“For a century, our family suffered from the Russians.”The story of an educator from Luhansk region who died in Bucha

For a century, Nataliia Sokolovska's family suffered at the hands of the Russians. Her grandfather, Mykola Sarma-Sokolovskyi, was imprisoned several times for his Ukrainian position and his participation in the A Ukrainian social and political movement that aims to establish a Ukrainian united independent state, its preservation and developmentOrganization of Ukrainian Nationalists. He spent a total of more than 15 years in captivity. His first wife, an OUN member, was killed by the Gestapo. His second wife was also imprisoned.

Decades later, the Russians brought grief to the family again, taking the life of Mykola Sokolovskyi's granddaughter, Nataliia. And her children and grandchildren became “migrants with experience”.

He loved Ukraine, created, fought

Mykola Sarma-Sokolovskyi was an artist, wrote poetry, prose, and essays, and played the bandura. He was born on May 19, 1910, in the Dnipropetrovsk region. His father, a Kuban Cossack Oleksandr Sokolovskyi, instilled in his son a love for Ukraine from an early age. When Mykola was 13, the Employees of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counterrevolution and Sabotage. The Commission was a punitive body of the Bolsheviks, acting in 1917-1922 to subjugate the territories of the former Russian Empire to the Bolsheviks and was marked by acts of massive red terror against disloyal segments of the population in the occupied territoriesChekists came to the family home to arrest his father. The same day, his father died of illness.

Later, Fotii Krasytskyi, a teacher at the Myrhorod School of Art and Ceramics and a relative of Taras Shevchenko, became Mykola's mentor and “second father”.

Mykola was first arrested at the age of 19 for belonging to the Union of Ukrainian Youth and for playing the bandura and spreading Ukrainian historical songs in villages in Poltava region. After the trial, the young man was imprisoned in a concentration camp, from where he later escaped.

In 1934, Mykola was drafted into the Red Army. The battalion was moved to the Far East, where the mobilized men were actually turned into convicts. He escaped from there as well and entered the Kyiv Art Institute with forged documents , where he received his education as an artist.

Mykola took the oath of allegiance to the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists in Kyiv in 1941. He was a leader of the OUN in the Poltava region. He also took pastoral courses at the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, and the following year became a priest.

In 1942, the Gestapo shot 12 OUN members in Poltava, including Mykola's wife, Dina Sokolovska.

The Soviet NKVD arrested the man himself in 1944. But Mykola once again escaped from custody. He began to live under an assumed name in Bukovyna, where he had a parish and preached in Ukrainian. Sarma-Sokolovskyi continued to work with the OUN underground.

His next arrest occurred in 1948 when the NKVD grabbed the priest near a church. At first, Mykola was facing the death penalty, but the sentence was changed to 25 years in a special regime camp. His two brothers and his wife Varvara also received the same sentence.

For his pro-Ukrainian activities, Mykola Sarma-Sokolovskyi spent a total of over 15 years in captivity. In 1961, the Soviet authorities granted amnesty to the prisoners. Mykola and his family were released, but they were forbidden to live in western Ukraine. So the family ended up in the Luhansk region, where the man lived until 1974.

Mykola then moved to the city of Novomoskovsk in the Dnipropetrovsk region. In the late 1980s, he founded a bandura group, the Ukrainian Language Society, and the Prosvita Society.

After Ukraine declared its independence, he was a church rector. All this time, Mykola continued to paint and write, although it was forbidden to publish his work until 1990. Despite this, he managed to secretly publish a collection of poems.

Mykola Sarma-Sokolovskyi died on August 9, 2001. His daughter was writing a book about her father but did not have time to finish it. It was finished by his granddaughter, Nataliia Sokolovska. She cherished her grandfather's paintings and everything related to the history of her family. In 2022, Nataliia's life was taken by the Russian army.

She made people fall in love with Ukrainian culture

Nataliia lived in the Luhansk region, in particular in Dovzhansk, Luhansk and Shchastia. She raised two daughters with her husband. She had a degree in engineering and philology, and taught drawing, painting, and labor training, and later Ukrainian.

“Nataliia was not afraid to be on the same page with the children. She was not worried that her authority would be shaken because of this. She was loved and respected,” says Yevheniia Kibets, Nataliia’s colleague and friend.

For more than 10 years, Nataliia worked as a Ukrainian language teacher and was responsible for the cultural sector at Luhansk State Medical University. Both her colleagues and students were delighted with the events she organized.

“She did everything with her heart, in an original, special way. It was a combination of engineering and aesthetic vision. Costumes, music, script, decor – she thought through everything to the smallest detail,” recalls Yevheniia Kibets.

