Mr. Ivan, the Kharkiv Human Rights Group compiles an archive in order to use it and make the Dictionary of Ukrainian Dissidents. You are also on our list, and you know why. So, please, tell us about yourself in a manner you consider the best.
I.I.Rusyn: It is a very useful and important work, because time is running fast, there will be a time when people will forget, if the information is not recorded now.
What can I tell about myself? I was not active fighter, as they say, but I always tried to contribute to success of our cause. How did I become a dissident? It happened a long time ago in the sixties. As a normal Soviet engineer I was placed on job in Kyiv at the end of 1959 having graduated from the Lviv Polytechnic Institute. My specialty is not humanitarian but purely technical: geodesy.
I was an ordinary country boy. I was born into an ordinary rural family in 1937. My parents: mother Xeniya, born in 1902, and father Ivan, born in 1886. They reached a great age: father lived to 75 years, and my mother to 92.
V.V.Ovsiyenko: Your father’s name was Rusyn, and what was your mother’s name?
I.I.Rusyn: Rusyn Too, but from the family of Babaks, active UIA insurgents. Her brother Oleksa in the Village of Tuchapy, Horodok Region, was even a detachment commander, who fought against the NKVD units, or as we called them at the time− the red broom. He was killed in action as a hero. The village was enveloped and an unequal battle ensued, in which many red scum were killed as well. This to some extent may have influenced the formation of my mind though I was schooled like everyone else then. All, especially at the institute, were Komsomol members because the non-members were admitted to the institute at the time this was the reason why many youngsters could not get higher education.
It is now a thing of the past. Parents knew this because many of our villagers were deported to Siberia. Our family, that is Rusyn father, was not repressed: somehow he checked himself as a farmer. And then they moved ahead with collective farming. He joined the collective farm and so his family was not deported like some other families.
As they say, “everyone has his own destiny and his way to tread”. Three persons from our family received higher education: my father, still under Austria, finished the classical school therefore he knew the value of education and tried to be overcautious to let his children get education.
So, as I mentioned, in 1959, I graduated from the institute and arrived in Kyiv. It was the so called period of Khrushchev Thaw already, but during the thaw the politicized people got hold of exactly what was happening, while persons with a background in engineering remained not well informed.
In the sixties, already in 1961, in Kyiv, not only in Kyiv, but also throughout the Ukraine, the Shevchenko’s woks and traditions were in the limelight. A lot of young people, and I as well, found their way to understanding national culture and distinct national consciousness was formed. The literary evenings were organized. Especially where Ivan Dziuba took the floor: he was the idol of young people and the house was always full.
At that time we began to celebrate the 22nd of May. The functionaries took the initiative and saw a chance to get their hands on a soft touch. But the official part ended in the daytime. They brought their loudspeakers with them, tables, and did concerts. But in 1963-64, after the official part there appeared Vasyl Stus, Ivan Drach, Mykola Vinhranovskiy, and Lina Kostenko. Obviously, Ivan Svitlychnyi was behind these happenings. He was not a famous public champion, nevertheless he handled everything. I remember exactly what he said: “Well, it’s high time to celebrate this date in earnest.” For example, Vasyl Stus speaks to the audience. Towards evening they start readings from not officially endorsed, although not banned works of Taras Shevchenko: “The Dug-up Grave” or “To the Dead and the Living…” Especially good at reciting was Petro Boyko, for which he had some trouble. He worked as a newscaster. There was also a very good reciter Kyseliov (I do not remember his name), but his forte was interpretation of Shevchenko’s poems.
We, the young people, attended all literary evenings where they gathered. It was our life. Officially, nobody banned it, and it was considered normal for the time being.
V.V.Ovsiyenko: Do you mean the Creative Youth Club?
I.I.Rusyn: Right, among others it was the Creative Youth Club. But I was not a member of the Creative Youth Club. Once more, I underline that I was an ordinary engineer who became familiar with the national culture in his own way. I have to tell you: the national consciousness is like cancer. If you develop cancer, it is the end of the line. You still tread about as usual, you look upon everything as usual and then you start apprehending all of it differently whether willing or not. Later, when I had to deal with the KGB, they said, “How come?” They were surprised that a normal person suddenly became different.
At the time, in Lviv, I had an old friend Igor Kudin. In 1964, the official Monuments Preservation Society came in. He was its head. Then the nationally conscious intelligentsia tried to use the slightest gap to get into it and take advantage of the official position or media. As opportunity offered, they tried to officially modify the consciousness of dark masses, which lived passively. It was just kind of geometric progression: if I went to some soiree and heard someone, the next time I would bring five more friends with me. And all of these people started apprehending the world in a different way. To some extent it was an opposition to the regime. Likewise Igor Kudin instilled new apprehension of reality in me.
