The text was edited in April–May 2002, taking into account the comments of Oksana Popovych and her sister Mariya Skrypnyk (letter dated April 23, 2002).
V.V. Ovsiyenko: On February 6, 2000, in the city of Ivano-Frankivsk, at 50 Molodizhna Street, apartment 70, Ms. Oksana Popovych is speaking.
Family
O.Z. Popovych: I am Oksana Zenonivna Popovych, born on February 2, 1926, in the village of Zhukiv, Obertysnkyi Raion, Stanislav Oblast, now Tlumach Raion, Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast. I was born into a family of intelligentsia. My mother, Olena Novodvorska, was a teacher, from the family of the writer Les Martovych. He was my grandmother’s brother. My mother’s brother, Ivan Novodvorsky, a lawyer in Kolomyia, was a Sich Rifleman, then served in the Ukrainian Galician Army, and was wounded in 1918. With the arrival of Bolshevik rule in 1940, he was arrested and died in the North, in exile.
My father, Zenon-Marian Popovych, took part in the so-called November Uprising in 1918, that is, seizing power from the Poles in Lviv. He worked as a postmaster. After the Poles came to power (as they were supported by England and France), my father was arrested. He served six months in prison, and then for the entire duration of the occupation of Western Ukrainian lands by the Polish occupiers, he was unemployed. However, even though he was unemployed, my father conducted cultural and educational work among the peasants: he taught them to read and write, organized a Ukrainian Native School, and taught the peasants to be patriots and to preserve their national dignity. My father had a large library, lent books to the peasants, organized a mutual aid fund, and gave lectures and reports on the history of Ukraine and its literature. Polish gendarmes always rummaged through our books and confiscated some of them.
Children often came to our house to sing carols. And my father would listen: “Oh, they’re caroling about Ukraine! Go give them something extra.” In short, my father was a kindred spirit. Because for me, too, Ukraine was something sacred.
My father’s sister, Klementyna Boyarska-Popovych, was a Ukrainian writer. In our family, the husband of my cousin Orysia—Yaroslav Kuryliv—was arrested and disappeared without a trace. He was probably shot by the Bolsheviks, like the others. My contemporary, my cousin’s brother, was also likely shot by the Bolsheviks. Many from our family later joined the UPA and perished there.
The village of Zhukiv was so lacking in national consciousness that my father would grumble: “When a Polish gendarme passes, they take off their hats and bow low, but when one of our own goes by, they just touch their cap.” This speaks to national dignity. But when we were leaving Zhukiv in those carts in 1939, all the people came out to say goodbye to my father.
My mother worked in the state school in Zhukiv for 20 years and constantly had problems. Eventually, the Ukrainian school in Zhukiv was closed, and my mother was transferred to another raion, so my father had to go with her, as he was unemployed.
(Note from her sister, Mariya Skrypnyk, April 23, 2002. Mother was transferred to Horodenka Raion, the village of Strilche. That same year, 1939, we moved to the town of Horodenka. There, mother worked as the school principal in the part of town called Kotykivka.)
I understood all of this well, so the word “Ukraine” became a sacred thing for me, even before I started school. When I heard the Ukrainian anthem being sung, my heart would begin to beat faster. The time was slowly approaching when I would be able to test my love for Ukraine...
And my uncle, Hnat Petrovych Stefaniv, was the commander-in-chief of the UGA after Vitovskyi. He had a complete military education. So we have that kind of family—soldiers, teachers... I knew a lot from a young age. After all, I grew up in an intelligent, nationally conscious, and spiritually rich family.
I am telling the story of my family based on my mother’s words, so I might diverge from the facts on some points.
I finished elementary school, then studied at a Ukrainian gymnasium. The Bolsheviks came and turned the gymnasium into a secondary school. And under the Germans, it was a gymnasium again. In short, I have a secondary education.
I don’t know by what criteria you are collecting information—whether about members of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group or about dissidents of an international type—because by conviction, I am a Ukrainian nationalist, I was a member of the OUN. I am not an artist, not a scholar, and—I must disappoint you—I am not even an average woman, because I do not have a family of my own. Most often, such people are called failures...
Youth
When the Bolsheviks first arrived, there were terrible arrests. In Horodenka, where we had lived since 1939, almost all the students were arrested. So we, the younger ones, gathered and decided to take their place. There were five of us—we went to join the OUN Youth. They didn’t want to accept us because we were still young. But they accepted us anyway. The Youth was for those up to 18 years old. We studied the rules of conspiracy, the history of Ukraine, Ukrainian literature, and underwent ideological and military training. We took exams for the first and second levels. There was a book called “Fodder Beets.” It contained all the rules of conspiracy. Everyone had to know the Decalogue, the Twelve Traits of a Nationalist, and the Forty-four Rules by which one had to live. Everyone studies them, and the activists take exams and then work. And only after that did we take an oath and join the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists.
