KISHKIN, HENNADIY HEORHIYOVYCH (born April 8, 1945, in Kyiv).
Translator, poet, dissident.
His father, from the village of Khmeleve, Fatezh raion, Kursk oblast, was Russian, from a dispossessed and repressed family: his grandfather Ivan Semenovych died during an investigation, and his aunt Nina and uncle Nikolai were imprisoned. His mother was Ukrainian, an orphan from Boryshivka in the Kyiv region.
During the defense of Kyiv, his father’s eye was knocked out by a German shrapnel; he was held in the Darnytsia prisoner-of-war camp. The fact that the Germans did not shoot him but released him aroused the suspicions of the “liberators.” The family had five children. They lived in a 13-square-meter room with an earthen floor on Bohunska Street near the Lybid River. Hennadiy went to school in felt boots. Despite extreme poverty, he was a good student. To gain work experience for university admission, he attended an evening school, graduating in 1962 while working as a locksmith’s apprentice at the “Leninska Kuznia” plant.
When the Berlin Wall was built on August 13, 1961, Hennadiy, then in the tenth grade, wrote a poem: “The Wall in Berlin, we can’t hold hands, I am cut in half by you. How are we to unite now, dear proletarians of all countries?” And he mailed it to the radio station Deutsche Welle.
In 1962, he enrolled in the Romano-Germanic faculty of the Kyiv Institute of Foreign Languages, in the department for interpreters and consultants. In 1967, he was sent to “Intourist” as a Spanish-language guide-interpreter. But he was not hired for that job, and was not accepted anywhere else. He then went to the Kyiv Oblast KGB Administration to ask for a job, but they showed him his letter to Deutsche Welle and promised that “the ground would burn under his feet.”
Since then, Kishkin never held any job for more than two months. He was often unemployed. By 1978, he had changed jobs 80 times. He mostly worked as a loader.
From 1966, Kishkin wrote the poem “Khreshchatyk”—openly anti-communist, or in KGB terminology, anti-Soviet. Over many years, it grew to 650 stanzas, for example: “Children are unaware of the intrigues that exist in Lenin, what a bloody book the ‘History of the CPSU’ is”; “When the last metro train leaves and the stars hang above the chestnut trees, I feel so light-headed and dazed, as if there are no communists in the world, as if there is no corruption and lies, neither in the Constitution, nor in the people’s courts, and only my enemies are angry that I did not die in Soviet camps.” He read this poem and other verses to acquaintances and strangers in doorways and dive bars. He sent his poems and stories to countless editorial offices, but they were never published, receiving replies like: “Low artistic level.” He collected up to 2,000 negative responses. In 1972, he sent poems to L. Brezhnev. Petro Osadchuk, a consultant in the cultural department of the Central Committee of the CPU, responded through a subordinate: go to the Writers’ Union. The poet Nikolai Ushakov gave a recommendation to the magazine “Raduga”: “Hennadiy Kishkin’s poems are very interesting, I recommend them for publication.” But that didn’t help either. Mikhail Sholokhov advised him to go to the USSR Writers’ Union, but no one there took an interest in him.
In 1978, a university acquaintance, Zhanna Ohnivchuk, who worked at the “Kashtan” store, introduced Kishkin to two KGB officers so he could read his poems to them. After that, policemen repeatedly detained Kishkin, took him to the district police station, and forced him to write pledges that he would no longer write anti-Soviet poems. They would release him in the middle of the night.
On May 5, 1978, Kishkin went to an exhibition of U.S. agriculture in Kyiv, at the VDNKh (Exhibition of Achievements of the National Economy), with the intention of passing his lyrical poems abroad. He was seized there by KGB officers and taken to the district police station. At his home, they confiscated the poem “Khreshchatyk.” He was held for 15 days in the Darnytsia prison, then taken to a narcologist who concluded that Kishkin abused alcohol and engaged in “anti-social actions.” On this charge, Judge Yablonsky sent him on June 21, 1978, to a medical-labor profilactorium in Bilychi, near Kyiv, for two years.
