Vasyl Omelianovych Makukh ( Ukrainian: Васи́ль Омеля́нович Ма́кух; 14 November 1927 – 6 November 1968) was a Soviet veteran of

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, political prisoner and Ukrainian activist, and member of the

Ukrainian Insurgent Army The Ukrainian Insurgent Army (, abbreviated UPA) was a Ukrainian nationalist partisan formation founded by the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) on 14 October 1942. The UPA launched guerrilla warfare against Nazi Germany, the S ...

. Having been conscripted into the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...

, in November 1944 Makukh defected and joined the nationalist

. In February 1946 he was wounded and captured after a shootout with Soviet and Polish border guards at the Soviet-Polish border (today

Poland–Ukraine border The Polish–Ukrainian border is the state border between Poland and Ukraine. It has a total length of soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs The Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR (MVD; ) was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union from 1946 to 1991. The MVD was established as the successor to the NKVD during reform of the People's Commissariats into the Ministries of the ...

) in

Velyki Mosty Velyki Mosty (, , ; ; ) is a city in Sheptytskyi Raion of Lviv Oblast (oblast, region) of western Ukraine. It hosts the administration of Velyki Mosty urban hromada, one of the hromadas of Ukraine. Its population is History In the Crown of the ...

and later to

Lviv Lviv ( or ; ; ; see #Names and symbols, below for other names) is the largest city in western Ukraine, as well as the List of cities in Ukraine, fifth-largest city in Ukraine, with a population of It serves as the administrative centre of ...

Prison No. 4 (known as "

Brygidki Brygidki () is a prison in the building of a former Bridgettine nunnery in Lviv, Ukraine. History The monastery was founded in 1614 at the behest of Anna Fastkowska and Anna Poradowska for girls from noble families. After the Partition of Poland ...

"). On 11 July 1946, the Military Tribunal of Lviv garrison sentenced him to 10 years of hard labour (

katorga Katorga (, ; from medieval and modern ; and Ottoman Turkish: , ) was a system of penal labor in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union (see Katorga labor in the Soviet Union). Prisoners were sent to remote penal colonies in vast uninhabited a ...

) with five years of detention ("civil rights restriction") plus the confiscation of all his property. Makukh served his sentence in

Dubravlag The Dubravny Camp, Special Camp No.3 (), commonly known as the Dubravlag (), was a Gulag labor camp of the Soviet Union located in Yavas, Mordovia from 1948 to 2005. The Dubravlag was founded as one of several Gulag special camps in the Mordov ...

(

Mordovia Mordovia ( ),; Moksha language, Moksha and officially the Republic of Mordovia,; ; is a republics of Russia, republic of Russia, situated in Eastern Europe. Its capital city, capital is the types of inhabited localities in Russia, city of S ...

) and other

GULAG The Gulag was a system of Labor camp, forced labor camps in the Soviet Union. The word ''Gulag'' originally referred only to the division of the Chronology of Soviet secret police agencies, Soviet secret police that was in charge of runnin ...

camps in

Siberia Siberia ( ; , ) is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed a part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its predecessor states ...

. On 18 July 1955, he was freed and exiled to a local settlement, where he met a woman who had also served 10 years imprisonment. In 1956, both managed to return to Ukraine, and being forbidden to return to their own region, they settled in Dnipropetrovsk (today

Dnipro Dnipro is Ukraine's fourth-largest city, with about one million inhabitants. It is located in the eastern part of Ukraine, southeast of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on the Dnieper River, Dnipro River, from which it takes its name. Dnipro is t ...

), where they married and Makukh worked as a schoolteacher. On November 5, 1968, he committed

suicide Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Risk factors for suicide include mental disorders, physical disorders, and substance abuse. Some suicides are impulsive acts driven by stress (such as from financial or ac ...

self-immolation Self-immolation is the act of setting oneself on fire. It is mostly done for political or religious reasons, often as a form of protest or in acts of martyrdom, and known for its disturbing and violent nature. Etymology The English word ' ...

Khreshchatyk Khreshchatyk (, ) is the main street of Kyiv, the capital city of Ukraine. The street is long, and runs in a northeast-southwest direction from European Square (Kyiv), European Square through the Maidan Nezalezhnosti, Maidan to Bessarabska Sq ...

Kyiv Kyiv, also Kiev, is the capital and most populous List of cities in Ukraine, city of Ukraine. Located in the north-central part of the country, it straddles both sides of the Dnieper, Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2022, its population was 2, ...

's main street, in protest against the

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

rule of Ukraine, against

russification Russification (), Russianisation or Russianization, is a form of cultural assimilation in which non-Russians adopt Russian culture and Russian language either voluntarily or as a result of a deliberate state policy. Russification was at times ...

as well as the Soviet invasion in Czechoslovakia. Before his death, Makukh shouted 'Long live free Ukraine!' He died the next day. On 6 November 1968 the prosecutor's office of the Leninsky District of Kyiv city opened a criminal case against him because of the suicide, the outcome of which was never made known.

References

1927 births 1968 suicides 1968 deaths People from Lviv Oblast People from Lwów Voivodeship Soviet military personnel of World War II from Ukraine Soviet defectors Ukrainian Insurgent Army Self-immolations in protest of the Eastern Bloc Soviet dissidents Suicides in Ukraine Suicides in the Soviet Union Ukrainian anti-communists Ukrainian dissidents Anti-Russification activists {{Ukraine-bio-stub Suicides by self-immolation

See also

References