In the Youth, we were studying almost all the time. I traveled to villages and taught others what we were learning. And when I became an activist and the raion leader, I had a permanent job and was responsible for it. Some were couriers, some were responsible for ideological training, some for Ukrainian history, some for military training, and I was in charge of the Youth network and commanded everyone, because I was the raion leader. When people started getting caught, it became harder...
V.V. Ovsiyenko: And when did you become a member of the OUN?
O.Z. Popovych: Sometime in early 1944.
V.V. Ovsiyenko: You were, in fact, in the underground?
O.Z. Popovych: Yes. But at first, I had a legal status. Then I was transferred to another raion, Kolomyia, and there I was already in an illegal status and got caught...
Arrest
We had an older woman as a courier from Horodenka Raion to Kolomyia Raion. (Note from her sister, Mariya Skrypnyk, April 23, 2002. Her last name was Kyslytsia, and her pseudonym was “Niania.” She died recently.) She made that journey every day. During the day, it was Soviet rule—at night, the Banderites worked while the Soviets slept. I was sent to Kolomyia Raion. But I missed the courier. So I went all the way to Kosmach, where there was an independent Ukraine. Another courier led us, depending on where we needed to go. And on the way, I got caught... You know, one raid after another. It happened that someone came and said, “The raid is over.” So we went. We approached a house—and the Soviets were there! I only had a bag, and in that bag were all sorts of reports, including one on medical training. And that courier had also given me some “shtafety,” so I put them in my pocket. These were relays, that is, notes, the underground mail. And then they approached. I quickly threw the messages into the snow, but I couldn’t throw the bag because it was big. So I thought, this is it...
They took us to a house and conducted a search. They said I was a “Banderivka.” I said, “I am a Banderite. But those two girls with me—they are going to church. I asked them to wait for me. They waited, but I don’t know them.” But they were the raion medic and a courier. So they said the same thing.
This happened in early 1945, on January 12, in the village of Ispas, Kolomyia Raion. We were detained by the army that assisted the NKVD. They took us to Kolomyia. I said the same thing there. The girls were interrogated again and then released. I had disowned them, and they, me. So they left. Later, I met one of those girls in prison. She somehow got out of it there too and was released a second time. But they held me because the bag contained various reports, literature, newspapers... I had no way out. I told them I was from Bereziv Vyzhniy in Yabluniv Raion, so they sent me to Yabluniv Raion. The investigator there wasn’t bad. But in Kolomyia, the investigator was terribly bad. Horrible... Whoever ended up there was in a bad way: they had their arms and legs twisted. Well, since there were no witnesses against me, they didn’t do much to me... I was sentenced only for what was in the bag. What I said, they wrote down. And it was a complete lie: that I was from Bereziv Vyzhniy, that I was going to church, and that I didn’t know who those girls were. They asked me if there were Banderites in Bereziv Vyzhniy, and I said yes, many. We were taught to say that—so they wouldn’t go there. “Are there cannons?” “Yes,” I said. I made things up on purpose so they wouldn’t go there. They wrote it down—and that was it. I gave a different last name. And I was tried under that name, served my sentence with it, and returned here with it. I went to the police. They said, “Oh! You deceived the Soviet authorities?” I said, “Well, the Soviet authorities worked so poorly that they didn't uncover me.”
V.V. Ovsiyenko: And how long did that investigation last? Many people were brutally tortured back then...
O.Z. Popovych: They called me in once or twice—and that was all. They didn’t know I was lying. And then—a military tribunal.
V.V. Ovsiyenko: And what sentence did that court give you?
O.Z. Popovych: 10 years of imprisonment and 3 years of exile.
I was waiting for the transport to Siberia. But it kept bothering me: I would try to escape whenever possible. When they were taking me from Yabluniv to Kolomyia, I was looking around... The guards—two soldiers—were sitting on a cart in front. And another soldier was behind: if he saw someone running, he would shoot. But I still thought I had to take the risk. I saw a building over there, and some kind of pond. So I bolted—and ran, and that soldier fired. They chased and chased me and caught me. They were so angry... First, they wounded me in the chest, and then in the right leg. They laid me on the ground and posted soldiers around me. The transport was moving, and I said to the others, “Why didn’t you run, why didn’t you take advantage of them being busy with me?” They just kept walking, like they were dead...
There, they beat me and everything else... And you know what? Nothing. They sent me back to Yabluniv.
V.V. Ovsiyenko: Was there any medical treatment?
