OKSANA YAKIVNA MESHKO

I TESTIFY

An Interview with Oksana Yakivna MESHKO

Recorded by Vasyl Mykytovych SKRYPKA on January 30, 31, and February 1, 1990

at her apartment at 16 Verbolozna Street in Kyiv.

Published in the journal “Kuryer Kryvbasu” under the title “The Mother of Ukrainian Democracy” in 1994 and as a separate brochure “I Testify” in 1996. Verified against the audio recording. Subheadings by the editor of the second edition, notes by Oles Serhiyenko.

V. Skrypka: The years have rumbled by, flown by... It’s been a quarter of a century, Oksana Yakivna, since we met—sometime in the mid-1960s—and it’s been that long until now. We used to meet more often, but there was a break in the 70s. It was caused by your imprisonment and my own turmoil, my various misfortunes. But you should know that you have always stood so high in my thoughts, in my mind, in my heart! When I learned that you, at 75 years old, had been sent away to the Sea of Okhotsk, you can't imagine how my whole soul went numb! How I suffered, how I thought about those who sent you to such torment! How cruel, how inhuman, and perhaps even how confused and doomed one must be to send an elderly person to such a remote place, to what they call the back of beyond. What’s there to do there! As you told me, for three days, the blizzard raged and buried your log cabin, where they’d thrown you. And how you then promised a bottle to the people—to whoever would dig you out. And after they dug you out of the snow, the guards warned those people not to do it again. And those people wouldn't agree to dig you out even for a bottle—that's neglecting the most elementary human act! A person is buried in snow—let her lie there, let her perish! Later, that Lyubka or Lyuda dug you out, just thirty meters from the road.

But you fought your way out of the snows and you are alive. And when I told this sad story about you to a friend of mine, he said, “What funny people, these countrymen of mine! If there were five grannies like that in Ukraine, the entire KGB would have a heart attack!”

Oksana Yakivna! Young people like me. I think it’s because I know our people a little, I know how they live. And I've scraped a bit of their wisdom onto the tip of my knife and, in my musings, in my sometimes unrestrained chatter, I pass it on. And I love old people. I sometimes think: we will yet call out, summon those people, fall at their footsteps, search for the traces of those people to nourish our spirit, to be reborn. And we won't always succeed, because much is disappearing, and we fail to reach those tablets that sustain us in this world.

I'm thinking now: maybe we could meet again in 10 years? My God, what's 10 years? The average prison sentence—oh, that's no small thing. I haven't been in prison—God forbid, I haven't. Vasyl Stus said he wouldn't survive a second term, and indeed he didn't. It’s hard there, so hard—that's 10 years! In the year 2000, if God grants us health, if we were to meet, I would talk with you again. So much would have changed in this life, and maybe we would be witnesses to those events. As my Grandpa Stets used to say (that was his nickname in my village): “I so want to see, I so want to live to see how all this will end.”

Once, Oksana Yakivna, I was among Western Ukrainians—proud people, so proud! They carry themselves so straight. They don't even lean over the table when they bring a spoon to their mouths. It's as if they live standing up, holding themselves so tall. I told them: “Oh, people, people! If only you knew what happened to us, the people from the Dnipro region, how they hounded us, how our people were destroyed and suffocated! If only you knew! From your milieu, fifty-fifty, decent people emerge. Half of them are crystal! And the other half can be scoundrels. But here, in the steppes of Ukraine, you're lucky if one in a thousand thinks about Ukraine, about its fate, about its future.”

And you, Oksana Yakivna, you are from the steppes. I was stunned when I found out you were from the Dnipropetrovsk region. And you reached heights where everyone sees you and respects you. And from that contemplation, they themselves become better people. That is what’s important, Oksana Yakivna!

Congratulating you on your 85th birthday, I wish for your next milestone to arrive in a free, independent state.

Glory to Ukraine. Vasyl Skrypka.

Dear Oksana Yakivna! I would like to ask you for a short interview. The first question I'd like to ask is: where are you from, and who were your parents?

FAMILY

O. Ya. Meshko: I am from the Poltava region. I was born twenty kilometers from Poltava, in a large old Cossack village-town called Stari Sanzhary. It is a picturesque corner of Ukraine on the Vorskla River. Five churches with their bell towers stood tall. The village was situated on five hills, lively and cheerful, with windmills, and in the evenings, filled with our Poltava songs, which still ring out today, but only in singing groups.

My parents were half-peasants, half-merchants, because they were landless. And it was very difficult to feed a family without a steady income in the densely populated Poltava region. My father, in addition to this, planted orchards throughout the whole area. He graduated from the Poltava School of Horticulture. Gardening was his favorite occupation. He loved working with the land. He didn't like to trade, but he had to in order to support his large family.* *(Her mother Marusia—a smart, cheerful, sociable woman—worked behind the counter. Villagers eagerly came to her for ordered goods, news, and pleasant conversation. – Note by Oleksandr Serhiyenko, Oksana Meshko's son).

The village belonged to the Cossack estate. It never knew serfdom, and that free Cossack spirit was felt in the entire peasant way of life. These were free, independent people. I bless my little town, where I lived my best years—the years of my childhood. But my childhood ended very early. As early as 1919, the working rhythm of this quiet peasant life was shattered by the revolutionary waves.

V. Skrypka: Oksana Yakivna, how exactly did these revolutionary waves manifest themselves?

O. Ya. Meshko: The village accepted the Ukrainian People's Republic, its government—the Central Rada, then the Directory. The Peasant Congress supported this government; it had authority and honor, and it enjoyed respect and full support. But it was driven out of Ukraine. Its place in the village was taken by the absolute dregs of society, idle people who commanded no respect among the peasants. This was when the red soviets took everything into their hands. How did it happen in our town? Five men ran the village. At night they hid from people, and during the day they used the help of red detachments that came from the city of Poltava. These red detachments, upon entering the village, robbed the peasants, taking their belongings, more or less valuable clothing, not to mention other valuables. They also repressed those people who, in their opinion, did not obey them.

And what did that disobedience consist of? A food tax was imposed on the village. The village paid the food tax, but after the food tax came the food requisitioning. They paid the food requisitioning—and then a new tax. And so on, endlessly. When the village had nothing left to pay with, they selected the most respected and relatively well-off people and made them responsible. My father was among these hostages. One day, when a red detachment came to Stari Sanzhary for such executions, my father was arrested and transferred to the GubChK. My father never returned home. At the end of 1920, he was shot on Kholodna Hora in Kharkiv. We received written notification of his death in 1921. Even before that, my younger brother Yevhen Meshko had ended up in a rebel detachment in the village of Bulanne, not far from Stari Sanzhary. The detachment was led by Bilenky. Yevhen was killed in some battle at the age of 19.* *(Yevhen, b. 1903, was respected among the village youth, and for this reason, the new authorities began to hunt him down. – Note by O. Serhiyenko).

My brother Ivan* *(The eldest, b. 1901. – Note by O. Serhiyenko), fleeing the red terror, volunteered for the Red Army, as there was no other way to save himself. Meanwhile, our entire family—our mother and two younger children, including me—were kicked out of our home. We were left without a roof over our heads. Our grandmother—our father's mother—took us into her little old hut. Later, Ivan appeared in the village with a red detachment. He came to the local administration as an insurgent, as a Red Army volunteer, and thanks to him, our house was returned to us.

We returned to our house, but there was nothing to do there anymore. We all scattered across Ukraine, wherever we could. I went to Poltava, worked there, and started my studies in secondary school. Later, I studied at the Dnipropetrovsk Institute of Public Education (INO).

Life was very hard. Constantly persecuted, constant interrogations, certificates stating I was from a kulak family. But by the standards of the time, we didn't belong to the kulaks, we didn't even qualify as middle peasants. This part of Ukraine, the Poltava region—I don't know how many wealthy people it had. These were landless but industrious people.

V. Skrypka: Dear Oksana Yakivna, I didn't want to interrupt you, but your father's death was a widespread phenomenon, which Korolenko protested against in his famous letters to Lunacharsky—this is written about in the journals "Novy Mir" No. 10 for 1988 and “Rodina,” 1989, No. 10.

O. Ya. Meshko: It was a phenomenon that was completely incomprehensible to the people of the town—people who were brave, familiar with military affairs, but unaccustomed to such a form of governance: five men, some sort of scum, the most worthless people, who hid at night and terrorized by day, relying on the red detachments from Poltava. They took the most prosperous and respected as hostages. And so my father was taken—he was not the first or the last to be arrested and shot. Kholodna Hora was a Ukrainian auto-da-fé, where so many people perished. They were shot and buried in a mass grave. Without a coffin, without any rites—so that people wouldn't see. And it's unknown where—no graves were marked.

V. Skrypka: There was no peaceful life, and then the war began. As one old man told me, he's not a true Soviet man who hasn't been in prison. So, Oksana Yakivna, perhaps we should move on to the most sorrowful and bitter part of your life—your arrest.

BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH

O. Ya. Meshko: I was arrested in February 1947. Arrested for no reason at all—as if I were stolen. Right on a street in Kyiv, four young thugs in white sheepskin coats threw me into a car and took me to the republican NKVD. I received 10 years merely for sympathizing with my older sister, Vira Khudenko, whose son was in the insurgent detachments in Western Ukraine.

Vira was alone at that time. Her son and daughter-in-law had been arrested, and her husband* *(He was already nearly 70. – Note by O. Serhiyenko) was taken in a raid for no reason, simply because he happened to be in Western Ukraine and was arrested there... She came to me, and I wanted to help her get settled here. She was helpless, without any specific profession. But this, too, was considered a crime, because, you see, I had sheltered the mother of a rebel. Both she and I were punished in the same case, under Article 56, paragraph 8—terrorism. We had supposedly intended to assassinate Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev. There was no evidence, and the investigator in his office told me: “What evidence is needed? We need you to confess to it yourself!” When I said that I could never confess to such an absurdity and would never help an investigator commit lawlessness, he said: “But we'll force you to. You'll be begging us.”

For twenty-one days, they tormented me with sleep deprivation. For twenty-one days, I endured without sleep. No doctor will say that this is possible, but I know it is—I endured it. And I did not confirm any of the self-incriminating confessions that the investigator, Kutsenko, tried to force on me.* *(See more on this in: O. Meshko. Mizh smertyu i zhyttyam (Between Life and Death). Kyiv: NVP “Yava,” 1991; Oksana Meshko, kozatska matir (Oksana Meshko, a Cossack Mother). On the 90th anniversary of her birth. Kyiv: URP, 1993. – Ed.)

THE THAW

I served 10 years in prison. In 1956, during the Khrushchev Thaw, my case was reviewed. I was simply lucky that it fell into the hands of a more honest prosecutor, and he cleared my sister Vira and me of the stigma of being terrorists. I was rehabilitated and returned to my job at the Kyiv regional consumer union.

I found my only son, Oles, ill (my first son, Yevhen, died at the age of ten in Tambov during a German bombing). I was sustained by the hope of curing him. I also wanted to believe that the Stalinist lawlessness condemned by Khrushchev was gone forever. I believed it. But my belief was built only on my misunderstanding of the situation: Khrushchev was building on sand, and it did not last long. Wave after wave of lawlessness grew. Once again, nothing united Soviet society except fear and the desire to somehow survive, to preserve oneself. A period of spiritual emptiness began, which had a particularly devastating effect on the younger generation.

V. Skrypka: Then came the 60s. That's when I met you. Since then, you have always appeared before me as energetic and full of initiative. Those evenings, where I myself once spoke (at the agricultural academy), the poetry evenings of our glorious Sixtiers poets—Vasyl Symonenko, Mykola Vinhranovsky, Vasyl Stus—undoubtedly united the youth. But that thaw was indeed short-lived. It ended again in terror. And you suffered the most.

O. Ya. Meshko: You have just reminded me of a truly happy period of my life. Back then, when I was in Stalin's camps, I never even imagined that I would return to active public life and to a life of my own choosing. I retired, and when I was free from work, I didn't worry about the “what will I do now” problem, as my peers and many people who retire would say. “Why, that's already death.”

On the very first day of my retirement, I went to my Stari Sanzhary. I walked those roads that were so familiar to me—from Poltava to Stari Sanzhary, through the Pereshchepyne station, I walked through the village. And I was horrified by the changes that had occurred between 1920 and 1963. Just count how many years had passed, while they were telling us about the development, about the flourishing of villages and cities. I looked at our old town, so beautiful, so prosperous once—now it was in ruins! It was worse than right after the occupation. It turns out that there were hardly any Germans there—they passed by somewhere on the side. The village was destroyed by the authorities themselves. People fled the village, from their ancestral homes, as if from a plague. Some to the Donbas, some were exiled to Siberia, some went to the Dnipropetrovsk region to find bread in the factories, some to Zaporizhzhia. Only the old and elderly were left, wandering around their yards like lost souls. I could not accept my village like this. Even the beautiful “Prosvita” building, built according to the design of a famous architect, was destroyed. They said the Germans set it on fire, but witnesses say that our own people destroyed it when the Germans were taking the village.

I walked along our road all the way to the large cemetery, searching for the graves of my ancestors, which I knew very well. The cemetery was so neglected, as if people were no longer buried there. I found my relatives. I found neighbors. I didn't recognize them. All five churches were destroyed—not a stone was left standing. The credit unions, the windmills (both wind- and water-powered)—everything was destroyed.

I returned from my Stari Sanzhary and for several days lived under the impression of the ruin. And then I thought: “I am retired, and I must do something. What should I do?” I must find people who understand the urgent need for our spiritual revival. I found people sympathetic to this idea, people who did not ask, “How much will we be paid for performing at an evening?” I only said one thing: “On a voluntary basis.” And—oh, a miracle! People from the philharmonic, from all cultural institutions—no one ever refused to take part. I held matinees and evenings in twenty Kyiv schools on themes of Ukrainian classics: the Ukrainian song, anniversaries of Shevchenko, Franko, Lesia Ukrainka, Dovzhenko—whatever was on the calendar. In research institutes, clubs, in the Tram and Trolleybus Authority Club...

It was such lively work, I was so engrossed, I had so many acquaintances and friends around me, so many people wanted to help me! Only then did I understand the Soviet reality: people subconsciously want something different, people want work that is of their own choosing, according to their own liking.

In the years 1963–1968, or even until 1969—that’s a whole 6-7 years—I saw that Kyiv was alive, that people were thirsty for cultural, spiritual work, that everyone wanted to make their own contribution. I say that this was the best time of my life, when, it seems to me, I compensated for the years of my forced idleness, of state work for a salary, for a ration of bread and soup in an aluminum bowl, which I received for 10 years in Stalin's camps.

THE HARVEST OF 1972

During that time, I truly seemed to believe in the possibility of some changes. And for me, to be honest, the arrests of January 12, 1972, were completely unexpected. On the same day, at the same time, in the cities of Kyiv, Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, and Cherkasy, a great many people were arrested—members of the Ukrainian creative intelligentsia, people who never spoke of weapons, people who never spoke of any military formations or any organizations. These were people who spoke of the Ukrainian song, of Ukrainian poetry, of culture.

V. Skrypka: Oksana Yakivna, in 1972, which you're talking about, Shelest was removed. I was told then that on the second day after his “ascension to the throne,” Shcherbytsky sanctioned the arrest of 75 people in Kyiv alone—and you mentioned many cities—these were writers, cultural figures, in a word, the intelligentsia. This is a crime beyond compare. Now in Germany, Honecker has been put on trial, in Bulgaria, Todor Zhivkov. It seems prison is crying out for Shcherbytsky too—what do you think?* *(V. Shcherbytsky was appointed First Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPU in May, whereas the arrests began on January 12. – Ed.).

O. Ya. Meshko: There were indeed many rumors in Kyiv at that time. As for Shcherbytsky, he didn't just appear on his own. Someone sent Shcherbytsky. But as for Vitaliy Vasylyovych Fedorchuk, he came to Kyiv while Shelest was still in power. Shelest did not accept him. Then Moscow co-opted him into the Supreme Soviet, and he began to take charge.* *(V. Fedorchuk was appointed head of the KGB at the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR in July 1970). The arrests happened not under Nikitchenko, but under Fedorchuk. Right after the arrests, KGB agents spread rumors: “We have 3,000 people on our list, but to frighten the Ukrainian intelligentsia, those who have been arrested are enough: Ukrainians are a timid people and are used to Stalinist order.” They laughed, they laughed in the face of the Writers' Union and spoke of it with contempt: “Ukraiyonskiie pismenniki” (a derogatory, distorted Russian for “Ukrainian writers”). They treated them with such disrespect.

