, he organized the “Free Trade Union of the All-Ukrainian Trade Union Association of Solidarity Workers” at the Marhanets HZK, and subsequently for the entire city of Marhanets. It was registered on March 29, 1995. He also created independent trade unions at the “Kvazarekskavatsiya” enterprise, where he worked in security from 2001, at the Marhanets department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, and helped create one at the Nikopol South Pipe Plant. He was repeatedly fired from his job for this activity.
In 2005, he worked as an excavator operator at the Hrushivska processing plant of the Marhanets HZK.
Bibliography:
1.
Ishchenko, O. “The Public Is Not Silent.” – *Shakhtar Marhantsia* newspaper. – January 3, 1989.
Ishchenko, O.I.: “‘A Trade Union. But a Free One’” (Interview by M. Ivanov) – *Shakhtar Marhantsia*. – June 17, 1995.
KHPG Archive: Interview with O. Ishchenko on April 7, 2001; handwritten autobiography of O. Ishchenko [summer 2008].
2.
Chepelyanska, T. “To Seek in Order to Find.” – *Shakhtar Marhantsia*. – September 6, 1988.
“Striving for Mutual Understanding.” – *Zorya* newspaper, March 1, 1989.
“Not to Survive, but to Act.” Interview with the First Secretary of the Marhanets City Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, Viktor Ivanovych Berezovsky. – *Agitator* magazine, CPSU Central Committee, No. 24. – 1989. – p. 48.
Lysenko, V. “On a Dirty Wave.” – *Shakhtar Marhantsia*. – December 9, 1989.
Mariya Ma……….. . “Ishchenko Got Up from His Knees and Lost Sleep.” Notes from the reporting and election conference of the D.I. Yavornytsky Regional Society for the Ukrainian Language. – *Prapor yunosti*. – December 16, 1989.
Zaremba, Volodymyr. “On the Causes of the Illness of Oleksandr Ishchenko, Assistant Operator at the Hrushivsky Quarry of the Marhanets HZK, and initiator of the city branch of the Society for the Ukrainian Language.” – *Slovo* newspaper, March 1990.
Matviyenko, O. “For a Free Flight.” – *Shakhtar Marhantsia*. – October 1, 1991.
Draft compiled by Vasyl Ovsiyenko on May 24, 2008. Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group.
On June 3, 2009, corrections and additions by O. Ishchenko from June 2008 were added. 8,504 characters.
ISHCHENKO OLEKSANDR IVANOVYCH
Oleksandr ISHCHENKO. Photo by V. Ovsiyenko, April 7, 2001.