ANTONIV, MARIIA MYKHAILIVNA

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Interview with Semen Fedorovych Skalych and Mariia Mykhailivna Antoniv

With corrections by Semen Skalych, added in February 2002.

V.V. Ovsienko: On January 25, 2000, in the city of Stryi, Lviv Oblast, in the home of Mariia Mykhailivna Antoniv, Grandpa Semen the pokutnyk is speaking with Vasyl Ovsienko. Mariia Antoniv and her son, Volodymyr, are also participating in the conversation.

S.F. Skalych: Lord God, bless us! I am Semen Fedorovych Skalych, born on October 9, 1920, in the village of Dovhe, the hamlet of Roven, Drohobych County. There were ten of us children, and my parents were poor. We all had to work as hired laborers. After finishing four grades, I also went to work as a hired hand.

I worked for various masters for three years, and in the fourth year, I was hired at a forestry, 18 kilometers from my home. On my way home in 1937—I was going to see my father, as my mother was no longer alive—I caught a severe cold on the road because I was lightly dressed, and I developed an inflammation of the joints in my right leg. They brought me home from my master’s on February 10, 1937. I was bedridden until 1939—my leg was festering. In 1939, the viyt, Fedor Krychak, at the community’s expense, sent me, Semen, to a hospital in Drohobych. I was supposed to be treated for two years for tuberculosis of the bone in my right leg.

In 1939, the German-Polish war broke out. The hospital was filled with wounded soldiers, so my treatment was discontinued and I was only treated at home. While walking on crutches in 1941, I fell and broke my left arm at the shoulder. The arm festered for two months until a bone fragment came out. The arm healed without medical treatment, with the help of nettles (to kill the microbes).

I recovered from my illness in the summer of 1942, so I could walk with the help of a single cane. In the fall of 1942, I was appointed secretary of the UET—the Ukrainian Educational Society, and for two and a half years during the German occupation, I worked in the reading hall with the youth, not on church matters, but on civil matters, for the young people. I didn’t dance, because I was a cripple—I organized festivals, plays, and read reports.

The Bolsheviks came. They didn't draft me into the army. I was forced to work in the village council. From the village council, in February 1945, they sent me to Pidbuzh, to the district center—to register as the village council secretary. I refused there, on the grounds that I was illiterate. But the head of the village council, Ivan Kostiv, spoke with the director of the cooperative, and he enrolled me in a one-year trade and cooperative school. From March 1945, I studied to be a cooperative bookkeeper in Drohobych. I got this knowledge of bookkeeping because when I was sick, I had studied grammar, mathematics, and other subjects. And I was lucky on the entrance exam. I studied very diligently, despite the hunger and poverty. Because I wanted to have a talent, since I was a cripple.

In the fall of 1945, I was poorly dressed, and my leg became inflamed again, so I went to the hospital. I stayed in Drohobych for five weeks. A KGB major, Mukhachov, came and arrested me. On December 3, 1945, my interrogation began—it was harsh, very harsh. The charge was that I had met the school principal, Vasyl Znachkivsky, at the school, and he had given me identification papers for underground fighters. At the same time, I also had an underground pamphlet, “An Appeal to the Population of the Western Oblasts of Ukraine.” When I went to the hospital, I didn’t trust my friends, so I hid it in the lining of the stairs, under a metal plate. While I was in the hospital, there were repairs, and the pamphlet was found. The principal was already a communist by that time. So the KGB major, Mukhachov, came, arrested me, and for that, I was given 10 years—for the blank forms for forging school documents and for the pamphlet “An Appeal to the Population of the Western Oblasts of Ukraine.”

The investigation was harsh not only for me but for all the prisoners back then. We were sent to the Bryhidky prison, then to Lviv. We, the disabled, were kept in the courtyard for two months while they prepared us for transit, and then we were taken to Kazakhstan.

It was very difficult on the train. They transported us for a whole month. I was sick, and others were even dying. We were robbed blind then. Because priests, directors of cooperatives, and school principals were also on the train, dressed in the Polish style—and thieves robbed them. The thieves were in the same wagon—and they passed the stolen goods through the window to the guards on the roof.

I spent two weeks in Karabas—it was a transit camp near Karaganda. We were distributed to different points. At first, we were in common-criminal camps with thieves, and they robbed us of everything, down to the last thread.

One prisoner, a Banderite, managed to get acquainted with a doctor—not in Karabas, not in Dolynka, but in another camp—and with that doctor's help, he escaped. He left the camp with documents stating that his term had ended and went back into the underground. He was wounded and caught again. And when they caught him, they found out he had been in prison! And how did he get out? Because of that, Moscow strictly separated political prisoners from common criminals, and we were transferred to a special political camp, 40 km south of Karaganda—the “Pishchanyi” special camp. There were 12,000 of us, all disabled.

V.V. Ovsienko: 12,000?!

S.F. Skalych: Yes, 2,000 women in a separate section and 10,000 men. They fenced off a hill. We quarried stone from that hill and built barracks on the flat ground—very hastily, because a communist revolution was happening in China, and they needed to resettle the Chinese here. Me, a cripple with bone tuberculosis, was also forced to work in the quarry, extracting stone slabs. I worked for four months, and then I categorically refused. They beat me, transferred me to Balkhash. They beat me in Balkhash, and the guard Rizanov beat me the hardest—on the head, in the chest, everywhere. They tormented me like that for a month, and then they opened an investigation and sentenced me to 5 years for camp sabotage—that made it 15 years, plus 10 of exile.

They sent me back to Spassk, and I didn’t work there for a couple of months. I got to know our priests, there were about twenty of them there, and I borrowed a Ukrainian Gospel from one old priest, Chekhut, which I read for the first time. I hadn't even finished reading the Gospel when the guards took it away.

I started a fight for this Gospel. I knocked on the doors of many offices fifty times. Finally, they gave me a firm refusal. Then I declared a 10-point protest: a hunger strike, a vow of silence, refusal to go to work, and refusal to move from one barrack to another. For two years, they dragged me around the zone; twenty times they grabbed me and threw me to the ground. Then they built a psychiatric hospital, and they transferred me there. I was there for three years. There, I was grabbed and thrown to the ground 60 times. They twisted my right arm there—and my left one was already broken. So now I was crippled in three parts of my body—my leg, my broken left arm, and my twisted right arm.

Stalin croaked, things changed, they started processing medical discharges. And they discharged me in 1955 as mentally ill. Two escorts brought me all the way home to Hirske-Dovhe in the Drohobych district.

There was terrible poverty at home, because my brother's leg had also been broken in the forest, our family land had been taken away, the kolkhoz paid nothing, and the family had to work. The poverty was immense. Besides, while my brother was in a German POW camp after fighting on the Bolshevik front, our ancestral thatched hut had rotted, and we had to build a new house. We built the house with our own hands, with great difficulty, great difficulty. We built it. In 1959, we finally moved into the new house.

I didn't join the kolkhoz. At the village council, they registered me as a madman. They tried to force me, but I myself no longer wanted to. They persecuted me for writing prayer books for children by hand. And the Bolsheviks cut off a piece of my brother’s homestead three times because I was writing prayer books for children. Some of those children benefited from them, and some didn't, because faith was already in decline then. So from 1955 to 1963, I wrote 60 prayer books—some up to 140 pages, others smaller. With my own ink, my own paper; someone would give me 3 rubles, but sometimes they didn't even pay for the ink. And I caused, so to speak, great persecution for my brother: they kept cutting off pieces of his homestead. We were severely persecuted—both as Banderites and because I had started writing prayer books for children.

In 1958, I was planing boards for the floor and strained my broken arm. And my broken arm swelled up with gangrene. I leave the cow I was grazing for my brother, leave my work, and go to the holy spring where the Mother of God and Christ the Lord appeared in His second coming, in the village of Serednie, Stanislav Oblast. I spent a couple of nights there, washing myself with that holy water and drinking that holy water.

V.V. Ovsienko: When did you first go there?

S.F. Skalych: Sometime around the end of July or beginning of August 1960.

V.V. Ovsienko: And who did you hear about it from?

S.F. Skalych: I didn't go to the subscribed, false-Orthodox priests—I went to Catholic priests: to Tsehelyk in Stryi, to Miahkyi in Drohobych. When they died, I started looking for others. In Stryi, I heard that the Mother of God had appeared in Serednie and that this Mother of God and Christ the Lord were already in their second coming. They said there was a spring there, and this spring healed people. That's why I went to this spring. I went there crying, but I returned with joy: my arm no longer hurt, and then it healed.

So, from July 1960, I became a disciple of the Second Coming of Christ the Lord and the Mother of God. In 1964, the Mother of God and Christ the Lord named us pokutnyky (penitents).