O.Z. Popovych: No treatment at all. In Yabluniv, I also fell ill with typhus and stayed there a bit longer. One woman died of typhus there, and almost all the men were sick with it and dying.
While I was in Yabluniv, one day they took a boy out of his cell—just as they were taking me out. He threw me a thread and a piece of wire and said he had measured where to chisel through the wall—he would chisel from his cell, and I from mine. We chiseled through the wall so that one eye could be seen. We covered that little hole with a stone so no one would see it, and that’s how we talked. Only one eye was visible...
Vorkuta–Krasnoyarsk
I recovered a little—and they took me for transport. They transported us in sealed cattle cars. We traveled and traveled, for about three weeks—until we arrived in Vorkuta. And there—permafrost, reindeer. A completely different world. They gave us felt boots, quilted trousers, changed our clothes—and sent us to work. It was still autumn, but in Vorkuta, it was already winter.
V.V. Ovsiyenko: What were the conditions of detention like there? Please tell me in more detail. You, of course, had to work there?
O.Z. Popovych: Of course I had to, even though I was wounded and no longer a hundred-percent worker. I was no longer fit for the organization or for work. They didn't even have an X-ray to see what was wrong or how to treat it. I didn’t know that on top of everything, I also had a dislocated leg. When I fell while escaping, I dislocated my leg. I only found that out 15 or 20 years later at home, in Ivano-Frankivsk, when I had surgery. But back then, I still did heavy labor.
In Vorkuta, there was a place called Predshakhtna... They gave us two small tin cans—in one can, they gave us soup, almost water, made from turnips—do you know what turnips are?
V.V. Ovsiyenko: I know turnips.
O.Z. Popovych: So, soup from turnips and a spoonful of kasha. And that’s how we lived, we were such goners... They used to say a person would trip over a straw and fall. We couldn’t lift our legs. We suffered from stomach ailments, pellagra, and scurvy. And we died. And you know, in such conditions, you don’t even run a fever? You go to the doctor, hoping to feign illness for an exemption from work—and you have no temperature, just your luck, so they don’t excuse you from work. You know, in the army or similar conditions, people somehow survive. But here, a lot of people, especially men, die. Such goners... They are so weak-willed, it’s terrible! When they’re hungry, they pick up rotten scraps. It’s terrible! But women are somehow more resilient... Their bodies are different.
They put me in a brigade—to shovel snow, to break up the permafrost with a crowbar and a pickaxe. Crowbar is `dzhogan` in Ukrainian, right?
V.V. Ovsiyenko: And why did you have to break it up?
O.Z. Popovych: Well, they build houses there. But I was in other camps too. A little lower, where there are forests. But the conditions there were even worse than in Vorkuta. It was Mukerka station. We used to say it came from the word `muka` (torment). And Adak—from the word `ad` (hell). It was even worse there. They sent us to mow hay, and we returned from there as such goners...
Imprisonment is not some heroic deed, but a monotonous life: you wake up in the morning, go to work, run to the canteen... Monotonous, without any heroic embellishments.
V.V. Ovsiyenko: That’s what makes it so hard. Stalin died in 1953, and the commissions began in 1954. Did early release affect you?
O.Z. Popovych: No, no. I wasn’t considered a minor. First, they released the minors, then the disabled.
In 1955, they transported me to exile in Krasnoyarsk. Not in January, but a little later. I remember I was wearing felt boots, but it was already warm. Under Khrushchev, exile was abolished. I served more than a year of exile, and when it was abolished, I went home.
The Fate of the Family
V.V. Ovsiyenko: Ms. Oksana, and what was the fate of your family during that time, especially your mother? How did she live to be over 101?
O.Z. Popovych: My mother’s name was Olena Novodvorska, and after marriage, she became Popovych. When they came to deport her to Siberia, my mother, my younger brother Oleksa, and my father were at home. My sister Mariya was studying at the pedagogical school in Kolomyia at the time. But my father didn't even get up, so they just left him. He later hid at my mother’s sister’s place in the village of Horodnytsia, where she was the school principal. They weren’t deporting my mother because of me, as I was imprisoned under a false name, and no one knew I was a Popovych. They put my mother on a train—and took her as far as Kyiv. They released my brother Oleksa as a minor but ordered him to find me, tell me to turn myself in, repent, and that all would be forgiven. He went to look for me when they released him. And where did he go? To a partisan detachment that was located at that time outside the village of Horodnytsia. Our boys took him into a bunker. But he wasn't there for long because he fell ill with typhus, so to prevent others from getting infected, they took him to the hospital in Horodenka. People came to visit him. And then my uncle, a maternal cousin, took him in. His name was Klym Stefaniv (it was his brother, Hnat Stefaniv, who had once been the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Galician Army after Vitovskyi’s death; he went abroad). So uncle Klym took my brother Oleksa and sister Mariya in for a while. They studied semi-legally in a strange city.
