(born April 30, 1929, in the village of Mykhnevets, Turka povit, Lviv voivodeship, which became part of Poland in 1950 – died September 29, 2015, in Odesa).
Teacher, translator, dissident, undeclared member of the UHG, victim of punitive psychiatry, public figure.
Teacher, translator, human rights activist, undeclared member of the UHG, victim of punitive psychiatry, public figure.
From a large family—;her parents had seven children. Her father, Vasyl Hryhorovych Smoliy, served in the Austrian army, reaching the rank of Feldwebel. He fought on the Italian and Russian fronts, was a Russian prisoner of war in Central Asia, and died in 1936. Her mother, Hanna Fedorivna, of the Lamanets family, died in 1979. The family owned 12 hectares of land, which they worked arduously. The family was nationally conscious.
The village had a vibrant political, social, and cultural life, with an active “Prosvita” society. With the arrival of the Bolsheviks, a time of great hardship began. In 1940, her brother Yosyp was arrested. Her brother Pavlo attempted to cross the border and, to avoid falling into the hands of the NKVD, blew himself up with a grenade. Her sister Kateryna was imprisoned in concentration camps from 1944 to 1956 for her participation in the UPA partisan movement. Ten members of the Smoliy family were incarcerated in Soviet prisons.
The NKVD searched their home for weapons that Hanna had collected. She fled to another district and, in 1947, enrolled in the Nyzhni Ustryky secondary school. The students resisted joining the Komsomol. Hanna was arrested as a ringleader and taken under convoy to the “Brygidky” prison in Drohobych. Three days later, she was released without documents. She was detained again but managed to escape.
Living on the brink of starvation, Hanna graduated from school in 1950 but only received her diploma in the fall. Meanwhile, under an agreement with Poland on territorial exchange, her native village of Mykhnovets was relocated to the village of Ahafiivka in the Liubashivka raion of the Odesa oblast. Hanna stayed behind and, in May 1951, entered the Lviv Teachers’ Institute of Foreign Languages, from which she graduated in 1955. She had to transfer to the correspondence department and taught German in Ahafiivka.
All the resettled people were under close surveillance. The KGB held talks with Hanna; in 1958, these talks at the Odesa KGB office lasted a week. She worked at the Tsybulivka school in the Tsebrykivskyi raion, and later in Izmail. In 1964, she moved to Odesa and found a job as a matron in a dormitory for young workers at the No. 1 Bus Depot.
In 1968, Mykhaylenko found herself at the center of a disturbance among drivers who were being evicted from a family dormitory. It did not escalate to a strike, but the drivers successfully defended their dormitory. When Mykhaylenko was dismissed “due to staff reductions,” she sued. The drivers unanimously came to her defense, and Judge Lebedev reinstated her.
At the end of 1968, Mykhaylenko took a job as a translator of technical literature at the “Sklomash” institute, where they also tried to fire her in 1972 “due to staff reductions.” She moved to School No. 1 as a librarian, where she worked until 1977. She promoted Ukrainian literature, served as a living example of Ukrainian culture for the students, and led them to the monument of T. Shevchenko on March 9 and May 22.
In 1971, Mykhaylenko met Nina STROKATA-KARAVANSKA. She helped her, wrote letters to Sviatoslav KARAVANSKY, Ivan SVITLYCHNY, Stefania SHABATURA, and other political prisoners, and collected parcels and packages for them. When Nina STROKATA was arrested on December 6, 1971, Mykhaylenko, along with Halyna MOHYLNYTSKA, Maria OVDIENKO, Leonid TYMCHUK, Olena Danielyan, Hanna HOLUMBIYEVSKA, Vasyl BARLADIANU, Zina Dontsova, Vasyl Varha, Tetyana Rybnykova, Rozaliya Barenboim, and others, formed a human rights group to defend Nina STROKATA, Oleksa RIZNYKIV (arrested October 11, 1971), and Oleksa Prytyka (arrested August 9, 1971). They submitted petitions in their defense and, from May 2 to 9, 1972, demonstrated their support outside the courthouse, from which they were barred.
Throughout 1974-75, the Odesa human rights activists defended L. TYMCHUK, against whom two criminal cases were opened in one year. The group literally guarded him, with someone accompanying him everywhere. At the trial, the support group had grown to 30 people. It achieved the unprecedented: having the defendant released on bail.
In 1973, while standing “at attention” (at the time, Mykhaylenko was on crutches due to a broken leg), she was read a warning at the KGB under the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of December 25, 1972, concerning “anti-Soviet activities.”
For a long time, the group defended V. BARLADIANU (arrested March 2, 1977). From his case, the investigation opened separate proceedings against Hanna HOLUMBIYEVSKA, Olena Danielyan, and Mykhaylenko. They were subjected to provocations and searches.