Every summer, I would travel to Serednie up to 10 times. My brother had no money—I never took a single kopek from him. I had to weave a basket or something to earn money. And just the journey itself cost 5 rubles—and what about food? Besides, there were also novenas, where you had to spend 9 days in prayer on that Holy Mountain. And what about food? So I was simply hungry, I didn't have a kopek—somehow I scrounged up a ruble to get to the Holy Mountain, a ruble for food, and another ruble to return. So, you know, I was happy if I had three rubles—that was enough for my journey. The family was not happy with my trips to the Holy Mountain.

Then a division occurred. They began to persecute my brother Mykola terribly because of me—especially my former school and shepherd friend, who was the blockhead at the village council: he intimidated my brother, and so my brother started to rail against me. I was forced to leave the house. In early May 1963, I had to move in with a widow, 11 years older than me, who had also accepted God's Truth. I stayed with her for 4 and a half years. I returned to my brother, then left him again. I had to leave my brother like that four times, until finally, in 1969, I joined her family and was taken in.

My brother and his family were very much against me, the village was very much against me—everyone was against both of us—against that widow and against me. I won’t repeat what that persecution was like, because it’s a lot to talk about, but somehow we endured it. All of Christ's disciples were persecuted, severely persecuted. Their cattle were taken away if they were grazing in the meadow. For some, they kept them for a whole year. They wrote petitions to Moscow, and Moscow forced them to return the cows. They beat us, tortured us on the Holy Mountain terribly, threw us into the river, threw us into trucks, drove us who knows where into the forests, into the fields; we walked on foot, and I, with my crippled legs, had to walk dozens of kilometers to the road. I was hungry, walked for kilometers, it was raining—we didn't have those plastic sheets yet to cover ourselves, our clothes were soaked. We would hold a novena, sleeping wet. Hungry, wet, catching colds—but we were zealous, very zealous. They beat us, beat us badly. They drove us to the district center, conducted searches, wrote protocols; we told them our exact addresses. Because of that, we received a decree from the Church not to give our addresses, but a single, common one: a pokutnyk, chosen by God, our Father is the Heavenly Father. Where were you born? In the house of the Lord. Where is that house? On the Holy Serednie Yasna Hora. How long have you been going there? God knows! That was the information for 500 questions and answers.

V.V. Ovsienko: Who beat you? The police or someone else?

S.F. Skalych: The Kalush police, the Voinyliv police; they brought in FZO students and soldiers.

Mariia Antoniv: They surrounded the Holy Mountain with barbed wire, wouldn't let us drink water, the military was stationed there...

S.F. Skalych: In 1965, there was a military post on the Holy Mountain for three days, and there was a sign saying it was a “forbidden zone.” No one could get through, and I couldn't get through on the first day. But on the second day, I managed to get through and even collected some holy water, I reached the spring. Later, the spring on the Holy Mountain was closed. They used a bulldozer to push soil onto the spring, and it ended up 2.5 meters underground. We didn't have holy water until 1989. But we still went to that holy place and prayed. They chased us at night, they chased us during the day, we were soaked in the rain... There weren't just dozens of us then, but hundreds—there were children, there were young people. We were poor, we had no money from anywhere because we had refused to work for the state, and we had no way to earn a living at home.

Why did we refuse state work? Because we began to observe religious holidays very fervently. And for that reason, we preferred not to work anywhere, so as not to violate the holy day. So for 4 years, young people wandered the mountains—in spring they gathered mushrooms, in the forest they gathered berries, ferns, and all sorts of things, and lived off that. And they helped the elderly. The city dwellers suffered the most, while those in the villages still had a garden and maybe a cow. When we got the name “pokutnyk,” in 1964 we all surrendered our passports, military books, all our documents. We were also persecuted greatly for this, but everyone was zealous. Some were even maimed, some were beaten and died—about six men.

About myself.

My brother Mykola died in the fall of 1976. My brother's daughter took her mother, the cow, and the property, and I was left alone in the house. I had no pension, no strength, no health—what was I to live on? I had to gather rosehips—true, they weren't very far, about half a kilometer or a little more. I gathered the rosehips, dried them on the stove, and our pokutnyk boys would take them to Lviv and bring me money for them. With that money, I could survive and I could go to the Holy Mountain, because it was already a sin not to.

I lived like that for three years. I had to prepare my own firewood, I had to do everything myself.

In my village, they started building a dam on the Stryi River. They came to resettle the villagers. They paid my sister-in-law, the widow of my deceased brother Mykola, for the house, and I had to move out. But the Lord directed things differently. On January 30, 1980, KGB agents came from Drohobych and arrested me. After I was gone, my sister-in-law dismantled the house, moved it to Synovydne, and set it up in her garden where she lived, for her granddaughter.

I was arrested for the second time on January 30, 1980, unexpectedly. The arrest was completely unexpected and I was innocent.

There were four pokutnyky in Drohobych, all old. Three had died, one of them a nun, Yuliia Vesela, and an old woman, Mariia Heigel, was left. She had a lodger from near Sambir, a 26-year-old named Mariia Kuts, who worked in a bread shop. We told her it was not right for us to keep outsiders, non-pokutnyky. “But I’m poor, and it’s a blessing that she pays me ten rubles a month for rent.” And this Mariia Kuts had a boyfriend. The boyfriend left her, so she lost her mind. So, she wandered through the snow, and during the Epiphany holidays in 1980, she went into the Tysmenytsia, the river in Drohobych, still wearing her boots, and got her feet wet and frostbitten. She came home, and three of our pokutnyk women from Stryi were at the old woman's place for the Epiphany holiday. Our women helped her take off those frozen boots, and then they left for home because it was getting dark. Mariia Kuts was taken to the hospital, and in the hospital, she said that Semen had baptized her in the Tysmenytsia River.

The KGB agents came for me on January 30 and conducted a search. I knew nothing about it. They took a full briefcase of my papers. No one knew, not even my family knew, that I wrote poetry—they knew I wrote prayers and thought I was still writing prayers, but I had started writing poems. So, they took 700 poems. Some 200 of them were poems praising the First Coming of Christ the Lord and the Mother of God, and the rest were praising the Second Coming of Christ the Lord and the Mother of God, 700 poems in total. Well, they also took a prayer book and other notebooks. At the same time, they took 370 rubles that I had earned from the rosehips. In a word, they took everything. And they took me. The investigation began in Drohobych on January 30, 1980.

The investigation wasn't very harsh this time. I confessed to everything, that I wrote the poems myself. They kept me in solitary confinement in Drohobych for 9 days in the bitter cold because the window was broken. I was so distressed there that I was overcome with fe-e-ear. Because I kept a church diary, and in the diary, it was written where I had been with Christ the Lord and the Mother of God, and this revealed a secret. And I was very distressed by this. If not for my faith, I might have committed suicide from that fear. But for 9 days straight, I prayed continuously: “Lord, turn the evil that has been done into good!”

After 9 days, they took me to Lviv, and the investigation in Lviv lasted 9 months.

V.V. Ovsienko: Can you recall who conducted the investigation?

S.F. Skalych: In Drohobych, the investigator was Ivan Snidanko, and in Lviv, it was Semyonov. At first, they suspected me of causing the girl's frostbite. It was even written in the newspaper “Komsomolska Molod” for the entire Lviv Oblast that Semen Skalych had baptized a girl in the Tysmenytsia River, that her feet got frostbitten and had to be amputated. And the whole case was built on the idea that I had caused the girl's frostbite. But I kept a diary, and in the diary, it was recorded how I celebrated the Christmas holidays. And that made it clear that I was not in Drohobych at that time. So the investigator went back, conducted another inquiry, and it was discovered that she had damaged her feet because she went mad over a boy.

Then the investigator gathered 15 witnesses against me from my village—even the priest, the head of the village council, the kolkhoz chairman, brigadiers, party members, and neighbors. 15 witnesses. He went to my family in Synovydne and questioned them there. The investigation then shifted the blame to me for religious matters. The witnesses didn't try very hard to “bury” me, although there were some who did. The priest, among other things, said that I had been to his house twice: “Skalych was at my house and admonished me to renounce the heretical faith.” He didn't say “heretical faith” [kryvoslaviie], he said “Orthodoxy” [pravoslaviie].

So the investigation was easy, I confessed to everything. They gave my notebooks to four writers to check if it was the same handwriting. For expertise. And they gave me a task to write at least one poem—to see if the handwriting matched. And I wrote the poem “Manifesto,” 4 verses, in my own hand. I used to write with glasses, but I didn't have them then, so I wrote it clumsily—but I wrote it, I didn't deny it. I didn't sign any of the protocols, based on my duty as a pokutnyk. But I wrote down the poem.

At the end, the investigator asked what I thought of the Soviet Union. I said very soberly: “I consider the Soviet Union to be the executor of God's will on the left-hand side, that is, as the Lord's scourge upon the capitalists and non-believers (pagans) who for two thousand years have refused to accept the faith of Christ.” “What do you think of the pokutnyky?” “I consider the pokutnyky to be the executors of God's will on the right-hand side, for they are to bring happiness to the whole world through the religion of the New Testament.” “How do you intend to live your life from now on?” “I intend to remain in the teaching that I have accepted.”

