Tykhy, Oleksa or Oleksii [Тихий, Олекса or Олексій; Tyxyj, Oleksij], b 27 January 1927 in Izhivka, Kramatorsk raion (now Kostiantynivka raion), Artemivsk (Bakhmut) district (now in Donetsk oblast), d 6 May 1984 in the prison hospital of Perm strict-regime camp No. 35, Chusovoі raion, Perm oblast, RSFSR. Teacher and pedagogue, amateur linguist, dissident, and political prisoner. Tykhy was a consistent and uncompromising critic of Russification in Ukraine and in the Donbas in particular. Other dissidents from Ukraine had roots in Donbas, but over time they typically left this region for Kyiv, whereas Tykhy had a strong, consistent, and emotional attachment to his native Donbas and never abandoned it. He was hence often referred to as the ‘Voice of Donbas.’
Born into a peasant family, Tykhy began his studies at the Zaporizhia Agricultural Institute and the Dnipropetrovsk Institute of Transport Engineers, before graduating from the Philosophy Department of Moscow University. In 1948 Tykhy was sentenced by a military tribunal in the Stalino oblast (now Donetsk oblast) to five years of imprisonment for criticizing the conduct of elections to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. This sentence was suspended, however, and Tykhy was released after he was warned about the possible consequences of his behavior. A talented pedagogue, from 1950 onwards Tykhy was an instructor at several different schools in Zaporizhia oblast and Stalino (now Donetsk) oblast, teaching a wide range of subjects including history, physics, mathematics, biology, and the Ukrainian language.
Tykhy was arrested on 15 February 1957 for sending a letter to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) protesting the Soviet intervention in Hungary in 1956, for criticism of the CPSU, and for openly criticizing the Soviet school system at a teachers’ conference. He was charged with anti-Soviet propaganda, and on 18 April 1957 he was sentenced by the Stalino oblast court, in a closed trial, to 7 years of imprisonment in corrective labor camps and 5 years of deprivation of rights in accordance with Article 54-10 of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR. He was detained in Dubravny special regime camp No. 3, VTK-10 (also known as Dubravlag), Yavas, Zubovo-Poliansky raion, Mordovian Autonomous Republic, RSFSR, and he also spent a year in Moscow’s Vladimir prison.
Tykhy was released from imprisonment in 1964 and returned to Ukraine, but was not allowed to resume teaching and worked as a laborer. During this period he wrote a number of articles, circulated as samvydav, on the Russification of Donbas and the deplorable state of the Ukrainian language and culture in this region, as well as articles on the problems faced by the Ukrainian village in which he recommended granting more freedoms to the peasantry. Tykhy also compiled a collection of quotes from prominent individuals about the importance of one’s native language as well as a dictionary of common grammatical mistakes in the Ukrainian dialects of Donbas.
At the invitation of his friend the writer Mykola Rudenko, in November 1976 Tykhy became a founding member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group. In December of that year his home was searched, and on 4 February 1977 Tykhy was arrested and charged with ‘anti-Soviet propaganda’ (Article 62-2 of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR). He was also charged with the ‘illegal possession of weapons’ (Article 222 of the CC of the Ukrainian SSR) since, many years earlier, someone had hidden an old German rifle in the attic of a barn near Tykhy’s home.
Mykola Rudenko was arrested one day later, on 5 February 1977, and their joint trial took place from 23 June to 1 July 1977 during a visiting session of the Donetsk oblast court in the town of Druzhkivka, Kramatorsk raion, Donetsk oblast. Discussions about this trial were held at the highest level, including then KGB Chairman Yurii Andropov, and the decision to hold the trial in the obscure location of Druzhkivka, rather than Kyiv, was made to minimize the potential for undesirable (for the authorities) publicity for the trial. Tykhy, as a ‘particularly dangerous repeat offender,’ was sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment in special regime camps and 5 years of exile.
Tykhy initially served his sentence in Mordovian special regime camp ZhK-385/1, village of Sosnovka in Mordovia, and was then transferred to Perm special regime Camp VS-389/36-1, village of Kuchino, Chusovoi raion, Perm oblast, RSFSR. Tykhy was the co-author or signatory of a number of samvydav documents prepared in these camps, and he was regularly punished for his ‘uncooperative behavior’ and active participation in the protests of the camps’ political prisoners. From 1983 onwards Tykhy was severely ill with a variety of ailments for which he received inadequate care, and lost a great deal of weight.
On 6 May 1984 Tykhy died in a prison hospital in Perm, RSFSR. Tykhy’s son Volodymyr was not allowed to return his father’s body to Ukraine, and the body was buried in the local camp cemetery in the village of Borisovo, Chusovoi raion, Perm oblast. On 19 November 1989, however, the remains of Tykhy and two other Ukrainian political prisoners who died in the same camp—Vasyl Stus and Yurii Lytvyn—were exhumed and reburied with great honors at the Baikove Cemetery in Kyiv. Some 30,000 residents of Kyiv accompanied the coffins in an unprecedented, at the time, ceremonial procession. Following the 1991 Ukraine’s Declaration of Independence a number of events honoring Tykhy were held in Ukraine, and in the Donbas in particular.
Tykhy was the author of Na perekhresti dumok (At a Crossroads of Opinions, 2013), a collection of his essays devoted to pedagogy, Dumky pro ridnyi Donets'kyi krai (Thoughts about My Native Donetsk Region, vol 1, 2012), Ne mozhu bil'she movchaty (I Can No Longer Be Silent, 2009), and Rozdumy: Zvirnyk stattei, dokumentiv, rozdumiv (Reflections: A Collection of Articles, Documents, and Reflections, 1982). The two latter publications include some biographical and other materials about Tykhy; a more complete collection of materials devoted to him can be found in vol 2 of Dumky pro ridnyi Donets'kyi krai (Thoughts about My Native Donetsk Region, 2012). Another collection of articles about Tykhy and his legacy was published under the title Oleksa Tykhyi: Vchora i siohodni; materialy Vseukraïns'koï naukovo-praktychnoï konferentsiï (Oleksa Tykhy: Yesterday and Today; Materials Presented at an All-Ukrainian Scholarly and Practical Conference, 2016). Tykhy was also the compiler of the following two publications: Mova – narod: Vyslovliuvannia pro movu ta її znachennia v zhytti narodu (Language is the Essence of a Nation: Quotations about Language and its Significance in the Life of a Nation, 2007), and Slovnyk movnykh pokruchiv (Dictionary of Linguistic Distortions, 2009).
Ivan Jaworsky
[This article was updated in 2026.]