“The Honcharuk Case.” The Last Executed Rebel

On July 12, 1989, two years before Ukraine regained its independence, the Soviet authorities shot Ivan Honcharuk, a former soldier of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. At the age of nineteen, he left his native Hrudky in Volyn, went through the Kolyma camps, and returned to Ukraine only in the 1970s. The KGB and the Volyn Oblast Prosecutor's Office reopened the criminal case in 1987, fabricating new charges based on old materials, denunciations from neighbors, and pressure on witnesses. The show trial in Kamin-Kashyrskyi proved that even during perestroika, the Soviet system was killing. As of 2021, Ivan Honcharuk was posthumously rehabilitated, and his burial place is still unknown. The organizers and judges of this trial still live in independent Ukraine, receive state pensions worth thousands, and have not been held accountable.

Having processed hundreds of archival documents, the memories of eyewitnesses and Ivan's relatives, Lesia Bondaruk, with a lively reportage, returns the story of the last executed rebel to the national memory and emphasizes: in order to restore historical justice, it is important not only to rehabilitate the victims of the regime, but also to punish those involved in the repressions.