VASYLYK, PAVLO YAKYMOVYCH

Memoirs of the Bishop-Ordinary of the Kolomyia-Chernivtsi Eparchy, His Grace PAVLO VASYLYK.

Recorded by Yu. M., 1991–1999.

Scanned, proofread, and posted on the KHPG website on the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, February 15, 2008, by V. Ovsiienko.

Published in: The Christian Herald. Journal of the Kolomyia-Chernivtsi Eparchy of the UGCC. May 1999, issue 7 (67), special edition. 24 pp.

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The life of the unwavering Warrior of Christ, the Most Reverend Bishop, His Grace Pavlo Vasylyk, is an example of service to our Church and Ukraine. We are recording the memoirs of his thorny path through life. We want to publish a book.

The work on these memoirs is not yet finished. We are publishing them as they are, not only to commemorate the Bishop’s Jubilee, but also to receive help from our Faithful.

Among you, Dear Brothers and Sisters, are those who shared prison bread with the Bishop and suffered with him in the Stalinist and Khrushchev-era concentration camps, who were present at his underground services, who keep the letters and photographs he wrote from behind the barbed wire.

We kindly ask you to bring us these rare and important documents. We will return them after copying. They will be used in the book.

We ask for clarifications and additions.

We hope for your understanding and support.

The Publishers.

1.

The closer a man gets to his earthly end, the more often he recalls the time and place where he came into God’s world. With great joy, he revisits the paths of his childhood.

I, too, was there, where I took my first steps. But I did not feel joy from my visit, but great sorrow. For the paths of my childhood have become overgrown. Not just with grass and weeds, but with trees and bushes. A forest now murmurs on the site of my village. Although the trees grow thickest where the church and cemetery stood, a few tilted crosses still remain here and there in the old graveyard. And one cross, with an iron Crucifixion, showed me where my school had been.

I recognized that cross. I remember it for as long as I can remember myself. It stood in front of the school, and it stands on that spot still, only it’s no longer planted in the ground but propped against a tree, for it has rotted through.

That this was the same cross, and that the school had been there, was confirmed by a man from our village who had hidden from the Poles when we were being deported and had remained to live here. He told us that immediately after our departure, the Poles set the village on fire. They did not dare to burn the church. Several years later, they dismantled it, using the wood for their own needs.

They destroyed the village and planted a forest to erase its memory. But the heart preserves the memory, though it bleeds. It was my heart's pain, not that of my hands or face, that I felt as I pushed my way through nettles and thorns to my father’s doorstep. The foundation of our house had not yet sunk into the green vortex.

Among the trees, I recognized our apple trees and the pear tree that I loved so much. It already stood withered, choked by thistles.

The last time I was in my village was five years ago. At that time, our fellow villagers who had managed to remain on their native land gathered on the wasteland from the surrounding villages. I celebrated the Divine Liturgy on the ruins so dear to us. We erected a strong oaken cross near the church.

I do not preserve my native village in my memory as I saw it at our last meeting. It was picturesque. The fields were on the hills, and the village nestled in a small valley, as if in God’s palm. It was surrounded by forests, and what once roamed in those woods is evident from their names. One of our forests was called Turnytsia. I did not find any aurochs there, of course, but when we went there for raspberries, we could startle a hare or a fox. From behind the distant trees, handsome stags with large, magnificent antlers would gaze at us and roar so loudly it was frightening to hear. In the thicket, one could encounter a wild boar or even a bear.

There were forests around our village. Forests, pinewoods. Glorious pinewoods. That is why the village was called Boryslavka. Twenty-four kilometers from Przemyśl, on the ethnographic border between the Boykos and Lemkos. I don’t even know for sure which I am: a Boyko or a Lemko. When someone asks, I say: if I need to be a Lemko, I am a Lemko; if I need to be a Boyko, I am a Boyko. But I always want to be a Ukrainian.

It seems to me that it was not only my upbringing at home, or certain teachers at school who, at the risk of losing their positions received from the hands of the Polish chauvinistic administration, told us who we were, nor was it just the songs of the youth on warm summer evenings, but also the small stream that flowed not far from our house that made me a Ukrainian.

In good weather, you had to listen carefully to hear the silvery chime of its crystal-clear ripples over the rainbow-colored stone bed. This wondrous music was heard not only by us children, but also by the fish that swam in the stream, lazily wagging their tails. And even pstruh (trout) would swim to us from the mountains, for Boryslavka is a submontane village.

Our stream played a different instrument when there were rains and downpours. Then it would swell, turn black with rage, and roar like the Dnipro. But even then, we were not afraid of it. The banks were high, and our grumbler could not bring misfortune to the village.

It was the Poles who brought misfortune to Boryslavka.

It is natural that a man departs, having first accompanied his relatives on their final journey. In departing, he also leaves behind the footprints of his childhood.

The footprints of my childhood have been destroyed. This pains me greatly, which is why I began my memoirs not as everyone does, not with a story about my relatives. But now that I have poured out my pain and thus soothed it a little, I will continue my story in the usual order.

So, I was born on August 8, 1926, in the village of Boryslavka, which belonged to the Przemyśl county of the Lviv voivodeship. I am the son and grandson of Sich Riflemen, for both my father and my grandfather were in the USS. My grandfather was even wounded at the front, but my father, thank God, came back whole.

My father’s name was Yakym, son of Mykhailo. A hardworking, respected farmer, he was not very talkative by nature. He did not like to talk about himself, so I know very little about his time as a rifleman. I only know that he fought in Volhynia. Sometimes he would mention the town of Sarny.

My father was not only a good farmer, but also skilled in carpentry. He had the soul of an artist from God—he played the violin and the accordion well. He was self-taught. His life turned out in such a way that he could not develop his abilities with proper training, but they were very useful to him in his interactions with people, and most of all, in raising his children.

My mother was Ksenia, née Kulhavets. No family trees were kept on either my father’s or my mother’s side, but a legend has been preserved that my mother came from a Cossack family. They say that in 1775, someone from the Zaporozhian Sich, which had been dispersed by Catherine, limped all the way to our lands and put down roots. Perhaps it is just a legend, but my mother had a passion unlike that of our women and girls: she loved to ride horses. Sidesaddle.

My mother also differed from others in that she was perhaps the best gardener in the village. Large red tomatoes, which were still very uncommon, ripened in our garden. Both they and new varieties of vegetables spread throughout the village from our house. To this day, it seems to me that no one grows beans, potatoes, beets, carrots, or cabbage as beautifully as my mother once did.

And then there were the flowers. My mother took great care of them. There were flowers in the garden, in front of the house. The cattle shed, the house, and the barn were under shingle roofs, the haystack covered with straw; a wattle fence and—flowers, flowers, flowers... Lord, how could a hand be raised against such beauty! To turn an earthly fairytale into a wasteland!

The garden was under my mother’s care, the orchard and the field under my father’s. Father grafted pear and apple trees. We even had plum trees growing on the boundary strip in the field. On those Hungarian plum trees, we children learned to count; there were over a hundred of them.

We had about ten hectares of land. We sowed spring and winter grain. There was enough for ourselves and for sale. There were always two cows and two calves in the cattle shed. We kept chickens, geese, and pigs. There was enough to feed the children.

And there were eleven of us, my father and mother’s children. Nine are still alive today.

I wanted to write about each one separately. But the storms of life that ravaged our twentieth century have added so many facts (mostly unhappy ones) to our biographies, to each of us of the older generation, that to describe everything would fill a book for each person. I encourage everyone to write such books. They will be the best textbooks on our history for future generations.

About my family, I will say only one thing. None of Ksenia and Yakym Vasylyk’s children went down the wrong path. Not one of them compromised their soul to get a cozier spot in life; not one of them joined that misanthropic party, even though, having a higher education, they were thereby ruining their careers. What all the Vasylyks had enough of on their life’s journey was thorns. I was the only one who became a servant of the Lord.

My father, a Sich Rifleman, made sure that we grew up nationally conscious. As for religious upbringing, it was inseparable from the national. It was a single whole, for our national traditions had long since merged with the spiritual, the Christian.

We all went to church. To festive services—from the earliest age. When we could not yet walk, we were in the arms of our father, mother, or one of our older brothers and sisters. Each of us, upon learning to read, received a little prayer book as a gift. We went to church with our prayer books. In church, we prayed, sang, and listened attentively to the sermons.

At home, besides the constantly subscribed “Dzvinochok” and the little books by Andriy Tchaikovsky, we also had religious booklets. We regularly received “The Missionary.” It and “The Lives of the Saints” were read to us at home. My father and mother, although very busy with us and the farm, found time to serve the church. Father was in the church Brotherhood, and mother in the Apostleship of Prayer.

Every year in August, when the Assumption of the Mother of God was celebrated according to the Roman Catholic calendar, we would all walk to Kalwaria. It was seven kilometers from us. The Ukrainians had their own indulgence, their own Way of the Cross, and a beautiful church there. The Poles later razed that church to the ground...

I started school in 1933. At that time, there was a famine in Greater Ukraine. In the village, at the “Prosvita” reading room, and in the church, there was much talk about that famine. “The Missionary” had photographs of children starved to skeletons. The village sent food to the starving, but the Soviets did not let it cross the Zbruch River.

I remember my teachers only by their last name: Woźni, a married couple. They were staunch Ukrainians. The Poles persecuted such people, but they bravely did their work—they raised us to be Ukrainian patriots.

We were much more obedient then than children are today, and so we benefited greatly from our studies. During breaks and after school, we played Cossacks and Sich Riflemen. Everyone was armed. We carved rifles and sabers from wood, and popguns from elderberry branches. And our bows could actually be shot. The arrows had metal tips.

I also “fought” with the others, but I was more eager to make myself a cassock from some piece of clothing and an epitrachelion from a towel, and imitate our parish priest. Once we even buried a pigeon that a cat had killed, with singing and sermons.

But those were still the unconscious games of childhood.

I felt that I wanted to be a priest when I was in the third grade. It happened after an incident that deeply upset me. At that time, the parish priest and our catechist was a young priest, Fr. Pavlo Pavlish, because when I was at the beginning of the second grade, our Fr. Mykola Shchepansky, who had baptized me, was transferred to another place by His Grace, Bishop Yosafat Kotsylovsky.

One Sunday, Father Pavlo stood in the Royal Doors and said:

“People, tell your children to watch the cattle when they drive them to and from the pasture. Because they are not watching them, and your cows are trampling my crops and causing me damage.”

I knew what had happened. A person’s cow had caused damage, but not through the negligence of the shepherds, but because of the heat. The heat, the swelter, the cows ran off. Who could catch them... And since the church field was not fenced, how were the shepherds to blame?

And even if they were to blame, could such things be said in church? I thought to myself that I would never say such a thing in church. And I would ask God to help me become a priest. And I would not need a church field. I would give it away to the poor.

I finished four grades in my home village. Then I went for two years to the neighboring town of Rybotychi. In our Boryslavka, there were only Ukrainians, but there were many Poles there. They had their own church.

We often fought with the Poles at school. The Polish teachers tried to Polonize us, but we resisted. We had tremendous support from our catechist, Fr. Haidukevych.

After the sixth grade, my father took me to the gymnasium in Przemyśl. The classes in Rybotychi were at the gymnasium level, so in Przemyśl, after the corresponding exams, I was admitted directly to the third grade.

From Przemyśl to Boryslavka, it was 24 kilometers by road, and 14 through the mountains. My family visited me rarely. I missed Boryslavka very much. In the city, there were beautiful churches and a Theological Seminary, where I hoped, with God’s help, to realize my dreams.

I was an unusual gymnasium student. Mischief, games, and excessive jokes were not for me. I read a lot. Not only what was required by the gymnasium curriculum, but also spiritual literature. Here I had greater access to books. I often went to church, to confession, and to Holy Communion.

I lived like an ascetic. I fasted strictly. I mortified myself, flagellated myself. In a youthful, fanatical fervor, I would let my own blood. To this day, I have scars in the shape of a cross on my wrist. I made my body suffer, tempered my soul.

The Przemyśl Cathedral became like a second home to me. And when we, the gymnasium students, marched in formation to our cathedral every Sunday and on holidays for the “nine o’clock,” for the service celebrated by His Grace Bishop Hryhoriy Lakota or other canons, it seemed to me that we were going to my home.

But the first Soviets came, and we could no longer march to church in formation. The first time, they did not yet dare to close it, and no one could forbid me from going to it as often as I wanted.

The first Soviets did their harm secretly. In some village, they might organize a dance in a place where the loud music would interfere with the church service. Our priests would disappear from their parishes to destinations unknown. And the parish priest of the village of Makova was found dead, with his arms twisted and his legs broken...

The only good thing about those first Soviets was that they soon left.

2.

The Germans came. Although they did not interfere in church affairs, life became much harder. A famine began because a terrible hailstorm fell in our area. It destroyed everything. The field looked as if someone had plowed it over. As accustomed as I was to hardship from my fasts, I too suffered from hunger. The food sent to me from Boryslavka then was unusual: flatbreads made with thistle, lamb’s quarters, and nettle. It was all mixed with the dough. The flatbreads only looked filling...

Because of the famine, I could not move to Jarosław, where our gymnasium was being transferred. I was sad to part with my fellow gymnasium students, but it would have been even harder to leave the Przemyśl Cathedral.

I did nothing for show, but my zeal was noticed. Father Hrynyk, a canon of the bishop’s chapter, paid a lot of attention to me. Seeing me every morning at the Divine Liturgy, and whenever possible at other times of the day, the priest understood without any explanation from me that I wanted to become a priest. But he still asked.

And there was an incident. A simple woman, very devout but a holy fool, attended the Apostleship of Prayer. She even went barefoot in winter. Perhaps she didn’t even feel the cold.

One day, the three of us met in the cathedral’s narthex—Father Volodymyr Savka (or Savko?), the leader of the Apostleship of Prayer, that woman, and I. The priest asks her:

“Madam, tell me, what will become of this boy?”

“Father, why are you asking me such a thing? What can I say?” the woman stammered. The priest had asked jokingly, but she took it seriously. She says to me:

“Please cross yourself!”

Now it was my turn to be embarrassed. But I crossed myself.

“This boy will become a priest!” she proclaimed solemnly.

The priest-leader took her words seriously. I, for my part, was very pleased with this prophecy. I told Father Hrynyk about it. After that, the priest began to take even greater care of me. I started to eat from their kitchen.

At first, I lived in Przemyśl on Słowackiego Street with a Polish woman, then with a gymnasium professor of German, whom I helped around the house and in the garden. Towards the end of the war, they took me in at the chapter house, to live with the mitred priest, Father Vasyl Penylo. He was a professor at the seminary. And I had been studying there privately ever since I was in Przemyśl.

When Germany fell, the gymnasium returned to Przemyśl, and I continued my studies. The Soviets returned and got back to their old ways. In the spring of ‘45, they arrested our bishop. The Poles began to deport the Ukrainians. In Przemyśl, it was dangerous for us to even go out into the street.

In September, they let us go home to help dig up the potatoes. There was trouble in Boryslavka too. People were working in the fields and gardens, but they were constantly on the lookout for whether the deportations were coming. The surrounding villages were already being cleared out.

Misfortune came to Boryslavka as well. The army burst into the village. “Departure! Departure!” Crying, shouting, cursing. Within two hours, a long, sad procession left the village. On the carts were small children, flour, rusks, clothing, bedding. People walked alongside the carts. Tied behind the carts were the cows. It was a good thing that rumors of the deportation had been circulating for a long time, and people had been able to sell a lot. But much was left behind. The most important things: our native walls, our native church, our native graves—we could not take...

They did, however, take the icons and church items from the church. But our road of exile was our Way of the Cross. Our Savior, who was with us in the fourteen images of the Stations of the Cross, eased it for us. People took them apart and carried them carefully hidden, like precious treasures. We did not leave behind any liturgical, cantor’s, or other church books (the metric book is now kept in the Ternopil archive), nor any banners or chasubles. But the banners and chasubles were stored in people’s chests. Dampness and time destroyed them. They all rotted and became unusable.

On our cart, we carried the monstrance—a church vessel where the Most Holy Mysteries are kept (it was later dismantled and its parts stored in different places), the liturgical chalice (it was already over a hundred years old at that time, with the inscription “Dvulit”—the surname of our fellow villager who bought it for the church) and the Holy Gospel. These items are still in my possession, even though the Gospel was in the hands of the KGB.

...Our sorrowful, almost funereal procession, from which came the neighing of horses, the mooing of cows, and the cries of women and children, reached Nizhynkovychi—14 kilometers from our Boryslavka. In Nizhynkovychi, we dismantled the carts and loaded them, along with the horses and cattle, onto a train. We also boarded the same kind of wagons as the cattle. The train set off.

We traveled to the Ternopil region for almost two months. It’s not even three hundred kilometers! The train would stop for long periods in sidings. We ate from our own supplies. We couldn’t cook anything. It was good that at every station we could get “kipyatok” (boiling water). We were not accompanied by either police or military, but we couldn't escape because we had no documents, and our papers indicated our destination: the village of Dzhuryn in the Chortkiv district of the Ternopil region.

We arrived there in November. At the station, we received an assignment to the Buchach district, to the village of Barysh.

In Barysh, they settled us in the houses where Poles had previously lived. They were semi-ruins. In ours, the stove had collapsed, the windows and doors were broken. Not every house even had a cattle shed.

It was very difficult at the beginning. As soon as we arrived, we went to the fields to finish harvesting the corn that had been left without owners. We had to feed the horses and the cow with something. We still had our own flour at first. We had a little money, because we had sold some things in Boryslavka before the deportation—we bought potatoes. A Cossack is not without his fortune, and God is not without His mercy. Somehow, we survived the winter. In the spring, they gave us land—not as much as at home, but enough. They gave us seeds. The people started spring planting. We struggled through one more summer, and by the next spring, we had our own.

The local people—those who were nationally conscious—helped us get back on our feet. The ignorant people treated us with contempt, as if we had left our homelands of our own free will.

Half of Boryslavka was in Barysh. The other half was in the Rudky district. People wrote to each other, visited each other. But it was bitter, because for many generations they were used to living together.

Our people were settling in to their new places. In Barysh, I could not fulfill my calling. After the Epiphany, I went to Lviv. My aunt lived there. They registered me at her place, at 19/20 Khmelnytskoho Street.

I needed a document of education, so I immediately went to school, to the tenth grade. The principal was one of our own. I told him I wanted to be a priest, and the principal was sympathetic to me. The school was on Kalinina Street, now Zamarstynivska. After graduating, I entered the paramedic school on Kamenarska Street. I had loved medicine since childhood. I thought this passion of mine would be useful to people, because I knew how much our villages lacked medical care. I wanted to heal not only the soul, but also the body.

The year 1946 is a sad one in the history of our Church. Since the previous year, after the arrest of all our bishops and many priests, the persecution against Her was already overt. It reached its peak on March 8–9, 1946, when that pseudo-synod was convened in Lviv. Lviv wept then. After the “synod,” we stopped going to St. George’s Cathedral—it was in that church that the gathering had taken place.

I knew that Father Havryil Kostelnyk attended the Preobrazhenka (the Church of the Transfiguration of the Lord, in the city center, near the Zankovetska Theater). I went there specifically to meet him. As he was walking from a side altar to the sacristy with the chalice in his hands, I crossed his path:

“What have you done? How did you dare to betray the Church like that?!”

The poor man looked at me with sad eyes, but said nothing. He went his way, and I went mine.

