In Chicago, at the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, the Ukrainian community met with poet, dissident, and former political prisoner Mykola Horbal. The event was dedicated to his life path, his experience of resistance to the Soviet system, and the role of the Ukrainian dissident movement.
This was reported by Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art.
Mykola Horbal is a poet, prose writer, composer, teacher, human rights activist, and politician, a member of the Sixties movement, and a long-time political prisoner. He has been a member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group since 1977, secretary of the Ukrainian Helsinki Union, chairman of the Kyiv organization of the Ukrainian Republican Party, and currently Honorary Chairman of the Ukrainian Republican Party, a founding member of the Republican Christian Party, as well as a member of its Central Executive Committee, and a member of the International and Ukrainian PEN clubs.
During the meeting, they recalled Horbal's life and his struggle with the Soviet government. The Soviet government sentenced him to prison three times for his pro-Ukrainian position. In total, the dissident spent 16 years out of the 23 years of his assigned term in captivity. He was saved from death in a "death camp" by a political amnesty.
While in Chicago, Mykola Horbal also visited the Vasyl Stus Ukrainian Studies School during the Shevchenko holiday. He thanked the teachers and parents for preserving the Ukrainian language and culture among children.
In addition, meetings were held with representatives of the city's Ukrainian community. In particular, Mykola Horbal visited the Cathedral of Saints Volodymyr and Olga, where the Divine Liturgy and a meeting with parishioners were held. After that, the conversation continued in the parish auditorium.
As part of his visit, he also visited the Ukrainian National Museum in Chicago, where archivist Halyna Parasyuk introduced him to the documents and exhibits of the museum collection, and museum president Lidia Tkachuk handed the guest a letter of gratitude.
The participants of the event spoke about the historical continuity of the struggle for Ukraine's independence and the role of the Ukrainian diaspora in supporting this struggle.
The organizers and sponsors of the meeting were: the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy Foundation in the USA, the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, the Ukrainian Congressional Committee of America (Illinois branch), the Organization for the Defense of the Four Freedoms of Ukraine, the "Conscience" store of the Cathedral of Saints Volodymyr and Olga in Chicago, the "Samopomich" Credit Union, and the "Heritage" Foundation of the First Federal Bank "Pevnist".
For reference
Mykola Horbal was born in 1940 in the Lemko region. At the age of five, he and his family survived the forced relocation of the Lemkos. Later, the family settled in the Ternopil region.
In his youth, he became a musician, composer, and poet. During the so-called “thaw” of the 1960s, he organized the instrumental ensemble “Sun,” which performed his original compositions. At this time, Horbal wrote the poem “Duma,” in which he openly expressed his longing for Ukraine’s independence. In 1970, he was arrested by the KGB for this.
The court sentenced him to five years in prison and two years in exile under the article “creation and dissemination of anti-Soviet literature.” In the camps, he found himself next to many figures of the Ukrainian resistance movement. Among them were Ivan Svitlychny, Valeriy Marchenko, Zynoviy Antonyuk, Semen Gluzman, and others.
In the camp, Horbal copied the documents of political prisoners - verdicts, testimonies and memoirs. In microscopic letters on small pieces of paper, he copied the texts, which were then secretly taken out to freedom in the form of "capsules". Thus, these materials ended up in samizdat and became known through the broadcasts of the radio stations "Voice of America" and "Freedom".
In 1979, he was arrested for the second time on a fabricated charge of "attempted rape" and sentenced to five years in a maximum-security camp. He served his sentence in a criminal zone in the village of Novodanylivka in the Mykolaiv region, where he worked in a granite quarry.
A day before the end of his second term of imprisonment in 1984, he was charged with a new charge - "dissemination of slanderous fabrications that defame the Soviet system". The new sentence was eight years in a high-security camp and three years in exile. He was sent to a camp in the village of Kuchino, Perm Region, where Vasyl Stus, Vasyl Ovsienko, and Semen Skalych were also serving their sentences. Mykola Horbal was released only in 1988 during perestroika.
In 1992, Mykola Horbal was awarded the Vasyl Stus Prize for poetry. Among his state awards are the Order of Freedom (2009), the Order of Courage, 1st degree (November 8, 2006), and the Order of Merit, 3rd degree (November 25, 2005).
Photo: Maria Klimchak
Author: Danylo Pievchev