(Rosokhach, April 2, 2000, in the home of Mykola Marmus; also present were Volodymyr Marmus and Petro Vynnychuk)
M. Slobodyan: My name is Mykola Vasylyovych Slobodyan, born June 21, 1944, in the village of Rosokhach, Chortkiv Raion, Ternopil Oblast. I studied at the Rosokhach school and graduated from the 11th grade of night school in 1971. I worked on a kolkhoz and studied at night school. I would leave for work. In Rosokhach, it’s customary to go for seasonal work in the eastern oblasts.
My mother, Khrystyna Tymkivna, née Balakunets, born in 1902, was ill at the time. My father, Vasyl Mykolaiovych Slobodyan, was born in 1906. I have a married sister. My parents lived in the village of Rosokhach and worked on the kolkhoz their whole lives. My father was in the war.
When I was younger, my father often told me about the Ukrainian insurgents, how they wanted our Ukraine to be sovereign and independent, and how many of them had fallen. How difficult it was for them to fight the Soviet authorities, and what those authorities did to Ukrainians. For example, in the village and in the fields, as is tradition, crosses are placed at every crossroads. So one evening, they gathered all the party members, the communists, got a truck, and drove around the village and the fields, desecrating the crosses that had been erected long ago by our grandfathers and great-grandfathers. They took them out of the village, past Yahilnytsia, to a place called the Kinzavod; behind the Kinzavod there is a ditch—and they dumped everything there, smashed them, and broke them to pieces. And everything was quiet, as if that was how it was supposed to be.
People watched all of this but could not oppose it. Because if they said anything, the KGB would immediately come—and they would be taken away and beaten, and told: “What, you don’t like Soviet rule?” They committed many crimes. Even to sing a Ukrainian insurgent song, you had to do it in a whisper so no one would see or hear, because everything was reported to the raion, to the KGB. Even in the Rosokhach choir, you first had to sing two Russian songs, and only then a Ukrainian one that they chose, because we couldn't choose for ourselves.
V. Ovsiyenko: Everyone had to sing “Pyrihy with Cheese.”
M. Slobodyan: Yes, “Pyrihy with Cheese” and some other one like that. So we knew that Ukraine was under oppression, that Russification was advancing with each day, at every turn. No one even tried to say a word against it, because it was frightening.
I was 27 or 28 years old, so I understood this perfectly. I was friends with Volodymyr Marmus and his brother Mykola; we would go to the movies together. Having heard and seen everything that was happening in Ukraine and in Rosokhach, we would talk about how we were being humiliated and how the Ukrainian language was being suppressed.
We knew that 1973 would be the 55th anniversary of the proclamation of an independent Ukraine by the Fourth Universal. Volodymyr Marmus said that we had to commemorate this date, because people had started to forget, and the youth didn’t even know what the Ukrainian People's Republic was, or what our flags and our Ukrainian symbols were. So we decided to commemorate this date—January 22, 1973. So, under the leadership of Volodymyr Marmus, we prepared paper, got material—blue and yellow cloth for the flags—and wrote leaflets calling on the people not to forget this date. Some of the boys wrote the leaflets, while others sewed the flags at my house. Mykola Marmus did the sewing. Well, others also did some of the hemming by hand. Mykola Marmus prepared the flagpoles in Bilobozhnytsia, where he was working at the time.
On the night of Sunday, January 21, 1973, gathering near the club in the village of Rosokhach, we already had everything prepared—the glue, the leaflets rolled into tubes, the flags, and the flagpoles. We stayed for a bit in and around the club so that more people would see us and know we were in the village.
I forgot one thing. The day before we were to go to Chortkiv, Stepan Sapelyak approached Volodymyr Marmus with a request—he sensed we were preparing for something—to be accepted into our organization. We agreed, and all seven of us went to his home, where he took an oath by candlelight before an icon of the Mother of God. We all took an oath. We were divided into small cells: the first four took their oath in the forest. We have a clearing there called Lakanets. Sapelyak took his oath at his home, in a small storage shed outside. And the three of us—I, Kravets, and Lysy—took our oath at Andriy Kravets’s home.
