[1] The act was quickly covered up by the Soviet authorities and remained unknown to general populace for decades.

[1] Hirnyk was born on 28 March 1912 in the town of Bohorodchany, then Austria-ruled Galicia, currently in Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast (province) in western Ukraine.

In his house he began to produce handwritten leaflets (accompanied with quotes of Taras Shevchenko)[1] — overall 1000 copies in 8 different versions.

The night of 21 January 1978, the eve of the sixtieth anniversary of Ukraine's declaration of independence by the Tsentralna Rada government, Hirnyk doused himself with four liters of gasoline and burned himself to death on Chernecha Hill, in Kaniv not far from Taras Shevchenko’s tomb.

[1] He had written close to a thousand leaflets containing quotes of Taras Shevchenko, protests against the russification of Ukraine, and calls for Ukrainian independence, and left them scattered on the hill.

[1] Unlike the Czech student Jan Palach, who also burned himself to death in protest of Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia, Hirnyk's sacrifice was not well known.