On October 5, 1976, following the example of Moscow dissidents, 11 Odesa dissidents went to the Pushkin monument on Primorsky Boulevard and held a silent demonstration to protest human rights violations in the USSR. In addition to Mykhaylenko, the participants included Hanna Viktorivna HOLUMBIYEVSKA, a teacher at School No. 130; Vasyl BARLADIANU, a publicist and lecturer at Odesa University; Vasyl Varha; workers Valentyna Mykhailivna and Leonid Mykhailovych Siri; and four of H. HOLUMBIYEVSKA’s students—Tetyana Rybnikova, Zina Dontsova, and two boys. Cadets from a naval school were sent to confront them. But the demonstrators did not yield to the provocation and stood for an hour and a half.
In 1977, a criminal case was opened against Mykhaylenko for “misappropriation of books.” But the children returned the books, and the case was closed. Then she was accused of having beaten children 5 years earlier. The Odesa Oblast Prosecutor’s Office was dissatisfied with the KGB’s blatant fabrication of the case, recalled it five times, delayed, and finally closed it under an amnesty commemorating the 60th anniversary of Soviet power. Nevertheless, on June 26, 1977, Mykhaylenko was forced to leave her job.
She found a job at the railway enterprise “UkrZhelDorTrans.” Three freight handlers took her to court for “insult.” Her lawyer, Lipkina, managed to get her sentenced to only one year of corrective labor at her place of work.
Mykhaylenko wrote dozens of letters and articles in defense of the repressed. From 1976, she collaborated with the Ukrainian Helsinki Group. On the advice of Oksana MESHKO, she appealed her criminal case to the Central Committee and wrote to I. DRACH about the persecution, searches, attacks, and provocations. A commission arrived in Odesa to investigate workers’ complaints. Although Mykhaylenko was not summoned, the prosecutor of the Illichivsk district, the second secretary of the district party committee, and the director of the school where she had worked were all dismissed from their posts.
“I met Oksana Yakivna in 1978,” Mykhaylenko recalled. “She carefully observed me, studying how I wrote and who I was. The matriarch was very meticulous, but she told everyone: ‘She writes—wow!’ And she would give a thumbs-up. She invited me to become a member of the Group. I said, ‘Oksana Yakivna, I have a criminal case against me, they’ll imprison me immediately.’ She looked at me reproachfully: ‘How you all are afraid… And what about me?’ Then I cried and said, ‘I agree. Only I will help you unofficially, I will be an undeclared member of the Group.’”
Mykhaylenko was authorized to prepare and edit UHG documents and sign them with the names of all 16 members of the Group at that time, who had given their written consent. Mykhaylenko often traveled to Kyiv, and O. MESHKO introduced her to other human rights activists. She was denied leave from work, given extra tasks on weekends, and removed from trains, but she still managed to get to Kyiv. Although O. MESHKO and Mykhaylenko were under surveillance, collections of UHG documents were still published in the “Chronicle of Current Events” in Moscow and abroad.
Mykhaylenko’s manuscripts fell into the hands of the KGB: her statements and complaints seized during searches, a collection of UHG materials stolen on its way to Moscow, and a second collection—allegedly found in April 1978 in T. Shevchenko Park—which also contained UHG documents, including some written in Mykhaylenko’s hand.
There were two attacks on her home. Provocations were staged to fabricate a criminal case. When this failed, another search was conducted at her home on February 20, 1980, during which UHG documents were confiscated, and a case was opened under Article 62, Part 1 of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR, “Anti-Soviet Agitation and Propaganda.” The first deputy regional prosecutor, Hudzenko, suggested that Mykhaylenko confess and repent. Mykhaylenko said: “There will be no repentance! You won’t earn your stars on me.”
Sixty-three people were questioned, but only 13 gave testimony, including the school principal and Dina Mohylnytska, a teacher from School No. 1. Mykhaylenko refused to testify about other people, speaking only about herself, or sometimes refused to answer questions at all. They could not force her to answer even “yes” or “no.” Then she was allowed to write her testimony by hand. Realizing that she was writing not for self-incrimination but “for history,” this was also forbidden. Mykhaylenko declared two hunger strikes. The criminal case failed spectacularly, as it had been intended to imprison many people. After talking with Mykhaylenko about the famine, repressions, and Ukraine’s constitutional right to secede from the USSR, investigator Serhiy Merezhko left his job at the KGB after her case.
