(born October 28, 1938, in the village of Sencha, Lokhvytsia raion, Poltava oblast – died July 14, 2011, in the city of Skadovsk, Kherson oblast)
Repressed for her civic activities, physician, environmentalist.
From a peasant family. Her mother worked her whole life on a collective farm pig farm; her father, Larion Piven, died in 1948. That year, Lidia went to school barefoot. The girl read a lot and believed that life was only so bad in her village. After finishing high school in 1957, she joined a collective farm on a Komsomol assignment with the idea of improving life. She worked at a poultry farm, was the secretary of the Komsomol organization, a member of the bureau of the raion Komsomol committee, and joined the CPSU in 1959. But she soon realized that nothing on the farm depended on her.
In 1960, wearing canvas sandals and a 10-ruble raincoat, she entered the sanitation and hygiene faculty of the Kyiv Medical Institute. She lived in a dormitory. To feed and clothe herself, she unloaded wagons with the boys. She became acquainted with medical students Mykola PLAKHOTNIUK, Yaroslav HEVRYCH, and Oles SERHIENKO. An informal circle of nationally conscious youth formed at the institute. Lidia went to the party committee, the dean's office, and the rector's office, demanding that the minister's resolution on teaching in Ukrainian be implemented. In 1966, she signed a petition demanding an open trial for student Y. HEVRYCH, who had been arrested in August 1965. She participated in a student Christmas carol group that raised 300 rubles for a monument to Vasyl SYMONENKO. Every year, she took part in the commemoration of T. Shevchenko on May 22 at his monument. At literary evenings and in the Creative Youth Club, she met Nadiya SVITLYCHNA, Alla HORSKA, Oksana MESHKO, Halyna SEVRUK, Liudmyla SEMYKINA, and Oles SHEVCHENKO, becoming part of the Sixtiers circle. She read and distributed among students books that awakened national dignity, as well as samizdat literature: “Regarding the Trial of Pohruzhalsky,” “Internationalism or Russification?” by I. Dziuba, and “The Diary” of V. SYMONENKO with his poems, and “Woe from Wit” by V. CHORNOVIL. In 196..., she married Vasyl Huk, the son of a repressed man (died 1971). Their son Yaroslav was born in 1966.
In 1967, she was assigned to work as a sanitary physician at the sanitary-epidemiological station in the city of Skadovsk, Kherson oblast. Here, too, she defended national rights. She wrote all her documents only in Ukrainian, which caused constant conflicts with the head physician.
Her friends came to visit her on vacation: Oksana MESHKO, Oles SERHIENKO, Mykhailo MASIUTKO, Svitlana KYRYCHENKO, Leopold Yashchenko, Lida Orel, Yuriy BADZIO, Halyna Sevruk, Iryna Korsunska, as well as Vadym SMOHYTEL, Petro ROZUMNYI, Oleksandr KUZMENKO, Orysia Sokulska, Ivan SOKULSKYI, Viacheslav CHORNOVIL, Atena Pashko, Mykola PLAKHOTNIUK, Vira and Yevhen Cherednychenky, and others. In 1969, 14 people were vacationing there. They organized the “Skadovsk People's Republic” with a “president,” went to the beach with a flag that was blue on one side and yellow on the other, and published a daily wall newspaper. People from Skadovsk, including youth, came to Huk's home, borrowed books, and read samizdat literature. Evenings were held at her house where works by T. Shevchenko, V. SYMONENKO, I. DRACH, and Lina KOSTENKO were read.
With the start of the 1972 arrests of the Ukrainian intelligentsia, KGB officers conducted a search of H.'s home on February 16–17, 1972, under a warrant dated February 8 in some “Case No. 42.” They seized two bags of literature, including samizdat, notebooks with her poems, journals, newspaper clippings, and poems. On February 18, they even seized works by Lenin with highlighted quotes in defense of the Ukrainian language and the right of nations to self-determination. H. and her acquaintances were summoned for interrogation. Most people avoided answering, but some signed protocols stating that H. “defended Banderites,” spoke about the lack of freedom of speech, Russification, the 1933 famine, and the occupation of Czechoslovakia. The investigation saw slander against the friendship of the peoples of the USSR in her poem “Ballad of the Dry Wind” and the poem “East Wind.”
On February 18, 1972, H. protested the search to the Prosecutor of the UkrSSR. On March 28, 1972, she wrote to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine about the illegal confiscations and stated that Ukrainization, halted in the 1930s, should be carried out in Ukraine. On April 19, 1972, she submitted a statement to the Skadovsk raion committee of the CPU in defense of the arrested Ukrainian intelligentsia. H. wrote that rumors were spreading in the city that ampoules with cholera cultures and botulism toxin and a book with codes had been found in her possession, and that she was responsible for an epidemic outbreak.
