WOMEN IN THE RESISTANCE MOVEMENT OF THE 1970S
(This article was published under the title “The Seventies Women” in the journal “Zona,” No. 12, 1997, pp. 3–12; it is re-edited and supplemented here. – V. Lisova. January 2008.)
In early November 1976, the BBC reported the emergence of a human rights organization in Ukraine—the Ukrainian Public Group to Promote the Implementation of the Helsinki Accords (UGG).
On December 19, a group of women from Kyiv (Oksana Yakivna Meshko, Tamila Matusevych, Svitlana Kyrychenko, Vira Lisova, Olha Stokotelna, Halyna Didkivska) traveled to Koncha-Zaspa to wish Mykola Danylovych Rudenko a happy birthday. Our hosts welcomed us with joy and hospitality. Mykola Lukash was there, already without a job and without his membership in the Writers’ Union—following his unprecedented offer to exchange places with the imprisoned Ivan Dziuba. Yosyp Terelia arrived from Zakarpattia, on a “furlough” from his latest camp or psychiatric hospital. An eternal optimist, he recounted with brilliant humor various adventures from his travels through torment. We had not laughed so hard in a long time!
After the convicted political prisoners were sent to the camps (1972–1974), a circle of relatives and friends who had not been imprisoned was formed. We began to communicate more actively with one another, despite the KGB’s obstacles. We established connections with the families of prisoners from other cities and villages in Ukraine. We even created traditions: birthday greetings, celebrations of the New Year, other ritual and Shevchenko holidays, and initiations into school life. This was done beautifully by Halyna Didkivska and her mother, Halyna Polikarpivna; Svitlana Kyrychenko; Nadiya Svitlychna; Tamila Matusevych; and others. Valentyna Berdnyk organized cutting and sewing courses, which she held at Vira Lisova’s apartment. In short, isolation in a society where confusion, silence, and fear reigned brought us closer together. It also provided an opportunity to share news from the camps and about the families of the prisoners.
And then, a human rights organization!
We had already heard about the raid on the Rudenkos’ apartment, about Oksana Yakivna, who was present, being injured by stones. We anticipated that the emergence of the UGG would provoke an aggressive reaction from the KGB. So, when we gathered at the Rudenkos’, despite our hidden anxiety, we felt more confident, more secure.
Much still needs to be collected and processed about women’s participation in the human rights movement of the 1970s. However, one can quickly and schematically outline that time and, it seems to me, conditionally divide it into periods in which the forms of activity changed.
So, in this closed circle were some of the women who had been involved to varying degrees in the *samvydav* of the 1960s. Now it had, in essence, acquired a human rights focus: petitions, protests, and complaints to various official state and party institutions, to deputies of the Verkhovna Rada, to courts, prosecutor’s offices, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs; and correspondence with the camp administration. The topics were broad, ranging from protests and petitions about the conditions of prisoners in the camps to matters of a political nature. These were mostly documents defending their own relatives, but not only (such as Svitlana Kyrychenko’s defense of two-year-old Yarema Svitlychny, who was abducted by the KGB after his mother’s arrest, or regarding the subsequent arrests of Mykola Horbal and others), about the medical treatment of Ivan Oleksiyovych Svitlychny, the hunger strikes of the men, and countless other individual writings. There were fewer collective actions, such as the statement by a group of Lviv women in defense of Valentyn Moroz (Raisa Moroz, Olha Horyn, Olena Antoniv, and others). Some of these documents became part of *samvydav*.
Did we believe in any positive results? There was so little hope that these were more like voices from a ravaged community, voices of conscience. All the more so because the reaction was unambiguous: formulaic, dry, and soulless replies. The ultimate expression of cynicism and legalized cruelty was the response from a high-ranking official in Shchelokov’s apparatus (Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR – Ed.) to O. Y. Meshko’s complaint about the poor conditions of her ill son, Oles Serhiyenko, in the camp: “He’s not at a resort. You must understand!”—and he silently showed her the door. The aforementioned statement by Svitlana Kyrychenko did not go unnoticed. On the KGB’s instruction and by order of Dorohuntsov, head of the science department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine (and, incidentally, a deputy of the first convocation of the Verkhovna Rada), she was dismissed from the Institute of Linguistics as “unfit.”
