Mykola MURATOV, Moscow
A HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST’S MEMOIRS
Dedicated to the 70th birthday of Ivan Hel, former chairman of the Committee for the Defense of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, and to the 20th anniversary of the UGCC’s emergence from the underground
For me, it all began in August 1987 with Iosif Terelia’s insistent ring at my apartment door. His visit was unexpected, without a telephone warning as the rules of conspiracy at the time required. “Mykola, order a call to West Germany,” he said, giving me the phone number of Pani Anna-Halya Horbach, a Ukrainian from the FRG who helped publicize events in Ukraine, particularly the persecution of activists of the Ukrainian Catholic Church (UCC). Although by then I was a fully-fledged dissident (having been subjected to administrative repressions and fired from my job), I preferred not to stick my neck out, i.e., I tried not to provoke the KGB by communicating with foreigners and signing high-profile appeals, and I didn’t call the West by phone. But I couldn’t refuse Iosif and booked the call. That is how the declaration of the UCC’s emergence from the underground was transmitted and publicized.
This was one of Terelia’s last visits to Moscow; he was preparing to emigrate to Canada and was handing over the reins of the Committee for the Defense of the UCC to the well-known human rights activist and equally long-serving political prisoner Ivan Hel.
A brief digression is necessary here to shed light on the situation with glasnost and perestroika in the USSR by 1987. By that time, most political prisoners had already been released; people were no longer being imprisoned under Articles 70 and 190' of the RSFSR Criminal Code (anti-Soviet agitation and slander of the Soviet system); and most importantly, in Moscow, dissidents could more or less freely communicate with each other and with the foreign press. Communication with Western diplomats was not suppressed either. Such liberalism had not yet reached Ukraine, and most information from there reached the world community via Moscow. In Ukraine, the local KGB still kept the opposition on a short leash: they physically interfered with meetings, even in private homes, removed people from trains, sentenced them to 15-day administrative detentions on trumped-up charges, and vilified them in the press. There was even a case of Ivan Makar’s arrest in Lviv under Article 187' of the Ukrainian SSR Criminal Code (dissemination of knowingly false fabrications defaming the Soviet system). And such an important PR moment (as they say now) as a press conference for foreign journalists and a meeting with Western diplomats was possible only in Moscow.
I would also note that the West’s interest in events in Ukraine, in my view, at that time even exceeded the average interest in events in the USSR in general, since almost every second political prisoner in the USSR was a “Ukrainian nationalist,” and a Christian denomination with five million followers in Western Ukraine was banned.
And I was brought into the circle of the Ukrainian human rights opposition by Yuriy Rudenko and Vasyl Barladianu, whom I met in the circles of the magazine “Glasnost,” published by S. Grigoryants and L. Timofeev. Yurko and Vasyl revived my “Ukrainiandom” and deemed my dissident credentials sufficient to represent the national-democratic and religious circles of Ukraine in Moscow.
Thus, my spacious apartment by Soviet standards, located in the Kyivskyi district near the “Ukraina” cinema and a 3-minute walk from the “Bagrationovskaya” metro station, became the representative office of the Ukrainian religious and socio-political opposition in Moscow for several years.
I repeat that by early 1987, the KGB had ceased to physically and legally obstruct so-called “anti-Soviet actions” in private apartments in Moscow. Therefore, the first public appearances of the UGCC clergy, who had emerged from the underground, to Western journalists, television crews, and diplomats took place at my apartment. It was here in late 1987 that the UGCC bishops and priests first appeared before the Western media in their clerical vestments.
