Rusyn, Ivan Ivanovych. The Second Journey

Ivan RUSYN

THE SECOND JOURNEY

Fragments of memoirs about the falsification of a criminal case and the second imprisonment

I had not intended to touch upon that tedious “case,” that segment of my life behind bars, where the KGB henchmen of the agonizing Brezhnev-era communist system had thrown me. And they did it insidiously, with the help of the republican prosecutor’s office, no less. This technique, as I later learned, was called “slinging snot.” In other words—they smeared me. More on all this later.

Time flows by so quickly. There is no longer any room to procrastinate or wait to be asked. I mean to finally fulfill my promise to people and to my wife, Zhanna, who was the greatest victim in that whole spectacle. I promised to try to reconstruct some events from that second imprisonment, in 1976. Perhaps few will read it. But still... The esteemed master of this genre, Vasyl Ovsienko, also asked me not to forget and promised all manner of support in completing this endeavor. He once said that I had done a fine job writing the memoir about 1965–1966 in the KGB dungeons at 33 Volodymyrska Street, and about the interesting prisoner transport journey to the ZhKh-385/11 concentration camp in Yavas, Mordovia. And about the sightseeing stay in the camp, about those glorious camp academicians, my true university. (See: https://museum.khpg.org/1186246408). I don’t know if I will succeed in this endeavor. A great deal of time has passed, and the “term” in those barred places was long. If only it had been possible then to write down all the adventures and impressions... But that was not the time for it. The task was to somehow endure, to preserve one’s human dignity, or at least a semblance of it, in that viper’s nest. In that most criminal, cruel zone, among murderers, robbers, and rapists. In the strictest of the strict-regime zones in Ukraine, Zone No. 93, in Mykolaiv Oblast, in Novodanylivka of the Kazanka Raion.

I hope that my preserved correspondence with my family will help me in this “free creative work.” I was prompted to turn to that epistolary collection by the sound advice of Bohdan Horyn, who recommends always corroborating memoirs with some facts. Although those letters contain only fragmented impressions, they sharpen the memory and allow one to recall some important details and at least maintain a chronological sequence. I must tell you, rereading those letters is no easy task. It’s like being transported back to that other world. The anxieties, the emotions, all over again. Especially the letters from my children, my mother, my wife. Oh, how difficult it is…

***

It was a kind of anxious autumn. Or maybe it wasn’t just the autumn. It was an anxious time, when the reactionary communist regime brazenly and insidiously stifled and uprooted the sprouts of freedom. Having signed the Helsinki Accords, the totalitarian clique led by Brezhnev was deceiving the democratic world. And it began to conduct mass “purges.” Moscow’s democratic intelligentsia organized itself on May 12, 1976, into the Moscow Public Group for Assistance in the Implementation of the Helsinki Accords, those points concerning freedom. The Ukrainian creative intelligentsia was in constant contact with Russian human rights defenders. On November 9, the Ukrainian Public Group for Assistance in the Implementation of the Helsinki Accords (abbreviated as UHG) was founded in Kyiv. The founding members were: Mykola Rudenko, Oles Berdnyk, Petro Hryhorenko, Ivan Kandyba, Levko Lukianenko, Myroslav Marynovych, Mykola Matusevych, Oksana Meshko, Nina Strokata, and Oleksiy Tykhyi. Later, many well-known people joined the Group and became its members, and it is especially noteworthy that this included human rights defenders who were imprisoned or in exile at the time. They were Sviatoslav Karavansky, Oksana Popovych, Bohdan Rebryk, Vasyl Romaniuk, Iryna Senyk, Stefania Shabatura, Danylo Shumuk, Yuriy Shukhevych, and Viacheslav Chornovil.

The Ukrainian Helsinki Group did not limit itself to defending human rights and protecting Ukrainian political prisoners. The Group defended the national, religious, and, first and foremost, political rights of our people, that is, it carried out the tasks defined in the Final Act of the Helsinki Conference. The communist authorities intensified the repressions even further. They directed all their repressive organs to the “implementation” of that agreement. And they drove the Moscow group to self-dissolution. But the choice for the Ukrainian group was the cruelest and most brutal: to pin criminal offenses on the Group’s members to compromise them, to blacken their names in the eyes of the people, to sow doubts about their virtues. Thus, cases of attempted rape were fabricated against Mykola Horbal in Kyiv and Viacheslav Chornovil in exile in Yakutia. For many, the KGB, together with the prosecutor’s office, fabricated criminal cases of hooliganism, resisting the police, possession of narcotics and weapons, and financial and economic activities. In other words, they decided to isolate all suspects. And then to trumpet to the whole world that in the “Soviet Union” no one protests because everyone is living in prosperity. And this was at a time when, since 1972, the most prominent political figures, such as Ivan Svitlychny, Yevhen Sverstiuk, Vasyl Stus, and others, were already in prison. They were torturing Leonid Pliushch, Mykola Plakhotniuk, and Vasyl Ruban in psychiatric prisons… The KGB was raging. “Prophylactic” crackdowns became periodic. To the West’s accusations of political repression, the authorities would respond: “Do not interfere in our internal affairs!” And then suddenly—to get into such a mess by signing that Helsinki Act! They completely exhausted their punitive-propaganda machine, trying to convince the West that there were no political prisoners in the Union. Only a few “pathetic renegades”… Had Divine Providence not intervened and changed that “prosperous” course of history, Brezhnev might have been a contender for the Nobel Peace Prize…

I will try to tell you a little about one of these “purge” episodes. It will, of course, be a rather approximate account. Perhaps even a work of free creation. But that’s no matter.

I was working then as a geodesist at the "Ukrcyvilsilbud" design institute. I often had to go on business trips. I had no doubt that the KGB had been keeping tabs on me all the years after my “first stint” in their preserve. Their agents often came to my workplace. They would get all the “overt” information about my trips from the “first department.” I was told about this. I also knew about the “covert” surveillance. And I had somehow gotten used to that guardianship. I was not engaged in any obvious, active “sedition” and did not expect anything bad. With all those business trips, I somehow even missed the start of that latest “roundup.” This was the period from September to November 1976.

It must have been October 10, 1976, when the head of my department wrote out a business trip for me and a geologist to Kamianets-Podilskyi and Khotyn. Our institute was designing new villages at the time to resettle families from the potential flood zone of the future Dniester Hydroelectric Power Plant reservoir. They sent us to select sites for new cemeteries for those villages. This is a kind of mystical touch in that pre-storm period of mine.

In Kamianets-Podilskyi, we were met with great care by employees of the district executive committee, who quickly organized breakfast for us, then transportation. Two young men of athletic build accompanied us to those villages, although there was no need for it. In one of those villages, after work, they organized a “round table” and dinner with a good bit of drinking. But no seditious conversation came of it, because my partner was far removed from political topics. The dinner was accompanied by jokes. We spent the night in a hotel. In the morning, we went to the villages again in their car. In the evening, they drove us to Khotyn and handed us over to others. These ones also took us under their wing very politely and with great interest. To begin with, they put us in a hotel room reserved for the district committee and arranged dinner. Also on the house. We thought the local authorities were just very interested in our work, so we didn't refuse such care. In the morning, we got to our work. In the evening, we met again, but no interesting conversations, for them, ensued. Our guardians were in a somber mood. They took their car and left us without saying goodbye. They were clearly disappointed. We didn't worry about it. We stayed another night. We had breakfast and coordinated our papers at the local architecture department. Then we looked around the town and visited the fortress. Restoration work was actively underway there for some anniversary of the Battle of Khotyn. Then we took a bus to Kamianets-Podilskyi. We wandered around the city there too. There are some beautiful architectural and historical monuments there. In the evening, we took a train to Kyiv. We arrived around half past five in the morning. My colleague took a taxi home. I waited until six and took the metro. I trudged on foot from the “Livoberezhna” station to Rusanivka. It's about a 20-minute walk. It was drizzling. I approached my building entrance. I stopped to wipe my glasses—and saw a group of men by the front door. One of them asked if I was Ivan Ivanovych. I said: “I am. What is it?” He handed me some piece of paper. I got a bit nervous from the surprise, and my glasses had fogged up. He said gently: “Just calm down a bit, it’s a search warrant from the prosecutor’s office.” I read it. It was true. I looked up and saw there were quite a few of them, maybe seven men. I calmed down, knowing there was no “sedition” at home. I thought it was just one of the KGB's operations. After all, they had been watching me. Let them do their work, that’s their business. I lived on the eighth floor. Two went up with me in the elevator, and the rest ran up the stairs. They were well-trained lads, because they reached the eighth floor faster than the elevator.

Well, what followed was obviously just as planned. By the book. They split into two groups. Some started ringing our neighbor’s doorbell across the hall, while the rest waited with me for our door to open. They terrified the woman, my mother, and the children, as it wasn’t even seven o’clock yet. They spread out through the rooms like they owned the place. The group leader, who was also the main investigator, Dmitriy Alexandrovich Pankov, announced that the Prosecutor’s Office of the Ukrainian SSR suspected me of committing financial and economic crimes. Well, fine, let them suspect. But no, he told me to voluntarily hand over all money and valuables. At this point, I was completely calm, because we had none of that. Although, as it turned out, not quite, because they turned out all our pockets, even the children’s. And they scraped together 250 rubles, including my mother’s pension. And they were pulling out single rubles from pockets. That scoundrel Pankov was particularly zealous, muttering: “You take a ruble from the state—and we’ll take a ruble from you.” He would repeat this phrase several times later. More on that below.

They began a total shakedown of every nook and cranny and all the bookshelves. They literally flipped through every book. Old editions, or anything suspicious, they set aside. It was then I realized that this was a serious matter, because it was no small thing for the republican prosecutor’s office to be involved. But what could I do? We all sat at a distance, so we couldn’t talk among ourselves. The children started crying because they were hungry. They took pity and allowed Zhanna and my grandmother to feed them. And the snoops kept snooping, turning over the beds, crawling under them. They didn’t even have a flashlight to illuminate the dark spots. They hadn’t prepared properly. And suddenly one of them shouted: “Found it!” I reacted instantly—they must have planted something and were putting on a show of delight. It turned out he had found a Bible on my grandmother’s bed, under the pillow. He clearly expected it to be some kind of sedition, as such things were rare finds back then. And inside it, he found more money. At this, there was a stir. They started removing the bills in front of the “witnesses.” And they counted a whole 75 rubles. They recorded it in the protocol. But for a long time, they refused to record my mother’s statement that it was her pension. They added that money to the rest. They even emptied the children’s piggy banks. They took everything. My wife had to borrow from the neighbors later to buy some food and bread. So, a good school of communism, they had learned the lessons of the 1930s well.

This spectacle lasted until about noon. Maybe they would have snooped longer, but they were probably hungry, so they started to seem hurried. The one writing the protocol kept encouraging the rest with the call: “What else.” And that “else” turned out to be: the Bible, three copies of Honchar’s “The Cathedral,” “The History of the Rus’,” a typewritten copy of Solzhenitsyn’s “In the First Circle,” and also a small book by Anatoly Marchenko, the title of which I’ve forgotten. He was a Moscow criminal prisoner who had been incarcerated several times since he was young. Somewhere in transit or in prison, he met Yuliy Daniel. After his release, he got together with Larisa Bogoraz, Daniel’s wife. She persuaded him to write down, or perhaps wrote down herself, his stories about the horrors of daily prison life. It was all naturalistic, with profanity and descriptions of episodes about which one could say: “you couldn’t make it up.” But it was interesting from a cognitive point of view. I didn’t consider these things seditious. They weren’t mentioned during the investigation. They were simply confiscated. Not a word about the KGB’s interest. A compromising criminal farce was planned. Maybe they had hoped to find overt sedition and create a combined crime. After all, it was clearly the KGB’s work when they met me, accompanied me, and even put me up in a luxury hotel room. They fed me, gave me drinks—and all of it “on the house.” As it would later turn out, not quite.

Around two o’clock, everyone present signed the long protocol. And they took me and my wife with them. They drove us to Riznytska Street, to the Republican Prosecutor’s Office. There they separated us and began to spin the case. I only found out what they asked my wife and how they questioned her when I was reviewing the investigation materials. And she told me about it later during a personal visit. They frightened her, demanding she tell them everything about my “criminal activities,” threatening her with criminal liability as an accomplice or, as they put it, a “podelnitsa.” That’s how it was. Of course, she couldn’t say anything, because there was nothing to say. Except that she sometimes traveled with me and carried the surveying rod or measured buildings with a tape measure. She told them about that. Then they made her sign a pledge not to leave the city, scared her a bit more, and let her go home, since there were two small children and an elderly grandmother at home. They were “humane,” after all, General Secretary Brezhnev had signed something or other in Helsinki for a reason.

They had a lot of trouble with me. They had prepared in advance. They had taken all my expense reports for my five years of business trips from the institute’s accounting department. They hadn’t kept them for the other years. Otherwise, they would have had even more work. It amounted to about 200 business trips or, as they classified them, criminal episodes. So they led me into a small room. There were two tables. One was piled high with huge, bound books. Pankov sat down at the other table. There was another man, but he didn’t sit; he just paced the room silently. The investigator ordered me to sit. And so began a long, eight-month conversation. There were sometimes long breaks. Sometimes a month would go by without anyone bothering me. Pankov said to me, pointing to the other table: “You have robbed the state blind. Confess how it happened and where you are keeping the stolen money.” What could I say to that... I couldn't for the life of me figure out what he was talking about. So I told him that I didn’t understand anything about their brutal action with the search and our detention. He calmly told me not to get too cocky, because what goes around comes around. The second fellow went to the window, sat on the sill, and lit a cigarette. And he remained silent. In a more tolerant tone, I asked if they were going to tell me what this case was about and why they weren’t presenting charges. He smirked insolently and said that they had three days to hold me in custody without presenting charges.

Since this outrage began on a Friday, they had until Monday. That’s the law. In other words, their task was to achieve a “break” within three days. How they achieve this has been described many times. Finally, he told me that I had robbed the state, specifically the "Ukrcyvilsilbud" institute, of a large sum of money by exaggerating the length of my business trips. He said this as if in passing, without it being on the record. And he said we would meet on Monday. And that second man remained silent the whole time, observing. As if he were studying me psychologically. It was obvious that he was a KGB man.

