DMYTRO DMYTROVYCH HRYNKIV

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FAMILY

Vasyl Ovsiyenko: On February 8, 2000, in the glorious city of Kolomyia, Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, in the hospitable home of Mr. Myroslav Symchych,* (*Information about some of the political prisoners mentioned in this interview, as well as other realia, can be found at the end in alphabetical order. – Ed.) Mr. Dmytro Hrynkiv tells his story.

Dmytro Hrynkiv: I, Dmytro Dmytrovych Hrynkiv, was born in the village of Markivka, now in the Kolomyia Raion, into a simple farming family. My father belonged to the respected Hrynkiv family in the village, and my mother was from the Kopyltsev family; her name was Olena Yuriivna. My father’s brother Vasyl was one of the Sich Riflemen, and his son Mykola (my first cousin) later fought in the UPA as a machine gunner in Spartan’s company. Of course, the legacy of the Sich Riflemen was very close to our family’s heart.

My father, Dmytro Petrovych Hrynkiv, was born in 1900, while all his peers—born in 1888, ‘89, ‘90, and all those years—all joined the Sich Riflemen.* But my father was later drafted into the Polish army, where he served with the cannoneers (artillery).

Since my father’s older brother, Vasyl Petrovych Hrynkiv, had joined the Sich Riflemen, the younger one, Dmytro—my dad—stayed on the farm with my grandfather Petro. He had to manage the whole farm, and so he married early (just as he turned 20) his friend’s sister, Paraska Pryimak. Incidentally, my father’s friend, Vasyl Pryimak, who was two years older (b. 1898), joined the Sich Riflemen and fought in many battles, and was also on the Italian front.

I am a son from my father's second marriage. His first wife, Paraska, was shot by the retreating Hungarians. There was a front line in our village of Markivka. The Hungarians wanted to take a cow from the barn, but she was a very persistent woman and refused to give it up. So one of the Hungarians shot her in the back of the head with an exploding bullet. My father came home to find his wife dead in the yard, her face torn apart. At the time, he had three sons and one daughter from his first marriage. None of them are alive now: two sons were killed by a landmine, and one fell near Königsberg after being mobilized into the Soviet Army. That was my half-brother, Vasyl Dmytrovych Hrynkiv.

My mother was my father's second wife. He married her in 1947, after the war. It was her second marriage as well. Her husband, they say, had died of typhus, and she was left with a small child—my maternal half-brother, Vasyl Mykolayovych Kopyltsev.

I was born on June 11, 1948. My mother was unable to have any more children, so I remained the only child my parents had together.

Of course, in those days my father helped our boys—the insurgents—because his nephew was fighting in Spartan’s company. Our extended family—both the Hrynkivs and the Kopyltsevs—was also in the local armed unit. My father was able to help by transporting fodder with his cart, delivering whatever was needed to the company. Many things essential for the insurgent movement passed through our house. Sometimes, Dad would even butcher an animal here to feed the insurgents (a pig or a calf). When such a task came up, he would do it.

His daughter Maria, my half-sister from his first marriage, was very active in helping the boys. She was a liaison. I recall being told about an incident when two insurgents were fighting off NKVD officers in an outlying field near our house. It was an unequal battle in broad daylight. The whole village, as they say, held its breath, seeing that the boys were down to their last bullets. For some reason, they rushed toward the village. Running through it, they fired back at the attackers, the NKVD men. There were many of them, and they flew after those boys like rabid dogs. One of the boys was breathing heavily, wounded in the arm. He was passing through our yard and recognized Maria. Apparently, he had some connection with her, which is why he headed for our yard. He threw down some documents and other things wrapped in a military tunic and said to Maria on the run: “Hide this, I beg you.” The boys dashed into the next thicket and disappeared.

Well, of course, the NKVD officers had their long-range viewers, their binoculars, and they noted that the boys had turned into our yard. They came and turned everything upside down. They started tormenting Maria—she was the eldest: “Why did he run in here, what did you say to him?” She said: “I only gave him a drink of water because he was exhausted. I didn't know who he was, but he was wearing military breeches, so I thought he was one of your men, since he was in uniform.” Well, of course, they searched everywhere but found nothing. It turned out—she was a clever girl—that she had thrown the tunic with the documents into the cow’s manger under the hay, and the cow was chewing the hay, so they didn't search there, although they did go into the barn to see if the boys were hiding there. It was a heroic act. One can imagine the state my father and mother were in, having witnessed such an event almost before their eyes.

Later, when my cousin Vasyl began to visit my father more often in the evenings, my father helped him and Spartan's company in any way he could. My cousin (who had the pseudonym “Vynohrad”) was a machine gunner for the company and carried out specific assignments. For example, there was one such case (I describe it in one of my short stories). He and another insurgent, with the pseudonym “Zvirobiy” (St. John’s Wort), also a machine gunner, on their own initiative and with the permission of the company commander Spartan, caught a large detachment of NKVD men and *“strybky”* (*“Strybky,” “yastrubky” – from the Russian *istrebitel* [destroyer]. Paramilitary groups created by the NKVD from the local population to fight the insurgents. – Ed.) in a crossfire. This detachment had arrived in four Studebakers* (*American-made trucks that the USSR received during WWII through the Lend-Lease program. – Ed.) from Pechenizhyn, where an NKVD garrison was stationed. Before this raid by the garrison troops, word had gotten out about their plan, so the boys asked to take on this daring mission, assuring the company commander that it would be done without a major battle. Otherwise, there would be heavy casualties on both sides. They would stop them without a fight and force them to return to their garrisons. At first, the commander hesitated to entrust such a task to just two men, saying it was impossible: “You are going to certain death, boys.” But they assured him they could do it. They had a plan, and they went.

One of them took up a position on the side of the village of Runhory, while Mykola, my cousin, took up a position on the side of Markivka. They let the trucks pass by toward the forest and thus ended up behind the NKVD men, who had already gotten out of their vehicles. The boys, with their machine guns, chose good spots—and opened fire over their heads as they were lining up in ranks. They fired in such a way that all the NKVD men fell into the mud and couldn't lift their heads. The bullets whizzed over their heads, so as not to hit them too badly, to avoid casualties among them, and thus they made it clear that they couldn't go into the forest. The NKVD men must have consulted among themselves and understood the situation, and they slowly began to retreat to the Studebakers. They hid behind the Studebakers, but the boys kept them from retreating into the forest. So they got into their trucks and drove away.

This was, of course, highly praised, and they both received awards for this operation, which averted a danger to Spartan’s company. There was such an incident in our village...

Well, as for that—I was small, born in 1948. The only thing that stuck in my memory was when those NKVD men would come to our house, tear up the floor in the barn with their ramrods, shout, beat people, and always take my father away somewhere—I remember that, but I was very young. Sometimes they would come when my mother was home alone, ask where Dad was, and in Russian they would force her: “Cook kulesh, cook kulesh.” And sometimes my mother was forced to cook for the enemy, just to get them to leave the house. But everyone knows this, everyone lived through it.

V.O.: And that battle you were talking about, when was it?

D.H.: It was around 1945. My cousin himself told me about it. He is no longer living. I can't say how he left the company.

YOUTH

I graduated from the Markivka eight-year school. I started in 1955, and in 1961 I went to the Pechenizhyn school, which at that time was an eleven-year school. That was right during the Khrushchev era, when they established 11 grades. I graduated in 1966. At that time, it was very fashionable to go to construction projects on Komsomol assignments. But first, my brother and friends recommended it to me: “You know history well, go apply to the Ivano-Frankivsk Pedagogical Institute for the history department.” If I had gone, it’s not impossible that I would have been accepted and studied there. But my friends, especially Roman Chuprey, said: “It’s not fashionable to be a teacher anymore. You know, it's the age of technocrats, of engineers—let's go to the Lviv Polytechnic Institute, to the power engineering department.” It was such an unknown profession to us. I took my documents from the Ivano-Frankivsk Pedagogical Institute and submitted them to the Lviv Polytechnic. Of course, I made a mistake, because I had to switch gears for the exams right away. I had been preparing for history, I knew the humanities, but for the Lviv Polytechnic, you needed more math and physics. I passed the written math exam, but I failed the oral one—a new section, logarithms, had just been introduced. I was, as they say, a bit lost there. Although the instructor who was administering the exams said: “You will definitely get in next year, I can see it in you, you will know everything. We hope to see you.” And I said: “Next year, I probably won’t be here.”

But fate turned in such a way that I met that instructor again several years later, when I was applying to the Institute of Oil and Gas in Ivano-Frankivsk. She was also on the admissions committee there and recognized me, because she had a good memory for last names. Besides, a distant relative of mine, Vasyl Hrynkiv, was already a fourth-year student there. She knew him well, so she asked if we were related.

Well, I just up and went to one of those so-called new construction projects on a Komsomol assignment. We were all Komsomol members then. I went to Dnipropetrovsk, choosing the city for unknown reasons. A city on the Dnipro River, with factories being built there, and that attracted me. I thought, I'll work for a year and then come back to apply to the Institute of Oil and Gas or the Polytechnic.

So I went. I ended up at a factory that served a large housing trust, “Dniprobudmekhanizatsiya.” That trust had a factory—the Dnipropetrovsk District Repair Plant. It was near the Tire Plant—a giant in Ukraine. Many people from the Ivano-Frankivsk region came on the same assignment—from the Rohatyn district, from our Kolomyia district, there were some from Bohorodchany. We became friends with the guys. They immediately placed us in brigades where most of the people were from Eastern Ukraine. The foremen were also from there, and they were good craftsmen. They said right away: “We’re taking the boys from the Ivano-Frankivsk region because these boys are hard workers, they’ll do a good job.”

We went to the mechanical workshop as apprentice metal structure fitters. There were various structures there—from simple construction railings for balconies and stairs to more complex ones, like those garbage chutes. You had to understand blueprints for that. We started to master it. The chief engineer of the plant noticed us and recommended that a few of us go to study at the Construction Institute. For the time being, we enrolled in preparatory courses at the request of this chief engineer. But we didn't manage to get in, because we were already being called to the military enlistment office of the Amur-Nyzhnodniprovskyi district of Dnipropetrovsk and signed up for the first summer draft (at that time, on the initiative of Marshal Grechko, reforms were beginning in the army to shorten the term of military service).

I wrote a letter to Chuprey—Chuprey, I think, had passed all his exams for the Lviv Polytechnic but didn't get in due to the competition. We wrote to each other, and I invited him to come join me, so we could be together. We were friends and wanted to be together. He came, we passed the exams together, and they gave us the second skill category. We worked for about three months, mastered our trade, and started working in Mykola Hulah's brigade; he was a foreman from Eastern Ukraine, a wonderful person. But we were still drawn to Western Ukraine.

By the way, Roman Chuprey’s mother (I used to talk with his family) had made a great contribution to the development of the “Prosvita” society in Pechenizhyn. Pechenizhyn is a large town. Our village is small, but theirs is big. His mother, Hafia Lutsak, told us many interesting things that were not in the school curriculum. She said that now there was an overwhelming dominance of the Russian language, that we were not even reading the right literature, that this literature was missing… And she always turned us back to those times when that literature was available, and now it was banned. This depressed us: why was it banned? Roman and I were always of the same mind on this issue: this ban had to be circumvented. Why should it be this way? Why was Hrushevsky banned? She knew the works of Mykhailo Hrushevsky, his *History of Ukraine-Rus'*, very well. She got us that kind of literature, and we were already reading it back then. But when we ended up in Dnipropetrovsk, we no longer had the opportunity to read it or talk to her. The atmosphere and the people there were different. But we recalled that literature with pleasure and often talked about it in the company of the Eastern Ukrainians. They would listen in amazement—about the Sich Riflemen, about the UPA fighting units in Western Ukraine. They were very surprised.

There, they usually called all of us “Banderites.” We didn’t get angry. If some Russian had said it, with malice—but they said it with a kind of respect, it seemed. We were even proud of it and felt freer at that factory. They were such open people. We didn't sense any suspicion toward us. We could have even been used by some forces because we were so simple. We understood that we were Ukrainians and they were Ukrainians, and we would just tell them straight: “Why are you speaking Russian? Let's start speaking Ukrainian.” They would shake their heads and marvel at our simplicity. Because they had clearly had their fill of all that, so they kept quiet. But they were very friendly towards us.

Eventually, we received notices from the military enlistment office because we were of draft age. Roman immediately figured it out and said: “I’m getting out of here.” After passing one medical commission, he left. But I stayed behind. My delay was because I had a girlfriend there—my current wife. I told Roman: “You're leaving, but I can't go.” Because I intended to marry her. But I was still young, that was still in the plans. I said: “I'll probably stay and try to get in here, either at the university or at that Construction Institute where we took the preparatory courses by arrangement with the engineer.”

But that year, by order of the Minister of Defense Grechko, two-year service was introduced, and they were drafting from the age of 18. They did a spring draft, and I was supposed to be assigned to submarines based on my specialty. There was a worker at the plant, a very big man, with a Cossack build, and he told me: “See how big I am? But those submarines ruined my health, now I don’t want anything. Avoid them by any means!” “How can I avoid them? I've got the summons—see?” “I’ll advise you on how to do it. Ask the military commissar of the Nyzhnodniprovskyi district for permission to go home, and then don't come back on time. Just say you were late, that your parents were crying…” And I was living in a dormitory in the Dnipro district, on the left bank of the Dnipro, and I traveled to work on the right bank.

Alright, so that's what I did. I told the military commissar that for the few days they give before the draft, I would go to Markivka. I went, said goodbye to my parents, but I stayed for two extra days. When I got back, the military commissar was stamping his feet, yelling, foaming at the mouth: “These Banderites are shell-shocked, awkward, and cunning, they’re all like that! You'll never make a good man, a good soldier. And I wanted you to be a good soldier!” I thought to myself, “What a ‘university’ they had in mind for me: they wanted me to go to submarines!” “Well, alright, you'll go to the tank troops!” He didn't like the tank troops: this military commissar's unit had been destroyed in our region during World War II. Between Horodenka and Kolomyia, he had lost an entire tank regiment; they were destroyed by German units. That's why he recalled Kolomyia, where I had traveled, with such bitterness. So, on his part, this was supposed to be revenge. But for me, it didn't mean revenge—I could serve anywhere.

I was drafted in June 1967. I ended up in Oster in the Chernihiv region, in that training corps on the Desna River, which trained sergeants, junior specialists, and tank driver-mechanics. I was assigned to reconnaissance units of swimmers who service the PT-76 amphibious tanks. I completed my training, became a driver-mechanic, and fulfilled all the requirements. There was a condition that whoever finished the training with distinction would have the right to choose a unit within the Kyiv Military District. I chose Dnipropetrovsk. Everyone was very surprised because Dnipropetrovsk was considered very dangerous for tankers. They thought it was a hole, that it was bad to serve there, they said the Communist Division was there—where are you going? But I did it because my girlfriend was left there—such a romantic attachment. Of course, I didn't end up in Dnipropetrovsk itself, but near Novomoskovsk, where two tank units were stationed. As we called them, military settlements—Cherkask and Hvardiisk. They said it was the famous Marshal Chuikov who, looking at a map at the bend of the Samara River where it flows into the Dnipro, said: “After the war ends, station tank units here.” I completed my tank service there, as a sergeant.

Nothing special happened during my service, but since it was the Communist Division, they started to pressure me, asking why such an active sergeant like me wasn't in the Party. I knew from my village that Party members weren't well-regarded. And they were like, what are you doing, what's wrong with you, and so on… The propaganda there was quite serious, and I was the only non-Party sergeant left in that reconnaissance unit. And the head of reconnaissance for the whole division was a Major Volodin. He started approaching me, suggesting I stay on as an officer: “We see you’re so well-trained, you’ve finished a training school. But that's impossible because you're not in the Party—you need to join the Party.” I had no one to consult with, as I was alone in that unit, so I just asked another sergeant who was about to be demobilized: “What will it do for you, being in the Party?” And he said: “Well, that’s how it is today, but tomorrow it could be different. I can always leave the Party.” He was from the Vinnytsia region. I thought to myself: anything can happen. I had also heard that Party members could help in various situations. And this romantic notion captivated me. I thought to myself that if I became a Party member, I wouldn't change my views, but maybe I could contribute something to the Ukrainian cause. I agreed.

Sometime in August or September 1968 (I remember it was warm), I had to go to Dnipropetrovsk to become a candidate member. On the commission was a major general whose name I didn't know. They asked banal questions, but the general asked about my family. I said they were simple peasants. They nodded. Obviously, they had made some inquiries; there was a special department for that. I returned to my unit, and then Major Volodin told me I had been accepted as a candidate member and my candidate term was starting.

I qualified for reduced service, so I didn't serve the full three years. Some of those who finished training with me were already demobilized; I would meet them in Dnipropetrovsk as civilians while I was still serving. It was strange to me why they were discharged and I wasn't. I raised this question. The major said I had a few months left, that I would get out of the army in the fall. So I was discharged not in June, but in November 1969.

By that time I was already married. My girlfriend, Hanna Serbyn, used to visit me at my post from Dnipropetrovsk. I had studied with her at the Pechenizhyn school: she was in class “A” and I was in “B.” By mutual agreement, we had gone to the construction sites in Dnipropetrovsk together. Hanna told me she had relatives in Dnipropetrovsk. Though, we never actually connected with those relatives.

During one of her visits, Hanna complained that a sergeant at the checkpoint had made a snide joke, something like, we get plenty of these “loose women” coming here. So, to avoid such talk and rumors, Halyna and I decided to get married. It happened on October 26, 1968. Her official name is Hanna, from the Serbyn family. She's from the Poltava region, the village of Vechirky in the Pyriatyn district. That village (I visited it later) is not far from Berezova Rudka, where the famous manor house is located, the one Taras Shevchenko used to visit. Apparently, somewhere there, in that Berezova Rudka, he painted the portrait of that famous lady.* (*T. Shevchenko visited the Zakrevsky brothers' palace in Berezova Rudka in 1843, and at that time painted the portrait of Hanna Ivanivna Zakrevska. He also visited there in 1945-47. – Ed.). There is now a film about Shevchenko that mentions Berezova Rudka. When I was in Vechirky, people said that a mirror and other relics from Taras Shevchenko's time were still preserved there. So, my wife was from there, from the Serbyn family. On her mother’s side, she is a Dyka, of Cossack descent. They say that the Cossack Dyky family founded the village of Vechirky. And on her father’s side, she is from the Serbyns. As for how they ended up here—that’s another story...

So, I got married and was discharged from the army in November 1969. Where was I to work? I went back to the same factory in Dnipropetrovsk where I had been drafted from. They put me on the Party register. The Party organizer thought for a moment and said: “You know, you’re such an active young man, I see you’ve returned to your home factory—so I'm recommending you for a medal for the 100th anniversary of Lenin's birth.” They were supposed to award this medal in April 1970. And I just up and said that I didn’t know how much I needed it… Because I thought medals were given for some merit, but it turned out they had selected a few workers who had been working well since their demobilization. In the meantime, I had written home, and my brother wrote back that things were a bit tough there, that my parents were old, so why had I stayed there? Come back home. Then I wrote to my friends, and they also suggested I return home. I decided to go with my family, because I already had a family: in December 1969, our daughter Olenka was born, and things got tighter for us in Dnipropetrovsk, so we decided to go back home, where we had housing and everything else.

And so we did. It happened so quickly that the factory administration didn’t even have time to react. The Party organizer called me in, irritated, and said: “How can this be? We had high hopes for you, and you're leaving? You can't leave—we are putting you up for a medal award here.” I said: “Do I really need that medal?” And he said it looked disrespectful, because everyone wanted to get a medal. But for me, it was incomprehensible: what did I need that medal for? He was very annoyed and said he didn't expect this: “This is a Westerner, why is he like this?” But what he said didn't stop me.

He must have written some kind of accompanying note, because when I came to the Kolomyia City Party Committee to register, the secretary who handled registration looked up at me and said: “Aha-a…” He drew out the word like that. So they already had some kind of report on me. He says: “Oh, you’ll have to go through the candidate term all over again. Why did you leave Dnipropetrovsk without waiting for them to accept you there?” If I had received that medal there, I would have been accepted into the Party right after, I understood. I was just a few months short of completing the one-year candidate term. But I messed all that up, and now they were telling me I had to start over. Some kind of eternal candidate. But I didn’t take it to heart. The candidate dues were paid just like member dues back then.

I found a job in Kolomyia. We settled in Pechenizhyn with my wife’s parents, the Serbyns. Her father was a supervisor at the boarding school there, and her mother worked at the hospital. The apartment there was quite spacious, large. I didn't go to my own village because it was harder to commute to work from there, and it was closer from Pechenizhyn. In that same year, 1970, I got a job at construction management office No. 112 in Kolomyia. It later became PMK-67 (mobile mechanized column), and the director was Cherniavskyi. I worked as a fitter-assembler because that was the trade I had from the Dnipropetrovsk factory. They didn't object. I immediately got on the housing list, because as a construction worker, you could get an apartment quickly. Construction in Kolomyia was quite intensive at that time, and apartment buildings were being completed on schedule and quickly.

Meanwhile, I was intensely preparing for entrance to the institute. After a few months, they gave me a decent, standard reference, saying that I worked well. I was applying to the Ivano-Frankivsk Institute of Oil and Gas. Since they had opened an evening department in Kolomyia, where professors from the institute would come to teach, I began my studies there in 1970.

In 1971, the time came for me to be accepted into the Party. Before that, the company's Party organizer, Kyzylov, approached me and said: “We’ve been watching you. You write good reports about construction workers for the newspapers. And we have a situation where there's no secretary for the Komsomol organization. It’s a respectable, large organization. Could you head it, being a candidate for the Communist Party and also having entered the institute?” I thought about it and consulted with my friends. The guys said it was a good idea.

