KOROLCHUK, SEMEN ISYDOROVYCH (b. November 11, 1930, in the village of Hlynsk, Zdolbuniv raion, Rivne oblast).
Member of the Ukrainian National Front.
From a peasant Greek Catholic family. After eight years of schooling, he entered the Rivne Medical College, from which he graduated in 1949. As an excellent student, he was directed to the Lviv Medical Institute, graduating in 1955. He married and has two children. He worked as a doctor at the Turka District Hospital in the Lviv region, and from 1959, as an obstetrician at the Lviv Regional Okhmadyt (Mother and Child Healthcare) Hospital. He was preparing his candidate’s dissertation.
Like many members of the Ukrainian intelligentsia of that time, he obtained, read, and distributed *samvydav* literature.
On April 11, 1967, Korolchuk was detained in connection with the case of the Ukrainian National Front. Yielding to pressure from the KGB, he agreed to reveal where he had hidden issues of the journal “Volia i Batkivshchyna” [Will and Fatherland], which he had received from Ivan HUBKA. The next day he was released from custody, and on April 13, in his presence, KGB agents searched his mother’s attic in the village of Hlynsk, Zdolbuniv raion, Rivne oblast, and confiscated issues 11–15 of the journal, as well as the books “The Sun Is Setting” and “Cossack Revenge” by Andriy Chaikovsky.
Korolchuk was not tried at that time, but he was placed under surveillance with brutal intrusions into his private life, which led to the breakup of his family.
The KGB had no new evidence against Korolchuk, yet they arrested him on April 21, 1971. Before the search, KGB agents, led by the well-known Lviv “specialist in political cases,” investigator Myroslav Boiechko, planted a small book by Ivan Krypiakevych, “Mykhailo Hrushevsky: Life and Work” (1935 edition), in Korolchuk’s apartment, but his brother Ivan managed to hide it. The book was not found, which enraged Boiechko. He then confiscated a radio receiver, alleging that Korolchuk listened to foreign radio broadcasts and relayed them to others, and engaged in conversations of an anti-Soviet, nationalist nature. Dozens of Korolchuk’s acquaintances were interrogated, but they did not say anything incriminating about him. Korolchuk’s arguments that he had done nothing illegal after 1967 were disregarded. On the contrary, for the purpose of blackmail, Boiechko sent Korolchuk for a psychiatric evaluation at the V. P. Serbsky Central Research Institute for Forensic Psychiatry in Moscow, where he was held from June 23 to July 27, 1971, and was declared sane.
All the acts incriminated to Korolchuk related to the years 1965–66, about which he had already told the investigation and the court during the UNF case in 1967. For instance, he was accused of receiving an article, “On the Trial of Pohruzhalsky,” from Lviv resident Vasyl Kobyliukh in 1965, giving it to UNF member Ivan HUBKA, after which it was published in issue 16 of the journal “Volia i Batkivshchyna.” He also gave HUBKA the “Diary” of Vasyl SYMONENKO, two issues of the journal “Suchasnist” [Contemporaneity], which was published in London at the time, and a filmstrip with text from the “Encyclopedia of Ukrainian Studies.” In 1966, he gave issues 11–15 of the journal “Volia i Batkivshchyna,” which he received from I. HUBKA, to acquaintances to read, including Yevstakhiy (Ostap) Pastukh, on whom, as stated in the verdict, Korolchuk “systematically exerted an anti-Soviet influence, expressing slanderous fabrications that defame the Soviet social order.”
Thus, as the journal “Ukrainian Herald” wrote at the time, the KGB used Korolchuk’s case to try to correct its recent “liberal” mistakes.
Y. Pastukh was charged in the same case under Article 187-I (“Dissemination of slanderous fabrications that defame the Soviet state and social order”). He repented, told everything about Korolchuk, and was released on his own recognizance before the trial, on July 29, 1971. By the verdict of the Lviv Regional Court on September 7, 1971, Y. Pastukh was sentenced to 6 months of imprisonment, which he had already served during the investigation. Therefore, the sentence was not determined by the court.
Korolchuk received 4 years of imprisonment in strict-regime camps under Part 1 of Article 62 of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR. He served his sentence in the Mordovian and Perm camps.
After his release, he was unable to obtain a residence permit in Lviv, and as a result, he emigrated to the USA. He has now returned to Ukraine and lives in Lviv. He met with his former investigator, Boiechko, who, while intoxicated, boasted that he receives a good pension from Ukraine.
Bibliography:
I.
Korolchuk, Semen. “Mnoiu perezhyte” [What I Lived Through]. Narodne zdorovia (Lviv), no. 7 (June 1995).
(Shchodo protsesu S. Korolchuka i Y. Pastukha) [Regarding the Trial of S. Korolchuk and Y. Pastukh]. Ukrainskyi visnyk [Ukrainian Herald]. Issue VI. March 1972. Paris, Baltimore: Smoloskyp, 1972, pp. 153–155.
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Hubka, Ivan. U tsarstvi svavoli. Spohady. Chastyna 1 [In the Kingdom of Arbitrariness: Memoirs. Part 1]. Lviv: Ukrainski tekhnolohii, 2000. 608 pp.
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. 323–325.
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, p. 333; 2nd ed.: 2012, p. 371.
Vasyl Ovsiyenko, Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group. May 4, 2004. Last read August 22, 2016.
