SKALYCH SEMEN FEDOROVYCH

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I n t e r v i e w with Semen Fedorovych S k a l y c h and Maria Mykhailivna A n t o n i v

With corrections by Semen Skalych, made in February 2002.

V.V. Ovsiienko: January 25, 2000, in the city of Stryi, Lviv Oblast, in the home of Maria Mykhailivna Antoniv, Grandfather Semen the Penitent tells his story to Vasyl Ovsiienko. Maria Antoniv and her son Volodymyr are participating in the conversation.

S.F. Skalych: Lord God, bless us! Skalych Semen Fedorovych, born October 9, 1920, in the village of Dovhe, hamlet of Roven, Drohobych povit. There were ten of us children, our parents were poor. We all had to work as hired hands. After finishing 4 grades, I also went to work as a hired hand.

I worked for landowners for three years, and in the fourth year, I was hired at a forestry, 18 kilometers from my home. Returning home in 1937—I was going to see my father, as my mother was no longer alive—I caught a severe cold on the way, because I was lightly dressed, and I got inflammation of the joints in my right leg. They brought me home from the master’s on February 10, 1937. I was bedridden until 1939—my leg was festering. In 1939, the village head, Fedor Krychak, sent me to the hospital in Drohobych at the community’s expense. I was supposed to be treated for two years—tuberculosis of the bones in my right leg.

In 1939, the German-Polish war broke out. The hospital was filled with wounded soldiers, and so my treatment was stopped, I was only treated at home. Walking on crutches, I fell in 1941 and broke my left arm at the shoulder. The arm festered for two months until a bone fragment fell out. The arm healed without treatment, with the help of nettles (to kill the microbes).

I recovered from my illness in the summer of 1942, so I was already walking with the help of one cane. In the fall of 1942, I was appointed secretary of the UOT—the Ukrainian Educational Society, and for two and a half years during the German occupation, I worked in the reading room with the youth, not on church matters, but on civil ones, for the youth. I didn’t dance, because I was a cripple—I conducted festivals, plays, and read reports.

The Bolsheviks came. They didn’t take me into the army. I was forced to work in the village council. From the village council, in February 1945, they sent me to Pidbuzh, to the district—to register as the village council secretary. I refused there on the grounds that I was illiterate. But the head of the village council, Ivan Kostiv, spoke with the director of the cooperative, and he enrolled me in a one-year trade and cooperative school. From March 1945, I studied in Drohobych to be a cooperative accountant. Where did I get this knowledge of accounting—when I was sick, I had studied grammar and mathematics and other sciences. And I was lucky on the entrance exam. I studied very diligently, despite the hunger, despite the poverty. Because I wanted to have a talent, because I was a cripple.

In the fall of 1945, I was poorly dressed, and my leg became inflamed again, so I ended up in the hospital. I was in Drohobych for 5 weeks. A KGB major, Mukhachov, came and arrested me. On December 3, 1945, my interrogation began—it was harsh, very harsh. The charge was that I had become acquainted with the school director, Vasyl Znachkivsky, at the school, and he had given me identification forms for the underground fighters. At the same time, I also had an underground brochure, “An Appeal to the Population of the Western Oblasts of Ukraine.” When I went to the hospital, I didn’t trust my comrades, so I hid it in the lining of the stairs, behind a metal plate. While I was in the hospital, there was a renovation, and they found this brochure. The director was a communist by that time. So the KGB major, Mukhachov, came, arrested me, and for that, they gave me 10 years—for the blank forms for forging school documents and for the brochure “An Appeal to the Population of the Western Oblasts of Ukraine.”

The investigation was harsh back then, not just for me, but for all the prisoners. We were sent to Bryhidky, then to Lviv. They kept us cripples in the yard for two months while they prepared us for the transport, and then they took us to Kazakhstan.

It was very hard on the train. They transported us for a whole month. I was sick, and others were even dying. We were severely robbed then. Because priests, cooperative directors, school directors were also traveling, dressed in the Polish style—and the thieves robbed them. In the same car, there were thieves—and they passed the stolen goods through the window to the guards on the roof.

In Karabas—that’s a transit camp near Karaganda—I spent two weeks. They distributed us among the points. At first, we were in general-regime camps with the criminals, and they robbed us clean, down to the last thing.

One prisoner, a Banderite, managed to get acquainted with a doctor—not in Karabas, not in Dolynka, but in another camp—so that with the help of that doctor, he escaped. Using documents as if he had finished his term, he left the camp and went into the underground again. He was wounded and caught again. And when they caught him, they found out he had been in prison! And how did he end up free? Because of that, Moscow strictly separated the political prisoners from the common criminals and sent us to a special political camp, 40 km south of Karaganda—the special camp “Peschany.” There were 12,000 of us, all cripples.

V.V. Ovsiienko: 12,000?!

S.F. Skalych: Yes, 2,000 women were fenced off, and 10,000 men. They partitioned off a mountain. We dug stone in that mountain and built barracks on the flat ground—very hastily, because a communist revolution was going on in China and they needed to resettle the Chinese here. Me, a cripple with bone tuberculosis, they also forced me to work in the quarry, to extract flagstones. I worked for four months, and then I categorically refused. They beat me, transported me to Balkhash. In Balkhash, they beat me, and the guard Rizanov beat me the hardest—in the head, in the chest, everywhere. They tormented me like that for a month, and then they started an investigation and sentenced me to 5 years for camp sabotage—so that’s 15 years plus 10 of exile.

They sent me back to Spassk, and I didn’t work there for a couple of months. I got acquainted with our priests, there were about twenty of them there, and from one old priest, Chekhut, I borrowed a Ukrainian Gospel, which I read for the first time. I hadn’t even finished reading the Gospel when the guards took it away.

I started a fight for this Gospel. Fifty times I opened the doors of various offices. Finally, they gave me a firm refusal. Then I declared a protest with 10 points—a hunger strike, a vow of silence, refusal to go to work, and refusal to leave my barrack. For two years, they dragged me around the zone, twenty times they grabbed me and threw me to the ground. Then they built a psychiatric hospital, and they transferred me there. I was there for three years. There, I was grabbed and thrown to the ground 60 times. There they twisted my right arm—and my left one was already broken. So now I’m a cripple in three parts of my body—my leg, my broken left arm, and my twisted right arm.

Stalin croaked, a change came, they started to review cases. And they certified me as mentally ill in 1955. Two escorts brought me all the way home to Hirske-Dovhe in the Drohobych district.

