Nil Khasevych

Family of Khasevych (from left): Theodotia Khasevych, Fedir Khasevych, Nil Khasevych and Anton Khasevych. 1910s

Nil Khasevych was born November 25 (November 12 Old Style) 1905 in the village Dyuksyn in Volhynia, now Kostopil Raion, Rivne Oblast, Ukraine, in a family of Psalomnyk Anton Ivanovych Khasevych and his wife Theodotia Oleksiivna. The village, according to the old administrative divisions, was Rivne district, Volhynian Governorate, Russian Empire. His brothers Anatoly and Fedir also become priests. Nil also studied at seminary. Besides his talent for drawing, Khasevych also had a good voice. In 1918, returning from Rivne, at the Derazhniansky railway crossing, he and his mother fell under a train. His mother died, and he lost a leg. As Nil could cut a variety of wood crafts, he had fashioned his own prosthetic leg.

With friends in the Warsaw studios. 1930s

After treatment, he attended a workshop of Vasyl Len in Rivne. In 1925, he took an external exam and received a certificate of the Rivne Gymnasium. From 1925 to 1926, he worked as an assistant iconographer. With the money received as compensation for the accident, he used it to study at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts. The young man graduated from the graphics department, he studied painting with Professors Miłosz Kotarbiński and Mieczysław Kotarbiński, and graphics with Professor Władysław Skoczylas.

In Warsaw, he then worked with a small circle of Ukrainian artists and students in the academy, who founded the Society Calm (circle), which included N. Khasevych, P. Andrusiy, V. Vaskivskyy, S. Drychyk, V. Zvarych, Petro Holodny, V. Havryliuk and Petro Mehyk. From memories of the last about his countryman:

In 1930 he belonged to the student union Zaporizhzhya. Defending a diploma work on the theme Saint Volodymyr, in 1935, Nil received a diploma of higher art education with the right of teaching in secondary schools. With the beginning of World War II he returned to his village. But even in 1931 his painting Laundry was awarded with the Vatican prize, and the next year, his portrait of Hetman Ivan Mazepa  won the Warsaw Academy diploma.

Reflecting on the specifics of art, Nil Khasevych made a record on February 24, 1933:

To study this language, Nil Khasevych copied by hand with quill pen the Peresopnytsia Gospel. In the process he mastered the Cyrillic font. Gradually moving from oil painting to graphics prints, he begins to engage engravings, and woodcutting (derevorizamy). In the early 1930s, Nil Khasevych exhibited his work in art salons of Lviv, Prague, Berlin, Chicago, Los Angeles. In 1937, he got a third cash prize at the International Exhibition of Engravings on a wood engraving in Warsaw. For two years, he printed an art album called Book marks of Nil Khasevych. This year, in the American city of Philadelphia, his art album, Ex libris of Nil Khasevych, was released. Nil collaborated with the Ukrainian magazine The Way and Volyn word. The artist tirelessly polished professional skills. His portraits of Prince Volodymyr the Great, bookplate of the president of UNR in exile Andriy Livytskyi, and the series of works in the anthology Woodcuts was highly appreciated by experts. He is compared to Ivan Trush, Heorhiy Narbut, and Vasyl Krychevsky.

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  Volhynia. Canvas, oil. 1920s
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  Laundry. Canvas, oil. 1920s
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  Initial "E". Woodcut. 1930s
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  Portrait. Woodcut. 1930s

