KULYNIN, VASYL IVANOVYCH (b. November 21, 1943, in the village of Lypa, Dolyna district, Ivano-Frankivsk region).
Participant in the Ukrainian National Front.
From a poor, large Greek Catholic family. Kulynin’s father was the village elder during the first Soviet occupation. One of his brothers died as a partisan, and another during a raid. Kulynin remembers the raids of 1948 and 1952 and that UPA partisans fought their last battle in their area in 1956.
He finished primary school in his village and from 1954 studied in Sloboda-Bolekhivska. He was threatened with expulsion for not attending school on church holidays. As a believer, his father did not allow his children to join the Pioneers or the Komsomol. On their way from school, the children would burn their Pioneer neckties and carve tridents into trees. In 1957, Kulynin enrolled in secondary school in the village of Vytvytsia. He completed 10 grades in 1960 and entered Stryi Railway School No. 3. He worked as a milling machine operator at a railcar repair plant and lived in a dormitory.
In November 1962, Kulynin was drafted into the army and served in the air defense forces in Kalmykia. In 1961, KGB officers interrogated him about who had raised a blue-and-yellow flag at the bus station in Vytvytsia.
After demobilization, Kulynin worked as a lathe operator at the Kirov Forging and Pressing Equipment Plant in Stryi.
In July 1966, Yaroslav LESIV, whom Kulynin had known since school, persuaded him to join the underground organization “Ukrainian National Front.” The UNF program, developed by the teacher Dmytro KVETSKO, advocated for peaceful methods of struggle for Ukraine’s independence, without ruling out the use of arms. The organization published the typewritten journal “Volya i Batkivshchyna” (*Will and Fatherland*), issuing 16 editions from October 1964 to March 1967. The UNF consisted of two well-concealed organizations in the Ivano-Frankivsk region, two in the Lviv region, and individual members in Rivne, Donetsk, Kirovohrad, and other regions—over 150 people in total, who did not know each other. In addition to the journal and numerous leaflets, the UNF distributed OUN literature that had been accidentally discovered in a *kryyivka* (bunker). The “Memorandum of the Ukrainian National Front to the 23rd Congress of the CPSU” (1966) and the letter “To the Highest Government Officials in Ukraine” resonated widely. The KGB began to search for traces of the UNF.
In July 1966, Ya. LESIV arranged a meeting for Kulynin with the UNF leader, Dmytro KVETSKO, who gave him several copies of the journal “Volya i Batkivshchyna” and the pamphlet “Who Are the Banderites and What Are They Fighting For,” explaining how to distribute them through mailboxes or by leaving them at markets and bus stops. Kulynin carried out such tasks repeatedly. He headed the youth wing of the organization. Kulynin incautiously dropped one pamphlet into a postbox used for mail collection, and postal workers handed it over to the KGB. Since UNF member Mykola Kachur had been arrested on July 20 for possessing the same literature in the Donetsk region, this fact gave investigators a lead on its source. Meanwhile, Kulynin distributed UNF appeals to peasants, articles about the Ukrainian language, an article titled “Regarding the Trial of Pohruzhalsky,” and an account of Easter celebrations in 1948. He distributed 6 issues of “Volya i Batkivshchyna” and pamphlets at the “Metalist” and railcar repair plants in Stryi and in the town of Mostyska. Kulynin also enlisted his brother Taras Kulynin and V. Salapata to distribute literature and tried to persuade M. Ilchyshyn and S. Derzhko to join the UNF.
From March 20–23, 1967, UNF members Dmytro KVETSKO, Mykhailo DYAK, Zinoviy KRASIVSKY, and Yaroslav LESIV were arrested. Kulynin was detained on April 27 for three days. During a search of his apartment, a letter from a friend in Drohobych, to whom Kulynin had given literature, was seized. The landlady confirmed that she had found a journal under Kulynin’s pillow and given it to her son to read. This formed the basis of the charges against Kulynin, but the authorities decided to keep him under surveillance. Having found nothing more, they arrested him at work on May 26 and added him to the case of KVETSKO, KRASIVSKY, DYAK, and LESIV. The first three faced a real threat of the death penalty.
