In the spring of 1969, Radio Liberty broadcast the so-called *Letter of the Creative Youth of Dnipropetrovsk*, which cited blatant facts of cultural genocide, discrimination against the Ukrainian intelligentsia, and the persecution of Oles Honchar’s novel *Sobor* (“The Cathedral”) in the Dnipro region. The material for the *Letter* was gathered by Ivan Hryhorovych Sokulsky. He also wrote it (it is possible that someone else participated in the writing). I was one of the respondents—in particular, I provided information about writers (their names will be mentioned below) who did not accept the authorities’ “directives” and who, on the instructions of the regional committee, were “pounded” at all writers’ gatherings. It fell to me to be the editor and thus the first reader of the *Letter*.
To give an idea of the tone of this document, it is worth quoting at least these lines: “…A large group of citizens was slandered at all official and unofficial events of the regional committee, district committees, and party committees, each time distorting their ‘views alien to the people’ and excessively exaggerating, as anyone saw fit, the facts which will be discussed below. They were harassed in the regional press and on the radio.
The so-called Dnipropetrovsk campaign reached its greatest brutality in connection with the appearance of the new novel by our fellow countryman Oles Honchar, *Sobor*… At one of the meetings, attended by secretaries of grassroots primary organizations of the Dnipropetrovsk region and senior press officials, the secretary of the regional committee, Comrade O. F. Vatchenko, gave the command to the press to prove to the readers that ‘the working class of Dnipropetrovsk does not accept *Sobor*’…”
Needless to say, the repressions against those involved in creating the *Letter* were not only ideological in nature… The “Bulldozer” (as one of the writers had nicknamed O. F. Vatchenko) began to scoop people up.
* * *
They came for me on a fine summer day. A pleasant-looking young man of about thirty had not even introduced himself, but I already knew who he was. A dog probably recognizes a dogcatcher in the same way. A “Volga” was waiting outside. As we were walking to the car, I thought about the “great changes” society had undergone since the Stalinist era: back then, the NKVD bone-breakers would arrive at midnight in a “black raven,” but now—it was an intelligent man in a passenger car, moreover, dressed not in a leather jacket, but in civilian clothes, light and summery. He politely explained that I had been invited for a talk at the KGB… The invitation was clearly long overdue. Sokulsky had already been under arrest for a month. He had been taken directly from the steamboat that ran the Kyiv-Dnipropetrovsk route—he was working as a sailor (before that, Ivan had been fired from the local Dnipro newspaper, from a library, and from somewhere else). By all accounts, he was incriminated for *The Letter of the Creative Youth of Dnipropetrovsk*, which had somehow ended up abroad.
From Chicherin Street, where I lived, to the corner of Korolenko and Chkalov streets, where they were taking me, was only about two kilometers. In that short drive, I had to “replay” in my memory all the events connected with Sokulsky, so as not to make a careless mistake during the conversation. This was the first summons and, it seemed to me, I was needed as a source of information. However, I knew little about Ivan. He was a reserved person, had some connections with Kyiv human rights activists, but considering the seriousness of the situation, I consciously showed no interest in them. As for the *samvydav* articles that Ivan gave me to read, only he and I knew about them… Lately, a feeling had been haunting me: something was about to happen. This feeling intensified after Sokulsky informed me that Radio Liberty had broadcast the *Letter*. That evening I was walking Ivan to the bus at Ostrovsky Square; it was a warm evening, but when Sokulsky mentioned the broadcast, I suddenly felt cold.
“This is very bad, Ivan,” I said.
“God won’t give you up, the swine won’t eat you,” he replied. We walked in silence for a while. I was analyzing the events of the last few months. Among them was a report from a friend of mine at the regional radio that the Party leadership had set a course for a new cult of personality and that appropriate instructions had already been given to the mass media. The authorities could, through clenched teeth, forgive Sokulsky for sending the *Letter* to all the editorial offices of newspapers and magazines, as well as to all other party and state bodies—but they would never forgive him for the *Letter* ending up behind the “iron curtain.” Danger was gathering over Sokulsky; and I, too, was in its dark halo.
