(b. March 13, 1938, in Odesa).
Participant in the independence movement.
His father, Fedir Hryhorovych (b. 1898), was killed in 1944 on the front near Iași. His ailing mother, Hanna Sylvestrivna Buchovska, could not raise three children on her own, so until the seventh grade, Volodymyr lived with his aunt in the village of Rozhniativka, Tomashpil raion, Vinnytsia oblast. In 1957, he graduated from the Odesa Technical College of the Ministry of the Food Industry of the Ukrainian SSR with a degree as a “technician-technologist.” For two years, he worked as a foreman in the confectionery workshop of a food processing plant in Pervomaisk, Mykolaiv oblast.
He began writing poetry in the fifth grade. This led him to the literary studio at the newspaper Prybuzky Komunar (“The Bug Communard”), where he met Oleksa RIZNYKIV, Ivan Halyniak, Stanislav Shvets, Valentyna Kravchuk, and other young people. Influenced by memories of the Holodomor of 1933, repressions, and war, as well as criticism of Stalin’s personality cult and the Khrushchev Thaw, they developed critical views of Soviet reality. As early as May 1958, B. and O. RIZNYKIV resolved to fight against the party dictatorship. The young men harbored the idea of creating an underground organization, held conversations critical of Soviet reality within their circle, and wrote poems that were later deemed anti-Soviet.
On July 20, 1958, B. arrived in Kirovohrad to see O. RIZNYKIV, bringing with him some ideas, slogans, and words written on paper that were to be included in a leaflet. They composed the first draft of a leaflet titled “Appeal to the People,” copied the text by hand, and each took a copy to refine it. However, B. lost his leaflet and had to recreate it from memory. On August 10, on the bank of the Syniukha River in Kirovohrad, they finalized the leaflet and signed it with the abbreviation “SOBOZON,” which was to stand for “Soyuz borby za osvobozhdeniye naroda” (Union for the Liberation of the People)—an organization they intended to create. The leaflet was not directed against Soviet power (the Soviets were not even mentioned) but against the “dictatorial policy of the Communist Party,” which had led the people to impoverishment and lawlessness, and against lies, duplicity, and the arms race. The leaflet ended with the calls: “We want brotherhood, true brotherhood, not enmity between the peoples of all countries of the world! Enough of splitting the world into two so-called ‘camps’! Down with the fascist dictatorship of the party! We need genuine freedom of opinion, speech, and the press! We stand for the state’s recognition of religion and the church! Down with atheistic propaganda! Long live the true freedom of the people!”
They intended to acquire printing type, but for the time being, they reproduced the leaflet on a typewriter at the Pervomaisk food processing plant, and Stanislav Shvets used his father’s typewriter, making about 40 copies in total. On November 7–10, 1958, during the “October holidays,” B. in Odesa and O. RIZNYKIV in Kirovohrad pasted, posted on stands, and distributed the leaflet in public places.
On July 11, 1959, B. resigned from his job and returned to Odesa from Pervomaisk. To monitor the contacts of the suspects, O. RIZNYKIV, a sailor, was transferred there to serve after completing radiometry school in Sevastopol.
On October 1, 1959, searches were conducted simultaneously at B.’s home, in RIZNYKIV’s barracks, at his parents’ home, and at S. Shvets’s home. That same day, all three were detained. On October 3, S. Shvets was released into his parents’ custody, while B. and O. RIZNYKIV were arrested. During the investigation, they were held in a KGB pre-trial detention center. After its conclusion on January 1, 1960, they were transferred to the Odesa prison, where they were placed in the same cell.
They were charged under Article 7, Part 1, and Article 9 of the Law “On Criminal Liability for State Crimes” of December 25, 1958. The military tribunal of the Odesa district (because O. RIZNYKIV was a serviceman) on February 15–19, 1960, sentenced them both to 1.5 years of imprisonment in strict-regime camps. The tribunal acquitted them under Article 9, although the prosecutor had demanded 4 years for RIZNYKIV and 3 years for B. The prosecutor appealed the verdict, but the Supreme Court of the Ukrainian SSR upheld it.
It should be emphasized that it was during the investigation that B. and O. RIZNYKIV realized they were Ukrainians, that their homeland was enslaved, and they decided to dedicate themselves to its liberation from colonial dependence. When they were brought together in the same cell after the investigation, they consciously switched to speaking Ukrainian with each other (although the trial was still conducted in Russian). Therefore, their repentance and assurances to the tribunal that they had realized their mistakes and would start a “new life” were not false. The formation of their national consciousness was completed during their transport and in the Mordovian camp No. 11 (at Yavas station), as a result of intensive intellectual work and the influence of political prisoners, especially former insurgents—Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estonian.
After his release on April 1, 1961, B. found a job by April 20 at the Odesa Refrigeration Machinery Plant, first as a worker in the woodworking shop, then as a loader, and a fitter-tester—a position he held until 1968, when he graduated from the Ukrainian department of the philological faculty of the Mechnikov Odesa University, studying in the evenings.
