{"id":477648,"date":"2026-05-10T11:30:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-10T11:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/477648\/"},"modified":"2026-05-10T11:30:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-10T11:30:09","slug":"i-pray-to-die-in-my-own-country-the-long-shadow-of-soviet-rule-in-a-western-ukrainian-town-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/477648\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I pray to die in my own country\u2019: The long shadow of Soviet rule in a western Ukrainian town \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eighty-one years later, Hanna Bodnar remembers her father Mykhailo\u2019s arrest with total clarity. She was 10 years old when the Soviets took him. Mykhailo had been helping the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which fought the Polish, Germans and Soviets for independence in the 1940s and 1950s. Mykhailo distributed banned publications, sheltered fighters and gave them food.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey took him first to a church which they used as a makeshift prison. The next day I saw him being walked barefoot to a truck. I couldn\u2019t say anything or acknowledge he was my father.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hanna approached and passed her father in the street, showing no sign of recognition. <\/p>\n

\u201cI couldn\u2019t say I was his daughter because I too would be taken away,\u201d she says. \u201cIf I tell you what I felt, I will start crying. He looked into my eyes, but he showed no sign he knew me. I walked around the corner and wept.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mykhailo Bodnar was sent to an Arctic prison and was not allowed to return to Ukraine<\/a> for 41 years. His family was persecuted. Hanna\u2019s memory of a half-century of Soviet oppression certainly helps one to understand why Ukrainians fight so fiercely to preserve their independence.<\/p>\n

\"RomanRoman Tochyn, a native of Khodoriv, was one of the ‘Heavenly Hundred’ Ukrainians killed by riot police in the 2013\/2014 Maidan revolution. Photograph: Lara Marlowe <\/p>\n

The 65km drive from Lviv to Hanna Bodnar\u2019s hometown of Khodoriv takes you through rolling green hills studded with flowering fruit trees, rickety wooden fences and vestiges of medieval fortifications built by King Danylo in the hope of stopping the Mongol hordes.<\/p>\n

Khodoriv boasted a population of 10,000 before independence in 1991. Roughly half its residents left when factories shut down during the economic crisis that followed the break-up of the Soviet Union<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

\u2018When the Nazis came here in 1941, some people wanted to give them flowers because they were liberating us from the Soviets. I asked my father \u201cShould I give them flowers?\u201d and he said, No\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u00a0Hanna Bodnar<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We stop at the cemetery where Khodoriv buries its martyrs. Roman Tochyn was 44 when he joined the ranks of the \u201cHeavenly Hundred\u201d who were murdered in the 2013\/14 Maidan revolution by pro-Russian riot police. <\/p>\n

\"RostyslavRostyslav Tityk, the first soldier from Khodoriv to be killed after the 2022 full-scale invasion by Russia, was posthumously awarded the Hero of Ukraine medal. Photograph: Lara Marlowe <\/p>\n

Rostyslav Tityk, the first soldier from Khodoriv to die in the full-scale invasion of 2022, rests beneath an elaborate tombstone with a life-size photo engraving of himself poised with an assault rifle. At least 15 men from Khodoriv have since been killed in combat.<\/p>\n

A Greek Catholic church stands a few hundred metres from Bodnar\u2019s two-storey bungalow. Much of western Ukraine converted from Orthodox Christianity to Greek Catholicism in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Stalin banned all religion, but tolerated the Orthodox church. He saw Greek Catholics as pro-Ukrainian. Greek Catholic priests fled abroad or risked deportation to Siberia. Catholics worshipped in clandestine services.<\/p>\n

Hanna\u2019s sittingroom is decorated with Ukrainian embroidery, a portrait of Taras Shevchenko, Ukraine\u2019s national poet, and a replica of Leonardo\u2019s Last Supper.<\/p>\n

This part of Ukraine was Austro-Hungarian until the first World War, then Polish until 1939, when the Soviets invaded. The Wehrmacht seized Ukraine from the Soviets between 1941 and 1943. A faction of the UPA collaborated with the Nazis because they falsely believed Germany would give Ukraine independence.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the Nazis came here in 1941, some people wanted to give them flowers because they were liberating us from the Soviets,\u201d Hanna recalls. \u201cI asked my father, \u2018Should I give them flowers?\u2019 and he said, \u2018No. These are not our people. Our people are yet to come\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0How culture became one of Ukraine\u2019s most powerful weapons against RussiaOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