“Ivan, in case they take you, they won't learn anything from me. You can be at ease on that account, at least.”
There must have been some pathos in my tone, because he smiled—with a feigned carelessness—and, after saying “Alright,” he got on the bus. That was our last meeting before his arrest. Now, as they were driving me to the KGB building, the memory of that warning calmed me.
I did not stay long in the office of my escort. The host delicately inquired if I knew Sokulsky, and then explained that he was new here and that the Komsomol had sent him. According to him, the State Security had been badly tarnished during Beria's time, people were afraid of it, and every effort should be made to change that attitude. A telephone call cut short his last words. The host picked up the receiver and, after a moment, said “yes” and “good.” Then he led me to another office, where we were met by Major Anatoliy Antonovych Tutyk. He supervised the writers' organization, attended, and sometimes spoke at writers' meetings. He was a clumsy, broad-faced man in civilian clothes (no one ever saw him in uniform, but everyone knew he was a major). Later, when I was describing a Gestapo officer in one of my stories, Tutyk's face was before my eyes—his vague, murky eyes and his teeth, which seemed too crowded in his mouth… This one began with the “triumph of Lenin’s nationality policy and the international unity of the Soviet people.” His clichés impressed neither me nor the man who had brought me. It even seemed that my escort felt embarrassed by his superior's sermon… The “conversation” could be called an interrogation and at the same time a “brainwashing”; before me sat a typical NKVD man who had been deprived of the right to inflict physical torture and had to make up for it with threats and intimidation. From time to time, I would glance at the “Komsomol emissary,” and he would sheepishly lower his eyes. Tutyk wasn't just rambling—he was searching for my pressure points. In fact, he knew those points and was now checking if they were indeed painful:
“I heard you’re planning to defend a dissertation… But how does that square with your anti-social activities? I don't know, I just don't know… Everything was going so well—the PhD, and a book in the publishing house’s plan…”
But the “mentor of all writers” was too late: I had experienced the painful shock when Sokulsky was arrested. I was in pain for Ivan and for myself:
Ivan was losing his freedom; I, my creative future. A “stop gate” had already been placed on the road I had been traveling, at thirty-one years of age. The realization of this made me less vulnerable, and this angered Tutyk.
…Two or three weeks later, having lost hope of getting the desired information from me by peaceful means, the major resorted to threats:
“We have a statement on you here.” He opened a drawer and pulled out a sheet of paper, about a third of which was filled with writing. It was a typical denunciation, reporting that I—Viktor Vasylyovych Savchenko—had passed on such-and-such anti-state *samvydav* documents and such-and-such a book published abroad for reading and distribution among acquaintances. “To my question,” the author of the denunciation wrote, “why show the documents to others, Savchenko said: ‘Let people know the truth.’”
Sliding the statement towards me, the major covered the author's name with his hand.
“I don't remember which documents you’re talking about,” I said, and then inquired:
“Can you at least tell me when this was?”
Tutyk named the date. The denunciation had been written about a year ago. I had given the book *Slovaks–Ukrainians* by Mykhailo Molnar to many people, but Pyrlik had not returned it. He had once “won me over” at a literary society meeting with his poems about the Cossacks. I went to his place for the book several times, but he would hide. I was never able to return it to its owner—Sviatoslav Mandebura, my friend from Kharkiv. So, everything I had entrusted to Pyrlik ended up in the KGB's drawers. And those things were, besides the book, a speech by General Petro Hryhorenko in defense of the deported Crimean Tatar people and a speech by Academician Aganbegyan, “The Current State of the Soviet Economy.” The *samvydav* materials belonged to Sokulsky.
“Then I'll remind you,” the major said.
He lifted his hand from the sheet. “You gave all that to Pyrlik.”
“I gave him the book. By the way, he still hasn’t returned it… As for the articles, I don’t recall them. So many months have passed since the denunciation was written…”
“Hey, don’t you be so casual—denunciation!” Tutyk snarled. “This is a statement, and let it be known to you that it was not addressed to the KGB, but to the party committee of the organization where Pyrlik works. It came to us from there. In the future, I advise you to think about what you say. This is not the gendarmerie.”
