He also had an older brother, Vasyl, after whom I was named. He, too, was a member of the OUN. However, neither of the brothers knew about the other’s involvement. One day, they got into an argument. My father said, "I’m going to sleep in the barn tonight." Vasyl responded, "No, tonight I’m sleeping in the barn!" Their father, my grandfather, scolded them both: "Both of you will sleep in the house!" It was then that my father said, "Brother, I need to sleep in the barn." And Vasyl replied, "So do I…" That’s how they discovered they were both in the same organization but in different cells. The conspiracy was so well-organized that neither the brothers nor anyone in the household knew about their involvement with the OUN.

​

Someone betrayed them. The NKVD [1] came, surrounded the house, and arrested my father. Vasyl, who had been sleeping in the barn (apparently, they didn’t know one could sleep in a barn), managed to escape. My father had his suspicions about who the informant might have been. Later, Uncle Volodya Hrytsovnyk told me that one young man had bragged about his "heroism" to a girl, and from there, word spread.

​

So, in 1939, my father was arrested and imprisoned. My grandfather, who was literate, a good singer, and the leader of the church choir, was appointed by the villagers to some local leadership position, either head of the village council or something similar—I don’t know for sure. He began writing appeals everywhere to save his son from execution. Eventually, the Supreme Court commuted the death sentence to imprisonment.

​

Though, in analyzing the situation, I believe this wasn’t done out of mercy. At that time, the Soviet Union had annexed the three Baltic states—Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia—without a single shot. They had also taken Bukovina, Bessarabia, Galicia, and Western Ukraine, where they were greeted with bread and salt. And here were some young boys daring to organize armed resistance… The authorities likely decided not to draw attention to this defiance.

​

My father was sentenced to 10 years in the camps and eight years of exile. My uncle Vasyl died in 1944 when Soviet rule returned after the Germans had been expelled. He was with the UPA.

​

Later, they arrested my father’s mother, my grandmother. As for my grandfather, his fate unfolded in a truly remarkable way. He was arrested because they couldn’t find the older son, Vasyl, and he was thrown into Lutsk Prison [2] . He was one of the few who survived the mass execution at the very beginning of the war.

​

He told my grandmother how it happened. When everyone was driven into the courtyard, he saw machine guns being set up at the corners of the walls. He realized they were about to be executed and started crouching down. The courtyard was so crowded with people that there was no room to move sideways, so he sank to one knee and kept lowering himself, lower and lower… In front of him stood a man from their village, a Polish count. When the machine guns began firing and grenades were thrown, the count’s stomach was blown open. Nearby, someone with their legs torn off, still alive, was screaming, "Executioners, finish me off!"

​

My grandfather crawled under the body of the already dead count. The execution squad walked among the bodies, finishing off the wounded. They didn’t see my grandfather. Later, they opened the gates and brought in carts. Suddenly, someone shouted, "Get up if you’re alive! We won’t shoot." It turned out there was no one left to load the bodies onto the carts.

​

My grandfather waited for a moment and thought that if it came to his turn, they would find him alive and shoot him. So, he stood up. An NKVD officer was startled when he saw him—covered in blood and pieces of flesh and entrails. The officer ordered him to wash up. My grandfather washed, but the only thought in his head was: get to the gates, get beyond the gates—there’s at least some chance to escape.

​

The bodies were loaded onto carts and taken to a ditch not far from the prison. At that moment, German motorcyclists—likely a reconnaissance group—appeared. Seeing the Germans, the NKVD officers began shedding their uniforms, but they failed to escape. This is how my grandfather managed to return home alive from that prison.

​

Later, in 1941, when the UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army) became active, someone informed the Germans that my grandfather Andriy’s son was fighting in its ranks. Raids began, and during one of them, my grandfather was imprisoned again. My grandmother would bring him food parcels, but one day a German officer came out and said, “Don’t bring anything anymore; he’s gone.” He had died, and he was likely buried somewhere in that same ditch.