On August 3, 1972, searches were conducted at her home and workplace, and she was ordered not to leave the city. After numerous interrogations in November, H. was arrested on December 9, 1972, and charged under Article 187-I of the Criminal Code of the UkrSSR with “slandering the Soviet state and social system.” After a short stay in a preliminary detention cell, she was transferred to the SIZO (pre-trial detention center) in Kherson, where she suffered from overcrowding, filth, and hunger. Following O. MESHKO's advice, H. denied all charges.
At the trial, most witnesses retracted their incriminating testimony. Her lawyer, Ivan Semenovych Yezhov, demanded that the case be dismissed for lack of a crime (after which he was barred from political cases). On February 9, 1973, the Kherson Regional Court, taking into account her good character references, sentenced her to 1 year of imprisonment in a general-regime labor camp. The Supreme Court of the UkrSSR upheld the sentence on appeal on April 5, 1973.
H. served her term in Dniprodzerzhynsk. The camp was located in a hollow near blast furnaces, and the women breathed in metal dust and suffered from overcrowding, hunger, and filth. H. was particularly troubled by the crude language of the prisoners and guards. She worked at a sewing factory, ironing linen. Meanwhile, her 5-year-old son was cared for by her mother.
H. was released early, 2.5 months before the end of her term, in September 1973. She could not find work anywhere. She complained to the prosecutor and went to the regional health department. Eventually, she was hired as a physician-methodologist at the district hospital. In 1974, through the efforts of a trade union meeting, H. was hired for a position in communal hygiene at the sanitation station, where she works to this day.
Numerous friends visited H. again, for which she was summoned to the KGB.
In 1977, H. established that the cultivation of rice using pesticides in paddies near the resort area in Dzharylhach Bay had led to the disappearance of gobies, shrimp, and flounder. She managed to publish a small note in a newspaper, which stirred public opinion. As a result of numerous meetings and rallies in 1988, she, along with physician O. Bilynska, initiated the creation of the “Dzharylhach” Ecological Society. After numerous scientific studies, publications in the press, and television programs, rice cultivation using the existing technology in the Skadovsk zone was banned in the late 1980s. The bay began to revive. In 1998, the Cabinet of Ministers granted the Skadovsk medical zone the status of a national resort and ordered the sanitation of the resort's sanitary protection zone.
On March 16, 1988, H. applied to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the UkrSSR for rehabilitation but was denied. She then appealed to the XIX Party Conference. On August 11, 1989, the Kherson Regional Court overturned its verdict and the Supreme Soviet’s decision and closed the case for lack of a crime. She was rehabilitated.
From February 1989, H. participated in the creation of the People's Movement of Ukraine (Rukh) and in September 1989 was a delegate to the founding congress of Rukh. She remains the head of the Skadovsk raion organization of Rukh. She also created and led a local chapter of the Social Service of Ukraine, which organized aid for orphans and pensioners, maintains a shelter for orphans, runs the “Good Samaritan” project, and sends children to western oblasts for Christmas holidays. She conducted environmental work and organized aid for the Children of Chornobyl. She advocated for the construction of a Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC) in Skadovsk.
In 1994, she ran for a seat in the Verkhovna Rada, but due to a lack of funds to organize meetings with voters, she did not win.
Her son, Yaroslav (b. 1966), graduated from the electronics faculty of the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute and a university in Boston (USA), and works in Canada. Her daughter, Yaroslava Nazarenko (b. 1978), graduated from Kherson State Pedagogical University and defended her dissertation in psychology.
Bibliography:
I.
Lidia Huk. Sertse moie – Ukraina. Poezii. (My Heart is Ukraine: Poems). Literary Agency “Piramida.” 2002. 88 pp.
II.
Natalia Havrys. “Shistdesiatnytsia” (A Sixtier). *Vira* journal (USA), no. 4 (92). 1998. P. 21.
Mykola Plakhotniuk. “Yuvilei Lidii Huk” (The Jubilee of Lidia Huk). Chas. October 30, 1998.
M. Plakhotniuk. Kolovorot: Statti, spohady, dokumenty (The Cycle: Articles, Memoirs, Documents). Compiled and commented by V. Chornovil. Kyiv: Smoloskyp, 2012. Pp. 100, 107, 216, 227–234, 297, 302, 307, 362, 382, 390.
KHPG Archives: Photocopies of Lidia Huk’s documents, interview with her on February 18, 2001. https://museum.khpg.org/1121096106
Mizhnarodnyi biohrafichnyi slovnyk dysydentiv krain Tsentralnoi ta Skhidnoi Yevropy i kolyshnoho SRSR (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. 195–198. https://museum.khpg.org/1121096106
Rukh oporu v Ukraini: 1960 – 1990. Entsyklopedychnyi dovidnyk (The Resistance Movement in Ukraine: 1960 – 1990. An Encyclopedic Guide). Preface by Osyp Zinkevych, Oles Obertas. Kyiv: Smoloskyp, 2010. Pp. 181–182; 2nd ed.: 2012, Pp. 198–199.
Vasyl Ovsienko, Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group. July 8, 2004. Last read on August 5, 2016
