Draft:Stefaniia Shabatura

Stefaniia Shabatura is an artist, human rights activist, a member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group (UHG).

Young age
Stefaniia Shabatura was born on November 5, 1938, in the village of Ivane-Zolote in the Ternopil region, Ukraine. Her father first served in the Polish army, but after the occupation of Western Ukraine by Soviet troops in 1939, he was drafted into the Soviet army and died in the war. His mother's family were village sculptors, and his mother, Hanna Shabatura, was an artist and folk craftswoman.

Stefaniia Shabatura received her school education and began her artistic career at a young age: 'People themselves forced me: 'Draw icons, there are no icons, draw. They're selling it at the bazaar, can't you?'. Later, Stefaniia entered the Art College in Lviv, which she graduated from in 1961, and the Lviv Institute of Applied and Decorative Arts, which she successfully graduated in 1967: 'I had everything good, all subjects - drawing, painting - I had 'five'. So I got my education.'

Resistance movement
With proper education, Stefaniia Shabatura also became a member of Spilka khudozhnykiv Ukrainy (the Union of Artists of Ukraine). However, an obstacle to further artistic advancement was the fact that Stefaniia was not a member of the ruling party and acted outside the framework of Soviet norms. In the late 1960s, Stefania had already come to the attention of the Committee for State Security (KDB/KGB), which became especially serious when Stefaniia, together with Ivan Dziuba, Lina Kostenko, Nadiya Svitlychna, and the Kalynets family, visited the open trial of Vyacheslav Chornovil on November 15, 1967. This was already the time of the Soviet government's struggle against the dissident movement. As Stefaniia recalls: 'And here were all those who were not imprisoned, who had not yet been arrested. There were a lot of people. The court was open, they were forced to open the court under that article. But they took a small room and took all the seats. Two policemen stood in the doorway and did not let me in. But at lunchtime, we broke through. We pushed those policemen away, broke through and actually filled the hall – half of theirs, half of us.'

Stefaniia Shabatura also clearly showed her position in 1970 during a visit to the open trial of Valentyn Moroz, when there was already a threat for her to be arrested. On November 29, 1970, Stefaniia wrote a statement to the Supreme Court of the Ukrainian SSR protesting against the arrest and illegal trial of Valentyn Moroz, in which she stated: 'As a free citizen of the Soviet Union, I had every right, according to the laws of our state, to be present at the reading of the sentence. And isn't the fact that none of us was allowed to attend the verdict a clear proof of the biased consideration of the case of V. Moroz, the fear of exposing the illegality and anti-Soviet nature of the court itself?.' Participating in the work of the Club of Creative Youth "Prolisok" and distributing uncensored literature not controlled by the state - samvydav -she was under the threat of punishment, in particular, because of the secret resolution of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on samvydav of June 28, 1971.

Even despite the serious threat, Stefaniia, along with her friends and colleagues, continued to fight and even support Ukrainian traditions. In January 1972, Stefaniia, together with Vasyl Stus, Lyubomyra Popadiuk, Iryna Kalynets, Olena Antoniv, Mykhailo Horyn, Maryan Hatalo and Oleksandr Kuzmenko, held a vertep and sang carols. From the second half of the 1960s, such celebrations began to be banned, which forced them to be carried out clandestinely. Stefania recalls: 'At that time, it was forbidden to do this on Christmas holidays, so we timed those verteps to coincide with the New Year in order to be able to walk. And then the Soviet New Year, the state one, is celebrated...Vasyl was somewhere in Morshyn at that time, or he was being treated, he came here and went with us.'

Arrest and camp
Stefaniia Shabatura was arrested on January 12, 1972, during mass arrests on charges of conducting anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda. This happened after the congress of creative youth in Lviv. She was accused of distributing typewritten collections of Vasyl Stus 'Veselyy Tsvyntar', M. Kholodnyy 'Kryk z mohyly', and V. Moroz's article 'Serеd snihiv'. At the same time, other members of the resistance movement, such as Iryna Kalynets, Mykhailo Osadchy, and Vyacheslav Chornovil, were also arrested. In the court case of Stefaniia Shabatura, she was reminded of her participation in verteps, a drawing of a pine branch on New Year's postcards, the initial "Ш" on tapestries, which also reminded investigators of a Ukrainian trident, signatures in statements in defense of those arrested, in particular V. Moroz, reading and distributing anti-Soviet works.

Stefaniia's trial took place in July 1972 and was held behind closed doors. As Stefaniia Shabatura recalls, it is possible that in order to avoid opposition actions during the trial, she was exposed to specific substances: 'They gave me not to speak... they thought that I would say something...I ate some soup or borsch, but I didn't have to eat. But somehow I still said something beyond my strength. I felt like I couldn't speak. I said that if the state thinks that I am guilty, then I am guilty. I believe that I am not guilty, there is nothing criminal in my case. But if this state thinks that people like me have harmed it in some way, well, then let it think that I am guilty.'