The investigation lasted 9 months. I didn't sign anything. After the investigation, in August 1980, the trial began. The hearing lasted four days. They brought in witnesses, but not all of them came. The witnesses didn't really try to “bury” me—some tried to, while others tried to save me. For example, a brigadier said: “I found him grazing his cow in the wrong place: ‘Why are you grazing the cow here? You can’t graze here, it’s between the crops!’ And he crossed me, turned to his cow, and said nothing. I wanted to fine him, but his brother worked in the kolkhoz, and I couldn't fine the brother.” People like that wanted to save me. But there were also those who tried to “bury” me. The one who tried the hardest to “bury” me wasn't at the confrontation—he went to the Donbas and drowned there. Slavko Bashchyk, a very zealous communist, the manager of a bakery in Boryslav.

I was sentenced to 10 years of special-regime camp, 5 years of exile, and declared an especially dangerous recidivist. And then they sent me on a transport. It was very hard... I was weak, suffering from a stomach ailment. I was in four places, I’ve already forgotten... Kharkiv—Kholodna Hora, Potma in Mordovia, Perm. And from Perm, they brought me to Kuchino.

V.V. Ovsienko: And on the way, you met Vasyl Kuryllo, right?

S.F. Skalych: I met Kuryllo in Perm. I ask: “Who are you?” “A person.” If he's a person, he must be Ukrainian. But he hadn't had his hair cut, and that made me suspicious. “Why haven't you been shorn—are you convicted or not?” “Yes, they flew me to Perm after my conviction.” “Why?” “Because I am blind.” He had been in an underground Banderite organization for 4 years, in the underground propaganda department. He got 10 years, and in the camps, he damaged his eyes from the cold. He was caught a second time for writing about the past; he trusted a friend, gave him a notebook to read, and that friend turned him in. There was a search, they found all his notebooks, and they gave him another 10 years. He was arrested on the same day as me, so in Perm they asked if we were accomplices, since we were arrested on the same day and under the same article.

From Perm, they brought us to Kuchino and placed us among the guys. I didn’t work because I was very sick with a stomach ulcer. They didn't even make me go out to clear snow or sweep. The guys in the cell cleaned up, and I was excused as a cripple.

M. Antoniv: You said they beat you a lot to make you work...

S.F. Skalych:. No, that was during my first sentence. I even said that the investigator was Rizanov.

I couldn't eat the camp food because I had a very bad stomach ulcer. I didn’t eat shchi, I didn’t eat rassolnik, I didn’t even eat cabbage—I only had tea, bread, and barley porridge. Some of the guys had the same illness and died. Oleksa Tykhy had the same ailment and didn’t survive, but I, thank God, survived.

M. Antoniv: But they asked how you could endure it, and you said: “Because I pray.” Stus asked, and everyone...

S.F. Skalych:. The guys loved me very much. Almost all of them were political prisoners; there were only a few of other nationalities or non-politicals.

V.V. Ovsienko: Who were you in the cells with?

S.F. Skalych: Vyacheslav Ostrohliad was from Magnitogorsk, a criminal. And the one who beat the Lithuanian, what was his name?

V.V. Ovsienko: Boris Romashov, the one who beat Balys Gajauskas. Did he attack you too?

S.F. Skalych: Yes. Those were common criminals. But our political guys were very calm—no one said an offensive word to another, the guys really loved each other. And they loved me for my faith. They asked me, specifically, about the Second Coming of Christ the Lord and the Mother of God. I told them about it, but even the late Vasyl Stus said: “It's very strange that you believe you will change the whole world! And you are confident that it will happen?” I said: “One hundred percent! I don't waver in my faith by even half a percent that this will come to pass!” “Well, it’s a miracle to have such faith! But we followed a political path, and we cannot accept that.”

I prayed a lot, so I didn't ask them to turn off the radio. But Ivan Hel, our man from Lviv, he prayed for short periods, so he would ask them to turn off the radio during that time. I prayed for hours on end, so I couldn't disturb them. The guys went to work, and I wasn't working, so I had time to pray. I secretly wrote poems, trying to memorize them. I forgot 40 poems, but I brought 50 home in my memory.

V.V. Ovsienko: So who else were you in the cells with?

S.F. Skalych: We would spend a few months with one group—then they would move us, transfer us from that cell to another. So they moved us around, we weren't in one place for long.

V.V. Ovsienko: And among the Ukrainians—were you with Stus?

S.F. Skalych: I was with Vasyl Stus, with Vasyl Kuryllo, with Yuriy Lytvyn. And with Oleksa Tykhy, with Moiseienko from the Donbas, and with the Lithuanians Balys Gajauskas and Viktoras Petkus, with the Latvian Gunārs Astra, with the Estonians Mart Niklus and Enn Tarto...

V.V. Ovsienko: And you were with me. So you were with practically everyone.

S.F. Skalych: Yes, there were 40 of us prisoners. Among them were 10 former policemen, 18 Ukrainian political prisoners, and the rest were of other nationalities. The policemen were spiritually dead, they didn't get involved in anything. The political prisoners were active among themselves, and for their activities, they often ended up in the punishment cell. And Vasyl Stus died in the punishment cell.

V.V. Ovsienko: I remember they sewed a tag with the name “Skalych S.M.” on your jacket, then burned it onto the jacket with bleach...

S.F. Skalych: I wanted to skip that part (laughs). There, every prisoner had his camp number—a registered letter and number. My number was 136, I've forgotten the letter—"D," I think. D-136. I refused to accept the tag on my cap, on my knee, and on my chest—on my jacket and on my pea coat.

V.V. Ovsienko: Wait, that must have been during your first imprisonment, right? Because in Kuchino, they only wrote the last name.

S.F. Skalych: Yes, that was during the first sentence—I refused. And in Kuchino, it was just the last name—I refused that too. There wasn't much torment—they wrote it themselves and threatened that if I rubbed off the “tag,” I would ruin the clothes, and I would be punished for the clothes with fines and punishment cells. So, for that reason, I said: “I don’t accept the clothes.” And I was naked. No one paid any attention to it. For more than half a year, I was only in a shirt, I didn't accept a jacket, a padded coat, or a cap. After that, in the winter... Lord God, I'm forgetting...

During the Epiphany holidays in 1981 in Lviv, our pokutnyky went caroling among our own people. And they went to spend the night at the house where Christ the Lord had stayed during His Second Coming. That's where the KGB caught them all. Because of that, a major wave of arrests of pokutnyky began. An order came to bring me in as a witness. In the winter of 1981, they put me in a separate cell—and I don't know why. And then in the spring, they summoned me and brought me to Lviv.

V.V. Ovsienko: They took you from Kuchino on March 13 and returned you on May 14, 1981.

S.F. Skalych: Yes, and there wasn't a major investigation here. Osmak, or whatever his name was, called me in a couple of times. There was also supposed to be a confrontation, to testify against Christ the Lord—but it didn't happen. I was in the hospital for 5 weeks there, in Lviv, for my stomach ulcer, and then after the treatment, they immediately put me on a transport and returned me to my place in the camp. I was in the camp until I was released.

V.V. Ovsienko: And how did the camp authorities treat you, especially the fact that you didn't work? I remember you telling a story about the camp chief, Major Zhuravkov, entering your cell—and you crossed him. “What are you crossing me for?!” “Because you are Satan!”

S.F. Skalych: The chief of the special-regime section, Dolmatov, was secretly sympathetic to me. Secretly sympathetic. But he had to be secretive about it. The doctor, Pchelnikov, was also very sympathetic, but secretly. He wanted to give me a second spoonful of vitamins—but a guard was coming, and he had to put the spoon back. And after Pchelnikov came Hrushchenko, a Ukrainian doctor—he took his revenge on me, he punished me severely. Because Pchelnikov gave me a special diet every other month—one month without, the next with, because my stomach ulcer was so bad. But Hrushchenko completely deprived me of the diet for three months: “Let's see what happens.” And my stomach started to hurt terribly. Then he checked it and in February 1986, he sent me for treatment at the central hospital 150 km away. They didn't give me anything besides a padded coat, no padded trousers for my crippled legs, they didn't even give me socks, no gloves—they put me in a paddy wagon, for three hours, 150 km they drove me to the hospital on February 13, 1986.

The other guys were transported in a general compartment. Stepan Khmara, from our Lviv, who later became a deputy, was there.

V.V. Ovsienko: This was in a “voronok” (paddy wagon), right? So there’s no compartment, there’s a small “stakan” [cup], a box.

S.F. Skalych: ...And they transported me in a small box. The box was made of sheet metal on all four sides, and I only had a thin padded coat and summer trousers. And I caught a severe cold, I chilled my spine. Since then, my spine has been giving me trouble to this day. It acts up and hurts. I have to wear two pairs of padded trousers, I have to wear sheepskin wraps in addition to the padded trousers, I have to wear a belt around my spine, I have to wear a woolen vest—it ruined me so much that I am a cripple to this day. You can see the photo.

