Rosokhach village, April 3, 2000
V. Ovsiyenko: Here at the Vitiv family homestead, construction is underway, with many relatives taking part. Please, Mr. Petro, tell us about yourself—when you were born, about your family, and then—how you came to join the organization.
Petro Vitiv: I was born on July 15, 1956. I grew up in the village, herded cows, went to school, and in 1971, I finished the 8th grade. My father,
See also Interview with P. Vitiv, S. Vitiv, Rosokhach, M. Vinnychuk, V. Senkiv
Ivan Vitiv, born in 1916, fought in the Polish war in 1939, and in 1941 was drafted for the war again, but he returned. There were five of us children in the family. The oldest was Stepan, born in 1941, then Vasyl in 1943, then my sister Olha in 1946, and my sister Slavka (Yaroslava) in 1949. I am the youngest. By that time, they had all married, and I was left alone with our parents. My mother, born in 1924, was named Maria, maiden name Hrekh.
Stepan Vitiv: That’s a Polish surname.
P. Vitiv: Because my mother’s parents—her father was Polish, and her mother was Ukrainian. And my father is also Ukrainian.
We were friends with the Marmus brothers, because, first of all, we are also relatives: my father and the Marmus's father are first cousins. Although Volodymyr and Mykola were older, we were friends, we would go into the village for social events together, and when that organization started, we would meet in that storeroom of ours—the one we’re about to dismantle—and write leaflets there.
V. Ovsiyenko: And how did the idea to create an organization come about? Who did you hear it from?
P. Vitiv: First and foremost, it was Volodymyr Marmus. I communicated with him the most out of the group. We used to herd cows together, and later he worked in Lviv, but we kept in touch—like relatives, even though I was young compared to him. I was 16 at the time, but I was a big guy, so nobody thought I was 16; they took me for an older fellow.
V. Ovsiyenko: There were incidents even before the flags were raised—the monument being damaged, the red flags torn down. Did you take part in that?
P. Vitiv: When they were tearing down the flags before those October Revolution holidays, I wasn’t there, but the monument—Volodymyr Senkiv and I smashed it. And then we hung up the flags and leaflets. When they arrested all of us—first Stepan Sapeliak, and then Volodymyr Marmus, Mykola Slobodyan, and after them Mykola Marmus, Petro Vinnychuk, and Andriy Kravets—they took me too. I don’t remember the date* (*April 11.—V.O.).
S. Vitiv: That was in the spring of 1973. I was building my house then, and you were helping me.
P. Vitiv: They took me from my home at dawn. We were still asleep; my father and mother were there. They came by car and knocked on the door. “Who is it? What do you want?” They showed me a paper. At the time, I didn’t understand what kind of paper it was. They conducted a search, went through the buildings, and said they were taking me as a participant in the hanging of the flags. My mom burst into tears... They searched everything. I had some rifle cartridges, but they didn’t find them.
They took me to Chortkiv. In Chortkiv, they held me until the evening. I denied everything, saying I knew nothing, that they were older guys and I wasn’t with them, that I didn’t know anything. They held me until the evening, and then—into a car and off to Ternopil. In Ternopil, they held me until the morning. Then they put the pressure on me, saying something like, “What are you doing, kid, when it’s written here in black and white that you were there, and there, and there—why are you denying it?”
They held me under arrest for a week and then released me to go home after I signed a pledge not to leave town. They said they wouldn’t summon me until the trial. But then, an official from the village council comes and brings a summons to appear at the KGB at a specific time. So, off I went. And there, they got on my case about not having said anything about Senkiv yet. They held me until about noon and then let me go for an hour. But whether they did that on purpose, I don’t know. I was walking to the train station, thinking about buying a pastry, when suddenly, walking toward me, was Volodymyr Senkiv in his military uniform. So I go, “Hey, Volodia!” and crossed the street to him. And he says, “What are you doing here?” “What are *you* doing here?” “Well, they summoned me for something, I don’t know what for.” I say, “This is a pretty bad business...” Although he wasn’t with us back on January 21, when we were hanging the flags, because he was already serving in the army.
We talked for maybe five minutes when, all of a sudden, from the other side of the street, some KGB agents appeared and grabbed me by the collar, asking what I had talked to him about. I said, nothing really, just that such-and-such was happening... I never saw him again. No matter how many times I was summoned to Ternopil, there was never any face-to-face confrontation; I only saw them all again at the trial.
Then they drafted me into the army, as usual.