It turned out that the honest communist Pyrlik had wormed his way into my—an enemy of the people’s—trust in order to expose me. He would come to my apartment uninvited, draw me into candid conversations, take *samvydav* documents, and then, outraged by my views, wrote a “statement” about me to the party committee of the central department store where he worked as a graphic designer. And all this on his own initiative… How many more such “statements” were hidden in the drawers of this desk?
Having gotten nothing useful out of me, Tutyk went all in:
“Let’s be frank,” he said. “Sokulsky has caused a lot of harm and must be punished. We know that you maintained close relations with him and that he gave you hostile *samvydav* documents. If you admit this and name those documents, you will only have to appear as a witness… Think about my words. Sokulsky's fate is decided, but your future is in your hands. You'll become a PhD candidate and you’ll get your book published… And you won't sin against the truth. After all, you are not being asked to slander anyone.”
Something twisted inside me. For a moment, a structure appeared in my mind, one that had collapsed on the day I learned of Ivan's arrest. That structure was my academic and literary future, the foundations of which I had laid through persistent work, without influential relatives or any other support. And I also thought that Ivan would not escape prison anyway, and those two documents that Tutyk knew about were unlikely to significantly affect his fate… The major must have noticed the indecision on my face. His eyes, in which a moment ago something human had flickered, were once again filled with zeal. The malevolent glints in his pupils brought me back to reality, and I suddenly clearly realized that I was sitting across from not a man, but a part that could fit into any totalitarian machine. In Hitler's Germany, he would have been a Gestapo officer; under Stalin, an NKVD man; during the Lenin-Trotskyist terror, a Chekist; in the era of Ivan the Terrible, an *oprichnik*… And I also remembered the promise, almost an oath, that I had given to Sokulsky.
…The last “peaceful” attempt to extract a confession from me was a summons to the head of the regional KGB, General Mazhara.
Although the general was not in uniform, countless details that you couldn't immediately describe indicated that you were in the presence of a high-ranking military official. Next to the clumsy Tutyk, his stiffness was striking. I did not detect hostility in his gaze. He did not interrogate me. It was something between an interview, an indoctrination in the new party line, and a presentation of me as… well, as what, I couldn't even guess.
The host’s speech, with a Russian accent atypical for these parts, was concise and clear. After an ideological preamble, the master of the luxurious office began to complain about hostile elements driving a wedge into the friendship of peoples.
“But you are converting Ukrainian schools to the Russian language,” I remarked to his words about “driving a wedge.”
“And you would want us to send our children to your schools?” the general replied with guileless surprise. “We liberated this land from the fascists so that…”
This was the first time in my life that a person so openly declared national injustice. For it was not about a few Russian-language schools, but about converting all schools to the Russian language. The mass media proclaimed the same thesis, but they hid behind internationalism. And here—straight to the face… I could not understand: was this general's frankness a sign of trust in me, or a complete disregard for me as a person? Even Tutyk, who had brought me here, was surprised by his superior’s directness, for something akin to a reproach flickered in his “matte” eyes. He had been telling me something completely different on this matter—that the parents were demanding it… I suddenly clearly realized that the man in the dark gray suit with a white collar and a neatly tied tie was an occupier, and the other—a fair-haired man in a short-sleeved shirt—was his mercenary, a collaborationist.
Meanwhile, the general began to ask about the creative youth’s May Day gathering at Sviatoslav’s grave. Hearing my “I wasn’t there,” he said:
“They wanted to read poems… They should have just gotten some vodka and some broads and read them then…”
The general was being disingenuous. The KGB had summoned all the participants of the May gathering and therefore could not have failed to know that I was not there. In this case, they were emphasizing their supposed lack of information. But this was not in their rules… Only one thought came to mind: the “May gathering” was their operation.
I think it was on that same day that Major Tutyk said that either I name the person from whom I received the *samvydav* documents, or he would transfer my “case” from the operational to the investigative department. At the time, I didn't understand the difference.