In the meantime, I began to move to Kolomyia: I needed to live somewhere nearby because it was becoming difficult to commute from Pechenizhyn. I registered in a dormitory and had to spend the night there at least once a week so the commandant would see me. But in reality, I was a family man. I decided to bring my wife to Kolomyia as well. I found an apartment. And this apartment caused a revolution in my consciousness. I realized that I was on the right path. I became friends with the people I was living with. They had been participants in the liberation struggles. Paraska Ryzhko, the wife of the master of the house, Roman Ryzhko, was from Pechenizhyn, had been a liaison for the UPA, and had served 10 years in Karaganda. And he had been in the SS “Halychyna” Division.

They were conscious people, and they started to have various conversations with me. But he was quite cautious with me because I had told him I was a Party member and showed him my Party card. And he just stood there, looked at it, and said: “And what will this do for you in your quest to do something for Ukraine?” I said: “Maybe this way, maybe not.” And Paraska from the house said: “You did wrong to join the Party. Look at what the Party members are doing!” And she started giving all sorts of examples that I had never heard before. A split personality began to develop in me, being a Party member on one hand, and on the other hand, being shown that this party was criminal. And Paraska was a very knowledgeable woman. They had a rich library. They showed me several old books.

Of course, when I met with my friends, I would talk about how Ukraine needed to break free from servitude somehow. Because I saw that even at the institute, there was a clear dominance of the Russian language, and we were forced to study from Russian textbooks. There was *“sopromat”* instead of “strength of materials,” *“teplotekhnika”* (heat engineering). Well, we translated it ourselves as we studied.

V.O.: And what language was the teaching in?

D.H.: The mathematician taught in Russian; he was Jewish. The history of the CPSU was taught by a sincere Ukrainian named Tverdokhlib. I had a chance to talk with him. He was a respectable man, spoke normally, but you had to learn the entire course on the history of the CPSU and pass it. And Marxist-Leninist philosophy—if you didn't respect these subjects, they would push you aside, ignore you.

And then our Kolomyia evening department of the Ivano-Frankivsk Institute of Oil and Gas was liquidated in our second year. Although we strongly advocated for a branch to be in Kolomyia, because we have no higher education institutions here. But the Party officials came and said at a student meeting: “We’re sorry, but there’s no possibility of constructing a building.” And our evening department was indeed squeezed into various schools. For example, in the second school. We even studied in the assembly hall of the shoe factory. Those part-time students had a rough time of it, and then they had to switch to correspondence studies.

Meanwhile, in 1971, they called me to the bureau and finally accepted me into the Party, on the recommendation of that Party organizer Kyzylov, who had “married me off” to the post of secretary of the Komsomol organization. I started working as the Komsomol secretary. They began to pressure me: “Many people from the villages are coming to your enterprise, but you’re not accepting anyone into the Komsomol. You need to prepare these people to join.” I would tell the girls who came to the vocational school to study as painters and plasterers to join. They’d say: “But we believe in God.” If they believed in God, they wouldn't join the Komsomol. I said: “Believe in God ten times over, it won't hurt you. Just don’t tell the admissions committee, and believe to your heart's content.” And some of these young people needed to get apartments from the construction administration, so they thought it was not a bad idea and started joining the Komsomol. But one of the secretaries, I think the second secretary, figured out my tactic. They called me to the Party bureau and began to criticize me, saying that Hrynkiv was using such tactics. Because one of those “sincere Komsomol members” had told on me: “Hrynkiv told us to say that. Believe what you want, but join the Komsomol.” That’s how she gave me away. At the bureau they said: “How could you? What are you allowing yourself?” They wanted to remove me as the Komsomol secretary, to give me a Party reprimand. But the party organizer Kyzylov waved them off. He was some kind of retired military man, a rather solid, influential figure, known in the city and in Party circles. He told them: “Forget it, we’ve seen worse! He's a good guy, he gets the job done.” This was a man who understood the system well. That it was all for show, just a facade. Later, during some inspections from the region, he would say: “Dima, make sure all your paperwork is in order! The main thing is the papers, and the rest…” And he would wave his hand, not finishing the sentence, because it was self-evident.

“UNION OF UKRAINIAN YOUTH OF HALYCHYNA”

While talking with my classmates—Roman Chuprey, Dmytro Demydov—we spoke about how some changes were happening in Ukraine, and we were being left on the sidelines. And these changes were such that even the nightingales were singing about them, all the birds were chirping, and it felt like we had been left out of the course of history. We started to speak openly about this with Paraska Ryzhko. And she said: “Well, there is important work to be done. If you want to, here you go: there's samvydav, and you’re not reading it, not distributing it.” We asked her: “Where can we get it, what do we need to do?” “You should listen to the radio broadcasts!”

So we came to the decision to develop a concept of self-education, to learn more about what was happening in Ukraine. The year 1972 arrived, and there was a huge uproar about the arrests of the intelligentsia, about how Petro Shelest had written the book *Our Soviet Ukraine** (*Kyiv: Publishing House of Political Literature of Ukraine, 1970. This book, which was meant to define the limits of what was permissible on the national question, was sharply criticized at a meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU in March 1972. In May, P. Shelest was dismissed from his duties as First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine and appointed Deputy Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers. In May 1973, he was removed from the Politburo. He lived out his days at a dacha near Moscow. – Ed.). Paraska told me about this matter. I got angry and said: “How can this be, that people are silent? Why were they arrested? We must scream about it!” And she said: “And how can you scream? You're a Party member, you won't scream.” “I won't scream?! I have to do something!…”

This got under my skin so much that I went to Chuprey, gathered the guys in January 1972, threw my Party card on the table, and said: “Boys! We have to take up something to fight for Ukraine.” Dmytro Demydov said: “How can you say that, you're a Party member?” “Nonsense! All the Party members at the top are fighting for Ukraine, what did you think? Look how many of the intelligentsia have been arrested! Were they not Party members? Did they not understand the need to fight?”

The guys believed me. Later, during the investigation, Demydov said exactly that: “How could I not believe him, when a Party man threw his card on the table and said we had to fight for Ukraine?” He told this to the KGB agents, and the agents understood well that this was a strong argument they couldn't counter.

I said: “We're creating an organization.” “Let's create one.” They agreed to create an organization. Since I was the “accumulator” of this idea, they recognized me as the leader. Demydov said he would be the organization's ideological developer. Right there, at the first meeting in January, he was given the task of drafting our organization's program. We named the organization the “Union of Ukrainian Youth of Halychyna.” Since Roman Chuprey was studying at the Lviv Polytechnic Institute at the time, I think in his second year in the automation department, he was given a separate task to recruit a few students from the Lviv Institute into our organization. The first issue was the creation of the organization, that is, to recruit reliable people who truly wanted to fight for Ukraine.

Paraska listened to all those radio broadcasts every night and every day. She was an active person and saw that a spark had ignited in us. We didn't really hide it, we said: “There are some boys like that.” I brought these boys to her, and she told them what she had heard on the broadcasts. We already knew about the murder of Alla Horska,* about Valentyn Moroz's* works “Amid the Snows,” “A Report from the Beria Reserve.” They were read on the radio, we listened, and we retold them to each other. We worked in a general way like that. And then we decided we needed to expand our activities. We couldn't work without a program. Demydov worked on the program for a long time, and then, when we met for the second time in February, we assigned specific tasks to everyone.

We swore an oath of allegiance to Ukraine in January 1972. It sounded very simple and direct, but there was one romantic nuance regarding responsibility. On the table where we were sitting, there was a knife with a beautiful, ornate handle. I said: “We must swear on the knife. We won't cut our hands and spill blood to swear on blood.” I stuck the knife into the table, placed my hand on it, and said an oath something like this: “I swear allegiance to the ideas of Ukraine, for which thousands of people fought and died, and they preserved this idea in their hearts. So let us too preserve this idea, for we will fight as long as our hearts beat and as long as we have strength.” Everyone placed their hands on mine and swore: “I swear!” It was a very simple version, and it happened so spontaneously that we barely noticed. Ivan-Vasyl Shovkovy took the oath then. Was he in the camps with you?

V.O.: Unfortunately, no. I was in Mordovia then.

D.H.: Yes, Ivan-Vasyl Shovkovy was at Vsekhsvyatskaya, in Perm Oblast.

V.O.: Is Ivan-Vasyl a double name?

D.H.: Yes, a double name. We found out later that he had a double name; the KGB agents opened our eyes to that. We knew him as Vasyl, but it turned out that his passport name was Ivan. Well, who was going to check? Roman Chuprey, Dmytro Demydov, Vasyl Mykhailiuk, Fedir Mykytiuk, and Mykola Motriuk swore the oath. At first, six men took the oath on that Christmas holiday evening in January.* (*D. Demydov indicates the date as January 31, 1972. Indeed, the UYHG was formed after the January arrests of the intelligentsia, which began on the 12th. – Ed.). And in February, the following people also took the oath: Liubomyr Chuprey—Roman Chuprey’s brother, a power engineer who had already completed higher education (as had Demydov—he was a chemical engineer-technologist). Ivan Motriuk and Vasyl Kuzenko also took the oath.

Later, Vasyl Ivanovych Hrynkiv was unofficially admitted into the organization. He was asked if he would join the organization and if he would lead it. We wanted to accept him. He was a very powerful intellectual, had graduated from a pedagogical institute, and had gone to teach mathematics somewhere in the Rivne region, I think in the Sarny district. We met him in the summer of 1972. He was a Party member and a rather well-known guy. We told him: “Don't be afraid, because I'm a Party member too. Everyone is fighting for Ukraine now.” He said: “Yes, I feel it and I understand that it’s true. But if they find us, you know what will happen to us?” “So what are we to do? Someone has to start,” I said, “someone has to do something.” He was present at our meeting, reacted favorably to our ideas, but said: “Dmytro, I see that the way you speak, the way you lead this, there's no need for any other leader besides you.” And he declined the leadership and went back to his teaching job. Because in the summer he was still at home, but he started teaching in September.

I gave out assignments individually. At first orally, but then—you can't keep track of who did what. So I prepared some sheets of paper (one of them later ended up with the KGB, which they used to “unravel” us during the investigation). For example, under pseudonyms it was written: “‘Lisovyk’ has the task of studying reliable data about such-and-such a company commander who operated in the territory of Markivka village.” To another one: reliable data about another person who was in the UPA; write down the texts of songs that were sung on that part of the village. Seemingly simple tasks like that. Another was tasked with obtaining such-and-such illegal, banned books from the library of a certain collector. Well, for example, General Petrov’s—there were books like that there. About the Sich Riflemen—what was banned. By the way, one of these books figured in our investigation. We read all of that.

Oh, another task was to look for weapons. This was a romantic notion, as the boys were all young, so as to interest them in weapons. Everyone welcomed this, saying, let it be, let everyone have some kind of personal weapon. Not to shoot at anyone, but the specific question of whether we should offer any resistance was not raised.

At that time, I was the head of DOSAAF* (*DOSAAF – *Dobrovolnoye obshchestvo sodeystviya Armii, Aviatsii i Flotu* [Voluntary Society for Assistance to the Army, Air Force, and Navy]. An organization created by the authorities to prepare young people for service in the Soviet Army. – Ed.) at this enterprise, and at that time, passing the GTO* (*“Gotov k trudu i oborone” [Ready for Labor and Defense]. – Ed.) standards was very popular. I conducted shooting practice with the Komsomol youth brigades and had access to weapons. So, I could save cartridges that the brigades hadn't used. That's why later, during the search of my house, they confiscated about 600 cartridges from me. I also had access to Margolin pistols—10-shot small-caliber pistols. It was a wonderful weapon. To this day, I regret not keeping at least one pistol as a relic from those times. But it’s a weapon—what good would it do us now? God grant that no one shoots you and you shoot no one.

So, I had the opportunity to take this pistol from DOSAAF on request and conduct training for my boys. I taught them how to use weapons, taught them safety. There were three such training sessions in the summer of 1972. They were held in the tracts between Markivka and Molodiatyn. There are such tracts there, Chymshory and Kupchava. We would go out there. Not all at once, but like, three today, then maybe a week later three others, to a different tract. The shooting had to be done in some ravine, so that the sound would be muffled, because the Margolin pistol is loud. I got targets, and the boys learned to shoot.

In the fall, there was the anniversary of the killing of Oleksa Dovbush* (*Oleksa Dovbush b. 1719 in the village of Pechenizhyn, Kolomyia raion. Leader of the Carpathian *opryshky* [outlaws]. Died in 1745. – Ed.). By then, a monument to him had been unveiled in Pechenizhyn. So we prepared a wreath for the Dovbush monument with a blue-and-yellow ribbon. Each person had a specific task: who gets the wreath, who gets the ribbon, who makes the inscription. We planned to write Shevchenko's words on the blue-and-yellow ribbon: “There will be a son, and there will be a mother, and there will be people on the earth.” The blue-and-yellow ribbon was to play the main role: to remind people of our blue-and-yellow flag.

We also planned something with the trident, but it didn’t work out. To draw the trident well, I turned to my landlord, Roman Ryzhko, with whom I was staying then at 54 Prykarpatska Street. He chose the most distinct trident for me from old literature, from old Ukrainian calendars. There were such beautiful tridents there. I copied that trident and decided we needed to make a stamp for the organization. I put this on the agenda for discussion with the boys. The boys said: “Yes, indeed. A stamp—that's for internal use. But if you wrote a leaflet and put the stamp on it—that would influence people.” We decided to make a stamp.

I ordered the blank from a turner—a Muscovite—at that same PMK-67. By the way, that Muscovite figured in the case (*V.S. Mikov – Ed.*). What was it to him—he knew full well what he was making, an old Muscovite, but we gave him a bottle, so for a bottle… He turned a bronze blank for a stamp, traced the lines. It came out a nice blank. Now we just had to find someone who could engrave the inscription “Union of Ukrainian Youth of Halychyna” around the edge and a trident in the center. An engraver can do that. And here we made a big mistake, because engravers, as a rule, are “their” people, from the KGB. One of our wise guys warned me. It was Vasyl Kuzenko, he said: “Don't go, because all these engravers are suspicious people.” But I was still persistent in these matters. I went to the engraver who, I thought, was trustworthy. I got acquainted with him and said I needed an inscription done. He asked what kind of inscription. I showed him the stamp, but I didn't say yet that there should be a trident in the center, because even the word “trident” caused a shock in everyone. He said: “Okay, leave it with me.” I left it.

And he, apparently, took this stamp where it needed to go, and they told him not to let this matter out of his hands until I returned. I analyzed this later and understood how it happened, because he himself became interested: “Oh, why haven't you been by? And what is supposed to go in the middle here?” I said: “Well, you do the inscription, and then they'll tell me. It's not for me.” That was the tactic I chose. He took the stamp and said: “Okay, I'll make this.” I promised: “We will pay you.” And I asked him where he was from and all that. He answered: “I live here in Kolomyia.” We checked, and indeed, he lived in Kolomyia, on Shkriblyaka Street, Taras Stadnychenko, his family was decent: his father was a quite respected figure, from an old Kolomyia family, had a good library.

We decided to meet with him and talk semi-openly. But when I came to ask about the work, he himself said: “A man approached us here. He gave me a *Kobzar* to inscribe: ‘May Ukraine be free!’ I don't know what to do.” He named that man so that I would go to him and start communicating. It was probably a KGB setup. I happened to know this man. He was a taxi driver who worked at the bus station. I told the boys about this, and the boys immediately became suspicious that it was obviously some kind of trap: taxi drivers are unreliable people. I said: “What does this Stadnychenko have to do with him?” “Maybe he doesn't know? After all, he spoke sincerely about the *Kobzar*.”

We considered that this was indeed a well-thought-out trap for us. But we were already caught anyway. Sometime in December 1972, we came to the conclusion that this Taras Stadnychenko was working for the KGB. I called a meeting and said: “What are we going to do? The 'tail' has gotten into our confidence; he's been coming to our meetings. What should we do? I think we need to wind down our activities now.” How to get out of it? We decided to get out of it very simply. To finally test him, Chuprey and I came up with a scheme. At one of the meetings, Chuprey said that a student in his group (and he was the group leader) named Lotov had two pistols at home. Roman had done some work for him and was a welcome guest in this Lotov's Lviv apartment, and Lotov had boasted that his father and grandfather were military men and had exchanged personalized weapons on the front lines. The grandfather was already dead, the pistol was still in the house, but the father was still alive. So there were two pistols. Roman Chuprey looked at those pistols, gasped, came and told me right away. I said: “Roman, I don’t know about gun models. But the small pistol is probably a Browning, and the other one is some other model. We need to carry out an operation. You give me the address, and we’ll go and do it. You won't do it, because you've already been seen there.”

All this was said in Stadnychenko’s presence. When we said this, he obviously reported it to them, and they ordered him: “At all costs, you must be with Hrynkiv when he goes to Lotov’s.” And Stadnychenko began to give himself away with this, because at one of the meetings he was very insistent: “Why haven’t you gotten that weapon yet? It must be in Lotov’s apartment! You have to go and get it! I volunteer to go.” The boys looked at him and later said: “He's suspicious. Why does he want to go?”

Then we did this: we set a date for the operation. It was sometime in February 1973. I told Stadnychenko that he was not included: “I'll go. Me and one other person, and you'll stay here.” “No, I’ll go too!” “No, no, just the two of us. There shouldn't be more than two, God forbid. You wear glasses, you're noticeable.”

And what does he do? On the appointed day, he came to the train station—we weren't there. Then he got on the train, went to Lviv, went to Roman Chuprey’s dormitory and said that Dmytro was supposed to arrive soon. Roman knew it was a test and said: “Well, so what? We'll wait.” They waited all day, but I didn't arrive. A day later, Roman comes to Kolomyia and says: “He's not one of ours. This is trouble! What are we going to do?” We already had a security service. Kuzenko says: “I’ll strangle him. Just let me get my hands on him, I'll...” He declared it just like that. And I said: “Well, if you have such inclinations, that you'd even skin him, what would that look like? I can’t give such a sanction. We don’t know this person completely. We have to make some kind of move to remove him from the organization peacefully.”

We thought and thought and came to the conclusion that we needed to hold a large meeting, inform Stadnychenko as well, but not say anything about the agenda, and at that meeting announce the dissolution of the organization. The rationale would be that we now know the enemy well enough, have studied his methods, know how to fight him, and now everyone will continue on their own, without relying on the organization. It had fulfilled its functions and was self-dissolving.

In early March 1973, we staged the “self-dissolution.” Stadnychenko, obviously, ran straight to the KGB agents, and the KGB agents had no choice but to immediately grab us. They were afraid that after the self-dissolution, they would have nothing to charge us with. I later told the KGB agents: “What, were you scared we would dissolve ourselves?” The KGB agent just exploded. “You were already starting to fall apart. You should have waged war with us subtly—why couldn't you endure?” And they said: “But you had a security service.” As if to needle me. I said: “It wasn't functioning, that security service. If it had been functioning, we would have really messed things up. It hadn't come to that yet.”

The KGB agents made another mistake. A week before the arrest, a member of the organization, Vasyl Mykhailiuk, was summoned to the military commissariat. He worked at the woodworking plant. He was summoned—and disappeared for two days. A frantic Vasyl Kuzenko ran to me: “Do you know that Vasyl Mykhailiuk is gone? He hasn’t come back yet.” “What do you mean, hasn’t come back? He was summoned to the enlistment office. We need to go there and find out.”

This is how it was. They summoned him to the enlistment office and began to accuse him of something, took him to the drunk tank, and there they drew up a report that he was drunk. Before that, some “nice guy” had gotten him drunk, and Vasyl had said: “What’s that enlistment office to me! I just need to fill out some form there.” Of course, an already tipsy Vasyl Mykhailiuk was detained at the enlistment office, and they called the police from the drunk tank. So they took him to the drunk tank, held him for a whole day, and drew up a report there. He worked as a foreman, had graduated from the Lviv Forestry Institute, and valued his career highly. So they showed him: “You see this report? Either you tell us everything about the organization and write a statement—or we’ll send this report to your workplace right now.” Mykhailiuk panicked and wrote down everything he knew. That’s why the prosecutor at the trial had something to say: that the organization was uncovered thanks to the statement of this Vasyl Mykhailiuk. Although in reality, that wasn’t the case. They were just using Mykhailiuk as a cover.

V.O.: And Stadnychenko was supposedly not involved at all!

D.H.: And he was no longer needed. Such interesting nuances. One could write a whole study about this investigation. Well, they had a lot of experience, it was a terrifying organization.

V.O.: Yes, the KGB gained experience by exposing us, and we took our experience with us into captivity and passed it on to no one there.

D.H.: They also took into account how we exposed them. What, did they not discuss how and why we exposed them? Their agent worked too aggressively. He should have worked more subtly. That was their miscalculation. And we, instead of directing our energy toward concrete work, were forced to wage an invisible battle with the KGB's network of agents before our arrest. This went on for the last 3-4 months. But what else could be done?

ARREST

What else did this Stadnychenko do? The day before the search, on March 14, he brought me the stamp blank that we had given him. He had already engraved the inscription “Union of Ukrainian Youth of Halychyna,” but he hadn't made the trident. He says: “You know, the bits are breaking (*shteker*—that’s the name of the drill bit in engraving work). Maybe you know where I can find these bits?” I told him I would ask. He brought me this blank late in the evening, I was sleepy, and he confused me with those bits. The calculation was that I wouldn't have time to take it anywhere, so that it would be in the apartment. They were obviously also watching the house to see if I would go out or not. I took the blank and said: “Alright, just leave it here. We'll find the bits somewhere.” Especially since we already suspected him. I took the blank and put it in a sliding cabinet in the kitchen set. It was wrapped in the same paper on which the inscription “Union of Ukrainian Youth of Halychyna” was written in my handwriting. I put the blank there and thought I would deal with it. And at six in the morning, they were already waking me up, putting me and my wife against the wall. She was pregnant, by the way.

On March 15, 1973, everyone was searched. There were searches at Mykola Motriuk's in the village of Markivka, and at Vasyl Shovkovy's and Dmytro Demydov's in Pechenizhyn. They went to Rivne and conducted a search at Vasyl Ivanovych Hrynkiv's. They traveled everywhere in cars, in “Volgas” from the Ivano-Frankivsk KGB. They even interrogated one of our acquaintances who was serving on a submarine that very day about his connections. How much money must it have taken to conduct such an operation?

