Ustym was quite an intelligent person; he had good command of Russian, Polish and Moldavian languages. The Polish gentry were bewildered by this fact: they could hardly understand how an ordinary serf could be much cleverer and smarter than anyone of them. The gossips of Ustym noble origin spread all over the country, but they only increased the hero’s popularity among the mass and helped petty Polish gentry to join his detachments.

As a rule, charismatic people are blind when it is for betrayers. In 1827 in Ustym detachment, one person blocked all riffles having greased them with fat right before the important battle with tsar army. All this gave a chance to the government to defeat the riot and as a consequence 750 people had been prosecuted. A thousand of citizens from nearby villages spoke in front of court as bystanders. However, while Karmalyuk was alive, the peasants’ riots started and started again at a steady gait.

It was love that made Karmalyuk a hero and the woman who brought him death. An ambush was laid for him in the house of Olyana Protsykova in Korchyntsi-Shlyakhovyk, not far from Derazhnya. At dawn of October 10, 1835 Ustym came round and was shot by the Polish nobleman – Fedir Rudkowski. For his action, the killer received a tsar fingering and life tax exemption. And for a long time the body of Karmalyuk was transported from village to village in order to frighten the peasants. Finally Karmalyuk was buried in Letychiv.

In Holovchyntsi the case of Karmalyuk had drawn so wide reaction that all his numerous relatives had to change their family surname in order to avoid repressions. The vast majority took the surname Karman: that was the given name of Ustym’s brothers-in-arms. After 1955, when the village had been renamed in Karmalyukove, there started the reverse process of surnames change. Almost everyone was willing to change his surname from Karman to Karmalyuk. The only direct Ustym descendant, who now lives in Karmalyuk’s native village, decided to keep prior variant of the surname. Son of Karmalyuk’s grate grandson was born in 1969. Petro Karman is very proud of his ancestor; there is no novel of Karmalyuk that hadn’t been read by him. Petro thinks that he took after Ustym very much but a moustache. Until now, there are only verbal portraits of Karmalyuk’s appearance; the only authentic portrait of Karmalyuk was made by A. Tropinin. One of its several copies is kept in Hermitage.

As per article of Yu. Burgena, Express

Translation by Nadia Dmitrieva