I noticed two civilians watching me intently. I realized they were NKVD agents. But they didn’t stop me. I don’t know if they heard what I said to the priest.

The Muscovites did not expect to destroy our Church officially so quickly and easily. After all, that “synod” was not unexpected; its “initiative group” had been working for a whole year. The Muscovites calmly arrested our priests and bishops—if only there had been some resistance, some protest. At that time, the Muscovites were still a little afraid of the world. The world might have stood up for us, but we were silent as fish...

There was not a single Greek Catholic church left in Lviv. Of two evils, I chose the lesser. I could not go to a Moscow Orthodox church controlled by the Bolsheviks. I went, like many of our Greek Catholics, to a Polish church, to the cathedral.

I went to Mass every day, and frequently went to confession and received Communion. My spiritual directors were Father Niszczomski, and later—Father Krynicki. But I didn’t speak Polish with them, even though I can. They understood Ukrainian and answered me in Polish.

It was very bitter, after we had suffered so much from the Poles, to go to their church. And the Poles—are always Poles. Even the priests. They showed no sympathy for our plight, but set about Polonizing us. They started with our children. We complained. It reached Rome, but Rome changed nothing. We stopped going to the Polish church and started gathering in private homes. Our priests, who had lost their official work but had not signed up for that Muscovite Orthodoxy, celebrated services underground. Thus our Church went into the catacombs.

There was no question of any legal theological studies then. They could, of course, have sent me somewhere to Odesa or Muscovy to study to be a “batyushka” (Russian priest), but I was faithful to the faith of my fathers.

The tragic events of 1946 only strengthened my desire to become a priest. Back in Przemyśl, I had collected a large spiritual library, and I brought it with me, along with my notes from the seminary (I still have them). I studied on my own.

In those years, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army was still strong. I had an interesting meeting with several of its leaders.

I found out that in Yakubova Volia, not far from Drohobych, Father Pavlo Pavlish was the parish priest. He had baptized me and was my catechist until the second grade, then he left the village. I studied in Przemyśl with his children, who were my age. I went to visit the priest.

The priest had remained in the church because he had signed on to Orthodoxy. He told me it was on the orders of the insurgents, whom he was helping. This was evidently true, because in 1965 the priest left Orthodoxy. He was Orthodox only on paper. Before God and his own conscience, he was a Greek Catholic priest until his death. He died at the age of 92.

At that time in Yakubova Volia, the priest introduced me to some partisan commanders. From them, I learned that they were publishing a partisan newspaper-bulletin. Later, we met in the forest outside the village, and I gave my patriotic poems for the bulletin. I don’t remember them anymore. I know that one was called “Forward.”

Our paramedic school also had connections with the underground. I had many patriotic comrades, and they helped me a lot. The need for their help was great.

About a month after my arrival in Lviv, my father visited me. He brought a long list of medicines and prescriptions. Those prescriptions had the stamps and signatures of the doctor from the hospital in Barysh. But my father didn't hide from me that the medicines were for the partisans. Back in Boryslavka, my father had been a stanychnyi (organizer of food, medicinal herbs, and dressing materials collection) in the UPA. In Barysh, he immediately took up the cause again. The Sich Rifleman continued to serve Ukraine.

Father would bring lists of medicines and prescriptions, and my trusted friends from my school and I would run around Lviv’s pharmacies and buy it all up in small quantities. We couldn't buy everything in one pharmacy, as that would be suspicious.

Once a month, my father would come with a fellow villager (also from Boryslavka). They would return from my place with full suitcases.

I kept everything I bought at my apartment. So as not to endanger my aunt, I moved from her place to 28 Kalinina Street. I stayed with a Polish woman, an elderly lady. I had a room with her. I felt safe. For a time...

We lived on an upper floor. One day, an old grandmother from downstairs came to us and said that her tenant wanted to talk to me. I agreed. And she came. She looked to be 25 or 26 years old. She said her name was Miss Nadia, from the Lonchyn priestly family, and that she had been imprisoned at Lontskoho Street for 9 months. They had taken her for collaborating with the Banderites, but found no proof and released her. Nadia said she could put me in touch with the insurgents.

I refused. Nadia seemed very suspicious to me.

3.

Before that, only our countryman had come for medicine, without my father. This time, besides the medicines, I bought paper and ribbons for typewriters for Barysh (I had sent the typewriters earlier). On the way back, the courier was detained by the NKVD. I don't know what happened, but they released him with everything. He didn't confess to my father...

After this incident, that Nadia started visiting frequently. I tried to enter and leave my lodgings unnoticed. I traveled just as secretively to Barysh for the Christmas holidays in 1947.

The journey was difficult. It wasn't always possible to squeeze onto a train back then. I often rode on the roof or stood on one leg, holding onto the entrance handle. But somehow I made it to Buchach. From Buchach to Barysh is 30 kilometers. There was no way to get there further. I went on foot...

We were sitting at the Christmas Eve table when there was a knock at the door. We open it—and there on the threshold is... Nadia!

I was very surprised. My parents were surprised too. They knew I wasn't going to get married, that I wanted to become a priest. And here was Nadia! As if she were my fiancée!

I only asked:

“How did you get here? Your first time in the village, and you didn't know the way?”

“I asked people.”

She was invited to supper. I kept asking:

“Miss Nadia, why did you come, why did you come?”

She wouldn't answer. She dodged the questions. The carolers arrived.

They took Nadia caroling with them. In one house, they found the district leader Hrom with some insurgents. Nadia said she was a priest’s daughter, and they treated her as one of their own...

When Nadia went caroling, I told my relatives that both Nadia and her arrival seemed suspicious to me.

When I returned to Lviv, I began to inquire cautiously about Nadia. It was confirmed that she was indeed the daughter of a priest and that she had been in prison.

Everything became clear in the first weeks of Lent. Her friend ran up to me and handed me a crumpled piece of paper. On it was Nadia’s denunciation of me and others to the NKVD. Nadia had thrown the note into the stove when her friend unexpectedly entered the room, but the friend pulled it out.

Everything was clear. I was not expecting anything good.

On April 1, 1947, I went to send a telegram that I would be coming to Barysh for Easter. The post office was on the same Kalinina Street, around number 30. I hadn't even finished writing on the form when four men approached me. They showed their credentials:

“You’re under arrest! Come with us!”

They led me out into the street. They walked me. Two behind, two in front. In plain clothes, in trench coats. Hands in their pockets. In their hands, obviously, were revolvers.

They took me all the way to Horkoho Street, to the NKVD headquarters. On the second floor, they handed me over to an investigator. Interrogation started immediately. With insults, curses, with vile Russian swear words. “Last name! First name! Patronymic!...” They asked about my grandfathers, grandmothers. “Connection to the gang: who, when recruited...”

I didn't hide that I had bought medicine, but I said that I had bought it for the hospital, which I knew from the stamps on the prescriptions. That was strong evidence. I didn't know that they already knew everything...

Later I found out that about a week later, on Easter itself, they arrested my father and that other man.

It's terrifying to recall those interrogations. They beat me. With fists—in the back, in the head, in the stomach. On the neck—with a “club.” They put me “to the wall”: facing the wall with my hands up. I stood like that for hours. When my hands dropped, they beat me. There was nothing human in them. It was as if a person had fallen into the hands of the devil. They had not the slightest mercy, not the slightest. For about a week at the beginning, I was in solitary confinement. Then they threw me into the basement, into a common cell.

So many people. Lying side by side on the concrete floor. Not everyone had something to lie on. A small window, about twenty centimeters, and that with a basket-like “muzzle,” only a sliver of open sky shone from above. They didn't take us to the bathhouse, didn't give us clean linen. They fed us starvation rations—salty and rusty herring, a piece of wet bread, a soup of half-rotten potatoes and beets... And the bedbugs ate us. But very soon they had nothing left to eat on us. There was no peace in the cell day or night. They took people for interrogation at night too. They would return with fresh beatings, groaning.

One of my interrogations was on Easter.

They took me to the investigator. They stood me facing the wall. The investigator was writing something, and my thoughts were on the outside. I remembered the Easter holidays in my native Boryslavka. Suddenly I hear:

“Christ is Risen!”

“He is Risen Indeed!” I answered solemnly.

A blow with a club on my neck, just below my head (they knew where it hurt most) brought me back to reality. I lost consciousness. Later, I could barely make it back to my cell.

Those inhuman beasts mocked the most sacred things.

But even in these inhuman conditions, we tried to be human. We did not forget God. Morning and evening—a common prayer. We prayed separately too. We sang in a low voice—for what is a Ukrainian without a song? Of course, they didn't give us any books or newspapers. So we told each other what we had read. We recounted stories from the Bible, from Holy Scripture, our historical novels. Here, in the cell, were my first attempts at catechization, at preaching.

About a month before the trial, they moved me to an upper floor, to a smaller cell. Among us was our famous partisan Soroka (he was recently reburied near Drohobych). He was a sturdy man of about thirty, well-built physically, and even better—ideologically. A conscious, intelligent, intellectual man. One could feel that he held a high combat position.

Soroka was preparing an escape from the cell. We stood “on lookout,” while he chiseled out the bars with a metal object. We planned to escape on a rainy and stormy night. There wasn't much left to chisel, the two lower crossbars were already free, when someone informed on us. We were all put in punishment cells. There, they kept us only in our underwear; during the day there was nothing even to sit on; once every three days—a glass of water and a hundred grams of bread.

I was kept in the punishment cell for a week. Then I was moved to another cell, but Soroka was no longer there.

Once during the investigation, they arranged a “confrontation” for me. They bring me to the investigator, and there is Stefa Kryvulets, my relative. They had also been deported from Boryslavka, but to the Lviv region, to the Rudky district, the village of Pidhajtsi. I had been there before my arrest, visiting my relatives.

I was very surprised when I saw Stefa. I went straight to her:

“Stefa, what are you doing here? You haven't been anywhere, you're not connected to anyone. Be careful they don't entangle you. You haven't been anywhere! You don't know anything!”

The investigators didn't expect me to behave like that. When they came to their senses, they started beating me. That was probably the worst beating I got.

It was only in the camps that I learned that my warnings helped Stefa get free. They held her for another week and then released her.

The time for the “trial” came. It was in the same prison. They took me to the courtroom. Here I met my father. The man who used to come to Lviv with my father was also here. They didn't conduct any confrontations with them during my investigation, didn't mention them at all, but from the protocols I guessed that my father was also behind bars.

We were seated behind a barrier. The guard didn't let us exchange a single word.

A military tribunal tried us. The trial was very short. The three of us were given 10 years of camps and 5 years of deprivation of rights (in camp jargon, “a hit to the horns”). Article 54-1 a-11—“treason to the motherland.” The partisan article. With this article, the commune dealt with all the soldiers of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army.

After the trial, they transported us to the prison on Lontskoho Street. They drove us in an open truck. It was June. Summer was in full swing. The sky was clear above. It was hard to return to the hell of prison again.

Even before the trial, I knew I wouldn't be released; I only expected a longer sentence. That's why I felt a sense of relief after the trial. I didn't “implicate” anyone, no one suffered because of me, even though I was beaten or tortured in other ways at every interrogation. And it was possible not to endure those beatings and abuse. In this prison, they broke people’s fingers between doors, they hung girls by their hair. Father Yavorsky “confessed” under torture that he had shot a general, although he had never been in the army, had never held any weapon in his hands, and couldn't have even killed a chicken.

Whoever survived those physical, moral, and spiritual tortures and lived—that person experienced the great miracle of God’s grace.

The prison on Lontskoho Street was different only in that we were on an upper floor and on a wooden floor. The bars, the slop bucket, the rules—all the same. The cell was overcrowded, stuffy. We were tormented by thirst, they didn't give us enough water, but they gave us very salty herring.

...The feast of the Most Holy Eucharist was approaching. I was very sad. On that day, when I was free, I would go to confession, to Holy Communion. But here... Yet the Almighty and the Most Pure Mother of God did not leave me without their care even within the prison walls.

What happened on Saturday, the eve of the Feast of the Most Holy Eucharist, I consider a miracle of the Lord.

And this is how it was.

During my sad reflections, footsteps were heard in the corridor, a key grated in the door, the door opened, and a guard pushed a man into the cell. An intelligent face. Exhausted, but with an unbowed expression.

The door locked.

“Glory to Jesus Christ!” the newcomer greeted us.

We understood that he was a priest. He immediately confirmed our guess:

“I am Father Tsehelsky. I have everything needed to celebrate the Divine Liturgy. Whoever wishes to go to confession, please come forward.”

The entire cell went to confession. There were about 50 of us in it.

I confessed among the first. My happiness knew no bounds.

I served as an acolyte for the priest during the service. The priest knew the Divine Liturgy by heart. To have any kind of booklet or notebook with him—that was out of the question.

Our Communion was very moving. The priest had wine in a small bottle with the label “Heart Drops.” A small cup served as the chalice. The prosphora was real.

In the morning, before “reveille,” the cell door opened with a bang. Then, as per the prison “rules”:

“Who’s last name starts with ‘Ts’?”

“I am,” Father Tsehelsky responded.

“Out, with your things!”

It turns out they had mistakenly placed him in our cell.

That's what they thought, that they had made a mistake. But it was God’s Will. It was a magnificent Grace of God for me.

I met with Father Tsehelsky in Lviv after my second imprisonment. God granted him a long life.

Sometime in September, a group of prisoners, including me, were put into “voronky” (NKVD prisoner transport vehicles) and brought to a camp that was 6 kilometers from Mykolaiv in the Lviv region, about 30–35 kilometers from Lviv.

This camp was in a former Roman Catholic orphanage. It was freer there. We could walk around the fenced-in yard, go from barrack to barrack.

Here I met my father. Neither he nor any of the other prisoners complained about their fate. People knew how to carry themselves, because they knew why they had gone to their torment. We only worried very much for my mother, for my younger brothers and sisters. While my father was in captivity, my youngest brother was born. My mother hid with him among people for a year...

My father and I were in different brigades. After work, I would go to my father’s barrack.

There, near Mykolaiv, we were building two-story residential buildings with 4 apartments each. At first, my father was not on the construction site, but worked in the gardening brigade. After they dug up the potatoes, they put my father in the carpenters’ brigade.

I had no construction skills, so I was a laborer, a loader. I pushed cement, bricks, mortar, and stones in wheelbarrows and carried them on stretchers. It was hard work.

Once, a boy of about seventeen, a Boyko from the Drohobych area, told me to come to him after supper. It so happened that I couldn't. The next day, he escaped from the camp. Later, they found his jacket near the pipe through which water flowed out of the zone. He had apparently escaped through that pipe. I regretted that I hadn't escaped with him. I would have persuaded my father too. We have large forests...

At the end of the year, we were transferred to the Lviv transit prison. We were packed in there like herrings in a barrel. It was a good thing they didn't keep us there for long. They loaded us into a freight train.

They transported us in wagons built for carrying cattle. But they had installed bunks on two sides, bars on the windows... Such a wagon should stand somewhere in Galicia as a monument. As a memory of those terrible times when thousands, millions of innocent Ukrainian people were transported in those cattle cars to Siberia and the Kazakh deserts. Was it their fault that they loved and defended their land, that they wanted to pray to God in Ukrainian?

4.

On the train, too, we suffered from thirst. They gave us salty herring. They withheld water. On purpose, to make people suffer. People licked the nails that held the wagon planks together, because frost formed on them.

During the journey, the convoy gave us no peace. First, they would tap the wagon with wooden mallets: to see if anyone had torn a plank, preparing an escape. Then they would herd everyone to one side of the wagon and make them run to the other, counting. They counted with the same mallets: hitting everyone wherever they could, and urging us on: “Skariey, skariey” (Faster, faster). They laughed, they swore. That was their entertainment...

One night, they woke me up. We took turns looking out the small window—a city was lit up. We realized it was Kyiv.

The train rumbled over a bridge. What a commotion broke out in the wagon! “Dnipro! Kyiv! Dnipro!” we shouted, rejoicing like children, forgetting that we were not traveling to our capital as welcome guests, but that they would transport us through it further, to a distant and cold foreign land. A song arose: “Moscow has fallen, and the city of Kyiv is now the capital!”

When the gardens around the whitewashed houses disappeared from view outside the window, and instead of neat little houses, “izby” of blackened logs appeared, we understood that this was already a foreign land...

Christmas found us on the road. It was a sad caroling...

Exhausted by the journey, the frequent stops, the long waits in sidings, we finally arrived in Chelyabinsk.

They crammed us into barracks—large buildings with no internal partitions, with two-tiered bunks along the sides. Between 200 and 300 prisoners lived in one barrack. On the sides of the barrack, two stoves seemed to smoke, but they didn't give off heat. People slept in their clothes, on bare boards, without mattresses.

The walls were red with blood. Bedbugs ate us alive. People caught them and crushed them against the walls.

In the camp, everyone was clothed. But in old, greasy, often blood-stained clothes. Everything was gray, the valenki (felt boots) were old and misshapen.

Here, behind the barbed wire, was a true international. There were people from every nation of that Soviet Union, and there were so many Ukrainians that it seemed they made up at least two-thirds of the USSR. After the war, there were Germans, Hungarians, Italians, Japanese, and Chinese among the prisoners. No one formed separate brigades; everything was mixed together: the “friendship of peoples.”

Our camp was building up Chelyabinsk. I was a laborer. But the work here was much harder. Because we were building five-story buildings, and there were no cranes to lift the loads. We served as the cranes.

To this day, it's terrifying to remember those steep ramps—planks with slats nailed across them. We walked up those ramps to the fourth, the fifth floor. Our arms couldn't take it. Once, right in front of the brigadier, I dropped a stretcher. The brigadier ran up and punched me in the face. He was also a prisoner. A Muscovite.

He hit me hard, I almost fell, but I stayed on my feet. I looked at him, without malice. With pity. He turned away, ashamed. Later, he looked for lighter work for me.

It was a difficult post-war time. All of Muscovy was hungry. What can be said about the prisoners? Some received parcels from home. No one sent me any.

My first camp Easter was in Chelyabinsk. On Easter Sunday, we gathered together, and after a common prayer, we ate the bread we had set aside from our meager camp rations. Tears rolled down our cheeks as we sang the resurrection hymns. Our thoughts were far from there, in our native land.

I suffered on the construction site for almost the entire year. Before Christmas—a transport. They took us to Bashkiria.

At first, I was at a logging site. The camp was in a valley. We would walk up into the mountains to the felling site, and if it was far, we would ride in open trucks. At the site, we would clear the snow from the tree trunk, cut it as much as needed with hand saws, then push against the tree with poles. When it fell, a cloud of snow would rise. Then we would chop off the branches and twigs, and cut the trunk into logs. It was hard to carry those logs down, to stack them.

The snows in the forest were deep. People would fall into them. I, too, was in a snow pit. It was lucky that others saw me fall. I would not have gotten out of it by myself.

They didn't give us a day off every Sunday. When it snowed, they would herd us out to clear the railway tracks and roads. It would seem that snow is light, fluffy, but this work was also very tiring.

I thought there was no harder work than logging. But then they put me in a stone quarry. There were stone mountains there, and they were supposed to build some military objects on their site later, so we were quarrying those mountains. The tools were simple: a crowbar, a pickaxe, a chisel, a hammer.