When they brought me to Perm, the heating from the boiler house was far away. The pipe was barely, barely warm. And the criminals had knocked out the windows, so it was full of snow! For two weeks, I lay there with snow even on my pillow. Then one guard took glass from another cell, put it in the windows, and shoveled out the snow—he took pity on me. I've forgotten his name, that guard. I slept in valenki [felt boots], because they gave me a pair that belonged to one of our prisoners at the time. I spent my days and nights in those valenki, but my legs were only in summer trousers. And one light blanket. So I was freezing, freezing badly, and I chilled my spine even more.

After that, in the summer, they sent me to Perm for a medical evaluation for discharge. I was in Perm for five weeks, and there too my ulcer hurt so badly, so terribly, that I almost died. They gave me two injections at a time against it, and I started bleeding in my intestines.

V.V. Ovsienko: A hemorrhage?

S.F. Skalych: Yes, a hemorrhage. And on the toilet, I saw that my stool was completely black like coal. I told the paramedic, and the paramedic told the doctor, and the doctor said: “Oh, Skalych, you’ve penitented yourself to the end!” Meaning, death was coming. And then they started giving me only one injection at a time. I was in Perm for about two months. The commission wrote down all my ailments, what I was sick with, what I felt, what pain I didn't feel, and then they returned me to the camp, and in the camp, I waited for my medical discharge. The discharge came, and they returned me home.

V.V. Ovsienko: The certificate says you were discharged on October 8, 1987. How were you released? Did they let you go in Kuchino or did they take you home?

S.F. Skalych: No, there was a communist from Belarus there. I forgot his last name... Zhovtniak, I think... He was assigned to me as an escort. He brought me by train all the way to Lviv. In Lviv, I told him: “You go home, and I'll get home from Lviv myself.”

I arrived by bus in Synovydne, I don't remember the date in October. The weather was still good here, the trees were still green! I have it written down somewhere, I can look it up. It was a kilometer from the bus stop to the house of my niece, Anna (Mykola's daughter, who had married and moved here earlier—she's the one who took her mother, as I said, and I was left at home alone for three years)—and it took me a whole hour to walk that kilometer! Every few steps, I would sit down or stand if there was no place to sit. I was that weak, that's how they destroyed me.

Well, I came home, and they were happy to see me and started telling me that they had heard on Radio Liberty in 1982 about all the pokutnyky, about Kuchino, and that they had also mentioned the writer and poet Semen Skalych. So the family was surprised: “What? The poet Semen Skalych? The world calls him that, and we know nothing about his poetry?” When I arrived, they told me this. And I said that I had been writing—they had confiscated 700 of my poems during the arrest, 700 songs they took.

From then on, the family was well-disposed towards me. I slept on a folding cot because the house was small and there was no place to sleep. My sister-in-law's arm and leg were already paralyzed by then. I was there for a week—I had to get registered. My niece worked at the sawmill—the DOK—and the local policeman was bothering her to get me registered. She would come home crying: “Uncle, please register, because they are bothering me. If you don't want to register, I'll register you myself.” “No need.”

It was the feast of the Intercession, and I went to the Holy Mountain. It was warm, nice, I was near the spring on the Holy Mountain, so to speak, moved—moved by my thoughts. A stream of thoughts flowed from the beginning of the revelation of God's Truth to that day... There was a woman from Lviv there, Gena, and a man, Roman, from Rozvadiv. We were returning together from the Holy Mountain to Stryi. I told Roman that I wanted to stop in Kniazha Luka to see Yosyp, to write down the poems, because I would soon forget them—I already felt that I was forgetting. But Roman said: “No, we will go to another place.” And Roman brought me to Bolekhiv, to Ivan and Zosia—their daughter Liuba is in the Truth.

Here, they received me very kindly. For two weeks, I couldn't control my bladder, the bed was wet... They gave me the best food, and in two weeks, the incontinence stopped. They gave me a new bed, washed everything, and my life of healing began. But my stomach ulcer hurt terribly, sometimes I would even whimper. There was still persecution, the Bolsheviks were still around, so I had to live very secretly. They didn't make me work; they prayed sincerely. I didn't even remember all the prayers they knew. There, I copied down the intentions again (an intention is a new, two-hour prayer for the pokutnyky), because all my prayer books were gone, all my notebooks were gone, and they never returned them to me.

I stayed in Bolekhiv for 9 months. My songs were written down there. And as soon as I left, the local policeman came and said: “You have unregistered people here!” And the host opened the doors and said: “Search, search! Look!” And the policeman saw from the people that they were not afraid—he looked here, looked there, and left. So, someone had already betrayed that I was there.

I moved from Ivan and Zosia's to Yosyp's in Kniazha Luka, from Yosyp's I moved to Anton's in Vytvytsia, from Anton's I moved to Zakarpattia to Andriy's, and so on, and so on—10 apartments in 6 years. I didn't sit still—I wrote their descriptions, wrote their prayers, wrote their songs. After I finished writing for someone, I moved on.

Then Ukraine came. When Ukraine came, I heard the guys saying that you could get a Ukrainian passport and apply for a pension. I decided how to start and went to Drohobych. I went to the KGB. “What do you need?” I said: “You tormented me, now help me.” “What do you want?” “I want a hospital, I want a disability group, I want a pension.” The deputy head of the KGB, Varnatsky, wrote down everything from me, what ailments I had, how long I had been suffering, and with that, he went to the city hall, to the regional administration. He came back from there: “Get in the car.” And he took me to the central hospital in Drohobych. He told the chief doctor, Tadei Hrynyk, to keep me for a long time. I was there for a full three months—in the Drohobych central hospital. I recovered there... I recovered there.

Autumn came, I started feeling cold, and I had to leave because I was only dressed for summer. My cousin was in Stebnyk; she was also a former political prisoner. She came to visit me in the hospital and told me to come to her place when I got out. Nastunia Skalych. I went to her place straight from the hospital. Her son and daughter were planning to study to be train conductors, and they had a little boy, not yet school-aged. And Nastia herself worked in the dining hall of a resort in Truskavets. She regretted leaving her job, but there was no one to stay with the boy. So they took me in to look after the boy. And they went to Lviv to study to be conductors.

During that time—I was there for 8 months—I got a passport, got a disability group (they gave me the second disability group), and arranged for a pension. And I succeeded in getting my poems back. I was at Nastia's in 1992, and in 1993 they returned my poems. But the rest was all lost—only the poems were returned. All 700 of them.

Even before they returned the poems, Nastia fell ill with high blood pressure and had to quit her job. Then Nastia sent me away. I moved to Synovydne to my niece Anna's place, because my sister-in-law, who had been paralyzed, had died, so there was room for me. Anna's family took me in. I had to help around the house a little—they had a cow, they had a garden. My illness still tormented me. I continued to be sick. I couldn't write anymore. It was very cold there—I slept in the entryway. Even though there was a kitchen, if you lit a fire in it, it would be terribly cold by morning. And even though I had a feather bed, I would freeze and pray: “My Lord God, help me!”

And then, on February 5, 1996, three people came to visit me. One had already visited me in Synovydne, the other two had not, but I knew them. It was Olga, whom we call the Poltava one, because she is from Poltava and bought a house in Serednie, and she comes to visit. I had only met them once, because they had recently settled there, and I didn't go to Serednie much anymore because I was sick. But I had spent the night at their place. “Why have you come?” “We want to take you to live with us—do you want to?” And I thought and thought—it's a holy place! How could I not go? And so, on February 1, I moved to Serednie to live with Olga and Oleksa Milchak. Oleksa Milchak is a resettler from the Lemko region from Stalin's time (not far from Serednie, actually). Olga's family had been exiled for political reasons. They wandered all over, and finally bought a small house in Serednie and moved there. For a while, it was very good for me there, very good. At first, Oleksa was quiet, but then he couldn't restrain himself. He is mentally ill. He would shout at Olga, and then he started shouting at me too, and I was forced to leave them.

And so, in February 1997, I moved to Stryi to live with Mariia Antoniv. It is very peaceful here, very nice. In the summer, I go to the Holy Mountain; in the winter, I don't go anywhere, my legs hurt, I still suffer from my spine, I suffer from my legs, I am getting old, my memory is failing, I pray much less. And so I live to this day—to the day I am giving this interview.

I thank the Lord God that He has given me a little memory, so that I could still recall all this!

[Dictaphone is turned off].

Then the hostess of the house, Mariia Mykhailivna Antoniv, showed V. Ovsienko a manuscript.

M.M. Antoniv: Christ Himself wrote this in His Second Incarnation.

V.V. Ovsienko: He wrote it in a notebook like this (reads).: “I greet you with the incarnation of the Word of the Only Son! My dear relatives, Slavs of all rites of the One Holy Immaculate Sobor Childhood of God of the Holy Spirit of the third Immaculate Lamb of Christ’s Church. Let us share our joy and be strengthened by the love, by the power of the Truth of the First and Second Incarnation of the Word on earth, which was born of the Father before all ages, from the throne and seat of the Most Holy Trinity and the Vicar General of the Father of Fathers in the Third Testament of the Holy Spirit of the Theotokos cult in Ukraine, of all souls in ruin in our native Motherland, the spirit of God’s wisdom has rested.”