And indeed, not a single one of them spoke up in defense of, say, Ivan Svitlychny, Ivan Dzyuba, and others. I myself appealed to Dmytro Pavlychko with a letter-petition for Ivan Svitlychny. I chose a moment at one of the official evenings and approached him. He was frightened, read the letter, but of course, did not sign it. And do you know what his motive was? He said: “I met with a KGB colonel, and the KGB colonel said that there is a corpus delicti in Ivan Svitlychny's case.” I answered him angrily:

“So you consult with a KGB colonel about writers you know well, with whom you were, it seems, on friendly terms?” That's how my petitions to the Writers' Union ended... Dmytro Pavlychko played no small role in the Writers' Union at that time. No one spoke up in defense.

HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENSE

When my son was already in the KGB prison* *(Oles Serhiyenko was also arrested on January 12, 1972. – Ed.), I found him a good lawyer, but I couldn't get in touch with my son. And they appointed their own lawyer for him. I wanted to ignore that lawyer, so I had to address this issue to Fedorchuk himself. A lot of time passed, two or three weeks, and I kept trying to get an audience. Finally, one day I was told that he would see me today. I came with my daughter-in-law* *(Dzvenyslava Vivchar, Dzvinka. – Ed.). They said: “He's at Korneichuk's funeral, but he called from there (whether he called, I don't remember how) and promised to see you—please wait.”* *(O. Ye. Korneichuk died on May 14, 1972. – Ed.) We waited a long time, from morning until about two o'clock. Finally, we were told: “He will see you alone—the mother, but not the wife.” My daughter-in-law was indignant, as was I. “Should I not go?” she asked. “Don't go!” I said, “But I must go now—even if I go alone.”

I went in to see him. It was a long, bright office-hall, with mirrors, a piano, and he was sitting at a table with the prosecutor. They seated me so that the sun was shining in my face. I squinted but recognized the prosecutor for supervision of the KGB investigative bodies. I glanced at him, averted my eyes, and started looking only at Fedorchuk. The prosecutor asked me: “Why aren't you saying anything to me? You've been to see me before, haven't you? Or have you forgotten?” “No, I haven't forgotten, and I also remember what you told me. You told me that the KGB is a reputable and objective organization. So I stood up and said that I have no business with you if it's an organization that one cannot complain about. And you are supposed to be supervising it. So what are you doing there? And now I am appealing only to Fedorchuk—I am counting on him.”

This was such a compliment to Fedorchuk, he was so pleased, he was in a good mood after a hearty meal at Korneichuk's funeral, flushed and red from wine. As I entered, he even stood up and walked towards me—a tall, heavyset man with epaulets, but without a jacket, in a light blue shirt. I thought: “It looks just like a police uniform. MVD.”

Our conversation ended as it was bound to—my request to remove the lawyer Martysh and transfer the case to another, with whom I had an agreement, was not granted.* *(Lawyer Serhiy Makarovych Martysh from the Darnytsia bar association was one of those newly granted clearance for political cases. My mother did not know him. But when I spoke with him in the investigator's office, I sensed a decent person. And I was not mistaken: S. M. Martysh, having familiarized himself with the case, unexpectedly for the court proposed to release me, due to the absence of a corpus delicti in my actions. For this, the KGB revoked his clearance for political cases. When they were fabricating a criminal case of resisting the police against V. Ovsiienko in 1978-79, my mother recommended this defender to him. S. Martysh demanded the defendant's release due to the absence of a corpus delicti and the initiation of a case against the “victim” policeman V. Slavynsky. He had trouble with the KGB again. – Note by O. Serhiyenko).

But this meeting stuck in my memory. While I was talking about my son, I saw into whose hands the KGB had fallen. This was a very limited, self-confident, and cruel man. When I came out and met my daughter-in-law, she looked at me and asked: “What's wrong with you?” I said: “We're lost, Dzvinka, we're all lost!”

And so it happened: everyone was convicted without any guilt or fault. It was a bit strange, perhaps, that so many of our best people ended up behind bars, but no one protested by means of silence, by refusing to sign protocols. The time was not yet ripe for that. They had not yet matured to that point. They still thought that a good, decent conversation could be heard and that truthful conclusions could be drawn from it. But in the KGB, everything was already predetermined, all the sentences were set. They were all convicted. I tried to attend every trial, but they wouldn't let us in; the trials were closed. We would walk around near the courthouse—and the police would chase us away even from there, not even letting us into the reception area.

V. Skrypka: And do you remember, Oksana Yakivna, you also appealed to Mykhailo Stelmakh, and he wrote a petition to the Chairman of the Supreme Court of Ukraine on his deputy's letterhead? How did that end?

O. Ya. Meshko: Imagine this: I, having gone through years of lawlessness and injustice, still wanted to believe and still believed that I could somehow help the arrested! I appealed wherever possible, petitioning for my son. Thanks to you, it seems, I got to see Stelmakh. He received me very graciously. After listening to my case, he was filled with sympathy for me and wrote on that state letterhead his petition for my son, Oleksandr Fedorovych Serhiyenko. That Serhiyenko had committed no crime, that the whole case was fabricated. Even their own lawyer said in court that there was no corpus delicti in Serhiyenko's case, that he should be released from custody today. This statement from the lawyer gave me hope that I could help my son Oleksandr with petitions, and I took up the cause so sincerely. Before Stelmakh, I didn't know what a deputy was, what his functions were. Not believing the government, I never delved into its structure. But about Stelmakh as a writer, I thought: he must be an authority for them!

V. Skrypka: At that time, he was already a Hero of Socialist Labor, a Lenin Prize laureate, and even the Chairman of the Council of Nationalities of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.

O. Ya. Meshko: Yes. He, as a writer, sincerely understood that I was telling him the plain truth—there was no crime in my Oleksandr's case. He wrote the petition on that state letterhead. He sent it himself. The petition was sent, but then he added: “I will talk to Yakymchuk.” He was the chairman of the Supreme Court of the Ukrainian SSR. He had reception days. Stelmakh went to see Yakymchuk on a reception day. The first time, he was not received, but the second time, Yakymchuk himself called Stelmakh for a visit. He went. I called Stelmakh to ask about the results and heard this: “I spoke with Yakymchuk. Yakymchuk told me how vilely your son is behaving in the camp.” I asked: “And how would you behave if you found yourself behind bars for no reason? And does his behavior in the camp have anything to do with the case? He was convicted for something that didn't happen. We are talking about a review of the court case.” Stelmakh told me: “I cannot help you any further.”

I hung up the phone. Alarmed, surprised, indignant, I even forgot my wallet with my meager pension. This conversation brought me back to the forgotten, long-ago things I had thought about there, in the camp, and what I had wanted to forget after my rehabilitation because I wanted to believe in good. I understood: there is no good in this government, and there is no person who can help against this totalitarian, cruel regime.

Disappointed, but not hopeless, I looked for ways to defend him. The belief that anything could still help was gone, but for my own sake, I wanted to test whether it was possible, whether one should believe.

My deputy was Paton* *(Borys Yevhenovych, academician, President of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. – Ed.). People go to their deputies with housing issues, with divorces, with other things. But I had an issue that seemed not shameful to bring to a deputy: I was defending my son, who was behind bars without having committed a crime. I told people: I'm going to see Paton. People shushed me: “What are you thinking! How can Paton help you? Paton gave the order at the Academy of Sciences to fire several people from the institutes of linguistics, folklore—people the KGB told him to fire!”

V. Skrypka: Oksana Yakivna, that was a whole purge. If you gathered all those fired from the Academy, you could form a second Academy. I was fired then from the Rylsky Institute of Folklore and Ethnography, and so was Tamara Hirnyk. From the Institute of Literature, Yuriy Badzio, Mykhailyna Kotsiubynska, and Viktor Ivanysenko were fired. Not to mention the Institute of Philosophy—Vasyl Lisovy, Yevhen Proniuk; the Institute of History—Yaroslav Dzyra; the Institute of Archeology—Mykhailo Braichevsky... It's a terrible page. A “black hand”—a black and perhaps hairy hand—guided Paton's hand. That needs to be investigated separately... Please continue.

O. Ya. Meshko: But I went to the deputy. The deputy held his reception—where do you think?—at the university. There were two men sitting with him. I took a seat in the queue. Those two men—whether they were monitoring the deputy, I don't know, but I didn't like them. I decided I would speak only with the deputy. I came dressed all in black—that's how I dressed then. Paton received me graciously. He invited me to sit down. He listened to me attentively. The two men sitting nearby made some disapproving remarks about my explanations of my son's innocence. Paton signaled them to be quiet: he listened to me attentively and asked: “I would like to help you. But what would you like?” “I don't want much from you, comrade deputy. I only want the three years of prison, which were added to my son's sentence by a closed court in the camp, to be removed. He was sentenced to 7 years in a camp and 3 years of exile, but from the camp, he was administratively transferred to 3 years in prison by a closed court. And 3 years in prison—that was the term given for murder, for rape, for the worst crimes! I will ask you,” I said, turning to Paton, “to have these three years of prison removed, which is a flagrant violation of Soviet law. I am not asking you to help me review his court case or reduce his sentence—I am only asking for this!” He himself, right there, wrote a petition to the Perm Regional Court with his own hand. He handed it to me and said: “It would be best if you send this yourself.”

I left elated: I had found a man I could trust, a man who could help! But do you think that the President of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine was an authority for the Soviet authoritarian state? Do you think anyone listened to his petition? The petition was sent through the usual bureaucratic channels, disappeared without a trace, and ended up somewhere in a wastebasket. They did not remove that three-year sentence! But when I told people who knew Paton from the Academy of Sciences about this, they were surprised by such a reception. And then someone said: “O-o-oh! Do you know why that happened? His mother had just died then. She was probably about your age.” So, all people are not strangers to human feelings, but only in moments when it affects them personally.

I sent Paton's letter, and in the meantime, I went to Moscow to see the composer Dmitry Kabalevsky. He had been elected as a deputy from the Perm district, and my son was in a camp located in the Perm region. D. Kabalevsky was an authoritative, humane person, known by many people, and he enjoyed the sincere love of the citizens. The composer received me twice. The first time he was alone, and the second time in the presence of his wife. It was a pleasant meeting, and his wife also left a good impression—a kind, sincere person. He also wrote his petition on his letterhead and sent it himself. He even promised: “And I will also try to do this through the Chairman of the Supreme Court of the USSR. That might be effective.”

It ended the same way as with Paton. That is, our deputies have no authority, no influence with the government. They were people elected for show, to deceive the citizens. They were powerless. Dmitry Kabalevsky himself tried to speak with the Chairman of the Supreme Court—but it came to nothing. So I was not able to help my son.

I had one more chance. That was Ivan Dzyuba. Why Ivan Dzyuba specifically? Because my son had committed no crime. He was incriminated with co-authoring Ivan Dzyuba's work “Internationalism or Russification?”. It was comical: the author himself denied it. To incriminate Serhiyenko with authorship, it was enough that, while reading this work, which was being typed at Zinovia Franko's apartment, Oleksandr made some pencil marks on the 33rd page. Zinovia Franko herself told him that Ivan Dzyuba had asked: “Anyone who reads it and has any critical remarks or additions, I kindly ask them to write them boldly on this copy.” And supposedly he also corrected the title itself. In what way? “Internationalism or Russification?”—it wasn't “or Russification,” but something else, I can't recall. Oles didn't like it, he crossed out that word and wrote “or Russification.” Thus, the title itself took on a different, sharper character. And on page 33, he made some comments. This copy was kept by Ivan Dzyuba. It was the first copy, he kept it himself. Serhiyenko's comments—perhaps not all of them—he included in subsequent copies of his work.* *(This is how it was. Arriving late in the evening at Z. Franko's place with Nadiya Svitlychna, Ivan Svitlychny's sister and my wife at the time, I found her proofreading for typos. I began reading the introduction—an address to the Central Committee of the CPU concerning the arrests and the contemporary national policy of the CPSU in Ukraine. It was the notes to this section, which I. Dzyuba found pertinent and incorporated into the text without asking the author, that were incriminated against me. I made no changes to the title. – Note by O. Serhiyenko).

Serhiyenko demanded that Ivan Dzyuba be called to court as a witness, since these were purely a reader's comments; there were no grounds to consider them co-authorship. Then there would have been no grounds at all to open that case. Ivan was not summoned to court. As is known, Ivan Dzyuba was sentenced to 5 years and then pardoned, released from custody. Many people were incriminated for “Internationalism or Russification.” People received long sentences—and Ivan was free. I went to Ivan and reproached him for this very thing.

We arranged to meet by phone and met near the “Bilshovyk” metro station. While waiting, I thought about how I would meet Ivan Dzyuba. I would say that I no longer love him, no longer respect him... No, that's not right: I no longer respect the Ivan Dzyuba whom I had loved so much before his repentance. It was cold. I hid behind a window in the metro, saw some people watching me—I paid no attention. And when I saw Ivan approaching, I came out of the metro. We met.

I knew Ivan—Ivan was tall, with a well-set head, a proud posture. But here I looked: it was Ivan Dzyuba, but something in him had changed, in his walk, in his manner of carrying himself, in his bowed head. Ivan walked under the heavy weight of his apostasy. It had left its mark on him. We walked for a long time, we didn't sit, because I saw we were being followed. I even asked: “Are they following you?” And he said: “I think they're following you too, but pay no mind.” We walked and talked for a long time. I told him everything, I reproached him, and I spoke to him without tears, but with the words a mother speaks in her maternal despair. (Cries). Ivan is good, Ivan is wonderful—I love him. After that meeting, I forgave him. (Cries).

We met a few days later. Ivan wrote a beautiful letter in defense of Oleksandr Serhiyenko. His petition was the kind that only Ivan could write. It was bold, generous, and well-reasoned. I also wrote to the Supreme Court, sending Kabalevsky's letter, Stelmakh's letter, Paton's letter, and Ivan Dzyuba's letter. These were materials that truly needed to be considered. At least one case, selectively, as their law requires. But no one reviewed that case. All those materials settled somewhere in their files. But Ivan Dzyuba, as he said, was never called to account for it.

Such is the illustration of our justice system. I'm not saying this is the only case, but it is one of those characteristic, flagrant violations of legality. Everything was in the hands of the KGB and a lawless court. The judge who tried my son is no longer alive, nor is the prosecutor—young and healthy, yet for some reason, they departed from this life. Whether it was God's punishment, or whether they had crimes on their souls that gave them no peace... I am inclined to think it was their inner repentance, which they did not admit even to themselves, but which was reflected in their short lives.

THE UKRAINIAN HELSINKI GROUP

V. Skrypka: Oksana Yakivna, and when did they come for you?

O. Ya. Meshko: They never liked me. They didn't like me even back when I was organizing those evenings. They knew me from that time. But they liked me even less when I was making efforts to have my son's case reviewed. The fact is, I also turned to three lawyers—one from Leningrad, one from Moscow, and two from Kyiv. I wanted the lawyers to familiarize themselves with my son's case as well. But they wouldn't provide the case file. The lawyers bothered them, demanding the case for review. I annoyed them terribly. A rumor started that I was supposed to have been arrested along with everyone else. But they didn't arrest me—it was inconvenient, a mother and son. I don't know if that's true. I think it's not. They got to know me better after that.

V. Skrypka: Oksana Yakivna, forgive me for interrupting. But wasn't it the founding of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group and your participation in it that really got to them?

O. Ya. Meshko: I was indeed arrested for my participation in the Ukrainian Public Group to Promote the Implementation of the Helsinki Accords. Formally, for that. The verdict I received was 12 pages long, very long, and so anecdotal that if it were published now, it would be a perfect illustration of the mindlessness of our legal system. Even before the founding of the Ukrainian Public Group, after my petitions and visits to Stelmakh, Paton, Kabalevsky, and Ivan Dzyuba, they began to visit me more often—sometimes with a search, sometimes to draw up some interrogation protocol. I refused to speak with them, and then I saw that I was effectively under house arrest! I couldn't go anywhere! They would grab me, put me in a car, take me for a personal search, for a search of my apartment... I was under house arrest! And then I fell ill: pneumonia. They came to see me daily—either alone or with a doctor. I wouldn't open the door—they would come with a doctor. I'd open for the doctor—and they would come in themselves. I then appealed to the prosecutor's office, stating that I considered this situation to be house arrest and asked to be released from such pressure. Prosecutor Tulin came to my home. In his presence, they took my statement (because I didn't want to give them such a statement alone). The prosecutor said: “You are free.” And he told them in front of me: “Stop all this.”