(Note from her sister, Mariya Skrypnyk, April 23, 2002. Two henchmen with a dog also came for me at the dormitory in Kolomyia. But a friend immediately informed me. I was in another room, so I escaped. I arrived in Horodenka, changed into peasant clothes, and with a friend, I brought a package for my mother, because I heard she was going to be deported to Siberia. I didn’t say she was my mother, but my teacher. My mother cried a lot and told my brother Oleksa and me to go to Stanislav to our aunt, Sofiya Tkachuk. I hid for a while longer because I was bringing food to my brother in the hospital. When he recovered, the three of us—me, my father, and my brother—went to Aunt Sofiya. And just then, our uncle Klym Petrovych Stefaniv (Aunt Sofiya’s cousin) arrived. He was a school principal in the village of Yablinka, Solotvyn Raion, so he took us with him.
At that time, everything was taken from our house in Horodenka—new furniture, belongings, and the hardest loss for us, especially for my father, was the large library. We became beggars...)
V.V. Ovsiyenko: And where was your mother deported to?
O.Z. Popovych: Near Kyiv, they took everyone out to get some air, and my mother—she ducked under the train, ran up the high embankment, and just walked away... As it got dark, she turned to a house, and an eastern Ukrainian woman, so poor, said, “Oh, I have nothing to give you to eat, only potatoes.” But my mother spent the night and went from village to village, staying with people and explaining that she was visiting her son who was wounded in the war and was in a hospital here. She had blisters on all her soles. It was only in Western Ukraine that she asked a soldier for money for a train home. They took her, put her in a train car, gave her food, and brought her all the way to Sniatyn. And from there, she went to her other sister, Olha Lukianova, in the village of Hrynivtsi, Tlumach Raion. She was a school principal and said that this was her cousin. There were no passports back then, but the village council made documents for my mother under the name Mariya Chermak. When my sister Mariya got married and had a child, she took my mother, brother Oleksa, and father in. My father died of asthma in 1949. My mother lived under a false name for a long time, until Khrushchev. When things eased up a bit, my mother went to the authorities with that document, and they changed it to her real name, and that was that. So it all worked out. My mother passed away about 10 years ago, at the age of 101 and a half.
(Note from her sister, Mariya Skrypnyk. Oksana had already managed to let us know through acquaintances that she was registered as Varvara Petrivna Petrushak. Every month, I would take 200 rubles to my aunt, Sofiya Tkachuk, in Stanislav; she would buy everything needed and send parcels to Oksana. And when people asked my aunt who she was sending them to, who this Varvara Petrushak was to her, she made up a story that Varvara’s father had saved my husband’s life during the war, so she felt obligated to help her.)
In My Native Land
O.Z. Popovych: Sometime in August 1956, I returned to my sister Mariya Skrypnyk in Manyava—have you heard of it?
V.V. Ovsiyenko: Yes, yes, there’s the Manyava Skete. Which raion is that?
O.Z. Popovych: Solotvynskyi.
V.V. Ovsiyenko: And what was your last name? Surely, it can be revealed now? O.Z. Popovych: The last name I was imprisoned under was Varvara Petrivna Petrushak. There, in Manyava, I switched to my real name. I thought, what’s there to hide anymore? Some were afraid, but I thought—eh! I went to the police and said that I had been imprisoned under a false name, so-and-so, and I needed to switch to my own. “Oh,” they said, “you deceived the Soviet authorities!” And I said, “It’s not my fault that the Soviet authorities worked so poorly that they didn't uncover me.” So they sent me to a KGB officer. I went and told him I had been imprisoned under a false name, that I had been in an illegal status. And he said, “I like that you say everything so directly. Others are afraid, they say, it wasn’t me, I didn’t want to, they took me by force.” But why say they took you by force? Did someone force us to fight for Ukraine?
It was a whole ceremony, changing to my own name. First, they issued documents for me under the name Varvara Petrivna Petrushak. I had to get a birth certificate, and this, and that...
(Note from her sister, Mariya Skrypnyk. Oksana changed to her own name later, when she was living with her mother in Solotvyn (now Bohorodchany Raion). She attended the 10th grade of an evening secondary school there, as she had no document of education. That’s where she changed to her own name. Again, our uncle Klym Stefaniv helped with this. That’s also when my mother switched to her name; I helped her get all the documents from Horodenka for her pension.)
V.V. Ovsiyenko: And when you returned, were you already considered disabled due to your injuries?