When everything was ready, we conferred and told Stepan Sapelyak to take the bus to Chortkiv. We gave him the flagpoles. They were wrapped in paper and tied up neatly so that it wasn't obvious what he was carrying, so it wouldn't be too conspicuous. And the rest of us went to Chortkiv through the Zvirynets forest, across Berdo.
When we arrived in Chortkiv, we were supposed to meet Sapelyak; he was to wait for us near the “Myr” cinema. But for some reason, he wasn’t there. We waited—he didn't show up. Mykola Marmus and one other person went to look for him around the city. We needed to start this work all together, because everyone had their own job—some were to glue up leaflets, others to hang flags, and a third group was to go a little ahead to provide cover for those doing the work.
Finally, Sapelyak appeared with the flagpoles. Volodymyr Marmus and the boys went ahead to hang the flags. The three of us put up the leaflets. Two of the boys would grab my legs and lift me up against the wall so I could glue the leaflets high enough to be read, but not so they could be quickly torn down. I had glue in one hand and the leaflets rolled up in my pocket. I would just grab one end, pull it out, and the leaflet would be in my hand. It was a cold evening, windy with blowing snow, but we were wearing gloves and simply didn't notice the cold because we had such a responsible task.
We started putting up the leaflets and hanging the flags when most people were at the “Myr” cinema for a movie or at the House of Culture, where the youth were at a dance. This was planned so that there would be the fewest people on the streets. We started at School No. 4 and went down Mitskevycha Street toward the town hall, which is in the center of Chortkiv, then we went past the “Myr” cinema. We also put a leaflet on the wall of a residential building. Near the Seret River, we still had a lot of leaflets, so rather than take them home, we glued them in conspicuous places, at bus stops. We put them up and went down into the valley—and there, on the town hall in the center of Chortkiv, we saw our blue-and-yellow flag flying. That meant our boys had already hung it. We went through the market and continued putting up leaflets.
I recall one incident. Volodymyr Marmus and Petro Vitiv had already hung our blue-and-yellow flag on the flagpole of the “Myr” cinema. I was passing the cinema because I had my own task. Just then, two fairly elderly women walked past me, noticed the flag, and one said to the other, “Look, look—our flag is already hanging on the cinema!”
V. Ovsiyenko: But it was nighttime, wasn't it?
M. Slobodyan: Yes, but the area in front of the cinema was lit. There were special holders for flags. The boys pulled out their flag and put up our own. And people had already seen it. But we hadn't finished our work yet, because we had designated places to hang flags and put up leaflets—it was all planned and thought out in advance.
We put some up where the administration building used to be and then headed down the road toward Ternopil, here toward Kopychentsi. Near the forestry department, a red flag was hanging on a flagpole. So our boys took it down, hoisted our own blue-and-yellow one in its place, and raised it high.
Then we turned toward the medical dormitory and put up leaflets, then went to the pedagogical college, where we also put up leaflets and hung a flag. Our work ended there. And then, through the park, we headed home along the same road we had taken to Chortkiv. The wind and snow were just right—it covered our tracks.
The KGB men probably didn't see all the leaflets that night—only the ones in open places. But there were leaflets and flags hung in places where they couldn't immediately tear them down. So all of it stayed up until the next day, and people who were out during the day saw and read them. And one more flag remained at the forestry department. They took it down the next day because they hadn't seen it at night. It was on a tall chimney. There was a watchman at the forestry department; he was from Rosokhach. So they summoned him to the KGB and interrogated him, asking where he had been, what he had seen, why he hadn't seen the flag. He said, “I went outside in the morning, looked at the flagpole—yesterday your flag was there, and today, I look, and our flag is there.” Well, he was an older man, so I don't know if they scolded him or what, but after that, they fired him from his job because he...