The difference was that in the office where Tutyk brought me, a military man in a captain's uniform was sitting. This was Mykhailo Antonovych Shkonda. I was surprised then that he wrote with a wooden pen, dipping the nib into an inkwell. The scratching of that pen on paper still grates on my memory.
Shkonda, unlike Tutyk, did not go beyond official politeness and did not rush events. As if to say, if it's a no, it’s a no. We'll talk about it some other time. For now, sign what we have worked out. Soon he arranged a confrontation for me with Pyrlik.
“Yes, I confirm that Savchenko gave me the book *Slovaks–Ukrainians*, as well as ideologically hostile *samvydav* documents, to read,” Pyrlik replied to the investigator’s question.
It was then that it occurred to me that Tutyk and Pyrlik had the same kind of eyes—they seemed to be closed, as if with curtains, and therefore appeared somewhat matte. A different, inhuman essence seemed to be hidden within their human forms. In essence, Pyrlik repeated everything that was in his denunciation. The date of the denunciation coincided with the period of the campaign against *Sobor* and with the resistance to that campaign by the creative intelligentsia. It was then that the KGB intensified its work among the members of the literary society.
Unfortunately, I had to admit that I had given the monograph *Slovaks–Ukrainians* to Pyrlik. After all, he knew Mandebura, the owner of the book. However, I did not attach much importance to this, if you can call it that, “crime.” The book was dedicated to Slovak-Ukrainian cultural ties, although it did include a “dangerous” essay by Taras Volia, written in the last century on the occasion of a congress of Slavic peoples. At that congress, all Slavs were represented, except for the Ukrainians, whom the tsarist government did not allow to travel to Belgrade (or was it Zagreb?).
After the confrontation with Pyrlik, as someone who was consciously obstructing the case, I was made to sign a pledge not to leave the city.
* * *
On November 17, a young man of about twenty-five, of medium height and neatly dressed, came to my department at the university. He called me into the corridor, introduced himself as a KGB officer, and showed me a search warrant.
In a mouse-gray UAZ van, besides the driver, there were two other men in civilian clothes, older than him. While we were driving from the university to my home, the young man asked if I had children. It was a psychological trick.
The search, which lasted several hours, was unsuccessful for the KGB. After the first summons, I had destroyed *The Letter of the Creative Youth of Dnipropetrovsk*, the essay by Taras Volia that I had retyped from the book *Slovaks–Ukrainians*, the photo negatives of Ivan Dziuba's *Internationalism or Russification?* and Mykhailo Braichevsky’s *Reunification or Annexation?*, and even photocopies of historical articles from the journal of the Shevchenko Scientific Society. The search was conducted by professionals, who had obviously performed such work not only in the presence of the owner. They paid the most attention to the library and the archive. They would take out a book carefully, as if it contained explosives, hold it by the covers, and shake it. Sometimes a scrap of paper would fall out, and a flicker of hope would appear in their eyes. They skimmed through ("diagonally") the manuscript that had been returned to me from the “Promin” publishing house (by the way, the book was supposed to be published in 1969), and even old correspondence with my wife. They showed no hostility. I also behaved politely: I offered coffee, but they refused. One of them had an intelligent face and thick, graying hair; the other, a portly man, looked simple. They worked in silence. Sometimes they would point at something with their eyes, as if consulting each other on what to do. They looked like two shadows… Much later, I would meet them in the city, and even then they reminded me of ghosts. The search protocol, which I still have, states about them literally this: “with the participation of operational officers of the UKGB Sokolyansky, Y. N. and Kotliar, B. N.” In addition to myself and Fedor Herasymovych Pokhyl, a KGB junior lieutenant, their actions were observed by two witnesses: my neighbors and my mother-in-law, Nina Pavlivna Strilchuk… The search was not a surprise, but the fact that the KGB had taken this step indicated that the denouement was approaching.
I was not arrested. Perhaps it was significant that, as recorded in the search protocol, “nothing was found or seized.”
I have forgotten who informed me that I was no longer a witness, but a defendant—Shkonda or Pokhyl. I asked if this meant I was arrested; they said, not yet. I was charged under Article 187-1. They warned: if additional facts were discovered during the investigation, they would take me in immediately.