​

My grandmother told me about my grandfather, and I remember her well. I was about five years old when she taught me: “Listen carefully, my boy, don’t tell anyone what is said in this house, even if they give you candy, a toy car, or any other toy. Don’t tell anyone, because it will bring great trouble.”

​

In 1944, when Soviet power returned, someone reported that a group of Ukrainian nationalists was operating in the village of Vorotniv or Romaniv—I don’t recall exactly, but I believe it was Vorotniv. In that report, the first name on the list was Vasyl Mishchuk, my uncle. Of course, the NKVD took action, and that was when my grandmother was arrested and sent to the camps.

​

I found the woman who had sheltered my uncle Vasyl. By then, she was an elderly grandmother, and she showed me where the lyada—the entrance to the bunker where my uncle had hidden—used to be in her house. She also said: “Touch here, on my head—the skull is still dented; my hands were pierced with a bayonet—they tortured me, but I didn’t betray anyone.” I touched her head and felt the dents in her skull. I can still feel that sensation in my hands… This grandmother, who had been a young woman at the time, had also endured the camps.

​

There was a forest nearby. People told me strange things—that in that forest, there were two UPA units: the Lenin Unit and the Stalin Unit. It’s incredible, but that’s what people said. Perhaps they were named that with a touch of dark humor.

​

I also remember my grandmother reminiscing about those times. She sat there, poor and frail, smiling as she said: “And he told me, ‘Keep quiet, auntie, or we’ll hang you!’” I looked at her in disbelief—who would dare say something like that to my grandmother? But then she told the whole story. They baked bread for the partisans, who would come from the forest and take it. There was a road near the house, and they could hear the constant rumble of vehicles moving day and night, machines groaning as they passed. She would say to the young men: “Where are you rushing, children, with your popguns? Look at their machinery—you’ll all die.” And one of them retorted: “Keep quiet, auntie, or we’ll hang you.”

​

My grandmother was incredible—sharp-tongued and full of spirit. She respected only men; my father above all! My mother, God rest her soul, lived her whole life with her mother-in-law. Even after my father passed away—he died young—grandmother wouldn’t recognize anyone else’s authority.

​

I remember coming home once as a university student. My mother was crying: “Vasya, talk to Grandma. She does such things that I feel ashamed. Talk to her—she won’t listen to me.” I said: “Mom, when you’re old, it’ll be the same for you.” “No, I will never be like that,” she swore. Grandmother passed away, my mother grew old, and my sister Nina once said: “Our mother is a hundred times worse than our grandmother ever was.”

​

Grandmother began to forget things in her old age. On the one hand, it was her age, but on the other, it was the terrible hardships and hunger she had endured that weighed on her. She was afraid of those times returning, so she started collecting various scraps and hiding bread. During Easter, she would dress in something old and sit near the gate. Our house was close to the cemetery, so people passing by to honor their loved ones would give her little gifts of food. She hid everything under her bed—just in case of hunger.

​

We can’t even imagine the horrors people lived through. That fear of being left without bread stayed with them their entire lives and never let go, even to their deaths.

I remember Grandmother’s bread so vividly. We had a traditional oven, and she always baked it herself. Her bread was incredibly delicious. My first memories of food are of a slice of bread with milk, and if you put honey or jam on the bread—nothing else was needed.

​

My older sister, Tanyusha—God rest her soul—went to university, got married, had a child, and Grandmother went to take care of her great-grandchild. But then, who would bake the bread? Mother was working. So, for the first time, a store-bought loaf appeared on our table—a government loaf. I tried it and said I wouldn’t eat it. Father kicked me away from the table.

​

I was offended, went outside, grew hungry, and quietly snuck back into the kitchen. I poured some homemade borscht with meat into a bowl, cut a slice of that store-bought bread, and just as I raised the spoon to my mouth, Father came into the room. My heart sank with fear. But he smiled and said: “Remember this, son: if there’s bread on the table, a person will never go hungry. I used to dream of a piece of bread, even just a crust in my pocket, so I could pull it out and gnaw on it whenever I needed to. I dreamed of that. Can you imagine it?”

