Ustym Yakymovych Karmаliuk (Ukrainian: Устим Якимович Кармалюк; 1787-1835) was a Ukrainian peasant outlaw who became a folk hero. He is often referred to as the “Ukrainian Robin Hood”.
Ustym Karmlyuk by Vasily Tropinin
Karmalyuk was born a serf in the settlement of Holovchintsy in Lityn District of Podilia Province. There is little known about his early life except that he possessed some literacy and was fluent in Russian, Polish and Yiddish, besides his native Ukrainian language, as attested by the police documents of the time. He was taken by his owner at the age of 17 to work as a servant in the manor, but was notoriously insolent. As a result his owner decided to forcibly send him into Russian military service, in order to remove him from others whom he was inciting to rebellion.
He was forcibly inducted into the Russian Imperial Army, and served in the Napoleonic Wars of 1812 in an ulan regiment, but eventually escaped and organized rebel bands who attacked merchants and landowners, while distributing the booty between the poor. He was captured in 1814, and was sentenced in Kamenets Podilsky to run a gauntlet of 500 “spitzruten” blows, a typical military punishment. He was then sent to serve out the 25 year term of service in a military unit in the Crimea, but he fled again, returning to northern Podilia. Once again he organized rebel bands in Proskuriv, Letychiv, and Lityn regions, attracting a wide support base among the Ukrainians, Jews and even Poles. The rebellions intensified over the years, and then had spread not only to other parts of Podilia, but also to the neighboring provinces of Volynia, Kyivshchyna, and Bessarabia. By the early 1830s Karmaliuk’s guerilla army was approximately 20,000 strong, with over 1,000 raids on the estates of the Polish and Russian landowners over a 20 year period. The response of the Tsar was to station military units in those regions hardest hit by Karmaliuk. Karmaliuk was caught four times and sentenced to hard labor in Siberia, but escaped each time, returning to Lityn and Letychiv Districts. A tower in the Kamenets Podilsky castle bears the name of its famous prisoner.
Unlike the Haidamaks of the previous century Karmaluk bore no ill will towards the poor of all ethnic groups and minorities in Ukraine, Jews in particular, and as a result they supported him en masse. Among his close compatriot were the Poles Jan and Alex Glembovski, Feliks Jankovski amd Alexander Wytwycki and also a Jews Avrum El Izkovych, Abrashko Adydovych Sokolnytsky anbd Aron Viniar. Many Jews were procecuted for participating in Karmalyuk’s raids and aiding and abeting them. In general Karmalyuk inspired unprecedented loyalty in all his supporters.
Karmalyuk is a subject of many art- and folk songs. He is sometimes also referred to as “the Houdini of Podilia”, as no prison was able to hold him for very long. Affectionately, he is known as the last Haidamak of Ukraine.
Karmalyuk’s Death
In 1835, a Tsarist posse closed in on the Karmaliuk gang at the house of a Ukrainian peasant by the name of E. Protskova, in the hamlet of Shlyakoviye-Karichyntsi near Derazhnia. There, they successfully ambushed the gang. Karmaliuk was shot and killed. His body was brought to Letychiv where he was buried. Now a famous statue honors him there. The man who killed Karmaliuk, F. Rutkovsky, was given a medal by the Tsar himself and was granted a pension for life. According to the legend, Karmalyuk was impervious to bullets, and was killed by the the only thing that could get him, a lead garment button.
Karmalyuk in Art and Literature
Karmaliuk was a subject of three portraits by Russian painter Vasily Tropinin. There are a few different versions of acquaintance of Karmaliuk with the artist. According to one version Tropinin was introduced to Karmaliuk by his friend physician Prokopy Danylevsky, who had given medical help to Karmaliuk people. According to the other version Tropinin painted Karmaliuk in the prison. Three portraits of Karmaliuk by Tropinin survived. One is kept in the Nizhny Tagil art museum, another one is kept in the Tretyakov Gallery and the third is in the Russian Museum. [1]
Karmalyuk was the subject of a number of poems by the songwriter Tomasz Padura, some of which became folk songs.
