STEFANIYA VASYLIVNA PETRASH-SICHKO

Stefaniya PETRASH-SICHKO

A WOMAN’S FATE

(Additions from the first, “Canadian,” version are in italics.)

Mr. Petro Sichko discovered the manuscript of his wife’s memoirs only after her death. The text was written neatly, with virtually no corrections, as if it were a clean copy, although P. Sichko insists that his wife wrote without drafts.

She began them on the Feast of the Intercession in 1991. Chapters I and II are written on 68 numbered sheets of standard paper. The text mentions that she “finished writing the 60th page in January 1993 and could not pick up a pen for a whole year.” These chapters cover the events from 1939 to the end of 1949: her youth, the underground, arrests, trial, transports, and imprisonment. It is not clear from the text whether the author described her imprisonment to the end or stopped there.

S. Petrash began the largest chapter, Chapter III, on October 5, 1994. It is a general notebook with squared paper. When making a photocopy, we numbered the pages: 165. This section describes the events of 1974–1994: how the family rose up a second time to defend its (and the nation’s) dignity, joined the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, and what repressions it suffered for it.

The author started Chapter IV a year and a half later, on March 15, 1996, and wrote only 7 standard sheets. Here she returns once again to the release of her husband and sons and describes her trip to Canada.

The author gave the memoirs their title herself. But to give the reader points of focus, we have divided the text into smaller subsections and named them. For the sake of narrative consistency, we have taken the liberty of rearranging some pieces of the text, noting this in each case.

Just as this volume was being typeset, we received word from Ms. Nadiya Svitlychna in the USA that she has many documents, as well as another manuscript of Stefaniya Petrash-Sichko’s memoirs—from the archive of the late Nina Strokata-Karavanska. An unfortunately undated note was attached to it:

“Ninochka! This is all done in a hurry, skipping over things. You know, no one ever wrote a book in two days, and here there are always some obstacles, it’s not my own home, so I have to do what the landlady wants.

If you have nerves of steel and the desire, then with your intelligence, you can bring it to order, though it is very difficult.

I have omitted many important things.

It will be necessary to insert things on those pages where I marked ‘1a,’ and within them, I have made markings 1), 2)...

A separate bundle is about my childhood from 1941 to 1977.

The second bundle is from the time you know, from 1977.

You’ll figure some things out, some you won’t, because I don’t even have time to reread it. There are heaps of mistakes. And if you think it’s no good, then so be it. Because this is an overwhelming labor. I give you permission to change sentences, rearrange phrases, so that the book has a more or less ‘marketable appearance.’ Because I’ve somehow forgotten how to write, or maybe it’s the rush. Don’t judge.”

From this, it follows that this manuscript is the original one. It was evidently written at the request of Nina Strokata-Karavanska in Canada, while the author was there at the invitation of her family. Volodymyr Sichko relates that he and his son Taras went to Moscow to see his mother off to Canada in June 1988. There is a date of her return: February 25, 1989, at Boryspil Airport, when customs officers confiscated a computer gifted to her by relatives. And from the chapter “Initiative Group for the Defense of Ukrainian Churches,” it is clear that it was written in Canada.

The Author’s amazing memory is striking, as she clearly did not use any documents in Canada. Upon returning home, S. Petrash wrote a new, in our opinion, more refined version of her memoirs. Recounting the same events a second time, the Author did not have the “Canadian” version at hand, yet the text sometimes matches almost verbatim, in well-crafted phrases. So, publishing both versions in one book is impractical; this is not yet an academic edition. Therefore, we will take advantage of the Author’s wishes, expressed in the note to N. Strokata, and the kind consent of Ms. Nadiya Svitlychna, and will introduce into the “Ukrainian” version only certain episodes from the “Canadian” one, setting them in italics. They significantly supplement the narrative; in particular, the story of S. Petrash’s imprisonment is here brought, at least in outline, to her release in 1957.

The “first bundle” consists of 71 pages of an A4 manuscript, the “second bundle” of 107 pages. In addition, there are another 11 pages of appendices. On July 14, 2003, Nadiya Svitlychna transferred these manuscripts, along with other Sichko family documents, for safekeeping to the Sixtiers Museum in Kyiv.

Editor-compiler Vasyl Ovsienko.

Chapter I

(14.X. 1991)

Youth

I, Stefaniya Vasylivna Petrash, was born on April 1, 1925, in the village of Zalukva near Halych, in what is now the Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast. My father was Vasyl and my mother was Oleksandra Petrash. They had seven children, two boys and five girls. My father had graduated from the Lviv technical school, so he worked for the government, while my mother worked at home on the farm, with the children helping her. While the children were small, they hired help for the work.

My eldest sister, Rozalia, at 24 years of age, that is, in 1928, left for Canada, settled in Toronto, where she lived with her husband, Dmytro Chabak, and their daughter, Liuba, until her death.

I was the youngest. I started school at age 5 because my older sister Milia was going, and I didn’t want to be left behind. They accepted me temporarily, but when they saw I was learning, they accepted me permanently. There were 4 grades in the village, so for the fifth, you had to go to Halych. They didn’t accept me there because I was only 9 years old; I had to repeat the fourth grade. In 1938, I finished the 7th grade and went to study at the gymnasium in the city of Stanyslaviv, now Ivano-Frankivsk. A year later, Poland collapsed, and I continued my studies under Soviet rule, but they turned the gymnasium into an incomplete secondary school, renaming the 2nd gymnasium grade to the 6th grade, and the third to the 7th grade. So in 1941, I finished the 7th grade again.

My fate is like that of thousands of girls and women, my peers of that restless time. I had not yet reached adulthood when the Polish-German war broke out. At 14, we met this war with joy, because the Polish authorities were becoming increasingly cruel towards Ukrainians.

The reading society raised us in a patriotic spirit: to value all that is good and hate what is evil. Our group was called “Dorist” (Youth Growth). There were younger and older groups here—up to 16 years of age. They taught us, first and foremost, the history of Ukraine, because many children finished the village school—4 grades—and did not go further, either because of poverty, which meant they had to earn their daily bread, or from the understanding that one could be a master of the land even without an education.

In the reading room, besides a library for adults, there was also children’s literature, but it was different from today’s books. I still remember some of those books: “Na ukhodakh” (On the Outposts), “Osaul Pidkova” (Cossack Captain Pidkova), “Ivas Chornousenko.” I wonder if they have been preserved anywhere? I think perhaps in the diaspora... These were books about Cossack campaigns against the Tatars. About young heroes who, without sparing their lives, without any orders, helped the Cossacks or warned of a Tatar attack. After reading such a book, you wanted to become one yourself.

What stirred our young souls the most (and not only the young ones) was the event that happened in 1933 when the Poles hanged two Ukrainian revolutionaries—Danylyshyn and Bilas. This event made the Ukrainian population very wary of the Polish authorities. Then, after their deaths, songs about the heroes poured through our villages, and these songs raised the spirit of resistance.

Allow me to tell you how the youth lived in the village at that time. There was a certain order in the village. Boys and girls would meet either in the reading room or at the girls’ homes, because girls did not leave their houses at night without their parents’ permission and did not wander the streets. On fast days, that is, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, one could not go to a house for “courting,” as they said then. The other four days of the week were for “courting.” So on these fast days, the boys would gather on the commons, on the riverbanks, and sing. They didn’t just sing any old how. There were large choral groups in the villages. Even in my village of Zalukva, there was a men’s choir of 40 men. They sang in church, at concerts, at festivals, and at funerals. Believe me, no orchestra at a funeral can replace this singing. With the arrival of the Bolsheviks in 1939, there was a funeral in Halych for one of our Ukrainian activists. When the choir sang “So sviatymy upokoi” (With the Saints, Grant Rest), all the military men took off their hats and stood with their mouths agape. Later, no matter how hard they tried to liquidate this choir, they did not succeed. Except that many choir members perished in the war.

I’ll return to the Polish times. The boys sang Ukrainian patriotic songs, Sich Riflemen songs, and then songs about Bilas and Danylyshyn. For example: “As the revolutionaries fled from Horodok, the Polish informers chased after them...” or “A black cloud hangs over Lviv...” The boys sang, and the melody flowed over the village, and no one was indifferent to these words.

There were seven of us children in the house, two brothers and five sisters. And all were choir members. Our older sisters also married choir members. We had our own choir at home. On Sundays, holidays, or just in the evening, a song always flowed through our house. There were hungry times, but a song replaced a piece of bread.

My father, Vasyl Petrash, was a former Sich Rifleman. He had graduated from an engineering and construction technical school in Lviv and was an educated man for that time. He spent more time in Halych at his government job, while our mother took care of our upbringing. My mother, Oleksandra Petrash, had little formal education, but she was by nature a nationally conscious Ukrainian. She taught us to love Ukraine more than her.

In our village lived a political activist who had been in a Polish prison, in Bereza Kartuska, Oleksa Pylyponko. He liked to come to our house. He probably liked my sister Olia, who did not receive him very gladly, so he spent whole evenings with us. I was 12, and my sister Omeliana was 14. He would bring us books that we had to read by a certain deadline and then retell to him what had captivated us. We read with attention. And to his question of whom we loved most, we would answer: “Ukraine.” For which we received praise.

My sister Omeliana, on the recommendation of this Oleksa Pylyponko, joined the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists—secretly. Only our mother knew about it, because how else could she leave the house in the evening? Dad often grumbled that it was not proper for a girl to wander about at night. And I wondered how mother could let her out of the house alone in the evening. When I asked about it, mother would say: “Quiet, don’t tell anyone, when you grow up, you will go too.”

Bolshevik Occupation

With the arrival of the Bolshevik occupation in 1939, I enrolled in the Stanyslaviv women’s gymnasium, which was located on Lypova Street. We met the arrival of the Bolsheviks with caution. In general, the population met this arrival joyfully, with flowers, because they believed that the Polish occupation was over, and that Ukrainians from eastern Ukraine had come who would bring happiness and prosperity.

But not even a month of occupation had passed before the population’s illusions were shattered. The new government began to implement the kolkhoz (collective farm) system. But before that, it began imposing a quota (kontingent) on every farmer, and in addition, the sale of grain to the state, which led the people to impoverishment. To add to this, in 1940 there was a flood that destroyed the harvest, and in 1941 a famine began. In addition, they began to deport wealthy farmers and nationally conscious people.

A terrible period of hardship began. All societies were banned. Not only could “Dorist” not meet, but all associations were liquidated: “Yunaky” (from 16 to 18 years old), then the “Sokil” and “Prosvita” societies. But my generation and the older one were already prepared not to be dormant.

I also want to write about what the arrival of Soviet power in Western Ukraine in 1939 looked like.

The nationally conscious Ukrainian intelligentsia knew, but did not fully imagine, what this power represented. The common people rejoiced, because the Polish yoke had gotten under their skin. That poverty, that oppression. The people were dependent on the Jews. You borrowed 5 or 10 zlotys, and after a few years, it was impossible to pay the interest, and the Jew would evict such a family from their home, the house went to auction.

They rejoiced, but not for long. In 1939, they began to distribute “kurkul” (wealthy peasant) land to poor peasants, only to take away their own land a year later.

In 1940, they began to organize collective farms, which no one wanted to join. It even happened that in a house where they were forcing people to sign up for the kolkhoz, one stooge would beat a peasant below the back with a whip, while another beat a drum so the screams couldn’t be heard. Our village did not sign up then. And even when the Soviets returned a second time, a collective farm was organized in our village only in 1950.

Some villages signed up. Our land had never seen a tractor. They brought in tractors, plowed too deep, and nothing grew. The kolkhoz members went begging in the villages that were not collectivized. And those people would reproach them: “Why did you sign up?”

And from those who did not sign up, there were unbearable taxes. A quota, an additional one, a sale to the state, a surcharge... They took five or six times a year. The people gave it, but still left some for themselves.

German Occupation

And so an end came to these troubles as well. On June 22, 1941, the bombing began. And June 23 became a fatal day for political prisoners. Although the NKVDists were in a panic, the terrorists did not forget to not leave their victims alive. That night they grabbed from their beds all those whom they had planned to arrest, whom they had not managed to arrest in these less than two years. Whoever they managed to take alive, they took, and for whom there was no time, they shot. And what was happening in all the prisons of Western Ukraine? I have read somewhere about the Lutsk prison, but how many prisons are not mentioned!

Take our Stanyslaviv prison, now Ivano-Frankivsk. My father went there himself, without us. The Soviets had fled, the Germans had not yet arrived, probably for about two weeks. My father returned from Stanyslaviv and said to my older sister: “Tomorrow we are going to Stanyslaviv. I will show you something. And someday you will tell your own children about it.” Maybe he told my mother something that day, but not us, the little ones. And the next day, when they returned, my sister tearfully recounted the horrors she saw in the prison. How could this have happened? Were the prisoners herded into a warehouse where lime was stored, or was lime brought into the cellars? But they herded people onto dry lime, then poured water on it, and in such agony, the people were boiled. At that time, a conscious Ukrainian from Halych, Vodoslavsky, who worked as a veterinarian, was in the prison. In that lime, his wife found a piece of a tie that she herself had embroidered. People sifted through the lime, but there was a pile of flesh and bones. To this day, no one knows, and if they know, they are silent, how many victims there were.

There were also barrels studded with nails, like concrete mixers. They pushed living people in there and ground them up. From one barrel, they pulled out the dead body of a pregnant woman who had died in such torment.

My father said to my sister: “For these victims, you, the young, must take revenge. Because who knows if we will live to see those days of reckoning.”

That is how we grew and were tempered. As my son writes in one poem: “I grew entirely from insults and pain and suffering.”

My mother always told us that she wanted nothing more than to live to see an Independent Ukraine. And she did, when on June 30, 1941, they proclaimed that independence. She then said that she could die now. But whether she said it at such an hour, or perhaps she also lived through the fact that they soon took that independence away from us...

Again a war in 1941 and again a new occupier. And again the people rejoice, because the world had not seen such horror as under the Bolshevik occupation.

This Oleksa Pylyponko was already in the regional command of the OUN. During the occupation, he went into the underground. He only appeared in the village sometimes, and only to those with whom he had business.

We were so organized that with the arrival of the German occupation on June 22, 1941, in just one week we were able to gather all our patriotic forces and on June 30 proclaimed an Independent Ukraine. The Act of Proclamation took place in Lviv under the leadership of Mr. Yaroslav Stetsko, and in Halych, this manifesto was proclaimed under the leadership of Oleksa Pylyponko.

A parade came from the entire district. Each village had its own folk costume. The older youth, who at that time were called the “Sokoly” (Falcons), marched separately, and the younger ones were called “Dorist” (Youth Growth) or “Yunatstvo” (Youth). I was a chotarka (squad leader) of the “Dorist” then. Everyone marched in columns with blue-and-yellow flags. The youth of our village were distinguished by their clothing from all others. The boys were dressed in white linen short trousers and embroidered shirts with sleeves rolled up above the elbow. And the girls had blouses embroidered with red and black threads, and narrow white linen skirts, fastened down the front with black buttons. This was a specific uniform, like in “Plast” today. What a spiritual uplift it was! If only one could feel such a renewal one more time in life, one could then die in peace.

I was 16 years old then, I was already a squad leader of the “Dorist” and at this demonstration, I led the “Dorist.” The youth group was led by Ms. Maria Lysak, later an underground fighter, whose husband died in the UPA, and she went abroad with her small child. I will tell more about her later.

After the proclamation, I was accepted as a sympathizer of the OUN. Our main task was training. Under the cover of supposedly being camps for the education of schoolchildren, we were trained for work in the OUN.

O. Pylyponko settled in our village in the house of my older sister, who, because of him, was deported with her family, that is, with her husband and two small sons, to Siberia in 1940. Incidentally, the small 4-year-old son ran away from the deportation, and when they caught him, he shouted: “You won’t kill me, there will be an independent Ukraine anyway.”

So, Mr. Oleksa opened his OUN office. Sister Omeliana, born in 1923, joined the OUN before the war, in the late 1930s. She was in the povit (county) leadership of the OUN and held the post of head of the povit active members. Five houses away from us lived a Ukrainian—the commandant of the German police, Ivan Kvasniy. About three months after the proclamation, in September 1941, his wife comes to our house early in the morning and says: “That nationalist (meaning Oleksa) won’t be proclaiming independence anymore, the Gestapo went with my husband to arrest him.” My mother looked at my sister with wide eyes—and my sister was gone from the house like the wind. She shot through the gardens like an arrow to warn Mr. Pylyponko, but she ran into the yard at the same time as the Germans, so she barely escaped herself. And Pylyponko was arrested and he perished in Auschwitz, a week before the arrival of the British.

During the first Bolshevik occupation, there were four boys and four girls who were OUN members in our village. The girls’ cell leader was Volodymyra Matskevych, who was finishing lyceum. On the last night, that is, June 22, 1941, one of the village Komsomol members betrayed her. She escaped through the window, but they caught her and beat her so badly in the house in front of her parents that when they led her out, the walls of the house were spattered with blood. She did not return. These four boys and four girls, one of whom was my sister Omeliana, were clandestine, but with the proclamation of independence in 1941, they revealed themselves and wore OUN badges—a blue-and-yellow ribbon, folded into a four-petaled cockade.

Work in the OUN became clandestine again. My sister immersed herself completely in this work, and at home, there was the farm. All the children were away, and this farm work fell on my shoulders; I had to leave my studies.

I was moved from sympathizer to a full member of the OUN exactly 50 years ago, on the Feast of the Intercession in 1942. Every summer I was at training in youth camps.

In 1943, at this training, there were students from the trade school in Stanyslaviv. The camp commandant was B. Samotulka, the son of a Greek Catholic priest from the village of Bliudnyky, Halych Raion.

Somehow the Germans found out that this was an OUN member training camp and arrested him. And we in the camp waited for something terrible, not dispersing so as not to arouse suspicion. But he managed to get out of it and returned a week later. We finished the training. A total of 5 girls received medals for successful completion, myself included. When I was accepted into the OUN, I became a cell leader, and later a sub-raion leader. This means that I had OUN members from several villages under my command.

The OUN was divided into a “youth” network and an “active” network. My sister Omeliana, in addition to working with Pylyponko, was in the povit rank of the “youth,” and later the povit “active.” In addition, my sister worked in Halych in the “Ukrainian Committee.” This was a committee permitted by the Germans, but the entire OUN elite worked there, and the chairman was this same B. Samotulka, whom I mentioned as the commandant of the youth camp.

In the winter of 1942, our father died, and our mother was paralyzed. 11 months after our father, our mother also died. My eldest sister Rozalia, born in 1904, graduated from the Lviv trade school and left for Canada back in 1928. My older brother Antin got married. Two sisters, Bohdania and Olia, got married. At home, there remained my brother Yaroslav, my sister Omeliana, and me. My brother was learning a trade in Stanyslaviv.

Our house was like a central communication hub. OUN meetings were held there, national holidays were celebrated, new members were accepted into the OUN, and oaths were taken in our house.

It is difficult to be orphaned at such an age, and at the same time, we had great responsibilities from the OUN. There was a farm, we had to work on it during the day, and at night—underground work. Either we were at meetings from the leadership, or we conducted meetings with the youth ourselves. In addition, there was a communication point in the house, correspondence would arrive that had to be sent via couriers to its destination, or sometimes I had to deliver it myself. Neither night, nor bad weather, nor danger from enemies stopped us.

In March 1944, the front was approaching. The occupiers were already in our oblast across the Dniester River, and we were given the order to go underground. My brother Yaroslav, born in 1921, joined the UPA, and I went too. The povit propagandist, Vsevolod—by pseudonym—took me as his secretary. I wasn’t there long, because the front retreated. I returned home, but not for long, because they were already recruiting hardened and conscious OUN members for the “cadre school.” The gathering was in June. Two columns moved into the Carpathian mountains. In the first column were boys for the “officer school.” The second column, which was formed of girls in the Kalush region, was the “cadre school.” A commander with the pseudonym “Kryha” (Ice) led us. He was the brother of the poet of blessed memory, Zenoviy Krasivskyi. The first column fell into a German ambush and engaged in battle on Mount Makivka. We were ordered to return to the Kalush region, because that area was threatened. Germans were raging everywhere, and we were forced to turn back. We stopped in the building of a forester’s lodge, not far from the village of Bolokhiv, Kalush Raion.

There were 99 of us girls. There were girls from Kholmshchyna, Volhynia, Ternopilshchyna, Lvivshchyna, Stanyslavivshchyna. They all held corresponding leadership positions in the OUN organization, that is, okruha (regional), povit (county), raion (district), and sub-raion. They didn’t have time to assign us there, because the front unexpectedly approached and caught us in this village. We had to return each to our own territory, and if possible, home.

The Second Bolsheviks. Arrest. Underground

My sister returned before me. She said that there had been an officers’ kitchen in our house. When she returned and said that it was her house, one of the officers told her in private: “A neighbor told me that you wouldn’t return because you are Banderites. I told her that if she repeated that to anyone else, she would be shot. If someone else had heard it, you would have been arrested immediately.”

That was August 24, 1944. The grain was rotting in the fields. It needed to be harvested for now. But we hadn’t even had a good look around when they came to arrest my sister Milia, about whom everyone knew she was an OUN member.

When all of us—that is, my sister Omeliana, my sister Olia with her 4-year-old son, and I—were in the house (it was the end of September 1944), a neighbor’s 7-year-old girl, Marusia Frendiy, ran into the house and shouted: “People sent me. Auntie Milia, run, the Bolsheviks are close, they are coming to arrest you.”

Milia, that is, Omeliana, just as she was, dove out of the house. She managed to shout: “Hide the documents!” I hadn’t even recovered when, about 2-3 minutes later, the Bolsheviks knocked on the door. They said they had to conduct a search. No one presented a warrant then. They asked where my sister was. I said she was in the fields. They sent for her, but I refused. They started the search and went straight for the pillow. They pulled out a package from there, which, to be honest, I hadn’t seen before. They unfolded the paper on the table, asked who had drawn and sketched this. I say I don’t know what’s drawn there. They replied vulgarly: “A gentleman and lady naked and kissing.” I say: “We don’t engage in such things.” And it was a plan prepared by my sister Omeliana of the location of the main military positions and anti-aircraft guns in the city of Halych, to be passed to a UPA sotnia (company). At that time, Chorniy’s sotnia was operating in our areas, which often harried the NKVD. They didn’t search any further, although they could have found more. They told my sister Olia Husak, who had just come to visit us, and me to go with them. She was born in 1919, was married, and her boy Mykhas was born in 1940. We didn’t even have time to get dressed. They took us to Halych. But since we were the first prisoners (there was no prison yet), they put us in a cold guardhouse. I took off my shawl, my sister spread it on the concrete, laid her sleepy son down, and covered him with her own shawl. The guards walk by, the door creaks, and the child is on the floor. Night. Just the time to take one for interrogation. They took me first. They question and beat me until I collapse. I know nothing. And my sister hears me screaming. They brought me back, took my sister Olia, and she picks up her sleeping child. They try to take him away, but she won’t let them, she goes with the child. When they wanted to beat her, the child screamed, so they held back. They interrogated us like this for 5 days.

On the sixth day, we walked out of the prison—and no one followed us. I ask my sister what happened. She says: “Be quiet.” When we were outside the city, she said that they had released us on the condition that in three days, I would bring them our sister Omeliana.

We did not bring our sister, but, like Omeliana, we ended up in the underground—my sister Olia with little Misko in her arms and I. The insurgents came for us and took us. We rode all night. The night was rainy. Finally, we ended up in the village of Dorohiv, 20 km from our village. My sister and the child were housed in one house where there was a kryivka (hideout) just in case. I stayed with her for the time being, until further orders from the OUN command.

In November 1944, there was a major roundup that lasted until this time. A lot of NKVD troops entered the village. We had to go into a bunker with my sister’s sick 4-year-old son. The evening before the roundup came to the village (and our Misko already had a fever), I went alone through the forest to the neighboring village, 10 km away (from Dorohiv to the village of Temerivtsi). There was a center of an underground hospital there. I hoped to find the povit surgeon, my sister’s friend from the village of Krylos, Maria Dukhovych, and ask her to go with me to the sick child.

I did find her in Temerivtsi, but she was very busy. There had been a battle between insurgents and NKVD troops, after which many wounded were brought in, among them a UPA sotnia commander with the pseudonym Rih, with whom this doctor, Dukhovych, pseudonym “Olia,” was friends. She promised me that she hoped to be done with the wounded by night and would come to us in Dorohiv at dawn. At 12 o’clock at night, I was returning alone with a heavy heart. When I found myself in the forest, I heard the clatter of weapons. Troops were marching. I squatted behind a bush until the clatter subsided and went on.

And so, in the morning, the doctor did not come, because the village was blocked by NKVD troops. The child and I were forced to go into the bunker. When we whispered there, the little boy would warn: “Mama, quiet, the piss-oviks (Bolsheviks) will hear.” Can this child not be called a hero of the underground?

The child became very ill, and we had no medicine with us. On the third day, the roundup subsided a bit. The troops gathered near the garrison. We secretly left the bunker. The owner let us into the house. We blacked out the windows, lit a lantern under the bed, because the Bolsheviks flew to the light like bees to honey. Our little one was breathing heavily with his stomach. My sister Olia on the bed held him close in her arms and dozed off after sleepless nights, and I sat beside her and heard that the little one had stopped breathing. I cried out. We ran with the little one to the owners and asked for help, but the child was already dead. Diphtheria had suffocated him...

In all my time in the underground, I never experienced a more terrible moment, and we could barely bring my sister Olia back to her senses.

The Bolsheviks left the village, and we buried the child right there, in the cemetery in the village of Dorohiv. My sister Olia remained in the village of Dorohiv, she hid there, was in contact with the underground, but she was not a member of the OUN and did not perform any special work.

Later, there was another battle in this village. An OUN boivka (combat unit), headed by Kryha, was stationed here. This was the same Kryha (pseudonym) who led us to the cadre school in the summer. In this battle, the entire boivka of 13 men perished. They were retreating to the forest, and an ambush was waiting for them in the forest. No one surrendered alive. They were also buried in the village of Dorohiv in the cemetery. Now there is a common grave mound there, in which our little insurgent Mykhas also rests.

My sister Olia remained in Dorohiv, my sister Milia was a secretary in the regional SB (Security Service) command in the villages of the Halych Raion, her commander was Yar (pseudonym). And I went again for training for propagandists (I forgot our referent’s pseudonym, I know he was from Eastern Ukraine).

It was a very difficult time. There were 40 of us girls. The propagandist training was in the Halych Raion on the left side of the Dniester. This is Podillia with its specific swamps, and late autumn was rainy. We didn’t stay in a village for more than 1-2 days, because someone could betray us, and at night we moved from place to place. The area was dangerous.

Our training was jokingly called “Jesus’s infantry.” Probably because we looked as if we had come from the Stations of the Cross.

About a month later, we were assigned to different areas. At first, I ended up in the Bohorodchany Raion, where I spent the winter, and in April, they sent me to the Nadvirna Raion under the command of the povit leader with the pseudonym Smereka. They brought me to the village of Pererisil. The neighboring district was Solotvynskyi, where Smereka (whom I did not find in this village) had gone to organize the raion command, because the previous one had perished. But a bad fate did not spare her either. When she had gathered a new command, they were ambushed and all of them—5 people—perished.

That was 1945. The war was coming to an end. The “victory” found me in this village. That “victory” which our superiors so generously honor today. And no one thinks about who defeated whom. What changed for the better for the Ukrainian people after it? For those who ended up in Germany, their fate was varied. Some perished, and some survived, ended up in Canada or the USA and continued to work for the benefit of Ukraine. Many of them received a higher education. And those who ended up here, in the USSR—it was the gallows, prison, or Siberia. And to this day, in our own state, we walk like beggars, begging for rehabilitation. Even our esteemed Mr. Pliushch’s heart did not tremble enough to rehabilitate the OUN-UPA for the 50th anniversary of its creation. They are afraid of the communists. They honor them because they themselves have not yet rid themselves of that communist stench. (I apologize, may God be their judge).

I want to return to where the so-called “victory” found me. In the village of Pererisil, Bolsheviks were driving along the road and shooting a lot. We were about to flee, but we were warned: they are shooting for joy that the war is over. And about a week later, in mid-May, a roundup descended on the village, and from the forest. There was nowhere to run. In the hut where I was, lay a UPA fighter, wounded in the leg, or rather a chotovyi (platoon leader) Iskra (I’ve already forgotten which sotnia, maybe Letun’s). He asked me to take him to the bunker and close the entrance, because everyone in the house was in the fields, and there was no time for ceremony, as they were already shooting nearby. I did all this quickly, and I myself took a cow out to graze in the orchard.

They killed 16 boys then, and almost all from that village. There were two brothers, former students. One was in the povit command, the other in the UPA. The one from the OUN was killed in his barn. And the other was fleeing through the rye to the forest. As we say, on St. George’s Day, a chicken can hide in the rye. But the spring was warm, and the rye was waist-high. There were only a few meters left to the forest. He didn’t make it. One was named Mykhailo, I don’t know his pseudonym, the other Ostap, but I don’t know if that was his name or pseudonym.

The one who was killed near the house (at that time, they still left the dead where they were killed, and later, in 1946, they started collecting them and taking them to the raion, so that acquaintances could identify who they were), was dressed at home, and the other, so that his mother wouldn’t know, at their sister’s. When they carried the coffin with Mykhailo from the house to the cemetery, the second coffin joined them on the way. The mother knew that many had been killed, so she didn’t ask who they were carrying. They laid them together in the cemetery. As bitter as it was, they opened the coffin so the mother could see him for the last time. She looked—recognized him and laughed. She went mad. The honest, the brave perished. But evil takes no harm. My platoon leader Iskra, whose home name was Bohdan Kozievych, from Deliatyn, remained alive, only to later, as a seksot (informer), put me in prison. We will return to that, it will be later.

So, povit leader Smereka did not return to Pererisil. A girl with the pseudonym “Olenka” came (her real name was Olia Dyrda, from my village), who was then in the okruha command, and she assigned us. A girl with the pseudonym “Zhurba” (Sorrow) was appointed raion leader for Solotvynshchyna, I was her deputy, that is, a propagandist and organizer, a girl with the pseudonym “Vyshnia” (Cherry) was in charge of medicine, and the fourth was in charge of communications, pseudonym “Nedolia” (Misfortune). My pseudonym was “Mariyka.” To come to a territory where two commands before us had already perished was not very easy.

After the war, NKVD troops were thrown into our villages, especially into the Chorniy Lis (Black Forest), to which our territory belonged. Days without roundups were very rare. At certain places at the entrance to each village, there was always a Bolshevik ambush. Our girls, couriers, liaisons fell. They did not surrender alive, and those who were caught off guard, prison tortures did not break them, they did not betray secrets.

The largest underground center was in the village of Maidan in Solotvynshchyna. The Stefaniv family, village intellectuals, lived there. Everything happened in their house. The father worked as a forester, knew what was going on in the district, and did not hide it from the underground. They had two daughters. One, Stefa, was about 18, the other younger. In the area, the raion SB (Security Service) leader was Gonta, who was courting this Stefa, and was almost always there. One night, this Gonta disappeared, and the Stefaniv family was destroyed by the SB, supposedly for treason. Everyone said that if Gonta had been there, he would not have allowed it. But it later turned out that Gonta was already working for the KGB. It is sad to write such things, but what can you do. How can you know what someone is like...

Once a month, the povit leader would gather a couple of raions for a report on their work. This could be in any raion. We didn’t travel alone, because if some misfortune happened to one, the other would know. So, Zhurba and I always went together.

In the autumn of 1945, we went to a briefing (that’s what the command meeting was called) in Deliatynshchyna, to the village of Chorni Oslavy. We had hardly made contact when someone ran up and announced: a roundup. We headed for the forest. We were jumping over fences. There, in the mountain villages, there were no fences, but rails in two rows. So I grabbed onto that rail to jump over, threw my leg out and fell. I hopped a few more meters and shouted to Zhurba that I had broken my leg. There was no time to dawdle, it wasn’t far to the bushes, and she dragged me. In the forest, we came across an insurgent boy who showed us a bunker, for which the senior person in the bunker was terribly angry, because we had broken the rule: no one should enter the kryivka during the day, so as not to betray the entrance.

We sat in the kryivka for three days. My leg swelled up at the knee so much that when the roundup ended, they carried me to the village. I remember, to a house where a little woman lived with two small children, 3-5 years old, and her husband had died at the front. The children were rachitic. The little woman boiled potatoes in their skins, peeled them, cut them, added boiled beans, and mixed it all in a large bowl. The children pounced on the food, and she invited me to that bowl. Although I was hungry, I couldn’t eat what the children were eating so greedily. To my surprise, the children ate everything, that is, enough to feed 10 people.

Why am I writing this? To emphasize that people gave us their last. They shared what they could. And in the mountain villages, there was poverty.

Then the little woman called a huge old man. He felt my leg, told me to lie on the pich (clay oven). He put his leg on a stool so that my knee rested on his thigh. He took my leg in his hands, one above the knee, the other below. When he bent my knee—I fainted. He revived me with water and said: “Get up.” I got up. As if nothing had happened. He had set my dislocated knee. And if one of us had a toothache, there was always an uncle in the village who would pull it out with simple rusty pliers. That’s how we treated ourselves.

We were returning from Deliatynshchyna. In the mountains near Deliatyn, there is a hamlet called Bilozoryna. At the edge of the hamlet was a forester’s lodge. The forester noticed us. It was towards evening. He said: “Girls, don’t go, because an NKVD ambush has gone into that pass where you need to go.” We insisted, not yet believing him. He offered for us to spend the night. He said, day after day we bring back corpses from there. No one has passed through here without being shot at. We spent the night. At dawn, we set off, although he warned us to go around.

We left the house, and I made a vow to God, saying: “Lord, if you carry us through this place, I will fast every Friday in Your glory, as long as I am a maiden.” And I believe to this day: the prayer was answered, the Lord carried us through, and I keep that vow to this day.

We were very hungry, and when we entered the village of Hvizd in the Solotvyn Raion, we went into the first house. To our great joy, the hostess was taking bread out of the oven. We said we were hungry. At that time, no one asked anyone where they were from. The hostess gave us a whole loaf of bread. We sat by the side of the road and ate until we had finished it all.

We were in the village of Rakovets in this district. It was November, and a light snow had fallen. Someone shouted: “Bolsheviks!” We looked, and they were in the neighboring yard. Our house was not far from the forest. We were barefoot, because our old shoes had fallen apart. We were supposed to get new postoly (moccasins). So we went barefoot into the forest. We came across a UPA sotnia—and again they scolded us for leaving tracks. But we hadn’t expected to meet anyone here. They broke off some fir branches, covered them with a tent, and said: “Warm your feet, you can’t light a fire.”

Why do I write such trivial details? Because I want to emphasize that we went hungry, naked, ragged, and no one complained about anyone. We perished, we buried our friends and did not lose faith, we did not repent of what we were doing, because we did everything not for the sake of glory. We did it not for ourselves, but for the future generation, for those who now have that Free Ukraine.

I will digress from the topic. But I often think: if our people today, our youth, had even a tenth of that understanding, of that dedication to the common cause, then our nation, despite all the current crisis, would be much better off.

What I want to say is... that during the war, until May 1945, when they killed us—whether OUN or UPA members—they didn’t take the bodies, but left them. After a battle, we could bury them. But after the war, they would kill them and force the peasants to load the bodies onto carts and take them to the raion center for identification. And the identification took place like this: they stripped them naked and set them sitting along the wall of the NKVD or KGB. If there were girls among the insurgents, for greater amusement, they would place the hands of the deceased girls around the necks of the deceased boys. They would walk around them, laughing and spitting. And passers-by, steeling their hearts, would walk past and only when they were far from that place, would they weep bitterly. When relatives were brought—they would not acknowledge their own children. Not because they condemned them, but to avoid Siberia, so as not to betray a secret under torture and give away someone else.

The deeper the underground went, the harder it was to work. The Bolsheviks penetrated our ranks more and more. They had their own special schools where they trained spies and sent them into UPA sotnias or the OUN network. One such school was in the Ternopil Oblast, in Pidvolochysk. We found out about this school later. It had communists and eastern Ukrainians and Russians. They were even taught to speak our western dialect. How did they penetrate the UPA? When there were big battles, it happened that only a few men were left from a sotnia or a kurin (battalion). These remnants would organize into groups and join another sotnia. No one had a passport or identification then—that’s how the spies got in.

After the war, all the attention of the KGB was focused on our underground. The Bolsheviks tried to have most of their people in the SB (Security Service) network, in order to destroy us with our own hands, to sow disbelief among the population. In 1945, the KGB managed to establish its provocative network well within our ranks. It is impossible to describe all the adventures and clashes with the Bolsheviks, because there was no such day, or rarely a day, that passed without incident. And we slept like a hare on the furrow, dressed and always ready to flee. Day and night, we had to come up with an alibi and everything else, adapting to the circumstances and the terrain. We were forbidden to carry weapons: we were in the field among the population, so as not to accidentally expose to destruction those people with whom we were staying. And secondly—if we had a weapon at hand, the thought of putting a bullet in our own head often crept in. We carried a troika (cyanide) with us, to poison ourselves in a desperate situation. But we weren’t always wearing the clothes in which the troika was sewn.

Before Christmas 1946, the three of us—me, Zhurba, and a third, I don’t remember well, either Nedolia or Vyshnia—went to a briefing in the Nadvirna Raion, next to the Solotvyn Raion, in the village of Pererisil. After the briefing (it was on Christmas Eve), but still during the day, we set off for our territory to celebrate the holiday there. From Pererisil, we passed through the village of Tsetsyliv, came to the village of Fedkiv, and from there a few kilometers away was the village of Hvizd, already in our Solotvyn Raion. In Fedkiv, at a contact point, we were told that there was a Bolshevik ambush in the hamlet of Mlyny, which lies between the villages of Fedkiv and Hvizd, so it was not advisable to walk into the enemy’s hands. They brought us to a house where three young women lived. All three were sisters, and they lived together; they had no children. Their husbands were all in the Soviet army, so such a post was safer than elsewhere.

While we were at the contact point figuring out the situation and came to our lodging for the night, the women had already had their Holy Supper and probably thought that we had already eaten too. They didn’t ask us and didn’t offer us anything. It was cold in the house. The baking oven was the only thing heated, so it was only warm on the oven ledge. They put us to sleep under the window on a bench, giving us a pillow each under our heads, but nothing to cover ourselves with or lie on. We couldn’t sleep because it was cold. At dawn, the Christmas bells rang. All three hostesses went to church, leaving us alone. These hostesses had a kryivka somewhere in the barn, where they were supposed to hide us in case of a roundup. The hostesses left the house—and all three of us climbed onto the oven to get warm. And because we hadn’t slept all night, we dozed off.

The roar of a truck woke us. When we jumped up, we saw that the truck had stopped by the windows and Bolsheviks were jumping out of it. In the middle of the room stood a tub of sichka (chopped fodder), to be taken to the cattle in the morning. I jumped off the oven and, so as not to betray my confusion, leaned over the tub and began to mix the sichka. Nedolia started making the bed, although no one had slept on it, and our Zhurba didn’t have time to jump off the oven. When we went to bed, we hadn’t thought up an alibi, because we knew that in case of danger, they would hide us in the kryivka. We started calling ourselves Anna, then Katia, but the enemies were already in the house. They ask who we are. We say we are the hostesses and that our husbands are in the army.

Since I was closest to the door, some little lieutenant grabbed me by the hem of my jacket, led me outside and said: “Show me where your barn is.” And I don’t know. In the mountain villages, there are no fences. I see three barns and don’t know which one is mine, which is the neighbor’s. I said—I won’t show you. Then he brought me to one barn. I saw a boy standing there and realized that he had betrayed us and given away the kryivka. NKVDists are standing by the kryivka—I don’t know which of them opened the entrance—and they say to me: “Get in it.” They pushed me in there, I resisted. Finally, I broke free from their hands and ran towards the house. Already in the entryway, that little lieutenant caught me by the shoulders, wanted to say something or threaten me, but instead said: “Your eyes saved you.” And he let me go. To this day, I don’t know what my eyes looked like at that moment. I don’t know who went into the kryivka first. Probably that boy. It was empty. And the rest of the troops were already helping themselves: carrying out Christmas sausages, kalaches, boots, sheepskin coats from the house—everything they could get their hands on.

Someone sent word to the church to our hostesses. They arrived just as the troops were looting. The women started screaming. The NKVDists ask who they are. They say they are the hostesses. “And who are these?” And chaos ensued. They started to flee to the truck with the loot and grabbed Zhurba with them. They started to move, but I ran after the truck and screamed so loudly: “Let my sister go!” that they let her go.

It turns out the kryivka was new, only two insurgents with that liaison boy had slept in it once, the boy who fell into the hands of the NKVDists and led them to show them the kryivka. If they had hidden us there, we would have perished, because they threw a grenade into the kryivka.

After that pogrom, the women started to cry, saying that now they would be deported to Siberia. There was nothing to console them with, and we decided to go to our own territory, come what may.

We returned to our territory and heard that some from our organization had fallen into the hands of the NKVD and were collaborating with them. It was difficult to move around, there were ambushes everywhere. We stopped in Hvizd. About two or three days before Epiphany, the garrison lieutenant found Zhurba and me in a house. At that time, every village had a garrison, but they didn’t go from house to house. But this one went alone and stumbled upon us. In the house, he started to accost us, who we were and what we were, began to demand that we go with him. Someone reported this to the head of the village council. And many village council heads worked for the UPA. This head came and began to persuade the lieutenant to go with him, saying he had good moonshine and why did he need those women. Apparently, his appetite for moonshine overcame his patriotism, he went, got drunk, but the next day he came to that house again. He didn’t find us, started to look for us.

