Oleksa Hirnyk

Oleksa Mykolajovyč Hirnyk (Ukrainian: Олекса Миколайович Гiрник) (March 27, 1912 - January 21, 1978) was a Ukrainian Soviet dissident, an engineer by profession, who burned himself to death as an act of protest against Soviet suppression of the Ukrainian language, culture and history. The act was quickly covered up by the Soviet authorities and remained unknown to general populace for decades.

Background

Hirnyk was born on March 28, 1912 in the town of Bohorodchany, then Austria-ruled Galicia, currently in Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast (province) in western Ukraine. He came from a family of boykos with a long background of preserving Ukrainian culture and heritage, his grandfather was the founder of the Prosvita Society in Bohorodchany, a society that promoted Ukrainian culture and the Ukrainian language.