Let us honor the memory of all the mothers who had imprisoned daughters and sons, for they endured great suffering, especially when losing their own children in the camps! In defending their sons and daughters, some of these mothers became well-known and prominent human rights defenders, as well as public figures. First and foremost among them, we must name Oksana Yakivna Meshko. We know of Nina Mykhailivna Marchenko, who transferred the great love for her deceased son to all his living comrades-in-arms, becoming deeply involved in their activities. We also know that most of the mothers from the western lands whose daughters or sons were convicted were conscious people who understood and supported their children.
In addition to those named above, these included Stefania Petrash-Sichko (Dolyna), Anastasiya Fedorivna Matusevych (Vasylkiv), Nadiya Antonivna Parubchenko (mother of Yuriy Lytvyn, Barakhty village in the Kyiv region), Hanna Polikarpivna Didkivska (mother-in-law of Yevhen Proniuk, Kyiv), Frosyna Fedorivna Ovsiyenko (Lenine village, Radomyshl district), Lyubomyra Popadiuk (Lviv), Natalka Oleksandrivna Lukianenko (Khrypivka village in the Chernihiv region), Mrs. Shovkova from near Kolomyia (mother of the very young Vasyl Shovkovyi), Lyuba Marynovych (Drohobych), Halyna Gluzman (Kyiv), Mrs. Kalynets—mother of Ihor Kalynets, Kylyna Kharytonivna Chornovil (Vilkhovets village in the Kyiv region), Mrs. Hanna Shabatura (Lviv, mother of Stefania), Mrs. Mykhailina Marmus (mother of two sons—Mykola and Volodymyr from Rozsokhach village in the Ternopil region), Melania Illinichna Svitlychna, Teklia Semenivna Turyk (Birky village in Volyn), Hanna Badzio (Kopynivtsi village in Zakarpattia), Yevdokia Yakivna Sverstiuk (Siltse village in Volyn), Yilyna Yakivna Stus, Mrs. Osadcha (from Lviv, mother of Mykhailo), and Teklia Mykolaivna Horbal (Letyache village in the Ternopil region). We did not know the names of many political prisoners’ mothers, but may their names invisibly supplement this list, for they lived and suffered throughout Ukraine.
Let us bow in honor of the mothers of political prisoners!
After the official authorities rejected our petitions, some of the women turned their attention to international organizations (Amnesty International for the defense of civil rights; they wrote to communists in France, Canada, and elsewhere).
Thus, by successfully using the relations between the communist parties of France and the USSR, with the assistance of A. D. Sakharov, Tatyana Khodorovich, and friends from Paris, Tetyana Zhytnyk, wife of Leonid Pliushch, managed to get her husband out of a psychiatric hospital. This was something I failed to do, although I appealed to all the above-mentioned authorities.
Another form of activity was the dissemination of information from the camps regarding the conditions of detention and the moral-psychological atmosphere; the state of the prisoners’ health; and the publication of political prisoners’ writings—letters, statements, and some literary works that would not have passed censorship in letters home.
Of course, each of us took these documents out of the camps during personal visits in her own way—as best she could under the circumstances: from memorization to swallowing tubes of paper or using various bodily orifices.
The KGB regarded this as information for the world and, therefore, essentially took revenge on the women and the prisoners in a variety of ways: they were deprived of visits and letters, placed in different types of isolation cells, and in the “large zone,” they were blackmailed, fired from their jobs, and so on. Moreover, the justifications given were entirely different. But no matter how these actions backfired on us on both sides of the bars, we simply could not remain silent. We cherished the hope that this information would enlighten and activate public opinion abroad, and that the signatory countries of the Helsinki Accords, at their subsequent conferences, might somehow influence the USSR’s policy on human rights, which could make life easier for our prisoners. I remember how anxiously we followed the Madrid Conference, where documents about Ukrainian prisoners were supposed to arrive!