We did not expect such a turn of events. I was in a house where an old man and an old woman lived with their 11-year-old grandson. I jumped onto the oven, the old man sat at the edge of the oven, tied a cloth around his head. When the garrison soldiers entered the house, the old man started coughing. The old woman said he had typhus, and the NKVDists left the house. After that, a liaison came to the house and said that they were looking for us in the village, they had described what we looked like. That there was still one un-betrayed kryivka, so we should go there. We went. In the meantime, someone reported that I was really at the old man’s house. The NKVDists came again. Not finding me, they took the old man and woman to the garrison. The grandson went with them to beg for the old man and woman to be released. The NKVDists began to threaten that they would deport the old man and woman to Siberia.

At that time, children knew a little more than they should have. Because in difficult situations, when it was impossible for adults to get through, children went. Not under threat, but consciously, knowing that danger awaited them. Relatives, no matter how painful it was for them, did not object, knowing that behind this or that message stood the lives of hundreds. It so happened that this grandson knew the kryivka and probably saw where they hid us. When the NKVDists threatened to deport his grandfather and grandmother to Siberia, he had no choice but to show them the kryivka and in this way free his grandfather and grandmother.

A liaison ran up. The kryivka was in the barn of the hosts, where she was an adopted daughter. She shouted: “Run, the boy is leading the Bolsheviks to the kryivka!” In our panic, we couldn’t find the exit, and when we did, I jumped out and couldn’t pull Zhurba out. It lasted for some 5 minutes, which seemed like an eternity. It was Christmas Eve before Epiphany... We jumped out of the barn (I have already mentioned that there were no fences in those farmsteads). Neighbors were carrying a tub of sichka for their livestock. We snatched the tub from their hands. At that time, the NKVDists had already surrounded the barn with the kryivka and were shouting: “Bandera, surrender!” It was getting dark, people were preparing for the Holy Supper, and we, with that tub, went from house to house, like carolers, came to the end of the village to another contact point and asked the liaison to give us a safe kryivka. She replied: “They’ve all been betrayed. The sub-raion OUN leader surrendered and gave away all the kryivkas. Because of you, they are rounding up all the girls and young women in the village to the garrison to identify you. Run!” We stood in the yard, the barn there was unlocked, so we went inside. There were a few sheaves of rye there. We spread one sheaf out to lie on and lined the walls with the rest to protect ourselves from the cold. We had hardly settled in for the night when we heard the clatter of weapons. NKVDists came and set up a “Degtyaryov” machine gun, an ambush, right next to our barn. We whisper to each other that if they come for straw, we are done for.

Fortunately, the owner, not knowing we were there, locked the barn. The Epiphany night was frosty, we were lightly dressed, drowsiness was setting in, and in sleep, one could snore or cough—and we would be done for. The night seemed like a year. At dawn, the Moskali (Muscovites) packed up their “Degtyaryov” and left. In the morning, the owner came out on his business. We knocked from inside. The owner got scared, ran back to the house, but soon came out and asked: “Who’s there?” We answered. He unlocked the barn and couldn’t believe his eyes. “In such a cold and in a barn?” And then he added, how did we not get caught and that there was an ambush nearby. His daughter, the liaison, came out and said that there was one way out: people from their village go to Nadvirna (the raion center) for kerosene. So the only salvation was to take bottles in our hands to get out of the village.

We had to go up a bare mountain meadow for 2-3 kilometers, and then a forest. What kerosene on Epiphany? But we went. At the very top of the mountain, we say: “Let’s look back and see what’s happening in the village.” We looked back. On the white snow, troops were like ants, a chase after us, a roundup... We fell into the snow and crawled on. Before that, we said: “One burst now—and the snow under us will turn red.” And we laughed. Because our proverb says that when the trouble is small, a person cries, but when it’s big, they laugh.

We reached Nadvirna in about two hours. It was Epiphany, people were leaving the church, very beautifully dressed: in woolen multicolored skirts, white or red sheepskin coats, large woolen shawls and postoly, or red boots. And we were dressed in everyday clothes, so as not to stand out from the peasant folk on weekdays. We saw that our clothes could arouse suspicion. We moved away from the city. Where to go? The first task—we needed to eat. The danger seemed to have passed, so hunger made itself known. We hadn’t eaten for two or maybe three days.

The first village after Nadvirna towards Deliatyn. I went into the first house I came across. I found the owner, asked for food. He agreed. I said I would call my friend. He didn’t ask why we, young women, were asking for food. He gave us cold potatoes with goulash. We ate without chewing, thanked him, and left the house. My stomach started to hurt. The sun had warmed up, and the tops of the gravel piles by the road were bare, without snow. I sat down there, dying of pain. I thought—a twisted intestine. A farmer was riding by in a sleigh with horses. We asked for a ride. He asked where we were going. We said to the village of Dobrotiv, Lanchyn Raion, it seems, because Zhurba, before going to Solotvynshchyna, had worked in this area and knew the OUN stanychnyi (local leader) in this village.

It was getting dark. Our driver said that there were Bolsheviks and traitors in the village, was it worth going there? But there was no choice. We arrived, went into the stanychnyi’s house, found his mother. Seeing us, she gasped: “What brings you here? The Moskali just left the house five minutes ago, and my son, as a traitor, with them. Where will I put you?” There were bundles of straw in the entryway. She says: “I can only hide you there, although it may happen that they don’t poke you, because they have a habit of probing straw bundles with a ramrod.”

We spent the night in the straw again. In the morning, the roundup subsided a bit. A liaison came, placed us with an unsuspicious woman, where there was a primitive kryivka in the attic.

Throughout all the districts, in all the villages, a frantic advance of the NKVDists. A Bolshevik network had started in the ranks of the OUN. Mass arrests, mass betrayals of secret places, contacts, kryivkas... We needed to get out somehow, but where to go without a liaison? Our own people would be suspicious—they wouldn’t accept us. I decided to get to my own territory, where I was born, in Halych, and there establish contacts with our people, and then it would be clear where I would go from there.

The women’s network was renamed the UChKh (Ukrainian Red Cross). Our main work was helping and protecting wounded UPA fighters. To save us from arrest, we were told that whoever had the opportunity to get even a fake passport and legalize themselves should do so.

A day later, we got out of this village to the raion center, the town of Lanchyn, where Nedolia was from. She sheltered us with her relatives. They didn’t do roundups in the town, unless they went to a specific place if there was a vsyp (betrayal)...

We stayed there for two weeks. We found out that Ukrainians who had been resettled from Poland were going to Halych. A good opportunity to get home with them. They were traveling by wagon, carrying their belongings and driving their cattle. I approached the column and saw that one farmer was driving three head of cattle. I asked where his wife was. He said she had stayed behind. I told him: “I will walk in your column. In case of a Bolshevik ambush, I will be your wife.” He agreed, because he immediately understood who I was. We walked for two days. We spent the night in a village in houses where the head of the village council had placed us. We had to pass through the oblast center, Stanyslaviv. About 15 kilometers before the oblast center, we ran into an ambush. When the senior officer ordered us to show our passports, “my” farmer let the cattle go and sent me to catch a cow. Instead of mine, he showed his real wife’s passport.

From Stanyslaviv to Halych is 25 km. They stayed to spend the night just outside the city in the village of Pasichne, while Zhurba and I went on foot to Halych. It was getting dark. It was February, but due to a thaw, the roads were a terrible mess of mud. There was no asphalt then. We walked in postoly with very thin leather soles. The soles wore through, and although we had thick woolen socks, they tore on such a road. We were walking almost barefoot.

Second Arrest

We reached our native village of Zalukva by midnight, where my older brother Antin lived. He wasn’t drafted into the army due to a disability. He gave us a place to sleep in the cellar where potatoes were stored. It was warm there. In the morning, a liaison—a close neighbor—came and took Zhurba to a safe place, and my brother told me to go into the stable, he would give me breakfast, then I would go with the liaison to the neighboring village of Krylos for a contact. I didn’t want to, but I had to wait for the liaison and went into the stable. Not even a few minutes had passed when someone knocked on the door. I opened it and to my great surprise saw NKVDists, namely Captain Korostenyov, who had arrested my sister Olia and me back in 1944... No explanations were needed: he recognized me immediately and put me in handcuffs.

They began a search. They let two horses and three cows out of the stable, began to dig under the mangers, from the barn they began to throw everything out—threshed and whole grain, buckwheat, wheat, rye, beans, hay. All in one pile... The cattle went into the fields... I remember it was a Wednesday—market day in Halych. The roads were full of people everywhere. A rumor spread that they were deporting my brother. I wanted to run, even though I knew they would shoot me. But my brother’s eyes pleaded with me not to do it. The guard who was watching me said: “If you run, I’ll shoot. I have children too.” I wasn’t afraid of death, but I felt sorry for my brother, so that it wouldn’t happen before his eyes...

They took me to Halych. They laughed at me, saying: “What are you wearing, didn’t Chorniy (he was the sotnia commander operating in the Halych area) have anything better?” I was in a wide, gathered skirt, in holey postoly, and a Hutsul siriak (coarse woolen coat). Not at all the kind of clothes they wore in our area. Our village is a suburb, so we dressed like in the city. And people coming towards me, see me being led in handcuffs, and in those beggarly clothes... And even though I was already a prisoner, I was ashamed of such clothes...

They kept me in the prison guardroom all day and didn’t take me for questioning. They were waiting for the night: at night they beat you, and few hear the screams.

At that time, my sister Omeliana had already been in this prison for 2 weeks, beaten to death. A few words about my sister. Before her arrest, she was sick with an inflammation. The Bolsheviks came across the trail of a UPA boivka. They were fleeing to the forest. My sister couldn’t run, so the boys wanted to carry her, but she refused. She said: “You run to the right in the forest, and I’ll lead the trail away.” There was no time to think. When the boys went right, she went left, but along the edge of the forest, so the raiders would see her. They shot at her many times. She fell unconscious. They all ran to her, and the boys were saved. She fell face down, and they regretted that she was dead and wouldn’t say anything. They turned her over with their foot—and then she opened her eyes. They shouted with joy that they had a “yazyk” (tongue, i.e., an informant): “She’s alive.” They took her to the village of Komariv, 8 km from Halych.

The jacket she was wearing was full of bullet holes, but she was untouched. Not a scratch. Later in prison, they showed the jacket to the authorities and even to their wives and marveled that the jacket was full of holes, but she, that is, my sister, was whole.

In the garrison, she might have even gotten out of it. She said she was going to the forest for firewood, heard shooting, and started to run. But then a “yastrebok” (little hawk, a term for pro-Soviet collaborators) happened to be there, a school friend of my sister’s from the Halych school. He was from Halych himself, Mykhailo Hlushko. He recognized her and said that this was Omeliana Petrash. That’s when it began... The worst was when the garrison arrested someone. Every soldier in the garrison wanted to test his strength on the victim—and the victim would be brought to the district, to the prison, half-dead.

They didn’t spare her in the NKVD either, or more precisely, in the MGB, which conducted the investigation. My sister was a person with a sense of humor: even half-dead, she knew how to joke and keep up the spirits of her friends. She was beaten to death. Witnesses came forward to testify about her activities, but she confessed to nothing, betrayed no one.

When I was sitting in the prison guardroom, a 14-year-old teenager from our village, Mykola Melnyk, who was imprisoned for singing carols, came in and said: “Your sister Milia knows you’re here, and she knows they let me out for water. She asked me to tell you that they beat her very badly, and she said that you are in ‘Chorniy’s’ sotnia.”

I thought it was true. I think: in the sotnia—so be it. That’s the easiest accusation. When they ask where the sotnia is, I’ll say, as the song goes: “By the green oak tree.” And go look for the wind in the field.

But towards evening, a woman comes in to wash the floor. She is in the same cell as my sister. I know this woman, from our village, Yulia Yatsynovych. She says: “Oh, they take me, an old woman, to wash the floor, and you have a girl here as beautiful as a guelder-rose, so let her wash it.” She winked, handed me the rag, and we went under the table. There was a blockhead guard sitting there who didn’t understand anything. This woman says to me: “Hold on. My sister said she didn’t say anything about you. What you say—that’s what will be. She didn’t implicate you, so don’t implicate her. But don’t confess to anything. If there are no witnesses—you’ll get out.” And just then, from under the table, they called me for interrogation.

To this day, I can’t figure out why the boy Mykola lied. They probably promised him that he would be released for the lie.

The head of the NKVD, Polyanov, himself took me for questioning: “Why did you run away from home in 1944?” The answer (because I was afraid of arrest): “I ran away and worked for people for a piece of bread.”

The area where I was, they didn’t know, there were no witnesses, and for “niet—suda niet” (Russian for “no—no trial”). Not even 15 minutes of that interrogation had passed before he started hitting me on the head, on the crown. He folded his military belt in four—and with the buckle on my crown... I felt maybe 10-15 blows, then my head went numb. I didn’t even scream. Only with each blow: “Stefaniya, talk, before it’s too late”—a blow. How many there were during that whole winter night, 100, 200 blows—I didn’t count. Before morning, the head of the MGB, a Georgian named Kuznetsov, came to relieve him. He beat me with a ramrod below the knees and hit my head against the wall. I clammed up and said not a word. Neither “no” nor “yes.” This drove them into a frenzy.

In the morning, they brought me to a cell where there were already 15 girls. I said I didn’t want anything, just to sleep. And the girls told me to look in the mirror (they had found a piece somewhere, 1 cm square). I looked—and didn’t recognize myself. I was as black as coal, only my eyes were red with blood.

The girls shielded me and I fell asleep immediately. And when I woke up, I said: “Thank God for the sleep. This is the first peaceful sleep in my 2 years.”

Next, Lieutenant Semkov took over my interrogation. People said different things about him, that he was good, that whoever got him was released. But that was a disservice. Because whoever he released was awaited as a victim in the forest and eliminated as a traitor. In reality, it was KGB intelligence, which was already prevalent in the OUN ranks. It eliminated those who said not a word during interrogation. In this way, they destroyed our conscious people. With our own hands, under the guise of the OUN. But in reality, it was the KGB that was destroying them. There were hundreds of such cases.

They didn’t take us to the bathhouse to wash. They only let us out for a walk once a day. And the walk consisted of us shaking the lice off ourselves. I had a sweater made of sheep’s wool, and I would shake the lice off it by the fistful. After three weeks, I fell ill with typhus. I was transferred to the typhus cell, where there were already 15 girls. We were not given any medical help, not once did a doctor see us. But I was glad, because this cell was next to the one where my sister was. And there was a hole in the wall through which we could talk. My sister, when she heard I was among the typhus patients, pretended to be weak, tied a cloth around her head. The girls called the prison warden, Minin, and demanded that he take another typhus patient. Minin himself took my sister and brought her to our cell (a yastrebok named Nadolsky, from Halych, had brought me there).

That was on a Monday. My sister and I talked about what we needed to. Tuesday passed like that, and on Wednesday our sister Bohdanna (born in 1913), who lived in our village, married to Mykola Kutsak, brought us a package. The yastrebok Nadolsky brought me the package, which the typhus patients took from me, because they said I was dying and didn’t need to eat. My sister stood up for me, because she was the only one without a fever.

Then this same yastrebok comes and asks me (and he went to school with us): “Stefa, where is your sister?” And Milia then, laughing, in a thin little voice, answers: “I’m here...” He just dove out of the cell. A minute later, everyone burst into the cell: the prison warden, and our interrogators... The warden reads out: “Petrash, Stefaniya.” I say: “Present.” – “Petrash, Omeliana.” And she again, jokingly, as if nothing had happened: “I’m heeeere...” Then the interrogator said: “We are cunning, but you have outsmarted us.” And to my sister: “Now, get out of the cell!” And my sister again: “If I must go, I’ll go.” And she walked out demonstratively.

My sister left... And I lay among the typhus patients, where lice walked on foot. She lay with us for three days—and did not get typhus.

Unexpected Release

When they took my sister away, I lost consciousness. I don’t know if it was on the second or third day that my interrogator, Semkov, came and said: “Sign the order, you’re being released.” I say: “No, no.” Then he took my hand and signed: “You fool, if you don’t sign, you’ll rot here.” He shouted at me: “Go.” I crawled on my knees and elbows, because I couldn’t get to my feet. I remember, I was still dragging that lousy blanket behind me...

In the guardroom, I found two insurgents from our village who had been arrested. Semkov said to them: “Lift her up and put her on the stool.” They lifted me and sat me in the chair. Then some prisoners (because the yastreboks were afraid of typhus) took me by the arms and led me out to the street. A wagon was standing there, and the driver was a boy of about 13 with empty milk cans. They threw me among those cans. The boy asked in fear: “Where should I take her?” Then I clearly heard them say: “Dump her in the nearest ditch!”

We drove about three hundred meters from the prison. My legs were dangling from the wagon. There, near the central hospital, our women were standing. They inquired who the boy was carrying like that and recognized me. They took me off the wagon and took me to the hospital. The head doctor there at that time was a man well-known in wide circles, Mr. Shyketa. He said that they had called him and told him not to admit me to the hospital. But he knew my father and my sister Bohdania well—and he admitted me, taking responsibility upon himself. He said to me: “It’s almost 9 days. If you survive past 9 days—you will live. If not—you will die.” And when 9 days had passed, he said: “We’ll live for a long time yet.” He discharged me from the hospital secretly, saying: “Be careful.”

I came, that is, they brought me from the hospital sometime before Easter 1946. And on Easter, I was walking to church in Halych past the prison I had come out of, and I heard the prisoners singing—the whole prison: “Christ is Risen!” The prison a few steps from the church... When they sang the same “Christ is Risen!” in the church, I cried so much, I was shaking so much that they led me out of the church, and barely brought me back to a normal state.

My sister was sentenced to 10 years and taken away... Where? We never found out, until six months later a letter came from her from the Krasnoyarsk Krai, from the city of Chernogorsk. She was working with mica.

I’ll go back. When I met my sister in prison, I told her that I had to confess to something so they would convict me, because I heard that whoever gets out of prison is shot in the forest. My sister said that had happened, but it turned out that it was Bolshevik agents doing it. It was exposed, and now it doesn’t happen anymore.

When I was in prison, the NKVDists had crowed that I had worked for “Chorniy.” Not a month had passed on the outside when the sotnia commander “Chorniy” himself really did summon me, asked about the prison and offered me to cooperate, since no one from the OUN had expelled me. He said it was difficult for the underground to move through the area, and I was free, and carefully, but still more easily. I agreed without hesitation. At the same time, I went to evening school in Halych to finish my secondary education so I could enter an institute. There was no kolkhoz in our village. My brother gave me my field. It was near the house. I started farming. This went on for a little over a year.

Third Arrest

On June 30, 1947, we were supposed to have our graduation party. On June 28, 1947, with an assignment from sotnia commander “Chorniy,” I went to the Tlumach Raion. I spent another day finding the right people, and on June 30—it was a Monday—I was returning home early in the morning. At that time, route buses didn’t run. I got a ride in a car with officers. It was safer that way. I had illegal documents with me that I was supposed to pass to sotnia commander “Chorniy.”

I got out of the car in Stanyslaviv and was walking through the city center. It was early and a Monday, there were few people on the street. I felt some suspicious glances from military men. I rubbed my forehead with my hand and said to myself: “Is it written on my forehead—Banderite?” There was no way to look back to see if someone was following me. But then I saw a man with a parrot near the town hall, the parrot was drawing lots and saying something. There were about five people around him. I stood near them, looked back—and froze. Three NKVDists were walking, among them platoon leader Iskra from the sotnia of, I think, Letun. When I was in Pererisil in the spring of 1945, before Easter, he was lying there wounded. Raiders had swooped in, there was a big pogrom. They killed two students in Pererisil then, UPA fighters from that village, and about 10 more insurgents. This very platoon leader Iskra (real name Bohdan Kozievych, from Deliatyn), since there was no one nearby, I had dragged into a kryivka, closed it, and I myself took a cow out of the stable, as if to graze. He told me his name then—just in case he was killed. We trusted each other.

Seeing platoon leader Iskra, I quickened my pace towards Halytska Street. There were trucks parked there. I asked where they were going. I heard, to Halych. I jumped onto the truck bed. Two soldiers were sitting there. The driver was about to start when a lieutenant came up to him and asked where he was going. He replied, to Halych. He said: “Wait.” Then he turned to me, where was I going. I reply, to Halych. He says: “Get down, we need to talk.” I was stunned. A blouse full of illegal literature, I couldn’t throw it out here, because of the soldiers... I sat down on the spare tire that was in the truck bed. He once again climbed onto the truck’s wheel and said: “How long do I have to wait?”

I got down. He said: “Follow me.” The number of people on the sidewalks had increased. He was walking half a step ahead of me. And I don’t know how myself, but I shook everything out from my blouse into my underpants, and from there, along the road, where there was a crowd of people, I was stuffing it into a leather briefcase that a friend of mine, who lived in a village next to ours, a Karaite by nationality but a Ukrainian patriot, had given me for the trip...

I’ll digress for a few words about her, about the Karaite Amalia Leonovych. She was my age, a month younger than me. I was born on April 1, she on May 1, 1925. Her parents were “kulaks.” Good people. There were about 30 Karaite families in Halych. Our neighbor was a rich man, kept a lot of cattle, horses, farmhands, cooks, God knows how much land. The yard was full of ricks, which people threshed with the help of horses and a horse-drawn thresher. People say they came from Turkey before the war, somewhere around 1914, and bought land for beans and broad beans. Apparently, there was also a famine then. His name was Leonovych, and his wife was from the Zurokhovych family. And they had this one daughter, Amalia, born in 1925, my age. In 1940, the NKVD took her father, he never returned, he perished. Until 1940, her father did not allow her to be friends with peasants, only with Karaites, of whom there were 30 families in Halych and Zalukva, but he allowed her to play with us, that is, my sister Milia and me. Milia would make up interesting fairy tales and could tell them for hours. These Karaites were happy when we came to visit them.

Amalia fell under our influence, we taught her how one should love Ukraine. Before 1940, she was young and maybe didn’t understand some things, but when her father was gone, she fell in love with our Ukraine with all her heart. During the German occupation, she was already a true patriot. She studied by correspondence and worked in the accounting department for Mr. Terpyliak, who grew young saplings, he had a kind of state farm. There she got along with our youth, sang our songs with them. With the arrival of the Bolshevik occupation in 1944, she went to teach in the village of Krylos. We went into the underground, and she joined the work of the OUN legally. When I got out of prison, she and I were inseparable. She admired our movement. The Organization trusted her. When I set out on June 28 on my last journey, I was wearing a dark blue suit. Amalia said it wasn’t worth taking on the road because it would get dusty, and she gave me her gray jacket and a leather briefcase that she used for school. Besides her, no one knew where I was going.

So, for the second time, I was sitting in prison in her jacket, and they took the briefcase. From the camp, in February 1948, I wrote her a letter. She received it on the day she was forced to leave her home. Insurgents were at her place. No one even suspected that Amalia was connected with them. And then, just like that, without any suspicion, four Bolsheviks came up. The boys fled to the pantry, but the food remained on the table. The Bolsheviks guessed and started to open the door from the corridor to the pantry. The boys let go of the door, and shooting began. Three Bolsheviks were killed, and the fourth escaped and reported it. And she fled with the insurgents. The NKVD took her old mother and sentenced her to 10 years. She was in Siberia and waited for a letter from her only daughter, but her only daughter had died that same year.

The boys—I don’t know and can’t find out which unit they belonged to—were hiding in the attic of a church in the village of Kolodiiv, Halych Raion. Someone betrayed them, the Bolsheviks stormed the church. At that time, Amalia and two OUN members were there. They burned the archive, sang “Shche ne vmerla” (Ukraine Has Not Yet Perished), and, in order not to surrender, they slit their veins on their wrists. They were not burned. They were all brought to Halych and placed naked and sitting against the wall of the KGB building. Amalia was placed in the middle and her hands were put on the boys’ shoulders. They herded people to come and identify them. The Karaites who still remained in Halych walked by and spat on Amalia. Because in her life, she had not maintained friendships with them, but with Ukrainians. Now that’s someone who should have a monument. A foreigner who gave her life for the Ukrainian cause. Glory and honor to such people.

Last year I was in that village with my sister, because during the underground my sister was also there. An old granny who lives near the church told us that she heard her singing. That’s how a Karaite woman ended her life for the Ukrainian cause in February 1949. Her mother, Mrs. Leonovych, was sentenced to 10 years in the camps under Article 54-1a, served 10 years and returned home in 1956. Her property had been confiscated, a collective farm was operating on that land. Someone let her have a room in her brother’s house. She lived on what her brother, a lawyer under Poland, Zurokhovych, helped her with. And I returned then. Although I no longer lived in Halych, I once came to visit my sister and went to see her. She was very frightened, asked me not to come anymore. And she said that if she had known that her daughter was not alive, she would not have strained all her strength to survive that hardship in Siberia, but would have perished. The faith in meeting her daughter had brought her back to her home.

...So many events, whatever comes to mind, so it’s not in order.

I’ll continue about my arrest. This same lieutenant brought me to the police station. I asked to go to the toilet, hoping I could throw away the illegal literature there. He agreed and took me to the toilet, probably knowing in advance that the door there was locked. From there he brought me to the guardroom, said to the guard: “Watch her.” And he left. The room was very large, like a hall, and the guard sat at a table about 15 meters from me. I pushed the briefcase behind my back, stuck my hands in it, and started tearing the seals off the glue from those packets. He noticed something and started approaching me, at the same time saying: “What are you doing there?” Suddenly, about 15-20 men burst into the guardroom with loud shouts. They were beating some disheveled woman and shouting: “Thief!” The guard rushed to them, and I took the opportunity and started tearing up the reports, all the papers that were near me, while throwing them away... How long did this last? Probably 5 minutes. In my briefcase, I had a piece of bread, smeared with something, so I started to knead those scraps of paper with the bread. My lieutenant didn’t take long to return. He came up to me and said: “Let’s go.” We went out into the square in front of the police building, and at his instruction, I sat on a bench. Here he conducted a sort of interrogation.

It was June 30 (1947. – Ed.). There was supposed to be a graduation party at school. The lieutenant asked where I was going. I say, to the pedagogical institute, to find out when the entrance exams are, to prepare for admission. Then he latched onto this word—institute—and began to question me about who I was connected with at the institute. If I told him, I would get into the institute without exams and graduate successfully, on the condition that I would report everything to them about students’ connections with the underground. Moreover, I wouldn’t have to go to them, but would leave notes with information in a place they designated. We sat in the square for about two hours. He became convinced that nothing would come of our conversation, because I denied everything. He got up and again said: “Let’s go.” We walked through the city. I had already figured out that we were heading towards the prison. I knew Stanyslaviv a little, because I had gone to the gymnasium here for two years. In addition, my sister Milia was sentenced here to 10 years in the camps, so I had brought packages many times. But each time they refused: “No such prisoner is held here.”

It was lunchtime. The sidewalks were getting more crowded. As we passed a crowd, I was carrying the briefcase filled with torn paper in one hand, and I stuck the other hand into the briefcase, grabbed a handful of those scraps, and let them fall beside me. The lieutenant noticed because the wind blew the scraps in front of us. He said very politely: “May I have the briefcase?” I say, no, I’ll carry it myself. He insisted that I give it to him and took the “briefcase” from me. And I thought: “Now I’m done for.”

Investigation and Trial

He brought me to the KGB, somewhere on the third floor. Two KGB interrogators were already waiting there for my soul. He dumped all the remnants on the table in front of them. It was a decent pile. They asked: “What is this?”

After the typhus, in a year and a half, my hair had grown back so much that I could curl it. My hair was curled just then, so I said that it was paper that I used to curl my hair. They interrogated me there until evening, and when they left, they would shove me under the desk and block it with another desk. There was little space under the desk, and because my legs were so bent, they hurt.

But the interrogators didn’t linger, they would return, say: “Crawl out.” That word was very crushing to the soul, that they treated you like a dog. I really did come out from there on all fours. They would seat me in a chair and interrogate me in turns all night. I answered almost nothing. After midnight, I became very sleepy. They were saying something to me, but my eyes were closing and I was drifting off as if in a dream. To keep me from falling asleep, they constantly poked me between the ribs with their fingers, which hurt badly.

In the morning, they asked if I would eat. I refused food. They said that there were 140 karbovantsi in the briefcase, so they could buy me food with my own money. I refused. I didn’t declare a hunger strike, because at that time one couldn’t even think of such a thing, but I decided for myself that I wouldn’t eat and thus hasten my death.

After that, they brought several large sheets of paper on which the scraps of literature I had torn were neatly glued. Many of the scraps I had thrown away were gone, many were smeared with bread, but they were able to read, if not sentences, then individual words that indicated it was illegal literature. In addition, they turned the investigation to my arrest from the underground. They called this same platoon leader Iskra (Bohdan Kozievych), who had turned me in.

I wasn’t connected with Iskra organizationally. Moreover, I was new in that area, he didn’t know what I was doing. He only knew my pseudonym “Mariyka.” He knew I was in an illegal position. Therefore, although he testified against me, I did not acknowledge him and insisted that he could have seen me where I worked as a servant. On the third day (I was in the same office the whole time, day and night), they brought another witness, Baranovsky, who had once been in the OUN, but was suspected of treason and had been shot at—he had a scar above his ear. He had managed to escape, and now he was sitting in the NKVD and taking revenge on everyone he knew and didn’t know. He knew us, that is, my sisters and me, well, because when we escaped from prison in 1944, we settled for a while in the village of Dorohiv, Halych Raion. And he was a native of this village and had seen us many times.

The interrogators left, leaving the three of us: me, Iskra, and him. Baranovsky came up to me, kicked me behind the knees, and I fell. I hadn’t eaten for three days and, worst of all, hadn’t slept. I was extremely exhausted. He fell on me with his knees and started beating me. At the same time, he called me obscene names. I didn’t defend myself and didn’t scream, because I had no strength. I was half-asleep and waited for him to kill me. But Iskra pulled him off me, and he, enraged, shouted: “Well, what, you still don’t recognize me?” I answered in a half-voice: “You scoundrel, it would have been better never to have known you.” At that, my interrogators ran in and joyfully shouted: “She recognized him! She recognized him!”

I want to say again that I was not connected with him organizationally. He could prove nothing, except that we were a Banderite family. But that was enough for them to read me the arrest warrant on the third day and send me to a general cell. I still remember its number today, 11, in the basement. There were already 17 girls there, I was the eighteenth.

The cell was quite narrow, probably 2.5 meters wide, because the girls slept head-to-toe. The feet of one girl reached the chest of the girl on the other side. As a rule, the “new girl” is put to sleep next to the slop bucket. The girls seemed very pale to me, and I, from the sun, was rosy-cheeked. They all gasped, wondering where I had come from, because mostly girls who had been sitting in the district prison for months ended up here. But they didn’t put me next to the slop bucket. One of the girls immediately approached me. As we later found out, it was the seksotka (informer) Nadia Pasichniak (that was her KGB pseudonym), and her real name was Paraska Seniuk. Because I later met her in the Magadan camps. So, this Nadia (for the purpose of processing me) offered me a prominent place next to her. She also had a large plaid blanket, which she laid out for both of us. Although I didn’t know then that she was an informer, no matter how hard she tried to get something out of me, I said in the cell what I had said during the interrogation.

Here I want to give a characterization of the interrogators. They were not professionals of any kind. If a person, that is, a prisoner, could withstand torture and had no direct witnesses, then in the end they had to write what the prisoner confessed. Therefore, they resorted to informers and relied on them.

The girls didn’t know that I hadn’t eaten for three days. But when they brought dinner and I refused to eat, the girls asked what the matter was. I said I wouldn’t eat because I wanted to die. If they had put me in solitary, I would not have betrayed my resolution. But under the pleas and pressure of the girls, I began to eat.

When I got to know the prisoner girls better, I became frightened. More than half of them were on a provocation. They didn’t know it, but I, being fresh from the outside, already knew something about it. But they didn’t believe it.

Now about the provocation, which was called the “barrel.” This was the most cruel thing the Bolsheviks could think of. Because it was impossible to find out anything from the girls of that time in any other way. They died under torture. It didn’t matter whether they had reached the age of majority or not. They remembered the words of the Decalogue: “Neither threats, nor pleas, nor tortures, nor death will force you to betray a secret.” In those uneducated little girls, there was so much high morality, honor, and pride in the fact that they were members of the OUN!

Arrested girls who were held in a district prison—of any district in the oblast, or even in the oblast center—were taken to the prison in the city of Halych, which is 25 km from Stanyslaviv. They were held there for two or three days and then taken back. On the road from Halych to Stanyslaviv, there is a small forest in a ravine called “Hlybokyi Potik” (Deep Stream). And in this little forest, the truck with the arrested person is attacked by supposed Banderites (but in reality, the same NKVDists) and the victim is rescued. During the shootout, they take the protocol from the NKVD and accuse the victim of treason, at the same time throwing a rope around her neck and leading her to be hanged. The victim wants to justify herself, because it is terrifying to die a traitor, she vouches for herself with everyone she knows, at the same time indicating where they are, to ask them about her loyalty to the cause. You are still led to execution. Here the NKVDists attack again and rescue you. And to make the victim believe in the truth of it, they kill an insurgent (but in reality, one of their own yastreboks) and take from him the protocol that the victim had supposedly given to her own people.

Thus, as they say, they kill two birds with one stone: the victim is supposed to be convinced that the insurgents are bad because they wanted to hang her, and the NKVDists are good because they rescued her. Therefore, she should confess to them. And secondly—they have the protocol with the contacts. On the hot trail, they go and arrest or deport them. And the victim, when she sees that her sincere confessions in the forest fall into the hands of the NKVD, simply goes mad.

This misfortune passed me by. I don’t know why they didn’t take me for the provocation. They probably guessed that I knew something about this provocation. As much as I wanted to convince the girls that this was a provocation, that there were no insurgents—they didn’t believe me.

After me, they threw another victim into the cell who had been through the provocation—Nusia Shuturma from the village of Bliudnyky, Halych Raion. I knew her, because I was studying with her sister Lilia, and our fathers had known each other since Polish times, because her father and my father were viity (heads) of their villages, so they visited each other.

They pushed her into the cell—and we were scared. One leg was bare, without a stocking, the other was shod. Her hair was disheveled, her blouse was torn at the shoulder. She saw us and began to laugh with a mad laugh, for a long, long time. I approached her, the girls approached, they tried to calm her—it didn’t help. When she had finished laughing—she looked at all of us and began to sob, inconsolably and for a long time. And only after that did she begin to tell what had happened, what she had said about her relatives, who were indeed deported to Siberia after that.

The second one they brought into the cell after Nusia was Hania Steblinska, from the village of Tumer, Halych Raion. They brought her from another cell, very exhausted. She was a stanychna. A simple girl, but so undefeated! She said that for two weeks in a row, they had taken her for interrogation night after night, and during the day they wouldn’t let her sleep, and if we could make it so she could sleep for even 5-10 minutes, she would bow at our feet. Then we all sat Turkish-style in two rows, leaning our backs against each other. They sat her so that her back was to the peephole. But it didn’t help, because the guard said: “Steblinskaya, get up and stand.” At night, they took her for interrogation again, brought her back beaten. She suffered with us like that for 5 days and then they took her away. I never met her again in the camps.

How long those summer days are and how endless they seemed in the prison cell! At six in the morning, “pod’yom” (reveille). They give us half a basin of water. Well, 5-6 liters. In that water, we all had to wash. And you know how it is for girls—you have to wash everywhere. Then, from the same basin, we had to wash the floor. After that, we all knelt down, except for a Baptist woman. Although the guard shouted through the peephole “get up” or “sit down,” we didn’t care, none of us even blinked, so he would stop. Once the cell was opened because a commission came. Even then we didn’t get up, until we were finished. They said they would put the cell on a punishment regimen, but it didn’t happen.

Another procedure. Through the peephole, they would pour tyulka—small fish—onto the floor for us, and stinking at that... But if only it just stank! We would joke: “Come on, let’s not take it, it will walk to us on its own.” This pile moved with worms. But we ate it. Many girls had no packages, like me, whose family didn’t know where I had gone, or whose family was already in Siberia, so there was no one to bring anything. Packages were only accepted from relatives throughout all the years of Soviet power. Father or mother, or sister or brother. It was forbidden for more distant relatives. In addition, most distant relatives were afraid to even get close to the prison. After the tyulka, they gave us tea and a very small piece of bread.

At lunch, they gave us balanda (thin soup), I don’t remember anymore, from a bowl or a pot, after eating they took them away. We could only keep a wooden spoon. Ah! In the morning, the very first job—to take out the slop bucket. I don’t remember a worse situation in my life than having to go to the slop bucket one after another in the presence of everyone, in the absence of fresh air. The bucket was high—neither sitting nor standing. From sitting, everyone was constipated. Anyway, when one of us had to go for herself, two girls would shield the spot with a blanket, that is, they held a blanket or a sheet in their hands until the procedure was over.

If I read somewhere in books or someone tells that somewhere in the interrogation cells there were beds or bunks with bedding, we didn’t have that. The floor was clean. We would lie down, and to cover ourselves or put something under our head, you used what you had. I had nothing, well, and Nadia the informer “warmed” me, gave me a blanket to cover myself. We were not just suffocating from the heat, but drowning. They took us for a walk after lunch for 20 minutes. During that time, they would search the cell. If they found a needle or a piece of a pencil, they would demand to know whose it was and put them in solitary.

In the evening, a spoonful of kasha and tea. All day long, they didn’t give us a single sip of water.

With us was a minor, born in 1932, from the village of Krymok—Domna Mezhyrytska. Through the wall was her uncle, her father’s brother, on death row. He was also Mezhyrytsky, pseudonym Dub, commandant of the raion boivka. We would tap messages to him, because almost everyone knew Morse code. There, we heard, the cell was often opened and someone was taken away. The boys tapped to us that they were being taken one by one to be shot. There were 24 of them there. The last one to tap to us was this Dub, and he said: “I am the last, if the cell opens, it’s my turn.” We didn’t have to wait long. The key scraped. Dub still managed to tap on our wall one last time and everything went silent. This Domtsia cried and sobbed, and we with her.

Later, they brought new people to the cell, but we knew nothing about them. They must have been newcomers—they didn’t know how to tap Morse code.

There was also a Romanian woman with us, Pranesco Aneta, I believe. She had the falling sickness, and she was often wracked with convulsions. If she grew quiet and tears started rolling from her eyes, we would exchange glances and try to comfort her. It never helped. Suddenly, a seizure would throw her body with such force that it took six of us to hold her down—and we couldn’t manage it. With great strength, she would either tear her arm free and strike us, or her leg. This lasted for 10-15 minutes. Foam would come from her mouth. When she relaxed, we would let her go. She would seem to wake up, sit in the corner, and weep bitterly. One day she came back from an interrogation and said they had hinted that someone from Romania was asking about her and that she might be sent home. I begged her that if she were freed, she should find my sister Olya in Dorohiv and tell her I was in prison. The next day, they took her away. A week later, I received a package from my sister. A large loaf of homemade bread and probably a kilogram of butter. It was then I believed that Aneta had found my sister. A few days later, I was sentenced…

When I was called for interrogation, they would ask through a small window in the door, “Who’s here for the letter ‘P’?” We would all respond. But they always took Nadya Pasichnyak (the informer) for interrogation first, before me. Vira Filyak was also in our cell; she held a significant post in the organization and was educated and very refined. Incidentally, when she was arrested, she asked to go to the lavatory. It was on the second or third floor. The guard agreed and led her down the corridor. She saw an unbarred window ahead, walked past the lavatory, rushed to the window, and threw herself against it with such force that she flew out and fell unconscious onto a flowerbed below. They revived her, but they learned nothing from her either. So they set a trap for her… And that’s how she ended up in the cell with us. Unremoved shards of glass still stuck out from her face, nose, and hands.

Vira’s mother sent her a package. In the package were shoes, and in the accompanying note, her mother hinted, “If the shoes aren’t too small, keep them for the road.” We all understood: aha, shoes, we need to look for a note in them. We unstitched the toes—and sure enough, there was a note. Right away, Nadya said, “Give it to me, Vira, I’ll read it,” and simply snatched it from her hands. For some reason, I became suspicious and whispered to Vira that Nadya seemed to be an informer. Vira, in her refinement, didn’t believe me. I said, “Look, everyone whose name starts with ‘P’ gets their packages on the same day, but she gets hers the next day, when they call the letter ‘S’.”

And indeed, she received a package, and Vira said, “Nadya, may I see your note?” At that, Nadya clutched the note and hid it in her bosom. I started in, “My mother has been here since yesterday; she probably had to beg them to accept it,” and so on. Secretly, away from the guard and prying eyes, Vira wrote a reply, stuffed it into the shoes, and sent them back to her mother, saying they were too small. She had no suspicion that Nadya had already sold her out. In two weeks, another package was due—and she would send it back to her mother. But that day, they called Nadya for interrogation, and then me right after her. We all sat on the floor, our legs crossed like Tatars. My skirt was narrow, made of thin wool. After six months, it had worn through, and a hole had simply appeared on the seat. On my way to the interrogation, I quickly put on Vira’s wool dress. Not even half an hour into the interrogation, the investigator asked, “What are you wearing?” I said, “What you see.” “Whose dress is that?” I said it was mine. But when he said that Vira had been taken from the cell and was asking for her “dress,” I said, “Oh, I’m wearing her wool dress.” And he said, “Take it off.” I replied, “Then I’m not leaving here naked.” So he called a guard to take me back to the cell. It was very bright on the third floor, and when you go down into the basement, your eyes immediately go dark. As soon as I descended (the door to the guardroom was open), I saw someone jump out and throw themselves around my neck. At first, I thought it was my sister. But it was Vira, whispering, “Nadya is an informer! My shoes are here on the table and the note is in them—they’re reading it.”