There was terrible poverty at home, because my brother’s leg had also been broken in the forest, our family field was taken away, they paid nothing in the kolkhoz, and the family had to work. The poverty was very great. Besides, while my brother was in German captivity after coming from the Bolshevik front, our great-grandfather’s thatched hut had rotted, and we had to build a new house. We built the house with our own hands, with great toil, great toil. We built it. In 1959, we moved into the new house.

I didn’t go to the kolkhoz. In the village council, they registered me as a madman. They hounded me, but I didn’t want to go myself. They persecuted me for writing prayer books for children by hand. And the Bolsheviks cut off my brother’s garden plot three times because I wrote prayer books for children. Some of those children benefited from them, and some didn’t, because faith was already in decline. So from 1955 to 1963, I wrote 60 prayer books—some were 140 pages long, and some were smaller. With my own ink, my own paper, someone gave me 3 rubles, and sometimes they didn’t even pay for the ink. And I caused, so to speak, great persecution for my brother: they kept cutting off my brother’s plot. They persecuted us severely—both as Banderites and because I started writing prayer books for children.

In 1958, I was planing boards for the floor and strained my broken arm. And my broken arm swelled up with gangrene. I left the cow I was grazing for my brother, left my work, and went to the holy spring where the Mother of God and Christ the Lord appeared in the Second Coming, in the village of Serednie, Stanislav Oblast. I spent a couple of nights there, washed myself with that holy water, and drank that holy water.

V.V. Ovsiienko: And when did you first go there?

S.F. Skalych: Sometime at the end of July—beginning of August 1960.

V.V. Ovsiienko: And from whom did you hear about this?

S.F. Skalych: I didn’t go to the subscribed priests of the false Orthodoxy—I went to the Catholic priests: in Stryi to Tsehelyk, in Drohobych to Miahkyi. When they died, I started looking for others. In Stryi, I heard that the Mother of God had appeared in Serednie and that this was the Mother of God and Christ the Lord in the Second Coming. They said there was a spring there, and this spring heals. That’s why I went to this spring. I went there weeping, and I returned with joy: my arm no longer hurt, and then it healed.

So from July 1960, I became a disciple of the Second Coming of Christ the Lord and the Mother of God. In 1964, the Mother of God and Christ the Lord named us Penitents.

Every summer I came to Serednie up to 10 times. My brother had no money—I didn’t take a single penny from him. I had to weave a basket to have some money. And I needed 5 rubles just for the journey—and what about food? Besides, there were also novenas, where you had to be on that Holy Mountain for 9 days of prayer. And food? So I was simply hungry, had no money at all—I somehow scrounged up a ruble to get to the Holy Mountain, a ruble for food, and another ruble to return. So, you know, I was happy if I had three rubles—that was my travel money. The family was not happy with my trips to the Holy Mountain.

Then a division occurred. They started persecuting my brother Mykola terribly because of me—especially my former school and shepherd friend, who was a blockhead in the village council: he scared my brother, and so my brother started to really pick on me. I was forced to leave the house. In early May 1963, I had to move in with a widow, 11 years older than me, who had also accepted God’s Truth. I stayed with her for 4 and a half years. I returned to my brother, then left him again. I had to leave my brother four times, until finally, in 1969, I joined her, was adopted.

My brother and his family were very against me, the village was very against me—everyone was against both of us—against that widow and against me. I won’t repeat what the persecution was like, because it’s a lot to talk about, but somehow we endured it. They persecuted all of Christ’s disciples, persecuted them severely. They took away their cattle when it was grazing in the meadow. For some, they kept it for a whole year. They wrote applications to Moscow, and Moscow forced them to return the cows. They beat us, tormented us on the Holy Mountain, threw us into the river, threw us into cars, took us God knows where into the forests, into the fields, we walked on foot, I had to walk several dozen kilometers to the road with my crippled legs. Hungry, I walked for kilometers, it rained—we didn’t have those plastic sheets to cover ourselves, our clothes were wet. We held our novenas, slept wet. Hungry, wet, I caught colds—but we were zealous, very zealous. They beat us, beat us a lot. They drove us to the district, conducted searches, drew up reports, we gave our exact address. Because of that, an order came from the Church not to give our address, but a single common address: a penitent, chosen by God, our Father—the Heavenly Father. Where were you born? In the Lord’s house. Where is that house? On the Holy Serednie Bright Mountain. How long have you been going there? God knows! That was the information for 500 questions and answers.

V.V. Ovsiienko: Who beat you? The police or someone else?

S.F. Skalych: The Kalush police, the Voinyliv police, they took FZO students and military men.

Maria Antoniv: They surrounded the Holy Mountain with barbed wire, wouldn’t let us drink water, the military stood there...

S.F. Skalych: In 1965, there was a military post on the Holy Mountain for three days and a sign saying it was a “forbidden zone.” No one could get through, and on the first day, I couldn’t get through. But on the second day, I got through and even collected some holy water, made it to the spring. Later, they closed the spring on the Holy Mountain. A bulldozer pushed soil onto the spring and it ended up 2.5 meters underground. Until 1989, we had no holy water. But we still went to that holy place and prayed. They chased us at night, they chased us during the day, we got soaked in the rain... There were not dozens of us then, but hundreds—there were children, there were young people. We were poor, had no money from anywhere, because we had refused state work, and at home, we had nothing to earn from.

Why did we refuse state work—because we began to observe religious holidays very zealously. And for that reason, we preferred not to work anywhere, so as not to violate the holiday. So for 4 years, young people roamed the mountains—in the spring they collected mushrooms, in the forest they collected berries, ferns, and all that, and lived off that. And they helped the old people. The city dwellers suffered the most, while the villagers still had a garden and some cow. When we already had the name “Penitent,” in 1964 we all handed over our passports, military books, all documents. For that, they also persecuted us severely, but everyone was zealous. Some were even maimed, some were beaten and died—about six men.

About myself.

My brother Mykola died in the fall of 1976. My brother’s daughter took her mother, the cow, the property, and I was left alone in the house. I had no pension, no strength, no health—what was I to live on? I had to gather rosehips (sverbius)—true, they weren’t very far, about half a kilometer or a little more. I gathered the rosehips, dried them on the stove, and our Penitent boys took them to Lviv and brought me money for them. With that money, I could already live and could go to the Holy Mountain, because it was already a sin.

I lived like that for three years. I had to get my own firewood, had to do everything for myself.

In my village, they started building a dam on the Stryi River. They began to resettle the villagers. My sister-in-law, the widow of my deceased brother Mykola, was paid for the house, and I had to leave it. But the Lord directed things differently. On January 30, 1980, KGB agents from Drohobych came and arrested me. After I was gone, my sister-in-law dismantled the house, moved it to Synovydne, and set it up in the garden where she lived, for her granddaughter.

