Vasyl Makukh (1927-1968) was a member of the Ukrainian resistance movement in the USSR, a soldier of the UPA. On November 5, 1968, on the eve of a key holiday for the ideology of the Soviet Union (November 7 - the day of the October Revolution), he committed a protest act of self-immolation in Kyiv on Khreshchatyk, near house 27 (near the Bessarabian market). Like a burning torch, he rushed to the present-day Maidan Nezalezhnosti, calling on the people to fight for freedom and against russification. His last words were: “Down with the occupiers!”, ‘Long live free Ukraine!’. He became known as a “living torch”. Vasyl Makukh died of burns on November 6. Before the sacrificial act, he wrote a letter to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, in which he testified to his conscious sacrifice as an act of protest against the colonial situation of Ukraine in the Soviet Union and as a sign of solidarity with the struggle of the people of Czechoslovakia for freedom and against the deployment of Warsaw Pact troops to Prague. Subsequently, the feat of Vasyl Makukh was repeated by 58 patriots from different European countries. All of them are immortalized by their grateful descendants and the governments of their countries.
In 2017, on the 90th anniversary of the patriot's birth, his memory was immortalized in Kyiv. On January 26, a bronze memorial plaque to Vasyl Makukh was unveiled on the facade of the building next to which he committed the act of self-immolation.
It should be noted that in 2001, a plaque was installed on the facade of the same building in memory of the dead journalists.
Author: sculptor Vasyl Biley.
Address: 27A Khreshchatyk Street
