“As long as I live, I must remember.”
Volodymyr Kolot came to Bykivnia, the forest outside Kyiv where tens of thousands of victims of Stalinist terror were buried in mass graves.
His grandfather, Kyrylo Davydovych Kolot, was one of them — executed in 1937.
For years, the family only knew that he had disappeared. In May 2019, Volodymyr visited the memorial for the first time. After the official ceremony, he walked to the black granite slabs — and there it was:
“Kyrylo Davydovych Kolot. Executed 1937.”
Kyrylo had lived in the village of Khotske in the Pereyaslav district. He worked in the local kolkhoz (collective farm), managing the building where seeds were prepared for planting. One year, the harvest failed. Kyrylo was accused of sabotaging the grain — possibly even poisoning it.
Volodymyr read the copy of the NKVD case file: it included a single testimony, from the head of the kolkhoz. That was enough for a death sentence. All blame was placed on Kyrylo.
He was 49. He and his wife had six children — three sons and three daughters.
After his arrest, his wife was left alone with all the children — just before the war.
Volodymyr’s father, Kyrylo’s son, grew up with the label “son of an enemy of the people.”
When drafted into the army in 1939, he was sent not to the front, but with a shovel — to build an airfield. When the war broke out, the workers ran home. Later, he was conscripted again and sent to fight. He was wounded twice. His younger brother Hrysha was killed in the war.
Though their father was branded an enemy, the entire family fought for the USSR — “for Stalin,” as they used to say.
There was a resistance network in their village. Volodymyr’s aunt Varka was a courier for the partisans. Another relative, Ivan Kolot, served in the local police — as part of an undercover partisan mission. He died in battle when the village was liberated. Today, one of the streets in Khotske bears his name.
Volodymyr once worked as an electrician at the Kyiv archive on Solomianska Street. There, he asked the deputy director, Olena Viktorivna Polozova, to help trace his family roots. She found the records — and confirmed that both sides of his family came from Cossack ancestry. He still keeps the documents.
“My grandchildren no longer listen to these stories. They have their own lives.
But I come here — while I still can.
Because memory is what remains. And it must remain.”
This video is part of our documentary project GULAG. Witnesses, which explores how the unrepented crimes of the past continue to shape new violence — from Soviet GULAGs to filtration camps and the war in Ukraine.
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