When the Creative Youth Club was disbanded in 1964, the intellectuals and young people began to gather around the Homin chorus. Originally Poliuh was the leader of the chorus later they invited Leopold Yashchenko. Borys Riabokliach, son of Ivan Riabokliach, was the chorus elder he was a very interesting person. I do not know what became of him later. He did a lot for the cause. It was necessary to have a permit for the premises. He was a member of the party. His membership was very useful: the Ukrainian-minded intellectuals sought such allegedly party people and made them top managers where s/he was of service. Those party members were called on the carpet and reprimanded. Some of them were all right again and supposedly repented and some turned in their party cards and threw their hats in the ring fighting within permissible bounds, because then no one thought that repressions would ensue. We barely knew what happened at that time in Lviv to Levko Lukyanenko, Ivan Kandyba and others. We also knew next to nothing about the repressions in the late forties and early fifties. Those in the know held their tongues overawed by their parents and relatives. So you learn and do it on the sly, do not tell it anyone.
In the case of Homin the communication occurred through songs, through the restoration of traditions. Artists Alla Horska, Viktor Zaretsky, Liudmyla Semykina, Halyna Sevruk made designs for Christmas carols and puppet show booths. Naturally, we could not go round carol-singing on Christmas, so we did it on the eve of the New Year. We tried to awaken people’s conscience. We were visiting famous artists and writers. These activities were supported by Pavlo Tychyna etc. (Rylsky was already dead), even such artists as Vasyl Kasyan. Anyway, when we came, they got rid of their usual fears. It looked like opening doors, windows to let in the light beams. It was a lucid moment for them…
But there were those who really helped us, e.g. such knights of freedom, as Borys Antonenko-Davydovych. He was not afraid of anything at all, he was willing to do anything and used every opportunity to socialize with young people because they would come up to take our place and it was sacred to him. He felt himself like an old man already and he was not so easily scared once again I repeat that he was a knight, our foregoer so to say. He was our Moses, who knew where he led us.
About 1963 and 1964 my stories are not that informative, because there are already evidence of active people, including members of the Creative Youth Club or other representatives of the spiritual elite. Again I stress that I am an engineer and not liberal arts representant. Though the nationally conscious youth included the technical intelligentsia as well for example, already deceased and of blessed memory Olexandr Martynenko, my later crime accomplice, Yevheniya Fedorivna Kuznetsova, chemical-process engineer, laboratory assistant or university lecturer, also a techie. And this Martynenko was a geophysicist. Engineer-geologist Volodymyr Zavoyskyy was an active member of Homin. The Homin included mostly young persons with a background in engineering who joined the chorus in 1964 and early 1965.
At those soirees, of course, not everyone could sing. Those wise managers Poliuh and, later, Leopold Yashchenko did not even hold an audition for us. They knew that people came consciously: that’s good and let them sing. They did not seek some sort of special vocal abilities.
When the rehearsal ended, serious conversations began. People became engrossed in reading popular samvydav publications. In addition to Hrushevsky we began reading Dontsov and authors, about whom the KGB had not a slightest idea and whom we distributed having typed twelve or some other number of copies[1]. Later we started making miniature photocopies of the booklets, they were the size of 10x15 cm? For example, The Renaissance Executed by Shooting by Yuri Lavrynenko and The Contemporary Literature in the UkrSSR by Ivan Koshelivets. This marked the commencement of conscious semi-underground work. Then we started thinking, what is to be done and how to unite into a party or something. There were advocates of this way, but, thank God, such wise people as Svitlychnyi and other categorically rejected this view and kept in check our hot heads, for they knew that recently there had been a trial of Lukyanenko, Kandyba, Virun and others in Lviv. That is, they knew that the future might hold for us the same. We tried to act legally, referred to the works of Lenin and other classics of Marxism, for formally we considered the a democratic state, especially as it was the period of Thaw. But gradually the party began to tighten nuts and bolts, especially in the last years of the reign of Khrushchev, who also began to review his supposedly democratic steps. Perhaps you remember that in Moscow he, at the meeting with creative intellectuals, already started banging his fists on the table and prohibit things. He himself already felt that, as the inmates of prison camps say, he had opened the cover of the gut-bucket, which smelled to heaven. He wanted to close it, but failed. As we know he was stripped of power and new younger and braver generation came into power. We know from history that once and again more or less democratic rulers relinquish their hold to more radical, repressive, totalitarian elements, such as Brezhnev. And in Ukraine they started to change things quickly and tighten screws. We felt that they began planting squealers in Homin and everywhere? Where three or four persons came together everywhere you turned you saw a stoolie. All over the place the trust was replaced with secrets and distrust.
