At the beginning of February 1920, during the
First Winter Campaign, when the Zaporizhzhia Division was in the vicinity of Kholodny Yar, Horodianyn-Lisovskyi became ill and remained in treatment at the Motronin Monastery, where the headquarters of the Kholodny Yar Haidamak regiment was stationed. He had to catch up with his military unit after treatment, but the
Kholodny Yar Republic partisans, who lacked soldiers with military experience, convinced him to stay with them. He chose the nickname Zaliznyak, and accepted the assignment of 1st lieutenant of the hundred of the Haidamak regiment, becoming one of the closest assistants of the
Ataman Petrenko and Chief Ataman
Vasyl Chuchupak. After becoming a liaison to the
Ukrainian People's Republic government, in the spring of 1922 he returned to Bolshevik-occupied Ukraine. He carried out underground work - under the pseudonym "Gorsky" — first in Kyiv and then in Podolia. Before long, Gorlis-Gorsky was arrested. He spent eight months in a GPU prison in
Vinnytsia. The Chekists failed to prove his guilt, and on 16 December 1923, he was released from custody. On the instructions of the Ukrainian government, Gorlis-Gorsky agreed to work in the
NKVD intelligence apparatus. According to a later statement by one of the most experienced leaders of the Podolsk GPU, Halytsky, Gorsky failed many Chekist operations. In 1924 he was arrested again. The Bolsheviks responded to his anti-communist underground work in Podolia by giving him a 15-year prison sentence. He was kept in a prison hospital for several years. During this time he was in prisons in Vinnytsia, Kyiv, Poltava and Kherson. Later he was transferred to the Kherson Psychiatric Hospital, from which he escaped in April 1931. In April 1932, after a long journey through the Soviet Union, he crossed the border and found himself in Rivne. Later he lived in
Lviv, Bagatkivtsi and Plow. Living in Bagatkivtsi with the local priest Fr. Vasyl Izhak, he visited the local reading room, where he spoke about the life of Ukrainians in Zbruch. In October 1932, the publishing house Chronicle of the Red Viburnum published an article by Gorlis-Gorsky titled
Kholodny Yar, and the next day began publishing a magazine version of his most important work —
Kholodny Yar. The first book published in 1933 was
Ave dictator! In 1934 the novel
Ataman Cloud was published. In 1935 the book
In the Enemy Camp and a reprint of the first part of
Kholodny Yar (reprinted in 1961 in New York) were published in Lviv. Later, the second part of the novel
In the Enemy Camp was written, which was called
Between the Living Corpses (about being in a psychiatric hospital). The manuscript was lost during the fighting in Transcarpathia. Yuri Gorlis-Gorsky was saddened by the loss, as he considered this novel his best work. In the autumn of 1935 he published memoirs,
The Red Thistle (The Red Army in the Light of Reality): Based on Materials Announced in the Soviets and Abroad, and from His Own Observations during Life in the USSR, also about the events of 1931-1932. In 1936, the publishing house Victoria published the play
We swear by the graves of heroes! (Ataman Cloud). The second part of
Kholodny Yar was published in 1937 by the publishing house Cheap Book. The book had a huge success in Galicia, especially among young people. During the preparation of the publication
Kholodny Yar in
Galicia, the text was adapted to the needs of the local reader. Thus, numerous words and expressions appeared in the novel, peculiar only to Galicia. Modern reprints are mainly based on the London edition of Nikita Myronenko in 1967. == Carpatho-Ukraine ==