​

He had reached the brink of death three times in Stalin's camps. That happened when protein starvation set in, and only skin and bones remained—literally. After the camps, my father was exiled to the Turukhansk District in the Krasnoyarsk Krai. My grandmother, after serving her time in the camps, went to join her son. At the same time, my mother was sent to the Trudarmiya (forced labor army), where the girls were sent into the taiga to fell trees. Later, she was transferred to a salting plant where they caught and salted fish. From that battalion, only 18 or 20 people survived—almost all perished because the work quotas were enormous, and the girls had to fulfill them. Later, various anniversary awards were sent to my mother, even some from Putin… She hated Soviet power, though. She and my father shared the same beliefs. The only thing she couldn't forgive him for was raising me this way. She was unhappy with the conversations we had because she knew it was dangerous—primarily for me. She was deeply afraid something bad would happen to me. She knew too well what it could lead to: the camps and a ruined life.

​

I had a bit of a fiery temper. When the Narodnyi Rukh Ukrainy (People’s Movement of Ukraine) was organized, I headed the city branch here in Dnipro. In the 1990s, we had to fight for the Ukrainian language and the blue-and-yellow flags—the very first ones we raised here. I remember in 1989, we had a brawl just to remove the last letter from the sign "Вареничная" (Varenichnaya) because in Ukrainian, it should be Варенична (Varenychna). There were many such episodes...

​

In 1992, when the Crimean Supreme Council adopted a resolution to hold a vote on secession from Ukraine, presided over at the time by someone named Bagrov, Narodnyi Rukh decided to organize a nationwide protest. They called me from Rukh and said, “We need you to lead the delegation.” I replied that I couldn’t deal with travel arrangements or finding people because of my work. They said, “We’ll take care of everything—you just lead.” So, I left work, went straight to the train station, and in Simferopol, the guys were already waiting for us. They had unfurled a blue-and-yellow flag so we could recognize them.

​

This wasn’t my first trip, but it was memorable because, as the Rukh activists in Simferopol told me, I was the first to raise the blue-and-yellow flag at their train station. I carried it with me all day. After the rally, the guys wanted to fold it, but I told them: “Flags aren’t raised to be folded again.”

​

The locals in Crimea didn’t even know what flag it was. People asked me: “Whose flag is that?” I answered: “The flag of independent Ukraine.” They even said: “Sell it!” — “Flags are not for sale!”

​

There was also this interesting encounter: two young guys approached me and asked, “Can you give us a flag?” I asked, “Why do you need it?” They replied: “We’re marines from Sevastopol. We want to raise it in our unit because we still have the Soviet red flag flying.”

​

I told them: “I can’t give you this one; it belongs to the city organization. But here, this one is mine. Take it, boys – just don’t let me down.” Later, they sent me a newspaper with an article about someone raising the blue-and-yellow flag overnight at a military base. It caused such a commotion! Brave lads — they didn’t take it for nothing.

​

That’s why my mother worried about me. Once she even told me: “Stop stirring them up.” I nearly exploded: “What do you mean, stop?!”

​

I found out about my mother’s deportation for the first time during my military draft commission. Back then, they made us kids carry our files to different medical offices for exams. I noticed that in my file, someone had written in pencil: “Parents were deported. Verify!” I immediately found an eraser and wiped it out.

​

They had documented everything. I remember being shocked — once, when I was 14, I placed third in a chess tournament and had forgotten all about it, but they hadn’t. It was written down in that file.

​

My father gradually brought me back to my senses, so to speak. I was incredibly disobedient, always had my own opinion, argued with my father, and even quarreled with him. I flat-out refused to learn Russian. He pleaded with me: “Just pass the exam…”

I loved literature, though — it was my father who instilled that love in me. He even persuaded me to join the Komsomol: “The principal comes to me and asks…” My older sisters were excellent students, and my father was head of the school’s parent committee. He and the principal were the same age, on friendly terms, and respected each other. Meanwhile, I argued and fought with him. I told my father I didn’t want to study, wouldn’t study, and no one could force me. I also told him to stop beating me.

