Today is the Day of Remembrance of Victims of Political Repressions
Today is the Day of Remembrance of Victims of Political Repressions, when it is customary to honor the memory of people who were killed or suffered as a result of political repressions. In Ukraine, this day is marked every third Sunday of May.
Ukrainian News Agency tells about the history of this memorable day.
The history of the memorable day
Previously, Ukrainians commemorated the victims of political repressions on the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holodomor and Political Repressions.
This memorable date appeared when, on October 31, 2000, President Leonid Kuchma renamed the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holodomor to the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holodomor and Political Repressions.
As a separate commemorative date, the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repressions appeared after the decree of President Viktor Yushchenko dated May 21, 2007, which decided to divide the days of remembrance of the victims of Holodomor and political repressions in time.
As a result, the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holodomor remained on the fourth Saturday of November, and every third Sunday began to honor the memory of those who suffered from the repressions.
Bykivnia Graves
The biggest "witness" of repressions, terror and mass murders in Ukraine is the national historical and memorial reserve Bykivnia Graves.
It is located in the Dniprovskyi district of Kyiv, a few kilometers from the now defunct village of Bykivnia, from which it got its name.
From 1937 and until the occupation of Kyiv by German troops in 1941, this place was used by the NKVD (People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the USSR) as a "special plot" for the burial of victims of Stalin’s repressions.
And in 1940, the Bykivnia Forest became the burial place of executed Poles from the "Katyn List".
In 2009, the Security Service of Ukraine established the names and surnames of 14,191 people buried in the Bykivnia area.
To date, the names of 18,500 people who were executed in Kyiv prisons and buried in this place are known.
At the same time, scientists believe that the bodies from 50,000 to 100,000 people repressed by the Soviet authorities may be buried near Bykivnia.
Not only Bykivnia
Unfortunately, the Bykivnia graves are not the only such place on the territory of modern Ukraine. Mass burial sites of people who were repressed by the Soviet authorities are scattered across the country.
The biggest of them are:
- Pyatykhatky in Kharkiv;
- Rutchenkove Field in Donetsk;
- Demyaniv Laz in Prykarpattia;
- Sucha Balka in the Luhansk Region;
- Tryby Urochyshche in the Poltava Region;
- Khaliavyn near Chernihiv.
There are also mass graves of the repressed in Vinnytsia, Uman, Zhytomyr, Berdychiv, Lviv, Zaporizhzhia, Odesa and many other cities of the country.
Victims of political repressions
Victims of Soviet totalitarianism were representatives of all social strata of Ukrainian society - from workers and peasants to the intellectual elite.
Below is a list of just a few famous personalities who became victims of political repressions:
- Serhii Karhalskyi - Ukrainian actor and theater organizer. In different years, he was the director of the Kharkiv and Odesa Operas, the artistic director of the Kyiv Theater of Musical Comedy.
- Volodymyr Dudrukovskyi - Ukrainian public figure, literary critic, linguist and teacher. He managed the First Ukrainian Taras Shevchenko Gymnasium in Kyiv.
- Mykhailo Ivaniv - military and political figure, major general of the tsarist army, General cornet of the Army of the Ukrainian People's Republic.
- Fedir Kryzhanivskyi - Ukrainian political figure. One of the founders of the Ukrainian Central Rada [Council].
- Veronika Cherniakhovska - Ukrainian poet, translator, granddaughter of playwright Mykhailo Starytskyi.
- Andrii Bandera - priest of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, father of Stepan Bandera.
- Volodymyr Hahenmeister - Ukrainian painter, graphic artist, illustrator, teacher, art critic and publisher.
- Oleksandr Puchkovskyi - Ukrainian otorhinolaryngologist, doctor of medical sciences, professor. Developer of Ukrainian medical terminology.
- Teofan Cherkaskyi - politician, minister of press and propaganda of the Ukrainian People's Republic in the government of Isaak Mazepa.
- Mykhailo Boychuk - artist and teacher. The founder of "boychukism" - a cultural and artistic phenomenon in the history of art in the 1910s-1930s.
Executed Revival
The Executed Revival is the name given to one of the most terrible pages of Ukrainian history. It is about the physical destruction of representatives of the Ukrainian intelligentsia by the Soviet authorities.
The beginning of the mass extermination of the Ukrainian intelligentsia is considered to be May 1933, when on May 12-13, Mykhailo Yalovyi was arrested and Mykola Khvyliovyi committed suicide in the Slovo building in Kharkiv.
The culmination of the actions of the repressive Soviet regime were the mass shootings committed on November 3, 1937.
Then, in one day, representatives of the NKVD executed Les Kurbas, Mykola Kulish, Matviy Yavorskyi, Volodymyr Chekhovskyi, Valerian Pidmohylnyi, Pavlo Pylypovych, Valerian Polishchuk, Hryhorii Epik, Myroslav Irchan, Mark Voronyi, Mykhailo Kozoris, Oleksii Slisarenko, Mykhailo Yalovyi and others.
The exact number of victims of the Executed Revival period is unknown. According to some data, this number reached 30,000 people.