My representative activities were formalized through my membership in the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, into which I was co-opted by Vyacheslav Chornovil at the end of 1987. I also began to represent the “Ukrainsky Visnyk” (The Ukrainian Herald) as a correspondent and “Khrystyanskyi Holos” (The Christian Voice), the organ of the Committee for the Defense of the UGCC, headed by Ivan Hel. My desire to give the legalization of the UGCC a legal basis, which was possible even within the framework of Soviet legislation on cults, led me to start signing off in publications and appeals to the USSR authorities as a legal consultant for the Committee for the Defense of the UGCC.*
Of course, no count was kept, but in the period from 1987-90, I hosted several dozen press conferences and meetings in my apartment. Among the participants of these meetings, the most frequent were Ivan Hel, Bishop Pavlo Vasylyk, and Ivan Marhitych, Sofron Dmyterko, and Philemon Kurchaba—these were from the UGCC. I became close friends with Ivan Hel, Vasyl Barladianu, Bishop Pavlo Vasylyk, and Zinoviy Krasivskyi. Vyacheslav Chornovil, Mykhailo and Bohdan Horyn, Vasyl Barladianu, Pavlo Skachok, Oles Shevchenko, and other Kyivans were also frequent guests of mine. **> ***>
That was a time saturated with events. Among them, those connected with the 1000th anniversary of the baptism of Rus-Ukraine, the human rights conference organized by the editors of the “Glasnost” magazine, President Reagan's visit, the hunger strike of Greek Catholics on the Arbat, the reception at the American embassy on the occasion of the visit of congressmen to Moscow, and the visit of the UGCC delegation to the Council for Religious Affairs under the Council of Ministers of the USSR were particularly memorable.
In the summer of 1988, at the height of perestroika, the USSR widely celebrated the anniversary of the 1000th anniversary of the baptism of Rus. Representatives of all religions and Christian denominations, including a delegation from the Vatican, gathered in Moscow. The representatives of the Holy See expressed a desire to meet with the Greek Catholics. A delegation of 10 people arrived (8 clergy members, among them F. Kurchaba, P. Vasylyk, the Simkailo brothers, Petro Zelenyukh, and two laymen: Ivan Hel and Zinoviy Krasivskyi).
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* At my disposal was a photocopy of a book for official use, “Legislation on Religious Cults.” I studied it thoroughly and considered myself a specialist in religious law.
** A typical activity of mine in those years:
– A call from Ivan Hel from Vnukovo airport; they have flown in for a press conference. I sit and watch out the window. They arrive by taxi. We prepare for the press conference.
– Vyacheslav Chornovil calls: they took him off the train, deported him to Lviv from Kyiv. I invite him to Moscow, he comes. For 2-3 days we visit embassies and representatives of the foreign press, publicizing the KGB’s lawlessness in Ukraine.
*** I established particularly warm and friendly relations with Ivan Hel, Vyacheslav Chornovil, Zinoviy Krasivskyi, Fr. Petro Zelenyukh, Fr. Yaroslav Lesiv, and Bishop Pavlo Vasylyk. With Chornovil and Hel, our families were friends.
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They stayed at my place. In the morning, they took a taxi to the "Sovetskaya" Hotel. The hotel was cordoned off by the police, and Ivan Andreyevich [Hel] and I escorted the clergy to the doors. We hesitated for a second, and two beefy plainclothes Chekists roughly pushed us out of the cordon. I was a little shocked; Ivan Andreyevich bore it stoically. We wait for 1-1.5 hours, our fathers come out, take pictures in front of the entrance, and look for a way out through the barrier and the crowd of onlookers. Suddenly, a policeman standing nearby moves the barrier, pushes aside the onlookers, and freezes at attention before our bishops. I am shocked for a second time, but this time in a positive way. This was the first public appearance of the Greek Catholic clergy, a de-facto recognition of the UGCC.
This event was preceded by a public action conducted, if one can say so, on an all-Union scale. Through the efforts of the editorial board of the samizdat magazine “Glasnost,” the First International Conference on Human Rights in the USSR was organized in February-March 1988. The organization of this conference showed the limits to which the communists were prepared to tolerate the opposition at that time: only in private apartments. Three banquet halls rented by the organizers for the opening, general discussion, and closing of the conference were shut down by the KGB with the help of the sanitary, fire, and technical inspectorates of Moscow, respectively. Then the “renegades who do not reflect public opinion in the country crawled into private apartments”—almost a direct quote from the “Sovetskaya Rossiya” newspaper of that time.
Ukrainian human rights activists and clergy were invited to the national and religious sections. The Ukrainian KGB managed to disrupt the national section; everyone was removed from trains and planes in Lviv, Kyiv, Odesa, Dnipropetrovsk, etc. Only Ukrainians from the USA and Canada were present. The Balts were treated in exactly the same way. But the Armenians and Georgians came! On the sidelines of the conference opening, I couldn't resist approaching Zviad Gamsakhurdia, telling him about the removal and temporary detention of the entire Ukrainian delegation, and asking him how the agencies had allowed him to come. “And who are they? They wouldn’t dare to do that to us, although the order was probably given,” the future president of Georgia replied with a slight Caucasian accent.
