The village of Mlynyska near Zhydachiv in Lviv oblast has never stood aloof from the national liberation struggle. Just like during the past century’s wars residents rendered assistance and joined the Sich Shooters and the UPA, now they donate money, food, and clothes for Ukrainian soldiers in the ATO zone, and some volunteer to the front. This is where Kateryna Bilyk, now 68, was born. Her photo with a machine gun went viral in social media, triggering Ukrainian’s enormously positive response. “Who can guarantee that occupants won’t come here as well?” asks Bilyk. “Should my son or grandson be wounded, God forbid, and his gun should lie next to him? Now it is more than just a piece of metal for me: check the magazine – full – a moment – bye-bye, enemy. The lowdown won’t go any further.”
Bilyk is not just “an old lady with a machine gun” as she is often referred to in the social media. She is a Ukrainian woman with a strong spirit, who keeps her dignity at all times, has a tough character and cherishes national principles. At the same time she is a charming person, tender mother, and caring homemaker who cooks delicious dishes, looks after the household, and brings up hundreds of children. A true lady.
STUDY AND WORK
Bilyk was born into a poor collective farmers’ family who worked hard to make ends meet. She lost her father when she was about to graduate the local secondary school. “I had always wanted to be a teacher, but my sick mother kept trying to talk me out of enrolling the institute. We didn’t even have money to pay for the ticket to the city, let alone something more. Since my mother was not able to work, I had to fulfill her quotas.” Then the girl said, “Mother, don’t you cry, I’m going to study and work.” And so was it: till noon the girl was at school, and around four in the afternoon she went to work in the fields.
“‘Where are you going to enroll, who will support you? I’m not going to borrow money, for how will be paying it back?’ my mother would say,” relates Bilyk reminiscing about those hard times. But nothing, even the lack of money, would stop the girl from pursuing her goal. She borrowed five rubles from a neighbor (she could not borrow more) and went to take entrance exams to the Ivan Franko Pedagogical Institute in Drohobych. Her persistence was rewarded with excellent grades and enrolment in the physics and math department.
“All my life I have had remorse concerning one situation: I never thanked the person who helped me find a place in the dorm for the time of the entrance exams (10 days),” says Bilyk sadly, looking out of the window. “I had stood in front of the dorm the whole day, and in the evening a girl came up to me and said in Russian, ‘Why have you been hanging here all day long? Come with me.’ She took me to her room where three other girls also lived. We had to share a bed, and when the warden came I had to hide under the blankets. I had no choice, I wanted to study.”
Since her sick mother needed to be looked after, Bilyk had later to opt for part-time study and went to work at school, to shape the new generation. She has been doing that for almost half a century now, so her dream came true.
“I CAN STAND UP FOR MY COMRADE IN ARMS”
Bilyk has noticed a certain negative tendency in the times of Independence, which she is trying to correct with the help of school. “We must teach our children from a very young age to love God, our land, our native tongue, and our songs,” says she. “I find it disturbing that we know the names of all Soviet Komsomol heroes, pilots, generals, colonels and so on, but we have no idea about our own countrymen, the Ukrainians who sacrificed their lives for us.”
There were particularly many Ukrainian heroes who gave up their lives during the Second World War. It was then, says Bilyk, that the flower of the nation was destroyed. But the roots survived. “Today we see that these roots give rise to wonderful new life, bold and supple, which strives for enlightment. They could not put up with the system, and that is why they went out onto Maidan. The flower of the nation, which again had to be destroyed.”
Today the hardest thing for Bilyk is to see a grandfather who receives his grandson’s dead body, and has to bury him. Under our circumstances she believes no one has a moral right to remain indifferent. That is why she took the boot camp in Zhydachiv, where the viral photo was made, as real war. She ignored her soaking boots and soiled coat. “Now, if an intruder broke into my house, wouldn’t I overcome him? I would, if not with my hands, then with my teeth,” she says sawing the air.
THIS PHOTO MADE KATERYNA BILYK FAMOUS / Photo by Taras PENIAK
Bilyk’s first reaction when she held a firearm was a feeling of relief. “I have long waited to learn to use this. I knew that if those lowdowns should ever intrude, I was able to fight back. I felt that I can stand up for the kindergarten and school, which we rebuilt after the war, and for my country. And most of all, I can stand up for my comrade-in-arms.”
She was trying to do everything in the best way possible, not to let her team down and earn as many points as possible. The team consisted of men alone. There was quite a funny incident. “If you are not ‘working,’ the weapon should look upwards, and I held it downwards,’” smiles the woman as she remembers the trainings. “The boys saw this and asked me, ‘Granma, why aren’t you holding the gun upwards?’ And I tell them, ‘Because up there is the Heaven’s Hundred, first of all, second, there is my man watching me, and God’s birds are flying. Do you want me to shoot them accidentally?’ The boys had to laugh.”
Bilyk believes it important that state be interested in teaching military discipline to its citizens instead of passively waiting for an assault. “That is why the losses are so big. But training will allow us to give good upbringing to the generation capable of defending Ukraine. Not only will they learn how to handle weapons, but they will also, like my grandson, learn history and find out about our heroes. State must turn its face to education,” says Bilyk commenting on the cheerless situation in education.
THEY WILL NEVER MAKE US KNEEL
Bilyk believes that it is time to raise the question of conscripting women to serve and defend their motherland. “Women are diverse: they are mothers, homemakers, and workers. Look at Maidan, where women were doing the same things as men, and sometimes even better.” She thinks that woman has the role of defender: “Even your maternal instinct pushes you to stand shoulder to shoulder with your child. Wherever they come from, east, center, or west, is irrelevant: they are all our children.” A perfect woman, according to her, cooks, looks after herself and the household, teaches children, but in the time of need takes arms and stands up to defend her motherland. “The occupant will come, kill your family and friends, destroy everything, and will you be working for that enemy?” muses Bilyk. “Never in this life! Even if I have an axe or rake, and he a machine gun, I will destroy him all the same. At least, I’ll try to. They will never make me kneel. How can I enjoy life if my country is destroyed and my family dead? Maybe someone will find it okay, but not Ukrainians.”
“Our problem is that there are too many indifferent people. Look at France, where terrorists killed 12, and everyone marched in protest. And here, terrorists keep killing Ukrainians, and what are we doing? ‘I am warm and snug, watching TV from my sofa, this is paradise,’ that’s what some think. Then the terrorist reasons, aha, everyone is sitting in his hole, so they are afraid of me, and I can go forth,” says Bilyk.
She sees indifference also in the incumbent government which has hardly drawn any conclusions. She says that today we see the same old faces in the law-enforcement agencies, courts of law, education, etc. They are all run by the same people of dubious moral standards. “Doesn’t the government see who has been raised in the east, and why?” This is a rhetoric question. “Had the teachers done their work properly for 23 years, some would not be asking Putin for arms to shoot their brothers. We would have raised patriots of Ukraine.”
Den kept its promise and presented Bilyk with the photo album People of the Maidan. A Chronicle for her standpoint and resoluteness, with the editor-in-chief’s autograph. “Without the past we will have no future. I’ll show this book to my kids at school, so they know,” reacted Bilyk.
P.S. The interview lasted almost five hours. In this time Bilyk and her daughter treated the author and the photo reporter to a delicious dinner of clear soup, cabbage rolls, jellied meat, doughnuts, pastries and so on. Here is our big thank you and the best wishes to our hostess!