V. Ovsiyenko: “Lost vigilance on duty.”
M. Slobodyan: We returned around half past one in the morning. No one was out in the village anymore, no lights were on, and each of us went to our own home. Our relatives were already asleep. They didn't know where I had come from. Sometimes I would come home later from the club, or after visiting girls.
The next day, we didn't know anything at first, but when the second bus arrived from Chortkiv—because a bus runs from Chortkiv to Rosokhach—rumors started to spread that some people in Chortkiv, maybe students or some other unknown people, had hung blue-and-yellow flags and put up leaflets with an appeal to the people not to forget about Ukraine. And so, wherever we worked, we kept our ears open to hear what people were saying. We were very curious because we didn't think we would be caught. We had other thoughts. We thought we had done the job and it would remain a secret.
The KGB didn't come to our village in the first few days. Then we heard: the KGB had arrived at the village council. They put out a call: who wants to work in Ternopil? They were building the KhBK—the cotton combine. But how they asked “who wants to” was just a pretense. They simply sent someone from the village council—there's a man who summons people to the council or delivers announcements. He came to me and said that the head of the village council was calling about a job in Ternopil. I thought, I'll go.
I arrive and see Vynnychuk is already there by the village council, along with some other guys not from our group. Three KGB men were in one room, and there was another room through a door. They call you in there and ask if you want the job. I say, no, I don't want to work there, because my mother is sick, my father is old, and I need to be here with them in the village.
Well, by this time we had already heard that the KGB was bothering Stepan Sapelyak. In Lviv, where he worked as a lab assistant, the KGB had summoned him and questioned him about where he was on the night of January 21-22. We don't know what he told them, but we heard he had been taken in by the KGB. After that, maybe they wanted to get a look at us, which is why they called us to the village council. They probably already knew who was in Chortkiv hanging the flags and leaflets. A few days later, I heard they had taken Volodymyr Marmus. Well, it became clear then that someone had betrayed us.
On March 22, they came for me. They searched the house. I had this beautiful embroidered portrait of Taras Hryhorovych Shevchenko in a frame, depicting Ukraine being crucified in chains, with crows pecking out people's eyes while they were still alive. After they took Stepan, after they took Volodymyr, my mother had some kind of premonition. She took that portrait and burned it. They found some little books at my place. To be honest, I didn't have any overtly anti-Soviet literature. But books—they looked through everything and took some of them. And they took me. They brought me to the KGB in Chortkiv, held me overnight, and the next day—I know now it was Colonel Bidyovka—he arrived with two guards and a driver. They put me in a UAZ and took me to Ternopil.
In Ternopil, they wanted to scare me a bit, to get me to confess where I was that night, to tell them who was there, what we did, who did it. I said, “I don't know anything and I won't talk, because what can I say about someone else when I wasn't there?” For four or five days they interrogated me, but I didn't confess. On the fifth day, Bidyovka called me in and, taking a file, covered the signature with his hands so I couldn't see whose it was. But in the middle, he let me read that so-and-so—Volodymyr Marmus, Mykola Marmus—all the members of our organization were listed in that file. I still didn't confess.
When I was taken back to my cell, I started to think that there wasn't a single name there that wasn't one of ours, only our guys. I suspected it was Stepan Sapelyak, that this was his doing. What was the point of hiding it anymore? It wouldn't accomplish anything. The next day, they called me in again. They summoned me for interrogation a few more times, and I finally confessed that, yes, I was there, that such-and-such boys did it—because they already knew everything. Since they knew, my holding out wouldn't have changed anything. I wanted to conceal some things, but they interrogated me until they got everything out. This Lieutenant Colonel Bidyovka said, “I'll make you remember which little stone you tripped on.” Suffice it to say, they were prompting me themselves, because the other boys had already talked.
So, the investigation ended sometime in late August. They held us under investigation for seven months. They said, “Get your things, we're going to court.” They put us in “voronky” (paddy wagons), each one separately, of course, and drove us away. The trial was closed. We were tried by Judge Kostyk, and there were some others, I don't remember their last names—one woman and two men, what are they called?
