UPRIGHT STANDING,
or Yevhen Kontsevych has a habit of receiving guests while lying down
( Vasyl Ovsiienko. The Light of People: Memoirs and Essays. In 2 vols. Vol. 2 / Compiled by the author; Art and design by B.Ye. Zakharov. – 2nd ed., rev. – Kharkiv: Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group; Kyiv: Smoloskyp, 2005. – pp. 83 – 89.)
“In commemoration of the 50th anniversary since the author broke his neck and became a writer…”—this epigraph might surprise an uninformed reader. Unfortunately, this is not a literary figure of speech—“broke his neck”—but the bitter truth of Yevhen Kontsevych’s life. It refers to his new book, *Vona yishla usmikhnena... Novely, opovidannia, etiudy* [She Walked, Smiling… Novellas, Stories, Sketches]. – Zhytomyr: M.H. Kosenko, 2002, – 216 pp., which collects works from the 1960s. However, some of them have been thoroughly revised: one need only look at his previous books, “Dvi krynytsi” [Two Wells] (1964) and “Yduchy vulytsieiu” [Walking Down the Street] (1985).
Yes, 50 years ago, on July 22, 1952, an athletically built young man of 17, almost two meters tall, dived from a cliff into the Teteriv River—and was pulled from the water. The first thing he asked upon regaining consciousness was: “The spartakiad is tomorrow—will I be able to run?” “You’ll run,” the doctor replied. But he never stood on his feet again.
Yet he became an outstanding figure of modern Ukraine, a core of our spirit and optimism.
Every year on June 5, his birthday, friends from all over Ukraine, and even from the entire Ukrainian world, gather at his almost rural homestead on II Shevchenkivskyi Lane in Zhytomyr, which is being ever more tightly encroached upon by new high-rise buildings. And his friends are no ordinary people…
Yevhen Vasylyovych Kontsevych was born in 1935 in the village of Mlyny_shche, 12 km from Zhytomyr. His mother, Maria, worked on a farm, where Yevhen often spent time (he still believes that if not for the tragedy, he would have become a veterinarian). His father, Vasyl, was a tailor. Fleeing the famine, the family moved to Zhytomyr in 1947, settled in a dugout, and then built the house where Yevhen—after additions and renovations—lives to this day. His father, with the windows covered, secretly earned extra money with his sewing machine, for which he was persecuted as a “private entrepreneur.” One of his most terrifying memories is how his father’s hands trembled during a search in 1949. The boy felt firsthand the contempt of his Russian-speaking “city” peers for his “rural” language. This was the ground for forming what Vasyl Stus defined as “upright standing.”
Yevhen did not intend to become a writer. But fate placed him in the same class at Zhytomyr’s School No. 23 with Vasylko Khomychevskyi—the son of the unparalleled translator of ancient literature, Borys Ten (Khomychevskyi). Even back then, the “old man” noticed Yevhen’s literary talent and feel for language, and when the tragedy struck, he advised him to write. Like a gift from God, like a salvation for his soul, the vast world of literature opened up before him. The constant pain was, to some extent, overshadowed by the solace of working with words. Aspiring writers, the brothers Anatoliy and Valeriy Shevchuk, began to visit Yevhen. He tried writing humorous pieces, but Valeriy Shevchuk stopped him and guided him toward serious prose. His stories were published in the newspaper “Literaturna Ukraina” and the journals “Vitchyzna,” “Dnipro,” and “Ukraina.”
It is easy to say: “His severe suffering—both physical and spiritual—did not break Yevhen.” But let us imagine what strength of will was required to endure it all—and not fall into despair. He completed 10th grade through correspondence and, starting in 1963, studied at the correspondence department of the Zhytomyr Pedagogical Institute. After the publication of his short story collection “Two Wells” in 1964, he was admitted to the Writers’ Union of Ukraine.
Local party officials, hoping to gain fame with something original, decided to turn Kontsevych into a kind of “Pavka Korchagin.” Pioneers and pensioners started visiting him frequently, and they tried to organize a solemn ceremony of tying pioneer scarves in his yard. The secretary of the regional committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine for ideology, Olga Chornobryvtseva herself, urged Kontsevych to join the party. At first, he said he was not ready, and then he flatly refused, for his living soul yearned for people of a different sort—those who were not erecting a living monument to him, but were simply moved by his fate.