As Stefaniia Shabatura later wrote in 1973 in a letter to Prosecutor General of the USSR R. Rudenko: 'The verdicts of the courts (in the USSR) do not always convincingly prove the guilt of the convicts, but nevertheless doom young, talented people capable of creative work to a thoughtless loss of energy and time in places of loss of freedom.' Stefaniia was sentenced under Article 62, Part 1 of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR to 5 years of imprisonment in strict regime camps and 3 years of exile. Stefaniia Shabatura served this sentence in a women's camp in the village of Barashevo, Mordovia. There she was forced to sew mittens. But even in such difficult conditions, she continued her struggle: she participated in hunger strikes, protests, demanded the status of a political prisoner, amnesty for prisoners of conscience (the Day of the Political Prisoner, the Day of the Armenian Genocide, the Day of Human Rights, the Day against the Destruction of Intellectual Property, the day of arrests in 1972 and others, accompanied by hunger strikes and protests).

Drawing was an part of Stefaniia's life. Thanks to numerous protest statements and hunger strikes, the artist Stefaniia Shabatura won the right to create sketches of future tapestries and paint portraits of her 'sisters' in prison in her free time. In July 1974, Shabatura's curator, a representative of the Lviv KDB O. Shumeyko appeared in the Mordovian camp and brought paints, brushes, a sketchbook and paper to the artist. She was allowed to draw, although she was warned that she was forbidden to depict camp episodes in her drawings. In less than a year, the artist created more than 200 bookplates, paintings, sketches of future tapestry. But this also caused a lot of problems. At the end of 1975, she was sent to Lviv, having taken away all the work performed: 'In 1975, they saw that I, as they say, did not give up, so they decided – and this is the 'Year of the Woman' declared by the UN – to send me to my native Lviv prison for re-education. But they didn't say where they were taking me, they only said that 'with all the things'...the most important thing I took. I had a list of all the appeals to whom I wrote, copies, all my drawings. And they took it when I was taken from there, as if for inspection. 'When you come back, we will give it to you'... Then I demanded that they give it to me. And they said that they didn't have any, that when I returned to the prison, they would give it to me... When I returned to Mordovia, I immediately demanded that they return all my drawings to me, but they said that it had been confiscated. 'On what grounds?' 'Because you painted the camp and the prisoners in a veiled form.' ... I asked: "Where did you put all the drawings?' – 'Destroyed.' – 'How?' – 'By burning.' Thus, 150 of her drawings were burned. A similar situation was also with the burning of the works of other dissidents - embroidery by N. Svitlychna, poems by I. Kalynets and V. Stus. Stefaniia Shabatura also protested against the destruction of the works by refusing to work in the camp, for which she was again punished.

Stefaniia Shabatura was exiled in the village of Makushyno, Kurgan region, where she worked in an art workshop at the House of Culture: 'Why was I sent there? Because the department of culture wanted to open an art workshop there, and according to the law, there must be at least one artist with a higher education, so there was a demand for me, so I was sent there.' Stefaniia was mainly engaged in the creation of campaign materials, such as stands, slogans, etc.

Return and further social activities
Even though she was serving a serious sentence for her activities, Stefania Shabatura did not change her position and was not afraid to defend her views and continue the struggle even after the end of her exile. While still in exile, Stefaniia Shabatura, through contact with Nina Strokata-Karavanska, declared her consent to participate in the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, which was established in 1976 as an association of activists of the Ukrainian human rights movement. This step gave her more opportunities to stand up for her rights, but added more obstacles in her life. Upon her return on December 2, 1979, the police "took revenge" on her for this activity with the threat of conviction for violating the passport regime, and she also had problems with employment.

In the 1980s, Stefania Shabatura continued to participate in demonstrations, fighting for a national and political revival. She was an active member of the Lviv organizations of Memorial and even joined the revival of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, which was repressed. Together with Iryna Kalynets, she decided to revive the women's Christian organization Mary's Society, helping in the organization of prayers and molebens. During one of these prayers, which took place on January 22, 1989 with the participation of 15-20 thousand people, according to Stefaniia Shabatura, Iryna Kalynets was arrested for an 'unauthorized demonstration.' As Stefaniia notes: 'And when Iryna was on trial, we were all under that trial, we had slogans... Prison on Lonsky Street, there is a prosecutor's office, there is a court, and from there we went down the street to the university, with protests and with slogans 'Freedom for Iryna Kalynets!'...and we were met by the military... And we were attacked. They started pulling boys, men, and we, women, began to pounce on them... They got scared of us and left us, they didn't arrest anyone... That's how our demonstration ended.' After this case, other religious events were also held, such as memorial services for Taras Shevchenko, Volodymyr Ivasyuk. Also, during 1990-1995, Stefaniia Shabatura was a deputy of the first democratic convocation of the Lviv City Council. Active work of Stefaniia Shabatura, along with other dissenters, were noted after the restoration of Ukraine's independence. In 1999, Stefania Shabatura was awarded the State Order of Kniahynia Olha of the III degree, and in 2006 - as a member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group - the Order 'For Courage' of the I degree.

Stefaniia Shabatura died on December 14, 2014. But, as Yulia Ovsyanyk writes, having collected the memories of Stefaniia Shabatura's contemporaries, for many people the role of Stefaniia in their lives was fateful. Her apartment became a meeting place for young people and intellectuals of the 1960s and 1970s, who were able to hold on to the desire for freedom and the spirit of struggle for a better future. As Yuriy Voloshchak recalls: 'I and my whole generation are deeply indebted to people like Stefaniia Shabatura, and we remain unrepentant before the women and men who held the front 20-30 years ago and are now holding it.'