Of course, they gathered some information. Someone said something somewhere, someone wrote something down, something was found during a search. For example, at Shovkovy's place, they found a homemade pistol from his childhood. It shot in such a way that it could pierce a board with a nail. It was soldered shut and loaded with sulfur from matches. The barrel was screwed to a wooden handle. The boy had made it for himself back in the 8th or 9th grade—and that was already considered a firearm. They were delighted to have found this weapon.

V.O.: How did it shoot? Was there a hammer, or did you have to light it?

D.H.: No, he made it so that a hammer would strike, and the impact would ignite the sulfur. I never saw that pistol.

But there was another matter. I think it was in the summer of 1972 that we carried out an operation to steal construction pistols from a warehouse. We wanted to modify them so that they could be fired with one hand, because a construction pistol is fired with two hands. It's used to drive in dowels. I had seen these pistols with construction workers, but I couldn't study them properly. So I told Shovkovy about it. Shovkovy says: “You know, maybe they can be converted to be fired with one hand. That's a formidable weapon. You can get charges from construction workers. The barrels, of course, are made at the Tula factory, all of them are manufactured with the same technological process.”

I knew where these pistols were located because we worked at the PMK-67 service yard. So Mykola Motriuk and I stole them one night. Just the day before, we had been moving those pistols. The warehouse manager didn't realize who he was dealing with. We stacked some of the special crates as he ordered, and I discreetly hid a part near the door. I placed it in such a way that the door could be pried open a little to take them. And the doors there were such that the bottom could be easily pried up, because it was a huge gate, those construction warehouses are big. There was a guard, but he knew we were workers. We were boiling tar there. Sometimes we would come to boil tar in the evening or at four in the morning. Who would suspect us? We were workers from that yard. We had access, and on that particular evening, we even had a drink of vodka with the guard. So I went, took the pistols, and gave them to Shovkovy in Pechenizhyn for examination and modification.

When we exposed Stadnychenko, I gave the order to destroy all materials for which we could be arrested. When Mykhailiuk disappeared, we sounded the alarm again. In addition, Shovkovy's mother worked as a cleaning lady at the village council in Pechenizhyn. Some man took her outside and said: “Tell the boys there’s trouble. Have them hide everything.” He said nothing more and disappeared. The mother told Shovkovy, he called me from Kolomyia and asked: “How should we understand this?” And I said: “This is some kind soul trying to save us. That means destroy everything immediately—tapes, any recordings.” We had tape recordings. We had recorded fragments of one of my program speeches that I was preparing to give at a meeting. We erased those recordings. I ordered everyone to conduct a thorough search of their own places to destroy any traces of our activities.

I came home and told my wife that I was going to conduct a search of my own place, just in case. She was frightened and said: “What is this supposed to mean?” “Don’t ask any questions, I have to conduct a search. You will help me.” She followed me around. I checked my briefcase—I used to take a briefcase to work. The briefcase had a flap that covered the bottom. I pulled out a notebook from there. It was my speech. I tore the speech out of the notebook and destroyed it. I found nothing else in the briefcase.

I went on. I found a few such thin booklets. I was sorry to destroy them. I can't say now what they were about. One, very thin, was about Dontsov's nationalism. I also found my notebook—which assignments I had given to whom. And I didn't want to destroy the photographs either. So I carefully wrapped these photographs, two small books, and the notebook in a newspaper and tied it with a ribbon, went to the toilet and said to my wife: “Watch.” We had a metal plate in our toilet's cistern. I pressed on the plate, pushed the package into the cistern, and released the plate. The plate pressed the package tightly. I checked—nothing was visible. By the way, the KGB agents never found this package. When they took me away, my wife threw everything away in a panic and burned the photos, but she saved the books. I told her she shouldn't have burned the photos either, but she—you know how it is—she was hiding it herself. And they came several times and terrorized her. So you can't blame her. And at that time she was pregnant, in her eighth month. She gave birth in April, and this was March.

They burst into the house, put us against the wall... I didn't finish telling you how I did my search. The stamp—oh, what an idiot!—it completely slipped my mind, I didn't hide the stamp! If I had hidden the stamp—they wouldn't have found anything. And that stamp was important to them—it was a sign of an organization. I had gone into the kitchen—it seemed there was nothing in the kitchen. But I left the stamp in the kitchen! I was so pleased with my search, and wanted to find out how the other boys had done theirs. I asked one—he had done everything. Shovkovy said he had taken the construction pistols to the school toilet. There’s a huge pit in the toilet at the middle school. He threw the construction pistols into that pit. But he didn’t throw away his homemade pistol, and they found it. How things happen! And so they found a little something on everyone. At Motriuk's place, they found a few cartridges that he didn't even know about, from a "TT" pistol, and there were also some from a "PPSh" submachine gun. We have a lot of such cartridges in our villages, bullets in workshops. And his father was a blacksmith. They recorded that in the protocol too.

They found 600 small-caliber cartridges at my place. I didn't know what to do with them. I thought they wouldn't do me any harm, since I didn't have a weapon. Oh, but we did have weapons. I had a small-caliber rifle that I kept in a hiding place at work. I made the hiding place in the locker room. During one operation, we got a Mauser-system carbine. It's a rather interesting carbine, very rare, German. Dmytro Demydov, while talking to a friend from his studies, a Czech by nationality, who lived next door, found out that his father had several carbines. One carbine was stored by the seat under the toilet. There was a hiding place underneath, where you sit down. He showed him all this, and Demydov remembered it and told me. I went there at night with Shovkovy. Shovkovy distracted the dog while I went into the toilet and felt around in the dark. There was indeed a carbine, with 40 German cartridges for it. A Mauser-system carbine, its receiver could be unscrewed, so it was small if you took it apart and hung it around your neck, you couldn't see anything, you could hide it under a jacket.

So we had such a carbine. I also hid it in a hiding place at work. Motriuk, with whom I worked, asked what we were going to do with this weapon in the hiding place. We stood there, as if spellbound: what to do with this weapon? I said: “First, let’s analyze who knows about this weapon.” It turned out that many people knew, even Stadnychenko knew. The fact is that Shovkovy took this carbine to the mountains when he went on a trip in December with the other Chuprey, Liubomyr, also a member of the organization. They had seen bear tracks somewhere on Mount Syvulia in the Nadvirna district. He even had this carbine with him at the police station—they became suspicious about why they were sitting at the bus station in Nadvirna so late and took them to the police station. They didn't look in their backpacks, and this carbine was in the backpack. Shovkovy had a close call with that carbine, he said: “We could have been caught with it even earlier.” If the police had found the carbine, they would have “unraveled” us back then. Although we trusted these guys, I decided that the weapon would remain in this hiding place for the time being.

So, Kuzenko, Shovkovy, and Stadnychenko knew that there was a hiding place somewhere at work. But they didn't know exactly where. So we thought we should take the weapon from the hiding place. But we didn't have time. And the KGB, after the “dissolution” of the organization, was already watching us, what we were doing.

During the search, the investigator, Major Rudyi, took that stamp and said: “Well-l-l...,” he drew out the word so meaningfully. From his voice, I understood that this stamp was what interested them. “Oh, so this is something!”

They conducted a thorough search and found in my briefcase, which I had checked myself, in that hidden compartment, a thin sheet of paper on which an assignment for one of our boys was written! He just hadn't been at the meeting, and there was no way to pass it to him, so it remained in the briefcase. I was very surprised, because I had conducted the search myself.

V.O.: You are not a professional at searches.

D.H.: Not a professional. The bottom was covered by a bar—I didn't lift that bar, and then I was surprised at how they found it. And that got to me a little. But what I had hidden, they didn't find. Well, I thought, not yet knowing that searches were being conducted at everyone's place, at least that’s good—they don’t have photographs, so I'll take everything on myself to shield the others.

They took those 600 cartridges, the targets. I explained that I conducted shooting practice at DOSAAF, so to avoid getting cartridges too often, I took them home and issued them personally. They didn't find any weapons at home.

Then they took me to work for a search. Obviously, they knew. I figured it out then: I didn't show them the spot in the locker room or my specific work area, but led them to the general locker room, counting on the fact that they wouldn't ask the supervisors where I changed. Because our supervisors were decent people. When I saw the "Volga" arrive with me and two agents and one approached the chief mechanic, Filipchuk, and said they needed to conduct a search of Hrynkiv's things, he understood something was wrong. I just motioned to him with my head: say nothing, I'll show them myself. The KGB agent asked Filipchuk: “Does he change here?” “I don't keep track, everyone changes here.” I thought: thank you, Lord. He's a good man. He knows I work in a different area, but he doesn't specify, and they don't ask for specifics. “Well, go on.” They let him go and started searching the locker. They ask: “Are these your pants?” “Mine.” And the jacket, I say, is also mine. He reached into the pocket—and pulled out the ID of a mechanic named Macherniuk and said to the other agent: “How can this be? He changes here, but here’s Macherniuk's ID?” I said, the mechanics also change here. The man nodded his head: “Well, alright.” They found nothing and waved their hands in dismissal.

We got into the “Volga”—and they took me to the KGB. They brought me in, and there the agents laid their cards on the table: “And where is your carbine and your small-caliber rifle?” “Ah, so you already know about that too? Well, since you know...”

V.O.: Did you think that or say it?

D.H.: No, no, I said it just like that: “Aha, so you already know about that too?” He said it straight to my face. So what, what if I had said I didn't have it? He said: “No, it won’t do you any good to delay. We know they are hidden somewhere at your workplace.” So I thought, they’ll bring that Stadnychenko or someone else—what's the difference? I didn’t want the guys to have trouble because of this, so I said the weapons were mine. He said: “Let them be yours, but show us.” We got into the “Volga,” and they brought me to the place. I had to climb some stairs to get up there, so one of them had to rush ahead, afraid that if I climbed up first, I might grab the weapon and do something. They were extremely cautious. They shooed away the curious onlookers, as people had already seen what was happening and understood that something was wrong, and they were already murmuring about it.

I also lied, saying I needed to tell my wife something because she wouldn't tell them herself. But actually, I wanted them to take me to my wife so I could tell her Motriuk's last name, so he could get the weapon out. They figured out I was lying and didn't take me home, but went straight to my workplace. Although my wife, when they were taking me from the house, asked: “Are you taking him for long?” He said: “Yes, for a long time.” She started crying, and I told her not to cry and to go to Motriuk. The poor thing understood and rushed to go to Pechenizhyn to see Motriuk. But it turned out there was a search there too. She met someone in town and realized that there were searches everywhere. Shovkovy's mother came and said there was a search there too. It was already the second half of the day. Everything became clear.

INVESTIGATION AND TRIAL

After I handed over the weapon, they took me to Frankivsk in the evening. I was held there in a pre-trial detention cell at the KGB. They threw some kind of “hanger-on” in with me. He was trying to get information about everything, so I told him I was a simple guy, arrested for poaching, they found a weapon, an old carbine. He said that was nothing, because they found a machine gun on one guy. Well, it was clear he was one of their men, because he started sniffing around to see if I had anything else. He said I'd get out, because it was all nonsense: good people always have something put away. I already understood he was a cell-plant, and I kept telling him it was poaching, not politics.

The next day I was called in, and they began to present charges under Article 56. Actually, the prosecutor’s sanction had been read to me back at home. I said: “Explain this article to me.” He said: “You are charged under Article 56, ‘Treason against the Motherland,’ from 10 to 15 years or the death penalty.” I'm a very direct person, and after a few days of investigation, I asked: “How should I understand this Article 56? If I am the leader of the organization—then leaders get the maximum, and you see what the maximum is here?” He looked at me and said: “Well, you think about it, think about it.”

In short, they charged five of us under this article. Roman Chuprey, however, was arrested in Lviv two days later. That means they still had hopes of winning Chuprey over to their side, they were still hesitating whether to imprison him or not. He spent the night on a sofa somewhere in their office as a detainee. Dmytro Demydov was taken in even later. They couldn't get anything out of him and let him go. And they wanted to leave it at that, but he started incriminating himself because he began to feel unwell, and people started saying: “Well, how is it that they are in prison, and you are not?” This prompted him to the point where he almost went to the KGB himself and started saying: “Arrest me, take me, I'm the same, I'm for Ukraine.” He said a lot against himself and breathed a sigh of relief. And the investigator wrote it down in the protocol: “Stay put!” Such an interesting nuance with Demydov. He said a lot about himself that wasn't even true—to add weight to his person in this group. But what happened, happened, and what didn't happen—didn't. During the investigation, they didn't really try to find out: if he said it, then thank God, because it was convenient for them.

They conducted the investigation in such a way that no violence was used in the office. Those methods were used in the cells. Demydov was beaten by someone in the cell. The one who was planted with him beat his head against the wall. Demydov was screaming in there. They put two people in with me, one of whom was a homosexual, and the other was an artist who loved to draw Lenin in various poses. He drew so many Lenins that he drove me to the brink, and I told him off: “Is that all you've learned to do, can't you do something else?” He kept telling me how he drew the coats of arms of the union republics, what they were like. I wondered what they were trying to achieve with this? They were obviously studying my attitude towards all things Soviet. I held on for as long as I could, but then he annoyed me so much that I started to condemn Lenin and almost sent the artist packing, told him to get out of the cell, because I would... “You and your Lenin—you’re an eyesore, drawing that satrap here!” In short, I told him what I thought. He was immediately taken out of the cell, supposedly because we couldn't get along. But I understood that he was performing some function.

The second one's functions were something else. This homosexual. He was taking some towel at night, I woke up and said: “What are you doing? Are you not normal or what?” I couldn't understand—was it just to have a conflict with him. And then, I hear shouting from other cells that so-and-so is a *suka* [bitch], he’s a snitch. I ask: “Is that not about you?” He hemmed and hawed, they took me out for a walk, and he said he wasn't going. And when I came back from the walk, he was gone. They had their own methods there.

These were the kinds of clashes in the cell. They understood that I could defend myself and raise a big fuss, so they didn't try to break me physically. They physically took their revenge on Demydov—he was weak, so they found someone, and that person beat him.

There was one guy, taken from the army. He jumped on me, so I grabbed the teapot—they had such heavy teapots there—and hit him with it so hard that he jumped back. He was a big guy, he kicked me so that I flew back, but that teapot saved me, because I made such a racket with that teapot that the corridor guards rushed in and threw him out. Maybe there was some intention there too, because why did they put me with him? He was some kind of thief, talking nonsense about his case being related to weapons. Probably to get me to talk.

I made some mistakes with another “plant.” A skinhead, came from a labor camp. He was supposedly about to be released, but they “cracked” him for some buried weapon. He was from the village of Zhovten, now Yezupil near Frankivsk. That was his cover story, he kept repeating it to me, and then he said: “If you had a weapon, you need to go abroad.” He was trying to steer the conversation in that direction. I watched him closely: it turned out he prayed in the mornings because he saw that I prayed. Apparently, he had the task of praying with me. When I started the “Our Father” in the morning, he would also start to pray. And one morning, he wasn't praying. I asked him: “Why don't you want to? You were praying.” When I returned from my walk (because they always did things during the walk)—he was gone. They obviously realized that I had exposed him, and it was no longer expedient for him to have contact with me.

Such were the twists and turns during the investigation. And during the investigation, I took everything on myself. Where is the pistol? “I took it, and no one else.” Motriuk remained silent, so everything was fine. During the investigation, I figured out that if I did something with one other person and took the blame, and the other person said nothing, they couldn't prove it. But if three of us knew, the investigation would unravel it.

They carried out an operation at Lotov's place, took those two pistols, photographed them, and attached them to my case. “And what do these pistols, the Browning and the Walther, have to do with my case?” “Well, you wanted to carry out such an operation, didn't you?” “Yes, we wanted to, but we didn't do it. I only saw them in a photograph.” “But it's connected to your case, you uncovered them.” “So make a separate case out of it, as if we helped you uncover trophy weapons at the Lotovs'.”

I could have argued strongly with them, but at the time I was completely legally blind: they were so calmly twisting us with this Article 56. They kept us like that until May, and in May they said: “Your article has been changed: you are charged under Articles 62, part one—‘anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda,’ 64—‘creation of an organization,’ 223—‘theft of weapons,’ part two, 86—‘theft of socialist property’ (this was for the construction pistols), and 141—they accused us of stealing a tape recorder in Kolomyia from Khmelevskyi. So I had a whole set, 5 articles. On aggregate, according to Article 41, I was convicted on political grounds, Articles 62, part 1, and 64, for anti-Soviet activities aimed at separating Ukraine from the USSR.

They asked why we wanted a free Ukraine, what that would give us. The boys explained that today Ukraine has no army of its own, no currency of its own, no language of its own, that there is such great Russification. But Ukraine has representation in the UN. But it is such representation that it must be subordinate to the Union. They were also interested: “Do you think there are other youth or student organizations in Ukraine?” I answered that there are probably students in every educational institution in Ukraine who think as we do. They meticulously wrote this down. Obviously, they analyzed our answers later. They asked if we had any connections with them. They were very persistent about connections. I said I had not made any connections, that I only got information from radio broadcasts. They asked: “Who brainwashed you into thinking that Alla Horska* was killed by the KGB?” I said, it was on the radio. I told them that now that they had arrested me, the very next day “Voice of America” reported on our group—which means someone from your offices passed it on to them. He looked at me—it's as clear as day that few people knew about our group, and a broadcast was made immediately, all over Kolomyia people were listening about the arrest of the “Union of Ukrainian Youth of Halychyna.” The name of the organization and the last names, all clearly stated. That means this information could only have come from there, from them—someone there was sympathetic to us.

They were also very persistent in asking me: “Who warned you that you gave the order to hide everything?” They were desperately looking for the person who had warned us. It bothered them a lot. I replied that I couldn’t explain it, because I genuinely didn't know.

V.O.: And do you really not know, or could someone from your circle have indeed reported it to Radio Liberty? Was there no one like that?

D.H.: Of course not. I told them: “It was your side that did it.” They were very surprised and angry. Such debates often arose. We're talking, after all, you can't just stay silent the whole time, it's a long story.

Oh, in the cell (this was done on purpose—I realized it later) they kept me in solitary. It was cell 95, where Myroslav Symchych* had also been held. (*A new case against M. Symchych was initiated on January 28, 1968, and lasted 25 months and 13 days. – Ed.) There, “Symchych” was carved into the board. He had been there before us. But I didn't know who that person was. They scrape off all the inscriptions, but this one was carved on the side of the bunk. I learned about Symchych later, but he had been in the same cell on the 4th floor, cell 95.

Meanwhile, I would stand on the window ledge and look through those “bayans”* (*“Bayans” – additional wooden shutters on prison windows: slats placed at an angle so one could only see up, not down or straight ahead), and I could see some of the walking yards. One time I saw Chuprey in one of those yards. I stuck my hand through the “bayans” and shouted as loud as I could: “Roman! I'm here!” He looked at the windows, and I showed him with my hand. I look—and he points with his finger that he is lower. Aha. And just then the doors open, because the corridor guards heard, and the guard from the watchtower had called them. The guards rush in, pull me away from the window: “What do you think you’re doing?! To the punishment cell with him!” And they attacked me fiercely. I play the simpleton and say: “What—I saw a colleague here. Not seeing a person for so long—what’s wrong with you!” “You are violating the rules! You signed that you would not violate the rules!” “Where did I sign that?” I did indeed sign it, but I said it to him like that.

My investigator finds out about this. He calls me in and says: “You are misbehaving in there. We are not responsible for what the prison administration does.” He's also playing dumb. Of course you are responsible, good people, where do you think you are! It was self-evident, but that was the game. Roman is sitting below. We communicated through a cup, he says we need to lower a “horse”* (*A string that is cast from a window to another cell to pass a note, object, food, or tobacco).

V.O.: Did he already know what a “horse” was?

D.H.: The one who was in the cell with him knew. He taught us. I write from here what to do, how to behave during the investigation, and also at the trial. Roman asks what to do. The neighbor probably advised Roman so. I later analyzed this case and told Roman that they wanted to know how we would behave during the trial. I wrote to Roman that we would have to play the fool and outwardly admit guilt, but in our hearts, we would remain as we were. And this note ended up in my case file as one of the main accusations at the trial, because Judge Vasylenko constantly emphasized that everything being said was only superficial, that is, I was behaving insincerely, as were all the defendants, since the note spoke of an “enactment of repentance and confession of guilt.” When this note was read at the trial, I protested: “Well, none of this is necessary.” Well, what happened, the boys started to repent. They ask: “Do you admit your guilt?” Demydov stands up and says: “Well, we do admit...” And so on… “So you see, and Hrynkiv wrote—look how he is behaving!” And I was indeed behaving defiantly, they silenced me several times: “Sit down! We will remove you!” But I had already given up, because it wouldn't change anything. This note seemed to have the opposite effect on me. But the boys began to disown it. Demydov said: “I didn’t know he was a man with a double bottom.” Whether he said this sincerely or deliberately, I can't say. “But do you admit your guilt?” “I admit it.” Well, I thought, to hell with it. What's the big deal? There's nothing terrible about it. We understand these things.

Motriuk’s mother, as a witness, shouted: “He (meaning me) came into our family, he had a weapon, we were afraid, and he forced him to join this organization…” This is how she wanted to mitigate her son’s fate. But when the prosecutor asked Mykola: “How do you see this? Did you really not want to have anything to do with Hrynkiv?” Motriuk listened and listened, then stood up and said: “No, he was my friend, and I decided that the cause he spoke of was necessary. That’s how it was. And that he represented his friends, well, his friends are my friends too. There is a saying that my vassal’s vassal is also my vassal.” That's why they found him guilty. Perhaps the KGB's plans included the possibility that one of the defendants might be released from the courtroom. But everyone was convicted.