But in Bashkiria, it was much easier for me than in Chelyabinsk. For my soul. Because in the same brigade with me was a priest. He was a lecturer at the Lutsk Roman Catholic Seminary, Father Józef Pukowiński. He was a noble, highly educated dignitary. The father was completely unaccustomed to camp conditions. The frost bothered him greatly. The father suffered a lot, but he did not get sick.

Camp conditions cannot be compared to seminary conditions, but in me, the father had a capable student. He was pleased that I wanted to be a priest and gladly helped me. The father spoke Ukrainian well. So as not to forget the language, I also spoke Polish to him.

We used every moment. The father taught me when we rested for a few minutes in the quarry, leaning on a crowbar or a shovel, and in the evenings in the barrack. Most of all—on Sundays. Every Sunday, the father celebrated the Divine Liturgy on his bedside table. He celebrated in Latin. He heard confessions, gave communion, but under one species. The camp bread served as the prosphora, as there was no wine.

In Bashkiria, I greatly regretted not having the opportunity to draw. The Lord gave me a small measure of this talent. No matter how hard the work was, I admired the beautiful landscapes. As if I knew that I would soon not see them.

And so it happened. In the spring of 1949, a freight train took us to Kazakhstan, to Dzhezkazgan, into a sea of sand. Wherever there was a patch of earth, it was covered with luxurious red tulips. We admired them as we rode. But within a few weeks, everything had burned up under the sun.

Sandstorms are a terrible thing. But they hid me from them very far away, or more precisely—deep down. In a mine. To extract copper ore. In the Pokrovskaya mine, number 39.

First, they would drill and blast the ore, then lay tracks, and on those tracks, we, the tunnellers, would push wagons into the face. There, they would load the ore onto a scoop with a scraper, throw it from the scoop into the wagon, and when it was full, we would push it back. In one shift, we had to fill 30 such wagons.

In Dzhezkazgan, I had someone to learn from. Here there were Father Dolishkevych and Father Pushkash from Transcarpathia. There was also a professor of Theology from Belarus, a Roman Catholic. Unfortunately, I don't remember his name. Father Dolishkevych was later killed in the Dzhezkazgan uprising. He was crushed by a tank... He was thrown behind bars because he did not sign on to Orthodoxy. He bravely set out on his Way of the Cross, leaving his family at home. Now his son is a priest.

Because in our level the ore-bearing layer was about four meters thick, it was that many meters, or even more, to the ceiling in the drifts-passages. The ceilings, unlike in coal mines, were not reinforced here, only in dangerous places was the ceiling supported by pillars. But that was not enough, and rocks often fell from the ceiling. Sometimes so much that it blocked the passage.

One such cave-in caught me and some other guys in the mine. A rock that broke off from the ceiling tore off my comrade’s leg. Another rock (we weighed it later—it was 20 kilograms) fell on my head, bounced off my helmet and hit my shoulder, but not too hard. The blow to the head stunned me, but I quickly recovered.

They brought me and the wounded man to the surface. They wanted to support me as I walked, but I refused. The mine chief, a short, dark-skinned, surprisingly humane Kazakh, pointed at me to his colleague:

“I knew nothing would happen to him. He’s a believer! Whenever he goes down, he’s always crossing himself!”

And so it was. Entering the elevator, I would, without hiding it, cross myself three times. No one laughed; they took it seriously, but did not imitate me.

When that cave-in happened, a commission from the Ministry of Health came to our camp. We were surprised by their high cultural level, their impeccable command of the Russian language. They summoned the prisoners. They asked not only about health. They inquired about camp life, about the relationship between the prisoners and the authorities. They inquired in detail. They asked me many questions too, when they summoned me. After examining me, they transferred me to another category, for work on the surface.

The commission worked and left. Very soon, another commission from the Ministry of Health arrived. A real one this time. The previous one had been organized by... British intelligence! Espionage!

The authorities didn't tell the prisoners about such a mess. And since my papers said that I was being released from the mine, I did not go underground.

I didn't go to the morning "razvod" (work assignment), but hid in the zones. They were separated from each other not by fire-lines, but by high walls with wickets. Prisoners guarded the wickets, and they let me pass. My hiding ended in a punishment cell. They put me in for a week. The regime was the same as in a prison punishment cell: once every three days—a hundred grams of bread and a glass of water.

After the punishment cell, they transferred me from the third camp point, the mine one, to the first. They were afraid that if I started to rebel again and not go into the mine, other prisoners would follow my example. After all, it was written in the papers: work on the surface. And for them, papers were more important than a person.

I went back to breaking rock. The work was much harder than in the mine, but safer. And there was the sky above my head.

And again—for this transfer, as for the fact that I was not killed or injured in that cave-in, I thank the Almighty. He was preparing a great event for me in this camp. In the first camp point, there were also priests. Our Greek Catholics, Polish Latins. Here I became friends with a priest from Moldova. A Basilian, a Greek Catholic. Someone in his family was of Italian descent, someone of Romanian.

In December of that year, 1949, a prisoner-bishop, whom the father knew, was transferred to us. The Bishop’s father was from Muscovy, his mother—Italian. When the Russian Empire collapsed, he emigrated with his family. He entered the Jesuit order. He studied, taught philosophy at the Russicum in Rome. I don't know how he ended up in Lviv, or who consecrated him a bishop. Obviously, it was done secretly—by the Servant of God Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky, because the bishop often mentioned him. The Metropolitan sent him for missionary work in Muscovy. The bishop was tried as a Vatican spy.

He was a mobile, sturdy man, similar in stature to Patriarch Josyf Slipyj. With a reddish beard. He was about 50 years old then. He introduced himself to me as Viktor Novikov. He hoped that we would get out of the camp, that better times would come, and that we would meet in Rome. He gave me his address in the Eternal City: via Spiritus Sanctus, 5 (Holy Spirit Street, 5).

By God’s Grace, times changed, and I looked for the Bishop in Rome. He was not at the given address; at the Russicum, they confirmed that indeed, a Kyr Viktor Novikov had taught philosophy there. They said he had two other surnames: Makovsky and Kholyava. Obviously, Novikov was his real one. But he was not in Rome. No one knew about his further fate.

...After several long conversations, which had the character of an examination and gave the Bishop a corresponding impression of me, he said that he would give me diaconal ordination.

I began to prepare for the ordination. I went to confession often, received the Holy Mysteries. The bishop himself gave me my retreat.

In the camp conditions, I could not even dream of clothing appropriate for this solemn act. But I wanted to distinguish myself somehow on the outside as well. I had a long white shirt. It served as a dalmatic. A friend of mine, who worked in the laundry and was in on the secret, cut a towel lengthwise and sewed an orarion for me from it.

The solemn and memorable day for me arrived. It was January 1, 1950.

The ordination took place during breakfast. The bishop knew the main prayers by heart, most importantly—the form of ordination, “The Divine Grace.”

After the ordination, I was on cloud nine. I forgot that I was in captivity. It was a great joy for me that even by such a difficult road, the Lord was leading me to the priesthood, that He heard my fervent prayers.

Of the priests, only that one father from Moldova was a witness to my ordination. The Bishop himself told our priests about my diaconal ordination. They received this news with joy.

Having received the first degree of the priesthood, I could work in the camp within the limits of my diaconal authority. It gave me the right to preach, to prepare people for confession, to celebrate molebens: vespers, matins, akathists.

The Bishop said that he would give me priestly ordination at Easter. Both he and our priests were preparing me for it. They told me things from memory. Some managed to get spiritual literature by some means. I devoured it eagerly.

But during Lent, in the middle of the night, the Bishop was taken from us. I can't recall whether it was before or after the Easter holidays that I too was sent away on a transport to Spassk.

5.

In Spassk, the camps were in the Valley of Death. They drove us for a long time through the sandy desert, in open trucks. The wind carried sand. It filled our mouths, our eyes.

There were over 20,000 prisoners in the Valley of Death. There were many priests there. I met Father Ivan Hotra there—a Basilian, Father Mysiak—the hegumen of a Studite monastery. The “true Orthodox” from Muscovy, as they called themselves, were also being punished for their faith. There were also Latin-rite priests, among them Father Turkus from Latvia.

Next to our concentration camp was a women’s concentration camp. There were nuns there. Between us was not a fire line, but a wall. We could communicate through a wicket gate. We would pass notes to the sisters, informing them of the time of our Divine Liturgy, so that they could join us in prayer. At the agreed time, they would come out to a small hill in their zone, so that they could be seen from our zone. They would express their sorrow, beat their breasts. Father Hotra would give them absolution, bless them.

In Spassk, there were old, depleted, forgotten quarries. We would gather there for prayer. Here we were truly like the first Christians who prayed in the underground Roman catacombs. As a deacon, I celebrated vespers, matins, and akathists there. Many people gathered. The guards found out, chased us away from there, but we would gather there again later.

Life was hard, the climate unbearable. People, exhausted by unbearable labor, were dying in large numbers. Two brigades of prisoners, in two shifts, did nothing but dig graves. The Valley of Death lived up to its name.

It seemed that there would be no end to this misery and sorrow, that our people would perish in these sands and in those boundless taigas, in those bare tundras.

We saw those terrible deaths, but in our hearts, a hope flickered that God would help us get out of this hell on earth.

One evening, after prayer, I was pondering the unfortunate fate of our people. I took it to heart. I thought: what will become of the people who suffer here? What will happen to the concentration camps? Will this ever have an end?

With these thoughts, I fell asleep.

And I dreamed that I was in a large square. I am sitting on the ground, drawing in it with a stick and thinking: My God, what will become of this nation?

Suddenly, a person of majestic appearance stands before me. His beard and the hair on his head are gray, almost silver. His clothes are so heavenly. Like a spirit. His supernatural power was palpable. He says to me:

“Child, what are you thinking?”

I was afraid to utter a word, I was terrified. The majestic old man then says:

“I know what you are thinking. You are thinking about what will become of my people. What the end of this will be, what their fate will be. Stand up.”

He takes the stick from me, and takes me by the hand to the middle of the square, and asks:

“What do you see?”

I look: before us is a large anthill. I tell Him.

“Watch what happens now.”

The old man with my stick, here and there—leveled that anthill. The ants—ran off in every direction with their little white pupae. The old man says to me:

“And now tell me what I have done.”

“You have leveled the anthill with the ground.”

“And what are the ants doing?”

“They are scattering. In all directions.”

“Yes. Now stand up and tell my people that soon the time will come when I will level all these concentration camps with the ground as well. And My People will return home.”

At this, I awoke. Sitting up! I was seized with fear. I knew I had gone to sleep lying down. I woke up—and I was sitting! I wake my neighbor:

“Ivan! Ivan!”

“What happened?” he asked, frightened. It was around midnight.

He was the first person I told my prophetic dream to. Mr. Ivan Smetaniuk now lives in Hoshiv.

I told this dream to my confessor, Father Hotra, to Father Mysiak, and to other priests. They all also took it as prophetic.

That dream was a great spiritual support for us.

I cannot say who appeared to me in the prophetic dream. Whether it was one of the Prophets, God’s messengers, or the Lord God Himself.

After my dream, we set to work even more zealously in the Lord’s vineyard. I had a prayer book, I cherished it very much. In addition, we had many services, psalms, handwritten. It was not always possible to take a book or papers with you. Therefore, I memorized a lot. I knew by heart the moleben to the Heart of Christ, the Akathist to the Mother of God.

Sometime in 1952, I had another prophetic dream. It also came true, but later. I dream then that I am in Rome. And that I am a bishop! It was very strange, because I wasn't thinking about any episcopacy then, I wasn't even a priest yet.

I dream that I, as a bishop, am preparing to celebrate the Divine Liturgy. And in St. Peter’s Basilica! At the tomb of St. Josaphat Kuntsevych! I am carrying the chalice, carrying everything to celebrate the Divine Liturgy. Not only that, I am going to the very place where, many years later, his holy relics were indeed solemnly laid. I enter the church, turn to the right side, enter the third or fourth nave...

It is known that the relics of St. Josaphat were in Vienna before the war, in the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church of St. Barbara. During the war, they were probably taken to Rome. But they were transferred to St. Peter’s Basilica, the most important Catholic cathedral in the world, during the second session of the Second Vatican Council, when, by God’s grace, the late His Beatitude Patriarch Cardinal Josyf Slipyj, torn from the Khrushchev concentration camps, was already in Rome.

In 1990, I, as a bishop, while in Rome, concelebrated the Divine Liturgy at the tomb of St. Josaphat with other bishops. My dream came true after 38 years!

I told only Father Hotra about that dream. Because not all of our priests, unfortunately, courageously fulfilled their duty, not all perceived my zeal in the same way, and if I had also told them that I had seen myself as a bishop in a dream...

I will also tell about a third dream, which I had in the same year, 1952, before my departure to the Altai Krai.

...I dream that I am in a vast space. Not planted, not sown. Like a desert. And in that desert, there are very many crosses. Different ones. Large, small. Iron, wooden. New, old. Straight, tilted. I understood that these are human crosses. Every person's. I became interested: is my cross among these crosses?

I started searching. I searched, searched for a long time. Until I got tired. My cross was not there. I approach one, a second, a tenth. I feel: this is not my cross, not mine!

Then I see—a tall cross stands apart, far from me and from the others.

I reached it. The cross was tall, oaken. At its foot—flowers. Delicate white flowers. They entwined the cross and its base. The crossbeam was also in flowers.

I stand before that cross, as if rooted to the spot. I think, I marvel. And suddenly my heart tells me: that cross is mine, mine!

I fall to my knees before it, embrace it, kiss it, wash it with my tears... And so in tears I awoke.

This dream told me that the Lord was preparing a special cross for me. Though adorned with pure white flowers, it would be larger and heavier than others.

My further path of captivity lay in the Altai Krai, in Olgerras. They were building some huge plant there, I think an oil refinery. Over 5,000 prisoners worked there—“udarnaya komsomolskaya stroyka” (Komsomol shock construction project)!...

In Olgerras, I was lucky. There was no medical worker on the site. Looking through my papers, as a newcomer, they read that I had studied at the paramedic school in Lviv. The head of the medical unit was Captain Shkuro. Of Ukrainian origin. He summoned me. I explained to him that my medical education was not complete. After talking with me, he determined that my knowledge was sufficient and handed me a box with medicines and everything necessary for providing first aid.

God helped me to become useful to people in this field as well.

Almost immediately after I began my paramedic duties, an incident occurred.

Just when Father Kuzyk, the brigadier Petriv from the Drohobych region, and an autocephalous priest from the Rivne region were in my medical unit, a sick prisoner named Vlasenko, from Greater Ukraine, came in. The brigadier lashed out at him:

“You’re constantly bothering the doctors, going to the outpatient clinics. Leave people alone! Get to work!”

I stood up for Vlasenko. I say to the brigadier:

“Mr. Petriv, a visitor has come to me. He has the right to do so. He came as a sick person. I am obliged to examine him.”

The patient complained of pain above the lower back. I asked him to take off his shirt, listened to his heart and lungs with a stethoscope. I didn't notice anything.

The priests and the brigadier watched my actions, snickering. I did my job. I told the patient to lie down on the couch, palpated his muscles. When I pressed on his sciatic nerve, the patient cried out, and very loudly. I realized that he had an acute inflammation of that nerve.

I asked Petriv to call the guard on duty. They found a car and sent the patient to the central hospital. Vlasenko was treated there for six months.

There was also a tragic incident: a person was electrocuted. I started to perform artificial respiration. They called a doctor from the civilian hospital. He arrived, looked:

“Colleague, don’t bother. He’s dead!”

He left. I continued. It was written in the instructions: perform artificial respiration for four hours! After three and a half hours, the person came back to life.

Once on the construction site, they were lifting hot tar with a winch, the bucket opened and spilled on the one who was lifting it. I gave first aid, sent him to the hospital. No inflammations, no abscesses. So, it was done sterilely.

Sometimes I had to take on the work of a surgeon. A man's skin was torn off his back, on his chest. It was hanging in strips. By the time that surgeon arrives... I took staples, fastened it together. Less pain already.

I also had to get into conflicts with the authorities. They refused to sign the injury reports I wrote. These gave exhausted and injured people the right to a short rest. Once, when the chief was very resistant to signing, I went to check the workplaces. The instructions gave me the right to do so. Meticulously checking compliance with safety regulations, I found a number of violations and shut down the entire site. The chief couldn't find anything to punish me for. The prisoners were given gloves, the trenches were reinforced, grounding was installed—in short, almost all the shortcomings were eliminated. After that incident, the chief would sign reports even for scratches.

I received thanks from the hospital for my paramedic work. But what pleased me most was that I could be of service to people.

In this camp, I also performed my diaconal duties.

There were many of our priests here. Besides Father Kuzych, there were Father Korzhynsky (now lives in Kolomyia), Father Mykola Zheltvay from Transcarpathia, Father Baslyadynsky, and one more priest whose name I don't remember. But, unfortunately, the spiritual life in the zone was very sluggish. The Jehovah’s Witnesses and other sectarians took advantage of this, confusing people. It was necessary to get to work.

6.

Before Lent, I ask Father Zheltvay to convene our priests on the nearest Sunday. Because before Easter, we need to hear the prisoners’ confessions, we need to constantly celebrate services in the barracks. Our pastoral work must be organized. I told the father that I would prepare the prisoners for holy confession, and preach sermons at the Divine Liturgies.

Father Zheltvay agreed with me and ordered me to summon the priests.

The priests gathered. When Father Zheltvay told them about my proposal, Father Baslyadynsky became indignant:

“What? That snot-nosed kid is going to boss us around?”

I didn't expect to hear that. I was hurt, but I didn't say a word. Father Zheltvay said:

“Reverend fathers, there are no snot-nosed kids among us. We cannot oppose God’s ordinance when the Holy Spirit speaks to us and has chosen the deacon to remind us of what we are forgetting, that even in prison we are not exempt from pastoral work. Our faithful are here, and we, as priests,

are obliged to work on their souls. And God has called us to the prisons only so that we may be among our own people, helping them, protecting them, giving them peace of mind. Therefore, this important matter is not the deacon’s matter. It is God’s matter. And we must submit to God’s Will!”

After our meeting, the prisoners received greater spiritual care.

In the barracks, between the bunks—services. Instead of the Holy Altar—miserable bedside tables. Confessions, Communion, catechization...

And I was transferred again to another camp point. We resisted the harsh camp regime. I participated in a six-day hunger strike. Unrest began in the camps. Our committee had already given the order for a strike.

We went out into the yard in the evening. Gunshots. With me was a boy of about 18. He was desperate to run. I tell him:

“Mykhailo, Mykhailo, we need to go the other way, they’re shooting from there!”

He didn't listen to me, tore himself away. He ran into the bullets. He was killed before my eyes.

Bullets are already whistling by me. I sat down against the wall. I pray...

In the morning, I went to where I had prayed. The wall in the place where I had sat was pockmarked with four bullets. Two were very close to my head.

A great miracle of the Lord, the great power of prayer!

After Stalin’s death (we were informed of it by the “liar”—that’s what we called the radio in the camp), I was transferred again to the third camp point. Again, I organize the priests. Here again were Father Korzhynsky, Father Baslyadynsky. We found Father Volodymyr Senkivsky here.

At this camp point, we took up catechization. We organized catechetical circles, took on as helpers boys who knew the Law of God from home. We prepared them to be catechists.

Our priests agreed to celebrate the Divine Liturgies, but without sermons. I gave the sermons. Watching me, Father Volodymyr Senkivsky said to me, perhaps with irony:

“Deacon, you’re leading us so much here, it seems to us that you are our bishop!”