1965 came and the KGB officers and public officials embarked on offensive. Specifically, on May 22 they dispersed people and feared nothing. They drove up cars, minibuses, seized everybody and packed into paddy-wagons: young, healthy and well trained like the members of riot squad now, but then they were not called the riot militia yet. They were the KGB officers, plain as a pikestaff.
V.V.Ovsiyenko: It was in 1965. And did they resort to dispersals in 1964?
I.I.Rusyn: In 1964 they did not do it in the open and contented themselves with bans. They went brutal already in 1965. In general, they issued warnings at places of employment, in educational institutions, while near the monument they began photographing the strollers. I remember they my chief, he was also a party organizer, Pustynskyy, a Jew, and said: “We know you have such Ivan Ivanovych Rusyn, so if you put him in a tight situation…” He was warned in the first department[2] to prevent my going to the monument[3]. He was a good man, I cannot say anything bad about him. He told me: “Ivan, what the hell you go there? So that it won’t be on your conscience I will send you on a business mission.” And be warned: mind that you will be on a business trip, because if you are in Kyiv, you will have trouble at work, we might even sack you. Such methods they used then. But in 1965 they already employed brutal methods.
I recall how they first sent their agitators among people. And it was a crowded gathering. Among them was Secretary of the CC LKU Korniyenko. He later became a party secretary either of the oblast committee or some other organization. They initiated debates proving that everything was OK in the state while we were doing wrong. There was also university philosopher, which is now busy as well, Shynkaruk[4] this son of a bitch was mouthing off about the marvels of Soviet power, while we were old so-and-so he maintained that they shed blood for us defending us[5] and gave us the possibility to learn, and we were rebelling instead of expressing gratitude. This was exactly the same Shynkaruk, I remember it exactly. And the same Korniyenko. From the University came a large group of people and it was a sort of counterpropaganda from inside. Their efforts were in vain, because we also had good discussants then they just dispersed us… I remember there was a shorty Colonel his name was something like Ivanov, I cannot remember for sure I remember that he was dumpy and plump. He gained time at first, and then ordered: “Go!” And the fuzzes and the KGB officers jump from behind the bushes and began to disperse if somebody resisted, they packed him into the paddy-wagon and on they went!
Then many people accidentally found themselves at the militia station. The militiamen recorded their personal data. In this way these people were blacklisted. I cannot say what happened to them later, though I brought with me two or three co-workers and they were blacklisted for life. Especially, Zynoviy Melnyk, who later got into a scrape…
V.V.Ovsiyenko: I know Zynoviy Melnyk.
I.I.Rusyn: They torpedoed his thesis. Such snots, who were not his equals, went to the top and back-pedaled him using his scientific and technical abilities to dance backup for them. He had to leave that institute to defend his thesis. In short, if you were blacklisted, you remained stigmatized for the rest of your Soviet life. Although, we can say that nothing has changed because the same people are at the helm… Afterwards Zynovyi Vasyliovych Melnyk worked at the Institute of Land Management. He told me that the department there was headed by very chauvinistic women and when he sought to keep records in Ukrainian, he had problems and the latter happened these days, under President Kravchuk. Things look black with all that.
But I got ahead of myself. Let’s return to 1965. In May the KGB officers made a display of power then followed summer vacations, the people departed. And then out of the blue at five o’clock in the morning on August 28, I heard a tap at my door. And then we had a baby: Oksana, about eight months. We lived in a shared apartment: we and our neighbors had one room per family. Apparently, subject to agreement our neighbor had opened the outside door, and they were knocking on our door. We did not lock the door, so they knocked and immediately opened the door, completely by surprise. Five people burst in to carry out a search.
Clearly, we had no forbidden literature well, they found Hrushevsky and Sofia Rusova’s memories. It looked like they found something they obviously had known about because they had either had watched us or agreed with our neighbor: they found the typewriter, on which I and Lidiya Melnyk, current wife of Vasyl Byshovets, typed. She worked as a proofreader at the Literaturna Ukrayina and knew how to type, therefore she typed the samvydav. The samvydav typewritten documents included mainly the poems of Vasyl Symonenko, Ivan Drach, Mykola Vinhranovskiy, and a copy of an article “Regarding the Pohruzhalsky trial”. Svyatoslav Karavansky brought in an action against Minister of Education Dadenkov. It was typed on cigarette paper, up to twelve copies. They also found the used carbon paper with traces of those works. They were professionals and we were neophytes and did not hit on destroying the carbon paper. We hated to throw it away, because it was a deficit, and, can you beat that, they came and found that carbon paper and later restored which documents had been printed.
