Documentary about Belarusian anti-Soviet resistance fighter shot in Homyel

A documentary about Belarusian anti-Soviet resistance fighter Tsimokh Vostrykaw who died last November has been released in Homyel.

The documentary has been shot on the initiative of the man’s son, Ilya, with a view to refuting televised allegations that Mr. Vostrykaw was an agent for the Soviet KGB in the 1980s.

A report titled “The Agent of Two Intelligence Services,” which was broadcast on a government-controlled television channel one day before Tsimokh Vostrykaw’s death, insisted that he helped the Soviet KGB unmask a US embassy officer in Moscow as a spy.

Two weeks before his death, Mr. Vostrykaw was visited by Belarusian KGB officers and a film crew, who recorded him on video and tried to question him. According to the woman who looked after him, he failed to answer any question, as he was very ill and could hardly talk.

According to Ilya, the new 60-minute film is based on his father’s recollections that he recorded in 1995. It features some 30 photographs dating back to different periods of his life, including a 23-year stay at a Soviet prison camp.

The documentary has been given to opposition activists in Minsk for copying and distribution.

Tsimokh Vostrykaw was born in the village of Barshchowka in the Tserakhawka district (now the Dobrush district in the Homyel region). According to his passport, his birth date was November 10, 1923, but he insisted that he was born in June 1923.

As an authorized representative of the government in exile of the 1918 Belarusian National Republic, he and three other Belarusians were airdropped from an American military plane over the territory of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic on August 28, 1952. He was captured by the NKVD after a week. He asserted that the Soviets had been informed of the airdrop before, that the CIA might have intentionally leaked information to distract attention from the airdrop of a Ukrainian, and that one of the four was a traitor.

Vostrykaw was held in the pre-trial jail on Valadarskaha Street in Minsk until 1955, when he was sentenced to 23 years in prison on a charge of armed treason. He served the entire term and was released in 1975.

Vostrykaw worked as a village teacher near Brest until the German occupation of Belarus. In 1941, he was called up to the Red Army. He soon fell into German captivity and escaped to Homyel. In 1942, he voluntarily went to Germany and worked there. Then he returned to Homyel, but when the Soviets were about to liberate Belarus from the Nazis, he left again for Germany where he fell into the American occupation zone. Between 1946 and 1948, he attended a Belarusian high school where he met future leaders of the Belarusian emigration, such as Yanka Zaprudnik, Vitawt Kipel and others. According to Vostrykaw, it was in that period that he evolved from an ordinary opponent of the Soviet regime into a conscious Belarusian.

In 1951, he decided to return to Belarus to organize anti-Soviet resistance there. He received special training at a US base near Munich.

In the early 1990s, Vostrykaw was actively involved in public activities. He gave historical lectures at educational institutions and spoke at public meetings.

Vostrykaw wrote his recollections in the 1990s, but he did not want them to be published during his lifetime. He said in an interview that he had hidden everything.