A bell rang. Two men appeared and motioned for me to go with them. As I was leaving, the investigator added that I should think carefully, recall everything, and preferably write it down over the weekend. They would give me paper and a pen there. He didn’t say where “there” was. So, they led me out into the courtyard. They put me in a car, not yet a paddy wagon and not yet with the command “hands behind your back.” Twilight had already fallen. We drove through October Revolution Square. I thought they were taking me to 33 Volodymyrska Street. They had already taken me to that prison in the courtyard of the KGB block three times before. But no, on Volodymyrska they turned right and drove into the courtyard of the former “government offices” building, on what used to be Korolenka Street, 15. It turns out that there are still temporary detention cells in the basements there. The infamous KPZ from literary, and not only literary, tales. They handed me over to the on-duty officer of the internal troops, who signed for me. Without delay, some sergeant major led me to a cell. There was already a man there. We greeted each other. The cell was small. Half of it was taken up by a raised platform of planks for sleeping. There was a small, barred and blacked-out window. You can see these little windows from Volodymyrska Street and from Mykhailivska Square. They are at sidewalk level. There was no latrine in the cell.

The little man introduced himself as some kind of accountant who had been held here for two days and had decided to write a “confession.” I didn’t want to talk about these topics. But he came at it from another angle and started saying the same thing again. If they’ve already taken you, you shouldn’t complicate things for yourself, you should confess, because they’ll beat a confession out of you anyway. And he kept hammering on about it, without knowing what my situation was. Or maybe he already knew a little. He was obviously a stool pigeon.

Somehow, I dozed through the night on those real plank beds. The small feeding hatch in the door clicked open, and they called me to the toilet. Then they gave me some kind of thin soup and a piece of bread. They gave me a few sheets of paper and a pencil. They didn’t take us for a walk. Soon they called my cellmate—and I never saw him again.

And again, thoughts and reflections. Mostly about my family. How are they, poor things, worrying over there? And what will all this lead to? I tried to remember my business trips. Where I was, for how long, and whether there were any abuses, any exaggerations of the duration. I had been working at that institute for fifteen years and had never stood out in any way. The trips, the work, were almost all the same. Except that I performed my tasks with higher quality, as I was praised before every holiday. My thoughts kept coming back to the idea that it was all some kind of misunderstanding. I didn’t know that a new roundup or “purge” had begun. But a brutal one, with a smear campaign of criminal cases. And yet, slowly, I began to come to my senses. I began, as they say, to sort everything out. A common expression came to mind: “If you have the man, we can cook up a case.” This thought was a bit depressing. But my thoughts continued to torment me. Like pacing in the cell—four steps forward, then four steps back—so my thoughts darted back and forth. The paper and pencil reminded me that they had demanded I write something. But what was there to write about, when I was sure that in my many years of work, I had never deviated from the established rules at the institute for reporting on business trips. Besides, I didn’t write out my own travel orders; the department head issued them, coordinating with the institute’s chief engineer. And I became more and more convinced that this was something more complex than my geodesic work. In other words, the hand of the KGB was clearly involved here. As it later turned out, it was precisely at that time that all those communist henchmen from all the security agencies united into a single mafia-like group and were conducting a “purge,” fabricating criminal cases against dissidents for things like hooliganism, parasitism, economic activities, and even rape.

Lost in these heavy thoughts, I didn’t notice the time. Suddenly, the lock clicked and the “feeding hatch” opened. Again, they gave me a piece of bread and some murky slop. Later, they gave me a kettle of boiling water without sugar and a mug. After such a lunch, my thoughts turned to home again. How are they, poor things, worrying? How are they enduring this blow? I felt very sorry for them. What a fate to have... For the third time, those lackeys were taking me from them. But that’s just a digression, and not a lyrical one. I slowly began to calm down. I remembered my past wanderings through the KGB dungeons. And it was fine, I survived and remained an optimist. So, it will all work out somehow. They didn’t find any anti-Soviet sedition. I didn’t steal anything at work. I resolved to wait until Monday. Everything would become clear then.

And suddenly, with a crash, the door flew open and a man with a battered face and blood-stained clothes was literally thrown into the cell. I was even frightened, almost stunned. He slowly sat up, then got up from the floor and took three steps to the plank beds. And he lay down, covering his face with his hands. I carefully asked what had happened. He asked for water. I poured him water into the single aluminum mug. He emptied the mug, wiped his face with his sleeve, and lay down again. I didn’t ask any more questions. I paced back and forth. And again I remembered what I had heard many times, and read about. That “interrogation with prejudice.” But I had never had to see something like that. They didn't beat me in the KGB when I was there.

I didn’t notice when evening turned into night. A small, rust-colored light bulb under the ceiling above the door burned day and night. For some reason, they didn’t give the “lights out” command. Outside the small window, life was slowly fading. The clatter of heels on the sidewalk ceased, and later, the movement of cars. I paced a bit more in a state of some kind of prostration and then climbed onto the plank bed. I settled in, listened to see if my cellmate was asleep, and then fell into oblivion. It’s hard to say how long it lasted. My cellmate woke me with his groans and curses. I sat up and asked if he needed anything. He shook his head and fell silent. The little window was turning gray. Morning was coming soon. What would happen next? What did they want from me? I no longer had any doubt that these were the KGB’s tricks.

I remembered how in 1972, during the New Year’s (Old Style) roundup, they had grabbed me too. They grabbed me right on the street, on the evening of January 13. It happened like this. I was working in Boryspil at the time. I found out by phone that arrests were being made. I took a bus to the “Livoberezhna” stop and was walking home. On the way, I decided to drop by Yevhen Sverstiuk’s place. I went up to his apartment. The door was unlocked. I went in—the apartment was in complete disarray. Books and notebooks were scattered everywhere. In the other room, Yevhen was lying in bed. He was sick, with a high fever. I asked what had happened, where Lilia was. With an effort, he said there had been a search, they had taken some things, but he hadn’t been able to watch the snoops. Obviously, they had planted something. The protocol mentioned some “Program…” They didn’t take him with them because his temperature was around 40 degrees Celsius. They said they would be back tomorrow. I didn’t linger and went across the bridge to Rusanivka. Lionia Pliushch lived nearby. I thought I should let him know, maybe he didn't know about the searches. I went in, told him what I’d seen at Sverstiuk’s. But he reacted calmly, saying: “I have nothing seditious.” That was good. In the morning, I went back to Boryspil. After work, I returned to Kyiv. I walked the same way, past Sverstiuk’s building, and saw two men leading Yevhen out of the entrance. I understood everything, greeted them, and walked on. The cerberuses ignored my greeting. They put Yevhen in a car and drove off. I walked quickly to Pliushch’s. I decided to call from a payphone near the entrance. I called. Some fellow answered. I asked for Lionia. And he said: “Who’s speaking?” I called again, and the same thing happened. It was all clear. I walked away, looking back. Pliushch’s apartment was all lit up. They were snooping around on the balcony. Two cars were parked almost at the entrance. I felt a kind of bitterness in my soul. I walked towards my home. I was about to call home. Our building is there, on the corner of Entuziastiv Street and Davydov Boulevard, in the courtyard of the grocery store. And suddenly, by the payphone, two men grabbed me from behind by the arms and dragged me to a car that had pulled up. I struggled, wanting to call for help, but it was already dark, no one was around. Some girl was at the payphone. I shouted to her to report to the address Davydova 20/1, apt. 48, that I had been seized. The girl got scared and ran away. Then a man ran up and, indignantly pushing them aside, asked what to pass on. I told him that some mafiosos had seized me. And he continued: “What else should I pass on?” Finally, they somehow subdued me and forcefully pushed me into the car and took me to the KGB. They brought me into some office from the Irininskaya Street side. There was a clear commotion in the corridor, people running around. They began the usual interrogation. I, however, declared that I would not answer until I informed my wife what had happened to me. They conferred and told me to say that everything was fine. So he dialed the number, handed me the receiver, but kept his finger on the hook. And I said: “Zhanna, they’ve seized me.” He pressed down on the hook and reprimanded me. And then came the questions: what relationship did I have with those arrested at the time—Ivan Svitlychny, Yevhen Sverstiuk, Danylo Shumuk, and others. My answers to the questions were almost identical, tested back in 1965. That is, I took nothing from anyone, gave nothing to anyone, and engaged in no anti-Soviet conversations. The KGB man wrote it all down in the protocol and left. They left some clerk with me to guard me. After some time, my former investigator from 1966, Kovpak, from Kharkiv, came in. Back then, they would “train” those provincials on “anti-Soviet agitation” in Kyiv and Lviv. I mentioned him in my memoir “At 33 Volodymyrska.” He was a “good guy” back then. He closed the case with some unresolved issues and went home. But his decision was overturned, and my first investigator, a certain Lionka Pavlovych Berestovsky, tried to clarify things further. But he didn’t succeed. I couldn’t let Kovpak down. When Berestovsky came with the decision that the investigation was being continued, he immediately declared: “You played Kovpak for a fool.” And now that Borys Antonovych Kovpak was interested, or maybe just came to look at me. It seems we greeted each other cheerfully. He boasted spiritedly that he was “breaking” Shumuk. He said he was easy to work with. I thought, well, Danylo is lucky. But it turned out that he broke Danylo for the full extent of Article 62.

We sat there. I asked for something to eat and some water, as I had a stomach problem. They brought a sandwich and a bottle of water. The pause dragged on. It was almost 11 o’clock, and I was starting to doze off. I was convinced I would be here for a long time. And suddenly, a daring thought struck me. I wanted to see my little children (8 and 1 year old) and my elderly mother one more time, and to look my dear wife in the eyes. To see if she condemned me. And at the same time, I could change into my warm winter work clothes. Because it was winter. So I said to my guard: “They must be searching my place right now. But they won’t find anything without me. I have something, but it’s in a secure hiding place.” He took the bait and asked: “So you’ll show us?” “I’ll show you.” He called someone and said that I had a hiding place and that I had decided to voluntarily surrender what was hidden there. A few minutes later, three of them rushed in: “Well, let’s go?” And we went the same way we came. Two on either side of me, the third in front. Somewhere near the Dnipro, I said to them: “If there had been someone else with that fellow, they would have rescued me from you.” The one sitting in front turned his head and said: “But that was me.” I looked closer, as I had lost my glasses during the capture. Indeed, the same muskrat fur hat, the same round face. And so he shattered my illusions. I felt bitter. But what could I do? We arrived. I and that fat-faced “muskrat,” who was their leader, took the elevator to the eighth floor. The other two ran up the stairs. They stayed on the landing between floors, and I went home. I went in. My mother and wife rushed to hug me in their joy. And I said loudly and clearly, on purpose: “Zhanna, please, open the hiding place and give me everything, because they brought me here for it.” And right then, I changed my clothes, put on my boots, and my sheepskin coat. Zhanna, bless her, understood the game and also said loudly that she had burned everything when I informed her that I had been captured. It all seemed logical. Because four hours had passed from my message to their arrival for the seditious material from the hiding place. Zhanna gave me some typewritten text by Gumilyov. For some reason, she had kept it since her student days. Well, it was also “samvydav.” I took the folder and tried to say goodbye. My mother started wailing, the children woke up. They wouldn't let me leave the house. It's hard to recall even now. I pried their hands and little hands off me, because I had to go, because they were waiting for me. I went up to them and said: “Sorry, lads, when my wife found out, she destroyed everything.” And I handed them the folder. The “leader” looked it over and, smiling, asked what was in it. I wasn't afraid of them anymore. I had fulfilled my dream, I had seen my family, said goodbye, and changed my clothes. So I said to him: “What difference does it make now? It’s all destroyed. Let’s go.” A short pause. And he said to me with a kind of “condescension”: “Stay home for the night. I’ll be waiting for you in my office at Volodymyrska at 10 o’clock tomorrow.” I didn’t object or resist. I mumbled something and quickly went to my family, lest they change their minds.

For the next three or four days, they spent time talking about everything and nothing. I even told him to give me some kind of “summonses” for those days, because I was on piece-rate pay. And I answered his questions very briefly or not at all. He got angry, but he gave me the summonses with the hours indicated. And he threatened me that I would regret it, that I would eventually get caught “red-handed.” I remained silent, took the pass to leave, and left. He was still a major at the time, Ruban. And he looked after me until the end, because he became a colonel, the head of the Darnytsia KGB. I believe he died at his post in 1989 or 1990. That's just for reference. And, probably, in 1976, he took his revenge and caught me “red-handed.” By the way, there were many others like me there in the KGB at that time. Halia Sevruk, Liuda Semykina, Mykhailyna Kotsiubynska, and Leonida Svitlychna all visited that “daytime prophylactic sanatorium.” These were the acquaintances I saw in the corridors, waiting their turn for processing. This is also a digression, but a historical one.

And so, lost in thoughts and memories, I waited for the morning command to go to the toilet. Later, they even gave me a piece of herring and sweet tea. This was now Monday. I hoped that everything would be cleared up today. It would all work out somehow. It will be as God wills. My grandmother used to say that. Soon they called for me, shouting through the feeding hatch: “The one whose name starts with R.” Apparently, my cellmate’s last name started with a different letter, because he didn’t react and remained lying down. They led me out into the courtyard, put me in some car, and with an escort of two “civilians,” brought me back to Riznytska Street, to the prosecutor’s office. They led me through some winding corridors and handed me over to that young but brisk cerberus, Dima Pankov. That’s what my guards called him. He thanked them for bringing me in one piece and unharmed. Maybe they had some intention of scaring me, like my cellmate. But God was merciful and protected me.

First, he launched a psychological attack. He stared at me insolently, with narrowed eyes. I withstood his assault. It was something like the duel of gazes between boxers before a fight. Then he sat down imposingly, leaning back in his chair with self-assurance. “Well, so what?” he asked. “Shall we get to work?” I was silent. “How shall we conduct the investigation?” Thinking to complicate his work, I said I would speak Ukrainian. I deliberately didn’t say that I would answer questions. It turned out that the scoundrel was perfectly fluent in Ukrainian. He hadn't graduated from Shevchenko University for nothing.

We began a long and tedious process of clarifying the essence of my criminal business trips. Apparently, he had already thoroughly studied the accounting books that lay on the table, because he easily juggled dates and names of towns. I, of course, had forgotten much about those trips from five or four years ago. I had to travel almost every week throughout Ukraine. But there is probably a certain technology for conducting interrogations. So he read me a question, having first written it into the interrogation protocol. Was I at such-and-such a place, how many days was I there. I said that it was a very long time ago and I had long since forgotten about that trip. He didn’t deny that I might have forgotten. He showed me a business trip report from five years ago. He asked what I did there and how many days I was there. Well, what could I answer? Sometimes I remembered what I did there. And besides, the tasks and the number of days required to complete them were written on those travel orders. But sometimes the scope of work would be increased, and then, based on a report from the institute’s chief engineer, I would have to stay longer. So I told him: “Don’t bother with these questions. I won’t give a clear answer anyway.” He smiled, the bastard. “It’s alright,” he said. “This is my job, and with your help, I’ll figure everything out.” Well, I thought, this is going to take a while. And so it did. That conversation lasted the whole day. There was a lunch break. Considering that I hadn’t eaten a proper meal in three days, it was almost a festive feast. There was borscht and a cutlet with buckwheat kasha. And even a rather tasty fruit compote. Probably from their prosecutor’s office cafeteria. But that’s just an aside.