“Father Volodymyr, please take into account that here, in the camp, I am your bishop!”

I answered immediately, without thinking, as if someone had put these words in my mouth beforehand. I said them and smiled, so there would be no tension. And the priest smiled. We ended it there at that time.

In April 1990, when we were welcoming our Beatitude Patriarch Kyr Myroslav Ivan Lubachivsky in Lviv, near the city hall, on his first visit to Ukraine, I met Father Senkivsky. We had met after my first imprisonment, when I was still a priest. Right there, near the Lviv city hall, he reminded me of our camp conversation.

“And in the camp, I took your words as a joke. But you see how it turned out: You really are a bishop!”

Strange are the ways of the Lord! By a difficult road You led me, O God, to the priesthood, to the episcopate. I thank You for not letting me stray from the path, weaken in spirit, lose faith.

In Olgerras, besides giving sermons, I also organized molebens to the Mother of God, to the Heart of Christ. I celebrated them myself, as well as matins and vespers. It was all done in secret.

But the authorities had plenty of “stukachi” (snitches) among the prisoners. They would report when a service or moleben was to take place, and an inspection would come. When it approached, the one we left to watch at the entrance door would run up, or shout from his post: “Atas!” (Look out!). We would then fall silent, sit calmly on our bunks, and everything would look as if the inspection had nothing to find fault with.

Still, the authorities locked me in a punishment cell for “religious propaganda.” I went to it with joy, with gratitude to the Almighty for rewarding me with this suffering as well.

After the punishment cell, Havryil, a university student, from Lviv I believe, approaches me. He tells me about a prisoner, a teacher from Greater Ukraine. His surname, I think, was Melnyk.

Melnyk was imprisoned as a nationalist. But he was a fervent atheist. He gathered supporters around him. They said they would build Ukraine without God.

And this was before August 14. According to tradition, on this day Saint Volodymyr the Great baptized Ukraine. I asked Havryil for two Ukrainian representatives from each barrack to gather on August 14 in a certain barrack.

A great many people came. Mostly young men. I addressed them with a sermon about the baptism of Ukraine. I explained to them the great importance for our State of accepting Christianity, that we did not cast off the yoke of paganism to put on a new yoke—atheism. This new yoke is even more terrible, because atheism denies the existence of the Divine.

After my sermon, not only did that atheist group disintegrate, but our lay catechists also got more work. Many boys from Greater Ukraine came to them, who were born under that godless, diabolical regime, having seen neither a church nor a priest, and many had not even heard a word about God at home. And they came to our catechists, asked them to write down prayers and parts of the catechism for them on a piece of paper.

To this day, now gray-haired, when they remember the camps, they warm their hearts with the memory of learning to pray there, and today they teach their grandchildren and great-grandchildren the prayers they learned in the camp from a scrap of paper written by our catechist.

Christian life blossomed, bloomed with lush flowers in our camps. Looking at us, Ukrainians, other nations in the camps also returned to God. They no longer greeted each other with “Dobryi den,” “Guten Tag,” “Zdraste,” “Labadiena” (“Good day” in Lithuanian), but “Glory to Jesus Christ!” resounded over the camp in different languages.

When we celebrated services or I preached in the barracks, we did not ask foreigners to leave. All nations, Christians of different confessions, even Muslims, listened to me.

The Muslims, knowing Russian, understood my sermons in Ukrainian. There was nothing in them that contradicted their Quran. When I said that we would break free from this captivity and go to Ukraine—they then thought of their own native land.

There were not many Muslims in the camps, they did not have their own preacher, and when they had something on their minds, they turned... to me.

Once, a Muslim, about 24 years old, an Afghan I think, asked me to explain an unusual dream. He dreamed that unknown people had cut off his head with a sword. Then all his consciousness was in that head. They carried that head over the barbed wire, to his native Afghanistan. From a height, he admires the lush greenery, the flowers, and on those luxurious grasses and flowers, his blood drips from his head. He asks me: what does this dream mean.

“My friend,” I tell him, “I do not interpret dreams, and it is difficult for me to answer you. But it seems to me that you will be home this year. And since you dreamed of grasses and flowers—it will be this summer.”

God made it so that it happened. An amnesty came, he was released. His joy knew no bounds. He came, thanked me with tears in his eyes. I told him that it was not my merit, but God’s grace. But he went around to his people:

“The mullah predicted it for me! The young Ukrainian mullah!”

That incident further strengthened my belief: God is one.

Ukrainians, how long will we divide our One God?!

I also remember unpleasant things from that camp. The Transcarpathian priest Halayda comes to me in tears:

“The ‘blatnye’ took my parcel. And it had raisins for wine!”

We made wine for Communion from raisins. I’ll tell you right away how it was done.

The raisins were washed with cold boiled water, put into a jar, and covered with water just enough to cover them. The jar was tied with gauze and hidden in a not too warm and dark place until the raisins absorbed the water—as much as the grapes had juice before drying.

When there was no water left in the jars at all, and it had all passed into the raisins, it, and this was now juice again, was squeezed through gauze, strained, and poured into bottles. The bottles were closed with a cork and left for a week or two to ferment. You just had to watch that the cork didn't pop out. Because it once did pop out, and so loudly that the guard, who was on inspection, ran away in fear: he thought someone was shooting. But that was already in the Mordovian camps, when I was serving my second sentence...

So Father Halayda came to me in Olgerras, saying the blatnye had taken his parcel. The blatnye are a type of common criminal. But the worst thing was that they weren't real blatnye; we had already chased them out of the camps by then (much has been written about the struggle in the Soviet special camps between common criminals and our political prisoners), but these were our own boys who had gone astray under their influence in the camps.

I find those boys:

“How did you dare? To take a parcel from a priest?! Those raisins are for liturgical wine! Did you drive out the blatnye just to take their place?!”

After that conversation, that “blatnoy” and his buddy call me out of the medical unit one evening (I was on the second shift). They pulled out knives:

“Now we're going to finish you!”

“Why?”

“You insulted us.”

“With what?”

“You said we took the place of those bandits.”

“It seems so,” I say. “You are still our own people. So why do you do this? If you have grounds to kill me—that’s your business. But know that you will answer for it before the Lord God. My conscience is clear. I had a duty to stand up for the priest whom you wronged.”

They stood there, thought, and put away their knives.

“Look, don't badmouth us to people anymore.”

“I haven't said anything about you to anyone.”

Later, they apologized to Father Halayda and gave him everything back. Including the raisins.

After that incident, those boys became my friends and good Christians.

Once, our lookouts in the barrack failed to be vigilant, and they caught me celebrating vespers. The punishment cell. They kept me in it for only three or four days, because I was needed as a paramedic.

The camp administration was very afraid of uprisings, of unrest. They didn't keep suspicious individuals, who could be instigators, in one camp for long. In the eyes of the authorities, I too was suspicious. They sent me to the BUR—a barrack of “intensified regime,” a kind of camp prison—for six months. I wasn't afraid that the barrack was behind barbed wire, or of the hard, unbearable labor again, but the worst thing was that in the BUR there were only about two hundred prisoners. A small flock for pastoral work... I got out of the BUR sometime in September. I didn't return to “my” camp. Another transport. Again, abuse in transit prisons. Dry rations of rusty herring. Thirst.

Three weeks of a hard journey—and the Omsk camps. Third section. That’s at the end of the camp.

We had hoped for better after Stalin’s death. But there were no changes. Still the same regime, still numbers, not people. “G-995!” they would call me at roll call. I had to answer... After quarantine in the Omsk camp, the head of the medical unit, Colonel Malinovsky, summoned me:

“You will work for us as a paramedic in the tuberculosis ward!”

“But I don't know anything about that!”

“Your file says you worked as a paramedic...”

“But in emergency aid. You know, bandaging a finger...”

“You also know about medicines. You were tried for transporting medicine to the gang.”

That word “gang” increased my reluctance to go work in the hospital even more. But Dr. Savka (or Savko, he even had family in Kolomyia) and our famous expert on medicinal herbs, Karhut, worked there. They persuaded me not to resist. And here, by God's grace, things went well for me. I learned to give intravenous injections skillfully here.

There was also a ward for the mentally ill in the hospital. I would feed those who refused to eat with a tube, through the nose. It was a very responsible procedure. The tube had to go into the esophagus, otherwise—death.

There were other difficulties. One Azerbaijani, when I was giving him an injection, wouldn't sit, wouldn't lie down, only stood. It was difficult to inject tense muscles, but there was no way out...

A young Lithuanian, about 17 years old, wouldn't go out for a walk, just picked at the wall. That's all he ate. He pecked away half the wall like that. I supported the boy with my conversations, then persuaded him to eat vitamins, and then—normal food. I managed to bring him out of despair. He recovered. As a minor, he was soon released. He left almost healthy.

His relatives wrote to me from Latvia, thanked me, sent parcels. I shared them with the sick.

The Lord God really did help me. The sick believed me, accepted medicine from my hands. I would ask the authorities, and they would prescribe fewer poisonous chemicals for the sick, and more—vitamins. I would make up the orders for medicines, and they would send them according to my list.

7.

In 1954, an outbreak of typhoid fever occurred. Everyone was mobilized to fight it. And I was taken from the mentally ill.

We vaccinated the prisoners and the free, the military and the children. The disease retreated. After the epidemic, they left me in the polyclinic. The mentally ill missed me, and I continued to visit them for another three months, even though they already had a new paramedic. He listened to my advice, did as I did, and my departure became less noticeable for the sick. In the polyclinic, too, by the grace of the Almighty, I was able to help people. In the morning, the weakened would come to me to get an exemption from work. For this, one needed to have a fever. I found ways to get sick people excused even with a normal temperature.

Once, a qualified specialist, a former ship’s medic, failed to consider that the Urotropin we had received was much more concentrated than usual and prescribed a patient his standard dose of 6 drops. It turned out to be the equivalent of 60. The patient took the medicine and began to fly into a rage, climbing the walls in pain.

I was already in the barracks. They called for me. I glanced at the prescription, then at the label. I realized it was an overdose. We gave the patient supportive care, heart drops, and an injection. Within an hour, it passed.

I gave shots better than the doctors. They admitted it themselves and would send patients to me. One time, the wife of one of the bosses came in—she was overweight, and you couldn’t see the veins in her arms. But I found one and gave her the injection as required.

A young man was unable to swallow the tube needed to provide a gastric juice sample for analysis. I managed to help him. It turned out he had high acidity. He was medically discharged and went home.

I had another case. A lathe operator came to me: a metal shaving had fallen into his eye. I looked but couldn’t see it. I put in some Albucid drops and told him to come back the next day if it was still bothering him. The next day was Wednesday, and on Wednesdays, an ophthalmologist from the outside would visit. On Wednesday, the turner went to the ophthalmologist. The ophthalmologist couldn’t find anything either. He prescribed the same drops I had. The patient came back to me.

I turned on a powerful lamp, a five-hundred-watt bulb, and looked at the eye through a magnifying glass. I saw a tiny shaving almost next to the pupil. We called the doctor. He couldn’t see it, even with better light and a magnifying glass. He said to me in Russian:

“If you see it, then remove it!”

He brought me his instruments—miniature scissors, scalpels, holders. He brought them and left. I understood the responsibility and didn’t want to take it on. But the patient pleaded:

“Do whatever you want, because it cuts day and night, I can’t stand it.”

We couldn’t wait long. The shaving would have been drawn into the eye, become invisible, and then a complicated operation would have been necessary. And who knows if it would have been successful…

The orderly and I set to work on that eye. He held the lamp and the magnifying glass, and I wielded the tweezers. About ten minutes later, I was holding a tiny metal fragment clamped in them…

Immediately after my intervention, the eye stopped bothering him.

Even in the Omsk camps, I did not cease my pastoral work. Fr. Stepan Basliadynskyi and Fr. Yosyp Kahanets were there. Worn out by their captivity, they were anxiously awaiting their release and did not want to violate the camp regime in any way that might delay their freedom. Easter was approaching, and I could not persuade them to perform their duties. Those whom I prepared for confession were heard by a Lithuanian priest, Father Aleksandravičius. I also confessed to him.

I painted a Shroud of Christ. On Good Friday, I set it up in the barracks. People came to it in a steady stream…

I conducted the Resurrection Matins. I was overjoyed when I saw Fr. Basliadynskyi there. He had a beautiful singing voice. He began to celebrate the Matins with me. But not as a priest, rather as a cantor. After the service, the priest wished to deliver a sermon.

Father spoke of the things that are usually said at such solemn services. But he spoke as if he were in his own church, before the war.

However, the sermon needed to be connected to our current life, to spiritually support the prisoners. The priest didn’t do that. I couldn’t leave it like that, so I decided to supplement his words. Just to supplement, not to refute. I immediately asked the priest for permission in front of everyone, and he granted it. At the beginning of my sermon, I thanked him and praised him with words something like these:

“The women who went with myrrh to Christ’s tomb at night were afraid that the coarse Roman guards might dishonor them and that they would not be able to roll away the heavy stone that blocked the entrance to the tomb. But their great love for God helped them overcome that fear…”

The priest’s participation in the Resurrection Matins and his sermon was a very bold act! We were not at home, in peace and tranquility, among a festively dressed congregation with baskets prepared for blessing…

I spoke in my sermon as sincerely as I possibly could. I assured our fellow prisoners that God had not given them such terrible trials in vain, that they would be rewarded a hundredfold, and that they would soon be in our native Ukraine…

I did not think that my sermon would make me an enemy…

I got caught in this camp too. The head of the regime himself caught me during a service. I was put in the punishment cell for ten days.

But this time it was not difficult for me there. Only in my soul. For I empathized with human sorrow. I had hope that if I did what I was asked, I might at least soothe some of the human pain.

The regime chief’s 14-year-old son had died just before that. The chief himself came to me in the punishment cell. Having learned (whether he knew before, or the informers reported about the Shroud of Christ) that I could draw, he asked me to paint a portrait of his son from a photograph.

I agreed. They brought me a frame, paints, canvas, and everything needed to prime it. The primer took a long time to dry, as I prepared it according to my own technique. Then I began to paint. I did not rush; I wanted to do the best job possible.

The regime chief himself violated the camp regime: he ordered that I be brought food in the punishment cell three times a day, and at night, he let me out to sleep in the barracks.

It was simple human gratitude. Grief can soften a heart of the hardest stone.

Before my release from the punishment cell, I gave the chief his commissioned work. He said the portrait looked very much like his son and thanked me profusely.

After my Easter sermon, Fr. Basliadynskyi looked at me askance. He thought to himself that only an informant could speak as boldly as I did, in order to provoke others. The fact that I was let out of the punishment cell at night convinced him he was right. At that time, there was an underground nationalist organization in the camp, and Fr. Basliadynskyi belonged to it. Under his influence, our members sentenced me to death.

Two members of the organization informed me of this—Petro Ivakhiv from Bibrka, in the Lviv region, and a Hutsul (whose surname, unfortunately, I don’t remember) from the village of Utoropy in the Kosiv district. I told them what had happened in the punishment cell and why I was allowed to sleep in the barracks.

Petro Ivakhiv then stood up for me. It is mostly thanks to him that I was not left to lie in a foreign land. I continued my spiritual work as before. My judges became convinced that their verdict was mistaken, and they did not carry it out.

I held not the slightest grudge against Fr. Basliadynskyi. He avoided me. I, however, sought spiritual connection with him, as is proper for pastors. The priest refused to hear my confession.

We were again transferred to another camp unit. Here I was no longer in the medical station but on the construction site of an oil refinery. They assigned me the job of an artist. I painted announcements, production posters, and calculation tables. But my camp “career” did not end there. My last job was as a teamster. They gave me a horse and cart, and I worked as a driver, transporting construction materials.

My last camp had perhaps the most priests. Here I met Fr. Ivan Chav'iak, to whom God had given a great talent as a preacher. Exceptionally modest, the priest quietly served until the end in a Hutsul-style church on the outskirts of Ivano-Frankivsk. He died quietly at an old age.

Fr. Ivan Slyvka was also there, as was Fr. Stepan Basliadynskyi. But most were Greek-Catholic priests from Transcarpathia: the Krkecheni fathers, the Romzha brothers (of the same surname as the bishop), Stepan Bendes (I drew his portrait in pencil), and Pavlo Sabo. And the Transcarpathian priests were there with their bishop, His Excellency Bishop Oleksandr Khyra!

When I learned that there was a bishop in the camp, I rejoiced that my dream of priestly ordination would come true. But both the bishop and the Transcarpathian priests looked down on us Galicians, communicating more with the Hungarians. As if the bloody spring of 1939 in their Transcarpathia had never happened, as if the Hungarians had not slaughtered our people. Such are we Ukrainians. We go to a church that anathematized our national hero Mazepa. And then there are these Magyarones of ours in Transcarpathia…

Although there were enough priests in that camp, because of this national discord, we could not achieve spiritual unity. There were services, confessions, and Communions. But it was all somehow listless, unorganized…

Changes came to the camp. They removed our numbers and the bars from the barrack windows. Commissions arrived, releasing prisoners. In the autumn of 1956, one such commission released me as well. After my release from the Omsk camps, I was transferred to the Omsk prison. So we were treated as if we had just been locked up. Again, all the same physical and moral abuse. They held us in the Omsk prison for two weeks. Then, by convoy to Novosibirsk. They kept us there for a month as well. Around December 10, they took us to Ustarsk, a district center. Sleighs were waiting for us there.

A tractor pulled those enormous sleighs. In them, a sheepskin coat and *pimy*—a large coat and felt boots—were waiting for each of us. People from the village where we were being taken had lent them, because they were told we were lightly dressed and might freeze on the way.

We sat down, burying ourselves in the straw. We set off. We were to travel one hundred kilometers like this.

The road went through forest and steppe. We spent the night at a “post station.” Two nights. The road was full of pits, and the tractor moved slowly, roaring like a tank.

On the third day, around noon, they brought us to Novrooleksandrivka. Here, the tractor drove us around the village, dropping us off. My turn came:

“Vasylyk! Get out! See that—that’s your apartment. You’ll live here!”

I climbed down. I looked—and they were leading me to a house with no roof. Only a chimney. It looked quite tall, because there was no roof.

The one who had called me out went ahead.

“Nyura, welcome your guests!” he boomed, kicking the door, and then left. I remained at the door. I heard a woman’s voice:

“Come in!”

I opened the door. I saw a middle-aged woman and a girl of about 17 sitting at a table, sewing something. There was one bed in the hut. Part of the room was separated by a screen. I guessed that was the kitchen.

I had left the camp with only a wooden suitcase. I put it on the floor of the hut and said, “Hello.”

“Hello.”

Not another word from them. They just sat there, sewing. And I stood there. After about 5 minutes:

“Sit down!”

“Where?”

“Wherever you want.”

I looked around—I couldn’t sit on the bed. They were sitting on a bench by the window. There were no chairs in the hut. So I sat down on my suitcase. We began to get acquainted. Nyura asked who I was, where I was from. About her own family:

“This is my daughter, Masha. I also have a son, Vitya. He went to see the kids in the village. What else is there for him to do—it’s winter.”

“And why is the house without a roof?”

“It burned down.”

“Why didn’t your husband build a new one?”

“I don’t have a husband. He croaked, thank God.”

“Croaked? But people pass away…”

“But he croaked. He was a drunkard. Froze to death on the street.”

Then she asked:

“Are you hungry?”

“I am.”