So, the Ukrainian Greek Catholics had to arrange for their unhindered trip to Moscow to meet the Vatican delegation through the Vatican.
In the summer of 1988, some time before the 1000th anniversary, the Peace Defense Committee under the leadership of Genrikh Borovik decided to organize a round table with religious dissidents. I was invited to speak on behalf of the UGCC. On the second attempt (he was removed from the train), Bishop Ivan Marhitych from Zakarpattia also managed to come.
Bishop Ivan Marhitych’s story about the daily life of the UGCC and my legal analysis of religious freedoms in Ukraine did not fit into the rosy picture of religious freedoms in the USSR. I concluded my 5-minute speech like this: “The opponents of the UGCC’s legalization claim that this Church bears not a cross, but the OUN trident. And what do you want to see there, the ‘shield and sword’?” The meetings were filmed for television. A part of Bishop Marhitych’s speech was shown on one of the Central Television programs, but mine was not. As far as I know, the authorities had not previously allowed such public speeches in an official institution in defense of the UGCC.
My speech had one consequence for me: the deputy director of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences’ Institute of Human Morphology, where I then worked as a Junior Researcher, summoned me and, after asking, “What church are you defending there?” suggested that I resign “at my own request,” which I gladly did. After this dismissal, to all questions from officials about my place of work, I would answer: “Nowhere. I am a professional revolutionary.”
Relatively recently, from the memoirs of a Ukrainian Chekist, I learned (for myself) that the Commissioner of the Council for Religious Affairs under the USSR Council of Ministers for the union republics by region was, by position, also the head of the regional KGB department for control of religious activities. This means that the all-Union religious agency was also a regular unit of the KGB of the USSR. But back then, we only suspected it.
The special service, which the KGB of the USSR was, had infiltrated the religious environment to such an extent that, according to Sandro Righa (a well-known religious dissident and prisoner of psychiatric hospitals), it became a visible participant in confession: during this sacrament, the priest thought the confessing person was a KGB agent, and the confessing person thought the priest was from that organization.
A Conversation at the Council for Religious Affairs under the Council of Ministers of the USSR
On October 26, 1988, a representative delegation of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, consisting of 22 people, arrived in Moscow for a meeting at the Council for Religious Affairs under the Council of Ministers of the USSR. The delegation was headed by Bishop Philemon Kurchaba from Lviv, and it included bishops: Sofron Dmyterko, Pavlo Vasylyk, Ivan Marhitych, Ivan Semediy, 7 priests, and 10 laymen, mostly veterans and invalids of the Great Patriotic War. The Chairman of the Council, K.S. Kharchev, despite a prior agreement, did not receive the delegation. The department head who reported this, O.N. Rubtsov, explained that the chairman had nothing new to say at the moment, that the issue was not so simple and required a decision at the highest levels. In general, the absence of an answer to the many years of appeals from the Greek Catholics of Ukraine demanding the restoration of the UGCC’s legal status is better than a refusal. But in essence, it is a continuation of the administrative persecution and psychological terror that has intensified in the Western Ukraine region since the UGCC’s emergence from the underground. Fines of more than 50 rubles under the Decree for violations of the rules for holding demonstrations and rallies are no longer an exception; searches and confiscations of religious property, crude propaganda campaigns in the press with slander and incitement of religious hatred, endless detentions and other restrictions on freedom of movement up to administrative arrests—such was the daily life of the clergy and faithful of the UGCC. To this should be added the occasional drafting of young priests for retraining in the Soviet Army, and the confiscation of 100 copies of the Bible in Lviv, which outraged everyone. This, in brief, was the leitmotif of the delegation members' statements.
After hearing specific complaints about the facts of persecution for religious beliefs, department head O.N. Rubtsov and his deputy Z.Sh. Sharipov promised (for the umpteenth time) to study the issue and present it for the leadership’s consideration. Apparently, the reception made some impression on the employees; they accepted copies of the confiscation acts, resolutions on fines, and applications from 60 communities (the "twenties") for the registration of their religious associations.