I was arrested for the second time on January 30, 1980, unexpectedly. The arrest was completely unexpected and innocent.

There were four Penitents in Drohobych, old people. Three had died, one of them a nun, Yulia Vesela, and an old granny, Maria Heigel, was left. She had a lodger from near Sambir, a 26-year-old Maria Kuts, who worked in a bread shop. We said that we shouldn’t keep outsiders, non-Penitents. “But I’m poor, and it’s a blessing for me that she pays ten rubles a month for rent.” And this Maria Kuts had a boyfriend. The boyfriend left her, so she went out of her mind. So, she wandered through the snow, and during the Epiphany holidays in 1980, she got into the Tysmenytsia, the Drohobych river, with her shoes on, and got water in them, froze her feet, came home, and there were three of our Penitent women from Stryi at the granny’s house for the Epiphany holiday. Our women helped her take off those frozen boots, and then they left for home, because it was getting dark, and Maria Kuts was taken to the hospital, and in the hospital, she said that Semen had baptized her in the Tysmenytsia river.

The KGB agents came for me on January 30, and conducted a search. I knew nothing. They took a full folder of papers from me. No one knew, not even my family knew, that I wrote poems—they knew I wrote prayers and thought I was still writing prayers, but I was already writing poems. So, they took 700 poems. Over 200 were poems glorifying the First Coming of Christ the Lord and the Mother of God, and the rest were glorifying the Second Coming of Christ the Lord and the Mother of God, 700 poems in total. Well, and they took a prayer book, took other notebooks. At the same time, they took 370 rubles that I had earned from the rosehips. In a word, they took everything. And they took me. The investigation began in Drohobych on January 30, 1980.

The investigation was not very harsh this time. I confessed to everything, that I wrote the poems myself. They kept me in solitary confinement in Drohobych for 9 days in the bitter cold, because the window was broken. I was so alarmed there that I was overcome with fear. Because I kept a church diary, and in the diary it was written where I had been with Christ the Lord and the Mother of God, and this revealed a secret. And I was very alarmed by this. If it weren’t for my faith, I could have committed suicide from that fear. But for 9 days, I prayed continuously all day long: “Lord, turn the evil that has been done into good!”

After 9 days they took me to Lviv, and the investigation in Lviv lasted 9 months.

V.V. Ovsiienko: And who conducted the investigation, can you recall?

S.F. Skalych: In Drohobych, the investigator was Ivan Snidanko, and in Lviv, it was Semyonov. At first, the suspicion was that I had given the girl frostbite. It was even written in the newspaper “Komsomolska Molod” for the entire Lviv Oblast that Semen Skalych had baptized a girl in the Tysmenytsia river, she got frostbite, and her legs were amputated. And the whole case was about me giving the girl frostbite. But I kept a diary, and in the diary it was written how I celebrated the Christmas holidays. And that clarified that I was not in Drohobych at that time. So the investigator went again, conducted an investigation, and found out that she had damaged her feet because she had gone mad over a boy.

Then the investigator gathered 15 witnesses against me from my village—even the priest, the head of the village council, the head of the kolkhoz, brigadiers, party members, neighbors. 15 witnesses. He went to Synovydne to my family and questioned them there. The investigation was now pointing to guilt for religious matters. The witnesses didn’t try very hard to “bury” me, although there were some like that. Among other things, the priest said that I had been at his home twice: “Skalych was at my place and reminded me to renounce the false Orthodoxy.” He didn’t say “false Orthodoxy” (kryvoslaviia), but “Orthodoxy” (pravoslaviie).

So the investigation was easy, I confessed to everything. They gave my notebooks to four writers for verification, to see if it was the same handwriting. For an expert analysis. And they gave me a task to write at least one poem—to see if the handwriting was the same. And I wrote the poem “Manifesto,” 4 stanzas, in my own hand. I used to write with glasses, but I didn’t have them here, so I wrote it clumsily—but I wrote it, I wouldn’t deny it. I didn’t sign any of the protocols, based on my Penitent duty. But I wrote down the poem.

At the end, the investigator asked how I view the Soviet Union. I said very soberly: “I consider the Soviet Union to be the executor of God’s will on the left side, that is, as the Lord’s scourge upon the capitalists and non-believers (pagans), who for two thousand years do not want to accept the Christian faith.” — “How do you view the Penitents?” — “I consider the Penitents to be the executors of God’s will on the right side, because they are to make the whole world happy in the religion of the New Testament.” — “How do you intend to continue your future life?” — “I intend to remain in the teaching that I have accepted.”

The investigation lasted 9 months. I signed nothing. After the investigation, in August 1980, the trial began. The hearing lasted four days. They brought in witnesses, but not all of them came. The witnesses didn’t “bury” me too much—some tried to “bury” me, and some tried to save me. For example, a brigadier says: “I found him grazing a cow in the wrong place: ‘Why are you grazing the cow here? You can’t graze here, it’s between the crops!’ And he crossed me, turned to the cow, and said nothing. I wanted to fine him, but his brother worked in the kolkhoz, and I couldn’t fine his brother.” People like that wanted to save me. And there were those who tried to “bury” me. In fact, the one who tried the hardest to “bury” me was not at the confrontation—he went to Donbas and drowned there. Slavko Bashchyk, a very zealous communist, the manager of a bakery in Boryslav.

They sentenced me to 10 years of especially strict regime, 5 years of exile, and declared me an especially dangerous recidivist. And then they sent me on the transport. Very hard... I was weak, suffered from a stomach ailment. I was in four places, I’ve already forgotten... Kharkiv—Kholodna Hora, Potma in Mordovia, Perm. And from Perm, they brought me to Kuchino.

V.V. Ovsiienko: And on the way, you met Vasyl Kurylo, right?

S.F. Skalych: I met Kurylo in Perm. I ask: “Who are you?” — “A person.” If he’s a person, then he’s a Ukrainian. But his hair wasn’t cut, and that made me suspicious. “How come your hair isn’t cut—are you convicted or not?” — “Yes, they brought me to Perm by plane after the conviction.” — “Why?” — “Because I’m blind.” He was in a Banderite underground organization for 4 years, in the underground propaganda department. He got 10 years, and in the camps, he damaged his eyes from a cold. And the second time he was imprisoned for writing about the past, he trusted a friend, gave him a notebook to read, and that friend betrayed him. There was a search, they found all the notebooks and also gave him 10 years. He was arrested on the same day as me, so in Perm they already asked if we were associates, because we were arrested on the same day and had the same article of the code.