It is also fitting to mention that some women cared for those prisoners who had no one on the outside. Correspondence connected them with the world and sometimes saved them from depression. They sent them their allotted food parcels and packages, and money for press subscriptions (Olena Antoniv, Tamila Matusevych, Alla Marchenko, Halyna Didkivska, Vira Lisova, Svitlana Kyrychenko, Lyolia Svitlychna, and probably others whom I have already forgotten). As for the women from Lviv and other cities and villages in the western lands, quite broad circles of women were involved in charitable actions at that time, collecting money and items not only for the camps but also for the families of political prisoners from all over eastern Ukraine. These were noble women—citizens and patriots. This chapter is still waiting to be illuminated.
The channels through which *samvydav* moved narrowed. Whereas previously, communication in institutions, at literary evenings, at various holidays, in choirs, and through relatives in the periphery had facilitated it, now the main channel left was communication through relatives. The geography of this sometimes reached the farthest corners of Ukraine. Often these were elderly people in villages. Some of them knew or guessed what they were hiding. Neutral people in the cities, including Kyiv, were not suitable. The KGB usually confiscated these materials from them.
Before the emergence of the UGG in 1976, all materials from Ukraine went through Moscow, as the road to the camps also passed through there. We gradually became acquainted with the Moscow dissidents, who later became famous human rights activists. These were Lyudmila Alexeyeva, Nina Lisovskaya, Tatyana Velikanova, Malva Landa, Galina Lyubarskaya, Andrei Tverdokhlebov, Andrei Amalrik, the Shikhanovich, Kovalev, and Ginzburg families, Lev Kopelev, Tatyana Khodorovich, Sasha Podrabinek, and General Pyotr Grigorenko. In Moscow, we stayed with Les Tanyuk. Some of us communicated with A. D. Sakharov, including Mykola Matusevych’s mother.
In addition to trips for visits via Moscow, we used the business trips of Kyiv residents to Moscow and of Muscovites to Kyiv. Some traveled specifically for this purpose, as I know Maria Hel, Olena Antoniv, Raisa Rudenko, Alla Marchenko, and others did. Oksana Yakivna knew many of the intricacies of Moscow’s *samvydav* and human rights “kitchen.” Here is an example of how things were done. Alla Marchenko would take a plane in the morning and return home in the evening. She would carry urgent information brought back from a camp visit or from exile by Nina Mykhailivna. Nina Petrovna Lisovskaya would lock the door and forbid anyone to approach the telephone. They would process the information. If it was for the *Chronicle of Current Events*, they would translate it into Russian. Of course, not everything reached the world at its intended destinations. Sometimes it disappeared somewhere without a trace.
After the UGG was founded, many materials from all over Ukraine were sent to Kyiv. Here, they were used to compile “Memorandums” and later, Information Bulletins. Thus, in the late 1970s, issues 4, 5, 6, and 7 of the completed “Bulletin,” based on materials collected by Lviv residents and prepared by Olha and Mykhailo Horyn, were also sent to Kyiv. And from here, the same path led to Moscow. At that time, certain apartments in Kyiv became “transit points” during certain periods and were, of course, subjected to searches, such as those at Oksana Yakivna Meshko’s, Lilia Andriyevska-Sverstiuk’s, Alla Marchenko’s, and others. The KGB confiscated many materials during these raids.
Some women continued to use proven channels, bypassing the UGG. It was easier to transmit materials abroad from Moscow through embassies and correspondents. For instance, in my presence, an employee of a foreign embassy drove up to Yuri Shikhanovich’s apartment in the late evening, took a folder, got into his car, and drove away. Or, in broad daylight, a press conference for foreign journalists was held at Tatyana Khodorovich’s apartment, which I attended. Of course, the tension was immense. The building was surrounded by cars, with “guys from the KGB” in the entrance. But correspondents from several European countries recorded the facts of human rights violations. I gave a general description of the situation in Ukraine and facts about Lisovyi, Proniuk, and Mykhailyna Kotsiubynska, who was then being tormented in Kyiv with constant interrogations and blackmail and was eventually fired from her job. But in Kyiv, as in Moscow, some of the materials fell into the hands of the KGB, which often served as grounds for new arrests.