“Masha, fry up some potatoes. And make some tea.”

Masha managed it quickly. The potatoes were half-and-half with fatback, and instead of tea, there was boiled water. Sugar was eaten “on the side.”

I had a tasty meal. Then we continued to talk. Slowly, because Nyura was not very talkative.

Nyura told me that their village had been built by settlers relocated back in the Tsar’s time, mostly from Ukraine. That Germans—colonists from the Odesa region, from the Volga—also lived in the village. The Bolsheviks had brought them here. That not far from there were purely German villages, and further on, Ukrainian ones. That in their village, the church was used as a warehouse.

Evening came. I was ready to rest. I asked:

“Aunt Nyura, where will I sleep?”

“Wherever you want,” came the familiar answer. A little later:

“You’ll either sleep on the stove or on the shelf-bed.”

“Where’s the shelf-bed?”

“Above your head.”

I looked up and saw something like a door hanging on four ropes. I chose the stove. They threw some padded jackets and other rags there instead of a mattress. They gave me a blanket to cover myself. The main thing was that it was warm.

Before sleep, as usual, I prayed. Nyura and Masha were not surprised. Viktor came in during the night:

“Ma, is there anything to eat?”

“Shhh!… The exile is sleeping there.”

“Where?”

“On the stove.”

He peered over: there was room for him. He lay down next to me. We got acquainted in the morning.

8.

A day later, the brigadier—the one who brought us and assigned housing—arrived.

“Listen, you’re on for work tomorrow.”

“I’m not going to work tomorrow, or the day after. Not for a month. I’m entitled to a rest after prison.”

“Your comrades already went to work today.”

“Let them go. I’ll go in a month.”

The brigadier left. He came again the next day. I gave him the same answer.

“And what will you eat?”

“It’ll work out somehow. I won’t starve to death.”

The brigadier came on the third day as well. But this time it was to tell me to go to the office and fill out a form, because they had issued me provisions. I went. They issued me flour, lard, oil, potatoes, pasta, and other products. A lot of everything. They even delivered it themselves. Aunt Nyura cooked from it for all of us.

I rested for a month. I walked around the village, met people, and prayed a lot.

Nyura and her children were good people, but I was with them for only a month.

First, on about the third night, something started biting me. In the morning I said to Nyura:

“You must have bedbugs.”

“Yes, we do.”

“But they bite!”

“What else are they supposed to do?”

“But you can get rid of them.”

“Yes, of course. If one wanted to…”

I got used to the bedbugs. But the cramped space…

Once, Viktor was joking with me: he tickled me in my sleep. I stretched out my legs—and broke through the stove wall. It was made of clay, not brick. We were black with soot.

At the very beginning, Viktor brought his friend David, a German, home to boast that he had an “exile” staying with him, and a “believer” at that. David told his mother how cramped it was for me at Nyura’s. His mother said that if I wanted to, I could move in with them.

David didn’t have a father either. During the war, he was taken to the front. They forced a German to fight against Germans. He died. David also had a sister, also named Marusia.

They were Catholics. They had images of the Mother of God and the Sacred Heart of Jesus on their walls. They had preserved them.

I moved, though Viktor didn’t want me to; he cried. I calmed him, telling him I wasn’t going far. I helped them out as long as I was in Novooleksandrivka.

Germans are Germans everywhere. Both inside and outside the house—cleanliness and order. And their house was larger—two rooms and a kitchen. I had a separate room.

I found out that in the village of Yarmatushkino, which was not far from ours, lived the family of a priest’s son from Galicia. On Sunday, I went there.

People in the village told me where their house was. I found it and knocked. From inside the house I heard:

“Come in!”

I opened the door. A blast of steam hit me from inside, and my glasses fogged up instantly. I took one step, then another, blindly, and heard a scream. I stopped, took off my glasses to wipe them. I looked—and I was standing in a washtub full of laundry, in water. They happened to be washing, which was why there was steam.

We laughed hard about that incident. They pulled my felt boots off me and dried them.

I spent the night with my fellow countrymen. There were more Ukrainian families in Yarmatushkino. I was there more than once, tending to their spiritual needs as much as my rank of deacon allowed.

Exactly one month after my arrival in exile, I went to work. They put me in charge of a hundred cows with brucellosis. People could only drink their milk after it was boiled.

I brought fodder for the cows and took out the manure. They gave me an ox to help, a lazy, lazy ox. I didn’t beat him—I felt sorry for him. Instead, I tied a two-meter-long rope to his horns and pulled. Only then would he pull the sledge. I worked for about a month and then said at a meeting that the livestock care schedule needed to be changed—to let them sleep at least an hour longer in the morning. Not to mention that it was a torment to get up almost in the middle of the night, at 5 a.m., and trudge to that farm in the bitter cold. We would arrive, and our cows would still be sleeping. We were torturing ourselves and torturing them, forcing the poor animals to their feet.

I said at the meeting that the cows should be fed at 6 a.m., or even later. And I started doing so with my own herd. At 5 a.m., the farm manager would knock:

“Get up, feed them!”

I stood my ground. I would arrive at the farm at 6 a.m. My cows were already well-rested and on their feet.

They scolded me until they noticed that my wards had started to produce more milk. I was feeding them just as before. The milk yield increased because I changed their routine.

When the next meeting was held, they praised me. They increased my allotment and rewarded me with… a ram. We slaughtered and ate it.

I made sure my cows were clean, promptly removed manure, fed them, and cared for them as if they were my own. They suffered less from their brucellosis and gradually recovered.

On that farm, there was a room where the milkmaids brought the milk. Farm workers would go there to warm up. I went in once, too. But I never went back. The milkmaids, mostly young women and girls, asked why I was avoiding them. Perhaps I preferred the company of cows?

“Yes,” I answered. “My cows are calm, they don’t sing such vulgar songs as you do, they don’t tell such dirty jokes. You are noble women, you are mothers, girls, and you behave so shamefully. You don’t care if an elder, a child, or a deacon is present…”

From the first day, I did not hide the fact that I had been ordained a deacon. The news immediately spread through the village. An old grandmother came to visit the “Father Deacon” when I was still at Nyura’s. She brought me “pickled cucumbers, sour cabbage.” The poor woman had nothing else. The people here were good; one could feel that their ancestors had once been Ukrainians. But the swearing, that vile coarseness in their behavior…

The milkmaids, during our conversation:

“Come visit us, come visit, we won’t do it! Nobody taught us. There’s no church, no priest, we live like animals.”

I started visiting them again. That place on the farm was the first in the village where I preached before a large group of people. Boys and men also worked on the farm. I had a good influence on them. I told them about God, what is good to do, and what is wrong. When people found out that I could baptize (I just couldn't anoint with chrism—I didn't have the authority for that), they started coming to me from the village.

I baptized one child, then a second, a third. It turned out there were also unbaptized older ones, 18, 20 years old. They asked me, and I baptized them too. The baptisms were celebrated solemnly, with dinners. I only asked that they not abuse alcohol at them.

Eventually, I also baptized the children of the collective farm chairman, the head of the village council, and the farm manager. People from the surrounding villages also asked me to baptize their children. When spring came, I traveled from village to village by bicycle.

We celebrated Easter solemnly. I conducted the Easter Matins, then blessed the Easter breads. It was a great, joyful, crowded Holy Day. People took down the icons in their homes and walked with them in a procession to the cemetery. I conducted services at the gravesides…

Not far from the village, a group of Roma had set up camp. A child was born in the camp, and the baron sent a *tachanka*, that is, a carriage, for me. I took Vitya with me. The Roma greeted us with songs and dances. I baptized the child, and they invited us to dinner. I never knew they were such excellent cooks.

After that, I baptized Roma children several more times. They were waiting for permission to leave for Italy and invited me to go with them. They said they would transport me without documents. I dearly wanted to go home and did not lose hope that I would go to Ukraine. Although for us exiles, they took that hope away.

About two weeks after our arrival, we were gathered at the village council. KGB officials arrived from the district and read to us that we were here for eternal settlement. They told us to sign the paper. When my turn came, I declared that I would not sign my own life sentence. The court had only sentenced me to 5 years of deprivation of rights. There was no other verdict.

“What, are you starting a riot here?” the KGB man said to me.

“What riot?! Did I say anything to those who signed your paper before me? I am only responsible for myself. I will not voluntarily put my neck in your noose. I will not sign anything.”

“Then we’ll put you back in prison!”

“Do as you see fit. For me, it’s a prison here too.”

They left without my signature. At that time, I was the only one who didn’t sign. Of the thirty who arrived with me, only two were from Galicia. And there were few Ukrainians from Greater Ukraine.

Spring and summer came. They gave me a horse instead of the ox, because I had to herd the cattle.

We shepherds became nomads in the spring and summer. The herd grazed its way farther and farther. The steppe was endless. We would wander up to 50 kilometers from Novooleksandrivka. Only the milkmaids came by truck every day to do the milking. They showed me two cows that had especially tasty milk, and when I was thirsty, I would milk some into a bottle—that’s how I learned to milk.

My cows, well-cared-for during the winter, recovered on the fresh pasture and were transferred to the main herd. And what a pasture it was… tall, dense, juicy grasses. Black earth!

I would herd the cows for a day, then I was free for three days. I had enough time for pastoral work.

With such a work schedule, and after asking Vitya to go out into the steppe in my place one time, I ventured on a longer journey that I had long dreamed of. David and I took some bread for the road and set off on our bicycles. We rode along field and forest roads, taking shortcuts and bypassing villages. We traveled about a hundred kilometers, got tired, but did not regret it, for we had arrived in a fairytale. To see, after the black log huts overgrown with weeds and nettles (in Novooleksandrivka they didn’t even know that chopped nettles were good for fowl, pigs, and cattle—I taught them that too)… To come from a neglected Muscovite “village” and see neat little white houses with foundations trimmed in blue, yellow, and pink, with beautiful flowerbeds like embroidery, with sunflowers (not yet bloomed, it's true), with cherry orchards (the trees, unfortunately, were stunted)… With a fence on which pots were drying…

How my heart rejoiced then, how proud I was of our Ukrainians, how glad I was that I could show David, here in a foreign land, a splinter of my Ukraine. A painful splinter…

Back under the despot-tsar, people from Okhtyrka were transported here from their native Sumshchyna region. And here they built their own Okhtyrka. They named the new village just that. And they did everything to make their new homes and surroundings look just like they did back home.

Is it worth describing how my countrymen greeted me here? First, they fed us, then took us to the community club. True, they had not preserved the pure language, but the songs were like mountain streams. They nourished the soul.

I was in Okhtyrka more than once. I served my countrymen as a priest. I wrote to them from Ukraine after I returned. They wrote back to me—the KGB let only two letters through.

Once, in Novooleksandrivka, I was rowing a boat on the lake. David’s mother called to me from the shore:

“You have guests!”

I thought it was one of the Lithuanian priests. They lived in other villages, and I used to visit them by bicycle as well. But as they say, an uninvited guest is worse than a Tatar…

There were two of them. Serious-looking. Dressed in black.

“Are you Vasylyk?”

“I am.”

“Good. Let’s go to the room.”

In the house, they told me they were from the KGB and showed me documents. They sat down at the table.

“We are aware that you are baptizing children…”

“What, do you have children who need to be baptized? Let’s go…”

They did not expect such a start to the conversation.

“No! No!… By what right do you do this—cripple the youth…”

“So you’ve only just now found out that young people live in Novooleksandrivka? Did you not know until now? Did you not know how your youth desecrates their native language? At every step—profanity, no difference whether it’s a boy or a girl, a father or a mother, or a neighbor… You’ve only just found out you have youth? They have been crippled—by you! And now, when the young boys and girls, the children, don’t swear at each other, when they respect their father and mother—you say it is I who have crippled them?”

“Watch yourself, or you’ll get another term.”

They had to say something. They left.

I continued to wait for other “guests,” those with red epaulets. But no one else disturbed me until the end of my exile. For the Almighty had opened the ears of those two in black, and they listened, and my angry but bitter words found a way to their hearts, and they evidently wrote their report on the trip in such a way that I would have no obstacles in my work in God’s vineyard.

9.

In August (of 1956), I received permission to leave for Ukraine. Without delay, I went to my native land. That same month, I was already in Barysh. The thought that pleased me most was that I would finally be able to be ordained a priest. No matter how much I inquired, I had no information that any of the Greek-Catholic bishops were free. They were all either deported or shot…

At the end of September, a letter arrived for me from Kaunas. My brother in faith, Fr. Siankus, with whom I had shared camp gruel in Olzheras, informed me that a Lithuanian bishop was willing to ordain me. I immediately decided—I would go!

But about two hours later, even more joyful news arrived. A messenger from Fr. Ivan Hotra brought it. I was overjoyed just to hear news of my dear confessor, as I had heard nothing of him since 1952. I was glad that he was alive, and in Ukraine.

But my joy was twofold. The priest’s messenger informed me that our elderly Bishop, His Grace Mykola Charnetsky, had returned to Lviv from exile. Fr. Hotra had told the Bishop about me, and the Bishop was waiting for me to come for ordination!

After sending a letter of thanks to Kaunas, I was in Lviv the very next day. It is impossible to describe our joyful meeting with Fr. Hotra. With tears in our eyes, we thanked the Almighty for His great mercy in helping us return to our native land.

The priest took me to the bishop. His Grace received me very kindly. They informed me that my ordination would be in three days.

I was very pleased that the Bishop, based on Fr. Hotra’s account of me and our conversation, had come to such a decision, but I asked His Grace to postpone this very important event in my life for at least two months. I wanted to prepare for it properly.

His Grace agreed. I added books brought from Lviv to my spiritual collection. I studied intensely for the two months I had requested.

On November 10, in Lviv, I successfully passed the exams before an examination committee that included Fr. Ivan Hotra, Father-Professor Ieronym Tymchuk, OSBM, and two other clergy members. On November 18, 1956, my childhood dreams and camp-day reveries came true. On this momentous day for me, from the hands of the unwavering Warrior of Christ, His Excellency Bishop Mykola Charnetsky, I received priestly ordination.

I did not linger long in Lviv. I packed a chalice, a phelonion, and books into my suitcase—and headed to Buchach. In this ancient city, on the feast of the Archangel Michael, I celebrated the first Divine Liturgy of my life.

The service was held in the residence of the Sister Servants. Clandestinely, but during the day. At that time, Father-Abbot Rozumeyko, OSBM, was with the sisters. I was very glad that the Father was present at this service. For all the following years, until his death in 1967, Fr. Rozumeyko was my spiritual guide and confessor.

That same day, I went to celebrate a service in the village of Perevoloka. Over 200 people gathered for the Divine Liturgy there.

At the end of the Divine Liturgy, I gave a sermon. I usually spoke after the service; I didn't want to prolong it. I was afraid the enemy would interrupt.

By the grace of God, during the entire underground period, I never had a single service interrupted!

In my sermons, I encouraged people to be patient, to be faithful to the holy Greek-Catholic Church and the Apostolic See, convincing them that the Almighty sent us this suffering as a trial, that for it He would reward us even in this world if we showed love for Him and did not submit our souls to that godless Bolshevik world.

I spoke of this to the people in all the villages, at every one of my sermons.

Thus began my underground pastoral work in Ukraine. I went from village to village. Every day—20, even 40 kilometers. By day—along field roads and forest paths. At night, I could take the main roads, but there I had to lie down on the shoulder or in a ditch before every car to hide from the headlights. Because they hunted for me at night too.

They hunted for me constantly. The best place for them to catch me was on the road. They set up dragnets and ambushes for me. But the NKVD men, or later, the KGB, did not know those paths as well as I did. Decades have rustled by, but even now, hundreds and thousands of them are in my memory.

I really disliked forest clearings. Because I had to run across them. It was bitter to run with the Holy Mysteries, but what could I do... I was afraid I would lose my glasses in the middle of the forest.

I memorized the way. The guides who constantly walked with me very soon became necessary only to inform me if I were captured, and, as in my partisan days, to go on reconnaissance into the village before my arrival to see if enemies were waiting for us. Because even without guides, I soon knew how to approach Tarnovytsia or Hostiv, Zastavtsi or Zarvanytsia—from all corners of the world—through the forest or ravines.

We never left a village by the same road we entered. We often skirted the village through the forest to enter from a safer side. I learned to walk through the thicket silently. This came in very handy. The militia most often set up ambushes in the forest. Once, on a holy day, going from Nadorozhna to Klubivtsi, we bypassed 27 militiamen!

Nadorozhna was under special police "care." And not by chance. On Sundays and holy days, the faithful soon began to arrive in this small village from other regions as well.

The foot of a Moscow Orthodox priest never crossed the threshold of the small church in Nadorozhna. The enemies closed the church, but the people did not let him in. There were many such steadfast Greek-Catholic villages in Galicia.

An elderly priest, Father Liubomyr, used to serve in Nadorozhna. But the years took their toll, and the time came when the priest became so weak that he could no longer celebrate services.

I learned about this in the village of Mykytyntsi, near Stanislav (now Ivano-Frankivsk), where I was visiting my cousin. A nun, Sister Anna, a Myrrh-Bearer, told me about the church in Nadorozhna and asked me to take care of it.

Sister Anna brought me to the church in Nadorozhna at the beginning of December 1956. She brought me—and left me alone. She went to get the people and the sexton. The sister brought me the first time because they knew her in the village. Without her, it would have been hard for the people to believe that I was a priest. Some KGB agent could have been sent to them. And I looked more like a young worker than a priest. I was glad I looked that way. It was better for conspiratorial purposes.

The sister went for the people, and I was left alone. I cannot convey what was in my soul then. For the first time in my life, I was to celebrate the Divine Liturgy not in a city apartment, not in a village hut, but in the House of the Lord!

The sister returned with the sexton. With them—about twenty peasants.

I celebrated the service, heard confessions, and gave communion. The Holy Mysteries had been waiting, unconsecrated, for three months. I consumed them and left fresh ones in their place. The people rejoiced: it was a sign that I intended to come to them again.

I celebrated a service in Nadorozhna on Saint Nicholas Day, then came here almost every Sunday.

At the end of 1956, I went to Lviv to report to the Bishop. I met a Greek-Catholic priest from Transcarpathia there, Fr. Pavlo Madiar, OSBM. Fr. Pavlo said there were few priests in his region and invited me to do pastoral work. I gladly agreed. The Bishop was pleased with this, and until my second arrest, I spent one week almost every month in Transcarpathia.

And so, I first traveled to Carpathian Ukraine with Fr. Pavlo, to his native village of Bilky in the Irshava district. I wandered from village to village. Mstychiv, Rakivtsi, Zavadka... What melodious Ukrainian names!

I tried not only to spiritually but also nationally enlighten the Russified Ruthenians. There were strong Hungarian, Czech, and Romanian influences here. Here, the Bolshevik propaganda had eaten deeper into the soul than in Galicia. All this had to be taken into account when preaching. Trusting me as a priest, the people accepted our national idea from me better than they would from a layman.

In Transcarpathia too, it happened that they would open a church locked by the authorities for me, but mostly I celebrated in people's homes. The militia and NKVD agents did not pursue me here as they did in Galicia, but it was very dangerous to travel by train, especially on the Galician side. I had reason to be afraid, because for about half a year my passport had no registration stamp. I will tell more about that later.

Many militiamen knew me by sight. They could get a good look when hundreds of people gathered for services, not fitting into a village house, and I had to celebrate outside, when people knelt for Communion, and I went to them with the Holy Mysteries.

