village of Rosokhach, April 3, 2000,
present: Mykola Slobodian and Mykola Marmus
M. Lysyi: I was born in 1941, on May 9, right on Victory Day. I was baptized here in this church and have lived in Rosokhach to this day. I studied at the Rosokhach school. That was the old school! I didn’t get to go to school much because there were five of us children with my mother, and my father went to war and never came back. He was born in 1904, Ivan Lysyi. My mother was also born in 1904, Anastasia Pidsadna. My father was taken to the war in 1941, and we’ve had no news of him since. I don’t remember him. But my older sisters—I have three sisters and a brother—they remember him. But I don’t remember him, because I wasn’t even a year old when he was taken. My eldest sister is now Dudka, Anna, by her husband’s name. After her is my brother Vasyl. Then Olena, now Kuvshok by her husband’s name. And another sister moved to Kherson Oblast; she goes by her husband’s name, Kushnir, Maria.
It was a long walk to school for me, and we were so poor right after the war, it was a year of famine. I finished my schooling in night school. Before the army, I went to the Virgin Lands for two years—Akmolinsk Oblast, which was later called Tselinograd Oblast. That was when they were developing the Virgin Lands. I went with a brigade from Rosokhach. And the next year to Dzhezkazgan—that’s beyond Karaganda, a dead end. We worked in construction there as well. Then I was at home for a bit, and in 1960, I was drafted into the army. I served in the navy for 5 years, until 1965. There were seven of us from Rosokhach. We completed our training in the Baltics; I studied there for 9 months. Where the Gulf of Finland is, we did our practical training on a cruiser. After that, two of us from Rosokhach were in Estonia—Hazela (he’s not here, he moved away) and I. There were 4,500 of us in the training unit, but anyone who didn’t join the Komsomol… I must say, here in the Rosokhach school, I didn’t join the Komsomol, but in Estonia—they put pressure on everyone there.
V. Ovsiyenko: Interesting, why didn’t you join the Komsomol?
M. Lysyi: They kept saying “Komsomol” and “Komsomol,” but what is it? I understood it was unnecessary—just as it is now, it was superfluous then. Well, in honor of what? My friend there joined the Komsomol. We were on the same shift. He joined the Komsomol—so he was sent closer, to Leningrad, but since there were 4,500 of us, 50 of us were sent like some kind of penal contingent—all the way to Vladivostok.
I served in Vladivostok for two years, and after that, from Vladivostok, we went via the Northern Sea Route to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. That’s all the way to Kamchatka, where the Kuril Islands are, where the volcanoes are. After that, trouble with China started, so from Kamchatka, we went via the Northern Sea Route—a whole squadron was going—to Khabarovsk. There were destroyers and warships. We spent the winter there, and after that, from Khabarovsk, when things had quieted down, we went again via the Northern Sea Route, stopping in Magadan, and back to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. I was demobilized from there in 1965.
And after that, I lived here. I went to Kharkiv Oblast for work; we worked in one kolkhoz there for 16 years, and then I went to Poltava Oblast as well. I was in Kyiv Oblast, doing seasonal work in the summer with a brigade. A bit at home, if stone needed to be quarried somewhere. And I also went to the kolkhoz—plastering, bricklaying, when there was material.
And then in 1972, we met up in the village; we would gather at the club. We knew each other. I myself was thinking that every country seems to be independent—so why can’t Ukraine be independent? So I talked with Volodymyr Marmus, then with Mykola Slobodian. We were already preparing in 1973 to celebrate the 55th anniversary of Ukraine’s independence. We gathered and went through the forest. Stepan Sapeľak, it’s true, went by bus to Chortkiv with the poles to hang the flags. There was heavy ice and such a snowstorm, so we went through Zvirynets, past Berdo—and to Chortkiv. This was in the evening. People there, students, were walking around, some going to the cinema, some here and there. In general, the city was full of people. We started from Ukrainian school No. 4, from the top. And we went on and on through the city, putting up leaflets on the Catholic church, on the cinema. By the time we reached the cinema, we had split up; we didn’t walk in a herd. I was with Vynnychuk then; we walked in pairs. Others went down a different street. Just as they were hanging the flag and leaflets on the cinema, they had already been spotted; the KGB agents were already there. They had sniffed it out and started searching the streets for us.
We hung one on the church. Some were pasting leaflets, others were on the sides. And the youngest one climbed all the way up the church, and the Marmus brothers climbed with Vitiv. And some were on the sides, acting as lookouts, guarding ourselves.
They already knew about the leaflets, but they didn’t know where, who, or what was being done. Near the “1000 Melochey” [1000 Trifles] store, a woman and her husband were going into the veterinary clinic, and there was already talk that someone had hung up flags and leaflets.