Around 1977 or 1978, an American consulate was opened in Kyiv (it was closed a few months later). During their first visit to the embassy, Nadiya Svitlychna and Mykola Horbal were seized on the steps of the Moskva Hotel, where it was located. Oles Berdnyk was luckier. He was taken on his third attempt when he was carrying a letter-appeal to the world community in defense of Heliy Snehiryov, who was dying in the KGB’s dungeons and, in the last month of his life, was transferred to the Zhovtneva Hospital. It was then that Raisa Rudenko secretly entered the ward and had a conversation with the terminally ill Heliy. O. Berdnyk’s letter still managed to get abroad through some other channel.
The moral and psychological atmosphere in our circle was difficult, and at times horrific. There was constant anxiety and fear for our relatives in the camps and for our children, who were targeted by the KGB and often became instruments of manipulation. First of all, each of us was assigned an authorized agent, a so-called curator. These were “guys” who advanced their careers on our torment. They tirelessly controlled our lives. Some wore a mask of benevolence, while others were outright blackmailers and sadists, fierce Ukrainophobes, cruel and cynical, like the infamous Kyrychek, the organizer of criminal cases against Mykola Horbal, Vadym Smohytel, and probably Sasha Feldman. The curators could appear unexpectedly in the most unexpected places, often before holidays. Their arsenal included interrogations, blackmail, psychological pressure, wiretapping of apartments, and attempts to recruit as informants everyone we communicated with, including our own children. They intimidated us with our children’s fate, arranged various attacks on them, and threatened us with the camps, saying that our “bastards,” as they called them, would be left alone. Behind these words are real living people and the children of Vasyl Barladianu, Olha Horyn, Olena Antoniv, Lyubomyra Popadiuk, and Lyudmyla Stohnota. An attack was organized on Vira Lisova’s daughter, a seventh-grader, with the intent to rape her, and Petro Ruban’s ten-year-old son was maimed. After Mykola Matusevych’s arrest, his 10-year-old nephew was terrorized by a KGB officer from Vasylkiv and a teacher, who held up Pavlik Morozov as an example to the child; when the child said his uncle was good and that he loved him, they replied: “Pavlik Morozov also loved his father, but he was first and foremost a Soviet pioneer.” After this, the children suffered from stress and severe depression.
They organized attacks on women, beating them and taking their bags with materials. This was done to Oksana Meshko, Raisa Rudenko, Mykhailyna Kotsiubynska, Lyolia Svitlychna, Svitlana Kyrychenko, and others. Invaluable archives of Antonenko-Davydovych, Nadiya Vitaliyivna Surovtsova, material about the Sixtiers from Mykhailyna Kotsiubynska, and Yuriy Badzio’s work “The Right to Live” were stolen as a result of violent robberies or burglaries.
They practiced the most absurd “denunciatory” publications in the press (against S. Kyrychenko and others), condemnation of “anti-social” behavior in labor collectives (O. Antoniv and others), and fired almost all the wives of prisoners from their jobs, some of them several times. They held women behind bars without authorization (Atena Pashko, Kateryna Vysotska, and others). And, of course, they tormented us with searches, even in connection with some department store robbery somewhere in the Lviv region (V. Lisova, A. Marchenko). They influenced a person’s future fate, for example, by openly preventing Lyudmyla Ryabusa (V. Ovsiyenko’s niece) from entering the Lviv Art Institute. Sometimes they would change curators for others, with a different, even sharply contrasting, mode of operation. One of the “new” ones might declare to V. Lisova: “We will communicate. But bear in mind: I’ve even re-educated tractors!” It was a debauched bacchanalia—from horrors to anecdotes, like this one: “What are you thinking? You are just a handful! The entire nation is marching in step—and you?! Why are you smiling?”—“I was imagining the picture!” (V. Lisova)
We cannot fail to mention Olha Heiko, who endured dual pressure—from the KGB and from a high-ranking party-nomenklatura family.
In these extreme conditions, we were quite united, and even some disagreements were smoothed over; we were much more tolerant, and most of us have remained friends forever. When preparing packages or getting ready for visits, we shared what was most needed. After visits, we would immediately meet to hear any news about our loved ones and the situation in the camps.
