Mikola Kulish Hurovich

Ukrainian poet, journalist, translator. One of the leaders of the "Plough" literary association. Author of textbooks for primary grades of secondary schools.

Victim of occupation communist terror.

Young summers

He was born in the family of a parish clerk. He received his primary education in the Zemstvo schools of the villages of Vorozhba and Korov'yakivka (Rila County of the Kursk Governorate, formerly the Tyotkina Hundred of the Sumy Regiment of Slobid Ukraine). In 1918, he graduated from the Kursk Teachers' Seminary. He worked as an observer at the Kursk Meteorological Observatory, taught in rural and railway schools at the Lyman and Izyum stations of the North-Donetsk Railway.

1921-1925 he studied at the Kharkiv Institute of National Education (INO). He was not a member of any political party, but he shared the social views of the fighters.

Writing

After completing his studies, he worked in the editorial offices of the newspaper "Selyanska Pravda", the magazines "Agricultural Proletarian", "Plow", "Traktor", in the cooperative publishing house "Pluzhanyn", as a teacher of the Institute of International Studies, a researcher at the Institute named after Taras Shevchenko. His first literary tests of the pen also fall at this time.

Poems, short stories, literary and critical articles were published in the newspapers "Selyanska Pravda", "Visti VUCVK", "Kultura i Butut", "Communist", magazines "Plough", "Pluzhanin", "Paths of Art", "Comunarka" of Ukraine", "Agricultural Proletarian", "Silkor of Ukraine", "Vsesvit", etc. The poetry collections "Evening Shadows" (1927), "Bez vrya" (1933), the children's book "How Animals Built a House" (1925), collections of lyrical short stories "The Village" (1925), "Christ" (1928) were published as separate editions. ), several popular textbooks for children's institutions.

He was always the responsible secretary of the Plow literary organization.

Arrest and execution

After the assassination in Leningrad of the leader of the local communists, Serhiy Kirov, Paniv was accused of involvement in terrorist groups that "aimed at organizing assassinations of party and government leaders." The arrest and search of the apartment in the "Slovo" building were carried out on the night of December 6, 1934.

According to the Decree of the Central Committee of the USSR, it was not possible to complete the investigation in the Paniv case within ten days, therefore, on December 17, the UDB requested an extension of the investigation period. The interrogations were arranged by the head of the 2nd branch of the secret and political department, Lysitsky, in the presence of military prosecutor Safronov. After 12 days of continuous torture, Paniv was forced to "admit" his membership in a counter-revolutionary organization, but he denied participating in the preparation of terrorist attacks. Only under pressure from the military prosecutor of the Ukrainian Military District, Perfiliev, on January 19, 1935, pleaded guilty because, they say, he "carried a stone in his bosom against the party leaders."

On March 28, 1935, at a closed meeting of the visiting session of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, Andrii Paniv was sentenced to 10 years in prison with confiscation of his property (under Article 54/8 and 11 of the Criminal Code of the USSR). He served his sentence in the SLON concentration camp on the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea.

However, a few years later, on October 9, 1937, the "troika" of the NKVD in the Leningrad region made a decision in the fabricated case No. 103010-37 "for 134 Ukrainian bourgeois nationalists." Paniv was also on the list. He, along with other imprisoned Ukrainian poets and cultural figures who were then in the Solovetsky Special Prison, were sentenced to be shot. The basis is a reference from the operative part of the Solovetskyi prison: "remaining on the previous k.r. positions, continuing counter-revolutionary intelligence espionage, terrorist activities, [they] created the organization "All-Ukrainian Central Block".

He was shot in the Sandarmoh tract on November 3, 1937.

On August 4, 1956, the military panel of the Supreme Court of the USSR overturned both sentences against Andrii Paniv and closed the case due to the lack of a crime. Rehabilitated posthumously.

Memory

At the place of mass shootings in Karelia, where the "Sandarmok" memorial was created in 1997, a granite monument - the Cossack cross to the "Slain Sons of Ukraine" - was built in 2004 at the expense of world Ukrainians.