In August, all five were charged under Article 56, Part 1 of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR (“Treason”) and Article 64 (“Organizational Activities”); M. DYAK was also charged under Article 222, Part 1 (“Possession of a Weapon”). On November 27, 1967, a visiting session of the Supreme Court of the Ukrainian SSR, in a closed session, delivered the verdict in this case. Kulynin was sentenced to 6 years of imprisonment in strict-regime camps, with the application of Article 44 (“Imposition of a Sentence Milder Than That Prescribed by Law”), “taking into account his youth” and “less active participation in the criminal activity.”
Kulynin passed through the transit prisons of Lviv, Kharkiv, Ruzayevka, and Potma. On February 20, 1968, he arrived at the 11th camp division of ZhKh-385 in Yavas, Mordovian ASSR. He worked as a lathe operator, earning 35 rubles a month. Since he owed 410 rubles in court costs, after deductions for food and clothing, he was left with 7–8 rubles for the camp store, but he could not use even that, as he was deprived of the right to buy food for not attending political education classes. He also had no visits or parcels. However, he was helped by insurgents serving 25-year sentences: Vasyl Yakubiak, Mykhailo Zelenchuk, Ivan POKROVSKY, Vasyl PIDHORODETSKY, Ivan Fedoriv, and Dmytro Basarab. He was in the company of the *shestydesiatnyky* (Sixtiers): Bohdan HORYN, Opanas ZALYVAKHA, Anatoliy SHEVCHUK, Ivan HEL, Mykola KOTS, Mykola HORBAL, Bohdan REBRYK, and others.
In June 1969, the 11th camp division was split into three camps: the 3rd, 17th, and 19th. Kulynin ended up in camp ZhKh-385/19, located in the village of Lesnoi, Tengushovo district. There were about 600 prisoners there, most of them Ukrainian. In December, a lecturer from Moscow was sent to the camp to speak about the successes of the USSR and its production figures. Kulynin asked him why, then, the USSR was buying grain from the USA. For this, he received 7 days in the *kartser* (punishment cell). On December 5, while his punishment was being processed, the administration demanded he remove his hat. For remarking that they should first remove their own hats, Kulynin received another 3 days in the *kartser*. On December 10, the anniversary of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, he began a hunger strike, which was supported by other prisoners. The punishment cell was unheated, and the door was left open.
The camp had a rich library collected by the prisoners, and there was a vibrant intellectual and cultural life. To this day, Kulynin remembers celebrating Christmas Eve in 1970 with the Lithuanians, where the service was led by Father Vasyl ROMANIUK.
In 1970, the regime in the camps was tightened: morning physical exercises were introduced, and prisoners were marched to the dining hall and to work in columns. Because Kulynin did not comply, he was deprived of his next visit and parcel. On July 1, Kulynin declared a hunger strike and refused to go to work. He was supported by Ya. LESIV, A. SHEVCHUK, I. POKROVSKY—about 20 men in total, 18 of whom were thrown into the punishment cells. Kulynin continued his hunger strike for 8 days. As the instigator, he was held without a mattress. On July 12, the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, he was summoned to the “Council of Internal Order.” Kulynin refused to speak with the former *polizei* (Nazi collaborators) who had “embarked on the path of correction.” On July 13, he, Stepan Zatikyan, and two other prisoners were taken to an isolation cell in the women's zone, and on July 20 in Yavas, a court transferred them to a prison sentence for the remainder of their term; Kulynin’s was for 2 years, 10 months, and 10 days. Kulynin did not stand for the court.
By transport through Moscow’s “Krasnaya Presnya,” he arrived in August at the Vladimir Central Prison. The ration of 900 calories consisted of water and 450 grams of bread in the morning, watery soup for lunch, and kasha for dinner.
A month later, Kulynin was taken to Ivano-Frankivsk for “re-education.” He was held with a *stukach* (informer), who received good parcels, so Kulynin was able to eat a little better. He had a visit from his father but refused a meeting with the “workers’ collective” from his factory.
Later, in Vladimir Prison, he was held with V. BUKOVSKY, A. GINZBURG, Ya. LESIV, G. Rode, and others. In the summer of 1972, during a severe heatwave when the peat bogs were on fire, it was difficult to breathe in the prison. With a norm of 2.5 square meters per person, 6 prisoners were held in a 10.9-square-meter cell. They declared a hunger strike, which lasted 8 days. A prosecutor ordered that only four prisoners be left in the cell.