Once, Nataliia needed brightly colored skirts for a performance – orange, green, blue… There was nowhere to buy them, so she made them herself. Nataliia also painted, beaded, knitted, and her interests and skills were diverse.

Through her university events, Nataliia Sokolovska made people fall in love with Ukrainian culture, which she loved immensely. She herself was Ukrainian-speaking, as were her daughters. They often wore vyshyvankas to school.

Nataliia herself also liked to wear vyshyvanka shirts and dresses. She complemented her look with red necklaces and earrings.

“Nataliia spoke Ukrainian so well! I wondered how in our Russian-speaking region she could speak Ukrainian so well. She only went to the Ukrainian theater. She had a portrait of Taras Shevchenko hanging in her office,” recalls her friend Olena Korzh.

The women had an age difference of almost 20 years, but it never felt like it, Olena adds: “She talked to thirty-year-olds as if she were 30. She spoke to older people as if she were their age. She had a natural wisdom.”

Nataliia cherished the memory of her relatives. In her home in Luhansk, portraits of her grandparents and aunts hung above the stairs leading to the second floor.

“You walk along the walk of fame, with the feeling that you are seeing the roots of the family. When they moved to Shchastia because of the war, they took the entire gallery with them,” Yevheniia Kibets recalls.

After 2014, Nataliia would return to occupied Luhansk only once to pick up her grandfather's paintings.

“Intelligent, sophisticated, noble. With restrained pride, she told the tragic and at the same time heroic story of her family. And it was immediately clear where she came from – a true Ukrainian,” Nataliia’s friend Olena Nelovkina describes her.

They went to protests until the occupiers seized Luhansk

In the spring of 2014, Nataliia Sokolovska and her colleagues joined Euromaidan in Luhansk, taking part in peaceful rallies and student marches in support of Ukraine's unity.

“In April, those who were tasked with stirring up unrest and then establishing a pro-Russian government in Luhansk were already coming from Russia. After the seizure of the SBU and regional administration buildings and the so-called referendum, it became dangerous to openly express a pro-Ukrainian position, including at the university. Armed marginalized people were running around the city, ‘throwing to the basement’ anyone they didn't like, who looked or behaved in a different way. There was no Ukrainian government in the city anymore. Our Luhansk was gone, too,” Olena Nelovkina recalls.

Nataliia was still gathering with like-minded friends, but it was already clear that she had to leave for the government-controlled territory.

With her husband Andrii Myronenko and two grandchildren (children of her daughter Oksana), she moved to the city of Shchastia. Her daughter Yuliia Hrynova, who was living with her family in Donetsk at the time, evacuated to Lutsk.

Her daughter Oksana and her husband Stanislav stayed in Luhansk to take care of their two elderly grandparents. Both of them are doctors, and they continued to work under fire, without electricity, water, communication, and under pressure from Russian soldiers.

One day, during the shelling, the grandfather was wounded by shell fragments. This was a signal that elderly relatives should also be evacuated.

“The Russians forbade people to drive around the city in own vehicles. Nevertheless, I dared to drive, took my grandfather to the hospital, pulled out the fragments, stitched up his wounds… I hid my car in the garage at work. After that, I found a taxi that took my grandparents to Shchastia,” recalls Nataliia's daughter, Oksana Myronenko.

She and her husband expected the Ukrainian army to liberate the city from the occupiers. Time passed, but this did not happen. On September 1, the doctors packed their belongings and medical instruments and left for the capital in their own cars.

“We went to Kyiv in search of happiness,” says Oksana.

From Shchastia to Bucha

Stanislav and Oksana first lived with friends, then rented a house in Bucha. Later, they bought their own place there.

Nataliia Sokolovska and Andrii Myronenko stayed in the Luhansk region. They came to Bucha from time to time and later bought an apartment there. In 2019, their daughter Yuliia, her husband, and three children moved to Kyiv region from Lutsk.

“Shchastia was periodically shelled by the Russian army. There were hits at the neighbors' houses, but my parents' house was not damaged. My mother wanted to evacuate, but my grandmothers were against another move,” says Oksana Myronenko.

Nataliia and Andrii's parents died, and a week before the start of the full-scale war, heavy shelling of Shchastia began.

On February 23, the couple arrived in Bucha. Before they could unpack their bags, the war came here.

Russian soldiers shelled houses, tortured, killed, and raped. They obstructed the evacuation by striking at convoys and individual vehicles.

Nataliia was recognized by the plate in her hand

First, the couple's daughters left Bucha. Nataliia and her husband hesitated: they hoped that everything would pass quickly. But on March 4, they finally left.

They took the road that others had used before. However, now the road was blocked by a concrete barrier. Nataliia said she knew another way.