Thus I felt myself free. But I was already so angry, so geared up for a fight: to struggle, to struggle, regardless of anything, stopping at nothing.

In the autumn of 1976, Mykola Danylovych Rudenko came to see me with his wife. He came with a proposal to join the Ukrainian Public Group to Promote the Implementation of the Helsinki Accords. “And who else is in the Group?” I asked. “Well, it's me, and you will be the second.” “But,” I said, “who then will bring packages to my son and send him parcels?” Rudenko was surprised, but without laughing, he said to me: “My God, Oksana Yakivna! You are so frightened that you thought we could be arrested! But our Ukrainian Public Group will be based on the Helsinki Accords, which were concluded on August 1, 1975.”

V. Skrypka: Oksana Yakivna, did you meet with Sakharov on that matter? Or was that later?

O. Ya. Meshko: That was later. So I sat and thought. I said: “There are only two of us right now.” “There will be more of us, Oksana Yakivna, don't be afraid that there are only two of us! We are just forming the core. There will be more of us.” I said: “But you know that we will all be arrested later?” “Oh, no!,” he laughed at this. “We won't be arrested!” I said: “We will be arrested. Because a wolf may shed its coat, but it never changes its nature. Just now, Comrade Rudenko, while defending my son and dealing with our state and judicial institutions, with the justice system, I have become convinced that it's all the same—we will be arrested. But I want to tell you—don't laugh—I am not afraid of being arrested. Because it's even better for me to be arrested. Because it's hard for me to live now. I can't live like this anymore.”

I agreed. I was the second member. We founded the Ukrainian Public Group. There were ten of us brave ones at first. They were Mykola Danylovych Rudenko, myself, Mykola Matusevych and Myroslav Marynovych, Nina Strokata, Levko Lukianenko, Ivan Kandyba, and General Petro Grigorenko—as the Moscow coordinator of our Group.

V. Skrypka: And Oleksa Tykhy came later?

O. Ya. Meshko: No, Oleksa Tykhy was there right away, and Lukianenko—there were 10 of us at the beginning. Two were in exile—Kandyba and Strokata were under administrative supervision without the right to leave their towns and without the right to leave their homes from 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. Tykhy was in the Donbas, Lukianenko in Chernihiv, Rudenko and I were in Kyiv, and Oles Berdnyk also joined us. That makes exactly 10 of us. Oles Berdnyk was the third member by count. Then came Tykhy and Lukianenko, then Matusevych and Marynovych, then Kandyba and Strokata.

I divided my duties regarding my son with my daughter-in-law in this way: you look after your little son—I will take care of my big son. He doesn't need a nanny—they are nannying him well enough there, and I will take on everything else that is needed. I had no other path left.

It was then that I truly embarked on the path of struggle. It was an unusual struggle. It was the first legal struggle in our history. In our human rights documents—because our main idea was the defense of human rights and the rights of the nation—we would refer to the Final Act of the Helsinki Conference and officially send them to the governments of the 34 signatory countries and the 35th—the Soviet government. This was the first opportunity that could not be ignored, that could not be relied upon. It was an opportunity to fight them on the basis of international legal documents that they themselves had adopted. They themselves gave this trump card to our democratic association.

V. Skrypka: Oksana Yakivna, you mentioned the press bulletins that the Helsinki Group sent to 34 countries and the USSR. What effect did they have?

O. Ya. Meshko: Our memorandums, declaration, and information about the state of human rights in Ukraine became known not only within the Soviet Union, because we addressed these documents not only to the Soviet government but also sent them through embassies to all the member countries of the Helsinki forum. Radio stations around the world broadcast these materials, popularizing them. The Group became very well-known in the world, despite being very small. There were 10 of us at first. The first five, with Berdnyk as the sixth, were deprived of the ability to work because they were arrested. The seventh, Grigorenko, ended up abroad. At liberty, so to speak, there were three of us left—me, Ivan Kandyba under supervision in Pustomyty, Lviv region, and Nina Strokata under supervision in Tarusa, Kaluga region—without the right to travel. Administrative supervision also dictated the hours they had to be in their homes: from 9 p.m. to 7 a.m., they were not allowed to leave their residences.

So, I stood alone like a rock, like a thorn in the KGB's side, and stormed ahead.* *(Here is a chronicle of the losses that Oksana Yakivna's heart endured—the arrests of Group members and those close to them:

February 5, 1977 – Mykola Rudenko (Kyiv) and Oleksa Tykhy (Donetsk region)

March 2, 1977 – Vasyl Barladianu (Odesa)

April 23, 1977 – Mykola Matusevych and Myroslav Marynovych

September 22, 1977 – Heliy Sniehiryov

December 8, 1977 – Petro Vins

December 12, 1977 – Levko Lukianenko (Chernihiv)

February 15, 1978 – Petro Vins (a second time)

December 8, 1978 – Yosyf Zisels (Chernivtsi)

February 8, 1979 – Vasyl Ovsiienko (Zhytomyr region)

March 6, 1979 – Oles Berdnyk

March 9, 1979 – death of Mykhailo Melnyk (Kyiv region)

July 6, 1979 – Petro and Vasyl Sichko (Dolyna, Ivano-Frankivsk region)

August 6, 1979 – Yuriy Lytvyn (Kyiv region)

October 3, 1979 – Petro Rozumny (Dnipropetrovsk region)

October 23, 1979 – Vasyl Striltsiv (Dolyna, Ivano-Frankivsk region)

October 23, 1979 – Mykola Horbal

November 15, 1979 – Yaroslav Lesiv (Ivano-Frankivsk region)

November 29, 1979 – Vitaliy Kalynychenko (Dnipropetrovsk region)

January 1, 1980 – Volodymyr Malynkovych expelled

February 20, 1980 – Hanna Mykhailenko (Odesa)

March 12, 1980 – Zinoviy Krasivsky (Morshyn, Lviv region)

March 12, 1980 – Olha Heiko-Matusevych

April 2, 1980 – Vyacheslav Chornovil (Yakutia)

April 11, 1980 – Ivan Sokulsky (Dnipropetrovsk region)

May 14, 1980 – Vasyl Stus

June 30, 1980 – Dmytro Mazur (Zhytomyr region)

July 1, 1980 – Hryhoriy Prykhodko (Dnipropetrovsk region)

After Oksana Meshko's imprisonment on November 13, 1980, they “scraped out” the rest:

March 23, 1981 – Ivan Kandyba (Lviv region)

August 15, 1981 – Raisa Rudenko

December 3, 1981 – Mykhailo Horyn (Lviv)

September 2, 1982 – Zorian Popadiuk (Aktyubinsk region, Kazakhstan)

October 21, 1983 – Valeriy Marchenko

November 29, 1985 – Petro Ruban (Pryluky, Chernihiv region)

– Ed. Note)

I experienced terrible pressure from the authorities. Constant searches, they would catch me on the street, force me into a car, take me to the KGB, interrogate me, and urge me to abandon this work, warning me that it would end badly. But by that time, I had lost my fear. Not only was I no longer afraid of anything, but I considered it my civic duty, my calling, since my age seemed to put me in the best position. But that's just what I thought... * *(Here is a chronicle of just some of the searches and detentions:

February 5, 1977 – search in the case of M. Rudenko and O. Tykhy, sanctioned by the Moscow city prosecutor;

June 12, 1977 – visit with son (together with daughter-in-law Zvenyslava Vivchar) at camp VS-589/36 in the village of Kuchino, Perm region. Personal search before and after the visit;

January 1978 – search and interrogation;

February 9, 1978 – search in the case of L. Lukianenko;

February 14, 1978 – 5-hour interrogation and warning of criminal liability under the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of December 25, 1972;

June 17, 1978 – O. Meshko was removed from the bus she was taking to L. Lukianenko's trial in Horodnia and sent back to Kyiv;

November 3, 1978 – armed attack on O. Meshko;

November 18, 1978 – detention and search (together with Olha Orlova-Babych) in the village of Lenine (Stavky) in the Zhytomyr region, where they visited Vasyl Ovsiienko;

March 6-7, 1979 – search; Hrytsko Miniailo, Volodymyr Malynkovych, Klym Semeniuk, and Olha Leliukh, who were visiting O. Meshko, were also searched;

April 12, 1979 – detention and search in Serpukhov near Moscow, while returning from a visit to Nina Strokata;

August 7, 1979 – search of Oksana Meshko, Vasyl Striltsiv, Mykhailo Lutsyk, and Stefania Petrash-Sichko at her home in Dolyna, Ivano-Frankivsk region;

August 8, 1979 – expulsion of O. Meshko from Lviv;

February 22, 1980 – search in the case of Hanna Mykhailenko;

March 12, 1979 – search;

June 13, 1980 – interrogation in the case of V. Stus and confinement to a psychiatric hospital for 75 days;

October 12, 1980 – last search;

October 13, 1980 – detention and confinement to a psychiatric hospital.

– Ed. Note).

The Group's materials, as I learned when I was abroad, did reach their addressees. The diaspora abroad published several volumes of these materials; they are preserved there, but there is no way to transport them here so that they can become known to our readers.* *(O. Ya. Meshko is referring to at least these publications: Ukrainskyi pravozakhysnyi rukh (The Ukrainian Human Rights Movement). Documents and Materials of the Ukrainian Public Group to Promote the Implementation of the Helsinki Accords. Foreword by Andriy Zvarun. Compiled by Osyp Zinkevych. “Smoloskyp” Ukrainian Publishing House named after V. Symonenko. Toronto–Baltimore. 1978. 478 pp.; The Persecution of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group. Human Rights Commission. World Congress of Free Ukrainians. Toronto. Canada. 1980. 66 pp.; Informatsiini biuleteni Ukrainskoi hromadskoi hrupy spryiannia vykonanniu helsinskykh uhod (Information Bulletins of the Ukrainian Public Group to Promote the Implementation of the Helsinki Accords). Compiled by Osyp Zinkevych. Afterword by Nina Strokata. “Smoloskyp” Ukrainian Publishing House named after V. Symonenko. Toronto–Baltimore, 1981. 200 pp.; Ukrainska Helsinska Hrupa. 1978–1982. (The Ukrainian Helsinki Group. 1978-1982.) Documents and Materials. Compiled and edited by Osyp Zinkevych. “Smoloskyp” Ukrainian Publishing House named after V. Symonenko. Toronto–Baltimore. 1983. 998 pp. A collection of these documents has already been published in Ukraine: Ukrainska Hromadska Hrupa spryiannia vykonanniu Helsinskykh uhod: Dokumenty i materialy. V 4 tomakh. (Ukrainian Public Group to Promote the Implementation of the Helsinki Accords: Documents and Materials. In 4 volumes). Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group; Compiled by Ye. Yu. Zakharov, V. V. Ovsiienko. Kharkiv: Folio, 2001. Total 794 pp. – Ed. Note).

V. Skrypka: Obviously, this didn't affect the Group's activities? Or did it, greatly?

O. Ya. Meshko: Imagine, the materials flowed in a continuous stream and were signed: “Ukrainian Public Group to Promote the Implementation of the Helsinki Accords. Attested. Meshko.” That is, I signed them as the secretary, while the members were already behind bars. There were people whose participation and work in the Group I was simply afraid to announce publicly, afraid to legalize. Such was Yuriy Lytvyn, and later Vasyl Stus. At one point, also Mykhailo Horyn, Zinoviy Krasivsky. There were also sympathizers—the late Mykhailo Melnyk. He took his own life... This figure must be remembered, it is a sin not to speak of him... He was a person who belonged to us with his whole soul, but fearing such a swift end as arrest, or perhaps he was not psychologically ready for it... He helped with various pieces of information. It was difficult to gather information about human rights violations. It required time and suitable conditions. He helped me a great deal on one condition—not to publicize his work.

On March 8, 1978, several of our sympathizers' homes were searched, people who visited me. And my home was under close surveillance: whoever came was noted down. The search on March 8 included Mykhailo Melnyk's home in Brovary. They confiscated a lot of material from him in 12 journals and a collection of his poetry. This was his creative work of several years. It was a chronicle of events that took place before his eyes. After the search, he understood that it would end in arrest, that all his work was lost, because there is no return from there. He took his own life at his home, in the cellar.* *(These searches of Mykhailo Melnyk took place on March 6 and 9, 1979, not 1978, in the village of Pohreby near Brovary. On the night of March 9, M. Melnyk took his own life, leaving a note saying he did not want to bring disaster upon his daughters and wife. – Ed.).

So, the price of our materials was very high. Yuriy Lytvyn and Vasyl Stus took part in writing them. Vasyl Stus took the most active part in the Group. While still in exile in Magadan, he, of course, knew about its emergence and its activities, understood and approved of it, and saw in it a healthy, rational core. From there, he wrote letters to his friends in Kyiv, asking them for help, chiding them for standing aside. Yes, he wrote a letter to Svitlana Kyrychenko, to Mykhailyna Kotsiubynska, to friends from research institutes, to engineers and scientists. And when he returned home after his exile—no one joined the Group. But he took the most active part in it. First and foremost, he defended Yurko Badzio, traveling to Moscow with his wife, Svitlana Kyrychenko. This brought trouble upon himself from the KGB. He threw himself into it with such energy and zeal, as was characteristic of this maximalist.

I was very afraid for Vasyl because this was after the arrest of Yuriy Lytvyn.* *(August 6, 1979. – Ed.). So there was no doubt that a second term awaited him, and as a recidivist—15 years. 10 years of imprisonment and 5 of exile. And so it happened. He was arrested in May* *(May 14, 1980. – Ed.), after Yuriy Lytvyn. But Yuriy Lytvyn, who was at that time in a corrective labor camp (which they called an "institution") in Bucha near Kyiv—even from there he managed to establish contact, sending materials to Vasyl Stus. A part of it, in particular, his imaginary conversation with Brezhnev under the title “If God Does Not Exist, Everything Is Permitted”—it does exist abroad, it was published there.* *(See: Ukrainska Helsinska Hrupa. 1978–1982, pp. 394-404; Yuriy Lytvyn. Liubliu – znachyt zhyvu (I Love, Therefore I Live). Publicistic Works. Compiled by Anatoliy Rusnachenko. – Kyiv: Vydavnychyi dim “KM Academia,” 1999, pp. 81-87; Ukrainska Hromadska Hrupa spryiannia vykonanniu Helsinskykh uhod: Dokumenty i materialy. Vol. 4, pp. 95–100). There were other materials as well. I know that some of it got through, but not all, because Vasyl Stus had to burn it when he saw that the “tails” were following him closely and that an arrest or a search was inevitable. He was expecting the search, he was ready for the arrest. Vasyl Stus once told me: “Well, what of it—they'll arrest me and you—and that's it, there's no one left to pass the baton to.”

The pressure on me was terrible—probably precisely because they didn't want to arrest me. It was inconvenient; my age stood in the way. But it was absolutely necessary to stop me. The calculation was that a woman would be afraid. And one time—it was in 1978, sometime before the October holidays, maybe October 5th* *(November 3. – Ed.)—a man in a Soviet-style trench coat came to my door: “I'm here for Olha Yakovlevna.” I said there was no one here by that name. “I'm here to see you!” “But I'm not Olha Yakivna, I'm Oksana Yakivna.” “Then I'm here to see Oksana Yakovlevna.” “Where are you from?” “From Moscow.” I said: “Come in.” I thought: I should let him in, because it had happened before that people came to me from different cities. Maybe it's on some serious matter, I thought.

I invited him into the kitchen, and I myself wanted to get the keys to the room, which was locked. I had just reached the door when I suddenly felt him press his whole body against my back and grab my shoulder with a strong hand. With indignation—still with indignation, not yet with fear—I turned to him, and at that moment he pulled a Colt-system revolver from under his coat—a big one! black!—and pointed it straight at my stomach: “Money!” he whispered. I was silent for a moment. I was speechless, then I cried out: “Money?! Hah, it's the KGB! Because everyone knows I have no money. No one would come to me for money!” And I started to scream.