However, the legal side of the matter and the position of the Council remained unclear, I noted. According to the Regulation on the Council for Religious Affairs under the Council of Ministers of the USSR, approved by the decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR of May 10, 1966, No. 361, it must:
Clause 3
a) Ensure the right of citizens of the USSR to profess any religion...
b) Exercise control over compliance with the legislation on cults...
It has the right:
Clause 4
d) To submit proposals for the repeal of orders, instructions, decisions... and other acts that contradict the legislation on cults to the body that issued the corresponding act...
“Why,” I asked, “does the Council not fulfill its duties with respect to Ukrainian Greek Catholics? After all, the refusal to register UGCC communities in Western Ukraine is a direct violation of the Regulation on Religious Associations in the Ukrainian SSR, approved by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR of November 1, 1976. Not to mention acts of higher legal force: the Constitutions of the USSR and the Ukrainian SSR,” I tried to emphasize.
No answer was received to the questions posed in this manner by the author of these lines. The questioner had to answer the question himself. And the answer contained nothing new.
The process of the UGCC’s physical liquidation was carried out under the pretext of suppressing the nationalist partisan movement and was part of a plan to “pacify” this region of Ukraine, serving as a kind of ideological finale to the military operations. The military structure of the OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) ceased to exist, and its political structure disintegrated. However, the established apparatus of suppression, which had partly settled in Western Ukraine in the form of an administrative apparatus, needed a visible “enemy,” and the UGCC became that “enemy.” Subsequently, from the late 1940s to the present, the apparatus for suppressing “bourgeois nationalism” in Western Ukraine, for its own departmental, selfish purposes, has been misinforming the central leadership about the maliciousness of the Uniate priests and other “bourgeois nationalists,” receiving laurels as fighters against the “enemies of socialism.” Over all these years, this apparatus of suppression has consolidated into a KGB-militia-Party-bureaucratic mafia and is holding back the natural process of democratization in public life, skillfully misinforming the country's leadership about the danger of the “remnants of Uniatism.” Therefore, for them, the restoration of the UGCC’s legal status is tantamount to losing their social prestige and highly paid work.
The second, no less important reason for the long-term disregard of the legitimate rights of Ukrainian Greek Catholics is the un-Christian position of the Russian Orthodox Church, or rather, of those of its hierarchs who do not see or do not want to see the unseemly, hostile role of the ROC towards their Greek Catholic brothers. Have the Orthodox hierarchs forgotten that it is a sin to take what has never belonged to you?
The position of the ROC was incomprehensible from the standpoint of its history. Being the state religion, Russian Orthodoxy never allowed itself to absorb entire Christian denominations; even Islamic peoples preserved their faith. But the Russian Orthodox hierarchs, directed by the “leader of nations,” committed such a sin. And to this day, in the process of restoring historical justice and God's truth, they are hand in glove with the atheists... I made the receiving side listen to all this.
The more than three-hour conversation came to an end. And yet, despite the fact that the issue of legalization was once again postponed, one could not fail to notice the humane attention and the lively glint in the eyes of the Council's employees. There was none of that cold indifference of officials that was typical of the stagnant times.
On November 28, 1989, Y. Reshetylo, the commissioner of the Council for Religious Affairs under the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR for the Lviv region, spoke on Lviv television. In his statement, he recognized the right of Ukrainian Greek Catholics to register their religious communities. Even before that, on October 29, the clergy and flock of the Transfiguration Church in Lviv had announced their transition to the bosom of the UGCC. The KGB-church hierarchy of the ROC could not like this. And they put their tried-and-true weapon to use—lies and slander. A campaign was launched in the press, instigated by the ROC, about terror against the clergy and laity of the Orthodox Church in Western Ukraine.
While in Rome in November 1989, I foresaw this and asked His Beatitude Cardinal Myroslav Ivan Lubachivsky, then the head of the UGCC, for a power of attorney to represent the interests of the UGCC in the USSR.
