(b. 24 March 1932, Hubky khutir (Bobroidy village), Zhovkva Raion, Lviv Oblast — d. 11 August 2014, Lviv)
Participant in the national liberation struggle, the Norilsk Uprising, and one of the organizers of the Ukrainian National Front.
Hubka's father, an Austrian officer, was the village head and died in February 1942. His older brother, Mykola, served as a *stanychnyi* (head of a local OUN branch) from 1943 and later joined the UPA, participating in a battle with the Bolsheviks. In 1947, his mother, Anastasia Lupiy-Hubka, was sentenced to 5 years of imprisonment and was “dekulakized” based on falsified records regarding state grain procurement. Their farm was destroyed and confiscated.
In the fall of 1945, Hubka began studying at a secondary school in Lviv. He distributed leaflets and obtained information, mail, medicine, and paper for the insurgents. He was arrested twice. At the age of 17, on October 24, 1948, he was arrested again and accused of collaborating with the underground. He endured over 100 interrogations and severe torture but admitted to nothing. Nightly interrogations and hunger exhausted him; for sleeping during the day, he was thrown into a punishment cell, where he held a hunger strike in protest for 8 days.
On July 23, 1949, the Military Tribunal of the MVS of Lviv Oblast sentenced Hubka to 25 years of imprisonment under Articles 20-54-1(a) and 54-10, Part 1 of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR, applying the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR “On the Abolition of the Death Penalty.” As a minor, he had no defense counsel at the trial. After sentencing, he was put in a straitjacket and heard a prison doctor say: “Continue, he is still conscious.”
The transport to Karaganda, which involved six or seven checks with beatings each night, lasted a month. Hubka served his sentence in Kengir, part of the Steplag system, working in construction. His prisoner number was SKh-948. He attempted to escape, for which he was sent to the BUR (punishment barracks). There, he did not work for several months but had the opportunity to meet many active Ukrainians, including Mykola Kurchyk, Petro SARANCHUK, Yurkiv, Stepan Hariachyi, Ivan Pyzh, Kovalchuk Matsepura, and Andriy Malaniuk. For the rest of his imprisonment, his file was marked with a “red stripe,” meaning “prone to escape.” This significantly complicated his status as a prisoner but also led to his transfer in 1950 to the Spassk camp (40 km from Karaganda), in the so-called “Valley of Death,” where 30,000–32,000 prisoners died each year from starvation and backbreaking labor (this information was smuggled out by Estonians who worked in the Spassk morgue). Afterward, he was held in the Akatas, Karabas, and Chumbaynura camps of the Karlag system, which was administered from Dolinka. In 1951, he was sent to a camp that came to be called the “Sich,” because it held only Ukrainians who were brought from the Steplag, Karlag, and Peschlag systems for resisting the tyranny of the “thieves-in-law” and the “suki”—camp criminals who collaborated with the administration. (Political prisoners upended the criminal order of the Soviet camps, which relied on cooperation between the administration and the criminal underworld). In the “Sich,” Ukrainians organized circles for studying Ukrainian language, literature, and history, and created a drama group. In the zones cleared of criminal elements, friendly relations prevailed among the political prisoners. Here, Hubka became close with Hryhoriy Pryshliak, a regional SB (Security Service) commander; Ivan Kuk, the brother of the UPA's commander-in-chief Vasyl Kuk-“Lemish”; Dr. Vitkovsky, a prominent cultural figure of the Ukrainian emigration in Harbin (he died in the “Sich”); Ivan Stoliar, a district leader; and Slavko Martyn, who was captured after being gassed in a *kryyivka* (bunker) where the journal *Ideya i Chyn* (Idea and Action) was printed. There, Hubka received a letter and his only food parcel from his sister Halia in the Sicheslav region, but he later forbade her from sending more, as she herself was struggling with her children.
In 1952, Hubka, along with an entire trainload of prisoners, was transferred to Krasnoyarsk, and in the autumn, they were transported by barge down the Yenisei River to Norilsk, where he spent 10 months. He worked in construction, with shifts lasting 12 hours.