Luckily for me, my tenant—in the room opposite—heard, opened her door, and ran right into this man. So, the three of us got tangled up in a heap. I was half-turned towards him, he was pressing his stomach against me, and she was pressing against him. I shouted: “Tonya, we're being robbed!” She ran out and started screaming in the street. And in the moment he let go of my shoulder—the window in my room was open to the garden—I fluttered out like a bird, and he was left alone in the room. I ran out to get over to my neighbors. As you know, I have a private house surrounded by a low fence. I thought I would jump over the fence to the neighbors. I could have done it, but this fear, this terror, say what you will—a black Colt—it made its impression, because he could have, if not shot me, then hit me over the head. And I understood that they didn't come to play games with me, but to do me harm. Ultimately, they could have just scared me. I had recently had a heart attack; I could have had a stroke, another heart attack.

I was indeed frightened, but not so frightened as to not defend myself. I ran through the garden, couldn't jump over the fence, and ran into my summer kitchen. My other tenant had also run out into the street by then; they were both screaming there. And I locked the door, pressed myself against it—my heart was pounding... I could hear a baby crying in its cradle... It seemed I stood there for so long. It was quiet in the yard. When I finally opened the door and went out into the street, beyond the gate, my tenants were standing there, and two neighbors across the way. And my neighbor, a taxi driver, also did something amazing: he noted the number of the taxi the man had arrived in. It was a number from the Kyiv taxi fleet* *(17–97. – Ed.). It was purely professional memory. They saw him leave the house. He didn't take anything from me. Didn't touch anything. He got in the taxi and left.

I asked our neighbor to call the police. The police—well, it was as if a special department of the criminal investigation was on standby (that young man, Terpylov, knew who to call): it was like they were sitting there waiting for that call—they arrived instantly. When the car arrived and stopped by the gate, only one man came into the house* *(Inspector of the criminal investigation department of the Podilskyi District Police Department, Captain Dytiuk. – Ed.). And I had already gathered the neighbors in the house; I wouldn't let either of my tenants leave my side. I said: “Bring your driver in too—I'm afraid of you!” He laughed. I said: “Yes, yes, I'm afraid of you! I've just experienced such a fright that I don't trust you either. I don't know who you are—show me your identification!” “Well, now I have to show you my documents—you're asking for too much! Tell me what happened here.” When I started to tell him, he became interested: “And who do you live with?” I said: “Here are my tenants, and this is my neighbor.” “And who do you live with, who else lives here? What, you have no one?” “No, I have a son.” “And where is he?” “He's in prison, convicted.” “Ah-ha, so it must have been a friend of your son's.” “So, you're from that kind of criminal investigation department? On what grounds do you think it was a friend of my son? My son is not a convict, not a thief, not a robber. He was convicted for political reasons.”

In short, this man began to write a report that I didn't like. I demanded that I write it myself. Then he made corrections and said: “We will summon you.” I said: “No. Don't summon me, because I won't go anywhere—I'm afraid of all of you. Just inform me of the results.”

No one informed me of anything, and I understood that it was an attempt to scare me. Was I scared? Like all people, of course, I was scared, but I could no longer retreat—once the work was started, I could no longer abandon it. I saw that everyone was being arrested, and I was given a privilege—the privilege of my old age.

This didn't last long. When Vasyl Stus was arrested on May 5 (I believe it was May 5), the trial took place soon after.* *(V. Stus was arrested on May 14, and the trial took place from September 29 to October 2, 1980. O.M. was interrogated in the Stus case on June 13, 1980, and was forcibly committed to the Pavlov psychiatric hospital, where she was held for 75 days—until August 25. – Ed.). And two men came for me at home—one from the investigative bodies of the regional KGB, from Bereza's office. But he didn't show any documents, just said so, and our former district policeman. He wasn't even the district policeman at that time. But for some reason, the two of them came together. “We're going to an interrogation with investigator Bereza.” I asked for a summons—there was no summons. I said: “I won't go without a summons.” “We'll take you by force.” It was lunchtime. The street was quiet, empty. All the neighbors, of course, were at work. I was alone in the yard. Even my tenant wasn't home at that moment. I decided to go with them because I understood they would put me in the car by force. This had happened so many times that it was better to get into the car yourself than to be thrown in like a stone.

THE PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL

Well, we left. I looked: I know the way to the KGB building very well, but they turned in a different direction. They turned into the republican psychiatric hospital, to the admissions department. Here, for the first time, I was truly terrified. I know what a "psikhushka" is, I know how many people, arrested for political reasons, were put in psychiatric hospitals without a trial or investigation—and for good, with forced treatment...

They took me to the admissions office. The doctor asked for a referral from a psychiatrist. They didn't have one. She said: “Please leave and don't interfere with our work.” And to me: “You are free.” The psychiatrist was on top of her game—she immediately determined that this was a mentally healthy person and that this was coercion and an illegal act. But one of them left, and the other grabbed me and forcibly dragged me into the small room where they change the clothes of patients admitted for treatment. She was indignant, but in the meantime, she started admitting other patients. Someone called her on the phone. From the conversation, I understood it was about me and that she didn't want to admit me to the psychiatric hospital on the grounds that there was no referral, and this was a violation of the law, because in her opinion, there were no grounds for treating me. But someone on the phone forced her. She said for a long time: “Yes... Uh-huh... But... But there isn't... But... But...” And then she invited me to her office, and said to the policeman: “Get out of here! I will speak with the patient alone.”

She began to calm me down and said: “I will remind you of your right. I understand everything. This has happened here before. Here is your right: you must demand an examination within three days and your release.” “Doctor,” I replied, “don't you understand that they are forcibly putting me here and may even confirm that I am mentally ill.” “If you demand it, they won't confirm it!”

In short, this doctor was the first to take that step which is punished by human law, by God's law, and by the law of conscience, and in a state governed by the rule of law—by state law.

They changed my clothes into a hospital gown and large hospital shoes. Two orderlies took me to the third ward, where the head was Dr. Liuta.

They put me among the violent, among the seriously ill. There were three wards of them there. There were up to 60 people—the ward was terribly overcrowded. I stayed there for 60 days* *(From June 13 to August 25—75 days. – Ed.). But during this time, I wrote petitions, although, by the way, I was immediately placed under conditions different from those of other sick people. My packages were inspected, paper was taken from them, but the other patients had it. I wrote a petition-telegram to Brezhnev. And although I had no money, because money was also not allowed into the ward, some visitor took pity on me, took my telegram, and sent it as a letter. For his part, my son Serhiyenko, although he was in exile in Ayan, Khabarovsk Krai, also sent a petition to the legal authorities, to the prosecutor's office, and demanded that I be taken from the psychiatric hospital “for its intended purpose.” He understood, just as I did, that a punishment was already hanging over me, not yet determined by a court, but already assigned by the punitive organs. Therefore, he demanded that I be handed over to the KGB— “for its intended purpose.”* *(This is my mother's mistaken impression. Having learned from my wife, who came to visit me in exile during her vacation in June, that they were threatening to subject my mother to forced treatment, I, as a medical professional, sent a telegram to the head doctor of the Pavlov hospital, reminding him of the Hippocratic Oath and of the legal responsibility for the patient's health to their relatives. – Note by O. Serhiyenko).

I was assessed by a commission. Fortunately... I was assessed by Charochkina—a psychiatrist. She declared me sane and ordered my discharge. My doctor, Patorzhynska, even asked if I could go home now, if I had anything to wear. She rejoiced with me. She left. But then she was gone for a long time, and when she returned, her head was bowed in embarrassment as she told me: “We would have released you, but the KGB did not allow it.”

So, I remained there until the commission declared me mentally sound. They gave me the most thorough examinations—three research laboratories located in this republican hospital examined me. In one of the laboratories, I was examined twice: after the lab technician, the head of the laboratory examined me and, as if in exasperation or sympathy for me, I don't know why, exclaimed: “May God grant us all such health!”

V. Skrypka: Meaning, to feel that well?

O. Ya. Meshko: Yes, and then she said: “Don't worry, my laboratory is the last one, you have been declared mentally sound by all the laboratories, now everything will depend on you.”

So, the commission, headed by Charochkina and with a psychiatrist-lecturer from the medical institute, declared me sane, but the psychiatrist Verhun, the deputy head doctor for medical affairs, did not release me but transferred me to the lower floor into separate cabins, where recovering patients were kept, and began to blackmail me in this way: she would summon me and try to persuade me to do this: “I will release you, but on one condition: you will go... You live in the Podilskyi district? Well then, you will go to the Podilskyi district and register at the psychoneurological dispensary.” I said: “No, I will not put a noose around my own neck.” “But then you will stay here.” “Then I will stay here. But here I am by force, and there I would be admitting that I am ill. You know that I am not ill.” “But be objective, Oksana Yakivna! You are 75 years old. This is an age when a person, in terms of nerves... The wear and tear of the body, changes in the psyche...” “So what, are you trying to persuade me to admit it?” “Yes, this is your only salvation, because only in this way can you be freed.”

I refused. Ten days passed like this. Finally, on a Friday (August 25, 1980. – Ed.), she told me: “I will release you. Let's make a gentleman's agreement.” “In what way?” “You will come to see me—you know where my office building is. You will come to me on Monday. Today is Friday—you will come on Monday.” I thought: “And for what purpose?” “I want a good specialist to examine you.” “I don't want him to examine me.” “Well, then just stop by, we'll settle a few more questions.” I thought that if she said “stop by,” then I would already be coming from home. I agreed, I gave my word. She even cheered up, saying: “I know, your character reference is such that if you give your word, you will keep it.”

I went home. And on Monday, I came to see her.

V. Skrypka: Like a gentleman to a gentleman?

O. Ya. Meshko: I came to see her. I had just approached the building when she drove up in a car right next to it—swoosh! A man was sitting in the car, and she jumped out, as happy as if she'd met her own father, and said: “Good, please come to my office.” And she quickly led me away. I was still looking back, wanting to see who she had come with. But she let me go ahead—I didn't see.

We came to her office, sat down. She started persuading me again: “You don't want to go and register? Fine, but a doctor will examine you now.” “No, Dr. Verhun (Nelia Yakivna, I think is her name, I remember Nelia), no, I won't go in there with you. I don't want a doctor to examine me.” “No, a doctor will examine you.” I got angry and said: “In the 75 days of my stay in your psychiatric hospital, I have seen seriously mentally ill people whom you cannot help—and here you, such a doctor, have such a desire to make a sick person out of a healthy one? And where is your Hippocratic Oath?” I turned my back on her and ran out. She shouted after me, the phone was ringing—it was that impatient doctor behind the wall waiting to examine me. I ran out—the territory of this hospital is quite large, but I knew the layout of the buildings and started running. I thought: now two orderlies will catch me, and the same thing will happen all over again.

I ran like a madwoman, not knowing where to run. I remembered: Charochkina! Her teaching building is right here, for practical classes for students. I burst into that hall. She wasn't in the first hall. The second was her office. I ran there. To my luck, Larysa Charochkina was there. She looked at me and said: “What's wrong with you? Why are you so frightened?” I told her everything. She gave me some medicine to drink, warmed up some tea, put out some cakes, apples and said: “Now we will talk calmly. I'm so interested in getting to know you! Tell me about yourself.”

We talked for a very long time. I was in no hurry to leave her, because I was afraid that that hounding was waiting for me there. She reassured me: “I assure you that you will not end up in this hospital again, despite the efforts of our doctors. Forgive our doctors—they are also under duress.”* (These doctors should be named. On June 20, 1980, Prof. V. M. Bleikher and Dr. A. H. Koropova declared Oksana Meshko sane. After O. M.'s written complaint on August 7 to higher Soviet authorities, a consultation consisting of Deputy Head Doctor L. A. Charochkina, Head of Medical Affairs N. I. Verhun, Head of Department Ye. I. Yastreb, and Dr. A. M. Patorzhynska confirmed this diagnosis. In the 1990s, Nelia Ivanivna Verhun was a member of the Ukrainian Psychiatric Association, created by Semen Gluzman. Through her efforts, many victims of punitive Soviet psychiatry were rehabilitated. – Ed.).

We left. She walked me to the exit here, near St. Cyril's Church, down to the steps. She said goodbye to me and promised that she would not allow this to happen again. By the way, she gave me several addresses of doctors I was supposed to see. It was somewhere in Darnytsia, I can't remember now, some building.

Thus I did not end up in the hospital a second time. I understood that my time at liberty was very short. I sent a similar telegram to my son, and I myself was already prepared. In the meantime, I went to my grandson's school every day—he was in the first grade then. I was with him during the short breaks, and during the long break, I would take him with me, we would go to the park, the square, I would give him something to eat, talk to him. It was wonderful—a beautiful autumn. I will never forget it!

THE LAST SEARCH

And so, on October 12, 1980, they came to search my place. They conducted the search as they always did, checking everything—all the wardrobes, all the sofas and tables. They tapped the walls, the floor, the cellar, the attic, the summer kitchen. They dug and re-dug all the soil. I can't even count how many times it had been like that. But whatever they were looking for—they never found anything. They left late at night.

I opened all the windows of my house to air it out. I took a mop and poured water on the floors of my three rooms, I washed them. It was almost morning. I couldn't fall asleep. I was haunted by that terrible smell. These people smell particularly strong. A special smell from these men: whether it's tobacco, or stale alcohol breath, or whether they were morally decaying from within, but that smell constantly haunted me. I am not exaggerating—I am telling you about my subjective impression.

V. Skrypka: But it's true! There's the cloth of the uniforms, and the leather belts, and the offices, and maybe some internal emanations... Even their sweat could be specific. It's a function of their role. Maybe they have some malice in them, and malice produces a different kind of sweat than in a kind-hearted and good person. You are probably right.

O. Ya. Meshko: You see, it's not an invention. I have a very sharp, developed sense of smell. Since childhood. For flowers, for the air, for everything. I have been in concert halls, in crowded institutions, but I have never smelled such a smell anywhere else. These people have a specific smell. And I, tired from that search, that interrogation, that humiliation, that personal search, which I do not allow, by law! When they search a house, they must also have a warrant for a personal search. But they would come without a warrant for a personal search, bringing their female guards from the prison, they would forcibly strip me of everything, and I would scream. After such agitation, I would still take a mop, a bucket of water, wash the floor, and then lie down. I fell asleep a little only towards morning, having taken a sleeping pill.

ARREST

A knock on the door. It was October 13, 1980. I looked out the window—the KGB. I quickly got dressed, opened the door for them. Because I know so many of them at the Kyiv KGB—how many people have passed through my home! “Let's go to the KGB for an interrogation.” “But all this happened yesterday! Why today?” “They told us to bring you. But quickly, no time, the investigator is going somewhere...” I said: “He'll wait for me.”

I understood that my freedom had ended here. I gathered what is immediately necessary when a person finds themselves behind bars. This was the second time... As you know, I served 10 years during the Stalin era. They took me on the street, but they drove through the gate on Irynynska Street, which has a particular creaking music.* *(The entrance to the KGB building at 33 Volodymyrska Street is from Irynynska Street. – Ed.). A long dark tunnel. And it closes behind a person forever. I knew this was threatening me now. I started looking for the most necessary things. But that same executioner followed me and said: “Why do you need that? What underwear? What do you need? We'll bring you back, well, maybe in an hour, two, no more.” “Don't bother me, give me a chance to take what's necessary.” I took a small book, gathered my glasses, toothbrush, a small towel, a change of underwear, locked the windows, the doors, and left.

I never returned here.

I came to the office of my investigator, Seliuk. This was the investigator who had conducted Vasyl Stus's investigation. This was the investigator whom Vasyl Stus complained about in court, saying he had been tortured in prison.

I entered the office and saw the prosecutor. I knew him—he was armless. Oh my God, I can't remember his name right now...* *(In O. Meshko's verdict, the prosecutor is listed as V. P. Pohorily. – Ed.). He introduced himself. But I already knew him. I addressed him with a protest, with these words: “First of all, taking this opportunity, I declare a protest to the prosecutor as a member of the Ukrainian Public Group to Promote the Implementation of the Helsinki Accords against the torture to which Vasyl Stus was subjected, about which he declared in court in the presence of his witnesses—Kotsiubynska and others.”

The prosecutor flinched and glanced at Seliuk.