It all lasted a second. They pulled us apart, shoving me in one direction and her in another.

I went back with the intention of “giving Nadya a dark one,” as the prisoners used to say. I got to the cell and asked where Nadya was. They replied that she had been taken from the cell for good just a moment before. They had taken her and thrown her into another cell, with the newcomers.

From that day, Vira and I did not meet again for nine years, until we were in Kolyma. And Nadya and I traveled to Kolyma in the same transport, but I didn’t see her until we were at the transit prison. But she was no longer Nadya, but Paraska Syniuk—that was her real name. She was from the Kosiv region; I’ve forgotten the village. The NKVD used her, gave her ten years, and sent her away like all the rest. Such was their gratitude.

I didn’t receive any packages, although I had another sister, Bohdanna, and a brother, Antin, in the village. No one knew what had become of me.

A Romanian woman, Anna Petronesca, was in the cell with us. I remember her last name because it started with the same letter as mine, so we always responded together when the guard asked, “Who’s here for the letter ‘P’?” She never said what she was in for. Both of her calves had been shot through. She had the falling sickness. Before an attack, she would always start to cry, so we knew a seizure was coming. The seizures were so violent that ten of us couldn’t hold her down. One day, she said she thought she was going to be released. I then began to ask her to find my sister and tell her I was in prison.

Soon, Anna was released. A week later, I received a package from my sister. Only bread and butter, because my sister hadn’t believed her words, as people had said they had seen me killed. And five days after that, I was sentenced and transferred to a holding cell in the main prison. Another five days later, I was sent to the transit prison in Lviv. It was the end of October, and by November 10, I was on my way in a transport. As they say—naked and barefoot, as I hadn’t had time to receive a package.

A military tribunal sentenced me on October 5 (October 23, 1947. – Ed.) under Article 54-1a-11 to a term of 10 years and 5 years of deprivation of rights. At the trial, I had another witness. This was my direct superior from our district leadership, a propagandist with the pseudonym Hulnara. She was from eastern Ukraine and a former Komsomol member. She had taught here during the first occupation of 1939-41, remained when the Germans came, gained the trust of the organization, and when the second occupation came, she went underground and worked for both sides. When she turned herself in and what forced her to do so—I don’t know. This Hulnara was supposedly Iskra’s wife. They testified that they knew me from the underground (when I was arrested in 1946, I did not admit to being in the underground). I was not given a chance to speak. There was no lawyer. The court did not “retire to deliberate.” It was immediately read out to me that “I am charged under Art. 54-1a of the Criminal Code for participation in the OUN, 10 years.” I was overjoyed, truly. I had expected 25, as that term was in fashion then, while 10 was given to minors. They noticed my joy and said, “You’re not going to freedom, but to the camps.” I did not participate in the trial. That was on October 23.

Chapter II

Now we will speak of the transit prison and the transport*

(*Author’s title. – Ed.)

After the trial, like everyone else, I was moved from the underground cells to the main prison. It was more cheerful there. There were many girls in the cell, 50 to 100, from different parts of the region. There you could hear all sorts of news, including from the men’s cells. We communicated by shouting through the latrine pipes or by lowering “zhuliky,” that is, notes on strings, through the windows from the upper floor to the lower one. But I wasn’t there for long, about 10 days, because when my sister brought a second package two weeks later, I was no longer in Stanislav. We were transported to Lviv by train in sealed special cars.

It was autumn, and I was dressed for summer. A worn-out skirt, a sleeveless blouse, a jacket, and pump-style shoes. They gave me no clothes for the journey.

They unloaded us and took us by truck to the transit prison, or more accurately, to hell on earth. They let us through the gates—and there was anarchy. We were attacked by a “gang of thieves” who began to take the political prisoners’ bundles of clothing (I had nothing, but I was terrified of that wild horde). Then the barracks orderly, or whatever she was, assigned us to a cell. It was filthy and stank; all the walls were smeared with crushed bedbugs, and the live ones scurried up the walls. At night, it was impossible to sleep. The cold and the bedbugs, and on top of that, the attacks from the common criminals… I wasn’t there for long either, two or three weeks, but the horrific conditions made it seem as if I would never get out of there.

One night, just before the transport, common criminal thugs broke into our cell and started taking everything we had, beating and robbing us. A great cry and lamentation arose in the compound. The guards did come running, but they were unable to separate us. Then they called the “fire brigade,” who began to douse us with water from hoses, so that the powerful stream knocked us to the ground. Then the firefighters or guards started dragging the thugs by the scruff of their necks out of the gate. It was cold in the cells, and we were soaking wet… A day or two later, in that state, our names were called for the transport. Not everyone, because there were political prisoners who had been in the transit prison for a year, cursing their fate. They were not taken on the transport because someone connected to them was still under investigation, so they were held back and sometimes sent back for further interrogation.

It was considered good fortune to get out of that hell. Those who had no clothes were given a uniform. For my feet, they gave me straw shoes, about size 46. When I put them on over my shoes, they would fall off, so I left them. They gave me torn trousers and a wet, quilted jacket, which I also left behind. I didn’t expect the journey to be so long.

It was November 13, 1947. We were brought to the railway station and held there for a long time, and then they brought children from a juvenile correctional colony. They were all barely clothed. It was a mild day, and at the colony, they had been told not to bring any extra clothing because they were going outside the compound to sort potatoes. These children, suspecting nothing, went to the gates in the clothes they were wearing. Outside the gates, they were loaded into trucks and brought to the railway station for the transport. These children had been in the colony for two or three years, and in that time, some of their relatives had provided them with clothes for the road, but the KGB had tricked them so that the children found themselves undressed on the brink of winter. They lined us up in a column and began to put us into the wagons in groups of five. First, they loaded the common criminal thugs. There wasn’t enough room for the group of five I was in. They tried to put us in there, but we dug in our heels and said, “Shoot us if you want, but we won’t go in the wagon with them.” And the criminals were shouting, “Banderites, come to us!” So I, in the first group of five, ended up in the next wagon, and behind me came eight more groups of five of those undressed children.

In my group of five, there was one older woman from the Chernivtsi region named Paraska, but everyone called her “Aunt Tsiya.” She was the only one among us who had a warm woolen blanket. There were also three Hungarian women; I remember one of their last names because it was similar to mine. I was Petrash, she was Tulyash. Often, when they called our names, we didn’t know who was being called.

There were bunks in the wagon. On one side, they were in two tiers, on the other, just one, and the space below was filled with coal for heating. In the middle stood an iron stove the size of a bucket, but we never used it for the entire journey because they never once gave us wood to light it. There was a hole in the wall with a chute inserted in it, which served as the latrine. But in a day or two, everything in that latrine froze, as there was no stick to clear it. Everyone relieved themselves on that pile of coal, but the waste froze immediately, so there was no smell. I don’t remember why we couldn’t sleep on the bunks above the coal. All 42 of us settled onto the two-tiered bunks. Why do I write 42 people? Because the Hungarian women had diarrhea and it was difficult for them to climb down from the bunks each time. So they just sat on that pile of coal; no one could persuade them to come up to the bunks. We slept on command, packed in like sardines. The cold made our legs ache. If one of us went down to the latrine, there was no space to lie down again. As I was older (I was already 22), I slept by the window. My shirt constantly froze to the window of the freight car. When I got up, a piece of my shirt would remain on the glass.

None of us had anything to lie on, for the boards were bare, nor anything to cover ourselves with. So Aunt Tsiya shared her blanket, which we passed around in turns to get warm. No sooner would we lie down, not even having time to doze off, than the guard would bang on the door with a wooden mallet and ask the wagon elder, one of the girls, “How many of you are there?” The answer: 45. Then the command: “To the right, with your things!” And it was dark in the wagon. We all moved with our belongings to the right, onto that befouled coal. The door would open. The frost would rush in on us, barely dressed, making our bones crack. The guards, in sheepskin coats, would begin to count, striking each of us on the shoulders with the mallet: “First, second.” After counting to ten or twenty, he’d lose his count, and again— “To the right!” When he had sated his cruel heart, he would leave. And we, like ants, would grope in the dark for our last remaining rags, lay them out, and lie down again. We hadn’t even had time to warm up next to each other when again it came: “To the right, with your things!” And so it went, four or five times a night.

In the morning, they brought food. Salted herring and a loaf of frozen bread for three people. Uncut, because you couldn’t break it even with an axe. We would eat the herring first because there was nowhere to put it, so as not to get dirty. Then we would take turns breathing on the bread and gnawing off little bits with our teeth. Once eaten, as they say, it was neither in the stomach nor in sight. They didn’t give us water or tea, so we didn’t know what to do for thirst. The inside of the wagon was thickly coated with frost, so we licked the walls, some with a spoon, others with their tongues.

When the wagon was moving, it was more cheerful, but there were also times we stood still for a day or two. Finally, we arrived in Omsk. They took us out to the bathhouse in groups of 500. By the time they unloaded us, lined us up, and led us half-dressed… We flew headlong down a very high embankment. They let us into the bathhouse 50 at a time. Whoever got into the first group of fifty had to wait for the tenth. I was in the third group of ten. Then, in 30-degree-below-zero frost or colder, I waited for seven more groups. But the clothes from the delousing chamber were warm, and that kept us warm. After the bathhouse—back into the cold wagons. And only the power of God saved us, that no one died or fell ill, at least in our wagon. What happened in the others—I don’t know.

In Omsk, a different convoy took over. These guards probably didn’t know who they were transporting, because they tormented us less. We traveled for five weeks, from November 13. On December 18, we were unloaded in Khabarovsk. Again, we were taken to the bathhouse, and before washing, “sanitary processing.” We were stripped naked and our underarms were shaved in the presence of the entire convoy. They turned us to face them, now front, now back, and all 30 of them roared with laughter. We were ready to sink into the ground with shame. In return, the belongings we had taken off were all burned, and we were dressed in felt boots, padded trousers, and warm hats. They were preparing us for work.

Urgal. Logging

From there, they divided us into two parties. Some of the political prisoner girls were sent to Alynop, and we were sent further, with the “bugs” (common criminals), to Urgal for logging. There was a women’s common criminal compound, and next to it, a men’s one. The men did lighter work, building barracks, hewing something, sawing, while the women were sent to fell trees. When they brought us, they put us in a long, cold barrack. They crammed 400 women into it. In the middle was a single iron stove that smoked terribly. The smoke went not into the chimney, but into the barrack. And although we were all suffocating from the smoke, no one went outside, because the criminal “bugs” were waiting for us there to strip us of our last piece of clothing.

They fed us like this. At five in the morning, they would bring a canister of soup. There was nothing to eat from, no dishes. We had only two cans from preserves. They would pour soup into them, wait for those two to finish eating, then pour for the next two girls. So breakfast began at 5 a.m. and ended at 5 p.m. Then they immediately brought supper, as they fed us only twice a day. Breakfast started from the right side of the barrack, in the order we slept. It finished on the left side, after going all the way around. But supper started from the left side and went in a circle, finishing on the right side. The one who ate breakfast last also ate supper right away, while the one who ate first had to wait a whole day for supper. The bread they gave us was raw, made from chestnut flour. It seemed that the bread was made of clay and sawdust. Many of the girls got sick from that food. They gave their bread to the girls who could eat it. I ate it, but first I made “pancakes” out of it: I would toast it on the rusty barrel stove, and then eat it. Besides that, they gave us herring. That was our misfortune. Because the winter was dry, there was little snow, maybe two fingers thick. We ate all that snow because they didn’t give us water, not even to wash. One day, a girl from our transport was very thirsty and reached with her spoon into the forbidden zone. A shot rang out from the watchtower; the guard killed her.

It was like that for several days. Then they took us to fell trees. They no longer fed us soup, but in the morning, they would give out bread and herring. In the evening, they fed us as usual, in turns throughout the night. Once every 10 days, they took us to the bathhouse. In the bathhouse, they gave us half a bucket of water. Exactly half a bucket. Do what you want with it: drink it, wash with it, eat it—you won’t get any more. And we were girls, we had our own women’s problems—no one took that into account.

Christmas was approaching. They took us to the forest to work on Christmas Eve. After work, they were three girls short. They had escaped. They were our friends, from the Stryi district of the Lviv region. They were cousins. I remember their distinctive last names well. One of them was Bida Katya, the second was Balanda, and the third was Vozna. The convoy was furious. The next day, they didn’t take us to work, and on the third, they transported us to another compound, one with a fence made of planks. Here, the fence was made of wire, so you could see who was walking outside the compound.

When those girls escaped, some girls from Volyn came up to me; I don’t remember their last names. One was called Pulfera, the other Nadya. They began to persuade me that we should escape too. I had little faith in a successful escape, but they insisted. They said: Bida will be celebrating Epiphany at home, and here we are. We waited for a moonless night to start our work. We wanted to dig a tunnel under the fence. But, however bitter, two weeks later they brought our escapees back to our compound, and they had already managed to add to their sentences what they had already served—meaning their term started over. (– Ed.).

The escapees told us that their bread lasted only three days. They walked on, hungry, looking for something in the forest, and when they got very hungry, they came across a railway guard’s hut. A woman was there, and they asked her for food. The woman gave them food, and then made a call to the right place. They had barely walked a short distance when soldiers caught up with them and arrested them. Then our hope of escape vanished, and we abandoned the idea.

From this compound, they also took us to fell trees. A wide, full-flowing river, the Burya, ran through there. It had frozen over, and we walked on it into the taiga, a distance of 10-15 km from the camp every day. There was a lot of snow here. Tractors also transported timber along this road we walked on. The snow was frozen solid and so churned up by the tractors that it was very difficult to walk on, like walking on loose sand.

A brigade was 30 people, meaning 15 pairs with saws. We were assigned a plot of 50 square meters—and told to saw. When a tree fell, the girls would shout, “Run!” But no one ran, because there was nowhere to go. On top of that, you had to saw to get those 700 grams of bread. The quota was to cut 12 cubic meters, trim the branches, pile them up, and burn them. It was back-breaking labor. In the morning, 700g of wet bread—on our starving stomachs, this was very little—and a thin soup. At lunch, a grey mare (a little horse) would come pulling a barrel of “shchi.” It was just plain water. You were lucky if you got a green cabbage leaf with your water. In the evening, thin soup without bread. Once I tried to save at least a bread crust for lunch. I was walking into the taiga, thinking all the while about the crust in my pocket. I started sawing the timber, but the bread wouldn’t leave me in peace. So I stood behind a tree, took out the bread, and ate it. And just then, the horse arrived with the “shchi.” Oh, and no bread.

I had a very unlucky partner who had no idea how to pull a saw. So we never made our quota, even though I worked myself to exhaustion more than anyone. My partner was a Russian woman, Mura Smirnova, from the town of Klintsy. An intelligent, delicate woman, unsuited for physical labor. When the girls picked up their saws and started pairing up, this Mura stood aside, without any hope that someone would offer to partner with her. I was a resourceful girl, capable of any kind of work, although I had never sawed timber before. I felt sorry for her and offered to be her partner. She was overjoyed but warned me that it would be hard for me with her. And indeed, it was hard. But I didn’t abandon her; we sawed together all winter. I began to feel even more sympathy for her. Smirnova was her maiden name. Her married name was Kashlanova. Her husband was a surgeon. They were both arrested because under the Germans they didn’t go into the underground, but operated on enemies as well. Her husband was serving his term somewhere not far from our camp, maybe 100-200 km away (I’ve forgotten the name). He was a good surgeon. In the camp, he successfully performed a brain operation on some free civilian. For this, the free doctors became jealous of him, and when he fell ill with appendicitis, they simply butchered him.

She had been arrested while pregnant and gave birth to a girl in the camp. Outside the compound, there was a house with the children; her child was there. In the summer, as we were returning from work, she picked a flower. The children were playing in the yard. She called out to her child and threw her the flower. For that, she was sent to the penal compound.

In the summer, we went by boat on that same Burya River to mow hay. As we were sailing, one boat swayed and a girl fell in. There were four of them in the boat. The others tried to catch her, leaned over—the boat capsized, and before our eyes, our friends went under the water. The water rushed by quickly, like a rabid thing. We got to the shore, and they told us to cut deadwood and build tents. Underfoot was fallen timber. I stepped carelessly, fell through, and a sharp branch pierced my leg from below and broke off. The guard, in a fit of temper, wanted to pull it out, but the splinter was rotten, broke, and remained in my leg. The senior officer then ordered me to be escorted back to the compound on foot, 30 km away. We went through the forest, over fallen timber, through pathless terrain. I was already dying, and the guard kept hurrying me along. In the evening, we stopped, because there was a horse base 5 km from the camp. The guard went to have dinner, and I sat on a wagon. When he came out and said, “Let’s go,” I couldn’t get up. My leg had swollen so much that they had to harness a horse and take me by wagon. In the compound, the nurse pulled out the splinter piece by piece, packed the wound, smeared it with something, and a few days later, they led me, alone again, on foot back to the haymaking, to be eaten by mosquitoes. We stayed there all summer.

Although I sawed timber with Smirnova, I was friends with and ate with a friend from the Lviv region, from the Zhydachiv district, village of Volodymyrets, Mariya Tkach (we still see each other). She was sick, emaciated, a “goner” as they said in the camps, so they put her in the “OP” (“Otdykhayushchiy punkt” – Resting Point. – P. Sichko) for lighter work. She worked in the greenhouses. She felt sorry for me, that I was starving so much, while she could even eat a cucumber there. One time, she hid a cucumber in her quilted jacket and wanted to bring it to me. At the guardhouse, they searched her and found it. The next day at roll call, as they were leading us out to work, it was announced that for violating the rules, she was being sent to a penal colony. So I said, “And me to the penal colony too, because she was bringing the cucumber for me.” They kept me behind as well. Then the whole brigade started shouting, “And us with them!” But they didn't listen. They left us in the compound and led the brigade out.

An hour later, we were on our way. The camp was called “25th Kilometer.” For “the construction of the railway.” We arrived at noon. They immediately took us to the stables and said, “Choose a horse and you will ride.” Three horses were standing there. I went up to the first one I saw and led it to a wagon. But when I tried to harness it, I didn’t know how. The horse understood this. It grabbed my arm with its teeth—and I fell to the ground. Blood flowed from my arm. But this was the “penal” colony, no one paid any attention. I wanted to switch horses—they didn’t allow it. Somehow, we got it harnessed and went to the quarry to load gravel, to build an embankment for the railway.

We had to cross a narrow bridge over a swamp. When we were on the bridge with the gravel, our horse reared up and blocked the way for the other carts. One of the inmates from our barrack, who received bread for our brigade, came up to me (probably a common criminal, because back in 1948, politicals served their sentences together with common criminals). She was Belarusian by nationality. She started cursing at me, asking why I wasn’t moving. I tried to explain, but she knocked me down under the horse and started kicking me. I barely got up. Our girls stood up for me. Somehow, I gathered up the harness and went to the horse base. There they gave me another cart and harness and sent me back to the quarry. This time we only loaded half a cart, so the horse pulled it. They didn’t count this towards our quota.

We worked like this for two months—and for those two months, for not meeting the quota, we received a penal ration, 300g of bread and soup once a day. It seemed that this misery would never end. But God had mercy. My name was called for the transport to Kolyma. I was overjoyed to escape this hell, although we all knew that Kolyma, as the criminals sang, was a “wondrous planet, there’s a road there, but from there, there is no return.” I only felt sorry for my friend Mariyka, but her health had declined so much that there was no one left to take.

What I bless the Lord for is that I was never sick during my entire term of imprisonment. In the previous colony, when we worked at the logging site, we were often woken up at night to unload wagons. There were different cargoes. There was cement, but there were also soybean leftovers, from which the oil had already been pressed. We ate it raw, and when raw no longer tasted good, we would light a fire to warm ourselves, put the soybeans on a shovel, and roast them over the fire. And on our way to the camp, we would stuff our pockets. They didn’t search us at the guardhouse. The girls took all their loot to the “kaptyorka,” the place where our personal things were stored, which we weren’t allowed to wear. Although there were only about 2 hours left for sleep, the girls lay down and couldn’t get up again. The camp chief and a nurse came to the barrack. Everyone, except me, had a high fever, up to 40°C (104°F). They guessed that the soybeans were the cause. They went to the “kaptyorka” and threw everything out into the trash heap. That day, the entire brigade lay sick; only I was taken to work in the kitchen, because a single guard won’t escort one person to work.

Another episode from that same compound. They brought the film “The Young Guard.” The film was shown outside on the wall of a barrack. Everyone was forced to go and watch. Whether you wanted to or not, you went. And after the film—a “revolution.” Our criminal thugs drew patriotism from the film and attacked us with curses: “You so-and-so Banderites!” And they came at us with their fists. The “dnevalnaya,” the barrack elder, defended us. She was old, and a “Banderite” herself. They called her “the lawful one.” She stood in the doorway and said, “Don’t you dare touch them—I’ll beat you.” They retreated, but we endured their insults for a long time after that.

Vanino Port

So, about the transport to Kolyma. Before getting to Kolyma, to that hell, one still had to pass through Sodom and Gomorrah. And that was Vanino Bay. For the road, they gave us bread for three days, which we ate in one sitting. We were transported in freight cars again. About two hours before the end of our journey, something happened and the floor in our wagon collapsed—completely, down to the last plank. Luckily, we were all on the bunks. Before some station, the train slowed down and stopped. They moved us to a wagon where the kitchen was. That’s how we reached the bay. They unloaded us and took us to a camp.

I don’t know if I can describe all the horrors of this compound, the anarchy from both the guards and the criminals. (Criminals was the name for that rabble of common folk, thieves, prostitutes, murderers—in a word, savages).

I wasn’t there for long, only five weeks, but I said then and I remember now that if there was ever a sinful Sodom and Gomorrah, it was repeated in Vanino Bay. Anyone who wasn’t there cannot understand, and anyone who was will never forget. I will try to recall at least a few things. Even if someone wanted to invent some kind of depravity, they wouldn’t be able to. Because it was a menagerie, and the criminals were worse than beasts. If you endure contempt and cruelty from your clear enemies—the KGB and their superiors—you feel that you stand above them. But when that criminal scum terrorizes you, it becomes unbearable…

* * *

I want to note that I finished writing page 60 in January 1993 and couldn’t pick up a pen for a whole year. Not because I didn’t have time, but such bitter events were happening in politics that I thought: what’s the point of all this writing and who needs it, when they are tearing Ukraine apart piece by piece, giving away the Black Sea Shipping Company, Crimea, and nuclear weapons to Russia for nothing. They reinstated the Communist Party without any fuss, and every piece of news, every law passed by our “glorious” President Kravchuk, is a wound in the heart. And who is leading us?

And on the radio and television, all you hear is how cordially they are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the “victory” and honoring the veterans of the Great Patriotic War.

And the thought imposes itself: what are we celebrating now?! If we celebrate the victory and honor the war veterans, it means we had a free Ukraine. So why did we overthrow it? And if it was slavery, which we now constantly talk about, then why do we honor those who brought us that slavery on their bayonets? Those who tortured us in prisons, who threw our small, naked children into trucks in the middle of winter and sent them to Siberia? And they killed the insurgents, and terrorized the living and threw them alive into fires… So what kind of liberators are they, that we honor them so sincerely?

In my opinion, an occupier remains an occupier, whether he is brown or red. Both the first and the second destroyed the Ukrainian nation. We erect monuments to some, and curse others. And we have completely forgotten about those who truly fought in the ranks of the UPA for an independent Ukraine.

This is how all these events—of 1918 and the 1940s—are interpreted by people who did not see those events, but were taught such thinking by the same occupiers who hammered into their heads that the communists were liberators. So now we reap the fruits. Oh, how bitter it all is to taste!!!

* * *

And now I will continue.

Vanino Bay is a very large compound, and in the compound—anarchy. There was one barrack with two sections, each holding 60 people. On the rest of the compound’s territory, tents were pitched, where the criminals reigned.

We were brought here in a transport that consisted almost entirely of criminals. There were only 7 of us political girls from the penal compound. While we were still standing outside the compound, we could hear the criminals shouting: “Banderites, come in faster, we’re waiting for you.” And indeed, as soon as we stepped into the compound, the criminals descended upon us. Here, no one took charge of us, as was the case in other compounds where the so-called barracks orderly managed the new arrivals. We started looking for a place, but there was none for us.

A “lawful she-thief” arrived with us—a 13-year-old girl nicknamed “Swallow.” The criminals greeted her as their princess and gave her the best spot.

We inquired if there were any political prisoners in the compound. Yes, and a great many, about 800 of them. They were housed in those two sections, which were designed for 120.

They didn’t take us in there. Although we met our own countrywomen and acquaintances there, there truly was no space in those sections. The girls slept sitting up due to the lack of room. We saw a small building—the medical unit. The sanitary service was located there. A small section for the sick was being renovated. We were glad that we wouldn’t have to sleep under the open sky, and we went inside. We settled on the bunks and were “thriving.” We hadn’t even fallen asleep when we heard a shout from outside the door: “Banderites, surrender!” We bolted the door. They were banging on the windows. We wanted to get into the next room where the nurses were sleeping, but they locked their door and wouldn’t let us in, thinking we were the “criminals.” We screamed so loudly that a guard from the watchtower came to our cry and scolded us: “What are you screaming about?” We said we were being attacked. He didn’t believe us and left, and the “criminals” came after us again.

We fought like this all night, and in the morning, we went to look for a better place. We found one tent where not everyone was a hardened criminal, but there were also girls who had been imprisoned for embezzlement or some financial matters. There was space there, and we settled in. In the evening, the “criminals” started their concert. Although it was already “lights out,” or the nighttime hour, they played balalaikas and sang vulgar songs. A guard ran in with a stick in his hands and beat everyone with that stick indiscriminately—the guilty and the innocent. He would leave—and the criminals would continue their concert. From the upper bunks, they would lean down to the lower ones and spit on us, and water would pour down on us from above. Others said it was them relieving themselves, and it was dripping on us.

In the morning, I went to breakfast, and my friend, Zena Muzychka from Chortkiv in the Ternopil region, stayed behind because she had a few rags (Rags, clothing. – Ed.)—so they wouldn’t be stolen. There was no dining hall. Under the open sky stood shelves made of rough-hewn planks, and next to them, also planks on posts instead of benches. The kitchen was also under the open sky, but separated from the compound by a plank fence with a single window through which they served us watery soup. That morning, the soup was made of flounder, or rather, from the heads of this fish. It was just a fish head with one eye and fins. It only took up space in the bowl. I took two bowls, one for myself and one for Zena. I hadn’t even managed to carry them to the table when an acquaintance ran up to me and said, “Run to the barrack, the criminals are beating Zena.”

I dropped the bowls and ran to the barrack. I saw Zena lying on the ground, and on top of her, one after another, like a ladder going up, were several criminals. I ran up, discreetly propped up the tower with my shoulder—and they tumbled to the ground. I pulled Zena out and shouted, “Run!” She ran, and they caught me, gave me a few blows, and said that if I didn’t bring her back, I, as a witness, would get twice as much. We understood that they would kill Zena, because they had probably already lost her in a card game, so we went to our political girls to ask for shelter. We somehow managed to persuade them. They secretly took Zena into the barrack so the barrack elder wouldn’t see. The elder was a Russian woman who was imprisoned for collaborating with the Germans.

I stayed in the old place. They came for me, beat me well, and threatened that if I didn’t bring my friend, they would kill me. In the morning, I also went to ask for a place in the other section. Nastya Karyvanovych from Yamnytsia in the Stanislav region was there. I knew her from the underground. She told me she had been in a camp with my sister. She hadn't been taken on the transport because she was ill. Nastya Horalnyk from Viktoriv was also there. They took me in. The section had no windows, as the “criminals” had broken them all. At night, everyone sat up. Bricks began to fly at us through the windows. And the door started to creak as the criminals tried to get in. The elder gave the command to shout loudly so the watchtower guards would hear. After a while, the guards heard and came, shouting, “What’s all the screaming for?” We told them the criminals were trying to break in. They didn’t believe us. They scolded us and left. And for us, this incident continued. And so it was every night. The “criminals” climbed in through the door, the windows, and through the ceiling. They would remove a beam and lower themselves down. But we had clubs, like pestles, that we had saved for ourselves when we were sent to the forest for firewood.

One time they took us to the bathhouse. We walked on command: “In fives, link arms and march!” They stopped us, counted off several groups of five, and told one of them: “Step out of the line.” The girls were naive, newcomers, suspecting nothing, and they stepped out. The guard fired a burst from his machine gun—and the girls fell dead before our eyes. We all fell to the ground. And though the guard shouted “march,” we screamed and didn’t get up until the camp administration came from the compound. They removed that convoy, and only then did we get up and go. They said a girl from Stanislav was among the dead.

We never went to the bathhouse again. We got lice. Once a day, water was brought into the compound in a tanker. The “criminals” would approach and fill their basins or buckets. They got them from their men, who lived behind the fence. The rest of the water—they would throw the hose on the ground and the water would flow over the earth. Any of our girls who had a tin can and the courage would also get some water. I said to Nastunya Karyvanovych that my shirt hadn't been washed in a month. And she said, “Give me your shirt, I have half a liter of water.” I was washing, she was pouring, when a “criminal” ran up and snatched the shirt from my hands. I was left without a shirt.

We went to the latrine in an organized group, because there was an incident where a girl who had gold teeth went alone. The criminals caught her there, killed her, and threw her into the latrine.

You can’t describe all the torments, because there was so much that was inhuman, like when men from the men’s compound would break into their barracks.

Transport to Kolyma

A rumor started that a transport was coming soon, that they would take us to Kolyma, and that no one had ever returned from there. But we waited for that transport, because we believed that a Sodom like this didn't exist even at the ends of the earth.

At last, the long-awaited day of the transport arrived. It was November 8 (1949. – Ed.), on the day of the “October holidays.” They began to issue us uniforms. And where did they get such clothes? Old, it was terrifying to put them on. And for my feet, they gave me boots: one size 44, with a wooden sole, the other size 37, with a thin rubber sole. I could barely squeeze my foot in. I limped away from them like a cripple—to their delight.

It was November, the 13th. Again, just as in Lviv, they began to dress us for the journey. They gave out felt boots, padded jackets, and a dry ration. That is, hardtack. I won’t describe how they drove us to that steamship. Wet snow was falling; by the time we arrived, our feet were soaked.

They loaded us onto a steamship named “Felix Dzerzhinsky.” Us in one hold, the criminals in another. In the holds, there were bunks, and next to the bunks, two barrels. One for porridge, the other for vomit. We hadn’t been sailing for two hours when what they called the “rocking” began. And immediately, the vomiting started. The girls vomited into the barrel that was closer. Then the attendants would come and top off these barrels with porridge, burnt at that, which made them vomit even more.

I stood out among the girls because I didn’t vomit. I ate my hardtack. The girls gave me theirs. And when I got hungry, I was the only one who would go out onto the deck where the galley was. The cooks were lying there half-dead; there were no guards. I would go up to the officers’ galley and help myself to a pot of stewed cabbage with meat. No one stopped me, but I almost paid for it with my life. When there’s a storm at sea, you don’t feel the ship capsizing, but it looks as if the sea has risen to where the sun is and is flying down at you from above. I crouched down, and a wave hit—and the water carried me across the deck. Fortunately, I stopped myself by grabbing onto the latrine that hung over the side.

Here, too, the criminals gave us no peace. In our hold, the water broke a window, and it filled with water up to our knees. I don’t remember if anyone bailed it out. But our felt boots began to float. They dropped anchor—sailing was impossible. There was no fresh water. They turned back to Sakhalin to refuel. I don’t know how many prisoners got seasick or if they did, but the ship commander’s child, a little boy, did. They had to throw him into the sea because they said a shark was preventing them from sailing. We saw his mother sobbing.

I don’t know how many days it takes to sail from Vanino Bay to Magadan, but we sailed for three weeks.

Kolyma

At last, they unloaded us. We reached for our felt boots—and they were wet and wouldn’t go on our feet. What to do? We jammed our feet in as far as they would go. That meant into the shafts. That’s how we walked. And the convoy hurried us along. What they hit us on the shoulders with—I don’t know, because I didn’t look back. The path was 4 kilometers long. They herded us into a bathhouse. A commission came to see us there. They roared with laughter, looking at our footwear.

They told us to undress and led us into the bathhouse. After such a journey, the bathhouse seemed like paradise. They gave us all new things: padded trousers, hats, pea coats, and felt boots. But the felt boots were small sizes. By the time we reached the transit point, our feet had bloody blisters. But there was joy when we learned that they were taking us to “Berlag,” and the criminals were separated from us for light work, in sewing workshops in the “ITL” (Ispravitelno-trudovye lagerya – Corrective Labor Camps. – Ed.).

Anyone who wasn’t there won’t understand what “criminals” are. Worse than scabies, and here, all at once—they freed us from them.

The year 1949 was ending; it was winter. They brought us to a compound, herded us into barracks. For a barrack 40 meters long, there was one electric light bulb. We could barely see each other. They said “get settled” and locked the barrack.

We found the barrack untidy. They left us 5 barrels in the entryway—all full latrine buckets. The first thing to do was to carry them out, because the stench was terrible. A guard came and unlocked the door. We got to work. We chose an elder from among ourselves and got busy. We started claiming spots. In one bay, there were 10 planks 12-15 cm wide. And there were 7 of us girls for one bay. We slept on command. It was very crowded. If one of us got up at night to use the latrine, she couldn’t get back to her spot, because it was gone. They didn’t take us out to work, except to clear snow from the barracks in the compound so the doors could be closed. And they were full of holes and didn’t close properly. At night, snow would drift over us on the bunks. In Magadan, there are constant winds in winter. They said: “A purga is blowing.”

They took us to the dining hall twice a day, because there were so many of us, they said 4,000. They didn’t have time or perhaps enough food to feed us three times. Near the threshold of the dining hall stood a barrel with a brew of dwarf pine. Everyone had to take a spoonful of the very tart brew before eating—to prevent scurvy. We drank it, though with disgust, because we knew that there were no other medicines for scurvy here; we wouldn’t survive without it. All our teeth were loose. Some girls’ teeth fell out. Some girls’ legs became crooked. True, they didn’t take us to work in production, only to gather fuel, that is, stumps or dwarf pine, both for the compound and for the garrison.

About three months later, they started taking a brigade of 30 girls from each barrack for the construction of “institutions” in the city of Magadan. We signed up voluntarily. I signed up too, because I was sick of freezing, and also of being under lock and key all the time.

Magadan greeted us with cold and wind from the Sea of Okhotsk, which very quickly gave us frostbite on our faces.

The transit point (it was the 19th compound of the GULAG) was empty. They said that Japanese prisoners had been here, but it was hard to believe. Because the Japanese maintained extraordinary cleanliness everywhere. And they put us in barracks, 400 women per barrack, and what did we find there? What immediately caught our eye were not in the entryway, but in the middle of the barrack, four latrine barrels, filled to the brim. From this, we guessed that it wasn’t the Japanese who had been here, but “our Russians,” and men at that.

They herded us into the barrack and locked the door behind us. I heard from others that two informers from the Stanislav prison were supposed to be among us, the same Nadya Pasichnyak, now actually Paraska Syniuk, and Marta Fedornyak. I told the girls about this, and lo and behold—they were standing right there. Despite their efforts, fate had driven them here too, and what could they say then: their own conscience reproached them.

When we found ourselves in this cold, stinking barrack, the first way out of such a situation was a cheerful song. We looked at each other and, as our saying goes, when the trouble is small, a person cries, but when it is great, a person laughs. And we had no other choice, so we sang: “Hey hu, hey ha…” And then again and again. Western Ukraine, in all its corners, sang the same songs, and everyone knew them, so it was not difficult to unite into a great sea of this song. And although the doors opened and the guard tried to give some orders, no one listened to him. And it was also joyous that back there, in the bathhouse, they had separated us from the “criminal world.” They were left in the city for lighter work, while we were assigned to BerLAG, that is, the political camp. Let it be what it will be. Let there be pressure from the outside, but at least we were separated from the internal compound robbery.

We sang our fill, took off our pea coats, and set about putting things in order. Carrying out half-a-year’s worth of latrine barrels. By morning, not a trace of the mess remained. For the time being, they didn’t take us out to work, but kept us under lock and key day and night. They even brought food to the barrack. If you could call it food. But the bread ration was 700 grams. Someone might be surprised: is that not a lot? I will say: it’s very little for our hunger. And seven souls for one bay between the bunks. That is 10 planks, 15-18 cm wide. For five people, it would still be tolerable, but for seven? We lay down on command, turned over on command, and if someone went for their needs at night, their place was lost, disappearing somewhere among the sleepers, and you had to push the girls around for a long time to squeeze in somehow and not freeze in the middle of the barrack. The barrack was 25-30 meters long, full of holes, with cracks in the doors, and with only one barrel stove, so no heat was felt at all.

Our men were on the other side of a fence from us. For three bread rations, you could trade one pea coat through the guards. And we did so. For a whole week, two of us would live on one ration, setting the other aside, then we would trade it with the men for a pea coat, and from the pea coat, we would sew a blanket and in this way save ourselves from the cold. After some time, we would trade for a second pea coat in the same way.

Two girls were on duty in the barrack every day. In the morning, two would carry out the latrine barrel, that is, they would ladle from the large barrel with a dipper into a small one that had handles, put a pole through the handles, take it on their shoulders, and carry it. I remember, during my shift, the handle on that barrel broke off. By the time they repaired it, morning had caught us— “roll call.” And they had already brought the men into the women’s compound to roof a new barrack. My friend and I were carrying this barrel. There was a large pile of drifted snow. My friend was in front. Going uphill, she didn’t bend down, and suddenly the barrel slid down the pole and hit me in the chest. I fell, and everything from the barrel spilled onto me. It wasn’t as painful as it was shameful, because the men were nearby and saw everything. Although it seemed that under our pea coats there could no longer be any woman’s heart, much less shame before men, yet still… Not just shame, but outrage for our trampled girlhood.

The other two girls washed the floor. When there was a big blizzard, or as they said there, a purga, we sat in the barracks. In good weather, they herded us up the sopka (hill) for firewood, that is, for stumps that had been uprooted by someone earlier.

Sometime in the middle of winter, I think in March, they began to organize four brigades of 30 people each for work on the construction of buildings in Magadan. These brigades were moved to a separate, warmer barrack. And I went. By nature, I was hardworking. And it’s better to have something definite than to wait for another transport. They promised us that we wouldn’t be taken on a transport. And they were taking people on long transports. “Khinkhanzha”—that was a gold mine 1000 km from Magadan. Or “Bogudukcha”—that was closer, but it was ore mining. Mostly girls and boys who were convicts worked there. My school friend, Bohdanna Dyrda, also worked there. We will meet her again in these memoirs.

All four brigades had different construction projects. We were building a “training combine.” First, we dug three-meter-deep trenches in the frozen ground. Then these trenches were filled with concrete. Some girls wheeled barrows of gravel and sand to the concrete mixer, one of us stood and mixed the concrete in this powered mixer, and the rest of us wheeled this concrete in barrows to the trenches, threw stones in, and vibrated it with manual vibrators.

The work was supervised by a free civilian foreman and several civilian foremen, former prisoners from the 1930s. The walls were laid with slag blocks, probably 20x20x30 cm. The work was hard, but time passed faster and the end of the term seemed closer. We envied those girls who had been arrested back in 1944 and already had 5 years of prison time, while we had only 2 or 3. The hardest part is serving until the halfway point of your term; after that, it’s all downhill.

Spring came, the month of May. Then those girls who weren’t working began to envy us, because everyone was being taken en masse on transports. There were over 4,000 girls in the compound. 11 barracks with about 400 people each. They took them and transported them far into the taiga. No villages, no towns, just small settlements with free civilian workers, as vicious as dogs on a chain. Bad rumors came from there. At “Bogudukcha,” they would strap something like backpacks onto the girls’ shoulders and drive them up the mountain for ore. On cold days, there wasn't enough air there. From there, with ore on your shoulders, you could walk. And those who weren’t afraid could go down on sleds. Many got into the sleds, didn’t steer on purpose, and ended their lives that way. The conditions were unbearable.

The men died the most. They were hungrier. They would trade a ration for tobacco and then look for something in the garbage heaps themselves. Or to their bread ration, they would add that spoonful of yellow sugar and half a bucket of water: they made what was called “tyurya,” ate their fill, swelled up, and died. In all situations, the girls knew how to hold on and live on their ration alone. Some would embroider or knit something for the free civilians in exchange for a bread ration.

I remember, they are leading us to work in Magadan. Ahead are 120 girls. Behind us, 100 men. A whole platoon of guards with dogs. And people, that is, free civilians. Some shout: “German…,” some call us: “Damned Banderites,” and some throw a piece of bread, a fish, or a pack of cigarettes into our column. We walk in fives, arms linked, as the guard ordered, and not one of us even glances in the direction where the handout has fallen at our feet. The men are walking behind us; they can’t resist stepping over those cigarettes and picking them up. The guard stops the whole column, pulls the victim out of the column, and beats and kicks him. We all scream at the top of our lungs, then they set the dogs on us. And that unfortunate prisoner, barely warm, is dragged to work. We girls never stooped to this, although we were no less hungry than them.