B. participated in the cultural movement of the Sixtiers. Together with O. RIZNYKIV, Oleh Oliynyk, and Halyna Mohylnytska, he took part in collecting books for Ukrainians in the Kuban region, an initiative organized by Sviatoslav KARAVANSKY, as well as in Christmas caroling and the activities of the Ukrainian Amateur Choir. B. and O. RIZNYKIV produced up to 10 photocopies of I. DZIUBA’s work Internationalism or Russification? and distributed the Ukrainian Herald, articles by V. MOROZ, S. KARAVANSKY (including his lawsuit against the Minister of Education, Y. M. Dadenkov), and V. CHORNOVIL, as well as nationally inspired poems by Vasyl SYMONENKO, Mykola KHOLODNY, Mykola Vinhranovsky, Ihor KALYNETS, Vasyl STUS, Lina KOSTENKO, and Ivan DRACH.
After graduating from the university, B. worked as a Ukrainian language teacher and as the executive secretary of the regional branch of the Society for Nature Protection, from which he was fired after his criminal record was discovered. He was unemployed for almost a year. Finally, in 1975, he became a literary contributor to the factory newspaper Radians’ka Shveya (Soviet Seamstress) at the Vorovsky Odesa Production Association, where he worked until 1992. He is currently a correspondent for the newspaper Odesky Dachnyk (Odesa Gardener).
He participated in the activities of the Society of the Ukrainian Language, “Prosvita,” the People’s Movement of Ukraine (Rukh), and the All-Ukrainian Society of Political Prisoners and the Repressed. He was rehabilitated on November 23, 1992, by the military prosecutor’s office of the Odesa Military District. His wife is Osypa Komarnytska. He is non-partisan. He lives in Odesa.
Bibliography:
My z GULAGu: Kolektyvnyi zbirnyk [We Are from the GULAG: A Collective Anthology] / Compiled by R. B. Ivanova, L. S. Rybak. Odesa: Astroprint, 1999. 324 pp., illus. (Series: “Odesa Memorial.” Issue 7). In Russian and Ukrainian. p. 17.
Oleksa Riznykiv. “Khloptsi, yaki vidkryly nahist korolia” [The Boys Who Revealed the King’s Nakedness]. Zona, 1994, no. 7, pp. 168–180.
Odessky martyrolog [Odesa Martyrology], vol. 2. Odesa: Okna, 1999. p. 44.
Oleksa Riznychenko. Promin z Odesy: Nina Strokata v poezii, dokumentakh i spohadakh (do 2-ykh rokovyn smerty) [A Ray from Odesa: Nina Strokata in Poetry, Documents, and Memoirs (on the 2nd anniversary of her death)]. Odesa: Druk, 2000. pp. 64–67.
Oleksa Riznychenko. “SOBOZON.” In his book Z liudei [From the People]. Drohobych: Vydavnycha firma “Vidrodzhennia,” 2000. pp. 362–376.
Donka Odesy: Nina Strokata v dokumentakh i spohadakh [Daughter of Odesa: Nina Strokata in Documents and Memoirs]. Compiled by O. S. Riznykiv. Scientific editor, Candidate of Historical Sciences Yu. Zaitsev. Riznykiv, Oleksa Serhiyovych. Bran: Poema-misteriia [The Captive: A Mystery Poem]. Odesa: Druk, 2005. pp. 13, 17, 19, 21, 273.
KHPG Archive: interview with O. Riznykiv on March 25, 2000. https://museum.khpg.org/1135181667;
Entsyklopediia suchasnoi Ukrainy [Encyclopedia of Modern Ukraine], Vol. 2. Kyiv, 2003. p. 278; Documents from archival case No. 24962 P of Riznykiv O. S. and Barsukivsky V. F. 1958–1961. // Odeska khvylia: Dokumenty, tvory, spohady v’iazniv sumlinnia [The Odesa Wave: Documents, Works, and Memoirs of Prisoners of Conscience] / Compiled by P. Otchenashenko, O. Riznykiv, D. Shupta. Odesa: Druk, 2006. pp. 39–72;
Mizhnarodnyi biohrafichnyi slovnyk dysydentiv krain Tsentralnoi ta Skhidnoi Yevropy y kolyshnoho SRSR. T. 1. Ukraina. Chastyna 1 [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. 63–66. https://museum.khpg.org/1120723030;
Rukh oporu v Ukraini: 1960–1990. Entsyklopedychnyi dovidnyk [The Resistance Movement in Ukraine: 1960–1990. An Encyclopedic Guide] / Foreword by Osyp Zinkevych, Oles Obertas. Kyiv: Smoloskyp, 2010. pp. 70–71; 2nd ed.: 2012, p. 77.
Vasyl Ovsiyenko, Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group. June 16, 2002. Last read: August 2, 2016.