I will not forget the sorrow that enveloped my soul after visiting Semen Gluzman’s parents, who had just returned from a visit with their son. (I needed to hear something about Vasyl Lisovyi, who had suddenly “disappeared” from the camp just before my trip with two small children to visit him.) The apartment was filled with a oppressive silence, and in its midst were two elderly, gray-haired, intelligent people, reserved and resigned, yet calm and full of dignity. A similar, though slightly nuanced, feeling came over me when I left Frosyna Fedorivna Ovsiyenko in a distant Polissian village in the middle of winter. Vasyl was then imprisoned for the second time. Her life was one of continuous, exhausting labor on the collective farm and at home. It was endless endurance. And all around was winter. Snow had covered the large yard and the large, old-fashioned house in which the elderly woman was all alone, like a finger, with her grief-stricken soul in a blackened, overworked body.
Due to the severity of the KGB’s sanctions or for reasons of expediency, our views on the forms of publicizing information did not always coincide. Some women channeled information into underground channels, transmitting their husbands’ texts to the world. Thus, the works of Ivan Svitlychny, Mykola Rudenko, Ivan Hel, Valentyn Moroz, and others saw the light of day abroad thanks to the absolutely risky actions of their wives, which was assessed accordingly by the KGB. Raisa Rudenko was thrown into a camp, and Nadiya Svitlychna was evidently saved from a second term by her little son, Ivanko, although she was still expelled from Ukraine.
A large share of the mass participation of women in both the resistance and human rights movements belongs to the western lands. There were conscious mass protests there, such as the struggle to preserve the graves of the Sich Riflemen, where women of all ages fought steadfastly. This was also the case in connection with the death of Volodymyr Ivasiuk. The entire region, down to the most remote mountain village, was shocked and outraged: “They’re even silencing you for a song now!” I heard from the village people. As someone from the east, I was struck by the powerful concentration of energy with a deeply spiritual aura, as people from villages and mountains gathered and traveled to his grave for a long time after work, singing religious and patriotic songs from the UPA era. It was then that Zenoviy Krasivsky, who had just been released from a psychiatric hospital in the summer of 1978, told us: “This is not a small circle of intelligentsia, but thousands of people from the fields and factories!” The energy of the UPA had not yet faded in society. Although even then, the living spirit of the region was being ruthlessly trampled. Young men from the villages were being taken to camps in whole groups! UPA participants who returned home from imprisonment were scattered throughout Ukraine, Siberia, and Karaganda, or sent back for a second term. Thus, Iryna Senyk and Oksana Popovych were imprisoned again. Physically maimed, they remained with the subtle and refined souls God had given them, endowed with a strange fortitude of spirit. In the camp, they declared themselves members of the UGG.
So, to summarize, let us name the women members of the UGG:
Oksana Yakivna Meshko, Kyiv
Olha Heiko, Kyiv
Nadiya Svitlychna, Kyiv – USA
Iryna Senyk, Boryslav
Stefania Shabatura, Lviv
Oksana Popovych, Ivano-Frankivsk
Nina Strokata, Odesa – USA.
Tremendous work, including technical work, was carried out by Raisa Rudenko, Olena Antoniv, and Olha Horyn.
