1) BORYS: Good
day. Certainly. My name is Borys Lehkar. I come from the city of Drohobych in
the Lviv region of Ukraine. After graduating from school, I entered the Lviv
Technical College of Rural Construction in the Department of Civil and Industrial Construction.
My education, which was the second half of the 1980s, came at a time when the
movement for democratic change and protests against the then Soviet system was
gaining momentum in Lviv. I tried not to miss any demonstrations. We hung flags,
glued posters, and were on duty at the Klumba (flowerbed) now a monument to
Shevchenko in Lviv. It was then that I was lucky enough to meet Chornovil, the
Horeniv brothers, Helia, the Kalintsy couple, and other dissidents of the time.
Lviv, where I had to live a significant part of my life, remains my favorite
city to this day. After graduating from college, I started working as a
construction foreman, and a few months later I was drafted into the army.
By the way, the years of my service (1990-1992)
coincided with the collapse of the Soviet Empire and Ukraine's independence. It
so happened that I took two oaths. The first, to the USSR, and the second to
Independent Ukraine. I am especially proud that I had the honor to serve at the
time when the Ukrainian Army was born. After demobilization I went to work in
business, and then I worked for a construction company as a foreman.