Using this power of attorney, on the advice of Ivan Hel, I initiated cases in several district courts of Moscow to protect the honor, dignity, and reputation of the UGCC against the Moscow Patriarchate, TASS, the newspapers “Sovetskaya Rossiya” and “Pravda,” and Central Television. In all cases, except for those against TASS and “Sovetskaya Rossiya,” my claim was refused. The judge of the Sverdlovsky District Court of Moscow accepted the statement of claim and scheduled a preliminary hearing. Unfortunately, the matter went no further, as Lviv lost interest in these lawsuits, leaving me without an evidentiary basis. My mission was coming to an end: the Moor has done his duty, the Moor can go. Unfortunately, to this day, I do not know if the Greek Catholics ever used my plan for the legalization of the UGCC as a public institution. In brief, it was as follows:
1. The convocation of a UGCC synod to formally declare the decisions of the so-called Lviv Synod of 1946 invalid. This is at the Church level.
2. At the parish level, within the framework of the then-current legislation on cults, it was sufficient to formalize with a protocol the decision of the parish “twenty” to terminate the agreement with the Orthodox clergy and to invite a Greek Catholic priest.
I published all the events in which I had to participate and the information that was transmitted to me by phone and in person in the Russian- and Ukrainian-language press in the West, and it was voiced on Radio Liberty. My activities were not ignored by the communist press in Ukraine, nor by the authorities in Moscow and locally. Once, after a raid on my apartment, I was taken to the local police station, and they tried to “book” me for 15 days of administrative arrest. But there wasn't the same enthusiasm as 3-5 years earlier. It was just “mouse fuss” on their part, although the threats I received by phone and the advice to “think about my children” (I was raising two daughters) caused quite a few unpleasant moments. The threat I remember most was from my ill-wishers to “cut me into pieces in Kharkiv.” As a forensic pathologist, I found this particularly “interesting” to hear.
There was no shortage of undercover operative work either. As early as my second meeting with Iosif Terelia in 1987, he told me that some woman in Zakarpattia (!?) had confidentially informed him that the male doctor he was visiting in Moscow was a KGB officer. I joked in response: “Iosif, that's a lie. I'm not an officer yet, just a warrant officer.”
There were more serious grounds for suspicion. Sometime in 1989, a stranger, a Polish student, rang my doorbell. He had brought a rotator (mimeograph) and instructions on how to use it. This needed to be delivered to Lviv. Vasyl Barladianu was at my place at the time, and he was planning to return to his home in Odesa that evening. Since no specific delivery deadline had been given, nor was it known to whom specifically in Lviv this printing machine, which, by the way, weighed over 20 kilograms, should be given, Vasyl and I decided to send it to V. Chornovil via Kyiv. Having seen Vasyl Barladianu off, I considered my mission complete.
Making a stop in Kyiv, Barladianu put the machine in an automatic storage locker at the station and reported the locker number and code by phone to Oles Shevchenko or Mykola Horbal (I don't remember exactly). But when they arrived at the station to get the device, the locker was already empty. A clean job by the KGB.
Of course, if I had known the importance of this matter, I would have taken the rotator to Lviv myself, but I still needed to pack, and it's not a fact that I would have gotten it there, whereas through Vasyl, the device was already in Kyiv the next day.
After the disappearance of the duplicating machine, I was subjected to a formal interrogation: first, Stepan Khmara, with his characteristic peremptory tone, accused me of collaborating with the KGB (though he later retracted his words at a meeting of the Ukrainian Helsinki Union in Kyiv). Zinoviy Krasivskyi also spoke to me on this topic, having come to my home specifically for this purpose. I had the most unpleasant conversation on this subject with Bohdan Horyn in Lviv, for whom this machine was intended. In all three conversations, I monotonously repeated how the device had been unexpectedly brought to me (there was a call from London for me to be home all day and wait for guests), but no specific addressee in Lviv was indicated, so I handed it over to Kyiv in the shortest possible time, and so on.
Another incident occurred during the elections to the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine in 1990. Two large rolls of stickers saying “Vote for Rukh candidates” were delivered to me by express mail from America; they asked by phone to pass them on to Kyiv. That same evening, I sent it with a conductor of the Kyiv train and reported the carriage number to Serhiy Naboka by phone. However, the package did not arrive in Kyiv. The conductor reported that at the second to last station before Kyiv, a young man who named the addressee had picked it up. Again, a clean job.
And again, I had to explain that I had done everything as quickly as possible and it wasn't my fault that I only got an agreement to meet the train on the fifth call to Kyiv, and with such “openness,” failure was inevitable.