V. Ovsiyenko: People's assessors, or “furniture” or “head-nodders.” They just nod their heads in agreement with the judge.
M. Slobodyan: Assessors, yes, people's assessors. The reading of the charges took a long time. The trial lasted about three days... Volodymyr Marmus is prompting me, because I've forgotten a bit—the trial lasted more than a week.
I want to add something. When they brought us in and sat us on the defendants' bench, we were so eager to say even a word to each other, we hadn't seen each other in seven months! I was sitting next to Mykola Marmus. The convoy guard who transported us stood near us, a senior guard, a Russian. You could tell from his accent. He saw that Mykola and I were talking, burst into the courtroom, lifted me up, and led me to a basement-like room. He said, “See, no one's here, I'm going to shoot you right now.” He pulled out his pistol and... Well, he was trying to scare me. I knew that in this situation, with the trial going on, he wouldn't do it, but he was so angry that spit was flying from his mouth because I hadn't followed the order not to talk. When he brought me back to the courtroom, I told the boys what had happened, that he had threatened to shoot me. When the judge came in, Mykola Marmus said, “What is this, that they're threatening us here with a pistol and want to shoot us?” The next day, that senior convoy guard was gone.
So, the trial ended, and they began to read the verdict. But for some reason, just as they started reading, the lights went out. Maybe they did it on purpose, to read us our sentences by candlelight? They did let our relatives who were still in Ternopil in for the reading of the verdict. I was given 3 years of strict-regime camp and 2 years of exile. Andriy Kravets too. They sentenced us in pairs, it seems, so that only Marmus, as our leader, got the longest sentence—11 years. The other boys got 8, the next pair 7, and Andriy and I got 5.
They brought us back to the KGB, to those cells. It was already night. We spent the night, and the next day they started trying to recruit us as snitches. A captain or major, Ponomarenko, called me into his office and said, “Look, you have 5 years, you'll serve them, but to make life easier for you there, you need to cooperate with us. We will tell you what you have to do and what to tell us.” I categorically refused, I said that my heart and soul wouldn't allow it, I couldn't be that kind of person. I knew they wanted to make me a *seksot* (informer). He didn't say anything, and I was taken back to my cell. The next day he called me in again, and for two days he tried to persuade me to work for them. But they didn't succeed, because I'm not capable of such a thing, it's just horrifying. And then they left me alone.
We all waited for the transport. How long did we wait—15, 18 days? Volodymyr Marmus was the first to be taken. At the end of October, they took me and Petro Vynnychuk.
V. Ovsiyenko: And did anyone file an appeal?
M. Slobodyan: No. We didn't, and there was no appellate court hearing. One evening they put us in the “voronky” and brought us to the train station in Ternopil, where a group of soldiers with dogs was already waiting. They surrounded us, forming a corridor, and led us into a “stolypin” railcar and took us away. They took us to Kyiv. We were in Kyiv for about two weeks, or maybe more than a week. Then from Kyiv to Kharkiv. We were held at “Kholodna Hora” for over a week as well.
V. Ovsiyenko: And it's interesting, there at “Kholodna Hora,” they probably held you in the death row cells? The ones with bunks made of a solid sheet of iron...
M. Slobodyan: Uh-huh, and the walls were like what they call a “fur coat”—all bumpy. Yes, those were the cells for prisoners on death row. Then they put us on a train again, in that stolypin car, and took us to Mordovia, to the Ruzayevka station, then Potma, then zone number 19, in the settlement of Lesnoy, Tengushevsky Raion, ZhKh-385/19. Petro Vynnychuk and I arrived there at the end of November. Andriy Kravets was taken to zone 17, in the settlement of Ozerny, Zubovo-Polyansky Raion.