The conditions in the profilactorium were the same as in corrective labor colonies, but without a paramilitary guard. Kishkin was given painful injections of sulfur, then treated with other drugs. His work was assembling fluorescent light fixtures. To meet his quota, Kishkin stayed after his shift. He engaged in sports.
A year later, KGB officers arrived with his poems in hand (they had conducted another search of his home and confiscated everything he had written, even from childhood) and demanded a written promise that he would not write “anti-Soviet material,” or else he would be sent to a psychiatric hospital. Kishkin signed—and then tore up the pledge. He spent another year in the profilactorium. In three months, he wrote the novel “The Ascension of Naturin.” A master, for whom Kishkin did university exam assignments, smuggled the novel out of the zone. Kishkin was released in June of the Olympic year 1980. He was now under overt surveillance.
Kishkin heard the address of the political exile Andrei SAKHAROV on foreign radio and sent him a telegram of support to the city of Gorky, supposedly from the students of the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, and decided to visit him. He bought a ticket to Moscow, boarded the train—and two policemen and an “aggrieved party” entered, accusing Kishkin of stealing money from him in the ticket line, although he had been standing in front. Kishkin was searched: they cut open a loaf of bread, opened a can of “Bila Tserkva Salad,” but found no manuscripts, so they let him go. Kishkin thought the KGB had relaxed, so he bought a plane ticket and flew to Gorky. He was detained as he reached out to ring SAKHAROV’s apartment doorbell. He was interrogated by KGB officers at the nearby “Community Support Point of the Prioksky microdistrict.” Kishkin claimed he was planning to write a screenplay about the physicist A. D. SAKHAROV. They put him on a plane to Voronezh, and he returned to Kyiv by train.
In November 1980, Kishkin managed to get a job as a supply agent at a technical school. He was often detained and searched by the police. One day, around March 20, 1981, someone stopped him from behind on the street—the police. They took him into a back room. Some woman screamed, “That's him!” They brought in witnesses. They placed cans of “Goby in Tomato Sauce” on the table, opened them, and accused Kishkin of reselling spoiled tulka fish by gluing goby labels on the cans. At his home, they “found” a whole pack of these labels. Captain Tsenov of the OBKhSS (Department for Combating the Theft of Socialist Property) and Lieutenant Nikitin drew up a report that Kishkin was “undermining the economic power of the state” in this way. At the Radyansky district police station, he was charged under Part 2 of Article 143 of the UkrSSR Criminal Code, “Fraud.” At his home, they seized a folder with manuscripts titled “Hennadiy Kishkin. Literary Works.” He was held for two days in the KGB pre-trial detention center on Volodymyrska Street, photographed, fingerprinted, and taken to the Lukianivka pre-trial detention center. On June 11, 1981, a court sentenced him to 3 years in a general-regime camp. A month and a half later, he was transferred to Zburyivka, Holoprystan raion, Kherson oblast. He worked. In an English textbook, disguised as a translation, he wrote his poem “Khreshchatyk.” After 5 months, Kishkin was offered a conditional early release to a work assignment and was sent to the village of Pershotravneve, Kharkiv oblast. He worked as a carpenter and a concrete worker, continuing to write his poem. In 1983, due to the death of another General Secretary, his term was shortened by several months under an amnesty. He returned to his mother, who had since received a one-room apartment in the Vynohradar district.