A few words separately about the Ukrainian diaspora in Moscow. The bulk of these people at that time consisted of nomenklatura workers and careerists with a Soviet mentality. Communicating with these “Komsomol members” brought me no joy, so to this day, I am not a member of any of the public associations of Ukrainians in Russia. I am not that kind of Ukrainian. Therefore, Mykhailo Horyn’s calls to work among Russian Ukrainians met with no enthusiasm in me.
By mid-1991, I felt an estrangement; a difference in views on the structure of an independent Ukraine emerged between me and the former political prisoners who had become deputies and chairmen. In my opinion, the Russian-speaking southeast of the country cannot be Ukrainianized by administrative measures. This will cause a rejection reaction, as happened with the Russification of Ukraine as a whole, as happened with the attempt to declare Greek Catholics as Orthodox. I believed and still believe that the federalization of Ukraine in 1991 would have strengthened Ukrainian statehood and would not have led to the kind of split that has now emerged. And why not make Russian the second state language? After all, the real bilingualism of Ukrainians is a fact. There are bilingual and even trilingual countries in Europe, and more than one. There is Belgium, Switzerland, Sweden. As a native of Donbas visiting my relatives in Donetsk, I saw how the people resisted reverse de-Russification. For example, everyone was fed up with TV commercials, and in Ukrainian, they were completely intolerable for the local residents.
The forces of nomenklatura-bureaucratic-KGBist revanchism that have begun to revive in Russia will surely try to take advantage of this short-sightedness of Ukrainian state-builders.
I expressed my attitude towards the unsavory sides of perestroika and the current politics in the USSR, and the blocking of dissidents with communists in Ukraine during the agony of the USSR, in a joke in the style of an informational message for April 1, 1990. Mykola Danylovych Rudenko called it a pamphlet:
Kyiv (Press Service of the URP-CPU)
As our correspondent, whose name is being established, reports, at the first session of the newly elected democratic parliament of the Ukrainian SSR, a Declaration on the withdrawal of Ukraine from the USSR on the principles of khozraschet (economic self-accounting) was proclaimed. USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev immediately recognized the independence of the Ukrainian Khozraschet Republic and, in a separate decree signed “M. Gorbach,” requested political asylum in it. Soon, the President, along with the presidential council and the council of the federation, will move to Ukraine. It should be recalled that this is the second relocation of the top Soviet leadership to another locality. The first such move in the history of our country was made by Lenin in 1918 from Petersburg to Moscow (not to be confused with Radishchev)*, and he remains there to this day, as the question of the Mausoleum's residence is beyond the competence of the highest bodies of power of the USSR.
Other Soviet socialist republics have joined independent Ukraine on the principles of federalism. The city of Kyiv has been appointed the capital of the federation thus renewed, and the title “Father and Mother of Rus’ Cities” has been constitutionally assigned to it. Decisions have been made to change the name, anthem, and coat of arms of the state. The Trident against the background of the Hammer and Sickle has been approved as the coat of arms of the Union of Soviet Khozraschet Republics (USKR). The words of the anthem will begin as follows: “The Unbreakable Union has not yet perished...” and will end pluralistically. After heated debates, it was decided to consider as a state flag any flag that is more or less yellow-and-blue on a red background, with dimensions of at least 10 by 15 meters.
The Law of the USKR “On the Exclusion of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia from the Federation without the right to enter into international relations with other countries” was adopted almost unanimously. The Government of the USKR voluntarily undertook the obligation to provide the population of the Baltic states with food—according to existing norms, and clothing—according to the season.
The adopted amendments to the Constitution of the USKR will be the legal basis for ending negative phenomena in all spheres of socio-economic and civil-political life in our country. The idea of self-government is organically combined with the principle of a regulated market economy: the President of the USKR exercises leadership of the all-Union Market and appoints ministers of the Market sectors. Power at the local level is exercised by the directors of republican, regional, city, and district Markets. The principle according to which, in case of a discrepancy between the Laws of the USKR and a Khozraschet republic, the Charters of the Armed Forces of the USKR apply, has been constitutionally secured. The rights of Soviet citizens have been expanded; amendments and additions to the Constitution provide for the right of every citizen of the USKR to veto the decision on the secession of Khozraschet republics. Corresponding changes have been made to the Law “On the Procedure for Resolving Issues Related to the Withdrawal of a Union Republic from the USKR.”