V. Ovsiyenko: Wait, at the trial you testified as a witness. But didn’t the court issue a separate ruling regarding you? And tell me this: as a 16-year-old boy, how did you take the arrest, the trial? Were you afraid? Were you aware of what you were getting into by participating in the organization? After all, you must have known there would be consequences.
P. Vitiv: At first, I wasn’t afraid; on the contrary, I was proud to have been accepted into such an organization, to be with the older guys. But after that, of course, there was fear. And later, too. After the others were convicted, people in the village said that I must have been the one who snitched on them—why else were they sentenced, and I wasn’t in prison? You know how awful it is to hear something like that, when people, even older folks, say it right to your face: “Oh, you informed on them. When they get out, they’ll get you.” I would say, “What could they do to me? It had nothing to do with me.” The investigator said that if I had, say, beaten someone up, they would have sent me to a labor colony. I also remember him saying that if I had been an adult, I would have gotten from 7 to 9 years. Because I participated in everything and even, being the youngest, climbed up to hang those flags in Chortkiv.
V. Ovsiyenko: And tell us, how did you do it?
P. Vitiv: We discussed beforehand how best to do it. We thought about using a car—Marmus had a friend who drove one, and we thought he could give us a ride. But the winter was fierce, so we decided to go on foot. So we went through the forest, across Berdo, to Chortkiv, and there we started from the upper part of the town, putting up leaflets and then the flags. Marmus was hanging one flag on the movie theater, while Mykola and I stood watch. People were just coming out of the movie. It was a harsh winter—so windy and snowy, and Mykola and I stood there watching him hang it and climb down, waiting for him. Some of the people who came out of the cinema noticed the flag and looked around, but no one stopped; they practically all ran away.
V. Ovsiyenko: So as not to be witnesses!
P. Vitiv: Well, they got scared and quickly walked away. Then we went to the forestry office, and then the pedagogical college, and that was about it, because it was on our way home. And we went home again, through the forest. Of course, no one at home knew where I had been—I just said I was in the village with the other guys. They knew nothing at home until the KGB arrived.
After everyone was sentenced, I stayed at home. I even went to work with some men—from our village, people would go to the eastern oblasts for work—you had to make a living somehow. But they still tormented me: they constantly harassed me, constantly summoned me to the KGB. They wanted to know if I was communicating or corresponding with the guys; they wanted to find out something more.
Then I finished driving school and was drafted into the army. I served first in Bila Tserkva, and then two weeks later, they sent me to Zhytomyr. This was from 1974-76. In the army, everything was quiet for about half a year. But then I was summoned to the “osoby otdel” [Special Department]. After I had served for a year and a half, they sent me to Poltava. I was already a driver and drove the commander there; it was a signals battalion. Sometimes they’d summon me to that “osoby otdel,” but I wasn’t supposed to admit it to the commander. But I drove him every day, so I told him I didn’t know what they wanted. And then about two weeks later, he says, “They’re urgently demanding you be sent to Poltava.” I said I didn’t know why or what for. There was a major there, a gray-haired man; I’d seen him maybe twice, he was the one who summoned me. He and a praporshchyk [warrant officer] brought me to the station, I got on the train and went to Poltava.
I arrive in Poltava—for a week, nobody approaches me, and I don’t approach anyone. The commander says they don’t need any more soldiers, and besides, he says, you’ve already served a year and a half, what are you doing here? I wandered around like that for almost a week, I tell you. There were some guys from the Lviv oblast, and I told them: “Guys, I’m going with you to the vehicle pool, maybe they’ll give me a truck or some work there.” Because I don’t know what to do, nobody gives me any duty assignments. When they go to the mess hall, I go with them, because I need to eat. Then, another couple of days pass, and the same major who was in Zhytomyr shows up and says: “Go into that building over there at such-and-such a time.” I went in the late afternoon. He asks: “Are you communicating with those guys from the Lviv oblast?” “Yes, I am, because we speak the same language.” Because the language there is a bit different. “Keep an eye on them, maybe you’ll find something out.” But in fact, there was nothing. Before I arrived, when they were painting the barracks, one of them had said it should be painted blue and yellow—that’s all. Those guys had already been discharged.
I had to serve out my remaining six months in Poltava.
When I came home from the army, I immediately started working as a driver. They again summoned both me and my wife to the KGB in Chortkiv, wanting us to cooperate with them somehow, to find things out for them. I always said that I wasn’t in contact with anyone, that I didn’t know anything, that I didn’t talk to anyone.