In the spring, they added several more brigades for the construction of Magadan; the rest were all transported to the taiga. In the camp, the worst thing is to be separated from a friend with whom you have grown close, whether from home, from prison, or from a previous camp. Separation is worse than death. There were even two blood sisters with us, and a mother and daughter. They were separated, and it seemed like the end of the world.

When we arrived in Magadan, we found four two-story buildings there. They were wooden and propped up with some sort of poles, probably against the wind. And when we were leaving the city in 1957, it was already, if not Lviv, then Ternopil. When we had to hand over a project for use, they wouldn’t give us a day off for several weeks in a row. We had to bring everything to a shine in the shortest possible time. And when we finally had a day off and were sitting on our bunks with still-bloody blisters, we would hear a report on the “kolkhoznik” radio that “today the Komsomol members have completed such-and-such project ahead of schedule.” We would then say to each other, laughing: “Oh, we didn’t even know we were Komsomol members.” Only the award for the “early completion of the project” was not awarded to us.

We worked in the city of Magadan itself for two years. After that, they transferred us, 4 brigades, to the 6th kilometer to build warehouses for all sorts of products that arrived from the shipping company. In our brigade, there were 16 Ukrainian women, 14 Lithuanian women, and 2 Estonian women. The forewoman was a Belarusian, not quite aware of who she was, named Nadya Syslavets. Each brigade took on a separate project, that is, one warehouse. We started with trenches, and all in the winter. As soon as we dug down to the thawed ground, the workday was over. The next day, everything was frozen again. In the trenches, even though it was winter, we worked in boots. Because felt boots would get soaked with earth and snow and become heavy. It was impossible to dry them.

Having finished the earthworks, we would move on to concrete work. Again, some would wheel gravel to the concrete mixer, others would prepare the concrete. We wheeled it in barrows by hand, lifted the barrow above ourselves, and poured it into the trench, throwing stones in with the concrete. When we finished this work, we would start laying walls, but no longer with slag blocks, but with stone. They brought us very large stones, sometimes a square meter in size. We would break them with a sledgehammer into pieces that could be placed on a stretcher and carried up the ramps. The quota was 1.8 cubic meters per person, or 3.60 cubic meters with a helper. It took three hours just to break up that stone from the rock. Then, this stone had to be gradually carried up the ramps. Then one of us would carry mortar in buckets, which was delivered by barrow near the worksite. If a stone couldn’t be broken, I would roll it alone up the ramps, and then along the wall, until it was on the wall, and then it was easier to place it, because in the frost it would freeze to the mortar and stay wherever you wanted it. There were separate girls for the mortar, who would quarry sand with picks. There was no harder work than digging frozen sand. It would chip off in tiny pieces. And we needed it by the barrowful.

Summer was no easier, because we dug trenches in water. On our feet, besides boots, we wore rubber overshoes, which leaked. Our feet were constantly wet.

On days off, the camp authorities used us to gather fuel for the winter. This was the so-called dwarf pine, whose branches twisted along the ground. We had to go twice a day, 8 km each way, to the forest for it and back. We would pile it up 1 km from the compound, and in the winter, when we came from work, utterly exhausted, they forced each of us to take one of these sticks and carry it to the compound for heating the tents and for cooking. We lived in tents. This camp was called “6th kilometer,” meaning 6 km from Magadan. Although 180 people were crowded into the tent, there was one iron barrel stove, around which we warmed ourselves. At night, our hair would freeze to the tent fabric.

The workday was 12 hours long, and it also depended on the convoy. The garrison commander was a young lieutenant, Konovalov, a pirate among pirates, and among the guards, I remember one named Belorus, who tormented us mercilessly. When we were standing at the gate and he and his platoon were taking us over, we would all shout in one voice: “We won’t go!” The guards would beat us, throw us out of the compound, and we would return. But the advantage was never ours.

I will describe one such episode. The road from work is narrow, with piled-up earth on the sides. He commands: “Link arms and march.” Right where the biggest puddle is. We don’t go, because the mud is up to our knees, and how will we go to work tomorrow? The command “down” and he shoots over our heads. Again “up” and again “march.” He brought us to the camp almost on our knees, and this time, to the pile of firewood. He shouts: “Take the sticks!” We did. The whole way he shouts either “march” or “down.” Somehow, we got to the gate. And he shouts: “March to the garrison!” That is, to carry the firewood meant for the compound to the garrison as well. We didn’t move a step. He ordered the guards to release 12 dogs on us. We all huddled together. The grannies with weak hearts began to fall to the ground; we raised a cry to the heavens. One Estonian woman, Danuta, ran with her stick to the guardhouse, shouted: “My heart!” But before she fell, the stick reached the electric light bulb. When it went dark in the guardhouse, everyone from the guardhouse started to flee into the field, shouting: “The prisoners are attacking!” Not far away in the field stood a clubhouse where the authorities gathered. We see the deputy camp commander, a Georgian, running. He was a little better than the commander. He shouts from afar: “Open the gates, let them into the compound, medical unit, take away the dead!” In this way, we found ourselves in the compound. The next day, for disobeying the convoy, they gave us a penal ration for 3 days with work release. But we refused, up to the point of being shot, to go to work with that convoy.

By this, I want to emphasize that lawlessness reigned; everyone could torment us as they pleased. The commander was a sadist named Krylov, who had previously worked with convicts at the infamous “Boguduncha” and for his “services to the motherland” had been promoted to major and sent closer to the city.

All these horrors cannot be described, because one day was worse than the next. But I also want to recall what women suffered from most, something men couldn’t even dream of. In the evenings, there was one barrel of water in the barracks, holding six buckets. Six brigades—one bucket for each brigade. Whoever came back from work first, got to wash; the second brigade might get something. But four brigades remained unwashed. And if you add to this women’s health issues, which are impossible to manage without water—this was already unbearable. How our girl prisoners, after all these troubles, could still become mothers, only God knows!

These scenes with us, one worse than the other, are indescribable. It often happened that you come back from work, just undressed, taken off all your wet things—and suddenly an order to get ready for the night shift, because a steamship with cement has arrived and there’s no one to unload it. The cement was in bags; you couldn’t take it with bare hands because the bags were very cold in the frost, and it was impossible with gloves because the bag would slip from your hands. And when it was spilled, it was a complete punishment. The wet clothes would cement together so that later, whether you dried them or not, they became like stone. And you have to wear out your term: a padded jacket and trousers are given once every two years.

And most of all, we suffered from hunger. Wherever we were—on heavy labor or in transit prisons—the food was always the same: 700 grams of wet bread, a ladle of plain broth, and a spoonful of plain barley or oatmeal. A ladle of tea. All this was far too little for our heavy work. I had no parcels from home. My sister Olya was in the underground; my sister Milya was imprisoned like me. She was serving her sentence in the Krasnoyarsk region, in the city of Chernogorsk. She worked splitting mica. She said it was very bad work. My brother and his wife were deported immediately after my arrest. And I tried to be friends with girls who also had no parcels, so as not to be dependent. I couldn’t take a piece of bread from someone, knowing that I would never be able to repay it.

In that camp at the 6th kilometer, the news of Stalin’s death found us. In the morning, we went to the forest for firewood. It must have been a day off. We are coming from the forest, and a black flag is hanging on the garrison building. We were surprised. And when we entered the compound, I don’t even know from whom we heard that “our dear leader Stalin” had died. At first, out of fear, we were afraid to laugh. But when we came into the barrack, we found a scene: the Russian women were crying so hard they were rolling on the floor. There was a Volksdeutsche woman named Stefan in our barrack. She used to work as a cook in the kitchen. Later, she was demoted for consorting with free civilians. She cried the most, repeating: “Dear father!” And if she had noticed joy in our eyes, she would have strangled us. She paced the barrack like a tigress. To this day, I wonder where such brutes come from. A patriot with a 10-year record…

Some time after Stalin’s death, they began to release minors in our camp who had been sentenced under Article 54-10. And some time later, maybe a year later, a guard announced in the barracks for us to remove the numbers we wore on our shoulders, 10x15 cm, on the knee of our skirts, and on our foreheads. That is, we had to tie our headscarves in such a way that the number was on our forehead. In winter, we wore ushanka hats. The number was also on the forehead. My number was U1-45. Anyone who didn’t remove their number by morning was put in the punishment cell. In the dining hall, they put bread on the tables: eat as much as you want. But only for three days, because there was a huge overconsumption of bread. A certain “thaw” was felt. The Khrushchev era had begun.

In 1955, a kind of amnesty began. That is, whoever worked well and had served 2/3 of their term, the remaining 1/3 was forgiven. At that time, I had served a full 8 years and was also subject to this amnesty. I had one year left to serve, because I had one year of so-called “credits.” I had always worked on heavy labor, so somewhere it was counted as one day for one and a half, and it added up to a year.

They released people like this. First, they took you for a rehearing, like a retrial, and released you that way. But the rehearing was a formality, because lists were already prepared in advance of whom to release and whom not to, regardless of what you said at that retrial. Because even when they asked the question “Were you in the gang?” we would answer: “Not in a gang, but in the ranks of the UPA,” it had no negative consequences.

So the day of my freedom came.

Chapter III

(September 5, 1994)

Introduction

However difficult it is in these present days of so-called independence of Ukraine to write my memoirs, which I began back in 1991, when there was fervor and a national uplifting of patriotic people who yearned for freedom…

Today, the “trinity” of communists—Moroz, Kuchma, and Masol—has crossed out our ideals, all our hopes. Under the guise, or no longer even hiding that they are communists, they are building an independent Ukrainian State in their own way. They praise war veterans to the skies, and no one asks what these veterans did after the war. And it occurs to no one that on our Ukrainian land, two occupiers fought, and one of them won. And that this occupier—Russian Bolshevism—destroyed Ukrainian intelligentsia, culture, religion, and the spirituality of the people for 70 years. That Ukraine was bleeding after the “victory” of 1945, because all the forces of these same veterans were thrown into suppressing the uprising in the western Ukrainian lands. That these veterans are the very prosecutors, judges, and investigators who sent executioners through the Carpathians and the Black Forest, hunting down Ukrainian insurgents, torturing them in prisons, shooting them at night, and carrying naked children with their mothers to Siberia in the winter. They themselves occupied the houses and apartments of the deported and what? Today they should be on their knees, begging forgiveness from the Ukrainian people and the Lord God for their crimes. But instead—they get medals for bravery… I can only say in the words of T. Shevchenko: “Ukraine has fought her way to the very edge!”

Historians appear on television at 9:30 p.m. on September 2, 1994, and say this: “We have condemned the Stalinist era, and now it remains to condemn the OUN and UPA. We say this so that our veterans will hear.”

That is why I have forced myself to continue my memoirs—to bring the truth to the hearts of our children and grandchildren. Then, perhaps, they will write the history of Ukraine.

Son Vasyl

It was 1974. My elder son Vasyl finished the 10-year school and received his secondary education. Since he was preparing to be a journalist, he took his documents to Lviv University to apply to the journalism department. He very much wanted to become a journalist, had a talent for writing, wrote poetry, but of such a content that it was not for the Soviet press. There could be no question of publishing these poems.

After the eighth grade, a correspondence school of journalism opened in the city of Nadvirna. You could send your articles to the regional newspaper “Komsomolskyi Prapor.” If they considered an article suitable, they would print it, and at the end of the year, they would summarize the results. This school gave a review and a grade. Vasyl enrolled in this school for correspondence study. There were 16 students. They gave preference to two students, a boy from Nadvirna, Bryndzhuk I believe, and Vasyl Sichko. And Vasyl had the advantage. During his studies at this correspondence school, Vasyl had 24 articles published in the regional newspaper “Komsomolskyi Prapor.” Although they were not of a Komsomol or party slant, they were still highly rated.

I remember when Vasyl was in the tenth grade, they held a meeting and announced an unplanned subbotnik (day of volunteer labor) for the upper classes of this school, with the money earned to be transferred to the construction of a school in Korea. At the meeting, the decision was adopted unanimously, the secretary of the Komsomol organization drew up the minutes, they were signed and approved. They held the subbotnik as decided, but where the money went—no one knows. Vasyl wrote about this “important event” to the newspaper “Komsomolskyi Prapor.” The newspaper published the article. When the teachers read it, a great commotion arose around this article. The school director, V. Lavriv, and the class supervisor, Rozaliya Kupriychuk, summoned Vasyl and started shouting: “What right did you, Vasyl, have to write about this and expose this secret to people? This newspaper is a party organ, the party committee will come to us for the money, and we don’t have it, no one gave us money for this subbotnik, the protocol was drawn up for form’s sake.” That is, for window dressing. They threatened: “If you write even a word to the newspaper, then watch out, the consequences will be deplorable.” This is how the teachers taught children to look at reality from another side. Vasyl stopped writing. And when letters came from the correspondence school asking why he wasn’t writing, Vasyl would reply: “I don’t know how to lie.” And so he did not finish that school.

The exams began. He passed the first three with a “5” (A), all that remained was to pass English. He got an easy exam ticket, answered well, but the woman who was administering the exams left the auditorium, and when she returned, she said to her assistant aloud, so that Vasyl could also hear: “The dean said to give him a two (F), because with a three (D) he will pass and be enrolled.”

Later, the woman with whom he was staying said she thought we must have paid well, given such grades, but then a “two.” It means, “The KGB does not sleep.”

My son went to work as a lathe operator at the Strutyn Metal Products Plant, where my husband also worked. But the thought of getting into university, specifically into journalism, did not leave him. Sometime in early July 1975, he read in a newspaper that the journalism department in Kyiv was recruiting students for experimental exams. They would be held from July 10 to 26. If a student didn’t pass, he could take his documents and apply to another university. For this, one needed to have 18 articles published in newspapers.

My son had 22 articles, because in the 9th grade he had studied by correspondence at the school for journalists at the newspaper “Komsomolskyi Prapor,” Ivano-Frankivsk region.

My son Vasyl was delighted by such an opportunity (“an attempt is not a torture”) and went to Kyiv. In the exams, he got one “4” (B) and three “5s” (A’s). His articles passed with an “excellent,” his duties as a guide also, Ukrainian language a “5,” the essay a “4.” He was waiting for the results in Kyiv, but the notification arrived at home, in the town of Dolyna, stating that Vasyl Sichko was admitted to the entrance exams. His father took this notification and went to look for his son. There were two days left until the exams, and so his son stayed. He passed all the entrance exams with 4, 5, 5, 5. He got in.

The Dolyna KGB started looking for where Vasyl had gone. We didn’t admit to anyone that he had been accepted in Kyiv. But two weeks passed, and my husband was summoned not to the Dolyna, but to the Bolekhiv KGB and offered a “deal.” Either my husband signs on to cooperate with the KGB and this will be a guarantee that his son will study—otherwise, his son will not last more than two years at the university. They said that journalism is a political department, and his parents are political prisoners; there is no place for such children there. And although my husband refused such a “deal,” they summoned him a second time a week later. My husband said that he had no intention of buying his children an education at the cost of human souls. He said: “I would rather see my children in prison than with traitorous diplomas.” And that was the end of it.

When my husband told me what the matter was, I grew sad. He asked: “Well, in your opinion, should I have done otherwise?” I was offended and said that if they had summoned me to the KGB, I would not have said anything different.

My son studied for the first year without any obstacles, but “friends” were assigned to him in the person of a student, Odryn from Fastiv, his sister Taya, who wasn’t studying anywhere but lied that she was, and another colleague named Klyots, from somewhere in the Khmelnytsk region, who was considered Taya’s fiancé. This Odryn, when he was visiting us, would always discreetly disappear from the house alone, and then reappear. We guessed that he was going to the KGB and told our son about it. He said he agreed with our suspicions, but there was nothing he could do, because they pretended to be good friends and never left him alone.

(Remove this paragraph. My son Vasyl studied well. The first year they didn’t bother him, only surrounded him with “colleagues” who provoked him into publishing an underground journal. When his father went to Kyiv, he found them printing it. He immediately understood what was going on. Before the “founders” arrived, my husband burned everything down to the last sheet—that was the resolution he made.)

In his second year, at mid-term, my son received a “2” (F) in Russian. A certain Parakhina gave him this grade. The students raised a fuss, a scandal, so they arranged a re-take for my son and gave him a “3” (D).

I will add that that winter, during the holidays, the “friends” came to visit Vasyl again. This was Taya Odryn with her fiancé Lyonya Klyots. They knew well that we were Greek Catholics, and they asked us to find them an underground priest to marry them: they wanted to get married secretly because their relatives were against this marriage. We seemed to agree at first, but when they said they wanted to go to the priest and wanted to know the time of the wedding in advance, we guessed that they didn’t need a wedding, but they needed the KGB to “raid” the priest’s house right during the wedding. To, as they say, “catch them in the act.” So we replied that the priest would not agree to perform the wedding until they were officially registered, that is, at the ZAGS (civil registry office).

And Odryn, when he was traveling with Vasyl from Kyiv to our home in Dolyna, never bought a ticket. When the ticket inspector came, he would show some piece of paper—and they would leave him alone. And when Vasyl asked him what that paper was, he said: “I fooled them, told them I’m a railway worker and have the right to use the train for free.” Even then we had a thought that it must be the KGB.

It came to the point where the students, led by Odryn, began to publish an underground journal, but my husband unexpectedly arrived in Kyiv and saw them printing the journal, took it away, and burned everything. Taya Odryn begged him to leave at least a draft, but my husband burned everything and shouted at them: “What are you doing?”

Later, my son said that there was some reshuffling in the student dormitory and no space was left for him, but here the good “friend” Odryn let him use some “his own” private apartment, while he himself went to spend the night “at his uncle’s”… Vasyl says that every time, things in his suitcase were rummaged through, until he left a note: “If you mess with my things again—I’ll break your hands.” They could have planted a weapon or drugs in the suitcase and arrested anyone who stood in their way.

While Vasyl was studying, we couldn’t give him much money. He had a 40-ruble scholarship and another 40 rubles from us. But when he came home, he always brought a suitcase of books. He bought them at a “Bukinist,” that is, in a kind of shop where people sold valuable books when they didn’t have enough money for living expenses. And he bought them with his own savings. He said he ate one saika (bun) for 7 kopecks and a liter of milk for 22 kopecks and thus saved money for books, so as not to have to ask us.

In all that time, he only once asked for 100 rubles, which surprised us greatly. He promised that when he finished his studies and went to work, he would pay us back immediately. For these 100 rubles, which we did send him, he bought a Bible on the “black market.” And although the Bible was in Russian, it was valuable because at that time it was impossible to get the Holy Scriptures anywhere. Later, this Book became a good companion and advisor to me in my sorrowful life.

At the end of his second year, they wouldn’t accept my son’s term paper. Because he wrote it not on the assigned topics, but on a free topic. The topic—perhaps I won’t say it verbatim—was “Man’s Attitude Towards Nature.” He used many quotes from Oles Honchar’s “The Cathedral.” Dean Prylyuk (Dmytro Mykhailovych, born Nov. 8, 1918 ─ Ed.) insisted that “The Cathedral” was banned. My son argued that not all of it was, and that he had used unbanned quotes. In the end, Vice-Rector Harbuzov sent my son to Prylyuk so that he would accept the term paper. Prylyuk replied verbatim: “Even if they put me against a wall, I will not accept a term paper from him.”

It is clear to everyone that this was not the dean’s personal attitude towards the student, but the interference of the KGB. The secretary of the party organization at that time was Anatoliy Pohribnyi. His role in this matter was not the last. He is still alive and well in Kyiv today. Officially, nothing was ever stated to my son, but upon arriving for the holidays, he told us that the KGB had kept its promise. Because, besides his father, they had also tried to recruit him as a provocateur, but he refused this mission.

He went to Kyiv for his third year. And then in September, I believe on the 23rd, it was read to him that “Vasyl Sichko is expelled from the university for academic failure.” (Expulsion order No. 506 dated July 20, 1977. – Ed.). He did not come home immediately. What can you tell people? You can’t tell the truth, because the truth means prison, and for academic failure, as it was written—it’s shameful.

My son stayed in Kyiv and tried to get to the truth. And when he realized it was a futile effort, he went to the passport office of the Moscow district of Kyiv and, along with an application, surrendered his passport. The application stated: “I am surrendering my passport due to my illegal expulsion from the university and demand an international passport to leave the USSR and continue my studies in any country in the world.” The head of the passport office, out of fear, did not want to accept the passport, but Vasyl left it and walked away. He came home at the end of October and told us all this. We knew not to expect anything good. And trouble was not long in coming.

On November 4, 1977, my husband and I came home from work and the neighbors told us that the police had been there. They were kicking the door of our house (a private house) with their boots and shouting: “Open up!” When the neighbors said we weren’t home and asked what they wanted, they replied: “Vasyl Sichko has gone mad and wants to set himself on fire on Khreshchatyk Street to mark the 60th anniversary of the USSR, so we want to prevent this disaster.” With that, they left, but they were not long in returning. But we had time to tell our son to run and hide somewhere. In the evening, they came a second time and took my husband with them and put him in a holding cell. When three days had passed, my husband demanded to see the warrant for his arrest. Because he wanted to know what crime he was being held for. They replied that there was information that he “wants to kill Dean Prylyuk and the secretary of the party organization, Pohribnyi, in Kyiv during the ‘October holidays’.” They released him only on November 9, without ever presenting charges or apologizing for the illegal arrest.

After that, the police visited often. They asked where Vasyl was, but Vasyl was nowhere near. The police stopped coming, so Vasyl came home for Christmas in 1978, hoping that the “October holidays” were over and they would leave him in peace. And we calmed down, but Vasyl was on his guard.

On January 17, 1978, before the Epiphany Holy Supper, I went to work. I left my sister Bohdanna at home, who had come to visit. Vasyl was not in the house. The KGB came for me at work and told me to go with them, and put me in their car. They brought me to the house and said: “Open it.” I called my sister and she, not expecting any harm, opened the door. They rushed into the house and found Vasyl… Someone had informed them that he had returned home. They put handcuffs on him, put him in the “bobby” police van instead of me, and drove away, without saying a word, why or what…

I rushed to look for my son at the police station, at the KGB—he was nowhere. Only in the evening did they say that he was in a psychiatric hospital. Early in the morning, I went for an appointment with the psychiatrist, her last name was Obukhova. I asked if they had brought a boy to her yesterday. And where she had put him. She, caught off guard, began to cry: “Woman, it’s not my fault. I had never seen him before, but the military enlistment office forced me to diagnose him with ‘schizophrenia.’ I wrote ‘schizophrenia’ with a question mark and they took him with that to Ivano-Frankivsk.”

With that, I came home. My husband said he was going to Ivano-Frankivsk, then to Moscow, but that I should go to the Ivano-Frankivsk psychiatric hospital for the night, so that they wouldn’t maim Vasyl there.

In Ivano-Frankivsk, my husband saw Vasyl through the window of the psychiatric hospital. Vasyl said that they had thrown him into a ward with 12 violently ill men, and in one day they had torn all his clothes to shreds. My husband protested to the chief physician of the psychiatric hospital, Noshchenko, and demanded that his son be moved to another ward and that no treatment be administered until he returned from Moscow. He submitted the same statement to the prosecutor and the regional health department, and then he himself set off for Moscow, to the chief psychiatrist, Churkin. This man asked how it all happened and replied that if my son took back his passport, the diagnosis of “schizophrenia” would be removed. If he didn’t—it would remain.

During the day, I went to work, and at night I would travel to Ivano-Frankivsk (60 km), just to sit outside the hospital and see through the window if my son was alive. I went to the attending physician, Burdeynyi, and asked by what right they were keeping my son in a psychiatric hospital. He replied that he had been brought in with a diagnosis of “schizophrenia.” I told him how it all happened, that Obukhova had been forced to make this diagnosis, but she had put a question mark. But Burdeynyi replied that the diagnosis had been confirmed.

They kept my son in the psychiatric hospital for two weeks, after which they discharged him with a diagnosis of “schizophrenia.” When he and I came home, we felt that at night some men were walking around the house. We were afraid that they were after Vasyl’s life again. It was the month of February. We consulted and said that Vasyl needed to be away from home again for some time.

My husband had a good acquaintance in the village of Mizun, a former political prisoner, Mr. Mykola Kostiv. He went with Vasyl to his place, and Vasyl stayed there. The next day after work, I went to visit Vasyl—and didn’t recognize him. He was standing in the middle of the room, pale as death, and the hostess began to make excuses. She said the house was cold, they wanted Vasyl to get warm, so they heated the stove with plum wood and closed the flue too early. Mykola, her husband, had gone to work for the night, she was in the other room, and look what Vasyl did: he vomited in the clean bed. Through the door, she heard that Vasyl was choking, but she didn’t rush to help. He himself gathered all his strength, pushed open the door to her room, and fainted. But the air saved him.

Even before this, we had been told that these people had been sold out to the KGB, but we hardly believed it. Now we were convinced…

I said, “Come, son. Better to die in prison than at the hands of friends.”

My son returned home and immediately went to Kyiv to seek justice from the dissidents and to join the ranks of human rights defenders, in the Helsinki Group, as it was then called. Because at that time, there were no other centers for the protection of the individual.

The Ukrainian Helsinki Group. The Arrest of My Son and Husband

When my son Vasyl joined the Ukrainian Helsinki Group in February 1978, we began to communicate closely not only with dissidents in Ukraine but also in Russia. A month after Vasyl, my husband also joined the Helsinki Group. It became easier on the soul. Although we were persecuted more intensely, we knew we were not alone. Just then (Feb. 5, 1977. – Ed.) the head of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, Mykola Rudenko (born Dec. 19, 1920, writer, philosopher, arrested Feb. 5, 1977, released December 1987. – Ed.), was arrested, and Oles Berdnyk (Born Dec. 25, 1927, writer, political prisoner in 1950-55, founding member of the UHG, arrested March 6, 1979, released March 14, 1984. – Ed.) took his place.

Vasyl was not working anywhere. This diagnosis did not allow him to work. So he dedicated all his energy to the Helsinki Group. My husband and I were often summoned to the KGB, but not Vasyl, because of his diagnosis. Vasyl would stay at home in the evenings, although he was young, 22 years old. Because at night, they could kill him. One time he couldn’t sit still and went to the club—and he was attacked. It was a good thing there were many of his school colleagues there who came to his defense.

In the autumn (of 1977) in Kyiv, when Vasyl, along with Valentyna Sokorynska, Oles Berdnyk’s wife, left Oksana Meshko’s house, the police put them in their car and took them to the police station, supposedly for crossing the street on a red light. But there were no traffic lights anywhere there. They searched them there. They found a note with Vasyl’s poems on Valentyna and took it, although Valentyna protested. They released Valentyna, but took Vasyl to the train station. But before the train departed for Lviv, they took him to some basement where there was a brothel. He was ashamed to talk about it; I caught a few words as he was telling his father about it. He said that naked women attacked him there. This was done to intimidate him, to break the young man. When they were letting him out of there, they threatened him not to dare appear in Kyiv again, or they would throw him in there and not let him out. This did not scare him, but if it was necessary to go to Kyiv, I tried to go more often, to also visit Volodymyr. Because every day, at the thought of the surveillance he was under, my skin crawled.

I often visited Oksana Meshko, and every time I came, she would say: “Oh! God has sent you! How did you know to come? And how did they let you in here? I thought this was the end of the world.” And then she would tell me that there had been either a search or blackmail. Everyone who visited her and left her house was detained by “certain individuals,” and searched. Of course, no one left O. Meshko’s empty-handed, so all the documents were taken. More than once, dissidents reproached Oksana Meshko that everything falls into the hands of foreigners, but she could not stop caring for others. Some things got through, because the house was constantly under surveillance, but some things also made it to the West. I am probably one of those who was never detained. And I always believe that God protected me, because all these years of tribulations I felt God’s hand over me, which held back the enemy’s sword. I prayed and hoped only in God and His help, when there was nothing more to expect from people. In trouble, people always abandon the persecuted, and even more so under the Soviet regime, where communication with suspicious persons is punished more severely than the suspicious person himself.

The fateful year of 1979 arrived. On March 6, I, like any woman, got up earliest to prepare breakfast. It was 7 o’clock in the morning, and we go to work at 9. I was just taking varenyky (dumplings) out of the boiling water. Someone knocked on the door. For the first time, without asking, I said “just a moment” and opened the door with the strainer full of varenyky still in my hand, expecting it to be a neighbor. And I was horrified—down went my varenyky! A horde of men in uniform, police, KGB agents, and civilians poured into the house. I shouted: “Get up!” At my shout, my husband and son jumped out of bed, but it was too late.

Without saying a word, they were already searching. And the first thing that fell into their hands was a letter written by Vasyl to a girl in Lviv and addressed. This girl was studying at the Lviv Conservatory and because of this, she had a great deal of trouble. Probably, only her parents, who held high positions, could have saved her from this sin of knowing Vasyl.

When my husband protested against the search without a prosecutor’s warrant, only then did they read the warrant for the search, but did not state the reason. On that day, searches were conducted at the homes of almost all dissidents, including Vasyl Striltsiv, who lived in our town. I had a ticket for that day, as I was planning to go to my son in Kyiv, taking advantage of the fact that March 8, by Soviet custom, was “Women’s Day,” a day off. The search continued. At 4 o’clock in the afternoon, I told my masters that I had the right to visit my son Volodymyr, who was studying in Kyiv, at least once a year. (Because “Women’s Day” fell on a Monday, so there were three days off). They hesitated, one of them took the ticket and went to the KGB to clarify, and returned 20 minutes before the train from Dolyna to Ivano-Frankivsk departed, and even offered to drive me to the station. Probably to make sure I would take that route. I had to agree, because I had no other way to get to the station in 20 minutes.

When I arrived in Ivano-Frankivsk, the KGB and the police were already waiting for me there. Without any reason, they asked for my ticket and did not leave my side until I boarded the train. On the train to Kyiv, I was constantly worried and berated myself for leaving, because I had left that whole KGB scum in the house when the protocol had not yet been drawn up. They could have accused my husband of anything (they are specialists at that) and arrested him. But at home, one thought drilled into my brain: how to break free and let my friends know, just to warn them. And on the road, the thought appeared, why didn't I stay.

There was no turning back. The train sped on. Getting off the train in Kyiv, I knew my son was in class, so I first went to Oksana Meshko on Verbolozna Street, 16. As soon as I opened the door, she was overjoyed and greeted me with the words: “God sent you after yesterday’s pogrom.” She had a search until late at night, something was confiscated (I don’t remember what). I said that I myself had just come from that hell, because I had left the KGB in my house in the evening, and by morning I was in Kyiv. And so began the stories of the horror that had to be endured during the search. At that moment, someone came in, some girl, and informed us that yesterday, that is, on March 6, 1979, Oles Berdnyk was arrested, at whose house they had also been turning things upside down all day.

At that time, Oles’s wife, Valya Sokorynska, was still living heart and soul with her husband, she was his support in all his troubles. And there were more troubles than necessary, until later she succumbed to the KGB’s processing. They gave her visits in prison during the investigation with her husband, that is, with O. Berdnyk, because they believed she had influence over him. She justified this trust before the KGB, because it was only under her influence that Oles’s spirit broke. This break painfully struck not only the Helsinki Group, but all honest Ukrainians, because no one justifies betrayal, whether by a wife or by a nation, in various respects. And Valya Sokorynska even boasted about this.

Then, from Oksana Meshko’s, I went to my son at the university dormitory and didn’t spend the night as I had thought, but went home, because my anxiety for my own family gave me no peace. I arrived, brought this sad news that another member of the Helsinki Group was arrested. We knew that this was not accidental, that it was not Oles’s fault, but that his time had come, and ours would not be far behind. We understood that there was an order from “above” to gradually arrest all members of the Group.

The biggest hunt was for my son Vasyl. He only left the house during the day. He stayed home in the evenings. Mostly, he read. One time, he felt like seeing who was at the club, he wanted to see someone his own age. Music was playing, young people were dancing, but as soon as he stepped onto the threshold, someone punched him between the eyes. He was covered in blood, but his colleagues saw it and joined the fight. It stretched for about 200 meters from the club, everyone was fighting, the boys and the police, and my son managed to hide. Vasyl came home and quietly went to bed. In the morning, when we saw his face, he told us what had happened, and then he clearly realized that he could not go out on the street in the evening.

One time, my husband was late coming home at night. Someone called out to him, approached, and said: “Why are you walking at night? An arrest is ready for you, they are just waiting for an opportunity to drag you into a fight. And that could happen right now. Don’t walk at night anymore.”

We were all careful, but the KGB has 1000 tricks for a dirty arrest.

In April of that year, 1979, I don’t know on which day, it was Holy Saturday. My husband was sweeping the yard when an ambulance stopped at the gate. The Dolyna psychiatrist Obukhova got out and asked my husband if Vasyl was at home. My husband asked why she needed him. She replied that he was registered as mentally ill and never came for his appointments, which was mandatory. My husband said in a raised voice: “Get out of the yard while the broom is still in my hands! You call yourself a doctor and probably took the Hippocratic oath, yet you commit lawlessness, knowing that my son is healthy and does not need your care. You have already committed a crime once, sending him to the regional hospital with a false diagnosis, and you have learned nothing from it. You are trying to commit a second crime. I hope you won’t come again.” And indeed, we had no more encounters with her.

Sometime before May 20th, Vasyl went to Kyiv. Because Oles Berdnyk, before he was arrested, had called for a hunger strike on May 22nd, which was to be supported by his followers in connection with the Year of the Child and Mother. In case of his arrest, this action was to be carried out by his wife, V. Sokorynska. But Valya had already been worked over by the KGB by that time. To not give herself away, the hunger strike was held, but silently, without any demand before the government.

And at home, on May 21st, my husband received a summons to appear at the police station. Another member of the Helsinki Group, Vasyl Striltsiv, who lived in Dolyna, was also summoned there. They were held at the police station all day. It seemed they were waiting for someone to arrive from the region. But in the evening, we learned that the funeral of composer Volodymyr Ivasyuk had already taken place in Lviv. This shocked us. Vasyl was in Kyiv for two weeks. When he returned, we were ashamed that we had not been at the funeral…

So, on May 22, 1979, when the murdered composer Volodymyr Ivasyuk was being buried in Lviv, Vasyl was not at home. He had gone to Kyiv then, because for this day Oles Berdnyk had scheduled a several-day hunger strike in defense of children. (Mistake. O. Berdnyk was already arrested on March 6. – Ed. Note by P. Sichko: My son Vasyl, Vasyl Striltsiv, and I were summoned to the KGB in Ivano-Frankivsk. They held us there all day, talked to us in a non-specific way, and let us go in the evening. The purpose of the summons was unclear. We also visited Valentyn Moroz’s wife, Raisa, sat there for a while, and on the bus home, we heard people talking: “There was a funeral in Lviv today, they buried Volodymyr Ivasyuk, who was murdered by the KGB, and to hide their crime from the people, they hung his dead body in a forest near Lviv”).

Two weeks later, June 10—the Green Holidays, Trinity. People go to visit their deceased relatives. In the morning, my husband and Vasyl decided to go to Lviv, to Volodymyr Ivasyuk’s grave. I was waiting for my daughter, who was supposed to come home, and then I intended to follow them. But my daughter didn’t arrive until after lunch. As sad as it was, I stayed home.

The last bus from Lviv to Dolyna arrives at 10:30 p.m., but it was already midnight, and my men were not back. I began to worry, because I knew that secret agents were following us, and something unexpected could happen. Around one in the morning, they arrived. I met them with the words: “I thought you had already been locked up.” My husband said: “It was a close call.” And they began to tell me that they had come to the Lychakiv Cemetery in Lviv, and the people—like blades of grass and leaves. On Ivasyuk’s grave, mountains of flowers, people were holding a memorial service. They were singing his songs, “Chervona Ruta,” and crying. Everyone suspected that the composer’s death was the work of the KGB, but they wanted to hear it from someone. Vasyl approached, wearing an embroidered shirt and an embroidered vest, and the people’s eyes begged him—say it. And the whole atmosphere: the flowers, the singing, the crying, and the looks of the people prompted him to say what he hadn’t even thought of, what he wasn’t prepared for. He jumped onto the grave next to Ivasyuk’s and delivered a speech before the crowd of many thousands. He said that Ivasyuk did not commit suicide, but died in the torture chambers at the hands of the KGB. He did not have to search for words, because although he was an expelled journalist, he was talented by nature, by God’s gift. His father understood that his son was in danger. To confirm his words, he also spoke. The people shouted: “Glory, glory to Ukraine!” At that time, it was a bomb in a quiet sea.

Plainclothes KGB agents approached and said to my son and husband: “Go quickly to that car over there, or the people will kill you.” But they understood where they were being called, and the crowd surrounded both my son and husband—and so they got to the tram. In the same crowd, they put them on the bus heading to Dolyna. But when the bus had driven about 300 meters from the station, strangers stopped it. It stood for a long time, and the driver explained to the passengers that a wheel was broken and needed repair. The bus stood for two hours while the KGB decided whether to take the Sichkos in public or let them go home. Finally, they decided—and the bus moved on with them.

We were expecting either a search or an arrest, because the first search we had was on the day of Oles Berdnyk’s arrest, I believe in February, on Army Day. They didn’t come. My husband and I took vacations from work. We were planning to go to the sea as a whole family. We bought tickets for July 7, and on July 6, the “long-awaited” ones came with a search and an arrest warrant. Aha! My son wasn’t at home; they found him in Nova Dolyna in the library or in a bookstore, because they brought him back with books.

After the search, they took my husband away in a “voronok” (paddy wagon), and my son in an “ambulance” and drove off. The prosecution was from Lviv. Prosecutor Ivanov arrested them with the blessing of the region’s chief prosecutor, Rudenko.

The next day, I went to Lviv to look for my men. I didn’t know where the prosecutor’s office was, so I went to the prisons. Everywhere they told me, both on Lontskoho and at Bryhidky: “No such people here.” Then I found the prosecutor’s office on Franko Street. Here they told me that my husband was at 1 Myru Street, that is, on Lontskoho, and my son was in the psychiatric hospital on Kulparkivska Street (I had forgotten to even think that he had a diagnosis!). They said that a package would be allowed in a month.

Aha! I’ll return to Oles Berdnyk’s arrest. We didn’t know there was a crackdown on dissidents across Ukraine. It seems Matusevych and Marynovych were arrested then. (Founding members of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, Mykola Matusevych and Myroslav Marynovych, were arrested on April 23, 1977, and sentenced to 7 years of imprisonment and 5 years of exile. Released in 1987. – Ed.). On the day of the search, I had bought a ticket to Kyiv because I needed to visit Oksana Meshko, and then this search.

After lunch, I said that I was going to Kyiv to my son Volodymyr, who was studying at Kyiv State University in the mechanics and mathematics department (he had enrolled before Vasyl was expelled). I said I wanted to congratulate him, I believe, on Army Day. They hesitated, went to consult with their superiors about what to do. They held me until the last moment, and then drove me to the station and put me on the train—not without a “tail.”

I arrived in Kyiv—and what son! I immediately went to Oksana Meshko (Jan. 30, 1905 – Jan. 2, 1990, from Poltava region. Founding member of the UHG. Political prisoner 1947-56 and 1980-86. – Ed.), crossed the threshold, and she rejoiced like a small child: “Oh, Stefa! God must have sent you to me.” And she began to tell me how yesterday they had come with a pistol to kill her, how she escaped through the window, because at the moment they were holding her by the arm and had put a pistol to her chest, a lodger from the next room called out. The KGB agent, startled, let her go—she jumped out the window and started screaming. The neighbors called the police, saying their neighbor was being killed, but it wasn’t the police who came, but the funeral home, because they were sure the assassination attempt had succeeded. (There is a time shift here: the armed attack on O. Meshko was committed on November 3, 1978. Oles Serhiyenko, O. Meshko’s son, claims that an inspector of the criminal investigation department of the Podilskyi District Police Department, Captain Dytiuk, arrived and, mocking, tried to portray the event as an ordinary crime, but conducted no investigation. See: Oksana Meshko. I Testify. Kyiv, 1996, p. 19. – Ed.).

And my son Volodymyr knew I was supposed to arrive, but I wasn’t there. He was nearly caught by the KGB because he came looking for me at Mrs. Meshko’s.

I worked at the Dolyna “Silhosptekhnika” (Agricultural Machinery) plant as a rate-setter. Work orders were mostly closed out at the end of the month because we had to pad the workers’ pay: if you put down the actual hours worked, the wages came out very small with those quotas. Almost every month, I would work at the end of the month and on weekends, but later they gave me days off in lieu, which I used for my own personal trips.

August passed (1979.—Ed.). My son Volodymyr went off to his third year at Kyiv University, and Oksana started 10th grade, her final year. The children were good students, but their teachers tried to humiliate them at every turn. My neighbors began to avoid me so they wouldn’t have to say hello, so no one would see them, because even for such “connections” you could be summoned to the KGB. Only those neighbors who were engaged by the KGB would visit often, especially if someone from out of town dropped by—so they could report back. Searches of my home were very frequent. As soon as a search happened, I knew that on that day they had arrested one of the dissidents, either in Kyiv or in Moscow. It didn’t matter which dissidents—back then, the KGB treated both Ukrainian and Russian ones the same.