“That is the first protest. The second protest—I, being a mentally sound person, spent 75 days in a psychiatric hospital. I was released as mentally sound, but no one apologized. And this was done with the permission or at the behest, more precisely, under the pressure of the KGB. They took me supposedly for an interrogation with investigator Bereza at the regional KGB department, but they brought me to a psychiatric hospital. In violation of all laws—they committed me by force. This is my second protest.

And the third: I demand an audience with the head of the republican KGB, Fedorchuk. I will not speak. Only after the audience, depending on what the two of us decide.”

Seliuk denied that Vasyl Stus was tortured within the walls of the closed KGB prison at 33 Korolenka Street, that is, on Volodymyrska Street. He also denied that there was such an investigator as Bereza in the regional department. It was a lie. Both the first and the second. And the prosecutor accepted this as Seliuk's justification and my slander against a decent investigator. As for my audience with Fedorchuk, Seliuk laughed sarcastically and said: “As if he has time to talk with you!” “Then I,” I said, “will not talk with you—this is my prerequisite for starting any conversation with you.”

While these conversations were going on, the prosecutor was nervously looking at his watch, and then he turned to Seliuk: “Forgive me, I'm already late: the store is closing, and my wife is diabetic, I need to buy her some diabetic bread.” I was indignant: “And are you aware that I am also a diabetic, and you are keeping me here for so long? I demand to be released from here. You are leaving—and I will leave too.” “Oh, no. You still have to finish your conversation with Seliuk, and I'm already leaving. Goodbye.” He said this so cordially to Seliuk and nodded at me. He left.

FORENSIC-MEDICAL EXAMINATION

As soon as the prosecutor left, Seliuk immediately changed his benevolent expression, went, opened the door of his safe, and took out a piece of paper. He gave it to me to read: the republican prosecutor Hluk—he is already in his grave, younger and healthier than me, probably, but gone earlier—had signed an order to commit me for a forensic-medical examination. I was outraged: “But just two weeks* (months. – Ed.) ago, I had an examination, I passed a commission as a mentally sound person, that is, as sane! Why do you want to subject me to such abuse again? To my human personality, to my dignity! Why are you destroying my health?” “We're going. Let's go, get ready without long conversations.”

We got into the car. And three more thugs, healthy men, with a fourth as the driver, drove me in that long, rattling car that all other cars make way for when it's on the road. I don't know, it must have some name.

We arrived at the republican hospital, in the closed courtyard of the psychoneurological dispensary for forensic-medical examinations. The gates opened. We entered the courtyard. Two of them ran off, and the third stayed with me. They ran to make arrangements with the head of the department. They were gone for a long time. It was stuffy in the car. I asked him to open the door. He seemed to take pity, that third one, and opened it. I took advantage of the open door and got out. He also jumped out after me, indignant that I was behaving in an undisciplined manner. I walked away from him to a flowerbed. There was a whole flowerbed... That autumn... The flowers were blooming so beautifully. I picked a few flowers. And he started shouting at me: “You can't do that, you have no right to pick flowers here, to destroy the flowerbeds!” I looked at the flowers so as not to listen to him. He wanted to strike up some conversation—I said: “Just be quiet, finally, I'm not listening to you, I'm thinking.” “Well, if you're thinking, then remember that today is the 13th!” I said: “I'm not superstitious, the KGB is superstitious because it fears retribution, but I have done nothing to expect God's retribution for.”

The head of the department came and invited us into the reception room. She announced to me: “By order of prosecutor Hluk, I am admitting you for an examination.” I shouted in outrage: “For how long? I was just in your hospital number 3, under head doctor Liuta, 2 weeks ago! Go back, get my chart, get my medical history, as you call it. Look—I've already passed a commission, and besides, if I have to go through it again, it's my right—they explained my right to me—to have it done on an outpatient basis, meaning I'll be at home and come for the examination at the appointed time.” “I can't do that—these comrades here object, you should talk to them.” “Me? I have to ask for the law from lawbreakers?! I am appealing to you, you are a doctor!” “I can't.” She called an orderly. The orderly was already carrying a faded, torn gown and footwear, and she called me into a small room to change. I looked at those two “comrades”—one a major, the other a staff captain—they were standing and looking at me. As a teacher, as a person who has lived a long life, I understand people—I looked at them, at how much schadenfreude was in them! I thought: I've done nothing to them, no harm—so why are they so happy? I was old enough to be their grandmother...

I changed... I came out, in that hideous attire. For a mentally ill person—they choose the shabbiest rags. I didn't look at them, but I only heard them both say in a recitative: “Goodbye. Take care, Oksana Yakivna!” in such cheerful, joyful voices. What do you want from these people? Do you really want to reform them? Can you hope for their spiritual healing? They were never, not one of them, punished!

In that forensic-medical examination facility, which is guarded by the police, there was one female ward with 4 beds, under lock and key, and several wards for men. We were locked in. And only male orderlies served us. They were truly a criminal element, people morally bankrupt. One couldn't even go out into the corridor alone—the keys were with the medical staff. I was overcome by a state of such anger, fear, protest, the state when you are helpless to do anything. Hands tied, a person under guard, under surveillance, a person in bondage...

To make matters worse, I fell ill with pneumonia there because I doused myself with cold water twice a day to somehow bring my nervous system into order and be ready for a new battle. This was yet another battle—a battle with the psychiatrist-doctors, those doctors who, without mercy, at the direction of the punitive bodies—the MVD, the KGB—sent people for forced treatment. And the worst, of course, was for those people who were convicted for political reasons. How many of them passed through this institution! Here, as I knew, Yuriy Lytvyn had been held, they brought Vasyl Stus, Nadiya Svitlychna was here too! And who wasn't tested for their sanity with the sole purpose—not to try them, but to send them for forced treatment, where a person's mental health is destroyed and where a person can be held for life, until their dying day.

I had pneumonia there, so they began to treat me, and because of that, they didn't send me to the commission. I demanded that they speed up the commission, but they said—“until you recover.” A doctor named Lifshits was supposed to assess me. As I learned later, much later, he was killed on the territory of this hospital, killed by a criminal element, people who were dissatisfied with him for declaring them sane. Because all the criminals, the real ones, prefer to be declared insane. In this way, they escape from captivity faster. He was killed right in the middle of the courtyard—I knew that. Well, but before he was supposed to assess me, the male orderlies told me about him, that he was already retired, Jewish by nationality, a good psychologist, a good specialist, and very strict. I was not afraid of his strictness, only eager for it to be over sooner. And I wrote a note on the package that was brought to me, saying that I was being delayed here in the hospital because I had a cold and Lifshits was supposedly ill, and I was waiting for Lifshits's recovery as if for God. I think it was this note that alerted my guardians, the supervisors, that perhaps he was one of those people I knew or had some connection with.

And so one fine day—I had been waiting for this for so long—I was summoned to the commission. I entered a long hall. A man sat at the table—tall, heavyset, you could paint a haidamaka from him. I thought: “So this is Lifshits! This is Lifshits!” He spoke to me in Ukrainian, greeted me first. And I had prepared to speak with Lifshits in Russian. I was even surprised. I began to speak with him. He asked so cheerfully, so casually: “Well, tell me about yourself.” I laughed and said: “And you too will ask me, like all the psychiatrists?” “Why are you in conflict with the authorities?” I answered all my psychiatrist-doctors this same way: “Then how should one view the behavior of Lenin, who was in conflict not with the authorities, but with the entire state? With the entire state government? He was in conflict with the tsar?” He said: “These are our standard questions. Don't mind them, but please, answer. Tell me everything, everything, everything.” “Well, if I must tell you everything, then I must start with the fact that I began to conflict with the authorities back in 1947, in February—I was arrested for no reason at all. They incriminated me, supposedly my sister and I intended to assassinate Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev. Although he died of natural causes, his end was hastened not by us, but by those who took such great care of him. I served 10 years, was rehabilitated, returned home to a sick son, and had only one desire—to get my son back on his feet. And after my rehabilitation, I believed in the possibility of change. Because when I was arrested and sentenced to 10 years—I didn't believe in change. But this was precisely the Khrushchev Thaw, as they call it, when the mass terror was ended. So, I believed. But how mistaken I was! Not so many years passed before my son was arrested in 1972, among many Ukrainians—creative people, writers...”

V. Skrypka: So was it Lifshits or someone else?

O.Ya. Meshko: It wasn’t Lifshits. It turned out that Lifshits had been removed; they didn’t trust him to certify me. Instead, the one who examined me was a professor of psychology, a lecturer at the medical institute, and the deputy chief physician of the Pavlov Hospital. He was Ukrainian.* (*Hereafter, Oksana Yakivna calls him Professor Bezpalchuk. – Ed.). He treated me like a doctor. I told him everything. I focused most, of course, on the events of 1972, on the arrests. I spoke with passion, not thinking about how he would judge it. He knew how to ask questions and how to speak so sincerely that for a moment I even forgot I was being evaluated. I spoke to him as to a person to whom I wanted to tell what wasn’t written in the press, what people didn’t know, what was known only to the KGB, the closed court, and those closed institutions, “uchrezhdeniyam,” where people were punished until their dying day.

V. Skrypka: Was he alone, or were there other doctors there?

O.Ya. Meshko: The head of the department was there, the doctor who had examined me was there, and one other. So there were three doctors, and he was the fourth. Finally, he said to me, “Well, that’s all.” He turned to the department head and said, “Tell her now.” She replied, “I’ll go to her ward and tell her.” But he insisted, “Tell her right now!” And she said to me, “You may go, Oksana Yakivna.” I got up to leave. I wanted to ask, “So, how did it go?” But I was ashamed to ask if I was mentally ill. Can you imagine, could I have asked? I felt ashamed of my desire to ask him… I even glanced back—and didn’t ask. A male nurse escorted me to my ward and locked the door.

But the department head didn’t come that day, or the next, and so it went for five days straight. For five days, I was going mad, I was dying—what if I’ve been declared legally insane? What if I’m sent for compulsory treatment? Just before that, one of the male nurses had lingered in my ward, as I happened to be alone at the time, and told me his impression of the Dnipropetrovsk compulsory psychiatric hospital, where he had just sent a whole group of criminals after their evaluation.

V. Skrypka: That’s Ighren, famous in the Dnipropetrovsk region.

O.Ya. Meshko: He told me that when he entered the gates with the patients he was escorting, and the gates shut with a creak and a roar… He said, “I’m just a medic, just an escort—but my heart sank! That’s the kind of psychological impression you get when you step into the courtyard of that hospital.” When he handed over the group and was let out, he said, only then did he feel the difference between the situation of a person facing such an inevitability, who has no choice, who must accept what is forced upon them—and a free person.

I spent five days under the impression of that male nurse’s story. I knocked on the door, called for the nurses to give me medicine or something, but really, I was asking, “Is the department head here?” “No, she’s not.” “Where is she?” “She should be here.” “When she comes, please call her.” Then I’d call again: “Has she been here?” “No, she hasn’t. She called.” Once, a male nurse came on his own and said, “She called and said you shouldn’t worry—everything is apparently as you agreed.” “As we agreed? I don’t know what she means!”

So, on the fifth day, she came in, greeted me warmly, asked about my health, and said, “Well, get your things—the KGB has come for you.” “The KGB?” “Yes.” “Well, thank God! Does that mean I’m going to the KGB?” “You see—and you were worried for nothing.” “Why didn’t you tell me?” “I didn’t have time. Get ready.” And to the orderlies: “Iron Oksana Yakivna’s clothes so she can leave the way she came to us.”

We talked some more while the orderly ironed my clothes. I got dressed while she was there. With what seemed like pity, or sympathy, or a desire to help, she said to me, “Don’t be angry, I’ll give you a piece of advice.” “Please do.” “Well, be more compliant.” “Doctor, what are you advising me to do? You are a psychiatrist, I underwent an examination here—and you didn’t understand that you have before you a person who does not make concessions to her enemies? To help them is to commit a crime with them, not only against myself!”

We said our goodbyes. I walked out. One of the men who had brought me was there to meet me. We drove in that rattling car. I was angry, I said all sorts of unpleasant things to him, I said whatever I wanted, whatever had been boiling up inside me.

THE INVESTIGATION

They didn’t take me to a cell, but directly to Selyuk’s office. I walked in. Another man was sitting there. Now there were three of them. They looked at me. I turned away. Selyuk said, “Oh, she won’t even greet her investigator anymore?” “Who is my investigator?” “I am.” “You? Selyuk?” “Yes.” I said, “Well, so ends the expedition into Soviet democratic law!” “We’re going to write up a protocol.” “No, we’re not! No protocols, no interrogation! You brought me here by force. I cannot leave here freely, but I am free not to speak with you. I will not speak with you. If for no other reason than the protest I filed. You tortured Vasyl Stus.” “That’s not true, Oksana Yakivna!” “I believe Vasyl Stus. And I have no reason to believe you!”

I was there for three months. I did not sign the protocols they wanted. I signed only one protocol, the first one, which was to confirm that I was Oksana Yakivna Meshko, born on such-and-such a date, lived at such-and-such a place, etc.—the identifying information, and also that I belonged to the Ukrainian Public Group. That I and everyone who belonged to it had committed no crime, but had promoted the implementation of the Helsinki Accords, which Brezhnev had signed. I later found out that I think it wasn't Brezhnev who signed it, but Podgorny or someone else, I don't remember.

They summoned me for interrogations twice a day. They would send me back to my cell for lunch, and then summon me again after lunch. Many times they kept me through dinner, detaining me during interrogations. I never had dinner on time—my guards would reheat it for me. I had to complain when I met with the prosecutor, and only then did they stop keeping me in the evenings. They were simply trying to wear me down by exhaustion.

They deliberately put an informer in my cell. She read all night because she slept during the day. When she would fall asleep, the book would fall, and I would wake up from the thud, the rustle of paper, her turning over. It was done on purpose. I used to remember her last name, and it’s strange that I’ve forgotten it. Probably because it’s very unpleasant to remember that person.

THE TRIAL

So, after three months, the trial took place.* (*The godless cynically scheduled it for Christmas: January 5–7, 1981. Her family was not notified of the start of the trial. – Ed.). A closed trial. They brought me in the same car. It was designated for that purpose. It’s one block from the KGB at 33 Volodymyrska Street to the court. They drove as if to a fire. And they didn’t bring me in through the main entrance, but from the courtyard—there’s a fire station there. A fence, high gates. They led me in through a back entrance, up a narrow, winding fire escape. I was indignant: why was I being led through a back entrance? They wanted to help me—I pushed their hands away, climbing up on my own as if up a mountain, nervously exhausted from insomnia, the conditions, the food, the surveillance, the interrogations. But I went up on my own. I didn’t want their help, neither in front nor behind.

It was a small, closed courtroom. I had two guards. One was from the MVD, guarding the corridors and the entrance. The other was from the KGB. There were always three of them—two men and one woman. When the trial began, one stood next to me, by the enclosure (the trial lasted three days), and the other stood at the door, letting no one in. And there was also the MVD guard. The woman stood a little farther away. When we were leaving for the trial, a doctor from their closed KGB prison hospital would “pump me up” so I could stay on my feet. She gave me things that shouldn’t even have been given—heart stimulants, when I, on the contrary, needed the opposite. But they “pumped me up,” gave me drinks, so that I would sit there and look younger. They constantly emphasized that I was physically younger than my age.

I also had a lawyer, Rudenko, whom I didn’t want, but the KGB forced him on me because I had no one to go and find a lawyer. They didn’t even tell my daughter-in-law. Maybe she could have found a lawyer. They did it themselves. I remembered that Rudenko as a lawyer. He had a decent reputation. In the sixties, he had defended someone, and apparently, defended them well. So when they brought him to me, I agreed—let him be my lawyer. Besides, the investigator told me: a trial cannot happen without a lawyer. I didn’t want a lawyer, but I agreed under pressure. The lawyer, as you know, also sits in the courtroom. They say that in political trials they sometimes behave like a second prosecutor. This one wasn’t a second prosecutor, but he behaved like a deaf-mute: present in the room, seeing, but not hearing or speaking.