My father would whip me like no one’s business. I deserved it. Discipline was strict back then. I have two sons, and I never hit them once. But in those days, a leather belt was part of parenting — not just for me, but in general. Maybe they didn’t know any other way. My parents would fight over me — my mother wouldn’t allow him to beat me.

​

I grew up like a true street urchin. When I was about five, I ran away from my grandmother to play outside. There were neighborhood boys, three years older than me: “Do you want to join our gang?” How could I not join a gang? “Of course, I do!” — “Does your father smoke?” — “He does.” — “Bring us a pack, then.”

​

So, I brought them the cigarettes. They smoked and taught me: “Take a puff, hold the smoke in your mouth, and say ‘Mom’s coming.’” Naturally, I choked and coughed, and they laughed. Then they told me to chew on acacia leaves so my mother wouldn’t smell it.

​

A few days later, they approached me again: “Will you bring us two more packs?” — “I will…” After all, I had to fulfill the gang’s assignments.

​

My father came home for lunch, placed the cigarettes on the hearth to dry, and counted the packs. I had snatched two and run back outside. That evening, I came home to chaos — my sisters were crying: “We didn’t take them!” My father stood firm: “Then who did? Did Grandma take them? No! Did your mother take them? No! Who took them? I won’t tolerate a thief in this house!”

He had forgotten about me. Just then, I opened the door… “Oh! There’s still one left…” He grabbed me, pinned my head between his knees, and gave me a solid whipping with the belt.

​

When I started to grow up, that’s when he began talking to me. I vividly remember the first time he drew the trident symbol and explained its meaning and the hidden message within it. Then he tore up the paper and burned it. My father was always being watched — constantly. They’d periodically call him in for “preventive conversations.”

​

I remember when Uncle Volodya Hrytsovnyk, my father’s comrade, came to visit. Their conversation stuck with me: “Petro, leave them alone, don’t mess with it. You don’t need this.” My father replied: “No. I’ll push through. They have nothing on us — nothing! And I need this for my children. I need to educate them. That’s why I’m doing this!”

​

He was determined to clear his name and have his criminal record expunged. And he succeeded. His rehabilitation didn’t state that he was innocent because no crime had occurred, but rather that there wasn’t enough evidence to prove it. There were no direct proofs of any wrongdoing. I believe it was in 1967 that he was officially rehabilitated.

​

My father had enrolled in a medical high school under Polish rule, but the war prevented him from finishing it. However, this education later helped him survive in the labor camp. When he became a “dochodaga” (a term for near-death prisoners), he was transferred to the camp hospital. There was a shortage of medical staff, so they treated him and kept him on to assist in the infirmary. He worked while simultaneously learning from the camp doctors. Later, he graduated from Mykolaiv Medical College and worked as a feldsher (rural medical assistant) in the village. Out of five children in our family, two received medical education. My father could hardly dream that I would eventually graduate from medical school. Reading — a habit he instilled in me — saved me.

I miss those evenings so much when our whole family gathered together. My mother would be knitting, Grandma would be bustling in the kitchen, the house would be warm, the snowstorm howling outside, the lights out, a kerosene lamp glowing on the table, and my father reading aloud to us. Jules Verne, Victor Hugo, Arthur Conan Doyle — he brought the world’s classics to life for us. We didn’t have a television, and my father had a beautiful, velvety voice. He could sing well and dance too.

​

He was fortunate to meet many people throughout his life who left their mark on him. My father was imprisoned in 1939 and released in 1950. After the camps, he spent another eight years in exile in the Turukhansk District of Krasnoyarsk Krai, in the settlement of Maduika. There weren’t many Ukrainians there, but there were a lot of Balts. The largest groups began arriving in 1944, but most came in 1946-47, when the large UPA units were dispersing into smaller groups and going underground. During that period, many UPA fighters ended up in the camps, and my father encountered many of them.