Motriuk and Chuprey got 4 years each. Chuprey only had one charge under Article 62; he was not charged for the pistols. Shovkovy and Demydov got 5 years each, because the former was the head of the security service, and the latter was the head of the ideological department. I was given a sentence of 7 years of imprisonment in a strict-regime camp and 3 years of exile.

The trial lasted three days, and on August 5, 1973, the verdict was read.

It so happened that I found out about the birth of my child only in May, while my daughter Svitlana was born on April 23, 1973. They didn't want to tell me… I even “thanked” the investigator: “What a vile method of yours—to keep dear family events a secret.” I had another meeting with this investigator later, I think in eighty… I can't say the year for sure anymore.

CAMP VS-389/36, KUCHINO

They sent us to the camp by transport. They took us through Lviv, Kharkiv, Sverdlovsk, and Perm—they made such a zigzag, turning back through the Chusovskaya station. There were various adventures on the different transports, but that’s another story. We arrived at the camp at the end of November 1973.

Chuprey, myself, and Motriuk were brought to the zone VS-389/36, in Kuchino, Chusovoy Raion, Perm Oblast, where at that time were Oles Serhiyenko,* Yevhen Sverstiuk,* Taras Melnychuk,* Oleksa Riznykiv,* Anatoliy Zdorovyi,* Levko Lukianenko,* Ivan Pokrovskyi,* a group of Jews who were would-be plane hijackers—Eduard Dymshits, Israel Zalmanson* (*The “airplane affair” hijackers, who had bought all the tickets for a 12-seat plane from Leningrad to Priozersk on June 15, 1970, with the intention of diverting it to Sweden. All were convicted, but with this act they “blazed a trail” for other Jews to emigrate to Israel. – Ed.); a group of Russian plane hijackers, Vasilyev, whose sister was in the women’s zone; then there were some monarchists, VSKhSON* (*VSKhSON – *Vserossiyskiy sotsial-khristianskiy soyuz osvobozhdeniya narodov* [All-Russian Social-Christian Union for the Liberation of the People]. A monarchist organization that emerged in Leningrad in 1964; in 1967 its members Yevgeny Vagin, Averochkin, Sado, Igor Ogurtsov, Vladimir Osipov, Leonid Borodin, and others were convicted), Chekhovskoy and Chamovskikh—they had such interesting last names. There was Davydov from Leningrad. Later Anatoly Marchenko* arrived; we met briefly. Then Ihor Kalynets* and Ivan Svitlychnyi* also ended up there, though not for long; we were with them for about two or three months. We talked before the strike that broke out in the zone (*June 23, 1974. – Ed.*).

While in confinement, I became acquainted with a Volynian, a participant in the OUN-UPA combat operations, Andriy Turyk.* His tall stature, posture, and courageous face with an aquiline nose were captivating. He had a talent for counterintelligence and, as it later turned out, was involved in the camp in truly unusual affairs involving the smuggling of materials to the outside world that described the situation of political prisoners. One day he approached me and started a conversation about whether I could write an article about the fact that there are many Ukrainians in confinement and that they continue to fight for Ukraine’s independence here, while the USSR empire continues to deal with them—throwing some into prisons and camps, putting others in psychiatric institutions, and destroying still others both morally and physically. This article was supposed to be an appeal to all people of good will. I asked Turyk who would sign this appeal. He said he would let me know later, but that it needed to be written. It was inappropriate to ask further questions, as it was considered that someone who asks too many questions is often suspected of being a stool pigeon.

I wrote the article-appeal describing who we were, what we were fighting for, and why the Bolsheviks had imprisoned us but did not recognize us as political prisoners. This was around December-January of 1973-1974.

Turyk studied the article carefully and probably consulted with someone. It could have been his brother-in-arms, with whom he had communicated for many years, Mykola Kurchyk* from the Rivne region, also a member of the OUN-UPA underground. They both lived in the 4th barrack at that time, but in different sections (the barrack was divided into 2 sections, each with 25 to 35 men).

About two or three days later, Turyk told me that my article was good and would “be put to use.” I didn't ask how he would smuggle it out. However, he explained to me that it was signed by a group of political prisoners, including Levko Lukianenko, Valentyn Moroz, Viacheslav Chornovil, Ivan Pokrovskyi, Ivan Svitlychnyi, Andriy Turyk, Dmytro Hrynkiv, and many others. About 20 names. I asked Turyk, here we are, freely signing this article with other people's names, but would the people we signed for agree to it? He laughed and, patting me friendly on the shoulder, replied: “We have an agreement among a few people on this. That if one of us writes something like this, he has the right to sign for others whom he knows well.” It was the first time I had encountered such a thing, but I was overjoyed when Turyk, sometime in the spring of 1974, smiled slyly and informed me that the article had already been published abroad.

After his release, Ivan Shovkovy told me that at the 35th camp, a KGB agent had summoned him and asked about this article, saying that his name was also there (Turyk and I had included it), and said that this article had been printed in an Italian newspaper and in some other newspapers. The KGB agent kept asking why Shovkovy's name was also signed there.

I guessed that Turyk had some secret channels. And indeed, rumors circulated in the camp that he had suspicious connections and had even gained the trust of some of the warrant officer guards. This was confirmed by the fact that once, during the Easter holidays of 1974, at the table where we were celebrating (and there were Oles Serhiyenko, Yevhen Sverstiuk, Ivan Pokrovskyi, Oleksa Riznychenko, Anatoliy Zdorovyi, and others), Andriy Turyk joined us and suddenly placed a quarter-liter bottle of vodka on the table. This was a miracle for those present, as alcohol was unthinkable here. How he obtained it is unknown. And Sverstiuk, assuming it had been passed on by the relevant authorities, even refused to take a sip of that vodka. When it was divided among everyone, it came out to a thimbleful each.

As it later turned out, the article I wrote was smuggled out by Yakov Suslensky,* who was released in 1974. He smuggled it out in such a way that the guards couldn't find it. Apparently, he swallowed several pills, sealed in cellophane, in which this article was rewritten in tiny script.

A friendship developed between Turyk and me, and at his request, I wrote some things in tiny script, which he would pass on. Once, while I was writing an information bulletin in a small room in the barracks (the so-called room for writing letters and reading), I was suddenly caught by guards led by a warrant officer nicknamed “Congenius” (he was somewhat swarthy). He pounced on my notes. I stuffed part of them into my mouth, chewed, and swallowed, but they tore the rest from my hands. This became a reason to put me in the PKT (cell-type premises) for two months. This was in 1975, around August-September.

In the PKT, I was imprisoned with Ivan Vernyk and Roman Haiduk.* The latter was there for some violations of the rules and insubordination to the administration, while Vernyk was there for demanding sausage and butter as payment for welding work. He had welded the doors in the PKT and then painted the floor and doors there. This infuriated Fyodorov, the head of the camp regime, and Vernyk was given the PKT to curb his excessive appetites a bit.

Another incident happened to me that could have ended tragically. It was in September 1976. I was working as a lathe operator, turning so-called broaches, the raw materials for which were brought to the camp from somewhere near the city of Lysva. My associate, Dmytro Demydov, was transferred to our 36th zone from the 35th. We worked at adjacent machines. I mounted a workpiece about 1 meter 40 cm long and started the machine. While adjusting the cooling fluid nozzle above the cutting tool, I didn’t notice a loose thread from my sleeve get caught, and in an instant, my right sleeve was pulled onto the rotating shaft. The rotations were fast, up to 100 per minute. Sensing the mortal danger, I jerked back with all my might in a superhuman effort. I was spurred into quick action by Demydov’s scream, who was yelling frantically, “Save yourself!” All my instincts kicked in to save myself. I was spun around, and bracing my feet against the machine bed, which was already behind me, I tore the remnants of my work jacket and the undershirt I was wearing off my neck. With God's help, torn and bloody, I broke free and, in the heat of the moment, started running toward the checkpoint. My comrades ran after me. Demydov was the first to catch up. As I ran, I checked to see if my arms were intact and slowly began to lose consciousness. The operations officer and the head of the camp regime, along with the unit chief, came to the medical unit. They drew up a report on what had happened. It was clear that they too would have been officially reprimanded if I had been crippled or killed.

I was kept in the medical unit for about ten days and then discharged. Scars remained on my arms because the clothing had been violently twisted off me onto that workpiece. They thought I would never return to lathe work, but, tempting my fate, I continued to work on the lathe, which greatly surprised, as I recall, Yevhen Sverstiuk. And Ivan Braha, a Belarusian, told me sincerely, “To escape from something like you did is physically almost impossible, no matter how healthy or strong as a horse you might be. There's something else at play: perhaps you are still needed by someone out there, in the free world, and that’s why God saved you.”

In the summer of 1974, a protest against the administration’s lawlessness began following a conflict between the camp's assistant warden on duty, Captain Melentyai, and the political prisoner Stepan Sapeliak.* The captain, while searching Stepan Sapeliak, exceeded his official authority and struck Sapeliak several times in the ribs as he stood facing the wall. Back in the camp, Stepan complained to his closest friends with whom he lived in the same barracks—Pavlo Strotsenev, Dmytro Solodkyi, and others. The Ukrainian group of prisoners filed a protest with the Perm Prosecutor's Office and the General Prosecutor's Office of the USSR.

The strike that arose from this conflict mainly involved political prisoners from the Sixtiers generation: Levko Lukianenko,* Yevhen Sverstiuk,* myself, Volodymyr Senkiv* (Sapeliak's associate), Sapeliak himself, and others.* (*Інцидент стався 23.06. 1974, у страйку взяли участь 45 політвיязнів. Див: С.Сапеляк. Хроніки дисидентські від головосіку. Невольнича мемуаристика. – К.: Смолоскип. – С. 35-41 с.; Юнаки з огненної печі. / Харківська правозахисна група. ─ Харків: Фоліо, 2003. ─ С. 122-123, 144 с. – Ред.). Roman Chuprey did not participate in the strike due to a finger injury (he was undergoing treatment), and Mykola Motriuk abstained from striking because he was in a somewhat depressive state due to his divorce.

The administration, seeing that the matter had involved the newly arrived young men in the zone, began to take measures to prevent the strike from becoming massive. In particular, both I and Volodymyr Senkiv were summoned by the operations officer and the regime officer Fyodorov: “You are still young; people like Mykola Kurchyk, who has murders on his conscience, are pushing you into this provocation.” They even spun tales that during a strike somewhere in Mordovia, Kurchyk had strangled someone with a towel for not wanting to strike with him! I didn’t listen and continued my work stoppage. Senkiv and I were put in the punishment cell. I was given eight days, and Senkiv, I think, five. Sverstiuk was also put in the punishment cell—he, Senkiv, and I were in the same cell together. Ivan Pokrovskyi,* a native of the Chernihiv region, who, like Lukianenko, supported the strike, was also sentenced to six months in the PKT, which was until the end of his 25-year term. Before his release, all his teeth fell out. Somehow, through a warrant officer, Andriy Turyk managed to arrange secret deliveries for Pokrovskyi—chocolate and butter, which sustained the elderly political prisoner’s health. But other warrant officers discovered this, and that warrant officer, apparently of non-Russian nationality (perhaps Tatar or Uzbek), disappeared. Levko Lukianenko was sentenced to serve the rest of his term in Vladimir Prison; Chornohlaz, a Jew who supported the strike, was also sentenced to Vladimir Prison.

Unit chief Dolmatov set up a provocation against Yevhen Sverstiuk. He summoned Yevhen for a conversation through the orderly, Volodymyr Hlyva.* Hlyva called for Sverstiuk with a demeaning gesture, beckoning with his finger and shouting, “Hey you, come on, they're calling for you over there!” Of course, this outraged Sverstiuk, as Hlyva could have approached him and spoken like a human being, saying the unit chief was summoning him. The matter, in fact, concerned the turmoil of that strike. Sverstiuk did not go to the orderly, who then wrote a report to the camp commandant. The deputy chief of the regime, Fyodorov, along with the camp commandant, then-Major Kotov, summoned Sverstiuk and Hlyva to demonstrate how a subservient “Ukrainian-khokhol” could curry favor. Kotov practiced such humiliations. Yevhen just spread his hands in dismay, not expecting such foul play from a supposed UPA fighter. And Kotov capitalized on Hlyva's feigned honesty, saying how diligently he performed his duties. And he worked as a “shnyr,” that is, an orderly who served the unit chief in the prisoners' absence. Sverstiuk was then sentenced to 10 days, in response to which he declared a hunger strike. The administration realized that the protest action could spread to the neighboring camp, as they knew that information was passed through the prison hospital, which was next to camp VS-389/35. And so, passions were gradually calmed, because, apparently, the KGB had no intention of making a big deal out of the newly imprisoned young men, as this could become public knowledge in the world community. The USSR would then have a fresh headache with all sorts of denials, and they were so eager to hide the facts about political prisoners that they even moved them from Mordovia to the Urals, although one strict-regime and one special-regime camp remained there, where Valentyn Moroz,* Danylo Shumuk,* Vasyl Romaniuk,* and others were held.

In the 35th zone, where our associate Mykola Motriuk was transferred, a long-term campaign for the status of political prisoner began around 1976. Almost the entire camp, especially the Sixtiers, began using statements and protests to demand recognition not as criminals but as political prisoners. Mykola Motriuk and Ivan-Vasyl Shovkovyi also joined this campaign. In a letter renouncing his Soviet citizenship, Mykola wrote that he chose France as his country of residence. When the KGB asked him why that particular country, he explained briefly, “I want to swim in the Seine and see the Eiffel Tower, and maybe even jump off it—what do you care?” Shovkovyi chose Holland.* (*Див. про це в публікації Миколи Горбаля «Хроника "Архипелага ГУЛАГ". Зона 35 (За 1977 г.)» у журналі "Зона", ч. 4, 1993 р., с. 141-142. – Ред.). Of course, the KGB was concerned that such a mass renunciation of citizenship would become known in the West and cause new trouble, which is exactly what happened.

At the beginning of 1977, before their release, Mykola Motriuk and Roman Chuprey were taken to the Ivano-Frankivsk detention center for a certain conversation. I was taken too, with the intention of testing my nerves: so that I would see my friends getting out, while I still had to sit and sit. I suspected it was some cunning trick but expected worse: that some provocations might happen on the way. There was no shortage of them, but that is a topic for a longer story. Someday, if I can, I will write about it. In Frankivsk, they told me straight out, “You see that Motriuk and Shovkovyi have written renunciations of their USSR citizenship. Perhaps you support them but haven't declared it?” Indeed, there was something to think about, because for some reason, this wasn’t discussed in our camp. We somehow hadn't considered all these complexities, and many had no intention of leaving Ukraine. And Yevhen Sverstiuk did not touch on this issue either; it was a rather painful topic. I replied that I had not delved into the motives for their renunciations but that I myself wanted to live in Ukraine; abroad was not an attractive paradise for me because I am not a materialist. “Write a letter condemning the actions of your associates and other political prisoners.” I flatly refused, and the KGB sent me back to the Urals. Perhaps if I had done so, it would have been that “indulgence” which, upon signing, would have set me free at the same time as Motriuk and Chuprey.

The second time I was taken “for a brainwashing,” as the prisoners used to say, was not to Frankivsk but to Kyiv. This was in February–March 1978. How surprised I was to see one of the KGB officers who had talked to me in March 1977 in Frankivsk, when Chuprey and Motriuk were being released—Kovtun. He and another major, with the surname Petrenko, started a conversation in Lukianivska Prison about how my parents were old, my mother was ill, and my children needed their father. They said, shouldn't I write not a statement, but just some reflections on how certain prisoners shouldn't hope for a paradise overseas, that there is no better land than one’s own, and that I believe one cannot achieve full democracy for the individual in capitalist countries because there, it’s a race for profit. “And you yourself said during the preliminary investigation that you wanted to see Ukraine as socialist, as long as it was more independent. Look, there’s socialism in Czechoslovakia and in Sweden,” Kovtun remarked. I replied that I had said that five years ago, but now, after the prisons and camps, I was convinced that even socialism would not give Ukraine independence as long as the USSR empire exists.

There were various conversations, until finally Kovtun said that my mother and wife had submitted a request for my pardon to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, and therefore, some step was needed from me as well. To write something. I replied that I would not write any statements or appeals. Then they settled on my signing an agreement of sorts, stating that I would not engage in anti-Soviet activities. And indeed, they brought a paper where it was written that I, so-and-so, convicted for anti-Soviet activity, assure the KGB that I have no intention of engaging in anti-Soviet activity after my release. I thought to myself that they have their own understanding of “activity,” and I have mine, and decided that time would tell. I signed that letter about responsibility for anti-Soviet activity, and they sent me from Kyiv. They stopped in Moscow at Lefortovo Prison. They held me for about a week, and then some representative from the KGB called me in and told me in pure Ukrainian that my mother had died. I replied that I knew, to which he was surprised, “How?” I said that I had a dream from which I concluded that my mother had died. They transferred me to a cell with two other men, apparently so I wouldn't be alone, knowing about the death of a loved one. The KGB officer did apologize then and said they couldn't let me go to the funeral: “Because you yourself understand what your status is.”

My mother died at the end of March 1978, and I was held in Lefortovo from late March. The same KGB officer—Captain Gurzhos—kept summoning me, and in May, he hinted that my case was under review and I might be released, because, “The petition from your mother and wife is still in effect.”

And so, in August 1978, I was released from Lefortovo, where I had spent almost half a year.

A STUNTED FREEDOM

D.H.: A few days after my release, the head of the Kolomyia KGB summoned me and said, “You have been released and you must understand that your activities and what happened with you in the camp must remain there, and here in Kolomyia, you must behave as Soviet people behave.” I didn't understand this and said, “Why are you threatening me right away, as soon as I've returned to my family? My children are here...” “We understand your family feelings, but you must not resume your activities.” The conversation took place as if on equal terms, but on the other hand, I understood that my place had been clearly indicated. He said that I had to find a job within two weeks. I asked what kind of job it should be. He said, “You’re not a stupid man, you must understand that you have to get a job, because the law is in effect: if you don’t start working within a month, you could be convicted again.”

I returned home and told my wife, “This is how it is, I have to find a job.” And I went looking for work. I went to the DOZ (wood processing plant)—at the DOZ personnel department they said, “Your specialty is such that we have no work for you. You're a fitter-assembler, and we have nothing to assemble. You’re a lathe operator—we have enough lathe operators.” In short, he said they would let me know if a position opened up. They gently turned me away. Talking to the head of the personnel department, I realized he was well aware of who I was. I said nothing, turned around, and left.

I went to the railway. I thought maybe I could get a job in the depot or somewhere at the station. There too, when I showed my release certificate, I was met with a kind of alienation. That certificate was horrifying for them: they looked, saw I was convicted, clicked their tongues a bit, and said, “Wait, our deputy will be here soon.” The deputy came and said he couldn't talk to me; the personnel department had to handle it. I looked at the situation and just went home.

On the way, I met an acquaintance of mine who had been released a day earlier; his name was Kovtsuniak, Yevhen. In the Kuchino camp, he had befriended me because he was from the Ivano-Frankivsk region, and even from the Kolomyia district. Kovtsuniak and his brother were members of the underground. Yevhen carried out certain tasks: liaison with armed groups, delivery, and distribution of leaflets. He hid at an acquaintance's place, whom he later married, and before his arrest, he lived in the village of Hvizdets, Horodenka district. For more than 10 years, he lived in a specially equipped hideout under the stove in a house. There was an article about him in *Prykarpatska Pravda* after he was discovered. After his arrest and trial, he was sent to Mordovia, and then to the Urals, where I met him. He had a 15-year sentence and was released in 1977. At that time, his charge was Article 54, part 1. His year of birth was approximately 1923. In 1980, Kovtsuniak died suddenly of a heart attack. He is buried in the village of Kornych, Kolomyia district, where he lived with his wife in a house purchased in the military town, not far from the Kornych airfield.

Now Yevhen Kovtsuniak was already working at the “Silmash” factory. He said, “Dmytro, remember one thing: everyone who is released from our political camps to Kolomyia—they stick them all in one factory, at Silmash. So don't even bother looking too hard.” “But what if I want to find something else and don’t want to go to Silmash?” But it was not to be!

Another man who had been released earlier approached me, Volodymyr Hlyva.* He was born in 1926 in the village of Nosiv (a district near Berezhany). Convicted for the murder of a district policeman in his home village, he had ties to the underground. His sentence was 28 years: 25 under Article 54, and another three for an escape attempt from the camp. He was released in 1977 to Kolomyia, where he married the girl he had corresponded with for a long time, Sofiia, a native of Velyka Kamianka, Kolomyia district. From a patriotic family, she sympathized with the insurgents. We were in the same camp and in the same barracks in the Urals. He also said that he was already working at Silmash in the same workshop as Kovtsuniak. I was very surprised that people who had been in the same camp were now even working in the same workshop.

I didn't want to go to work for a month. And then a district policeman came to the house, introduced himself, and said to me, “I would like to talk to you. May I?” “You may.” We sat down and talked. He said, “I wouldn't want to bother you, but there are instructions, so I’ll speak frankly. You have been released but are not employed. Why haven’t you found a job?” He was a sincere man. I asked, “What am I to do? I tried here, I tried there—everywhere they treat me with prejudice, they don’t hire me. So what should I do?” “Why don’t they hire you? What are you talking about?” “Well, where do they hire?” “Haven't you applied to Silmash?” I understood everything, as I had spoken with those two prisoners who had been released. This was their practice: to herd all released prisoners into Silmash, especially those with political charges, like the former Article 54, or our Article 62. Well, what could I do? I smiled and said, “Alright. So what should I do?” “Just go there, and that’s it, it's guaranteed… What are you talking about? You haven’t even applied there, have you?” “No, I haven’t.”

After the policeman’s visit, my wife said, “You see for yourself, they will constantly pressure you. Do you need that?” Alright, I waved my hand in resignation and went to this Silmash. I went to Silmash—and it was as if they were waiting for me! I’m telling this in a simplified way. I had spoken with my people, so everyone understood that I would eventually end up at Silmash.

A man worked in the personnel department at Silmash who, as I was later told, was from the KGB. One of those who used to chase our UPA boys in the forests. His surname, I think, was Rebrov. He was short. I was told, “Well, this one knows your boys from those times!” Rebrov smiled, as if trying to win my trust. Of course, I got the job in the second workshop of the factory, as there was nowhere else to go.

Indeed, it turned out there were many former prisoners of all categories there. Why I say this is because one year someone robbed the cash office of the vocational school, which was on the factory grounds. It trained lathe operators and milling machine operators for the factory. Someone stole the money intended for the school teachers' salaries, about 4,000 to 5,000 rubles. So the investigative bodies were tasked with finding the thief. Everyone who had served time was under suspicion. For two days, they took everyone, 2-3 people at a time, in a “bobby car” to the police station for questioning. A major or a captain sat in every office. I spoke with one captain, and then a major apologized to me, “We understand that you are not guilty; you have completely different charges.” This was because I had protested, “My charges are Articles 62, 64, why was I brought here?”

They took everyone—Hlyva, Kovtsuniak, and the rest. So I roughly calculated: it came out to about 80-something people they brought in from the Silmash factory for questioning about this theft. Then I understood that they had a developed surveillance network here to keep so many former prisoners in one place. Moreover, one man warned me, “I would ask you: talk less with some of your people.” And he walked away from me. I was surprised why he said that to me. And he, apparently, knew those people who approached me for conversations.

The second case was this. A man from a neighboring section approached me and said, “I want to tell you something. I am a party man, a communist. At the meetings and at the bureau of our workshop, I was given the task of keeping an eye on you. But I feel somehow ashamed, because I’ve heard about you.” And he admitted that he had heard our whole case on the “Voice of America” when we were arrested. He confessed this to me. He turned out to be a decent man. I asked, “What drove you into the party? You have to get out of that party.” And he said, “Well, didn't they say you were a communist too?” “I’m that kind of communist: accepted here—and kicked out the door right there. But you have been suppressing yourself for years.” “Well, what can I do?” “Just go and say that you can’t handle the work and leave the party.” And he did it two years later. When I met him later, he was very grateful to me. He left long before people started leaving the party en masse. Of course, it was hard for him to do. His surname was, I think, Horobets, or some other “bird-like” name.

The work was in two shifts, hard work, on a lathe. In the zone, with the help of a German named Kost, I had learned the lathe trade and was now forced to work as a lathe operator. The surname was Kost; many knew him, he taught more than one Ukrainian the lathe trade.

After my release, I had this conversation. When I was summoned to the KGB in the city of Kolomyia, there was another man in civilian clothes. Some curator from the region, or someone. He said to me, “Well, how is it? You were in your third year at the Institute of Oil and Gas—there's an opportunity to continue your studies. We could help you.” I said, “No. If I want to study, I will study. But for now, I haven’t decided, and I don't want to study.” I understood they were “throwing me a line”: if I wanted to have relations with them, it would be very easy. How could it be so easy for a former political prisoner to resume his studies? I understood this perfectly well.

But I thought anyway: I’ll take my documents and find out what’s going on at the Institute of Oil and Gas. I met with the dean of the correspondence faculty. He turned out to be of Lithuanian nationality. He spoke to me in Russian. I said that I had studied at the Institute and would like to know how I could be reinstated. He looked at me and said, “And when did you leave your studies?” “In 1973, I was arrested.” He stood there and said, “What were you arrested for?” So we started talking. He, a Lithuanian, had a rather pleasant conversation with me. I understood that he was a supporter of everything I was telling him. This was in 1979. He, of course, understood whom he was talking to; I told him such things and hinted that I had been in zones where there were many Lithuanians and Latvians, all for the national revival of their countries. And he said, “What did you do? Couldn't your wife, or whoever, come here to the faculty and write a request for academic leave? I would have extended it annually, and now you would have come and studied calmly. What can be done now?” Of course, I understood him and he understood me too, but I was pleased that he received me well and was glad that I told him the truth. I said that I didn't want to study now, and if I did, what kind of study would it be if they were constantly persecuting me?

ABOUT TARAS MELNYCHUK

D.H.: It so happened that in the camp I became very close with Taras Melnychuk,* a dissident poet who was released a little earlier* (*В січні 1975. ─ Ред.). The Chekists used this technique: before release, they would send a person supposedly to the hospital. And our hospital in the Urals was near another zone, at the Vsekhsvyatskaya station. Once they took Melnychuk, they never brought him back to us. But before that, we had good contact, we talked about various things, about poetry. We also talked about how we might meet someday in freedom. Although he was released earlier than me, he did not forget about it.

When I was released—it was the end of August 1978—Taras Melnychuk visited me just a month later. I was released to the same address from which I had been arrested, because my wife lived there, in Kolomyia. Of course, we met with joy, but he was sad. I started asking him what the matter was, why he was so sad. He said, “Well, how can you not be sad when the KGB is persecuting you from all sides? I can't go anywhere without permission. I have already received several warnings from the KGB and from the police.” Because the KGB always acted through the police. I was surprised, but it turned out there was nothing to be surprised about, because I myself received such a blow.

In early 1979, Taras Melnychuk was provoked into some criminal act. There was some kind of altercation with fellow villagers. He couldn’t stand some insult regarding his poetic achievements. They insulted him badly there, he couldn't take it and hit the offender with a mug of beer. For that, he was later given four years. Meanwhile, he fled. Where did he flee? He understood that they would arrest him, so he turned to me in Kolomyia and told me the whole story. I said, “Taras, you see that my house is ‘under fire.’ We are all, as they say, under a microscope. There’s surveillance here, the district officer comes, people come. There are neighbors here…” (These neighbors later, in the 90s, admitted to me that before my arrest, some device was placed against the wall in their room. I was very surprised that they confessed this to me). So I told him, “Let me get you to Pechenizhyn to the boys. There is a house there, they will hide you.” Pechenizhyn is a town, currently with about seven thousand inhabitants. A truly large and sprawling town, one could hide there for about two months.

The calculation was that perhaps we could hide Taras Melnychuk, and this crime wasn’t serious, so the investigation, as they say, would wave it off: so what, he hit a man with a mug? But, unfortunately, it turned out that it was all provoked by the KGB; they were very interested in finding him. We learned this later. I took him to Shovkovyi and told him all these twists and turns. Shovkovyi didn’t want to move him somewhere to his relatives or anywhere else and said, “Let him stay with us.” Shovkovyi had him stay at his place. Maybe he will tell about this himself…

Taras hid at Shovkovyi's place for about a week. Roman Chuprey lived nearby. They told him not to show up in the village, but he appeared somewhere. Because he had such a nature, you know: he was an impatient man. He showed up in the village. Obviously, someone saw him. Of course, someone saw him. He was undone by that impatience. He couldn’t stand it all and said, “Why should I hide from them forever? What will they do to me? Besides, I realized here that they won't leave me alone. So I'll go and turn myself in.”

But be that as it may: before that, he had appeared somewhere in Kolomyia. At the bus station in Kolomyia, people from his village saw him. They reported that he was boarding a bus to Pechenizhyn. It’s clear what kind of people they were. In short, he was discovered in Pechenizhyn. How exactly—I don't know.

Searches were conducted during his investigation—at my place and at Shovkovyi's. They were supposedly looking for a knife with which he had supposedly fought someone off. In reality, one of the attackers had raised a hand with a knife at Taras, and Taras knocked the knife out, grabbed it, and threw it away somewhere. So they wanted to portray it as Taras Melnychuk's knife, which had gone missing. Such a mythological situation. They came with searches. Looking for a knife—and they flip through every book. I remarked ironically to them, “Guys, you came to look for a knife, could it really be in a book? Well, maybe a blade, but how can a knife be in books?” These people were in civilian clothes. They were dissatisfied with my behavior, and my wife added fuel to the fire, “What are you doing?”

Then they went to search Shovkovyi's place in Pechenizhyn. They had information from somewhere about where Taras was staying. I later asked Taras if he had told them where he was. He said, “I didn’t really want to hide it, because they saw me at the bus station. So what, I'm not supposed to be with friends or what?” He said something like that.

Then we got together and decided: well, since he’s already been caught, our task now is to help him as a person, because he is the only one here from our camp. At that time he was divorced, but his wife went to see him. He started passing poems by any means possible. And he wrote a lot. His wife started bringing these poems to me, and I didn’t know what to do with them. Then I thought about it, consulted, and decided that I would pass them on to Raisa Moroz* and Lyuba Vozniak-Lemyk* in Frankivsk, who had contact with us. That was my one and only channel of communication. Sometimes my wife took them, sometimes they came, rarely I did, because I was noticeable. Through Raisa Moroz, all the convicted members of the “Union of Ukrainian Youth of Galicia” received a small amount of money from Kyiv.

Even when I was serving my sentence in Kuchino, such aid, about 80 rubles, suddenly arrived from the fund of Academician Andrei Sakharov. To individual political prisoners. Including in my name. The Chekist of our camp, Kronberg, a Latvian, summoned everyone who received the aid and tried to persuade them to refuse the “handouts.” He said that it meant we were not reforming because we were taking handouts from anti-Soviets. Maybe someone refused, I can't say anything about that.

Our relatives also received help through Raisa Moroz. In Kyiv, this aid for us was managed by Mykola Horbal.* By the way, he visited all of us in Pechenizhyn after our release in 1979.

Lyuba Lemyk, the wife of the legendary Mykola Lemyk,* who in 1933 attempted to assassinate the Bolshevik consul O. Mailov in Lviv. As an organizer of OUN mobile groups, he was hanged by the Germans in 1941. Lyuba lived in Ivano-Frankivsk. By the way, she is the aunt of Opanas Zalyvakha’s* wife. After my release, I befriended this family, and in July 1980, Opanas Zalyvakha visited my village of Markivka, where he and Orysia Sokulska* served as godparents to my son Petro. Also among my godparents were Volodymyr Hlyva* and Maria, the wife of Vasyl Romaniuk* (later Patriarch Volodymyr).

So what were these poems by Taras Melnychuk? I grouped them into several cycles. They were quite critical of that system, of the Communist Party, of Suslov, of Brezhnev. They were very topical at that time and made a strong impression on people. I passed a thick notebook of these poems to Raisa Moroz and Lyuba Lemyk. I could only guess about their subsequent fate. I only know that Mykola Horbal came to Frankivsk, took them, and somehow passed them abroad. A collection of these poems was published by the "Smoloskyp" publishing house, and another one was published somewhere in Great Britain. I haven’t seen the British collection, but the one published by "Smoloskyp" contained those poems we passed on, from the period when he was under investigation in Kosiv and Ivano-Frankivsk. After that, he was sentenced to 4 years and ended up in Vinnytsia.

In 1982, in Toronto, the V. Symonenko “Smoloskyp” publishing house published a small collection, “Iz-za grat” (From Behind Bars), without Taras Melnychuk’s knowledge or consent—28 poems written in detention, in the investigative isolators of Kosiv, Ivano-Frankivsk, and some in the Vinnytsia prison. In 1990, a book of T. Melnychuk’s poetry, “Strofy z Holhofy” (Stanzas from Golgotha), was published in Great Britain.

Taras Melnychuk died on March 29, 1995, in Kolomyia. The communities of Kolomyia and Kosiv buried the poet according to his will in the village of Utoropy in the Kosiv region, in the yard of his native home. On one side, Utoropy borders the village of Stopchativ, where Dmytro Pavlychko was born, and on the other, the village of Pistyn.

I am now talking more about Taras Melnychuk than about myself, because at that time our work was concentrated on saving this man, unjustly imprisoned for the second time by the totalitarian regime. This led to the dissident circles of Ivano-Frankivsk joining with the dissident circles of Kyiv. I am getting a little ahead of events...

Taras Melnychuk began writing letters to me from prison. The letters had some strange content. I have them. They were semi-candid letters: “Dmytrovych, it’s like this, we shouldn’t do something.” I thought, “What kind of letters is he writing?” But you can’t argue with him, because I know the letters are being checked. I write in generalities, that everything is fine with us, I'm working at the factory, the guys send their regards. Everyday letters, without politics. And he, on the contrary, writes letters with a political slant. Well, such a strange letter… “This state of ours, the Soviet Union, look how powerful it is. I am coming to the conclusion here that it is a force, such a nuclear power…”

I read and thought it was some kind of irony that needed to be understood, because I know he can’t be like that. And I don’t really show these letters to anyone, because they are addressed to me. Of course, the KGB censorship read them. I understood that he was pursuing some goal, but I couldn't figure out what. What does he want, what does he mean?

Only later did he explain to me, “I wrote things like that to throw them off. Let them think we’ve lost our minds.” And then he wrote an open letter to *Prykarpatska Pravda*—the regional communist newspaper. It published Taras Melnychuk's recantation. And then he wrote an open appeal to us, to the guys he knows. He named our surnames there: Hrynkiv, Demydov, Chuprey, Shovkovyi, Motriuk. “What are you doing, come to your senses, this is impenetrable. You continue to do this, you've been released, but you haven't seen the light.” But for some reason, they didn’t publish this letter. It remains a mystery to this day.

V.O.: And when was this?

D.H.: It was, I think, in 1980. The recantation appeared, I believe, in the autumn of 1980.

The poets Nina Hnatiuk and Dmytro Pavlychko helped Taras a great deal. They visited the zone in Vinnytsia where he was imprisoned.

V.O.: Dmytro Pavlychko?

D.H.: Yes, they really helped pull him out. Even Taras was surprised. When Taras died, Dmytro Pavlychko sent a telegram here, saying something like, we bow our heads before you. The telegram sounded beautiful. We have it in our "Prosvita" society. But Taras Melnychuk was not fond of Pavlychko. They knew each other, but Taras Melnychuk, as a dissident, as a man who challenged this system, he never wrote poems like Pavlychko did. They are from neighboring villages, Utoropy and Stopchativ. They knew each other and went to the same school in Yabluniv. It was bitter for him to hear that Pavlychko wrote such poems. Taras Melnychuk never stooped to the level of writing odes to the communist future, about Lenin. The only thing—this recantation. Then the Chekists summoned me and pompously handed me this recantation: “Read what your colleague has written.” Of course, we read it and internally wept bitterly, so as not to betray ourselves externally. Well, the man wrote it—that's his personal affair. “What do you think of this? Perhaps you would support it?” “Well, how can one support it? This is his bitterness, not mine. Why would I support it?” “No, you think about it.” Such a conversation.

After the recantation, Taras wrote another letter from captivity. Then he is released, he comes. He starts revealing his cards to me: “You see how it is? I wrote something completely different. This is half of what I wrote. I wrote it in one light, and they presented it in another.” “I see, you wrote it, and they touched it up.” “By the way, on the eve of it, I wrote an appeal to you.” And he told me how he wrote that appeal: “I pursued the goal of showing people like you. That there are people in the Prykarpattia region who are fighting for Ukraine. To draw attention to you. It's not about me—I already understood that, as they say, I'm drowning, but I thought, at least I’ll show you.” I don’t know how sincere he was, but in that recantation, there are names: Levko Lukianenko, Yevhen Sverstiuk...

Then I ask, “And what about the letters about the humanism of that state? I have a sea of those letters.” “What else could I write? I wanted to show that I had become loyal.” Perhaps Mr. Symchych* is partly right here, that a person thinks and behaves differently in different conditions. Well, he couldn't take it, and that can be understood. God be with him.

In the Dnipropetrovsk region, a search was conducted at Hryhoriy Prykhodko’s* place. He was in the zone and somehow had my addresses in the village and in the city. When they descended on him and conducted searches, he mentioned me, because I had corresponded with him a little, so they conducted a search at my place regarding what kind of relationship I had with Prykhodko.

V.O.: That was already his second case, in 1979.

D.H.: That was his second case. And I also had a search in the case of Ivan Sokulskyi.*

V.O.: Their case is the same one as Prykhodko’s.

D.H.: In Sokulskyi's notebook, they also found my address and phone number. And some letter of mine was found in Dnipropetrovsk. On this basis, they conducted a search and took two books. One book was “What is Moscow Orthodoxy.” I had borrowed it to read from Taras,* the son of Vasyl Romaniuk,* the future Patriarch, now deceased. His father was still in exile at the time. I also communicated with his wife Maria, now also deceased; she used to visit us. And Vasyl Romaniuk appeared later, so we communicated. He was forced to move to Eastern Ukraine, which facilitated his rise to the status of Patriarch. Because if he had continued to fight in Galicia for the Cossack Orthodox faith, and here were the Greek Catholics… It almost came to a fight there, they nearly beat him up. And I was also accused of having contact with him as an Orthodox Christian. I said it was as a dissident.

In 1980 my son Petro was born, and I invited Romaniuk’s wife to be the godmother. And for the godfather—Panas Zalyvakha.* Well, Panas gave me a condition: it had to be either Orysia Lesiv,* who I think was not yet married to Ivan Sokulskyi, or Olena Antoniv.* I went to Lviv to look for Olena Antoniv and couldn’t find her; they told me she was either in Panevėžys or somewhere else in Lithuania—on vacation. Then I returned here, found Orysia, and invited her to be the godmother. That's how I got to know Orysia, and I started corresponding with her brother, Yaroslav Lesiv.* Lesiv was in prison at the time, accused of drug offenses and some other trouble they had framed him with back then.

When Taras Melnychuk returned, he started drinking heavily. He needed to be saved, as they say, from all sides. We decided we would try to save him somehow. But how? When you visit him or he comes here, and you don't give him a drink—he immediately runs away and looks for an “outlet” himself. We reprimanded him, but he bore it impatiently. He was already in such a state.

And at that time, we were trying to do something useful. But we were, as they say, “lit up.” You take a step—it immediately becomes known. We were summoned, warned. Somewhere at Shovkovyi’s birthday party, we raised our glasses to the militant Hlyva*—and I was already being summoned: “You were doing such things there again.” We started trying to figure out who could have reported it. There were scandals with those people; Shovkovyi sorted that out.

Meanwhile, right after his release, they started putting heavy pressure on Taras. They began to apply sanctions of a compulsory nature, supposedly to treat his alcoholism. They seized him and took him to Dzhuriv in the Kosiv district. During Soviet times, a treatment facility for alcohol dependents was opened there. The KGB, persecuting the poet Taras Melnychuk, calculated that by confining him for compulsory treatment, they would not only undermine his authority among his countrymen but also gradually destroy him with drugs. When I visited Taras at the Dzhuriv hospital, he was almost in despair and told me things that made me fear for his life. From his story, I understood that people like him were given large doses of some drugs that caused pain, convulsions; a person would writhe in pain, foam at the mouth, bang against the walls, and therefore the more boisterous ones who protested against these drugs were tied by strong orderlies to a bare metal bed frame without a mattress, and, as Taras acknowledged, two men died before his eyes from an overdose or from their hearts giving out. “And they were still in their prime! Young men, not some old-timers!” Taras lamented, shaking his head. I was also surprised to see the director of the Pechenizhyn school, Ivanytskyi, there for treatment for constant drinking binges. It later became known that he died from alcoholism. People were sent there, to Dzhuriv, from the Kolomyia district, from the Kosiv district, even from Verkhovyna and Sniatyn. Alcoholics who have psychoses, delirium tremens. Taras didn't have delirium tremens, but he behaved a bit unconventionally. But they put him in the ward where they treat those with delirium tremens. What he saw there... Somehow he managed to scrawl a letter, and that letter came to me. It said: “Brother, save me! I've ended up here among such and such people. I can't understand…” I went there, talked to the doctor. I said that he is a poet, a famous man, do you understand what you are risking? The doctor looked at me and said, “Well, alright, I'll let you meet with him.” We met, we talked. Taras said frankly, “I won’t be here long. I'll either escape or do something to myself.” “Taras, maybe you’re right.” Because I saw that he could do something to himself. Returning to Kolomyia, I consulted with others, “Guys, we’ll get him out of there, we’ll save him.”

We developed a plan for his escape. I went to a meeting and said, “We'll get you out of here. No one will be able to find you. But only if you listen to what I tell you.” He said with conviction, “I can't stand it here anymore.” I don't know what he couldn't stand anymore. Well, obviously, the injections, that environment. We decided to snatch him from there. We told him how we would do it. We would come by car in the morning, stop by the church... But he preempted all events by about two hours. We were still approaching the village, and there he was, standing at the crossroads! That is, he snatched himself. He was so inspired by the hope that we would rescue him that he rescued himself! He somehow tricked the guard, climbed out of a toilet window. He had thought it all through. And that was it: an early morning bus or car was passing—he was out of the village in a flash. Who’s going to ask, it’s not like Dzhuriv is fenced off with nets!

We took him in the car, and to do him a good turn, we took him to Sniatyn, to acquaintances. He stayed there for a bit, then we took him to Kolomyia and locked him in a house. He didn’t leave the room for about three weeks. This was an apartment on Bohdan Khmelnytsky Street, in the home of the Pashkovskyi family. Pashkovskyi worked with me; we trusted him. But Taras had that nature of not refraining from communication. He wanted the street, he wanted freedom, he wanted air! He breaks out—and this time he broke out to his own detriment. He broke out, and they caught him and locked him up in Pidmykhailivtsi, which is the Ivano-Frankivsk central psychiatric hospital. This was already, I think, in 1985, when they took him to Pidmykhailivtsi. It’s hard to even write a letter from there. I understood that one letter from him reached me through third parties. A terrible letter. We read it and were terrified. We had to somehow get this letter to Frankivsk.

THE JOURNAL “KARBY HIR”

Meanwhile, I told Taras Romaniuk that I wanted to publish an almanac, “Karby Hir”—this was around 1985. He said it would be a good thing. In this almanac, we decided to show the dissident movement in Ukraine, the creative work of these people. Between 1985 and 1987, 8 issues were published.

V.O.: What did this almanac look like?