The search continued for five hours. They looked up and down, took everything away and delivered the whole load to the Oblast KGB Office on Rosa Luxemburg Street, Lypky micro-district.
I was not prepared for it. I did something, but thought that all of it was legal.
Later I learned that on the same day they arrested Olexandr Martynenko and Yevheniya Fedorivna Kuznetsova, whom I knew. On the same day they also arrested Ivan Svitlychny, Mykola Hryn, and Yaroslav Hevrych who was a student then. Later we learned that in Lviv the arrests were also made. This masterminded massive operation was carried out in August. In Ivano-Frankivsk they arrested Panas Zalyvakha and Valentyn Moroz. The questioning began, and we were not ready for it. We had no experience of underground work. That is we defended ourselves as we could. What was the defense like? At that time the Trifonov’s book went out it was called Impatience: about Zhelyabov, Sofia Perovskaya, and about the members of the “Narodnaya Volya”. We read it and even passed from hand to hand. It narrated about the agencies of immediate inquiry, secret political police and interrogations. For us it was all theory. Nevertheless we tried to defend ourselves… “Where did you get it?”−“I do not know.” In particular, where I got the typewriter. “Well, I bought it.”−“Where did you buy it?”−“At the bazaar.”−“For how much?”−“For so much.” He wrote everything down. It’s on the first day. I said all I wanted to say, no problem. A little later they read out to me: “So you’re saying that you purchased the typewriter.”−“Yes, I’ve bought it.”−“But Martynenko says that he bought this typewriter and brought it to you.” So it was, indeed. And he typed… Then confrontations started. And it was difficult to extricate oneself from a difficult situation.
Many questions were about the “Homin”. They occasionally collected money. In particular, I remember exactly when Dziuba was ill. And the public decided to send him somewhere for treatment. The donations made 10 or 20 karbovanetses. It was normal money if salary made about 100 or 120 karbovanetses. I do not remember exactly, something was wrong with his lungs.
V.V.Ovsiyenko: He had tuberculosis.
I.I.Rusyn: Anyway, they were collecting money. Why I say this? I asked this question: “Did you collect money?”−“No, did not, I took no part in this.” And a day or two later the investigator quotes that Martynenko told him that “Rusyn gave me 20 karbovanetses on such and such date, and said that it was his 10 karbovanetses and 10 from someone else”. The investigator asked me: “What do you say to that?” And what shall I say? I say that he is probably making up something. And the same Olexandr Martynenko told the truth, as it was. God knows, why he said this, but it’s is now a thing of the past. So we were not prepared for any party responsibility: as Russians put it, “every man for himself”.
And then, getting acquainted with the “case”, I learned that they followed Yevheniya, or, as she called herself, Yivha Kuznetsova at the university, because she carried out work among students. She was a friend of Martynenko and Martynenko was my buddy. So they tailed her, as they said, then Martynenko and Martynenko’s tail came upon the tracks of me. So they came to know our links, because we failed to check whether we were followed. Though I was not familiar with Kuznetsova personally and we met only later, they tied us in one and the same case and we became “partners in crime”.
Our case reached the trial in eight months in March 1966. During that investigation, as I said, everyone was for her/himself. We really were not as obvious opponents of the regime: we rather wanted to somewhat improve it. And one would not even imagine that it could be toppled. We mainly fought for Ukrainian language of instruction in schools and institute of higher education, that is, for those norms that were written down in the so-called Constitution of Ukraine, as well as some other articles about the state, about the Ukrainian mission at the United Nations. And we quoted the so-called “classics”. At that very moment two volumes of Lenin and the Ukraine came out. I remember an episode during the investigation. The investigator asked me something and I told him, “It’s a quotation from Lenin’s work…” And he exploded: “Let your Lenin…?”−“What do you mean?”−“Well, forget it.” So, you see that the paradoxes also took place? It is clear that they did not need Lenin they wouldn’t listen to him and would not follow him. The more so they made do without the Constitution. All of it was empty blabber. Our people were simply hyped up, let this hoopla be and took no interest in the fake. Although we cannot say that at the time of the Brezhnev era people were mostly concerned with material things. We called it “sausage consciousness” at the time though there were no sausages on sale then. It reminds of the ideals of the Narodnaya Volya. But they obviously were conscientious objectors, they wanted to overthrow the tsar, but with us it was still a long way off.