As fate would have it, after the arrest of my husband and son, I was forced to get to know the best people of the 1970s—the dissidents. I was writing protests to the prosecutor’s office about all the abuse, and I would personally deliver a copy to the dissidents in Moscow because it was difficult to pass anything to Radio Liberty in Kyiv. In Moscow, they received me warmly, but they couldn’t believe all the persecution because they were not under such pressure. I even traveled beyond Moscow, to Tarusa, where Mrs. Nina Strokata lived in exile (Jan. 31, 1926–June 2, 1996, Odesa, political prisoner 1971–75, a founding member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group.—Ed.). Later, her husband, Mr. Sviatoslav Karavansky, was released (b. Dec. 24, 1920, Odesa, 31 years of imprisonment: 1944–60, 1965–79.—Ed.), and I visited them one more time, a few days before their departure to America (The Karavanskys left on Nov. 30, 1979.—Ed.). The Karavanskys gave me all the telegrams with which courageous people had congratulated Mr. Karavansky on the day of his freedom. Very beautiful words were written. From Odesa, they wrote something like: “All the flowers of Odesa bow at your feet and greet Karavansky.” Others wrote: “All the city’s bells are ringing in honor of your release.” But during one of the searches, they confiscated these telegrams from me too. What did they need them for?

We all maintained close contact with one another. I most often visited Mrs. Meshko in Kyiv, and always, as she put it, precisely when she needed me most. Because only what she passed through me reached its destination. I must confess that everyone who left her place was searched and whatever they were carrying was taken from them, but I was fortunate enough to never be detained on my way from her. I was there, too, when they took her to the psychiatric hospital (Oct. 13, 1979.—Ed.). And then she and her son Oles switched places. He was released from exile at the end of his term, and she was sent into exile to the same place (The village of Ayan, on the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk.—Ed.). She still found him there, in Khabarovsk Krai (Summer 1980.—Ed.); he had even prepared firewood for his mother for the winter... I helped her when she was at home and in exile. She called me her sworn sister. And she kept asking me if I knew what the word “posestra” meant—it means the very closest, like a sister.

In Kyiv, I associated with Mrs. Svitlana Kyrychenko (b. Oct. 31, 1935, Kyiv, philologist.—Ed.), the wife of Yuriy Badzyo (b. April 23, 1936, political prisoner from April 23, 1979, to Dec. 8, 1988.—Ed.). Svitlana introduced me to a wider circle of the political intelligentsia. She and I visited the mother of Marchenko, who died in prison (Nina Mykhailivna’s son Valeriy Marchenko, Oct. 16, 1947–Oct. 7, 1984, member of the UHG.—Ed.). We also visited the family of the late Vasyl Stus. I arrived in Kyiv when his wife had gone to retrieve his body (V. Stus, b. Jan. 7, 1938, political prisoner 1972–79, arrested a second time on May 14, 1980, died in a punishment cell of the special-regime camp VS-389/36 in Perm Oblast on the night of Sept. 4, 1985.—Ed.). Everyone hoped she would bring it back, but his wife returned without the coffin. Then his friends gathered for a memorial service. This was on September 11, 1982 (1985!—Ed.). I remember how Yevhen Sverstiuk (b. Dec. 13, 1928, political prisoner from Jan. 14, 1972, to Jan. 14, 1984.—Ed.) was the first to speak, saying that Vasyl’s fate was similar to that of John the Baptist, whose feast day we were celebrating. Just as the Baptist was beheaded, so was Stus. Then Yevhen led the “Our Father.” I had never heard anyone recite the prayer like that; a shiver ran through my body from head to toe. Mrs. Mykhailyna Kotsiubynska was also there (niece of M. Kotsiubynsky, b. Dec. 18, 1931, philologist.—Ed.), and Mr. Vasyl Lisovyi (b. May 17, 1937, philosopher, political prisoner from July 6, 1973, to July 1983.—Ed.) with his wife (Vira Hrytsenko-Lisova, b. Jan. 5, 1937, philologist.—Ed.), and many more of Vasyl’s friends.

And no matter how much hardship pressed down on me, I thanked fate for being in a circle of such friends, united by one idea: a free Ukraine. I also got to know the Svitlychny family (Ivan Svitlychny, Sept. 20, 1929–Oct. 25, 1992, philologist, political prisoner in 1965–66, 1972–83; his wife Leonida, b. April 2, 1924–Feb. 18, 2003, engineer.—Ed.), and the family of Yevhen Proniuk (b. Sept. 26, 1936, political prisoner in 1972–84, philosopher; his wife Halyna Didkivska.—Ed.), and many others—I can’t recall them all now. Back then we were all united and rejoiced whenever we met.

The Search of August 7, 1979

On August 3 (1979.—Ed.), I remember it well, I went to Kyiv, and then to a village in the Vasylkiv Raion where Mr. Yuriy Lytvyn lived (Barakhty village. Nov. 26, 1934–Sept. 4, 1984, member of the UHG, 22 years of imprisonment.—Ed.). I felt the need to talk with him. I found Mr. Yuriy by his house under a sprawling apple tree. He turned out to be a very interesting conversationalist, and I was very pleased with our talk. I promised to visit him again when I had the chance.

When I arrived home (only my daughter Oksana was there—oh, and my son Volodymyr was still home on his school break), I found a dear and long-awaited guest, Mrs. Oksana Meshko. Although she lived in Kyiv, she had just come from Khabarovsk, where she had been visiting her son Serhiy (Oles Serhiyenko.—Ed.) in exile.

She said she had valuable documents that she had received from dissidents in Moscow, as well as letters from Mr. Levko Lukianenko from the camp. She hadn’t even had a chance to read anything on the way, as she was hiding them from prying eyes. She asked me to hide them. I went into the flower garden and buried them in the earth under the flowers. Toward evening, Mr. Mykhailo Lutsyk from Skole came to visit us (b. Dec. 31, 1921, Ukrainian monarchist, prisoner of German, Polish, Hungarian, and Soviet camps, over 32 years of captivity.—Ed.) and was delighted by the unexpected meeting with Mrs. Meshko. Evening was approaching. I told him it was dangerous for him to stay the night, because I was more than certain we were being watched and there could be a search in the morning. But Mrs. Oksana insisted that he stay, as there was still much to discuss. In the morning, she sat with him on the veranda while I prepared breakfast. I think we had already eaten; it was 10 o’clock. Mrs. Meshko asked me at what time I usually have searches. I said, “So far, always in the morning, around seven.” She said that there probably wouldn’t be one today, so I should bring the package she had given me to hide, because she needed to discuss something with Mr. Lutsyk. I went right away, dug up the package, brought it into the room, laid a newspaper on the table, and started shaking the dirt off the package. I glanced out the window—and saw car after car driving up. It was unusual because our street only has three more houses and then a dead end. I realized it was the KGB. I ran to the veranda and shouted, “Search! KGB!” They were already breaking down the door, kicking it and yelling in Russian, “Open up!” I forgot that I had left the package on the table, I opened the door, and they burst in. The interesting thing was that they didn't scatter through the rooms but all rushed to where they heard Meshko’s voice. I took advantage of that, ran into the other room, snatched the package, and tucked it under my arm.

I hear shouting near Meshko. They are yelling to the official witnesses, “Strip her!” But she resists. Then my daughter Oksana stood up for her: “Aren’t you ashamed to be undressing an old woman?” Then the KGB agents commanded, “Strip her too!” Meaning my daughter.

I’m thinking, oh, God, now me, and the package is under my arm. But as they ran into the house—in the hallway there was a large bag of apples I had picked that morning. They stumbled over the bag, and I dragged it into the kitchen. The prosecutor shouts (and they were furious, like mad dogs; what luck, to find the people they needed in the house), “Search the bag!” I say, “I’m not dumping the apples on the floor, let me get a container from the pantry.” They allowed it. I seized the moment—not looking for a container, because there wasn’t one there, but quickly pulled the package from under my arm and shoved it into a sack of corn flour. I dusted off my hand, came back and said they could dump the apples out, as there was no container. But I must have been very agitated because they exchanged glances, and the Lviv Oblast prosecutor, Ivanov, commanded, “Search the pantry!”

At the search there were three women from Dolyna as witnesses: the head of the passport office, Karpova; some crooked-browed resident of Dolyna who I think worked as a cleaner, Kavka; and the head of the party office, who also performed marriages at the civil registry—I’ve forgotten her last name. All three of them went to the pantry and started going through everything. (See the search protocol of Aug. 7, 1979, in the “Documents” section.—Ed.)

There was a lot to look through because we kept a small farm—a piglet, chickens, rabbits. The pantry held their feed and our food products. In addition, there were old books and various papers.

I ask Kavka, “You’re a witness, so why are you taking part in the search?” She replied that not only should everything be gone through, but my ribs should be counted too. They were searching, and I was praying. And God heard my prayer: they didn’t look in the sack.

We knew that our house was bugged, so when discussing secret matters, we wrote on paper. That’s how Mrs. Oksana was communicating with Mr. Lutsyk, with a pen and paper. When I announced the KGB agents were there, she tore up what she had written and threw it out the window. And just before that, she had asked me to write down for her roughly what Vasyl had said at the grave of composer Ivasiuk, which had led to his arrest. I wrote it down, and she, for lack of time, hid it under the rug, which the KGB agents found immediately. During the search, they took everything they liked. Private letters written to us, all sorts of postcards, even holiday greetings.

During the search, they took Mr. Lutsyk and led him away somewhere. But they caught another one—Vasyl Striltsiv, a former English teacher at School No. 1 in Dolyna. (b. Jan. 13, 1929, political prisoner 1944–54, Oct. 23, 1979–May 5, 1987). He had taught all my children. But he, a former political prisoner, had fallen out of favor (probably on KGB orders) with the principal of the first school, Vasyl Lavriv. He was fired from the school for his protests and complaints against the principal. So he too, like Vasyl, became a member of the Helsinki Group. They were planning to arrest him but needed a reason, even one like the Sichkos had. Striltsiv, back when my boys were home, was friendly with us, a frequent guest in our house, and after the arrest of my husband and son, he would visit me. Not knowing I was having a search, Striltsiv walked into the house and they wouldn’t let him leave until the search was over.

The search ended around 4 o’clock in the afternoon. They wrote up a protocol, which none of us signed. The prosecutor was writing the protocol, and I happened to reach into the pocket of my housecoat and remembered that inside my glasses case was a note I had recently received from my son Vasyl from the psychiatric hospital, via some kind male orderly. I was sitting on the sofa. I pulled the case out of my pocket (because I expected to be searched again) and discreetly slipped the note under the coverlet. In that room, no one noticed, but in the other room was a witness, a simple-minded neighbor, Mykhailo Hodovanets, and Striltsiv heard him tip off a KGB agent that I had hidden something under the coverlet. The agent practically foamed at the mouth as he ripped off the coverlet, sending both me and the case flying to the floor. He went for the case and I started trying to wrench it away, but he was stronger—he took the case and pulled out Vasyl’s note from the psychiatric hospital. Ivanov, the prosecutor, frothed at the mouth, screaming, “Read it!” The agent began to read: “Mama, 30 days have passed, and the commission still hasn’t met. Please look into it, because I think they want to pin this schizophrenia on me, even though they have no facts. The medics don’t leave my side day or night. And some of them are surprised I’m being kept here.”

The prosecutor shouts in Russian, “Who passed it on?” I say, “A little bird brought it on its tail.” At that point I lost my temper, telling them what I really thought...

They all left, and we remained in the house—Striltsiv, Meshko, my daughter, and my son Volodymyr, who hadn't been present during the search because he had gone to a neighbor’s right at that time and, seeing the KGB at our house, didn't return until now. When misfortune is small, a person cries, but when it’s great, they laugh. We laughed, and I started serving lunch. We had just sat down at the table when two KGB agents returned. They addressed Mrs. Oksana Meshko: “Come with us.” And she, mockingly, drawled in a thin voice, “Whe-ere to?” They said, “To the Dolyna prosecutor’s office.” She changed her tone and said, “I spit on your Dolyna prosecutor’s office, the Kyiv one is enough for me.” They said, “Whatever the lady of the house says.” And I say, “If it’s up to me, then get out of the house, but really get out, out!” And I started advancing on them. They backed away, step by step, and found themselves on the other side of the threshold. Then they say, “Sixteen of us will come right now and take you all.” I always kept an axe by the threshold, just in case. I took the axe in my hand, showed it to them, and said, “When you come back, I have a gift for you.” And I shut the door.

Mrs. Oksana grew worried: “I’m not afraid of the Kyiv prosecutor’s office, my friends will look after me there, but here in Dolyna, they’ll kill me.”

Striltsiv left. I didn’t let the children out of the house, so they wouldn’t be taken hostage. We began to make a plan for how to get out of the house. I told Mrs. Oksana to go rest, and I would wake her up and we would leave on the first shuttle bus that takes the drivers to work. That’s at 4:30 a.m.

I turned on Radio Liberty and heard that Yuriy Lytvyn had been arrested (Arrested on Aug. 6, 1979.—Ed.).

We left the house at 4 o’clock. I still wanted to pick some fresh apples, because it was time for a parcel for my husband, a month had passed since his arrest. But we decided against it, not to make any noise. We left quietly. It was a 5-minute walk to the stop. We got on the workers' shuttle bus and arrived at the city garage. From there, a bus was leaving for the town of Bolekhiv. It’s in the direction of Lviv, about 16 km away. But it was good to get out of Dolyna before daybreak. We got off in Bolekhiv. A large truck came by, heading to Drohobych, but via Stryi. We got in. In Stryi, it was starting to get light. A Morshyn–Lviv bus was waiting. We asked the driver if we needed tickets. He said to get on, as he was about to leave. Around 8 o’clock we were already in Lviv. Mrs. Oksana told me to take her to Olena Vintoniv (Antoniv, Nov. 17, 1937–Feb. 2, 1986.—Ed.), the wife of Zenoviy Krasivskyi (Nov. 12, 1929–Sept. 20, 1991, political prisoner 1948–53, 1967–78, 1980–85.—Ed.), because she didn't know the way well. We went into the house. Mrs. Olena was always glad to have guests, though she knew that after such guests, there would be trouble.

After 10 minutes, someone called for Mrs. Olenka. She returned and said she’d been told that KGB agents were on their way to her place. I told Mrs. Meshko that I would leave first, and she should follow a bit later. My head was spinning. Instead of walking down Horodotska Street toward the center, I went in the opposite direction. Then I realized I should be heading toward the Church of St. Elizabeth, which is visible as a landmark. I turned back and ran right into Mrs. Meshko. She asked me something, but I said, “Quiet, I’ve got a tail now.” We parted ways. I went to the market to buy something for my husband’s parcel and headed to the prison on Lontskoho Street, at the time Miru Street, 1.

The guards told me that the prosecutor had ordered them not to accept any parcels without him present. And he would be there in the afternoon. I waited. Ivanov arrived and began an interrogation. First, he asked where Meshko was. I said she went to the station yesterday and said she’d take whatever bus was there: either to Lviv or Ivano-Frankivsk. Then he started showing me glued-together scraps of notes. He asked something else, but I refused to answer. Finally, he told me to go, they would accept the parcel. But at that moment, a guard came in and called him to the phone, adding, “It’s about this woman.”

Ivanov told me to wait. I thought this was my last hour of freedom. He returned: “That’s not respectable, you deceived me. You met with Meshko in Lviv, after all.” I replied, “You lie to me all the time, so I’m allowed to as well.”

He let me go. I realized that they had lost track of us and didn’t know we had arrived together. The “tail” must have spotted us when I briefly met with Meshko.

My efforts to have them accept the parcel were in vain. My husband had declared a hunger strike, and they wouldn’t take it.

When I was traveling to Lviv, I was only thinking about the two of us, how we could slip out of Dolyna unnoticed. I forgot about the children. And they were being stormed all day, constantly questioned about where their mother and Meshko were.

I no longer knew who to worry about first...

The psychiatric hospital is worse than prison, especially when Vasyl is undergoing an evaluation there. I couldn’t get a meeting with the head of the ward. Finally, I managed it. And sincerely, with a mother’s heart, I told her where her son’s diagnosis of “schizophrenia” came from. I felt that she, a Ukrainian, understood me, even though they said she was Jewish by nationality. But she didn't let on that she understood. I asked if I could file a complaint with the commission. By law, they hold you in the psychiatric hospital for evaluation for 30 days, and more than 30 days had already passed. She said the commission would meet in a few days, so if I wanted to, I could submit everything I had told her for the commission’s consideration. But by letter, and dropped into the mailbox. (This paragraph was moved here from Section III.—Ed.).

On August 14, 1979, I went to Lviv again, to the psychiatric hospital, to find out the fate of my son Vasyl. I went to the chief physician, Markevych. To my question about my son’s fate, he said I should ask the prosecutor, because he wouldn’t tell me anything. And he added that I had written such a statement about my son that any psychiatrist could envy me.

I left the office with the intention of going to the prosecutor’s office. I had already passed through the gates of the Kulparkivska (on Kulparkivska Street in Lviv.—Ed.) hospital, but I remembered that I had a parcel for Vasyl with me, so if I couldn’t give it to my son, I would give it to the patients sitting in the park near the hospital. I handed out the parcel, mainly vegetables, and thought: I can't just leave, I’ll go and at least look at the building where my son is being held. I approach and see that they are repairing the sidewalk near the hospital entrance, and a police van, a “bobik,” is parked nearby.

The fifth ward is built in the shape of a T. I looked at the window, and I see them coming. A guard in front, my son behind him, and a second guard behind him. I quickly ran to the exit and hid. The first guard passed, and when my son came out, I cried out, “Vasyl!” And I threw my arms around his neck. Before the guards realized what was happening, my son managed to say, “Mama, they declared me sane. They’re taking me to prison.” Then they twisted my son’s arms and pushed him into the van, telling me, “Go away—you’re not allowed.” I said, “Too late.”

I can’t describe how happy I was, as if my son had been set free! They drove him away, and I went to the bus stop and took a bus to the prosecutor’s office on Ivana Franka Street.

I had come to know those prosecutorial thresholds well, so I went straight to the chief prosecutor. He turned out to be an unfriendly old man of retirement age, Rudenko. I asked, “Where is my son?” He answered, “In prison.” I crossed myself and said aloud, “Glory to you, Lord.” And he says, “What are you crossing yourself for? He’s not free, he’s in prison.” I say, “For that too, I praise the Lord, because a psychiatric hospital is a hundred times worse than prison.”

I bought a few things, since I had given away the parcel, and took them to the prison on Lontskoho. They accepted the parcel. I didn’t find out another word.

Later, my husband told me that on that day he had felt in his soul that his son had been brought to the prison because they had previously told him his son was in a psychiatric hospital. When he, my husband, was called in for questioning, he asked, or rather, stated confidently, “My son is in prison now.” The investigator denied it. And when my husband said, “I can even tell you when you brought him. Yesterday.” At that, the investigator became furious: “Who told you?” My husband said, “You know I’m isolated from the outside world. A father’s heart told me.”

And it’s true, I don’t think I’ve mentioned this in my memoirs, but when you worry intensely about someone, your intuition works so strongly that you can see in your soul what is happening to them.

Later, they accepted a parcel from me every month. Not everything, but what was permitted by their regulations.

I shared everything that was happening to me with Striltsiv, my boys’ colleague and a member of the Helsinki Group. He advised me not to sit quietly, but to write, to pass information to Radio Liberty, because otherwise they would be killed in there. Since no lawyer at the time wanted to legally formalize my documents, Striltsiv would correct them. But in October (on the 23rd.—Ed.) of that same year, 1979, Striltsiv was also arrested—my last support.

Sometime before his arrest, my daughter and I went to his apartment to get some things. We found him with his colleague from the Norilsk camps, some Boliuk from Sloboda Dolynska. Striltsiv maintained close ties with him, trusted him. Striltsiv was from Ivano-Frankivsk, born in 1929, he had ended up in prison as a 16-year-old boy and served 10 years in the Norilsk camps. This same Boliuk was imprisoned there at the time. Striltsiv was released from prison, never married, lived alone. When we invited him to our home for Christmas Eve, he said he couldn't, because he was going to Boliuk's. Why am I writing about these trifles? Well, I found Boliuk at his place, and Striltsiv said: “I’m preparing for the possibility that they might arrest me too, so I’ve hidden some of my writings in 12 places. I don’t want to expose you to trouble prematurely, and I’m not sure they won’t arrest you too, so Mr. Boliuk knows about these hiding places. And at the right time, when I hint to you from the camp, he will reveal the hiding places to you, and you will forward it all to Radio Liberty.” A few days later, Striltsiv was indeed arrested. While still in the pre-trial detention cell in Dolyna, he sent a message for the Pylypivskys to bring him his jacket. The Pylypivskys were old OUN members; they were supposed to be executed by the Germans, but they managed to escape. And now Mr. Pylypivskyi, like Striltsiv, taught at School No. 1; they both taught English. They were friends and supported each other in times of trouble. When I went to them, Mrs. Pylypivska seemed almost indignant and said that I could have done it myself. The Pylypivskys were on very good terms with the members of the Helsinki Group, were friends with us, and also hosted Oles Berdnyk in their home, which was very dangerous. But the KGB managed to intimidate them somehow. Because when they put my men in prison, they would cross to the other side of the street when they saw me, to avoid saying hello.

Although I’m jumping around in time, I want to finish the story I started about Striltsiv. They tried him, I think, in February (On Oct. 23, 1979, V. Striltsiv was arrested on charges of “violating passport regime rules”—Art. 196 of the Criminal Code of the UkrSSR, and on Nov. 12, he was sentenced by the Dolyna District Court to 2 years of imprisonment in strict-regime camps.—Ed.), secretly. No one was at the trial except the old, deaf landlady with whom he rented a room. After the trial, the landlady told me about it, but I’m not his relative, and they wouldn’t accept a parcel from me.

From the camp, which was in Poltava Oblast, Bozhkove station, Striltsiv wrote to me and hinted about those documents. For some reason, the mail carrier didn’t bring me the letter; instead, I received a notice to come pick it up, not at the post office branch No. 2 in old Dolyna, but at the main post office. I saw the letter was from Striltsiv and was about to leave when I ran into this same Boliuk. I said, “Oh, perfect timing. I just received a letter from Striltsiv.” And right there, in the hallway, we read it together. Then Boliuk tells me that he had been wanting to see me for a long time to say that in all 12 hiding places, there wasn’t a single sheet of paper. Probably, the neighbors had spied and taken them. At first, I was surprised, but I immediately understood who I was dealing with, though it was hard to believe because people said that when Striltsiv was arrested, Boliuk’s place was supposedly searched as well.

I said, “If they’re gone, they’re gone, what can you do.” He wanted to add something else, but I left him and went on my way. All of this troubled me greatly. But about a week later, I was walking home from work at the “Silhosptekhnika” plant and saw Boliuk standing at the bus stop by the lake. The bus arrived. I pretended not to notice him as he got on through the back doors. I got on through the front. At my stop, I jumped off first. Just then, some neighbors were there with their car, so I asked for a ride and went home, though it wasn’t far to walk. Boliuk didn't stop at that. Two days later, he was waiting for me not far from the house. He greeted me and asked why I was avoiding him. I answered, “What connects us, and why are you following me?” We never met again. But whether it was that year or the next, I don’t recall—he came home from work on Good Friday, sat down in front of the television, and died. And may God be his judge.

Seventeen years have passed since then; it’s hard to remember everything, but there are moments that can never be forgotten.

October, November 1979. I often traveled to Lviv to the prosecutor’s office to find out if the trial would be soon. They assured me they would notify me about the trial, but I didn’t believe it, because I had seen from the facts that they tried dissidents and never allowed relatives into the courtroom, let alone strangers.

It was December. I had just returned from near Moscow, from Tarusa, from the Karavanskys. They, the Karavanskys, were supposed to fly to the USA on December 4. (The Karavanskys left on Nov. 30, 1979.—Ed.). I didn’t stay to see them off at the airport because I was working. On December 4, the Feast of the Presentation, the evening before, I was thinking of going to Lviv, because my soul felt something was wrong. That night I got very sick to my stomach, like dysentery. In the morning, I realized I couldn’t travel in such a condition. I got ready and went, or rather, trudged, to work. From the bus stop to “Silhosptekhnika” it’s another kilometer uphill, and I was dragging myself. I see a car stop and someone calls for me to get in. I was very surprised: it was the manager of our enterprise, Volodymyr Martyniuk, with whom I was an irreconcilable enemy.

I have already mentioned in Section II that because we were political prisoners, the KGB never took its eyes off us, but there were different kinds of bosses. Some obeyed the KGB agents out of necessity and didn't cause us much harm; others wanted to earn a “star” from our misfortune. Martyniuk was one of them, and his devoted assistant was the party organization secretary, Mykhailo V. Ilnytskyi.

I didn’t want to get in the car, but he got out of the car and led me in himself, asked if I was sick, and told me not to go home if I felt worse, but to tell him, and he would take care of a doctor.

I was a little surprised by this concern. Truthfully, I managed to stay at work until the end, but the next day my temperature rose. I went to the doctor and got a sick leave for 2 or 3 days. I took advantage of this and went straight from the clinic to Lviv. I go into the prosecutor’s office and ask the prosecutor when the trial will be, and he replies, “You can have a visit with them, they were sentenced yesterday, got three years each.” It was then that I immediately understood the previous day’s concern from my manager, meant to keep me at work.

The prosecutor said there would be only one post-trial visit, where I could give them food and clothes for the road. So I didn't go right away because I wanted to go with the children and also prepare winter clothes. I asked the prosecutor what happened to his word, his promise to inform me about the trial. He replied that they had sent the notification by mail, and why I didn’t receive it was not their business.

After that, I got quite sick and went for the visit in mid-January 1980. I also informed my son Volodymyr that if possible, he should come on the appointed day to say goodbye to his father and brother.

My son was in the middle of his exam session at Kyiv University. He submitted a request to the dean’s office for a day off and received it. He came to Lviv, and after the visit, he returned to Kyiv straight from Lviv. Why do I write this? Because later they built their whole case for expelling him from the university on this one day.

They didn't give us a visit with both of them together. I came with my daughter Oksana and son Volodymyr. First, they gave us a visit with my husband, then with my son Vasyl.

My husband told me how disgracefully they were tried. They tried my husband and son together. When they were told, “All rise, the court is in session,” they did not stand. So the guards held them up under their arms, and they hung there. They brought in some fictitious witnesses who said that the Sichkos were indeed the people who spoke at the grave of composer Ivasiuk (though my men had not denied this during the investigation). At the trial, neither my husband nor my son said a word, they didn't answer any questions, not a “yes,” not a “no,” which infuriated the judges.

Also present at the trial were students from Kyiv University, Vasyl’s classmates, who had come to visit us with him during the holidays. At the time, we told our son that these boys were from that “kitchen” [the KGB], but they treated him so well that he both believed and didn’t believe it. They were Serhiy Odryn from Fastiv and Volodymyr Kliuts from Khmelnytskyi. And with Kliuts was his beloved, Odryn’s sister, Taya. Although she wasn’t a student, she worked, probably as a secret agent, and came along under the guise of being Kliuts’s fiancée. There was also a story that Kliuts’s mother did not approve of their marriage, so they asked us to take them to an underground Catholic priest. But they wanted the wedding to take place in the priest’s home. When we told this to the priest who worked underground in Dolyna, Father Protsiv, he immediately said that it was a provocation and he would not agree.

So, they brought these Odryn and Kliuts to the trial. They wanted to get into the KGB's good graces, but their testimony was not supported by facts. They said that you could feel that Vasyl was a nationalist, and so were his relatives.

They also took the head of the 5th ward of the Lviv psychiatric hospital (I forgot her last name) as a witness. She said words for which she was later fired. She said: “Sichko has never been mentally ill, he is currently healthy, and probably never will be ill.”

They sentenced both my husband, Petro Sichko, and my son, Vasyl Sichko, to three years in “correctional labor camps of a reinforced regime” under Art. 187/1 for “slander of the Soviet system.” (The son—reinforced regime, and the father—strict regime.—Ed.).

They were taken away. My son to Cherkasy, and my husband to Luhansk, then Voroshylovhrad, Oblast, the city of Brianka (Brianka-6, camp UL-314/11.—Ed.).

After the winter break (of 1980.—Ed.), when my son Volodymyr went back to his studies, I received notifications from the camps—from both my husband Petro and my son Vasyl—that a visit was scheduled. With my husband on March 8, 9, and 10 in Brianka, and with my son on March 10 in Cherkasy. My daughter and I began to discuss what to do, who would go where. We decided that we would go to our father, and then we would see.

We arrived in Brianka in the morning. Around 9 o’clock they began to let relatives in for visits. They let everyone in, but not me. They tell me to go to the headquarters to clarify. The headquarters is on the other side, more than 2 km around the zone, and we had heavy bags. We went. There they told us, “We are looking for your husband, and he is nowhere to be found.” I say, “What, did he escape or something?”

They found him only after work, when he was washing up. We were let in only toward evening. One day, the 8th, was already lost. My husband came and says he had been asking the administration all day if his wife had arrived. They told him no, so he was already worried about what had happened.

He came to the visit with a battered head. He began to tell how an attempt on his life had been made the day before. (March 6, 1980.—Ed.). How he was separated from his brigade and taken to work in some workshop, and from there some criminal with a knife attacked him and hit him on the head, how he barely escaped from his hands. He says that the only reason he didn’t declare a hunger strike after that was because he knew I was coming.

We had dinner together, and I don't know how to confess that the visit with Vasyl is on the 10th, and what to do... In conversation, I laughed at something with Oksana. My husband noticed and started asking why we were laughing. Then I say that I don’t know how to tell him that the visit with Vasyl is on the 10th. And I started to cry. He began to insist that we should go to Vasyl already, and he would go back to the zone. I say it’s nighttime, we’ll go in the morning.

In the morning, the guards let everyone out from the visits and said that no one would be let in for the day. My husband asked them to let us out because we were going to our son. During the night, we decided that Oksana would stay so that dad could at least eat something for these three days. But when everyone was let out, my husband said that something was planned: it was dangerous for Oksana to stay. We went and consulted. When they started letting two families in for visits, my husband told Oksana, “Stay, since there will be other people here.”

They came for us, and my husband says, “My daughter is staying.” They began to protest, but my husband says he has a statement signed for 3 days.

They led me out with a broken heart. And there is no connection from Komunarsk to Cherkasy. I went to Luhova station, stood there until midnight for a ticket, and still made it to Cherkasy, arriving on the 10th. When they were letting people in for the visit, I had to hand over the money I had on me. I had about 18 rubles. Just enough for a ticket. The female guard asked why I had so little money. I say, “It’s enough for a ticket, and there’s nowhere else to get more.”

But let me go back. When my son Vasyl was brought to Cherkasy and I received the notification, I took a parcel and went anyway: what if they let me pass it on. There I approached one of the female guards and began to plead with her. She left, and soon returned and said, “A tall man will come out, approach him.” And indeed, I approached him, and he accepted it. I thought I should thank him because maybe I would need his help again someday. I had a small, carved box with me that Oksana had made. The guard had noticed it. So I gave it to her and put a couple of rubles inside. She didn't look inside, she just took it.

And now, for this visit, the same guard was admitting me. The conversation took place in the room where the visit was supposed to be. She says, “Last time, besides the box, you gave me money, so I am returning it to you.” I was stunned. I know there’s a listening device in the room, so how do I tell her that? I just say, “You must have mixed something up, I never gave you anything.”

They brought Vasyl. I had a 24-hour visit with him. He had somehow managed to bring a pen made by the prisoners, which they hadn’t confiscated. Inside was a magazine cover, rolled into a tube, and on top was a knitted cover made of various threads, pulled over it like a stocking. I took the pen and put it in my bag. After the visit, no one was searched. They let me out. I see that female guard and the authorized officer Sydorenko standing there, with about 10 other men, either guards or from the “leadership.” He says very sternly, “Give her the money.” She, turning pale, handed it over. I took it—and put it in my pocket. And he shouts at me, “Count the money.” I say, “I don’t want to.” “And I order you to.” “And I do not obey you, I am not a prisoner. I trust that no one has robbed me.” Then he told the guard, “Search her bag.” She searched, felt the pen, put it back in the bag, then got scared and showed the officer, “And here’s a pen.” He says, “Put it back.”

I asked them to take the parcel for my son. He refused. I say, “At least the candies...” and held them in my hand. He kicked the candies—and they scattered from my hand across the floor, and he shouts, “Pick them up.” I say, “Now you can pick them up.”

I left there with my emptied bags, I hadn’t even walked 30 meters when he, Sydorenko the officer, catches up with me and shouts, “Come back.” I don’t look back. He caught me, ripped the bags from my hands, and ran. I followed him to the 2nd floor. He called the convoy and said, “Bring the expert.” He took my pen from the bag and handed it to the man who arrived—the expert.

After some time, the expert returns, brings the pen back disassembled, and says, “There’s nothing, just a magazine cover.” Then the officer says they will not compensate me for the pen because it is of “production manufacturing.”

I left that place—it's terrifying to even remember. I took the bags and walked right down the middle of the road. As they say, “I didn't give a damn.” Drivers pointed at their temples: was I crazy? And I had only one thought: “Oh Lord, if only a lake would form in the middle of the road, so I could walk into it and never come out.”

In Cherkasy, not far from the camp, on the other side of the road, there was an airfield. I sometimes flew from there by plane. Exactly 18 rubles was enough, while the train was 14 rubles and I had to get to Shevchenko station. But this time I took the train, because my daughter and I had arranged to meet in Kyiv. We met in the morning. We got tickets for the evening, so I went to the university at the far end of Kyiv, near the agricultural exhibition, to find out how my son Volodymyr was doing.

My Son Volodymyr

Since I have already mentioned my younger son Volodymyr, I will continue the story about him.

I spent a long time looking for and waiting for the dean. Finally, I got a meeting. I asked what he planned to do with my son. He replied that he would be expelled “for academic failure.” The dean’s name was Zavalo. I ask, “And how many times has any of the instructors contacted me or informed me that my son is not keeping up?” He then raised his voice: “I am a veteran, I am a pensioner, and you are offending me.” I calmly replied, “Then you should have retired, and a younger person in your place might have thought twice about whether it’s worth chopping off a young man’s head, and on someone else’s orders at that.” At this point he really got worked up, but I no longer cared, and I said, “And so we help the Muscovite rule and strip the last patched shirt off our mother’s back...” I left so I wouldn’t cry in front of the scoundrel, but my heart was leaping out of my chest.

He shouted something after me, but I didn’t care.

Volodymyr finished secondary school in 1977. He didn't get a medal only because of our persecution. Where to apply? They say you fight fire with fire. As much as he didn’t want to go to Kyiv, we insisted. We said, you won't get through in Lviv, and the KGB agents won't even think that the second son is applying where the first one was expelled from. Vasyl had studied in the red building, but Volodymyr enrolled in the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics, which was in the new buildings, and he got lost in the crowd there. He was admitted.

In the fall of 1978, they summoned him at the military department, and the KGB proposed that he cooperate with them. That he would hardly have to attend classes, but he would get good grades. In return, he would travel home and monitor what his father and brother were doing. Volodymyr was stunned by the unexpectedness of it all: “What, go against my own father, who puts bread on my table?” They relented and said, “Then you will monitor Striltsiv.” (Vasyl Striltsiv—his English teacher in secondary school, a member of the UHG since Oct. 10, 1977.—Ed.). My son replied, “I’m against that too.” The last offer: “Then you will monitor the students.” My son refused this as well.

(Until the end of the subsection—text from pp. 57–60 of the manuscript.—Ed.). After the visit with his father and brother (Dec. 11, 1979.—Ed.), Volodymyr returned to Kyiv—and he was not allowed to take his exams due to an unexcused absence. When he showed the signed leave request, they then said it was because he didn’t have credit from the military department. When he showed his record book that he had such a grade, they sent him to have it verified at the department, because they didn’t have the grade written down there. But at the department, no one wanted to talk to him. He ran back and forth between the university and the military department, which was in a different location, but couldn’t clarify anything. And finally the dean asked, “Why are you running around, boy, and not taking your exams?” My son said they wouldn’t let him. Then the dean said, “Then take them after the holidays.” With this news, my son came home. I felt that it wouldn’t end well, but I no longer knew who to worry about first.

After the winter break, Volodymyr went to the university, hoping for some honest soul among the professorship who would help him get out of this mess. But he was mistaken. The entire professorship was programmed by the KGB. No matter where he turned or who he approached, it was useless. And a professor of higher mathematics (last name Panasovych) said, “Why are you still getting under our feet, boy? You should just pack your bags and go back to your Frankivshchyna.”

But Dean Zavalo did schedule a retake for him with this same Panasovych. Panasovych gave him an assignment, three problems on the blackboard, and an oral explanation, while he himself sat down to play chess with his assistant. When my son solved the problems and answered, after some time he asked, “Why are you quiet?” My son said, “I have already answered.” Then Panasovych says, “A 2.” And he gave him a “2” [equivalent to an F]. (Volodymyr’s note: They gave me two more F’s in theoretical mechanics and continuum mechanics.)

When my son told his classmates that he was being expelled from the university, the students were surprised because he was a good student. The entire year sent a telegram to Brezhnev (head of the Supreme Soviet), stating that a student with good academic standing was being unlawfully expelled. (Expelled by order No. 192 of March 21, 1980.—Ed.). That telegram didn’t get past the post office; it was returned to the dean’s office. Then the secretary of the university’s Komsomol organization began to summon students one by one and explain who Volodymyr Sichko was: not only a good student, an athlete, a football player, but also the son and brother of enemies of the people, that his father and brother were convicted of “treason against the homeland,” so if any other student said or wrote a word in defense of Sichko, they would be expelled along with him.

Another Cross (The Arrest of Zenoviy Krasivskyi)

In the evening, we went to Lviv, and from there to Morshyn. In Morshyn lived my husband’s fellow villager, colleague, and our good mutual friend, Zenoviy Krasivskyi. Anyone who knew him would agree that after talking with him, half your burden would be gone. He knew how to say just the right words.

Oksana went home because she had school, and I turned to Zenoviy’s. It was still dark, around seven in the morning. This was on March 12, 1980.

He asked me to sit down, but I said it was just for a moment, because I had been on a journey and had taken on so many crosses that I couldn’t manage on my own. At that moment, someone knocked on the door. I stayed in the room, and Mr. Zenko went to open it. I ask who it was, and he says, “My brother-in-law, Melen. He brought back a book I had lent him.” I was surprised and said, “So early?” And I joked that the only people who come to me that early are right before a search. I asked, “Do you trust him?” He answered, “I trust you.” (Myroslav Melen, b. Sept. 13, 1929, political prisoner 1947–1956, 1967–1973.—Ed.). In the meantime, Mr. Zenko made tea—and again a knock at the door, but louder this time. He opened it, and I hear these words: “We have a warrant for your arrest. You failed to serve 8 months and a few days in Volodymyr prison and five years of exile. And also a warrant for a search.”

No matter how strong a man is, there are some surprises that... and even Mr. Zenko turned pale. Because just before this he had managed to tell me that he and his wife were going abroad, that they just needed to get one more paper signed. I had even asked him, “And do you believe they’ll let you go?” He replied, “I don’t believe it even 50%, but Olenka, my wife, believes it 100%, and she’s already packed her suitcases.” And now such a sharp turn: instead of heading West, he had to go East... The road West was open only to Russians, and especially if one was also Jewish.

They began the search—and what was there to find... A pile of books, and an even bigger pile of photographs, because Mr. Zenko was also a photographer. They started rummaging through those photographs—and it was already lunchtime. I asked how long they planned to detain me. They said to give them my passport, they would write down the necessary information and let me go. Indeed, they let me go. I was hurrying to catch the electric train, or diesel, that left for Ivano-Frankivsk at 12:30, to get to Dolyna. I had walked a few meters from the house and came to my senses: what have I done! In a situation like this, I left Krasivskyi alone with the KGB! They would kill him and cover their tracks. After all, people disappeared for unknown reasons.

I turned back, but they wouldn’t let me back in the house and told me to go home. If I turned in another direction, they would detain me. I left. There was no way to let his wife Olenka in Lviv know because neither I nor she had a telephone. In the morning, I was looking for my passport, as I needed to take it to the passport office for replacement. I had taken it for my trip with a note promising to return it by a certain time. I remembered I hadn't gotten my passport back in Morshyn during the search... I still had one more day off from work, so I went to Morshyn—but I found a seal on Krasivskyi’s door. I went to the prosecutor’s office in Lviv, a place now familiar to me, because the same “gentlemen” who arrested my family had arrested Krasivskyi. Seeing me at Krasivskyi’s yesterday morning, they had been maliciously pleased. They gave me my passport back and even asked why I hadn’t taken it yesterday. I say, “Because you run from them like from devils, you could forget your own head.”

From there, I went to Spokiyna Street, to Mrs. Olenka Vintoniv’s (Antoniv.—Ed.), Mr. Zenko’s wife, to ask what she knew about her husband. Seeing me, she said, “You know, Stefa, yesterday they took Zenko somewhere, who and what—I don't know. I went to all the KGB offices and prisons today—and he’s nowhere.” Then I told her who had arrested him, on what grounds, that I was present and even forgot my passport there. She was glad that at least she knew where to look for him, and we went together. Olenka went in to this same Ivanov, and he told her that Krasivskyi had been taken directly to Volodymyr prison yesterday... Such is our fate as women: everything is secret, everything is hidden, to torment our souls.

I was riding back from Lviv and reflecting on everything that was happening around us. Just yesterday, I was coming from a visit with my family and had turned to Krasivskyi to somehow unburden myself from that sorrow, to cast off at least a part of that cross which was impossible to bear. And instead, I added another cross to my shoulders. Because the arrest of every human rights defender was our cross. And someone so close in spirit, someone who, after talking with him, somehow made things feel lighter—that was a heavy burden...