M.M. Antoniv: That’s all, thank you, Mother of God! [Dictaphone is turned off].

V.V. Ovsienko: Grandpa Semen, did you believe that you would be able to return home from captivity and even witness an independent Ukraine?

S.F. Skalych: When I became a pokutnyk and in 1977 underwent what we call in our church, legitimation (which is a confession of all the sins of one’s life)—at that time I was tested by Christ the Lord and the Mother of God in Their Second Coming. The Mother of God said that my life was hanging by a thread, but Her assistant Katrusia, a medical surgeon who understands human health, was very alarmed that my health was already very, very weak, hanging by a thread, just a breath away from being gone. So she said: “Will he live until...” “He will live.”

This was before my second arrest, and I knew that I had to serve my sentence. No matter how terrible my ulcer was, and now I suffer from various ailments, so much so that my memory is beginning to fail, but I have faith, because the Mother of God said “until”—so it must happen. And this “until” is the glorification of the Second Coming of Christ the Lord and the Mother of God. What kind of glorification of Christ the Lord and the Mother of God—you will read about it in what I gave to Levko Zelinsky from Morshyn.

V.V. Ovsienko: Thank you. [Dictaphone is turned off. Then Ovsienko asked him to talk about the Person whom the pokutnyky consider to be Jesus Christ in His Second Coming. His secular name was Soltys, Mykhailo, it seems. The Mother of God is his sister, Mariia].

S.F. Skalych: ...Our Lord Christ in his second coming was tried three times. The first time he was tried was in 1955 for consecrating the spring in Serednie. The second time Christ the Lord was tried was in 1962. Here, in Stryi, they took him on July 2, and a KGB agent from Stryi tormented him terribly—he wanted to beat out what he wanted. At that time, they were persecuting priests, and he took a priest—he thought the King was a priest—and wanted to beat out what he wanted. And the Mother of God in her Second Coming was already underground with Anton Potochniak in the town of Yampil near Lviv. And the pokutnyky would come to the Mother of God in the underground at night. The work was done at night... She and Anton Potochniak fell asleep towards morning. They got up in the morning and were washing themselves. And then Christ the Lord, who was in prison in Stryi, appears to the Mother of God. And he says: “You have only just gotten up and are washing, and they have already beaten me three times.” The Mother of God says: “How can we save you?” “Send for Myron—Myron will help.” And Myron, a student, was studying at the university in Stanislav. They quickly sent a message from Yampil all the way to Stanislav and told Myron. Myron the student went straight to the chief KGB agent and said: “In Stryi, a prisoner-priest is being severely tortured.” “How do you know?” “I had a vision: this morning he was beaten badly.” The KGB agent phones Stryi from Stanislav. The Stryi KGB agent was very surprised and frightened: how does Stanislav already know? That one said: “A student from Stanislav complained to me that he had a vision that you were beating someone.” And the Stanislav KGB agent ordered the prisoner to be transferred to Lviv. In Lviv, he was no longer tortured.

Then the Stryi KGB agent summons the student: “How did you know about this?” “How could I not know—you were beating the Lord, and the Lord appeared to me and complained.” That was the kind of torment the Lord endured, and the rescue of the Lord God through a vision. [Dictaphone is turned off].

V.V. Ovsienko: Please tell us about Anton Potochniak.

S.F. Skalych: He was a supporter, a very close friend, and a very, very zealous worker in the Second Coming of Christ the Lord and the Mother of God here in Stryi. He knew all their secrets. At first, he didn't really believe that she was the Mother of God.

M.M. Antoniv: He couldn't understand it, he would say: “I can't.”

S.F. Skalych: Yes, he couldn't. In 1962, the Mother of God was forced to go underground. They arrested her twenty times, and the last time they wanted to deport her all the way to Kolyma. But the Lord said: “Take your child and leave home, for a great danger threatens you.” And in early February, she was forced to go underground with Potochniak. Potochniak wrote down all her visions and came to believe very strongly. Then Potochniak was released to go home. Potochniak got cancer and died during an operation in Lviv.

M.M. Antoniv: No way, he was in prison, they gave him a year in prison for his passport, we know all about that. He died in prison.

S.F. Skalych: Yes, yes, that's right. I was already in prison then. I was arrested in 1980, and he in 1981. They took him for his passport.

M.M. Antoniv: He said: “I will not take that mark.” Animals have passports, but we had identification cards under Poland. And now everyone should have identification cards, not passports.

S.F. Skalych: And he was a very close friend of Christ the Lord and the Mother of God, he was a very zealous priest, very strong and delicate, incredibly delicate. He died a martyr's death.

M.M. Antoniv: They murdered him in prison in Lviv. The “Voice of America” talked about it then. And my son woke me up, it was midnight, and said: “America is reporting that Potochniak is dying in prison.”

S.F. Skalych: I confessed to Potochniak more than once, I had dinner at his house more than once.

V.V. Ovsienko: Mykhailo Lutsyk, whom I visited earlier today, asked me to ask about Potochniak. [Dictaphone is turned off.

Next, V. Ovsienko reads the verdict of Mariia Antoniv. The paragraphs were numbered by Ovsienko himself].

“Case 1233 of the year 1973.

Verdict.

In the name of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.

June 11, 1973.

The People’s Court of the Kalush Raion of Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, composed of the presiding people’s judge Mykhailov B.I., people’s assessors Tsymbalista M.Y., Shvets P.V., with secretary Byhyr S.V., with the participation of prosecutor Potapenko M.N., having considered in an open court session in the courtroom in the city of Kalush the case on the accusation of Antoniv, Mariia Mykhailivna, born April 8, 1932, a native of the village of Nezhukhiv, Stryi Raion, Lviv Oblast, a citizen of the USSR, Ukrainian, a non-party member, with a 4th-grade education, married, with 4 minor children in her care, a resident of the city of Stryi, Lviv Oblast, 10 Radianskoi Armii St., apt. 113, with no prior convictions, under Art. 214, part 1 of the Criminal Code of the UkrSSR,

has established:

1. The defendant is registered in the city of Stryi, has a family there—a husband and 4 children, worked until 1963, and then left her job. At first, she looked after her children, and then began to attend the “pokutnyky” sect, refusing socially useful labor and taking up vagrancy. She was detained in 1972 and warned by police officers not to engage in vagrancy in the future. She drew no conclusions from this for herself. On April 7, 1973, she was again detained in the village of Serednie on Serednianska Hora, where all the “pokutnyky” gather.

2. When questioned in the court session, the defendant refused to explain anything regarding the substance of the charges presented to her and only read her prayers. Witnesses Antoniv V.Y., the defendant's husband, and Yemelianov O.M. explained that the defendant worked in a military unit, and then for 15 years at a furniture factory. She worked well, was a deputy of the City Council, then left her job, began to engage in vagrancy, and abandoned her family and 4 minor children. She did this with the onset of spring.

3. Having reviewed the case materials and the testimony of the witnesses, the court considers that the defendant's actions under Art. 214, part 1 of the Criminal Code of the UkrSSR were correctly qualified by the preliminary investigation bodies, and her guilt in committing this crime has been fully proven in court. The defendant, although she has a permanent place of residence, having left her job in 1963, constantly engages in vagrancy, travels to various districts of the Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk oblasts, and does not want to work.

4. In choosing a measure of punishment, the court takes into account the degree of the defendant's guilt, the nature and social danger of the crime she committed, that she has 4 small children, and considers it necessary, taking the above into account, to determine her punishment in the form of deprivation of liberty.

5. Guided by Art. 323, 324, 327 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the UkrSSR, the court has sentenced

Antoniv, Mariia Mykhailivna

under part 1 of article 214 of the Criminal Code of the UkrSSR to 1 year and 6 months of deprivation of liberty in a general-regime corrective labor colony. The term of punishment shall be calculated from May 7, 1973, and the measure of restraint—detention in custody—is to remain unchanged.

The term for appealing the verdict is 7 days to the oblast court through the Kalush Raion People’s Court from the time the convicted person receives a copy of it.

Presiding Judge (signature).

People's Assessors (signatures).

“True to the original.”

Chairman of the Kalush Raion People’s Court Y.D. Horblianskyi.”

Such a verdict. Mrs. Mariia, I would like you to tell us about this conviction and imprisonment, and not only about yours but about other pokutnyky as well. Please, tell us.

S.F. Skalych: Under Stalin, there was a split in the Greek-Catholic Church into the false-Orthodox and the Catholic. The Greek-Catholic priests were arrested, but the false-Orthodox ones, who signed on with Kostelnykov to Moscow—they were not arrested. And the population was also divided: some went to the false-Orthodox, while others had no Greek-Catholic priests and had to go to the Polish Roman Catholic church, since the Church in Truth did not yet exist. That is why Mariia also went to the Polish church.