O.Z. Popovych: No. It was only here that they took an X-ray, put me in the hospital, performed surgery, and classified me as a disabled person of the second group.
V.V. Ovsiyenko: But you still had to work somewhere, to earn a living somehow?
O.Z. Popovych: Yes, I worked at “Energozbut” in Ivano-Frankivsk. My mother and I moved from Solotvyn closer to Ivano-Frankivsk, where I could find some work. We rented a house in Krykhivtsi. A woman there found me a job; I worked as a bookkeeper and earned enough for a piece of bread, until I was arrested. Krykhivtsi is about 5 kilometers from Ivano-Frankivsk, so I had to take a bus to work. I had surgery in 1974, and after the surgery, they gave me an apartment in Ivano-Frankivsk, and a month later, they arrested me again. I had just gotten the apartment—and I went to prison. But my mother remained there.
“For the Purpose of Undermining and Weakening Soviet Power...”
V.V. Ovsiyenko: The indictment states that “Popovych, during the period of 1959-69, engaged in anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda for the purpose of undermining and weakening Soviet power,” and so on. What criminal acts did you commit?
O.Z. Popovych: I was involved with samvydav. Here, with Lyuba Lemyk and others, we distributed samvydav.
V.V. Ovsiyenko: I also distributed samvydav during those years, starting in 1968, and was imprisoned for it in 1973. So I'm interested, what kind of literature did you have?
O.Z. Popovych: There were works by Valentyn Moroz, Borys Antonenko-Davydovych, Ivan Dziuba’s “Internationalism or Russification?”... We transported those articles back and forth. I worked until the end, until that one person betrayed me...
V.V. Ovsiyenko: In your case file, there are people I knew in Mordovian camp No. 19: Mykola Hamula and Mykola Hutsul from Horodenka. And Roman Hayduk was imprisoned in the Urals.
O.Z. Popovych: They are not part of my case, because only Hutsul betrayed me.
V.V. Ovsiyenko: Did you only know him?
O.Z. Popovych: No, I knew the others more or less, because my family lived in Horodenka, but I had nothing to do with them in the case.
V.V. Ovsiyenko: I understand what distributing samvydav is, but perhaps you could tell me something more specific?
O.Z. Popovych: We also collected money for those in prison, helped the families of political prisoners. We took it to Lviv, to Kyiv. Oksana Yakivna Meshko was our leader there.
V.V. Ovsiyenko: Oksana Yakivna? Oh, I’m very interested to hear about Oksana Yakivna! I’ve known her since 1978; she visited me in the village of Stavky in Zhytomyr region, where I was under administrative supervision. And in the last years of her life, we were very close.
O.Z. Popovych: Not just Oksana Yakivna—I myself traveled to see Ivan Dziuba. We gradually obtained literature wherever we could. And are you writing about those people who were also involved in this, who were under suspicion, who were fired from their jobs but not arrested?
V.V. Ovsiyenko: Of course, please tell me about them, because those people were doing something!
O.Z. Popovych: My sister Mariya Skrypnyk’s husband, Ivan, also distributed samvydav. (Note. March 27, 1930, v. Manyava – April 7, 2002, Ivano-Frankivsk. Local historian, teacher, writer, and publicist. Deported to Siberia in 1940. Graduated from the Faculty of History and Philology of the Brest Pedagogical Institute. From 1949, worked as a teacher. For 25 years, he worked on a literary and artistic map of Ukraine. From 1980 – senior researcher at the historical-architectural museum “Manyava Skete.” Author of several books and hundreds of publications. – V.O.) He knew Borys Antonenko-Davydovych and others. He brought in whole suitcases of samvydav. And we traveled all over the raions here, and people came to us. And then I got caught!
Second Arrest
V.V. Ovsiyenko: Under what circumstances were you arrested?
O.Z. Popovych: I had just had my second surgery. They had put a nail in my leg and then removed it. They discharged me—and they came for me right away in the morning. October 2, 1974. It was very strange to me because it wasn't a KGB officer who came, but a prosecutor... I was just after surgery, and he threw me off. I would have at least taken something with me... I thought maybe he wanted to talk first and then arrest me.
V.V. Ovsiyenko: Do you remember his name?
O.Z. Popovych: It's written down somewhere. I forget names, but it’s written somewhere at the end of the indictment.
V.V. Ovsiyenko: Investigator H. Andrusiv...
O.Z. Popovych: That’s the KGB officer.
V.V. Ovsiyenko: Investigator of the regional prosecutor’s office, Ya. Ohorodnyk...
O.Z. Popovych: They said they brought a civilian because I was ill, after surgery.
