Connections

By Walter Kish

As my regular readers will attest, my columns cover a very eclectic mix of themes, whose inspiration sometimes comes from an interesting series of mental connections in what passes for my brain.  This week’s offering provides an illustrative if somewhat convoluted example.

I had decided earlier in the week to write about a particularly colourful character from Ukrainian history by the name of Ustym Karmaliuk.  Unfortunately, few Ukrainians have ever heard of him, which of course makes him all the more fascinating in my view.  In any case, how he came to be the subject of this week’s column is an interesting story in its own right, being the end result of a series of seemingly disconnected events during the past few weeks.

I have been involved with a committee representing the Ukrainian community in the City of Oshawa, where I live, in planning a Holodomor commemoration next month, part of which will be a documentary exhibit in the city’s central library.  Included in the exhibit will be a large mural by a local Ukrainian artist of some note by the name of Olexander Wlasenko.  In doing some research on Wlasenko on the Internet, I came across a photo gallery of his works, one of which was a charcoal drawing of Oleksa Dovbush.

Most Ukrainians know Dovbush as a legendary Hutsul figure, popularly known as the “Ukrainian Robin Hood”.  During the late 1800’s, Dovbush led a band of some forty to fifty rebels in the Carpathian Mountains known as the opryshky (brigands) who fought the oppression and exploitation by the local Polish nobility.  Similar to the legendary English Robin Hood, they robbed from the rich and gave to the poor.  Dovbush is a popular figure in Hutsul folklore and literature, and became more widely known as a result of a famous 1959 Soviet film titled Oleksa Dovbush.

Seeing the picture of Dovbush reminded me of another “Ukrainian Robin Hood” that I had come across during my travels in Ukraine in recent years.  This happened on a visit to one of Ukraine’s best known and well preserved castles in Kamianets-Podilsky.  During a tour of the castle, I learned the story of Ustym Karmaliuk who had graced the castle’s dungeons on many occasions as a prisoner.  Karmaliuk, in my mind, deserves equal if not greater recognition than Oleksa Dovbush.

Ustym Yakymovych Karmaliuk was born a serf in 1787 in a little town called Holovchintsy in what was then known as the provincial gubernia of Podilia, and what currently is Khmelnytsky Oblast.  He was unruly from an early age and constantly rebelling against his feudal masters, who in exasperation forcibly inducted him into the Russian Imperial Army when he was seventeen.  He escaped military service and returned home where he organized other like minded serfs into a rebel band who robbed the local nobility, distributing the booty to the poor.  He was caught, flogged, and returned to military service in Crimea, but escaped once more, returning to Podilia where he once again organized a rebel force that included not only Ukrainians but also other victims of oppression such as Jews and even some Poles.  His fame and his band grew until by the 1830’s it was reputed to have numbered as many as 20,000 rebels who became the scourge of both the Russian and Polish nobility of the region.  He inspired the downtrodden of his time and engendered fierce loyalty from all his followers.

The Tsarist authorities responded by increasing their military presence in the area and eventually managed to catch Karmaliuk.  In fact, they did so on four separate occasions, punishing him severely and exiling him to Siberia.  After each time he escaped, he returned back to Podilia to resume his rebellious activities, which stretched over a period of twenty years.  Eventually, he was ambushed and killed in 1835 at the age of 48.

Karmaliuk is a true Ukrainian hero that deserves greater recognition, particularly at this time, when Ukraine is sorely lacking in heroic figures that care about the fate of their oppressed brethren.