So, he asked a specific question, flipping through those books with bookmarks. And my answers were almost identical: “I don’t remember due to the passage of time.” He wasn’t bothered by this and continued. We went through 1971 like that until late in the evening. A lot of time was taken up by my recollections, or rather, the game of remembering those trips. Because what could I remember? A lot of time was also spent leafing through those bound volumes of accounting documents. He tried to scrupulously write down all those business trips. He was trying to prove to me that he was genuinely concerned about them. Maybe so, because he had to prove the “theft” and “put me away” for a long time. And so it happened. But we’ll get to that. At the time, I still thought it was all some kind of misunderstanding. I began to remember some things. I explained to him something about the specifics of geodesic work. He seemed to listen attentively. And again he asked about the number of days I spent here or there. I began to answer that it was for as long as was indicated on the travel order. He didn’t argue and wrote down my almost identical answers. And so the first conversation ended. He gave me the long protocol to sign. While I was reading his manuscript, a man came in. Obviously his superior, because Dima stood at attention before him. He gave the investigator some papers and left. When I finished reading and signed each page, he took the protocol and said: “Well, Ivan Ivanovych, since you are suspected of committing a crime, the appropriation of state funds, we have decided to keep you in custody for two months.” And he announced the prosecutor’s sanction for this. Then he called somewhere and said to take me away and place me in the pre-trial detention center.

At Grandpa Lukian’s

After a while, two sergeants came, and this time with the command “hands behind your back,” they led me out into the courtyard. They put me in a “paddy wagon,” in a box. This special vehicle looks like a bread truck. It has a large compartment in the back and two or three “boxes” just for one person to sit tightly. And off we went. We arrived in the courtyard of a large building. I later learned that it was Lukianivska Prison, with a long history stretching back to Catherine the Great’s time. They processed me, obviously, like all criminals. They stripped me, looked in all my orifices. Ordered me to squat three times. They patted down my clothes, took my belt, and pierced my shoes with a large awl. Once, ten years ago, in the KGB prison, such a large awl had scared me a bit. The same thing happened now, when they were processing me for detention. Imagine, I’m standing there naked—and suddenly this big sergeant major takes this shiv from the table and walks silently towards me. But it turned out he also intended to pierce my shoes. But that’s just to make your reading a little more cheerful. Then they read something about the rules of conduct in that “prophylactic sanatorium” and took me into custody. On the second floor, they put me in a cell. It was a cell for four. It had two two-tiered metal beds. For some reason, such cells were called “troykas” (triples). As I later learned, there were also solitary cells and large general cells where they crammed in as many prisoners as they wanted. The area of that “troyka” was probably 3x4 meters. There was also a toilet corner, slightly partitioned off, with a “parasha” (latrine) and a washbasin. A small window with forged bars. Under it was a small table and two stools, firmly fixed to the floor. Above the door, as in all such rooms, was a wire-mesh-covered light bulb with a pale yellow light. The floor was concrete. There was also a heating radiator, on which people were constantly tapping. A kind of peculiar “Morse code.”

There was already a resident there. We greeted each other. He asked what my article was and if I was recently from the outside. I said Article 84, it had been four days. And this was my first time here, first day. It was obviously late, because he was already asleep. I spread out the “mattress” they had given me and lay down too. And I passed out... I woke up from some horrible dream, to the sound of knocking on the door and the shout “padyom” (reveille). We got up. I splashed some water on my face, wiped it with the hem of my shirt. Then we all sat down on the beds and waited for further commands. He told me that he had been here for over a month for armed robbery. That episode was supposedly already cleared up. But the investigation was extended, they were pinning other, still unsolved episodes on him. That’s how investigators, through threats and violence, reduce the number of unsolved crimes. Soon we heard the clatter of dishes and the clicking of the small doors, those “feeding hatches.”

They gave us a kettle of drinking water. Then half a loaf of bread for the two of us and a piece of rotten herring. This was the typical breakfast. We had our treat and continued to wait. My cellmate said that now they would either take us for investigation, or if not, they would take us for a walk. All sense of time by the hour was lost. It was inconvenient for two people to walk around the cell, as the passage was narrow. One had to sit on a stool. So we took turns walking and, at the same time, waited for our fate together. My cellmate turned out to be a man of few words, which was a considerable plus. I seemed to have slept enough, but I felt sluggish. Probably nervous exhaustion. A kind of apathy, an indifference to that fabricated charge. And my thoughts again and again went home. What’s happening there? Have they been told where I am? My poor Zhannochka. I remembered how long ago I used to call her “Terpelykha” (the long-suffering one). Oh, how much she has suffered with me. And it’s unknown what will happen next. The memories somehow pushed me away from my current reality.

The clang of the opened “feeding hatch” made me jump. And I heard: “The one whose name starts with ‘R’.” I identified myself. “Out.” I had nothing with me, so I immediately moved to the already open door. They led me down the stairs to the basement, then through a tunnel-like passage into a courtyard. There was an annex there with many small doors. They pushed me in and told me to wait. I could hear other small doors clicking. I don’t know how long it lasted. A vehicle pulled up, and they loaded us in. Eight of us were placed in the large compartment, three were crammed into the boxes. Someone was asking someone else about something. I was silent. Along the way, we stopped somewhere and they dropped people off one by one. I was the fourth. It was the courtyard of the same republican prosecutor’s office. They handed me over with a signature and drove on. In the office, that Dima, whose last name was Pankov, was already waiting. He was a bit sullen, but he greeted me and told me to sit down. I no longer speak of invitations, because I had been a prisoner for five days and had to obey orders. The bastard asked how I had slept. I remained silent. “Well, shall we continue?” I was silent. And he began to ask the same questions again. Was I here or there, how many days, what did I do? I had really forgotten everything. He read me the texts from the travel orders again. I told him that everything was written there, in the order, and I had nothing to add. It was quite boring. They also brought lunch to my “workplace.” The food was also relatively good. I chatted a bit with the guard who was with me, because Dima had gone for lunch. I asked about my family. He said everything was fine at home, Zhanna Pavlivna was going to work. Dima came in and announced that he had allowed me a package today. Well, thanks for that. And we went on “working.” It’s his job, he has to earn his bread and butter somehow. We worked again until evening, until six (I asked the time), and then we went our separate ways. I waited for a long time in some box. But they didn’t forget about me and took me home, to Grandpa Lukian’s. It was already dark. The ceremony of transferring me from hand to hand happened quite quickly. They took me to the same cell. After a while, they brought a piece of bread and some kind of boiled fish. I still had tea from the morning. So I had dinner, as the book says, that is, according to the cost calculation for maintaining a zek. My cellmate was not there. And I sat on the bed, waiting for “lights out.”

I won’t describe in detail how the further investigation was conducted, as it would be boring to read. I will only touch upon the characteristic episodes. This preliminary stage of the investigation lasted for about three weeks, maybe more. That is, the same questions were asked about all those, around two hundred, episodes. I gave almost identical answers. The investigator seemed to be in no hurry. And I became more and more indifferent to the conversation. I already understood that the trap was custom-made, that it was a complete fabrication and there was nothing I could do to help myself. Whether I explained the details or answered briefly—they wouldn’t take it into account. But if I had known then, I could have remained silent altogether. They gave me the maximum for the article anyway. And so, in this conversation, we reached the end, or, in other words, to the episode from which the whole process actually began. From that cheerful journey to Kamianets-Podilskyi and Khotyn. For some reason, I remembered a dream I had on my last night of the business trip, in Khotyn, in that district committee hotel room. I dreamed that I was riding in a large open car. And suddenly a gust of wind tore my beret from my head and carried it high into the air. I asked my colleague what that could mean. He said it would be good. Such are the dreams one can have. Maybe they foretell something. For me, it turned out like in that well-known folk joke, the punchline of which is that a dream tells the truth once, and lies the second time. The fact that I was going somewhere was not so tragic. But that loss of the beret—that was obviously a hint at the confiscation of property. And this with a maximum prison sentence of 7 years of a strict regime. Such were the fabricated outrages. But that’s just a digression.

Lines from some old adventure book I read long ago seem to surface in my memory. Those anxious waves have already smoothed over. Time smooths everything over. If only I had my notes from then, it would be a grotesque tale. But let’s move on. Suddenly, they stopped calling me. I sat for a week, I sat for two, the two-month period for which they had taken me into custody was approaching. And Dima was nowhere to be seen. It was December 15, a Friday. My cellmates, and there were two of them by then, advised me to raise a “ruckus” for illegal detention. So on Saturday morning, I started banging on the door. A guard looked through the feeding hatch. I shouted: “Get the chief. They’re holding me without a sanction. You have no right.” The feeding hatch closed. We laughed at the scene. But about 20 minutes later, the senior on-duty officer came and told me not to make noise, that everything would be cleared up in an hour or two. It worked. After lunch, they called me out of the cell. We said our goodbyes, because we didn’t know where they were taking me or if I would return to the same cell. Once outside the door, I told the guard that my things and food were left there. He laughed, the parasite, and said I’d be back soon. And indeed, at a meeting with some official, I received a prosecutor’s order to extend my arrest for another two months. They returned me to my cell. Everyone was happy, and I was a little too. So humorous situations can happen even in prison. I think I’ve mentioned somewhere that the first day is the hardest. Then those three unpredictable days without a sanction. But when a week or two passes, you get into the rhythm of zek life. The worst thing in this whole affair is the torment of one’s relatives. You can’t even compare it. What does a zek have to worry about: they give him food, take him for walks, and even bring packages from home. The investigation becomes a routine. You go as if to work. It can even get a bit boring when they don’t call you for a conversation. The only problems a zek might face are from his environment. It depends on who you get for cellmates. Or worse conditions of detention. The punitive services often provoke extreme situations, encouraging the “hardened” criminals. They plant them in cells, and they abuse others, which can even lead to fatal consequences. I will mention all of this as it comes up. By the way, all those investigative (or police) abuses and tortures are applied during those three sanction-free days. But once you are transferred to the detention center, that is, to prison, they can no longer torture or maim you. The prison authorities are responsible for you then. There is even prosecutorial oversight of the conditions of zek detention. Of course, that’s how it should be according to the law. During my time under investigation at “Grandpa Lukian’s,” I didn’t see anything like that man, beaten to a pulp, thrown into the temporary detention cell. Later, after the trial, when they threw me into a general cell, I saw all sorts of things. But those were mutual settling of scores among the zeks.

As it later turned out, the investigator Dima Pankov had been on business trips. To all the sites of my “episodes of crime.” That cabal had to play such games, spend so much money, freeze, because it was winter. But it turned out he was traveling on my money, because the court ordered me to pay for all the expenses. That’s how they proved my “crimes.” They took testimony from the clients on-site and then presented them as witnesses for the prosecution at the trial. When I returned to Kyiv, I tried to find out the reasons for their testimony. I met with some of them. With those directors or chairmen who ordered the work, who clarified the scope of work with me on-site and noted the number of days I was there, and then told the investigator that I was there for a day or two. In court, they later denied this. But the court did not take that into account. The witness interrogation was conducted like this. Investigator Dima, or maybe another one, would come to that manager (the client). He would introduce himself, showing his prosecutor’s ID. Every one of those managers, obviously, had something to hide. And accordingly, they would get the jitters and be terrified. Then he would show my photograph and ask if he knew such a person. The vast majority really couldn’t answer affirmatively, that is, they didn’t recognize me, because many years had passed. Then he would show the travel order and ask if those were his signatures. Trembling, he would affirm. To the next question, whether he had written the arrival and departure dates, he would deny it. And then came the storm and pressure. Who wrote it, when it was written, and how is it that he, a manager, signs blank forms. Maybe the dialogue was different. Then a little softer: “So how many days was that guy in the photograph here on a business trip?” The signatory, of course, couldn't remember. And to the question of whether it was a day or two, he would answer: “Maybe a day, maybe two.” They would write a protocol, indicating that one or two days. This technology was evident in all my business trips. The accusation of exaggerating the length of my trips was built on this testimony. At the same time, my travel tickets with dates and even hotel receipts were not taken into account.

I must note that many of those who ordered the work, especially for 1975 and 1976, who still remembered me, did not succumb to such an attack and confirmed the number of days I was on a business trip, as indicated in the travel orders. But investigator Dima ignored this testimony.

After those trips of his, that long break, Pankov resumed our conversations. This time he was more confident. Because he already had written statements-testimonies about my “crimes.” And we went through all those business trips again. Only the questions were posed differently. They began with a reading of those statements-testimonies. They ended with the question: “What do you have to say to that?” My answers were again almost identical: that the statements I had heard were fabrications. And as for the specific business trip, I had already given an explanation. What I did there and for how many days is in the report on the completion of the work, which was checked and accepted by the head of the survey department. He doesn’t argue, he writes everything down. We move on. This went on again for maybe a month. There were, however, occasional deviations from peaceful conversations. Suddenly, after hearing one such statement, I would say with indignation that it was a clear lie and I demanded a “face-to-face confrontation.” I even told him that he was falsifying, that the client couldn’t have lied like that. He calmly assured me that there would be face-to-face meetings. He wasn't aggressive. Obviously, he was confident that, no matter what, they would get me the maximum seven years under the second part of Article 84, because there were many episodes. So those vile KGB men decided to give me the opportunity to serve the full term provided for by Article 62, that is, seven years. Because in 1966, there was indeed some game played by the liberals P. Shelest and Nikitchenko, when they handed down sentences starting from six months. That is, from the minimum. Later, from 1972, they would give 7 years of a strict regime and 5 years of exile to “remote” places for a first offense. But my sentence was still a long way off.

This second series of investigative “walks” through those episodes also became tedious. So I won’t tire you with a retelling of them. I’d rather move on to daily life. They continued to keep me in the “troyka.” My cellmates changed, but I remained. Mostly, they would add one person. There was, however, a time when there were four of us. This was after the New Year, when the prison was overcrowded. About a week later, there were two of us left. He was a cheerful fellow. His name was Oleksandr Lutsenko, from Boryshivka in the Kyiv region. A bit of a philosopher, he knew history quite well, and most importantly—he was a poet. He was over thirty years old. This was his fourth time in prison. And all for fighting. Apparently, he took up poetry while in confinement. He had several notebooks filled with tiny script. He was not forbidden to write and keep them. He had a good memory. He often recited excerpts from his latest poem about the Cossack era. What happened to him and what his creative fate was—I don’t know. Maybe they gave him a long sentence, because the fight involved a weapon. He got into a scuffle with some older neighbor. The neighbor pulled out a pistol, and he supposedly somehow took the pistol away and in the course of the struggle, two shots hit his opponent. But he survived. The investigation was charging him with attempted murder, claiming it was his weapon.