In the spring of 1953, in camp No. 5, a guard fired a burst of machine-gun fire along the frozen ground to intimidate the prisoners; the ricocheting bullets killed a prisoner named Kovalchuk and wounded several others. This sparked a strike by about 40,000 prisoners. It was led by representatives of various nationalities, including the Ukrainians Mykhailo Marushko, Ivan Stoliar, Yevhen Horoshko, and Oleh Krysa. In zone No. 5, guards cut openings in the barbed-wire fences, but out of 5,000 prisoners, no more than 300 left the zone (escaped). On the 9th day, 350 officers with pistols burst into the zone with fire engines to break the resistance. The prisoners cut the fire hoses and formed a human wall. The attempt was neutralized. On the 14th day, June 6, a government commission headed by Colonel Kuznetsov arrived. The prisoners presented 13 demands, including: removing numbers from their clothes, bars from the windows, and locks from the doors; reviewing their cases; allowing visits; introducing a system of work-day credits; reducing the workday to 8 hours; transferring the sick and disabled from the North; releasing minors and those convicted by the OSO (Special Council of the NKVD); and allowing more than two letters per year, among others. Most of the demands were met, but two weeks later, they began to remove the activists, and a new strike began. The defiance in camp No. 4 was led by Yevhen HRYTSIAK and a group of prisoners. On July 1, armed soldiers stormed zone No. 5; after the command “Fire!” was given, the unarmed prisoners engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the submachine gunners. Hundreds of prisoners were killed—the exact number has still not been established.
After the defeat of the uprising, its activists, including Hubka, were sent to the “Nadezhda” camp. He was then transported with a thousand other prisoners to Krasnoyarsk and, via the port of Vanino, taken to Kolyma. He was held at Kholodny, Yubileyny, Alyaskitovy, Ust-Umchug, Foku, and Susuman, where he spent over a year in prison, after which he was held in the BUR.
By a ruling of the people's court of the Srednikansky Raion of Magadan Oblast on September 3, 1954, based on the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of April 24, 1954 (“Decree on Minors”), Hubka's prison term was halved. By a resolution of the commission of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on August 21, 1956, Hubka was released from further imprisonment, and his conviction was expunged. Lacking money to rebuild his life, he worked for almost a year in a field party of the “Dalstroyproekt.”
In August 1957, Hubka returned to Ukraine. His brother and mother were renting a room in their own family home, which they were able to buy back two years later. With great difficulty, Hubka found a construction job in Krystynopil (Chervonohrad) in the Lviv region, passed exams for grades 7–9 as an external student, and enrolled in the 10th grade of an evening school. But after 4 months, he was summoned to the militia and ordered to leave the Lviv Oblast within 24 hours. He found a job as a warehouse manager at a garment factory in the town of Rozdil, Drohobych Oblast, where he lived for 5 years. He suffered from a duodenal ulcer.
In 1959, Hubka enrolled in the correspondence department of the Kharkiv Institute of Trade. From the third year, he transferred to the Lviv Institute of Trade and Economics, from which he graduated in 1964. In 1962, he married Valentyna Kukulivska from the Zhytomyr region. In 1963, their son Rostyslav was born, and that same year, they moved to Lviv. Hubka worked as the manager of a warehouse for industrial goods at an inter-oblast base, then as an engineer-economist at the Lviv Low-Voltage Lamp Factory, where he was also the head of the trade union.
Hubka communicated and corresponded widely with former political prisoners (Bohdan Solonchak, Stepan Levandovych, Fedir Zharko—a famous bandura player, Valeriy Pidmohylny—a former head of the Pryazovia regional committee, Bohdan Krysa, Yevhen Horoshko, Ivan Stoliar, Oleksa Nitsenko, Volodymyr Hursky, Stepaniak—a member of the Main Council of the OUN, Dmytro Susik, Huberant, Ostap Bilyk, Ivan Shymansky, Ivan Buchma, and many others). He read extensively, acquiring pre-war publications as well as samvydav, including the articles “Two Ukrainian Encyclopedias” and “On the Trial of Pohruzhalsky.” He became part of the Lviv opposition intelligentsia and was acquainted with the Sixtiers Mykhailo and Bohdan HORYN, Oleksandr MARTYNENKO, Lina KOSTENKO, and others.