During the investigation, Mykhaylenko submitted a statement that the case had actually begun in 1977 with an attempt to recruit her as a KGB agent, and she said she would tell the court about it. The KGB then decided to prevent her from appearing in court. She was taken for a brief psychiatric evaluation at Regional Hospital No. 1 (“na Slobidku”). The experts realized she was not ill but kept her for an in-patient evaluation. Since the Odesa psychiatrists refused to commit such a sin, Mykhaylenko was returned to the KGB two days later and sent for an evaluation in Kharkiv. Over three months, there were two commissions. Dr. Radzishevsky said, “No one can force me to diagnose you as ill.” But in September 1980, a council of 5 people, including Professor Bacherikov, head of the psychiatry department at the Kharkiv Medical Institute, diagnosed her with “schizophrenia.” Professor Pohybko of the Institute of Psychiatry and Neurology refused to sign the report. It was then signed by department head Artamonov, who had not participated in the evaluation.
Two sessions of the Odesa Regional Court, on December 13, 1980, and February 18, 1981, were held without Mykhaylenko’s participation, as she was deemed “unfit to plead.” Her sister was also barred from the court. The expert Radzishevsky had by then agreed to send Mykhaylenko to a special psychiatric hospital. The court, citing Article 12 of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR, sentenced her to compulsory treatment.
Three days later, Mykhaylenko was met by the head of the Kazan Special Psychiatric Hospital himself, Konstantin Leonidovich Sveshnikov. She spent 7 horrific years there. The prisoners suffered from overcrowding, lack of water and air, lice, stench, and filth. She was prescribed strong neuroleptics, Tizertsin and Aminazine, which cause severe pain. She would lose consciousness. They tried to use electroshock and insulin shock therapy, but a nurse named Farida took pity on her after hearing that Mykhaylenko had nasal polyps and asthma—she would have died if she lost consciousness, and the nurse would have been held responsible. Mykhaylenko was so tortured with medication that she became mute, not speaking for two years; her tongue swelled, her teeth fell out, and her hands and legs trembled. The drugs caused akathisia, but there was nowhere to walk. Sometimes, she would suffocate in the hermetically sealed cell. In the bathhouse, the water would be turned off, and the wet people would freeze. Mykhaylenko developed bronchitis and pneumonia. But even in these conditions, she helped other women and, through her sister Paraska Smoliy, passed information to the outside world about the political prisoners held there.
As early as 1980, the World Federation of Ukrainian Women’s Organizations (WFUWO) spoke out in defense of Mykhaylenko. The Ukrainian diaspora and international human rights organizations—the “Group of 24” from Cambridge, teachers’ and librarians’ associations in many countries, the Human Rights Institute in Strasbourg, AHRU (Americans for Human Rights in Ukraine, led by Bohzena Olshanivska), the Pope, and Amnesty International—petitioned for Mykhaylenko. The American section of Amnesty International chose Mykhaylenko as a symbol of the organization’s work worldwide. In 1987, U.S. President Ronald Reagan, during a visit to Moscow, presented the Soviet leadership with a list of political prisoners, which included Mykhaylenko. Forty-two U.S. senators signed a letter in defense of 5 female political prisoners, among them Mykhaylenko.
After 8 years of confinement, in October 1987, a commission from the Serbsky Institute authorized Mykhaylenko’s transfer to a regular hospital, prescribing a diagnosis of “paranoid schizophrenia with changes in the emotional-volitional sphere.” The transfer was delayed for 4 months: first there was no stamp, then no signature. Meanwhile, she continued to be terrorized and was not allowed to go for walks.
On February 22, 1988, Mykhaylenko was flown from Kazan to Odesa. Due to a malfunction, the plane landed in Donetsk. After 5 hours of anxiety, Mykhaylenko was taken by ambulance to Odesa Psychiatric Hospital No. 1, where she was diagnosed with “post-schizophrenic syndrome, state of compensation.” In other words, that she had recovered from schizophrenia. The doctors forbade Mykhaylenko from writing, and she was allowed to see her sister for only 10 minutes. Mykhaylenko filed a complaint with the head doctor. “Patients do not write such complaints,” decided Mayer, the head of the expert commission, and lifted the restrictions. She was allowed to go for walks.
On May 11, 1988, the court lifted Mykhaylenko’s compulsory treatment, and on May 19, she was released. She was greeted with flowers by people from human rights organizations. However, to register her sister Paraska in her apartment, Mykhaylenko, while still in Kazan, had agreed to her sister’s guardianship, which took a full year to be lifted in Odesa.
In February 1990, at the invitation of the Boston chapter of Amnesty International, Mykhaylenko traveled to the USA, where she was welcomed by the Ukrainian diaspora, and her numerous interviews were published. Two expert examinations showed that she had never been mentally ill.