They brought us from Perm to Kuchino and put us among the guys. I didn’t work, because I was very sick with a stomach ulcer. They didn’t even make me go out to clear snow or sweep. The guys in the cell cleaned up, and they exempted me as a cripple.

M. Antoniv: You said they beat you a lot to make you work...

S.F. Skalych:. No, that was during my first conviction. I even said that it was the investigator Rizanov.

I couldn’t eat the camp food because my stomach ulcer was very bad. I didn’t eat shchi, I didn’t eat rassolnik, I didn’t even eat cabbage—I only had tea, bread, and barley porridge. Some of the guys were sick like that too and died. Oleksa Tykhy had the same illness and didn’t survive, but I, thank God, survived.

M. Antoniv: But they asked how you could endure it, and you said: “Because I pray.” Stus asked, and everyone...

S.F. Skalych:. The guys loved me very much. Almost all of them were political prisoners, only a few were of other nationalities or non-political.

V.V. Ovsiienko: And who were you in the cells with?

S.F. Skalych: Vyacheslav Ostrohliad was from Magnitogorsk, a criminal. And the one who beat the Lithuanian, what was his name?

V.V. Ovsiienko: Borys Romashov, who beat Balys Gajauskas. Did he attack you too?

S.F. Skalych: Uh-huh. Those were common criminals. But our political guys were very calm—no one said an offensive word to another, the guys loved each other very much. And they loved me for my faith. They asked me, in fact, about the Second Coming of Christ the Lord and the Mother of God. I told them, but even the late Vasyl Stus said: “It’s very strange that you think you can change the whole world! And you are confident that it will happen?” I say: “One hundred percent! I don’t waver in my faith by half a percent that this will happen!” — “Well, it’s a miracle, such faith! But we followed the political line, and we cannot accept that.”

I prayed a lot, so I didn’t demand they turn off the radio. But Ivan Hel, our man from Lviv, he prayed briefly, so he asked for the radio to be turned off during that time. But I prayed for hours, so I couldn’t disturb them. The guys went to work, and I wasn’t at work, so I had time to pray. I secretly wrote poems, tried to memorize them. I forgot 40 poems, but I brought 50 home in my memory.

V.V. Ovsiienko: So who else were you in the cells with?

S.F. Skalych: We would stay with one group for a few months—then they would change us, transfer us from that cell to another. So they changed us, we weren’t together for a long time constantly.

V.V. Ovsiienko: And among the Ukrainians—were you with Stus?

S.F. Skalych: I was with Vasyl Stus, with Vasyl Kurylo, with Yuriy Lytvyn. And with Oleksa Tykhy, with Moiseyenko from Donbas, and with the Lithuanians Balys Gajauskas and Viktoras Petkus, with the Latvian Gunārs Astra, with the Estonians Mart Niklus and Enn Tarto...

V.V. Ovsiienko: And with me. So you were with practically everyone.

S.F. Skalych: Yes, there were 40 of us prisoners. Among them were 10 former policemen, 18 Ukrainian political prisoners, and the rest were of other nationalities. The policemen were spiritually dead, didn’t engage in anything. The political prisoners were active among themselves with their work, for which they often ended up in the punishment cell. And Vasyl Stus died in the punishment cell.

V.V. Ovsiienko: And I remember they were sewing a “birka” [tag] with the name “Skalych S.M.” on your jacket, then burning it on with bleach...

S.F. Skalych: I wanted to skip that (laughs). There, every prisoner had his own camp number—a registered letter and number. My number was 136, I’ve already forgotten the letter—“D,” I think. D-136. I refused to accept the tag on my cap, on my knee, and on my chest—on my blouse and on my padded jacket.

V.V. Ovsiienko: Wait, that was probably during your first imprisonment? Because in Kuchino they only wrote the last name.

S.F. Skalych: Yes, that was during the first term—I refused. And in Kuchino, it was just the last name—I refused that too. There was no great torment—they wrote it themselves and threatened that if I erased the “birka,” I would destroy the clothes, and they would punish me for the clothes with both money and the punishment cell. So for that reason, I said: “And I don’t accept the clothes.” And I was naked. No one paid any attention to this. For more than half a year, I was only in a shirt, I didn’t accept a blouse, or a quilted jacket, or a cap. After that, already in the winter... Lord God, I’m forgetting...

During the Epiphany holidays in 1981 in Lviv, our Penitents went caroling among their own people. And they went for the night to the house where Christ the Lord had stayed during the Second Coming. It was there that the KGB caught everyone. Because of that, a major arrest of Penitents began. There was an order to bring me in as a witness. In the winter of 1981, they put me in a separate cell—and I don’t know why. And then in the spring, they summoned me and brought me to Lviv.

V.V. Ovsiienko: They took you out of Kuchino on March 13 and returned you on May 14, 1981.

S.F. Skalych: Yes, and there was no major investigation here. Osmak, or whatever his name was, summoned me a couple of times. There was also supposed to be a confrontation, to testify against Christ the Lord—but it didn’t happen. I was in the hospital for 5 weeks there, in Lviv, for a stomach ulcer, and then after the treatment, they immediately put me on a transport and returned me to my place in the camp. I was in the camp until I was released.

V.V. Ovsiienko: And how did the camp administration treat you, particularly the fact that you didn’t work? I remember you telling how the camp chief, Major Zhuravkov, comes into the cell—you cross him. “What are you crossing me for?!” — “Because you are Satan!”

S.F. Skalych: The chief of the special regime section, Dolmatov, was secretly sympathetic to me. Secretly sympathetic. But he had to be secret about it. Dr. Pchelnikov was also very sympathetic, but secretly. He wanted to give me a second spoonful of vitamins—but then a guard comes, and he had to put the spoon back. And after Pchelnikov came Grushchenko, a Ukrainian doctor—he took revenge on me, he punished me severely. Because Pchelnikov gave me a special diet every month—one month without a diet, and the next month a diet, because my stomach ulcer was severe. But Grushchenko completely deprived me of the diet for three months: “Let’s see what happens.” And my stomach started to hurt terribly. Then he checked and in February 1986 sent me for treatment to the central hospital 150 km away. They didn’t give me anything besides a quilted jacket, no padded trousers, though my legs were crippled, they didn’t even give me socks, they didn’t give me gloves—in a Black Maria, for three hours, they drove me 150 km to the hospital on February 13, 1986.

The guys were transported in a general compartment. Our man from Lviv, Stepan Khmara, who later became a deputy, was there.

V.V. Ovsiienko: This was in a “voronok” [Black Maria], right? So it’s not a compartment there, there’s a “stakanchik” [a small solitary cell], a box.

S.F. Skalych: ...And I was transported in a small box. The box was made of sheet metal on all four sides, and I only had a thin quilted jacket and summer trousers. And I caught a severe cold, a cold in my spine. Since then, my spine has been acting up to this day. It acts up and hurts. I have to wear two pairs of padded trousers, I have to wear, besides the padded trousers, sheepskin wraps, I have to wear a belt around my spine, I have to wear a woolen vest—it damaged me so much that I am a cripple to this day. You can see the photo.

When they brought me to Perm, the heat from the boiler house was far away. The pipe was barely, barely warm. And the criminals had knocked out the windows, and snow had piled up everywhere! For two weeks I lay like that, with snow even on my pillow. Then one guard took glass from another cell, put it in the windows, and threw out the snow—he took pity on me like that. I’ve forgotten his name, that guard. I slept in valenki [felt boots], because they gave me the valenki of one of our prisoners at that time. I spent my days and nights in valenki, but my legs were only in summer trousers. And one light blanket. So I was freezing and freezing, and I caught an even worse cold in my spine.

After that, in the summer, they sent me to Perm, for a medical review. I was in Perm for five weeks, and there too my ulcer hurt so terribly, terribly, I almost died. They gave me two injections against it, and I started bleeding from my intestines.

V.V. Ovsiienko: A hemorrhage?

S.F. Skalych: Yes, a hemorrhage. And on the toilet, I saw that my stool was completely like coal. I told the paramedic, and the paramedic told the doctor, and the doctor says: “Oh, Skalych, you’ve done your penance now!” That meant death was coming. And then they started giving only one injection. I was in Perm for about two months. A commission wrote down all my illnesses, what I felt, what I didn’t feel in terms of pain, and then they returned me to the camp, and in the camp, I waited for my case to be reviewed for release. The review came, and they sent me home.

V.V. Ovsiienko: The certificate says you were released on medical grounds on October 8, 1987. And how were you released? Did they let you out in Kuchino or did they take you home?

S.F. Skalych: No, there was a communist from Belarus. I’ve forgotten his last name... Zhovtniak, I think... They assigned him to me as an escort. He brought me by train all the way to Lviv. In Lviv, I tell him: “You go home, and I’ll get home from Lviv on my own.”

I arrived by bus in Synovydne, I don’t remember the date in October. The weather was still good here, the trees were still green! I have it written down somewhere, I can look it up. It’s a kilometer from the bus stop to the house of my niece, Anna (Mykola’s daughter, who had already been married off here earlier—she was the one who took her mother, as I said, and I was left alone at home for three years)—it took me a whole hour to walk that kilometer! Every few steps—I would sit or stand, if there was no place to sit. I was so weak, that’s how they destroyed me.

Well, I came home, and they were happy to see me and started telling me that they had heard on Radio Liberty in 1982 about all the Penitents, about Kuchino, that they also mentioned the writer and poet Semen Skalych. So the family was surprised: “What? The poet Semen Skalych? The world calls him that, and we know nothing about his poetry?” When I arrived, they were talking about it. And I say that I did write—they took 700 poems from me during the arrest, they took 700 songs.

From then on, the family was well-disposed towards me. I slept on a cot, because the house was small, there was nowhere to sleep. My sister-in-law already had a paralyzed arm and leg by then. I stayed for a week—I had to register. My niece worked at the sawmill—the DOK—and there the district police officer was pestering her to register me. She would come home crying: “Uncle, please register, because they are pestering me. If you don’t want to register, I’ll register you myself.” — “No need.”

It was the feast of the Intercession, and I went to the Holy Mountain. It was warm, nice, I was at the Holy Mountain near the spring, so to speak, moved—moved by thoughts. A stream of thoughts flowed from the beginning of the revelation of God’s Truth to that day... There was a woman from Lviv, Gena, and a man, Roman, from Rozvadiv. We were returning together from the Holy Mountain to Stryi. I tell Roman that I want to go to Yosyp’s in Kniazha Luka to write down my poems, because I’ll soon forget them—because I already feel that I’m forgetting. And Roman says: “No, we’ll go to another place.” And Roman brought me to Bolekhiv, to Ivan and Zosia—their daughter Liuba is in the Truth.

Here they received me very warmly. For two weeks, I was incontinent, the bedding was wet... They gave me the best food, and in two weeks the incontinence stopped, they gave me fresh bedding, washed everything, and life began to lead to recovery. But my stomach ulcer hurt terribly, sometimes I would even scream. There was still persecution, the Bolsheviks were still around, so I had to live very secretly. They didn’t make me work, they prayed sincerely. I didn’t even remember all the prayers they did. There I rewrote the intentions (intentions—this is a new two-hour prayer for the Penitents), because all my prayer books were gone, all the notebooks were gone, and they didn’t return them to me.

I stayed in Bolekhiv for 9 months. My songs were written down there. And as soon as I left—the district policeman came and said: “You have unregistered people here!” And the host opened the doors and said: “Search, search! Look!” And the district policeman saw by the people that they were not afraid—he looked here, looked there, and left. It means someone had already betrayed that I was there.

I moved from Ivan and Zosia’s to Yosyp’s in Kniazha Luka, from Yosyp’s I moved to Anton’s in Vytvytsia, from Anton’s I moved to Zakarpattia to Andriy’s, and so on, and so on—10 apartments in 6 years. I didn’t sit still—I wrote their descriptions, wrote their prayers, wrote their songs. After writing for one, I moved on.

Then Ukraine came. When Ukraine came, I hear the guys already saying that you can get a Ukrainian passport and apply for a pension. I decide how to start and go to Drohobych. I came to the KGB. “What do you need?” I say: “You tormented me, now help me.” — “What do you want?” — “I want a hospital, I want a disability group, I want a pension.” The deputy head of the KGB, Varnatsky, wrote down everything from me, what illnesses I have, how long I’ve been suffering, and with that, he went to the city hall to the regional administration. He came back from there: “Get in the car.” And he took me to the central hospital in Drohobych. He told the head doctor, Tadei Hrynyk, to keep me for a long time. I was there for a full three months—in the Drohobych central hospital. There I recovered... There I recovered.

Autumn came, I got cold, and I had to leave, because I was only dressed for summer. My cousin was in Stebnyk, she was also a former political prisoner. She came to visit me in the hospital and told me to come to her place when I get out. Nastunia Skalych. Right from the hospital, I went to her place. Her son and daughter intended to study to be train conductors, and they had a young boy, not yet school-aged. And Nastia herself worked in the resort canteen in Truskavets. She was sorry to leave her job, but there was no one to stay with the boy. So they took me in to stay with the boy. And they went to Lviv to study to be conductors.

During that time—I was there for 8 months—I got my passport, got my disability group (they gave me the second disability group), and got my pension. And I managed to get my poems back. This was when I was at Nastia’s in 1992, and in 1993 they returned my poems. The rest was all lost—only the poems were returned. All 700 of them.

Even before they returned the poems, Nastia fell ill with high blood pressure and had to quit her job. Then Nastia sent me away. I moved to Synovydne to my niece Anna, because my sister-in-law, who was paralyzed, had already died, so there was a place for me. Anna’s family took me in. I had to help a little around the house—they had a cow, they had a garden. My illness still tormented me. I continued to be sick. I couldn’t write anymore. It was very cold there—I slept in the entryway. Although there was a kitchen, if you lit a fire in the kitchen, it would be terribly cold by morning. And even though I had a feather bed, I was freezing and prayed: “My Lord God, help me!”

And just on February 5, 1996, three people come to visit me. One—who had already been to my place in Synovydne, the other two had not, but I knew them. This was Olga, as we call her, from Poltava, because she is from Poltava, who bought a house in Serednie, and she comes to visit. I had only met them once, because they had recently settled, and I didn’t go to Serednie very often anymore, because I was weak. But I had spent the night at their place. “Why have you come?” — “We want to take you to our place—do you want to come?” And I thought and thought—but that’s a holy place! How could I not go? And on February 1, I moved to Serednie, to Olga and Oleksa Milchak’s. Oleksa Milchak is a resettler from Lemkivshchyna under Stalin (not far from Serednie). Olga was exiled with her family for political reasons. They wandered all over the place, and finally bought a small house in Serednie and moved there. For a while, it was very good for me there, very good. At first, Oleksa was quiet, but then he couldn’t hold back. He is mentally ill. He would shout at Olga, and then he started shouting at me too, and I was forced to leave them.

And so, in February 1997, I moved to Stryi, to Maria Antoniv’s. It is very calm here, very nice. In the summertime, I go to the Holy Mountain, in the wintertime I don’t go anywhere, my legs hurt, I continue to suffer from my spine, I’m getting old, my memory is weakening, I pray much less. That’s how it is to this day—to the day I am giving this interview.

I thank the Lord God, that the Lord God gave me a little more memory, so that I could still recall this!

[Dictaphone turned off].

Next, the lady of the house, Maria Mykhailivna Antoniv, showed V. Ovsiienko a manuscript.

M.M. Antoniv: This was written by Christ Himself in the Second Incarnation.

V.V. Ovsiienko: He wrote it like this in a notebook (reads).: “I greet you with the incarnation of the Only Son! My dear relatives, Slavs of all rites of the One Holy Immaculate Sobor childhood of God of the Holy Spirit of the third Immaculate Lamb of the Church of Christ. Let us share our joy and be strengthened by the love, by the power of the Truth of the First and Second Incarnation of the Word on earth, which was born of the Father before all ages, from the throne and seat of the Most Holy Trinity and the Vicar General of the Father of Fathers in the Third Testament of the Holy Spirit of the Mother of God cult in Ukraine, of all the souls in ruin in the native Fatherland rested the spirit of God’s wisdom.”

M.M. Antoniv: That’s all, I thank the Mother of God! [Dictaphone turned off].

V.V. Ovsiienko: Grandfather Semen, did you believe that you would be able to return home from captivity and even witness an independent Ukraine?

S.F. Skalych: When I became a Penitent and in 1977 was, as we call it in the church, on legitimation (this is a confession of all the sins of this life),—at that time I was tested by Christ the Lord and the Mother of God in Their Second Coming. The Mother of God said that my life was hanging by a thread, but Their helper Katrusia, a medical surgeon who understands human health, was very alarmed that my health was already very weak, hanging by a thread, just a breath—and it’s gone. So she said: “And will he live until...” — “He will live.”

This was before the second arrest, and I knew that I had to serve the arrest. Although my ulcer was a terrible illness, and now I suffer from various illnesses, so that my memory is beginning to fail, but I have faith, because the Mother of God said “until”—so it must happen. And this “until” is the glorification of the Second Coming of Christ the Lord and the Mother of God. What kind of glorification of Christ the Lord and the Mother of God—you will read in what I gave to Levko Zelinsky from Morshyn.

V.V. Ovsiienko: Thank you. [Dictaphone turned off. Next, Ovsiienko asked to be told about the Person whom the Penitents consider to be Jesus Christ in the Second Coming. His secular last name was Soltys, it seems, Mykhailo. The Mother of God is his sister Maria].

S.F. Skalych: ...Our Lord Christ in the Second Coming was tried three times. The first time he was tried was in 1955 for the consecration of the spring in Serednie. The second time Christ the Lord was tried was in 1962. Here, in Stryi, they took him on July 2, and the Stryi KGB agent abused him terribly—he wanted to beat out of him what he wanted. At that time they were persecuting priests, and he took a priest—he thought the King was a priest—and wanted to beat out of him what he wanted. And the Mother of God in the Second Coming was already in hiding with Anton Potochniak in the town of Yampil near Lviv. And the Penitents would come to the Mother of God in hiding at night. The work was done at night... She and Anton Potochniak fell asleep towards morning. In the morning they got up and were washing themselves. And then Christ the Lord, who was in prison in Stryi, appears to the Mother of God. And says: “You have just gotten up and are washing yourselves, and I have already been beaten three times.” The Mother of God says: “How can we save you?” — “Send for Myron—Myron will help.” And Myron, a student, was studying at the university in Stanislav. They quickly sent someone from Yampil all the way to Stanislav and told Myron. Myron the student went straight to the head KGB agent and said: “In Stryi, a prisoner-priest is being severely tortured.” — “How do you know?” — “I had a vision: this morning he was beaten severely.” The KGB agent telephones Stryi from Stanislav. The Stryi KGB agent was very surprised and frightened: how does Stanislav already know? The other one said: “A Stanislav student complained to me that he had a vision that you are beating him.” And the Stanislav KGB agent ordered the prisoner to be transferred to Lviv. In Lviv, he was no longer tortured.

Then the Stryi KGB agent summons the student: “How did you know about this?” — “How did I not know—it was you who beat the Lord, and the Lord appeared to me and complained.” That’s what the abuse of the Lord and the salvation of the Lord God through a vision was like. [Dictaphone turned off].

V.V. Ovsiienko: Please tell me about Anton Potochniak.

S.F. Skalych: He was a supporter, a very close friend, and a very, very zealous worker in the Second Coming of Christ the Lord and the Mother of God here, in Stryi. He knew all their secrets. At first, he didn’t really believe that this was the Mother of God.