And then an event occurred that—we can now confidently assert—became part of the history of the Ukrainian Sixtiers movement…
Nadiia Svitlychna, from a Radio Liberty broadcast on June 5, 1990:
“Iryna Zhylenko introduced us in 1964—as she did many Kyivans. And so we visited Yevhen’s cozy, almost rural house at number 12 on Druhyi Shevchenkivskyi Lane in Zhytomyr as often as we could. Yevhen, like his devoted, elderly mother, always welcomed guests warmly. We Kyivans were usually allowed to stay the night. On that day, many of Yevhen’s friends came from Kyiv (on June 5, 1965, to congratulate him on his 30th birthday, Ivan, Nadiia, and Leonida Svitlychnyi, Yevhen Sverstiuk, Alla Horska, Halyna Vozna, Viktoria Tsymbal, Iryna Zhylenko, Vyacheslav Chornovil, Mykola Plakhotniuk, Mykhailo Huts, and Borys Mamaisur came from Kyiv. – V.O.). And since it was summer, and it seemed to be a Saturday, Yevhen was sleeping under an awning in the yard, so we all gathered around his bed. The local poet and, it seems, party functionary, Oksentiy Melnychuk, came with that ominous little album. He had once been Kontsevych’s neighbor and had also been seriously ill for a long time. So Yevhen’s mother used to divide the strawberries from her garden between her own son and the neighbor’s. Later, Oksentiy recovered, made it into the ‘nomenklatura,’ got an apartment, and forgot the path to Yevhen’s house. But here he suddenly, as if by chance, dropped by—and what a coincidence!—it happened to be Yevhen Kontsevych’s birthday. Just as coincidentally, he had with him a small album of landscapes, which he left for Yevhen to look at, saying, if you like it, I’ll make you a copy.
“If one were to scrupulously analyze his behavior, something might seem strange in all this, but who was analyzing then… A group of people had gathered, not all of whom even knew each other. So around Yevhen, there were jokes, songs, and conversations. Jubilee-related, all sorts of things. And they forgot about the little album. I remember that Borys Mamaisur, who couldn't find a seat, even sat on it for a while, having placed it between two chairs… It turns out that a miniature listening device, embedded in the album’s cover, was transmitting a recording of the conversations to a KGB car parked about 500 meters from Kontsevych’s house. When Yevhen discovered the bug, disconnected the power supply, and the transmission stopped, the KGB anthill stirred. Following the perpetrator, Oksentiy Melnychuk, who, despite his groveling and repentance, was thrown out of the Kontsevychs’ house, the highest authorities from the regional KGB appeared early on Monday morning, along with their chiefs from the Kyiv republican headquarters. It seems the operation was led by Kalash himself, the ideological deputy chairman of the KGB.
For Yevhen, this looked like an interesting detective story. And, in the end, it was. And since Kontsevych ‘feeds’ only on the events that come to him, he approached the adventure with the bug with a certain zeal. But the adventure was not limited to a conversation with the ‘secret police’: after June 5, 1965, Yevhen Kontsevych’s house began to be avoided like the plague by his ‘admirers,’ those pioneers and pensioners.”
Yevhen Kontsevych, June 5, 1994:
“We threw the discovered bug into a bucket of ash. There was even a scoop sticking out of it. When the KGB men came and started searching, I realized they didn’t know where it was. I started telling them I’d sent it to Kyiv. And they said: ‘Not even a mouse could have slipped past us. We know you have it.’”
“I never considered myself a fighter. I was obviously not born for that. But I’m not timid either, judging by my mother’s saying: ‘Oh, he’s already taken the bit between his teeth…’. I became obstinate against them from that very moment. But at that time, I really got scared. Because I saw something irrational outside the window. A Willis jeep stopped by the house—and they jumped out: one, two, three, four… Nine men, listen! In my mind, that car couldn't hold so many… It turned out there were two of them, I just hadn't seen the second one. And they all piled into that room and started chattering about something. I felt terrified, and my kidneys were aching. This was after all that… I had even sinned a little… I looked: such thugs standing there… And I started to laugh. And, you know, ever since then, that laughter has saved me. I saw myself—and them—from the side. The senior officer started to get confused. I said: ‘Stop it, let’s speak plainly.’ Then he waved his hand—and they all flew out, like flies.”
The head of the regional KGB himself, Colonel I.I. Yudin, with a group of his subordinates, demanded the return of the bug and silence on the matter, and tried to persuade Kontsevych to work for their “institution.” Kontsevych flatly refused—and the disgraceful story of the KGB’s “birthday gift” became known throughout dissident Ukraine. It was reported by foreign radio stations. Yudin then suggested that Kontsevych make a statement in the press against the foreign publications—to no avail. Seven years later, KGB Major Medvedsky cynically lectured him during an interrogation: “You, Yevhen Vasylyovych, broke your life’s backbone not when you jumped from the cliff into the river, but when you ignored Ivan Ivanovych’s good advice and refused to help us.”