D.H.: It was an A4 format, typewritten journal. Its volume ranged from 60 to 100 pages, and the last issue was larger. From about the fourth issue, Bohdan Rebryk* joined us, when he returned after his release* (*Влітку 1987 р. ─ Ред.). There we published Yevhen Sverstiuk, Yaroslav Lesiv, Viktor Rafalskyi,* Ivan Hnatiuk*—poems of all such well-known people who were imprisoned. And almost every issue had poems by Taras Melnychuk that had never been published anywhere else. There was even his letter from Pidmykhailivtsi and the poems he sent from there. That issue needs to be dug up; it describes very precisely how he ended up there.

Our almanac sparked interest in Kosiv, in Transcarpathia. By then, Father Vasyl Romaniuk had been released from exile. Yosyp Terelya* was visiting him. I gave him a few copies, and he distributed them in Transcarpathia. He’s from there. The almanac was typed on a typewriter. The last two or three issues, Mykola Kraynyk,* a teacher from the Dolyna district, helped me produce. He was a member of the Ukrainian National Front.* He was active in the UNF along with Zinoviy Krasivskyi,* Dmytro Kvietsko,* and others. Mykola Kraynyk contacted me and suggested that our guys from the “Union of Ukrainian Youth of Galicia” (this was back in 1979) become members of the UNF and continue the struggle. I agreed with him and said that we would continue the struggle for Ukraine's independence by various methods. In this way, we made a kind of verbal agreement to cooperate, which resulted in him actively collaborating with me, reproducing and distributing the almanac “Karby Hir,” of which I was the editor. It can be said that we were already like members of the UNF, because we were doing certain work: distributing anti-Soviet materials, conducting extensive educational work among the population.

Kraynyk produced the journal “Karby Hir” using a photographic method from the typed text. I had a simple “Moskva” typewriter. I ordered it by mail. This was already 1985; it was possible to order such goods by mail, but I ordered it not in my name, because I was afraid they would record the typeface, so I ordered it in my brother-in-law's name, my wife's brother, who worked in construction. He received the typewriter and gave it to me. But the plates holding the letters were very soft, so the machine often broke down, and many copies had to be printed. Try typing 20 copies of a 100-page journal on a typewriter—it’s very difficult. Then Kraynyk said, “Give me the typewriter, I’ll replace a few things and adjust it.” I gave him the typewriter and said, “You make the copies then, and I’ll just give you the master copy.”

And right after Chornobyl, before Easter, they release Taras Melnychuk from Pidmykhailivtsi. Taras tells me that a Chekist from Ivano-Frankivsk came to him and said, “You’re lucky that Chornobyl happened, because we were preparing new prison bars for you.” They really intended to lock him up and serve as a warning to us. Taras was shown a 19-page opus by a Kolomyia resident, a student at what is now Prykarpattian National University. It's somewhere in the KGB annals—if only one could get it! That, of course, is very difficult.

Taras came from Pidmykhailivtsi before Easter 1986, terribly thin. I had received one more letter from him just before. I passed his letters and poems through the Ivano-Frankivsk communication channel. Apparently, it worked. I boasted to Taras that we already had issues of the almanac "Karby Hir" and asked if he also wanted to work on it. He agreed. I told him, “You'll be the literary editor, and we'll continue to gather materials.”

And when Vasyl Romaniuk was released, I went to him and proposed opening a church section so that he could also have a chance to express himself. He agreed, and then there was a conversation with Yosyp Terelya about expanding all this or maybe doing an issue for Transcarpathia. We didn’t meet after that, so I don’t know if he did anything. But he did distribute our almanac. I even heard about the content of one of our issues on Radio Liberty. We understood that we were moving to a higher level.

Gorbachev had already come to power, and we, to put it our way, got bold. We had to act more openly. But some frightened people said, “Oh, they'll lock you up! They'll take you away!” Well, let them take us—we saw that there would be no more “takings,” and this was confirmed by the words of the Chekist who released Melnychuk. At that time, he showed Taras a denunciation against me, against Taras, against Ostap Kachur (he’s a philologist from Kovalivka, Kolomyia district). The denunciation stated that these people were engaged in the wrong things, they were still advocating for Ukraine, writing and saying such and such. And it was said a bit degradingly, “What are they, pretending to be poets? Hrynkiv has started writing novellas…” And this was written by the philologist Andriy Malashchuk. When Melnychuk was released, he had a conversation with him in my presence at my apartment. Melnychuk almost grabbed a knife on Malashchuk, “I should just gut you!” And the other one, “What are you talking about? Do you understand, they held me there for two days! Is any idea worth being tortured like that? I was hungry, without anything—how could this be?” Taras and I looked at each other—we were shaken. To prevent anything from happening, we let him go. There are people like that—what can you do? May he not be offended that we speak so frankly about him. This man hung around us quite a bit and started trying to get into Ivan Dziuba's* confidence, even started visiting Ivan Dziuba in Kyiv. He wants to elevate himself with his bizarre poems and opuses. Something like Oles Buzyna* (*Бузина Олесь – автор вульгарної книжки “Вурдалак Тарас Шевченко”, 2001).

He is now part of the avant-garde clan of poets. Well, may God help him, but we know what kind of person he is. This Malashchuk really wanted to use his acquaintance with Melnychuk in literary circles. Apparently, he partially succeeded with Dziuba, because Dziuba even started responding to him—he later boasted to us about those letters. Taras Melnychuk said with bitterness, “Look, some miserable wretch always takes advantage of my name and me,” he spoke so crudely.

Meanwhile, around 1987 or 1988, the Sichkos,* father and son, appeared at my place. They had found out about “Karby Hir” because one of the issues had fallen into their hands. One evening they came directly to my apartment and asked to speak with me. I came out, and they asked if I could publish their almanac. I said, “I have Taras here, there's another philologist and one historian.” Our historian is Ihor Kichak.* He is now in the Kolomyia organization of the All-Ukrainian Society of Political Prisoners and Repressed Persons. Such an interesting man, he has a phenomenal memory. I asked Taras Melnychuk and Ihor Kichak if they could help me. They agreed, so I gave my consent as well.

The artist Volodymyr Kasiian, who is now a priest at the children's church of St. Josaphat in Kolomyia, in the diocese of the UGCC, had relations with the Sichkos. He told the Sichkos, “Hrynkiv might help you publish a similar almanac in Dolyna.” They brought us all the materials; we only needed to create the sections and lay it out. I told Vasyl Sichko, “The almanac is yours, but surely you want us to contribute some materials as well?” We agreed that we would provide some journalism and perhaps some fiction. He took on the editing himself: “I still want to be the editor.” We named this almanac “Dosvitni Vohni” (Pre-Dawn Fires). In 1988, two issues of “Dosvitni Vohni” were published. Vasyl came, took the still unassembled almanacs: “Give them to me!” He distributed everything. He had a greater ability to distribute. And the second time he came—he brought material, two compact typewriters, a recorder, a camera, and a lot of paper. The only thing I asked was that Taras, poor soul, was working but had nothing to wear. So Vasyl said, “Let's go get him now.” We found Taras in Utoropy, went to the store, and he simply bought him a suit there. At that time, Vasyl was apparently well-off, had good money. Taras was incredibly happy about it. He even took on translations from the Lithuanian Front's journal “Sąjūdis.” Because the Sichkos' organization was also called a “Front”—the “Ukrainian Christian Democratic Front.”

V.O.: Taras was translating from Lithuanian?

D.H.: No, no, from Russian. It was the Russian version of “Sąjūdis.” Taras didn't know Lithuanian.

The third issue of “Dosvitni Vohni” was not published. Vasyl Sichko explained, “Chornovil* beat me to it, he stole the name ‘Dosvitni Vohni’ from me.” The People's Movement (Narodnyi Rukh) published a newspaper called “Dosvitni Vohni” in 1989. They had some friction with Chornovil; they disagreed on many things. Vasyl didn’t come again, and we didn’t undertake the publication of further issues.

Speaking of almanacs, I went to a meeting in Lviv. This was, I think, in 1988. Present there were Mykhailo Osadchyi* from the journal “Kafedra,” Iryna Kalynets* from “Yevshan-Zillia”, and both Horyn brothers, who represented the “Ukrainian Herald.”* Melnychuk and I, and later Iryna Kalynets, had submitted our works to the “Ukrainian Herald” back in 1987.

We wanted our almanac to be known as well. After that meeting of samizdat press publishers, we met in Frankivsk with Viacheslav Chornovil. A conversation then took place about whether to make our almanac an organ of the UGS for the Ivano-Frankivsk region. At that time, Chornovil was overseeing the Ukrainian Helsinki Group. He came from Lviv. Chornovil knew everything about our almanac. I was summoned from Kolomyia through Panas Zalyvakha. There were people from the Nadvirna district, from Rohatyn, from Bushtyn. It was decided to elect the head of the regional Helsinki Group organization. They elected Petro Marusyk,* who had published several of his works in the almanac “Karby Hir.” Chornovil said that perhaps Hrynkiv should become the head, but I refused, saying that I was running a journal, “Karby Hir” was enough for me. And he then said, “Well, if so, then let your journal ‘Karby Hir’ be purely from the Helsinki Group.” I replied, “It is designated as an artistic publication, so I cannot write on it that it is a publication of the Helsinki Group.” We understood that a purely Helsinki publication would be more persecuted. I said, “Let's add 20–40 pages of UGS materials. Let there be such a section.” He agreed for the time being: “Let it be so.”

Sometime at the end of summer 1989, I met with Chornovil when he was traveling somewhere through Kolomyia to his relatives in the village of Prokuryava in the Kosiv district. There is such a village there. Chornovil's in-laws lived there—the parents of his son’s wife. He ended up in Kosmach, and we met at the home of Didyshyn, who has a monument to Dovbush. This Didyshyn in Kosmach is an original character. I asked him there, “Mr. Viacheslav, what do you advise after all?” He says, “Well, how? Make this almanac regional.” And Panas Zalyvakha had already written on it “Kolomyia—Kosiv—Kyiv.” Panas Zalyvakha was more farsighted and gave the almanac an all-Ukrainian significance. Perhaps it didn't reach an all-Ukrainian level, but we wanted to orient people in that way. Zalyvakha created two versions of the title page. He was familiar with the issues of “Karby Hir” and in every way assisted in its distribution. By the way, my little book of poems “Panas Zalyvakha” was also published with a title from one of his works for the almanac “Karby Hir.” The journal was published until 1989, and in 1990, when it became free to publish, it no longer came out. Why not? There were several reasons.

V.O.: You mentioned Bohdan Rebryk. What was his role in the almanac “Karby Hir”? Because he himself did not tell me about it.

D.H.: I’ll tell you now. Levko Lukianenko wrote me a letter from exile that the Ukrainian Helsinki Group was being formed. I wrote to Levko that Rebryk had been released to Frankivsk, but for some reason, he was not joining the Helsinki Group. And Levko replied to me, “Strange that he isn’t joining!” I have these letters; I need to find them. Through Lyuba Lemyk, I went to a meeting with Rebryk—she was the curator of our meetings, of our releases. I boasted to Rebryk about our almanac, and he expressed a desire to work on it. And coming to this house were Taras Romaniuk and Taras, the son of political prisoner Petro Rozumnyi.* This Taras was from the Dnipropetrovsk region. Both of them were welcome guests at Rebryk's. They were the ones who told me that Rebryk could help us. In short, it wasn’t me who reached out to him, but he who reached out to the almanac and said he wanted to cooperate with us. But something else troubled me a bit. When he was traveling abroad somewhere, I re-photographed several issues of “Karby Hir” through Mykola Kraynyk and gave him the film rolls. He was going to Israel and somewhere else, and he gave me some mythological story that he had to destroy these films at the airport in Moscow because he couldn’t get them through. Well, what can you do? It is what it is, let it be.

V.O.: And what were the circulation numbers of the almanac “Karby Hir”?

D.H.: The first run was 15 copies.

V.O.: That must have been two sets of carbon copies, right?

D.H.: No, no, it was up to three sets. But subsequent runs were almost uncontrolled because I gave the almanac to Taras Romaniuk in Kosiv, and he tried to reproduce it there somewhere, gave it to Kraynyk—he re-photographed it. And they didn't report how many they made. He gave some to Terelya. I think that the circulation couldn’t have been large anyway, but it reached up to 50 copies. And Rebryk gave an interview somewhere abroad and said that he was practically the editor of the almanac “Karby Hir.” This troubled me greatly, because it's unfair. And then, when we met at the Helsinki Group meetings in Ivano-Frankivsk, in the apartment where Nadiia Stasiv* (*Друга дружина Л.Лук’яненка. – Ред.) was, where Lukianenko used to come, I asked him about it. He denied it, “No, I didn’t say that, it was misinterpreted.” Well, that's history now. Although he did contribute two good pieces about what was happening in Ivano-Frankivsk: about an evening in memory of the Krushelnytsky family (they were a famous family), and also about a forgotten poetess. He also gave several articles on his vision of the political situation. That did happen. He worked on several issues.

Petro Marusyk contributed his materials when he became the head of the regional organization of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group. He has since passed away. He was preparing a book about the UHG, about the URP. I don’t know the fate of that book—I'll have to ask someone.

THE YEAR 1990 ARRIVED...

We became members of the Helsinki Group, which in Kolomyia numbered 42 people. Bohdan Hermaniuk* had organized one branch of the Helsinki Group in Piadyky, and we organized another branch, this one from Chornovil, which Petro Marusyk headed. Then I came to Kolomyia with Kachur, and we were present at the creation of the Helsinki Group organization in 1988. We knew there were other people. We then invited them—this was Hermaniuk's branch from Piadyky—and decided to elect one head. We thought and thought and elected Hermaniuk. And I was, so to speak, its ideological content provider with my almanac.

This is my brief story. There are still many unlit pages. Here, the Ukrainian Helsinki Group led to the creation of the Kolomyia "Memorial" society. We searched for and selected a person to head the Kolomyia "Memorial." The choice fell on the lawyer Bohdan Yurashchuk (now the mayor of Kolomyia). By the way, the first celebration of Stepan Bandera's birthday—January 1, 1990—was organized by us, the Helsinki Group. Because now the KUN (Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists) attributes the first celebration of Bandera's birthday to itself. People shrugged their shoulders: “Well, what is this? You can't do that. There are people who started this.” We gave impetus to many things.

V.O.: And now I would like you to briefly outline what you have been doing from 1990 until today.

D.H.: Delegates from the Kolomyia region went to the Helsinki Group congress in April 1990, where it transformed into the Ukrainian Republican Party. We returned inspired: we had a democratic government, they even gave us an office for the URP here on Pervomaiska Street, which was later renamed Stepan Bandera Street. Practically, the URP was the first in all initiatives back then. This will need to be described. After the almanac, the guys in the URP told me, “Let’s publish a newspaper.” We published the newspaper “Na perelomi” (At the Turning Point). It was one of the first democratic newspapers in the region, unparalleled. The Kolomyia organization of the URP published it. Twenty-three issues came out. After campaigning for the candidate Pavlo Movchan, it ceased to exist: you had to pay, paper became expensive, everything became expensive. Moreover, we were not registered and were using the interim law that allowed publishing printed materials up to 1000 copies without registration. There was such a law back then, and we immediately took advantage of it. Later, we would have had to go through registration to revive the newspaper. But what we did was still good because people drew information from that newspaper about Unity Day, the November Uprising, the Battle of Kruty… People still didn't know this or knew very little about it. We dedicated half a page to the UPA insurgents. Several of our photographs and their captions sparked very lively discussion and interesting debate in Kolomyia society. We became so well-known in the city that people still remember us and, by the way, complain that we have ceased our activities, that we are not heard from, and that we should be at the forefront.

I can say that 1990-91, and especially 1992-93, were years of great upheaval in Kolomyia. There were no parties of that type. The Communist Party was criminal and was leaving the scene. And our URP was an innovative party, people were joining it. At that time, it had 182 members; it was a solid force in Kolomyia. Then the Democratic Party, the Green Party appeared. Our radicalism was a bit too much for some of the intelligentsia. The intelligentsia, the teachers, did not want to join the URP. In general, few teachers in the Kolomyia region joined parties, which surprises me. Even the Democratic Party organization in Kolomyia had only 25 members at its creation. This greatly surprised people, because Pavlychko—one of the leaders of the DemPU—is from here.

The trouble was the split in the Republican Party when Stepan Khmara* split it. At that time, very many people wanted to join the Republican Party. But when Khmara broke away with 2000-something members, people stopped joining that party. Then misunderstandings began in the URP leadership, and we found ourselves in a situation where the party seemed not to exist at all. And now I have no directive documents. When Mykhailo Horyn* was the chairman, not a single grassroots organization was deprived of the “Obizhnyky” (Circulars), of all the information. I would call meetings, read everything out, inform everyone. We had a display case, everything worked like clockwork. But when the struggle for leadership began, the information stopped. And information is the main thing. I still say that the RChP and the URP are two identical structures, there’s no reason to differentiate them. And Levko declared something about leaving the URP, and now he’s issuing a retraction. But has the train, as they say, already left the station?

We should have relied more on former political prisoners finding common ground among themselves, and not on those elements that pulled us into different parties. We probably could have united on the basis of the struggle against the totalitarian regime. Perhaps it should have been some non-partisan association.

V.O.: And what was your political career? What positions do you hold now?

D.H.: I was elected a deputy of the Kolomyia City Council of the first democratic convocation, 1990-94. Obviously, people elected me as a deputy who fought against the totalitarian regime. We had 100 deputies elected then. That was our first democratic Council. On my proposal, we initiated the removal of Lenin in the hall. Then we went out to the crowds, to the streets, and took down the monuments to the idol on the streets. Other people joined us then. At that time, 6 deputies from the URP were elected—all of them behaved with dignity. They were wonderful people: Taras Deren, Oksana Tkachenko, Ihor Saliy, Mr. Myroslav Hnatiuk from Piadyky. All good people, all members of the UGS—those who were elected, just like the Republicans.

In 1999, I completed my studies at the Economic and Industrial Institute in the city of Chernivtsi, as a lawyer; I enrolled there on the recommendation of Levko Lukianenko. In August 1999, I joined the National Writers' Union of Ukraine. Since 1992, I have been a member of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine.

Then I was elected a deputy of the second democratic convocation, 1994-98. And I might have been a deputy of the third convocation if I hadn't aimed higher, thinking I already had some experience—for a deputy of the regional council, because there were certain city interests in the region. But I didn't get elected. It's not so scary: our people are there, they are working. When there were elections for the mayor of the city, we called Ihor Dovhaniuk for negotiations and said that we were betting on him, since we didn't have our own candidate from the Republican Party. I worked in the City Council in the department of internal policy. I am a chief specialist at the city executive committee, currently working as a consultant in this department. That is my political career.

During this time, I have published seven books: four of poetry and three of prose. Poetry: “A Red’s Journey into Blue and Yellow” (1992), “Panas Zalyvakha” (1992), “Furrows of Freedom” (1995), “The Moustached Little Moon” (2000). Prose: “Revenge”—a historical novel about the struggle of the local population against the Pechenegs, from the 14th century (1994); “On Thorny Paths”—a story about the OUN-UPA liaison Maria Ivaniuk, 2000; “Bloody Crossroads”—first edition 2002, second—2003. This is a historical essay about the OUN-UPA liaison Yustyna Kachurak. A biographical book, “Taras Melnychuk,” is currently being prepared for publication. I am preparing a large novel from the times of the OUN-UPA. Articles and individual works have been published in periodicals and journals. A separate cycle of free-verse poems, “Fresco of the Year,” was in the journal “Vyzvolnyi Shliakh.” A part of the poetry cycle “Dovbush's Prayers,” on the recommendation of Iryna Kalynets, was published in the samizdat journal edited by V. Chornovil, “Ukrainian Herald,” from which the almanac for youth in the USA, “Avangard,” reprinted it. There were publications in journals of women's organizations in Australia.

In 1998, for the works “Panas Zalyvakha” and “Furrows of Freedom,” I was awarded the Taras Melnychuk literary prize; in 2002, for the collection of poems “Dovbush's Prayers”—the Oleksa Dovbush prize. It was established by the Kolomyia organization of the Union of Political Prisoners and Repressed Persons. In 2003, for my civic, political, and literary activities, I was awarded the Les Hryniuk literary prize—a writer and publicist.

DMYTRO HRYNKIV’S ANSWERS to additional questions posed by Yevhen Sverstiuk.

September 25, 2005

1. What did you gain from that new world and those new people you met in the camps?

It was truly a new world for me and, undoubtedly, for my associates, a world we in the camp called the “small zone,” because we came there from the “large zone.” There, people were as if on the palm of your hand, and this microworld once again mobilized me not to lose my honor, so that I would not look worse in front of those people who, at different times, had been repressed by the brutal system. I understood that in this world, the majority of people were imprisoned not for criminal acts (murders, atrocities, violence), but only for their CONVICTIONS and INVOLVEMENT in certain events, while murders and other criminal offenses applied only to a few convicts.

I was more impressed by the people who were imprisoned for the OUN-UPA insurgent movement and those from the ranks of the Sixtiers. I rejoiced that here, in the camp, I met people who took up arms and went into the forests, joined sotnias, and openly defended their people, their land. They knew how to tell about it, that it was not some personal insult or a struggle for their own interests—it was a struggle for an idea that began with the rule-oath “You will gain a Ukrainian state, or you will perish in the struggle for it.”

Having seen these steadfast, heroic people in the camp, I was once again convinced that I had chosen the right path. I will forever be grateful to God for appointing me that time when I met them. It gave me the opportunity to understand my own actions more deeply, and if there were any doubts (and who didn’t have them?), I noted with joy that they were disappearing.

The second important factor for a broader understanding of my actions was seeing people there who were close to me in that they, like me, even with better positions, higher intellect—writers, poets, critics, and scholars—the Sixtiers, who were a step ahead of us, took up the continuation of that noble cause—the struggle for an independent Ukraine through the power of the word. I was incredibly happy, because I was convinced that the word is an even greater weapon than a firearm.

Meeting such people affirmed my conviction in the correctness of my choice; I rejoiced that God had opened my eyes.