I’m telling so much about him because we spent a long time together in the same cell. He loved to tell stories and knew how to do it. During this time, almost three months, they rarely took him for interrogation. He said that the victim was in serious condition in the hospital. And the investigation was waiting until he could testify. Whether it was true or not, who knows. But in those conditions, you listen to each other. It’s not worth getting into an argument, because you don’t know what his mental state is. Anything can happen. I’ll talk more about that later.

To lighten this reading a bit, although it may not be appropriate, I’ll retell one of his funny stories, a life episode. So, he was married. His wife was from Bila Tserkva, and she lived there with her mother. He, also with his mother, lived in Boryshivka. Since he often had dealings with the police and didn’t work regularly, he traveled back and forth. His mother-in-law was always scolding him. Not having a steady job and not wanting to listen to his mother-in-law, he would visit the neighbors. And the neighbors were good and would treat him. So he complained to a neighbor woman that his mother-in-law was so nasty. The neighbor told him that she was so mean because she didn’t have a man. She was about 50 years old, a widow. He didn’t say what else the neighbor advised. But every time, she treated him to moonshine. And one evening, when his wife was on the second shift, Sashko, having had a good drink, went to bed. Passing by the cot where his mother-in-law was already lying, Sashko suddenly put his hand under her blanket. And she said: “Tsk, you fool.” He quickly scurried off to the bedroom. The next evening, Sashko had a little more to drink, for courage. The mother-in-law seemed to be already asleep on the same cot. Sashko stopped, grabbed his mother-in-law in his arms, and carried her to the bedroom. Instead of screaming—for help, she said, asking if she was screaming too loudly: “Oh, you’ll break me.” Sashko didn’t break her, but he did his business. And with the eyes of Sirko, he climbed into the hayloft above the shed to sleep. Being drunk, he fell asleep quickly. In the morning, he remembered the incident and said he was very ashamed. But well, it happened. So there he lay, “the pipes are burning,” but there was nothing to quench the fire with. Then he heard someone climbing the ladder. He thought it must be his wife. But no. He heard the gentle voice of his mother-in-law: “Sasho, get up for breakfast”... He took his wife and went to Boryshivka, as it was the weekend. There were three of us in the cell then. The laughter was so loud that the guard had to knock on the door to bring us to our senses. Things like that happen.

For a time, a typical Russian was my cellmate, though not for long. He also loved to tell legends of his life behind bars. He first went to prison a long time ago, as a teenager. He stole rabbits from one of the neighbors. There he gained experience and, shortly after his release, was “banged up” again for a “gop-stop.” That’s a robbery with violence. They gave him 10 years. He served them from bell to bell. In the camps, he got a secondary education. He studied philosophy on his own and was knowledgeable in literature. Later, in the camp, I knew such self-taught wise guys. He was, apparently, a bit of a tough guy. He said he was a respected person in the camp. And so, after his release, he went to his sister’s, in some “backwater,” though not far from Moscow. He told all these life stories with great seriousness. But one time, when he got to his memories of staying with his relative near Moscow, he literally snapped. So, they made him sleep on a bench in the kitchen. The conditions, according to him, were terrible. They used a kerosene lamp for light. Whether there was no electricity, or it was rarely supplied, I don’t remember anymore. And they kept a calf in the house. One night, that calf started to suckle him. It’s hard to imagine what he went through then, given how emotionally he reacted after such a long time. How he cursed that Soviet, deceitful reality. It broke all his good intentions about that life “on the outside with a clear conscience.” He said: “I don’t want that kind of freedom.” Apparently, for the last ten years of his confinement, he had lived on the information of deceitful radio and the newspaper “Pravda.” So he left his relatives and went to his “buddies” in Ukraine. He said that the Ukrainians were richer and it would be easier there. What would be easier, I didn’t clarify. He and his “buddy” had a couple of successful episodes. They had recently “hit” some “village store.” And they got “burned.” They had been under investigation for two months already. Later, he went “with his things” to a world more familiar to him. His place did not remain empty, because Grandpa Lukian’s is always busy.

All sorts of passengers came to my compartment, but I don’t remember any particularly characteristic ones. Except for one incident. A passenger came who loved to play chess. I also used to dabble in it. We asked the guard for a chessboard and began to shorten that cell leisure time. I lost for several days in a row. It even became uninteresting for him. There was a break, but the days in prison are long. And we resumed the game. Draws began, because I had already memorized his moves. And then I started to win sometimes. He would get nervous and make more mistakes. And he suggested we play for stakes. I already knew what that was. In camp or prison conditions, games are often played “for stakes.” This is especially dangerous in the zones. And all kinds of games. And those who lose have terrible problems. Because there is no cash and no way to pay up. But I’ll tell you about the consequences of losing later, when I describe camp life. So we agreed to play for squats. It’s kind of useful to stretch. Twenty-five times for a loss. At first, it was fun. Losses alternated with draws. But when your luck runs out and you have to lose several times, it’s not so fun anymore. All sorts of things happened.

In particular, this happened. My cellmate lost four games in a row. He honestly did his squats. He took a time-out. Then there was a walk. Then lunch. And again, the game. And again he lost and did squats, but it was already difficult. When your partner is doing squats, it’s advisable to stretch a bit yourself. And so, on his second or third set of squats, I went to the window and started doing pull-ups on the bars... I came to on the bunk. I was vomiting uncontrollably. I saw two orderlies and guards. They put me on a stretcher and carried me to the infirmary. A medic came, examined me. There was no open wound. My head hurt, I was nauseous, had urges to vomit, and the bed was spinning. They gave me some pills and a cold compress for my head. The pills put me to sleep. When nature called, I tried to get up. But I almost fell. Thankfully, two guys helped me to the toilet and back to the bunk. I slept through the night with the pills. In the morning, the doctor diagnosed a concussion. Some senior lieutenant came, asked questions. How it happened, I still don’t know. What my cellmate explained, they didn’t tell me. My ward-mates, when I told them about the game and the squats, assured me that he had whacked me on the head with something. Maybe so, or maybe I lost consciousness while doing pull-ups and hit my head on the concrete floor. I lay in that infirmary for almost a month because I couldn’t walk on my own. When they took me out for a walk, I held onto the walls. Later, I started to walk more steadily on my own. And as a result of that “game for stakes,” I still have complete hearing loss in my right ear and a walk like a tipsy old man. Several times, policemen didn’t want to let me into the metro.

While I was “on sick leave,” investigator Pankov finished drafting the indictment. Apparently, they were already waiting for me, because as soon as I left the infirmary, they immediately took me to the investigator, where he ceremoniously handed me the said indictment. There were two of them again. They also had me sign a protocol on the completion of the investigation and the beginning of my review of all the volumes of the criminal case. How much time I spent reviewing those materials, I, of course, no longer remember.

The most noteworthy part of that indictment was this: “Rusyn, Ivan Ivanovych, is accused of the fact that he, having been previously convicted on March 25, 1966, for anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda by the Kyiv Regional Court under Article 62, Part I of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR, and having served his sentence, failed to draw the proper conclusions for himself, did not embark on the path of correction, and again committed a series of crimes...” This paragraph was depicted with a red diagonal stripe on all my court cases and accompanying letters for all seven years as a special mark.

But, besides that, the prison detention continued. The review of the investigation materials dragged on because I was carefully studying that six-month “creative work.” I seemed to already understand what was what, but I naively hoped to dispel all those investigative fabrications. So I wrote down an explanation for each business trip. I thought that in court, with the help of witnesses, I would be able to prove that it was all a falsification. The second week was already passing, and investigator Dima started to get nervous. He said: “Do you think you’ll be able to read all your notes in court?” I remained silent and continued to read and write. Some other fellow, obviously a “senior,” came and also tried to persuade me not to waste paper. Reading through those volumes, I became more and more convinced that there was no crime there, that it was a generally accepted technology for going on business trips and having them stamped by the clients. And the most important thing in all of this was that I didn’t write out my own task-orders; the department head determined the necessary number of days and coordinated all tasks with the chief engineer. I finished my review of the indictment materials in a fairly good mood. At the end of our “cooperation,” the investigator even gave me some hope, saying that, you know, in court, half of the episodes will be dropped. I managed to ask him: “So why did you write them in?” The response: “I had to show that I was working.” We parted on that dialogue. I wanted to see him after returning to Kyiv, but they wouldn’t give me his address or phone number at the information desk. They are all, the scoundrels, classified.

After some time, they brought a protocol to the cell stating that I was now under the jurisdiction of the court. Well, so be it. The detention regime didn’t change. I was waiting for the trial. My wife hired a lawyer. A certain Nina Ivanivna Pushkina. She came a few times. She asked about some episodes because she was also reviewing the case. I gave her my notes for my defense, and she mostly used them during the court hearings. That court spectacle lasted quite a long time because there were many witnesses for the prosecution. All the witnesses who, under pressure from the investigator, had written statements about me being with them for one or two days, affirmed in response to my questions that I had actually been with them for as long as was indicated in the travel orders. That is, they denied their previous testimony. In response to the judge’s questions, they said that the work had been carried out over many days. But they had seen me at the beginning and after the completion of the work, when they signed the travel orders. The head of the survey department, Pustynsky, tried to convince the judges that it was impossible to complete the work in the time the investigator had written, that it was absurd, that just getting there and organizing the work took a day, and a day to finish the work. He explained this for each business trip. My lawyer and I were satisfied. The judges seemed to listen attentively. The secretary supposedly took notes, or shorthand. Well, a real performance. The main actors: the prosecutor, the lawyer, and me. The judges were just judges, listening, sometimes asking something. And they had to pass a sentence. The lawyer encouraged me. The court performance came to an end. The prosecutor, with pathos, starting with my KGB imprisonment and my failure to reform, went through all the episodes and ended his accusatory monologue with a demand to sentence me to the maximum under that Article 84, part two, 7 years in strict-regime camps with confiscation of property. The lawyer, Nina Ivanivna Pushkina, passionately, perhaps also with pathos, argued to the judges that there was no criminal offense in this whole affair. After the lawyer, there was nothing left for me to add in my defense regarding those “criminal episodes,” because the lawyer had said everything we had agreed upon. I only asked the court to pay close attention to the witnesses’ changed testimony in the courtroom regarding the number of days of my business trips. And especially to the explanation of witness Pustynsky, the head of the geodesy department of that institute, which I had allegedly harmed. He was effectively an expert from that institute. He explained the technology of the work and the necessary number of days for its completion, which in fact refuted the conclusions of the prosecution. That is, the criminal case, as such, had no grounds. It looked like a complete falsification.

But that’s something that isn’t even worth mentioning. The judges took a three-day recess. Obviously, to coordinate the decision. And they coordinated it and announced the decision. The verdict literally repeated the prosecutor’s text of the accusation and seven years in strict-regime camps with confiscation of all property. And on their own, they added: to reimburse the institute 1002 rubles, the amount the investigator had trumped up for my five years of business trips. Also, to reimburse all court costs. This included all sorts of expert examinations and the travel expenses of the investigators and witnesses to the court hearings. I had to work off all that money in the zone for many years. This reprisal against me was carried out by the head of the Moscow District Court of the city of Kyiv. By the way, God marks the scoundrel, because he was soon caught taking a bribe and was put away for ten years.

All my relatives and friends were stunned. Especially by the confiscation of property. That KGB gang really got their revenge! Seven years was not something special. Since 1972, people had gotten used to such terms; the KGB thugs didn’t give less. But to torment a woman with two small children and an old, frail grandmother... That was true fascist KGB torture. Well, what kind of property do Soviet engineers have? Two beds, two wardrobes, two children’s cots, a table, chairs, some sofa, and a “Rekord” television. All this was listed in the protocol upon my arrest. Some clothing was also listed. During the investigation, it turned out that I also had a “dacha.” It was a wooden cabin of 20 sq. m on a 4-are plot in the garden cooperative of our institute. They listed that too. The most annoying thing in this whole affair was that my poor wife had to run around the courts with lawsuits to divide that property. The most humane, just Soviet court divided everything equally, not taking the children and grandmother into account. And she had to buy out my share from those court bailiffs. Thank God, relatives and friends helped.

The lawyer was also bewildered; she had not expected such a decision. She tried to calm us, saying we would appeal and everything would be changed. And she appealed that arbitrary verdict in the Kyiv City Court. She managed to get to one of the court leaders there, supposedly a former classmate, or even a friend. His last name was Matsko. When they brought him my “case” to study, he urgently called her to his office, showed her the red stripe diagonally across the title page, spread his hands, and apologized profusely. That’s what she told Zhanna, and later me. Whether it was true or not, who knows. The only thing that is true is that there was such a judge with the last name Matsko. That Matsko had judged us in 1966 in the Kyiv Regional Court. That is, the cassation instance left the verdict unchanged.

Meanwhile, right after the trial, I was transferred to a general cell. I had already heard enough about those cells and the conditions there. I had even been in large cells once, in 1966, during a prisoner transport journey. But this was a horrifying impression. A real “monkey house.” Instead of 12 people, they crammed in 20. Sometimes there were fewer, but mostly, even more. We were packed on those bunks like herrings, and people were lying on the concrete floor. It was a good thing it was already June, at least we weren’t freezing.

So they took me from that “troyka.” On another floor, they opened a door with a screech and pushed me into the darkness. The door slammed shut behind me, and the bolt scraped. I stood by the door, not knowing where to step next. I heard an authoritative voice: “Come on in, what are you standing there for, untie your sack.” The cell was hazy with smoke, and it was already getting dark. I could barely make out a long table. Benches along the sides. All around were solid two-tiered bunks. Inmates lay on them, squeezed together. On the benches sat several shirtless men, wet with sweat, obviously the top dogs. They were playing dominoes and backgammon. I went to the table, untied my sack, and stepped back. The same voice: “Now that’s a good lad.” And then: “We’re gonna call you, muzhik, ‘Ochki’ (Glasses).” Well, I had already received that “kikukha” (nickname) in transit prisons, during my journey to Mordovia in 1966. And Sashko Martynenko and I had lost our “sidors” (sacks) in much the same way then. At the very first transit prison, when they herded us into a general “holding pen.” After a while, when they realized our “cases” had red stripes, they separated us from those “cheerful lads.” And they put us in a separate cell, just the two of us, but now without our “sidors,” that is, without food and warm clothes. The cell was strange. As we later learned, when they put an old prisoner with us who was being transported from Mordovia, it was a death row cell. He was an interesting cellmate for us. He told his stories interestingly. He had been in prison for over twenty years. He said he had been a colonel under Vlasov. And they caught him in Paris in the autumn of 1945. They were having dinner, or maybe drinking, in a restaurant. And suddenly the waiter called him to the phone, in the lobby. He had just started to say “hello” when three men in civilian clothes came right up to him and ordered him to walk silently to the exit. They pushed him into a car and took him to the military commandant’s office. From there, after some processing, they transferred him to the Soviet occupation zone. And then the “vyshak” (death penalty), which was later commuted to 25 years in the camps. His name was Ivanov, and he also said that some brother of his was now a general, the head of the military commandant’s office in Moscow. We, of course, asked him why he didn’t help. He said that maybe he would help, because they were taking him for some meeting at the KGB. There were many interesting details in his legendary stories. For the most part, long-term zeks try to use any free ears, because no one listens to them there, among themselves, anymore. Later, he returned to the same camp where I was already staying. This was in Yavas, ZhKh-385/11. Our guys advised me not to communicate with him, because he was a snitch. And that they had probably taken him for a report. Forgive the digression. Such digressions will probably be repeated more than once.

My sack served as a kind of ransom bribe. I was now sort of under their protection. They ordered someone on the top bunk to move over and give me a spot. I somehow wedged myself sideways into that spot and fell asleep. I lived there, on the second floor, for more than two weeks, until the notification came that my sentence had entered into legal force. That same day, they took me from that beehive and placed me in another wing of the prison, in the “etapka” (transit cell). There were about ten men in the cell. The number changed daily, as people were taken for transport. It was relatively calm here. There was enough space for everyone on the lower bunks. There were no incidents. Everyone was focused on waiting for the call, when and where fate would cast them. They keep people with the same regime in the cells, so I was among the strict-regime prisoners. And they were mostly sent to the same camps where they had been held before. Often there were several of them from the same zone. And, of course, there were serious “settling of scores” with group brawls. I was a witness, back in that beehive, to such rather brutal clashes. It was a good thing there were no knives or shivs. But the legs from a bench were used. Twice the guards dragged people out of the cell with their heads bashed in. They also pulled the brawlers out of the cell. But later, other gangs would form “based on interests.” That is, “pickpockets” against “muggers,” or camp-based regional groups.

The Prisoner Transport Journey

In the Kyiv region at that time, there were three strict-regime camps. They were in Bucha, Bila Tserkva, and Berezan. So I heard a lot about those camps. I hoped they would take me to one of them too. I asked about the details of the conditions of detention. I compared where it would be better. It’s like that saying, that a fish looks for where it’s deeper, and a man, where it’s better. But it didn't turn out as I had thought. Without warning, they pulled me out of the cell and led me to some long, large room. There were already people there. I learned that it was a transport to Odesa. We waited for about three hours. In the evening, paddy wagons took us to the train, and they loaded us into a vagon-zak (prisoner transport railcar). And there I got it, just like everyone else. It was a matter of luck. I managed to somehow “sit down” on the lower level. There were five of us on each bench and five or six on the upper shelf. The upper shelves were connected by a folding panel, forming a solid platform. During that cramming, I saw something. The compartment wasn't even full yet when a not-so-young man ran in, pushed someone’s legs apart, and scurried under the bench. We dozed like that, on each other’s shoulders, through the night. In Dnipropetrovsk, they apparently hitched our vagon-zak to another train. We stood there for a long time. They took some people, added others. That is, they were distributing them to the regional zones. They took about ten men from my compartment. The one from under the bench jumped out too. I asked my neighbor what that meant. He looked at me, such an ignoramus, and said that he was a “petukh” (a rooster). And so, for the first time, I saw the horrifying state to which people can sink. They added a few more to our compartment, and we moved on. During the shuffling, I made my way to a corner. I sat there, lost in thought. What is this? Where have I ended up? And where are they taking me? I remembered the privileged state Oleksandr Martynenko and I were in during our transport in 1966. The two of us riding in a whole compartment, still with our “sidors” from the last packages from home. Next to us, Yevheniya Fedorivna Kuznetsova, alone in her compartment. And the rest of the compartments were crammed just like mine was now. I felt a little sorry for those “sidors” that they had taken so quickly. I had to make do with smelly herring and bread. It was a good thing they didn’t refuse to give us water. I didn’t get into conversations with my neighbors. They quickly got acquainted with each other, found people from their old camps. This wasn't their first time in such conditions. But it was my first, even though I was considered a “recidivist.” I had served too little time the first time. I had improved theoretically, but in practice, I hadn’t seen or felt the criminal strict regime.

And so, with my “ears pricked,” wary, with anxious premonitions, I arrived in Odesa. Paddy wagons took us to the prison. This was a real transit prison. They somehow crammed us into cells. It wasn't too tight. They immediately started taking us for walks. I looked around the structure. The building was made of red brick, obviously also from Catherine the Great's time. It was two and four stories high. Where they housed us, there was a hall two stories high. Our transit cells were on the second floor. The entrances were from a balcony. The regime was somewhat unusual. The cells weren't locked. You could go out and enter other cells. The most piquant thing was that the guards were selling tea and even vodka. Maybe they were also passing money, because they were buying these “delicacies” with money. And another interesting thing was that they kept passengers there from both the direct (to the zones) and reverse (from the zones) directions. And even those on parole, who were being taken to “khimiya” (forced labor projects). In short, just like in the real Odesa, there was a liberal detention regime. Everyone was trading something or even selling things. They even traded my good civilian clothes for zek clothes. They didn't confiscate them here, but convinced me that I wouldn't be using them in the zone for the next few years, that they would all be ruined, so they traded them with a certain surcharge. I was there for four days. The food was relatively good.

This Odesa transit existence had a somewhat positive effect on me and relaxed me. I even, sinfully, thought that maybe they would continue to keep me like this. But one evening, they interrupted my “blissful existence”: a sergeant came and took me “with my things” to the exit. In the courtyard, they put me in a paddy wagon, in a box, separate from the others. Maybe because my “case” had that red stripe. Remember? The railcar was not overcrowded. They brought us to Mykolaiv at night. With vicious cerberuses, at a run, they transferred us to paddy wagons, crammed us in to the brim, and brought us to the Mykolaiv prison. There they put us in a large cell. There were maybe twenty people, or more accurately, zeks. I no longer stood out with my clothes, and I didn’t have a “sidor.” So, no problems. I drank some water, lay down, and slept the sleep of the righteous, because I had no sins on my conscience, it seemed. We were woken by the command: “Padyom.” Later they gave us boiling water, a ration of bread, and again that same signature rotten herring. To someone’s indignant remarks, they said: “We didn’t invite you here.” There were also such smart-aleck guards who would say: “You are the smiths of your own happiness.” I don’t know who was a smith there, but I had to be a stonemason and for long years chip away not at a symbolic rock, but at granite in the Novo-Danylivka quarry.

I was kept in that Mykolaiv transit prison for almost a week. Why—no one ever told me. I didn’t complain much, as the conditions were bearable. The occupants of the cell changed frequently, but I remained. I saw the contingent of the general and reinforced regimes there. The most vile types were from the general regime, especially those young punks. One day, a group of those young men was brought in from some transport. And immediately the settling of scores began, real fights broke out. They even wanted to rape someone. It supposedly became known that the person was imprisoned for rape or attempted rape. And in that criminal world, there is such a terrible “law” that for such an article, they rape you, or, as they say, “opetusharivayut” (turn you into a rooster). It was horrifying. It was a good thing the guards heard the screams. Four sergeants burst in, scattered them, gave them a good beating, and dragged them off to different cells. I have already mentioned a cell fight, but this one was more horrifying, because there was a lot of blood and screaming. Outsiders are not allowed to interfere in those disputes. They immediately broke up the whole cell.

They moved me too, to another, smaller cell, where there were already two others. They already knew they were going to Zone 93, in Novodanylivka. They said if they had put me with them, then I was going there too. I don’t remember if it was that day or the next, but they put us in a paddy wagon and took us to Camp No. 93.

In a Strict-Regime Criminal Zone

When they brought us to the zone, it was already dark. They let us through a sally port into some building. There, a lieutenant from the convoy handed me over with my accompanying folder to the internal guard for permanent residence. They stripped me, inspected me according to instructions, and led me to the reception quarantine holding pen. Later, the other two who had traveled with me were brought in. One of them had been here before. I didn’t know what was supposed to happen next. I asked my neighbors. Someone said: “Drink some water and go to sleep. No one will bother us until morning.” I settled onto the plank beds, put my hand under my head, and fell asleep. It was a good thing it was summer. It wasn’t cold. And my sides were already trained. We woke up without a command. Some were still lying around, while others were stretching. The latrine and water tap were in the corner of the cell. The door was metal, with a feeding hatch. Suddenly, the feeding hatch clicked open. A head poked in and said quietly: “Got any good stuff?” They told him no. I asked what that meant. It was one of the top zeks. The senior “naryadchik”—the one who counts the zeks by brigade when they go to work and after work, when they return to the living zone. The camp is divided into a living zone and a work zone. That naryadchik and a few other zeks could walk freely around the camp territory. Sometimes even outside the camp. They are “de-convoyed.” The “kums” (KGB operatives in the camp) trust them because they are their unofficial employees. So that fellow was trying to wheedle, and maybe sometimes trade for tea, good clothes from the “newbies.” Then he would sell them to those being released—the “old-timers.” So there are profiteers everywhere.

From that holding pen, they were taken to the zone after the reception commission. It met once or twice a week. It consisted of the colony chief (“the boss”) or the political officer, the doctor, and the head of the work zone (the plant director or chief engineer). They bring each person to them, they ask about their work history, and send them to a detachment. That is, where the new zek will live and where he will work. They supposedly place them according to their profession or give them a new one. All sorts of curious things happen. These newcomers already have zek experience, most of them don’t really want to work, so they come up with all sorts of “dodges.” But it doesn’t help them much, because for the most part, all the “cushy” jobs are taken. And you have to buy them. There was apparently such a case, or maybe it’s a joke. They ask one guy: “Profession?” He says: “Foreman.” “And will you work?” “Where the hell are they gonna go.”

My work story seemed to interest them. In fact, every zek told his embellished work story, the commission supposedly listened and sent them where they could be used. Later it would turn out that it was all nonsense, that they were specialists in a completely different profession. They were interested in me as someone knowledgeable in construction, because a large construction project had started there. They were building a metal structures workshop and a workshop for sawing granite into slabs. By the way, that granite plinth and the first floor of the entire Khreshchatyk, and not only that, was built from granite from “our” Novodanylivka quarry. They really needed zeks knowledgeable in construction, and even more so—in blueprints. So they immediately offered me a foreman position. And they were surprised when I refused, citing my health. From what I had heard, I knew what a foreman in a zone was. I told them that I would show what to do and how, but I wouldn’t be able to handle the men. They agreed and sent me to the construction detachment. They ordered the detachment leader to provide me with the opportunity to familiarize myself with the project documentation. And what else pleased them: “muzhiks”—hardworking people—rarely end up in such strict-regime zones. Serious people rarely do two “stints” in a zone—they do one at a time. And only in general or reinforced-regime zones. It turned out I was the unserious one and got caught twice, and both times in strict-regime zones. The first “stint” was also strict, because the KGB camps were only strict and special regime. Here I’ll add what they told me on the transport about Zone 93: it was the strictest of the Ukrainian zones. Almost everyone there had 10-15 year sentences. These were murderers, rapists, robbers, and major thieves. And all of them had been imprisoned before, that is, they were de facto recidivists, but without this official title. Because those recognized by the court as recidivists are sent to special, cell-based regime zones, where they wear striped clothing. We wore black clothes. There were many “petukhs” here. That’s what the “company of toughs” was like in that zone.

The detachment leader brought me to the “khata” (barracks). That “khata” occupied the entire second floor of a barrack-type building. It was designed for 120 people. It was around lunchtime. The “section”-khata was empty. Everyone was in the work zone. Only the “dnyuvalny” (orderly), the “uborshchik” (cleaner), and the “kaptyorshchik” (storeroom keeper) were there. I’m writing in understandable zek language. So the “otryadny” (also more understandable) introduced me to them, ordered them to find me a place and give me the key to the “lenkomnata” (Lenin room). This flustered those “cushy job” guys a bit. But he explained that I was an “engineer-builder” and would be there to familiarize myself with the project documentation for our construction projects. And he left for the headquarters (camp administration). They gave me the key to that “Lenin room.” They showed me stacks of project papers in a cabinet and left me alone. I fiddled around there, rearranging things, systematizing by project for over an hour. I got hungry. But I didn’t know if I could leave or if I should wait. I remembered my stay in the Mordovian camp. There, within that barbed-wire fence, you could walk wherever you wanted. It must be the same here. I went out. I approached the “dnyuvalny” (he’s the top dog in the “khata”) and said I wanted to eat, and asked where my spot was. He led me, showed me my spot and my nightstand, and ordered his assistant to bring bedding. I thought to myself that this zone wasn’t so terrible after all. And they even gave me a lower bunk right away. I sat down, tested the springs, and asked about getting something to eat. He looked at his watch and said we would go to the dining hall soon, then I had to get my camp clothes and wash in the banya. All of this was done. I returned to my bed, sat for a bit, and then went back to that “Lenin” lounge. I sat there, no one bothered me. Bliss. I analyzed the course of that half-day. Why did they receive me so politely? Were they really in such a bind with those construction projects? But that’s another matter... It will all work out somehow. It will be as God wills.

Those zek “clerks” (“cushy job” guys) got a little scared: the orderly, the foremen. I had to spend a long time convincing everyone that I wasn’t going to “undermine” anyone. It took about a week for them to calm down, when they saw, especially the foremen, that I was helping their work, showing them what to do and how. That is, I was defining the scope of their work, and accordingly, maybe their earnings. Yes, yes, earnings. Because whoever wanted to work could earn. The work quotas and rates were the same as on the outside. The same “Collection of Norms and Prices” as in the “big zone.” And especially when the authorities were interested. The contractors were construction and installation departments from the town of Kazanka. They were spending the allocated funds on those construction projects in the zone. Each department had its own foreman assigned to a project. But he would only show up in the zone once or twice, at the end of the month, when it was time to sign off on the volumes of completed work, write up the work orders, and take them for calculation. And those work orders indicated how many cubic meters of brick had been laid or how many panels had been installed, etc. In a word, you could earn money—under favorable conditions and with good organization. The biggest problems were organizational. Either the materials weren't delivered, or there was no crane. But the zeks didn't care. They mostly said they hadn't come here to earn money. And: “Working is for suckers.” They were still driven out to the work zone anyway. So they “got by” day after day—in the summer outdoors, in the winter in their “hiding spots.” The guards chased them like stray dogs. They would move to other hiding spots. And so it went every day, for many, many years. But I emphasize, whoever works normally, without violating the regime, can even be paroled to “khimiya” (construction sites of the national economy) or to a settlement.

This may be a bit of a tedious piece of writing. But please forgive me. And I’ll add something about the distribution of those earnings. 50% of the earnings can be taken to pay off debts, court costs, such as alimony claims. Of the rest, half is taken by the “boss,” then they deduct for food and clothing. From the remainder, you can use the commissary up to a certain amount and send money to close relatives. This is all if you meet 100% of the work quota. And for not meeting the quota—the same, but you were forbidden to buy products in the commissary. There was also an incentive option then. From earnings above 100%, the “boss” only took 25% from the zek. There were cases where quotas were fulfilled up to 600%. These were the granite polishers. And that was already a big earning. Those who had lost at gambling and were under the threat of being moved to the “petushatnya” (rooster’s coop) if they didn’t pay up on time worked their asses off like that. There were “petushatnyas” in every section. It was a partitioned-off corner for 10-15 people, hung with sheets. It also had a quarantine border of two bunks. These were people of a different sort, it seemed. You couldn't shake hands with them, or sit next to them. In the dining hall, they had separate painted pots and bowls, a separate table. They used to be kept in a separate barrack. But the new zone chief dispersed them to all the barracks (detachments), motivating it with: “You kiss them—so live with them in the same house.” Such was the logic. I learned all this later. But then, on the first day and in the first week, I observed everything and “kept my ears pricked.” I will probably provide some explanations as I describe that life of mine.

Next was dinner, then the evening roll call, at ten o'clock "lights out" for everyone. At night they checked twice to see if everyone was there. The next day, I was already on the brigade's roster. Breakfast, roll call in the work zone, everything else followed—by brigade. It was Saturday. Although Saturdays are working days in the zones, we practically loafed around, because the managers have a day off. If they want to work, they come to the industrial zone on Sunday too. I repeat: it’s good that it’s still warm. There was a railway access track on an embankment. And it served as a kind of road for walks. You could walk, then lie down on the slope, and then it would be lunchtime. That's where people get acquainted, where they get needed advice on how to behave in that small zone. After lunch, I wandered around the territory. I looked at those construction sites. Soon a siren called all the workers to line up for the roll call-headcount and return to the living zone, also by brigade and by detachment. The number of people led into the work zone and led out must match exactly. So the detachment and the brigade cannot “fail to notice the loss of a soldier.” More on “losses” later. They also check your appearance. Anyone with long hair has part of it forcibly cut right there at the guardhouse. Anyone with a long-unshaven mustache has half of it forcibly cut off. And then: at seven, dinner, personal time for socializing, at ten, roll call and off to dreamland. At night, they shine flashlights in your eyes again—to make sure you are there and alive. All sorts of things happened: scores were settled, people were stabbed with shivs (sharpened electrodes).

Sunday. A non-working day. All the zeks of the camp are kept by detachment, in locked local zones. These local zones are mesh fences three meters high, running the entire length of the two-story barrack, 8-10 meters wide. As I already mentioned, a detachment is housed on one floor, in a section with a separate exit. That is, each detachment—about a hundred zeks—has its own micro-zone, where you have to spend your leisure time after work and on Sunday. They take you to the dining hall by brigade, according to a schedule. In the evening, they showed some movie. Maybe about Chapayev. The evening and night were the same—by the book. Monday began like any other day. Breakfast, headcount, and being led out to the work zone. There, the foremen assign people to their sites. I don’t stick my neck out. There are about twenty people in the brigade. They are divided into groups of five—links. So the foreman placed them in their spots and then got to me. We had met on Saturday. He was just as I had imagined from the stories. He led me to the construction trailer, the so-called foreman’s office. There were also plenty of construction blueprints there. He told me what the brigade was doing, and about that granite sawing workshop. He asked me to pick out the foundation blueprints, because they should have started a long time ago. And it would be good if we started before the rainy season. Well, if they want it so badly, we’ll build. Later, a young man came, introduced himself as a construction engineer from the plant office, the client for those construction projects. He called himself Serhiy. He asked about my work related to construction. He was pleased that I was both a geodesist and knowledgeable in installation. He was excited about the possibility of starting the foundation work, to get out of the ground before the rains. I was all for it. As the leader used to say: “I’m devilishly eager to work.” I haven’t done anything for ten months. You can get so lazy that work starts to feel like a “sucker’s game” too. The day passed quickly somehow. And again, everything according to the regime schedule. After dinner, I took the key to the “Lenin room” and started studying the project again. I needed to prepare seriously, to know where to start and what was needed for it. And to be alone, not to watch my neighbors.

And again, night. I no longer reacted to the nightly checks. I seemed to have slept well. I spent the next few days also getting to know reality. I didn't get in the foreman's way of “putting on airs.” It turned out that out of the 18-20 people in the brigade, maybe 5-6 did some work. The rest seemed busy if the management was passing by, but in practice, they did nothing. There was no daily accounting of completed work. They somehow muddled through the day until evening. They said that “the term is long—you have to preserve yourself.” Maybe so. I also “preserved” myself all week. That Serhiy (the builder) also, probably, didn't bother his head with trifles or his hands with heavy things, also just getting through the day. He said he had called the contractor, that they had promised to come and draw up a work plan. We were waiting. It seemed they weren't in a hurry. It turned out that I also needed to start “putting on airs,” because “the term is long.” I realized that the main thing was not to be seen.

Noticing that I was loitering around without anything to do, a gypsy named Nikolai, who also went by Nikolayek, called me over to his “hiding spot.” He had already served half of his nine years. He had stabbed his wife’s brother to death while drunk. He had been here a long time. He had arranged to be the one who handed out construction tools. He sat in the warmth, ate salo and other things his wife brought. And she came for visits often. Apparently, she loved him very much, and probably wasn’t poor, because unscheduled visits cost a lot. So that cunning gypsy wanted to find out from me what kind of fellow I was. In a long conversation over strong tea (not chifir, because he didn’t drink it) and salo, I told him that I had seven years under Article 84. He asked slyly: “And is the claim big?” I told him it was 1002 rubles. The gypsy laughed for more than a minute. And he said: “You’re lying, Ivan. They don’t give such a term for such a theft.” I also smiled, but I didn’t try to convince him. Later, we became friends, if you can call it that. When he used the word “theft,” I remembered and told him about the gypsy who asked to have his Article 62 charge changed to horse theft.

This week passed too. On Sunday, I started writing a letter. There was a kind of uncertainty. I had already sent letters to all my relatives from the road. That was a statement of fact, a description of impressions. But here—it was uncertainty for long years. But I didn’t finish the letter, because there was nothing to write about. Monday passed like the previous one. I felt a little anxious. Those who were so eager to build were silent. They had hidden somewhere. And I was worried. My current companions would probably laugh if they heard my worries.

So another week passed. Maybe this was the normal pace here. I tried to be inconspicuous. But still, the contractors came, they were let into the zone. They discussed something with the camp authorities in that “foreman’s office.” Then they called me and two foremen. They asked if we wanted to take on such a construction project and if we could handle it. The foremen said in unison: “We want to.” They asked me. I said: “If there’s a bulldozer, an excavator, a crane, your desire, and help.” They looked at each other and promised to bring those machines. The plant director ordered that engineer Serhiy to take personal control of the work organization. And I also told them that we needed a level for the planning work, a theodolite for the installation work, and a long tape measure. They promised. They let us, the zeks, go. They themselves walked around the construction sites a bit more and then left. Construction sites in the plural, because they were already finishing a two-story administrative building for those prospective workshops. It’s easy to talk and promise. Maybe ten days passed before that construction somehow began. Serhiy and I bustled about every day, planning something. He would call somewhere, curse. Finally, things started moving. To describe my state, I will quote an excerpt from a letter to my brother dated October 27, 1977.

“I, like that fool who loved work, am constantly looking for something to do and never have enough time. So it’s been a while since I received your letter, but I still haven’t carved out the time to sit down properly and dash off a letter. There’s some constant turmoil here. It’s hard to describe, and you don’t need to see it. In time, it may settle down, but for now, I’m still organizing myself and looking for my place in this environment. Work is work. Builders are needed everywhere. The construction is quite serious, and there’s only one knowledgeable person—that Serhiy. But he has many other worries outside the zone. So I have to be this kind of captive, sort of a zek foreman on that construction site. Maybe, God willing, my diligent attitude to work will in some measure change that, as you beautifully put it, ‘sentencing.’ When they were processing me, that is, admitting me, the management was even glad that they had finally gotten a specialist. But the management is outside the zone, and you have to live among these people. Believe me, my dear, life here is a complicated thing. It’s a whole complex of unforeseen traps. You always have to keep your ear sharp. It’s like in that children’s fairy tale about the hare who was afraid of everything. And the hedgehog advised him to scare the flock by jumping out of the rye. Although he scared the flock, there was another problem: his lip split from laughter. So I have to be as if among a flock, although another word is needed, because they are all incomparably more aggressive and you can expect anything unexpected. Don’t think that it’s some kind of preserve. It’s simply certain relationships between people, among whom there are plenty of non-humans. And I, you see, am in such conditions and among such people for the first time. Back then, in Mordovia, it was completely different, and how long was that term anyway. There was romance there. And here—it’s naturalism. But it’s alright, I remember, my Brother, your instructions: the most important thing is to preserve myself. I always remember that. Sometimes I pray for it.

I live virtually alone, that is, I don’t get close to anyone, although there have been attempts. But everything here is insincere. I don’t need to waste time. There is some decent literature. But I don’t feel like reading either. I must have had my fill of reading during that almost year-long parasitic period. You have to be kidding: feeding healthy louts for free without work for years. So I’m working it off. I run around, measure things, tell someone what to do and how, do something myself, and so on. In other words, I’m busy. And it’s not sad, and not boring. But I feel that this will be corrected, because to a certain extent it violates the established order and habits. So it’s all like in that song, where everything seems simple, but ends with ‘everything is so complicated.’ That’s how I’m ‘searching out’ the continuation of my fate...”

And these are excerpts from a letter dated November 1, 1977, to my wife Zhanna and our little children: “My dear little ones! How are you there without me? Half a month has already passed since we saw each other, and I keep thinking, did it really happen, or was it a dream. I walk around and remember, remember everything down to the smallest detail. And I almost always see you, waving your little hands at me. How it was for all of us then, it’s hard to say. Whether joyful, or sad, maybe even tearful... Right now everyone is waiting for something (supposedly an anniversary amnesty). Obviously, after ‘nothing’ happens, they’ll tighten the screws a bit. But I’m not too worried about it. I have my work, I live by it, and it helps me forget my situation a little. But there are periods of decline. This is the most unpleasant thing, that because of some trifles my mood sours, apathy takes over. But despite that, as the fortune teller told You, I will live. And I hope to be with you as soon as possible. As Myron wrote: ‘Sooner than the sentenced time.’ The only way to get out of this pit sooner is to be sent to ‘khimiya’ or to a settlement, through a court with a good work record and no violations. There is such a law. ...It must be just ‘upsetting’ for you to read letters from another world. And this world is truly not what one might imagine. The main thing is that even the appearance, the type, is somehow its own, characteristic. And they are all gathered together. And each one considers himself something. The educator-cops have already gotten used to them and, if you dig a little, they are not much different from them themselves. The jungle, that’s all. And sometimes Mowgli ends up there and the poor fellow has to adapt somehow. He has to look for some Bagheera or the Great Elephant for protection.” “...I work conscientiously, I try to reproduce the project as it should be, although here they slap things together any old way, and say it’ll do. I gently persuade them that this is a serious construction project, etc. They laugh at me and say I’m ‘driven.’ Maybe so, maybe I should reduce my show of initiative. Maybe they are all tired already...”

Perhaps I really had started to annoy them. It seems funny, but I caught them twice, even the management, sort of running away from me. All I had for them were demands that there was no brick or a crane, that blocks and panels needed to be brought in. And so it was every time I ran into someone. And I often reminded the foremen that the rains would start soon, and if we worked at this pace, we would drown in mud. In short, I had probably “overdone the airs” a bit. It turns out that here, any initiative is seen as “putting on airs.” And what my real state and mood were—I will quote excerpts from a letter dated December 24, 1977. “...I am healthy and everything is fine with me; only time is short. Literally not enough. Maybe that’s a good thing, so that all sorts of nonsense don’t bother me.” “...Myron has no reason to come here either, because there is little joy here. And I don’t need support. I am already, one might say, balanced and I know where I’m going. This is unlike that poor Abram with his two little Abrams on the train. He couldn’t handle them, and Sarah had disappeared somewhere with the conductor. And from the top bunk, some ruffian was scaring him. But he wasn’t scared of him and said that they were going in the wrong direction anyway.” “...No one believes in anything, and they say that everyone is just ‘putting on airs.’ So now, if they ask me what I’m doing, I say—‘I’m putting on airs.’ As a result, everyone is satisfied and we all laugh. So laughter in these conditions is also a great force. So, my dears, I ask you all to calm down regarding my mood. I am becoming more and more of an optimist. On the outside, it works, because they already say: ‘You’ll live to be a hundred, nothing fazes you, you’re always joking and smiling.’ So there you have it. That’s how my affairs stand...”

At that time, my wife Zhanna was very preoccupied with all sorts of appeals and insisted in every letter that I should write them too. I kept putting it off, because I didn’t believe that gang. Here is an excerpt from a letter: “...I always remember that joke about the traffic lights with old Abram, when he didn’t even trust the green light. Of course, I’m not saying to give up completely, but don’t torment yourself with overexertion. Carry on, get by somehow with the daily grind, take care of yourself, don’t wear yourself out, cherish the children. Lina wrote it beautifully: *‘Ковтала сльози і брела додому чучикати свого Девкаліона. Тужити, падати і жити як в пустелі. Чекать, що хтось у спину засміється: це та, що в неї чоловік на скелі. Він, кажуть, злодій. Щось украв, здається’.* So, my love, cherish the children, and I will do everything in my power to preserve myself for you and to get out of this ‘not a rock,’ out of this granite island in the steppe, entangled in many rows of barbed wire, as soon as possible... And if you manage to get through to someone, then go and say everything you can. The main thing is to convince him to read the court materials and judge objectively. But where can you find someone like that, who isn’t afraid... Don’t plan any specific deadlines, because all this rolls on regardless of our desires. Only the days and weeks roll by quickly. It’s really true. Can you imagine, if there isn’t enough time in prison, what is there to say... Our affairs are in a bad state. If only we could live to cherish our grandchildren in good health...”

In such hustle and bustle, we climbed out of the mud. A sudden cold snap caught us a bit off guard. Our tails froze in some places. It was almost 20 degrees below zero. All construction work was stopped. And there was nowhere to get warm, because the frost got everywhere. It held like that for three days, and then there was a thaw. The frost retreated, but a snowstorm began. People were driven out to the industrial zone, but there was no work. The management was furious. The cops too. The poor fellows had to freeze, forcing the zeks to clear the roads and the territory in general of snow. And on top of everything, an extraordinary incident occurred. Maybe just one of many, because during my time in that zone, there were quite a few. So, at the evening inspection, one “soldier” was missing. They called the roll three times. They found out which detachment and brigade he was from. An alarm was sounded. That detachment was from the metalworking shop. All the camp guards, together with the zeks of that detachment, went to search. But where to search when everything was in snowdrifts. They kept the rest of us in the cold with the blizzard for almost an hour. The camp leadership appeared and allowed us to be let into the living zone. Then they brought the external guard with dogs, who found the unfortunate man under the snow. They said he had been stabbed with a shiv three times from behind. A day later, two suspects were taken from the zone. And it was forgotten, because such things were not a first. All this together affected the inmates, all incentives were cancelled. They didn’t get an extra commissary visit and, accordingly, no tea. So we met and saw off the New Year in a somber mood. The regime officers started to “snoop” around the hiding spots and at the workplaces daily. But that’s not a weapon. A common welding electrode, sharpened on a grinder and bent for convenience. This is the main tool in a “settling of scores.” But that’s another story... We have our own work to do.

The week of Christmas passed quickly after New Year’s. On Christmas Eve, we had a little tea and even broke our fast, as one of my new-found friends received a package with some salo. We recalled a few joyful things, and then each of us retreated into his own world. I couldn’t fall asleep for a long time, wandering the back roads of my past. I seek solace in the past. As one poet wrote in a poem about Nalyvaiko: “I live—backward.” I regret that I don’t remember all of it by heart. I heard the author read it magnificently, for he was an artist. (This is Mykola Vinhranovskyi, “The Last Confession of Severyn Nalyvaiko.” – V.O.). Can you imagine, a person living backward? It’s strange, but it turns out to be possible…

Then the rush began. They started trying to catch up, because they had evidently signed off on “percentage reports” for unfinished work at the end of the year. They must have been afraid of inspections, because the foremen even lived in the hotel and froze with us, even encouraging us with tea on the sly to move faster. I found this appealing. They asked me to stay on for the second shift. I agreed, since it wasn’t digging earth or splitting granite. The weather was good. We caught up with that previous year’s plan. The foremen left. The second shift was canceled. There was more time, and the days grew longer. But the pace of work clearly slowed. And the management started treating me differently somehow, avoiding me. One evening, the supply manager approached me and asked if I was a writer. I was taken aback. We seemed to have a good relationship, so I asked, “Where did you get that information?” And he said, “Heard it from the informants.” The conversation somehow petered out.

In the following days, I became convinced that everything was falling into place. The engineer, Serhiy, asked me what was going on between me and the Committee (the KGB). I didn’t try to squirm my way out of it and told him that ten years ago I had been in a KGB camp in Mordovia. We didn’t go into detail. I ended the conversation with a joke, saying that I had long since broken with my “shameful past.” Another week of seemingly normal work passed. And then suddenly, our detachment chief comes to the construction site and says that some colonel, a pilot, is calling for me at the headquarters. I have to go. I went to the chief of the operations unit. Sitting there were: the “koom,” a colonel in blue epaulets—not a pilot, but a representative of the Mykolaiv Oblast KGB, one Bryk—and a third man in civilian clothes, a representative from Kyiv, Hanchuk. They introduced themselves very politely. And they politely asked about my life and circumstances. I told them I was serving my sentence without any violations of the rules. They asked what I was reading, whether I followed the news. There were some other questions. I told them I didn't have time for reading because there was a lot of work, sometimes having to work two shifts. They exchanged glances. The head “koom” stepped out. There were a few more stupid questions. I asked them why they were so interested in my life. And I told them that I had long since broken ties with their agency, that I was a common criminal, atoning for my sin here and planning to reform. Smirks lit up their mugs. The one from Kyiv said, “I’ve brought you a few newspapers. Read them carefully; you’ll find some of your acquaintances, former friends, among the authors. Maybe you could write something too. Think it over carefully. We’ll be back in a week.” They said a very polite goodbye. And so I went back to the zone, to “my” construction site. My mood was foul. I sat in the foreman’s office. I looked through the newspapers. They were: Literaturna Ukrayina, Vechirniy Kyiv, and the Poltava and Lviv editions of Pravda. Maybe there was something else—I’ve forgotten. The brigadier came in, maybe he wanted to ask something, but seeing that I paid him no mind, he left. He probably had some information too, since he often drank strong tea with the supply manager, and they were all close to the “koom.”

I looked for the authors—aha: Oleksandr Martynenko, and his older brother Leonid, who was released from a Gulag camp in the late ’50s. Some Zakharchenko—I didn’t know him. Oles Berdnyk—also not personally acquainted. There were a couple of other marked articles. Well, we had already been through this back in Mordovia. There, the “kooms from back home” tried to recruit everyone, or at least get them to write something. But among the twenty of us from the 1965 “harvest,” no one took the bait of an early release. What was in those writings, I don’t remember, because I didn’t try to delve into them. But it can be summarized in one sentence: “Thank you, Party, for your concern for us; how wonderful it is to live in the Soviet land.” What those guys achieved with their “recantations,” I don’t know. O. Martynenko had worked as a geophysicist in the far North and remained there. What compelled his brother, who lived in a village in the Poltava region, to write—God only knows. Berdnyk and Zakharchenko were apparently released early. (A chronological discrepancy: Oles Berdnyk’s “repentant” article appeared on May 17, 1984, and Vasyl Zakharchenko’s in 1977. – V.O.). The latter later even rose to the Shevchenko Prize, supposedly for his body of creative work. My guardians asked me to pass on my impressions of what I had read to them through the koom. But I had no intention of reporting to anyone. I go to work every day, supposedly continuing to help those builders, but I feel the tension. The brigadier no longer asks me anything, but looks for Serhiy instead. I, too, now ask Serhiy what I should do, because a conflict situation is brewing. Those zeks are disgustingly vile types. As soon as they noticed I was being pressured, they were ready to throw their own shovelful of dirt on me. Serhiy says he doesn’t know and advises me to go to the factory director, Arnatsky. I found him, asked for half an hour of his time, and told him everything that had been boiling up inside me, what I had been going through lately and what was worrying me. He listened attentively, asking a few questions for clarification. He asked for more details about the KGB. I told him it was 10 years ago. And I explained my current “predicament” to him. He promised to transfer me to another construction site. Indeed, the next day I was transferred to another brigade and to the construction of a metalworking shop. No questions asked—we are convicts.

And so January passed. About a week after the meeting with those colonels in blue epaulets (because the one without epaulets, Hanchuk, also turned out to be a colonel), some schmuck without epaulets arrived in the zone. They summoned me to the headquarters again. He was a wretched-looking thing, but introduced himself as a major. It was clear he was angry. But I didn’t care; I was starting to get worked up myself. So he immediately asks, “So, have you written anything?” I say no, because I don’t know what to write about. And then I ask, “What should I describe: my camp life or how you cooked up seven years with confiscation for me?” He’s silent. I was overcome with such fury that I was almost shouting, “I broke ties with your KGB agency ten years ago. I’m a common criminal, a thief—so leave me alone. I’m not writing anything, because I’m not a writer.” He took the newspapers and said calmly, “You’re doing this for nothing. Colonel Bryk wanted to help you. You’ll regret it.” And he let me go. A guard led me back to the industrial zone. It was already getting dark. I felt sick at heart. I went to the common changing room. When it was cold, those who didn't want to work could walk back and forth in there; it was about twenty meters long. A long barrack. You could talk to yourself there. True, the guards sometimes chased people out. Soon, the whistle announced the end of the shift. The “star workers” crawled out of their hideouts and trudged to the checkpoint. Then everything went according to schedule, or more precisely, according to orders. In the morning, at roll call, I was transferred from the construction detachment to another one, where the men who leveled granite blocks with flame-jets lived. My caring guardians. They decided to give me an opportunity to earn big money. Remember I mentioned those who earned up to 600 rubles? This was the place, at the “tyoska.” But I had no luck here either. You might recall that I was injured in prison, had a concussion, lay in the infirmary, still stumble, and am deaf in my right ear. All of this was recorded in my medical history. It turns out that even zeks are followed by their medical records. There was a medical unit in the zone with a rather humane doctor. So I went to her, told her that I couldn’t stand the whistling at the “tyoska” because I was partially blind and deaf. She read all the medical reports from the Kyiv prison and gave me a “ksiva” stating that I could not be employed where my guardians wanted me. That same day, I moved to another detachment, to another barrack. In the new hut, I had to climb to the second tier of bunks to sleep. I jumped up there for maybe a week, and then I bought a lower bunk for some tea. I went to the industrial zone dutifully every day. The guards didn't chase me anymore, because I had the note. None of them knew what to do with me. The bosses, big and small, even greeted me and told me to wait a bit, that things would get sorted out somehow. My former detachment chief told me in secret how that wretched little KGB man had yelled at the “koom”: “Into the trench, into the pit with him. Let the son of a bitch rot.” It was a good thing we were already out of the pit and had built the ground level. And, accordingly, the trenches and the pit had already been filled in. The factory director, Arnatsky, and that Serhiy were clearly unhappy about losing a capable assistant on those construction sites, but everyone was afraid. The colony chief, the “boss,” Colonel Samiylenko, was also afraid. He was even offended that I hadn’t told him about myself. He was the one who had received me into the zone and later sincerely rejoiced at the progress of the construction. And now he’s yelling at me, “You let me down.” I say to him, “How did I let you down?” Even though he was a colonel, like everyone else, he was afraid of that mafioso communist octopus. To show what I was doing and how I felt then, I’ll provide a few excerpts from letters to my family. This is so my narrative doesn’t seem like a work of fiction.

So, a letter dated February 15, 1978, to my brother, sent uncensored: “When you write, don’t put your return address. I don’t know where this will end. It’s some kind of plague; things are getting tougher and tougher. They no longer hide the fact that I’m under special surveillance by those old and, it turns out, permanent guardians of mine. Such a tight grip. It would seem, what could be worse? Everything is already lost, everything has been taken, everything is destroyed. But it turns out that’s not enough. Right now I’m some kind of mysterious figure—a ‘byword.’ Nobody knows anything specific, but they talk, they make things up, sometimes they question me. But I don’t know anything either. All it took was for some vile little man of a certain rank and title to arrive. He put the fear of God into the entire administration. They immediately transferred me to another detachment to work at the ‘tyoska.’ This is work with flame-jets, trimming granite blocks to a certain shape. You have to wear special goggles and ear protectors because it’s very loud and whistles. Due to my health (I have a doctor’s note), I can’t not only work there but even be near it. So the management of that shop doesn’t know what to do with me. They wanted to put me on as a builder at their site, but they were forbidden. ‘Only to hew stone.’ So how it will turn out—I ‘can’t for the life of me figure it out.’ The main thing is that none of the mid-level managers really know what to do. And so I wander like a ‘lost soul’ for over a week now… The high-up bosses tell the mid-level managers that this is the order, and it is not subject to discussion. Can you imagine the fear they have of those guys! Everything becomes clear in their previous actions as well. I mean the investigation, the trial, and the review of my appeals. And from here, they don’t even want to accept and send my appeals. It’s some kind of enchanted circle… And all of this—I still don’t know for what. So they can’t force me to hew that granite. For now, they’re not touching me. I’m alone with myself. I eat myself up, consume myself. But I still give myself some comfort, knowing that it was, and evidently is, worse for someone somewhere else. I often remember my last trip to Solovki, to those memorable places. Of course, my current situation is incomparably better than that of the Solovki prisoners. That’s the only thing that keeps me going. That comparison, which gives a person a certain leeway, a certain niche to escape from that vile environment… So please forgive me. I know you can’t help me in any way. And no one can help. But I’m sure you will understand. It seems this is my fate… I have a single, constant request to you—help my children become true human beings. To the extent possible, of course.” “I’ve literally lost my balance for now. How it will stabilize, God only knows. Well, that’s probably everything, from my heart and soul… I won’t trouble you with my whining anymore. To hell with them. I’ll probably throw my sorrow to the ground and go among the people, go to where the stone-cutters are. I’ll become a stone-cutter, while I still have some strength. I will hew this rock, regardless of the cold, and maybe I’ll live to see the heat as well…”

And so February passed. I wandered a bit through nooks and crannies, in someone’s hideouts. I earned a little by giving consultations at those construction sites, because I had to have 100% work output. But the enemy never sleeps. Surveillance must be surveillance. If they can’t crush him on the tyoska with those horrific conditions, then “into the quarry with him, the son of a bitch.” And so it happened. I didn’t suffer too much from it. There were a lot of people there too. There were various professions. I was ordered to be in a brigade of quarry stone loaders. Sometimes I had to break up overly large stones with a sledgehammer. After about a week, I got into the swing of things. The main thing was that there was no hustle and bustle. They told me my guardian had come, asking if I was still strong, if I was begging for mercy. It seemed to be okay, if it weren’t for the buts… So here are excerpts from a letter dated March 5, 1978: “You write that our little one got sick. What can you do. Raising children is like hewing stone. So you raise them, and I’ll hew here, as long as I have the strength. I wonder if the poet ever tried to hew stone when he called on others to hew it, regardless of the heat and cold. I, of course, would hew and not stop, but that fall led to a sharp reaction to impacts. And I stumble even without a sledgehammer…” We stone-cutters were led out to work first and brought back last, because it was a long walk. And by the time we sorted out our quilted jackets and gloves, shoveled a little snow, and maybe loaded one or two dump trucks, it was time for lunch. Lunch was brought strictly on schedule. After lunch, we loaded stone again. Maybe things changed a little, but for us, the main thing was for the siren to sound sooner. Sometimes, for some reason, there were no trucks, so we wasted time in our hideouts. For me, this work seemed tolerable. Compared to the construction site—I had nothing to worry about. I reread letters. And so March passed, and it got much warmer. We found cozy spots between the rocks and warmed ourselves in the sun.

And again, letters. Excerpts from a letter dated March 28: “I received all your recent letters on the same day. What a bundle of joy I had! I truly poured out my soul, gladdened my heart, and generally came back to life. You’re wonderful, my dear wife. I just don’t know how I would endure all of this, all this vileness of existence without your optimistic and sincere conversations. Of course, you are all wonderful for writing to me so much and about everything…” “I believe that there will still be a celebration on our, maybe not street, but at least our little path, a single path to my dear family. So don’t worry about me and consider that I am now more or less as one should be in a strict-regime zone… But in general, it’s a bit difficult, because I can’t seem to grasp where I am, and what I need to do and how to ‘steer’ in this ‘society.’ This is, after all, almost a madhouse. But life will teach me how to ‘steer’ and ‘find a way out.’ I’m just trying to be optimistic. But it doesn’t compare to your letters, which are so joyful for me…”

I won’t even say that the days pass quickly; the weeks just fly by. It’s all like that if you don’t have a calendar in front of you. It would all be tolerable, if not for those wretched guardians. At the beginning of April, they showed up again. And again, the same old thing. They brought some newspapers again. As if they had forgotten that I had already refused them. And that Jesuit, Hanchuk, so gently advises me to re-evaluate my past. I didn’t throw a fit this time. I didn’t get into a hysterical argument. And I promised them I would think about it. At that moment, the idea came to me to add that I needed to consult with my wife. And consulting is only possible by getting an additional personal visit. The man has a plan, you see. In that moment, I recalled 1972, January 13, when they grabbed me and forcibly took me to the KGB. Back then, I promised to show them my hiding place; they took the bait and drove me home, where I was able to change into winter clothes and see my family one more time. They let me go into the house alone. And I loudly demanded that my wife give me everything that was hidden. She, bless her, caught on quickly and said loudly that she had burned everything. And so here, too, I wanted to outsmart those guardians. We parted peacefully. Because of this meeting, I had a free day, as no one would take me to the quarry alone. I immediately wrote my wife a letter in an acceptable tone. Here are excerpts from the letter dated April 10, 1978: “The conversation was general, but about the same old thing. About what I expected. They gave me a few newspapers to read. And they proposed, in all seriousness, that I make an assessment, or a re-assessment with a certain analysis of my past life, or, more correctly, of certain moments of my life. I asked them to give me the opportunity to see you and consult with you… So plan your time and come, my adviser, when they allow you and you arrange it. For now, I am indeed alive and indeed inclined to humor. As for my health, there’s nothing to describe. You know yourself: it doesn’t get better here. The main thing here is that it doesn’t get worse. Everything remains unchanged, everything is blocked. Everyone is very afraid, even the doctors.” “I’m still hauling, breaking, and loading granite stones. So I’ll be a strongman soon. My biceps are clearly growing. That’s what physical labor does. It’s not for nothing that someone wrote that song and labor are two great forces…”

And meanwhile, April is passing. A person gets used to everything and finds little joys for himself. Here is an excerpt from a letter: “Spring is gaining more and more ground. Sometimes it’s quite warm, and spring rains fall. So there’s everything—mud, and wind, and sunshine. So summer is coming soon, and then autumn, and then two years will have passed, and another lawful visit… Because they must have figured me out; they’re not giving me an out-of-turn visit… Our starlings are diligently building nests, carrying all sorts of twigs and rubbish to their little houses. They sing beautifully in the morning. They fight comically with the sparrows—with their little feet. And it was also funny when a bird brought a rather long twig and couldn’t fit it into the hole. The poor thing poked and poked at it, but it wouldn’t bend and let him in. We were already shouting at him to drop it, and giving all sorts of other advice. And then he just turned his head towards us. And in that moment, the twig went into the hole sideways and he pushed it in. That’s how we entertain ourselves. The apple trees will bloom soon. It will probably be both joyful and sad…” May came, and will soon pass. And it seems like it was just autumn. Time runs on, like that gypsy said: “Septem-ber, ber-ber, and suddenly it’s May.” No changes, no one is bothering me for now. The only joy is corresponding. I’m allowed to send two letters a month. My wife used to comfort me, and now I have to comfort her, because I get a lot of anxiety from her.

I think I’ve already written that for the family in that big zone, it’s harder than for the zeks in the small one. Here’s something from a letter dated May 1: “You shouldn’t let anxiety get too deep inside you. It’s okay, my dear, we will still have a lot of joy. It can’t be otherwise. That happiness, that joy, evidently manifests itself differently at different times or years of life. I recently read a quote from Marcus Aurelius in an article in Molod Ukrayiny: ‘Do not forget, on every occasion that causes you sorrow, to make use of this principle: that this is not a misfortune, but that to bear it nobly is good fortune.’ …Get some rest. Don’t go anywhere, don’t ask for anything. Don’t worry about general troubles or anxieties either. It doesn’t help. Nothing will change whether we worry or not. Everything takes its own course, rolling past us and often through us. So more optimism, my dears.”

They say that human life, its trials, mostly do not depend on the one living that life. And they explain it by fate. By the way, Dahl’s dictionary has an interesting interpretation of the word ‘fate’ [dolya]. It is judgment, a tribunal, a place of judgment, reprisal, etc. Something here doesn’t quite add up. Because such terrible categories cannot accompany a person’s entire life. Obviously, these interpretations from Dahl have a certain time frame. I offer these philosophizings to somehow explain my own life. Perhaps that fate clings to me in certain periods of life, decreed by it. If only I knew how much longer it wants to have its way with me. But that’s that… Periods of time have a beginning and will someday have an end. And so I comfort my dear wife, that we too will have joy and happiness. And for now, as Sidor Artemovych Kovpak used to reply to appeals: “The sentence isn’t so bad—you just have to serve it.” And so I serve my sentence, I suffer, but I do not repent. In this hard, forced labor, I try to remain a human being, even if with a small ‘h.’ As may have been mentioned above, in this vile semi-madhouse, correspondence and escaping into myself, into memories, help me a great deal.

From a letter dated June 5, 1978: “The only joy is memories. And the further you get from them, the more clearly the past scenes emerge. That’s how it is, my dear dove. And besides that, life goes on, life passes. Some leave, others arrive. Many are still going to ‘chemistry’ (to construction sites) and so on. Many also return… It means I am alive and well. And just as before, inclined to humor. I try to find some comfort for myself in every problematic situation. As they say here, I ‘run my game’ in my own way. Since everyone here is ‘running their game,’ I try not to stand out. I do everything they tell me, I don’t argue, and in general… I eat everything they give me, I’m not picky. So I’ve submitted, and I don’t want to complain or write to anyone, anywhere, to prove that I don’t have one hump or two. So I will reform myself through labor, and conscientious labor at that, I will cleanse my conscience, because one must leave here with a clear conscience—so say the proclamations.” These are, of course, lines for the censor. The “koom’s department” is constantly watching me, although the KGB guys remind me of their presence rather unsystematically, as if they’ve forgotten. And time flies, July is already passing: “It will soon be a year that I’ve been here, crushing granite and gaining strength, pumping up bodybuilder biceps…”

In August, sudden changes occurred. I was transferred back to the construction detachment. Here’s what happened. The regional chief of corrective colonies came for an inspection. And he scolded the local leadership, including for the slow pace of construction work. They said he literally cursed them out in public. The mid-level management also got it for not having enough people involved. Regarding me, he supposedly ordered the “boss” to put me to work immediately, because he remembered how the construction had started. The detachment chief told me all of this, the same one who once relayed the KGB’s instructions to drive me into a trench and “let the son of a bitch rot.” But that’s that… And for us, it’s all the same where we work. The main thing is to have the opportunity to cleanse our conscience. And so the general rush began again. “As I promised you, I’ve completely stepped away from work assignments, and in general, I’m asking to be left alone. I really want to be a nobody, nothing. I want to be a little man. But there’s tension here too. They smile, and some say: ‘What a rotten guy, what a fish.’ So the Lord’s ways are strange. And the boss keeps scolding and reproaching me, as if I can force the zeks to work. Just recently he says, ‘You got what was coming to you, and you’ll get more.’ And what could I say? I say, ‘Okay, everything will be as it should.’ In any case, there’s no time to be bored. I’m busy to the point of exhaustion. When I return from work, I can barely drag my feet…”

Every person rests during the night, if they sleep well. And so every morning I was ready for new feats. But when the work is almost monotonous, that heroism goes unnoticed. I have to remind and ask for extra “stalls” [rations from the commissary] and packs of tea for those who are actually “plowing away.” And so the summer passed. Before I knew it, September was passing too. Excerpts from a letter dated September 21: “It’s interesting to be alive, after all. Here, it’s the same actions, the same tasks. So my head isn’t too cluttered, and many things from the past come to mind, and in detail. I’ll finish here about my personal state. What can one say? Life is like in prison, and everything that comes with it. Health, and living conditions, and mood, etc. But since everything is relative—my condition in all things is middling…” “And so a year has passed since I’ve been here, resting from worldly cares. They brought me here on the 8th, held me in quarantine for a bit, and on the 10th I was already ‘at large.’ It was truly such a feeling, after almost a year of ‘wandering’ through prisons… It’s hard to describe, I’ll tell you all the nuances someday. Now all of that is in the past. I’ve gotten used to it, settled into this world, and I’m getting my bearings more and more, although I’m still constantly ‘on guard.’ Because this, as I’ve said more than once, is not a semi-madhouse, but a real madhouse or a crazy camp. So to hell with them all. God grant me only the strength to endure and the wisdom to restrain myself… Sometime in mid-October, I will have my lawful personal visit. I will inform you of the exact date.”

And this is from October 13: “It’s already been a week since we saw each other, since we hugged and parted again with pain. It’s still bitter to part, even though you know it can’t be otherwise. And besides that, life goes on, the years pass. It’s already been two years since I left home. ‘And on a long journey, for many long years…’ That’s October for you: once it brought sorrow, and now twice it has given us that behind-bars joy, the joy of feeling your closeness and everything in general… And a person doesn’t need all that much…”

And so October passed. “A true late autumn has set in. And there’s as much work as there was before. Almost nothing changes. They don’t want to work, but the bosses demand it. So I’m spinning, turning, running, and mixing mud. And besides all that, ‘the sentence is running,’ we’re getting older, the children are growing, and everything passes…” “In my free moments, when I’m left alone with myself, I miss you all, I remember all the best things that were. And there was quite a lot of it, although we didn’t notice, but simply lived or lived through the years or days. And there was never any time to look back. But it’s okay, my dear, everything is still ahead. The main thing is to believe in yourself, in us, and in our future. I understand you very well, that it’s hard and bitter for you. What can you do…”

The last pages are built on excerpts from my letters. It might be a bit much already, but that’s what life was like. I’m thankful that my wife saved them. I, in fact, saved all of their letters too. If only God would grant the opportunity to scan them, to arrange them sequentially, it would make for much more interesting reading. Because there are very meaningful letters from the children, and mine to them. And they are written quite legibly. But those are just dreams…

Here I will recount a few episodes of camp life. Just to give a general idea. So, after a personal visit, I was allowed to take out some food. At that time, I had a friend who had come from the Ternopil region. He had a technical education in construction. I convinced him to be a brigadier for the construction of a residential barrack in the living zone. He already had a finished room there—a foreman’s office. There was also an iron cabinet where we kept our supplies. And so one night, they “bombed” us: they broke down the door and stole everything. The biggest loss was the tea, cigarettes, coffee, and salo. All of this was our “strategic reserve.” Especially the tea. For three to five packs of tea, the “petukhi” would agree to unload a railcar of cement. There was a case last autumn when the boss himself brought tea to organize the unloading of a railcar on a weekend, because there was a large fine for the delay. So we hired some “expert trackers,” also for tea. The next day, they identified the “rats.” In prison and in the zone, stealing personal belongings is considered a major crime, called “ratting,” and is punished very cruelly, even to the point of being sent to the “petushatnya” [roosters’ quarters]. First, they beat him. A few enthusiasts with itching fists are found, they surround the poor soul, and each one hits him until the guilty party falls. Then with their feet, as much as anyone wants. And no one can stop this cruelty, not even the ones who were robbed, the victims. That’s what they did to the second one. And since he didn’t confess right away, they decided to “punk” him as well. And there were many willing to carry out this decision. What saved that unfortunate lover of others’ property was that someone reported it to the headquarters, and the guards rushed over. This mob justice was not investigated, because that’s the established way of punishing “rats.” And yet, there is little humanity in those people.

November is passing, and winter is approaching. And I, like a fool, keep bustling about, so as not to sit still, always looking for ways to overcome difficulties in the construction process. Here is another excerpt: “I try sometimes with requests, sometimes with persuasion, and when things get tough, I have to shell out for a ‘zavarochka’ (that’s a third of a pack, or a full matchbox) of tea, because otherwise they won’t even think of mixing mortar or concrete in the mixer. And so I spin around, ‘running a bluff,’ or maybe I’m ‘hustling.’ This is one of the most common expressions here—that is, everyone ‘hustles’ in their own way and for their own ends. Maybe for that ‘hustling’ they’ll give me an extra visit. They promise. They would have given it long ago, but they’re still afraid. The local guardian was here, maybe a month ago. Some new guy. He politely inquired about my work, whether they were mistreating me, and so on. Then he started beating around the bush again. But he doesn’t understand the details, so it was only in general terms. We parted peacefully. I said: let them send specific questions, and if I know the answers, I’ll respond. And what I don’t know, you’ll have to excuse me. He agreed.”

And this is from a letter dated November 28, 1978: “I’ve just reread all four of your letters from the recent period and finally carved out some time. A poor zek doesn’t even have time to write a letter to his beloved wife. Can you imagine how people would laugh if they had to listen to such a funny tale? And I, as you wrote, no matter what I’m up to, I always find something to do. Everything concerns me, like in that fairy tale: everything is mine. But there is a certain advantage in this, because I am reforming myself through conscientious labor. Besides, everything has flared up again, because the end of the year is approaching.” “By the way, you wrote in two letters that I’ve crossed into my fifth decade. My dear, I crossed into it a year ago. You seem to think I’m very young, or want me to be. Huh? Or do you count these two years, for which they only gave one visit, as one? Thank you for your great, perhaps even sacrificial, love. For some reason, I’m drawn to lyricism. These lines came to mind: ‘Тебя я услышу за тысячу верств. И мне до тебя, где бы ты не была, дотронуться сердцем не трудно. И даже в краю наползающей тьмы, за гранью смертельного круга Я знаю, с тобой не расстанемся мы. Мы память друг друга...’”

On that note, I will end the first part of the story of my second journey behind the barbed wire.

[March 2011. Edited by V. Ovsiienko, 30.03 – 18.04 2011]