Crosses of Merit, project No. 1

Khasevych was a successful artist and could easily live with the Crosses of Merit. Nil Khasevych was an active public and political figure, and a member of the Volhynia Ukrainian association (VUO) from 1935. He was a delegate to the Regional Congress of the VUO in 1935 in Lutsk. He was personally acquainted with Stepan Bandera and other Ukrainian leaders of the national movement. He was a member of the central and regional OUN leadership, and later, he joined the Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council (UHVR). But the impending world war and the fate put him a choice. Along with the work, he is engaged in social and political activities: he took part in the Volhynia Ukrainian association, and later joined the OUN. Since April 1943, when groups of the UPA were formed in mass, he joined the underground work. He was elected to the central and regional leadership of the OUN. From that time, he began a nomadic life. He worked in the Kriivka, and constantly changed his location because of the constant danger. He was known by the pseudonyms Bay-Zot, Levko, Rybalka, 333, Stary, and Dzhmil. Nil Antonovych was a talented propagandist who led an insurgency printing house. He also worked as an artist and editor, preparing illustrations for satirical magazines of the UPA "Ukrainian pepper" and "Horseradish", designed the pappus and leaflets for underground publication, and released an album of caricatures. He also worked on projects of flags, seals, forms for insurgents. During 1943 — 1944, he led a political-propagandist unit of the UP "North" group, commanded by Klym Savur (real name Dmytro Klyachkivskyy). After the death of his friend and leader, Khasevych remained on combat post for another seven years. His portfolio of the war and post-war era — 150 woodcuts, which was issued overseas in albums as "Volhynia in the fight" and "Graphics in UPA bunkers" during 1950 — 1952.

In 1941, he became a member of the Labor Union of Lviv, Ukrainian Fine Arts and worked with the Rivne Magazine "Volhynia" with Ulas Samchuk. In Nazi-occupied Lviv in 1942 — 1943, he held an exhibition of Ukrainian artists in which Nil Khasevych exhibited the work of patriotic themes, including "Sleep, guys, sleep".

In June 1948, the Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council (UHVR) introduced awards for illegals, which earned them with a personal courage. In particular, "Zot" created sketches of the Cross of Merit and Cross of Combat Merit and medal "For the fight in especially difficult circumstances." Subsequently, the author was awarded the Silver Cross of Merit and Medal and elected to UHVR from Ukrainian intelligentsia. Few know about who he really was, what he was doing and where he was. He was carried from hiding place to hiding place by bicycle.

In 1951 an order came from the capital of Soviet Union "to suppress the anti-Soviet activities" (Russian: пресечь антисоветскую деятельность) of Khasevych, because the engraving was presented to the delegates of the United Nations General Assembly and to foreign diplomats, and then was published in the aforementioned book "Graphics in UPA bunkers". To search for the artist, the authorities established an inter-oblast task force, led by GB (Russian: ГБ (государственная безопасность), lit. 'State Security') Captain Borys Steklyar. It also included, as captain, Markelov, and Kudrytskyi. Secret police picked up the trail of "Zot" several times - once, in Lviv, through "citizen M", who hid in his place a personal archive of Nil Khasevych. He hid them in a glass jar and buried in the garden. "Organs" tried to lure and capture him, but to no avail. Later, in one of the captured bunkers, they found an encrypted document. When deciphered, it read:

Ukrainian: "Заготували для Вас 5 кілограмів паперу, вишневе дерево", romanized: Prepared for you 5 kilograms of paper and cherry wood

(from which printing cliches for producing cards and prints were made). The decryption pointed to an address: a bunker on a farm near village Suhivtsi (Rivne region) (then Rivne Raion, Rivne Oblast, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union) - 12 km from the town of Klevan, in Rivne Oblast. The farm was surrounded.

The bunker (Ukrainian: криївка, romanized: kryyivka) was equipped for homesteading, with the hidden entrance to the cave located in a barn near the wood. The bunker itself was relatively spacious, had three-quarters. Here there took place last fight of Khasevych and the two rebels who guarded him against the gebists (Russian: гэбисти, lit. 'state security operatives'). Teodor Gladkov's book, With shield and sword (Russian: Со щитом и мечом), published in 1988 in Lviv by the Kameniar publishing house, gives details of the death of the warrior-artist:

According to another text, Nil Khasevych shot himself with his personal weapons, along with his two bodyguards — Vyacheslav Antoniuk — "Matthew" and Anton Melnychuk — "Hnat", burning all important documents beforehand.

From the memoirs of Dmytro Udod, a former UPA soldier:

After three days the rebels' dead bodies were taken to an unknown destination. Julius Holovatsky, Ukrainian writer, member of the national liberation movement for the independence of Ukraine and political prisoner, wrote an essay, "Barrel", in 1956, which was published in parts throughout 1996 — 1998, which also described the death of Nil Khasevych: