VASYL STEPANOVYCH STRILTSIV

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With corrections by V. Striltsiv.

V.V. Ovsienko: On February 7, 2000, Mr. Vasyl Striltsiv is speaking at his home in Ivano-Frankivsk, at 52 Belvedersky Street, apt. 6. Tel. (03422) 422-06. Recorded by Vasyl Ovsienko.

V.S. Striltsiv: I, Vasyl Striltsiv, was born on January 13, 1929, in the village of Zahvizdia, three kilometers from the regional center of Stanyslaviv—a city that was later renamed by both the German and Soviet occupiers. The Germans called it Stanislau, and the Soviets called it Stanislav, not Stanyslaviv. It was our regional center, a voivodeship center under Polish rule, and during the Soviet era and the German occupation, the regional center of our Prykarpattia region.

My father, Stepan Striltsiv, was born in 1889. He fought in the Austrian army, specifically in Italy, where he was taken prisoner and remained until the end of World War I. He returned home in 1918. He was a farmer in his native village.

My mother, who was from the same village, was born in 1893 and died in 1956. My father passed away in 1962.

My parents had three children. My oldest brother, Pavlo, was born in 1915 and died in 1984. I will return to him later. My sister, Stefania, did not live to be twenty. She was born in 1926. She studied at a trade school in Stanyslaviv and fell ill with tuberculosis in 1946. Medical treatments were still primitive back then, so she died before reaching the age of twenty.

I am the youngest. I finished primary school, four "classes" as they used to say then. I studied in my native village from 1936 to 1941. When the Communo-Muscovite occupiers arrived in 1939, they held all classes in Galicia back by one year. When the German occupiers arrived in 1941, a gymnasium with Ukrainian as the language of instruction was opened in December; it was the only one in our region. Although, later another one was opened in Kolomyia. I entered the second class of the Ukrainian gymnasium, where I studied for three years, meaning I finished its fourth class at the end of March 1944, when the German-Soviet front was approaching. This was equivalent to eight grades.

I had just turned 15 at the time...

When the Soviet occupiers arrived on July 27, 1944, I went to the ninth grade of Stanislav Secondary School No. 3. But soon after, on December 7, 1944, I was arrested by agents of the NKGB (People’s Commissariat for State Security).

I want to return to the spring and summer of 1944. When studies at the gymnasium stopped because the front was moving through—it was stalled for several months here, near the city of Stanyslaviv—I had just turned 15 in January. Boys like me had close ties with the OUN-UPA underground.

As a gymnasium student, I knew the history of Ukraine from Krypiakevych's textbook. Moreover, during the German occupation, I had read about eighty historical novels about the past of the Ukrainian people—from the princely and even pre-state times to the Sich Riflemen, to the restoration of Ukrainian statehood in 1917-20 and the struggle for it. Being a member of a small group (five or six boys) of the OUN youth organization called "Yunatstvo" (Youth), I could tell a lot about the history of Ukraine. The boys listened with interest, as they had not attended the gymnasium and were too young to know much about Ukrainian history. But they could learn from me.

What did we, the young men, do? We studied the political documents of the OUN, about the struggle of the OUN and UPA. Later, in 1943 and 1944, we prepared to join the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. The underground gave us a rifle—*kris* is the old Ukrainian word for it—and we practiced: we went to a small forest near Zahvizdia and learned to shoot. And we learned riflemen’s songs and already underground songs, not just Ukrainian folk ones. About the UPA's struggle, about the Muscovites’ destruction of the Ukrainian people, its leading figures, about the patriots who gave their lives for Ukrainian statehood.

So, they arrested me. Precisely because I was a gymnasium student. They received information from the village that I was a member of the Ukrainian Youth. Four of us were arrested at the same time—all former gymnasium students...

V.V. Ovsienko: Do you remember the names of those boys?

V.S. Striltsiv: Yes. There was Yuriy Godlevsky (he is still alive, lives here in Frankivsk, we are very close). Also Koval, Mandziuk, Andrian Protsyk. Protsyk served his sentence—ten years as well—and died in Siberia. He died tragically: he was working near an excavator when a clump of earth fell and killed him. Koval served part of his sentence and was released as a minor. I don't know if he's alive now, as he doesn't respond. All of us who met in the camps, who were tried together—we look for each other and find each other. But we have no information about Koval.

I was arrested while sick with tonsillitis. An NKGB operative came to my apartment, and although he was told I was sick, they said I was being summoned to the military enlistment office. Supposedly, high school students were needed to help with some paperwork. My brother went with me. When we entered the building, after ten minutes the operative said we could let my brother go home. I agreed, and my brother went home. But, as we understood ten years later, this was their tactic.

They called a woman who worked for the NKGB. The two of them took out pistols and said we would be walking from the enlistment office (it was not far from the “White House,” where the city and regional authorities are now located) to the NKGB building. (That was Chekistiv Street, now renamed Andriy Sakharov Street). They warned me: don't stop anywhere and don't talk to anyone. The woman walked ten meters ahead of me. I looked back, and the same KGB agent was behind me.

We entered the NKGB. They first took me for interrogation, and after a many-hour-long interrogation, to a cell in the basement. I was there from December 7 to 19. Interrogations didn't happen during the day, only at night. And during the day, as is known, they don't let you sleep; it's specifically to exhaust a person. They beat me. Only through beatings could the NKGB investigators obtain material to give the planned, say, ten years. They had to beat you to get you to answer: “Yes, I did it... I was involved in that...”

I gave them minimal information about myself—let them beat me... Minimal information. But one among us was a traitor; he was not arrested.

While the German-Soviet war was still going on, we high school students were preparing to go into the forest instead of to the front. Better the forest! We discussed this among ourselves in the ninth grade, and it was these boys who were arrested. But a certain Halyuk joined us. He was aware of what was happening, but he was informed by the KGB; he was their stooge! And it was he who planted these ideas in our minds. We agreed. He was from the village of Siltsia, and we didn't know then that his father had already been punished by the insurgents for collaborating with the KGB. He would feed us all sorts of questions and supposedly prepared us for such an action together with him. So, the materials on us were already prepared, and they only needed to beat us to make us confess to what the KGB already knew.

On December 19, 1944, we were transferred from the NKGB to the prison cells, which were in the courtyard nearby. On January 15, 1945, the investigation was completed, and on February 2, the trial took place, which was called the “Military Tribunal of the NKVD Troops of the Stanislav Oblast.”

Three people sat there: the presiding judge and two assessors. They were all foreigners, occupiers, Muscovites. There were four of us. We didn't even have a place to sit; we sat there in a corner. The room was tiny, tiny. They read to us what we were being tried for: Article 54-1a, 54-11—that's “treason to the Motherland” under the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR. Everything was conducted in Russian. Even our surnames were Russified. In particular, mine, which is correctly written and pronounced Striltsiv, they wrote down as “Streltsov.” Because the investigators were, as I said, Muscovites, and they wrote it down incorrectly. The sentence was 10 years of “corrective labor camps.” Of course, without confiscation of property, because I didn't have any at the time, and without deprivation of civil rights, because although I would be an adult in ten years, I was still a minor then.

All four of us received 10 years. For some time, we were held in the Stanislaviv prison, and around April 22, 1945, we were taken, as they used to say then, on a transport. They marched us to the railway station and packed us into a so-called Stolypin car. Soon, at night, we arrived in Lviv, at the transit point. It had something like 12 buildings. And in each building were prisoners, primarily political ones. We stayed there for a long time. We were there for the end of World War II in Europe, that is, from May 8 to 9, 1945. They separated us there, but I stayed together with Yurko Godlevsky.

Transports

They tried to put us on a transport. They took us from Lviv to Kyiv, from the Kyiv prison to Odesa. They didn't accept us in Odesa and returned us to Kyiv, and from Kyiv, in July 1945, we returned to Lviv again. There were a lot of us minors gathered there. We even got into fights with the criminals, especially the Russian ones who came from Russia and robbed people at the transit point. But then we got tired of it all. We signed up as adults, changing our year of birth, for one of the camps in Lviv.

V.V. Ovsienko: How did you sign up?

V.S. Striltsiv: They were recruiting people who wanted to go to the camp. And we signed up. Well, they didn't find me out, because I was a bit taller, but they found out Yurko. And then we were separated for the entire ten years.

I was in that camp from July 14, 1945, to January 31, 1946. We went to work, rebuilding the Sykhiv airport, which had been destroyed by bombs during the war. On February 9, 1946, the first elections were held. We knew that the UPA, the insurgents, were attacking camps and even prisons, attacking district KGB offices, and the vipers' nests of the party. We knew this. So, to prevent us from being caught in the attacks of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, they took us to the Lviv transit point again.

They used to take us by truck from the camp to the aircraft factory, opposite Stryiskyi Park. One morning in the autumn, we learned that the evening before, after we had been taken away, a group of Banderites had attacked the camp. The head, the director of the factory, Lieutenant General ... ... ...-netskyi [surname illegible], and several of his guards were killed. The attack was very skillfully planned. So, in Lviv, UPA combat units, especially the Security Service, dealt with the occupiers, particularly the KGB, party officials, and other local people who collaborated with the occupiers. We learned about this.

Dudinka

In the autumn of 1946, 30 boys, those born in 1929, and especially in 1928, meaning those who had already turned 17, who were considered adult workers by camp standards, were selected for a transport. Around August 20, 1946, they put us in a railcar with hard-labor convicts. There were 30 of us plus 50 others, so 80 in one car. And they took us, the prisoners, in a whole train, away from Ukraine to a foreign land, to Siberia. We traveled by train for 17 days to Krasnoyarsk. In Krasnoyarsk, they unloaded us. We stayed at a transit point for a week, and then they transported us on the river steamer "Iosif Stalin" for two thousand kilometers along the Yenisei from Krasnoyarsk to the Dudinka pier. We traveled two thousand kilometers in the hold. With the Japanese, because the Kwantung Army had just been defeated. These were officers who, in addition to military matters, were arrested as political prisoners for protesting. Over a hundred Japanese officers, colonels, were taken with us to the port of Dudinka on the Yenisei, on the Taymyr Peninsula. There, some were sent one way, some another, but we, the young boys from Lviv, were left in Dudinka and transferred to Camp No. 4.

V.V. Ovsienko: And where did you meet Vasyl Dolishnyi?

V.S. Striltsiv: I met Vasyl Dolishnyi only in 1952, in a camp near Norilsk. He was only arrested in 1946. But by 1946, we were already being transported to Krasnoyarsk, and from there to the Taymyr Peninsula. I was there for two years. I got frostbite on my hands and feet there, and I still feel it now. Because when the skin is frostbitten, it means the blood vessels are already deformed, and blood circulation is weakened. Since then, I get very cold in the winter. I need warm clothes; I can't stand in the cold.

So, I got frostbitten in the very first camp, during the log rafting. Timber from Igarka was rafted down the Yenisei to the Dudinka River, which flows into it right where the camp zone was built, in the settlement of Dudinka. In eight or ten degrees of frost, we would break the ice and, with special hooks, pull the logs out of the ice and slowly guide them onto conveyors. And from the conveyors, they were taken to Norilsk for the coal mines, where they were needed as support timber. Norilsk was 128 kilometers to the east of us, by land.

Later, I worked there in Dudinka. From the same camp, we were taken to the so-called coal section. Piles of coal from the Norilsk mines were brought to the bank of the Yenisei during the winter. And in the summer, ships that ran on coal would come and load up. They would take it for themselves or transport the coal to other places. Barges, that is.

In the autumn of 1948, political camps began to be created. Before that, political prisoners were held together with criminals. That was the case at Dudinka Camp No. 4, where I was for two years, from 1946 to 1948.

Norilsk. Kaerkan

And so, on October 18, we, the political prisoners, were separated from the criminals and common prisoners and transferred to Norilsk, specifically to Camp No. 5, which now consisted only of political prisoners. There, at first, I worked in a brigade on the construction of the city of Norilsk. We built those first multi-story buildings, which I later saw many times in books or films. Among them was a technical college, which was later reorganized, I think, into a university. Such a huge, multi-story building. This city construction project was called "Gorstroy" in Russian. I was there for one year. Around June 20, 1949, a group of us prisoners were taken on a transport to Camp No. 4, which was quite far out in the tundra. A huge copper-smelting plant was to be built there.

Copper was mined there in Norilsk. There was also a plant on Medvezhka Mountain where nickel was mined. That was one camp. The ore was mined by political prisoners. This copper-smelting plant was built, and it was also serviced by political prisoners from the fourth camp. The camp was 4-5 kilometers from the construction site of the copper-smelting plant. It was serviced by 111,000 political prisoners. We had to walk a long way. Many people died or were tragically killed there.

A year later, in June 1950, I was returned to Camp No. 5. There, I worked at a brick factory, which was next to the camp, behind the wire. In Camp No. 5, decent guys had gathered, former UPA fighters like Kanytsky, Hupalo, and Semashko. In 1950, what you might call a revival of the UPA, founded in 1941-1942, began there. I worked there for two years (25 months), and then I was transferred to Camp No. 2 near Norilsk, in a suburb called Kaerkan, mine No. 18. It was there, in Kaerkan, in 1952, that I met Vasyl Dolishnyi, who was arrested as a 16-year-old in 1946. He had worked at some enterprise in Lviv until 1948 and was then transported to Norilsk, to Kaerkan. I got to know him there as a close countryman (he was from the neighboring village of Pidlyzhzhia). There, we met the Ukrainian historian Mykhailo Antonovych. He, by the way, wrote a two-volume history for us, young imprisoned patriots like ourselves. These were two separate books, written on wrapping paper from cement bags. We called them volumes. He is the grandson of the famous historian Volodymyr Antonovych, who was Mykhailo Hrushevsky's professor, and the son of the historian Dmytro Antonovych.

A rather large group of us boys gathered; we spoke openly with each other and, of course, read that history. We constantly had conversations on political topics, in particular, about what future awaited us. There, in Kaerkan, we received the news of Stalin's death, and we discussed it. And Professor Mykhailo Antonovych predicted how events would unfold. He said that two or three months after Stalin's death, major events would unfold in the Soviet Union. The system would change or, at least, there would be an attempt to change it. And so it happened.

As is known, in June 1953, Beria planned a coup, was arrested, and condemned. There was an amnesty, but not for political prisoners. But it was an impetus for the political prisoners too, for the minors. A review of cases began. In addition, there was a mutiny in our camp. It was initiated in our camp in Norilsk. Such processes occurred in almost all political camps—in the direction of restoring freedom.

On the night of May 21, 1953, we dealt with the contingent that was almost officially called the *suky*. They were eliminated in our camp. They had been in various camps and were finally sent to us. And with us, they met their end. This was the impetus for the uprising in other camps, not only in "Norillag," but also, for example, for "Karlag" in Karaganda, in Kazakhstan. In 1954, the Kengir Uprising took place. In our camp in Norilsk, it went more smoothly; there were no shootings. But in other camps, many were shot. We, the Ukrainian political prisoners, began, so to speak, to dominate the c all the power was in our hands.

There was also a small uprising in the fifth camp. One or two were killed there, as in the fourth. Encirclement, a strike, a hunger strike—and the authorities were forced to come all the way from Moscow. Not all, but many demands were met: the numbers were removed from our clothing, and they started paying us some wages. The regime eased up a bit. But we didn't stop there. And in the hard-labor camp in Norilsk, they didn't stop there either. The hard-labor convicts were an even more powerful force. They were mainly OUN leaders, UPA commanders. The uprising in the hard-labor camp lasted two months, then a terrible crackdown followed. They brought tanks into that c they shot, destroyed, crushed. And, of course, they shot and wounded about two hundred and fifty people with machine guns. That was the crackdown in 1953.

Arrests began; people were scattered everywhere. I, for example, ended up in the ...... ... ... ... penal [name illegible] camp. In Norilsk, there was a well-known central penal camp—it was called Kopets. It was far out in the tundra. True, it belonged to the fourth c our commandant was in charge of it. Because it was tiny—just two small barracks. I stayed in this Kopets penal camp until the end of my ten-year term and was released in 1954, on October 16.

Twice in the camp, I was informed, and I signed for it, that I was not eligible for early release as someone who had participated in a “violation of the camp regime,” meaning I took part in this mutiny.

So, after my term ended, I was assigned to stay in Norilsk. I still have the documents stating that I had to report to the commandant's office every week. Finally, in 1956, the 20th Congress of the CPSU took place, and a decision was made to release political prisoners. Khrushchev achieved this. It was then that he exposed the cult of personality of Stalin, that is, he spoke about his crimes, and it was decided to release the majority of political prisoners. At that time, they were releasing both those who were still behind the wire and bars, and those who were already in exile. I was one of the latter. I have a document stating that on April 23, 1956, I was released from exile.

I received a so-called "wolf’s ticket," that is, a passport in which it was almost directly indicated that I had once been convicted: instead of “based on a previous passport” or birth certificate, it said that it was issued “on the basis of the regulations on passports.” This meant that the passport holder had been convicted.

And so I came to Stanislav. My mother and sister, as mentioned above, had passed away, but my father and brother were still alive. I stayed here for three months, but I couldn't get registered. My brother and I went to all our acquaintances. My brother taught in the city; his students included the children of prosecutors, investigators, and police chiefs, but nothing helped me get registered in the city. Some flatly refused, others said directly: "Go back where you came from." And so, after three months, I was forced to return to Norilsk...

But, fortunately, my brother soon met one of his students from Zahvizdia, whom he had taught at School No. 5 in the city of Stanislav. He had become the secretary of the Zahvizdia village council, in the very village where I was born. He was even an acquaintance of mine, a few years younger than me, but we knew each other before my arrest. And he said: "I will do everything to get him registered in Zahvizdia." And so my brother wrote to me, and I came (but it had been almost a year by then).

Teaching

He really did register me. And not only did he register me, but he also helped me get a passport. At that time, the district center was in Zahvizdia. I just got my birth certificate, he took it, and handled the rest of the paperwork himself. Nobody asked me anything; I just had to come and sign to pick it up. That's how in November 1957, I returned to Ivano-Frankivsk and was registered in Zahvizdia.

For two years, until 1959, I worked at an enterprise in Ivano-Frankivsk and simultaneously studied at night school in the ninth and tenth grades. I finished secondary school in 1959 and quietly applied to the correspondence department of Chernivtsi University. I passed the exams very well and was admitted to the English department. I had learned English in Norilsk, in Kaerkan, in two years. On my own, using textbooks, since I knew Latin, having studied it for two years in the gymnasium, and I knew German well, having studied it for three years in the gymnasium with Germans all around. It was easy for me to learn English. And I knew Polish, of course, because I had started my schooling under Polish rule.

V.V. Ovsienko: There must have been people there who knew English?

V.S. Striltsiv: Yes, there were. But I never had a teacher among them. I studied on my own. Because I knew how to learn a foreign language. Moreover, English spelling is almost like German. Only the pronunciation is different.

Soon, after about six months, the KGB found out that I had enrolled in the correspondence department of Chernivtsi University, majoring in English, and they summoned me to the regional department. They asked why I hadn't written in my autobiography that I had been imprisoned.

By the way, I want to say that in the admissions office, there was a sign: "Anyone with a convicted person in their family, take back your biography and write about it." I read it, but I didn't take it back. Why? Because if I wrote that, I wouldn't be accepted. And that is a crime. I simply did not commit a crime. That's what I told the KGB agents in our conversation. And I continued my correspondence studies.

After two years of correspondence studies, I had to switch to a job in my field. I taught in several schools. In 1965, I received a diploma in philology, as a teacher of English, from Chernivtsi University, and as a certified specialist, I moved to teach in the Prykarpattian town of Dolyna, at School No. 1—the oldest school there. In Dolyna, I met many acquaintances from the camps. Ilko Boniuk, for example. In the camp, he and I decided our fate, what we would do, and the fate of the entire camp. There was also Anton Kotovych. Unfortunately, he died back in the 50s. He was a feisty fellow.

Indeed, in Kaerkan in 1953, Anton Kotovych, Professor Antonovych, and I decided how to spark the uprising. The fate of the camp depended on us. Antonovych was not in the leadership of the uprising in Kaerkan, but we consulted with him. And he had vast experience and was not afraid of the authorities. And it was with his help that we won; we were victorious in that camp. We took the initiative into our own hands without any losses. In Kopets, we declared a hunger strike three times, and they took us to prison—by the way, with Myron Melen. He was there too; we went on hunger strikes in prisons together. And then they sent us back to Kopets. They took him for a re-trial then. He was imprisoned later, they gave him 25 years...

I worked at Dolyna School No. 1 for 14 years. There, I taught all of the Sichkiv children—Vasyl, who later became a political figure, the head of the Ukrainian Christian Democratic Party. His father was a great activist, a participant in the national liberation struggle of the OUN-UPA. I also taught English to Vasyl Sichkiv's younger brother, Volodymyr, and their sister, Oksana. While working in Dolyna, the first thing I bought for myself in 1966 was a motor scooter, and every year during the holidays, I traveled across Ukraine. We visited all corners of Ukraine, many historical sites, including Kholodnyi Yar, Motryn Monastery, Subotiv, Chyhyryn, which are connected with our history. We visited all Ukrainian regional cities, and Crimea. Sometimes I traveled with my brother, sometimes with Vasyl Dolishnyi, sometimes with that Boliuk fellow.

While teaching English, in every lesson, in all classes, I spoke about Ukrainian history, Ukrainian culture, the Ukrainian language, and art. I always spoke about this—at the end of the lesson, between lessons... I took both teachers and students on trips to historical places in our region, and then throughout all of Galicia. Even though it was a Soviet school, there was nothing in those trips related to any kind of Soviet patriotism. Everything was connected with Ukraine, with the Carpathians. In my school, there was never the slightest manifestation of Soviet patriotism. I never praised Lenin. Perhaps I spoke very neutrally. But I always spoke about Ukraine. With students, with teachers, with the public, with parents at meetings—always. I am not exaggerating; the whole of Dolyna can attest to this. The KGB knew this too.

Of course, they warned me. The principal of Dolyna School No. 1, Vasyl Dmytrovych Lavriv, was simply a stooge, a clown of the Communist Party and the KGB. He openly opposed me, he was the main, so to speak, instrument of struggle against me. Because I was never summoned to the KGB itself. Later, I only spoke with KGB colonels who dealt with members of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group.

And so I worked from 1965 to 1977. For the last two years, the principal told me to leave the school at the end of the school year, to move to another district, or at least transfer to another school. I couldn't leave—it would have meant that I was afraid of those enemies of the Ukrainian cause. And I didn't go.

The Strike

Then they took special harsh measures against me. And I was forced, on February 1, 1977, to declare a strike in protest against the criminal activities of both the school administration, the district education department, the regional education department, and the trade union. Of course, they were directed by the communists and the KGB. I announced the protest strike publicly, in the teachers' lounge, when salaries were being paid out at the school. There were many teachers there. By the way, I saw the principal faint from fear. Yes, because he knew he was a criminal against the Ukrainian nation. I have a lot on him.

For example, when employees of the Dovzhenko Film Studios came, wonderful people—Ivan Mykolaychuk and Sosiura's son, also Volodymyr, and there was a woman there, I don't recall her name now... They gathered us, the teachers, and the public was there. Lavriv got up and said that if necessary, he would provide materials to write a film script against the OUN-UPA. No one said a word to him in response—neither Sosiura nor Mykolaychuk, because they were decent people. That's one thing. Second—that same Lavriv, as a member of the district party committee, proposed that funeral processions should not go along Dolyna's main road from the church to the cemetery, so as not to block the road, but that they should travel by car. The district committee accepted this as a good proposal (he bragged about it to us at school). There's plenty of evidence of what a Muscovite buffoon he was.

But let's get back to my protest strike. I declared that until this school principal, the party organization secretary, and the head of the trade union ceased their criminal activities against me, a free citizen, I would not leave the school. Of course, after 8 days, I was fired from my teaching job, and a few months later, police officers came to me and warned me: if I didn't find a job within a month, I would be prosecuted for being a "parasite," for idleness.

Of course, I knew what I was doing, and I knew I would never break. Firstly, I wrote complaints against those who fired me, and I indicated that it was for political reasons. I wrote complaints everywhere: to the district, to the region, to Kyiv, and to Moscow. I had a great many of them, up to 250 complaints written. So harsh that they would make your hair stand on end. I myself am surprised now at how I could write like that under that regime: I could have been killed, blinded, injured, crippled... And I wrote. I'm amazed. I still have copies of almost all those complaints to this day.

Furthermore. As that deadline approached, I prepared statements to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet in Moscow, with a copy to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet in Kyiv and to the local authorities, stating that I was renouncing my Soviet citizenship, because no one had stood up for me, an innocent person, but instead I was being persecuted, so I did not want to be a citizen of the USSR. Everything was well-argued. This, of course, shocked the authorities, both local and higher up. They didn't know what to do. But after a month, they extended this... They started coming to me, from the region, even from Kyiv, from the Ministry of Education's trade union, to persuade me to return to teaching, that they would pay me back my salary and so on. I didn't want to go back. I cannot break my word, because I know what it means politically.

The Ukrainian Helsinki Group

They were told what to do: they extended it again... But I, in turn, on October 25, 1977 (I often traveled to Kyiv), met in Kyiv with Oles Berdnyk, who was the head of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, and with Oksana Meshko. They accepted me. I submitted an application, photographs, my biography, and was accepted into the Ukrainian Helsinki Group by these two individuals.

By the way, Oksana Yakivna Meshko told me then that she had returned a day or two ago from your village of Lenine, and told me how the police had caught you there. When I came again later, she told me that you had been accused of resisting the police. That you had recently been released from prison, and they imprisoned you again for two or three years.

V.V. Ovsienko: For three years.

V.S. Striltsiv: We found out later that they gave you three years. She told me all about it, because I stayed with her for about a week then. There, at 16 Verbolozna Street, was our headquarters. I was there very often. And from the small house across the street (that Verbolozna street is very narrow), the KGB evicted the people and set up a surveillance post. There were lenses, television cameras, night vision, listening devices... That's why when we talked, we wrote with a special pencil on a sheet of paper where the writing would disappear.

V.V. Ovsienko: Yes, Muscovites called that device a "Russian-Russian phrasebook."

V.S. Striltsiv: That's how we talked, because everything was bugged there.

Then her son, Oles Serhiyenko, returned from exile, and in the meantime, Oksana Yakivna was sent to his place of exile, to the same hut on the shore of the Sea of Okhotsk. I visited him later too, and even helped them. His wife is Dzvinka. And they had a boy and a girl.

V.V. Ovsienko: Ustym and Olya.

V.S. Striltsiv: Yes, yes. Ustymko and Olya. They were little.

And so we discussed everything by writing. She, by the way, asked whether to admit Volodymyr Malynkovych to the Ukrainian Helsinki Group. She was hesitant: to admit him or not? Hanna Mykhailenko from Odesa came. We discussed it with her too. There were no larger gatherings, because everything was being filmed, they were watching.

They once caught me when I went to the store with her. It's not far. They followed us everywhere. One time I was going to visit Yuriy Lytvyn, in the village of Barakhty in the Vasylkiv district. Oksana Yakivna described the way for me and told me to take a note with me. “No, I don't need it. I remember everything.” I remembered well how to get to Vasylkiv, how to get to that village of Barakhty. I left her place and drove off. And they were after me. I quickly switched from one tram to another, or to a trolleybus, arrived at Sofiivska Square, which was then called Khmelnytsky Square. From there, a bus left for the Volodymyrskyi Market. V.V. Ovsienko: That was bus number 38.

V.S. Striltsiv: I got on the bus. But even when I was on the trolleybus on Melnykova Street, I sat in the back to watch and control who was getting on. It seemed there were no suspicious people, but apparently, a car was following me. I went to the Volodymyrskyi Market, bought a ticket to Vasylkiv for 50 kopecks, and waited. There was a long queue, probably several dozen people, standing very politely. The bus pulls up, I want to get on, I'm almost there. And then one policeman approaches from the sidewalk, and another from the road, dressed only in a shirt, because it was summer. The policeman takes me by the arm and says, "Citizen, your documents!"—and pulls, pulls. And the other one grabs me too. They lead me: in front of the bus, about twenty meters away, a blue passenger car is parked. They put me in that car. On the way to the Podilskyi police department, to the KGB, we got into a fight, a real scuffle... They forced the policeman to search me completely. Then an interrogation. Then there was such a quarrel... I wasn't afraid, I knew they wouldn't beat me, they would be too scared. And even if they did, so what... There was such a quarrel... They held me for a while, then put me in a car and took me to the station—and into a train car. One KGB agent was already sitting in the compartment. Back at the police station, they took my money and bought me a ticket to Frankivsk. And there, the KGB agents were already waiting for me.

There were such funny episodes.

I declared a protest strike at school, then renounced my citizenship, and finally joined the Ukrainian Helsinki Group. I had contact with Oksana Meshko. Oles Berdnyk and Ms. Oksana came to us in Dolyna. They stayed mainly at the Sichkivs', they came to my place less often because I was renting a room. I was no longer working at the school. I sold about a thousand of my books to make a living. I traveled to Kyiv, I traveled to Moscow. I carried many papers. I had a special belt—they wove it for me. It was canvas, wide, thin, and had a pocket. It was double-layered. So I would go to Moscow, to Tatyana Velikanova, and give her documents there. At that time, she was publishing the "Chronicle of Current Events." I would give her the materials there, and I would stay overnight with Nina Petrovna Lisovska. The Sichkivs also stayed with Lisovska when they went there. At Lisovska's, I rewrote some papers, translated some things for publication in Russian in the "Chronicle of Current Events," and some were sent abroad through journalists. They gave me the "Chronicle" to read there. With Velikanova, I went to a well-known lawyer (Nelya Yakivna Nemirinskaya) in the center of Moscow, who defended us. She wanted to take me to Sakharov, but Sakharov asked that people visit him as little as possible, because they wouldn't let anyone get through to him.

I returned from Moscow to Kyiv “empty-handed.”

And here, in 1978-1979, I communicated with Zinoviy Krasivsky in Morshyn, visited Stefa Shabatura in Lviv, and the wife of Valentyn Moroz, Raisa. Sometimes Sichkiv and I went, sometimes I went alone. It was impossible to visit other people—they were too afraid. Well, we could still visit the Lemykivs; Panas Zalyvakha was not afraid. We used to go to Zalyvakha's. His wife and Mrs. Lemyk suffered a lot; they were very scared. But Panas was not afraid. He and I even prepared covers for new issues of the "Ukrainian Herald." He would prepare those covers in advance.

V.V. Ovsienko: How did he make them—did he draw each one separately?

V.S. Striltsiv: Yes, he drew them. They were all the same, but the number or the paint was a little different. I had close ties with him. I would visit him at work. He worked to earn a little money for a living. His was the only door in Frankivsk that would open, no one else—everyone, everyone was afraid. We were alone: the Sichkivs came to me, I went to the Sichkivs'. And I was living in a rented room. All those years in Dolyna, I was at the Sichkivs' every day. And I often traveled to Morshyn, to Zinoviy Krasivsky.

In 1978, two colonels, Cherkasov and Popov, came to Dolyna. They were from that headquarters or committee that dealt with the Ukrainian Helsinki Group. They summoned me ten times. I went eight times, but the last two times I didn't go. We talked about political topics. They spoke Russian... Although, that Popov spoke Ukrainian... One KGB colonel told me that he wasn't Popov, but Popiv. He could speak Ukrainian, but Cherkasov spoke Russian.

I insisted that I was a patriot just like an Englishman, like a Frenchman, who loves everything native, national. And like a Russian—no matter where he lives in the Soviet Union—he has everything Russian, in his language. I said: "I am not against anyone. Let everyone have everything in their own language. But I should too, and there is no crime in that. And I will stand by this position." I know the history of Ukraine well, and they do not. They know the history of Russia poorly. They ask: "What bad things are the Soviet Union, specifically the KGB or the Party, doing to Ukraine?" Just like that: what bad things are they doing? So I told them. "And what else? And what else?"—I name how history is falsified, the state of the language, what's happening with schooling, that almost all of Eastern Ukraine is Russified, meaning there are no Ukrainian schools. We debated for two to four hours.

They promised that if I left the Ukrainian Helsinki Group—and that was the main thing!—they would restore my salary and work record in a year and a half, and then in two and a half, they would convene a district trade union meeting of teachers, and Principal Lavriv and other culprits would repent for persecuting me. Everything would be fine—if only I left the Group. But I said that I equate the Ukrainian Helsinki Group with the people's militias, only those fight against theft and drunkenness, while we deal with political issues. Therefore, I see no need to leave it.

I never had any hesitation. What I did was thought out, discussed with my brother Pavlo. My brother supported me very much. He was already too old, 14 years older than me. He had a family, children, grandchildren. Besides, he was ill. He died in 1984—he had a heart attack on the road, died right in the bus.

Trial in Dolyna

At the end of 1978, those KGB colonels said that in that case, I would be arrested. And the trial would not necessarily be on a political charge; it could be some other article. That's why they charged me under Article 125. That's “slander against a person with an accusation of committing a state or other serious crime.” It carries a sentence of up to five years. Then they changed it to 126—“insult.”

A district court trial took place in Dolyna. The chairman of the regional court was present and said that the trial was purely political. They gave me the floor 12 times, but I boycotted, saying it was instigated by the first secretary of the district party committee, Fedorchuk, and KGB colonels Cherkasov and Popov. I justified my position, the essence of which was that the case was malicious, and therefore I was boycotting the court.

My brother and the Sichkivs were at the trial, along with some other people. All 60 seats were filled with a special audience, that is, secretaries of party organizations, heads of trade unions, and other activists. Moreover, I knew half of them; they were all people from Dolyna or the Dolyna district. And they probably all knew me, because people were talking about me. Children and teachers told their parents.

V.V. Ovsienko: Do you remember the date of that trial?

V.S. Striltsiv: The trial took place on January 9, 1979, in the Dolyna District Court building. And on January 13, I turned 50.

By the way, the teacher Svitlana Kushchenko, with whom I shared a classroom, the wife of the head of the district KGB, told me that on the occasion of my 50th birthday, Queen Elizabeth of Great Britain had sent me greetings as an English teacher, as a dissident. There, in London, is "Amnesty International." And I had appealed to it, written to Margaret Thatcher, to allow me to emigrate to Great Britain when I renounced my citizenship. They informed me from there that they were ready to accept me. And Thatcher, when she was here, spoke about it. You know, about 30,000 Ukrainians live in Great Britain. There is the SUB—the Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain. There is a strong OUN there, the journal "Vyzvolnyi Shliakh" (Liberation Path) is published there. I had already been offered a job in a museum there. But they didn't let me go, of course. I never believed they would let me go. They could let a Jew go, or a Muscovite like Solzhenitsyn, but not a Ukrainian.

So, the chairman of the regional court—I think his name was Karpets—sat in a side room and said that it was a completely political trial. And there was an instruction from Shcherbytsky not to conduct political trials, but to somehow convert them into criminal ones. So he ordered the charge to be changed so that I would not be arrested (because I came to this trial from home). Or the regional court would acquit me on appeal. Then the court took a huge break, for about two hours, and reclassified Article 125 to 126—“insult.” So, I had insulted a person, not the authorities. They gave me three months of corrective labor with a deduction of 20% of my salary.

I worked for three months at a reinforced concrete plant with a shovel in my hands, alongside my former students. And when the three months were up, I had accumulated a lot of documents, and I went with them to Moscow. True, I had great adventures getting to Moscow, because I was accompanied on the train by KGB agents, those KGB worms. I had to jump off the train just before Frankivsk, before the bridge over the river. It was still moving slowly because there's a stop there. And they couldn't jump after me. I arrived late at night. A KGB captain on a motorcycle was waiting for every train then. He saw that I had arrived and followed me. Then I got on a shuttle bus that was going to the drilling sites, and half a kilometer later I jumped off, the driver stopped for me, and the KGB agent didn't notice (it was night) and drove on. Those were great adventures!

V.V. Ovsienko: You were an adventurer!

V.S. Striltsiv: Yes. I was not afraid of anything in the world. I just didn't want to get caught with the papers. So I barely made it home from the station with those papers. I listened to see if I could hear a motor—at night you can hear far away. It was night, around three or four in the morning. Not far from home, I hid all those papers and came home empty-handed. No one was there. I spent the night, then got ready and secretly left, got to Frankivsk, and from there to Moscow and handed over what was needed. And I went again. Well, there were more adventures in Kyiv, they detained me there.

Second Arrest. Camp in Bozhkove

Finally, on October 23, 1979, they arrested me in Dolyna. This was the second arrest, on the orders of the KGB (the investigator told me this).

The investigation in Dolyna didn't last long. Then they transferred me to the Ivano-Frankivsk regional prison—what they called a pre-trial detention center. On the morning of November 12, without warning, they brought me to Dolyna. I didn't know why they were bringing me: I saw that I was in the courtroom. They deceived my brother too. My brother somehow found out—people told him, the Sichkivs or someone. There were a lot of police, about fifteen. There were two or three civilians. They even took away my glasses, I couldn't read anything. They read the decision... I spoke out very sharply. They gave me two years on a charge of "violation of passport regulations," Article 196.

On January 2, 1980, they sent me on a transport to Poltava, and from there to the village of Bozhkove, to camp OP-317/16. I fought there, a lot happened there... The camp was on my side. They rebelled. And the camp there is divided, each barrack is separate.

V.V. Ovsienko: Yes, they call them “lokalkas.”

V.S. Striltsiv: Yes. There were a few other people there who also had a conviction under Article 196, which means violation of passport rules. But mine stated that I had renounced my Soviet citizenship and surrendered all my Soviet documents, and lived for two years without documents. I surrendered my passport and military ID, of course. I only had a driver's license, nothing else.

V.V. Ovsienko: What kind of work were you forced to do in that camp?

V.S. Striltsiv: There was a heated workshop, but they gave me a cold spot, on construction, on repairs. Specifically outdoors, where I was very cold. After all, I have frostbitten feet.

I constantly wrote complaints there. The administration would gather the entire barrack of prisoners and say that I was the most dangerous enemy of the Soviet Union, who had already served ten years. And almost all those people supported me, shouting: “You communists!” One criminal, a *vor v zakone*, specifically came to see and talk to me. They said that whatever I needed, they would help me get, that they would support me, because they knew that the political prisoners wanted the regime to collapse, so that life would be better.

I wasn't there for a full two years, because I spent several months in prisons. And they took me to Poltava, to Bozhkove, via Odesa! I was held there in Catherine's prison. Catherine built a prison there together with a church. It's not a prison—it's a palace. Very huge, several combined buildings...

In Bozhkove, I was repeatedly summoned and warned. They had conversations with me... One time they gathered about thirty officials—from lieutenants to colonels. A large room, benches along the walls, they were sitting, five to eight of the highest-ranking officials at tables, and I was on the other side. I was terribly glad to talk about the crimes of their regime. I was rarely so happy—that they had the opportunity to listen.

V.V. Ovsienko: They gathered an audience for you?

V.S. Striltsiv: They gave me an audience of their own employees. I talked about the old days, because they asked: “Have you been imprisoned before?” I told them what the KGB did. That they were all Stalinists.

V.V. Ovsienko: And they didn't later use them as witnesses against you?

V.S. Striltsiv: Witnesses? No. But after that, some expressed their sympathy for me. For example, one operative came to me, looked around to see if anyone was there, and said: "I bow before you. I was told that Colonel Dudka and some Shelmenko or Bloshenko, a lieutenant colonel, said: 'Never in my life have I met anyone who spoke so fearlessly on political topics.'" I wasn't afraid, because I had decided that they could kill me anyway. So it was better if I spoke... I already knew that I was registered as a member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group. But I was like that even without it. So, they warned me: "If you don't leave the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, you won't be released, because there is a decree about recidivists: those who do not reform are not to be released!"

They constantly summoned me. Some officers said it outright: "I know for a fact that they won't release you if you don't leave the Group." They told me this for a whole year. Finally, when my two years were up the next day, on October 23, 1981, they summoned me again on the 22nd before a huge commission and said the same thing: "Either write a statement that you are leaving the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, or we won't release you, we will arrest you." I resolutely refused. And many prisoners had come to the headquarters. A prison vehicle was parked there, and many officers. The headquarters was near the guardhouse. You know, there are gates, no fence, the fence is behind the gates. And the gates are made of bars, iron rods, so you could see that it was full of prisoners, people had come out of the barracks. They were shouting from there, because everyone knew me by then. Then I said: "No! No way! I am a member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group forever!"

The Fourth Case

Then they put me in a vehicle—and to the prison. There was a lot of officialdom there too. There were such complicated ceremonies... The head of the regime summoned me. Not of the camp, but of the entire regional administration. He said he would talk to me and wanted to force me to leave the Group. At first, when everyone was present, he spoke politely, but then... I fought back so hard that I was ready to brawl. The conversation lasted half an hour. And he broke, saying: "Well, I didn't know there were such people..."

V.V. Ovsienko: That such people exist?

V.S. Striltsiv: Yes, yes. He met with me again later. He spoke Ukrainian, although he was from the Voronezh region. He told me: “I never thought, I never thought...” And he had promised that he would break me. When everyone left, the administration said that I was unbreakable, and therefore it was decided not to release me.

By the way, during the interrogation they told me: "What, did you all conspire? Because Chornovil, Oksana Meshko, Lukianenko, and others—they all talk the same way!" And we had no conspiracy. But logic forces us not to surrender—I will die, but I will not yield... And we were able not only to defend ourselves, but also to patriotically uphold the national cause. I reminded them what Moscow was doing, how it was destroying the Ukrainian people, about the famine of 1933, about Baturyn, where the entire population was destroyed. I have all of history at my fingertips. I had read two parts of the book "Poltava," Lepky's trilogy: "Motria," "Ne ubyvai" (Do Not Kill), and "Baturyn." I didn't have time to read everything, because I was arrested in 1944. But I know the whole history and make precise points about fateful events.

So they took me from Bozhkove to the Poltava regional prison. And when they brought me, they searched me very thoroughly. Everything, they even tore my shoes and gave me others. Because I had been carrying papers there, when I was in the Poltava prison for nine months. Although they sent many spies to me there. One Lithuanian confessed to me. One person smuggled my papers out of there.

The investigators had a lot of my papers. They laid them out on the table and photographed me with them.

There were four investigators, three majors: Brechko was the lead, Grazhdan, and one more. And Rudyk—a senior lieutenant, who traveled everywhere.

My brother came there twice, for a so-called visit. But in the meantime, they took him for interrogation, and gave me only a five-minute visit. And all the KGB agents, even the head of the investigative department, came—God forbid we talk about anything else—only about health. Nothing else. So they all stood over me. That was the visit. But in reality, they were interrogating him.

V.V. Ovsienko: And how was this visit? Across a table or, perhaps, through glass, by phone?

V.S. Striltsiv: Oh no. It was in the investigator's office—they all gathered there and trembled. I know them all: I wrote down everyone who was active in the Poltava KGB, in the prosecutor's office. I have it written down, who they are.

The investigation lasted several months. Finally, six volumes were filled. I boycotted the investigation: I refused to answer 475 times—during the investigation and at the trial. Only when they asked about the physical education teacher from my school .... .... .... Semenyshyna (first name?), with whom they found my papers, only her did I defend. I was forced to speak. That is, how to speak? I talked the whole time, but not for the record, because I was boycotting the investigation.

Imagine, 475 times during those interrogations and the trial combined—I refused to answer. Maybe I answered ten questions concerning that teacher—I didn't want her to be arrested. It was enough that my papers were found on her. There was the "Ukrainian Herald," typewritten poems by Ihor Kalynets. And my papers—58 pages of my various writings. So, during the interrogations, I didn't just deny things for the record—I simply boycotted, because I knew that this was all being done on the orders of the KGB.   Of course, there was an order that all anti-Soviets must undergo a psychiatric examination. So they took me in a special prison vehicle to Kharkiv. I was in a psychiatric hospital there for 18 days.

V.V. Ovsienko: What were the conditions during this examination? Were you held alone or with others?

V.S. Striltsiv: I was with several others. It wasn't apparent that there were political prisoners among them. But they had been there for a long time. I didn't observe any direct signs that they were mentally ill. But they stood their ground. People much younger than me.

V.V. Ovsienko: And were you not afraid that they wanted to declare you mentally ill?

V.S. Striltsiv: I had no such fear. I held firm, because it was clear that their task was not to leave me in a psychiatric hospital, but to declare me sane. I noticed that those doctors were not so much concerned with their professional duty as they were with carrying out the KGB's instructions. They knew I was sane, and they had to classify me as such.

V.V. Ovsienko: To declare you sane.

V.S. Striltsiv: Instead of three weeks (21 days), they kept me there for 20 days and wrote the corresponding conclusion.

Finally, the investigation was concluded. The chief investigator, Major... I forgot his last name... (Vyacheslav Vasylyovych Brechko) was writing the indictment. It dragged on for a long time, for two weeks, because the indictment was 81 pages long. I have it, they gave me one copy, because it was typed in several copies (I think two). He was typing the indictment, and I was studying the case, taking notes (he allowed me to) from all six volumes, volume by volume. I wrote down a great deal. There were 70 witnesses who were interrogated in my case. And they were from everywhere I had lived, where I had worked, from various, various places.

V.V. Ovsienko: And also prisoners from the zone?

V.S. Striltsiv: From the zone as well; the main witnesses were from the zone. There were seven of them. I have them written down and characterized. It's necessary to show what kind of people they were. They were common criminals. They also turned the camp's chief doctor into a spy; he testified against me too.

The testimonies were terrible—such that they deserved more than one execution. I, of course, said much less and in a milder tone. But those camp witnesses were given the task of exaggerating my statements as much as possible. Dozens of prisoners were summoned, but they didn't want to testify against me. Only these eight agreed... They were promised—and indeed they were released early. But by the time my investigation was over and I was convicted (months passed), several of them had already returned to the zone: they had earned themselves a new sentence, they were arrested again.

V.V. Ovsienko: Were you incriminated only for oral statements or also for something written?

V.S. Striltsiv: There was a lot of written material too. All sorts of statements, even letters home. And in every letter...

V.V. Ovsienko: Slanderous fabrications?

V.S. Striltsiv: Yes, yes, yes. True, the case was conducted in Ukrainian. They specifically found such investigators. Because the indictment stated: "He accuses the Ukrainian authorities of everything being Russified, that even radio broadcasts in Ukraine are in Russian." That was an exaggeration; I heard the radio, not everything was. That's why all the investigators spoke and wrote everything to me only in Ukrainian.

By the way, I remembered: the senior investigator was Major Vyacheslav Vasylyovych Brechko. I have all this written down.

And so, the trial. I refused the court, refused a lawyer, or rather, I wanted a lawyer from England. They didn't give me one. They agreed to try me without a lawyer. I boycotted the trial as well. My brother Pavlo came to the trial as a witness. But it's a great pity that he didn't hear when I took the floor. While boycotting the trial in general, I read a statement of four pages of small handwriting (you've seen how small I write). There were something like eleven points on why I was boycotting the trial. Everyone listened. The audience—about 50 people. It was not a special audience. People came who supported me, who listened to what I said. I read well, like a propagandist. My voice is weak now, but then I read like an actor. I am not exaggerating. I was still relatively healthy then, not like now. I read it and submitted the text to the court. It is in the case file. Mr. Vasyl, how can I get at least copies from the case file?

V.V. Ovsienko: Well, you have to apply to the court that tried you.

V.S. Striltsiv: I wanted to go there someday. Will they allow me? I would like someone from Kyiv to stand up for me.

V.V. Ovsienko: Now, as a rule, they allow people to take their materials from the case files. You need to apply in writing directly to the court that tried you.

V.S. Striltsiv: I did apply to the Poltava Regional Court, but that was still in Soviet times, to get a copy of the verdict.

V.V. Ovsienko: Oh, that was a different time. You should apply now. Many have already taken their documents from their case files.

V.S. Striltsiv: I would like to go to Poltava because I would like to review the case myself.

V.V. Ovsienko: But first, apply by letter and see what the response is.

V.S. Striltsiv: So, the trial. My brother was outside the door. Only when he was questioned was he allowed to remain in the hall. So he didn't hear the main part.

V.V. Ovsienko: So the trial was on April 21-28, 1982?

V.S. Striltsiv: It began on the 21st. The next day there was no session—they had a meeting. And then on the 23rd, 25th, 26th, and 28th there were sessions. Every other day. On the 28th, they read me the verdict. The verdict was: Article 62, Part 1, that is, “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda,” under the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR. They gave me 7 years in a strict-regime camp, 4 years of post-camp exile, and I had to pay 473 rubles and 50 kopecks—all court costs. What does that mean? Payment for the court's expenses for everyone who was called as a witness. By the way, they also paid for my brother's travel there and back at my expense. My brother came twice. Once he came in January for interrogation—and they allowed a visit of a few minutes. And then he came for the trial. Well, I didn't see him live to be released, because the trial was in 1982, and in 1984, on January 24, he died. From angina pectoris. An attack on the bus—and that was it. Here, in Frankivsk.

And so I was convicted. I wrote a long appeal. I have a copy here with me. Huge, over 30 pages of fine script. In fact, I wrote down a history of the terror. And I called it an "appeal" so that it would be preserved in the criminal case file. Because if there were any of my memoirs or something else, any statements, protests, they would be discarded by the KGB. But an appeal would be kept.

Mordovia

So, they convicted me. The appellate court—either the regional one or in Kyiv—reviewed and upheld my sentence. Soon they took me on a transport. They took me through Kholodna Hora, that is, through Kharkiv. I was there for several weeks. And from there they took me through some regional cities and brought me to Mordovia. There—to Potma. I stayed in Potma for a few days (it's a transit point—Potma), and from there—to Barashevo. And there to the fifth camp. (ZhKh-385/3-5). It was already small by that time.

I arrived there, I think, around July 15, 1982. There were 85 political prisoners there at the time, all in one barrack. It was tiny. I later described and drew this camp. The work was sewing mittens, the quota—85 pairs per shift. 

I was there for over 5 years. What were the guys like? All dissidents, of course. But not all of them were here, because, as you know, there was another political camp in the Urals, in the Perm region, and also Vladimir Prison, where they sent people to the “kryta” (high-security prison). Maybe some others...

V.V. Ovsienko: There were three camps in the Urals. And at that time, was the 19th camp in the village of Lesnoye a political or already a criminal camp? Because the 17th, in the village of Ozerny (Umor in Mordovian), the political one, was liquidated back in 1976.

V.S. Striltsiv: No, there were only political prisoners in Barashevo. There were women in this camp too. Ten or fifteen women. By the way, Tatyana Velikanova was imprisoned there later.

V.V. Ovsienko: That's the women's camp ZhKh-385/3-4. Which Ukrainian political prisoners were imprisoned with you in this fifth section?

V.S. Striltsiv: Yuriy Badzio was in Barashevo at that time. He was already there when I arrived. We were together for about five years. We discussed all political topics. He is a patriot, but a socialist. So there were minor disagreements. When it came to the OUN-UPA, he still sometimes adhered to what the Soviet press and radio said. That the Banderites, for example, killed Soviet citizens. Sometimes he could say something like that. He didn't believe it, but he still thought that something like that had happened. He is a socialist, but for him, Ukraine is not so much socialist—let Ukraine not be a land of masters. But there should be Ukrainian statehood, nothing in common with the Soviet one. He, by the way, wrote a 400-page book "The Right to Live" (for which he was arrested). The first version was stolen from him, so he later recreated it. He told me all this. We had a so-called “red corner” in that barrack. Eight people sat in that “corner.” There were also newspaper files there. Eight or ten of us used to go there. The rest were not interested because they were old, or they didn't need it. But we, mostly Badzio, myself, and that Skoodis, a Lithuanian. He emigrated abroad. But there was Dmytro Mazur, there was Henrich Altunyan, there was Hryhoriy Kutsenko from Kyiv. And his countryman, Volodymyr Dilydivka. You don't know him? Delydivka or Dilydivka. As in "to divide a girl in two."

V.V. Ovsienko: A fine surname!

V.S. Striltsiv: The surname Dilydivka is a Cossack one. He is from Vasylkiv, like Kutsenko, like Yuriy Lytvyn. I even visited Volodymyr Dilydivka when I was in Kyiv, but I didn't catch him. He lived in a dormitory at first. A decent guy, too. He graduated from the Technical University in Dresden. So he knows German, that was the language of instruction. A decent guy. I have his address somewhere. Kutsenko should know him, because they are from the same area. Kutsenko is in the leadership of the Democratic Party. There was also Mykola Krainyk from near Dolyna.

In that Mordovian camp in Barashevo, the most prolific writers were Badzio, myself, and that Skoodis, the Lithuanian. He is also a university lecturer. Almost all of them were lecturers, people with higher education. There were a few without higher education. Different people. But all the dissidents had higher education. And the non-dissidents did not. There were also old prisoners, and there were spies, they had all sorts of education.

I wrote a work there in 1985 (completed it fully in 1986) of 90 pages, “Education Must Serve the Peoples.” And I even translated it into Russian and sent it to the president of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the USSR. That was in mid-1986. 

The Thaw

In January 1987, the “thaw” began. Gorbachev decided to release political prisoners in the dissident category. But those spies, or those who were still imprisoned for the national liberation movement—they were not released. They remained imprisoned. So, several dozen of us, so-called dissidents, were taken from the camp. Including me, of course. We were taken to our respective republics or regions. There were Georgians, the Berdenishvili brothers, there were people from Yerevan, from the university, from Vilnius University, from Estonia, from Belarus. But the most were from Ukraine, of course. All were taken to their regional prisons. Prosecutors and KGB investigators met with them. And all you had to do was write a statement, an appeal, to be released, and promise not to fight against the Soviet government.

There is data that 143 dissidents were released in the Soviet Union at that time. That is, everyone except a few individuals. I know that Mykhailo Horyn was still detained, and Levko Lukianenko was still in exile in the Tomsk region. Also Nechyporenko.

I was here, in the Frankivsk prison, from February 1 to May 5, 1987. I wrote eight such notes, but none of them were accepted. They wanted me to write clearly, but I didn't write that I would not fight. I wrote that I would continue to fight for justice. I wrote all eight like that. The last one was short, asking for permission to emigrate. It was three sentences. And they released me with that. They release me, and I emigrate. I didn't want to leave the prison, because I know them well...

V.V. Ovsienko: And how did they bring you here?

V.S. Striltsiv: They took me from Barashevo back in January 1987, took me to Potma. They held me there for a bit, assembled a special convoy just for me—a captain and two soldiers. They took me by train to Moscow, in Moscow they handed me over to insulator No. 3 on Krasnaya Presnya. I was there for a while. And then by plane, Ivano-Frankivsk to Moscow. The captain and soldiers carried my books, because I had many books. I had subscribed to 175 books in Barashevo.

V.V. Ovsienko: But a prisoner was only allowed 50 kg of belongings. Especially on a transport... They didn't take them from you? Because they took mine...

V.S. Striltsiv: No, they didn't take them. Listen further. Most were Moscow publications, a few were from Kyiv, from Kharkiv. I left 50 books in the camp library in Barashevo, and took 125 with me. Those two soldiers and the captain carried them. I didn't carry my things. One of them carried a wooden suitcase, and the other carried my backpack. I carried almost nothing.

V.V. Ovsienko: Like a great lord.

V.S. Striltsiv: And also. I was wearing my zek uniform. They brought me to Vnukovo airport: the plane was leaving in the evening, around 11 o'clock, so they said to clear the way for us.

V.V. Ovsienko: As if the General Secretary was coming.

V.S. Striltsiv: Yes. And all the passengers stood aside. I walk past them, I see that they are Ukrainians, going to Ivano-Frankivsk, so I greeted them: "Good evening, dear friends!" They didn't forbid me to speak! I greeted them in Ukrainian. The passengers looked and everyone understood that he was a zek. But my hands were not cuffed.

V.V. Ovsienko: And in 1976, they transported me with such a special convoy on a plane in handcuffs.

V.S. Striltsiv: Well, they probably already knew they were taking me to be released. The captain said so. We sat in the back, in the last seats. It was an AN-24, a 48-seat plane. I sat on one side, the captain on the other, and those soldiers—one sat there, one there. They gave me food and drink. I went to the toilet myself. But the toilet was right there, next to me, behind a door. So no one followed me. You could already feel the easing of restrictions. The captain said that everyone was being taken to freedom.

We arrived at night, around one o'clock. The KGB and the prosecutor's office were already waiting for me there. And the prison. Those ones handed me over, these ones accepted me. And they took me in a paddy wagon to the prison.

I was in the prison for three or four months. The prosecutor spoke with me. I have the "Prykarpatska Pravda" here. It was a communist newspaper. Now he's its legal consultant. That prosecutor came to me, we argued. And two KGB agents came—a major and a captain. They came many times, because I wrote a statement eight times. They said: "Finally, the Ukrainian is agreeable.” That was, I think, a KGB general. His surname was Ukrainsky. “Our chief already agrees with the wording ‘I will continue the struggle for justice.’ He agrees, but the first secretary of the regional committee, Postoronko, does not agree. Postoronko does not agree. He wants you to write it clearly."

So I know this lout. Someday I'll have to meet him. He supposedly used to be here, but where he is now—I don't know.

Finally, I wrote three sentences that I wanted to emigrate. Then they took me to be released, but I said: "I don't even want to leave here—straight to the plane." They didn't know what to do—the whole prison was on alert, the KGB, the prosecutor's office... But they couldn't beat me anymore, of course. They just came and persuaded me. The prosecutor's office guaranteed everything: “We are not against it now. You will be registered in two days, submit your application, and emigrate. It's not complicated now, it's possible now, they are letting people go.” It was funny to me, because it wasn't my life's principle to emigrate. I just wanted to poke a little fun at them!

“The Hour for Work Has Come...”

Finally, I agreed—how they rejoiced! On May 5, 1987, they gave me a truck, because, as you know, I had 125 books and some other luggage in my backpack. They took me to my relatives. My brother had been dead for over three years, but they took me there, to my brother's apartment. Of course, I was registered there within a few days. They registered me very quickly. At the passport office, they simplified everything. They coordinated something by phone.

I lived there for the first few months.

Immediately after I was released, I got in touch with Lviv, with the guys. Viacheslav Chornovil, Zoryan Popadiuk were already there, and Mykhailo Horyn was released soon after. I declared that the Ukrainian Helsinki Group needed to be revived immediately—right away. And I heard this two days later on Radio Liberty. The guys immediately transmitted it to the West... I hear on the radio that Vasyl Striltsiv has been released and has joined the Ukrainian Helsinki Group.

We and the Sichkivs immediately started to act here. Because other patriots were not yet visible. It was still the old way—everyone was afraid, only individuals... I got in touch with Chornovil. He had already managed to marry Atena Pashko. And I used to visit him on Bichna Street...

V.V. Ovsienko: Maybe on Levitan Street?

V.S. Striltsiv: It was Bichna Street where he first lived. Or maybe Levitan. I don't recall.

V.V. Ovsienko: There was the 700th Anniversary of Lviv Avenue, which is now called Chornovil Avenue. And on the side of it was Levitan Street, where Chornovil lived.

V.S. Striltsiv: Ah, yes. I was there. I remember, he asked me to give a tape recorder to Vasyl Stus's wife—a long one, it was called a "Panasonic." Because we had received about 42 of them from abroad, as Sichko told me. I got one too. When I was going to Kyiv, I took it to Vasyl Gurdzan. Yevhen Sverstiuk and Shevchenko were already waiting for me there. But I don't remember which one, are there two brothers?

V.V. Ovsienko: They are not brothers, they are only associates: Oles and Vitaliy.

V.S. Striltsiv: Ah. So they were waiting for me there. We got acquainted. This was in 1987, if not 1988.

In 1988, they already gave me a job. They allowed me to work in a school, like others. I went to a village school in the Kolomyia district, the village of Zhukotyn. By the way, this is the neighboring village from where Oksana Popovych comes. Her mother lived to be one hundred and one and was a teacher and principal in the village of Zhukiv. And I was four kilometers away, in Zhukotyn. Zhukiv and Zhukotyn. I often traveled to Frankivsk and further.

We, you may recall, revived the Ukrainian Helsinki Group in 1987. Chornovil in Lviv probably put the most effort into it. For a few months, he called it a Federation. Then he renewed the publication of the "Ukrainian Herald." And on July 7, on the feast of St. John, it transformed into the Ukrainian Helsinki Union. And in 1990, on April 29, into the Ukrainian Republican Party.

V.V. Ovsienko: And when did you create the regional branch of the UHS here in Frankivsk?

V.S. Striltsiv: We created the regional branch on March 12, 1989, that is, a little more than six months after the Group became the Union.

V.V. Ovsienko: Did you head the Union here?

V.S. Striltsiv: I didn't head it, because I was already teaching, I couldn't. The meeting took place at the home of Panas Zalyvakha and Mrs. Liuba Lemyk. He interfered little, but he was supportive. And Mrs. Lemyk took an active part. And Kateryna Savchuk.

In the UHS, Chornovil played the main role. We met rarely, because I was teaching. They wanted to elect me as the head of the Frankivsk branch, but my teaching prevented it. A non-political prisoner, Petro Marusyk, became the head. He recently passed away. He published a small reference book. He was a decent fellow.

Mrs. Lemyk said that they were waiting for me, an old political prisoner. They had known me for a long time, even before my arrest. But I became the executive secretary of the regional UHS branch. Everything passed through my hands. Not the head, but I did everything. I decided who to admit, I issued papers, I registered. With me, everything is done thoroughly. I wrote many documents, articles.

And in 1989, on June 3, the All-Ukrainian Society of the Repressed was formed. Were you there when we celebrated the ten-year anniversary of its creation?

V.V. Ovsienko: Unfortunately, I was away somewhere then.

V.S. Striltsiv: Yuriy Badzio was there. Badzio is great! We are old friends. But, you know, he came out in support of Marchuk for President. And Yevhen Proniuk and others had long ago decided that Kuchma should be supported. So there was a misunderstanding. Badzio spoke twice—at the beginning, and then at the end, that Marchuk should be supported. But the assembly did not accept this. I did not interfere in the dispute, because I know that one should not fight here. Badzio is not an activist of the Society, but I am an activist. Marchuk is the head of the KGB, or at least a deputy...

V.V. Ovsienko: Wasn't Yevhen Marchuk in the Poltava KGB when you were imprisoned?

V.S. Striltsiv: He was! In my time, he was a lieutenant colonel in the KGB. But he didn't interfere with me. At that time, the head of the KGB in Poltava was Major General Zhabchenko, and the head of the investigative department was Lieutenant Colonel Cherednychenko. These were the ones who dealt with me.

V.V. Ovsienko: And what was Marchuk?

V.S. Striltsiv: And he was lower-ranking. He was still a lieutenant colonel in Poltava. Only later was he brought to Kyiv. That's what they told me there.

So, on June 3, 1989, I became a member of the Coordinating Council of the All-Ukrainian Society of the Repressed. Here I carried out unifying work, because a year later the Union of Political Prisoners of Ukraine emerged here. I joined it as well, and soon I headed it, that is, I became the chairman of the regional organization of the Union of Political Prisoners of Ukraine. We organized many events. And on December 19, 1992, we merged into the All-Ukrainian Society of Political Prisoners and the Repressed. We have 40,000 members. In our region, there are 5,000. In all districts, there are several hundred. For example, almost 700 in the Halych district. They were building a thermal power plant there and hired ex-convicts, because no one wanted to dig the earth. It was cheap labor. Former prisoners were registered there, they had work and a salary.

I was elected to the regional leadership of the Ukrainian Republican Party. I was its political adviser. I am still a member of the regional leadership of the Republican Party. Here it is currently headed by .... ..... .... Fitych. Ihor Banakh was the head, but Lukianenko expelled the best people from the party, and now he himself has left the leadership. At first, Yaroshynsky helped Lukianenko, and a year later Yaroshynsky was also expelled...

V.V. Ovsienko: And now Lukianenko is dissatisfied with Shandriuk as well.

V.S. Striltsiv: Yes, and with Shandriuk. And he himself seems to have left the leadership, I read something like that in a newspaper. Proniuk told me that he didn't leave the Republican Party, only the leadership. He wanted to make it a family party... Who was in charge? We know. His wife, Nadia, was in charge of everything...

V.V. Ovsienko: Well, never mind that. Do you still belong to the URP? What is your current status? You said you were no longer the head of the regional organization of the Society of the Repressed...

V.S. Striltsiv: Yes. I was the head of the regional organization for over 8 years. We call it the “regional administration.” We use the name “uprava” (administration) for civilian organizations, "provid" (leadership) for party ones, and "shtab" (headquarters) for military or paramilitary ones. And now I have stepped down because of a bad heart. Such a pity. I mobilize myself when I speak, I forget a little. But when I am alone, I start to moan, lie down a bit, walk a bit, sit a bit... I can't do it. I haven't been to meetings for three months now...

I already said that I was forced to leave the post of head of the regional organization of the All-Ukrainian Society of Political Prisoners and the Repressed due to a heart condition. So I want to say a few words about it.

Ten years ago, in December 1989, I had my first unexpected heart attack. I barely survived. I was bedridden for four months. But I still worked, took care of myself, received treatment, including folk medicine, for example, I drank an infusion of garlic in alcohol. And so I have lasted until now. But for all these ten years, I was forced to completely devote myself to the cause (that's the only way to work), but this work brought me to such a state. I have already had several heart attacks. The wall of my heart opposite the ventricle has thinned. There is a great danger that due to great excitement, or carrying a heavy load, or walking or running fast—it could rupture. Just as in 1962, the wall of my father's aorta ruptured when he turned seventy-three. That's why I was forced to hand over the leadership to a younger person, [surname illegible] ...... .......... ....... Yaroslav. With the consent of all the heads of the district organizations, and with the knowledge of Mr. Proniuk as the head of the All-Ukrainian Society.

I still deal with the affairs of our Society, because it is constantly being passed on. One must be taught to continue this useful work. I mean the method of conducting the work itself. It is necessary not only to lead, but also to keep documentation. By the way, I am on the editorial board of the all-Ukrainian journal "Zona" (The Zone). Many of my articles have been published there.

And back in 1992, I appealed to the President of Ukraine, Leonid Kravchuk, with a relevant document, for Ukraine to demand monetary or generally material compensation from Russia, reimbursement for those nearly forty million citizens of Ukraine who were destroyed. Half of them were killed. For example, by famine, somewhere between ten to twelve million, and then by the extermination of the Ukrainian intelligentsia in the late 1930s, and then in the 1940s, a great many were destroyed. And the other half of those forty million are those who were imprisoned in camps, exiled, and in some way repressed.

It must be so. After all, when Hitler's fascist Germany destroyed 6 million Jews in various countries, including Ukraine, and in Germany itself, in other occupied states and territories—now their legal successors (Adenauer and Kohl) are paying billions of marks for those 6 million killed. And other Axis powers too: the Italians—for Albania, for Libya, for Abyssinia, they are also compensating for the killings and destruction of property they caused there. Likewise the Japanese, as an Axis state, allies of Hitler—for the captured lands, say, Indochina, the Philippines, and others—they are also paying for this.

So why doesn't Russia, when it directly exterminated Ukrainians, why doesn't it want to pay? It must be forced by any measures and means. Either through interstate relations between Kyiv and Moscow, or Kyiv and other countries of the so-called CIS with the help of European courts in Strasbourg and The Hague. This is the court of the United Nations. So, Russia must be forced to pay for this through the UN itself. But instead of compensation, in 1991, Gorbachev, the last or first President of the Soviet Union, that terrible empire, forced the Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, Kravchuk, to transfer all our, the people's, savings that were in Ukraine, in the amount of about 85 billion rubles, to Russia. This wasn't some state money—it was our money. But I didn't keep it in my pocket; I put it in the bank. And it was stolen. This is a crime! I am surprised that the authorities have done nothing to get it back so far. I think that now, with the new course of Ukrainian policy, both domestic and foreign, this will be done.

We, political prisoners and exiles, the deported—state slaves—built Kolyma, Magadan, Norilsk, Komi. Political prisoners did all this. And why is there no payment for it?

After all, it is known that Germany pays for the Ostarbeiters. Let it be an average, albeit small, wage. But it is necessary. And the Westarbeiters, that is, those who were taken to the east, to the Soviet Union—they should also be paid. Let that money not go to us, but to the families—to the children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren of those people. And when there is no family, say, the lineage has ended, everyone died in Siberia or somewhere, then perhaps it should go to the state. After all, we built thousands of factories and mines there. How much benefit we provided—and now all of this is Russian, including the gold of Kolyma.

V.V. Ovsienko: I would like you to tell us about your manuscripts.

V.S. Striltsiv: I want to say that wherever I went, I wrote everything down. And not in one copy—because it could be confiscated, but in several. I did this wherever it was possible. That is, I wrote it twice, or used carbon paper. And I wrote thoughtfully. This was after returning from the camps. And I wrote a lot in the camps. In the political camp in Mordovia, in the village of Barashevo, I wrote several hundred pages of various materials. And I buried them there.

I would like the authorities to help me make an official appeal... Because there, in Moscow, they won't listen to me... I would like some minister from our government to help do this. I would go there and dig it up. Approximately 400 pages of my fine script are buried there. Written in Ukrainian. I would like to get them. And I buried the first, best copy.

V.V. Ovsienko: But, I see, you have a large pile of those notes?

V.S. Striltsiv: I have many notes. Practically, I have all the letters that I wrote, that my brother or relatives, friends, acquaintances wrote to me, or that I wrote home. As for those I wrote to other people—I don't know if they have kept them. But those I wrote home and those written to me, I have kept practically all of them. This is many hundreds, if not a thousand letters, which I plan to arrange into a book in the future...

In the letters from my five years in the political camp in the village of Barashevo, I wrote about 64 different protests, describing all the events to which we reacted. I also wrote a work there called "Education Must Serve the Peoples." By the way, I submitted all the papers to the authorities. And I had copies, but not all copies survived, because, as you know, they were confiscated during searches. Some were sent to me from the camps to my home, and I keep them. I am making copies of them.

But I have many documents as the head of the Society of Political Prisoners and the Repressed and as one of the leaders of the Republican Party in the city of Ivano-Frankivsk and in the region. I intend—regardless of my illness—to put them in order and, on their basis, write a history of both our Society and the beginnings of the Ukrainian Republican Party. And as a prehistory—of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, then the Ukrainian Helsinki Union, and finally, the Ukrainian Republican Party. Because, I recall, at one of the first congresses, Mr. Mykola Rudenko proposed that these years—of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, the Ukrainian Helsinki Union—be counted as the history of the Republican Party. True, there are other parties that could think so. For example, the Sichkivs—Petro and Vasyl, were also members, even the backbone, but they created the UCHDP. It is our common history. Various parties began from there.   These documents of mine are well-organized, but these, you could say, are untouched. See—those two bundles? They are waiting, have been waiting for years, for me to organize them.

I also have major works, not just some protests, appeals, or complaints. Some are tens of pages long. I’ve already mentioned one of them: “Education Must Serve the Peoples.” It’s an analysis and critique of the Soviet Union’s education system and a new system of education that I am proposing for Ukraine. I propose that for each people, its own system is best. It should serve the nation, that specific people, and not just the Russians or their Russian language as some kind of common tongue.

My Wife

V. V. Ovsienko: For the record, what is your, so to speak, marital status?

V. S. Striltsiv: I never married because I was tried four times. And, besides the trials and prisons, I was also persecuted everywhere for a long time, persecuted for years. That’s why I didn’t marry. Although I wanted to, my situation was such that it wasn’t the right time. I traveled everywhere. I was in the camps until I was 25, and then there was exile. And when I returned home, I needed to get an education. So that postponed it for me a bit... And then imprisonment again. And only now, two and a half years ago, that is, in 1997, did I marry a fellow political prisoner. But she was born in 1936, so she’s seven years younger than me. When I finally returned from Norilsk in 1957, that was when she, as they say, was imprisoned. She was a young elementary school teacher at the time. She graduated from the Rohatyn Pedagogical College. She taught for a year, from 1956 to 1957, and on the last day of the school year, May 22, she was arrested. She was also charged under Article 54. But this time not as a “Banderite,” but as an enemy of the Soviet Union. She wrote poems and spoke openly about the UPA’s struggle, which she had seen with her own eyes. In 1946, she was ten years old, and at that age, you know how interested children are in such things. And 1946 was the height of the struggle against the Communist-Muscovite occupation. She observed all of that. Her relatives were in the underground; some were even convicted. Her cousin got 25 years—he died. A wonderful young man, he left behind so many memories; I am working on them now.

She was sentenced to 6 years in a strict-regime camp, 5 years of exile, and 3 years of disenfranchisement.