By that time, Mykola Kulchynsky had already been arrested. This comrade-in-arms of Ivan's was taken during a search when a typewriter and five copies of an unfinished draft of *The Letter of the Creative Youth* were found at his place. They also searched the home of Oleksandr Oleksiyovych Kuzmenko, who was suspected of passing the *Letter* abroad. Many of the envelopes with the *Letter* were addressed in the handwriting of his seventeen-year-old daughter, Maria. But no "incriminating evidence" was found during the search, and O. Kuzmenko remained at liberty. It must be said that this family enjoyed special attention from the KGB. And there was a reason for that: practically the entire human rights movement in Dnipropetrovsk emerged from the house at 20 Armyiska Street. Frequent guests there were writers Mykhailo Chkhan, Semen Danyleiko, Hryhoriy Malovyk, Oles Zavhorodniy with his wife Tamara Zavhorodnia, Ivan Sokulsky, Volodymyr Zaremba with his wife Hanna, the engineer Ivan Rybalka, the teacher Petro Rozumny, Halyna Savchenko, and the author of these lines… University youth also used to visit there.
The investigation, which at first had been progressing slowly, was now being hurried by someone. Either Shkonda or Pokhyl said to me:
“Do you know Sokulsky's handwriting? Here, read this.” And he handed me a written sheet.
It stated that he—Sokulsky—had given me the *samvydav* materials by Hryhorenko and Aganbegyan. But I didn't remember Ivan's handwriting and told the investigator so.
…Ivan entered Pokhyl's office accompanied by an armed guard; his hair was cropped, his hands were behind his back, and he wore a dirty gray prison uniform. His face was gaunt, but I saw no despair in it. I asked the investigator if we could greet each other; he said, “Of course.” We shook hands and sat on opposite sides of the table. After the formalities of filling out the interrogation protocol, Pokhyl got to the point: clarifying the circumstances of the transfer of the same *samvydav* documents (the articles by Hryhorenko and Aganbegyan). He started with Ivan, who confirmed that he had given me the documents.
“Under what circumstances did the transfer take place?” the investigator asked.
“One time he came to my house on a motorcycle, and I gave them to him to read then…” Ivan said.
“Do you confirm what Ivan Hryhorovych said?” the investigator turned to me.
“No. That didn’t happen. He is mistaken.”
And then Ivan looked at me with a long gaze—and it was then that despair appeared in his eyes! Suddenly, he leaned over the table and, not so much clutching his head in his hands, but as if striking himself. I don’t recall his exact words. I think he said:
“What have I done…”
He sat like that for a long time. Pokhyl behaved tactfully—he did not rush him. Meanwhile, I addressed Ivan:
“You must have forgotten our conversation in May when I was walking you home. Otherwise, you wouldn't have made up something that never happened.”
“You can't talk like that,” Pokhyl interrupted.
Indeed, Sokulsky realized the blow he had dealt himself. As for me, Ivan had only confessed to the KGB his own "sin." The "sin" that I had refused to confirm for six months. It was a dramatic moment. Our meetings, our trip to Crimea, must have flashed through his mind. And for some reason, I remembered Ivan's words as we were descending the winding road from Mount Ai-Petri towards Bakhchysarai. It was raining, the asphalt was slippery, riding the motorcycle was dangerous, and Ivan, behind me, was reciting a poem dedicated to the deported Crimean Tatars, which ended with: "I see Bakhchysarai. I do not see Bakhchysarai..." The fate of the Crimeans pained him as much as the fate of the Ukrainians.
Finally, Ivan raised his eyes; there was no more despair in his gaze—only fatigue and a desire for it all to be over soon. For better or worse, just to be over. He said something like: “Just tell it as it is, you can’t change anything anyway.”
I don't remember how the confrontation ended. I think I stuck to my story. It must have been so, because during my next interrogation, Pokhyl placed a piece of paper in front of me, the same format as a summons. It was a warrant for my arrest, signed by the prosecutor.