The agenda item on the formation of the Council of Ministers has been postponed for now. However, the personal composition of future cabinet members has been approved unanimously. Among them are Masol and Chornovil as the most popular political figures, Lukyanenko and Ivashko—leaders of the largest political parties, Drach and Derkach, the Horyn brothers, the Basilian sisters, the Kalynets couple, the Redemptorist fathers, and namesakes Shevchenko. However, some ministerial appointments have already been made. Ivan Makar has been confirmed as Chairman of the State Forestry Committee. Vyacheslav Chornovil—Chairman of the State Publishing Committee, while retaining the post of Governor of Galicia. Ivan Hel will head the Council for Religious Affairs and Atheism. The director of the Ukrainian edition of Radio Liberty, Bohdan Nahaylo, who has been granted Soviet citizenship, has been invited to the post of chairman of the State Television and Radio Broadcasting. It has been decided to refer to the well-known writer and publicist Vasyl Barladianu, who emigrated to the West this month after being stripped of his Soviet citizenship, as “Our Solzhenitsyn.”
Article 6 of the USKR Constitution, which caused endless disputes and unhealthy agitation, has finally taken its final form—the leading and guiding force of the renewed Soviet society is recognized as the bloc of parties CPU-URP-NDU (Rukh), which has adopted a new name—OUN (a, b, c..., e, u, ya). It has been decided to transform the State Security Committee into the Committee for the Defense of the UGCC and the UAOC from the ROC, which will be headed by Colonel-General Gromov, who has been relieved of his post as commander of the Kyiv Military District.
Some tension at the session was caused by Stepan Khmara's statement that he had identified more than 300 KGB agents among the people's deputies, which constitutes 2/3 of the list. A crisis was averted thanks to a timely Decree by President Gorbachev “On the surrender by people's deputies of the USKR of hunting rifles, table knives, and carpenter's tools on the territory of the electoral districts of the Ukrainian Independent Khozraschet Republic.” This decree stirred up the patriotic strata of voters, among whom an informal movement “For the voluntary surrender of forks” began. As always, crudely distorting the facts, subversive mass media, especially the magazine “Ogonyok” and Leningrad Television, called this popular movement a sign of “the final solution to the food problem.” Such a literally coinciding negative assessment testifies to the existence of a single center of “glasnost” hostile to perestroika, which is why the delay in adopting the Law “On the Protection of the Honor and Dignity of the President, His Family, and His Appointees” is puzzling. The session will continue its work tomorrow.
*) Radishchev made the journey in the opposite direction (note from the Research Institute at the Lenin Mausoleum)
I hope the man of the anniversary will appreciate my sarcasm correctly.
“Your Excellency, how many Orthodox priests have you personally slaughtered?”
An interview with UGCC Bishop Pavlo Vasylyk, August 18, 1990.
I. Your Excellency, last November, on the eve of M.S. Gorbachev’s visit to Italy and his meeting with His Holiness Pope John Paul II, the Council for Religious Affairs announced the recognition of the right of Ukrainian Greek Catholics to legal existence. What is the legal and factual situation of the UGCC at the present time?
Answer: After the secular authorities recognized our right to legalization, which in practice meant an end to criminal and administrative repression, a mass transition of believers began in Western Ukraine, where our Church was the predominant confession, from the Orthodoxy imposed on them by force to the faith of their fathers. Moreover, anticipating your question, I will say that there was no “violence” on our part and could not have been, because, firstly, we do not have an apparatus of violence. The apparatus of violence is in the hands of non-church authorities, and their sympathies are still on the side of the Russian Orthodox Church. Secondly, a person’s confessional choice is a matter of conscience, and a person's conscience is always free. In practice, the transition was carried out by the decision of a religious community to invite priests under the jurisdiction of the UGCC episcopate, which is in canonical unity with the Holy See in Rome, to satisfy their religious needs. It should be noted that such a choice by a religious association in no way contradicts the current legislation on cults. The authorities simply stopped their administrative containment of the religious re-identification of Christians in Western Ukraine at the end of last year. Then, when the national-democratic forces won the elections to local councils in our region of Ukraine in March of this year, the process of the de facto rehabilitation of our Church as a legal entity began. In Ivano-Frankivsk, our Cathedral has been returned to us, and a decision has also been made to transfer to us our holy site—the Cathedral of St. George, the residence of the head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Lviv. However, representatives of the Moscow Patriarchate refuse to leave the premises. Thus, a process of returning our church’s religious buildings and property is underway, which is consistent with the presidential Decree on the rehabilitation of all victims of extrajudicial repression, or rather, with the spirit of that Decree. After all, Stalin's extrajudicial bodies of repression were not only the “troikas” and the Special Council of the MGB, but also the Lviv pseudo-synod of 1946, organized by the Chekists, which forced our Church to go underground, and also the party decisions “on changing the national composition of the population” of the North Caucasus, Crimea, the Volga region, and partly Western Ukraine. Although slowly, the rehabilitation of this category of victims of the godless government is also proceeding.