While I was still serving, they let me go home on leave, and that’s when I married Pavlyna Synyshyn; we had a small party. So by the time I came back from the army, my daughter Maria, named after my mother, was already born, in 1975. In 1977, my second daughter, Ivanka, was born. In 1979, my son Volodymyr; he just got out of the army a year ago. I named him in honor of Volodymyr Marmus, because we had no one named Volodymyr in our family. My wife wanted to name him Anton, but I said he would be Volodymyr.
V. Ovsiyenko: And when those iron shackles finally fell, did you participate in the creation of civic organizations, such as Memorial, Rukh, the UGS [Ukrainian Helsinki Group], or the URP [Ukrainian Republican Party]?
P. Vitiv: I was involved a little with the guys in the URP, but not in Rukh or Memorial. It’s only now that we communicate more. Back then, there was never any time, because where I live now, with my in-laws, I rebuilt the whole property, because everything was old and falling apart. My wife and mother-in-law are there, but my father-in-law died a long time ago. There was no money, so I worked as a driver at the kolkhoz for a while, and otherwise I’d go away for seasonal work. I rebuilt a few things there, and now here, at my brother Stepan’s place, something has to be done, because it’s also falling apart.
My father died a year ago, right on Easter Sunday, April 13. I even went to church in the morning, because we had been sitting with him all night. My wife had gone an hour earlier. Dad told me I should go too, that maybe I wouldn’t be long, but by the time I left for church, Dad had passed away; only Mom was with him. For the anniversary of his death, I am making a donation for a church service.
V. Ovsiyenko: And you, Stepan, as the older brother, how did you perceive this whole affair? What was the talk in the village?
Stepan Vitiv: I was building my house in 1973. Petro was still young, but he was helping me with the house—pouring the foundation and whatnot. Then they came and took him away, either to Chortkiv or Ternopil. And I had some furniture, a wardrobe, in our father’s house, because I was building my own. They come and say, “Come and open up your furniture there, whatever you have, we need to take a look.” And he shows me a warrant giving him the right to search. I came, opened it, and they looked. To be fair, they weren’t abusive: whatever they took out, they put back in its place; they didn’t just toss things around maliciously or anything. But they looked through everything, whatever clothes or papers were there—they looked through it all and put it back piece by piece. “And what do you know about your brother?” I say, “What do I know? Nothing. He’s still young, 16 years old, what could he understand about such things?” “Oh, they understand some things. We see you’re busy with construction, so you don’t have time. But maybe you could tell us if they had any weapons or leaflets?” I say, “I saw nothing and I know nothing.” “And the mother doesn’t know, and the father doesn’t know?” I say, “Well, they’re alive, let them tell you.”
P. Vitiv: And they summoned our parents to Chortkiv too, both Mom and Dad.
V. Ovsiyenko: And you, Petro, you went to the forest with a weapon and learned to shoot. Did you enjoy that?
P. Vitiv: Yes, I liked it. They had already told my father that I had a *vtynok* [sawed-off rifle]. A *vtynok* is a carbine, but sawed-off. They brought me from Ternopil in a “bobykom” [UAZ-469 police van]; it was muddy, there’s a place called Hrabska, and I kept it there in a ditch, along with the cartridges. But for some reason, I had given the cartridges to my brother.
S. Vitiv: I had taken everything to my place and buried it by the stream, under a rock.
P. Vitiv: But they forced me to show them the *vtynok*. They drove me there in such a way that fewer people would see. We went down a path from the hill, I climbed into the ditch, and they all pulled out their pistols and lay down. They thought I might start shooting, but there were no cartridges there, only the sawed-off rifle itself. “Where are the cartridges?” And I couldn’t say that I had given them to my brother. I said that I had poured them into the stream, because there’s a stream there with running water. They crawled around, searching and searching, but how could they find them if they weren’t there? So I didn’t give them those cartridges; Stepan says he buried them somewhere. And they took the sawed-off rifle—and took me back to Ternopil one more time.
V. Ovsiyenko: And how did your parents react to this? Here, the memory of the armed struggle was still fresh, so perhaps it wasn’t unexpected for them that their son would also follow that path?
P. Vitiv: No, no, no one had anything against it.
V. Ovsiyenko: Your parents didn’t reproach you?
S. Vitiv: No, not to anyone—not to me, not to my brother, not to our sisters.
P. Vitiv: Neither Dad nor Mom ever reproached me for getting involved...
V. Ovsiyenko: So it was taken as a given, that one must resist the occupiers?
P. Vitiv: Yes, it was something that had to be done—and that’s all. And back in the day, our father and Marmus’s father were always together.