When I was first brought to trial, I wanted to use my right to dismiss the prosecutor or the judge, because I had previously consulted and learned that a defendant has this right. I decided to file a motion to dismiss the prosecutor. I had already had a meeting with this prosecutor, which I mentioned. But there was also an earlier one, in the Supreme Court, when Kovalenko was on trial.* *(Ivan Yukhymovych Kovalenko, a teacher from Boyarka near Kyiv, was arrested on January 13, 1972. The trial took place from July 6 to 11 with the participation of the same one-armed prosecutor, V.P. Pohorilyi. – Ed.). I was at Kovalenko’s trial. It wasn’t always possible to get in, but sometimes you could. So, I already knew him from a negative side, I had grounds to dismiss him. I filed the motion. My judge, Matsko (a healthy, still young fellow—he’s no longer alive, he died, for some reason they don’t live long)—Matsko made a face as if my demand had to be considered behind closed doors. They left and probably laughed behind the wall at my naivety, at my desire to use a written law that none of them ever took seriously.* (*The verdict lists I.A. Datsenko as the presiding judge. – Ed.).

And so it happened. When they returned, Matsko said, “Your motion to dismiss is not being considered; it is unfounded.” Although I had substantiated it quite well. I even regretted that I hadn’t filed a motion to dismiss Matsko himself, just to annoy him—let him go out one more time. The fact that I filed a motion to dismiss the prosecutor (his last name was Pohorilyi) angered him so much that when it was time for his prosecutorial speech, he was in a hurry, he dragged the lectern himself, they helped him, he couldn’t wait to get through the break. He read a long piece of material—about what happened in Western Ukraine, about Bandera, about the UPA, about Petliura. He talked about everyone and everything, but said little about me, even though they wrote a long verdict—it was printed on 12 pages.

V. Skrypka: Oksana Yakivna, I’ll interrupt. What he said about the UPA, about Bandera—as a psychologist, he calculated that it was also about you. Recently in a newspaper, someone from Bryansk, I think, asked: “What is all this: anti-communists, some informal organizations that are against the party? But maybe they are right to criticize the party?” And what do you think Yuri Zhukov, a famous Hero of Socialist Labor, a journalist, a real tough cookie, answered him in “Pravda” 4 or 5 days ago? I didn’t read it myself—I heard it on the radio in a press review. He said the same thing about the NTS as your prosecutor said about the UPA and Bandera. He dragged out that old junk and twisted it so that people would understand that the NTS and the informals are the same thing. So there’s nothing surprising in that; they are very predictable in these matters.

O.Ya. Meshko: My lawyer sat there as if he had a mouth full of water. But do you think he was just sitting there, staring at the wall? Nothing of the sort. He was working on the materials for his next case. He was making some notes. He didn’t even hear what sentence they were slapping on me: six months in the camps and five years of exile. And the sentence was counted from the moment of arrest, that is, from December 1. But the fact is, they held me illegally for five days in the forensic medical examination; there was no arrest warrant yet. I had to say something about that.

Let me return to that. The KGB had no intention of arresting me—the KGB intended to lock me up for compulsory treatment as legally insane. And they didn’t think that Bezpalchuk, Professor-Psychiatrist Bezpalchuk, would dare to defy their persuasion or hints to declare me insane. He—thank him, God grant him health!—he found me sane. But there was a gap of 5 days.* (*Indeed, according to the verdict, the sentence was calculated from December 1, 1980. The time spent in the psychiatric hospital—from October 14 to November 25—was included in the sentence, but O.M. was held in custody for 5 days without any legal grounds. The lawyer, Rudenko, did not even point this out to the court. – Ed.). By the way, they had no right to send me for a forensic medical examination a second time: I could have freely undergone it on an outpatient basis. This was all done for one reason: to put me in the psych ward.

I went through three days of trial—the first, second, and third, with breaks. On the third day, they only read the verdict. They read for a long time—because it was 12 typed pages! If you had it in front of you,

O.Ya. Meshko: if you just read it, you would see that behind all the crimes listed in the verdict, there should have been not one person, but a whole group, or a titan, capable of carrying it all out. I even laughed. According to them, I was engaged in undermining Soviet power—a stereotype: I both produced and distributed, “undermined the Soviet foundations”… All that, 12 pages—they had to write all that! But they didn’t give me a copy of the verdict.* (*Oksana Yakivna received a copy of the verdict in a Kyiv court after returning from exile. The verdict, though poorly written, was in Ukrainian. While it only records a part of her activities, it testifies that the “defendant,” as she is called there, carried out truly titanic work that contributed in no small measure to the fall of Soviet power. The verdict was published in the brochure: Oksana Meshko. I Testify. Recorded by Vasyl Skrypka. Kyiv: URP Publishing, 1996, pp. 48–56, and also in the publication: Ukrainian Public Group to Promote the Implementation of the Helsinki Accords: Documents and Materials. In 4 volumes. Kharkiv: Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group. Folio, 2001. Vol. 4, pp. 185–194. – Ed.).

THE TRANSPORT

They took me on the transport… They talked me into…—oh, something I didn’t want to do and understood was pointless!—they talked me into writing a cassation appeal. But they said the appeal would be reviewed within three weeks. Well, I thought, three weeks—although I didn’t want to be in prison anymore, I figured I could delay my transfer from prison with this appeal. And this was the closed prison of the republican KGB: there’s nothing worse or more terrifying. But, they said, it wouldn’t be for long. So they talked me into it. I thought: there will be another visit… So I did a foolish thing: I believed them. They took advantage of this, delayed the review of my appeal—specifically to keep me in prison. And in the meantime, they transferred me to the hospital of the Lukianivska Prison.

Lukianivska Prison, as is known, is well-guarded—with bars, and fences, and appropriate surveillance. But under my ward, there were two more guards on duty, constantly changing shifts. How many man-hours were spent to hold me! And they held me there for quite a long time. They assigned a special doctor who would come in the presence of the guard outside the door. I protested—the doctor wants to listen to my chest, I demand that the man leave. He would say, “It is my duty to be present.” I said, “I do not allow you, doctor, to examine me. Let it be a female guard.” “But the female guard is off today. I’ll turn away.” The doctor was silent—the doctor obeyed them completely.

The doctor treated me—I had high blood pressure. Obviously, one cannot be sent on a transport with such pressure. But I don’t think they were worried about that, and I have proof of it. On March 8, 1981, I was still in Kyiv. I had a heart attack, a terrible heart attack. And it had happened several times before. At that time, the chief physician of this hospital was on duty. He came, examined me, listened, and said, “If your superiors agreed, we could have you certified as medically unfit—I can’t imagine how you can be taken on a transport.” What was wrong with my heart then, I don’t know. Obviously, it was a very serious condition.

So they kept me there, I think, until March 10th or 13th. And on March 13th they returned me again to the closed KGB prison.* *(In a letter from exile, O.M. writes: March 17, 1981. – Ed.). They showed me the response to my cassation appeal, gave it to me to familiarize myself with the results. I had the right to review the protocol of the court proceedings. I saw that there were errors in the records (not in my favor, of course). By law, I had the right to make appropriate corrections. I started writing those corrections, and then they announced to me: “You are leaving on the transport today.” I had only written about five pages. And the distortions of the trial proceedings were very significant. I said, “Until I finish, I’m not going anywhere—I still need today to finish, let it be tomorrow.” The chief guard said, “You will go now!” I said, “I will not go, because I am not finished.” “If you want me to drag you down the stairs, I will do it! Keep that in mind. Write, go on, write.”

So I took all the notes I had made, which I needed for my work—of course, I wasn't allowed to take them with me, they would be confiscated—I started tearing them up, destroying them, threw them in the slop pail. I got my things together.

They put me in a police van and drove me away. Where to—no one said a thing. They always transport you as if you are some kind of cargo, not a living being. They don’t say where. At the station, they put me on a train—they transport you in a “vagón-zak,” what they used to call Stolypin cars. But Solzhenitsyn describes the Stolypin car and the vagón-zak well—there is a difference between them. There are no such large transports as the ones they assemble—where they provide food and water. They give you boiling water three times, and cold water from some dirty bucket twice. They only take you to the latrine twice—whether you beg or not.

The next day I came out before a large prison gate. I looked around at the high fence—a concrete wall. And I guessed: I’m at Kholodna Hora in Kharkiv. When the gate opened and I walked through with my belongings, it was as if a veil covered my eyes, tears streamed down! I knew that somewhere through this gate in 1920, they had led my father, Meshko Yakiv Pavlovych, a 42-year-old man, who was then shot somewhere right here. He is buried somewhere in a mass grave. I knew he had died at Kholodna Hora. Imagining him walking through this gate, it was as if I were stepping into his footprints. My nephew Vasyl Khudenko also passed through this gate. My brother-in-law, my sister’s husband, Mykhailo Khudenko. Vasyl Khudenko’s wife—Nadiya Kandyba. My uncle, Oleksandr Petrovych Yanko. My other uncle, Dmytro Petrovych Yanko… How many more of my relatives passed through here, whom I may not even know passed through this very Ukrainian auto-da-fé—Kholodna Hora?

I was supposed to go to a transit cell. But they didn’t take me to a transit cell, but somewhere downstairs. Countless stairs… No light—only artificial lighting, a deep basement. They opened a door. I entered the cell. A small cell. Double bunks. A tiny table bolted to the concrete, and a stool just like it. Unheated, cold, damp, and dimly lit—maybe a 15-watt bulb. I realized I was in a punishment cell. But I’m going to exile. I’m being taken on a transport, I should be in a transit cell for those being transported. I knocked, I called—the guard didn’t even approach. I could hear his muffled footsteps far away, but he didn’t come. Only three times did they pass bread, boiling water, and some slop to eat through the small window. And every now and then the little window would stir: they weren’t even watching me that closely.

I demanded to see a doctor. The doctor came on the third day. For three days I hadn’t slept—I couldn’t fall asleep from the cold, there was nothing there, only metal bunks and bare boards. A female doctor came, entered the cell—in warm felt boots, a sheepskin coat, and a large shawl, like our peasants wear, thrown over her shoulders. This was further confirmation of how damp, raw, and dangerous to one’s health it was here. I started telling her, “I am going to exile. Exile gives me the right to travel even freely—they could have given me money and I could have traveled on my own, according to the law. Why have I ended up in a punishment cell? I am 75 years old, I haven’t slept for three days, I am cold, I am frozen, I am shivering. Look at you, you came in dressed so warmly.” “Because I have worked here a long time and I am sick. What do you want?” She spoke to me in Ukrainian. I said, “I know this is a violation and I shouldn’t be here.” “Alright, I’ll try to do something for you. But I want to tell you that our prison is overflowing, our cells are overcrowded, and you have such a charge that you must be kept separate, without contact with common criminals. So I would have to move a whole cell of people into that already overcrowded cell, just so you could be alone.” I said, “I don’t know how things are in your prison—thank you for the information. But the law demands to be followed, and I demand to be moved to a transit cell.” “I’ll try.”

That evening, they did indeed move me. The cell was small, but, as a guard later told me, everyone was peeking through the little window, because it was a miracle that one person was put in such a cell. They knew about the upheavals that had taken place before to free it up. But he said, “It won’t be for long, you’ll be leaving soon.”

Every day they would announce to me, “Get ready for the transport.” I would sit dressed with my bundles, but they wouldn’t take me. This happened several times. Then I started asking what was going on, and one guard said, “The transport chiefs don’t want to take you because you’re old.”

Finally, they announced to me again, “Get ready, and your things—take everything. They are going to look at you.”

I went out into a large, fenced-in transport yard. A whole group of people stood there in padded jackets. Men to the side. They placed me here, closer to the authorities. The transport chief approached. As he called the roll of all his transportees, he would glance at me sideways from time to time. Then he came up and said, “Do you know that you don’t have to go on the transport?” I said, “No, I don’t.” “You have the right to refuse the transport. It’s not just me who doesn’t want to take you; I don’t want to transport corpses.” He asked one thing, then another, and I spoke to him in a cheerful voice, of course, and said, “I’m asking you: please take me on the transport.” “What? You’re asking?” “Yes. Because one way or another—they will take me on a transport. They will take me from Ukraine! They will take me from Ukraine… But to suffer here, in transit, is hard for me. I just want to get to my destination sooner.” “Well, alright, if you’re asking. But are you sure that if you refuse, they’ll take you anyway?” “Ask them: with a charge like mine, they’ll transport me anyway—dead, but they’ll transport me!”

So I left with that transport chief. We traveled on the Kharkiv-Sverdlovsk leg. We traveled for three days. From time to time we would stop, our cars would be uncoupled and shunted somewhere into a corner. It’s a rather long and slow procedure.

When we were about to arrive—we already knew we were going to Sverdlovsk, I heard it somewhere among the people, because there were some knowledgeable folks there who had been on these transports more than once—I discovered that the zipper on my boot wouldn’t close. I asked for the convoy chief to come. The guard on duty was surprised why I wanted him specifically. I said, “I have a special matter—tell him I’m asking for him.” “He’s sleeping.” “Then later.” I reminded them several times, and finally he came. I said, “You know, I have a request for you—you know we’re not allowed to have a shoelace, or a bandage, or anything, so could they give me some rag so I can tear it and tie up my boots—how will I walk?” He said, “Here, let me see—my wife always has this problem. Maybe I can do something.” He left, came back later and said, “There, that’s better. This zipper is still not bad.” He fixed my zipper… I know about the severity of the convoy, I know about these convoy chiefs, who allow themselves anything… I don’t want to praise him, but I want to say that in this case, he acted… he acted humanely towards me. Can you imagine how I must have looked, that even the convoy chief—even he took pity (cries), while those KGB men in the Kyiv prison tormented me so with their interrogations! And other things like that.

When we got out and had to walk to the Sverdlovsk transit prison, the convoy chief took my things and gave them to some common criminal who had nothing (laughs and cries), he was “as poor as a church mouse.” He gave them to him and said, “Carry this!” I even thought that maybe I had just said goodbye to those things. I didn’t say anything, but I was doubtful and probably looked frightened, but he said, “Don’t worry, he’s not going to run away from here” (laughs). These were the kinds of comedies that happened along the way.

In Sverdlovsk, they threw me into a cell, of course, with the common criminals, because the place was so overcrowded with people that there was nowhere to put a single soul. They put me in a tiny cell among criminals. The criminals gave me a very unwelcoming reception, saying, “Just what we needed, an old hag in here!” And they themselves were young and, you could say, healthy girls. “There’s no room!” And he said, “You’ll sleep two to a bunk.” I said, “I won’t. Don’t worry, you sleep separately—I’ll be on the floor.” Then these girls softened a little towards me. I was undemanding (cries). What was there to put on the floor? But I was so tired that I lay down right away—my bundle under my arms and head, I lay down, and they had to walk over me to get to the toilet—there was plumbing there. So they stepped over my legs. I think there were four of them. It was a small, special kind of cell.

They started asking me what I was in for. I thought: I won’t tell them what for, because who knows what their reaction will be. I said, “For bribery.” “A big bribe?” “No, not big.” “How much?” “50 rubles.” “Oh, was it worth it for 50 rubles?!” These girls of mine were one from Kharkiv, another from somewhere in Odesa—they were such pros that the ground burned under their feet. “At 75—and for bribery? What beasts!” They cursed out all my investigators, gave them a piece of their mind… (Laughs).

And then I started to feel ill—I fainted. They noticed it. When they noticed, they got scared—they are all terribly superstitious. They were afraid that I might die here in their cell—and that’s a bad thing…

V. Skrypka: A bad omen.

O.Ya. Meshko: A bad omen! (Laughs). They started banging on the door. I wouldn’t have been able to bang—I didn’t have the strength to crawl to the door, I just lay there. They started calling for a doctor. No one came in response to their calls. Then they all started shouting together! I had already come to, got scared, and said, “Oh, God, don’t knock so hard, they might even punish you.” “Let them take you away—why did they dump a corpse on us?”

A female doctor came. She looked at me, took my blood pressure, and quickly called for orderlies. I could barely move my legs, and the orderlies brought me to some small hospital room of theirs. I think the hospital there isn’t small, but they sort people according to their charges. So, they brought me—there were eight of us there. All those people helped, worked, and served the “separate blocks.” And what were these “separate blocks”? It turns out that there, in Sverdlovsk, various lawyers, jurists, and judges were imprisoned for their own crimes. Whether it was bribery or something else, I don’t know. Those women told me what polite people they were, how easy it was to work with them. They would collect their dirty laundry, deliver their food, bring them the press—because this was the privileged part of the prisoners, those who had administered Soviet justice but had been punished. How many of them there were, I don’t know—obviously, quite a few, because it was a whole separate corridor.