​

In that settlement, my older sisters were born, and my father himself delivered my mother’s babies. My eldest sister was born in 1952. I used to tease her: “Tetiana, tell me, what good can come out of someone born in a place called Maduika? What worthwhile thing could possibly be born there?”

​

My father passed away in 1978, and I wasn’t even eighteen yet. I deeply regret that I kept postponing those conversations, and from what I heard, I remembered very little. Something comes to mind about Indigirka — a place in the Far East. And he also mentioned an uprising. He said it was led by soldiers. They completely took over the camp and tried to break through to Chukotka, toward America. A plane circled above them, holding them in its sights and strafing them with machine gun fire, preventing them from moving. Then another plane came. They held them there until troops arrived, surrounded them, and destroyed the rebellion.

He also spoke of an uprising in Kazakhstan [4] — though it seems he heard about it from others he met in exile — where they crushed the rebels with tanks. What struck me most then was when he said that the girls wore embroidered shirts during the uprising!

​

It is a pity I never wrote anything down. I always thought, “later, later, later,” but it turns out that later never comes. However, one phrase stuck deep within me, and I have never forgotten it. Once, while explaining the Ukrainian symbols—the trident and the flag—my father said to me: “Son, believe me, you will live to see the time when Ukraine is independent. I will not live to see it, but you will. Ukraine will be independent.” This conviction of his took root in me and grew strong in my soul.

​

When I sat beside his lifeless body, I felt as though he were still alive. It couldn’t be that his dreams, his thoughts, and his deeds had vanished with him. They couldn’t just disappear; something had to remain—not just the part of him that lives in me, but something beyond me, something greater… I only cried when they started to nail the coffin shut. That dull sound of hammering still unsettles me to this day.

​

It was forty days after my father’s death when I was drafted into the army. The recruitment officer asked my mother, “Hanna Ivanivna, should we give the boy a deferral?” I looked at her, waiting to hear what she would say, because, to be honest, I didn’t really want to go. But my mother replied, “Let him go while I still have my health. Let him go.”

​

I went to serve, and back then, “dedovshchina” flourished in the army. It wasn’t an army; it was a living hell. And I think my father hardened me, perhaps precisely so that I could endure that hell because many guys were losing their minds. There was such a case in my unit. The “old-timers” wouldn’t let us sleep, yet you still had to go on guard duty. You wanted to sleep so desperately; two or three hours of sleep a day—you could endure that for a couple of days. But weeks on end? I once crouched in a corner on duty, placed my rifle between my legs, sat down, and asked him: “Dad, if you’re out there somewhere, help me, wake me up.” And I passed out, sitting up. Imagine—after some time, I felt someone shake me by the shoulder. I jumped to my feet—silence. Then I heard footsteps approaching; they were coming to check the post...

​

So many times later, already in combat situations, I received such help. It’s simply incredible. Once, it was as if I was struck—something bent me sharply forward—and at that very moment, a large-caliber bullet whizzed past. I turned my head and saw a massive hole in the wall. If it had hit me, it would’ve taken my head clean off...

​

Once, I asked my father where they drew their conviction that the Ukrainian resistance would prevail. "Even the Germans couldn’t defeat such power!" I said. He replied: “It was a sacred faith that we would win. Sooner or later, we would win.”

​

The visionaries of Ukrainian nationalism—true visionaries—realized that as the fight was ending, all those who had been part of the liberation movement but remained hidden needed to legalize themselves. I read Bandera’s articles, including the one where he said that our generation of fighters must become the manure for the future of our nation. Not in the literal sense, but as a fertilizer to nurture the future generations who would continue the struggle. And this legalization—there was a program called “OLEG”—truly worked.

​

As the head of the city branch of the Narodnyi Rukh in Dnipro, I analyzed the makeup of our organization and came to the conclusion that its most active members were precisely the children of OUN and UPA fighters, those who had endured the brutal camps. Take even my own family, for example. My father said we came from a Cossack lineage, that our forefathers were registered Cossacks who never bent their backs to serve the landowners. They had their own land and their own property. This spirit of freedom was passed down from generation to generation.