In many villages of Galicia, where large crowds gathered for services, it was no longer possible to hide the service from the KGB. The important thing was, after sending my scouts on reconnaissance and using their information, to enter on the edge of the village. The people developed a tactic for leading the priest to the place of the service. They would approach me one by one, unnoticed. When a large group of them had gathered, they would surround me, and we would set off. There were often more than a hundred of these "guardians," but the people were always far more numerous. They would not have let the manhunters near me, even under gunfire.

When there were few militia and KGB, they would stand quietly somewhere by a fence. When there were many, they behaved more audaciously—shouting, whistling, and laughing during the service. But when I delivered the sermon, they fell silent. They listened. They listened attentively. Lord, did Your living word, which You placed on my lips, reach any of them?

The "hunters" tried to grab me after the service. But here too, the people had their own tactic. They would leave the place of the service in a group. A human wall would advance on the KGB and militia. Before them, it would unexpectedly break apart into small groups. The captors did not know which group I was in. And I was in the middle of one of them. At that time I had neither a mustache nor a beard, and it was good if I could manage to change into women's clothes unnoticed.

And so it was that I would leave the church, change back into my own clothes, and might be reaching the next village while my "guardians" were still watching for me near the place where I had just celebrated the service…

It happened that people were informed about the services in Nadorozhna by... the regional Stanislav newspaper "Prykarpatska Pravda." With a notice like this: on such-and-such a date, in the village of Nadorozhna, some itinerant Uniate, a self-proclaimed priest Vasylyk, will be stirring up trouble among the people, so they should be wary and not go.

But the people knew on their own whom and what to be wary of.

After those announcements, a great many people gathered for the services. Did someone deliberately think of using the Soviet press for announcements in this way? It could have been so.

10.

On the night between Saturday and Palm Sunday in 1957, I was celebrating a service in Dolishnia Perevoloka. 300 people came to confession. I was very tired. I thought I might get a little nap before the morning service. But a woman asked me to go with her and hear her very sick mother's confession, because she might not last until morning.

As she was walking me back, I saw that we were being followed. I left her on the road and walked ahead more quickly. I managed to get into the house of Maria Hnytka. I was supposed to celebrate the service at her house. Many people were already waiting in the yard. I was convinced that the people would not let any enemy near me until I had finished the service.

I finished the Divine Liturgy and blessed the willow branches. I gave a long sermon. The people were crying. They knew what was waiting for me…

I told the people to wipe their tears, not to submit, that the Almighty wants our suffering, that He is testing us, and that the more sacrifices, the sooner He will grant freedom to our Church and our Nation.

I finished. They opened a window for me. But to climb through it after such a sermon—I couldn’t. I was ashamed of myself. I went to the door.

They were waiting for me behind the door. I gave myself into their hands.

They led me to a truck. They told me to get in the cab. The engine roared, but there was no way to drive. The people lay down under the truck. The old, the young. Boys, girls, children.

The investigator began to reason with the people, assuring them that they were just taking me in for a talk.

Nothing helped.

Then the investigator asked… me!

I got out of the truck. I said that I accept this trial.

The people listened to me. They stood up.

They took me to Buchach. That Sunday, I deprived the Buchach KGB of their day off. They were as furious as hornets.

The KGB chief Rybchenko himself took charge of me. He started by checking my documents. There was nothing to fault, as I still had my Buchach residence permit.

The interrogation began.

“By what right do you celebrate Uniate services in the villages?”

“I have God’s right to do so.”

“The Uniate Church does not exist! It has been liquidated!”

“Then which one am I in?”

The chief had no more breath for further interrogation. Instead, he had his fists. Heavy, huge fists. He hit me on the head once, twice.

“If you have a law that says to beat a priest, then beat me further. If not—you will answer for it before God and before men.”

After that, it was without fists.

“Sign out of your residence! And may we not see a trace of you here!”

“I am not going anywhere from here. I am home.”

“Find yourself some kind of job.”

“But I am working: I preach the Word of God. And what job would you hire a Greek-Catholic priest for?”

The interrogation lasted until lunch. Who ordained me, where I was ordained, which priests I knew. Persuasion interspersed with threats, with vile swearing.

They learned nothing and got nothing from me. They let me go. That evening, I continued to celebrate services.

A few days later, I was informed that I had been deregistered from Buchach. This was a greater misfortune, for they had thus led me to the prison door. Now they could lock me up as a vagrant for violating passport regulations.

It was necessary to immediately obtain that serf's stamp. It took me about half a year to get registered in Mykytyntsi, near Stanislav, with my cousin Stepan Dolyna. It cost time, nerves, and money.

But in a state where soul and conscience were for sale, it was possible to buy a residence permit too.

During the time I was, in essence, without a passport, I did not sit around at home. My pastoral work did not cease for a single day.

I did not only disturb the peace of our enemies.

The end of 1957. I am in Lviv, on Vechirnia Street. I am approaching the residence of Bishop Mykola Charnetsky. The Bishop is clearing snow in the yard.

“There is a complaint against you!” he tells me after we greet each other.

“From whom?”

“From our underground priests.”

“What?!”

“They complain that because of you, they are also being checked on, that they are not being given any peace. They say that if you don’t quiet down, you will go to prison, and they might be taken along with you. They are asking me to restrain you a bit.”

“So what should I do now, Your Grace?” I asked, dejected.

“The same as before. I did not ordain you to restrain you.”

The KGB wanted to restrain me. They would stop at nothing. They were even prepared to liquidate me.

I won’t say in which locality or whom I met in the middle of the forest. He had an axe. I was supposed to be walking alone, but a young boy, a fourth or fifth grader, had insisted on accompanying me.

That saved my life. Because the one who was waiting for me in the forest might have been able to strike me down if I were alone, but he could not take the life of an innocent child on his soul.

He came out to me with the axe, but apparently, his mother had taught him to pray as a child and told him about God, about God’s mercy. Though in time this was forgotten. He took a wrongful path, committed a crime, and was locked up. They released him now to kill me. They promised him that if he carried out their task, his crime would be forgiven, and he would not be prosecuted.

Instead of raising the axe over me, that sinner came to me for confession. He departed with my blessing.

Later I found out that he was convicted anyway.

After that incident, I became more cautious. I no longer spent nights in houses, but in barns and sheds. I often slept on haystacks, even when there was snow.

For the Easter holidays, people wanted to eat consecrated food. I could only consecrate, as is customary, when everything was baked, boiled, and placed in a basket, in one village, at most two. So I began to consecrate the ingredients from which it was baked: the flour, the eggs. The consecration was valid even in this case, and it allowed me to begin the Easter ritual right after Palm Sunday. I took great joy in this work, although I lacked sleep and my feet were weary. I had trouble with my feet. Back in the camps, working as a loader on a construction site, I developed flat feet. It was difficult for me, but I walked from village to village and fulfilled my pastoral duty. I knew I would only be able to rest after the Holidays.

On Easter Sunday I celebrated service in Nadorozhna, Tarnovytsia, and Bortnyky, and on Monday—in the Buchach district. On the night leading to Tuesday, I celebrated in Barysh, where my relatives lived.

After the Divine Liturgy, I felt a desire to spend the night in my parents’ house. I should not have allowed myself such a luxury…

At dawn, the house was surrounded. They took me, exhausted and sleepy. They took me away. They beat me on the road, they beat me in Buchach.

“You are not registered here, how dare you travel so far, planting Uniatism?”

“I have only traveled 70 kilometers, and that on my native soil. And you, who have come all the way from Moscow—is that allowed for you?”

They answered with their fists.

They checked my documents. By then I already had my Mykytyntsi registration. They took me to Stanislav. There they arranged a theatrical meeting for me.

It looked like this. The corridor of the regional KGB headquarters. From the entrance to the vestibule—a wide staircase. I am walking up it, like a king, with an “escort” on both sides—the Buchach KGB agents. Coming toward me, accompanied by his own retinue, the head of the Stanislav regional KGB himself, with theatrically outstretched arms and an ironic smile:

“We welcome today, on the Easter Holy Days, the distinguished Uniate preacher. Will you find it strange to ‘celebrate’ here with us?”

“Nothing strange. If the Lord wishes for me to preach the word of God to you today, even in your offices—I will gladly fulfill His will. God knows what He is doing.”

They did not expect such an answer. The jokes were over.

The interrogation: where I was born, when I was born, where my parents were, who my parents were, where my grandfathers were buried, where and for what I was imprisoned, when, where, and who ordained me, why I obey the enemy of the Soviet people, the Pope of Rome, why I mention in the Divine Liturgy the fascist collaborator Andriy Sheptytsky and the traitor of Ukraine, Josyf Slipyj…

I answered some things, explained some things to them, refused others.

They questioned me for a long time. They repeated questions. They forced me to sign that I would not go anywhere to celebrate services anymore. I said I would not sign, because I would go. They beat me. In front of the KGB chief. He encouraged them, but did not beat me himself.

It was long dark. Evening. Night. They kept telling me to sit on a hard chair. The interrogators grew tired on their soft ones and took turns. I fell asleep sitting up. They would shake me, force me to answer. True, they didn't beat me anymore, though I still didn't mince words with them, speaking sharply. They were no longer interested in my words; their main goal was to exhaust me. Their tactic hadn't changed in ten years.

Around four in the morning, they allowed me to get up. I was so tired I would have fallen on the floor and instantly fallen asleep. And they were telling me to get out! They were letting me go!

It was unexpected. I had thought they wouldn't release me. Tired, half-conscious, I still understood that I would be safer now within these walls. So I… refused to leave. I said I was very tired and would wait with them until morning.

My behavior both surprised and angered them. They grabbed me by the arms and dragged me to the exit with vile curses. They locked the door behind me.

I don't know how long I stood there, leaning against the door from the outside. The fresh night air made me even sleepier. I felt it was dangerous for me to be here. With great effort, I tore myself away from the planks I had warmed and stumbled along, holding on to trees, then a small fence. I looked around anxiously. A little further on, a car rumbled. It was coming my way, its headlights shining. I watched where it shone, to spot my executioner in its light. I sensed they were after my life.

But that executioner was behind the wheel. When I stepped out from behind the trees into an open space, the dark hulk, blinding me with its headlights, charged at me.

I understood immediately whom I had to beware of. It was supposed to be the end for me. But the Savior still wanted me to serve Him more on this sinful earth.

To this day, I don’t know if I managed to jump away at the last moment, or if the car crashed into a tree. I didn’t look back and didn’t wait for it to turn around. I ran. I ran with all my might. I turned into some courtyard. It, thankfully, turned out to be a thoroughfare. I ran into a second one. Even the next day, I couldn’t have shown which streets, alleys, and paths I took to save myself.

I came to my senses only in Mykytyntsi, under Stepan’s window.

In the house, they were frightened. They had already been told that I had been taken. They thought the authorities had come for them.

Later, Stepan told me that he had known the saying: “white as a sheet.” He only believed one could be so that night. He said that’s how I looked.

By the grace of the Lord, I soon recovered and again went to where I was eagerly awaited.

They continued to hunt for me. The Almighty protected me, did not let me fall into the hands of my enemies. Sometimes I even had to deceive my enemies. I will recall a downright comical case.

It happened because I was very tired. At night I had celebrated a service in Kurdybanivka, in the Buchach district of the Ternopil region. I was walking on the road to another village. If I hadn’t been utterly exhausted, I would not have allowed such a thing to happen. A car rumbled behind me. By the time I heard it, it was so close there was nowhere to go. And they were already out of the car and walking towards me. But somehow hesitantly. So I turned around and walked towards them.

“Are you chasing someone?”

“Yes.”

“About ten minutes ago, a man with a briefcase ran past me and kept looking back.”

“And where is he?”

“He turned that way!” I point towards Babulintsi.

They rushed to the car, turned around, and drove off.

Later I found out they had come for me in Kurdybanivka but had missed me. The informers (Secret Collaborators) had told them which way I went, and they had rushed to catch up. Having caught up, they were thrown off by my attire. I was wearing an officer’s greatcoat, a very convenient item for my travels. And those KGB agents were new, they didn't know me by sight.

But I am most indebted for my salvation to the grace of the Lord. At that moment, I was worried not for myself, but for my suitcase. It contained my vestments, my church items. The Lord did not want the enemy to mock them.

11.

One more miraculous salvation.

Sometime in December of that same year, 1958, I was walking through the forest in Pshenchnyky to see a dying man. Vasyl Fedorak, just back from the army, was with me.

Although there were no leaves on the trees and we could see far, we noticed the henchmen waiting for us only about ten meters away. With no hope, we dove into some dense bushes.

But they didn't see us.

The bushes were so low that we could only hide in them by kneeling.

We dared not move, lest they hear us. Just as we heard their every word. They were talking about me. Angry that I wasn’t coming.

We knelt like that for an hour. And for another quarter of an hour after they left.

We could barely get up from the ground. There was no snow yet (which also served us well, as they would have found us by our tracks), but the ground was as cold as ice. Our legs wouldn't obey, but we had to go.

I heard the dying man’s confession and gave him communion. He passed away in the morning. We did not linger in the village but returned during the night, as I had to celebrate the Divine Liturgy in Nadorozhna early in the morning.

Very quickly, Nadorozhna became the underground religious center of Galicia. Many people came here from other regions. I celebrated services all over Galicia and Transcarpathia, but in Nadorozhna most often.

Once after vespers, which ended at midnight because there were many people for confession—both local and from out of town—I was informed that there were KGB and militia in the village. In Nadorozhna, as in every village, there were informers among the communists and state activists. Therefore, I was forced to maintain conspiracy: only the church watchman and the hosts where I slept knew the location of my lodging.

This time, having been warned about the captors, I did not go to the prearranged house, because I would have had to go through the village. Instead, I asked Vasyl Fedorak, who was guiding me, to let the Shlapaks know. Their house was not far from the church, by the forest. The lady of the house had married off her daughters and now lived alone. It was peaceful there.

At the Shlapaks’, in a dark corner of the entryway, there was a small door to a little storage room. They made a bed for me in it. I fell asleep immediately.

I thought I was dreaming of the rumbling and shouting.

But the hostess answered. She went to open the door.

I heard them rummaging through the house. I hoped they wouldn't notice my little door. But they found it.

“Get up!” they shouted from the doorway.

“Please close the door, I need to get dressed.”

They listened. I came out, greeted them in a Christian manner. I asked the hostess for some water.

“Alright, let’s go!”

“I’m not going unwashed!”

They let the hostess in to me with water.

“Now, let’s go!”

“No, I still need to pray!”—without waiting for permission, I knelt in the middle of the room.

Four men were taking me. One went to the village council for the paddy wagon, another waited in the yard, a third in the entryway. The fourth stood over me with a pistol while I prayed.

I prayed the rosary. Several times. I prayed more than usual. It was hard to concentrate on prayer in such a state.

In those times, many village houses did not have wooden floors, but rather earthen floors. The Shlapaks' house had such a floor. A cold came up from the earth, my legs grew numb.

I rose with difficulty. I crossed myself. Outside, it was already getting light.

“I can go now.”

“No, we’re not walking now, we’re driving. A car will be here soon. We can’t lead you out of this hooligan village in broad daylight. You were clever for nothing. This time you won’t escape us. Last night, I woke up because that, what do you call it... that *bambetel*, broke under me. That's a good sign!”

“That's a good sign for me! It’s a sign that you have lost!”

“How so?! You are in our hands.”

“I am in God's hands!”

“So what, there will be a miracle?”

“Yes! I, as I planned, will be celebrating Matins in this village!”

And at that moment, the church bell began to ring!

It was unexpected even for me. To say nothing of my "guardian." He suddenly turned pale as a sheet.

“What is that?”

“It is a miracle of God!”

The bell did not cease. In the street, in the yard—shouting. I hear them trying to break into the house. Suddenly: bang! bang! bang! Three shots. It grew quiet. Then—a squall, a storm! A little more and they would have torn the house down.

They had to bring me outside.

In the yard, on the street—almost the whole village. Girls are tearing their clothes, baring their chests to the bullets.

It was a militiaman who had fired. Into the air. He wanted to pacify the people with this, but it angered them even more. They attacked him, took his pistol and threw it into the garden, and lifted him up and flung him like a stick. He remained lying on the ground. From fear, it seemed.

At that moment, they brought me out. With cries of “traitor, executioner,” the people attacked “my” KGB agent. I barely managed to calm them.

More and more people gathered. There was no more room for them in the yard, on the street. They stood in the gardens too.

The people freed me, took me in their arms and carried me to the church. At that moment, two cars with militia arrived. They continued to fire into the air. The people pulled the militia from the cars, pushed both them and the cars into a ditch, and pelted them with clubs and stones.

At exactly ten o'clock, I began to celebrate. Every living soul was in the church and around the church. Only the village party activists helped the militia get out of the ditch and pull out the cars.

Later they told me who had sounded the alarm in the middle of the night.

When I was already at the Shlapaks’, Vasylko Fedorak was coming to them—carrying my things. We did this when there was danger.

The boy saw the militia in the yard and ran to ring the bell.

Vasylko, unfortunately, is no longer living. He died at a young age. He now rings the bells of heaven.

After this event, Nadorozhna began to be watched very closely. Especially before Christmas. How could I bypass Nadorozhna on such a great Holy Day? The people would have been very bitter.

Reconnaissance informed me that there were police posts on all approaches to the village. Only there was no one near the church on the forest side, because the snow was very deep in the forest.

In Nadorozhna, the forest comes almost right up to the church. So I came through the forest that time. That was from the Tysmenytsia side.

Not only the militia, but even the people did not expect that my guide and I would make it through such deep snow.

I arrived in Nadorozhna on Christmas Eve. The service, with the blessing of the Jordan water, was supposed to begin at midnight. After having supper with an elderly sister, Nastia—who lived on the edge of the village—I moved closer to the church around nine o'clock, to Chornoliska Street. The Kavetsky family lived here, four of them: the older couple and the newlyweds. I wanted to sleep for a few hours at their place.

About an hour later I was awakened by shouts and banging. They were raging outside the house, shining a flashlight into my window—it wasn’t covered at the top. To avoid being seen, I lay down on the floor.

The young couple were called into the room for me. They took the bedding and blanket off their bed, pushed aside the straw down to the planks, and told me to lie on them face down. On top, they again threw straw, leveled it as best they could, made the bed, and lay down on top.

Only then did the hosts go to open the door.

The intruders rummaged through the whole house, looked in the attic, even in the oven, and under the bed. It didn't occur to them to pull the young couple off the bed.

Meanwhile, under the newlyweds, I could barely breathe. One of them was lying on my head. I felt I couldn't hold on any longer when… the bells started ringing!

The militia were out of the house as if blown by the wind!

According to village custom, the youth in Nadorozhna weave a wreath on Christmas Eve. They use it to adorn the cross above the well where the water is blessed.

As the boys and girls were carrying the finished wreath to the cross, they saw a sleigh with militia. They rushed to block the road, to ring the bells. They ran after the sleigh.

Shots rang out from the sleigh. This time—not into the air. But they only wounded… their own driver. They were racing like madmen. They ran over a school-aged girl (the people took her to the hospital, but, thank God, she was not seriously injured).

The militia managed to get out of the village. The people thought they had taken me on that sleigh, and half the village rushed to Tlumach (which is three kilometers from Nadorozhna) to free me.

The people caused a great commotion in Tlumach. The militia were so terrified that they led the people through the cells where they held the arrested—to show them that I was not there.