They started to treat me there, and I recovered a little.

The next transport. This time, they took me on the transport without any friction. From this Sverdlovsk, where I had stayed for about 10 days until the doctor allowed me to be transported, they took me… I’ve forgotten what came first on the way, I need to look at a map. Because I was in Krasnoyarsk and in Irkutsk—so which was first? I think, Irkutsk.* *(It was Krasnoyarsk. – Ed.). I went to Irkutsk.

In Irkutsk—it wasn't without incident. They put me in a large transport cell. People were lying on the floor, under the bunks, in the aisles, stepping over one another like that. The guard led me in and addressed the people: “You all reproach us for being heartless people. You are humane people, kinder than us—so give up a spot for this old woman.” No one moved and no one drew any conclusion from this. He didn’t try to persuade them for long—he turned and left. I sat there on a bench for a long time—there was a long table and long benches like that. I sat for a long time, then some thin little woman said, “There’s a window here, so it’s cold, the pane is not glazed—maybe you can settle here?” I was very glad, although a little bit of wind did blow on me. I was dressed in warm clothes, only my shoes were off, and I lay there just like that.

I have high blood pressure. Nurses bring medicine to a little window. Everyone goes up in turn and asks for it themselves, saying what’s wrong with them—a stomachache or a headache. The range of understanding was very limited: she dispensed medicine at her own discretion, without a doctor’s examination. I have high blood pressure. They gave me Raunatin tablets—as it later turned out, I shouldn’t have taken them because I have glaucoma, and it was terribly harmful to me.

I also forgot to tell you that before they sent me to this transit cell, I took my medicine with me. They didn’t allow it, but I said, “I have glaucoma, I must have this medicine with me because I have to put in drops three times a day.” “The nurse will come and put them in for you!” And some sick person sitting there said, “When does that nurse ever come? Sometimes she comes, sometimes she doesn’t, if it’s once a day, thank God—but you need it three times.” Someone there supported me. But this senior guard wouldn’t allow it: “Not allowed”—and that was that. I dug my heels in—and he dug his heels in. And then he said, “You have such a charge that you should behave a little better, without such harsh demands. Some guy just passed through here—what was his name? Listen, Ivan, do you remember that man’s name? I forgot, something with the letter ‘S’… I forgot… He was such a composed man, he needed something too, but when we said it’s not allowed, he obeyed.” “Well, I can’t obey, I need to put drops in my eyes!” And I demanded until they gave me the drops—because of the glaucoma. It turns out that Yevhen Sverstiuk had passed through their prison, and they remembered him. They remembered this person.

V. Skrypka: They must have remembered him because of his charge.

O.Ya. Meshko: They remembered his manner of speaking. Of course, I lost my temper when they wouldn’t let me put drops in my eyes, sick with glaucoma.

V. Skrypka: He was more reserved than you in his dealings with the authorities.

O.Ya. Meshko: Without a doubt. He is reserved, he is well-mannered, while I with them…

V. Skrypka: And you are irrepressible, like all women, and on top of that, there was the situation.

O.Ya. Meshko: No, I couldn’t stand them. First of all, all my predecessors had gone through the investigation, signed protocols. But I did not sign protocols. Can you imagine—not signing? To not sign a protocol, you had to fight for that right. I had to fight for it because we had an agreement among the members of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group: not to engage with them in a protocol. All our predecessors had kept protocols, signed the completion of the investigation—we remained silent. Matusevych didn’t sign a single protocol; they dragged him down the stairs, from what I know. Lukianenko was the same—Lukianenko even at his trial, when he was being tried in Horodnia, he said, “I ask you: take me back to my cell and try me in my absence.” Those were the kinds of trials we had.

V. Skrypka: Yes. And he’s a lawyer, Lukianenko, so he probably knew some legal grounds for behaving that way. Lukianenko—he graduated from MSU, didn’t he?

O.Ya. Meshko: Well, yes, he graduated from Moscow State University, the Faculty of Law. Gorbachev graduated from there too.

V. Skrypka: Lukyanov, Gorbachev, Lukianenko…

O.Ya. Meshko: Lukianenko was even the secretary of a party cell there—he was a party member, you know.

V. Skrypka: Oh, yes, he could have become a big shot. He might have even had a path to the Central Committee and the Politburo if he hadn't gotten involved with you…

O.Ya. Meshko: Excuse me, but you also have to belong to that clan—they have their own clan, they prop each other up. That’s why they’ve ended up in a situation where today the entire Central Committee needs to be replaced, leaving perhaps only Gorbachev.

V. Skrypka: Yes, it was one thing to take a swing at Khrushchev, as you and your sister did. But now, you see, it’s collective leadership.

O.Ya. Meshko: You know, when Khrushchev was driving home to his dacha, a whole escort of cars drove with him—how could one possibly get near him?

V. Skrypka: They blocked all traffic.

O.Ya. Meshko: All the traffic was blocked—he drove along the Zhytomyr highway to where his dacha was. So how could one get near him? By the way, I said to my investigator, “How, practically? I’m not insane, my sister and I are not insane—how could it be done practically?” He said, “Well, why must there be intent? An inclination is enough.” I said, “But that’s insane, you just made that up, didn’t you? I can’t confirm this for you. Let’s have witnesses.” Then the investigator, Kutsenko, told me this: “What proof is needed? The only proof needed is your own confession.” And they beat a “own confession” out of me.

So, we were sitting there, in transit, for a whole two weeks, even more than two weeks. People were shouting, demanding to be put on the transport sooner. The conditions were horrific. They took us to the bathhouse, and in the bathhouse, the drain water wouldn’t go down—we were knee-deep in a puddle, the water itself was knocking us down, we could have fallen in. Furthermore. You couldn’t get enough sleep… Well, horrible conditions. I got acquainted with such a contingent there… I didn’t know people, I didn’t know our society, Mr. Vasyl! Imagine: I am a person who was always involved in public affairs—back when I was a schoolteacher, when I worked in the Kyiv regional consumer cooperative, traveling to the districts—I was always dealing with people. I knew the village people, I knew the intelligentsia, I knew the people who are herded to evening events, to concerts, I knew them in the store, on the street—but I didn’t know people! And here I saw what ails our society.

There was one young girl there who told the whole cell (and there were many of us) that she had been convicted of prostitution. She said, “I had 25 witnesses, but they should have called 125, and even that would have been too few.” Such horrible things. I saw young girls, who couldn’t even be tried as adults yet, serving their sentences as minors. They were just being transferred to the camps. I saw those children too… These are the children of the North, the children of Russia. They didn’t have such long transports as I did, because, for the most part, they were people convicted of common crimes.

By the way, there is an interesting point I must emphasize. They serve their sentences in their own republic, and only especially dangerous criminals are held in distant camps. People convicted for political reasons were also classified as especially dangerous criminals. They never serve their sentences at home in Ukraine; they are taken to the most distant regions, the most difficult in terms of climate, supplies… People there live in unnatural, unfamiliar conditions for them; they are not adapted to it. It’s a different matter when it’s the Yakuts, who were born there. They have self-preservation in their genes, whereas we do not have that self-preservation. We serve our sentences in such conditions, on such long transports. I don’t know if any other of the most serious criminals—did any of them have a transport of 105 days, like I did? I asked many people, “How long were you on the transport?” When I finally mentioned that number, people would clutch their heads: “What are you saying? That’s impossible!” Well, that’s how it was.

So, I was in Irkutsk for a long time. I was also very unwell there. They didn’t even have the medicine I asked for. So I asked to see a doctor. I told my guard that according to the charge I was convicted under, I should be in a separate cell. “You are committing a violation by putting me in a general cell. I have nothing against those I’m in here with,”—this I addressed to my fellow sufferers. “But you are breaking the law. Besides the fact that there is no space, no anything.”

I called for a doctor. A strapping young fellow came, a handsome man. He listened to me with such skepticism, looked at me with such contempt, and said, “You still have complaints? Be thankful you’re in this cell, we could have just thrown you in solitary, in a punishment cell, and you’d be sitting there in an unheated room!” “But that would be a violation of the law!” “So what are we supposed to do? Put yourself in our position—our prison is designed for…”—I don’t remember the number he said. “But there are ten times more people here.”

That’s the situation with this criminal element.

From Irkutsk, they took me to Krasnoyarsk.* (*Probably the other way around. – Ed.). In Krasnoyarsk, they took me to the hospital. They took me to the hospital themselves. Because they took me off the train, leading me by the arms. They brought me in—and without looking to see if there was a place, because there was no chair, no bench, you had to stand while you went through the inspection and document checks for the transport—I just sat down, stretched out my legs, and bowed my head—not to sleep, but to die. In that state, they took me to the hospital.

They obviously didn’t have such a cell either. They came up with something, but they put an informer in with me. The informer was a rather pleasant person. She talked me into writing letters: “I’ll arrange everything for you, I’ll arrange it, I walk around here, she does something somewhere…” I later realized that she was their informer. She only slept here in the cell, but spent more time out there. I wrote several petitions, several letters. I wrote one letter to Charochkina at the republican psychoneurological dispensary, the one who had evaluated me. I wrote one to the head of the forensic examination department—I wrote and reproached her for the five days I was held in custody, that she had kept me there illegally and that I could have been free for five days. I dreamed so much of that freedom, of our “freedom” in quotes. I mourned for five days, and I had five and a half years ahead of me!

So, from this cell, they also didn’t take me for a long time—the transport chief didn’t want to take me. Finally, they would bring me out for inspection, he would look at my cheerful appearance—when you’re 75, it seems you should be led by the arms, but I…

[ E n d o f t r a c k]

In Nikolaevsk-on-Amur* *(First Khabarovsk, and then Nikolaevsk-on-Amur. – Ed.) I spent more than a month alone in a cell, after the disinfection of bedbugs and various filth, in an unventilated room. I don’t know how I survived. Then Khabarovsk, a meeting with yet another investigator, who was curious to see such a political prisoner, who at 75 years old* *(At 76! – Ed.) was on her way to exile—probably for that purpose. I didn’t want to talk to him and argued with him.

EXILE

The weather to Ayan was non-flying. There are two ways to get to Ayan: either by plane—that’s all year round, or by steamship—only during the navigation season (the shortest period is 2-3 months of navigation). So, I didn’t get on a plane because the weather was non-flying. Then—by steamship—and I arrived in Ayan.* *(O.M. arrived in Ayan, where her son Oles Serhiyenko was serving a 3-year exile, on July 3, 1981. – Ed. The following is a note by O. Serhiyenko. Mom was brought to Ayan by sea, having broken all records for the length and arduousness of the transport—by prisoner transport cars and by sea—from Nikolaevsk-on-Amur. The code allows exiles to travel to their place of exile on their own, without a convoy. Or, if with a convoy, then by plane, in three days. The calculation was to completely undermine her already broken health with the tribulations of the prison transport: it was in the psychiatric hospital in the summer of 1980 that Mom developed hypertension.

When Mom was taken on the transport, my wife, on March 28, after a difficult labor, gave birth to my daughter, and due to a symphysis rupture, lost the ability to walk and found herself alone with two children—an infant and a third-grader. Mom understood well the choice the KGB had put me in by assigning Ayan as her place of exile, and, without hesitation, strictly ordered: “Son, go, save your family!” For me began a three-month epic of repairing a dilapidated hut and gathering firewood for the long winter. In addition, they deliberately did not pay Mom’s pension, in order to force me to stay in Ayan, and I worked odd jobs on Sundays to leave her money until her pension came. My exile was extended by a month and a half (from September 4 to October 16, 1981), and I left there on October 18 on the last random steamship. – O. Serhiyenko).

The hut was 300 meters from the shore of the Sea of Okhotsk, on a large, wide street named Vostretsov. A Yakut hut that had to be repaired for a full three months to be able to stay in it for the winter. I was there alone, and I was lucky in that, because Yakuts have a small hut but a larger vestibule where they kept their livestock in the winter. This vestibule was filled with chopped firewood—this allowed me to survive during the blizzards, when my hut stood like a haystack in a field, like a snowdrift, when I was snowed in for several days, with no way to get outside. One barrel of water in the hut, and another, empty one, closer to the street, 35 meters away. In good weather, they would fill the barrel with water. You had to carry it instantly, 20 buckets, into the hut, because it would freeze. Sometimes it would happen that it was time to get new water, but you, say, had a third of a barrel in the hut and you weren't getting more water yet. And then bad weather hits, you get snowed in, it snows for a week, and then—a week until someone digs me out, shovels away the snow.

There were times when the wind would tear down the power lines and I would be left in the hut without light. I would light a candle. The windows were snowed over, the doors drifted shut. I was alone in that hut, and I didn't know when I would see the light of day. This hut is by the road. People walking by would ask, “Is she in there, is she alive?” A neighbor would say, “Well, probably alive, because yesterday there was still smoke coming from the chimney.” That’s how I signaled to people that I was still alive.

Once my Lyudochka, who worked at the store, got angry with my neighbors when they said, “Well, she’s still alive—there was smoke yesterday.” “You’re men, you should have taken a shovel and dug her out!” She took a shovel, and I heard someone shoveling snow. Suddenly the snow falls from the window—God’s light, it’s bright outside! And Lyuda, rosy-cheeked, cheerful, knocks on my window, waves her hand, and runs to her shift…

I hired people for half a liter of vodka. There are many alimony dodgers there; they are sent there. Only one political exile, no more are allowed. So, I would make arrangements with the alimony dodgers for vodka. They clear the snow once or bring water—half a liter of vodka. But then they would be summoned to the KGB and strictly ordered: if he does this for me again, he will be punished. So he wouldn’t come again—unless he was drunk and remembered that he could get a drink here to cure his hangover, and then he’d come.

Then I started to manage on my own, because that dependence tormented me terribly. When a blizzard started, I would get dressed—felt boots, padded pants, a hat, take a shovel and try to clear it. But there was nowhere to throw it—it was so high! So I started to stomp it down. The snow is fluffy, it gets packed down and settles. I walk and stomp, and stomp, and stomp—35 meters to the street. They clear it there with a tractor. I get tired—I go into the hut, sit, drink some water, and go out and stomp again. In this way, I created a narrow tunnel, just for my figure to pass through. And all that snow was packed upwards, forming a tunnel somewhere up there, higher than the windows of my little hut.

I took care of myself. I didn't worry. All day, when I didn't leave the hut, I wrote—I wrote letters, I wrote petitions, I wrote complaints. I wrote… When it was possible to go outside, I went. The road there is cleared. I would cross over to the bay of the Sea of Okhotsk, where a section was cleared because people drove to the other side of the bay for gasoline. I would stroll along this bay for an hour, two. A KGB car would come specially to look at such a marvel—this one person, outside, marching on that ice.

I didn’t give in to my sorrow and my pessimism. I am not a pessimist by nature, but in those conditions, one could go mad. But each time I mobilized myself for a walk, for work, and for prayer. I believe that prayer and turning to God helped me to endure that terrible captivity. It’s a small district, called Ayano-Maysky, the village of Ayan. There are very few inhabitants—1,800 people, and in the summer more come “for the long ruble” for construction and various jobs. They live in families. There wasn't a single woman my age there, living alone in a hut, battling the elements and the KGB.

And I had to battle the KGB. The KGB persecuted me. Imagine, when the MVD designated this geographical point on the map as a place of exile for politicals, they set up a KGB service post there. There were two of them, a third was the driver, a car, and a typist from the locals. And that office worked—the typewriter clattered, they drove around the town, summoning people. They questioned everyone about me, informed everyone who I was. But they didn't inform them properly, they didn't tell the truth, but said that I had been in Western Ukraine, that I belonged to those who shot our own red soldiers, who destroyed them. Some fool listened, but others no longer believed them. I arrived in Ayan at a time when people, I can say, didn't treat me badly—some were perhaps indifferent, some with sympathy, and some would ask with a smile: “Is our government really so weak that this one woman is here, and there are two of them, and two more, and a cleaning lady too? Just think, how many people! And when will your term end?”

And there were also some drunken boys who threw stones at me. I would run away, because I was afraid of being hit in the head. But that didn't happen often, maybe once or twice. There was one, when I would go out for an evening constitutional before bed, if the weather permitted—some motorcyclist would chase me. In the store, where I went for groceries—vegetables and all that were brought in from Khabarovsk—there were long lines, many people crowded in, and I would get my products there in line—people know each other, and I was a stranger among them, they would ask: “Who is that? What is that?” Those who knew would say: “Oh, the exile, for life.” They thought I had come to Ayan for life, I heard that.