Nadiia Svitlychna, 1990:
“I return to the group photo taken in Yevhen Kontsevych’s yard on June 5, 1965. Why is that photo so dear to me? It is like a dividing line between two very different eras in the lives of the Sixtiers. I never again saw such carefree smiling faces as in that photo, not on Alla Horska, nor on Vyacheslav Chornovil (he is also in the photo), nor on Svitlychny, nor on Yevhen himself. Though we still met, even went caroling, and he donated his sheepskin coat with its luxurious wool for the goat in our troupe. But the emotional traumas that fate generously dealt the Sixtiers extinguished their lightheartedness, carving in them the stern features of fighters.
“By the way, you might ask, why did they so clumsily plant a bug in the bed of the seriously ill Kontsevych at that particular time? Kontsevych himself asked the KGB this question. They assured him—and for some reason, I believe them on this—that they were not so much interested in his conversations as in his guests from Kyiv. Because it was then, in the summer of 1965, that the first major arrests among the Sixtiers were being prepared.”
Stepan Pinchuk, Doctor of Philology, June 5, 1995:
“But, just so you know, the difficult conditions this man lived in...
When I arrived in Zhytomyr in 1965 to head the literature department, the scandalous story of the bugging had already spread throughout Ukraine. The first thing I did was go and meet Yevhen. He was constantly threatened with expulsion from the Writers’ Union, with having his meager pension—60 rubles—taken away. In the Zhytomyr branch of the Writers' Union of Ukraine, the question of his expulsion was raised directly. And if it didn’t happen, credit must be given to the Zhytomyr writers. We stalled: we’re thinking it over, we’re not ready, we can’t expel him in his absence… But eventually, the head of the branch, Volodymyr Kanivets (the famous author of the novel “Ulyanovs”), put the question bluntly: expel him. Yevhen told me not to go to that meeting or to vote for his expulsion. I declared: I will not speak against an absent and, moreover, bedridden man. There were 9 of us members of the Union in Zhytomyr at the time. Borys Ten, Danylo Okiychenko, Mykhailo Klymenko, and Mykola Kolesnikov also voted against the expulsion. Volodymyr Kanivets and Mykhailo Mytsenko were for the expulsion, and I won't name the other two because I’m afraid of making a mistake. So, by one vote, we kept Kontsevych in the Union. (It should be added that there were two such attempts. Kontsevych and the entire Zhytomyr branch of the Union were condemned at a regional party conference—the newspaper ‘Radians’ka Zhytomyrshchyna’ wrote about this on February 3, 1974—but eventually, Kanivets, who was then vying for the Shevchenko Prize, was reined in: ‘Don’t make a hero-martyr out of Kontsevych.’ And he was left in the Union, although the obstruction continued until the mid-80s. Kontsevych was no longer published. He then took up translating from Polish and Russian—here, the translation school of Borys Ten proved very useful. – V.O.).
“Back when they were talking about him as a local Pavka Korchagin or Mykola Ostrovsky, there was one beautiful young girl, Olha, who married him. But under the influence of the KGB, her feelings cooled. His mother was becoming more and more frail, and Yevhen found himself in a helpless situation. And then a miracle from the Lord happened. It was Maya Borysivna… If there is a woman in the world before whom one should kneel and pray to God, it is she. God, perhaps, watches over this house…
And the one who did the evil deed lived only a few months and died from the same illness that Yevhen has had all his life.”