“While my parents were on the road, I was in touch with my mom. They were on Yablunska Street, now called the ‘road of death’. We heard shots. The bullets hit the car. My parents stopped and got out of the car. I advised them to lie down on the ground or look for a place to wait it out,” Yuliia Hrynova recalls.

It was an area with detached houses, the doors to the nearest houses were locked, and there was nowhere to hide. The couple got into the car. They turned around and drove about a hundred meters. The shooting started again.

“The last thing I heard were my father's words: ‘Mom...’ He called her mom in front of us. Then my father fainted. The call lasted for another 10-15 minutes, I called out to my parents, but there was no answer,” says Yuliia.

When Andrii Myronenko came to his senses, his car was on fire. He looked at his wife and saw her chest and head shot through. He tried to get her body out of the car, but the door was jammed. The glass was already shattered, and it was impossible to pull the woman out through the window either: one of his arms was shot.

After that, he picked up his phone, took two backpacks from the trunk, and ran to the nearest open gate. He entered the barn. Meanwhile, the car exploded.

Andrii Myronenko managed to inform his son-in-law Stas, the husband of his daughter Oksana, about the injury and then fainted again.

Oksana Myronenko called all the services to save her father. As the fighting continued, she was denied help. Finally, she found volunteers nearby, including a medic. Andrii Myronenko walked to them through the yards, climbed over fences, but he got there, received first aid and stayed overnight.

At 6 am the next morning, he crossed a Russian checkpoint on foot on his way to Irpin. Oksana's friend gave him a ride to the Romanivskyi Bridge, which connects Bucha and Irpin to Kyiv. Oksana's husband took Andrii to a private Kyiv clinic where he and his wife worked. Oksana operated on her father.

She shared how she managed to overcome her emotions after losing her mother: “I felt hatred and a whole range of negative emotions towards Russians. But I concentrated on what I could do and did it, because I could not and still cannot accept such a senseless death of my mother because of the Russians.”

Oksana Myronenko, her husband, children and father left for Ivano-Frankivsk. Yuliia Hrynova and her family went to Germany.

Nataliia Sokolovska's body was recovered only a month later, after Bucha was liberated from the Russian occupiers.

A few years before the tragedy, she had undergone bone surgery to implant a plate. It was used to identify the woman. Nataliia's body was cremated.

“If there was a piece of Ukraine left, she would live there”

When Olena Korzh learned about Nataliia's death, not only she but also her husband cried.

“The worst thing is that they came to Bucha from Shchastia to escape. She would never have lived in the occupied territory. If there was a small piece of Ukraine left, she would live there,” saysOlena.

She is having a hard time dealing with the loss of her friend. Now every holiday is a reminder that Nataliia is gone.

“We do not forget about her. It is impossible to forget her. We could talk for hours. I don't know how to live without her,” says Olena Korzh.

“We were on the phone every day until the connection was lost, and on March 4, our mutual friend called me and said that Nataliia had died… I still feel the pain. I still have photos of ‘that’ life. I don't have the strength to look at them yet. May she rest in peace…” adds Olena Nelovkina.

“I still can't believe it…” says Yevheniia Kibets. She often recalls the times they spent together. Now, she says, she feels like an orphan. She lives abroad. She misses Ukraine, but has no one to go to.

Daughters set up a charitable foundation in memory of their mother

Nataliia Sokolovska's husband cannot recover from his grief. Her daughters are actively volunteering. In memory of their mother, they created the Nash Sokil charity foundation, which takes care of the elderly, internally displaced people and people with disabilities, and provides medical care to civilians and soldiers affected by the war. Yuliia sends humanitarian aid to Ukraine from Germany.

“Nothing will change if I am only angry at the Russians, so I transform this aggression into something positive. I do volunteer work. I know what it's like to move when no one is waiting for you. I have experience and a great resource to help people,” says Oksana Myronenko.

According to her, being busy saves her from realizing what happened.

“For a century, our family suffered from the Russian authorities. My mother never expected anything good from the Russians. For some reason, some people (Putin and his supporters) believe that they can control the fate of millions of people and not be punished for it. I am depressed by this thought and the absurdity of this war. It hurts to realize that my mother could still live for 20-30 years,” Yuliia says.

Nataliia Sokolovska wanted to spend more time with her children and grandchildren. She wanted to paint more often.

“We bought her an easel and paints. She kept saying: ‘I'm going to finish this and start painting.’ She also wanted to finish the book my grandmother had started writing. She didn't have time… My mom loved life and could still bring love and goodness to the world,” says Yuliia Hrynova.

The text was prepared by Memorial, a memory platform that tells the stories of civilians killed by Russia and fallen Ukrainian soldiers. To report casualty data, please fill out the forms for both military and civilian victims.

Author: Natalia Khvesyk