German officers were billeted in Hanna\u2019s house. \u201cOne of them liked our embroidery and stole a towel. My mother complained to his commander. Some of the Germans gave me chocolate. They asked my grandmother to fry potatoes for them, then complained that German potatoes tasted better.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the Soviets returned in 1943, there was heavy fighting in Cherniv, the village 35km from Khodoriv where Hanna was born. \u201cThe main street was filled with dozens of Russian corpses. The Germans took their dead with them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\u2018My husband died early. I was a widow at 60. I raised two grandsons as if they were my own children. I cared for my father-in-law when he was old. I survived and overcame all this\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u00a0Hanna Bodnar<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Bodnar family spoke Ukrainian. \u201cI always knew I was Ukrainian,\u201d says Hanna. \u201cWe read Shevchenko and cherished [Ukrainian poet, playwright and political activist] Lesya Ukrainka. We had a trident symbol in the house. The Soviets told us to destroy these things, that it wasn\u2019t allowed.\u201d Her brother Ivan buried symbols of Ukrainian identity in the cellar.<\/p>\n

The Soviets sentenced the entire family to exile at Vorkuta, in the Arctic Circle, a punishment used by Russia<\/a> to this day. Hanna\u2019s brother was caught and sent instead to Yakutia, northeastern Siberia. He met a Ukrainian woman there, also from a deported family. They married and had three children.<\/p>\n

After Stalin\u2019s death, Mykhailo Bodnar was allowed to move from Vorkuta to Taishet, in the Irkutsk region near Lake Baikal. He was forbidden, however, from returning to Ukraine until 1986, and then only to the industrial east of the country. His passport was stamped with the words \u201ctraitor of the nation\u201d. Mykhailo returned to the Lviv region for his last years and was overjoyed to vote Yes in the December 1990 referendum on independence. He died the following month. The Ukrainian government cleared his name posthumously.<\/p>\n

Mykhailo\u2019s arrest was followed by years of fear and poverty for Hanna and her mother Yevdokiia, whose names remained on a Soviet wanted list. Mother and child were often separated. Hanna escaped once through a window when the Soviets came looking for her. She walked through snow to a village where she knew people.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0\u2018I survived a tank hit. That\u2019s bad ass\u2019: British amputee chooses to stay in Ukraine after strikeOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Hanna dreamed of studying at university, \u201cbut I couldn\u2019t because of my surname\u201d. She trained to become a librarian. Acquaintances urged her to become a communist youth leader, which would have paid more. \u201cI didn\u2019t try, because I knew they would start digging into my background and it would all come out.\u201d<\/p>\n

A railway worker called Ivan, two years Hanna\u2019s junior, had just completed his military service and frequented the library where she worked. Her brother returned from Siberia on their wedding day in 1960. He tried to buy the family\u2019s former home in Cherniv, but the Soviets stopped the sale because of the family\u2019s disgrace.<\/p>\n

Hanna and Ivan built their house in Khodoriv and raised two sons. One became an architectural designer in Lutsk, the other an electrician in Prague.<\/p>\n

Independence Day in August 1991 was one of the happiest days of Hanna\u2019s life. Ivan passed away prematurely in 1996.<\/p>\n

\"HannaHanna Bodnar at her home in Khodoriv, near Lviv. Photograph: Lara Marlowe <\/p>\n

Khodoriv is 5km from an electrical power substation. \u201cThe Russians have fired Shahed drones on it many times,\u201d says Hanna. \u201cIn bed at night, I watch the red bullets from the anti-aircraft guns shooting at drones.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hanna\u2019s life has not been easy. \u201cMy husband died early. I was a widow at 60. I raised two grandsons as if they were my own children. I cared for my father-in-law when he was old. I survived and overcame all this. I am grateful for what I have, that I can get up in the morning and still take care of myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last January, Hanna fell while shovelling snow and could not walk to church for two months. Kind neighbours have ploughed the lot next to her house so that she can plant her garden. They bring her water from a well and buy bread for her. \u201cI pray to God to let me die in my own country,\u201d she says. \u201cI don\u2019t want to die in a country that is no longer Ukraine. I tell my grandchildren to do everything they can to prevent it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eighty-one years later, Hanna Bodnar remembers her father Mykhailo\u2019s arrest with total clarity. She was 10 years old…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":477649,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,13,14,6,11,12,15,16,5,550,44270,7,8,2264,65,66,67],"class_list":["post-477648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-featured-news","tag-featurednews","tag-headlines","tag-latest-news","tag-latestnews","tag-main-news","tag-mainnews","tag-news","tag-russia","tag-soviet-union","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories","tag-ukraine-crisis","tag-world","tag-world-news","tag-worldnews"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116550056575738253","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=477648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477648\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/477649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=477648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=477648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=477648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}