“It is within my power to arrest you,” he said, nodding at the warrant. “And I will do it if you continue to deny the obvious and obstruct the investigation.”
I felt a chill then. I was not so much afraid of arrest (I had prepared myself for that thought) as of being completely in the hands of the KGB. Although they didn't torture people like their NKVD predecessors, there were rumors that Ivan's confession was the result of psychotropic drugs mixed into his food. Foreign radio stations also reported on the KGB's use of psychotropic drugs. How else to explain that Sokulsky was providing compromising information on himself? If he hadn't spoken against himself, his "crime" would not have been enough even for Article 187-1. The thick volumes of the "case," with which the KGB agents intimidated witnesses and later the court, consisted mainly of copies of *The Letter of the Creative Youth*, which Sokulsky and Kulchynsky had printed themselves and sent to educational, cultural, party, state, and other organizations, whose leaders dutifully forwarded them to the KGB. The young men believed that in this way they would manage to draw the public's attention (and perhaps even convince someone) to the lawlessness that Suslov's ideological service had unleashed in Ukraine. Thus, I faced a dilemma: either to be stubborn and end up on the "rations" they were feeding Sokulsky, or to confirm the obvious but protect myself from the threat of becoming more candid… And my candor would have put O. Kuzmenko behind bars, and probably Chkhan as well. I chose the latter.
* * *
The investigation, which lasted more than six months, was over. In January 1970, I received a letter from the regional court with the following content:
“Please appear at the Dnipropetrovsk Regional Court (38 K. Marx Ave.) on January 12, 1970, at 9 a.m. in room No. 43 to receive the indictment in the case in which you are being prosecuted under Art. 187-1 of the Criminal Code of the UkrSSR.
We also inform you that the case is scheduled for hearing in the premises of the regional court on January 19, 1970, at 9:30 a.m. and your appearance at the court session is mandatory.
Deputy Chairman of the Dnipropetrovsk
Regional Court (V. Burkun)”
The letter was typed in Ukrainian on a typewriter with a Russian font.
In the indictment (one for all three of us), I was charged with the same *samvydav* materials by Hryhorenko and Aganbegyan and the monograph by M. Molnar, *Slovaks–Ukrainians*. There was also something along the lines of: “conducted oral propaganda…”
Petro Polikarpovych Yezholy, the lawyer who took on my case, turned out to be a simple man. Right before the trial, he told me literally this:
“Don’t do anything stupid and start quoting Lenin on the national question.”
I think he was expressing the warning of the KGB agents, whom I had been pestering with those quotes throughout the entire investigation. Sokulsky and Kulchynsky hired Moscow lawyers. The human rights activists in Kyiv suggested I do the same, but I had already agreed to Yezholy.
Soon after (or perhaps even before that), an event occurred that, one might say, prepared me for the worst. One evening, my wife and I, returning from friends, stopped a taxi in which, as it turned out, a writer I knew was sitting. We greeted each other cordially, and he whispered to me that I was “looking at” a year of imprisonment at the trial. He even said that I would be serving my sentence in the Dniprodzerzhynsk prison (or camp). He and his friend got out of the car soon after, and I didn't have time to ask where he had gotten that information. However, the source of the information (or disinformation) could only have been Major Tutyk, who was beating a path to the Writers' Union.
Since no one has yet proven that two grains make a heap, I decided to try to get rid of the third. In the regional library, I looked through the *Chronicle of Newspapers and Magazines* and found that M. Molnar was a frequent guest on the pages of our periodicals. I found and read all of his articles. And right before the trial, something happened that happens only once in a lifetime. An article by V. Nuzhny appeared in *Literaturna Ukraina*, in which he wrote about M. Molnar and reported that the “Dnipro” publishing house was preparing his book *Slovaks–Ukrainians* for publication.