V. Ovsiyenko: What time did you start this?
M. Lysyi: Just as we were near the market, people were already coming out of the cinema.
Before carrying out this operation, Volodymyr Marmus and I went to Chortkiv on reconnaissance, to find out how, what, and where.* (*January 19. – V.O.). There was a religious festival in Bilobozhentsi at that time. We determined where to start and where to finish. So we already had our plan of how and what to do, so as not to wander around—everything was prepared.
We hung flags on school No. 4, on the medical college, on the cinema, and the last one at the forestry enterprise. While we were still hanging them at the medical college and the forestry enterprise, the “bobik” vans, the police, were already searching Chortkiv, looking for who was doing it and where, because it was fresh work, and they have their duty shifts and check things. We knew our way. We finished our work, but we still had leaflets. We could have put them up somewhere else in a visible place for people to read. Because they cleaned them up right after us. Not everyone saw them at night, and by morning they had all been torn down. But we were already cornered, with nowhere to go.
It was around one or two in the morning when we got back home. God helped us, as they say, because as we were returning, it started snowing, there was a strong wind, and it immediately covered our tracks. Otherwise, they would have found us by our tracks. We returned through the forest, and they didn’t know where we had all gone. If we had been traveling by some vehicle, they could have stopped us. We returned on foot, and whatever leaflets were left, we burned them so they wouldn’t be at home either.
Well, once they took Stepan Sapeľak, there was no way out, as they say. A person can’t endure that kind of torment, all of that. Gradually, they pieced it all together. They deliberately didn’t take us all at once because they thought there might be someone else, so they could uncover them. They took us one by one.
V. Ovsiyenko: And when were you arrested?
M. Lysyi: I don’t remember exactly, but they took me from the police station.
M. Slobodian: They took Sapeľak on February 19, Volodia Marmus on February 24, and me third, on March 22.
M. Lysyi: We were both in the police station in Chortkiv in March 1973.
V. Ovsiyenko: You heard that the boys had already been detained, so you were expecting to be arrested too?
M. Lysyi: I was expecting it—what else? No one could withstand those interrogations. It’s not like in the police station where they just beat you a bit with batons or something. There, they have a doctor with you; he helps, and they do their work, you know how it is…
Once Sapeľak was caught, there was no way out; we had nowhere to go. He told them everything, who was there, what happened. Then they started watching us, not the police, but plainclothes KGB agents. They watched us every single day, every one of us. I went to the club in a raincoat and put the collar up. They showed me a photograph: on such-and-such a date, at such-and-such a time, you entered the club. And by that time, I had already served time once for some “artistry.” A woman there was teaching—I took the heat for her, got those 10 days. And then for “dupaka”—we were playing a game of “dupaka” in the club, and Lenin got involved. And he was standing in the hallway, in the foyer, innocent of any wrongdoing.
V. Ovsiyenko: Was it a sculpture?
M. Lysyi: A sculpture.
V. Ovsiyenko: And did it break?
M. Lysyi: No, it was bronze. So, for that, a woman in Chortkiv added another 15 days to my 10. She judged men mercilessly. I was at the police station for 19 days, and from there they took me to the Chortkiv prison. They washed me, shaved me, because I had grown a beard there, and then the KGB agents took me to Ternopil, into their custody. Lieutenant Colonel Bidyovka conducted my investigation.
Everyone knows I liked to drink; I had been convicted four times before that. I had nowhere to turn. I just told Bidyovka straight that I didn’t know anything, where those flags were made, who carved those poles, who wrote the leaflets—I don’t know, and that’s that. And he had a pistol, and he’s poking that pistol, furious: “You’ll tell me everything anyway!” I say: “I’ll tell you what I know.”
The investigation was on the second floor, and on those stairs, I had to rest three or four times before I reached that second floor. I felt so dizzy, I was falling off my feet, couldn’t stand, I lost my memory. Well, what was I supposed to talk to him about? So I just said, this and that happened. “And how did you go through the forest?” “How did I go? Drunk, intoxicated—how can one walk? I fell down the hill, slid down into the valley, and that’s all, just trudged along slowly.”