V. Ovsiyenko: What, they took part in the underground movement?
S. Vitiv: They didn’t participate directly, but they helped. If weapons or something needed to be transported, Dad had a horse, and so did Vasyl Marmus, our uncle. They’d arrive and say, “Come on, let’s go.” And Dad had a good horse, and they had to transport things to the next village, or the one after that, staying up all night. One night, then a second. But a man has to sleep sometime! And at home, there are children, and tomorrow you have to go plow, or sow, or weed, but they come and won’t let you sleep, because it has to be transported at night; you can’t do it during the day. Dad said, “I’m not going anymore, boys, I can’t do it. Do what you want, shoot me or whatever. Take the horse, take the wagon, but I’m not going anymore.” And he didn’t go anymore; they left him alone. They took someone else, but they didn’t come to Dad anymore.
And then they also took grandfather’s greatcoat, took his boots. It was a bit of an unpleasant business, as they say. That’s how the story went...
V. Ovsiyenko: And what did they say in the village about what happened in Chortkiv in 1973? What kind of reputation did it get?
P. Vitiv: There were all kinds of people: most praised it: “Oh, look what they did!”
S. Vitiv: And others said that all of them should be locked up because, they said, they had caused trouble in the village, brought misfortune upon the village.
P. Vitiv: I know many guys who would have gone too, if only someone had asked them.
V. Ovsiyenko: Thank you for your story.
S. Vitiv: This is all, as they say, from the heart. It was what it was.
* * *
V. Ovsiyenko: You must be Petro’s mother?
Maria Vitiv: Yes, yes. Maria Petrivna Vitiv. I was born in ’24.
V. Ovsiyenko: I want to ask you about the 1973 case. How did you endure your son’s arrest? Was it a surprise to you?
M.P. Vitiv: I cried so much... It was a surprise. You know, he didn’t tell his mother what they had done. Until they came. We were asleep—he, my husband, and I. The other children were already married. Suddenly at dawn, a loud bang on the door: “We are conducting a search of your premises.” And they went over there, to the other cottage, where Stepan’s locked wardrobe was. So they led me at gunpoint to my son’s house, so he would come and unlock the wardrobe.
And after that, on Good Friday, they held me for five hours in Chortkiv: “Tell us, what did your son tell you?” I said, “When your child goes to the movies, does he tell you anything? Well, my son went to the movies and didn’t tell me anything either.” Then they went on: “And do you know who went to smash the monument?” “No,” I say, “I know nothing of the sort. I’m at home, with two small grandchildren—I know nothing.” They held my husband for 20 minutes, and me for five hours, on Good Friday. Well, it was, “Tell us, tell us, tell us, tell us”—he badgered me so much, you know, that I couldn’t take it anymore. I say, “You know what, what do you want? Go ahead and kill me—what can I know when I know nothing?” “And you didn’t know they went to hang flags?” I say, “No, nobody told me that. How could I have known?”
V. Ovsiyenko: And after Petro was released and the trial took place, did the KGB agents come to you or summon you?
M.P. Vitiv: No, no. They dragged Petro around, but they didn’t bother us anymore. They kept taking him to Ternopil, so I cried my eyes out—I didn’t know if they would release him. If he had been 18, they would have convicted him, but he was 16.
V. Ovsiyenko: Here, in your region, there were battles and insurgents not long before that, so these boys followed the same path as their fathers. Now we have an independent Ukraine. But back then, we lived in constant fear.
M.P. Vitiv: That’s what I’m saying—no, under the Muscovites, it was terrible, there were no rights. But nowadays, even children go to church, and no one is afraid anymore. But we survived it, I survived it... Because, you know, he was just a young lad... Would you like some breakfast?
V. Ovsiyenko: Thank you, we’ve already had breakfast, and now we will go see Mykola Slobodyan. We’ve already visited everyone here, and we still need to go to Borshchiv to see Volodymyr Senkiv.
Published in:
Lads from the Fiery Furnace / Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group. Compiled by V.V. Ovsiyenko. – Kharkiv: Folio, 2003. – pp. 104–110.
Photograph:
Vitiv1 Petro VITIV in his youth.
Photos by V. Ovsiyenko:
Vitiv Film roll 9770, frame 35. April 3, 2000. Rosokhach village. Petro VITIV.
Vitiv2 Film roll 9770, frame 36. April 3, 2000. Rosokhach village. Pavlyna—Petro’s wife, Petro Vitiv, his mother Maria, and his brother Stepan.