2. About which of those people and what would you like to tell?

Of course, I cannot tell about all of them here, because there were many. I will talk about meetings with those whom I most respected and sought to communicate with.

This is a whole pleiad, a series of famous nationalists-patriots, past and present—Levko Lukianenko, Ivan Pokrovskyi, Mykola Kurchyk, Andriy Turyk, Yevhen Sverstiuk, Oleksa Riznykiv, Taras Melnychuk, Vasyl Lisovyi, Ihor Kalynets. Ivan Svitlychnyi, Valeriy Marchenko, Kulak, Hryhoriy Prykhodko, Roman Haiduk, Stepan Sapeliak, Anatoliy Zdorovyi, Mykola Slobodian, A. Berniychuk, and others.

I also communicated with those who were not involved in the movement for Ukraine’s independence. These were people of other nationalities. Among the Lithuanians, I remember most vividly the young guys who fought for Lithuania’s independence—Petras Plumpa, Žukauskas and Baranauskas, Jurgštas, Markūnas.

From the Latvians—Plekšs, Ritenis, Gunārs Astra.

From the Jews—Semen Gluzman, Mark Dymshits, I. Mendelevich, Israel Zalmanson, D. Chornohlaz, Makarenko.

From the Armenians—Ashot Navasardyan, Melikyan.

From the Russians—Stroganov, Vitold Abankin, Davydov, Chekhovskikh, Viktor Pestov.

Let's briefly touch on some outstanding individuals, in my opinion.

Levko Lukianenko impressed me with his consistency and indomitable spirit. In fact, in the camp, he was our father and the battery of the movement for our rights. As a lawyer, he knew how to lead people with balance and courage in conditions of confinement (an example is the strike in 1974 when I and other prisoners protested the beating of Stepan Sapeliak), and could give advice in a situation where the law needed to be used. And in general, his case about creating an underground organization was related to ours, because we too were creating an organization; I considered myself a follower of the cause he began.

Yevhen Sverstiuk is a man of high honor and morality. His powerful intellect made a great impression on me because I was drawn to literature, to writing. I thank God for bringing me together with him. I plunged even deeper into literature. Communicating with him, I became convinced that the word is the weapon with which one must defend oneself and the rights of others. I began to live in a new world and loved the word even more.

From Sverstiuk, I drew knowledge not only about famous Ukrainian writers but also about world-renowned writers who were united by their love for creativity. Y. Sverstiuk opened my eyes to philosophy. I was first introduced to the world’s prominent philosophers, studying their works from Plato, Aristotle, F. Bacon, Spinoza, Thomas Aquinas, and others, down to the glorious Hryhoriy Skovoroda.

Ihor Kalynets amazed me with his knowledge of art. He, like no one else, knew how to talk about world painting in such a way that I didn't even notice how I was drawn into that rich sea. It was good that there was a “History of World Art” in the camp. I studied it with great enthusiasm, delving into the world of the creators of the Italian Renaissance up to the Quattrocento, into the world of French Impressionism...

Ihor Kalynets, seeing that we were drawn to art (I and my friends were ten years younger than him), gave us unique lectures not only on painting but also on poetry. Those were unforgettable times!

I never expected to communicate with a philosopher, but it happened. Vasyl Lisovyi was deeply rooted in the Ukrainian spiritual sphere. He explained things so intricately that it seemed to me that it would take me a long time to learn those new philosophical terms and concepts he used. I re-read his individual works again and again, and I must admit that I did not understand everything then, but I came to the conclusion that he was a highly educated person who deserved respect.

Andriy Turyk, one of the UPA insurgents, sincere and frank with me, attracted me with his bearing and determination. In his expressions and actions, I felt some incomprehensible strength. He amazed me with his adventurism and courage. He told me long stories about our insurgents who escaped from camps and prisons in all sorts of ways. I listened about digging tunnels under the barbed wire of the “zapretka” (prohibited zone), about escapes via shipments of wood shavings and lumber from the work zone, through camp water outlets, and other methods, and I was envious of those who so bravely undertook those tasks that were mostly doomed to failure.

In fact, Andriy Turyk incited me to this adventure. Through the postwoman, the wife of unit chief Belyaev, I passed several letters from him and several group letters to the outside world (these were letters to people who were already free and with whom Andriy Turyk wanted to establish contact, informing them of our existence and the conditions of our detention). This was a considerable risk, but in my youth, I gradually led conversations with the postwoman in such a way that her trust (she was a Ukrainian from Kharkiv) was strengthened. I don’t know if I managed to convince her that we needed her help and that she was doing a good thing, but I know that A. Turyk received news from those to whom we had appealed through her.

Turyk and I wrote a lengthy letter—an appeal to people of good will—stating that we, Ukrainians, are fighting for an Independent Ukraine, relying on the constitutional right to self-determination, that there are more of us now because there is a new wave of fighters—the so-called dissidents. Andriy Turyk told me to sign this letter-appeal with such respected names as Levko Lukianenko, Valentyn Moroz, Vasyl Romaniuk, Yevhen Sverstiuk, Viacheslav Chornovil, with our own surnames, and many others. It was interesting and, at the same time, unexpected for me, because I hesitated whether we were doing the right thing. He knew how to convince me that it was right, and so that I would not worry, he said the sacramental phrase, “Dmytro, I have communicated with all of them and we have a special agreement: all letters to the governments of democratic states are to be signed by trusted and convinced nationalists, even if they themselves are not present.”

Taras Melnychuk, over a cup of strong tea, revealed himself in his poems—he knew how to extract ever new words, a bouquet of which he wove into his verses. Those words were unexpected for me then, but at the same time, I admired them. From his poems, all of Ukraine breathed on me—from the Carpathians all the way beyond the Dnipro. Taras, with his maximalism, his desire to bring his creativity beyond that camp world, was not accepted by some political prisoners. I pitied him and wanted to understand all that, and Oles Serhiyenko, who was also of a sharp disposition, told me that Taras thinks his works should be the first to be transmitted from the small zone to the large one, which is why he is so uncompromising.

I delved into that camp world through understanding with different people and felt that from communicating with them, I was spiritually enriched, and this pleased me. One could write separate books about many of these people—that would be an invaluable service to future generations. I was so engrossed in this communication that Yevhen Sverstiuk, who occupied the lower bunk while I had the upper one, once noticed it. One morning he tells me, “You talk in your sleep. Do you know what you were saying? You were musing aloud about philosophy, about the disappearance of the present time, and talking about the existence of the past and future…”

The poet Oleksa Riznykiv was one of those in the camp who, like all of us, sought to learn something necessary and new from people. He dedicated every free moment to studying the Lithuanian language and, together with the Lithuanians, translated the works of Marcinkevičius and other poets. He loved to communicate with those who valued the word and found new turns of phrase, a skill which Taras Melnychuk possessed well. They would walk for long hours behind the barracks and compete in word creation. If only those conversations could have been recorded—there would be something for researchers to study!

Hryts Herchak, a native of the Ternopil region, evoked feelings of joy and sadness in me. The NKVD had imprisoned him as a young boy during campaigns to exterminate, as they said, “nationalist gangs.” I was glad that he had not broken and had not lost heart. In the camp, he gave the impression of a rather balanced and intelligent person. And I was sad because he, like other UPA fighters, had to waste all his youth in Soviet prisons. It was clear that he had acquired much of his knowledge in the camps—he learned to play the guitar, learned musical notation, and mastered it flawlessly. He mastered the art of painting, especially graphics. He could draw a portrait with pencils, and he was particularly good at small forms of drawing—ex-libris. For those prisoners he respected and communicated with, he made ex-libris from pieces of rubber or linoleum (whatever was found in the industrial zone). In my presence, he made an ex-libris for Yevhen Sverstiuk—it was a sower walking across a field, sowing grain. With the inscription: *“I will sow colorful flowers on my poor fallow land”* (Lesia Ukrainka). He made ex-libris for Stepan Sapeliak, Bohdan Chornomaz (from Uman), Oleksa Riznychenko—a Cossack Mamai sitting by his horse; for Yuriy Dziuba (from Kharkiv)—a whimsical cat; for me—a mustachioed opryshok (rebel) in a keptar (sleeveless sheepskin coat) and a hat with an eagle feather, with mountains covered in fir trees. He was fluent in Polish. During one of the releases of Poles after the resettlement of Ukrainians from Poland and the return of Poles to their ethnic lands, Hryts had the opportunity to be released as a Pole, but he did not do so because he considered himself a true Ukrainian. I communicated with him quite closely. For a certain period, he mastered many elements of physical and spiritual yoga, and he was good at hiding articles on national issues from searches, transcribing them in Latin letters. Warrant officers could not read such texts during searches and sometimes did not confiscate them, although there were searches for something very seditious, and then this trick would not work.

In the camp, I met an underground member, Dmytro Paliychuk, who had a 25-year sentence. He was from Kosmach, in the Ivano-Frankivsk region. He didn't talk much about himself, but from those sparse stories, I learned that he had been the orderly-adjutant of the leader Khmara, whose fame resounded throughout the Carpathians. Though no longer young, Dmytro Paliychuk maintained impeccable order in his daily life: he was always neatly dressed and in polished boots or shoes, looking as if every day was a holiday for him. Looking at him, I imagined whole sotnias in the forests, in those difficult conditions, when in rain and snow the boys were not only morally steadfast but also smart and well-groomed, they took care of themselves—even clothing played a big role (and now you see sloppily dressed young men even in Kyiv). Dmytro Paliychuk worked in the kitchen, often standing at the serving line for lunch or breakfast. He knew how to ladle soup or other dishes, especially if they had floating pieces of some tendons or meat film from cattle, in such a way that they ended up in the bowl if he saw familiar faces. When I asked him why he put those pieces in my bowl, he told me, “You are still young, you need to temper yourself physically.” After his release around 1980-81, he died in Kosmach.

Even now, good and strong personalities who were involved in the noble underground movement of the OUN-UPA stand before me. Mykola Kurchyk from the Rivne region (I corresponded with him after his release), Mykola Henyk—a rifleman from the Moroz sotnia from Bereziv, Dmytro Solodkyi and Pavlo Strotsen (both from the Ternopil region). By the way, in the camp, it was established that older prisoners who had been in captivity for a long time took their fellow countrymen under their wing. This was a rule, and I had the favor of the underground participants who were from the Carpathians, from the Ivano-Frankivsk region. Although I also communicated with underground participants from other regions. I remember having conversations with a tall Uprising fighter from the Lviv region, Volodymyr Oliynyk, nicknamed “Holodomor” (Famine). When we went on strike and didn't go to work for over a week, he came up to me and said quietly, “Dmytro, it won't do much good—they have broken more than one of us. It's hard to prove anything here, but I just feel sorry for you young ones, because they intend to exterminate us all.” I don't remember who told me that he had already given up in the camps and didn't really support such actions.

Bohdan Chuyko, leader of an SB (Security Service) armed unit from Kalush in the Ivano-Frankivsk region, immediately asked me where I was from when we met. I was surprised when he suddenly remarked, “In your village, there is a large, notable cemetery—the underground fighter Orlyk is buried there. I read about his death in the reports from liaisons in your area.” Bohdan Chuyko was already of a venerable age. He had a habit of writing to various authorities about the judicial reprisal against him. I recall that Levko Lukianenko had long conversations with him and even reread his appeals and made legal corrections.

But perhaps the one who impressed me the most was Vasyl Fediuk, from the village of Kydantsi in the Kolomyia region. Communicating with him, I learned that he was imprisoned for the second time. He served his first sentence as an ordinary rifleman under a Romanian surname and as a Romanian subject for participating in the underground, and he was serving his second sentence as a regional leader of the Kosiv and Kolomyia areas. He had the pseudonym “Kuriava” (Dust Devil), and during the underground resistance, he was involved in forming sotnias in the Carpathians and belonged to the senior leadership of the OUN-UPA. He told me how investigators tortured him during interrogations, beat him with whips and ramrods so that blood flowed from his back, and since he was wearing military breeches, it collected in dark, clotted masses behind his knees. He didn't talk about himself, adhering to the rules of the underground. He knew the location of villages, their names, and remembered the names of individual streams, mountain ranges, and corners of different villages, which often surprised me. I couldn’t grasp how he could have learned it all. Vasyl Fediuk himself, smiling, said that all these places he spoke of with such love, he had walked on his own two feet and could describe the location of those houses where he had to stop as a regional leader on assignment from the leadership.

In the camp, I sometimes communicated, though very little, with M. Kulak, who went into the underground after the war and acted alone, shooting red aggressors wherever he could. He did not talk about himself but was very stubborn. He learned to play the accordion and played the melody of “Rosamunde” for long hours. You had to see his dreamy face while performing this melody—it seemed that he wasn't in the camp, that he had flown away somewhere far. It was said about him that when he spoke with KGB representatives, to the questions of higher ranks whether he would take a rifle and shoot at government representatives, he answered in the affirmative, and this supposedly gave them grounds to keep him in the camps indefinitely. He had two other brothers—one of them ended up in Australia after the underground, and the other in Siberia. That second brother, the one in Siberia, married some Buryat woman after his imprisonment. This so infuriated Kulak that he refused to communicate with his brother, believing that his brother had violated a sacred principle: the children would no longer be Ukrainians, and breeding Mamluks was unseemly. He received some parcels from his brother in Siberia, but he refused them, though he did receive letters from his brother in Australia. There was also talk about his firm character: so that his male urges would not torment him, he pierced his own bladder with a nail, injuring himself so that he would not feel desire for women.

From the neighboring camp arrived Ivan Svitlychnyi, Ihor Kalynets, Valeriy Marchenko, Semen Gluzman, and a little earlier, Dmytro Basarab. This rather sturdy fellow, with a cheerful gaze, immediately took a liking to me, and we gladly communicated. From his stories, I even wrote several novellas. And Oles Serhiyenko arranged a kind of contest-competition: who could better describe Dmytro Basarab's story about the winter wren. I took to writing a novella, and he a poem. It turned out that we both depicted it all quite well, and each was a leader in his own genre. Dmytro Basarab enthusiastically told about military operations, how he, being a machine gunner in Hryn's sotnia in the Zakerzonnia region, was in the very battle where the Polish general of armor, Karol Świerczewski, was killed. He painted fragments of battles and skirmishes with the combined forces of the NKVD and the Poles so vividly that it seemed as if you yourself were seeing the battle and becoming its participant. Later, after my release, we corresponded.

I had known about Valeriy Marchenko even before meeting him and was very surprised when we met face-to-face. I had pictured him as an intellectual, a young journalist with delicate features, but instead, there appeared a tall young man with a somewhat massive chin, large blue eyes, and a sincere smile. He had a way of recounting the story of his “case” that made all his actions seem as if they were done in jest and by chance. His knowledge of languages was astonishing. Not everyone could understand why this journalist had taken a liking to the Azerbaijani language.

Ivan Svitlychny, upon hearing that I was studying French, gave me a collection of French poets to translate something of my choice. I took up translating Théophile Gautier and Paul Verlaine. I managed to translate something about spring by Théophile Gautier, which was well-received by Ivan Svitlychny. However, he advised me to write prose. Ihor Kalynets also encouraged me to do so. They both concluded that I write short stories very well and that I was much stronger in prose than in poetry.

Stepan Sapelyak was from a group of boys from the Ternopil region who, like us, were imprisoned in 1973. He studied in Lviv, where he was arrested, and he also wrote poetry. He became fascinated with free verse and mastered that style quite well. He would sometimes read those poems and defend his interpretation of various images.

Among the Armenian dissidents, the one I remember most is Ashot Navasardyan, a young man who had tied his fate to Armenian nationalists and was part of a group that fought underground for an independent Armenia. While communicating with the Ukrainians, especially us younger ones, Ashot openly admired our efforts for Ukraine’s independence but, at the same time, said that “if it weren’t for Ukrainians, many republics would have left the Union.” I asked him why he thought so, and he confessed that he held a grudge against Ukrainians because such a large nation was not fighting for its liberation—only isolated individuals and groups like us were. He said that with the help of Ukrainians, the Bolshevik system’s authorities suppressed national minorities in the USSR, and that Ukrainians helped build communism in the USSR and developed all of Siberia. Personally, I was very struck by such conclusions, but to some extent, this fact was evident.

Ashot sang Ukrainian songs with us, and we sang Armenian ones with him. It turned out that the melodies of our Hutsul songs, and especially of the dances “Arkan” and “Hutsulka,” are very similar to the melodies of Armenian dances. Ashot concluded: it’s because we are both mountain peoples. The Hutsuls live in the mountains, and the Armenians are from the mountains, and such melodies are characteristic of mountain peoples.

The Lithuanian Pyatras Plumpa amazed us with his firm faith in God. His daily conversations about heaven and eternal life gave us comfort and instilled hope that captivity cannot shake a person’s faith, that faith, if it is strong, makes a person free and happy in their inner world. It was Plumpa who would gather a few of us—me, Roman Chuprey, Mykola Motryuk, Dmytro Demydov, Stepan Sapelyak, Volodymyr Senkiv—for common prayer. It was a sort of small Sunday service, where Plumpa took on priestly duties and led the prayer. I recall that we even recited the “Our Father” together in Latin, and Dmytro Demydov learned the “Our Father” by heart in Latin and recited it to all of us.

I kept in touch with Plumpa later, after my release—we corresponded in French because Plumpa, not knowing Ukrainian, consciously refused to use Russian. And since I was studying French, which he knew well, I had to reply to his letters in French.

Of course, I could write about many political prisoners of camp No. 36, where I served my sentence, but this topic requires broader coverage and a separate publication, which I hope, God willing, to accomplish.

3. Who planted what seeds in your soul, and how did they sprout?

A question that is impossible to answer briefly, but I am forced to cover it at least with a few key points.

The diversity of prisoners in terms of national background convinced me that not only Ukrainians were fighting for their liberation from the communist system, but also representatives of almost all the union republics. And it was the defense of one's national, unique identity that convinced me that nationalism is something sacred and utterly necessary for a people that strives to survive and exist.

The heroic feat of the patriots who fought in the UPA, whom I saw in the camp and with whom I communicated, inspired me from within. I realized that their path was my path and that I had to fight for Ukraine by all means necessary. If in them, the fighters who waged an armed struggle, I saw giants of spirit, then in the people arrested for their convictions in the 1970s (Yevhen Sverstyuk, Ivan Svitlychny, Ihor Kalynets, Oles Serhiyenko, Oleksa Riznykiv, Taras Melnychuk, Valeriy Marchenko), whom I perceived as kin, I saw those who inspired me in my daily work with the word. It was this second rank of prisoners who taught me to value the Word and use it as a weapon.

All those instructions and even the stories of their struggle instilled in me the conviction that I had made the right decision, and I prayed to God to give me the strength to fight the satanic, godless regime.

4. What spirit did you carry out of captivity into the post-camp atmosphere of persecution? What warmed your heart?

From the camp, I carried out a spirit of steadfastness in my intentions—to fight with the word and not yield to enemies, and through my behavior in society, to prove to everyone that Ukrainians need unity and an understanding of their national dignity, or as they used to say in our Hutsul region, “to have one’s honor.” To this end, I communicated with young people and had conversations about Ukraine, and then I began to think about the printed word (I published the almanacs “Karby Hir”—seven issues were released, with the eighth being very small—and “Dosvitni Vohni”—together with Vasyl Sichko, we only managed to publish two issues).

My heart was warmed by the belief that the dream of an independent Ukraine would someday come true, that there would be a Ukraine. Sometimes, when I worked at the Silmash factory in Kolomyia, the thought crept in that the people were not yet ready for a general uprising, for a great push in the struggle for their liberation, but in my heart and soul, I was strengthened by my faith in an independent Ukraine. Analyzing world events, I became convinced that the national liberation movement was spreading across the world and that we, Ukrainians, would also reach it. This happened in 1990, and by 1991, we had rid ourselves of the damned dominance of the communist regime. I could not have foreseen this, because I still thought that all this would happen later.

5. What negative experiences did you take away from captivity? Do you have any regrets for what was lost?

It was very painful for me to see in the camp how certain people behaved unacceptably and became toadies (this refers to the service staff and the detachment leaders’ assistants). I deliberately do not name them, as some of them are still alive—God be their judge.

Another negative experience I took away was this: in the camp, there were some Ukrainians who associated with Jehovah’s Witnesses. This religious movement had penetrated across the borders with its magazine “The Watchtower” and pamphlets from the USA, and had even made its way behind the barbed wire. Later, I understood that the beliefs of Jehovah’s Witnesses are ruinous for Ukrainians, because in this sect, the national spirit is not supported, and Ukrainian traditions are lost. And indeed, they, the Jehovah's Witnesses, do not want carols sung to them, do not participate in state-building processes (they oppose elections, assemblies, viche gatherings, etc.).

I knew several Ukrainians in the camp who were Jehovah’s Witnesses. It is a pity that they did not rid themselves of this even after being freed.

I do not regret the lost years at all, because it was in the camp that I came to better understand the fundamental ideological principles of the national idea and became definitively convinced of the correctness of my life’s choice. And today I return to the thesis that if it hadn’t been for my captivity in those years, I cannot give a full guarantee that I would have known myself as well as I know myself now.

6. What are your hopes for the future in connection with the change of power in Ukraine?

The events that took place during the Orange Revolution proved once again that Ukrainians know how to and are able to fight for their rights, but they do not always know how to see a good cause through to the end.

The weakness of Ukrainians lies in their choice of government. We still blindly believe in the good and correct ideas of leaders, and this is our ruin. A foreigner and an enemy can worm their way into our trust, which is unacceptable, and it is in this field that we must work for a long time to weed out from our national field the foreigners who have their own states. They should not be given power or leadership positions in Ukraine.

The government must be nationalistic, first and foremost for ourselves, and such a government will be accepted by the people.

Notes on the individuals and realities mentioned in Dmytro Hrynkiv’s interview.

Antoniv, Olena, November 17, 1937–February 2, 1986. A member of the Sixtiers and human rights movements. Wife of V. Chornovil, then Z. Krasivskyi.

Arrests of January 12, 1972 – a KGB operation targeting Ukrainian samvydav, which resulted in the imprisonment of its main authors and organizers.

BUR – “barak usilennogo rezhima” (reinforced-regime barracks), the same as PKT – “pomeshcheniye kamernogo tipa” (cell-type confinement). Punishment for this was up to 6 months in a strict-regime camp and up to a year in a particularly strict-regime camp.

Vozniak (Lemyk), Lyuba, born September 30, 1915, in Krynytsia, Nowy Sącz Powiat. On August 4, 1941, she married Mykola Lemyk. Stepan Bandera was the best man. On assignment from the OUN, she worked in Kremenchuk, Poltava, and Kharkiv. Arrested by the NKVD on December 22, 1946, in Lviv. The investigation was conducted in Kyiv at 33 Korolenka St. In the autumn of 1948, she was sentenced to death, which was commuted to 25 years of imprisonment. She served her sentence in Mordovia and Norilsk, and was released in 1956. She lived in Taganrog, Anzhero-Sudzhensk, and from 1968, in Ivano-Frankivsk. She participated in the human rights movement of the 1960s–90s.

All-Ukrainian Society of Political Prisoners and Repressed Persons was created on June 3, 1989, in Kyiv on Lviv Square. Yevhen Pronyuk is its permanent chairman.

Haiduk, Roman, b. 1937, arrested in March 1974 in the Ivano-Frankivsk region. Sentenced to 5 years of imprisonment, 3 years of exile. Was imprisoned in the Perm camps.

Hermanyuk, Bohdan, b. August 20, 1931, leader of the “United Party for the Liberation of Ukraine,” Ivano-Frankivsk region. Imprisoned on December 4, 1958, for 10 years. Currently lives in Kolomyia.

Hlyva, Volodymyr, b. 1926, insurgent, political prisoner from 1949–77.

Hnatiuk, Ivan, b. July 27, 1929. Arrested on December 27, 1948, imprisoned for 25 years, released on February 6, 1956. Writer, laureate of the T. Shevchenko Prize in 199...

Horbal, Mykola, b. September 10, 1940, imprisoned on April 13, 1971, under Art. 62, Part 1 for 5 years and 2 years of exile; for the second time on October 23, 1979, for 5 years; for the third time on October 10, 1984, for 8 years and 5 years of exile; released on August 23, 1988. Member of the UHG, writer, musician, People’s Deputy of Ukraine of the 2nd convocation.

Demydov, Dmytro Illych, b. December 3, 1948, in the village of Pechenizhyn, Kolomyia district, Ivano-Frankivsk oblast. Member of the “Union of Ukrainian Youth of Halychyna” (1972). Arrested on April 4, 1973. Sentenced under Art. 62, Part 1 (“anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda”), Art. 64 (“participation in an anti-Soviet organization”), Art. 223, Part 2 of the CC of the UkrSSR (“theft of weapons”) to 5 years in strict-regime camps. Served his sentence in Perm camp VS-389/36.

Dzyuba, Ivan, b. July 26, 1931, one of the leaders of the Sixtiers movement. Author of the book “Internationalism or Russification?” (1965). Arrested on April 18, 1972, sentenced under Art. 62 of the CC of the UkrSSR to 5 years in camps and 5 years of exile. In October 1973, he appealed to the Presidium of the Verkhovna Rada of the UkrSSR for a pardon. Released on November 6, 1973. Literary critic, academician of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Minister of Culture of Ukraine in 1994–94, laureate of the T. Shevchenko Prize in 1991, Hero of Ukraine.

Dobosh, Yaroslav. Member of the Union of Ukrainian Youth of Belgium. He came to Ukraine as a tourist just before New Year 1972. His arrest on January 4, 1972, as an “emissary of foreign nationalist centers” marked the beginning of another wave of repressions against the Ukrainian intelligentsia. He was released on June 2, 1972, and expelled.

DOSAAF – “Dobrovolnoye obshchestvo sodeystviya Armii, Aviatsii i Flotu” (Voluntary Society for Assistance to the Army, Air Force, and Navy). An organization created by the authorities to prepare youth for service in the Soviet Army.

Zalyvakha, Opanas, b. November 26, 1925, imprisoned in September 1965 under Art. 62, Part 1 for 5 years. Served his sentence in the Mordovian camps. Artist, laureate of the Shevchenko Prize in 1995.

Zdorovyi, Anatoliy, b. January 1, 1938, scientist. Imprisoned in Kharkiv on June 22, 1972, under Art. 62, Part 1 for 7 years. Served his sentence in the Perm camps.

Kalynets, Ihor, b. July 9, 1939, imprisoned on August 11, 1972, under Part 1, Art. 62 for 6 years and 3 years of exile. Poet, laureate of the Shevchenko Prize in 1991.

Kalynets, Iryna, b. December 6, 1940, imprisoned on January 12, 1972, under Art. 62, Part 1 for 6 years and 3 years of exile. Poet, People’s Deputy of Ukraine of the 1st convocation.

Kvetsko, Dmytro, b. 1935, leader of the Ukrainian National Front, imprisoned in 1967 for 15 years and 5 years of exile. Served his sentence in Mordovia, Perm oblast, and Siberia.

Kichak, Ihor, b. December 12, 1930, imprisoned on January 28, 1951, for 25 years, served 8. For the second time, on April 9, 1960, for 10 years.

Kosiv, Mykhailo, b. December 28, 1934. Arrested under Art. 62, Part 1 on August 27, 1965, released on March 6, 1966. Participated in the publication of the journal “Ukrayinskyi Visnyk” (Ukrainian Herald) (1970–72). Art historian, People’s Deputy of Ukraine of the 1st–4th convocations.

Kraynyk, Mykola, b. April 20, 1935, a teacher from the village of Solukiv, Dolyna district. A member of the Ukrainian National Front, imprisoned on October 8, 1979, under Art. 62, Part 1 and Art. 64 for 7 years and 3 years of exile. Served his sentence in the Perm camps.

Krasivskyi, Zinoviy, November 12, 1929–September 20, 1991, political prisoner in 1948–53, 1967–78, 1980–85. Founding member of the Ukrainian National Front (1964–1967), member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group.

Kurchyk, Mykola, b. 1927, insurgent, arrested in 1946, 1954.

Lemyk, Mykola, 1914–1941, an OUN militant. Participated in the assassination of Mailov, head of the Bolshevik consulate in Lviv in 1933, as a protest against the famine organized by the Bolsheviks in Ukraine. In 1941, as an organizer of OUN mobile groups in Eastern Ukraine, he was hanged by the Germans.

Lesiv (Sokulska), Orysia, sister of political prisoner Yaroslav Lesiv, she was the wife of political prisoner Ivan Sokulskyi.

Lesiv, Yaroslav, January 3, 1943–October 19, 1991. Imprisoned as a member of the Ukrainian National Front on March 29, 1967, under Art. 62, Part 1 and Art. 64 for 7 years; for the second time on November 15, 1979, for 2 years; for the third time in May 1981 for 5 years. Member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, priest, poet.

Lukianenko, Levko, b. August 24, 1928, imprisoned on January 20, 1961, for 15 years under Art. 56 and Art. 62, Part 1 for creating the Ukrainian Workers’ and Peasants’ Union; for the second time on December 12, 1977, under Art. 62, Part 2 for 10 years and 5 years of exile as a founding member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group. Released in December 1988. Chairman of the UHS, URP, Ambassador of Ukraine to Canada, People’s Deputy of the 1st–4th convocations.

Marusyk, Petro, b. December 22, 1936, in the village of Beleluia, Ivano-Frankivsk region. Poet, publicist, public figure. Died in 2000 (?).

Melnychuk, Taras (August 20, 1938–March 29, 1995. Imprisoned on January 24, 1972, under Art. 62, Part 1 for 3 years; for the second time in January 1979 under Art. 207 (“hooliganism”) for 4 years, laureate of the Shevchenko Prize in 1992.).

Moroz, Valentyn Yakovych, b. April 15, 1936, historian. Arrested in September 1965, 4 years under Art. 62, Part 1; for the second time on June 1, 1970, under Part 2, Art. 62 for 9 years in special-regime camps and 5 years of exile. On April 29, 1979, he was released and expelled to the USA. Currently a lecturer at the Lviv State University of Physical Culture.

Moroz, Raisa, b. April 1, 1937, in the Donetsk region, of Greek ethnicity. From 1955–1960 she studied at the Faculty of Foreign Languages of Lviv University. In 1958, she married Valentyn Moroz. She worked as a teacher in Volyn and Ivano-Frankivsk, and was repeatedly fired from her job for defending her husband. R. Moroz and her son Valentyn arrived in New York on July 24, 1979. She prepared Ukrainian samvydav for publication.

Motryuk, Mykola Mykolayovych, b. February 20, 1949, in the village of Kazaniv, Kolomyia district, Ivano-Frankivsk oblast). Member of the “Union of Ukrainian Youth of Halychyna.” Arrested on March 15, 1973, sentenced under Art. 62, Part 1 (“anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda”) and Art. 64 (“creation of an anti-Soviet organization”) to 4 years of imprisonment. Served his sentence in the camps of the Perm oblast.

Osadchyi, Mykhailo Hryhorovych, b. March 22, 1936, in the village of Kurmany, Nedryhailiv district, Sumy oblast. In 1958, he graduated from the Faculty of Journalism at Lviv University. He defended his dissertation on the work of Ostap Vyshnia. Imprisoned on August 28, 1965, under Art. 62, Part 1 for 2 years. Served his sentence in Mordovia. For the novel “The Cataract,” he was arrested for a second time in January 1972, sentenced under Art. 62, Part 2 to 7 years in special-regime camps and 3 years of exile, designated as a particularly dangerous recidivist. Served his sentence in Mordovia. In 1991, he defended his doctoral dissertation at the Ukrainian Free University, and from 1993 was an associate professor at the Department of Journalism at Lviv University. Died on July 5, 1994.

PKT – “Pomeshcheniye kamernogo tipa” (Cell-type confinement). The same as BUR.

Pokrovskyi, Ivan, b. September 7, 1921, in the village of Shtun in Volyn. Insurgent. Was caught in a raid, became an Ostarbeiter. On December 7, 1949, he was arrested in Baranavichy, sentenced by an OSO (Special Council of the NKVD) troika to death, commuted to 25 years. Served his sentence in Kazakhstan (Karlag, Karaganda, Tayshet, Omsk). Released from the Perm camps in 1974.

Prykhodko, Hryhoriy, b. December 20, 1937, imprisoned on December 27, 1973, under Art. 70, Part 1 of the CC of the RSFSR for 5 years; for the second time in January 1981 to 5 years of prison, 5 years of special-strict regime, and 5 years of exile. Released on July 8, 1988.

Rafalskyi, Viktor, b. 1918, imprisoned in 1938–41, 1954–59, 1962–64, 1967–87.

Rebryk, Bohdan, b. July 30, 1938, imprisoned on February 6, 1967, for 3 years under Art. 62, Part 1; for the second time on May 23, 1974, under Part 2, Art. 62 for 7 years and 3 years of exile. Returned from Kazakhstan in the summer of 1987. People’s Deputy of Ukraine of the 1st convocation.

Riznykiv, Oleksa, b. February 24, 1937, imprisoned on October 1, 1959, under Art. 7 of the Law on Criminal Responsibility for State Crimes for 1.5 years; for the second time on October 11, 1971, under Art. 62, Part 1 for 5.5 years. Writer.

Rozumnyi, Petro, b. March 7, 1926, teacher. Member of the UHG since October 1979. Imprisoned on October 8, 1979, for 3 years on charges of illegal possession of a cold weapon.

Romaniuk, Vasyl (Patriarch Volodymyr), December 9, 1925–July 14, 1995, imprisoned in 1944 for 20 years, served 10; for the second time in January 1972 under Art. 62, Part 2 for 7 years and 3 years of exile. Served his sentence in Mordovia and Yakutia.

Romaniuk, Taras, b. 1959, son of Vasyl Romaniuk, priest.

Sapelyak, Stepan, b. March 26, 1952. Member of the Rosokhach group, arrested on February 19, 1973, 5 years of imprisonment and 3 years of exile. Served his sentence in the Perm camps and in Khabarovsk Krai. Poet, laureate of the T. Shevchenko National Prize in 1993.

Sverstyuk, Yevhen, b. December 13, 1928. Literary critic, publicist, one of the leaders of the Sixtiers movement. Imprisoned on January 14, 1972, under Art. 62, Part 1 for 7 years and 5 years of exile. Served his sentence in the Perm camps and in Buryatia. Doctor of Philosophy, Laureate of the Shevchenko Prize in 1993.

Svitlychny, Ivan, September 20, 1929–October 25, 1992. The recognized leader of the Sixtiers movement. Imprisoned on August 30, 1965, for 8 months without a trial; for the second time on January 12, 1972, under Art. 62, Part 1 for 7 years and 5 years of exile. Laureate of the Shevchenko Prize in 1994, posthumously.

Serhiyenko, Oles, b. June 25, 1932. Imprisoned on January 12, 1972, under Art. 62, Part 1 for 7 years and 3 years of exile. Served his sentence in Perm oblast, in Khabarovsk Krai.

Symchych, Myroslav, b. January 5, 1923, commander of the Berezivska company of the UPA. Imprisoned on December 4, 1948, for 25 years; resentenced to another 25 for participating in a strike. Released on December 7, 1963. Without a trial, on January 28, 1968, he was imprisoned for another 15 years, with 2.5 years added at the end of the term. A total of 32 years, 6 months, and 3 days of captivity. Lives in Kolomyia.

Sichko, Vasyl, December 22, 1956–November 17, 1997. Imprisoned in the town of Dolyna on July 5, 1979, under Art. 187-1 for 3 years; for the second time on December 3, 1981, under Art. 187-1 for another 3 years. Released on July 7, 1985. Member of the UHG, founder of the UCDF/UCDP.

Sichko, Petro, b. August 18, 1926, imprisoned as an insurgent on February 12, 1947, for 25 years, released on March 20, 1957. For the second time as a member of the UHG on July 5, 1979, under Art. 187-1 for 3 years; for the third time on May 26, 1982, under Art. 187-1 for 3 years. Lives in the town of Dolyna.

Sokulska (Lesiv), Orysia, sister of political prisoner Yaroslav Lesiv, wife of Ivan Sokulskyi.

Sokulskyi, Ivan, July 13, 1940–June 22, 1992. Poet. Imprisoned on June 14, 1969, under Art. 62, Part 1 for 4.5 years; for the second time as a member of the UHG on April 11, 1980, under Art. 62, Part 2 for 5 years of prison, 5 years of special-strict regime, and 5 years of exile; for the third time on April 3, 1985, for 3 years; released on August 2, 1988.

“Union of Ukrainian Youth of Halychyna” (SUMH) – an underground youth organization. It emerged in January-February 1972 in the village of Pechenizhyn, Kolomyia district, Ivano-Frankivsk oblast. The initiator of the Union was a locksmith, Dmytro Hrynkiv. The SUMH considered itself the successor of the OUN under new conditions, and its goal was the creation of an independent Ukrainian socialist state (like Poland or Czechoslovakia). Hrynkiv and an engineer, Dmytro Demydov, developed a charter and program for the SUMH but did not have time to adopt them. The group consisted of 12 people; its members (workers and students) held meetings (a kind of seminar), obtained several rifles, learned to shoot, and collected OUN literature, memoirs, and insurgent songs. The SUMH was uncovered by the KGB, and in March-April 1973, the group’s members were arrested. Five of them were convicted (Dmytro Hrynkiv, Dmytro Demydov, Mykola Motryuk, Roman Chuprey, Vasyl-Ivan Shovkovyi).

Stus, Vasyl, January 7, 1938–September 4, 1985. Arrested on January 12, 1972, under Art. 62, Part 1, sentenced to 5 years of imprisonment and 3 years of exile (Mordovia, Magadan oblast). For the second time on May 14, 1980, he died in a punishment cell of the special-strict regime camp VS-389/36 in Kuchino, Perm oblast, on the night of September 4, 1985. Member of the UHG, poet, recipient of the T. Shevchenko Prize in 1993, posthumously. On November 19, 1989, he was reburied at the Baikove cemetery along with Y. Lytvyn and O. Tykhyi.

Suslensky, Yakiv, b. May 10, 1929, in Moldova. English teacher. Imprisoned 1970–1977, served his sentence in the Perm camps and Vladimir Prison. Currently in Israel, where he created the “Ukrainian-Israeli Society.” Honored Worker of Culture of Ukraine (1993).

Terelya, Yosyp. b. October 27, 1943, political prisoner in 1962-66, 1966-76, 1977-82, 1982-83, 1985-87. Currently lives abroad.

Society of Political Prisoners – see All-Ukrainian Society of Political Prisoners and Repressed Persons

Taras Shevchenko Ukrainian Language Society (later “Prosvita”) was established on February 11–12, 1989.

Turyk, Andriy, b. October 14, 1927, insurgent, arrested in 1958, 25 years of imprisonment. Died in 1975 (?).

Ukrainian Helsinki Group – Ukrainian Public Group to Promote the Implementation of the Helsinki Accords was created on November 9, 1976, with the aim of disseminating the ideas of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights of December 10, 1948, promoting the free exchange of information and ideas, facilitating the implementation of the humanitarian articles of the CSCE Final Act, and demanding the direct participation of the Ukrainian SSR in the Helsinki Process. Founding members: Mykola Rudenko, Petro Grigorenko, Oksana Meshko, Oles Berdnyk, Levko Lukianenko, Mykola Matusevych, Myroslav Marynovych, Nina Strokata, Oleksa Tykhyi, Ivan Kandyba. 39 of the 41 members of the UHG were imprisoned. On July 7, 1988, it was transformed into the Ukrainian Helsinki Union; on April 29, 1990, at its Constituent Congress, the majority of its members created the Ukrainian Republican Party on its basis.

Ukrainian Helsinki Union was created on the basis of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group on July 8, 1988. At the Constituent Congress of the UHS on April 29, 1990, the Ukrainian Republican Party was created, which included 2/3 of the UHS membership.

The Ukrainian Republican Party was created on April 29, 1990, on the basis of the Ukrainian Helsinki Union. Registered on November 1, 1990, as No. 1. In 2001, it merged with the “Sobor” party under the name URP-“Sobor.”

“Ukrayinskyi Visnyk” (Ukrainian Herald) – the first uncensored literary, publicist, and human rights journal in Ukraine. It was published in typewritten form in Kyiv. 1970–1972, issues 1–5, editor-in-chief – V. Chornovil; issue 6 was published in Lviv by M. Kosiv, A. Pashko, Y. Kendzior. A Kyiv group, Y. Pronyuk and V. Lisovyi, released their own version of issue six, but called it number 9. In 1973–1975, issues 7–9 were published by S. Khmara, O. Shevchenko, and V. Shevchenko. It was revived by V. Chornovil starting with issue No. 7 in 1987 and was published until 1990.

“Ukrainian National Front” – an underground organization founded in 1964 in Halychyna (main figures D. Kvetsko, Z. Krasivskyi). It published 16 issues of the journal “Volia i Batkivshchyna” (Freedom and Fatherland). Arrests occurred in March 1967.

UNF-2 was exposed in 1979. Mykola Kraynyk, Mykola Zvarych, and Ivan Mandryk, along with about 40 other people, were active from 1974, in particular, publishing issues No. 10 and 11 of the journal “Ukrayinskyi Visnyk.”

Khmara, Stepan, b. October 12, 1937, imprisoned on March 31, 1980, under Art. 62, Part 1 for 7 years and 5 years of exile, released on February 12, 1987. People’s Deputy of Ukraine of the 1st, 2nd, and 4th convocations.

Chornovil, Vyacheslav, December 24, 1937–March 25, 1999. One of the leaders of the Sixtiers movement. Imprisoned on August 3, 1967, under Art. 187-1 for 1.5 years; for the second time on January 12, 1972, under Art. 62, Part 1 for 6 years and 5 years of exile; for the third time in April 1980 for 5 years, released in 1983. He returned to Ukraine in May 1985. Editor of the journal “Ukrayinskyi Visnyk” (1970-72, 1987-90), member of the UHG, People’s Deputy of Ukraine of the 1st–4th convocations, leader of the NRU, laureate of the T. Shevchenko Prize (1996), Hero of Ukraine (posthumously).

Chuprey, Roman Vasylovych, b. July 1, 1948, village of Pechenizhyn, now Kolomyia district, Ivano-Frankivsk oblast, member of the “Union of Ukrainian Youth of Halychyna.” Arrested March 15, 1973, sentenced under Art. 62, Part 1 (anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda) and Art. 64 (creation of an anti-Soviet organization) to 4 years of imprisonment. Served his sentence in the camps of Perm oblast.

Shovkovyi, Vasyl-Ivan Vasylovych, b. July 7, 1950, village of Pechenizhyn, now Kolomyia district, Ivano-Frankivsk oblast. Member of the “Union of Ukrainian Youth of Halychyna.” Accused under Art. 62, Part 1 (“anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda”), Art. 64 (“creation of an anti-Soviet organization”), Art. 140, Part 2 (“theft”), Art. 222, Part 1 (“manufacture and possession of weapons”), Art. 223, Part 2 (“theft of weapons”). Sentenced to 5 years in strict-regime camps. Served his sentence in Perm oblast.

Shumuk, Danylo Lavrentiyovych, b. 1914. 5 years in Polish prisons, half a year in a German concentration camp. 1944 – 25 years, released in 1969, imprisoned again 1972-1988. A total of 42 years, 6 months, and 7 days of captivity, including 5 years of exile. Member of the UHG. Lived in Canada, from 2002 with his daughter in the Donetsk region. Died on May 21, 2004, in Krasnoarmiysk.

Photo by V. Ovsiyenko:

Hrynkiv Film 9059, frame 14A. February 8, 2000, Kolomyia. Dmytro HRYNKIV.

Photo:

Hrynkiv-Motriuk Dmytro HRYNKIV and Mykola MOTRIUK. 1971.