Well, they kept asking and asking, then I was at the KGB until the very end. They asked if I knew so-and-so. You know Vynnychuk in Rosokhach? I say, yes, there is. “Who?” I say: “Sianyk, he writes his name as Vynnychuk.” He looked. “There’s no such person,” he says. I say: “Well, I don’t know any other.” Then he says: “Is there a Senkiv?” I say: “Yes.” “What do they call him?” I say: “Ivan.” That was the one who was the record-keeper. But he was asking about Volodymyr Senkiv, the one who was drafted into the army, and I, God knows how he is there. And Bidyovka is thinking and thinking, and then he says: “Do you know Pashosha?” I say: “I do.” “Well, what’s his name?” I say: “His name is Mykola.” “What do you mean, Mykola?” I say: “We used to break stone together here in the quarry at Berdo. Why wouldn’t I know? I know—Pashosha. We used to ride there on a motorcycle, break stone.” He asks if I know so-and-so. I say: “How would I know such young people?” And really, I’d come back from work in the spring, so how would I know that youth? I know them by sight—that’s Pashosha, that one’s like this, and that one like that. But I didn’t know them otherwise.
Then there was another thing, in Ternopil, they were taking me to the exercise yard, and they had already brought Senkiv from the army, they were leading him down the stairs into the valley, and me up. Some guard didn’t time it right, so we wouldn’t see each other… So I’m going up, and he’s coming down, in a military uniform, but I recognized him. They immediately pulled me aside: “Hands behind your back, to the wall!” They turned me to the wall, and led Senkiv to the wall there and away.
There, you couldn’t be alone in a cell for long, so they’d throw someone in, then another. They were always asking what I was in for. Well, I’d say, for love. They’d ask, how for love? And it was like this: Vasyl Zavgorodnyi, Andriy Kravets, may he rest in peace, and I went to the “Podolianka” café, had a good drink, and were walking. Zavgorodnyi had a ticket, so he went to the show, and Andriy and I were walking. And that Maruska from the “Dnistrovski Kruchi” café, from Zalishchyky, says, let Andriy go, and latches onto me: “Wait, wait! Let’s go into the foyer, I’ll tell you something.” I didn’t want to go, I say, the show is on, but she somehow pushed me so that she sat down on her rear on the floor against the wall. The club manager and the head of the village council (he’s deceased now) led me out of the club and wrote such things that I was also tried for that. That’s the kind of story I told those snitches. And when I was tried in Chortkiv, they brought Andriy Kravets from Ternopil as a witness for me. Andriy and I saw each other then; he said a few words.
I was in the KGB until the very end, until the investigation was over. At the trial, all the boys sat together, but they questioned me separately, whether I knew this one, whether I knew that one.
I served a year.
V. Ovsiyenko: So, in the flag case, you were listed as a witness. Here, the verdict states: the court sentenced Volodymyr Marmus, Stepan Sapeľak, Mykola Marmus, Petro Vynnychuk, Volodymyr Senkiv, Mykola Slobodian, Andriy Kravets—but Lysyi and Vitiv are not there.
M. Slobodian: They were used as witnesses.
V. Ovsiyenko: But still, the man served a year—that must be recorded somewhere? Was there a separate court ruling regarding you?
M. Lysyi: They gave me something, but I don’t know where it is or what. Maybe they did, but years have passed, and I don’t remember, I’ve forgotten. I’m not saying they didn’t.
V. Ovsiyenko: So you didn’t receive a rehabilitation document in 1991 either?
M. Lysyi: No, nothing.
V. Ovsiyenko: And after you served that year, what was your fate? I understand you were a bachelor before that trial?
M. Lysyi: And I’m still a bachelor—I separated from my wife. My wife has a child from another man, but I don’t have any yet.
V. Ovsiyenko: You were probably the oldest in the organization?
M. Lysyi: Yes, I was the oldest. When we set out on that operation, it was like going to war. But in war, you can still dodge here and there, but here, where can you go? You can’t escape anywhere here, you can’t back away from one another, because we took an oath. If one doesn’t return, then no one returns…
V. Ovsiyenko: And you lived here after your release, you didn’t go anywhere?
M. Lysyi: I didn’t go anywhere, except for work—to Kharkiv and Poltava oblasts.
V. Ovsiyenko: And did the KGB have any more issues with you over the years? Maybe they summoned you or came to visit?
M. Lysyi: No, after they released me, they didn’t bother me anymore.
V. Ovsiyenko: Are you working anywhere now?
M. Lysyi: I used to go out for jobs, worked in the Chortkiv Raion, in the kolkhozes. And in winter, I was at home. Now in the kolkhoz, as you know, there’s no pay. So I do some work for people. Dig a well for someone… Just to not sit around, to live somehow. You’re not going to go out and steal…
Published:
Youth from the Fiery Furnace / Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group. Compiled by V.V. Ovsiyenko. – Kharkiv: Folio, 2003. – pp. 98–103.
Photo:
Lysyj1 MYKOLA STEPANOVYCH LYSYI in his youth.
Photo by V. Ovsiyenko:Lysyj Film 9770, frame 33. April 3, 2000, village of Rosokhach. MYKOLA STEPANOVYCH LYSYI.
