Vasyl Ovsienko: On December 23, 1999, we are in Kyiv, at the premises of the Republican Christian Party, talking with Mr. Klym Semeniuk. Recorded by Vasyl Ovsienko.
Klym Semeniuk: I, Klym Vasylovych Semeniuk, was born on December 4, 1929, in the village of Zolotolyn, now in the Kostopil Raion of Rivne Oblast. My father, Vasyl, also served ten years in Kolyma; he returned and died at home shortly thereafter (his years of life: 1902–1959; he lived to the age of 57). My mother—her name was Opanasia, Opanasia Borysivna—lived out her days as people do (years of life: 1903–1984; she lived to be 81).
In 1951, I was conscripted into the Soviet army. I served in Balakliia, where a medical commission granted me a six-month deferment due to a bronchial illness. During those six months, a captain named Borshch from the Stepan Raion KGB (it was the MGB back then) repeatedly warned me: “Get out of here! If you don’t, we’ll get you out.” I didn’t pay any mind to these talks because he said it with a laugh. But he kept his promise—I was sent to Rivne for a medical commission through the military commissariat. On March 7, 1952, I arrived in Rivne, went into the polyclinic’s registration office, and Senior Lieutenant Prysiazhniuk was already there waiting for me. By the way, he is now a member of the Rivne Rukh.
V.O.: Interesting!
K.S.: He then took me to the Rivne MGB directorate for interrogation. I didn’t know at the time that if I had held out for three days without giving any confession or signing anything, they would have had to release me because they didn’t have a prosecutor’s warrant for my arrest. They had detained me without a warrant. I knew nothing about their methods back then. They interrogated me around the clock; I had to stand in the corner of their office. It was very hot in there. They were lightly dressed, while I was warmly dressed, even wearing a sheepskin coat. I fainted many times. They would give me some water and then the three of them would continue interrogating me with ‘crossfire’ questions. They beat me, of course. They beat me and interrogated me. If I had held out for a third day (they saw I could manage it), they would have had to release me by morning. So they resorted to a trick. They bought me a train ticket for the way back and said, “Just sign this protocol, and you can go home; we’ll take you to the train station.” I was in such a state that I didn’t look too closely at the contents of that paper; I signed it and took the bait. And then they took me to a cell. It was cell number six, I think.
There were no more places in the Rivne prison, so they had made an MGB prison in the fire station. There were four of us in that sixth cell. They were different kinds of people: one was a Pentecostal, and the others were afraid to say anything about themselves. And they were mostly young men. I was also 21 then, and I knew little about such matters.
The interrogations began—regularly, mostly at night. Then Prysiazhniuk handed me over to an investigator, Captain Posazhennikov. By all accounts, he was a Siberian; I could tell from their conversations. There was also investigator Chuikov—a junior lieutenant—and a cadet; I don’t know his rank. The three of them handled my case. Posazhennikov was an especially evil brute. He tormented me the most, setting up provocations—he would place his pistol on the table, then lower his head as if he were dozing off, thinking I would lunge for the pistol. Such provocations… Most of all, he would hit me on the head with his fist or the butt of his pistol or whatever else was at hand. Chuikov and the cadet didn't get involved, they just interrogated. But when all three of them were there, each did his own thing.
I fainted quite often, especially during those first three days. It was stuffy, I was hungry, and they kept up the ‘crossfire’ interrogation. They squeezed that signature out of me, and I ended up in a cell.
There was something else I had to sign, but I resisted, so Posazhennikov decided to put me in an isolation cell. He put me in. I began a hunger strike. Well, I simply didn’t want to live. I didn’t know then that a hunger strike is a method of protest. I just didn’t want to live; it seemed better to end my life that way. I spent three days in a punishment box about one meter by one meter. There was a latrine bucket and nothing else.
V.O.: Was there no way to lie down, only sit?
K.S.: To lie down, you could only curl up into an arc on the concrete floor. And the ceiling was high enough. There was a small window, with a lightbulb burning overhead. You couldn't reach it; it was too high. I refused food, lay down on the concrete, and thought: what will be, will be. But no—on the third day, they let me out. They let me out and took me to the delousing chamber, where they heat-treat clothes to kill lice. At first, it was nice and warm there, and I warmed up. But then it became hard to breathe; I think they turned up the heat. I started banging on the door. A Belarusian man who worked in the supply department was there, in charge of the rags and mattresses. His last name was Matsuta. “What do you want?” he asked. “I can’t breathe.” “Wait!” He left. A little while later, they put me back in the same cell, number six. By then, more people had been added; there were six of us. And it was a small cell, maybe two or two and a half meters by five meters. The floor, though, was wooden, and there were mattresses now. And the routine was: at six o’clock, ‘Reveille!’ We would roll up our mattresses into a pile, and we were no longer allowed to sit on them. Lights out was at 10 p.m. They watched this very strictly.
V.O.: And what were they interrogating you about? What were the charges?
K.S.: I was charged under Article 54, paragraph 10, part two. This second part, they explained to me, was related to wartime. They accused me of distributing anti-Soviet leaflets. They called me a Banderite, a nationalist, a bourgeois nationalist—they called me everything. They had no evidence. So this Posazhennikov went to my village and interrogated nine people. But no one could say anything bad about me. He even let me read the protocols. People spoke well of me. Then he tore up all those protocols right in front of me.
And so it went to trial. I was arrested on March 7, and the trial was on April 23. The court consisted of four people: a judge, two assessors, and a prosecutor. I was the fifth. The trial was closed. For that article, they gave me 10 years of imprisonment and 5 years of deprivation of rights for anti-Soviet propaganda and activity. After the trial, they sent me to the central prison in Rivne, which was on Lenin Street. Today, I think there’s a sewing factory there. And the prison is gone. Some guys took me there, because I had never seen it from the outside…
There, they put me in cell 24 on the second floor. From the window, you could see three small yards for exercise. One time, I was talking through the window with a man from my village, an old OUN member. He was asking who I was. For that, they put me in the basement for seven days. I was naked—all I had was underwear, galoshes, and two footwraps. It was a very large cell with two windows and no glass in either of them. And this was March, a very snowy March in 1952. In the cell, snowdrifts had piled up on the floor from those two windows. I would climb onto the top bunk and cover myself with the footwraps. At least you could doze off a little. You can’t walk around all the time. But if you lie down, you freeze, because you’re naked. Imagine, I was on my feet day and night. Once, I felt some warm air coming from a crack in the door, from the corridor. I pressed myself against it to get some warmth. The guard couldn’t see me through the peephole. So he quietly opened the door and kicked me right into the snow! So I didn’t press myself against the door again. I served my seven days there and was sent back to the same cell.
Before the transport to Lviv, they threw me into a death row cell. It was in the basement, all scratched up. A metal table was chained to the floor, and there was nothing else. I spent two or three days there.
Then came the transport to Lviv. I ended up in Pidzamche. There were many barracks there. Not barracks, but large buildings. I was put in a cell with Galicians, all of them young men; you rarely saw an older person. The cell was huge—maybe twelve by six meters. We lay side-by-side on the cement floor, in two rows along each wall, with a tiny passage down the middle. All the way to the doors. I described this in my memoirs in the journal *Zona*, no. 3. A newspaper in Rivne published it too. I didn't give the memoir a title, but the journalist titled it “How I Was Tortured.”
Interestingly, someone named Tkachuk responded to my article in the newspaper *Dialoh* in Rivne. Well, who would have access to my father's case file? Only one of their people. This Tkachuk supposedly had been a shepherd in our village and knew my father. He writes that he doesn't know me, but he knows my father. When the UPA destroyed the Polish settlement in Stepanska Huta, my father took part in it. Stepan, a resort town, is nearby. The Polish colonists would go around the villages, looting. Seeing this, the UPA destroyed their settlement. My father was involved in that too. Not that my father was a UPA fighter, no. The UPA just organized the peasants with wagons to take and haul away everything that was left, so the Poles couldn’t regroup there. The UPA, through its local organizers, gathered peasants with wagons from the surrounding villages. This Tkachuk had looked at the case file and writes that he knows my father. That he supposedly saw bloody clothes, that some woman and a child were killed there. He doesn't write that it was my father's work, but that my father was only there with a wagon. And it seems that's really how it was. This was his response in the Rivne newspaper *Dialoh* to my article “How I Was Tortured by the MGB.” I have a clipping from that newspaper at home. It wasn’t that long ago, maybe 5 years ago, that I wrote these memoirs.