They bring us into the zone, and a stocky man approaches us: “Where are you from, boys?” he asks. Well, things immediately felt a bit brighter; we recognized our own language. It was, as we later found out, Mykola Konchakivsky. We were taken to the barrack where we were to live. Ukrainians came up to us, and we told them where we were from and why we ended up there. Such fine men, our boys, former UPA soldiers who had already served 18, 20, more than 20 years in prisons. Besides Konchakivsky, there was Mykhailo Zhurakivsky—an older man, Dmytro Syniak, Ivan Myron, Romko Semeniuk, Father Denys Lukashevych (I used to give him massages, he asked me to, an old man), Lyubomyr Starosolsky.
V. Ovsiyenko: He wasn't an old man! He was imprisoned at 18, also for a flag, for 2 years.
M. Slobodyan: So he was young. From the younger generation, there were Kuzma Matviyuk from Uman, Hryts Makoviychuk from Kremenchuk, Ihor Kravtsiv from Kharkiv, Lyubomyr Starosolsky from Stebnyk, Zoryan Popadyuk from Sambir, and soon they brought Vasyl Ovsiyenko from the Kyiv region, then Yaromyr Mykytko from Sambir* (*b. 1953, imprisoned in 1973 under Art. 62, Part 1 for 5 years).
V. Ovsiyenko: Mykytko was brought to us a little later. Mykytko was in the 17th, and when his accomplice Zoryan Popadyuk was sent to the 17th, he was transferred to us in the 19th.
V. Marmus: And then they transferred Mykytko to the Urals, to the 37th. He said he was Popadyuk's accomplice. I found out that the older patriots weren't so numerous in the 19th. There were more of them in the Urals. They were transferred there from Mordovia in 1972.
M. Slobodyan: After that, they took us to the barracks, showed us our bunks. About two hours later, we were taken to the commandant's office. The camp warden* (*Captain Pikulin. - V.O.) and the zone's doctor* (*Seksyasev. - V.O.) were sitting there. The doctor said about me that this one would go work in the boiler room, and about Petro Vynnychuk he said that he would go work in the cutting workshop at the sawmill, cutting boards. This was in the evening.
The next morning, they gave us clothes, we changed, and they took us to the work zone. I was shown how to work the boilers. I worked on the same shift as Dmytro Syniak, an insurgent (he's deceased now). He showed me what to do, as there were two boilers, one was a steam boiler—it had to produce steam for the workshops to heat glue, and the other was to maintain the temperature in the workshops during the winter.
After some time, I was transferred to the drying workshop. There, we had to take short boards from the cutting workshop, stack them on trolleys, and take them into the drying chambers to be dried, and then deliver them to the workshops where they were glued together to make boxes for clocks—cases. We worked in shifts.
Both at work and in the living area, we socialized with our guys from Ukraine. There were plenty of our boys there with whom you could speak frankly. Such conversations in the zone were called “tusovky”—we would walk shoulder-to-shoulder, telling each other things—and that's how time passed.
There was a canteen where they served all kinds of kasha—barley, wheat. Just scraps. And the bread was such that you could mold it into little balls. With that, a thimbleful of oil, not even fried. You go up with your bowl. You had to have your own spoon. They gave us fish, herring, but who knows how long it had been sitting in warehouses or stores. The fish was sometimes half-rotten and so salty it was impossible to eat. The boys really ruined their stomachs with it, but you had to eat a piece or two just to survive, to be able to walk a little.
They kept me there from November 1973 until the beginning of 1975. Sometime in August 1975, they told us from the 19th zone to get our things ready, that a train was already waiting near the zone. They put us into stolypin cars and took us away, but we didn't know where we were going. A few days later, we arrived in Perm Oblast. At night, they transported us from the “stolypins” in “voronky” with a convoy to zone No. 37. It had just been built. A new zone. They brought everyone into a building where there was nothing inside, just walls. They gathered everyone, held us, and then moved us to a building where bunks were already set up. They brought some girls who had cooked soup, and on the tables were bowls with sliced bread. It was as if they had arranged a cheerful welcome for us, as if they were being very kind to us. We understood perfectly well that they were trying to ingratiate themselves. We had dinner and were assigned to bunks. The bunks were two-tiered. We slept there for the rest of the night.