* * *
The court session was closed. The prosecutor was T. P. Zhupynsky; the judge was O. K. Tubilets. Only later did I realize that a judge with such a surname had not been chosen by chance. The chauvinist wits seemed to be saying: “You are being judged by your own kind—the natives.” Did the judge himself understand this? In the courtroom, besides the three defendants, were Sokulsky’s mother, Kulchynsky’s father, and the defense lawyers P. P. Yezholy, V. B. Romm, and Yu. Ya. Sarry. By the way, Romm (Sokulsky’s lawyer) was a war veteran—he was missing an arm, and Sarry (Kulchynsky’s lawyer)—I believe, a leg. The presence of armed Asian soldiers who escorted and guarded Sokulsky and Kulchynsky (not to mention the plainclothes KGB agents) made the people’s court look like a military tribunal.
From the prosecutor's speech, I remember only two things: the pathos of the first words, something like: “At a time when the entire Soviet people…,” and accusations that seemed dubious even on paper, and in oral presentation were perceived as completely frivolous. The accuser himself must have understood this, for he reinforced the lack of argumentation with expressions from the ideological dictionary. This was the first such trial in the Dnipropetrovsk region in those years; it was followed closely not only by the interested parties but also by the soldiers. I was sitting opposite them and saw their faces. At first impartial, if not hostile, they became increasingly curious. The attention of the young men from the East sharpened especially when they began to examine the *samvydav* "Speech by General Petro Hryhorenko in defense of the deported Crimean Tatars." They now looked at Ivan and Mykola (who was their age) with completely different eyes. They were no longer zombies…
The court session lasted about a week. Witnesses were called for each document, and they repeated what they had said during the investigation. None of the defendants tried to shift the blame onto another. But while Ivan and I were being disingenuous, pretending to have repented, Kulchynsky, with youthful recklessness, called things by their proper names, which annoyed the prosecutor. But what annoyed the court the most was Mykola Kulchynsky’s girlfriend—a student at the Dnipropetrovsk Institute of Chemical Technology (one of the Rozhko sisters, if I'm not mistaken, who were appearing as witnesses). She spoke out loud about things that we were afraid to talk about even among friends—chauvinism, genocide, the closure of Ukrainian schools, the ban on celebrating Taras Shevchenko's birthday… She was the real prosecutor and judge at that trial, speaking on behalf of the future. Her fiery words had another—suggestive—argumentation: these words were thrown in the face of “justice” by an intelligent, educated, beautiful young woman…
The process of extracting “criminal evidence,” which had lasted a good six months, was condensed into a week in court. It is impossible to reconstruct the sequence of events chronologically. The testimony against me was confirmed by Pyrlik and Mandebura (he was summoned from Kharkiv). It wasn't easy for the prosecutor, as I was only "on the hook" for two *samvydav* items and an accusation of more than dubious value—M. Molnar's monograph. However, he compensated for the lack of documentary "criminal evidence" with facts from my oral "slanderous" activities. Something like: "pitted young Ukrainian and Russian writers against each other, said that the Ukrainian creative youth was being harassed, named a number of then-young writers (M. Chkhan and V. Chemerys), whose names Sokulsky used in *The Letter of the Creative Youth*…" What was said corresponded to reality, but was it a "crime"? At the literary society of the Writers' Union, there was constant friction between those who wrote in Russian and the new generation of Ukrainian youth (these were mostly university students). I often led the meetings of the literary society (as the deputy chairman), and I had to calm passions and sometimes even rebuff the chauvinistically inclined members; it is possible that I did not always do so in a proper form.
The lawyer Yezholy, in his speech, condemned the criminal actions of the defendants but, considering the insignificant guilt of his client (saying, there is no visible system of distribution), asked the court… When it was my turn to speak, I reported that M. Molnar was the author of a good dozen publications in the Ukrainian press, and showed the latest issue of *Literaturna Ukraina* with the article by V. Nuzhny… Perhaps it was just my impression, but this news bewildered the judge. It clearly did not fit into the script written by the KGB. After all, with the dismissal of this document, only two *samvydav* articles that I had distributed to Pyrlik and Mandebura remained. It seems that at this moment, Sokulsky's lawyer, Romm, took the floor and reported that there was an agreement between the USSR and the countries of the socialist commonwealth regarding literature that was forbidden to be imported from abroad. M. Molnar's monograph was not on that list; otherwise, they would not be planning to publish it here. In addition, he said that no one was even considering initiating criminal proceedings against the authors of the *samvydav* documents I and Sokulsky were accused of—Hryhorenko and Aganbegyan—and that my so-called "criminal" activity did not even warrant a "private ruling," let alone a criminal charge.