In early 1965, from his former fellow prisoners Vasyl Vardynets and Myroslav MELEN, Hubka learned about the creation of the underground organization, the “Ukrainian National Front” (UNF), whose goal was to fight for independence. In early 1965, he met Zinoviy KRASIVSKY. Hubka established a UNF underground group in Lviv, which distributed the typewritten journal *Volya i Batkivshchyna* (Freedom and Fatherland), of which 16 issues were published. The author of the documents “Programmatic Demands of the UNF,” “Our Tasks,” and most of the articles was the UNF leader Dmytro KVETSKO. The draft program was based on the provisions of the OUN(b) Program adopted at its Third Great Assembly in 1943. The documents assessed Ukraine's situation as colonial. Rejecting communist doctrine and practice, the UNF proposed an independent development for Ukraine in the form of “people's socialism,” very similar to the realities of Western European social democracy. The UNF, including Hubka, also distributed pamphlets from 1948 found in a *kryyivka* (bunker): “*Kto takiye banderovtsy i za chto oni boryutsya*” (Who Are the Banderites and What Are They Fighting For) and “*Byuro informatsii UHVR*” (Information Bureau of the UHVR).
Hubka maintained contact with the UNF leadership through Ivan Mohytych (who was not exposed). He discussed with Zinoviy KRASIVSKY, Myroslav MELEN, and Hryhoriy PROKOPOVYCH ways to improve the form and content of the journal *Volya i Batkivshchyna*, searching for a font to publish it by printing press. By 1967, the UNF had up to 150 members in many oblasts. A few failures occurred, and the KGB localized its search for the UNF to Galicia. Hubka later assessed the situation: “…if there is no informer within the organization, then only a small part of the organization's actions can be discovered by the special services. They might know about meetings, even the topics of conversation, but they won't be able to prove anything and won't be able to build a case on it” (I. Hubka, *U tsarstvi svavoli* [In the Kingdom of Arbitrariness]. Lviv, 2000, p. 452). “Today, not a single member of the UNF can be said to have betrayed the organization…” (p. 453).
On March 19, 1967, Hubka was unexpectedly sent on a business trip from work to Moscow. Immediately upon his return to Lviv, on March 27, 1967, he was arrested. Nothing was seized during the search of his home.
The KGB considered the UNF case to be of great importance, and its leaders, including Hubka, were personally interrogated by the head of the KGB of the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR, V. Nikitchenko. Acknowledging that the KGB was working poorly, he promised: “Don’t think we'll make heroes or martyrs out of you. We will do everything to ensure no one knows about you; we will try each of you separately, without witnesses and in secret. We will not allow any rumors or speculation to spread. No one will know when you are sentenced, so there will be nothing to talk about” (Ibid., p. 448).
Since Hubka did not admit to being a member of the UNF, his case was separated into a separate proceeding to “conceal” the Lviv group, and the charge under Article 56 (“Treason”) was replaced with Article 64 (“Organizational Activity”). Hubka was incriminated with reproducing and distributing, since 1965, samvydav literature, specifically the articles “Two Ukrainian Encyclopedias,” “On the Trial of Pohruzhalsky,” the UNF journal *Volya i Batkivshchyna*, and the pamphlets “*Kto takiye banderovtsy i za chto oni boryutsya*” and “*Byuro informatsii UHVR*.”
His ulcer flared up during the investigation, and he had to receive treatment before the trial, but he refused surgery. While reviewing his case file, he was not allowed to take notes.
On August 1, 1967, Hubka was sentenced by the Lviv Oblast Court to 6 years of imprisonment in strict-regime camps and 5 years of exile under Article 62, Part 1 of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR. Implementing V. Nikitchenko’s instructions, the court dropped the charge of organizational activity (Article 64), stating: “Sufficient evidence has not been gathered in this case to confirm the existence of the anti-Soviet organization Ukrainian National Front or Hubka’s membership in it... Apart from conversations, Hubka did practically nothing to improve or expand the publication of the journal.” The trial was closed; his wife was only allowed in for the reading of the verdict (which was in Russian).