The next morning—reveille, and we were assigned to our places. That new building where they had first taken us at night turned out to be a workshop where there were supposed to be machines—for metalworking, grinding, lathing. They brought in those machines, and we had to install them on concrete so we could start working on them. We were assigned to different jobs.
I remember when we arrived, there was very deep snow. They assigned a special group of people to clear a path from the residential building to the work building. This was in 1975, in November, I think I remember that because it was in November that my mother died—they wrote me a letter from Rosokhach that she was gone. For some reason, the letter was delayed—it arrived two weeks after they wrote it. For some reason, they spent a very long time censoring that letter.
My prison term in the strict-regime camp was supposed to end in March 1976. Everyone knows their day, and when it approaches, you start counting down—a week left, three days, two days. The day arrives. They even called me to the commandant's office a day early and told me to get my things. My boys—Volodymyr Marmus, Mykola Marmus, Petro Vynnychuk, Andriy Kravets, Volodymyr Senkiv were there—it was commissary day, so they bought me a few things for the road. They took me to the commandant's office, held me for three or four hours, put me in a stolypin car, and took me away.
They took me to Tomsk. I sat in a transit prison in Tomsk for several days. Three militiamen, armed with automatic rifles, took me from there and put me in a car. I don't know where or how they were taking me, but we had to cross the Ob River. They brought me to Krivosheinsky Raion, the village of Nikolsk, Tomsk Oblast—a settlement right on the Ob River. My case file was transported with me, but I didn't see it, because the file—my verdict and everything else—was handed over to these militiamen. They were also transporting another guy from Tomsk, who lived in this village of Nikolsk. He had robbed a store or something there. On the Ob River, one militiaman started asking me what I was in for, and said, “I should shoot you right now, throw you in this Ob River—and no one would ever know.” I just shrugged my shoulders—what could I say, being alone and so far away? I didn't argue, because it wouldn't have done any good.
They brought me to Krivosheino—that's the raion center. They locked me in a KPZ* (*Kamera predvaritelnogo zaklyucheniya [Pre-trial detention cell]. - V.O.). It was already dark when they brought me. I sat there all night. They threw someone else in with me. The light was very dim, I couldn't make him out, what he was, but he was a man. He started telling me tall tales, that he had shot his wife, and what would happen to him, and where was I from, what was I in for? I didn't tell him what I was in for. I said it was under Article 62. But for them, Article 62 means alcoholism, or so they think.
P. Vynnychuk: They really loved that article!
V. Ovsiyenko: Article 62 of the Russian code is the analog of our 14th: compulsory treatment for alcoholism. It was enough to have committed a crime while drunk or to have testimony in the case that you drank. It was given in addition to the main article. In the zone, they use it to torture you further. I saw this in zone 55 in Vilnyansk, Zaporizhzhia Oblast. Those zeks walk around green, their guts torn out from that “treatment.” And it's not even necessary anymore: by the time the investigation and trial are over, months have passed. His delirium tremens and alcoholism are long gone.
M. Slobodyan: I mostly kept quiet. They opened the door and took him away from me. In the morning, the chief of the militia came and they took me to him. I had a wooden suitcase with me—the boys in the zone had given it to me for the road. It had some old rags in it—what could I be carrying? But at least I had something to put a few things in. He said that from today I was being released from imprisonment and transferred to exile, but I had to check in with the militia every 10 days.
He called over a sort of commandant and said, pointing to me, “Here are his documents, assign him to some work, in some village, because we don't need to keep him here.” As it turned out, Volodymyr Vasylyk was serving his exile there in Krivosheino, also under Article 62.
The commandant sent me to the village of Nikolsk—it's about 180 kilometers from Krivosheino. He says, “There will be trucks going to that village today, I'll call, you can go.” I say, I don't know the town, where should I go? He told someone to give me a ride to that organization—a PMK, or something like that. I went there, and sure enough, trucks were getting ready to leave. One driver started asking me questions. He spoke Russian, I spoke Ukrainian. I was curious if there were any Ukrainians here. He says that there's a smithy here, and a blacksmith named Volodymyr Vasylyk works there, we're not leaving yet, go over there. I went—he wasn't there. The driver said he'll be back soon, he went for lunch a while ago, he lives nearby. And indeed, after a little while he says, “Here he comes.”