Just yesterday, when I had turned to Zenko (as we all called him), I wanted to complain to him, and I said, “Oh, Mr. Zenko, I’ve taken on so many crosses, and I’m not strong enough to carry them.” And he, laughing, replied, “You are such a strong woman, I didn’t expect to hear such words from you. But I’ll say this: once you take hold of the harness, don’t say you’re not strong enough.” And after that, I felt somehow ashamed, because indeed I was capable of carrying these crosses, and even more. Because more crosses were added—I didn't have to wait long.

KGB Antics

About two weeks later, in the morning, I was standing by the window and I see my son Volodymyr walking up in full gear with his things. I understood that he had already been expelled. I didn't fall into despair, nor did I scold my son; I even encouraged him. I said, “It’s nothing, son, the world doesn’t end here, a magpie will land on our gate too.” And a month after the expulsion, the academic year ended, earlier than usual, because their dorms were being prepared as housing for the ‘80 Olympians.

My son said that the draft was approaching, but he wouldn’t go into the army because the military department had facilitated his expulsion by erasing his completed course credit. Volodymyr was a very honest boy by nature, and here he encountered such dishonesty that he could not reconcile himself with.

But there was an announcement that they were recruiting for driver’s courses. He went, and so they didn't call him for the draft.

In the spring, my daughter Oksana finished secondary school. Quite well, considering the persecution we faced from the KGB. Because some teachers, to get into their good graces, also persecuted her. But besides “excellent,” she only had four B’s.

The daughter of the KGB chief, Kushchenko, was in the same class as Oksana, and Kushchenko’s wife taught English. My daughter had voluntarily switched from her class to Striltsiv’s, for which the chief reproached me. Often, when I was summoned to the KGB, this Kushchenko would tell me not to make another mistake: Oksana shouldn’t even think about applying to the institute.

Oksana studied woodcarving and drawing in school and was quite a good carver. We decided she should go to an art college. Because my son Vasyl, when he was in the 8th grade, had finished art school (along with Yakovyna, who is now the deputy minister of education (In 1992-95 Mykola Yakovyna was the 1st Deputy, acting Minister of Culture.—Ed.)). Vasyl was quite a good artist.

Oksana and I went to Kosiv on July 20, 1980. They told us it was too late because the exams were already underway. We went to the bus station, but there were no more buses heading to Ivano-Frankivsk. There was a taxi to Kalush, but only one seat. I put Oksana in it and told her to spend the night in Kalush with my sisters who live there. And I went to spend the night with the Romaniuk family (Vasyl Romaniuk, Dec. 9, 1925–July 14, 1995, political prisoner 1944–58, 1972–82.—Ed.), with whom I was on friendly terms. (This is the current Patriarch of the UOC-KP Volodymyr in Kyiv). They received me warmly, and I spent the night there. I left their place at noon and arrived home towards evening. I was exhausted from the journey, and it was raining outside. I let the children go to someone’s birthday party, while I lay down and fell asleep. And I didn't hear the KGB agents knocking on the door. The next day was Sunday. In the morning, I was making varenyky when someone knocked on the door. Holding the bowl of varenyky I had just taken out of the boiling water, I went and opened the door. It was a militiaman. He says, “Come with us, we have a car. I was looking for you all day yesterday and couldn’t find you, even knocked in the evening, you didn’t let me in, and they won’t let me off my shift until I bring you.” I ask, surprised, “What happened? By the way, do you have a summons?” He said no. Then I said I wasn’t going anywhere. He went to get a summons. Not even 10 minutes passed before he brought one.

They took me. And not to the militia, as he had said, but to the second floor, to the KGB chief. There, this same KGB chief Kushchenko met me. Smirking slyly, he asked, “Stefa Vasylivna, where were you yesterday?” I say, “In Moscow.” “And what were you doing there?” “Helping Brezhnev open the Olympics.” “And so what?” “What do you mean, what? Brezhnev thanked me, shook my hand, personally put me on the plane—and here I am.” Then he frowned and asked, “And without jokes?” “And without jokes: what the devil are you following me for?” And I showered him with “warm” words. Then I told him to calm down, that I was in Kosiv. Then he delivered an ultimatum: “Know this, during the Olympics, neither you nor your children are to leave the house, because we are increasing our surveillance on you. If you violate this requirement—it won’t end well for you.” I ask, “And how will my daughter apply, we need to deliver the documents?” He said sharply, “She’ll manage without.”

I’m walking home, and a sob chokes my throat. I’m thinking, how will I tell Oksana that she can’t even apply anywhere?

I open the door—and I was surprised. On the threshold stands my eldest brother Antin, who returned from Siberia and settled in Kalush, along with my sister Omeliana, who had also returned. They lived in the same house. I ask, “Why are you crying?” He began to tell me that he was sick, but during the night the militia came to their place in Kalush. One of them identified himself as the chief and said this: “Where is your sister Stefa, is she with you? The thing is, she’s missing, and her house in Dolyna has burned down, and the children burned with it, and we can’t find her.”

They thought that upon hearing such words, Stefa would definitely appear, but if not, they had done their dirty work and left... It was 12 o’clock at night. My sister had a heart attack. My brother was sick, and to call an ambulance, he had to go far to the neighbors. My brother went, almost on his knees. The ambulance came, they wanted to take her, but my sister refused. When she came to, she began to persuade my brother to go to Dolyna. As sick as he was, he left at dawn and just arrived on the first bus. “As soon as I got off in Dolyna,” he says, “I thought that if I see the house burned down, and the children in it, I won’t make it, it will be the end of me here.” He asks what happened that they were scared so horribly.

I understood everything. And I had no idea I was such a “big shot” that when I disappeared from the KGB’s sight, it caused such a commotion. This somehow comforted me.

I gave my children and brother breakfast and said I’d be right back. I went to the KGB. When the KGB chief was informed that I had arrived and was asking to see him, he probably understood that I had come “to surrender.” And so to the militiaman, “Please, please.” They almost carried me into his office. The chief asks, “What happened?” I reply, “I came to be arrested. I won’t leave here because it’s not enough for you to torment me and my children: you’ve reached all the way to Kalush, to those sick old people (my brother is 70 and my sister around that age), and you’re blackmailing them too. So it’s better you imprison me and leave them in peace.”

He brazenly began to deny knowing anything about it. I didn’t back down, I was already angry and said whatever I wanted so there would be a reason to arrest me. No, they didn't arrest me. The chief left the office, a militiaman came and escorted me out.

And such incidents would happen... I got so used to them that if they left me in peace for a week or two, I would start to worry that they were delayed somewhere.

It was September of that same 1980. There was a wedding in the family in the village of Hoshiv. Since I didn’t go anywhere, my relatives asked me to let my son go as a groomsman for the groom. I agreed, because I’m old, but I can’t keep my children locked up. I let my son and daughter go. But I warned them not to return home at night under any circumstances. It's a distance of 12 km. I say, stay until morning, and then come back. They promised and left. And I was glad to finally get a peaceful night’s sleep, because I was constantly on guard, even at night. Every night two men watched the house. If not under the front window, then by the barn, behind the house.

Every night I slept like a hare on the furrow, jumping up at the slightest rustle. I kept an axe by the threshold. I told the children that if they broke into the house at night, I would stand on the threshold and fight, and in that time they should escape through the windows and call for help. Although I knew well that even if they killed us, not a single neighbor would come to help, that’s how much the KGB had intimidated them.

So, the children were not at home. I looked out the window—the familiar figures were there. So I lay down and fell sound asleep, like never before. Around midnight, I hear a frantic scream. I jumped up and didn’t know what was happening. But I recognized my daughter’s voice, ran and opened the door. She stood there pale, neither dead nor alive. I brought her into the house, quickly gave her water, and asked what had happened. She says that as soon as she entered the gate, a German shepherd attacked her: it put its paws on her shoulders and was growling in her face...

We’re afraid to go outside. I ask why and with whom she came. She says, “At the wedding, we left the table, everyone was dancing, but I wasn't in the mood for dancing, I wanted to cry, I wanted to go home and was looking for someone to drive me.” Some acquaintances were driving from the wedding to Dolyna, so she started asking them to take her. They said there were five of them, no room. But she pleaded, saying she would lie on the floor. And so she got a ride. And from the city center to the house isn’t far: a shortcut through the ravine can be run in 5 to 7 minutes. Volodymyr also wanted to go home, but he was a groomsman, so it wouldn’t be right to leave the wedding. And she left without telling her brother.

Somehow I brought her to her senses and we went to sleep, not checking what was going on around us. In the morning, my son comes in, pretending to be staggering. I ask, “Did you even have 50 grams, as a groomsman?” He says, “No.”

We had one room that we called the children’s room; Volodymyr slept there. He stepped over the threshold of the room and says, “Whoa, who made such a mess?” I went in—and the window in the room was ripped out. They couldn’t take the frames off the hinges, so they broke them, smashed them, and removed them. They had stacked the frames on the potato plants so they could climb into the house and kill me without witnesses. My daughter had interrupted them. I say to my daughter, “The KGB agents were watching closely, they knew I was alone. If you had arrived earlier, they would have killed us both. And a few minutes later, you would have found a corpse.”

But believe me, only the Lord himself prevented it and protected us.

The next day I called the militia to report that there had been an attack on me, for them to come and inspect everything. No one came, because that would mean filing a report on themselves.

My daughter didn’t get into college, and no one would hire her. Finally, she was hired as a carver in the collective farm in the village of Vytvytsia. She did some work there, and took some to do at home.

Volodymyr got a job driving an old truck to transport milk, as he already had his driver’s license. He worked as a driver, but his old truck broke down. A new truck came with its own driver—my son was left without a job. It was the autumn army draft. He didn’t show up for the summons. The militia came and took him away. They said that if he agreed to go to the army, they would release him. He refused. He wrote a statement. He said he would go to the army after he was reinstated at the university. They didn’t release him.

I again turned to lawyers, but no one would take the case. So I wrote the protests myself to both the prosecutor’s office and the court. I took the code of laws in hand and found Article 212 or some other one, I don’t remember, which states: before arresting a person, the prosecutor must identify the reason that prompted the person to commit such a crime. I wrote about this to the prosecutor’s office, because the reason here was that he was illegally expelled from the university. But who wanted the truth?

Before my son’s arrest, I was still going to work, because I had to live on something and support everyone. But after the arrest of my men, it was no longer work, but a wearing down of my nerves. The manager of “Silhosptekhnika,” where I worked, Volodymyr Martyniuk, completely submitted to the “guidance of the KGB.” They put pressure on him, and he tried to conscientiously carry out their instructions. At that time, we had a chief engineer, Zenoviy Shvets, who was assigned to watch me. But he, on the contrary, treated me with respect and never informed on me. However, the manager and his lackey, the party organization secretary, did not take their eyes off me. And the rank-and-file workers who were communists also looked for a reason to call for an audit on me. When the workers had low wages because they hadn’t earned enough and the workshop foreman hadn’t padded their hours, the workers would run to the manager and complain not about the foreman, but about me. Then the manager would threaten me over the phone that if the workers’ pay was not satisfactory, it would be my last month on the job. I was forced to add hours, to write them up, and to risk an audit.

On Christmas or other holidays, they would schedule “Leninist planning meetings” an hour earlier. I didn’t go, and about 20 other people didn’t either. Nothing happened to them, but the party organization secretary, Mykhailo Ilnytskyi, hounded me to write an explanatory note. I wrote one and said that I hadn’t violated any law. The manager called me in and started shouting that if I wanted an article [of the law to be used against me], he would pin one on me. In the end, I was forced to say that it might turn out the other way around, because I don’t steal and I don’t trade in state property.

How can one work under such circumstances—but I worked. Finally, on April 1, 1980, I turned 55. That meant I had reached retirement age, so there was something to hold on to. But I only had 18 years of work experience, and 20 were needed. At this point, the head of the HR department, Ilnytskyi’s wife, Myroslava, started hunting me. Every morning she would tell me, “Write a letter of resignation, because otherwise the manager will fire me.” And I would say that I wasn’t even thinking about it, because I had to support my family.

I wrote applications to four authorities: to my boss in the oblast, to the trade union, and to the “Workers' Newspaper,” to somehow protect me. Then I got sick and was hospitalized. I was there for three weeks, and when I came out to work, an hour later I was called into the manager's office by representatives of those organizations I had written to, and they told me to keep working, because they had no right to fire me since I didn’t have enough years of service. I left, but a few minutes later they call me again. One of them says: “You know the laws, but you don't obey them. The manager complains that you don't go to demonstrations, that you don't go to vote, and so on.” I say, “We have a democratic country: I go if I want to, I don't if I don't want to. You didn't come here about this issue. I’ll say the same thing to the KGB about this.”

But that didn’t save me. Life became unbearable.

Volodymyr's Trial

And then my son Volodymyr was arrested. I ask to be let off work for 2 hours so I can give my son a parcel, because parcels are only accepted from close relatives—mother or father. And that’s where the manager caught me: “If you need it, then write a resignation letter.” I wrote it—and he signed it in that same moment.

We were left to live on my daughter’s salary. But they are trying to get her fired from her job too.

My son Volodymyr was arrested on December 6 (1980.—Ed.), on the anniversary of the trial of my husband and son. I was laid off on December 10. I started to seek justice. The investigator from the prosecutor’s office who arrested him was in his first year on the job. A man named Dovhaniuk, from somewhere in the Horodenka region. I went to see him. He listened to me attentively. He said that when the case was finished, he would tell me when the trial would be. But when I went to see him a second time, he whispered that I should get out of his office before the chief prosecutor, Solodovnyk, saw me, because he had gotten in trouble from this Solodovnyk for talking to me. And that my son's case was closed, and as for when the trial would be—I should find out myself.

I started going to the court. I went on January 6, 1981, on Christmas Eve. They said the case wasn’t in court yet and I should stop coming. On Christmas Day, I didn't go. But on the third day of the holidays, St. Stephen’s Day, I went again. It was quiet everywhere. I went into the waiting room. I hear a noise in the other office. The judges are drinking, making toasts, pinching the secretary, Maiivska (because she’s squealing). And they’re telling such jokes that even I, an old woman, feel uneasy. But I wait, to find out something. After about 15 minutes, the secretary bursts into the reception area, red as a viburnum berry, and asks, “What can I do for you, woman?” I say, “I came to find out when my son, Volodymyr Sichko, will be tried.” As red as she was, she immediately turned pale. And some judge, I think it was Vylka, walked past and said the word “now.” I didn't understand who that word was directed at. He disappeared, and the secretary ran off for advice. She came out and says, stuttering, “Why do you keep coming? The trial will be on the 15th. You will be notified, there’s no need to come here.” And I don’t know why I said, “And would you expect to be healthy with such justice?” She started shouting—and I left.

It was 30 degrees below zero. It's about a 10-minute walk from the court to my house. I say to my daughter that even though it's quiet at the court, get ready, let's go back one more time, because something seems suspicious to me.

Just then, an acquaintance of ours, Volodia Kreminskyi, came to visit, so we asked him to drive us to the court. He drove us, but not right up to the court, because the road was dug up. There were about 100 meters left. We run and see that someone is sitting in the courtroom. We run quickly. At the entrance, a militiaman meets us. He stood in the doorway and said, “You can’t, court is in session.” And I say, “But that’s why we’re here, because court is in session.” But I don't know whose trial it is. Oksana is quick. He raised his hands in the doorway to block us, but she slipped under his arm—and was already in the hall. She isn't 18 yet, so she can still get away with anything, but I don’t go in. The doors are glass. I think, if she calls out that they are trying my son, then I will go in too. Oksana looks around the hall—the defendant is not visible. She took another step—and there in the corner behind a column sits Volodymyr! She screams, “Volodia! Volodia!” And then I don't know what happened to the militiaman, whether I pushed him or jumped over his head, but I was in the hall.

At that moment, the court rose and went to deliberate. We sat down in the first row, next to where Volodymyr was sitting in the corner. There were no civilians in the hall, except for up to 15 militiamen. We look at our son, and he is glad that we are there, that at least someone will see this shameful trial. The judges came in and said, “All rise, the court is in session.” The militiamen stood up, my son is sitting, and we are sitting. They repeated it and shouted at us, “Stand up!” We sit. I say, “If this were a court, we would stand, but it's a bunch of liars and drunks who were making toasts half an hour ago, pinching the secretary, and lying to me that the trial would be on January 15. Oh, don’t expect us to stand for you!” Then they say to the militia, “Remove them!” This militiaman, the notorious Tsap who wouldn’t let us in, comes toward us. And my Oksana—I didn't expect this—stood up, raised her fist in the air and says, “Whoever is first, come on, I’ll beat you all to a pulp right now!” The militiaman backed away, and they left us alone. I looked around and saw that this Kreminskyi, who had driven us, was also in the hall with us.

They gave my son the last word. He spoke well. I have it written down somewhere. I will include it... But no one listened to him. They read out: “3 years of correctional labor camps under Art. 72, pt. 1.” And they left. I asked if they would allow a visit and a parcel. They said no. I approached to say goodbye—they wouldn’t let me. But Oksana got past the militiamen’s arms—and wrapped her arms around her brother’s neck. Then a militiaman grabbed her by the hair. And Vlodko, over her head, smashed his fist into the militiaman’s face, between the eyes, and then I saw him on the ground and they were kicking him with their boots. They threw him into a vehicle through the back doors of the court, and pushed us out the front... (Volodymyr’s note: I grabbed the militiaman by the collar and with all my strength pressed him against the wall, lifting him off the floor. Others ran up and twisted my arms, but they didn't beat me).

They held the trial on St. Stephen's Day on purpose. They knew everything about me, down to the smallest detail. They knew my name is Stepania, that on this day we always had guests and a small celebration. They were hoping it would be the same today, they even sent a relative from Lviv to visit me, but told him not to be late. But he, it seems, hadn't lost his conscience completely. He was late, we found him when we returned from the court. Though he still hasn't admitted it. The guest left in the evening. He probably spent the night at the KGB, because there was no way to get to Lviv. And early in the morning my daughter and I were at the court. I prepared a parcel and stood by the wall, hoping that not all militiamen were dogs, that I could persuade one to accept it. But no chance, they said we were too smart yesterday, they wouldn’t accept anything and there would be no visit. So I told my daughter to go up to the chief’s office on the second floor: if she hears them open the cell and lead Volodymyr out, she should run to him, because they were chasing me out of the courtyard. I would have hidden somewhere, but our dog Laika, who loved my son very much, had come with us. She was betraying me, because she kept trying to get in there, to the pre-trial detention cell.

Finally, I hear a scream. My daughter saw them leading Volodia and ran down, but the convoy blocked her brother from her, pushed Volodymyr ahead, dragged him across the threshold where the vehicle was waiting, and stood in the doorway himself. When Oksana tried to get outside, the investigator (our nearby neighbor Standio, whose daughter was in Oksana's class) came up from behind and hit Oksana in the back of the head with the sharp edge of a folder. At this, Oksana screamed, and he began to beat her, saying, “You, bitch, should have been hanged long ago.” I ran to the vehicle, and I don't know whether to ask them to take the parcel. The vehicle is not a Black Maria, but a “bobik.” I see my son sitting there, but should I run, because Oksana is screaming and crying. A militiaman took pity and said, “Give me the parcel.” They got in and drove away, and I am no longer running after the car, but into the hallway. I hear Oksana crying in an office. I went in and said, “Come home.” But some investigator says she’s not going, she’s arrested for pushing a militiaman. Then Oksana said that Standio had beaten her. In such cases, I also lose my temper. What I said to them, I cannot convey, but I took Oksana and we left.

Walking Through Torment

Oksana and I were left alone. And if it weren't for those dissidents, the members of the Helsinki Group, who visited from time to time, it would seem that the world had forgotten about us and our troubles.

For a long time I did not want to write my memoirs, because it is very difficult to relive what I have lived through. Because as I write, tears stream from my eyes. This is not a fairy tale, but a bitter reality...

On January 9, 1981, a year and a half had passed, which was half the prison term of my husband Petro and son Vasyl. They were due their first parcel (it was the date of our—Petro’s and mine—“silver” wedding anniversary—25 years). I went for this long visit.

But they didn't grant the visit. They did, however, accept the first parcel. I remember it was the first and last parcel, because they never accepted another one. For my son, I think they also accepted one. Every six months, a “short” visit, meaning one hour, was allowed—through a glass window. But they didn’t give them to me, because whenever I arrived, they would put them in the punishment cell.

I want to return to what happened on that same day, January 9, 1981, in the camp where my husband was serving his sentence, in the city of Brianka. January 5th marked exactly one and a half years since their arrest, and my husband was due a parcel weighing up to 5 kg. I sent it in advance so that he would receive it on time, because from that day, he was due to receive another one a year later. I put in 4 kg of salo, a little kutia and poppy seeds, and some cookies. The parcel didn’t reach him before the holidays, as I had calculated, or perhaps they deliberately gave it to him on January 9. He asked the guys in the kitchen to cook this kutia. And in the evening, he invited the entire barrack, that is, 60 people, to dinner. Although they were people of a different sort, he had to reckon with them. Some gave their ration for the kutia, my husband mixed the kutia with poppy seeds, cut the cured pork fat into small pieces so there would be enough for everyone, they set up a table in the middle of the barrack, and he asked everyone to come up with their spoons and bread. They took a spoonful of kutia and a piece of salo on their bread and went back. The prisoners asked what he was celebrating, and my husband answered that this day was our “silver wedding” anniversary, my name day, and also the Christmas season. Someone reported it to the watch post. A guard appeared, stood at the threshold, and observed this gathering without saying a word. After the gathering, the prisoners began to be summoned to the camp headquarters. They were asked for details, but there were none. Everyone had happily eaten a piece of salo and was thankful for it.

Finally, in the morning, they summoned my husband, also asking him why and what. And then they read out the order: in connection with the violation of the regime, he was being deprived of his commissary rights for six months (every month a prisoner has the right to buy goods: cigarettes, canned fish, gingerbread, margarine) and his next parcel, the one due in a year. They told him to sign the order. But instead, my husband wrote a statement: “Until the end of my term, I renounce all your handouts, through which you blackmail me, that is, the commissary and parcels. I reserve the right to correspond with my family and to have visits.”

And when, two months later, on March 8, I arrived for the first visit where, as I have already mentioned, my husband came out wounded, after the visit they allowed him to take the leftover food with him, and as much as he wanted to, my husband said that dignity is higher than hunger, that since he had refused their “sincere” handouts, he would keep his word, because after that they would have had the opportunity to dig further into his soul. When I went for a visit, whether short or long, I always brought a parcel with me, hoping that my husband might have changed his mind. And they allowed him to take it not out of sincerity, but to test his courage. My husband never took a single crumb (...)

I returned home and found a notice from Zaporizhzhia that “Volodymyr Sichko is in the correctional camp in the city of Vilniansk, Zaporizhzhia Oblast, a short visit is permitted.” I breathed a sigh of relief. I gathered my belongings and went to Zaporizhzhia. They gave me a short visit. My son had grown thin, but he didn’t complain, as that was his character; he never complained about anyone in his life. And even if someone did him wrong, he tried to justify them.

He was in a general-regime camp and therefore was allowed two long visits (i.e., 24-hour) per year. So I went with my daughter Oksana. We were called third on the list, but when our turn came, they said, “Wait.” Twelve families were going in at that time, they were taking everyone, but we were waiting. A sign that we would not be let in. But finally, our turn came. Everyone was let in without a search, but they took us to a separate room where two women searched us down to the thread. Then they let us in.

All our food was opened. The standard, factory-stamped canned goods, clearly from a store, were unsealed. I had bought them on the way just in case. I also had chicken meat with me. I begged, “Don’t open them, let them stay here with you, I’ll pick them up on my way back.” It didn’t help. They unsealed everything, dumped it into a large bowl, and mixed it all together, searching for something. And they crumbled the cookies to dust. We were all on edge, we didn’t want to eat, and we threw almost everything away, because how could we preserve it on the journey?

There was one kitchen in the visiting building for 12 families. Whoever cooked first, ate first. And when I was cooking something in the kitchen, other prisoners were telling their wives that there are “pityushatnyky” in the zone. I thought that meant a chicken coop for roosters and asked, “What, do you have roosters here?” They laughed and said yes. And I kept asking, “And who feeds them, who eats them?” Then they began to explain that in the zone there is also a psychiatric hospital, where you can end up for any infraction, but even worse are these “pityukhy” [roosters], men who live with each other. I don’t know how to explain it more delicately. Because as they say among the people, it’s a filthy word, you can’t say it nicely.

I went into our room, where Vlodko and Oksana were waiting for lunch, and I said jokingly, “Well, Volodia, I heard you even have ‘pityushatnyky’ here, and you don't admit it.” He replied, “Because it’s shameful to talk about it, but since you asked, I’ll tell you that the administration often threatens to throw me into the ‘pityushatnyk’ for any infraction. So you should know: I can endure anything, but not that. If I take my own life, it will only be because of that.”

I had no words of advice, no comfort. But a pain seized my heart. With this pain I returned home, and at home I prayed fervently to God, no longer for my son to be released, but for God to protect him from shame, from the “pityushatnyk.” Someone else can tell you about this shame inflicted on prisoners. I am a woman, I cannot. But I will say that no state should allow its people, especially the youth, to sink to such a level of depravity.

Sometime in the summer, Mrs. Svitlana Kyrychenko, the wife of Yuriy Badzyo, came to visit me in Dolyna. She said she had received some important information from Moscow, both about her husband and about those imprisoned with him. There was nowhere to hide it in Kyiv, because they would find it in her apartment. We needed to be away from home for two hours, so she asked me to hide them, because she hadn’t even had a good look at these letters herself and wanted to make copies. My toilet was outside by the barn. It had a double ceiling. No one could have seen us go in, because the only window looking onto our yard was from the attic of the neighbor’s summer kitchen. So I don't know if they spied from there or if they overheard us. Because we left those papers in the toilet, and when we came back two hours later, they were gone. I asked my daughter who had been in the yard. She said no one, only our aunt who lived next door had been in the yard chasing a chicken.

I am writing this to show how difficult it was when every movement, every step was monitored. But they didn't summon me to the KGB over this incident, so as not to reveal their agents.

The 1981 academic year was underway. My daughter needed to apply to college. This time she submitted her documents to the Lviv Medical College. She took the chemistry exam. She was confident she would get in because she knew chemistry like the back of her hand.

We both arrived the day before the exam. We needed somewhere to spend the night. Although we had relatives here, they begged us not to visit them, so they wouldn’t have any trouble. We went to one of the people from the Sixtiers generation and asked if we could spend the night. But these people, to our great surprise, also refused us, explaining that their child was a student and they had given their word (I don’t know to whom) that they would not associate with political prisoners. To secure their daughter’s place in the institute in this way...

We spent the night at the train station. The next day Oksana went into the auditorium, and I started to worry. There were many parents there. They ask why I’m worrying, and they say, “Haven’t you paid?” I say, “No.” “Well, then you can be sure your daughter will come out with a D.” And they guessed right. My daughter came out crying. She said she knew everything, answered everything—and they gave her a “2” [a D]. In Lviv at that time, the name Sichko alone was like a bomb. “Enemies of the people.” I didn't look for connections because I had nothing to pay with, and I knew that even if I had money, no one would take on this case.

My daughter went back to work. And in October, we both went to the camp in Cherkasy, because my son Vasyl was allowed a 24-hour visit. At the camp, we went to the small window where all visitors hand in their passports for a visit. They accepted mine too. They said my son was already waiting at the gate. I quickly ran to a nearby kiosk and bought eggs and milk, because you can't bring that from home. I’m walking back happily, and then I’m told that the guards were looking for me, that I should go to the window. I went up, and he hands me back my passport and says, “The visit is off, because Sichko just fell ill with dysentery and was taken to the infirmary.”

I raised a fuss. I went to the chief—he said he couldn’t do anything, it was the sanitary service’s doing. I went to the head of the regime, Polyakov—he screamed at us. I demanded the head of the medical unit. A pockmarked woman came out and attacked us: “What, you don't know what dysentery is?” I say, “I know, but my son was healthy at the gate this morning, so did he soil his pants there by the gate?” One of his “squad” leaders saw how upset I was and told me the truth, that Vasyl was healthy, he didn't even know why he was taken to the infirmary, that Vasyl resisted and was led to the infirmary in handcuffs, shouting, “What are you doing? My mother is waiting for me outside the gates!”

We saw that all our efforts were in vain. We declared a hunger strike and informed the camp chief, sending a copy to the supervising prosecutor’s office, and then sat down in the corridor. The first night, no one chased us away, but on the second day, I see the supervising prosecutor arrive (I had already managed to recognize him). He went to the chief. He saw us clearly and seemed to nod a greeting. We waited with hope that everything would be resolved in our favor. But he ran out of the camp chief’s office without a glance in our direction and ran to his car. They began to chase us outside. But at night, the guard let us into the corridor. On the third day, the head of the regime, Polyakov, summoned us to his office and said, “If you don’t leave, we will call the van right now and it will take you to a place where you won’t feel like starving. This is not the place for that, and you won’t get us with a hunger strike.”

This was on the second floor. A window was open. Oksana quietly approached the window and says to him, “And how do you know I’ll leave through the door? I’ll throw myself out the window right now—and over my dead body you’ll give my mother her visit.” And in that same moment, she threw herself toward the window, but he managed to catch her as she was already hanging over the edge. I was terrified, because I didn’t expect this from my daughter. And he called the guard and said, “Escort them out.” Which he did.

I saw that my hungry daughter had reached her limit, that another day and who knows what would happen: I would lose my last child too. I began to persuade her that we should go home. She resisted, but she listened. We went to the Shevchenkove station. We started eating on the train. But what to start with? We threw out the meat because it had spoiled, the sour cream was a little off. There was still some cheese, so we started with that.

I never took Oksana with me again after that.

(From here until the section “Vasyl’s Second Trial”—transferred from the section “I write further at random, what I remember.”—Ed.). I want to mention one more fact, I just forgot which year it was. I think somewhere in 1981 or 1982. I received a notice to appear at the Ivano-Frankivsk regional prosecutor’s office to see prosecutor Shovkovyi. I went. Prosecutor Shovkovyi was sitting in his office. He said that a dissident named Laut (I didn’t know him personally) had been tried in Moscow, and during a search, they found a document in his possession that related to me. It was completely falsified. So I had to read it, deny that it was all made up, and sign it. He handed me the document.

I took it in my hands and immediately understood what was going on. It was a retyped copy of my own statement, which I had written to the Moscow prosecutor’s office (as a decoy), and I had given a copy to the dissidents in Moscow! It was about how, after my son Vasyl was expelled from the university, they had pinned the diagnosis of “schizophrenia” on him. I had described all the vile deeds, which I have already mentioned here. When I had read it, the prosecutor said that I should write my denial in Russian, because this document was from Moscow. I say, “Fine.” On the last sheet, there was about half a page of space. I began to write: “Please believe what is stated in this document, it is the absolute truth.” And I signed it.

After reading it, the prosecutor shouted, “What have you done, you’ve ruined the document, and this is the original!” I say, I didn’t ruin it, and you can convince yourself right now that it’s a fact. The psychiatric hospital is nearby, go or summon this doctor, Burdeinyi, or Stuparyk, who was blackmailing Vasyl there, or even the chief doctor himself, Donchenko. They will tell you the truth.

He went out, leaving me in the office. He didn’t return for a long time, and when he did, he was calm and said, “Tell me how it happened.” I began to tell him. Not with the intention of making him pity me, but to show how brazen they had become. I told him about Vasyl. This prosecutor was probably not so well informed in detail, because the arrest had been conducted by the Lviv prosecutor’s office. Then I touched upon the fate of my younger son, Volodymyr. The prosecutor sat at the table, constantly wiping the sweat that was pouring from his forehead, and from time to time he would repeat to himself, “It can’t be...” But not with anger, because he saw himself in the mirror, what they had come to. Finally, he said gently, “Go, you are free.”

I left, but in my soul, I was fuming at Laut for his carelessness. We, Ukrainians, knew how to hide everything, but they in Moscow, it seems, were not so persecuted, because even when I visited, all the writings were either on the table or in a box. When I told them about our repressions, they didn’t believe it because they were not persecuted in the same way. They broadcast even more on the radio stations, which restrained the KGB agents.

Take this fact, for instance. When they got Solzhenitsyn, they did with him as they did with that Gypsy: supposedly threw him out to the West. But our Krasivskyi, already with permission to go West—ended up in the East.

Why do I write that the KGB agents were a little afraid of publicity on the radio stations? Because when Yosyp Terelia (b. Oct. 27, 1943, political prisoner 1962–66, 1966–76, 1977–82, 1982–83, 1985–87.—Ed.) was arrested for the third time (and tried on April 25, 1985), they conducted a search of my home on that day. Either that day or the next, because his trial lasted two or three days... They told him that they had searched my home. He asked, “So, did you arrest her too?” And they replied, “Would you like ‘Radio Liberty’ to be screaming that the whole family has been arrested? We’re not stupid.” That’s what saved me. As powerful as they were, they feared publicity.

In 1981, before Constitution Day, winter is setting in, and the collective farm fields are full of unharvested beets and rutabagas. All enterprises, that is, all city workers, are assigned corresponding hectares of land—you have to harvest it. On the eve of Constitution Day, we were harvesting rutabagas. They sent everyone out, that is, the party and non-party leadership, and all us mortals, because it was raining and snowing.

After lunch, around four o’clock, one of the henchmen (he worked as some kind of engineer) comes up to me and says, “Stop working, let’s go to the plant, they’re waiting for you.” I started to shake the mud off myself, because I thought someone was being laid off and their final salary needed to be calculated, and there was no one to do it because everyone was in the field. But by the way, I asked, “And who is waiting?” And this engineer, Zenok Kozak, says, “The KGB.” I was stunned. I ask, “Where’s the summons?” He says there isn’t one. “In that case, I’m going back to cleaning rutabagas.” And I got back to work. He went to the car that was waiting nearby and drove off with them. I thought, “Thank God.”

Five o’clock, end of the workday, time to go home, our bus is waiting. We got ready to go home quickly. Everyone was wet, with no change of clothes. Just as we were about to leave for Dolyna, someone stopped our bus. The doors open, this Zenko Kozak gets on with a summons, hands it to me, and says, “Get out.” At this point I couldn’t hold back: “And you, you janissary, what functions do you perform for the KGB?” And I started to tear into him with insults. I didn’t get out, the bus stood there for a long time, the wet people were in a hurry, but no one said a single word to me, whether to get out or not. But when a KGB agent came up and said he wouldn’t let the bus go, I took pity on my colleagues and got out.

They brought me to the KGB with a huge half-meter knife that I had been using to clean rutabagas. And I also had two loaves of bread in a net bag, bought in the field. In the mud, but such an opportunity comes once a year. Constitution Day—it’s necessary that everyone has bread in their house at least once a year. The bread was unwrapped, smeared with mud, and I was all covered in mud. They sat me in a chair. The KGB chief at the time, Kushchenko, asks, “Why are you in a bad mood, Stefa Vasylivna?” Two dandies are sitting on the side. I say, “Don’t come near me, I’m armed, I have a knife, and I’ll throw it at you and it won’t be a sin. Why were you hunting me down on the roads in front of people like a bandit, undermining my authority, and even threatening me with handcuffs if I didn’t get off the bus? How am I supposed to work with those people tomorrow? I thought there was a fire to be put out, but I see you haven’t burned down yet.”

They drove me to pure desperation. Then the two of them speak up. They introduced themselves as being from the Ivano-Frankivsk KGB. I have to put my signature on some letter stating that tomorrow, on Constitution Day, in the city of Dolyna, no one will hang a blue-and-yellow flag. I said, “Go find bigger fools than yourselves, but not here. You’ll hang it, and I’ll be held responsible. What, you don't have another reason to arrest me? Think a little and come up with something more modest. And don’t summon me a second time on such a matter, because I will complain.” They threatened me and let me go. And I have nowhere to complain. They are all cut from the same cloth.

Vasyl’s Second Trial

On December 14, 1981, I went to Kyiv to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, at 10 Bohomolska Street (Bohomoltsia.—Ed.), to try to get some justice there. Because an invitation had come from Toronto from my sister, Rozalia Chabak, for me, Oksana, and Vlodko (he was still free). How I dreamed then of getting my children out of the Union, only God knows! I remembered the street name because I thought that for such a hornet’s nest, the name of the street was not fitting. There, at the entrance, they told me to wait. I waited a long time until some major came. He asked who was here about emigration. I said it was me. He replied, “Your son and husband are serving their sentences. We cannot separate you, so we are rejecting your sister’s request from Toronto.”

Before the chief arrived, the old stooge who sat in the reception area began to boast that, you see, we have sent troops into Poland today. I told him, “What a wise man is ashamed of, a fool boasts about.” The chief came and said that he had been briefed about me, he had checked with the Cherkasy camp authorities, that everything was fine with my son, that I could even bring him a parcel today.

I returned home but didn't go to Cherkasy right away, because I knew that if a parcel was not due, they wouldn't accept it. I went on January 4, 1982.

I go to the guard post where they accept parcels, and the guard tells me to go see the chief. I went, and the chief says, “Go see the head of the regime.” I went in, and he, on the move, as if in a hurry, says, “Vasyl isn’t here, he’s in Cherkasy in the pre-trial detention center.” And he left.

With my bags, I went to the Cherkasy prison. I ask the guard if Sichko is here. He tells me that Sichko has been “held” here in the prison since October 10, 1981. That on December 30 he was taken to trial but was returned. The trial will probably be tomorrow...

I found out more than I had expected. Evening was approaching. I had good friends in Cherkasy, a former prisoner of the Norilsk camps, so I went to their place for the night. They were very surprised by this turn of events.

In the morning, I went to the court, to Judge Kulchytskyi, who was handling my son’s case. I asked when the trial would be. He had not yet been informed by the KGB who Sichko was, so he told me the whole truth: “Sichko is accused of ‘possession of narcotic substances without intent to sell.’ We conducted an expert examination and established that his body is not predisposed to narcotics, because he doesn’t even smoke.” The judge was very surprised why the boy had such an accusation. I asked when the trial would be, and he replied that it was today (that is, Jan. 4, 1982), but he didn't know which courtroom yet because the one where they usually held trials was under repair. He told me to go for a “walk,” and he would tell me where to go in the afternoon, or rather, he would notify me about the trial.

I didn't go anywhere because I had heavy bags and nowhere to go. I sat down in the corridor and began to wait for them to call me. It was 10 o’clock in the morning. Around 11 o’clock, I see them coming. Judge Kulchytskyi in the lead, followed by two other men and a woman, all with folders under their arms. The judge glanced at me condescendingly, without saying a word, and walked on. I guessed that they were probably going to the trial. What to do? To be sure, I went into the reception office, found a secretary, and asked, “Where will Sichko’s trial be? Because the judge just told me, but I didn't hear properly, and they all left.” And she replied quite calmly, “In the prison, where he is being held.”

From the court to the prison, it's a shortcut of three blocks, but a longer way around. I have heavy bags. I ran out onto the sidewalk, stopped a taxi, said, “To the prison.” And I arrived before the judges did, because I saw them all marching around the corner of the building.

At the prison gates, they rang the bell, and though they see me, they pay no attention. The prison chief himself came out, began to let them in one by one, asking, “Who are you?” “The judge.” He asked the second one, “The deputy.” And the other two, “The assessors.” And I had already stepped over the threshold and found myself with them in the entryway, having passed behind their backs. Then the prison chief asks Kulchytskyi, “And who is this woman?” Kulchytskyi replied, “I don’t know.” At that, I raised my voice, “You don’t know? A minute ago you said you would call me for the trial!” They all disappeared somewhere behind the neighboring doors, and the prison chief, as they say, threw me out the door with a bang.

Two blocks away was the main prosecutor’s office. I left my bags on the sidewalk near the prison, come what may, and went to the prosecutor’s office. I found the deputy chief prosecutor, someone with the last name Besieda. He listened to me and, in my presence, called the prison to let me into the trial, because I am the mother and the law demands it. I don’t know what they replied, but he said to me, “Go, they will let you into the trial.” I was glad to have achieved something and left. But no matter how much I knocked, no one came out to me, and the guard through the small window said, “Go away, or we’ll detain you.”

I went to the prosecutor’s office again, but it was lunchtime. I waited. I was shaking, because I knew the trial was in progress, and I just wanted my son to know I was there. Besieda came, and then he said to the commissioner for prisoner affairs, “Take care of this matter.” This commissioner (the same one who had come to the camp when we declared our hunger strike) began to call the prison to allow the mother, me, to be at the trial, after which he said, “Go, they will let you into the hall.” I went, knocking and banging on the door. Finally, the prison chief came out. He asks me, “What do you want?” I say, “They called you from the prosecutor’s office to let me into Sichko’s trial.” And he asks, “Do you have a summons?” I say, “Did you give me one?” He clicked his boots in a military fashion, put his finger to his forehead and said, “Goodbye.” He left and locked the door. And the day was drawing to a close.

Again I went to the prosecutor’s office, and again this same Besieda picked up the phone and said in my presence, “What are you doing over there? The mother is standing here next to me and says she will go to Moscow to complain. I am absolving myself of responsibility, you will be held accountable.” After which he said, “Go, this time they will let you in.”

But this time, not only the door but also the windows were shut with shutters. There was no point in going to the prosecutor’s office because it was six o’clock in the evening. Although it was winter, it had been raining all day. I was soaked, but I started waiting by the gates, still hoping for something. An hour later, exactly at 7 in the evening, the gates opened. The first to come out was Kulchytskyi, laughing, followed by the rest. I wanted to ask if they had convicted my son and for how long, but they, laughing, got into a car and drove away...

