Mykhailo Melnyk
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Mykhailo Spyrydonovych Melnyk | |
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Михайло Спиридонович Мельник | |
Order For Courage |
Mykhailo Spyrydonovych Melnyk (Ukrainian: Миха́йло Спиридо́нович Ме́льник; 14 March 1944 – 10 March 1979) was a Ukrainian historian, poet, human rights activist, dissident and member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group. He was an author of a book about the history of Ukraine, which was confiscated by the KGB.[1]
On November 8, 2006, he was posthumously awarded the
Biography
Mykhailo Melnyk was born in the peasant family. In 1967 he graduated from
He lived in the village of Pohreby in Kyiv Oblast with his family. He worked as a guard there. He continued to take part in protests against repressions of Ukrainian writers and human rights activists. He often contacted press asking them to report human rights violations.
On July 14, 1978, while visiting Kyiv, he was detained and searched by the law enforcement. On October 24, 1978, government officials tried to charge him with an attempt to rob a store. KGB officers who held the investigation proposed him a help to find a job in his profession if he ceased all contacts with other human right activist Oksana Meshko.
On November 3, 1978, Mykhailo Melnyk became a member of Ukrainian Helsinki Group. On February 16, 1979, he sent letters to the newspapers "Radianska Ukrayina" and "Molod Ukrayiny" asking to intervene in the case of human rights activist Vasyl Ovsiyenko. On March 6 and 7, 1979 law enforcement performed searches at the houses of many Ukrainian human rights activists and writers under the investigation against human rights activist and writer Oles Berdnyk, including the search in the house of Mykhailo Melnyk. All his scientific and art works, which consisted of 15 folders, were confiscated.
Suicide
On March 10, 1979, several days after the search, Mykhailo Melnyk wrote a farewell letter to his wife and committed suicide to save his family from further persecutions. Mykhailo Melnyk was buried on March 11 in the cemetery in Pohreby. The funeral took part under the supervision of KGB officers. His friends Pavlo Stokotelny and Oksana Meshko, who wanted to attend the funeral, were detained by KGB on the way to it. Stokotelny was questioned about the case of Oles Berdnyk and Meshko was just held in the KGB office with no reason.
The KGB continued to put pressure on the family of Melnyk, warning his widow to keep away from "unreliable" people.
References
- ^ "Melnyk, Mykhailo Spiridonovych". Virtual museum of dissident movement in Ukraine.
- ^ Указ Президента України №937/2006 zakon5.rada.gov.ua (in Ukrainian) (tr. "Decree of the President of Ukraine 37937/2006")
- ^ Membership in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was nearly compulsory. A man in Soviet Union could not get a job other than a guard or a janitor unless he was a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. That is why almost all residents of Soviet Union were members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, even those who detested it.