I walk up and say, “Good day.” He looks at me: “Good day. Where are you from?” I say, “From Ternopil Oblast. And you?” “From Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast.” So we got acquainted, but there wasn't much time to talk, because the trucks were already leaving. He says, “What do you have in that little package?” “Nothing—just a rusk left from the journey here.” He ran home, brought back a piece of salo, about half a kilogram, but there was no bread at his house or in the store, so he bought some sweet gingerbread cookies for 9 kopecks. I told him where they were sending me. He says, “Don't worry, I'll come visit you sometime, or you'll visit me—we'll see each other anyway.”
They took me halfway, but the road was impassable beyond that, because you had to go through forests and swamps. It was spring, and the trucks didn't dare to go on, because they could get stuck in that swamp and sit there for a long time. So they returned to Krivosheino. And I went with them, because how would I know how to get to Nikolsk through the taiga? I came back, and the commandant says, “What are you going to do? Go to Volodymyr, to Vasylyk.” So I went. He was happy to see me, and his wife was there too. He had gotten 2 years of imprisonment and 2 of exile for anti-Soviet activity.
V. Marmus: He stood up to defend a cross.
M. Slobodyan: He was thin, but very steadfast. On May 1st in Krivosheino, there was a demonstration. He took a bottle, broke it, tore his shirt, and cut his chest with the shards. Later I asked him, “Volodymyr, what did that accomplish?” He said, “Look how they're enjoying all this, and I at least disrupted their rally, so it wouldn't be so cheerful for them.” For that, they gave him an additional two years. I was at that trial, because his wife sent a message to me in Nikolsk through a Romani paramedic.
Vasylyk's wife was a doctor at the polyclinic. She helped me out a lot one time. It was very cold, down to 50 degrees below zero, it was hard to get to work, you couldn't breathe because there wasn't enough oxygen. I went to her and said, “Mariika, here's the thing: how could I get a little rest?” She says that we can only do it through the paramedic who works in Nikolsk. “How's that?” “I'll call her, and you go to her, she'll be aware of the situation, she'll do something.”
Two days later, I went to the medical station in Nikolsk, the paramedic asked for my last name and said, “I'm giving you a referral to the raion polyclinic, says you have a cold, that there's something wrong with your lungs and stomach.” I went to the office and said, this is the situation, I have a referral, I'm sick, I need to go to the raion polyclinic to get checked. The foreman I worked for said that nothing would happen today, maybe a truck will be going tomorrow, and you can go. And the frosts were very severe, it was very hard there.
I went to the polyclinic, met with Mariika, and she took a sample of my gastric juice. It showed negative results, and they admitted me to the hospital. I was there for three weeks. They put one of the militiamen who had transported me from Tomsk in there. He recognized me. But I hadn't told anyone at the hospital who I was—just that I was from Nikolsk, that's all. And he told the doctor that I was an “izmennik Rodiny” (traitor to the Motherland). That militiaman came up to me and said, “You know, I was thinking that you... But you're a traitor to the Motherland, I know all about you.” A few days later, they discharged me from the hospital. I returned to Nikolsk and continued to work on the farm. There was no other work there, only on the farm. Everyone kept asking, “What for?” I told them it was for the 62nd. They said there were a lot of people like that now, for alcoholism. I didn't explain further.
Comment: If only you had said it was the 70th under the Russian Code!
M. Slobodyan: But by the second year, they all knew and looked at me sideways. They housed me in a dormitory—a dilapidated house, no stove, nothing. I didn't want to live there and told the foreman, maybe I could find an apartment? He said there's an old granny there. I said I would help her—do some repairs, chop firewood. He took me there, I settled in with that granny and lived there for those two years.