An old man approached me and asked if I was Sichko’s mother. He said he was the lawyer, Kramar. It was already dark. He told me to step a little away from the prison and began to tell me about the trial. He says it wasn't a trial, but a disgrace: “Sichko was tried on the 31st, but he defended himself so argumentatively, there weren’t even any false witnesses, so they didn’t convict him but took him back to his cell. Today they brought him in so beaten that his face was all blue, so swollen you couldn’t see his eyes, and they started the same old song. Sichko again said that he was being tried not for drugs, that it was a fabrication, because even that officer Sydorenko, who had fabricated these drugs for him, didn't show up. Probably ashamed. ‘You are trying me as a dissident, for my human rights activities.’ Then they ridiculed him...”

The lawyer continues: “I intervened, asking to close the case because there was no crime and no evidence. They didn’t listen to my evidence, the verdict was ready, they read it out to him: ‘for possession of narcotic substances without intent to sell, a term of 3 years.’ And in addition to these three years, he has to serve the remaining 5 months and 25 days of his previous term.”

I asked the lawyer for the indictment. He said it was forbidden, but he gave it to me on the condition that I make a copy and return it in the morning.

I came in the morning, brought what I had promised, and the lawyer added, “Sichko, like all prisoners, is entitled to a visit and a parcel after the trial. If they don’t allow it, go see the chief of justice.” And he gave me the address. I thanked him, for God had sent me a single solitary person among those spiteful people.

It happened just as the lawyer had predicted. They said, “Parcels and visits are forbidden.” I went to the chief of justice, but it was already lunchtime, and the chief was heading out. Still, he said it was impossible that they wouldn't allow it, because by law, everyone is entitled to it, even those on death row. He said he was going to lunch and would stop by the court, sort everything out, and I would see my son after the lunch break.

I waited, and when he returned, he said, “The law allows both a visit and a parcel, but there is also a note here that the final word belongs to the judge. And Kulchytsky won’t allow it, so I am powerless here.”

And today, this Mr. Kulchytsky lives in the city of Cherkasy on, I believe, Lenin Street, No. 5, and works as a lawyer. During “perestroika,” not a single hair fell from that tormentor’s head. An acquaintance of mine went to see him about some matter last year. He introduced himself as Kulchytsky, and she asked if he wasn't the one who had served as a judge. He confirmed it. And she said, “So you were the one who tried Vasyl Sichko and fabricated his sentence? Because I’m aware of that whole mystery.” He replied, “What was I to do? The KGB ordered me, and I complied.”

And today, stained as he is, he has the right to work as a defense attorney? If there’s some kind of “perestroika,” then why aren’t such Kulchytskys thrown out of their cushy positions? Back then, they told him to do one thing, and he did it; tomorrow they’ll tell him something else, and he’ll do that too. But where is his mind? They go after Demyanyuk, asking where his mind was. (The case of Ivan Demyanyuk, 1977-1992, groundlessly accused of crimes against humanity.—Ed.). Though he is not guilty, they don’t see their own guilty ones. You could sweep up such Kulchytskys all over Ukraine with a broom.

The days are short in January; evening fell on January 5th. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve, but I was in no mood for celebrating. My heart was so full of bitterness that I no longer wanted to live. I went to the post office and called my daughter at home in Dolyna. I told her what had happened, what a surprise the New Year had brought us, and that I wouldn’t be coming home, so she should go to our aunts in Kalush for the holidays, and I would go either to Zaporizhzhia to my son Volodymyr or to Bryanka to my husband, because they were also due for parcels. My daughter was so stunned she said nothing, just began to cry, and I hung up the phone.

I stayed the night with some acquaintances, and in the morning, I went around the courts and prosecutors’ offices again. But it was useless to ask for the impossible. In the afternoon of January 6th, on Christmas Eve, I went to the airport. I thought, wherever there’s a plane, that’s where I’ll fly—whether to Zaporizhzhia or Bryanka. The airport was nearly empty. The weather had been unfit for flying for three days. And just then, they announced that planes were not flying. People returned their tickets and went to the Shevchenkove train station. I went to the ticket counter anyway and asked if I could get a ticket to Lviv or Ivano-Frankivsk (since there was nothing to my son in Zaporizhzhia or to my husband in Luhansk). I felt terribly sorry for my daughter, for leaving her all alone for Christmas with such news.

The cashier asked, “Which one specifically?” I said, “Ivano-Frankivsk.” The tickets were ready, since people had returned them. She wrote down my last name and said, “Hurry, boarding is ending.” I was on the plane in an instant, and we took off, just two passengers in total. Again I thought, could it be that God had taken pity on me and my misfortune? At 5 o’clock in the evening I was already in Ivano-Frankivsk, and at 7 o’clock I crossed the threshold of our house. I saw that my daughter hadn’t listened to me, hadn’t gone to Kalush, but had cooked a Christmas Eve dinner and was making a mushroom gravy. I asked, “Why are you at home?” And she answered, “I prayed so hard for you to come, and I believed that God would hear my prayer. You see—He did.”

As you can see from what I’ve written, the greater the religious holidays, the greater the surprises the KGB agents had in store for us. They knew that we believed in God because every time they summoned me to the KGB, they would ask if I was a believer and which church I attended.

While still in Cherkasy, I wrote a few words to my husband in the Bryanka camp and shared the news. I came home, gathered some things, and went to Bryanka to deliver a parcel. I had to take more than the allowed 5 kg, since you could never guess what was permitted. In one camp, sugar was allowed; in another, only candy instead of sugar. In one, sausage; in another, only salo. This time I took sugar. During the inspection, they told me it wasn't allowed, only candy. There was no store nearby. By the time I found some candy, they were returning my parcel to me. They said they had just learned that my husband had declared a hunger strike. They returned everything to me, all rummaged through and unsealed, because they had opened the canned goods...

And my husband had indeed learned from my letter that Vasyl had been given a second prison term, and he declared a hunger strike in protest against such lawlessness.

A Visit with Vasyl*

(*Written in October 1994, Riga.—Ed.)

I have already written that when my son Vasyl was sentenced a second time in Cherkasy (January 4, 1983.—Ed.), they did not accept a parcel, did not grant a visit, and said, “Come back in a month.”

So I went a month later, though I had little hope for any concessions. At the prison in Cherkasy, I spoke to the officer on duty, and he asked if I had come in response to a telegram. I asked, “What telegram?” And he said that the prosecutor’s office had called and told him that when I arrived, he was not to accept the parcel but to first send me to them. They told him where. I went. It was not the same address where I had previously gone to the prosecutor’s office, but a different one. I asked the officer on duty who had summoned me. He went to find out and said that no one had. So I told him to have that “no one” call the prison and tell them to accept the parcel for Vasyl Sichko. But just then, some man came out and said to me, “Since you’ve come on your own, then come in.” I replied that I had not come on my own but had been summoned. He led me into an office where three of them were already sitting; he was the fourth. One of them said to me, “Tell us your story.” I said I had nothing to tell them, but I did have to ask why they wouldn’t accept my parcel without their permission. Then he began in Russian, but I will relate it in Ukrainian: “We are not fools, and you are not a fool, so let’s be ‘frank.’ You should know that there were no narcotics. Vasyl was tried not for narcotics, but for his human rights activities. We know that you have influence over your family, and that it may be your fault they are all in prison. Therefore, you must influence Vasyl to repent, to speak on the radio and write in the press that he was deluded. And we, for our part, will guarantee his readmission to the university without entrance exams.”

I listened and then asked how I was supposed to influence him when a visit was “not permitted,” and they wouldn’t even accept the “permitted” parcel? They said they would arrange everything.

When I arrived, Vasyl was already waiting for me in a separate room at a large table, without any guards. I greeted him, placed the parcel on the table, and asked him to eat. He was very agitated and asked why I had come, because they had been tormenting him about this repentance.

I said, “Vasyl, calm down, but before we begin our conversation on this topic, I want to tell you about a film I saw yesterday while spending the night in Cherkasy.”

And I began. To be honest, I don’t remember the title of the film, but I still remember the plot. So, there was a war between the Turks and the Bulgarians. The Bulgarian king went to Moscow to ask for help. In his absence, the Turks seized the palace and captured the Bulgarian queen with her one-year-old son and his nanny. Delighted with their prize, they led them to be executed—burned at the stake. On the way, the queen said to the nanny, who was holding the son in her arms, “Strangle the child.” The nanny began to refuse. Then the queen said that she was giving her order for the last time. And the nanny strangled the only son.

When the Turks brought them to the blazing fire, they said these words: “We will burn you, but we will take your son and make him such a janissary that he will destroy Bulgaria.” The queen replied, “You have power over the body, but not over the soul.” The Turks turned to the child—and he was lifeless. The queen preferred to see a corpse rather than a janissary.

I hadn’t even quite finished my story. Vasyl hadn’t taken a single bite of bread, only picked up a piece of candy and was crumbling it... when an official rushed in, shouting, “Get out!” I asked what had happened, since they had told me I could stay for four hours. He didn’t answer, but swept everything on the table onto the floor with his hand and started kicking it, shouting, “Take it, get out!” I managed to grab the empty bag, and when I came to my senses, Vasyl was no longer in the cell. I understood that they didn’t like my story, whether you call it a parable or a tale from a film. Even though they were thick-headed, they had caught the essence of my chatter.

A few days after this, I received a notification that Vasyl had been sent to Vinnytsia, to a strict-regime camp. It was truly strict, because every time I came, my son was in an isolation cell. I only had a 24-hour visit once, at Easter (and one short visit), and the second time was after my husband’s release. He had exactly 30 days left until his release. He, a tuberculosis patient, spent them in solitary confinement. And anyone who has been there knows what that means: a ladle of thin soup and 300 grams of bread once a day, or even every other day. A concrete floor, water trickling down the walls, and the board to sleep on is attached to the wall during the day, unfastened only for 8 hours at night. It was good if they let you keep your outer clothing; more often, they would lock you up in your underwear.

A Visit with Volodymyr

What I threw out, what I took with me—I went home and started preparing for the journey to Zaporizhzhia, to the town of Vilnyansk, where my other son, Volodymyr, was imprisoned. He was due for both a parcel and a short two-hour visit. I arrived. I was met by the head of the camp regime, Panchenko, who asked, “What, they’ve tried Vasyl again?” And I said, “What’s it to you? Do you want to torment Volodymyr in the same way?” He said, “Yes.” But they allowed the visit. I sat on one side of a glass wall, and he on the other. He was so pale, he was almost black. I asked, “What’s wrong with you, son, why do you look so gaunt?” And he, who had never once in his life complained to me about anyone or anything, for the first time ever lowered his eyes and said, “Because I’m very hungry.” (Volodymyr’s note: I never said that). My heart nearly burst. I said, “But I brought a parcel, they said they’d take it after the visit.” He brightened up and asked what was in it. I said, salo (he used to dislike salo, but now he was overjoyed), and canned goods, and cookies... Volodymyr said he wouldn't go back to the zone but would wait for the parcel somewhere near the gate. He said he knew they had tried his brother because the head of the regime had already threatened him that if he didn’t obey, he would be sentenced just like Vasyl.

The visit ended, and the guard said, “Leave!” I said, “What do you mean, ‘leave’? What about the parcel?” He replied, “The parcel is not permitted!” I said, “But you told me after the visit, and I know the due date is February 12th.” And he said, “While you were on your visit, someone added another stroke, and instead of 12.II it became 12.III.” I said, “If someone put a stroke in your notebook, why are you looking for trouble with us?”

There was no one to talk to, because they had intentionally scheduled the visit for the end of the workday. All the officials had gone home, and the guard was just a pawn.

There was nowhere to spend the night. They hadn't taken the parcel, and my son was waiting, hungry as a stray dog, because I had given him hope... I had believed the scoundrel...

I spent the night at the train station, just sitting and waiting. The station in Vilnyansk was empty, except for a few shady characters milling about. In the morning, I went to Zaporizhzhia, to the Department of Internal Affairs, to sort out the matter of the parcel. The chief said, “Wait, I’m busy.” But around ten o’clock, he locked his office. I asked why he wasn’t seeing me. He said, “I can’t, I’m going to a meeting, wait.” I waited. After the “meeting,” he ignored me and went to lunch. That’s when I became indignant. I said, “But you told me to wait, how long can a person wait?” He then went into his office, called me in, listened to my issue, and in my presence, called the camp warden. I couldn't hear what the warden replied, but he hung up the phone and said coldly, “So it turns out you have three of them in prison. What a family! Leave!” I wanted to say something, or perhaps I did, but no one was listening. He locked the door and walked away quickly.

I walked out with those bags, my hungry son’s face haunting my vision. I had food for him, but it was impossible to deliver it. I was in a situation like the one when I had left Vasyl. I went out onto the main road where buses and trolleybuses run, and I walked down the middle, hoping that someone would finally hit me, because I didn't want to live another minute. A policeman took me off the road and asked if he should take me to a psychiatric hospital.

Somehow I got to the train station, and along the way I thought that I would go to Bryanka to see my husband, because after his hunger strike they had put him in solitary confinement and had not accepted his parcel. I thought they would accept it now, as a month had passed. It was a shame for the food in the parcel to go to waste. It wasn’t easy to get, after all, my pension was 54 rubles. (I didn’t have a full work history, so no benefits were added when my pension was calculated. Moreover, the pension was calculated based on the last three years. During those last three years, I was deprived of any bonuses, and my monthly salary was 110 rubles.).

So, I arrived at the railway station and heard an announcement: “Boarding is now underway for the Simferopol-Lviv train.” It was 2:30 PM. I quickly bought a ticket, because the ticket counter, for once, was empty, and ran to the train. I got on and was already traveling for about an hour before I realized I was going the wrong way; I needed to go to Luhansk, but I was on my way to Lviv. Things like that happened too...

(What follows, up to the section “The Initiative Group...”, has been moved from the section “Next, I’ll write whatever I remember.”—Ed.). I want to return to my younger son, Volodymyr. When he was sentenced to 3 years, he said that his father and brother would have been free for a year and a half while he would still be in prison. But it turned out that he served his time, got out, and his father and brother were still imprisoned for another year and a half.

He was released from prison in December 1983. He found a job as a driver, and then the military draft was approaching again. He had come out of the camp with ringworm in the hair on his head, or as people say, scabs, which were spreading to his eyebrows and near his eyes. A dermatologist, Dr. Lyoda, prescribed some ointment, which reduced the ringworm for a while, but it kept coming back. When my son received his draft notice, that doctor told him not to worry, because he would be on the commission, and he knew well that they wouldn't take him into the army with this ringworm, as it was contagious. So my son accepted the notice. This doctor said that if the Dolyna commission broke any rules, the Ivano-Frankivsk commission would send him back.

He provoked my son—and he believed him. Lyoda didn’t show up for the commission, and there was no commission in Ivano-Frankivsk. And so Volodymyr, despite having served his time, unexpectedly and unthinkingly got caught, because he hadn’t planned to go into the army, but he went. (Volodymyr’s note. Back at the end of May 1984, my nose was broken during soccer practice—a transverse fracture of the nasal bone. It’s still visible today. With such an injury, I was entitled to a six-month deferment from military service. During that summer, I would have had time to re-enroll in the university. At the military enlistment office, however, they threatened me with a new prison term for “malingering,” but I told them I had about 20 witnesses, fellow soccer players, who saw how it happened, and I had nothing to fear. To this, they replied that you can serve in a construction battalion even with a broken nose, and two weeks later, they took me into the army.)

Lyoda had once been persecuted because it was established that his real surname was Hundyo. His father had been a policeman under the Germans and later lived in the USA. Lyoda had a great deal of trouble with the KGB, but it seems he “atoned” for his guilt. May God not judge me for this, for I judge no one. Everyone will answer for their own actions.

Now he’s in Rukh. He received an inheritance from his father, gave a little of it to Rukh, and thereby saved his “reputation.” But he is hostile towards our family, although I swear, today is the first time I am mentioning him. No one has ever heard from me that I distrust him or even suspect him. And I only remembered him because, thanks to him, my son ended up in the Soviet Army.

The Initiative Group for the Defense of Ukrainian Churches

I arrived home (from Cherkasy, in January 1982.—Ed.) and found the human rights activist Yosyp Terelya there (Born 27.10.1943. Political prisoner in 1962-66, 1966-76, 1977-82, 1982-83, 1985-87.—Ed.). I knew him a little from before. He said that the repression against the Greek Catholic Church was intensifying and that the time had come to create an “Initiative Group for the Defense of Ukrainian Churches.” To start, this group needed three people. There were people, but they were afraid of losing their jobs. Among those who weren't afraid were him and Father Hryhoriy Budzynsky from Lviv, so would I want to be the third? I was overjoyed and eagerly agreed. Because with this, I wanted to prove to the KGB agents that not only was I not afraid of them, not only had I not repented for my family, but I was also getting involved in human rights activities myself.

We gathered materials. And they weren't hard to find. Because in almost every village, chapels and churches were being demolished or burned, and crosses were being cut down. Underground Greek Catholic priests and nuns were being persecuted and blackmailed.

Throughout the summer, we did everything secretly, and on September 9, 1982, Yosyp Terelya went to Moscow to register our group. Because a decision to do so was made at a conference that day.

The “Initiative Group” was not registered, but its members were noted. Our persecuted, like-minded women found out about this and did not approve of my actions. They said that now I would surely be arrested. But I wasn't afraid of arrest because, believe me, I really wanted to go to prison and, in that way, free myself from the pangs of conscience. Otherwise, I was just traveling to the camps (in 1981, I visited my family 33 times!) and could do nothing. I'd go to the camp gates—and they'd be in solitary confinement. Everywhere I heard the same thing: “Your husband just misbehaved and ended up in solitary.” The same for my sons... I thought, Lord, if only I could be imprisoned too, then my conscience would be clear that I can do nothing to help...

The Committee sent complaints to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet about local officials who were destroying, burning, and cutting down Ukrainian Catholic churches. We published the “Chronicle of the UGCC.” Many issues are now available here, abroad. In this “Chronicle,” we inform the public about the state of our Church, past and present. At that time, it was difficult to contact people abroad. But still, we passed on the “Chronicle” so that information about our movement for the legalization of the UGCC could be more widely known to the people through radio stations. Unfortunately, some dark hand kept many issues under lock and key and did not let them see the light of day. Only now has Olena Terelya brought a portion of the issues from Vienna, and Yosyp Terelya brought a portion from Switzerland. The issues of the “Chronicle” were not just interesting, but very necessary to open people’s eyes to what the Russian Orthodox Church represents, who stands above it, and whose instructions this Church follows.

Soon Yosyp Terelya was arrested and sentenced to one year. His wife, Olena, took over his duties regarding the “Chronicle.” Although the distance from my home in Dolyna to the village of Dovhe in the Irshava district of Zakarpattia was considerable, a 7-hour bus ride, the contact between us was good; one could get there without a transfer or change to another bus in the city of Stryi. Near or far, Olena and I stayed in touch. I traveled more often, because she worked and had three small children on her hands.

Yosyp Terelya was released in 1984, and in February 1985, he was arrested again. Sometime in February, I wasn’t home, and in March, just before evening, two policemen came and handed me a summons to appear at the prosecutor’s office. I was just preparing a parcel for Vasyl Striltsiv, a member of the Helsinki Group, a former English teacher who was serving a sentence in Mordovia along with Yuriy Badzyo. Someone was supposed to bring me a few heads of garlic for this parcel, but I packed what I had and began to sew up the package. I was supposed to appear at the prosecutor’s office at 10 in the morning, but before going there, I hid a few things at home. I hid the Bible, took the keys to a neighbor, and told her that if I didn’t return, she should only give the keys to my sisters, who lived in the neighboring town. I took the parcel in my hands and, before heading to the prosecutor’s office, ran to the post office to mail it to Striltsiv. He had no relatives, and a parcel was allowed only once a year, so it would have been a sin to miss this opportunity.

And I took the parcel because I knew: I was going to a place from which people often do not return. When my husband was arrested, they read the arrest warrant to him at home, while Vasyl was “asked” to go with them to the prosecutor’s office for “clarification”—and he only returned home 6 years later. They “invited” Volodymyr to the prosecutor’s office in the same way, and he returned after 3 years. So I knew what such an “invitation” meant.

I was delayed at the post office because the package was a little over 5 kg, and I had to rip it open and take some things out. I arrived at the prosecutor’s office at 10:30. The secretary pointed me to an office. There were 5 unfamiliar men sitting there, meaning they weren’t from Dolyna. First, they asked why I was late. They had driven to my house, I wasn’t there, they thought I wouldn’t come, but that would have been worse for me. I didn’t say I had gone to mail a parcel for Striltsiv, because then that parcel would have been censored, or even confiscated. The suspicion: why did I mail it so suddenly? These strangers introduced themselves, saying they were from Uzhhorod, and told me that Yosyp Terelya had been arrested, and they knew I collaborated with him, so they would go with me to my house, and I would give them all the documents prepared by me and Terelya. I said I had nothing of the sort and therefore could give them nothing. Then they, all these men from Uzhhorod and one Dolyna police major, Standyo (who had hit my daughter Oksana on the neck and head in the police corridor when she tried to see her brother after Volodymyr’s trial), led me to a police car and told me to get in. They sat down next to me, and the car started moving. I thought that this was the end, the end I had “dreamed of” and hoped for. And I thought to myself: “Praise be to God.” I didn’t even try to look where they were taking me. I didn’t care. I had warned my neighbors, so everything was in order. But then the car stopped in front of my house, and they told me to get out and open the door. I said I had to get the keys from my neighbor first. It was a bit awkward to go for the keys accompanied by two policemen; my neighbor was frightened, but there was no choice.

They all entered the house, and then they read out that, first of all, in connection with the arrest of Yosyp Terelya, they would conduct a search of my home. Everyone dispersed throughout the rooms. I have three rooms and a kitchen. I said that I was alone in the house and demanded that the search be conducted room by room, but they broke all the laws. They said, “We don’t have time.” They brought two witnesses, who were always on standby, as it wasn’t their first time in my house, from Vatutina Street 10/20 (or vice versa): Tkachuk and Humenyuk. They were assigned to the rooms instead of me, and I ran from room to room, as if by doing so I could prevent the searchers from planting something (as was common at the time) that could be used as grounds for my arrest.

They didn’t find what they were looking for, but they took some small things that had no relation to the suspicion, drew up a search report (I never signed them), and left the house, leaving me behind.

That was the end of March (1985), and a month later, my husband was due to be released.

Yosyp Terelya, after his release in 1984, felt quite unwell, so he passed on the duties and title of the head of this Group to a member of the Group, Kobryn, who was also soon arrested. That left just Olena and me. New members joined the Committee: Father Mykhailo Havryliv, Father Petro Zelenyukh, Father Myrhytych.

In February 1987, Yosyp Terelya was released and forced to go abroad. Before leaving in August 1987, Yosyp Terelya and Bishop Pavlo Vasylyk declared to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet that our UGCC was coming out from the underground. After this, our priests began to conduct services openly. Of course, not in churches, but in open places. In cemeteries, at holy sites where a cross or chapel had been cut down. For almost a year, the police did not disperse these services. Only now, in the jubilee year of the 1000th anniversary of the baptism of Ukraine, when mass celebrations began, priests started to be imprisoned for 15 days or fined again, that is, punished monetarily.

In September 1987, Yosyp Terelya went abroad, and the Committee for the Defense of Ukrainian Churches was headed by Ivan Hel, a long-term political prisoner of the Brezhnev-era camps. The Committee increased its membership to 11 people. Ukrainian Catholic priests joined this movement en masse.

Soviet law states that if there are 20 members of one faith, then such a Church can be registered. And when Pimen, in the fall, at a meeting with foreigners, said that a church like the Ukrainian Catholic Church does not exist, that there are a hundred grandmothers in Western Ukraine who profess this religion, then Ivan Hel wrote back to the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Pimen, thanked him for acknowledging the existence of such a Church, and said we would try to clarify the number of UGCC faithful. And we began to collect signatures from believers. People from entire villages signed, all those who for long years had secretly prayed in forests and fields, far from the enemy’s eye. The signatures were sent in batches to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. By mid-1988, 15,000 signatures had been sent. This, I think, is a sufficient number to legalize the UGCC, which for over 40 years has not only existed, but has lived and created. But 15,000 is not the final number, because the faithful of the Ukrainian Catholic Church number more than 4,000,000. But not everyone will put down their signature. There are people who have experienced too much fear under the Soviet terror to suddenly get rid of that fear now.

The current UGCC Committee publishes its own journal, “The Christian Voice.” This journal is passed on to the West. It is desirable that it be reprinted and distributed so that a wider circle of the population, both in the diaspora and in our own lands, knows about it. We cannot print this journal there in large numbers. It is impossible to find a person who would print it, because it is not an entirely legal position. When a person is found, they have no connection to this organization; they print for money, of which we do not have very much. The journal is published in 100 or 150 copies. In addition, there are not even manual typewriters with a Ukrainian font, and those that exist are in Russian, and they break. The working conditions are very unfavorable, yet we constantly stand up for our right to be called Christians, for the rights of the Church—an independent UGCC.

On the anniversary of the 1000th year of the Baptism of Ukraine, in almost half of the Western Ukrainian villages, a Divine Liturgy was celebrated on the occasion of this date. And again, the authorities could not look on indifferently at these manifestations, and again arrests and warnings to the clergy began. But despite this, on June 23, 1988, there was a demonstration of both priests and the faithful at the Lychakiv Cemetery in Lviv in memory of the victims tortured by KGB agents on this day in all the prisons of Western Ukraine on June 23, 1941. People are demanding that a monument be erected to these victims of Stalinist terror.

This is already the fourth demonstration of the Ukrainian people in Lviv for the month of June. The first was on June 3, the second on the 16th near the monument to Ivan Franko in protest against the delegates chosen for the 19th Party Conference in Moscow, which was to take place on June 28 (the candidates can be named here). The people nominated their own candidates, honest people—writers as delegates to this party conference, so that these people could truly defend the rights of their people there.

The party elite agreed to give a response on June 21 at the Lviv stadium. But when 60,000 people gathered near the stadium, a sign hung on the stadium gates: “Under Repair.” The people decided to hold a demonstration right there, but the Lviv party elite began to shout into microphones for the people to disperse, thus disrupting the demonstration. But the people, in protest, marched through the streets and along Lenin Avenue with patriotic Ukrainian songs.

Search in my husband’s case

They started persecuting my daughter Oksana at work, telling her to write a letter of resignation. She resisted, because she was meeting her quotas and there were no layoffs. They fired her anyway, without any justification.

My husband’s brother Ivan lived next door, but he, like all the neighbors, avoided any contact with us. Although, if a stranger, a visitor from out of town, came to my house, one of them, either he or his wife, would find a reason to drop by.

On May 26, 1982, they did try my husband, Petro Sichko, in the camp and added another three years, arguing that through me, he had connections abroad. And, of course, “slander against the Soviet system.” (On 26.05, P. Sichko was charged under Art. 187-1 of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR; the search of his wife's home took place on 5.07, and he was convicted on 19.07.1982.—Ed.).

We didn't know this, but on the day of the trial, we had another search. In the morning, my husband’s sister-in-law, our neighbor, came over. We called her stryina. My daughter was still sleeping, and I had just gotten up. I was surprised by such a visit. She asked if I and my daughter would be home today. I said we would. She asked, “Isn't Oksana going to work?” I said she had been fired. And she asked, “Isn’t she going to pick up her final pay?” I said, “How do you know whether she got her final pay or not?” She asked again if we would be home and left. I didn’t go out after her to lock the door but went into the bedroom. And I said to my daughter, “Get up, stryina was here. She seemed scared, almost crazed, and was very insistent about whether we would be home. What could that mean?” (I want to note that there was only one telephone on the street—and it was at this stryina’s house).

I hadn’t even finished talking to Oksana when I glanced out the window—and here were cars, one after another (our street is a dead end), and KGB agents were already jumping out. I ran to the corridor to lock the door, but they were already there. They immediately read out: “Search.”

I don’t want to blame my sister-in-law; maybe it was some kind of coincidence...

There was nothing left to take or confiscate, but they took whatever came to hand. They searched very zealously, repeatedly prodding the ground in the garden with metal rods. They were probably hoping to find some more evidence against my husband. They took a Bible and some letters. They started writing the protocol. And Oksana walked up to the table, snatched the Bible, and hid it in her bosom: “This Book I will not give you, even if you kill me! This is where my mother draws her strength to exist!” She said it with such conviction that they stopped and didn’t try to take it from her. I was very grateful to her for that, because I truly lived by that Book. I couldn’t sleep at night. I would read the New Testament for the tenth or twentieth time—and always find in it new words or teachings that I needed so badly.

Once, when Zenoviy Krasivskyi had not yet been arrested, he was at our house and asked me, “I’m amazed how you manage not only to live under such circumstances, but also to act. What gives you strength?”

I answered then, “This book, the Gospel. Believe me, when I read the Gospel or pray, I feel that Someone is sitting on the chair next to me, protecting me. Whether it’s Jesus or the Most Pure Virgin, it seems I can feel the touch of Their hand.” Then Zenko replied, “You are fortunate. I also pray and fast, but I cannot boast of what you have.”

So when anyone asked me what I considered happiness, I would answer that the greatest happiness for a person is to have no fear. I would go to the KGB—and not a nerve in my body would tremble. I would only repeat these words in my mind: “Lord, instill the Holy Spirit, let Him speak for me, for I do not know what to say.” Would you believe me—I always came out satisfied with myself and was amazed at my own answers. Fear is a person’s greatest enemy, and without fear, a person is free. In my circumstances, if fear were added to the mix, a psychiatric hospital would be guaranteed.

I kept repeating these words: “My peers perished at 18-20 years of age. But I survived prisons, camps, I returned, created a family, and my descendants continue the fight for our ideas. So, maybe it’s already time for me to go to my eternal rest? And if death is not frightening, then what is there to fear?”

Let me return to that search, when Oksana was still at home.

I mentioned there that she took back the Bible, and the prosecutor, Dovhanyuk (from Dolyna), began to draw up the protocol in the next room, where my daughter was. I stayed in the kitchen, as some of the searchers were there. With them was one man they called a “trainee.” Probably from the law faculty after university, a certain Ryndyuk. He spoke with a Hutsul or Chernivtsi accent. I stood by the stove. He measured me with his gaze from head to toe and told me to step aside, because there was a small door in the stove leading to the oven, which he hadn’t looked into yet. To get to it and open this door, he had to move a small table. When he started to move the table, he noticed it had a false bottom. I froze, because that was my hiding place...

Ryndyuk shouted to the prosecutor not to write the protocol yet, because they had found something else. He called a policeman, broke the bottom—and beamed with joy. There, in cellophane bags, were documents: some of Vasyl’s notes or writings, poems, and the passport of my younger son, Volodymyr. When he was arrested, he didn’t have his passport with him, so it was left behind. I kept it just in case: when he was released, maybe he could go somewhere with a clean passport.

Ryndyuk began to boast, as if to say, look what I’ve done. And I asked him if he had a mother. I said, “If you have a mother, then when you get home, boast to her about your achievement. That you came to the house of students just like yourself. Only my students are morally superior to you. And although no one forced you to take an active part in the search, only to observe, you, right before a mother’s eyes, exposed the hiding place of her sons, who are suffering in prison. If your mother is wiser than you, she will say such words to you that your vision will go dark. But if your mother is as stupid as you are—then eternal memory to you both.”

I shamed him with every curse I could think of. I said that for this achievement, besides a good grade, he would also receive a star, but it would burn him until the end of his days.

That's how the Ryndyuks were building Ukraine at that time. And today—I am certain—he holds a position as, if not a minister, then a chief judge, and beats his chest about what a patriot he is and what he did to make Ukraine free.

I said whatever I wanted, emphasizing the national aspect and, strangely enough, neither prosecutor Dovhanyuk nor anyone else present stopped me or told me to be quiet. The prosecutor was displeased because he saw his mistake: this was found while the protocol was being written.

As soon as they left, we both sat down wherever we were and were silent. Just then, the neighbor comes over and asks, “Who was that at your place?” That's when I gave her a piece of my mind too. And do you think it helped? She kept coming into the house: a KGB order is above any morality.

The Fate of My Daughter Oksana

It was July (1982.—Ed.). I was left with just that one child—Oksana. And again, the worry: where should she go? Fired from her job, university inaccessible...

Oksana read in a newspaper that in Latvia, they were recruiting students from all USSR republics for a medical college, for the physician's assistant and dental departments. She became fired up with the desire to go. I wasn't very keen, because I was still hoping she would get into a university. No matter how we thought about it, there was no better way out of this situation. Oksana went to Latvia alone. (At that time, Ukrainians didn't travel to Latvia en masse for trade).

About two days later, she came back joyful and told me she had been accepted into the medical college. But not into the dental department, as we had agreed, because admission to dentistry required knowledge of the Latvian language, but into the nursing program. I wasn't very happy, because I saw from her abilities that she could have studied somewhere higher. She burst into tears and said that if I didn't want it, she would go back and withdraw her documents. She was happy that she had been accepted without exams, based on an interview, and they had even told her she had the knowledge, and as an exception, they had enrolled her, which made her very happy. And I, instead of rejoicing with her, was dissatisfied... I came to my senses, praised her, because it was truly the only way out, so as not to get dragged through those courts again, not to sue the company that fired her. Because even though the law was on our side, where and from whom could one seek that justice?

It was the end of August 1982. My little daughter went to Latvia, to a foreign country, because in her native Ukraine, there was no place for her to gain even some knowledge...

I was left alone within four walls, like a broken boat adrift. With my sorrow, my troubles—all alone. And yet I thanked God that my daughter had left home: now I had nothing to fear, neither the KGB agents nor those informants who walk past my windows. Because until then, I had been more afraid for my daughter, that if they broke into the house at night, they might frighten her or, heaven forbid, beat her.

I prayed and, for the first time in those three years, I went to sleep peacefully...

All of this was happening before my daughter's eyes... That’s why, when she left for Latvia, I felt as if I had been freed from the burden of responsibility for my child’s fate. I became, in a way, free from domestic worries, and turned all my attention to my prisoners. To avoid sitting at home and going out of my mind, I would travel to visit my family—whether my husband or my sons. I went to beg for those legally mandated visits or the acceptance of parcels, though it was almost always without result. Because Vasyl was on a high-security regime in Cherkasy, and when he was sentenced a second time and transferred to Vinnytsia, it was a strict-regime camp. On the day a parcel was due, they would accept them from everyone else, but they would give me hope and keep me waiting until the end, and then, “sympathetically,” say that it was “not permitted” because my son had ended up in solitary confinement. Although I was used to such tricks, my heart still ached every time. But I had to restrain myself so as not to show my bloody tears to the enemies. And then, upon returning home, finding myself alone within those four walls, oh, how I cried with both my heart and my soul... But I never complained to God for giving me such suffering. Though those who knew my attitude toward faith in God tried to provoke me, they were unsuccessful. Because then, as now, I believe that I survived it all not because I am strong, but because my faith in God is strong.

I would leave home, lock the door with a key, but I would return to find the door unlocked. To be safer, I would also fasten the front door from the inside with a large hook. One time when I was leaving the house, I fastened this door from the inside and went out the front door, which no one used. I left unnoticed, or so it seemed to me, and locked it. When I returned, I put the key in to unlock the door, but it wouldn't turn at all. I touched the door—and it opened. And I thought I had outsmarted the KGB agents!

Next to us, as I've already mentioned, lived my husband’s brother, Ivan. His married son and son-in-law lived with him. Both of them had cars, but when they were driving and I was walking, they never noticed me, never gave me a ride. I accepted all this with understanding, because I knew the KGB had forbidden them, and they were afraid.

But here is one such fact. It was the spring of 1983. Oksana was already studying in Latvia. Before that, a young woman had asked to rent a room from me; these same neighbors had directed her to me. She begged me so much that I took her in. I thought at least there would be someone to leave the house with when I went somewhere.

One day, my husband’s brother’s son-in-law comes into the house and says he’s going to Latvia to do some shopping, and would I like to go see Oksana. I was very surprised, because he was afraid to give me a ride, and here he was offering such a service. I said no, I didn't want to, because I wasn't ready. He said he would go later, so I could still get ready. I refused. After some time, he came again. I refused, but I hesitated. There was such an opportunity, and besides, he said he would take groceries to my daughter—but only if I went too. And if I didn't go, he wouldn't take anything. He even added, “When I tell Oksana in Riga that you had a chance to visit her but refused, how will she feel about that?”

And no matter how much my soul screamed that something was not right here, the desire to visit my daughter, and to bring her something, overcame it. I left the tenant, got in, and went with him and his wife. It was ten o’clock at night. On the way, we turned into the village of Mala Turya, supposedly because he needed to see a colleague. They went into the house, and I sat in the car for a very long time, about two hours. When they came out of the house, I said I wanted to go back home. Sitting in the car, I had had time to think everything over and became convinced that this was some kind of conspiracy. He refused to take me back. And it was night, the buses were no longer running. So I went. He said he would stay in Riga for about three days, so I would have time to spend with Oksana. We arrived on a Saturday evening. My daughter was overjoyed. They went somewhere for the night to some supposed relatives of theirs and said they would come for me in three days.

On Sunday morning, my daughter and I went to the seaside, as the weather was beautiful. We weren't there for long, and when we returned to the house, the landlady said that my people had been by and said that if I wasn't there, they would be leaving for home in 2 hours. I hadn't expected this, otherwise we would have allocated our time differently. But what can you do when you are dependent on someone...

I arrived home—and my tenant had packed her things and was waiting for me. I asked what was wrong. And she said that on the night I left, she was going to work in the morning. (And from my house, to get to the bus by the short road, you have to cross a ravine where a stream flows). As soon as she descended into the ravine, a “gentleman” stopped her, showed her a document stating he was from the KGB, and said, “Now, hand over the keys to the house!” She tried to object, but he said, “I'll search your bag right now and find narcotics in it. Then you’ll be coming with me for good.”

The tenant started crying, saying she was not at fault.

I understood everything. Both their planned trip for me, and that they had had their way in my house without me. Although I had never doubted that there was a listening device in my house, today I did not thank my neighbors for such a service. Nor did I curse them. To this day, they think I understood nothing. But what is strange—my tenant moved into their apartment. And such things happened...

Why do I clarify such a seemingly trivial matter? So that anyone who might want to read this someday will know how subtly the KGB agents could craft their provocations.

The Release of My Husband and Son Vasyl

My husband had a whole month left until the end of his prison term. Because when they arrested him a second time there in the camp, he had 40 days left of his first term. And when they announced the second sentence, they read, “the term is to be counted as three years from the date of arrest.” And the 40 days were lost. Not like with my son. That's why Vasyl served 40 days longer.

A KGB agent from Ivano-Frankivsk came to see my husband in Kherson. They thought they could at least squeeze some kind of repentance out of him at the very end. He asked, “Did you search my home again?” The KGB agent was surprised, how did he know. And when my husband said he had had a dream, he replied, “We did, but it was your wife’s good fortune that we found nothing, because we wanted to have you switch places.” Like Oksana Meshko with her son... Then this KGB agent pulls a kilogram of chocolate candies out of a drawer and offers them to my husband, saying, “We’re from the same region, and it’s not proper to arrive empty-handed.” My God! My husband just flew into a rage and shouted, “Take them away! Who do you take me for?”

The KGB agent said he had been warned that Sichko wouldn’t take anything, but he had hoped. And he says, “But your freedom depends on this.” And my husband replied, “It depends on God’s will. This time I will get out of here, whether you want it or not, because I had a dream.”

Indeed, my husband was so distressed that he intuitively sensed what was happening at home or with his sons, and he also had prophetic dreams. This time he dreamed that he had burned his prison jacket and all his prison clothes. And so a month later, on May 26, 1985, he was released.

I brought my husband home—skin and bones, it was frightening to even travel with him, because in the camp he had almost never been out of solitary confinement.

I went to see my son Vasyl for another visit (a short, one-hour one), because he still had 40 days left. (According to letters, this visit was on 26.04.1985, 2.5 months before his release.—Ed.). The visit was through glass. A guard stood behind me, over my shoulder. My son was trying to show me something with gestures; I didn't understand, so he wrote it down. But the guard noticed and wanted to take it, but Vasyl popped the note into his mouth and ate it. With that, our five-minute visit was over. I was kicked out, and he was put in an isolation cell for 30 days.

On July 6, 1985, as I had been notified, I came to get my son. They said, as always, “Wait.” I waited. Towards the end of the workday, they told me he would be released tomorrow, because his term ends tomorrow. I raised a ruckus, because I know from experience: if they don't release you on that day, it means there will be another term.

I went to the warden; he started sending me from office to office, and there were shrewish women there, saying that due to a mistake in the documents, they had put 7.VII, that one day doesn’t matter for me, and they can’t correct the documents. No matter what I did, the workday ended, and that was that. I went to the post office and called my husband. He said, “It means they’re pinning a third term on Vasyl.”

I spent the night at the train station, although we had acquaintances there (I’ll write about them later). In the morning, I went back to the camp and, to my great joy, Vasyl was released. But I didn't recognize him, they had dried him out so much in those 40 days. I said, “Who have you brought me? How can I get on a train with him? All the people will scatter, because even people on their deathbeds don’t look like that.”

The convoy escorted us to the train. Vasyl said that after solitary, they took him to the hospital and diagnosed him with tuberculosis, but he was afraid to stay for those 10 days, lest they cure him on one side only.

At home, he had to find a job. He went for a medical certificate—and here the X-ray showed tuberculosis of more than a year’s duration, because he had caverns in his lungs.