M.M. Antoniv: He couldn’t understand it, he said: “I can’t.”

S.F. Skalych: Yes, he couldn’t. In 1962, the Mother of God was forced to go into hiding. They arrested her twenty times, and the last time they wanted to deport her all the way to Kolyma. And the Lord said: “Take your child and leave home, because great danger threatens you.” And in early February, she was forced to go into hiding with Potochniak. Potochniak wrote down all her visions and believed very strongly. Then Potochniak was released home. Potochniak got cancer and died during an operation in Lviv.

M.M. Antoniv: What are you talking about, he was in prison, they gave him a year in prison for his passport, we know all that. He died in prison.

S.F. Skalych: Yes, yes, that’s right. I was already in prison then. I was arrested in 1980, and he in 1981. They took him for his passport.

M.M. Antoniv: He said: “I won’t take that mark.” Cattle have passports, and we had identity cards under Poland. And now everyone should have identity cards, not passports.

S.F. Skalych: And he was a very close friend of Christ the Lord and the Mother of God, he was a very zealous priest, very strong and delicate, extremely delicate. He died a martyr’s death.

M.M. Antoniv: They tortured him to death in the prison in Lviv. The Voice of America talked about it then. And my son woke me up, because it was twelve o’clock, at night, he says: “America is reporting that Potochniak is dying in prison.”

S.F. Skalych: I confessed to Potochniak more than once, I dined at his house more than once.

V.V. Ovsiienko: Mykhailo Lutsyk, whom I visited today, asked me to ask about Potochniak. [Dictaphone turned off.

Next, V. Ovsiienko reads the verdict of Maria Antoniv. The paragraphs were numbered by Ovsiienko.

“Case 1233 of 1973.

Verdict.

In the name of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.

June 11, 1973.

The People’s Court of the Kalush Raion of Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, composed of presiding People’s Judge Mykhailov B.I., People’s Assessors Tsymbalista M.Y., Shvets P.V., with Secretary Byhyr S.V., with the participation of Prosecutor Potapenko M.N., having considered in an open court session in the courtroom in the city of Kalush the case on the accusation of Antoniv, Maria Mykhailivna, born April 8, 1932, a native of the village of Nezhukhiv, Stryi Raion, Lviv Oblast, a citizen of the USSR, Ukrainian, non-party member, with a 4th-grade education, married, with 4 minor children in her care, a resident of the city of Stryi, Lviv Oblast, 10 Radianskoi Armii St., apt. 113, with no prior convictions, under Art. 214, part 1 of the Criminal Code of the UkrSSR,

has established:

1. The defendant is registered in the city of Stryi, has a family there—a husband and 4 children, worked until 1963, and then left her job. At first, she looked after her children, and then she began to attend the “Penitents” sect, refusing socially useful labor and taking up vagrancy. She was detained in 1972 and was warned by police officers not to engage in vagrancy in the future. She drew no conclusions for herself from this. On April 7, 1973, she was again detained in the village of Serednie on Serednianska Mountain, where all the “Penitents” gather.

2. When questioned in the court session, the defendant refused to explain anything regarding the substance of the accusation presented to her and only read her prayers. Witnesses Antoniv V.Y., the defendant’s husband, and Yemelyanov O.M. explained that the defendant had worked in a military unit, and then for 15 years at a furniture factory. She worked well, was a deputy of the city council, then she left her job, started to engage in vagrancy, left her family, 4 minor children. She did this with the onset of spring.

3. Having examined the case materials and witness testimonies, the court finds that the defendant’s actions under Art. 214, part 1 of the Criminal Code of the UkrSSR were correctly qualified by the preliminary investigation bodies, and her guilt in committing this crime has been fully proven in court. The defendant, although she has a permanent place of residence, having left her job in 1963, constantly engages in vagrancy, travels to different raions of Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk oblasts, and does not want to work.

4. In choosing the measure of punishment, the court takes into account the degree of the defendant’s guilt, the nature and social danger of the crime she committed, that she has 4 young children, and considers it necessary, taking into account the above, to determine her measure of punishment in the form of deprivation of liberty.

5. Guided by Art. 323, 324, 327 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the UkrSSR, the court has sentenced

Antoniv, Maria Mykhailivna

under part 1 of Article 214 of the Criminal Code of the UkrSSR to 1 year and 6 months of deprivation of liberty in a general-regime corrective labor colony. The term of punishment shall be calculated from May 7, 1973, and the measure of restraint—detention in custody—shall remain unchanged.

The term for appealing the verdict is 7 days to the oblast court through the Kalush Raion People’s Court from the time of receipt of its copy by the convicted.

Presiding Judge (signature).

People’s Assessors (signatures).

“True to the original.”

Chairman of the Kalush Raion People’s Court Y.D. Horblianskyi.”

Such a verdict. Mrs. Maria, I would like you to tell us about this conviction and imprisonment, and not only about yours, but also about other Penitents. Please, tell us.

S.F. Skalych: Under Stalin, there was a split in the Greek Catholic Church into false Orthodoxy and Catholicism. The Greek Catholic priests were arrested, but the false-Orthodox ones, who signed up with Kostelnyk for Moscow—they were not arrested. And the population was also divided: some went to the false-Orthodox, and others, having no Greek Catholic priests, had to go to the Polish Roman Catholic church, since the (Church) in the Truth did not yet exist. That is why Maria also went to the Polish church.

M.M. Antoniv: I went to the Roman Catholic church and in the church I prayed constantly and cried before the Mother of God for help: “Mother of God, grant me something Ukrainian! I want a Ukrainian Church, so that I can be in the Greek Catholic Ukrainian Church! Once, the Lord spoke to Moses, is there a person now to whom God speaks? Or has everyone in the world died? And then, when I desired that Ukrainian Church, I suddenly came out of the church, and some people from Nezhukhiv were standing there and they say to me: “Have you heard that the Mother of God has come with Jesus to the village of Serednie in the New Jerusalem? Have you heard?” I say: “I haven’t heard, this is the first time I’m hearing it!” — “The Mother of God has come to save everyone, the whole world, in the village of Serednie. And she has so much grace, and she cried that there is no one to give it to, because her sons and daughters have turned away from Her. There is a priest there, so esteemed, that the Lord speaks to him.” I then thought of those thoughts, that I had desired that. And now, they say, that priest is in Siberia, convicted.

