Torchbearer: Vasyl Makukh

2015, National Television Company of Ukraine. The programme ‘Smolosypik’ is dedicated to the dissident and human rights activist Vasyl Makukh, who sacrificed himself in protest against the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Soviet troops.

In the video: opening sequences, old newsreels (Kyiv, a pre-revolutionary village, villages in the Kariv district of Lviv Oblast), archive photographs and documents relating to Vasyl Makukh, a cemetery.
Vasyl Makukh’s comrades, friends and relatives recall his life and heroic deed: his nephews Petro Makukh, Yaroslava Osmylovska, Melania Kleban and Ivan Kulynich; the family’s neighbours Mykola Datsyshyn and Teodozia Datsyshyn; fellow villager Maria Shevchuk; researcher into Vasyl Makukh’s life Oleksandr Kutenko; artist, poet and fellow villager Stepan Ivasyko; deputy director for research at the ‘Smoloskyp’ Museum Lyudmyla Ogneva; former political prisoner Maria Kushpeta-Petronchuk; researcher at the Sectoral State Archive of the SBU, Yaroslav Antoniuk; wife of Ivan Humenyuk’s comrade-in-arms, Hanna Humenyuk; former political prisoner Ivan Migus; head of department at the Dnipropetrovsk National Museum of Dmytro Yavornytskyi, Nadiya Shemina; local historian, researcher of Oleksa Hirnyk’s life and winner of the Oleksa Hirnyk Prize, Mykhailo Ishchenko; and rector of the Church of Saints Anthony and Theodosius in Dnipropetrovsk, Oleksandr Serbin.

Author: Oleksandr Ryabokrys, with the contribution of Andrii Danylenko.

Background: Vasyl Makukh was a Ukrainian dissident, a soldier in the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and a human rights activist, known for his protests against Soviet rule. In 1968, he publicly set himself on fire on Khreshchatyk Street in Kyiv, protesting against the Soviet occupation and Russification of Ukraine, and against the USSR’s aggression against Czechoslovakia.