By the roads of Mykolaivshchyna By the roads of Mykolaivshchyna | Page 33

that time, it was really difficult to get it).
Such bunkers were built only in the forests
of inaccessible mountains. There were two
big rooms, connected with a long corridor,
in the walls of which a food shop and a
toilet were hollowed out. Each room had
a radio, a double storey bed, a long table,
at which at least five people could work. In
the corner, there was a table with a typing
machine. One of the rooms had a kitchen
with a regular size stove.”
In the years 1945–1946, kryivkas
were significantly enhanced. They served
as hospitals, head-quarters, barracks,
shelters, communications points. Having
analyzed different types of kryivkas,
the Soviet secret services came up with
thousands of schemes, which presented
the most typical samples of clandestine
architecture.
The simplest structures were used
as communication points as well as the
places where archives were kept. As
a rule, they were located in the forests,
and, in fact, were not equipped for
accommodation. Among comparatively
simple from the engineering perspective
structures, were kryivkas, located on the
garrets of habitable houses as well as those
of household structures or churches.
Mostly, they could accommodate
a few persons, for whom they served as
temporary shelter.
The most complex structures were
kryivkas, located underground with a
capacity of accommodation a rather
bog number of people, who had to stay
there without going outside for fourfive months (hospitals, underground
printing shops, head-quarters etc.). They

had several exits, a ventilation system,
heating, stand-alone wells, stocks of
foods and medication as well as that of
oil or kerosene, sufficient amount of
weapons, technical means for printing
propagandistic materials, living rooms,
two or three storey beds, radios with selfcontained power supply etc.
At the territory of densely populated
forest-steppe Gorodenkivsky Rayon of
Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, in the vicinity
of the village of Kopachyntsy, there was
a kryivka, where seven people, including
three women, stayed. It functioned till
the spring of 1956. The above-mentioned
dugout looked like that.
It was located in the forest above the
Dniester. One could get there unnoticed
through the raven. A secret entrance to
the kryivka had a square form and was
laid with wood (in fact, it was a typical
design for all dugouts in Prykarpattya).
A ladder lead down. This entrance was
camouflaged with a square box, in which
a hazel shrub was growing. An interesting
solution was found to the problem
of a kitchen smoke. A pipe with a big
diameter was installed above the stove,
with small diameter pipes being fixed
inside, due to that smoke went outside,
and then dispersed. Also, in order to
camouflage the site, shrubs were planted
above the kryivka. The wastes from
the kitchen and the toilet through the
canalization pipe went to the small river
nearby. In the Drohobych museum one
can see the diorama “The Insurrectional
Kryivka”, which was made according
to the description, given by Stepan
Stebelsky, one of the UPA’s commanders.

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