(born July 7, 1921, in the village of Monastyrykha, Skalat county (now Husiatyn raion), Ternopil oblast.
Participant in the national liberation struggle, member of the OUN.
From a wealthy peasant family. His father, Ivan Boroznyi, died in 1936. His mother, Maria Kushnir (b. 1900), married Maftey Fostakovsky, who went into hiding at the start of the Bolshevik repressions. Stepan studied at a Polish gymnasium in Ternopil and, until the arrival of the “first Soviets,” at a teachers' seminary in Sambir.
The occupying authorities imposed such a heavy tax on B.'s mother that she sold all her property and eventually had to abandon her home and hide in other villages. Stepan also went into hiding in the town of Skalat, but when he visited his native home once in May 1941, he was caught and deported to Siberia by administrative order. The journey by transport train from Hrymailiv station lasted three weeks. On June 5, 1941, train No. 2597 delivered 295 families—1192 people, including B.—to Tyumen. The head of the Omsk NKVD administration, Ishevsky, reported to the Deputy People's Commissar for Internal Affairs of the USSR, Chernyshov:
“During the dispatch of administrative exiles from the points of disembarkation to the areas of settlement, the following shortcomings were noted:
1. In the city of Tyumen, from the Vodnikov club, where the arriving families of administrative exiles were temporarily housed, administrative exile BOROZNYI, Stepan, born 1921, son of FAITKOVSKY—a participant in a c(ounter)-r(evolutionary) terrorist organization, who is living illegally—escaped on the night of June 9-10. BOROZNYI, Stepan, arrived in the Omsk oblast alone, as his mother, FAITKOVSKA, had evaded deportation. The immediate local search measures have not yet yielded positive results, and the search for the escapee continues.” (See in: Bilas, I. H. Represyvno-karalna systema v Ukraini. 1917–1953: Suspilno-politychnyi ta istoryko-pravovyi analiz (The Repressive-Punitive System in Ukraine, 1917–1953: A Socio-Political and Historico-Legal Analysis). In 2 books. Book 2. Kyiv: Lybid–Viisko Ukrainy, 1994. P. 205. The names here are misspelled: they should be Fostakovsky, Fostakovska).
He and a fellow escaped companion, gymnasium student Mykhas Hudz (from Lezhakivka, Hrymailiv raion), made their way back to Ukraine over several months, mostly on foot. Near the city of Sumy, they crossed the front line. The Germans put them in a column of prisoners of war, but they managed to get themselves released. Upon returning to his native region, B., together with Stepan Protsyk, produced underground leaflets in a print shop in the town of Skalat. When the threat of arrest arose, they moved to the village of Chernytsi, Stryi raion, where they continued their underground work under the guise of students at an agricultural lyceum. As a result of a denunciation, the Gestapo arrested them on a train. Relatives managed to secure B.'s release from the Ternopil prison. (S. Protsyk was sent to Auschwitz; after his release, he moved to the USA, was the editor of the Bulletin of the Ukrainian Democratic Movement, and died in 1997).
In a battle with NKVD forces near the Stryi River, B. was wounded in the lung and right arm. His friends carried him away. He hid in a kryivka (bunker) in the village of Hnizdychiv, which he had to leave before he fully recovered during a raid.
On January 15, 1945, in a forest near the city of Kalush, he was captured by NKVD forces along with a group of underground fighters. B.'s lungs were bleeding. The investigation involved torture. On March 16, 1945, weakened, he was brought to court, supported by his arms. The Military Tribunal of the NKVD of the Stanislav oblast, under Articles 54-I "a" and 54-II of the Criminal Code of the UkrSSR, sentenced S. Boroznyi to death with confiscation of property. B. received the verdict calmly and did not ask for mercy. By a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on April 23, 1945, the execution was commuted to 20 years of katorga (penal servitude).
Meanwhile, his mother's farm was confiscated by the collective farm, and his mother died in a kryivka in 1947, along with her husband and other partisans to whom she had brought food.
B. served his sentence in locations including the 3rd katorga zone (Norilsk), working in stone quarries, a cement plant, and a brick factory. In 1953, he participated in a political prisoners' uprising. He was closely acquainted with the uprising's organizers, Danylo SHUMUK, Roman Zahoruyko, and Kost Korol. On August 3–4, the insurgents were machine-gunned from Studebaker trucks that broke into the zone. Later, he was in camps in the Irkutsk oblast (Vykhorivka, Tayshet, Suyetikha).
According to the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of July 14, 1954, a permanent session of the Irkutsk Regional Court on April 9, 1959, commuted the remainder of B.’s term (5 years, 9 months, and 10 days) to exile, which he served from April 28, 1959, to March 3, 1964, in the settlement of Suyetikha (near Tayshet) in the Irkutsk oblast. He worked at a woodworking plant on machines. There he married Emilia Ivanivna Rykhlitska (b. 1921), who on October 29, 1945, had also been sentenced under the same articles to 10 years, served over 8 years in prison, and was already in exile. In 1961, their son Orest was born. The family was forbidden to return to Western Ukraine, so after his release, B. settled in the city of Nikopol in the Dnipropetrovsk region. His wife died in 1996. B. worked in construction, in a school workshop, and in a boiler room. He published a number of poems in the press.
By a resolution of the Ternopil Regional Prosecutor's Office dated April 26, 1993, the court verdict and the 1945 decree of the PSS regarding Boroznyi were “annulled, the case was closed for lack of evidence of his participation in the crime, and he is recognized as rehabilitated.”
Bibliography:
I.
“S. Boroznyi” (Biographical note). Bil. Almanakh “Memorialu,” (Pain. Memorial Almanac), Issue 5-6. Lviv: Poklyk sumlinnia, 1995. P. 138.
“S. Boroznyi” (A selection of poems and biographical note). Nikopolskiye izvestiya, October 3, 1997.
“Poeziia Stepana Boroznoho” (The Poetry of Stepan Boroznyi). Nikopolskiye izvestiya, March 27, 1998.
KHPG Archives: interview with S. Boroznyi, April 9, 2001, typescripts by S. Boroznyi. https://museum.khpg.org/admin/index.php?do=edit&id=1195493802&r=