HOMEL, Belarus – The word "traitor" in Russian is scratched over the tombstone of Heavenly Hundred hero Mikhail Zhyznevsky in a cemetery near his hometown of Homel.
Belarusian Zhyznevsky and Armenian-Ukrainian Serhiy Nihoyan were the first protesters killed in the EuroMaidan Revolution that drove President Viktor Yanukovych from power last year. Both were shot dead during the protests on Hrushevskoho Street on Jan. 22, 2014. The shots were allegedly fired by police forces, but the investigation is still under way with 10 notices of suspicion issued, including to Yanukovych and other former high-level officials. They were the first of roughly 100 people, mostly demonstrators, killed before Yanukovych fled, hence the name Heavenly Hundred.
Mikhail Zhyznevsky
Zhyznevsky was buried in a small village cemetery in a pine forest near Homel. But he was not left to rest in peace. Almost two years since his death, vandals still regularly desecrate Zhyznevsky’s grave – tearing down and stealing the Ukrainian blue-and-yellow ribbons and smashing flower pots.
The harassment doesn’t end at the graveyard.
Today Zhyznevsky’s parents, Mikhail and Nina Zhyznevska, suffer insults. His mother can scarcely step out of her apartment without being called “Bandera’s bitch” in a reference to Stepan Bandera, the Ukrainian nationalist leader who lived from 1909 until 1959, when a KGB agent killed him in West Germany.
Neighbors call her son a Nazi and a bandit. “I’d rather have my son a bandit and a Nazi, but alive, rather than a dead hero,” she says, and her voice cracks as she starts crying.
Ukraine is not treating her much better. The family knows nothing about how the investigation is going and haven’t even gotten their son’s belongings back from police.
They are also still waiting for him to be given a Hero of Ukraine award. Technically, the award is only for Ukrainian citizens, but in 2014 President Petro Poroshenko promised to make an exception and grant it to Zhyznevsky and two other foreigners killed during the EuroMaidan Revolution.
“If only Poroshenko would give him a Hero of Ukraine medal, our bastards here would probably shut up,” said Zhyznevsky’s mother.
Zhyznevsky left home and moved to Ukraine when he was 17. In Belarus, he got in trouble with the Belarussian Committee of State Security, or KGB.
That prompted him to emigrate. He was also in love with a Ukrainian girl at the time. Zhysnevska says her son always kept in touch and visited the family occasionally, but didn’t tell his parents he was a EuroMaidan activist.
“He was a good kid. He would help the priest in the local church and bring food to all the neighbors,” Zhyznevska said. “Everyone loved him.”
Everyone loved him at EuroMaidan too, said his revolutionary girlfriend Yevheniya Dzubanenko.
Dzubanenko says they met at the beginning of the revolution. They joked and laughed a lot.
“At first I thought he was kind of shallow, but one day he opened up to me and I realized I was mistaken,” she said. “I still cannot let him go.”
He loved adventures, too.
“When he was going to Hrushevskoho Street all those days before Jan. 22 he had that look of hope and enthusiasm in his eyes. He believed we were making history,” Dzubanenko said.
So while neighbors in Belarus insult Zhyznevsky’s mother, Ukrainian volunteers raised money to pay for the medical treatment she needed after suffering a stroke following her son’s murder.
Zhyznevsky’s picture stands on a table in his parents’ small apartment in Homel. It is surrounded by books about the EuroMaidan Revolution, the Heavenly Hundred and Russia’s war in Ukraine’s east, blue-and-yellow ribbons, small Ukrainian flags and items with Ukrainian traditional embroidery. All were brought by volunteers.
“He thought fighting for Ukraine was a chance to restore justice – a chance that Belarus would probably never get,” Dzubanenko said.
His parents hope that what Zhyznevsky did is appreciated and wasn’t done in vain.
“We follow what is going on in Ukraine,” his father said. “We hope you get through this.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Daryna Shevchenko can be reached at [email protected].
