KOTS, MYKOLA HEORHIYOVYCH (YURIYOVYCH) (b. December 4, 1930, in the village of HUSHCHA, Liuboml raion, Volyn oblast)
A participant in the national liberation struggle of the 1960s–80s.
His father, Yuriy Yakubovych, was from a poor family; his mother, Daria Kharytonivna (1897–1951), was an orphan. They married in 1919 and had five children. They began farming with half a desiatyna of land. His father bought timber and built houses for people. By 1939, he owned 10 hectares of land and leased a fishing lake. The Bolsheviks imposed double and triple taxes on his “kulak” farm, ruining it.
His brother Ivan, born in 1921, was passionate about radio engineering and studied English, for which he was accused on July 31, 1940, of intending to flee abroad. He perished within a year in the camps of the North.
In November 1940, the family was exiled and settled in the Polish village of Ostrówki. Kots continued his studies in a Polish school. In 1943, the village was burned down during an inter-ethnic conflict. During the German occupation, the family returned to the village of HUSHCHA. The village was looted by Red partisans and then burned by the Germans. The Kots family nearly died from smoke in a cellar (their house miraculously did not burn down).
On July 20, 1944, Soviet troops entered the village. His father was exempt from mobilization due to his age and health, but the new authorities ruined his farm once again. In the summer of 1947, his father was falsely accused of burning down the house of the kolkhoz chairman. He was arrested in October and, on January 8, 1948, sentenced to 10 years in correctional labor camps and 5 years’ deprivation of civil rights. He served his sentence near Kyiv, in the Urals, and in Siberia. He was amnestied in 1953, after Stalin’s death.
Meanwhile, the authorities threw the family out of their house and confiscated all their food. Mykola dug a dugout and lived in it with his mother and two sisters. They had to survive by gathering mushrooms, berries, and acorns, and by fishing. He found work as a loader and a watchman at a railway station and spent the winter of 1948–49 living in an empty tank car. He fell ill with pleurisy.
On October 1, 1950, Kots was conscripted into the Soviet Army. Worn out by hunger, his mother died in March 1951. Kots served in the Far East. He suffered from pleurisy and bone tuberculosis. In 1952, he was discharged for medical reasons. He had no money for treatment, but the illnesses eventually receded. He completed accounting courses and got a job at the district consumer cooperative. He helped his sister Halyna finish her studies in physics and mathematics and his brother Andriy graduate from a technical college, while he himself studied mathematics, physics, and chemistry using their textbooks. He attended evening school in the Holovyne raion center, completing seven grades. He then enrolled in a correspondence high school and walked 14 km to an evening school in Liuboml. He received his high school diploma in 1956.
In 1957, he enrolled in the Faculty of Economics at the Agricultural Academy in Kyiv, graduating in 1962. At the same time, he studied by correspondence at the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics at Kyiv University, graduating in 1966. He advocated for instruction in the Ukrainian language. He managed to read M. Hrushevsky’s “History of Ukraine-Rus.”
From 1962, he worked at the Kopychyntsi Agricultural Technical College in the Ternopil region. To the best of his ability, he protected students, gave them pre-war literature to read, collected data, and kept records about the UPA’s struggle for independence and about forced collectivization. He also took notes on broadcasts from Radio Liberty.
While in Kyiv in 1966, he copied poems by Vasyl SYMONENKO from the journal “Duklia,” published in Slovakia, including “To My Kurdish Brother,” which he transformed into “To My Ukrainian Brother.” He replaced the word “chauvinism” with “communism,” “Kurd” with “brother,” and changed the lines “When the last chauvinist on the planet / Falls into an open grave” to “the last communist in Ukraine.” He rewrote the poem in block letters on cardboard, drew a *tryzub* (trident), photographed it, and produced about a hundred leaflets. He distributed them in Ternopil, Khmelnytskyi, Volochysk, Kremenets, Dubno, Lutsk, Novovolynsk, Turka, Kyiv, and the Rivne region.
This leaflet became the main piece of evidence in the accusation against Kots for “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda.” Kots gave the leaflet to some of his students to read but did not involve anyone in its distribution. None of them betrayed their teacher. Kots fell under suspicion; his fingerprints were obtained through deception, and secret searches and provocations were arranged.
Finally, on October 26, 1967, Kots was arrested during a business trip in the town of Zalishchyky with the leaflets in his pocket. He was interrogated by Colonel Stupak, the head of the Ternopil regional KGB directorate, who urged him to give a “sincere confession,” warning that concealment would be considered an “aggravating circumstance.” The case was handled by investigator Bidyovka. During the investigation, he shared cells for some time with Viktor Rafalsky and Levko HOROKHIVSKY.
The investigation had no direct witnesses to Kots’s “anti-Soviet agitation”—only a few leaflets that people had brought to the KGB.
On April 9, 1968, in Kopychyntsi and Khorostkiv, where Kots had previously worked, “public meetings” were held: the “outraged Soviet public” demanded that “the enemy be severely punished.” Rumors were spread that Kots was an American spy, that his late brother Ivan was an enemy of the people (though he had already been rehabilitated), and that his father was a kulak.
His father, brother, and sister were not allowed into the trial on April 11, 1968. The sentence was the maximum: 7 years of imprisonment and 5 years of exile under Part 1 of Article 62 of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR. The visit with his father, brother Andriy, and sister Hanna lasted 15–20 minutes.
Kots filed a well-reasoned cassation appeal, but the appellate court upheld the verdict.
On June 6, 1968, he was sent by transport to the Mordovian camps. On June 29, he arrived at camp No. 11 (Yavas). He worked in the polishing and sofa-making workshops, where he suffered from harmful fumes and dust. He developed a heart condition and was hospitalized. Eventually, former insurgent Ivan POKROVSKY helped Kots get a job in the electrical workshop, where he learned to rewind electric motors. His circle of contacts included: Myroslav MELEN, Mykhailo Zelenchuk, and Anatoliy SHEVCHUK.
On June 29, 1969, Kots was transferred to the 19th zone (Lesnoy), and on March 30, 1970, to the 17th (Ozerny). With Levko HOROKHIVSKY, Oles NAZARENKO, and Stepan Bedrylo, he formed a circle where they discussed various issues.
On August 9, 1972, along with a large group of political prisoners, he was transported under top-secret conditions to the Urals, to Perm camp No. 35. He worked rewinding motors, a trade he later taught to Yevhen PRONIUK.
On the eve of his transport into exile, he was isolated and subjected to multiple humiliating searches to ensure he took nothing with him to freedom.
On October 26, 1974, he was transported with two suitcases and a sack of books to Tomsk; a month later, he arrived by plane in the town of Teguldet in the eastern Tomsk oblast. For a long time, he could not find work anywhere and suffered from frost and hunger. He subsequently worked at a brickyard, a sawmill, and as a duty operator at a power plant and a diesel generator. KGB agents visited him, seeking an “understanding.” He had trouble sending telegrams in Ukrainian and subscribing to the press. He had to live among criminal exiles. During his last year of exile, he worked as an instructor of several subjects at a vocational school (PTU), but he was blackmailed with inspections. He was tolerated only because there were no other teachers.
On September 13, 1979, Kots returned to Lutsk. For 5 months, he could not find a job, living with his brother and with his sister in Novovolynsk. But the authorities blackmailed them as well. Eventually, Kots went to the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVS) in Kyiv, where he was promised a residence permit in Lutsk and a job. In Kyiv, he met with Ivan KOVALENKO, Andriy KOROBAN, and Vasyl STUS.
Kots was registered at a workers’ dormitory. He had to take a 5-month course for crane operators and then worked for 5 years on construction sites in various towns in the oblast. He did not join the trade union and did not participate in elections or *subbotniks* (volunteer workdays).
When “perestroika” began, Kots often traveled to Kyiv and Lviv. His employers tried to prevent him from leaving work. In the summer of 1988, at a rally, he submitted an application to Viacheslav CHORNOVIL to join the Ukrainian Helsinki Union (dating it to the day of his arrest, October 26) and founded its Volyn branch. A wave of publications appeared in the local press against him, claiming he was a criminal and his father had been a kulak.
Kots is a founding member of the All-Ukrainian Society of Political Prisoners and Repressed Persons (June 3, 1989, Lvivskyi Maidan in Kyiv) and the Ukrainian Republican Party (April 29, 1990). He developed an action program for the regional organization but, disagreeing with the regional leadership, he distanced himself from it. The same happened with the KUN (Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists).
He was rehabilitated in accordance with the Law of the Ukrainian SSR of April 17, 1991. He is a pensioner.
Bibliography:
I.
“Zhyttia za koliuchym drotom” [Life Behind Barbed Wire]. Narodna trybuna newspaper, October 9, 1991, p. 4 (About Valeriy Marchenko).
“Proshchannia z pobratymom po nevoli” [Farewell to a Brother-in-Captivity]. Narodna trybuna newspaper, October 2, 1991, p. 4 (About Vasyl Pidhorodetsky).
“Taiemnycha podorozh (Pro etap na Ural 1972)” [A Mysterious Journey (On the Transport to the Urals in 1972)]. Zona, no. 3 (1992): 68–77.
“Uralskyi kontstabir staie muzeiem” [The Ural Concentration Camp Becomes a Museum]. Zona, no. 3 (1992): 78–84.
“Kontstabirna Femida” [Concentration Camp Themis]. Zona, no. 7 (1994): 98–103.
“Berestechko.” Zona, no. 11 (1996): 225–230.
“Slidstvo” [The Investigation]. In Reabilitovani istoriieiu. Zbirnyk naukovykh statei i materialiv mizhnarodnoi naukovo-praktychnoi konferentsii [Rehabilitated by History: A Collection of Scholarly Articles and Materials from an International Scientific and Practical Conference]. Lutsk: Nastyr’ia, 2003, pp. 132–140.
Kots, M. H., and L. M. Osaulenko. Volyn u leshchatakh smerti. Storinky z zhyttia Mykoly Kotsa i ne tilky. Publitsystychno-dokumentalna povist [Volyn in the Vise of Death: Pages from the Life of Mykola Kots and More. A Journalistic and Documentary Novella]. Lutsk: VAT “Volynska oblasna drukarnia,” 2007. 432 pp.
“Akt; Buv u seli skhron” [The Act; There Was a Hideout in the Village]. In Mynule i suchasne Volyni ta Polissia… Materialy XXI Volynskoi oblasnoi konferentsii [The Past and Present of Volyn and Polissia… Materials of the 21st Volyn Regional Conference]. November 17, 2006. Lutsk, 2007, pp. 119–121.
“Z istorii stanovlennia ukrainsko-polskoho kordonu” [From the History of the Establishment of the Ukrainian-Polish Border]. In Mynule i suchasne Volyni ta Polissia. Materialy XXV Volynskoi oblasnoi konferentsii [The Past and Present of Volyn and Polissia: Materials of the 25th Volyn Regional Conference]. October 25, 2007. Lutsk, 2007, pp. 194–199.
ІІ.
A. Rusnachenko. Natsionalno-vyzvolnyi rukh v Ukraini. Seredyna 1950-kh – pochatok 1990-kh rokiv [The National Liberation Movement in Ukraine: Mid-1950s – Early 1990s]. Kyiv: Vyd. im. Oleny Telihy, 1998, pp. 171, 174.
Yu. Danyliuk and O. Bazhan. Opozytsiia v Ukraini (druha polovyna 50-kh –80-i rr. XX st.) [The Opposition in Ukraine (Second Half of the 1950s–1980s)]. Kyiv: Ridnyi krai, 2000, p. 192.
Ukrainska Hromadska Hrupa spryiannia vykonanniu Helsinkskykh uhod: Dokumenty i materialy [The Ukrainian Public Group to Promote the Implementation of the Helsinki Accords: Documents and Materials]. In 4 volumes. Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group. Kharkiv: Folio, 2001. Vol. 2, pp. 48, 115; Vol. 3, p. 99.
KHPG Archive: Interview with M. Kots on December 26 and 27, 2000, in Kyiv. https://museum.khpg.org/1186749390
International Biographical Dictionary of Dissidents in the Countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the former USSR. Vol. 1. Ukraine. Part 1. Kharkiv: Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group; “Prava Liudyny,” 2006, pp. 332–335. https://museum.khpg.org/1184399237
Rukh oporu v Ukraini: 1960 – 1990. Entsyklopedychnyi dovidnyk [The Resistance Movement in Ukraine: 1960–1990. An Encyclopedic Guide]. Foreword by Osyp Zinkevych and Oles Obertas. Kyiv: Smoloskyp, 2010, pp. 339–340; 2nd ed.: 2012, pp. 378–379.
Vasyl Ovsiyenko, Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group. May 9, 2006. Last read August 9, 2016.
