LETT.POLI.MEM.1974.42'.OBRI
(in Russian), Paris, Baltimore: Smoloskyp, 1974 English title: "Beyond the Eastern Horizon"
* 1914, Boremschyna, Russia, † 2004, Krasnoarmiisk, Ukraine
Charge: Anti-Soviet Agitation
Prison: Various prisons, POW camps, gulags (Map)
The ethnic policies in the inter-war Poland were directed towards the Polonization and cultural assimilation of ethnic minorities contrary to the international obligation Poland had to grant the autonomy to ethnic Ukrainian territories. When he was 17, Shumuk began his struggle against the Polish control of the area. In 1933, he was arrested by Polish police four times and held for short terms. In 1934, he was arrested by Polish police and held in jail in Kovel until he was sentenced in 1935, to eight-year term for his role in the underground Communist Party of Western Ukraine. He served his term in a prison in Lomza. In 1938 under an amnesty for political prisoners, his sentence was reduced by a third. In the spring of the following year, he was transferred to a jail in Bialystok, and on May 24, 1939, he was released.
During the round of repressions that followed the Soviet takeover, Danylo's older brother Anton was arrested as "enemy of the people" since he worked for the Polish National Railway.
On 15 May 1941 the Soviet authorities arrested Danylo Shumuk as a brother of an enemy of the people. From the prison he was sent into one of the Red Army Penal military units, the formations assigned some of the most deadly tasks.His unit was disarmed by the Soviet Command and, being unarmed, Shumuk was taken prisoner. He was kept in a POW camp in the town of Khorol in the Poltava Oblast, but he managed to escape.
He organized a guerilla detachment in his native places. In 1943 the detachment joined the UIA. Because of principal difference of views with the commandment of the UIA, Shumuk refused to take part in the actions and taught economic geography at the military courses.
In December 1944 he was arrested and in 1945 he was condemned by the High Tribunal of the NKVD in the Zhytomir oblast to the capital punishment, which was later exchanged for 20 years of concentration camps. He did his term in the 3rd camp of Norilsk. Shumuk was one of the organizers of the rebellion of convicts in Norilsk in June – September 1953. For this he was transferred to the Vladimir prison.
In 1955 Shumuk was rehabilitated. On 19 November 1957 Shumuk was summoned to the KGB and was proposed to cooperate. He refused. The next day Shumuk’s flat was searched and all his manuscripts were taken away. On 21 November 1957 he was arrested and transported to the prison of the town of Lutsk.
On 5 May 1958 the closed trial of the Volyn oblast court condemned Shumuk to 10 years of incarceration in colonies of strict regime. He did his term in Vorkuta, then in Tayshet (the village of Vikharevka). During a search in the colony Shumuk’s memoirs were found, and he spent much time in the barrack of especially strict regime. In 1962 he was transferred to Mordova colony ÆÕ-385/7. On 21 October 1967 he was transported to Kyiv and released on 20 November.
From the autumn of 1967 Shumuk lived in the town of Boguslav of the Kyiv oblast, worked as a watchman in a pioneer camp and as a sailor on duty on the Kyiv beach. In 1970 he completed the second part of "Beyond The Eastern Horizon".
On 12 January 1972 Shumuk was arrested again and accused of the «anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda» and of «communication of deliberately false testimony». In the course of the arrest his memoirs were confiscated, as well as his letters, which were later acknowledged as program documents of the national liberation movement; these letters were confiscated from I. Svitlychny.
On 5-7 July 1972 Shumuk was condemned by the Kyiv oblast court to 10 years of strict regime colonies and 5 years of exile. He was regarded as an especially dangerous recidivist. He did his term in Sosnovka colony, Mordovia. Being incarcerated Shumuk took an active part in numerous protest actions and hunger-strikes, although he was ill and many times got to the hospital because of stomach ulcer and other maladies. In 1978 he was recognized an invalid of the second group. However, Shumuk served his term completely.
In 1982 Shumuk was sent to the exile in the village of Karatobe of the Ural oblast (Kazakhstan), where he stayed under the administration survey till 4 January 1987.
In 1987, having spent a total of 42 years in Soviet and Polish prisons, Nazi concentration camps, Soviet penal colonies and forced exiles Shumuk was allowed to leave the country. He moved to Toronto. On 28 November 2002 he returned to Ukraine, independent by then, and moved to Krasnoarmiysk of the Donetsk Oblast (province) in the east of Ukraine. He died there on 21 May 2004 at the age of 89.