They waited and searched for Volodya for 24 days. Following the
mysterious disappearance of the composer, the search for him was not
disclosed to the public, the explanation being given that such an
announcement would create a disturbance. However, the mass media are
daily used not only to help locate people, but sometimes even their
pets. [...]
It was not until May 18, 1979 that Volodymyr Ivasiuk's body was
accidentally discovered in the heavy forest near the village
Briukhovych near Lviv.
One couldn't bring oneself to believe it. The parents were allowed to
identify their son only on the following day, even though it was only a
five-minute walk from the apartment where Volodya lived to the morgue;
and the identification was conducted with gross violations of law. The
father was allowed to view the body only after he repeatedly telephoned
the Oblast Procurator threatening to send a telegram of complaint to
the General Procurator of Ukraine. The local authorities eventually
gave in with the exasperated reply: "Take your son home, and look at
him there at least a hundred years!" His death certificate reported
that he died 24-27 April 1979 at the age of 30. The cause of death:
mechanical asphyxiation. Hanging from a noose - suicide. The death
certificate was issued on May 21, 1979, and even back then, a mere
three days after the body had been discovered, without any evidence or
investigation it had been written in black and white that Volodymyr
Ivasiuk had committed suicide.
There immediately arises the question that if the composer had indeed
hung himself on 24-27 April, and was not found until 18 May, whether he
could have remained hanging from a tree for 21-24 days. Volodya
weighed 80 kg (176 lb), such that hanging for so long, the noose would
have cut into his neck to the depth of the bones. Also during May the
weather was warm and dry. The body would have decomposed during this
interval, and from it would have emanated an intolerable odour. All
these substantiating signs were missing, and missing too were the
autopsy photographs.
On May 22 of every year let us remember that Volodymyr Ivasiuk became
another innocent victim of a totalitarian regime.
M. Masly, Volodymyr Ivasiuk: Light and Shadow of a Legend, Halas
(Clamor), 3Jun97, pp. 11-12, as translated by Lubomyr Prytulak.
Halas is a Ukrainian-language magazine which reviews popular music and
is published in Kyiv. The section commemorating Volodymyr Ivasiuk in
the 3Jun97 issue was sponsored and supported by Coca Cola Ukraine.
And truly, the administration hated him while he was alive, and feared
him once he was dead. Volodya's mother, Sophia Ivanivna Ivasiuk met
with the first secretary of the Lviv administration, V. Dobryk to plead
with him to permit a monument to be placed on the grave of her son.
"The war took from me my father and three brothers. My sister's
husband did not return from the front," wept the woman, "and now my son
too has been lost. Do I not after all that have the right to
consecrate his memory?" In reply, Dobryk (what evil irony that such a
soulless individual should have a name denoting goodness) pressed a