Research and Expeditions

  In Medvyn, on the edge of Gedzivka, our expedition team was hospitably welcomed by Nina Rozsokhina (née Skopenko), born in 1944, and Tetiana Vasylenko (née Plaksun), born in 1946. We were meeting in Nina’s yard, near the Intercession Church, which was rebuilt on the premises of a parish school in independent Ukraine. The old […]

  The second time we visited Sofia Hohulia from Medvyn (born in 1937), we asked her to teach us how to make a ‘flower’ – the local equivalent of ‘didukh’, which was crafted at the end of the harvest season, ceremonially celebrated on the Saviour’s Day and used at Christmas. ‘We reap wheat or rye,

  Otaman Yukhym Tsiurupa (born in 1896) from Rozkopantsi had two older brothers: Ivan (born in 1884) and Havrylo (born in 1889). In the Museum of the History of the Bohuslav Region, we found out that Ivan Tsiurupa participated in the insurgency during the Ukrainian Revolution and was killed. Havrylo Tsiurupa was shot by the

“In this picture [together with the OUN member Hryhoriy Fastovets] is my father, Vsevolod Yavorsky,” commented Hanna Kharchenko, a resident of Bohuslav, under the post about our next expedition. She is now a psalmist at the Church of the Intercession of the Mother of God of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine in Bohuslav, and before

Since the mid-1980s, local historian Petro Hohulia (born in 1961) has been studying the liberation movement in the Medvyn and Bohuslav regions. He discovered the names of the participants of the Medvyn Uprising (1919-1922), as well as OUN members. In 2014, together with Roman Koval, he published the book Medvyn Uprising, followed in 2023 by

  “When Hryhoriy returned from the camps, he was welcomed by the whole village. We have photos. He was so well-loved and respected. Many people joined resistance together with him, and he never betrayed anyone. They [the former members of an underground organization] lived a decent life until they were old,” recalls his sister Mariia