I was not there for life. I set a goal for myself to return home. I took all sorts of measures for physical training, mental training. I had moral support from people who wrote to me: people from Lviv wrote, the Horyn family wrote, Muscovites supported me. The Ukrainian diaspora and the Germans supported me very much. Strangely enough, Germans from the FRG sent me a lot of different parcels—this and that, nothing special, but those little parcels were important to me—that I was remembered, that I was known. They sent letters to the Khabarovsk Krai—they appealed to the authorities, they appealed to the prosecutor's office. The prosecutor's office had to take an interest in my situation and my provisions.

I appealed to the court. There was a judge there named Stus, a Ukrainian, who had once come “for the long ruble” and stayed until his pension. Stus sympathized with me. Stus even said, “If I had the chance, we would work it out with the hospital—let them give such a document, and we would get you through a commission for release.” I reassured him: “It won’t help, that’s out of the question.”

There was a prosecutor there named Suvorov. An interesting man. We would sometimes—because he had little work, and I would come in on some matter with a complaint against the KGB—they would confiscate my letters, or seize some parcels, or something like that—and so I got to know him. When I came to him, we would talk for a long time. He criticized the Soviet government and the KGB so much, and how much they cost the state, those who were over me in this Ayan post, and how it affected our finances. He spoke so sincerely, so openly, that one time I listened to him and was amazed, because even when I was free, I didn't always allow myself to speak in such a way with just anyone. I asked, “Aren’t you afraid, telling me all this?” And he said, “Who would believe you? No one would believe you—I’m perfectly calm. Besides everything else.” That is, he truly sympathized with me, and he helped me when they took my letters. All letters were checked—both those that arrived and those that I sent. Very few of my letters reached the outside world.

Being in exile in Ayan—from where you can only get out by plane, and I was also under surveillance—I had to go to the militia station every month to check in. And there were days when you couldn’t get out, and they would even reproach me: “Why didn’t you come on time?” So, I also went to the militia. I would joke: “My militia is protecting me. Maybe you need some help here?” They would ask, “With what?” “Your windows are so dirty, they need to be washed.” “There, thank you for telling us. When we have people sitting here—we really do need to wash the windows and doors.”

Many of these chiefs had a portrait of Lenin under the glass on their desks. Forgive me, I made a mistake—a portrait of Stalin. This infuriated me. And our passport officer—he was separate, you had to go to him through another entrance, in the same building—had a portrait of Stalin under glass. He would sit, work, and admire it all day. I was outraged. I explained to him, “In a short time—how ashamed you will be that you have him there under glass.” I think they remember me today. None of them keep Stalin under glass anymore—but what about in their souls? They all dream of a “harsh order,” they all dream of a “firm hand.” They want a “firm hand.” Democracy gets up their noses. These people cannot stand democratism. Can they be reformed? Can the restructuring be done with these people? They all remained in their old posts.

I was in the hospital several times. Even for several months at a time. The doctors were of such a qualification that they couldn’t even make a correct diagnosis, but they understood that it was severe heart failure, and I stayed there. When I was later examined in Australia before my eye surgery, it turned out that I had suffered three heart attacks. I know I had two heart attacks—somewhere, obviously, in Ayan. I myself am surprised that I was so ill, and yet had the strength to return.

THE RETURN

I served out that term. But not a single day more. I was lucky—this time the weather was good for flying. Just before the end, not long before, our local policeman told me—he was just passing by somewhere, as if not on purpose, but we met, as I understood, not by chance. He told me, “I’ll take you, and then I’ll come get you—after all, you’ll be released from here.” “To where?” “They want to check your mental health.” And that, I remember, was on April 1st. I was being released on November 5th. I told him, “Today is April 1st—are you joking with me?” “No, but we shouldn’t talk about this anymore.” He wanted to warn me. Imagine: an ordinary local policeman, who drags drunks by the collar, still had some semblance of humanity at times. He sympathized with me and warned me.

So, I was extremely wary. What I regretted most—I understood: if they were taking me to the psych ward, then I didn't need those letters and the 12-page verdict. I decided to destroy the letters. There were many letters from Sverstiuk, from Petro Rozumny, from my countrymen, from Panas Zalyvakha, from Kyiv, from Lviv, from other cities. There were many beautiful letters from abroad. I gathered everything and decided that I would burn the letters myself. But my verdict—I had to call the KGB and burn it in front of them. Why did I do this? If I ended up there, I didn’t want an investigation to start immediately. Because they would question me based on those letters. I burned them—and I regret it deeply. It was a treasure that could not be parted with without heartache.

I left all my things there. I took only the minimum, what I could carry. I sent the more valuable things home, and left all this. One woman, very old, but, of course, younger than me, who helped me a lot when I was in the hospital, heating the hut, she said, “No, no, we’ll sell everything.” But I said, “No, I won’t sell anything, I’ll leave everything here. Let the poor Yakuts take it.”

The Yakuts are poor, the Yakuts are people who truly belonged to those who were robbed both spiritually and physically. I left everything for her. And the last things, what I slept on and such—I took out in the morning and placed on the stoop. I locked the door, took the key to the hut to give it to a political prisoner who was sent there, to provide him with housing.

So, on November 5, 1985, I left. In Nikolaevsk-on-Amur, there was a stop for refueling. While the plane was being prepared for the next flight, they let us off for a break. I wanted, like everyone else, to go to the terminal—they blocked my way, didn’t let me pass. A man, not in a military uniform, but in a pilot’s uniform, said, “Come with me to our office.” I was frightened, thinking: he might leave me here, and the plane will take off in the meantime. They’ll do something—not in front of the people who were traveling with me and knew I was returning home. He was pulling my arm, I was resisting. But he didn’t yet have that grip—to grab by the scruff of the neck. He was acting on instructions, but he didn’t have the audacity and courage—to drag an old woman. I said, “I’m going to the restroom. Will you allow me to go to the restroom?” “We-e-ell… Alright, go,” he allowed. He had some other business, someone was calling him. He waited for me outside the restroom. I locked myself in. I sat there until I heard people already heading to the plane. I came out and joined them. Thus I got back to my seat and thought: so, whatever they wanted to do won't happen here. It won’t be here, it will be in Khabarovsk.

I flew to Khabarovsk with a heavy heart. And how surprised I was: when I got off with my things—four people were standing in a little group! Two I knew, and two I semi-knew. The ones I semi-knew were accountants-auditors who had previously been on an audit in Ayan; I had spoken with both of them. And one was a Muscovite, /Leonid/ Vasilyev, the other—Petro Rozumny. Not knowing each other, they stood there in a group, waiting. Thus, they all reached out to me together and all got acquainted. They were surprised that the arrival of this plane had not been announced, whereas all previous planes had been announced. So they were the only ones left by these doors.

These auditors knew the date of my release—I had told them. Just in case—they weren’t sure I would actually be on this plane, but the weather was good for flying, so they guessed and came. So, four people met me. I said a polite goodbye to the auditors, we even took pictures, went to a park.

A hotel room had already been arranged for me by Vasilyev. They got a room for Petro too, as we had to wait for a plane. We flew the next day. I stayed in the hotel with these men. That is, there were already people, there were witnesses. And the auditors also came to say goodbye.

We flew with Vasilyev and Petro Rozumny. I knew Petro Rozumny from letters and a photograph; I hadn’t met him before, although I knew about him from Ivano-Frankivsk.

We arrived by plane in Moscow. In Moscow, I decided that we wouldn’t take a plane, we would take a train. I thanked Vasilyev for his trouble and said that I would now travel with Petro Rozumny, we were going the same way, and this route had probably already tired him out.

We traveled together on the train with Petro Rozumny. He had come especially to meet me. But he didn’t come to Ayan—he came to Khabarovsk, because he didn’t even know how to get to Ayan or when. It was difficult, because you needed a special pass to Ayan. I didn’t mention that my place of exile, Ayan, had restricted entry as a border zone—it’s on the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk. So, it was very difficult to come to me in Ayan—you needed a special permit. That’s why they all met me in Khabarovsk.

I arrived accompanied by Petro Rozumny. I immediately felt a very great sympathy and gratitude for the care he showed me. I had had to spend five years in captivity alone, relying on my own strength—and here, suddenly, a relatively young and healthy person is taking care of you, a person who sympathizes with you. It is very pleasant, especially pleasant when you are returning after serving your time in captivity.

V. Skrypka: Dear Oksana Yakivna, new times have come—times that are hopeful, heartening, that inspire faith that a turning point has occurred in our society, in people’s psychology—and that is very important. Central Europe is now storming towards democracy, towards at least those elementary freedoms that are an indispensable attribute of human life. So for us, undoubtedly, the prospects are not bad. But I would like to ask what your views are on the course of events that are happening here. And I would also like to ask, how did that trip to Australia come about? Because I was listening to the radio then—I just happened to turn it on—and heard that you spent a whole day in parliament. And anyone who wanted to asked you about the situation here, in our Ukraine. You even gave a speech there… A few specific details, if you could.

O.Ya. Meshko: You know, I believed that I would return home. I directed all my spiritual energy towards returning. Because I thought: to die on foreign soil is the worst punishment. And I was indeed lucky: I returned home. I was very unwell, and I did not acclimatize to Kyiv quickly. My return fell at the end of 1985; I returned in November.

These were interesting, new events. The first wave of perestroika, “glasnost, acceleration.” It was still perceived with such surprise and disbelief. It seemed there was no basis for it. But then the press, radio, television… Idols were torn down from their pedestals, smashed to pieces. A lot of fiction about the Stalinist era was published. Recently, Solzhenitsyn’s “The Gulag Archipelago” is also being printed.

ABROAD

I ended up abroad not by chance—I was invited to have eye surgery. I ended up in Australia.* (Note by O. Serhiyenko: February 1988 – January 1989. I want to note that both my mother and I were most cared for in exile by Maya Hrudka from the Australian community, who regularly and consistently sent everything necessary to Ayan: clothing (a full set), food. It was she, Maya Hrudka, who, on behalf of the Ukrainian community, organized Mom’s invitation to Australia and payment for the trip, thus beginning Mom’s triumphal journey abroad in 1988, which, after her successful speech in the Australian parliament, turned into a round-the-world trip across continents and communities. It looked like this: Kyiv – Moscow, where, having received a paid ticket at the Australian embassy, Mom flew on the Moscow – Singapore – Melbourne route. And in the summer of 1988, accompanied by her nephew, she flew on the Melbourne – Honolulu – New York route, approaching home. After a stop and a productive stay in the USA, where she participated in the congress of the World Congress of Free Ukrainians, and a rest, she returned via Paris to Kyiv.)

I remember with what disbelief the Australian community, the Australian diaspora, treated perestroika. There was a distance between how people who had left Ukraine in 1947 perceived it, and how I perceived it, having arrived from Ukraine in 1988. It was a colossal distance. Our diaspora remained at the viewpoint of the most terrible times. Having survived those terrible times and a second captivity—those five and a half years—and having come out during perestroika, I did not acclimatize quickly. I want to say that it wasn't in one year, or two, but when I found myself abroad, when I was allowed to go and when I had to speak before my countrymen, I brought them full information about our situation, about the Ukrainian question, about Ukrainian political prisoners. I conveyed it as it was at that time. At that time, the Perm camps were still filled with members of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group and human rights defenders. I conveyed information very truthfully, but with faith in possible changes, since the head of state, Gorbachev, had taken a new position.

Gorbachev inspired hope for change. Our Writers’ Union of Ukraine, which I, to be honest, regarded with great prejudice… I had appealed to them for the defense of Vasyl Ovsienko. Yevhen Sverstiuk also appealed with his own petition for help in the case of the “Cathedral in Scaffolding,” which they had incriminated him with. I appealed to those writers, but I treated them with prejudice, as there were no people among them who were capable of spiritually overcoming fear. And here I saw with my own eyes that people had crossed the threshold of fear. Such articles appeared in the newspapers that I copied them, as there was only one newspaper. This was the case with Volodymyr Yavorivsky’s article. It was a long article—perhaps one of the boldest at the time. I copied it, although I had heard that Yavorivsky was a very moderate man and kept very much to the right bank.

I BELIEVED ONCE MORE...

I began to believe. This was the second time—the first time, when I was rehabilitated, I believed and then repented. And the second time—now, but perhaps with less trust, more restrained.

The diaspora untied my tongue. When I was going there, I thought I would have the surgery, get some treatment, and I had to return—I had a goal to return. Although things were not so good for me here, I always feel Ukrainian. The kind of Ukrainian who is obliged by her very birth, by her belonging to this long-suffering Ukraine of ours, that I must make a feasible contribution. I have always lived by this. Although I told myself that I would behave very moderately, finding myself abroad among people who remained at the level of 1947, who did not understand what colossal changes had taken place in that time, that time itself was turning us towards those changes—I began to persuade them to accept these changes. I told them about my Perm colleagues, my brothers-in-arms, I told them about the misfortune they were enduring. I believed that perhaps they would not have to sit until the end. Speaking to my countrymen, I told them, “I am campaigning for the Soviet press—which one? Read the newspaper ‘Literaturna Ukraina,’ read our journals! ‘Zhovten’ was the most left-wing then. There were such articles there—I even brought them with me… What’s his name, that French writer who wrote about Bohdan Khmelnytsky?”

V. Skrypka: Prosper Mérimée.

O.Ya. Meshko: Ah, Mérimée. I brought them these journals, gave them to read, left them there. When they told me, “If you want to help, then we want to help too, say, Levko Lukianenko and those in Perm—let’s go to the parliament.” I agreed.

In parliament, I met with people who were very interested in the Soviet Union and, in particular, Ukraine. They even invited me to lunch in a restaurant. They ate, and I talked with them. Then I spoke in parliament in defense of our political prisoners, emphasizing Levko Lukianenko the most. Because they say, “You can’t do everyone at once, but at least someone separately.”

I found myself in an environment where people freely said whatever they thought, without looking around to see if it was okay to say it to this person or not. And you know, I literally became infected with this, I was imbued with it. I began to feel so free that I forgot my initial reservations. And when I had to move to New York to my relative, my nephew, Yurko Lohush—I stayed with him—and then, when I was invited to the World Congress of Free Ukrainians—I went, I had to speak there—I saw how people spoke freely about everything, and I was reborn during those eleven months. Returning to Ukraine, I arrived right at the time of rallies, at the time of the reorganization of our Ukrainian Public Group to Promote the Implementation of the Helsinki Accords into the Ukrainian Helsinki Union. We gathered, albeit in private apartments—I breathed a sigh of relief, and believed once more...

In the journal “Kuryer Kryvbasu,” no. 7, 1994, p. 9:  

V. Skrypka. I will end with a parable about how the Lavra Bell Tower was built. Whatever the builders erected during the day—would sink into the ground overnight. In the morning, they would start again, and by the next night—the same picture: the construction had sunk into the ground. And so it was every time. Until the builders worked so harmoniously that from dawn to dusk they raised the walls, and the dome, and placed the cross. And in the morning—oh, a miracle!—a structure reaching to the sky stood before their eyes. Because everything they had done before had risen from the ground. Is it not so with our Ukraine?

And I wanted to remember a woman I had known for a quarter of a century. She lived for one idea: a free Ukraine. This idea guided her all her life and, apparently, gave her the health to endure incredible torments, tortures, and hardships.

I once called her the Iron Lady. To which she only smiled apologetically: “Someone else has told me that.”

137,776 characters.

Published:

Oksana Meshko. The Mother of Ukrainian Democracy. Literary record by Vasyl Skrypka. // Kuryer Kryvbasu, 1994, No. 2–7. 

Oksana Meshko. I Testify. Recorded by Vasyl Skrypka. Prepared for publication by V. Ovsienko. Library of the journal “Respublika.” Series: political portraits. no. 3.—Kyiv: Ukrainian Republican Party, 1996.—P. 56.

Oksana Meshko. I Will Not Retreat! For the 100th anniversary of Oksana Yakivna Meshko / Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group; Compiled by V.V. Ovsienko, O.F. Serhiyenko; artistic design by B.S. Zakharov. – Kharkiv: Folio, 2005. – Pp. 276–318.  

Photos:

Meshko  Oksana Yakivna MESHKO.

Meshko1  Oksana MESHKO in her youth.