V.O.: Was this fact of your father’s participation in that action incriminated against him?
K.S.: Yes, of course.
V.O.: You began your story from when you were 21, but you haven’t told us anything about what you did before that. Were you involved in the national liberation struggle? This isn’t an interrogation; you can tell everything here. It would be good to talk about your childhood years as well.
K.S.: My childhood years were under the Germans. I worked on my own land and went to school. It was all village work; what is there to tell? But by 1950, I had connected with the OUN underground and was receiving and distributing literature.
In Lviv, they loaded us onto a transport train, packing about forty or fifty men into each Pullman car. They had built bunks in them. We were transported in the cars for a whole night and a day. Then through Belarus—on to Moscow. In Moscow, our train stopped under a pedestrian bridge. In our car, there was a guy named Yaroslav Shepita, from the Borshchiv Raion in Ternopil Oblast. He was 18, but his face looked just like a child’s. A crowd had gathered there, watching. The guys prompted him: “Stick your head out the window and ask for bread!” He stuck his head out and pleaded, “Give us some bread!” A woman there saw him and cried out: “Oh, God! They’re taking children away!” and started screaming. And just like that, the bridge filled up with people. Muscovites, unlike us in Ukraine, were not so afraid of the KGB. The guards started to disperse them. But they yelled back at the convoy, “Get out of here!” So they moved our train to another location.
On the way, the prisoners started rocking the car. And they rocked it hard! I didn’t know our car was the last one. The guards were in it. The guards started shooting, and the train stopped. An MGB officer came and asked, “What’s going on?” “Nothing! The tracks are bad, you’re going too fast, so the car is shaking.” And that was the end of it.
They brought us to Kotlas in Arkhangelsk Oblast—the southernmost point of Pechorlag: the Kotlas camp, number eight, a transit camp. We arrived there towards autumn. The journey had taken almost a month. I don’t know the dates. They didn’t interest me at all back then.
That transit camp was a big camp. A real hell. It was a quarantine zone. It was full of *bytoviki*: thieves, murderers, you name it. They were the kind of people who would rip the epaulets off the camp commandants' shoulders—that’s the sort they were. Real bandits. And they threw us in there with them. They separated 16 of us and put us in a different barrack. There was a danger of getting into a fight. We went to negotiate with their leader. But they didn’t touch us, those *bytoviki*. They searched us and didn’t bother us again.
After 15 days of re-processing, they took us to Vychegodsk in paddy wagons. Not Solvychegodsk, where Stalin was exiled, but on the other side of the river, about 12 kilometers away, is Vychegodsk, camp number 11, a political one. By 1952, the *bytoviki* and political prisoners had been separated, because before that, there had been a huge massacre. Until then, the *bytoviki* had held all the positions: camp store manager, work assigner—all the bosses were from their ranks.
The commandant of this political camp was Captain Suvorov. By the way, he was also the Party organizer for Vychegodsk. The local people said that he had fled from somewhere and moved there with his mistress. The work was constructing a railcar repair depot for repairing railway cars. Some prisoners worked in the depot, while others went to backfill the tracks in the railyard. There’s a huge railyard in Vychegodsk. Another group worked on constructing residential buildings. It was right about then that Stalin croaked. There, in the railyard, which was full of steam engines, the whistles were blowing, and we were shouting “Hurrah!” We stood there shouting “Hurrah!” that the butcher had croaked. It all passed without incident; they didn’t do anything to us for it.
A while later, I came down with Botkin’s disease, which is jaundice. I ended up in camp number 12. It was across the fence, right next to our camp, the Pechorlag hospital. My friend Zinoviy Kulyna (also from Borshchiv Raion in Ternopil Oblast) died there, a young lad who wrote beautiful poems. Nothing of his survived. He died there from a cold in his sciatic nerve.
From the hospital, they transferred me to camp number 14. Here, the camp commandant was Junior Lieutenant Don. As a person, he seemed decent enough. By then, there was already talk of future releases. A commission from the Central Committee was working there in 1955, so they started treating us more leniently.
In this camp, I got a job at the woodworking plant, in the carpentry shop, under foreman Kazakov. Then I was transferred to the smithy, where I worked until my release.
I was released on November 9, 1955. The documents must have arrived earlier, but they didn’t release me before their holidays—they released me on the 9th. And I was released because of a complaint I had filed. I had pointed out that the investigator, Posazhennikov, had torn up the interrogation protocols of my fellow villagers, which exonerated me. They went to my village to check my statement, re-interrogating people. They took five years off my sentence, and with a five-year sentence, I qualified for the 1953 amnesty. When Stalin croaked, there was an amnesty for those with sentences of up to five years. No political prisoners were given such short terms; it was all for the *bytoviki*. But now I fell under this amnesty. I only had six months left to serve. They released me on November 9.
V.O.: So you were released from the camp—and then where did you go?
K.S.: To the Yelets directorate, 300 km from Vychegodsk. A guard escorted me. They even put me in a holding cell there. I waited for three or four hours while they prepared my documents. They gave me my papers. I got my travel permit for Kyiv. I wasn't planning to live in Kyiv, but I got it with the thought that it was a big city. I had one dream—the underground. I could get lost in Kyiv and then go where I needed to. And that's what I did. I went to Chernihiv to see an acquaintance from the camp. He had also been released on appeal. From there, I went home. There is a train station, Klevan, 45 km from my village. There was no transport. I walked through the forest, through villages, getting closer to my village, but trying to arrive when it was dark. I stopped in the village of Postiine, to see another acquaintance from the camp. I went to check on my former contact. It was dark, in the evening. He tells me that the people I knew were gone, killed. “But wait,” I say, “the regional command was not far from here.” I asked him to notify them. He says: “Where would you go with such a tail? Fingerprints, photos—where can you go with such a tail?” Well, what could I do? Since my travel permit was for Kyiv, I stayed at home for only a week and then left for Kyiv. That’s how I ended up in Kyiv.
V.O.: And who was at home?
K.S.: At that time, we had two brothers, two sisters, and my mother at home. My father was still in prison then. He was also released after that Central Committee commission. He had served 10 years, but they wouldn’t let him go home, so he ended up spending 11 years in Kolyma.
In Kyiv, I had an acquaintance from the camp. I went to stay with him, as I needed a place. I started looking for a job. He only advised me to talk to his son-in-law. But he was a Party member and was afraid to have anything to do with me, not wanting to stain his reputation.
I ended up at a “Komsomol construction project” in Telychky—a prefabricated housing combine. It was very bad there. The lowest wage was 25 karbovantsi, and the highest was 45. And I had nothing to wear! I arrived in just a padded jacket and tarpaulin boots—that became my work uniform. I had nothing to wear on my day off. So I spent the winter in the dormitory. I thought, somehow I’ll save up a few kopecks and buy at least some kind of suit for the summer. Because I had nothing to wear to go out. Seeing that there was no life on such wages, I decided to leave. But the man in the personnel department, Dyachenko, wouldn’t process my resignation! One guy in front of me was trying so hard to resign that he pulled out a knife, he nearly stabbed him. Well, people were working for free! And he wouldn’t let them leave. Seeing that it was all useless, that I wouldn’t get my papers, I went to Irpin. I earned money doing carpentry work for people—I agreed to lay a floor…
A month later, I went back to this Dyachenko and asked, “Will you process my resignation?” “No!” I turned and left. I didn’t say anything to him because I knew it was pointless. I came back a month later—“No!” I came three times. Then I filed a complaint with the prosecutor of the Pechersk Raion: this is the situation, Dyachenko hasn’t processed my resignation for three months. The prosecutor ordered him to process it. And Dyachenko declared: “And I’ll have you kicked out of the dormitory!” “Kick me out!” I knew he would do something like that, so I had already arranged with the dormitory’s passport officer to register me as having left earlier. I hadn’t officially been in the dormitory for six months; I was registered in Bykivnia, where I found a room with a *propiska* for a hundred karbovantsi a month.
I got my papers and went to the rubber factory. Now it’s called “Vulkan.” I worked on the presses as a vulcanizer. First as an apprentice, then as a worker, and I earned 85 karbovantsi. I thought, where will I spend all this money? I used to get 25, and now 85. Where am I going to spend it? But it was still peanuts. I worked there for a bit and saw that the temperature near the press was high and the work was hard. I wouldn’t have the strength to pull on like that until old age. So I went to study to become a maintenance foreman. I worked and studied at the same time. I finished, passed the exams, and transferred to the DShK—the Darnytsia Silk Combine, repairing equipment. I didn't work there for long.
On June 19, 1958, I was arrested again. They came to search my place. I thought they were from Brovary, since Bykivnia was in the Brovary Raion, but they came from the Darnytsia department of the MGB. They immediately found a weapon—a pistol and a small-caliber rifle.
V.O.: And where did you get those?
K.S.: I acquired them. I bought the small-caliber rifle at a store on Sverdlov Street; there was a “Sporting Goods” store there. And I acquired the pistol.
V.O.: And what was your goal?
K.S.: The goal? Well, certainly not terrorism, as they wanted to accuse me of. I never even thought of that. I just bought it—let it be.
V.O.: It’ll come in handy on the farm?
K.S.: Yes, it’ll come in handy on the farm.
V.O.: But still, you must have had some goal?
K.S.: I did. With that guy from Chernihiv Oblast, and another one, and a Kyivan, we were thinking of creating a group. But nothing came of it. I was arrested…
V.O.: What—were you planning to go into the underground?
K.S.: Oh, no. What kind of underground? It’s impossible to create one here. Especially since we all had “tails” [records].
The investigator was the deputy head of the investigative department, Lieutenant Colonel Kasyanenko. A very nasty man, a real janissary, a good janissary he was, that Kasyanenko. They charged me under Article 196—illegal possession of a firearm. They wanted to give me a political charge, but they had no evidence. I was tried on a criminal charge, but the investigation was conducted by the regional KGB, located on Rosa Luxemburg Street. This lieutenant colonel didn’t physically abuse me, but his words stung: “OUN scum,” “Banderite,” “bandit”—he called me everything under the sun.
I was tried on August 29, 1958. The Kyiv Regional Court awarded me this: 5 years in strict-regime camps, 5 years of deprivation of rights, with a ban on residing in any regional center of the USSR after release. Investigator Kasyanenko said that my place was in the taiga, not in the capital of Ukraine.
They took me on a Stolypin car to Potma—there’s a station like that in Mordovia.
V.O.: I know, I know…
K.S.: And again, camp number 8, quarantine for 15 days, then I ended up in Sosnovka camp. It was a political camp. It was clear that the Dubrovlag administration in Yavas hadn't figured it out: if the KGB investigated, then he's a political prisoner. So they took me to Sosnovka, to the political prisoners. There I met an old acquaintance from Pechorlag, Novak, I don't remember his first name, from Ternopil Oblast. He hadn't been released, he was still there. He had been sentenced by an OSO [Special Council of the NKVD]. And Korniy Syvachivskyi was also there—a friend of mine from the North. I didn't see him; he had been taken away from there shortly before, as I was told. The commission in 1956 hadn't released him. He was a young lad, but he had been in the UPA's intelligence. And why wasn't he released? The head of the commission, a woman, asked him: “What do you want from the commission?” And he said: “Nothing!” “What do you mean, nothing? We can release you, or we can keep you.” And he said: “Only God will release me.” So this party woman, this mother, left him to serve 25 years. At that time, he had served three or four years. He was arrested in 1953, even later than me. He was trying to escape abroad, they arrested him there and handed him over to the USSR. And that party mother didn't release him.
I wasn’t in this seventh camp for long—about a week, until they figured out in Yavas who I was. They moved me to Yavas itself, to the 11th camp point, zone 2. There were about 200 men there—a small zone, one barrack. We did maintenance for the camp: digging a ditch here, putting up a post there—that kind of work. And huge columns of political prisoners were marched to work somewhere from there. I was in 11/2 for only three months. They transferred me to camp number 6—the settlement of Molochnytsia. It was a women’s camp, and next to the women’s camp was a small men’s camp, also for about 200 men. It was mostly young guys there. Also on maintenance: we prepared hay for the winter—various jobs. The camp commandant was Colonel Ushakov.
I ended up as a carpenter in the camp's service yard. Captain Hryshchenko, from Zaporizhzhia Oblast, was in charge of the yard. He treated me quite well. It was a large women’s camp, then the service yard across a restricted zone, and then, across another restricted zone, the BUR [strict-regime barrack], one barrack where they held the defiant women. The platoon leader wants to make me the foreman of the service yard. To work and be a foreman at the same time. He wanted to make me watch so the guys wouldn’t climb onto the roof to talk to the women. They'd talk, then tie a note to a stone and throw it over into the zone. I refused: “Take me off the job; I won’t be a foreman. Or relieve me from work, and I’ll be a full-time foreman and then I’ll talk to them on this subject. But as it is, I'm just like them.” I refused. Then he sent an informant, a Mordvin. I identified him and warned him: “Just you dare snitch about anything!..” There were guys there who had civilians bring them vodka. Or the guy who delivered groceries. I didn’t want people to suffer for that. Then a Mordvin (a recruited informant) who was the head of the convoy for the service yard, brought two bottles of vodka. I told him more than once that it was dangerous, that there were informers here. Then the platoon leader calls me in and asks about him. So I gave that Mordvin a good beating in the barracks.
There was a guard there named Bychenko from Rostov Oblast who treated me well. We sometimes played chess. The informers reported to the platoon leader that I had beaten the Mordvin. The platoon leader sent him for a medical commission, to the doctors. Bychenko happened to be on duty, so he went to the doctors, there were two women, a nurse and a doctor. He said: “Semeniuk is in big trouble—help him out!” And I had also done some carpentry work for them on their windows. So they gave a certificate saying nothing had happened to the Mordvin. Bychenko took the certificate, had it stamped, and gave it to the platoon leader. In short, this guard Bychenko saved me.
I was there for three months. Then they moved me to a strict-regime facility, camp number five. This was the settlement of Liplei, on the same railway line. I was assigned to Captain Losyev’s platoon. The very next day, he sent me to unload train cars with logs. I said: “That’s too hard work for me.” Sometimes they’d even call us in the middle of the night to unload the timber. This plant produced furniture—desks, wardrobes, and even chess sets. By then, I already knew I had a third-degree disability rating and they had no right to give me such hard labor. I had found out by chance during a roll call in Potma that I was disabled due to my bronchial condition. So I didn't go to work. Captain Losyev summoned me: “Why?” I said: “I have a third-degree disability, this work is too hard for me. I can’t do it.” He put me in the BUR. I spent seven days in the BUR, then they brought me to the workshop where they varnished chess sets. The smell of acetone and varnish was overpowering, but what could you do? You had to work. I worked there for a long time. Then I transferred to the carpentry shop, where the foreman was Mykola Ostrovskyi from Kyiv Oblast. He had served there, married a Mordvin woman, and stayed on to work. He gave me a good job on a mortising machine—drilling holes for table legs. It was delicate work. One wrong move and you had to throw the part away. And they were covered with veneer, so much labor went into them. A while later, there was a medical commission, and they gave me a second-degree disability for high blood pressure. And I had high blood pressure before. The work was such that I wouldn't have been against doing it (I could have refused it with a second-degree disability). The rate was decent, and you wanted to earn a kopeck to buy a gingerbread cookie or something, because the food was very bad. And another thing—there were *bytoviki* and men who owed alimony working in the workshop. They asked me to take credit for their production quotas. So I was “fulfilling” my quota by 130%, and this contributed to my early release.
V.O.: You became a “production champion”?
K.S.: Yes. I was a good worker. But in 1961, the Criminal Code was amended. Under the new code, the maximum sentence for my charge was two years. And they had given me five. So, thanks to those percentages, I was released early, after three and a half years. And again, on November 9. My wife had just arrived for a visit. I came out in the evening, because you had to go to the station to spend the night, the train left early. I looked—and my wife was sitting there with my daughter!
V.O.: You haven't mentioned getting married yet. When did you get married?
K.S.: It was in that interval after I came to Kyiv in 1955. I got married in February 1958. My wife's name is Maria Oleksandrivna Dudko; she is from Chernihiv Oblast, Bobrovytsia Raion, the village of Osovets. And my daughter Liudmyla (we called her Liusia) was born on January 4, 1959. So they came for a visit. They were waiting for morning to come for the visit, but I was released that evening, and we met at the train station.
V.O.: That’s interesting.
K.S.: Yes, very interesting! We were heading to Kyiv. By the way, they hadn't given me a travel permit to Kyiv; my rights to reside in regional centers were restricted. I couldn’t go to Kyiv, so I got one for Brovary, near Kyiv. I thought, I’ll live in Brovary if I have to. I was hoping to get my residency permit (*propiska*), because no one would hire me without one. There was work, but no housing. There was housing, but no work. I even went to Bobrovytsia to get registered there—that didn't work out either. As soon as they looked at my documents—no job for me.
At that time, my wife was working at Combine No. 512, earning 85 karbovantsi. She paid 20 karbovantsi for a room in a dormitory for the three of us, leaving 65 for the three of us. We couldn't spend more than 2 karbovantsi a day on food. Well, it was a dire situation! I went everywhere, even to the Kyiv regional committee. I went to the chairman to ask him for permission to get a *propiska* in Brovary. I had a conversation with him there. He was sitting far away, at a huge table, in a large room, and he says: "Why do you want to go to Brovary? Because of the powder plant there?" But I heard not 'порошковий' (powder) but 'пиріжковий' (pyrizhky). I ask: "What do pyrizhky have to do with anything?" He cursed me out and kicked me out. I misheard, and I didn't even know there was such a plant, a powder plant. And he sent me on my way…
I wandered around like that for six months. No one would hire me. Nowhere. I went to the DShK—they wouldn’t hire me there either. And I didn't know that they were obliged to take me back because I was arrested there. And they just said: "You're free! Go! Come back tomorrow!" I kept going back—all for nothing. I got so angry that I wrote a letter to Khrushchev (Khrushchev was still in power then). And it was a sharply worded letter! I described everything, my biographical data, and I ended it like this: either give me a place to live anywhere in Ukraine with appropriate housing and a job, or put me back in prison. I have no other way out; I have nothing to live on. The reply came about two months later. In total, after six months.
A Colonel Zakharov summons me here in Kyiv. No, even before that, they summoned me to that building between Mykhailivska Square and Sofiivska Square. You know, where the regional court is?
V.O.: Yes, I know. I was tried there in 1973.
K.S.: The entrance is on the side facing Mykhailivska. I knew that it was the kind of building from which no one returns. I took some food with me, went into the monastery, prayed, and went to them. I waited, they called me in, and asked me about four or five people I didn’t know at all. I really didn’t know them. And even if I had, I wouldn’t have said so. What's it to me? I signed a sheet of paper and went home. About a week later, a Zykov summoned me. In the same building, but through a side door.
V.O.: And what institution was that Colonel Zakharov from?
K.S.: God only knows, I didn't ask. Probably from the KGB. I have a document here, it probably says. He summoned me and my wife. And he just tells my wife: "He has no future, what do you need him for? You will suffer your whole life." That’s what he said. We listened like mutes; neither she nor I said a word. Then he gives me a referral to 4 Khreshchatyk Street. The building is not there anymore. An escort took me to Captain Volkov, who was in charge of Kyiv residency permits. That captain signed it without any discussion: "Go!" I went. They registered me quickly. I thought: now I’ll have a job. But no! The same thing again: as soon as it came to my documents—"Come back tomorrow!" And tomorrow, there was no job. That’s why I wrote the letter to Khrushchev.
After getting the *propiska*, I walked around and around—no one would hire me. I went back to the prosecutor: “What should I do?” “Your restriction on living in Kyiv hasn't been lifted! Write an application to the regional court to have it lifted!” I wrote the application. A certain Nikitenko received me. He gave me the court's decision that the restriction was lifted from me. And still, I couldn't find a job. I went back to the prosecutor’s office. He says: “It’s time to go to the DShK!” (To the Darnytsia Silk Combine, the place from which I was arrested).
I went. He must have warned them. Before, they would refuse me, but this time, they took my documents without any discussion and started processing them: “Come to work tomorrow. But not as a foreman; you’ll be a repairman for weaving equipment.” I had no choice, so I agreed. As a former foreman, they hired me immediately at the fourth skill category. That was 52 kopecks an hour—that’s what they paid me. I worked there for eight years, reached the sixth category, the highest. Well, it wasn't such a big raise—61 kopecks an hour. Sometimes there were bonuses; altogether, it was about 130 or 140 karbovantsi, no more. Still not much, but I worked there for eight years, and then decided to leave. Now my work record book showed that I had been employed, there were two entries, so I could try to get a job somewhere else.
My brothers from Western Ukraine went to work in Kirovohrad Oblast. I went with them. I went there for two seasons. They recorded in my work book that I had also worked on a kolkhoz. I went to study to be a crane operator. I traveled to Brovary for the training. I worked for about six months, resigned, and went to BMU-57 [Construction and Installation Directorate-57]. It was better here. I worked on a two-shift, every-other-day schedule, and that suited me. I had a lot of free time.
It was then that I heard on the radio about Oksana Yakivna Meshko, that a group of human rights defenders had been formed—the Helsinki Group. They even gave the address: 16 Verbolozna Street. I decided that I had no right to be free while all my like-minded people were in prison. I had no right to sit back and wait for something! I had to work!
V.O.: Were you listening to Radio Liberty then?
K.S.: I heard it through the jamming.
V.O.: Did you have access to samvydav literature?
K.S.: Only some.
V.O.: Did you communicate with anyone in the sixties?
K.S.: I did. There was one person. Volodymyr Yurchenko. He graduated from Kyiv University, the evening faculty, a lawyer. He supplied me with some things. Like Mykhailo Braichevsky’s “Reunification or Annexation?” and a few other things.
V.O.: You mentioned the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, which was formed on November 9, 1976. When did you meet Oksana Yakivna Meshko?
K.S.: In 1978, I found her and visited 16 Verbolozna Street several times. To get ahead of myself, I'll say that Oksana Yakivna trusted me. What I valued most was that trust. I told her I had no right to stand aside while my like-minded friends were in prisons, so I worked. Oksana gave me tasks: establishing contacts with new people. And providing financial aid. We had some small funds. I would travel to visit people. I had to go to Uzhhorod to see Pavlo Kampov. Near Kyiv, there’s a village called Lisnyky—I went there to see the writer Vasyl Ruban, who had spent six years in the Dnipropetrovsk psychiatric hospital. He needed help after his release. I went to Klavdiievo to see Leonid Kudlasevych, who worked as an engineer at an institute in Sviatoshyn. But he, to be honest, was a bit timid... Because when I was arrested and they interrogated him, he got a little scared. It happened. He later apologized to me. I had been keeping some documents with him at the time. They weren't lost; he returned them to me after my release. I also established contact with Borys Kovhar. I traveled to the Rzhyshchiv area, where Oles Berdnyk's wife, Valentyna Sokorynska, lived in the village of Hrebeni. That was an unsuccessful trip because Olena Leliukh had been there a week before me. The KGB had bugged her. A whole fuss was raised, and Valentyna became mistrustful of me as well. She didn't treat me very well. By the way, the bandurist Vasyl Lytvyn lived nearby.
There was a lot to be done. Some documents had to be kept safe. One time, I went to Oksana Yakivna's. And they were watching her very closely. Not only was a piece of tin on the roof of the house opposite hers slightly lifted to house a spyglass, but they later installed an automatic camera.
V.O.: They said there was even night vision equipment there.
K.S.: Perhaps. But they installed such strong lighting on a pole near her house that night vision wasn't needed. You could see as clearly as in daylight. A kilowatt lightbulb was hanging there. During our conversation, she gave me a letter for Oles Honchar, the one who wrote the novel “The Cathedral.” I took it in front of her and sealed the envelope. She had given it to me as a copy for me to keep. But I took it and sealed it. And when I was walking home, they just—bam, pulled me into a car on the road. There, in Kurenivka, on the way to the tram tracks, there's a police room. They took me there and started searching me. They took the letter, and it was sealed. A Captain Tkachenko of the police was there. He turned the letter over and over but didn’t take it. He gave it back to me. But he looked very closely at the keys to my crane. (After that, there were constant secret searches of the crane).
V.O.: And was the recipient's name written on the envelope?
K.S.: Yes, it was written, to Oles Honchar. But without an address. He gives me the letter back, but he looks very intently at the keys to the crane I was working on at the time. And I had some literature in the crane then. I thought no one would go looking in there. But they were watching me.
This was around the summer of 1980, before Oksana Yakivna was put in the psychiatric hospital. I had met and started contacting her in the autumn of 1978. And on December 29, I noticed I was being followed. Right before New Year's. Maybe it had been happening earlier—I hadn't paid attention.
Then they took this letter to Honchar from the crane. There were other documents there too. Even your “Word” was there.
V.O.: My “Instead of a Final Word,” prepared for the 1979 trial? How did you get it?
K.S.: How? I think it was through Oksana Yakivna or possibly your friend, Dmytro Mazur. He visited me but didn’t bring any documents… Oksana Yakivna gave it to me for safekeeping. As for Dmytro Mazur, we talked, and then I told him I would watch from the balcony to see if he was being followed. If so, I’d whistle. And sure enough, as soon as he left my place, two men started following him. I whistled, he nodded his hand, and walked on. I was living in Obolon at the time, at 16 Korniichuk Avenue.
V.O.: Was this after I was sentenced?
K.S.: Yes, after that.
V.O.: And what about the trip to Radomyshl? I was tried on February 7 and 8, 1979. Did Oksana Yakivna ask you to accompany her?
K.S.: Yes. She was an elderly woman, so she asked. And, you could say, she was afraid of what to say there. Anything can happen on the road, right? She needed someone to accompany her. So she asked me to go with her.
V.O.: And did you have any trouble because of your trip to my trial in Radomyshl?
K.S.: No. Nobody said anything. Is Slavynsky still alive?
V.O.: Slavynsky… The police major who fabricated the case of resisting arrest against me… When I was released in August 1988, I saw him once in Radomyshl. Just across the street. I saw him and turned away. And a month after my release, he was driving drunk on a motorcycle with a sidecar and crashed into a car. And that car was parked. They got him to the hospital, and he died there.
K.S.: And Kovbasiuk, the witness?
V.O.: I don’t know about Halyna Kovbasiuk. She was a typist for the police. But the district policeman, Bazlenko—Volodymyr, I think—didn't come to the trial. He was born the same year as me and was in a parallel class with me for the last two years of school. He, by the way, died of a heart attack, right on the street, a year after I was imprisoned.
K.S.: That’s how God punishes. Well, at Oksana Yakivna’s, I was present during a search once. The search was led by Major Pluzhnyk. By the way, Petrunia, the head of the KGB prison, a lieutenant colonel, took part in that search. As did my future investigator, Lukianenko (he was a captain then, but by the time he handled my case, he was a major). There was someone else, but I don’t remember his name. They asked me: “Will you stay here or go home?” I turned to Oksana Yakivna: “Oksana Yakivna, what do you think, should I stay with you?” She answered unclearly. I decided: “I’m staying here!” Then they called a car…
V.O.: They wouldn't have let you go home anyway. They don’t let anyone leave a search until it’s over.
K.S.: But he asked me that way. And then he himself called for a car and people, put me in the car—and they took me home to conduct a search at my place.
V.O.: Ah! And when was that?
K.S.: I have the dates of the searches written down somewhere… It was May 14, 1980.
V.O.: That's the day Vasyl Stus was arrested. Indeed, there was a search at Oksana Meshko's then.
K.S.: The search at my place was conducted by Baniev, Borzdov, Makoviy, and Yenenko. Yenenko was my “minder.” And Tkachenko was Oksana Yakivna’s “minder.” He wasn't a captain, but a major, as I later found out. When they came from Oksana Yakivna's, they found nothing at my place. I had searches not only then, but also on December 17, 1980. That one was conducted by Shevchenko, a prosecutor’s investigator. It was in connection with the case of Vasyl Rozlutsky from Chervonohrad; I have a friend there. He was arrested then. Shevchenko was the investigator, and the official witnesses were Olena Nestezhyna and Mykhailo Kurylenko. I also had a search on December 6, 1984, conducted by Krechuniak, my investigator, Major Krechuniak. That’s when they seized my radio receiver. By then I was already under arrest. I was arrested on October 26, 1984. Oksana Yakivna had already been exiled to Siberia. And before that, they had put her in the Pavlovsk psychiatric hospital. No one could visit her; there was no one to do it. Berdnyk had been imprisoned since March 1979… Because both Berdnyk and I used to go to 16 Verbolozna Street. I never met him there, Berdnyk. But he visited her regularly, about once a week.
V.O.: Why didn’t they touch you for so long—until 1984?
K.S.: Apparently, it was more advantageous for them to follow me around to identify more people. They followed me for six years before arresting me. They only took a break for one year. For a whole year, they didn't follow me at all. But otherwise, they were on my tail for six years.
V.O.: That was a lot of work! People were earning a living...
K.S.: They were earning a living; the surveillance was very intense. I started to study them. Sometimes I even mocked them.
V.O.: And what were you doing at this time?
K.S.: When Oksana Yakivna was in the psychiatric hospital, I used to visit her. We planned to abduct her from there. She had this idea that I should find some inconspicuous apartment somewhere. But then I thought about it myself, and she probably changed her mind too, that it wouldn't last long. It wouldn't have achieved anything. And when they exiled her to Siberia… She told me in advance where and what to take from her house. She gave the keys to Olena Leliukh. So I went with Olena and took some things. We turned on the water so the listening devices wouldn't pick up our conversation on this topic. I should say something about Leliukh now, because I might forget later. Her car had a listening device installed in it. I got burned by that once. They slipped that device into her car. That’s what happened.
I corresponded with Oksana Yakivna. But what really surprised me was that someone (I think it was them) sent Oksana Yakivna a parcel in my name to Ayan. Some dried fruit, honey, and washing powder that was spilled. I think they were planning to kill Oksana Yakivna. And since the parcel was from me, I would be the one blamed for poisoning her. These are my thoughts, my suspicions. But Oksana Yakivna didn't use the parcel. She was a very intelligent woman. She sent me a letter, thanking me for the parcel. I sent her an urgent telegram: I know nothing about the parcel! Oles Serhiienko was at home by then, so I asked him. He hadn't sent it either. And my wife hadn’t either. So who could have sent that parcel? I think they intended to get rid of Oksana Yakivna there, and I would have been blamed for sending poison. What other explanation could there be?
I forgot about an interesting incident that happened at home. After Oksana Yakivna was exiled to Ayan, two burly policemen came to my door. They rang the bell. I looked and didn't let them into the apartment. I was home alone at the time. They must have been watching me; they knew I was alone. Then one of them went downstairs to the street and looked up at the balcony, to see if I would look out. I saw them, but they didn't see me. Then he went to the heating-control station to make a phone call. After that, he returned, and they went to a neighbor on my landing, in apartment 126, who was also a policeman, but with the water patrol. He comes to my place and rings my bell. I didn’t open the door for him either. After a while, they left. This was in the middle of summer, 1984.
What's interesting? If the police had needed me for something personal, they definitely would have come back again. And they usually summon you to their station if they need you. But no district officer or janitor came with them. Just two burly men in police uniforms… I think that if I had opened the door, it could have been that they would have whacked me on the head, scattered my clothes as if robbers had come to burgle the place, and I was defending myself, so they killed me. That's my personal opinion. Such an incident could have happened. I think Volodymyr Katelnytsky was killed later in a similar way.
V.O.: Quite possible. They staged such scenes.
K.S.: After this, I began to write down my own thoughts. It came out in five sections, totaling 94 pages. I laid it all out as best I could. Maybe not very cleverly, but I expressed my opinion. It's called “An Appeal to the Workers of the World.” I drew their attention to the fact that they are being called to rallies, to strikes. Who is calling them? I didn't name the KGB. And if they go and win, I wrote about what awaits them. Using the example of Ukraine, I listed everything for them: repressions, poverty, collective farms—I described it all.
V.O.: And has this text been preserved?
K.S.: It was kept at Olena Leliukh’s dacha. I told her to put it in a jar and bury it in the woods at the dacha. And she did so. When she went to check on the spot, wild boars had been digging there! She got scared that they would dig up the jar, so she took it home. But she didn't re-hide it; she put it in the sofa. And when we were going to Dymer, where her parents lived, she said my name as she was getting into the car. Even though I was sitting silently in the car, they heard my name then. After my arrest, they searched for these documents of mine for 14 days. And they found them at her dacha.
V.O.: And under what circumstances were you arrested? What was the pretext for the arrest?
K.S.: In connection with Case No. 22. I was arrested by Slobozhaniuk, the same one who arrested Stus... I reminded him of this: “Oh, so you’re the one who arrested Stus!” And he replied: “Well, that’s my job. What does it have to do with me? I’m not guilty,” he justified himself. I said: “Guilty or not, you arrested him and you’ve come for me.” So, it was Case No. 22. I asked: “Is that my case?” They didn’t answer. But when we arrived at the KGB, they said: “Yes, yes, that’s your Case No. 22.” Actually, even before that, I had been summoned to the KGB by investigator Seliuk. He was Stus's investigator. He summoned me in connection with Stus's case, after he was arrested. He asked if I knew him. And I didn't know him before that. I had heard of him, that he was a great man, but I didn't know him personally. My investigator was Lukianenko. Back when there was a search at Oksana Yakivna’s, he was a captain, and by my case, he was a major. And there was a Prysiazhniuk—all their names are connected to prison; he arrested me for the first time. Posazhennikov—conducted the investigation. Then Kasyanenko—the second arrest—was involved in the cassation. And now Lukianenko—all such investigators… Are these their nicknames? I don’t understand. They must be nicknames. Then I had Slobozhaniuk, then Major Krechuniak, Captain Smilyvyi, Ilkiv—an old acquaintance of ours.
V.O.: Vasyl Ivanovych Ilkiv? He came to us in Kuchino in the Urals in the '80s, giving instructions on how to break people…
K.S.: Yes, that was him. Rudenko was also there during my arrest. And the official witnesses were Viktor Omelianovyk, Yuriy Kovpak, and Oleksiy Doroshenko. One of them even helped with the search of my apartment. I pointed this out to Slobozhaniuk, and he told him to stop. I said: “Why are you doing this?” He replied: “It’s interesting!” That was Yuriy Kovpak. Fourteen days after the arrest, they found my papers at Olena Leliukh’s dacha and charged me under Article 62, part 1—“anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda,” “slander against the Soviet reality.”
There were witnesses too. When I was working on the crane at the Paton Institute, law students from the second year were doing their practical training there in August. And some guys from my region were there. I talked with them. One of them comes up, and I’m reading Lina Kostenko’s “Marusia Churai.” And he says: “Let me read it.” “Okay, take it, just don’t lose it. Return it to me.” And during the investigation, it turned out there was an agent, Vasyl Kostrytskyi. He was from Cherkasy Oblast but worked here as an electric welder. He worked at BMU-22. I also worked there at one time. He was spying on me. And he informed on these young law students too. To their credit, they didn’t say anything bad about me. Only one of them, regarding “Marusia Churai,” said that I tried to sway him towards nationalism with that work. But he didn’t say anything more. The students were also afraid to say anything, because they were taking a risk. But this Kostrytskyi was at a face-to-face confrontation with me. He confirmed that I had told him some “anti-Soviet” things. Well, maybe I did say something like that.
There was another witness, Leonid Slankovskyi, my work partner. He once told me (and I had heard it myself on the radio) that in Crimea they had found four or two men who had collaborated with the Germans, executing communists. Now they were sentenced to be shot. And I told him that they shot too few of them. I said it ambiguously, about who was shot too few of. At the interrogation, Sankovskyi recounted it precisely: “They shot too few of them.” The investigator asks: “And who did they shoot?” And he added: “communists.” So Sankovskyi testified to that.
There was one more incident. When I was in the Kyiv Regional Hospital for gastritis, up there above Kurenivka, where the No. 18 trolleybus goes, there were two doctors with me, Volodymyr Dolia and Borys Mysiuk. I talked to them about the future of Ukraine, spoke frankly about what I thought. He, admittedly, remained silent. But when I was arrested and they followed all my tracks—where I had worked, with whom, and where I had been—they got to him. The poor man, how he swore that he was a loyal Leninist! He wrote about how much of a loyal Leninist he was, that he wasn't to blame. He told them everything I had said to him.
I was tried on February 4, 1985. Lukianenko had extended the term of my investigation. Zubets was the judge.
V.O.: Zubets? Oh, he tried many people! In particular, he sentenced Valeriy Marchenko in 1983. Essentially, a death sentence. He also rehabilitated him. Posthumously.
K.S.: He tried me too. The verdict has all their names. He also rehabilitated me.
They give me 7 years of imprisonment and 5 years of exile for anti-Soviet activity.
V.O.: And the title of “especially dangerous recidivist”?
K.S.: No, not a recidivist. They gave me part one of Article 62.
They caught me on the street several times and searched me. But they found nothing, so they would let me go home. In total, I had four searches: May 14, 1980; December 18, 1980; October 26, 1984—that was during the arrest; and December 6—that was without me present, when they took the radio receiver. And on the street—they caught and searched me quite often too.
At the trial, in my final statement, I called it a kangaroo court and said that, dead or alive, I would definitely return for a just trial. The secretary probably didn't write down those words. Of course, they wouldn't want that. But I said those words to them. Here, I have the rehabilitation document; Zubets himself prepared it for me but forgot to stamp it.
When they sentenced me, it was February—cold, there were frosts in the spring of 1985. I knew that a cassation appeal is usually considered after a month. So I decided to file this appeal in order to spend the winter here, not on the road. I thought it would work out that way, but a week later, the response came: "Denied." And they take me for transport. The head of the Stolypin convoy even shouted to a guard: “Redhead! The KGB men are watching us.” This was already the new KGB prison, between the Park of Glory and the "Arsenalna" metro station, somewhere on a hill there. They were still holding me in the Volodymyrska prison and sent me for transport from there. By the time I returned from Perm, they had all moved from the old prison to the new one.
They took me for transport and took me to the Urals on a “Stolypin.” They transported me for a month and twenty days. I was in Kharkiv on Kholodna Hora for about two weeks. Then by “Stolypin” to Sverdlovsk. And for some reason, they got me off in Kazan. There's a huge prison there. And it's still being built, expanded. The guards there are terrible, vicious. I had grown so weak on the road that I couldn't climb to the third floor. With a bag of food and the mattress and pillow they gave me, I couldn't make it up. I dropped the pillow and mattress and sat on them. A guard shouted at me: "What's wrong?" I said: "I can't go any further." He took the mattress, the pillow, and carried them up. I followed him. To the third floor. The cell there was even more terrible than the one on Kholodna Hora in Kharkiv. Like a punishment cell. It was clear that someone before me had been there naked. He had plugged all the cracks: it was cold. And it stank so badly… I was well-dressed, so I tore out the plugs and pushed out the glass in the transom window to let some air in. I stayed there for 18 days. To not lose track of the days, I made marks on the wall.
One time the prison warden comes in, and probably the head of the regime, also a lieutenant colonel: "Any complaints?" I said: "No complaints. But give me"—I was in solitary—"someone to talk to." "We don't have anyone of your category." "Then give me a newspaper or a book." "We have no newspapers, we'll see about a book." "Could you give me a bigger cell, so I could walk around?" Because it was very small—four meters by two. Double bunks, a slop bucket, a table—there was no room to even walk. He wrote down that there were no complaints. There was such a noise from the common criminals, it was terrible—they were led out for walks all day until dark. They really were short on cells. "Why are they keeping me here for so long?" I asked. "It's been two weeks already." He replied: "You were brought here with the wrong convoy, not the one you were supposed to have." "How," I said, "is that not the right one? We were brought here in a Stolypin car. And I was brought here under escort." "We'll see."
And what do you think? After 18 days, he gave me a personal convoy. When I was riding in the Stolypin car, there was a general convoy for everyone. But here he placed one personally by my compartment. He even assigned a guy from Ukraine. The others did all the work, taking prisoners to the toilet, while one stood by me. They escorted me like that all the way to Perm. And in Perm, the convoy chief and another guard took me by the arms, so I wouldn’t escape, with another guard behind me, and led me to my cell.
V.O.: Like a great lord—by the arms!
K.S.: Yes. If only they had carried my bag, but my bag was hanging on me, and they were leading me by the arms. And the one with the pistol was walking behind. They brought me straight to the cell. I stayed in that cell for a week. Then they took me for transport. The transport there was strange: a train goes from Perm to Sverdlovsk via Chusovoy, then stops in Solikamsk. From Solikamsk, it goes back to Sverdlovsk. A triangle like that. And then back to Solikamsk and back to Perm via Chusovoy. They took me through Chusovoy but didn't let me off. They let me off in Kizel. It's a small prison in the Urals. Oh, what a prison—I'd never seen such a filthy one in all my travels! They locked me in the basement. There were two floors above, and a third in the basement. A deep basement. And there was water there. Water right in the cell. I said: "I'm not going in there." The guard said nothing, just swore and left: "Wait. Sit there." The basement cells were full of women, all criminal types, shouting, smoking. You couldn't see anything: it was full of smoke. I heard a lock click. The guard had cleared out a cell and put me in it. The cell was arched and divided in half. One half had a two-tiered bunk. But there was no water there. A slop bucket was in its place, but liquid was leaking from it onto the floor. Well, the stench was terrible! And the windows weren't glazed either. Well, I wasn't afraid of the cold, what mattered to me was that fresh air was coming in. I was well-dressed. I knew where I was going, so I had dressed warmly.
I was there for a day. They took me back to a “Stolypin.” The guards there were nasty. The Black Maria was about four square meters, no more. There were twenty-four of us in it. He stuffed us in with his feet—sitting and shoving with his feet to close the doors. The roads were bad, full of potholes. You couldn't stand, and there was nowhere to sit. Everyone squatted. The train went to Solikamsk, from Solikamsk to Sverdlovsk. I was in Sverdlovsk for a while, the train moved fast and then went back. About four hours later, it went back from Sverdlovsk to Perm. And again they take me to Solikamsk and put me in the same prison. The next day, from Kizel, they take me again and transport me to Perm. I rode around like that for a week, passing through Chusovoy four times. They brought me to Perm—and again Chusovoy doesn't pick me up, and I'm back in the same cell! I wrote a statement to the duty officer, addressed to the prison warden, asking him to explain these travels of mine, why they were dragging me around like this. There was no reply. A week later, they take me on the same transport again. Well, I thought, that's it. I won't survive this.
Strangely enough, in Kizel, I was in a cell with common criminals. When they were taking me to Perm, they gave me a nice piece of some red fish. Good fish, but very salty. And they don't give you water in the “Stolypin.” So I didn’t eat the fish. I had a supply of sugar, so I ate sugar. I gave the fish to the criminals. And I gave them my bread too. I was constantly traveling on this triangle. They ate everything; they were given some kind of sprat. But the main thing was that they gave me a day's ration for the transport, but those criminals got nothing—no bread, nothing, they were just taken like that. I gave them mine. I thought I wouldn't survive another such triangle. But no—this time Chusovoy picks me up. A convoy came out and took me. They put me in the BUR of Zone 36. This is in Kuchino, in the strict-regime section, next to your special-regime section. I stayed in this BUR for 15 days.
The 'kum' [KGB operative] did come to see me, though, trying to recruit me. He was from Sumy Oblast, he had worked there. Said he was a major. I didn't remember this 'kum's' last name. I just said to him: "Listen, aren't you ashamed to be recruiting me? No one has ever tried to recruit me before, and you want to recruit me now?" But he wasn't very insistent.
V.O.: If he was from Sumy Oblast, could it have been Stetsenko?
K.S.: I don't know. I only saw him once. Then Ilkiv replaced him. He knows Ukrainian, though. Not very well—worse than me.
I sat there for 15 days. The 'kum,' by the way, told me to try to communicate less with Khmara, with Yevdokimov. He named someone else, I don't remember. All such undesirables. And I said: "But I'm going to Khmara!" He just looked at me... "You brought me to Khmara yourselves; I didn't ask to come here. How am I not supposed to communicate with him, when he's from my part of the country?"
Stepan Khmara, Rostyslav Yevdokimov, Hudovskyi, a Jew, and Zorian Popadiuk were in that zone. From Moscow, there was Aleksei Smirnov—many people. Mostly, those whom Brezhnev rounded up in 1972. There were those accused of collaborating with the Germans during the war, who hadn’t been tried right away because no guilt was found. And then they were picked up to maintain fear in society. And so-called spies. I don’t know if they were really spies or if they sold something for money. There weren't many of them. There was one Georgian, and the rest were mostly Jews from Leningrad.
There, a guard named Shirayev (a major) put me in the ShIZO for 7 days for “talking back.” I had said that the Germans didn't force prisoners of war to work after the working day.
From there, they sent me to the hospital twice because my blood pressure was very high. The climate didn’t suit me, so my heart ached. Not that it ached, but it burned with fire. Hrushchenko was the doctor there.
V. V. Ovsienko: Hrushchenko? I know Hrushchenko. In fact, he saved Mykhailo Horyn’s life…
K.S.: He gave me injections, which eased the pain, and sent me to the hospital at camp thirty-five, in the settlement of Tsentralnyi. Osin was the camp commandant there. In the hospital, they had recently started keeping prisoners from each camp in separate cells, to prevent information from getting out. I was alone in a cell there. Then they brought a young man from Tajikistan to me. He had been in Afghanistan and had crossed back home. He was put on trial. They treated me a bit in the hospital. The food was also better there than in the camp. In the camp, it was very bad.
When I returned from the hospital for the second time, they started taking people for transport. Zorian Popadiuk was the first one they took. They were taking five or six men from the zone at a time. It was unknown where—just transport, and that was it. Then they took a second batch. I was in the third one.
V.O.: And were there any talks with KGB officers before this?
K.S.: Absolutely secret. We didn't know where we were going. They would call you up and say nothing.
V.O.: So they started releasing political prisoners around January-February 1987.
K.S.: Yes. The first group left in January, then the second around the tenth. I was in the third, sometime in mid-January. They took us to Perm. There, prosecutors worked us over: "Write..." We concluded that just one word was enough—"I won't." If you wrote just that one word, it was enough to be released. They would say: "Write such a statement, then we'll release you." They called me in too. I refused to write. I said: "I have nothing to repent for. I told the truth then, and I'll tell you the same truth now." Then Major Lebid, the head of the convoy, and two soldiers in Perm took me—and put me on a plane to Kyiv.
I was in Perm for about a week. Three Georgians refused to sign. They were also taken home. I met Vitaliy Shevchenko there; we were in a cell together. Shevchenko was from another zone. There was also Isayev… So, some signed, some didn't. To be fair, no one hid the fact that they had signed. One Russian from Kuibyshev said to me: “Oh, you fool! I agreed. I did everything to get out of here.” I replied: “And I said I wouldn’t sign.”
In short, they brought me to Kyiv. I ended up back in the KGB investigation prison. There's a lane near "Arsenalna," a couple of blocks or so. It's on the way to the monument to the military. The same guards greeted me so warmly! All familiar faces, asking me how things were. I was in such a state that if I had stayed in Kuchino for another six months, it probably would have been the end for me. The climate didn't suit me, and they would put you in the ShIZO for anything. If you had an unbuttoned button, they'd put you in the ShIZO. That's what happened to Khmara; they put him in for that: he went on a dry hunger strike for seven days, and they didn't react at all. So we—Popadiuk, myself, Hudovskyi, and this Georgian, Deribadze—agreed that something had to be done. The plan was: Popadiuk would refuse to work (it was the sixth day of Khmara's hunger strike), then me, then Deribadze, and Hudovskyi would refuse to work because they weren't reacting to Khmara's hunger strike. For that, they put me in for seven days too. But Hudovskyi was cunning; he managed to resolve some issue of his own. And Deribadze didn't serve any time at all. Only Popadiuk was put in with me. I end up in a cell with Popadiuk, Svarinskas, and Smirnov. A small cell. I'm naked—just in my underwear. There's frost on the table—you could write on it and see the letters. And Smirnov knew I suffered from radiculitis. He brought a terrycloth towel and gave it to me. But they took the towel from me during a search. Well, we served those seven days there. Khmara, however, was released. He agreed to end his hunger strike, and they let him go.
We always acted in an organized way there if someone was unjustly put in the ShIZO. That ShIZO was never empty. There were eight cells, and they were never empty, always full. The Russians and everyone else supported this—18 people. Except for the policemen [collaborators] and those spies. When I arrived, there were only 18 political prisoners in total. These were the ones under the article “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda.” So, they released Khmara. We all supported anyone who was put in, in an organized manner.
We earned miserable kopecks there, and we could spend 5 rubles a month at the canteen. But if someone was deprived of canteen privileges, or was coming off a hunger strike, he needed a little support. So everyone pitched in a little bit to get him back on his feet. Because after a hunger strike, they’d immediately send you to work. And he’d be completely weak: he couldn't even walk after that. There was such a case with Smirnov: he spent 15 days in the punishment cell, and they added another 15. Then they sent him to the high-security prison in Chistopol—for passing information to the outside.