My husband was already working. They got him a job at the sawmill at the reinforced concrete products factory in Dolyna. Although he had worked as an economist before his arrest, no one was going to reinstate him in such a job. It’s only we, Ukrainian democrats, who are so humane that we haven't removed a single scoundrel from his post and sent him to do manual labor. Oh! How all this hurts!

More on the release of my husband and son

(*This section was written on 15.III.1996. Despite some repetition, it contains significant details.—Ed.)

I’ll start with how my husband was released after 6 years of imprisonment. It was May 26, 1985. I went to Kherson and, as always, they first released the criminals, and they made me a little more nervous before they let Petro out. I brought clothes, but the pants just fell off him, because there was nothing to hold them up, my husband had become so thin. We got on the train at noon, at 2 PM, and headed home. I wanted to stop and see my son Vasyl in Vinnytsia, but my husband asked me not to, because he couldn't mentally bear those barbed wires he had just left behind. We went home.

But a day or two later, I did go to see my son for a short visit. This time, they granted it. The booth was small, and the “squad leader” persistently watched from over my shoulder. My son wanted to tell me something, wrote it down on a piece of paper, but this lackey-guard saw it, started walking towards Vasyl, and he popped the note into his mouth. On that, our visit ended: I was kicked out, and my son was taken to solitary confinement.

Vasyl was sick with tuberculosis. Before his release, to avoid a scandal if he died, they offered to admit him to the hospital. Vasyl refused, because he was afraid they would inject him with something and write him off, as was common practice in prison.

On July 6, his prison term was ending. Even before that, I had a “notification” from the camp that “on July 6, 1985, Sichko will be released.” And so I arrived. (My husband still had a year of supervision: from 8 PM to 8 AM he had to be at home).

The prisoners began to be released, but for me, it was always, “Wait.” And at the end of the workday, they announced that his term of imprisonment would end tomorrow, that is, on 7.VII. And I knew from experience what it means when they delay even by one day. Firstly, that my son was raging at the gates, demanding freedom. Secondly, I knew: if they delayed, another prison term was inevitable. I caused a commotion, but the officials hid like mice. With great difficulty, I managed to get a meeting with the camp warden, who was already on his way home. He said he knew nothing. He supposedly called the dispatcher, who was supposed to know. She answered, “Big deal, a day here or there.” She started calling me names, saying I was a troublemaker, and supposedly called me into her office to show me something in the documents. In the meantime, the warden fled.

I saw there was no one left to talk to. I went to the post office to call my husband. To tell him not to wait for us. My husband said, “This means they’ve tacked on another term for Vasyl.”

Only God knows how I sat through that night at the train station. In the morning, without any hope, I went to the camp. And around noon, they released my son! But not without a convoy; they escorted us to the train and put us on. I asked those KGB agents, “Who have you released to me?” I tell you, a corpse in a coffin looks better. It was a shadow, not a person.

We arrived home. Just as my husband had been told, so was he: get a job within three days. No one would hire ex-convicts, especially political ones. But in Dolyna there was (and still is) a factory for reinforced concrete products and structures. I had previously worked there for 4 years as a shift engineer. The entire management there knew us. Moreover, the head of the plant was a good, intelligent man who didn't really follow KGB instructions. He hired my husband as a general laborer. My son went there too. He passed the medical commission, except for the X-ray, because the machine wasn't working. But they hired him with the understanding that the three days were ending. He worked for two days, then went for the X-ray. They diagnosed him with tuberculosis, with caverns in his lungs. They immediately took him to the TB hospital. My son benefited from this because, while in the hospital, he received an average salary, albeit meager, and his work experience was counted.

He was in the hospital for a whole year. When he was discharged, they forbade him from working at the sawmill. He knew woodcarving, so he went to the town of Vyhoda, where there were workshops. In addition to this, he carved at home, got a permit, and took his work to the town of Morshyn to sell. These items were not in high demand, but he would sell 1-2 pieces a day.

Vasyl saw that the women next to him were selling children’s cotton suits, which were in demand. He bought one suit, took it apart, made a pattern, and said to me, “And now we’ll sew too.” Laughing, I asked, “Do you even know how to thread a needle?” He said, “I’ll learn.” He went and bought cotton fabric, various trimmings, and we started sewing. At first, one suit a day, then two, and then more. Later, he didn't sew, but only supplied the material and sold them, 10 or even 20 at a time. The money started coming in. He got married (admittedly, unsuccessfully, as his wife left him and their two children and went to her own family. But at first, she helped with the sewing. (After Vasyl’s death, Lesia returned to the children and lives in the Sichko home.—Ed.).

The Funeral of Olena Antoniv*

(*Moved from the section “Next, I’ll write whatever I remember.”—Ed.)

And again I was alone. The one person with whom I shared my troubles was Olena Vintoniv (Antoniv.—Ed.), the wife of Mr. Zenko Krasivskyi. A few words about her, now deceased. Mr. Zenko was already in Khanty-Mansiysk. I sometimes wrote him letters and received sincere thanks. As he responded, in my few lines he read more than in other long letters. And Mrs. Olena was a sensitive person. When I came to her with some trouble, she wouldn't just lament or sympathize, but would think and propose a way out of that trouble, while at the same time offering her support. She was the only one I could visit without any pretense, although I was also on good terms with Olya Horyn (Wife of Mykhailo Horyn, born 15.10.1930, political prisoner from 1952-1956.—Ed.).

I know that one must cherish friends in times of trouble. So it was a terrible blow to me when on February 2 (I think) 1985, I received a telegram from Mr. Zenko that Olena had died tragically (Olena Antoniv died on February 2, 1986, after falling under a truck.—Ed.).

At that time, my daughter Oksana was at home with me. She often came from Riga for a day or two. After reading the telegram, I told Oksana, “I'm fleeing to Lviv right now, or the KGB will be here any minute.” I hadn't even finished the sentence, and there they were. I instantly jumped into the wardrobe, and Oksana stood in the doorway. They say to Oksana, “Excuse us.” And Oksana says, “What do you want?” And doesn't let them in. “Where’s your mother?” “She’s not here.” “And what if we find her?” “Where’s the search warrant?” asks Oksana and asks them not to push in the doorway. He shoves, she doesn't let him in. He said, “Fine, there will be a warrant soon,” and left. I quickly got out of the wardrobe, put on my coat and boots. I said to Oksana, “I'm running through the gardens, because they won't let me go if they catch me. You lock up.” But she should have fled the house too...

I went through the fields, through the snow, through gardens on pathless terrain, to get from Stara Dolyna to Nova Dolyna, to the bus. I had just reached the bus stop when the police came. Some were looking for someone: standing in the doorway of their car and driving slowly, others walking behind people and looking into their eyes. I turned this way and that—and God blinded them. I got a ride to Bolekhiv, and from there took a bus to Lviv.

And what a coincidence. In Lviv, I went to Spokiyna Street, where Mrs. Olena lived at No. 13. And at No. 2 lived a founding member of our Initiative Group, Father Hryhoriy Budzynsky. I couldn't pass by his house. I went in to find out what had happened. I had just entered when, about 5 minutes later, a nun ran in and said, “They're coming! The KGB!” I jumped into the kitchen. Four of them walked past me to the priest, and in that time I slipped out into the yard... I thought, I didn't get caught in Dolyna, so I had to get stuck here. They would have asked for my passport, which I didn't have with me, and they would have detained me until the end of the funeral. God was merciful.

What a terrible sight I saw in the house! That beautiful Olena lay in a casket completely without a head... The head was made of cotton wool...

This is too cruel. I am not a judge, but this dignified, brave woman could not have deserved such a death... What a cruel fate! It was a pleasure to look at this couple—Mrs. Olena and Mr. Zenko. He looked at her as if she were a holy icon, and she adored him. Hadn't enough troubles befallen them, that such a death had to happen, to the delight of their enemies?

The entire Ukrainian elite from both Western and Eastern Ukraine came to the funeral. There was Mr. Yevhen Sverstyuk, and Mr. and Mrs. Lisovyi—Vira and Vasyl, and the wife of Myroslav Symchych from Zaporizhzhia, Raisa Moroz, the wife of Levko Lukyanenko, Nadiya. Because at that time, the men were still in prison. Vyacheslav Chornovil was also there, and our entire Lviv elite. There were no patriotic speeches at the cemetery, although everyone knew that if anyone deserved it, Olena deserved honor even in death.

From the funeral, everyone was brought to the memorial meal. There were very many people. I didn't sit down because I was in a hurry to catch the Morshyn electric train, which leaves at 6:15 PM. I left the house seemingly unnoticed, when suddenly someone called out to me: “Sichkova!” And asked me to come back. In the porch stood Mrs. Iryna Kalynets, and she said, “So you’re Sichkova, and I didn’t recognize you. Are you perhaps holding a grudge against me?” I was surprised that she was holding a cigarette in her hand, but I replied, “And do you think there’s a reason to?” And I ran. There was a little sin on Iryna's part... It's good that she at least understood it. But when I was at the funeral of the Horyns' father, Mrs. Iryna walked behind me the whole time during the procession. And now she doesn’t recognize me again, unless I’m standing with my husband.

I don’t want to say that I was ever a prominent person. I didn’t do anything special for the people, didn’t write or draw anything, but fate so decreed that I had the opportunity to get to know those luminaries. Now they continue to shine and fade, and shine again, and I, an old woman, have been pushed by them to the farthest flank. Although we never gave up.

Next, I’ll write whatever I remember...

* * *

(Moved from Section III)

I have jumped ahead in time. I want to return to a very unpleasant topic. Not so much unpleasant as painful. I would like to skip it, but then I would have to omit many things.

So, as I've already said, Vasyl was expelled from the university in September (The expulsion order No. 506 is dated July 20, 1977.—Ed.). He didn't come home right away, but we already knew what was coming.

Until then, our friends—whether from our underground work, fellow students, or friends from the camp—hardly ever visited us, and we knew nothing about where they were. But with our son's expulsion, our friends started visiting us frequently. The first to come was a colleague, the senior economist of the Dolyna drilling site, Mr. Rozhak. He had been deported to Siberia with his mother. He was originally from the village of Rypne, where my husband’s father once worked because there was an oil field there. And after his imprisonment, when my husband enrolled in correspondence courses at the Lviv Polytechnic Institute, they studied together and prepared for exams at our house.

Rozhak came on a Sunday before lunch. Only my daughter Oksana was home; we were at church. My daughter said we weren't back from church. He left, but as soon as we returned, he came in again. Supposedly for some economics handbook. We said we didn't have one, but he didn't seem particularly bothered by that. He even forgot about it, sat down, and started a conversation on various topics.

I served lunch, but since he was a rare guest, I even bought a half-liter of vodka with borrowed money and we began to treat him. At that time, no one in our house drank alcohol, so he, whether out of boredom or fear, polished off the bottle, though you couldn't say he was an alcoholic.

When a person is in grief, they want to share it with someone. So my husband began to tell him about the trouble that had befallen Vasyl. Mr. Rozhak sympathized, thanked us for the hospitality, and left. And my husband regretted that he had shared his trouble.

The next day, the secretary of the party organization came to my workplace (I worked as a rate-setter at "Silhosptekhnika") and said that someone from the military enlistment office had called for me to go there. I said "alright," but when he left, I called my husband at work (he worked in another district, Rozhniativskyi, but not far from Dolyna, at the Strutynsky "Metalist" plant) and told him to go to the enlistment office, because I was not subject to military service. My husband went immediately, but they asked him why I hadn't come instead of him. The KGB was waiting for us there. They began the conversation. My husband realized that they were repeating to him, word for word, the conversation he had had with this guest, Rozhak, the day before. As always, my husband did not answer any of the KGB’s questions. They let him go. He went out—and right there, by the gate, as if by chance, he ran into this Rozhak. And as if nothing had happened, he greeted him. Instead of a greeting, my husband said, "You sellout, yesterday I treated you with borrowed money, and you sold me out. If I had known what you were coming to me with, I would have served you manure water, not vodka." The man tried to justify himself, but my husband walked away.

After this, however bitter, our friends—fellow defendants in prison cases, or camp friends—began to visit frequently. I don't want to name them, because it is painful. But under pressure from my husband, many of them admitted that they worked for the KGB, otherwise their children would not get a higher education. I do not want to compromise them by giving their names, because today, as former political prisoners, they head various organizations or societies and beat their chests about their honesty and love for Ukraine. God be their judge.

The second to come, also without reason, was my husband's fellow defendant, Petro Brunarsky, who lived in the Halych district in the village of Mariupil and worked there as a paramedic. He had once studied with my husband at the university and was arrested in the same case. He arrived after work. It was raining, my husband was carrying hay under the roof, and I had a meeting at work, and no matter how much my husband begged that he had no time to receive a guest, and that I would be home late, he wouldn't leave until he had completed his task. I came home late, the children were already asleep, I was exhausted, and here was a guest. The house was bare—nothing to eat. What there was, they had eaten.

He waited while I, in the middle of the night, peeled potatoes, fried them, and served them. He even asked for vodka for more courage, even though he had come by car. We weren't very talkative, because we were angry that the guest had come at an inconvenient time. We offered him to stay the night, as it was already past midnight. He said he had to go home because there was a holiday in the village, St. Paraskovia's Day (August 8.—Ed.). My husband got in the car with him to show him the main road and was worried about him driving after drinking. My husband waited a bit longer to see how he drove. The man looked back, saw that my husband was gone, turned the car around, and drove towards the KGB. We became suspicious again, but we didn't want to believe it.

The third was again a political prisoner who had been in prison with my husband and shared his rations, by the name of Volodymyr Hutsul, from Krykhovychi. He had never been to our house before. We had lunch and asked if he wasn't going home, because we were going to pick apples in the orchard, as a frost was coming. He didn't want to leave, hung around until it got dark, then left. He was smirking the whole time, but he never said, never had the courage to admit, who had sent him.

Sometime in March (probably 1979.—Ed.) Mykhailo Lutsyk, who had served 32 years and had only recently been released from the camp, came to our house. Half an hour later, another former political prisoner, who had served 25 years, came after him. We weren't home, as it was Sunday, and we were at the Divine Liturgy. As soon as we returned, another good friend, who had served 10 years in the 50s, came after us. We hadn't even taken off our coats when he crossed the threshold and said, "Oh, I saw you in town, but you left so quickly I didn't have time to ask something." My husband says, "Take off your coat, you'll be our guest." And he says, "Oh no, you probably have someone over." My husband says, "Yes, people like you, old friends in misfortune."

The first to arrive was Mykola, the second Taras. They greeted each other not very friendly.

Although Mykola had once been imprisoned with my husband and lives in a village about 8 km from us, he never acknowledged us until he sought us out when trouble befell us. He came even before Rozhak. That was in August. Because when we wondered why he had come, he replied that there was a holiday in their village for the Dormition of the Theotokos, and he really wanted us to come. We believed his sincerity, and although we didn't want to, we went because we had given our word. But, unfortunately, there was a large lock on the door. And as we waited, his mother, who lived next door, came and said that he and his wife had gone to a wedding. After that, he came and apologized profusely, and we, being good-natured, believed him, because what doesn't happen in life?

And when, after the October Soviet holidays, the KGB wanted to take Vasyl to a psychiatric hospital, my husband went to him with Vasyl and asked if Vasyl could stay with him until things cleared up. Mykola agreed, but he stoked the stove with plum wood, closed the damper when the embers were still glowing brightly, and went to work for the night. Vasyl suffered from carbon monoxide poisoning. He vomited, fell out of bed, and clung to the doorframe. He lay like that until morning, and when the wife saw him (though she couldn't have not heard it at night), she ran for Mykola, and somehow they revived Vasyl. If this was not intentional, then I take my words back. (I mention this on page 16).

And now here was this Mykola again, as a guest. Everyone at the table was talking—and leaving things unsaid. I didn't sit with them, but I didn't like this forced conversation. When Mykola was leaving, he asked my husband to go with him and show him where Volodymyr Horbovyi lived, because he had moved to another apartment and Mykola hadn't been to that apartment yet. When Mykola was putting on his shoes in the hallway, he said to me, "I'll come again, I'll bring you some cheese and butter so you have something to bless for Easter." For some reason, I said, "And it seems to me that you won't come again." He turned pale and asked, "Why?" I say, "Don't you know how painful it is when you trust people, and they don't live up to your trust?" With that, I closed the door, and they left.

Mykhailo Lutsyk had left even earlier. In the house remained me, my son Vasyl, and Taras. Then I say to Taras, "Why didn't you go with them? You know the KGB is persecuting us. You'll go out, and they'll ask you why you come to our house. You'll have trouble." He says, "I was sent to you." I ask, "By whom?" He replies, "The thing is, I work with them." I was stunned. And he says, "For three more months. In three months, my daughter finishes her institute, and I'll break with them." I understood everything and asked him to leave the house quickly, before I could fully process it all. He left—ran off. My husband came back and asked why I had offended Mykola. I say, "You'd better ask what Taras said."

It became very bitter. We guessed that they had sent two people after Lutsyk to confirm the truth of what was said.

I would not want this to harm those people; they are still alive, working, and they did not take this job willingly, and it is not easy for them. They would probably give half their lives for it not to have happened, but there is no going back. The system is to blame. Those who had faith in God, whom God helped, stood firm. But those whose faith wavered fell victim.

Later, this Petro Brunarsky appeared at our house once more, but this time with a bottle of his own cognac. It was shortly after this incident. He came into the house and, without any invitation, began to take off his coat, placing the cognac on the table. My husband told him, "Listen, Petro, don't put the cognac on the table, because you won't be drinking it at my house." His face changed, and he asked, "Why?" My husband then said, but with a shout, "First, get on your knees and confess before the icon why you came and who sent you!" He fell to his knees and said, "Petro, I will work with them for one more year, and in a year my daughter will finish the institute and I will break with them." Then my husband said, "Get up, take your hat and your cognac, and get out of the house. And let this be the last time I see you here." He left, looked back in the corridor, and said, "Say hello to Stefa." Because I wasn't home then, only my husband and Vasyl. My husband said, "Stefa will do without such greetings."

Later, either neighbors or friends would come. But we, perhaps unjustly, saw an informant in almost everyone, and to avoid conflict, we simply said, "Don't come to our house. It seems we have nothing to talk about."

Then, after my husband and son were arrested, how many of them I had, no longer political prisoners, but just young people, who I don't know what they came with, and it was impossible to get rid of them.

And so, out of fear of the regime, people against their will took a vile path, comforting themselves that someday they would be free of it, that it wouldn't last long. The KGB changed, but the people were left with a dark conscience.

* * *

(October 1994, Riga)

I want to return to the arrest of my family—my husband and son. When they were on their way to the station after speaking at Volodymyr Ivasyuk’s grave, good people protected them to prevent them from falling into the hands of the KGB. Along the way, Vasyl met a girl from Lviv, from Naukova Street—Oksana Kilechko. When she heard on Radio Liberty that Vasyl had been arrested, she came to Dolyna to confirm it (I wasn't home, only my daughter Oksana). Clearly, she was not indifferent to my son's fate. But about two months later, her parents came to see me, but with a different purpose. They said their daughter had fallen in love with Vasyl. All she does is sit by the radio at night, listening to Radio Liberty and crying for him. They wanted me to help them with their problem, to write to their daughter and tell her to focus on her studies at the institute and forget Vasyl. Because, they said, “we are intellectuals, we intend to marry our daughter to an engineer who is courting her. We don’t need a prisoner for a son-in-law.”

I am amazed at their audacity and rudeness. I said, “My son is behind bars, and your daughter is under your watch, so you should be the one to forbid her. A pity, I thought differently of you.” They replied, “If you correspond with her, we will intercept all the letters and prevent this friendship.”

* * *

I will return to Vinnytsia, to our acquaintance Mr. Yakymchuk, who, like us, he and his wife, had served 10 years in the Norilsk camps. They are originally from Volyn. We met them on the Black Sea (where, like them, we were traveling “wild”). We were vacationing as families. We met him through former political prisoners from Kremenets, the Hachnevychs. We became friends there. Our children were the same age. They had a daughter and a son, and we had three. Later, they visited us. When their daughter was applying to the Chernivtsi university, she stayed with us beforehand and prepared for admission.

It must have been at Easter in 1982. Vasyl was due for his first long, that is, 24-hour, visit. It was granted after serving half of the term. And so they notified us to come precisely on Easter. My daughter and I arrived, but they were off by one day and told us the visit was tomorrow. We came out—and where to go? It's Easter, you can't wander around the markets or sit at the station. We remembered our acquaintances, the political prisoners, the Yakymchuks. We had their address—and we went to them. We didn't search for long. We went in, found everyone at home. They seemed happy to see us. But when we told them why we had come, they turned pale. We asked if we could spend the night. If they had said no, we would have understood, but we stayed. They treated us to soup. Although we had blessed eggs and Easter bread in our bag, it was all for Vasyl. It seemed strange to us then, and it does now, that people were so intimidated by the Soviet authorities that they were afraid not only to have food blessed, but even to prepare eggs and Easter bread, as is our custom. One could expect anything, but such a small detail characterizes people. There was nothing to indicate that it was Easter in this house, and no one even mentioned what day it was.

In the morning, everyone was going to work, but their son, my daughter’s age, was supposed to go in the afternoon because he was studying at an institute. I said that we didn’t need to leave so early, because the visit was in the afternoon. If the son was at home, we wouldn’t be in a hurry. Then Mr. Yakymchuk said, “Then I’ll be late, and I won’t leave you with my son.” We gathered our things at that very moment and left. On the way, he slipped a piece of paper into our pocket. Later we looked, it was 50 rubles. We could neither take it nor throw it away. To this day, I can't understand why he was afraid to leave us. Was it because his son looked so lovingly at my daughter, lest he fall in love, or was there another reason? And I was still thinking he would help me find someone to contact, to pass something to my son through acquaintances... And today I hear he is the head of the Society of the Ukrainian Language in Ternopil! May God help him. And conscience?! But who asks anyone about conscience today? And there were people who guarded it their whole lives and did not falter. That is why they have passed on from us. And those who have remained conscientious, who needs them?

* * *

As I have already mentioned, my husband was first imprisoned in the Lontsky Street prison in 1947. He was sentenced to death, which was later commuted to 25 years. He was imprisoned a second time in the same Lontsky Street prison in 1979, but not alone, but with our son Vasyl. As you read from these memoirs, we dedicated our entire lives to the fight against Bolshevism. And we taught our children the same way. At that time, all the people—acquaintances and relatives—condemned me for not being a mother. Because if I were a mother, I would have valued my children's university education and diplomas. But what kind of mother sends her children to prison, to certain death? They would say, such a state, such power—tanks, weapons, the atom bomb, and you with your sons, like trying to fight the sun with a shovel! But when my family served their sentences and were released in 1985, they did not repent, did not give up. I will talk about this in the next chapter. They were the first, on November 1, 1988, to create the Ukrainian Christian-Democratic Front, which no one wants to mention today, although it still exists as a party. But more on that later.

And now, when this spring they consecrated the memorial stone to the murdered political prisoners opposite the Lontsky prison, my husband asked to speak at the rally. Because he had the moral right to say a few words. But there was no time for him, because those who spoke didn't even know what a prison was.

Not all political prisoners had the strength to endure. Even the head of the KGB in Dolyna used to tell us during his “receptions”: “Do you know that your name is first on the list?” We would answer with a laugh that this was very good, because we wouldn’t have to see the deaths of other people.

I also had a sister, Bohdanna, in the village of Zalukva near Halych. And she lived next door to the head of the village council. When all my family members were in prison, I often visited my 70-year-old sister. And this head of the council, Nadya Basarab, asks me: “Stefa, how are your boys—are they still in prison? Just don’t think that when the old man (Brezhnev) dies, things will get easier for you. Because he holds peace on his shoulders, and in case of war, you won’t fare well. I was at a party meeting yesterday. We received instructions to arrest people like you first in case of war. And there are 460 such people in Zalukva. Only then will they begin mobilization.” I replied: “A stick has two ends: it strikes with one, and then with the other.”

They managed to intimidate many, especially former political prisoners. And not right away, but when their children grew up and needed to go to university. Or were already studying, so that they wouldn’t be expelled.

Not far from the town of Dolyna is the settlement of Broshniv. We had friends there. Petro Shuler, with whom my husband was imprisoned in Magadan, and his wife, Olya Matsyk, with whom I was imprisoned. Here in Dolyna, we somehow found out about each other, and although not often, we would visit one another. But when my family members went to prison, all our friends broke ties with me. One time I was traveling to Lviv. I met this Petro Shuler on the electric train. He was, in fact, on his way to the hospital to see his wife, who died soon after. I asked him why he didn't visit us. He replied, “We won’t be in contact with you anymore. You chose one path, we another. I have suffered enough in my life, and I want my children not to suffer. We are not on the same path!” He had three children, just like me, two sons and a daughter, and they were the same age as mine. The one Vasyl’s age was studying in Kyiv, I think, at the pedagogical institute, at the same time Vasyl was studying at the university. He graduated. And now he was working in some ministry in Kyiv. Now he has been sent abroad. He has a diploma and a biography—the son of political prisoners.

* * *

You know, I often ask myself a question that Mrs. Mykhailyna Kotsiubynska, with whom I am slightly acquainted, once asked me. She told me this: “There was a trial for Vasyl Stus. Svitlana Badzyo (Kyrychenko) and I were taken as witnesses. They questioned me first. I answered not so much for them, but spoke in a way that would orient Stus about the events in Ukraine. And Vasyl nodded his head at me gratefully. They didn't kick me out of the courtroom, and I was able to see the entire shameful trial. Then they questioned Svitlana. Svitlana said this: ‘I will testify when Vasyl is sitting in your place, and you are in his.’ After that, they kicked her out. Which of us did the right thing?”

As painful as it was for me to give Mrs. Mykhailyna my opinion, I approved of Svitlana's answer, counting it as patriotism, on which our youth should be raised.

Who am I to pass judgment? I respect Mrs. Mykhailyna for her creative talent, for her modesty and intelligence, and I love Svitlana for her unforgiving attitude towards the enemy. It gladdened me that there are such people, especially in Eastern Ukraine.

I repeat once more that in that grief, in that time of hardship and trouble, I too had my joys from being able to communicate with such people.

If someone ever reads my writings (most likely, no one will), let them forgive me for writing haphazardly, without a plan, just what I remember. Because with my memory, I probably won't write even a tenth of it all. After all, in six months, I will be 70.

* * *

And still, I do not condemn the people, but I condemn that cruel system that dug into people’s souls and gave them no peace.

And again, many of my friends condemned me when my two sons were in prison. They said I was not a mother, because a mother gives her children an education so they can have an easy life; that, they said, I should have compromised, so that the wolf would be fed and the goat would be safe. Many were silent. Because there was nothing to praise me for, and nothing to sympathize with. You got what you wanted. But it seems to me that what is ordained by God cannot be avoided. A person should not look at what others suggest from the side, but do as their conscience dictates. Because conscience is your judge for life. You cannot run or hide from it.

We, former political prisoners who were released during the “Khrushchev Thaw” in 1956, managed to marry and have children. Many former political prisoners remained living in the places where they were released. At first, they did not give us permission to leave, meaning we had no passports, only “certificates.” That is, freedom without the right to travel. Then they began to issue passports. Some after a year or two, some later, but for many with the caveat that they could not return to Western Ukraine.

Many remained there. They earned money, bought some kind of house or dugout, settled in with necessities, and started family life. Many longed so much for their native land that they returned to Ukraine at any cost, not understanding at the time that the terror against them would never end. Those who returned home after their release were constantly under surveillance. During Soviet holidays—"October," "May Day," or "Constitution Day"—there was always police in the house, or at best we were summoned to the KGB and warned that if any disturbances occurred on those days, that is, if a blue-and-yellow flag was raised or something of the sort, the responsibility for it would fall on us. They even forced us to sign a statement that nothing of the sort would happen. This outraged us terribly. They blackmailed us and waited for our children to grow up. They gave the children the opportunity to enter universities, and then they blackmailed us, the former political prisoners. They would say, either work as an informant, or your children will be expelled. And, to our great regret, not to condemn those unfortunate victims, but to condemn the system that turned decent people into informants, some broke. He didn't break then, when he was captured in battle, even with a weapon in his hands. He endured all the tortures, but here he hesitated about what to choose. And once he hesitated, the KGB would make of him what they had been trying to get from him all those long years. They didn't need the informing as much as they needed you to spit in your own soul, to bring you to your knees in this way.

Many of those exposed informants find justification, saying, we suffered, so let our children at least avoid that. And they calmed themselves with this, and people partly justified them. They would say, one has to live somehow. But is that really living? You go against your own will, and all your guilt lies on you like a heavy stone, and there is nowhere to retreat.

October 1994. Riga

I am writing my memoirs out of order, because I didn't keep a diary, never dated anything, so it is very difficult for me now to remember what year it was.

I wrote all this in Lviv, and now I am in Riga with my daughter. I came because the need arose to help her. October, 1994.

Just yesterday, an artist, Oles Tsaruk, called me to say he is opening an exhibition of his paintings and that I should come. He is originally from Ivano-Frankivsk; he got married here and works here for the benefit of Ukraine. He reminded me of when, in 1989, a forum of 18 captive nations was held here in Riga. There were representatives from almost all the republics, and Tsaruk was supposed to represent Ukraine. So he was very happy that I was there and invited me. At that time, I was somewhat politically savvy, I knew what to say. They gave me the floor. I explained the situation in Ukraine, and at the end, I said, as if joking, “When the next forum is held, in three years, we will already be coming to you with visas.” Everyone applauded, and my prophecy came true. I came to Latvia with a visa both last year and this year.

Since I've started talking about Latvia, I'll say that our Ukrainians here are not idle either.

Back in 1989, the Ukrainian society “Dnipro” was founded here, headed by Mr. Stroy. In those years, I was often in Riga because my daughter had small children and she was studying at the medical academy, so I had to help. That's why I sometimes had the opportunity to attend their meetings. It was not bad for a start, although it's always difficult for beginners. The society had about 300 members. That's a lot for a beginning, but with such a number, people of all stripes crowded in, many “former” ones who sowed discord. Ukrainians considered it an honor to belong to this society. My daughter Oksana was also a member.

I remember a meeting somewhere in February 1990. My daughter said that the “Dnipro” society was being accepted as a member of the Society of the Ukrainian Language. Someone from Kyiv was supposed to arrive, I think Yevhen Pronyuk. My daughter and I went—and to our great joy, we met the Badzyo couple there. We knew Mrs. Svitlana Kyrychenko well, and Mr. Yurko Badzyo only through letters, because I often wrote to them in Yakutia. How pleased both the chairman, Mr. Stroy, and the members of the “Dnipro” society were that they would have the right to belong to the Society of the Ukrainian Language! Mr. Yurko presented them with the certificate, and gave a very modest speech.

They also gave me the floor, because they already knew me a little. I said that they should not only rejoice in this certificate, but also cherish the one who presented it to them. And I briefly told them about the Badzyos. I said about Mr. Yurko what I thought. Because I counted him among those who not only did not kneel before the KGB agents, but did not even bend a finger. We know that in 1987-88, the Bolsheviks saw that during “perestroika,” when the world was making noise, it was not advantageous for them to keep political prisoners, so they made their “maneuver.” You know, to keep the wolf fed and the goat safe. They released those who wrote an application. Not a repentance, but just an application, even with such content as: “I ask to be released due to poor health.” Myroslav Marynovych signed one—and repents to this day. Because then he did not yet understand this trick. Many political prisoners wrote such or similar applications. We know what prison means. One wanted freedom, there is no betrayal in that. But the KGB agents had a trump card in their hands: they brought those unbreakable ones to their knees... They even came to my husband's work, summoned him to boast: “Your people are also asking for forgiveness. Even Striltsiv asked—and he is already free.” My husband said, “That’s not true.” Because we knew Vasyl Striltsiv as an unbreakable patriot. So how painful it was when we heard from Striltsiv himself that it was true. Although I emphasize once again that it was not any kind of betrayal, but an application—“due to health reasons.”

They approached Mykhailo Horyn with such a proposal—he rejected it. Badzyo did not go for it either, although he was dying in that Yakutia. Levko Lukyanenko did not give in.

Why do I emphasize this—because we, our family, valued honor more than life itself.

Our “privileges”

Now it is so easy to hear from the surrounding environment: “Those political prisoners get such privileges, big deal, they sat for 10 years”...

And the privileges are the same as for pensioners. Travel on transport—it’s only on the electric train that you ride for free. By bus in the Lviv region—that’s still possible, but not in the Frankivsk region. I often traveled from Dolyna to Kalush because I have sisters there. When I show my political prisoner ID at the ticket office, the cashier looks at you so contemptuously and says, “Is there anything else you wanted? Look at her, she wants to ride for free on a comfortable bus!” These words cut worse than a sharp knife. Why in our own State have we become beggars, why can any snot-nosed kid humiliate you? We were ready to give our lives, and we did give them for the freedom of Ukraine. We gave it selflessly, not expecting praise or medals. But now that we have lived to see this supposed freedom, we do not want to receive spit from all sorts of filth. And who will ever understand us?

This year, in the second round of elections, Mr. Oleksander Yemets was a candidate for deputy in Lviv. Once he gave an interview and talked about how he defended the rights of the Tatars, about their return to their ethnic land. The journalist asked, “And how do you think, who should be responsible for the return of former political prisoners and exiles from Siberia to Ukraine?” Yemets replied, “Oh, that will also happen someday, in 5 or 10 years. The action for the return of the Tatars began a long time ago and we are continuing it, but the issue of returning political prisoners has not yet been raised by anyone, it is very complicated.”

But Yemets didn’t think that in 5 or 10 years, we will no longer be alive and there will be no need to pass any laws. And now our friends write to us, or come on vacation, and they beg us: help us. But who listens to us?

There is a friend of mine in Kolomyia. We built Magadan together. We were both “masons.” She returned with her husband (the husband is from the Rivne region), Stepan Osypchuk, to her village of Dzhurkiv back then, in 1957, after the “Khrushchev thaw.” She lived there for 8 months. One day they were summoned to the village council with their passports. When they gave their passports to the head of the village council, he deregistered them, and the district policeman told them to get out of the village within three days, otherwise they would be prosecuted. The times were such that one could expect anything. They left for Vorkuta, because they had friends there among the political prisoners.

Now, almost 50 years later, there is nothing left in the village. They are destroyed: Anna Andriychuk, born in 1923, can barely move her feet, and her husband Stepan has a hundred illnesses: asthma, heart problems... They have a sister in Kolomyia. They come there and beg for one little room so they can die on the land for which they gave all their health. After death, they will leave that little room to the state. They have knocked on all the doors of the district executive committee, the regional executive committee, and all the societies—“Memorial,” the Society of the Ukrainian Language... Everyone promises to help, but in the end, they just throw up their hands.

True, they did give this Osypchuk family an apartment in Kolomyia, at 17 Bandera Street. But before they gave it, they squeezed all the life out of this same Osypchuk. They sent him to Moscow for citizenship, then for something else, and when he finally achieved his goal, he lived in that room for a whole three weeks and gave his soul to God.

Meanwhile, “our” communists are living lavishly in four-room apartments or in multi-story mansions—but quietly, shhh... God forbid you offend them, they are our minorities, they don't know how to suffer. And us—what about us? We’re used to it...

Oh, oh, what have we come to! The song always comes to mind: “Did you boys sleep, or did you play cards, that you so easily gave Ukraine away to the enemies?” And the one call is: “Make way for the young!” But the old, hardened ones—maybe they could have held on to our unfortunate Ukraine?

I am writing this at my daughter's in Riga. Today I heard on the television news: “The power of the communists has been legalized in Ukraine.” Nothing could be worse to hear...

CHAPTER IV

(15.III.1996)

Introduction

Almost a year and a half has passed, and I still can't bring myself to pick up a pen to finish my memoirs. And I keep asking myself: who needs this? Especially now, when the Moscow Duma has proclaimed the restoration of the USSR. And there are still many obstacles that prevent me from writing.

My daughter Oksana, who lives in Riga, has two children. She would like them to study in Ukrainian, but there is no such opportunity there. The boy, Danylko, is 6.5 years old. So I brought the children to Lviv. We put the boy in the first grade here. He learned to read and write well, but when he finished first grade, he had to return to Riga because I fell ill and underwent a not-very-successful operation, which still torments me. Oksana enrolled her son this year in a Latvian school, again in the 1st grade.

Oksana cannot return here for economic reasons that have developed here, and because of finding a job. There are cutbacks everywhere, and how can one sit idly by? The children need to be fed. We took measures to enroll the children in schools somewhere abroad, but they have their own laws and callous souls—money!

So it happened that now I have other grandchildren with me—my son Vasyl’s, of the same age, 7.5 and 5 years old. Petrus goes to school in Lviv. And to write something, one needs both time and health. So I don't know what will come of my writing. On top of that, I am already 71 years old. So I ask for your forgiveness in advance.

I have forgotten so much, and in addition, my illness is progressing: instead of remembering what was, I think about what hurts.

A Trip to Canada

It was February 1988. A relative from Canada, from Toronto, sent me an invitation. I took it to the passport office. They didn't accept it because the last name was spelled incorrectly. (I still go by my maiden name on my passport, because when we got married in Magadan, we didn't have passports yet. And the name wasn't changed on the power of attorney). So, instead of Petrash, it was written as Petrosh. I notified my relative in Canada. A month later, I received an invitation with the correctly spelled last name. I took it again to the Dolyna passport office. The chief, Karpova, said that a biography was needed. I said I had one ready and gave it to her. She said that such a biography was not acceptable to her because it said nothing about my children and husband. She gave me 4 clean sheets of paper and said, “Go to the reception area and write.”

I was sure they wouldn't let me go anywhere. Because this wasn't the first invitation. And I wrote the whole truth. I thought, at least I’ll spit in their face. I wrote that I had been convicted, and my husband for 10 years. And in 1979, my husband and son Vasyl were convicted again as members of the Helsinki Group. How they provoked my son's expulsion from the university, and then in 1980, they expelled my other son, Volodymyr, from the university, and how he was also convicted, and how they terrorized me for those 6 years with summons to the KGB and searches.

When I submitted these sheets (there were quite a few people, as they were processing departures to Poland), she read them—and sweat poured down her face. Then she asked me, “And you think you're going to travel with such a biography? You were in prison!” I said, “I want to go, and the fact that we were in prison, well, now maybe you will be.” And I laughed. She said, “Go.” I left.

Soon, that is, at the beginning of April, I went to Riga to my daughter's, because she had given birth. I stayed in Riga for April and May, and when I returned, I had a summons to appear at the OVIR. I went—and to my great surprise, they handed me a foreign passport. At first, the secretary said that I should wait, that the chief wanted to talk to me. But an hour later, she said, “Alright, go.” It means they had changed their minds.

I hadn't expected such a surprise and quickly began to prepare for the journey. Where to start? With getting money for the ticket. I went to friends, to Mr. Zenoviy Krasivskyi, and said, “Mr. Zenko, I need 1000 rubles for a ticket to Canada. If you have such money, not your own, but public funds, could you give it to me against a receipt? When I return—I’ll give the money back. And if I perish in a disaster or something, so that you don't have to ask my husband, because he won't give it back.” Mr. Zenko said, and I believed him, that no one from anywhere gives him a single kopeck. He advised me to turn to Bishop Vasylyk. I went with the same proposal. And the bishop said, “Sichkova, we live on what we get from baptizing someone or performing a marriage, and that's a pittance.” And so it was, because at that time, priests were hunted more than laymen.

I scraped together the money from my relatives. And on July 1, 1988, I was in Toronto. I traveled from Montreal by car (my relatives sent it). We were entering the city—11 o'clock at night. It was Canada Day. The city seemed like paradise. Colorful lights, fireworks—it took my breath away.

My eldest sister, Rozalia, had left for Canada back in 1928, married there, and lived until 1983. I didn't get to see her alive. The invitation was given by the Ukrainian community, and my sister's grandson, Ivan Seychuk, was listed on it. My sister's son-in-law, also Ivan Seychuk (my sister's daughter had passed away). I was brought to Toronto to my fellow villager, my sister’s friend Oli, Maria Lysak by birth, and now Mr. and Mrs. Kolodiy, Maria and Mykhailo. My sister’s son-in-law was also there to meet me, it's true.

They received me very warmly. It was a Monday. Mrs. Kolodiy, also a Ukrainian activist, spoke with Mrs. Maria Shkambara and told me that on Thursday, the Ukrainian community was inviting me to a meeting at the Ukrainian Club on Christie Street. I felt embarrassed, because although I was politicized and knowledgeable about all the political events in Ukraine, as fate had it that I constantly communicated with Ukrainian dissidents or persecuted intellectuals, I had never spoken anywhere before a proper audience. The conscious Ukrainians of the diaspora knew me because a brochure of our “Initiative Group” had been published there, and my signature was on many statements.

Willy-nilly, I went. The audience greeted me warmly. At that time, I was like the first swallow, who bravely spoke the truth about the injustices the Ukrainian people suffered from the communist government and the KGB.

They asked many questions, all of which I believe I answered. It was clear that they liked the meeting with me, because after that I had many invitations to cities in Canada, and I was in the USA twice. And after the first meeting, as soon as I got to the Kolodiys’, Mrs. Nina Strokata-Karavanska called me from Washington and congratulated me. I asked, “On what?” She said, “On your speech.” And again, it was pleasant that people received me so sincerely.

Published:

The Three Uprisings of the Sichkos. In 2 vols. Vol. 1: Memoirs of Stefania Petrash-Sichko. Documents / Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group; Editor-compiler V.V. Ovsienko; Artist-designer O. Ageev. – Kharkiv: Folio, 2004. – pp. 19 – 136.