M.M. Antoniv: I went to the church and in the church, I constantly prayed and cried before the Mother of God for help: “Mother of God, grant that there be something Ukrainian! I want a Ukrainian Church, so that I can be in the Greek-Catholic Ukrainian Church! The Lord once spoke to Moses, is there a person now to whom God speaks? Or have they all died out in the world?” And then, when I desired that Ukrainian Church, I suddenly came out of the church, and some people from Nezhukhiv were standing there and said to me: “Have you heard that the Mother of God has come with Jesus to the village of Serednie, to the New Jerusalem? Have you heard?” I say: “I haven't heard, this is the first I'm hearing of it!” “The Mother of God has come to save everyone, the whole world, in the village of Serednie. And she has so much grace, and she cried that there is no one to give it to, because her sons and daughters have turned away from Her. There is a revered priest there, to whom the Lord speaks.” Then I remembered the thoughts that I had desired. And now, they say, that priest is in Siberia, convicted.

I came to Serednie for the first time, and the collection plate isn't passed around there. I ask why the collection plate isn't passed, why they don't collect money? And they tell me: “Because all the priests in the world allowed themselves to be led astray by that money, and the collection plate is never passed here.” So I think: God, is this the true church that I have desired since I was a small child? Then I see that all the people are praying very sincerely, people are crying, asking for forgiveness of their sins, crawling on their knees up the Holy Mountain from below: “Mother of God, forgive us, for we have all gone astray, for we have all followed this world, followed that bald one. That bald Lenin has poisoned us with his venom!” And then I started to cry. I didn't yet understand that I was sinning so much, I didn't have that understanding yet. I began to pray and ask the Mother of God. And then I came home and told my mother. Then my mother went with me.

And in the village of Nezhukhiv, I thought that I would tell the village and the whole village would also go to the Mother of God. But everyone turned against me: “We won't go there—why? We have an Orthodox priest in the village.” And I say: “But he signed on with Moscow, it's a Moscow church, it's no longer Orthodox, it's not ours anymore! The devil has taken root there, in those churches.” And everyone started to laugh at us loudly. My father delivered the mail, and the school principal said: “Be careful—when you go for the mail, be careful they don't sacrifice Nastunia there.”

I was still working at my job then, and one day I went to work, and a woman says to me: “Mariika, the school principal said that you will be crucified in the square on a cross, and your Marta will be on the Holy Mountain in a barrel with nails and they will roll her around!” The commie, the school principal, told all the children, and when people came to our house to get the mail, they looked around warily, because they were very afraid that we might sacrifice them. And then I burst into tears and said that it wasn't true—who could have said such a thing? The school principal said it, and the school principal spread it, and then the school principal harbored a great hatred for us. He summoned my sister to his office and said: “Marta, do you know that your mother is going to put you in a barrel with nails as a sacrifice on the Holy Mountain?” And she then said: “It doesn't suit you, you are a school principal and you speak such lies. She is my mother, and I go to Serednie with my mother—my mother will never sacrifice me and will not crucify my sister on a cross in the square!”

And then the school principal fell ill with cancer, he had stomach cancer. And when my mother was sleeping, he took her prayer book “The Christian Family” and prayed a lot, and repented. It was still secret, but when he was about to die, he came and said: “Nastunia, forgive me, because I was the one who spread such slander about you, that you would crucify your daughter on a cross and put her in a barrel. The communists ordered me to do it, and I did it, I poured such hatred on you. And now I have cancer and I am going to die. I repent so much for spreading such things about you, because I turned the whole village against you!” The whole village was against us. Because, he says, the communists told me to—this was when his soul was about to depart. And so he died of cancer in our village, and the whole village was very much against me. And when my mother crossed herself on the bus, they took her and threw her off the bus into a ditch, and she was unconscious. And some old woman was walking by and said: “What's this swaying here under my feet? Nastuntsia, is that you lying here?” And my mother says: “I don't know—I crossed myself and they beat me badly.” My mother said she didn't see who. And she took my mother home, and said: “Your wife has been badly beaten for crossing herself on the bus.” And they brought my mother home, already unconscious.

And then, you know, when I didn't go to work on the Feast of the Holy Cross, because the Lord had revealed that we should not work on holy days, and if at least a couple of people were not found who would not work on a holy day, He would bury the whole world, because like before the Flood, the Lord wants to destroy the whole world. And then I and a man named Belsky, who worked with me, from Kolodnytsia, we left our jobs and didn't go in on the Feast of the Holy Cross. And my supervisor asks me: “Why didn't you come to work yesterday?” I say: “Because it was the Feast of the Holy Cross.” “But you worked before?” “Yes, I worked before, I sinned, but now the Mother of God on the Holy Mountain has spoken, that we should all repent, because a great punishment awaits us.” And she then says: “Then take your things and go home! You have to work on holidays—this is the kind of state where you have to work.”

I came home, and right after me, the management came and said, “What will you live on? You have four children and a husband—a war invalid, a cripple. What will you live on in the city? Go back to work, work on the holiday!” And I say: “No, I won't go.” And then they fired me and gave me a record stating it was for the Greek-Catholic Church, for Uniatism, that I was an inveterate Uniate. They kicked me out of my job, I was left without work and was very worried about how I would live. But the Lord provided, and I survived, I earned my piece of bread—I went to the forest to pick berries, snowdrops, those red berries, and lived off that.

I went to Serednie. I arrived, and they took me to Bohorodchany, where there used to be a monastery. They gave me a cell and said: “Pray.” It was a monastery in Bohorodchany, and that's why they say “pray.” They took me to be fingerprinted, and fingerprints mean the five-pointed star. And we refused to be fingerprinted. So you can imagine what they did to us, because I never gave in—as long as I had the strength, I saved myself and didn't give in. But there were so many of them—and what could I do? Only when they had beaten me badly, to drive Jesus out of my head, because I have Jesus, and Lenin is supposed to be here. He came, he had a star and says: “Do you see Lenin?” “I see him.” “He is supposed to be in your head. We will beat you on the head until that Jesus comes out.” So they beat me badly, until I was unconscious, and then I don't know how they fingerprinted me—I don't remember, because they took my hand and fingerprinted me. And I said that it meant the five-pointed star, and I wouldn't let them fingerprint me, I was not guilty. And I was in Bohorodchany for interrogations many times. And then on April 7th (I was born on the seventh of April, it's my name day), I go to the Mother of God.

I arrived, and here comes the police and says: “We already warned you not to come here again.” And I say: “This is our Ukrainian land, the Mother of God descended here, so you go back to the North Pole, from where you came.” Because he was Russian, from Siberia, and said: “I don't believe in anything, there is nothing.” And I say to him: “Then go back to the North Pole. This is Ukrainian land, this is our land, and the Mother of God has come, and I am on my own land, I say, I came to pray.” “You are not allowed to go there.”

And then they took me to Kalush. My husband came there for the trial, but they threw him out. He says: “It's hard for me, I have four children, I'm a cripple, let her go, because it's very hard for me.” And they say: “We'll convict you too.” Then they threw my mother out of the courtroom: “You are Christians.” The judge told me: “Sign that you will not go to Serednie to the Holy Mountain anymore, and we will let you go, but you will go.” I say: “No.” “Give your signature.” “I will not give my signature. I have gone and I will go, and even if I were to die, I will go.” Well, then they convicted me, deprived me of motherhood, and even wrote that they stripped me of motherhood.

And I was still going to the seventh school in Stryi then—I went, and as soon as I stepped on the stairs and made the holy cross—they immediately summoned me to the police station, Horodetsky did: “Why did you go to the seventh school?” “I went so that there would be religion, because the children will grow up—the prisons will be full—without God. Without God, there will be no generation, they will steal, they will kill, so I went so that there would be religion.” “And do you know that Lenin separated religion from the school? Do you understand what you are doing?” And then they held me for a whole month. And my little children, as my neighbor told me, were eating raw potatoes, they were in great poverty—so the neighbor helped them a little. She came there and said: “You are keeping her here, her husband is at work, and the children are hungry. And you are keeping Antoniv.” And they say: “Why did she go to the school?” And the chief of police says: “Don't cross my doors, or they'll burn!” And I didn't ask him when I crossed them. And they interrogated me there, why I went to the school, beat me severely, you know, kicked me, until blood came from my mouth. Blood was coming from my mouth. They were furious about why I went to the school.

I was held for a month many times. Once, on the Feast of the Holy Cross, they took us to the police station in Kalush, held us for three days—and nowhere to sit, nothing. The Holy Mountain was besieged, there were soldiers, FZO-niks, and when my mother bowed down, they said: “Grandma, get up and go away!” My mother didn't move, so we saw how my mother's whole skirt was burning, all her shoulders were burnt, and they were watching to make sure she didn't catch fire completely.

V.V. Ovsienko: What—they set it on fire?