​

Having survived the camps—not all of them, of course, but many—these people became actively involved in Ukraine’s future. They joined Rukh [6] , the Ukrainian Republican Party (URP) [7] , the Democratic Party of Ukraine (DemPU) [8] , and Prosvita [9] .

​

I met members of the OUN and UPA who lived and worked in the Dnipropetrovsk region. It turns out that there was a well-established Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists here, which carried out specific tasks and maintained excellent communication. I was surprised to learn that, for example, if a battle took place in the Carpathians, information about it reached this region within three days and was printed in leaflets — all this during the occupation.

​

In the labor camps of that time, when Ukrainian nationalists began to fill them — starting around 1944 — there was a significant dominance of criminals of various types. The camp administration intentionally incited these criminals against the Ukrainians, using them as tools to oppress and destroy Ukrainian patriots. Their first aim was to demoralize them, pushing them into the status of "untouchables." [10]

​

However, they encountered a force they could not overcome. Ukrainians immediately began to organize into resistance units, forming their underground networks and conducting very active anti-camp work — on one hand, against the criminals, and on the other, against the administration. This escalated into real criminal wars, with my father’s body left scarred and covered in wounds.

Over time, even the criminals began to respect the strength and unity of the Ukrainian nationalists. It reached the point where they collaborated with the Ukrainians on certain matters, especially when acting together against the camp administration. This alliance alarmed the camp authorities, who quickly realized that such a tandem posed a significant threat to their control. To counter this, the administration began separating political prisoners from criminals into different camps.

​

The Ukrainian nationalists also actively cooperated with the "Forest Brothers" [11], particularly with the Lithuanians. Unfortunately, this topic remains poorly documented, and the generation that could provide valuable insights into these events has largely passed away.

​

After the camps and exile, no one was allowed to return to their native regions. My father was given a choice between Zaporizhzhia or Kherson Oblasts, but not Western Ukraine. He ended up in Kherson, while his acquaintance, Volodymyr Symchych, was sent to Zaporizhzhia, as he too was forbidden from returning to Western Ukraine. I met Symchych — a sturdy man, clearly battle-hardened, though sadly now deceased.

​

When he was sent to the Gulag, his sentence was 25 years. By then, executions had ceased because the post-war population was too depleted, and someone still had to work. Instead of executions, they handed out 25-year sentences and lifetime settlements outside Ukraine without the right to return.

​

At that time, Norilsk was under construction, and windows on the first floors were installed with grates due to the tense criminal situation. The men of the UPA, living under lifelong exile in Norilsk, began organizing themselves into volunteer patrols. When a shift ended and workers walked the streets, if they saw a thug attacking a passerby, they would grab him by the arms and legs, slam his back against a stone, and toss him into a ditch. In the polar cold, a broken spine didn’t leave much chance of survival.

​

During the polar night, which lasts half a year, women were also met after work in groups for safety. This is how they cleaned up the city. The very first volunteer patrols, which later spread across the Soviet Union, were organized here — initiated and led by Ukrainians.

​

My father told me about Symchych. When he first arrived in the camp, brutal conflicts would erupt among the criminal inmates: the so-called “suki,” who had fought at the front, and those who refused to take up arms. One day, a notorious figure, known as "Varshava" (I believe that was his name), arrived at the camp — a “suka” with his gang of thugs. He began imposing his own rules, targeting both rival criminals and the Banderites (UPA members). He caused the UPA fighters a great deal of suffering.

​

The camp decided that Symchych should eliminate this crime lord. Why was Symchych chosen? Because he had only been in the camp for a few months — that wasn’t much time served. Even if they added a few more months or half a year to his sentence, it wouldn’t make a difference next to the 25 years he already had. No additional punishment beyond that would apply. Symchych agreed.

​

They gave him an axe. In that region, the snow was deep — I served in Russia myself, so I know. When the roads are cleared, the snowbanks on both sides grow two meters high. There’s no turning left or right. They tracked Varshava’s routine and saw that he would walk back from the dining hall alone. Symchych waited for him on that snow-cleared path.