Those who went to Tlumach were very happy when they returned and found me in the village. I, as planned, celebrated vespers, the Divine Liturgy, blessed the water, and, before it got light, went on to other villages.

I am looking over these notes, and they seem very much like some kind of detective story. I am fleeing, hiding, either I am caught, or I manage to escape or hide.

To some people who still remember the fear instilled in their souls by the Stalinist regime, and, despite the democracy for show, maintained by the Khrushchev regime, my behavior with the enemies of our Church may seem contrived. I refer them to the beginning of my memoirs, where I wrote about the mortification of the flesh, which I resorted to almost from childhood, to my sincere veneration and desire to imitate the Holy Martyr of our long-suffering Church, the Most Reverend Josaphat Kuntsevych. And, by the grace of God, I strengthened my spirit in Stalin's concentration camps.

My enemy, the enemy of our Church, had nothing in his soul but a diabolical "doctrine" sucked from a thumb, in which he himself did not believe. I, however, had behind me a strong, impregnable, majestic Rock, on which proudly stood my scorned, tortured by the red devil, but unconquered, holy Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church. My pillars of support, besides Saint Josaphat, were the Prince of our Church, the Prince of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Prophet Metropolitan Andriy Sheptytsky; his worthy disciple, who suffered for long years in satanic camps and prisons but did not break—Patriarch Josyf Slipyj; and our Bishops tortured by the Bolshevik horde, and our heroic Nation.

Our Nation, which like the burning bush was reborn by God's Power after fires and ruins, a Nation more accustomed to storms and adversities than to a peaceful sky, a Nation that sacrificed itself for the Christian and national Idea.

Is there greater satisfaction in this world than to serve God's Ideals and to suffer for them, to serve and to be tormented for our God-loving Nation, chosen by the Lord for suffering and tribulations? For it, like Jesus, endured its torments for all humanity.

Through its sufferings, Ukraine is saving the world!

Perhaps I should speak more about the services, about pastoral work. In them, I adhered to our Christian canons, did everything just like any other underground priest. I differed perhaps only in my sermons and teachings, which were, probably, more patriotic than others. I see no evil in this and do not repent, for our Ukraine suffered from its enemies just as our Church did, and it was impossible to care for the restoration of our Church's rights without caring for the resurrection of Ukraine.

Our Church stands on a firm foundation—Christ's Teaching. But it also has another unshakable support—our Ukrainian People. The freedom of Ukraine is also a gift from the Almighty for our Nation's service to its native Church.

It has not yet been realized how all of our Ukraine, through its suffering, has served the Universal Church, all of world Christianity.

12.

That revolutionary outburst (as Marxists would have characterized the incident in Tlumach, when Nadorozhna came to free me and even the militia capitulated before them) was too much for the KGB. They concluded that my continued presence at liberty had become dangerous. They reminded me of the possibility of re-imprisonment at every meeting: “The slop bucket is crying for you!”

They couldn't catch me in Nadorozhna or any other village. They chose Stanislav. I used to stop here before my trip to Lviv.

I was in Stanislav on January 22, 1959. I arrived with Vasyl Fedorak. He went to buy us tickets for the evening (around 7 p.m.) train to Lviv.

At 3:00 p.m., I was met in the city by Sister Anna from the congregation of the Myrrh-Bearing Sisters. She took me to rest in a stone building not far from the market. There, Sr. Tetiana from the congregation of the Sisters of the Virgin Mary, the daughter of the late Father Petro Holeiko, was waiting for me.

Shortly before departure, Vasylko and I were to meet at an agreed-upon place. We had just stepped out onto the street when I noticed four suspicious-looking men walking toward us in a line. I looked back—another four were behind, catching up.

“Please step away from me. We are surrounded!” I say quietly to Tania.

Tania stepped back. The ones behind her didn’t touch her. All their attention was on me.

I, though more slowly, kept walking.

Near a wide gateway, the circle closed. They pounced on me. A little farther away, a paddy wagon was waiting, just in case. But I was to be accorded special honors. A black "Volga" drove past us through the gate. They were going to put me in it. They were dragging me toward it.

There were people on the street. They were watching the capture. They might have thought that valiant law enforcement officers were performing a heroic deed, taking away some bandit.

Could I allow them to think that about me, a Greek-Catholic priest?!

The captors did not expect it. God multiplied my strength tenfold, and I broke free. But I did not run. I began to shout at the top of my voice:

“You are bandits! What, you want to take me away secretly? It won’t work! Everyone will know who you are and who you are taking! I am a Greek-Catholic priest, Pavlo Vasylyk! You have murdered our priests and bishops, you have murdered our entire People!”

I went on and on. More and more people gathered.

The KGB men seemed petrified. They were afraid to touch me!

I said that I had not signed on to Orthodoxy, that I celebrate services in the Greek-Catholic rite and therefore suffer persecution, that I am being arrested not by representatives of the authorities, but by bandits. Because otherwise, they would deprive me of my freedom as they do in civilized countries, not by staging a manhunt in the middle of the city, not by hiding in civilian clothes, not by covering their faces with caps.

I called on the people to hold fast to our holy Greek-Catholic Church, to the faith of their fathers, not to yield to the lure of the Moscow church, which has locked up our temples.

I preached to the people for half an hour. When I finished, the people parted to let me escape. I ran, but my big boots slipped on the icy ground. I fell.

The hunters pounced on me. They were afraid the people wouldn’t give me up, but they were even more afraid for their own epaulets, which would have been torn off if they had let me go.

They grabbed me, carried me to the "Volga." By the car—I stuck my feet up! Instead of into the cabin, they landed me on the roof. It was both laughable and tragic! But somehow they stuffed me in—and tore off. It's a good thing they picked up my glasses...

At the time the train was leaving the station for Lviv, I was crossing the threshold of the regional KGB headquarters.

The duty officer met me. About ten minutes later, those with bigger stars began to arrive. They were outraged that I had dared to call them bandits. They promised a separate charge for that.

I expressed my protest regarding my gangster-style arrest.

Then—the usual KGB conveyor belt began to operate. One group replaced another.

Some were simply doing their shift. Some mocked. Some listened to my words.

I, as an experienced prisoner, sensed that this was still just a game, not some thorough interrogation. They wanted to exhaust me again. I already foresaw some new trap and declared that I would not say another word, as I was very tired, and to let me rest.

But this time they took me to a cell.

In 1947, when I first crossed the threshold of a prison, I sang "The Grieving Mother." The time was right for this divine hymn then, as it was the time of Great Lent, before Christ's Resurrection. Now it was Christmastide, but I sang it again. It was my prayer to the Most Pure Virgin Mary, to the Most Holy Theotokos. With my song, I asked Her for strength, to help me endure this captivity once more and return safely to my flock.

The cell was a solitary one. It greeted me with the familiar smell coming from the slop bucket. I climbed onto the bunk, a rough plank bunk without a scrap of cloth. I climbed onto it and immediately forgot myself in a deep sleep.

I didn't have to wait long for the interrogations. But from the start, they were tedious, gray. They kept asking why I said they were bandits. I explained it to them.

About a week later, they took me not to the investigator’s office, but to a luxurious hall. I was informed that people had come from Kyiv to speak with me.

About ten minutes later, four men arrived: the Head of the KGB; Bibyk, the plenipotentiary for religious affairs in the Stanislav region; Vilkhovyi, the plenipotentiary for religious affairs under the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR. I don’t know who the fourth man was. Obviously, some high-ranking KGB official from Kyiv.

Vilkhovyi began the conversation. A man of advanced years, he greeted me politely. He spoke in a friendly manner:

“How did you end up in prison again? For the second time... When I learned you were in prison, I came personally to help you get out.”

“What must I pay for this freedom?”

“You must understand for yourself: you need to break ties with Rome once and for all, leave the Uniate Church, and convert to Orthodoxy. Then you will be free. I will see to it that you serve in Stanislav, in the cathedral.”

“Thank you for your concern, but that is impossible.”

“Why?”

“Because I preach to the people that the one Church of Christ is the Universal, Catholic Church, to which we, Ukrainian Greek-Catholics, belong. I cannot change. It is impossible! There can be no talk of any conversion! I belong to the Church founded by Jesus Christ Himself!”

“I cannot understand you. You have been there once before and you know what that smells like...”

“I know.”

“Do you have no pity for yourself? You are young, healthy. We are giving you a choice...”

“I have one question for you,” I say, trying to change the subject.

“Please.”

“Are you a believer?”

“No, I am an atheist.”

“That surprises me. You are an atheist, yet you act as a missionary for the Orthodox Church. You are not proposing that I convert to Orthodoxy—you are obligating me! You are threatening me! What kind of church is this you have? Who runs it? No, I will not go against the Truth of Christ, against the Catholic Church!”

“You have no pity for yourself...” he continued on the same track.

“No, I do have pity for myself. For myself and for the people among whom I work. If I did not pity them, I would have abandoned both the Church and the Nation, I would not be preparing them for eternity, for besides life on earth, there is also eternal life.”

“And I don’t consider you a priest! You are not in my books!” Bibyk interjected.

“I am written in the Books of Heaven.”

My answer angered Vilkhovyi. He lost his patience:

“Either you convert to Orthodoxy, or you will rot in prison!”

“They told me I would rot, in '47. But I returned. God willing—I will return safely this time as well. And if not… Will you ever understand how sweet it is to suffer for Christ’s Church?! Your punishment is an honor for me!”

“Our government is too humane, but if we need to hang you, we will hang you!”

“You should have started with that!”

They sent me back to my cell.

After that, it was the usual investigation. With threats, with shouting, with humiliation. They constantly repeated the same questions:

“You are against the USSR! You are with its enemies! You were ordained on the stones of Dzhezkazgan!”

“In that is my happiness, that I was ordained on a stone. For on a rock, on a stone—is Christ's Church. Even the name of Christ’s beloved Apostle, the very first Pope of Rome, is Peter. From ‘petros,’ which means ‘stone.’ The Church which is on a rock is not subject to the powers of hell. You will not overcome it either!”

“Who ordained you?”

“A bishop.”

“His name!”

“I swore I would not say.”

“We know ourselves.”

“That’s your business.”

“In which villages did you serve? Which people received you?”

“I don’t remember the villages, I don’t know the surnames. I don’t keep a diary, I don’t write anything down anywhere, I don’t memorize the names of villages and people on purpose.”

They also asked me about Vasyl Fedorak. At that time I did not know that he had been captured. But the two tickets to Lviv found on him were not sufficient material evidence for an arrest. They held him for only two days. Vasylko held strong.

Once, investigator Nikitin asked me:

“Why do Ukrainians dislike ‘Russians’ so much?”

“I am surprised by your language. Is anyone doing them wrong here? Ukrainians hate the Soviet government because they cannot forget the famine of '33, nor the deceitful ‘liberation’ of '39, nor the innocent blood of '41. The Ukrainian people rose up not against the ‘Russian’ people, but against a godless state.”

The investigator was very pleased with my words. He immediately called the prosecutor. I repeated it once more. The prosecutor wrote it down, I signed.

They arranged confrontations for me. The first time—with Petro Pyrizhko, a student of the Lviv underground theological seminary, also a resettled person. They brought Petro to me:

“Do you know him?”

“I don't need that question. Ask the one who needs to know.”

They ask Petro. He says he knows me. He asks to be put in my cell, so that he, like me, may have the grace from the Almighty to suffer for the Holy Church.

The investigator was furious. As Petro was leaving, he asked me for my blessing right in front of him! He justified his name before the Lord!

Confrontation with Fedorak:

“Do you know this young man?”

“I know many young men!”

“Do you know this vagrant priest?”

“What vagrant?” Vasyl turned red from the insult directed at me.

“This Uniate here, who’s messing with people’s heads!”

“Don’t you dare speak like that! He is not messing with anyone’s head! He teaches us the Law of God! He is our priest!”

“Were you in the army?”

“No.”

“Well, you won’t be. We’re not letting you out of here.”

“Excellent! You will increase my merits before our Church!”

At that, the investigator couldn’t hold back. He began to curse.

I was indignant. I asked if he had any shame to speak like that in front of a priest.

Seething with rage, the investigator kicked us out of his office. They brought no more witnesses to me.

Just before the trial, I had a dream. That I was in the church in Nadorozhna. It was time to celebrate the service, but I was sitting on the floor near the pulpit. In my hands, I held a large wooden cross. The kind they place at crossroads.

Surprised people approach me:

“Why aren’t you starting the Divine Liturgy?”

“I will sit like this for 5 years and hold the cross for 5 years.”

Thus I guessed my sentence: 5 years of imprisonment and 5 years without the right to reside in Galicia.

Every day, people came to the prison. The window in my cell was high up, it was hard to reach. I would often climb up and wave my hand to the people. They saw me. The people brought me packages, but during the investigation, they didn’t let a single one through to me.

13.

Somehow people found out when the trial was. A great many of them came that day. They surrounded the prison on all sides, because they didn’t know from where I would be brought out. They waited for me by the Stanislav regional court as well. But they waited in vain.

The paddy wagon drove me around the city streets for a long time. Then it turned onto a straight road. After about 15 minutes of fast driving, it stopped. They had brought me to Lysets. They took me into a club, where the trial was to be held. I asked:

“Why are you not trying me in Stanislav?”

“There are no free courtrooms there.”

The reason was different: they were afraid of the people.

They arrested me like a thief, and they tried me like a thief.

The trial was “open.” The “public” in the hall—KGB agents and correspondents.

The court officials entered. The usual formalities. They read the indictment. Such-and-such, a so-called Uniate priest, ordained illegally. He traveled through cities and villages in various regions, celebrated Divine Liturgies in the Uniate rite, heard confessions, gave communion, baptized, married, buried, consecrated, without having the right to do so and in violation of the law. He sows enmity between the Orthodox and the Uniates. Proving his illegal activity is a large amount of anti-Soviet literature of a religious nature seized from his cousin, Dolyna Stepan, residing in Stanislav, at 126 Radyanska Street.

From my cousin, they had taken my Holy Gospel, Book of Hours, a three-volume Catechism, an Akathist book, a Book of Needs, a Service Book, and a book by Fr. Prystai, "From Truskavets to the Skyscraper."

I immediately protested that the literature they had taken from me was spiritual, not anti-Soviet. I demanded that it be brought into the courtroom so that the people could see for themselves.

They began to call witnesses. No matter how exhausted I was by the interrogations and the prison, I tried not to show it, not to appear gloomy and depressed. I was serving the Almighty not only at the church Altar, but also here, on the defendant's bench. Here I defended not myself, but our holy Apostolic Church. Here too, by my appearance, I tried to encourage our people to be steadfast, I supported them spiritually. And they, my dear ones, supported me. When they were let in to testify, they first of all loudly addressed me:

“Glory to Jesus Christ!”

Each of their Christian greetings filled my soul with strength, and at this vile trial, I felt great joy from serving the Almighty, our long-suffering Church, and our people, who did not lose face even before a fierce enemy. Petro Pyrizhok testifies:

“I belong to the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church. The Father did not force any of us to attend his services. We asked him to. You closed our church, and we do not go to the Polish church or the Moscow Orthodox church. I say again, that our father is not guilty of anything!”

They question Vasyl Fedorak from Nadorozhna:

“Do you believe in God?”

“I do.”

“How? So young, you went to school—and you believe in God? Are you a Komsomol member?”

“No.”

“You see! That is the fault of this Uniate priest. He is agitating the youth against the Komsomol!”

“No, they agitated me to join the Komsomol. They forced me! We used to escape from your Komsomol at school through the windows! Everyone who didn't want to be a Komsomol member had their grades lowered. Is that fair?!”

“Listen to how he speaks! This is the teaching of a vagrant Uniate!”

“My father and mother taught me this way! They are older than our father! They are Greek-Catholics. And our whole village is Greek-Catholic. Don’t blame our father for anything! The Church does not begin with the priest, but with our Savior Jesus Christ! The priest is only fulfilling his duty!”

You will not read these lines, Vasylko, for the Almighty has taken you to Himself in your youth. I pray for you to the Savior and our Most Holy Intercessor, the Virgin Mary. Our Faith, our Church, rests not only on our bishops and priests, but also on hearts as great, sincere, and fearless as yours.

Take him, Lord, into the Heavenly Kingdom!

Everyone testified this way. The young, the old, men, women. From the Lviv, Drohobych, Stanislav, and Ternopil regions.

The last to be called to testify was the Nadorozhna sacristan. Onufriy Morykit—dignified, elderly. He had lived through all the bloody wars of the century. Unshakable in his faith.

He stood firmly in the middle of the hall, leaning on a long, thick staff. It seemed as if he had not come here from the plow, but that the Savior Himself had sent His Apostle to me.

The judge dared to ask him, as he had everyone:

“Do you believe in God?”

The sacristan straightened his chest. He took a step toward the judges. He banged his staff on the floor. He spoke slowly, distinctly, and loudly:

“Yes, honorable judges! I tell you: a person who does not believe in God is like cattle!”

He was immediately removed from the hall. A recess was declared. I had not sought a lawyer for myself at the trial; they appointed a defender for me. The world had never known such a "defense." All he did was constantly say to me:

“How dare you, how dare you...”

“Did you come to defend me or to help the prosecutor accuse me?” I asked him during the “process.”

I refused his services, but they paid no attention. Later, they charged me 70 rubles for the lawyer.

The verdict was as I had dreamed.

In May, they took me to Mordovia, to Yavas, to the 2nd camp unit. They put me to work in a furniture factory. I became a versatile machine operator. I mastered planing, sanding, and milling machines.

Then they transferred me to the 1st camp unit and made me a metalworker.

The 1st camp unit was a special, specific camp where Christians of all denominations were brought together: Catholics, Orthodox, Protestants. There were also our Greek-Catholic priests in the camp.

Here, in this camp, a great joy awaited me. In 1960, our great Martyr for the Christian faith, Patriarch Josyf Slipyj, was transferred here.

In my two years of freedom, I had not had time to grow unaccustomed to camp life. I could hardly wait for the end of my shift—and rushed to His Beatitude.

In this camp, the Bishop directed the spiritual life. He held discussions, academic conferences, and theological gatherings with us. All this, of course, did not happen openly. We maintained strict secrecy. Both the Bishop and I were already well-trained.

So a year passed for us. Then the authorities remembered that I was a recidivist, and a dangerous one at that. They threw me into the Potma-Yavas prison.

That prison, it's true, was of a barracks type.

They issued me striped clothing, like a criminal. They herded me into a cramped cell. About 15 of us prisoners were crowded from wall to wall. Here too, all denominations were gathered. Among us was a Roman Catholic, Fr. Alfons from Lithuania. I was the only Greek-Catholic.

There were no enterprises here, but to get some use out of us, they took us to work in the vegetable garden. There I gathered herbs, dried them, and made myself a fragrant mattress.

About half a year later, the Almighty blessed me with such a great grace that I had not even dared to hope for: they brought His Beatitude into my cell!

Our Patriarch was also pleased to see me. My place on the bunks was a convenient one: by the wall. I offered it to His Beatitude and gave him my hay mattress.

Due to his advanced age and poor health, they did not make him go to work. When the vegetables grew, I often managed to hide a green onion or a carrot for His Beatitude.

In the winter, they made us shovel snow and perform other maintenance work.

How I hurried back to the cell where His Beatitude was waiting for me!

Long years of wandering through camps and prisons had not broken him, had not clouded his brilliant mind, and I was able to benefit as much as possible from my interactions with such a majestic figure in our History.