M.M. Antoniv: They set it on fire! My mother was praying like that and was on fire! And her whole skirt burned up. And we saw it from a distance, because it was a great persecution, and the Holy Mountain was surrounded with wire, you know... And this was the persecution where the police led us into the water, and we go with them, we go, we go. And they didn't expect it—they thought they would just shove us into the water, but we grabbed onto them tightly. And we ended up in the water together with them!

V.V. Ovsienko: With them? Who were they—police or who?

M.M. Antoniv: The police. They didn't expect that. They led us into the water and thought they would let us go after that. But we held on lightly until the end, and they wanted to push us, but we wouldn't let them go. They didn't expect that—and we ended up there together.

Volodymyr: But they filmed that on a video camera, so it must be somewhere in the KGB archives, it should be in Kyiv.

M.M. Antoniv: Ivan went, and they said it wasn't time to release it yet.

Volodymyr: They still don't want to release it. Because I remember they were filming, because when I was little, it was around 1962-63. There was no video then, but there was a film camera with film.

M.M. Antoniv: All three of them were little, and my brother says: “Mama, I saw in the cinema how Mariika prays on the Holy Mountain!” And our Ivan went to Kyiv—“It's not time to release you yet.” Everything is there, the archives, everything is recorded—there's no order to release it. And the televisions, and everything—what were they to do with us? Because it was terrible—our commie showed what kind of believers still exist. And they showed us in the cinema. Snow, mud, and they came to the Holy Mountain. They say: “People, you've collected your holy water—go, because we have orders to beat you.” But no one even looks back. “People, did you hear or not? You've collected water, you've prayed—get out!” No one even looks back. “Well, we are asking you, we are asking you—we don't want to beat you.” No one. So what to do? They had iron rods—and the iron rods broke just like that. No one obeyed the order. [End of track]. And no one even looks at them. Then they drag us from the Holy Mountain to the bus—by the legs, by the arms, and they kick and beat us hard—and it's all bloody, blood from the head, from the hand. They won't drag you gently, but if they drag you, they know what they're doing! And then to the bus, all of us bloody, muddy, they bring us to Kalush—to the police station.

V.V. Ovsienko: What year was that?

M.M. Antoniv: It was almost every year. It happened on all the big holidays—on the Immaculate Conception, on St. Nicholas Day, on Christmas, on Epiphany. They brought us there, to the Kalush police station: “Get out!” No one gets out. And then they take us one by one from the bus—and onto the yard. We could be there for a week, nothing to sit on, nothing to drink, nothing to eat, they locked us in the yard at the police station and didn't even check on us—whether we were breathing or what. And when they saw that we were very exhausted, then they say: “Get out of the police station.” And no one leaves. We say: “We are fine with Jesus even here.” Then they start dragging us out of the police station into the street, outside the gate, so we have to go. And when they drag us, we fall at their feet, kiss their feet, because the Lord God revealed that if we had any hatred for them—it would be hatred for God Himself. We must accept everything for our sins. Do you understand? We thanked the Mother of God, we thanked them that it was our sins that were beating us... Then the chief says to us: “You are against the state.” We say that we have never been against the state. “How so—you are against the Soviet Union, you are undermining all authority: we wanted to take the whole world with us. You could undermine the whole world, even though there are few of you, because a small worm can gnaw through the thickest tree. And you are a great hindrance to us in the whole world.” “How are we a hindrance?” “Because we want to abolish religion, so that there would be a commune. And we have strict, strict orders to fight you, because you are a great hindrance to us. So go away and don't come to Serednie anymore.”

But we continued to go, and the struggle with the Antichrist was very strong. In the Holy Scripture, it is written that there, on that mountain, a terrible battle with the devil will take place. The Lord said that if we stand up to fight in the village of Serednie, if we surrender our passports to the devil, do none of his work, and stand up to fight him, then the whole world will rise up to fight. That's what the Lord said. And I think to myself: Lord, even if I were to die of hunger, I will go to this fight.

They brought us. I had a small cross, a rosary on my chest—they tore the rosary to tiny pieces. He says: “Let's take the cross from her—and not just from her, but from everyone. And then what will we do?” “We will,” he says, “steam them.” Were you there when they steamed people? Burned them?

S.F. Skalych. No.

M.M. Antoniv. And then they strip us naked (and it's a freezing winter!), and they steam all our rags.

V.V. Ovsienko: Where and in what?

M.M. Antoniv: In a steam room like this... [unintelligible].

Volodymyr: I know that in the zone, there's also something like that, where they steam things.

V.V. Ovsienko: Yes, in the zones there is a large metal chamber—it's called a “prozharka” [roaster]. It's for killing lice. Because sometimes prisoners arrive from transit with lice—so all their clothes are sent to the roaster, and the prisoners to the bathhouse.

M.M. Antoniv: But we didn't have that.

Volodymyr: And what did they tell you—that they were going to steam out the Holy Spirit? Or lice?

M.M. Antoniv: Yes, the spirit. They took everything off us, we stood there naked. They wanted us to take their clothes. But we didn't. And we insisted on getting our own clothes back. And we didn't accept that “tag.” So they would strip us naked, and we walked around the zone naked. Mariika from Ternopil, so young, 18 years old, walked around the zone for three days as naked as the day she was born. For God's sake—to walk around the zone naked! Three days naked! So they say to her: “Aren't you ashamed!” And she says: “You should be ashamed, because I have clothes.” But she told us, poor thing, that she was very ashamed... And we didn't go to that “minute” check at 9 o'clock...

V.V. Ovsienko: Were you held in the Odesa Oblast for this?

M.M. Antoniv: In Odesa.

V.V. Ovsienko: And what was the colony number?

Volodymyr: It was UIN-74, a penal institution.

M.M. Antoniv: When they brought us to the colony, that colony chief, Kushch, said to us: “What is that Brezhnev do-o-oing? I tell him: don't give me pokutnyky, because they are honest people! And he sends me more pokutnyky. What am I supposed to do, if they are good people? I write to him not to send me these people!”

Because we say: why have you taken an interest in us? You have others to investigate. You have a whole world of young people, you have already corrupted the youth, the prisons are full. Our ancestors used to build churches, and now you build prisons. Then the regime chief called in an old woman, Marta Starynska, and said: “Marta, what should we do?” And she says: “You need to throw away that old fairy tale, throw away that Lenin, and teach the youth about God, introduce religion in schools, because that Lenin is an old fairy tale.” That's what Marta says.

Volodymyr: That was in 1972.

M.M. Antoniv: Yes, seventy-two. You, says Marta, don't know what to do? And the regime man says: “Well, how—we were going to turn the whole world upside down, we were going that way, and now what, we're going to go back?” Do you understand? That's how he's interrogating her. And she says: “There is no other way, you have to turn back, throw away that fairy tale, that bald Lenin, and turn back to God.”  

There was a young girl with me there, eighteen years old. We didn't follow their orders, we didn't go to the interrogations. After that, we didn't go on our own two feet; they carried us everywhere. Because the Lord said: “If you submit in prison, they will torture you, they will keep putting you in prisons. But if you take nothing with you, do not go to interrogations on your own feet, do not take food, do not work—they will stop convicting you.” And so it happened, because that Kushch, the colony chief in Odesa, began to write to Brezhnev: “What am I supposed to do? There is a lot of work, and they have to be carried...”

Look, I got sick in the punishment cell, my legs were like this, you know? My kidneys failed, and I wouldn't go to the medical unit on my own feet. They tell me: “Mariia, go to the medical unit, you are dying.” “I will not go.” “But it's good there, they will give you milk, good food, not like here, in the punishment block.” And I say: “I will not go.” Then they come, wrap me in a blanket like this and carry me. I can hear them saying in the zone (they called us “God-worshippers”): “E-e-e—the God-worshipper has died, they're carrying the God-worshipper away.” And I'm laughing in that blanket, even though I'm sick. They brought me to the medical unit. Then they have to struggle to carry me back from the medical unit to the punishment block in a blanket. And that chief, Kushch, says she's tired of carrying us—not only do they not work, but they also have to be carried in their arms! And why is that Brezhnev, she says, doing this to me?

And then they stopped convicting us.

V.V. Ovsienko: Can you name the pokutnyky who were convicted? And when were they convicted?

M.M. Antoniv: Marta Starynska, but I don't know how she spells her name. Myrosia, Marta, Mariia, the one who walked naked in the zone. (Name unintelligible) and Mariia—two sisters. Stefaniia, Nastunia... Quite a few. Nastunia had a book that was supposedly used to poison children. A lie, she didn't poison any children.

V.V. Ovsienko: Were all of you, pokutnyk women, held in this 74th camp? Or somewhere else too?

M.M. Antoniv: Those on their second conviction were in a different camp, and those on their third were even in Siberia, like one girl, Paranka—she lived in Lviv.

V.V. Ovsienko: So these were women. But men were convicted too, right?

M.M. Antoniv: Men too.

V.V. Ovsienko: And where were they held, in which zones?