​

Yes, they added a few extra months or half a year to his sentence, but he completed his time successfully. Later, after being resettled in Zaporizhzhia, he eventually returned to Western Ukraine. It turned out that Symchych had been a commander of a UPA partisan company. On one occasion, his unit ambushed and completely destroyed an entire NKVD convoy. Of course, that wasn’t talked about back then, but it’s a known fact in his biography.

​

Later, I read an article by Valeriy Marchenko [12]  that described exactly what I had heard from my father, and I was truly amazed.

​

When the members of the OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) ended up in the camps, they began organizing their own underground structure. This was a powerful force that had the capacity not only to incite rebellion within the camp but also to orchestrate uprisings and take control after the camp administration fled. Thanks to the experience of the Ukrainian nationalists during the war and their expertise in underground work, such uprisings were possible. Of course, they were doomed, and the organizers understood this. However, there remained a flicker of hope that some change could be achieved—and, indeed, they succeeded in improving conditions for political prisoners. But at what colossal cost—human lives, immense sacrifices…

​

When I watched the film about the Kengir uprising, where prisoners were crushed by tanks, I immediately recalled an episode from modern history—how an APC (armored personnel carrier) attempted to break through our barricades on Khreshchatyk during the 2014 revolution. My only fear was that the APC would start shooting; if that had happened, we would not have been able to hold our ground. The APC was equipped with a large-caliber machine gun, one of the most powerful weapons that can pierce 30 mm armor. Their goal was to destroy the barricade, but we were prepared. When we built it, we didn’t just pile up snow: the base included "hedgehogs"—steel anti-tank structures—that were buried in snow and frozen with water to hold everything together. When the APC came, we began throwing incendiary mixtures.

​

By the way, it is incorrect to call them "Molotov cocktails". These mixtures were actually invented by the Finns in 1939. When the Soviet Union bombed Helsinki, Molotov responded to international press statements by claiming, “We didn’t drop bombs; we delivered baskets of bread for the starving residents of the city.” The Finns then sarcastically said, “If Molotov dropped bread for us, we’ll prepare a cocktail for him.” Thus, the proper term is "a cocktail for Molotov." The Russians later adopted its use during World War II to set fire to enemy equipment.

​

So we started making it too, but on Maidan, for some reason, it wasn’t called a cocktail—it was called "yogurt". There was this funny moment: when I joined the 15th youth hundred, which was still forming, I saw some guys carrying bags, and one of them complained, “I’m so sick of carrying these yogurts!” I jokingly suggested, “Well, give them to the guys, let them drink!” Everyone burst out laughing, and then they explained to me what those “yogurts” really were.

​

It was the same in the camps—those cocktail-yogurts were used in a desperate attempt to stop tanks. I understand the desperation of those people. They held out for what, a month? And then they were simply crushed… But that month—it was a breath of freedom, something they so desperately longed for and for which they paid such a terrible price.

​

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[1] The NKVD (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, НКВД in Russian) was one of the executive-administrative ministries of the USSR, operating under union-republican jurisdiction. It was established on November 7, 1917, as a commissariat of the interim Council of People's Commissars of Soviet Russia. In 1946, it was renamed the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR (MVD).

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[2] On June 23-24, 1941, prisoners of the Lutsk Prison were executed by the NKVD. The prison was located within the grounds of the Outer Lutsk Castle. In the early 17th century, the Lutsk Starosta and Lithuanian Chancellor Albrycht Stanislaw Radziwill donated his palace to the Bridgettine Monastery, but by the late 19th century, it had been converted into a prison.

Investigations revealed that on the eve of World War II, approximately 2,000 convicts and detainees were held there. The names of 481 prisoners have been identified: 121 were transferred to places of imprisonment in other regions of the USSR between April and June 1941, 11 were released by the administration, 2 escaped, 11 died in prison, 65 were freed by the German occupying authorities, and 271 went missing.