Despite these hardships, even in prison the political prisoners behaved with dignity: they organized a Christmas celebration in 1972, complete with a Christmas tree and a cake. In order not to offend any of their cellmates, they sang Ukrainian carols and also learned a Latvian and a Russian song. An old Latvian partisan who had refused to communicate with anyone also joined the table. They managed to pass a portion of the homemade cake, decorated with a trident and the inscription “Slava Ukrayini!” (Glory to Ukraine!), along with a hidden greeting card for Independence and Unification Day, to Ya. LESIV in another cell. The celebration ended with a search. Before his release, a priest from Irkutsk performed a service for Kulynin in the cell.
He was released on May 22, 1973. He went to work in the Kharkiv region. In the village of Charivne, Bobrynets district, Kirovohrad region, the director of a state farm promised Kulynin an apartment, recognizing him as a good lathe operator, but the KGB did not allow it: Ya. LESIV lived in the neighboring district.
In November 1975, Kulynin married Iryna Kvestko from Sloboda-Bolekhivska, a relative of D. KVETSKO. As they had nowhere to live, they turned to a resettlement agency. They were sent to the “Khliborob” state farm in the Russian village of Nyzhni Torhayi, Nyzhnosirohozky district, Kherson region, where the school taught in Russian. Their son, Ruslan, was born in 1976 (he died tragically in 1999), and a daughter was born in 1980. They secretly took their children to their homeland to be baptized in the Greek Catholic rite.
When Ya. Lesiv was imprisoned on fabricated drug charges, attempts were made to accuse Kulynin of setting fire to a haystack and the house of the state farm's division manager. In 1979, in Nyzhni Torhayi, a lecture was given (for the first time in Ukrainian) about nationalists and Zionists, which mentioned Kulynin and Vasyl Pirus, a 25-year veteran of the insurgency who lived in the same village.
In 1990, Kulynin ran as a candidate for the village council, but his registration was denied because he did not fit the “quota.” In 1994, he was elected to the village council, and in 1998, to the district council. Although the council was dominated by the former party nomenklatura, he at least forced the chairman to conduct sessions in the state language and secured benefits for veterans, Chornobyl victims, and political prisoners.
Bibliography
I.
KHRG Archives: Interview with V. Kulynin, February 20, 2001. https://museum.khpg.org/1273090857
ІІ.
Kasyanov, Heorhiy. *Nezhodni: ukrayinska intelihentsiya v rusi oporu 1960-1980-kh rokiv* [The Dissenters: The Ukrainian Intelligentsia in the Resistance Movement of the 1960s–1980s]. Kyiv: Lybid, 1995, p. 74.
Rusnachenko, Anatoliy. *Natsionalno-vyzvolnyi rukh v Ukrayini* [The National Liberation Movement in Ukraine]. Kyiv: Olena Teliha Publishing House, 1998, pp. 105–140.
*Ukrayinskyi Natsionalnyi Front: Doslidzhennya, dokumenty, materialy* [The Ukrainian National Front: Research, Documents, Materials]. Edited by M. V. Dubas and Yu. D. Zaitsev. Lviv: I. Krypiakevych Institute of Ukrainian Studies, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, 2000, 680 pp., illus., pp. 387–400, 508 et al.
*International Biographical Dictionary of Dissidents in Central and Eastern Europe and the Former USSR. Vol. 1. Ukraine. Part 1.* Kharkiv: Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group; “Prava Liudyny,” 2006, pp. 360-364. https://museum.khpg.org/1128065228
*Rukh oporu v Ukrayini: 1960 – 1990. Entsyklopedychnyi dovidnyk* [The Resistance Movement in Ukraine: 1960 – 1990. An Encyclopedic Guide]. Preface by Osyp Zinkevych and Oles Obertas. Kyiv: Smoloskyp, 2010, pp. 357–358; 2nd ed.: 2012, pp. 401–402.
Vasyl Ovsienko, Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group. February 20, 2001. Last reviewed August 2016.
Photo by V. Ovsienko, February 20, 2001.
