FINDING OUT THE FATE OF UKRAINE’S BEST

The Day hosted a round table with the participation of historian Yury Shapoval, deputy head of the Ukraine Security Service’s SBU State Archive Serhiy Kokyn, journalist Col. Serhiy Shevchenko, and The Day’s staff journalists. In fact, this was the presentation of the two volumes of Ostannia adresa [The Last Address], which, along with documentary evidence and historical documents, includes numerous lists of writers, physicians, church figures, teachers, and middle peasants, who were shot in 1937-1938 in the Solovki Island (Karelia, Russia), which became a huge common grave for Ukraine’s elite. Last year marked the 65th anniversary of this tragedy. Unfortunately, this sad event went unnoticed on the state level.

Ostannia adresa has a certain background. A few years ago, a three-volume work was already published on the executions of the Solovki convicts. Among them there were many prominent figures: Mykola Kulish, Les Kurbas, Mykola Zerov, et. al. The book’s compilers, scholars and researchers, processed thousands of documents to find out about people’s life in those unbearable conditions, their estimation of the events in Ukraine, and their communication with each other. The SBU State Archive sent an expedition to Solovki, discovering many materials, which essentially formed the three-volumes. But three volumes appeared not enough. Thus, Ostannia adresa came into existence. Read in The Day’s coming issues about the road to Solovki, which was different for everyone, the reasons why our society does not want to learn truth about itself in spite of the opening opportunities, the specifics of the secret services’ archives’ operation, and other issues discussed at the round table.