Hubka was transported to Ivano-Frankivsk to serve as a witness at the trials of H. PROKOPOVYCH and Z. KRASIVSKY.
He served his sentence in the Mordovian camps No. 11 (Yavas), No. 3 (Barashevo), and No. 19 (Lesnoy). He worked as a bookkeeper in a furniture workshop and on woodworking machines. He had extensive contact with political prisoners who were former insurgents (Mykola Onyshkiv, Vasyl PIDHORODETSKY, Dmytro Basarab, Vasyl Yakubiak, Mykhailo Viter, Vasyl Levkovych—Colonel “Voronyi,” Mykola Kurchyk, Ivan Kozhan), with Sixtiers (Opanas ZALYVAKHA, Bohdan HORYN, Mykola KOTS, Yosyp TERELYA, Ivan HEL, Mykhailo OZERNY, Fedir Vikhot), with his co-defendants (Hryhoriy PROKOPOVYCH, Myroslav MELEN, Yaroslav LESIV, Vasyl KULYNIN, Mykola Kachur), as well as with Yury Galanskov, Yakov SUSLENSKY, Andrei Sinyavsky, Mikhail Sado, and many others.
Hubka's journey into exile in 1973, to the village of Pirovskoye in the Krasnoyarsk Krai, took three months. There he worked as an economist for the district consumer cooperative, and as a legal consultant, from which he was fired following a denunciation), and as a foreman in a timber enterprise, but was later reinstated as a legal consultant on appeal. He bought a small hut for 200 rubles and fixed it up. His wife, Valentyna, joined him there for two years. He underwent a serious operation and only regained consciousness on the ninth day (his sisters had come to claim his body for burial in Ukraine). He survived and recovered. The local population and authorities were generally friendly to the political exile.
Because the additional three-month period of detention during his transport to exile was credited at a ratio of one to three, he returned to Ukraine in the autumn of 1977. For 4 months, he knocked on the doors of various institutions to get permission to live with his family.
In 1989, Hubka became a member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Union and was one of the leaders of its regional organization.
Hubka is one of the founders of the Union of Political Prisoners of Ukraine. At its founding congress (April 20–21, 1991, in Lviv), he was elected its chairman. On his initiative, the UPPU merged with the All-Ukrainian Society of Political Prisoners and Repressed Persons on November 21, 1992. Hubka was co-chairman of the All-Ukrainian Society.
Hubka is one of the founders of the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists (CUN), a member of the CUN leadership, and Chairman of the Lviv regional organization. He is the editor-in-chief of the journal *Volya i Batkivshchyna* (revived by the CUN in 1995). He participated in the preparation of the fundamental study “The Ukrainian National Front” (2000) and is the author of a book of memoirs, “In the Kingdom of Arbitrariness,” and a number of other books. He is a member of the National Writers' Union of Ukraine and a member of the Ukrainisches Institut für Bildungspolitik (Ukrainian Institute for Education Policy) in Munich.
Bibliography:
I.
*Ukrainski politychni viazni i krakh bilshovytskoi imperii. Pershyi (ustanovchyi) zizd Spilky politychnykh viazniv Ukrainy (20–21 kvitnia 1991 r.): Materialy i komentari* (Ukrainian Political Prisoners and the Collapse of the Bolshevik Empire. The First (Founding) Congress of the Union of Political Prisoners of Ukraine (April 20-21, 1991): Materials and Commentaries). Editor-in-charge, compiler Ivan Hubka. Lviv, 2001. 340 pp.
*U tsarstvi svavoli. Spohady*. Part I. (In the Kingdom of Arbitrariness. Memoirs). – Lviv: Ukrainski tekhnolohii, 2000. – 608 pp.;
*Pyriatyn: peremoha i trahedia* (Pyriatyn: Victory and Tragedy). – Lviv: NVF “Ukrainski tekhnolohii,” 2002. – 292 pp.
*Spohady*. Part II (Memoirs. Part II). – 2003. – 576 pp.