Yevhen married Maya in 1975: “The Lord sent me a chosen lamb from a chosen flock… I have done a great service to Ukraine: I converted one Jewish woman to Ukrainianness…”
When guests gather in the home of the Kontsevychs—Yevhen and Maya—the same ritual is always repeated: looking at the rushnyk [embroidered towel]. It was Nadiyka Svitlychna who suggested starting it. Someone has a guestbook in their home, Alla Horska had autographs written on the wall of her studio, and at Yevhen’s, people he liked would sign a piece of cloth, and his wife would later embroider the autographs with colored threads. Who isn’t there! Borys Ten, all three Svitlychnys, Ivan Dziuba, Mykhailyna Kotsiubynska, Liudmyla Semykina, Halyna Sevruk, Panas Zalyvakha, Yevhen Sverstiuk, Vyacheslav Chornovil, Bohdan Horyn, Rostyslav Dotsenko, Nina Virchenko, Mykola Plakhotniuk, Serhiy Babych, Nina Marchenko, Mykola Kaharlytsky, Lyubomyr Pyrih—all of opposition Ukraine…
During another “mowing” of the Ukrainian intelligentsia, on April 18, 1972, a search of Kontsevych’s house resulted in the confiscation of 17 samvydav documents, many manuscripts, letters, a typewriter, and other items. “If that lying corpse were to get up, he still wouldn’t walk. He’d be sitting in our cells…,” Captain Kostiuk bluntly prophesied. The towel was saved by a miracle that day. They were, after all, looking for papers. One of them picked up the towel, which was lying among the books, but before he could unfold it, his mother cried out from her heart: “Those are his swaddling clothes…”—and snatched it away, throwing it into the dirty laundry. After that, Yevhen was very worried about the towel and showed it to very few people.
Vyacheslav Chornovil, June 5, 1994:
“It seems to me today that we are eternal and immortal. After all, it was so terribly long ago. We even knew Stalin! We knew a small thaw, we knew the Sixtier movement. We were destined for something that the generation of the ‘Executed Renaissance’ of the 20s did not live to see. A few of them lived to see the thaw of the 60s, and very few to our day. We were scattered, some into politics, some into literature, some into one party, some into another. But we need people who bring us together. It was Ivan Svitlychny who gathered us, the Sixtiers, let’s not forget that. One such person is Yevhen Kontsevych—a man of great magnetic power. Would we have gathered like this in Kyiv, as we are here in Zhytomyr?”
Valeriy Shevchuk, June 5, 1995:
“He has something magnetic about him that drew people to him. He has something that makes you not notice that he is confined to his bed. He carries himself as if he has no trouble or illness at all, but simply that it’s his manner to receive guests while lying down. And when a person communicates with him, they carry away a ray of light in their soul. It was these light-bearing souls that united, unorganized, without charters, into a brotherhood. Later, an iron hand would strike this brotherhood of young men and women, ‘the youths from the fiery furnace,’ and not all would live to see this day. Some would be killed, others would perish in concentration camps, and still others would die of natural causes. And the Judas of Yevhen Kontsevych will not live to see this day either. After that shameful act, he wanted to hang himself several times, because the evil sown in the world destroys the soul.
When I visit Yevhen, I experience the celebration of communication. Because he is a light-bearing person. Leaving him, you carry away a spark of his heart’s flame. And when that sacred light burns in your soul, it means we exist in this world and will continue to exist.”
Yevhen Sverstiuk, June 5, 1994:
“In our unstable, increasingly unreal world, there is a small, real island that holds together by a mysterious force. This is Yevhen Kontsevych. So it seemed in 1965, and so it remains…”
Ivan Dziuba: “Yevhen Kontsevych is, in a way, a symbol and a legend for this generation—the generation of the Sixtiers. He is an amazing person who has always inspired everyone. It was not he who needed to be supported, as it might seem—it was he who supported and energized everyone…”
Valeriy Shevchuk, June 5, 1995:
“There is a very interesting pattern. When a nation is experiencing a catastrophe, it is at this very time that children are born who will later revive this nation. The Sixtiers were born in the 30s and early 40s. It was precisely when the Ukrainian intelligentsia was shot, Ukrainian literature physically destroyed, when the Ukrainian peasantry was starved to death, when the nation was subjected to communist genocide and completely bled dry—it was then that Ukrainian women began to give birth to boys and girls who, in the 60s, would take upon their shoulders the difficult mission of reviving their people. Among these idealists was Yevhen Kontsevych…”
political prisoner and member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group—expanded by interspersing fragments of memoirs from other people who were in the sameHe did not write many works. But his very first book, titled “Dvi krynytsi” (Two Wells), published in 1964, is—I can say with full conviction—magnificent. It is supple; it has an aroma and its own inimitable style. No one else wrote like that; only he wrote that way. And when an artist has his own voice, he has truly come into his own.” space and recall the situations described in the main text of the book. A commentary is added to the book, which explains the meaning of slang words (camp jargon) and some biographical information. For schoolchildren, the texts of V. Stus's works included in
Yevhen Kontsevych, June 5, 1995:
“My barely literate mother gave the best review of that book: ‘And where did you find such words?’ ‘Why, from you,’ I said. And mother smiled softly.”
Besides the aforementioned books, an anthology titled “Dinner for 12 People” was published in Zhytomyr in 199 the school curriculum are highlighted in a separate section.