I used to travel to check in at the urban-type settlement called Krasny Yar, across the Ob on the other bank, but a bit downstream. I had to be away for a whole day, but I had to work, I was feeding a group of cows. So the director of the sovkhoz called and said there was no one to replace me. So I started checking in once a month.
Then they called me to Krivosheino and told me my term was ending, and gave me my passport. I really didn't want to take it, but I had to. I got on a “Raketa” hydrofoil and sailed along the Ob to Tomsk. From there, I made my way home.
Here, in Chortkiv, I also had to go to the militia to check in.
P. Vynnychuk: Forgive me for interrupting, but I'll remind you that when you returned to the village in early 1978, some younger boys again smashed the monument to the communist idol.
M. Slobodyan: Yes, that monument across the river, the very same one we had disturbed. As if in honor of my return. The KGB was driving around again, had work to do, searching.
V. Ovsiyenko: And did they find those boys?
P. Vynnychuk: They found them.
V. Ovsiyenko: And were they also tried?
V. Marmus: By then, the approach was different.
M. Slobodyan: They were still too young. There are many people here who still say, “Why didn't you tell us? If you had told us, we would have gone with you too.” But they only say that now, after we've been released. They say if I had put up a notice, many would have joined the organization and done something.
When I came home, my father and sister met me, as my mother was no longer alive. I rested at home for a bit, and then I got a job at the kolkhoz to earn a living. I worked at the kolkhoz, and when the administrative supervision was lifted after a year, I started going for seasonal work in Sumy Oblast. We always go for 3-4 months, earn a little money and some grain to live on.
After my release, I married Olha, née Svidzynska. We already had a son, Vasyl. He had just turned 5. He was born on January 27, 1973, five days after we hung the flags and put up the leaflets in Chortkiv. Olha and I got married, and in 1982 our son Andriy was born, two years later, in 1984, our daughter Mariika, and in 1986, Mykhailo. Vasyl has already served in the army, gotten married, and now has two children. So I'm a grandfather now, I have two grandchildren. Andriy finished secondary school and is working. It's very difficult to find work now, so he helps around the house. Mariika and Mykhailo are still in school—Mariika is in the 10th grade, and Mykhailo is in the 7th.
In 1989, the “Memorial” society was founded.
V. Marmus: Why do you say it was founded? We were the ones who founded it!
M. Slobodyan: We founded it. I joined the Coordinating Council of “Memorial.” It was in Chortkiv, in the park. We were supposed to discuss our issues, but the Chortkiv militia didn't let us finish. A lot of them showed up and wouldn't let us speak. So we moved to another place and founded “Memorial” anyway. Then I became a member of the branch of the People's Movement of Ukraine, a member of the Ukrainian Republican Party, and now I'm in the Republican Christian Party.
V. Ovsiyenko: Are you working somewhere, do you have your own farm?
M. Slobodyan: I live with my children, I keep a cow, a piglet, chickens. My wife used to work at the kolkhoz, but now she's retired. We have our own land now, we grow potatoes, sow barley, cucumbers, tomatoes. We're not living lavishly, but we have no reason to complain or cry. If only our Ukraine can get out of this crisis, then maybe things will be a bit more cheerful, easier. But for now, we have to live with what we have and hope for the best, and not listen to those who long for bread at 16 kopecks and cheap sausage, and say that now, supposedly, everything is expensive. But at least we can think and speak freely, and we are not afraid of anyone or anything. And we will have our sausage.
V. Ovsiyenko: Mr. Mykola, what about your rehabilitation status?
M. Slobodyan: I was rehabilitated. They gave me a certificate for benefits in the raion. I had a 50 percent discount on gas, electricity, and public transport. But then they canceled it, said the raion had no funds. But Volodymyr Marmus helped, so I have the benefits for gas now. But with electricity, I can't seem to get anywhere, although I need it, because the children go to school and need to read and write, and I need light for the farm. Maybe our raion officials will somehow restore these benefits.
V. Ovsiyenko: Thank you, Mr. Mykola.