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[3]  The system of forced labor obligations in the USSR primarily targeted foreign nationals: ethnic Germans, Finns, Romanians, Hungarians, and Italians, as well as Soviet citizens who were deemed criminals. During World War II, Soviet ethnic Germans were considered particularly unreliable, which is why they constituted the largest group in the Trudarmiya (forced labor army). They were later joined by ethnic Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians who had lived for extended periods in occupied territories, as they were also labeled “unreliable.” The NKVD of the USSR was responsible for mobilizing and maintaining control over the Trudarmiya workers. The labor of the mobilized individuals was exploited in mining operations, logging, construction, and even on top-secret nuclear projects, including mercury extraction and uranium mining.

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[4] The Kengir Uprising of political prisoners in the Steppe Camp (Steplag) at the Kengir camp division near Dzhezkazgan (Kazakh SSR) occurred from May 16 to June 26, 1954. It involved around 5,200–8,000 prisoners, the majority of whom were Ukrainians convicted on political charges, as well as Russians, Balts, Jews, and others. The uprising was brutally suppressed by the Soviet army, with tanks being used—an unprecedented measure in the history of suppressing camp uprisings in the Soviet Union.

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[5] Dedovshchina—previously in the Armed Forces of the USSR, and now in the Russian Armed Forces, the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and some militaries of former Soviet republics—is the most widespread form of hazing or non-statutory relations. It is based on an informal hierarchical division of soldiers and sergeants according to their conscription period and length of service.

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[6] The People's Movement of Ukraine (Rukh, NRU) was established as a socio-political organization in 1989. Since 1993, it has functioned as the political party "People's Movement of Ukraine". The NRU played a key role in Ukraine’s restoration of independence in 1991.

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[7] On April 29-30, 1990, the congress of the Ukrainian Helsinki Union was held in Kyiv, where a decision was made to transform it into the Ukrainian Republican Party (URP). The URP became the first political party officially registered in Ukraine. It condemned the communist ideology and advocated for the nationalization of the Communist Party's property in Ukraine. The party's main program goal was the creation of an independent, united Ukrainian state. The URP’s first leader was Levko Hryhorovych Lukianenko, a Soviet-era dissident.

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[8] The Democratic Party of Ukraine (DemPU) was founded on December 28, 1990, in Kyiv. It supported Ukraine's independence from the USSR and advocated for democratic reforms. The DemPU upheld the principles of modern global and European liberalism, emphasizing the inalienable rights and freedoms of individuals as formulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

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[9] The All-Ukrainian Society "Prosvita" named after Taras Shevchenko (formerly "Prosvita" Society) is a Ukrainian cultural and educational civic organization. It operates both within Ukraine (historical and modern) and in Ukrainian diaspora communities worldwide.

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[10] "The Untouchables" ("Roosters," "Untouchables," "Offended," "Humiliated," "Outcasts," or "Blues") represent the lowest caste in the prison hierarchy, an informal system of relationships among inmates. They are assigned tasks considered degrading or "dirty" for other prisoners, such as cleaning latrines, toilets, or bathhouses. Individuals are relegated to this status for violating the prison code, which can include offenses such as theft from fellow inmates, failure to repay debts, acting as an informant ("stool pigeon"), unkempt appearance, accidental contact with another "untouchable" or their belongings, as well as convictions for sexual offenses or crimes against children.

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[11] The Forest Brothers was the collective name for the anti-Soviet partisan resistance in the Baltic States during the Soviet occupation that followed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. This movement comprised around 170,000 fighters, of whom approximately 50,000 were killed or went missing. In modern Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estonian historiography, the movement is described as national-liberation, whereas Soviet and modern Russian sources often characterize it as pro-fascist. The term "Forest Brothers" traces its origins to Latvian revolutionary partisans who operated during the Russian Revolution of 1905-07.

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[12] Valeriy Veniaminovych Marchenko (1947–1984) was a Ukrainian dissident, human rights defender, literary critic, and translator, who became a victim of the Soviet regime. He was twice sentenced (in 1973 and 1984) for "anti-Soviet propaganda." Marchenko died on October 5, 1984, in a prison hospital in Leningrad.

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