*U tsarstvi svavoli (Stezhka dodomu). Spohady*. Part II. (In the Kingdom of Arbitrariness (The Path Home). Memoirs. Part II). – Lviv: Ukrainski tekhnolohii, 2003. – 576 pp.
*Dorohoiu borotby* (On the Path of Struggle). 2004. – 494 pp.
*Univska bytva* (The Battle of Univ). – 2004. – 140 pp.
*Pravda pro Norylsk* (The Truth About Norilsk). – Lviv: VF “Afisha,” 2005. – 156 pp.
*Dorohoiu borotby (istorychni zamalovky)*. Part I. (On the Path of Struggle (Historical Sketches). Part I). – Lviv: VF “Afisha,” 2005. – 576 pp.; *Dorohoiu borotby (peremozhni boi UPA)*. Part II. (On the Path of Struggle (The Victorious Battles of the UPA). Part II). – 632 pp.
*Neoplatni borhy Rossii* (Russia’s Unpayable Debts). Memorial, 14 Feb. 2006. http://memorial.kiev.ua/genocyd-ukrajinciv/suspilna-ocinka/183-ivan-gubka-neoplatni-borgy-rosiji.html
*Borotba OUN-UPA v moskovskykh kontstaborakh* (The Struggle of the OUN-UPA in Moscow’s Concentration Camps). http://oun-upa.national.org.ua/articles/hubka.html
*Dorohoiu borotby (bortsi za Ukrainu 1960–1990)* (On the Path of Struggle (Fighters for Ukraine 1960-1990)). – Lviv: “Afisha,” 2007. – 820 pp.
*Dorohoiu borotby (Lytsar Sluzhby Bezpeky [Hryhoriy Pryshliak])* (On the Path of Struggle (Knight of the Security Service [Hryhoriy Pryshliak])). – Lviv: “Afisha,” 2009. – 612 pp.
*Dorohoiu borotby («Siromantsi» – kurin okremoho pryznachennia)*. Part VIII. (On the Path of Struggle (“Siromantsi”—A Special Purpose Battalion). Part VIII). – Lviv: TzOV “Afisha,” 2011. – 564 pp.
*Dorohoiu borotby (Syloiu i zbroieiu!)*. Part IX. (On the Path of Struggle (By Force and by Arms!). Part IX). – Lviv: TzOV “Afisha,” 2012. – 584 pp.
ІІ.
Georgy Kasianov. *Nezhodni: ukrainska intelihentsiia v rusi oporu 1960-1980-kh rokiv* (The Dissenters: The Ukrainian Intelligentsia in the 1960s-1980s Resistance Movement). – Kyiv: Lybid, 1995. – pp. 74–75.
Anatoliy Rusnachenko. *Natsionalno-vyzvolnyi rukh v Ukraini* (The National Liberation Movement in Ukraine). – Kyiv: O. Teliha Publishing House. – 1998. – pp. 105–140.
Yuriy Zaitsev. *Ideia i chyn Ukrainskoho natsionalnoho frontu* (The Idea and Action of the Ukrainian National Front). // *Volya i Batkivshchyna*, Lviv, Ukrainian journal, 1997, No. 2.— pp. 26-34.
*Ukrainskyi Natsionalnyi Front: Doslidzhennia, dokumenty, materialy* (The Ukrainian National Front: Research, Documents, Materials) / Compiled by M.V. Dubas, Yu.D. Zaitsev – Lviv: I. Krypiakevych Institute of Ukrainian Studies, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, 2000. – pp. 373–384, 485–493, et al.
*Neskorene pokolinnia* (The Unconquered Generation). – Lviv regional organization of the CUN (undated). Foreword by M. Yakubovska. – 36 pp.
*Mizhnarodnyi biohrafichnyi slovnyk dysydentiv krain Tsentralnoi ta Skhidnoi Yevropy y kolyshnoho SRSR*. Vol. 1. Ukraine. Part 1. – Kharkiv: Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group; “Prava liudyny,” 2006. – pp. 188–194. https://museum.khpg.org/1116580743.
*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. 179–181; 2nd ed.: 2012, – pp. 186–198.
Vasyl Ovsienko, Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group. 7 June 2004. Last read on 5 August 2016.
