Vovchuk, Ivan Grigorievich

The early years

Born on June 13, 1886 in the village of Lyashki-Gorishny (now the village of Gorishnee, Nikolaevsky district of the Lviv region ). Originally from a peasant family: his father, Grigory Vovchuk, a member of the educational society "Enlightenment" and the Ukrainian National Democratic Party, was engaged in charity work and rendered all possible assistance in the development of the village. The family had only eight children: Ivan was the eldest.

Ivan studied at the Przemysl gymnasium, was actively fond of literature. Favorite authors were Taras Shevchenko , Ivan Franko , Vladimir Shashkevich and Nikolai Gogol . After graduating from high school, he entered the Agronomical Agricultural Primary School in the town of Dubno. Participated on December 28, 1913 in festivities on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the creative activity of Ivan Franko, reading to him a welcome letter from the villagers.

World War I

In July 1914, Austria declared war on Serbia, which marked the beginning of World War I. Several sons from the family, including Ivan, were drafted into the army. Ivan participated in battles on the Italian front and on the Eastern front, rose to the rank of sergeant-major of artillery troops. In 1915 he was captured by Russia and until 1918 he stayed in a prisoner of war camp in the Turkestan governor general , and after Russia left the war, managed to leave the prisoner of war camp and joined the newly formed Ukrainian Galician Army - the armed forces of the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic that appeared on the ruins collapsed Austria-Hungary. The UGA also included former military personnel of the OSS legion . Ivan served in the 3rd Berezhanskaya brigade of the UGA as an officer (lieutenant). At the end of December 1918, he joined the battles against the Polish army, participated in escorting by train a detachment of volunteers from Khodorov to Gorodok. In July 1919, retreated behind the Zbruch and, as part of the combined forces of the Galician and Naddnipryansky armies, participated in a campaign against Kiev.

Interwar years

In 1919, Ivan Vovchuk fell into Polish captivity. His family had already experienced several hardships: even before the war, his brother Nikolai, born in 1889, died at the age of 21 under mysterious circumstances (Polish nationalists, whom Nikolai was at enmity with, were accused of death). Brother Andrei and family friend Ivan Sharabura (husband of Palama's sister) died in early 1919 in battles against the Poles. After the establishment of the Second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, his father fled to the caves near the village of Ilovo, hiding from the Polish police and the gendarmerie, and after the events experienced, he died in 1927. The Polish military gendarmerie threatened mothers, brothers and sisters with reprisal, accusing them of anti-state activities. In 1920, Ivan left captivity and returned home, and in 1924 Vovchuk married Apollonia Lototskaya, having been married in Lviv. Having regained contact with friends from Volhynia, he moved to Dubno, where he continued to work and support the Ukrainian national movement in Poland. The wife lived in Lyashki Horishny with her parents and then persuaded her husband to return to the village. There he worked with his father-in-law at the mill. After the death of 35-year-old sister Maria, Ivan adopted her daughter Anna (born in 1926).

According to the testimony of Fyodor Gulia, a resident of the village of Granki Kuta, Ivan Vovchuk, working in the Volyn lands, was actively engaged in anti-Polish propaganda: for example, in 1931 he and Nikolai Fedoriv and Nikolai Luzan were engaged in printing anti-Polish political leaflets. In 1933, Vovchuk was elected the head of the village library there and from the next year he began to distribute prohibited literature. This was one of the prerequisites for the preparation of the OUN assassination attempt on the Minister of Internal Affairs of Poland Bronislaw Peratsky . However, the Polish police could not prove the facts of anti-state activity: Jozef Lototskaya, a relative of Ivan’s wife and the director of a three-class school in Granki Kuta, convinced the police of the opposite (she enjoyed the authority of the villagers and the Polish authorities). Thus, Vovchuk escaped arrest and the consequences of pacification .

World War II

In 1941, Ivan Vovchuk, after the declaration of independence of the Ukrainian State under the patronage of the Third Reich, was appointed secretary of the precast society of the village of Transnistria . He knew Yiddish, German, Polish and Russian, skillfully convincing local residents of the support of the German military administration and Ukrainian nationalist organizations. According to the testimony of Nikolai Sidor-Chatoreysky, one of the ideologists of the OUN-UPA , he received an order in 1943 to take Vovchuk out of Pridnestrjan: it was his experience of military service and knowledge of artillery that allowed Vovchuk to become a military specialist in the ranks of the UPA. Together with Pyotr Mandryk, who graduated from a senior artillery school, Vovchuk became an instructor of artillerymen in the units of the UPA-Zapad zone and all cadets of the school of military artillery. Among the UPA rebels, he became known under the pseudonym "Hornbeam."

Kuren “Lions”, where Vovchuk commanded, clashed with the Hungarian garrisons and partisans (Soviet and Polish). Vovchuk at the same time headed the organizational and mobilization referent of the OUN wire of Bobretsky district. After the defeat of the German units in the Lviv-Sandomierz operation by Soviet troops, he went underground due to huge military losses. In October 1944, his hundred began to fight against units of the NKVD and the police, however, it was quickly defeated: only a few small groups remained from it. At the end of the year, due to health reasons, he was dismissed from the regular units of the UPA and sent by pension to the village of Drokhovichi, Zhydachevsky District, by retirement.

After the war

On June 15, 1945, Apolonia, the wife of Ivan Vovchuk , died. After the final establishment of the Polish-Soviet border, he moved to the Pustomitovsky district , in one of the villages. In 1946, Vovchuk began working in Lviv in the construction management of the storekeeper, lived in the hostel of management in house 3 on Stryiskaya Street. On August 15, 1947, he was arrested by the NKVD for anti-Soviet activities and cooperation with the Bandera movement. The court, according to one of his friends, Mikhail Lenishin, was held on September 29 of the same year: in the same case, the defendants were Maria Nabayko and Ivan Kozak. The military tribunal of the border troops of the NKVD of the Lviv region sentenced Vovchuk to 10 years in prison: the defendant was already 61 years old. That punishment was to serve in the Mordovian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, Zubovo-Polyansky district , the village of Yavas , post office LC 385-7.

Only brother Peter (who was arrested in 1945 for anti-Soviet activity and sent to prison in Karaganda) and the younger sister Rosalia Dyakovskaya (born 1907, lived in Lyashki, was married, raised three daughters) survived from the family. Ivan rarely corresponded with his sister, and in one of the letters he claimed that he did not want to disturb the peace of others:

Indeed, I did not write to any of my relatives, but for reasons beyond my control. I will not write to relatives and friends for now, because I think: let others live in peace, what right I have to violate someone’s peace.

Original text (in Ukrainian)

Honestly, I didn’t write to anyone from the past, but I didn’t see any underlying reasons. I won’t write at once until I know and know, having thought: high life and other peace, since I have the right to ruin my peace.

Nevertheless, even while in prison, Ivan Vovchuk was worried about his family and sent letters to his relatives in Horishny, Lviv and Zashkov. He wrote especially much to his niece Ivanka, who successfully graduated from school, expressing in her letters hope for her successful life. At the end of his life, he began to write a book, but after death, manuscripts were not found. In fact, Vovchuk was reconciled with the Soviet regime, and the only thing that bothered him at the end of his life was the fate of his family and friends.

August 4, 1955 Vovchuk died after a long illness in Yavas. Officially, he does not appear to be a victim of Soviet political repression; he was not rehabilitated.

• Our heroes - the birthplace of Vovchukiv (Ukrainian)