M.M. Antoniv: Oh, they were put in prisons, they were beaten badly... They were held in Stryi, in Bohorodchany, in Stanyslav for two or three months.

Women were held at police stations for a week, locked in the yard. Marta was locked up for three days...

Volodymyr: She had four minor children and a 2nd-grade education. They considered her an ignorant, downtrodden woman, so they made allowances. But for someone with an education, 10 grades or more...

M.M. Antoniv: I'll tell you how they elected me as a deputy at work. The supervisor, an accountant, Jewish I think, says to me: “Mariia, don't you dare disgrace me. You have to get up on that podium and say: I thank the Soviet government for nominating me as a deputy.” She's telling me this as we walk through the park: “Have you memorized it or not?” And I'm walking and praying, but I don't admit it to her. Then I got there, all the deputies are there—and it's all the big shots, all commies! And as I climbed onto that podium, I didn't know what I was going to say, I was praying the whole time, and as I climbed onto that podium, I was praying. And when I got up on the podium, my speech failed me, so I said: “Oh, oh, oh!” And they, all those commies: “Ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha!”

Volodymyr: You started laughing at them, and they at you. And everyone started laughing together.

M.M. Antoniv: And I'm sitting on this stage, and everyone is roaring with laughter, clutching their stomachs. And the Holy Spirit says to me: “See what I have done through you! You have ridiculed the entire Soviet government.” The next day they say to my husband: “If she had 10 grades of education, she would have gotten 15 years for politics. But since she has two grades... Listen, she ridiculed the Soviet government!” And you, commies, wanted me to thank you. They are laughing, and so am I.

V.V. Ovsienko: And what—they still elected you as a deputy after that? It's written in the verdict that you were a deputy.

M.M. Antoniv: Well, wait, I had to be one for a year.

Volodymyr: Because under the Soviet government, it was hard to remove a deputy.

M.M. Antoniv: You know, it was hard! I then went to that city chairman and said: “Give me a house, because I don't have a house.” And he tells me: “I don't have a house myself.” He was so angry with me, you know how? Then I say: “Give me lighter work, because my work is hard.” And he says: “My work is hard too.” And then he says: “You'll be one for a year, because you have to be, and after that, you're no longer a deputy.” And that's how it turned out. “And you could have,” he says, “done so well. Even though you have two grades, you should go to night school, and then you would have gone higher and higher. And you would have achieved a lot because you have a good head on your shoulders. I wanted to make a human being out of you.” Yeah, right, I thought, so I would thank the Soviet government? I should thank the communists? But as he said, she ridiculed the entire Soviet government! And, you know, he told me how they all roared with laughter, clutching their stomachs. But, it's true, Baraniuk came in (he's a prosecutor, and his wife is a judge) and gives me a chocolate bar. I say: “Thank you. I don't want your chocolate.” Because he's a commie. And that prosecutor himself was amused that I had ridiculed the commies.

I didn't know about Serednie back then. So, God was probably preparing me for it. Because when the Muscovites came and I was walking past the police station, a thought came to me: those communists will beat you for the Christian faith. I thought to myself: what will they beat me for? I didn't know that God had chosen me for that.

Volodymyr: They thought you were just ignorant.

M.M. Antoniv: And that accountant says: “Girl, how you have disgraced me! How you have disgraced us! You have disgraced the Soviet government!” But you see what holy prayer did! I was just praying as I walked because I didn't know what I was going to say.

A high-ranking official summoned me to Ivano-Frankivsk and said: “Listen, Antoniv, how is this supposed to work? You don't work on holy days. If everyone stops working, what will we live on?” I say: “If we all stop working on holy days, there will be the Kingdom of God on earth: there will be no prisons, everyone will understand God's Law, they will live by the holy commandments of God, and there will be paradise on earth. You won't even need a police force.” And he was a commie, and he says: “So you are forcing me to convert to your faith? Listen, Antoniv, you are so persuasive that I am starting to fear God. But I can't...”. I say: “Well, so what—let's not work on holy days, the youth will turn to God, and life will be good.” They told me: “So you, such a tiny worm, want to gnaw through the Soviet government?”

But the Lord revealed that they would be throwing their party cards in the trash—and this was in the early seventies. And I ask him: “Volodia, listen, can such a thing be? The Lord revealed to me during the divine service that they will be throwing party cards in the trash.” He then says: “You know, Mama, the Soviet government is so vast, America is afraid of it, it's unlikely that would happen.” And when did it happen? Twenty years later? And I say: “You see, Volodia, the Lord revealed that it would be so—and so it came to pass.”

And now they say that something will happen with Rome... In Rome, there are many secret communists, around that Pope of Rome. The commies have infiltrated all the churches, just so you know, Vasyl. Masons, masons, masons... I'm telling you... And they themselves don't know that there are masons around them. And they say that's worse than a communist. Because the communists went openly against religion, while these do it secretly. This is so that the devil would be in the church, so that the church would become as it should be before God. Do you understand, Vasyl? It's worse than the commies! Because it's hidden, they allow all sins. Look: drug addiction is spreading, the youth—how is it with you, in Kyiv?—are the youth turning to God? No way! [Dictaphone is turned off].

Volodymyr: The newspaper “Ratusha” from April 30, 1992.

V.V. Ovsienko: Title of the article: “Such Are They, the Pokutnyky.” Who is the author?

Volodymyr: The author is Yuriy Shukhevych, Lviv, April 11, 1992.

V.V. Ovsienko: Could you read it?

Volodymyr: “Men and women stand before me. Stern faces, with the seal of faith and martyrdom. They look at me, persecuted and oppressed. Why are they here? Probably because they, persecuted under the second Soviets, remain persecuted now, under the third. They live in Lviv. Their flag flies from a flowerbed. They are not allowed to build their own church or chapel. That is why they came to me—also unrecognized, also once persecuted and unrecognized by the democracy of the third Soviets—hoping to find at least some understanding here, and they find it.

Who are these people? They are called pokutnyky. Pokutnyky—because they atone for the sins of humanity. And they call themselves the Slavic Church of the Holy Spirit.

And then came 1946. The so-called Lviv Sobor, with Stalin's blessing, destroyed the Greek-Catholic Church. Hundreds and thousands of priests, monks, and nuns, faithful to the Church, perished or were imprisoned. Others went into the catacombs. The penance for sins began.

It seemed that now, when the Church has emerged from the underground, the sorrowful path of these people should also have ended. But no. In 1958, Pope Pius XII dies—the last just Pope, whom the pokutnyky recognize and believe died not of natural causes, but was poisoned by his personal physician. Masons take over the Apostolic See, and the new pontificate of John XXIII begins—the second antipope with this name, say the pokutnyky. But even before his death, the blessed Pope Pius XII transfers his apostolic authority to Ukraine. Masons intercept this document, but despite everything, the pontificate of a new Pope begins in Ukraine—the last incarnation of Christ Himself among men, Emmanuel I.

The era of Jerusalem ends, the era of Rome is completed, and the era of Ukraine begins as the center of the world. The village of Serednie in the Precarpathian region becomes the ideological and mystical center. From here begins the renewal and revival of the Catholic faith of all Christianity—the faith that has been preserved in all its purity and truthfulness here, in Ukraine.

They stand—simple people, faith in their eyes, and above them a flag: blue-yellow-white, a combination of the Ukrainian and papal flags. They do not trust the democrats. For them, democracy is chaos, the rule of demons. Their ideal is a theocratic monarchy. And they hope for our help, the help of those who fought against Bolshevism. They believe in the God-chosenness of Ukraine, as we believe, and, like us, they believe in the great future of the nation, in its mission to renew this world. Therefore, we stand, one before the other—not as enemies, not as opponents.

Yuriy Shukhevych, April 11, 1992.”

M.M. Antoniv: And do you know what a theocratic state is?

Volodymyr: Theocratic means that religion has supremacy.

M.M. Antoniv: A theocratic state must exist—then it will be God's state, from God. Not democratic, but theocratic. A theocratic Ukrainian state—there is no other. A democratic one—that's a demon that has come out of the abyss. Theocratic is God's state. And it doesn't exist yet. But God will grant it, if we fight for it, it will be. That's what pokutnyky are.

V.V. Ovsienko: Yes, I have known about the pokutnyky from Grandpa Semen since 1981. [Dictaphone is turned off].

V.V. Ovsienko: End of the conversation with Semen Skalych and Mariia Antoniv on January 25, 2000. Mariia Antoniv's son, Volodymyr, took part in the conversation. He is in his forties. The pokutnyk Semen Fedorovych Skalych lives with Mariia Antoniv in the city of Stryi, Lviv Oblast, postal code 82400, 4-A Hrushevskyi Street, apartment 37. Telephone: area code 245, number 598-35. Intercity code 032245.

[End of recording]

Photo by V. Ovsienko:

Skalych1 Film roll 7945, frame 20. 25.01.2000, Stryi. Semen SKALYCH, Mariia ANTONIV, and her son Volodymyr ANTONIV.