What did we do there? Terminals for an iron. The zone was a single entity, all guarded together, but the workshop was separate, through a barred passage. There we made terminals for an iron, a contact for the cord.
V.O.: And we, in the special-regime section, screwed those panels onto the cords.
K.S.: Oh! So we were the ones who made those panels. We screwed on some cords too. That was the kind of work. Should I bring a panel? They might be useful for a museum. I took one as a souvenir. I could never make the quota. The Lithuanian priest Svarinskas helped me a bit; he got the hang of it.
V.O.: I have some of those panels. When we went there in 1989 to bring back the remains of Stus, Lytvyn, and Tykhy to their homeland, I picked up a whole handful.
K.S.: We bent them. A press would stamp out a plate, and we would bend it. So Svarinskas and I bent those plates. I could never make the quota. And if you didn’t make the quota for three days—it was the ShIZO.
So they brought me to Kyiv. In Kyiv, I was met by the same old faces. Ilkiv had even visited the c he summoned me for a talk once. Well, we talked about various topics. But he didn't seem to try to recruit me. When he came a second time, I was in the infirmary. There’s a medical unit in the zone. An informant came and said that Ilkiv was summoning me. I told him: "Tell him that if he needs me, he can come here." I couldn’t go to him then; I was sick. He never summoned me again. But here, when I returned to Kyiv, he came for a talk, asking how things were. During the talk, he started pressing me again to write a statement. The former curator of political camps, Honchar, was also there.
V.O.: Colonel Honchar, yes, I knew him.
K.S.: Honchar also had a talk with me. I don’t know his rank; he was always in civilian clothes. A short man. This Ilkiv was tall, but Honchar was small. And he was talking to me about the same thing. I refused him too. Then someone from the Ministry of Internal Affairs came (I don’t remember his name). He said: “Write such a statement and you’ll be released. Why would you want to sit here?” So I took a piece of paper and wrote: “I will do nothing that could harm Ukraine.” He silently collected it and left. I never saw him again. Later, Ilkiv told me that he had called him: “What did he write?” And the lawyer told Ilkiv that I wrote about how much I love Ukraine. Ilkiv comes to me and starts pressing me again to write something else.
I was there for two months. And my condition was poor… It had been poor since the Urals. And he kept pressuring me to write something else. Then I wrote: “I will not keep or produce any other documents.” And that was it. He took it. That was the end of it. Well, I was headed for release.
I once told him that he was one of those who, while studying at Lviv University, informed on students, otherwise he wouldn’t have ended up in the KGB. And now you’re forcing us to our knees? It’s the vilest job—forcing people to their knees. What else did he do while trying to break me into writing? He called my brother, son, sister, wife, and daughter for a visit. All at once. So that they (he had discussed everything with them) would persuade me to write. The visit was just like this, with you and me in a room. Only he himself was present. It lasted about half an hour, I think.
So, I only wrote that I would not keep or produce. That was enough.
I was in the KGB pre-trial detention center for two months. Petrunia—the prison warden—called me for my release. I was in bad shape, so he called my wife to come get me. I was already staggering as I walked—that was the state I was in. And he wrote out a certificate of release and told me to find a job without delay. But my wife told him: "What job? Can't you see the state he's in? I'm taking him to the village, and there will be no work until he recovers!"
And that’s what she did. I went with her to the village in Chernihiv Oblast. I was released on March 17, 1987. I went to the village and didn’t come to Kyiv all summer. I came back in the autumn because it was getting cold. Then two policemen show up: “Get a job!” I say: “I will try to find one, if I can.” “And why haven’t you found one yet?” “Give me a job.” I looked again, but no one would hire me. I went to the organization from which I was arrested. Because they were obliged to rehire me. But that organization had been disbanded, merged with another one. And its base was now all the way in Borshchahivka. I went to the personnel department. She hands me my work record book: “Sign that you have received your work record book.” “I came here to get a job.” “Get your book, then we’ll process the hiring.” She gave me the book and said: “Go! We don’t have any jobs.” I had asked the guys earlier if there were any crane operator jobs there. They told me that there really weren’t.
Then someone told me that in the district executive committee, there's a person who is obliged to find jobs for those released from prison.
I went to the district executive committee and found that person. He found me a job in my specialty at “Kyivprodmash,” a factory in Kurenivka, with a salary of 136 karbovantsi. I worked there until my retirement in 1995, and for the last 4 years, I haven't worked anywhere. They gave me a pension for those years in the camp that were supposed to count as three days for every one, but they don’t affect the amount of the pension at all. My work record is long, but they gave me a pension of 48, then 59 hryvnias. And now they give 64—they added another five. A pension of 64 hryvnias. That’s how we live. They took away my rights, my health… I’ve been in the hospital several times here. Mostly, I suffer from high blood pressure and my entire intestinal tract—liver, kidneys, stomach. Especially the stomach—food doesn't digest properly. But I am happy that I have lived to see this day. After all, my childhood dream has come true: Ukraine may not be the one I dreamed of, but it exists. I am content with the one we have. I think it will get better. I would like to see what it will become. Well, that’s as God wills.
V.O.: But after your release, you spent several months in the village and recovered a bit—you didn't sit idly by after that, did you?
K.S.: I participated in the democratic movement, in all those rallies, at meetings. I was a member of the Ukrainian Culturological Club, the Ukrainian Helsinki Union, and then a member of the Ukrainian Republican Party. And after the URP split, I joined the OUN of the Banderite wing. I was a participant in the Constituent Assembly of the Society of Political Prisoners and Repressed on June 3, 1989, on Lvivska Square. I submitted an application to join the OUN in 1992, but they accepted me a year ago. They thought about it for a long time.
So my age-old dream has come true—the flag of Ukraine is flying where they used to tell me: “It won’t happen! Your Banderite propaganda won’t succeed!” The flag of Ukraine flies there and no one is prosecuted for it. If only the Church would unite on a Ukrainian foundation. That worries me a great deal. That it would be as Patriarch Filaret says, that it should be a Ukrainian church. He has repeated these words several times already: that for Ukrainians, there should be a Ukrainian church. He is right. Because that Moscow church is a breeding ground for chauvinism and the stupefaction of people. But not everything at once. As they say, Moscow wasn't built in a day. And neither was Ukraine. God grant that there will be a future for my grandchildren. As for me—what’s left? I just turned seventy on December 4, Vasyl.
V.O.: Seventy years is nothing!
K.S.: It depends on who you ask. For some, even forty is a lot. It depends on one’s health. And after a path like the one I’ve traveled—always underfed, I used to dream of bread, of my mother baking pastries. I dreamed of this in the camps! If you're hungry, you dream of food. I always drank water so my stomach wouldn’t ache so much. All of that happened. Thank God I’ve lived to be seventy.
V.O.: And still, you are happier than many, because many generations perished without ever reaching the goal.
K.S.: My generation also perished; a great many lie in the permafrost. That's why I say that I am happy to have lived to this day.
And Kuchma... Well, he, one might say, satisfies us for the time being.
V.O.: Well, if what he has announced in recent days happens, that Yushchenko will become prime minister, then that will be a very significant shift for the better.
K.S.: He said he would be the new president. If only someone would help him become more decisive.
V.O.: What else would you like to add to your story?
K.S.: I haven't recalled many details; maybe they aren’t worth mentioning. Except maybe about my family. I didn't say that I had a son born in 1964, Yaroslav. He is married now, has two children. So I have four grandchildren. My eldest granddaughter is studying at the university, at the polytechnic, she’s into computers, already in her third year. But we have no money to pay, so she switched to a correspondence course. You have to pay there too, but it's three times less. So I appealed on behalf of the Society of Political Prisoners to the city council, to Zgurovsky, the rector of the KPI. I delivered the letter myself, handed it to the deputy. They just laughed at me. I swear to God, they just laughed. But they did waive her tuition starting from September. She was supposed to pay 800 hryvnias. And now she’s studying in the correspondence program for free.
According to the law of April 17, 1991, I was rehabilitated for the 1952 case and for the third case of 1984. Zubets rehabilitated me, without any request from me. But not for Article 196, concerning the weapon, from 1958.
V.O.: Thank you. This is the end of Klym Semeniuk’s story on December 23, 1999.
Photo by V. Ovsienko:
SemeniukK 23.12. 1999. Kyiv. Klym SEMENIUK.