This man, a stranger to me—a war veteran, a Moscow Jew—was defending me selflessly, in the name of justice (just as General Petro Hryhorenko had stood up for the Crimean Tatars). This was true internationalism, not the one declared by Suslov’s propaganda. Mykola Kulchynsky’s older brother, Bohdan, who approached me during a break, said that it was not the first time Romm had to speak at trials of human rights defenders… It was then that Bohdan Kulchynsky offered me financial assistance, which I refused. That assistance was organized by human rights activists from Kyiv, Lviv, and other cities under the cover of various "lotteries." We also held such lotteries at meetings at O. Kuzmenko’s place. Only Sokulsky and Kuzmenko knew where that money was sent.
The real masters of the court were not Tubilets and the assessors (A. L. Krykunov, S. P. Hrynevych), nor the prosecutor, but the KGB, whose representatives closely monitored the trial. And yet, the bold speeches of the Moscow lawyers made an impression. Against their background, the provincial totalitarianism, the senseless accusations, and the selfish interests of someone invisible and malevolent became more clearly visible. Those speeches did not destroy the court's script, but the original author's plan (to give this one so much, the other—so much) underwent a certain change. Thus, under the pressure of V. Nuzhny’s article in *Literaturna Ukraina*, M. Molnar’s publications in Ukrainian periodicals, and Romm’s explanations regarding the “convention,” the court was forced to remove one of the three “grains”—and thus there was no “heap.” And the “criminality” of the *samvydav* articles was also “softened” by the Moscow lawyer.
However, I did not know what to expect, and so my wife and I prepared ourselves—we gathered everything a prisoner needs.
The verdict was read not in the courtroom, but in another, smaller room, filled with the relatives and friends of the defendants, the press, KGB agents, and some human rights activists.
“In the name of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist…”
Ivan Sokulsky was given 4.5 years of a strict-regime camp (Art. 62, Part 1), Mykola Kulchynsky—2.5 years of a general-regime colony (Art. 187-1), and Viktor Savchenko—a two-year suspended sentence with a three-year probation period (Art. 187-1). In other words, I was placed under KGB surveillance for three years. I could be arrested at any moment for a new "sin," or for an old one if they discovered it.
* * *
The first-person narrative form allows for a fuller and more truthful illumination of the course of events, but at the same time, it requires the author’s constant presence in the midst of the conflict. As a result, the reader may get the impression that the narrator is intentionally presenting himself in a favorable light. This is not the case. At the center of everything that happened was Ivan Sokulsky. In the Dnipro region, he was the first to refuse to play the game in which the whole of society was entangled, and he rebelled… There were many people who sought freedom. But the vast majority of them saw no prospect in open struggle, and each chose their own way of undermining the system. But there were also those—dozens, perhaps hundreds of them—who felt the pain of the entire nation: its past, present, and future generations. They took upon their shoulders the heavy cross of struggle and suffering. Sokulsky was one of them.
He died of illness in peacetime, in the first year of independence. But I know for certain: his death was the result of the psychological torture inflicted upon him by the imperial inquisitors.
He found his final resting place under the shady acacia trees in a quiet Dnipro-side cemetery. He was bid farewell by all of Ukraine. May the earth be light for you, Ivan…
These memoirs are written from memory, so it is possible that the chronology of events has been violated somewhere—many years have passed since then. Therefore, I advise anyone interested in the details of the trial and investigation to turn to the primary sources—the criminal case of I. Sokulsky, M. Kulchynsky, and V. Savchenko, which is stored in the archives of the regional court of the city of Dnipropetrovsk.
*Suchasnist*, No. 9, 1993. – pp. 153-163. (Also in the magazine *Borysten*, newspaper *Batkivshchyna*, August 2007). The author's final revision - April 2008.