I received from the Almighty privileges that not a single student, not a single postgraduate in the free world could dream of.

The Lord rewarded my sufferings a hundredfold! Had I known in freedom that such a meeting awaited me behind the barbed wire—I would have walked to these camps on foot without hesitation!

Unfortunately, my intensive studies did not last long. In February or March of 1963, His Beatitude, having blessed me one last time, stepped over the threshold of our prison. Freedom awaited him. We parted for a long time. Only 29 years later did I see His Beatitude again when I came to Rome to fulfill his testament and transport his long-suffering body to our native, already free, Ukraine.

At the end of 1963, my strict-regimen status was lifted, and I was transferred back to the 1st camp unit. I again worked at the machine-building plant, mostly as an assistant.

I carried metal, brought heavy blanks to the machine tools, and carried away the finished products.

It was hard, exhausting work. Always on my feet. An unbearable strain on my sore feet. They gave me no relief until the very last day of my imprisonment.

My sentence ended, and on January 22, 1964, I was outside the prison fence.

Now my ordeals with the residence permit began. I was strictly forbidden to live in Galicia.

I traveled to register in the Crimean, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, and Kyiv oblasts, and to Moldavia. I was refused everywhere.

Somehow I managed to get registered in the Khmelnytskyi region. But a year later, they found out that I was a Greek Catholic priest. They offered me an Orthodox parish. I said I would agree if they allowed me to mention the Pope of Rome during the Divine Liturgy. They deregistered me.

I only traveled to all those regions to get registered; I did not live there permanently. Immediately after the camps, I returned to my populous flock. I had the same towns and villages under my spiritual care as before my arrest. And new ones were added.

I had neither a residence permit nor a state job. They could lock me up again not only for violating the passport regime but also for vagrancy.

Good people helped me.

During my imprisonment, a student of the underground theological seminary, my sincere and fearless defender at the trial, Petro Pyrizhok, finished his studies and was ordained. Fr. Petro met me after my return from the camp with tears of joy. He took me to see Ivan Shchavel in Lviv.

Ivan Shchavel was a former partisan of ours, a political prisoner. He worked as a pharmacist. At that very time, he was organizing the collection of medicinal plants. He hired me as a collector.

This was already a state job. It was pleasant, useful for people, and very convenient for me because it justified my travels to the authorities.

Thus my life went on for about ten years. During the day, I would gather herbs, climb linden trees for their blossoms, and dry my collection in people’s attics (at the same time, I would tidy up for people, as the attics often needed sweeping before drying), and in the evenings and at night, I would carry out my Christian service.

No one controlled how many hours a day or a week I was busy; I only reported on the raw materials I had collected. When I needed to devote more time to pastoral work, I used the help of volunteer collectors from among the peasants. These were mostly young boys whom I thus gathered around me, taught them the Holy Scripture, and watched to see which of them was ready to walk the same thorny path as I.

Finally, the KGB sniffed out our “firm.” Besides me, Fr. Pyrizhok, Fr. Choliy, and the Basilian brothers, Frs. Yantukh, were also using it as cover.

They disbanded us.

Then I registered at my parents’ place in Barysh, went to Ternopil, and signed a contract with Pharmacy No. 95 to collect herbs. I held on there for several years. Then I got a similar job in Buchach. I collected herbs for 23 years.

The camps left a mark on my health. I caught colds easily. It was hardest for me during flu epidemics. I also ministered to the sick. I often got infected myself.

I fell very ill with the flu on September 5, 1970.

I suddenly felt weak. I barely made it to a house where no one lived anymore. I had the keys from the family of the deceased owner, and when I arrived in the village late, I would go there to spend the night so as not to disturb people.

I lay alone all day with a high fever.

On Christmas Eve, someone came to see me—a nun had sent them.

It was 15 kilometers to Barysh, but it was dangerous for me to go home.

Word was sent to Pidpechary, near Ivano-Frankivsk. From there, Hryhoriy Simkailo, a student of the underground theological seminary, came for me. He looked after me while I had the fever. It reached 40 degrees Celsius. My condition was serious.

A priest was called to hear my confession.

He came, terrified. Without the Holy Sacraments, without the oil for anointing...

It was not yet in the Lord’s plans to take me from this world. The fever began to recede, and on Christmas Day, I was secretly transported to Barysh. There, a doctor came to see me and prescribed injections. A nurse administered them.

The illness weakened me greatly. My nose was bleeding, and I couldn’t eat.

A new trial awaited me on the Feast of Jordan.

People ran to tell us that “guests” were coming.

There were some boys from Nadorozhna with us then; they had come to visit me. They dressed me in a sheepskin coat and took me outside. I couldn’t walk. They dragged me for about 5 kilometers through the snow. Finally, they took me to my sister, who lived on the edge of Barysh.

Such a “journey” did me good: my appetite returned. I savored a whole plate of potato holubtsi.

At night, a car came for me from Pidpechary. We were stopped on the way, but some boys from Nadorozhna were on duty with the traffic inspector. They asked the policeman, and he let us go.

I did not stay long with the Simkailo family in Pidpechary. My brother took me to Lviv. There, at my sister’s house, I finished my recovery. As soon as Great Lent began, I returned to my pastoral work. But I was still very weak. For a long time, I walked with a cane.

On May 1, 1974, a momentous event occurred in my life: I was consecrated a bishop. I was consecrated by the Lviv bishop, Kyr Yosafat Fedoryk.

My pastoral duties increased. It was necessary to prepare new pastors for our Church. I taught our youth. I ordained them as priests.

All my work continued to be under the watchful eye of the KGB. They did not delay in “congratulating” me on my high episcopal rank. These congratulations were, of course, mocking, but I did not object. I thanked them politely. The rest of the “meeting” was the usual conversation:

—Stop celebrating services in the illegal Uniate rite of a Church that does not exist!

—I and all our clergy will continue to celebrate them. Our services are proof that our Church does indeed exist!

—You were behind bars as a deacon and a priest. You will go to prison as a bishop, too.

—I will accept your punishment as a reward from God for my pastoral work!

We had “conversations” like this more than once. They swore at me, called me all sorts of names, and fined me. But they would let me go.

My high spiritual rank did not grant me any privileges. I continued to be cold, sleep-deprived, walk on animal trails, and flee from persecutors. Most often, I traveled from village to village on foot. When possible, I used transportation: not only trains and buses but also sleds, carts, trucks, and even tractors. I was happy to get on a bicycle or a moped. I also had a state job. They no longer had a reason to stop me on the road.

14.

My pastoral work was almost official. The KGB was earning its keep, and it was rare to hide any services. And it was impossible to conceal such large gatherings as those in Zarvanytsia or Nadorozhna.

Our enemies prepared especially for such large services. Each time they would devise something new to cause harm. One time they would cement the holy spring in Zarvanytsia, another time they would beat pilgrims in the forest on their way to the Divine Liturgy, or they would set police dogs on them.

Their outrages only strengthened the people’s faith. Beaten, bitten, humiliated, but unbowed, they came to our open-air churches.

We worried most in the autumn during dry weather. We were not afraid that our prayer gathering of many thousands would be easily spotted from a plane or helicopter by the myriad of candles in the forest after the leaves had fallen. What was frightening was that the leaves could catch fire from the careless handling of candles. We strongly warned people to be careful.

It could have been otherwise: the KGB agents could have deliberately set fire to the forest and then blamed the people. But thankfully, that did not happen. The Almighty protected us.

To this day, the beautiful picture of our forest services remains in my eyes. Especially on a summer-like warm night, when the Zarvanytsia or Nadorozhna forest rustles quietly in its nocturnal slumber, and overhead are the stars—not painted like in a church, but real ones—and candles shine like little stars in the hands of people trembling with the joy of our spiritual communion. The golden-shining flames illuminate the inspired faces of the people and the Altar of God, built upon a pile of firewood.

It was different at times, too. Often, in the middle of the Divine Liturgy, it would start to drizzle, or a downpour would begin. The people did not hide or flee. And when the priests distributed the Most Holy Gifts, they would fall to their knees on the wet, cold ground and kneel there until the Communion was over...

Our reporters also made their way to the services. Their photographs were published abroad. They testified that our Church was alive and that, under these inhuman conditions, it zealously served God and Ukraine.

The KGB listened to foreign radio broadcasts about us, obtained newspapers and magazines with articles and photographs of our services, and seethed with rage. Brezhnev’s cowardly oprichniks portrayed themselves to the world as defenders of human rights; they feared publicity and therefore did not dare to arrest us.

What also gave me strength was that my dear Teacher from the Mordovian camps, His Beatitude Patriarch Kyr Josyf Slipyj, was a Cardinal at the Universal See.

The militia and the KGB constantly proved they were not idle. They apparently had a plan for our “re-education.”

Once, the head of the district police department detained me along with the young fathers Mykola Simkailo and Volodymyr Viityshyn in this “planned” manner. He took us not to the police station but to the district committee of the CPSU. The first secretary himself spoke with us.

—How dare you drive around in a car!?

—We drive a car because we don’t have a helicopter yet.

—Last Sunday, you held services in the forest!

—Yes, but please, quiet down, one shouldn’t speak loudly about such things!

—Why?

—We live in a democratic state!

—So what?

—What if you have listening devices somewhere here? The news will spread throughout the world that in the 20th century, in a civilized state, churches were closed, and people have to pray in the forests!

I don’t know what the first secretary wanted to achieve in that conversation, but it didn’t go in the direction he wanted. He let us go. With threats, of course.

With the mere fact of our detention, the police chief proved to the secretary that he wasn’t slacking off. He later told me that more than once, having received a denunciation about where and when I was supposed to celebrate a service, he would send his men after me, calculating their arrival so they would get there only after the service was over and I had already managed to move to another place.

I can confirm that such incidents did indeed happen. At the time, we would mock the incompetence of “our” police, not suspecting that we owed it to the goodwill of a high-ranking official.

Not every district police chief was so decent. Very often, they arrived on time. There were times they stood next to my head with a Nagant revolver, and they shot after me when I was already a bishop.

In 1984, I contracted viral pneumonia. The worst part was that I almost completely lost my hearing. I began treatment in Ivano-Frankivsk. Secretly, because I wasn’t registered there. My brother received a letter telling me not to go to the hospital because I would be killed.

I went to Vilnius to see my camp companion, Fr. Račiūnas Pranas. In Vilnius, I was admitted to a hospital of all-Union importance. There, my hearing was restored within a few months.

After my illness, I returned to Galicia to make up for lost time. The KGB, which had “missed” me, was also making up for lost time. They continued to watch my every step.

The year 1985 arrived. Gorbachev’s “perestroika” began. Although the promised freedoms were only on paper, we began to act. Also, Yosyf Terelia—chairman of the Committee for the Defense of the Faithful of the Greek Catholic Church in the USSR—was released from prison.

On August 4, we gathered at my sister’s place in Lviv: Mr. Terelia, Fathers Mykola and Hryhoriy Simkailo, Mykhailo Havryliv, then a student at the Leningrad Theological Academy, and I, as a bishop.

We wrote a declaration on the emergence from the underground of our long-suffering Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.

We addressed the declaration to Gorbachev, but we appealed through the Holy Father.

The declaration was later also signed by Fathers Volodymyr Viityshyn, Ivan and Taras Semkiv, and others. Twenty-three priests signed the declaration.

Mr. Terelia added one bishop’s name on his own authority. He was certain of him. But when an uproar was made about the declaration, that bishop went to the KGB himself and stated that he had signed nothing. Even before that, foreign radio had already reported that he had signed...

So it turned out that I was the only one of our bishops who had signed that declaration. I became an “unauthorized actor” because our eldest underground bishop had refused to sign it earlier. He justified his refusal by saying that he did not want to endanger our Church.

I thought differently.

We proceeded with our declaration with the signatures we had collected. The world found out about it.

In Kyiv and Moscow, officials and the KGB sounded the alarm. They understood perfectly well what could happen next. They took urgent measures.

Under threats and intimidation, three priests officially retracted their signatures from the declaration.

Under KGB pressure in one city, a bishop and 10 priests signed an “anti-declaration” in which they called us “extremists”—a fashionable word at the time...

They came for me, too, of course.

From Buchach, where I was registered, they summoned me to the Ternopil KGB:

—How dare you, what have you done, we’ll... Write a statement that you are retracting the declaration to emerge from the underground, that you were forced to write that declaration by... Banderites!

—That’s a lie! I will not write anything for you!

—We’re taking you to Kyiv!

—People are waiting for me. If I don’t return now, you’ll have problems. I will go to Kyiv by myself!

They let me go.

Immediately after leaving Ternopil, I went to Ivano-Frankivsk. I had business cards from foreign embassies. I sent Fr. Mykola Simkailo to Moscow with them to inform them about my trip to Kyiv.

“Friends” met me at the Kyiv train station. They took me to the Hotel Ukraina. They gave me 6 hours to rest. Then they came to interrogate me.

—There is no Greek Catholic Church! It does not exist!

—Then who have you been letting rot in camps and prisons for 40 years? Our Church is alive! You have closed and desecrated our church buildings, but you have not taken our Church from our People, you have not cast it away from the Apostolic See, from the feet of the Almighty!

—No one gave you the right to write any declarations!

—The Lord God gave me the right to defend my native Church!

—But you... Your bishop was right when he said you are an impostor. He is wiser than you; he does not go against the state... Are you convinced you can destroy such a giant state?

—I have no need to destroy it! You are destroying it yourselves because you live without God!

Then came foul language. I just smiled sadly.

—“Why are you smiling like a May rose?”

—Your foul words testify to only one thing: You, General, and you, Colonels, have capitulated before me!

They came to their senses. They began to plead, promising mountains of gold, if only I would renounce that declaration. I did not give in. Then came threats again:

—You will not leave this place!

—Many embassies in Moscow know about my presence here. If you detain me, the “Voice of America” and “Radio Free Europe” will start talking. A detachment of supporters is waiting for me in Kyiv (in fact, I had come alone).

—You will not listen to us?

—No!

—Then we will destroy you! We will spit on you, defile you before the people!

—I know you are masters of your trade. But you will do nothing to me!

—Even if your Church is recognized, you will not be a bishop. We have our own people in the Vatican, and they will do everything to harm you.

—I agree to be even a sexton, as long as our Church becomes free!

—We ask you one last time: repudiate your declaration!

—I am a bishop, and I will not break my word!

On that note, they released me.

About two weeks later, anonymous letters appeared. They accused me of... debauchery!

The letters said that while in exile in Karaganda, I had behaved licentiously, not like a priest. That I had broken up the Simkailo family, lived in a “kombinat” (what a word they invented!) with the mother of my students Mykola and Hryhoriy, and that they were my children! That her husband, unable to bear the shame, had hanged himself because of me!

That forgery was very crudely fabricated.

I have never been to Karaganda. I was in Dzhezkazgan, and not in exile, but in a camp.

Mykola was born in 1952, and Hryhoriy in 1955. I, on the other hand, have known the Simkailos only since 1969, from the time they invited me to Pidpechary to consecrate the house they had built after returning to Ukraine.

The forgery was distributed throughout Galicia, throughout all of Ukraine. They even sent it to Rome. But it did not trouble me, because it was clearly a vile lie.

But I was alarmed by a letter from His Beatitude Cardinal Kyr Myroslav Ivan Lubachivsky. He forwarded to me a letter addressed to him that confirmed the KGB’s forgery! The letter was signed by one of our priests and a high-ranking spiritual dignitary!

The priest who signed this deceitful letter came to me in 1992 to repent. He said he had signed it under pressure from the KGB.

I forgave him. He wrote to His Beatitude explaining how everything had really happened.

The struggle for the legalization of our Church continued. Many of our faithful took a more active part in it than some of our underground priests. Unfortunately, we had no support from some of our bishops, nor from the Basilian monks. They said our work was in vain, that the “Moskal” had never given us our Church and never would. It was claimed that I was acting without a blessing, that they were distancing themselves from me because I was an impostor and an extremist.

But we saw a clear goal before us. We could no longer be stopped either by the threats of outsiders or the silencing from our own.

The KGB harassed us constantly. They summoned both me and my spiritual superiors. They told them to “shorten my leash.”

I was reprimanded by them again and again. They forbade me from collecting signatures for the legalization of the Church, told people and priests to avoid our group, saying that it was not yet known what would happen to us, that we might be shot or locked up, that we were bringing new persecution and oppression upon our Church...

Even our own people were spreading rumors that I was not a bishop but an impostor.

I had no support whatsoever. It was easier for me in the camps than in that so-called “freedom”...

Sometimes, I couldn’t bear it and would shed a tear in some corner. Then it would get easier. Sincere prayer to the Almighty gave me strength and vigor.

The sacred idea of reviving our Church was inseparable from the idea of reviving Ukraine. It so captivated the souls of Galicians, rising like a mighty wave in our long-suffering land, that it became clear: our enemies were powerless to oppose us.

Then our bishops also changed their minds about the legalization of the Church and declared it with ever-increasing boldness in word and deed.

In September 1988, an extraordinary event occurred: American congressmen who had come to Moscow invited me for a conversation.

I told the Americans about the persecution and the current state of our Church.

Five Soviet deputies were present at the conversation. They slandered our Martyred Church. They said that it had been a servant of the fascists, that Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky and Patriarch Josyf Slipyj were enemies of the People.

I did not allow them to denigrate either our Church or her faithful Servants.

The Americans were outraged not only by the Soviet government’s attitude toward our UGCC but also by the lies of those deputies.

After the conversation with the congressmen, the KGB agents made me an international criminal. I was immediately summoned to the Ternopil KGB. Their superiors from Kyiv were already there. After some harsh swearing:

—You are interfering in the state’s foreign affairs, ruining our international policy!

—I’m not ruining it, I’m correcting what you have been ruining for 70 years!..

We could not achieve recognition in Galicia alone. We had to go to the place where the plans were developed and from where the work of that infamous Lviv “sobor” was directed. We decided to seek rights for our native Church from the highest authorities in Moscow.

Then, in 1989, Kyr Sofron Dmyterko, bishop-ordinary of the Ivano-Frankivsk eparchy of the UGCC; myself; and the priests Fr. Hryhoriy Simkailo, Fr. Taras Semkiv, the Redemptorist Fr. Ihor Vozniak, and another priest from Lviv went to Moscow.

In Moscow, we tried to get into the Supreme Soviet. They would not let us in. We declared a hunger strike on the Arbat—an ancient and crowded district of Moscow. We were noticed not only by Muscovites but also by foreigners. The six of us were invited to an international symposium of journalists. We were using “glasnost” and “perestroika” not in the way Gorbachev had intended.

The hunger strike helped. The Supreme Soviet sent deputy Yuri Khristoradny to us. They probably wanted to dazzle us with his divine-sounding surname.

But there was nothing behind that surname. The deputy was being cunning, trying to send us to the hierarchy of the ROC, because we had come on a spiritual matter.

I protested resolutely, because our Church was destroyed not by the ROC, but by the Soviet government. We intended to speak only with them.

The resolution of our issue was delayed in every possible way. To support us, people from all over Galicia began flocking to Moscow.

The hunger strike lasted for six months.

During this time, I came to the Arbat many times with archiepiscopal care.

The hunger strike was led by Stepan Khmara.

In November 1989, on the eve of M. S. Gorbachev’s visit to the Vatican, official permission was announced for the registration of communities of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.

Recorded by Yu.M.

1991–1999.