So I left without taking anything. Later I asked them why they hadn’t told me anything, only that the prosecutor wanted to talk to me. I said, “I believed you...” Although I was a little suspicious, but... Lyuba Lemyk even came to the prosecutor, and he said, “Let her write down what she needs.” My mother was old, she couldn’t bring me anything. Can you imagine, my mother died at one hundred and one and a half! So Lyuba Lemyk brought me packages. You know, we used to print samvydav in her cellar. She had a house on Koshoho Street, 10—and you could hear it all the way out on the street...
My trial lasted two or three days; the verdict was delivered on January 14, 1975.
V.V. Ovsiyenko: And were all four of you sitting in the dock, or were you tried separately?
O.Z. Popovych: No, I was tried separately. They were arrested a year earlier because I was in the hospital. And they as witnesses... No, they weren't at the trial as witnesses.
V.V. Ovsiyenko: After that sentence, you were taken by transport to Mordovia. And you were on crutches?
O.Z. Popovych: I was on crutches. And later, with a cane.
V.V. Ovsiyenko: I'm curious, how did the guards treat you?
O.Z. Popovych: I can’t say anything—it depended on the person. There was a time when a soldier gave me some canned food.
V.V. Ovsiyenko: Because Oksana Yakivna Meshko told me how they transported her, a 76-year-old, in 1981, and they stopped at Kholodna Hora in Kharkiv. They would take her out to continue the transport—and then take her back to the cell. And so, several times. So she started begging, “Please take me, they’re going to take me anyway.” And the head of the convoy said, “We don’t want to transport corpses.” So she was in transit for 108 days until they took her from Kyiv to the shore of the Sea of Okhotsk.
O.Z. Popovych: They did that on purpose. The transport takes a long, long time... The train goes and goes, and then it stops and stands for a day or two. The guards buy bread. A woman who was imprisoned worked with me. She said, “Did they give you food? They didn’t give us anything.”
Mordovia
V.V. Ovsiyenko: So, sometime in the spring of 1975, you were brought by transport to Mordovia, to Barashevo, to camp ZhKh-385/3, the women’s zone. Which women political prisoners did you find there?
O.Z. Popovych: I found Iryna Senyk, Iryna Kalynets, Nadiika Svitlychna, Stefa Shabatura, and Darka Husyak and Mariya Palchak were still there for their OUN activities. I found them there, and then they finished their sentences and gradually left. After that, only the Moscow women remained.
V.V. Ovsiyenko: And who were they?
O.Z. Popovych: Oh, that one whose father is a professor...
V.V. Ovsiyenko: Was the Lithuanian, Nijolė Sadūnaitė, with you?
O.Z. Popovych: Yes, she was.
V.V. Ovsiyenko: Everyone speaks so highly of her. And the Estonian, Lagle Parek?
O.Z. Popovych: No, she wasn't there.
V.V. Ovsiyenko: She was imprisoned there later. And what can you tell me about these women?
O.Z. Popovych: We held protest actions there.
V.V. Ovsiyenko: And you, a disabled person, participated in hunger strikes?
O.Z. Popovych: I did, I did. I was on a hunger strike for 48 days in the prison in Ivano-Frankivsk during the investigation. I've even forgotten what protest I declared. I can’t remember anymore. 48 days. But they wrote down less for me.
V.V. Ovsiyenko: Were you force-fed or not?
O.Z. Popovych: They fed me by force, insolently. Men would come and shove that tube into my mouth. And it was impossible to fight back because they were so strong, five healthy men.
V.V. Ovsiyenko: Were you forced to work in Barashevo?
O.Z. Popovych: They tried, but I refused.
V.V. Ovsiyenko: I'm curious, what did the women do there?
O.Z. Popovych: They sewed mittens.
V.V. Ovsiyenko: I also sewed work mittens back then in the 17th camp. But you didn’t work?
O.Z. Popovych: No, not a single day. They tried, saying, “We’ll bring you thread and you’ll sew something.” And I said, “No thread!”
V.V. Ovsiyenko: I heard that you met Vasyl Stus in Mordovia. How did that happen?
O.Z. Popovych: By chance. There are several sections in Barashevo. One is the men’s hospital. They took me there under guard to see a doctor. I had some kind of abscess. I asked, “Please call the Ukrainians.” So Vasyl came. He was in the hospital at that time. And I talked with him for a long time. The guard didn’t stop us. The doctor told me, “You should be hospitalized, but this is the men’s section.” It was raining heavily just then... I asked them to call any of the Ukrainians, and Stus came. That was right after they had cut open his stomach.
V.V. Ovsiyenko: Stus was in the hospital right after August 2, 1975, when he had a perforated stomach ulcer. And even before that, when a former criminal had attacked him with a knife...
And please tell me how Iryna Senyk taught all of you to embroider.
O.Z. Popovych: As lazy as I am, Iryna got to me too—she taught me how to embroider. (Laughs).
V.V. Ovsiyenko: One day, a rumor reached us—I was in the 19th camp then—that they had confiscated your embroideries, drawings, and poems. And that they had destroyed them. There was a hunger strike in all the Mordovian camps then. Do you remember that?
O.Z. Popovych: I remember that they took Stefa Shabatura’s embroideries and drawings. She drew, and Iryna Senyk embroidered. Mostly like that. Each one had her talent—one was an embroiderer, another a poet, and Stefa was an artist. She drew there, including about Oles Honchar, about the “Cathedral in Scaffolding.” Somewhat political drawings. So they confiscated all of that.
V.V. Ovsiyenko: And destroyed them?
O.Z. Popovych: They didn’t return them then, and I don’t know what happened later.
V.V. Ovsiyenko: And did they take anything from you?
O.Z. Popovych: No. I didn’t have such embroideries. But I embroidered too. I even learned—I thought: why does everyone embroider so beautifully, and I so poorly? What’s wrong, why does mine turn out so bad? It wasn't until Iryna taught me—she said, you have to lay all the cross-stitches evenly. One goes this way, the other that way—and I was wondering why it looked so bad. So she taught me. She was in charge of that. And Stefa drew. She drew many political drawings—Cossacks, our boys, the cathedral in scaffolding. They confiscated those.
There, the sentence passed quickly—you get up early, have breakfast, embroider. And after lunch, you read. We didn’t have things like watching television there.
V.V. Ovsiyenko: Was there a television there? There were no televisions there.
O.Z. Popovych: There was one towards the end of my term.
V.V. Ovsiyenko: Iryna Senyk sends her greetings. I was at her place in Boryslav on January 29.
O.Z. Popovych: You won’t be seeing her again?
V.V. Ovsiyenko: Well, I won’t be going to her now, I’ll be visiting others.
Ms. Oksana, the records say you became a member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group on February 3, 1979, that is, while in captivity...
O.Z. Popovych: That was Oksana Yakivna; she signed up all those who were imprisoned into the Group.
V.V. Ovsiyenko: But you knew about it, right?
O.Z. Popovych: Yes, I knew, because she wrote in such an Aesopian language. So I said, “I have nothing against it—if it’s necessary, it’s necessary.”
V.V. Ovsiyenko: Several political prisoners were announced as members of the Group then. By the way, no one disputes it—only Yuriy Shukhevych says, “Nobody coordinated that with me.” He doesn’t deny it, but he says it wasn’t coordinated with him.
O.Z. Popovych: And it was impossible to coordinate—you had to write in some kind of Aesopian language. So that the censorship wouldn't notice.
Exile
V.V. Ovsiyenko: So, your second sentence was 8 years in strict-regime camps and 5 years of exile under Article 62, Part II. And Article 26, under which you were declared an especially dangerous recidivist... Well, I’m a recidivist myself, so I’m not afraid of you being one... So you were in that same women's camp in Mordovia until 1982?
O.Z. Popovych: Yes. Sometime in the summer of 1982, they took me by transport, sent me to exile... What does it say there?
V.V. Ovsiyenko: It says this: “On October 28, 1982, brought by transport to exile in Molchanovo, Tomsk Oblast.” And you served the full 5 years there, until the end of 1987?
O.Z. Popovych: Yes. They wanted to release me earlier if I had written a petition to Shcherbytsky, but I said, “I won’t.”
V.V. Ovsiyenko: How so—did KGB officers come to you? And when did they come—at the beginning of your exile or towards the end?
O.Z. Popovych: From time to time.
V.V. Ovsiyenko: And yet by early 1987—in January, in February—they had already transported many political prisoners home from the concentration camps by special convoy.
O.Z. Popovych: Yes, they offered it to me too. And I said, “Me, write to Shcherbytsky? No, that won’t happen.”
V.V. Ovsiyenko: And what were the conditions like in that exile?
O.Z. Popovych: There was one factory where free people worked. Not free, but various offenders. And I was a disabled person of the second group, they didn’t force me to work. But they had to arrange for me to live somewhere. The KGB wrote to provide me with an apartment, but the director didn’t want to. They eventually managed to get me a room. Before that, I was in a holding cell for a very long time. It was cold there, just imagine! They don’t give you bedding, and it’s cold—I suffered a lot there. People work in the prison—and they drink, drunkards. Drunkenness is so widespread there!
V.V. Ovsiyenko: Of course. Well, so they gave you some housing—but what did you live on? Was there some kind of support?
O.Z. Popovych: They didn’t give me any support. It was what Lyuba Lemyk sent me somewhere, my mother sent a package every month...