Let us also name here the women who were not officially members of the UGG but were involved in this movement in various ways:
Lyolia Svitlychna, Kyiv
Nina Marchenko, Kyiv
Alla Marchenko, Kyiv
Mykhailyna Kotsiubynska, Kyiv
Lilia (Valeria) Andriyevska-Sverstiuk, Kyiv
Tamila Matusevych, Kyiv
Svitlana Kyrychenko, Kyiv
Halyna Didkivska, Kyiv
Valentyna Drobata, Kyiv
Olha and Maria Stokotelni, Kyiv – Kamianets-Podilskyi
Valentyna Popeliukh (Stus), Kyiv
Tania Chernyshova, Kyiv
Vira Cherednychenko, Kyiv
Paraska Heta, Kyiv
Olha Buzivska, Kyiv
Lesia Padun-Lukianova, Kyiv
Kateryna Vysotska, Kyiv
Rita Dovhan, Kyiv,
Lyudmyla Stohnota, Kyiv
Lyudmyla Lytovchenko, Kyiv
Vira Lisova, Kyiv
Nina Obertas, Kyiv
Lyuba Murzhenko, Kyiv
Valentyna Berdnyk-Sokorynska, Kyiv – Hrebeni village – Kyiv
Lyudmyla Ryabukha-Holubchyk, Kyiv – Israel
Nadiya Sylenko, Kyiv
Zvenyslava Vivchar-Serhiyenko, Kyiv
Veresa Antoniuk, Kyiv
Olena Leliukh, Kyiv
Maria Semeniuk, Kyiv
Iryna Kalynets, Lviv
Yaroslava Menkush, Lviv
Halyna Menkush, Lviv
Myroslava Zvarychevska, Lviv
Maria Hel, Lviv
Hanna Sadovska, Lviv
Oksana Senatovych, Lviv
Maria Protseviat, Lviv
Oksana Osadcha, Lviv
Atena Pashko, Lviv
Lyudmyla Sheremetyeva-Dashkevych, Lviv
Lyuba Marynovych, Kyiv – Drohobych
Raisa Moroz, Ivano-Frankivsk – USA
Maria Ovdiyenko, Odesa – Brovary
Valentyna Chornovil, Vilkhovets village – Bucha
Raisa Moroz-Symchych, Dnipropetrovsk – Kolomyia
Orysia Sokulska, Dnipropetrovsk
Lidia Huk, Kyiv – Skadovsk
Sofia Matviyuk and her mother Vasylina (widow of a fallen UPA soldier), Pyrohirtsi village in the Khmelnytskyi region
Hanna Mykhailenko, Odesa
Halyna Holumbiyevska, Odesa
Halyna Mohylnytska, Odesa
Nusia (Hanna) Masyutko, Lviv – Nova Kakhovka
Olha Babych-Orlova, Zhytomyr region
Maria Vasheka, Kaharlyk
Hanna Yovkhymenko, Kaharlyk
Halyna Kravtsiv, Kharkiv
Halyna Melnyk, Pohreby village, Brovary district
Iryna Kovalenko, wife of Ivan Kovalenko, from Boyarka
Women—participants in the UPA who returned from the camps also joined in *samvydav*, educational, and human rights work.
These are women of legend:
Volodymyra Bandera
Daria Poliuha
Darka Husyak
Kateryna Zarytska
Maria Vulchyn, Lviv
Lyuba Lemyk
Kateryna Savchuk, Ivano-Frankivsk
Nadiya Vitaliyivna Surovtsova, Uman
Oksana Bandera, Ivano-Frankivsk
And how many such women have I not named!… Of the thousands who were repressed, hundreds returned. They have already begun to tell of this hellish and amazing page of our history in the journal “Zona”:
Orysia Mateshuk, Lviv
Valeria Dzhulai, Pervomaisk
Tetyana Baida (Barbeliuk), Kalush
Marta Hai, Ivano-Frankivsk
Paraskovia Pasko from the Ternopil region
May the women I have not named, and those whom I have named without their consent, forgive me. These are only the names of those whom I know personally or have heard of in our circle. I am certain that with our collective efforts, this list will grow longer. And perhaps books will be written, in addition to those we already know: Valeriy Marchenko’s “Letters to a Mother from Captivity” (to Nina Mykhailivna Marchenko), memoirs about Oksana Yakivna Meshko (through the efforts of Vasyl Ovsiyenko), Svitlana Kyrychenko’s memoirs, and Georgiy Kasyanov’s very valuable book “The Dissenters.” And this is necessary not only to supplement history, but also for ethical reasons, as is customary in any normal society. It is, after all, a tribute to the women who not only supported their imprisoned relatives and loved ones but who, under difficult conditions, according to their conscience and abilities, laid their own stone in the pavement that led our state to independence.
“Zona” journal, No. 12, 1997, pp. 3–12.
In the photo: October 12, 1978, seeing Nadiya Svitlychna off as she emigrates abroad: Oksana Meshko, Vira Lisova, Mykhailyna Kotsiubynska, Nadiya Svitlychna, Darka Husyak, Mykhailo Horyn, Atena Pashko, Valentyna Chornovil. Photo by Olha and Tarasyk Horyn
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