II. Your Eminence, I would like to know the number of parishes that have returned to the fold of the UGCC.
Answer: Church-wide statistics are not yet available; we do not yet have a chancellery and the corresponding accounting for the entire metropolitanate. However, I can say that about 600 UGCC parishes are active in the Ivano-Frankivsk Eparchy. There are almost no parishes under the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate. In other regions of our area, the situation is somewhat different. There, almost half have come under the jurisdiction of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church.
III. You have already briefly touched on the issue that concerns all Christians and non-Christians about the accusation of Greek Catholics of aggressive and unlawful actions. Since the end of last year, the central and Ukrainian republican press, citing mainly circles of the Moscow Patriarchate, have constantly been reporting on a veritable religious war and terror unleashed by the Uniates against the Orthodox clergy and laity. If I didn’t know you personally, Your Eminence, then, by God, I would seriously ask you: Your Excellency, how many Orthodox priests have you personally slaughtered?
Answer: It's not as funny as you think. But you are in some sense right in your irony. Indeed, the slanderous campaign regarding the “aggressiveness and criminality of the Uniates” has been brought to the point of absurdity by the party press. Let's take, for example, the so-called violent seizure of churches. I have already spoken about this; I only want to add that a church is not a fortress, and we have not undertaken any assaults. As for the “assaults on the lives of priests,” as stated in the Appeal of the Synod of the UOC (Exarchate of the ROC) of 08.09.1990, here we are blamed for natural mortality, which may have increased with the loss of parishes by the Orthodox clergy. This also includes common crime, which has increased in our godless society, being blamed on us, and the deliberate religious coloring of the increased conflict in our lives in general. In this respect, the case of the death of Fr. Vasyl Bochalo, the former rector of the church in the village of Zalissia, Zolochiv district, Lviv region, is indicative. On November 19, 1989, the parishioners voted to return to the fold of the Catholic Church, and Fr. Vasyl lost his position. When he tried to prevent a Greek Catholic liturgy, the emotional stress caused him to have his third heart attack, and he died on the way to the hospital. The entire communist press wrote about and showed the death of Fr. Bochalo as resulting from “violent actions,” or even as the “murder of a Uniate.”
And as for me (the bishop smiles), it could have been the other way around, when a group of zealots of Orthodoxy—women—attacked me in May of this year in the building of the regional executive committee. They tore my cassock, ripped off my cross. And I wasn’t the only one attacked; in February of this year, Fr. Petro Zelenyukh, a Greek Catholic priest from the Lviv region, was brutally beaten. Do the Orthodox fathers really teach their flock this?...
IV. If you please, Your Excellency, a few words about yourself.
Answer: I was born in pre-war Poland in 1926. I studied at a medical school until 1946, then was “convicted” by a military tribunal of the MGB for helping wounded partisans of the UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army) and was in Stalin's camps until 1956. I was ordained a priest right in the camp by one of the repressed Greek Catholic bishops. From 1958 to 1962, I was convicted again for performing pastoral duties. In August 1987, I was one of the initiators of the Church’s emergence from the underground.
June-July 2007.
Photos from M. Muratov's archive:
Photo “Lviv, January 1988.”
Pavlo Skochok, Ivan Hel, Mykola Muratov, Vyacheslav Chornovil, Fr. Petro Zelenyukh from the Yavoriv region. Lviv, January 1988. Photo from M. Muratov's archive.
Photo “Vatican. November 1989.”
Mykola Muratov and Yevhen Sverstiuk with Pope John Paul II. Vatican, November 1989. Photo from M. Muratov's archive.