V.V. Ovsiyenko: So you had no salary, no pension, nothing there?
O.Z. Popovych: No, I had nothing then. It was only after I was released that they assigned me a pension.
At Liberty
On October 2, 1987, my exile ended, and I returned to Ivano-Frankivsk. And I didn’t go to work anywhere. I returned to my mother, lived there for a while, and then they gave me this room, on Molodizhna Street. Ivan Skrypnyk and friends petitioned for me, helped a little. Because my mother’s house was slated for demolition. First, my mother died, and then my brother died too.
V.V. Ovsiyenko: So, in total, it turns out you have 24 and a half years of captivity behind you... I understand that you are disabled, but did you participate in any organizations after your release? After all, your name was already in the documents of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group since 1979...
O.Z. Popovych: And when I returned from exile, Vyacheslav Chornovil organized the Ukrainian Helsinki Union in our Ivano-Frankivsk. And we were its first members—me, Lyuba Lemyk... Back then, everyone else was refusing, except for close relatives... But now everyone is such a hero, you can’t even compare!
V.V. Ovsiyenko: Do you remember the month when the regional branch—as it was called then—the UHU regional branch was created? The Ukrainian Helsinki Union was proclaimed at a rally in Lviv on July 7, 1988.
O.Z. Popovych: Yes, in 1988. I was elected treasurer. I remember writing two eights...
V.V. Ovsiyenko: So, Vasyl Striltsiv must have belonged here too?
O.Z. Popovych: Yes, Bohdan Rebryk, Vasyl Striltsiv, Lyuba Lemyk, Opanas Zalyvakha...
V.V. Ovsiyenko: And Volodymyr Andrushko was somewhere around here too?
O.Z. Popovych: Andrushko joined somewhere in Kolomyia. At first, there were few people in the UHU, later more. And then it was liquidated.
V.V. Ovsiyenko: No, in 1990, on April 29 and 30, the Constituent Congress of the Ukrainian Helsinki Union was held—and there it was transformed into a political party, the Ukrainian Republican Party.
O.Z. Popovych: I didn’t like that.
V.V. Ovsiyenko: About three-quarters became party members, and one-quarter did not want to join a party. Were you among those who did not want to join?
O.Z. Popovych: Yes, I did not want to.
V.V. Ovsiyenko: What was, was. Well, now you live here alone, and have been alone for many years. What are your means of subsistence—do you have some kind of pension?
O.Z. Popovych: Yes, I have a pension—64 hryvnias. I give 2 hryvnias because someone brings me my mail, and so on. But here they tear things, break things, smash lightbulbs—I don’t know what it is, it wasn’t like this before!
V.V. Ovsiyenko: Does anyone look after you? Does anyone visit you?
O.Z. Popovych: There is a woman who comes. There is a service from the authorities—I forgot what it’s called. She comes twice a week, takes my money, buys me groceries, and brings them. And I can still take care of myself for now.
V.V. Ovsiyenko: Do you go outside?
O.Z. Popovych: No, I don’t go out.
V.V. Ovsiyenko: Because it’s winter, right?
O.Z. Popovych: I don’t go out in the summer either, because I feel very unwell. I go out rarely. My sister Mariya is here, but she’s old too, like me. And Skrypnyk, whom I mentioned—he’s her husband. He is also ill, a disabled person of the II group.
V.V. Ovsiyenko: And any public or political organizations—do they look after you?
O.Z. Popovych: No, they don’t. Back when I worked at “Energozbut,” if you got sick, people from work would visit you. No one said to bring anything, but still, someone visited. But not anymore. But I don’t worry about it.
V.V. Ovsiyenko: Well, thank you for telling me about yourself. There is very little material about you.
O.Z. Popovych: Everyone tells their own story, trying to make it bigger. The other day a journalist came: to write, to write... I said, “So, you want fame or what?” She got angry with me.
V.V. Ovsiyenko: The truth needs to be recorded.
O.Z. Popovych: She writes about people who never did anything—they were afraid.
V.V. Ovsiyenko: I will take your indictment, make a photocopy, and return it to you. The document must remain with you. Have you still not remembered who took your verdict?
O.Z. Popovych: Some official from the state service, during the rehabilitation.
V.V. Ovsiyenko: Have you been rehabilitated for both convictions?
O.Z. Popovych: For both.
V.V. Ovsiyenko: This was Oksana Popovych speaking, on February 6, 2000. Recorded by Vasyl Ovsiyenko.
The conversation lasted approximately one hour.
Photograph by V. Ovsiyenko:
Popovych Film 9059, frame 0A. February 6, 2000, Ivano-Frankivsk. Oksana POPOVYCH.