Soon, Kishkin heard on the Voice of America about the arrest of human rights activist Felix Serebrov and his wife’s address. He went to Moscow, where Vera Serebrova gave him the phone numbers of correspondents for the “Washington Post” and “New York Times.” He called them and promised to come. He returned to Kyiv, collected his manuscripts, and called the “New York Times” bureau from the Intercity Telephone Station to say he would arrive tomorrow, December 24, 1983. But on the platform of the Kyiv railway station, a jar of pickles fell and broke in front of him. The police appeared, along with “aggrieved parties” Galdanov and Goncharenko, who accused Kishkin of hooliganism. Sergeant Berehovyi wrote a report: “Was in a state of intoxication, used obscene language, undermined the dignity of Soviet citizens, engaged in hooliganism on the platform.” They confiscated Kishkin’s manuscripts and tore up his work record book as if it were trash. A judge gave him 15 days of arrest “pending clarification of circumstances.” A few days later, senior investigator Melnyk of the Kyiv Prosecutor’s Office opened a case against Kishkin under Article 187-I of the UkrSSR Criminal Code, “Dissemination of deliberately false fabrications that defame the Soviet state and social system.” The investigation was led by investigator Mazurkevych. Prosecutor Leonid Mykhailovych Abramenko tried to get a confession that Kishkin was going to meet with foreign journalists. He threatened him with a psychiatric hospital. On April 19, 1983, he was tried by the Kyiv Regional Court, presided over by Hryhoriy Ivanovych Zubets (who also tried political prisoners Stanislav Khmelevsky, Valeriy KRAVCHENKO, and Valeriy MARCHENKO): 3 years in a strict-regime camp. Even Kishkin’s mother did not know about this “open court session”; there were only two witnesses, Fedorenko and Zaitsev, who later confessed to Kishkin that they had been forced to bear false witness.
He served his sentence in a camp in the village of Stari Babany, near Uman. In a stone quarry, he processed road curbs. The quota was 3 meters per shift. Kishkin produced 1 meter because the quality control department was particularly strict with his work. The colony chief, Dudka, and the deputy chief for the regime, Mykola Vasylyovych Demchenko, put Kishkin in the ShIZO (punishment cell), where he suffered from cold and hunger. Kishkin’s only interlocutor in the zone was a believer, Volodymyr Ivanovych Loboda, from Kostyantynivka, Donetsk oblast.
During Gorbachev’s “perestroika,” Kishkin only believed in it when he read in the newspaper “Izvestia” about the release of A. SAKHAROV and 120 political prisoners. He himself was released early on January 8, 1987. But not completely released: KGB officer Ivan Mykhailovych Humeniuk immediately took him to the Uman KGB department where, amid a mix of promises and threats, he was forced to sign a statement that he would remain in Uman and work for the KGB under the pseudonym Krylov. However, Kishkin never informed on anyone. He worked as a loader at the “Umansilmash” plant and lived in a dormitory under administrative supervision: he had to be in the dormitory from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m.
At the beginning of 1988, he was finally released. He returned to his mother in Kyiv. A few days later, he was summoned to a “council of veterans,” where he was reprimanded. In his new work record book, issued in Uman, it was noted that he had worked at forced labor—because of this entry, he was again denied employment everywhere. He brought an even more daunting certificate for personnel departments from the head of the Kyiv Regional Court, H. I. Zubets: “Served a sentence under Article 187-I for malicious fabrications against the Soviet state and social system.” He worked as a loader for some time.
Kishkin participated in meetings of the Ukrainian Culturological Club at 10 Olehivska Street and in other places. The secret surveillance of him ended in 1989. He was rehabilitated in accordance with the Law of the UkrSSR of April 17, 1991.
In 2000, Kishkin married a Jewish woman and moved to Germany, to the city of Osnabrück. The marriage there effectively dissolved. He worked as a janitor for a year and now receives state assistance.
Kishkin wrote a trilogy titled “My Trilogy, My Three Camps.” Excerpts from it were published by journalist Kirindiasenko in the newspaper “Kievskiye Vedomosti” in 1995. It has not yet been published in its entirety.
Bibliography:
Interview with Hennadiy Heorhiyovych Kishkin from October 11, 2005.
Characters 10,495.
Author: Vasyl Ovsiyenko, Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group. September 8, 2009.
Hennadiy Kishkin. Photo by V. Ovsiyenko, October 11, 2005. 