While a student in Kyiv in 1948, she was arrested on charges of Ukrainian nationalism, and was a political prisoner in a gulag in Eastern Siberia for six years.

Virchenko also became involved in the movement for Ukrainian independence from the Soviet Union, writing and distributing leaflets, which led to her imprisonment in a gulag for political prisoners from December 1948 to January 1954.

[2] When she was released, she was not allowed to return to university, and taught mathematics in village high schools.

Virchenko was denounced to the Soviet secret police, NKVD, and was arrested in June 1948 with a group of teachers and other students.

[1] Virchenko created poetry, which was shared orally among the prisoners, and she also taught mathematics, drawing in sand or snow with a stick.

[2] She and her husband, who was also a former Gulag detainee, were subjected to KGB surveillance in a later wave of repression of Ukrainian academics.

Virchenko was the Chair of the scientific and methodological council of the All-Ukrainian Association for Political Prisoners and Victims of Repression.

[4] In 2016, Virchenko was one of over 80 former Soviet political prisoners who co-signed an appeal to the Dutch public to vote in favour of the European Union-Ukraine Association Agreement.

[1] Virchenko was also the scientific advisor for a documentary Oleksandr Riabokrys, called "Голгофа академіка Кравчука" (Academic Kravchuk Calvary).