Maybe some of us had such plans, as it turned out later: such leaders like Mykhailo Horyn or of blessed memory Vyacheslav Chornovil. Single men only. But my close environment simply wanted to legalize our language song, not to keep aloof from national traditions, because we were citizens of our state, like it was written in the Constitution at the very least.
Just not to take up a lot of your time, my dear Vasyl, I wrote about the investigation in the fifth issue of the magazine of our Association of Political Prisoners Zona. My article is titled “33, Volodymyrska Street”. I am not going to repeat it now, and everyone can read it there. I wrote these reminiscences five years ago or more, then I recollected it better. Those are pretrial recollections.
As usual in those days, it was a secretive trial. At the level of the oblast court. After all, the judges who tried our cases are still judging today, so to speak, and even run the same oblast courts, and have become the merited members of the Supreme Court of Ukraine. The investigators are also in the saddle. The KGB has given them the sack, but not for wrongdoing or criminal offences, which are triable, but simply because of retirement age. My investigator Leonid Pavlovych Berestovskyi may serve an example,.
V.V.Ovsiyenko: He began conducting my case on March 5, 1973 and after a month he passed it over to another investigator, Mykola Pavlovych Tsymokha.
I.I.Rusyn: So it was with us. He arrested me. He was a crafty lieutenant at the time, not even a senior lieutenant, but simply a lieutenant: he had two stars. He bent over backwards! He was apparently a half-Jew: his face betrayed his origin. I have recently met him: he is working as a lawyer for a legal advice office. We often meet now on Zolotovoritska Street, because I live in the downtown. When I returned I used to often run into him. Now he is an ardent patriot! During the war he stayed in occupied Kyiv. We happened to meet when we commemorated Olena Teliha. We carried on a conversation, and he said that in the age of 10 or 12 years he wore a badge of trident on his chest. A peculiar individual. I asked him how about that investigation and all those things? “It was my job, just my job.” But he rose to the rank of major or lieutenant colonel I do not know exactly because now I usually see him in the civil attire.
I have already mentioned about my peripeteia with him, and then he passed me over to another investigator from Kharkiv. It was a sort of schooling. In the sixties they trained those greyhounds, if I may use a hunting term, coming from Kharkiv, Odesa or Dnipropetrovsk. When proceedings were initiated in the seventies, they were already in all oblasts. In 1965 they were only in Kyiv, Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Lutsk, and in Zhytomyr they arrested Anatoly Shevchuk there were no such boffins in the southern cities yet. And later they were in Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkiv already.
From Kharkiv they brought Borys Antonovych Kolpak. It was him whom I tried to convince that the proper Ukrainian spelling of his name was not Kolpak, but Kovpak. He agreed. He was a real fun person. The style of his protocols of investigative activity was rather poor, but I insisted on corrections for I had completed the course of Berestovsky. By the way, I was afraid of Berestovsky, because he was psychologically stronger than I. I felt so. When he asked his questions, I had got out of a scrape. When I extricated myself, he told me an anecdote… It turned out that during the face-to-face confrontations Zavoyskyy or Martynenko or Hryn told everything as it was. I couldn’t tell that they spilled the beans they simply did not consider it illegal and gave it to him straight and one could easily notice the discord in our attestations.
And so Berestovskyi told me an anecdote: “Ivan Ivanovych, in your case it will turn out like in the case with Abram. They asked Abram, when he came with a black eye, what happened. He explained: “They wanted to kick me in the rear end, but I wiggled out and got a sock in the eye.” Well, we laughed together.
I’d like to point out that in 1965 there was no violence during interrogations, at least in Kyiv, either in my case or in the cases of other detainees. Although later, when I met Lviv detainees in Yavas, for instance, Mykhailo Osadchyi, now deceased, said that one of his investigators started belting away with his dukes and even hit him a couple of times. So he was physically intimidated. Later Osadchyi tried to bring him to justice, but they started to tear him limb from limb and didn’t allow him to go to Lviv. When he wrote his Walleye memoirs, they increased his sentence. (Mykhailo Hryhorovych Osadchyi, writer, philologist, 22.03.1936 − †05.07.1994. Imprisoned on 28.08.1965 by art.62 part 1 for 2 years the second time in January 1972 by article 62, part 2 for 7 years and 3 years of exile, the hon. His first investigator was Major Halsky.