Although it was difficult for Mykhaylenko to walk, she headed the Odesa organization of the All-Ukrainian Society of Political Prisoners and Repressed Persons, took an active part in the creation of “Prosvita,” the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers, the Ukrainian Helsinki Union, and the Ukrainian Republican Party, whose regional organization she led from 1990-92, and then, until 1998, the Ukrainian Conservative Republican Party. She organized pickets, including one on August 19, 1991, at the City Council against the State Committee on the State of Emergency (GKChP). She was among the 60 Odesans who delivered a flag to the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine.
In the early 1990s, Mykhaylenko organized resistance to an attempt to resettle 250,000 Russians in the Odesa region to change the demographic situation and proclaim a buffer “republic.” She also organized mass protests by Odesans against the attempt by the Odesa Regional Council, led by R. Bodegan, to not recognize the Act of Independence of Ukraine and to proclaim “Novorossiya.” A mass picket by Odesans thwarted this attempt on February 11, 1993, as well.
By a decree of the President of Ukraine dated November 26, 2005, Mykhaylenko was awarded the Order of Princess Olga, III class; by decree No. 937/2006 of November 8, 2006, she was awarded the Order “For Courage,” I class.
She died in Odesa on September 29, 2015, at 11:30 p.m. She was buried on October 3 in Truskavets in the alley of political prisoners.
Bibliography:
I.
Speech by H. Mykhaylenko // Materials from the 1st Meeting of Political Prisoners (St. Petersburg, August 11-12, 1990) / Za Viru i Voliu, No. 14 (15) 1991.
Interview with H. Mykhaylenko on February 10 and 12, 2001, in Odesa. https://museum.khpg.org/1121199690
II. Tetyana Protsenko. V kom sovest nechista / “Znamya kommunizma” newspaper, October 23, 1977.
Soviet Teacher Imprisoned in Mental Hospital / New York teacher’s newspaper – Vol. XXII, No. 42, June 28, 1981.
Visnyk represiy v Ukrayini. Foreign Representation of the UHG. Editor-compiler N. Svitlychna. New York. 1980–1985. – 1980: 3-11, 8-4, 9-2, 10-23, 11-1; 1981: 1, 2, 3, 9, 10; 1982: 2-29; 1984: 11-14; 1985: 6-15, 7/8-25.
Hanna Holumbiyevska. Duma pro liudynu / Ukr. visnyk, 1988. – pp. 286-291. Perezhivannia odniyeyi z bahatyokh / Svoboda (USA). – February 23, 1990.
Alicia Szendiuch. Hanna Mykhailenko, ex-Soviet prisoner, arrives in Boston / The Ukrainian Weekly. – January 7, 1990.
Lyudmila Zahlada. Vyrvavshayasya iz ada / Vseukrainskiye vedomosti. – 1996. – June 16.
Svichka, shcho horyt vnochi. Hanni Mykhaylenko 70. Odesa, 1999. – Booklet. Text by Oleksa Riznykiv.
Oleksa Riznykiv. Nezlamna odesytka. Hanni Mykhaylenko – 70 / Slovo. – 1999. – May 14.
Donka Odesy. Nina Strokata v dokumentakh i spohadakh. Compiled by O.S. Riznykiv; Riznykiv O.S. Bran: Poema-misteriya. – Odesa: Druk, 2005. – pp. 4, 8, 10, 16, 17, 27, 183, 200, 216, 253, 266, 330, 332, 406.
Odeska khvylia: Dokumenty, tvory, spohady v’iazniv sumlinnia / Compiled by P. Otchenashenko, O. Riznykiv, D. Shupta. – Odesa: Druk, 2006. – pp. 101-111 (Verdict of 1980).
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. 478-484. https://museum.khpg.org/1120818672 ; https://museum.khpg.org/1120733012
Vyrok sudu nad Hannoyu Mykhaylenko // Odeska khvylia: Dokumenty, tvory, spohady v’iazniv sumlinnia / Compiled by P. Otchenashenko, O. Riznykiv, D. Shupta. – Odesa: Druk, 2006. – pp. 101–111.
Diahnoz KGB: shyzofreniya. Interv΄iu Yuriia Zaitseva z Hannoyu Mykhaylenko. Dokumenty / Introductory article, compilation, and editing by Yu.D. Zaitsev. – Lviv: Ivan Krypiakevych Institute of Ukrainian Studies, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, 2008. – 240 p.
Rukh oporu v Ukrayini: 1960 – 1990. Entsyklopedychnyi dovidnyk / Preface by Osyp Zinkevych, Oles Obertas. – Kyiv: Smoloskyp, 2010. – pp. 435-436; 2nd ed.: 2012, – pp. 490–491.
Vasyl Ovsiyenko, Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group. July 14, 2004. Last read August 12, 2016.