V. V. Ovsienko: And did she serve all of that?

V. S. Striltsiv: She served the 6 years. She was in various camps, including in Mordovia and in Krasnoyarsk Krai. And she was in exile in Arkhangelsk Oblast, and from Arkhangelsk Oblast, she quietly escaped. After serving two years, she fled to Kyiv. She went with her brother, who now lives in Kyiv (by the way, she just went to visit him because he is leaving for Germany)... She went to her brother, and for a week they tried to get an appointment with Shelest. At the appointment, she told him everything. And Shelest said, “You go back there for now, because this is a violation, and we will do something about it.” So she didn't serve two years of her exile. That is, three years, not five.

V. V. Ovsienko: You still haven’t mentioned her name...

V. S. Striltsiv: Her maiden name is Sofia Burtnyk. Her brother, Burtnyk, a construction engineer, is in Kyiv. And then she got married (she has children—I’m the one who just got married, but she has four boys)—so her name became Kuchirko. It wasn’t until our time, in 1992, that she graduated from the psychology department of the Precarpathian Pedagogical Institute. It is now called the Precarpathian University.

My Brother Pavlo Striltsiv

V. V. Ovsienko: Next, Mr. Vasyl Striltsiv will talk about his brother Pavlo, also a political prisoner.

V. S. Striltsiv: My brother Pavlo is 14 years older than me. He’s the oldest, and I was the youngest. Between us, there was also a sister, Stefka, born in 1926. And he was from 1915. He was born on March 17. So the First World War was already underway. Our father had just gone to the front. Wounded on the Italian front, he was taken prisoner in 1916 and remained there until 1918, when the First World War ended. Only after that did he return home from Italy.

During the front’s passage, our house in the village of Zahvizdia burned down, so those were years of martyrdom for the family. But the war ended, and everything got back on track. Pavlo finished the four-grade elementary school in the village. Then he entered the Stanyslaviv Ukrainian Gymnasium, that is, one with Ukrainian as the language of instruction, and he finished the 8th grade there in 1935. He very much wanted to study law because he loved the field. It is closely tied to politics. But it didn't work out, because the Poles did not admit Ukrainians to such specialties. Under Piłsudski, they adopted what could be called an anti-Ukrainian policy.

But Pavlo was also gifted at languages. A natural linguist. He entered Lviv University to study classical philology, meaning he studied Ancient Greek and Latin languages and the cultures of the ancient world. He studied from 1936 to 1941. His papers are somewhere; I’ll check. He had many writings.

So, in June 1941, he finished his studies. But during his last exam (he still had one more to take), the bombing of Lviv by German planes began. The war between Germany and the Soviet Union had started. And he didn’t receive his diploma because he hadn’t passed that one last exam, just like all the other students. During the German occupation, the university was not functioning; it was closed. And in Soviet times, after 1944, the university was reopened. In 1945, he passed his final exam and received his diploma with honors from the Faculty of Philology of Lviv University. Even when he was a student, he wrote articles. A student writing articles about Greek culture! And he had a dissertation written—this was later. The dissertation is called “The War of the Mice and Frogs. Batrachomyomachia.” He took a creative leave to write it. They give you three months for that kind of creative leave. But instead of defending his dissertation, his home was searched on that very day.

V. V. Ovsienko: When was that?

V. S. Striltsiv: It was on the night of February 21–22, 1972. It was during the crackdown on the Ukrainian intelligentsia. So they searched his place, just like mine and Vasyl Dolishnyi’s. Many of us... And at his place, they found our travel notes. For many years, we traveled around Ukraine to historical sites, and he wrote about it. I only took short notes because I was driving the motor scooter. He wrote more; I have these notes. It’s 70 written pages. I started it, then he wrote the travel notes. We wanted to illustrate them because we traveled with a camera and an 8-millimeter film camera. We shot about 50 small films, or rather, reels. But they searched our places in 1972 and confiscated all of it.

He wasn’t arrested right away—investigation, investigation, investigation... He would go from home to the investigations. And then on July 4, 1972, he was arrested... First by the KGB, and then the KGB transferred the case to the regional prosecutor’s office. Then the trial, Article 187-prime, that is, “the dissemination of knowingly false fabrications that defame the Soviet state and social system.” Chornovil was the first to be tried under this article, then both Sichkos, when they were arrested in Lviv.

By the way, Vasyl Dolishnyi was at the trial. And I was there, of course; I spoke. They gave him a year and a half, just like Chornovil. And the article allows for up to three years. Chornovil (in 1967) was given three years, but then they took off a year and a half.

V. V. Ovsienko: There was an amnesty at that time, and they immediately “shaved off” half his sentence.

V. S. Striltsiv: The defense attorney, a woman, was good. Against her was the regional prosecutor Paraskevych—a terrible tiger, he was a scoundrel! It was the regional court. The judge, also a woman, a war invalid with one arm, was a friend of the defense attorney. The judge blushed deeply when prosecutor Paraskevych spoke against the defense attorney. But still, they gave him a year and a half, not three.

My brother wrote a cassation appeal; we went to Kyiv to the cassation court. By the way, the judge who upheld the verdict and called my brother an anti-Soviet is now on the Constitutional Court. Pavlo served his sentence where the Sichkos were. But the Sichkos were arrested in 1979.

V. V. Ovsienko: The Sichkos were in different places: Vasyl in Cherkasy, and Petro in Brianka.

V. S. Striltsiv: Brianka, Luhansk Oblast. And my brother was also in Luhansk Oblast, but in the town of Sverdlovsk. I went there to visit him several times. When he returned, we fought for a long time—half a year—to get him permission to teach. We tried to get it here, we tried in Kyiv, we went to Moscow. And finally, after half a year, he was allowed to teach. He taught German. Because he had previously taught a little Greek and Latin at the college and at Chernivtsi University. In 1962—that was a long time ago—our institute was part of Chernivtsi University. It had its faculties here. There was a department of Latin, so he taught Latin here. He also taught at the college, but then he was fired. My brother was always being fired. And he was one of the best teachers. He taught the Ukrainian language for 15 years, and then he refused to teach in the Soviet way. A lot of people here know him... He taught Ukrainian because there was no more Latin. At first he had a few hours of Latin there, and then none. He is the author of many works on Ukrainian language and literature. He wrote for the journal “Ukrainian Language and Literature at School” and for many other journals. He did translations. One was published in the “Anthology of Ancient Literature.” True, only half of his translation of the “Batrachomyomachia” from Ancient Greek was published. He wrote his dissertation about it. But instead of defending it, he was arrested. First the search—on the last day of his three-month creative leave!

He and I went all the way to Moscow, arguing that there was no law anywhere that would bar him from teaching. We only didn’t go to the Central Committee; otherwise, we went to all the authorities: the Presidium of the Verkhovna Rada, the Trade Union, the Ministry of Education, and other levels of higher education. Finally, they gave him permission. He taught in Tlumach Raion, commuting 28 km to get there. Well, not every day. And so, on a bus, he had an angina attack and died on the bus on January 24, 1984. I was in Mordovia at the time, serving my fourth sentence. They only wrote to me about it in a letter.

He was an eternal fighter (????). He knew history wonderfully. He met with Dontsov and other Ukrainian figures in Lviv—under Polish rule, when he was still a student—and with our other Galician politicians. He was a Ukrainian patriot.

I am 14 years younger, so for a long time, he was my guardian. I already had experience from the camps, so we would discuss the matter of the struggle; he was very supportive of me. We shared the same views. He very much wanted me to get a higher education, saying that life would be easier and it wouldn’t be so easy for them to arrest me.

Our trips with him to historical places in Ukraine were very patriotic. We met with different people, discussed everything, wrote, and took photographs. We have many photographs; I want to illustrate our descriptions and publish them as a small book. It’s tiny script; he wrote so elegantly, so minutely, better than I. By the way, he and I have the same mentality, or character, if you will. But I was always catching up to him, because 14 years is a big difference, not just a year or two. I gained my political experience in the camps, while he knew general politics, law, and philology. Imagine: knowing Greek, Latin, Polish, and German—down to the subtleties. He wrote about things I only came to understand later. Such academic problems...

I want to say that when I was arrested in 1944, they would summon him to the KGB from time to time, right up until Stalin’s death. Well, they went by different names: NKGB, then MGB—Ministry of State Security, then KGB. So they summoned him all those years and demanded that he join the Party and become an informer. He told me that almost all the teachers were terrorized by the KGB. So he told me that he miraculously managed to avoid it... When I returned, he would tell me what was on everyone’s mind.

He was a very good teacher and psychologist. He knew his subject wonderfully, knew it perfectly! But when trips to Kyiv or excursions to other places were organized, he was always excluded. He had never been to Kyiv before I returned! He was always being excluded, always being criticized—criticized because I was in prison. Not for his work as a teacher, but because he was supposedly an enemy. He fought. He was not a coward. He used to tell me that when they released him from the KGB in the evening or at night, he was always on guard, because they could have killed him. He’d say, “I was always on alert. If someone had swung at me, I would have fought back, because I would have been killed or maimed anyway.”

After Stalin's death, they left him alone.

V. V. Ovsienko: If one were ever to gather information about him, was he married? Did he leave any children?

V. S. Striltsiv: Yes. He was married on July 18, 1943, to a girl—she was 18, born in 1925. Her parents were decent people. She is still alive. Like me, she finished 7 grades of the gymnasium. I was in the second, third, fourth grade, while she was in the seventh, eighth, and finished during the German occupation. I have a photograph from that time. They have three children.

V. V. Ovsienko: Please state their names and years of birth.

V. S. Striltsiv: The oldest is Zoreslav, born in 1945. Larysa is from 1949. Myroslav is from 1953. All are alive. And there are grandchildren. They live in Frankivsk.

Zoreslav, the oldest, is a radio engineer. He was building radio receivers back in school. And later he worked at a school; now he leads the regional radio club. Larysa has a technical college degree but doesn't work because she had children. Myroslav graduated from the Lviv Institute of Physical Culture. They all live in Frankivsk. Myroslav, the youngest, went to Tyumen to work.

His wife is quite old now. She lives at the old place in Ivano-Frankivsk, at 7 Bukatchuk Street. Their little house is there. Not my brother's, as he moved in there, but her parents'. A small, separate house in the central part of the city, behind the train station; she lives there with her daughter Larysa. And the boys left home to live with their wives.

V. V. Ovsienko: Good. Thank you for this story.

This was Mr. Vasyl Striltsiv, February 7, 2000, Ivano-Frankivsk. Recorded by Vasyl Ovsienko.

Photo by V. Ovsienko:

Strilciv Film 9059, frame 6A, 7.02. 2000. Vasyl STRILTSIV.