I came to Serednie for the first time, and there was no collection plate. I ask why there is no collection plate, why they aren’t collecting money? And they tell me: “Because all the priests in the whole world were led astray by that money, and here the collection plate never goes around.” So I think: God, is this the true church that I desired even as a small child? Then I see that all the people are praying very sincerely, people are crying, asking for forgiveness of their sins, crawling on their knees from below up the Holy Mountain: “Mother of God, forgive us, because we have all gone astray, because we have all followed this world, followed that bald one. That bald Lenin has poisoned us with his venom!” And then I started to cry. I didn’t yet understand that I was sinning so much, I didn’t have that understanding yet. I started to pray and ask the Mother of God. And then I came home and told my mother. Then my mother went with me.

And in the village of Nezhukhiv, I thought that I would tell the village and the whole village would also go to the Mother of God. But everyone turned against me: “We won’t go there—why? We have an Orthodox priest in the village.” And I say: “But he signed with Moscow, that’s Moscow’s, it’s no longer Orthodox, it’s not ours anymore! The devil has already settled there, in those churches.” And everyone started to laugh at us loudly. My father delivered the mail, and the school director said: “Be careful—when you go for the mail, be careful they don’t sacrifice Nastunia there.”

I was still working at my job then, and one day I went to work, and one woman says to me: “Mariiko, the school director said that you will be crucified on a cross in the square, and your Marta will be on the Holy Mountain in a barrel with nails and they will roll her!” The communist, the school director, told all the children, and when people came to us to get their mail, they looked around very carefully, because they were very afraid that we might sacrifice them. And then I burst into tears and said that it’s not true—who said such a thing? The school director said it, and the school director spread it, and then the school director harbored a great hatred for us. He called my sister into his office and said: “Marta, do you know that your mother is going to put you in a barrel with nails as a sacrifice on the Holy Mountain?” And she then said: “It doesn’t suit you, because you are a school director and you are telling such a lie. That’s my mother, and I go to Serednie with my mother—my mother will never sacrifice me and will not crucify my sister on a cross in the square!”

And then the school director got cancer, he had stomach cancer inside. And when my mother was sleeping, he took my mother’s prayer book “The Christian Family” and prayed a lot, and repented. It was still a secret, but when he was about to die, he came and said: “Nastunia, forgive me, because I was the one who spread such slander about you, that you would crucify your daughter on a cross and put her in a barrel. The communists ordered me to do it, and I did it, poured such hatred on you. And now I have cancer and I’m going to die. I repent very much for spreading such things about you, because I turned the whole village against you!” The whole village was against us. Because, he says, the communists told me so—that was when his soul was about to depart. And so he died of cancer in our village, and the whole village was very much against me. And when my mother crossed herself on the bus, they threw my mother off the bus and into a ditch, and my mother was unconscious. And some old woman was walking by and says: “What’s this swaying here under my feet? Nastsuntsiu, is that you lying here?” And my mother says: “I don’t know—I crossed myself and they beat me badly.” My mother said she didn’t see who. And she took my mother home, says: “Your wife was badly beaten for crossing herself on the bus.” And they brought my mother home, already unconscious.

And then, you hear, when I didn’t go to work on the Feast of the Holy Cross, because the Lord revealed that one should not work on a holy day, and if at least a couple of people were not found who would not work on a holy day, He would destroy the whole world, because like before the Flood, the Lord wants to destroy the whole world. And then I and a man named Belsky, who worked with me, from Kolodnytsia, we left our jobs and didn’t go in on the Feast of the Holy Cross. And my boss asks me: “Why didn’t you come to work yesterday?” I say: “Because it was the Holy Cross.” — “And you worked until now?” — “Yes, until now I worked, I sinned, but now the Mother of God on the Holy Mountain has spoken, that we should all repent, because a great punishment awaits us.” And she then says: “Then take your things and go home! You have to work on holidays—this is a state where you have to work.”

I came home, and right after me, the authorities came and said: “And what will you live on? You have four children and a husband—a war invalid, a cripple. What will you live on in the city? Go to work, go to work on the holiday!” And I say: “No, I won’t go.” And then they fired me and gave me such a document for the Greek Catholic Church, for Uniatism, that I am a die-hard Uniate. They kicked me out of my job, I was left without a job and was very worried about how I would live. But the Lord arranged it so that I survived, I earned a piece of bread for myself—I went to the forest to pick berries, snowdrops, those red berries, and lived off that.

I went to Serednie. I arrived, and they took me to Bohorodchany, where there used to be a monastery. They gave me a cell and said: “Pray.” It was a monastery in Bohorodchany, and so they say “pray.” They took my fingerprints, and the fingers—that means the five-pointed star. And we didn’t let them take our fingerprints. So you can imagine what they did to us, because I never gave in—as long as I had strength, I saved myself and didn’t give in. But there were so many of them—and what did I have? Only when they beat me severely, to drive Jesus out of my head, because I have Jesus, and Lenin is supposed to be here, he came here like this, had a star and says: “Do you see Lenin?” — “I see.” — “He must be in your head. We will beat you on the head until that Jesus comes out.” So they beat me severely, I was unconscious, and then I don’t know how they took my fingerprints—I don’t remember, because they took my hand and took my fingerprints. And I said that it means a five-pointed star, and I won’t let them take my fingerprints, I’m not guilty. And I was in Bohorodchany for questioning many times. And then on April 7th (I was born on the seventh of April, it’s my name day), I go to the Mother of God.

I arrived, and here comes the police and says: “We already warned you not to come here anymore.” And I say: “This is our Ukrainian land, the Mother of God descended here, so you get out to the North Poles, where you came from.” Because he was Russian, from Siberia, and said: “I don’t believe in anything, there is nothing.” And I say to him: “Then get out to the North Pole. This is Ukrainian land, this is our land, and the Mother of God came, and I am on my own land, I say, I came to pray.” — “It’s forbidden to go there.”

And then they took me to Kalush. My husband came there for the trial, and they threw my husband out. He says: “It’s hard for me, I have four children, I’m a cripple, let her go, because it’s very hard for me.” And they say: “We’ll convict you too.” Then they threw my mother out of the court: “You are Christians.” The judge told me: “Sign that you will no longer go to Serednie to the Holy Mountain, and we will let you go, but you will go.” I say: “No.” — “Give your signature.” — “I will not give my signature. I went and I will go, and even if I were to die, I will go.” Well, then they convicted me, deprived me of my maternity, and even wrote that they had stripped me of my maternity.

And I was also going to the seventh grade in Stryi then—I went, and as soon as I stepped on the stairs, made the holy cross—right then Gorodetsky summoned me to the police station: “Why did you go to the seventh grade school?” — “I went so that there would be religion, because children will grow up—the prisons will be filled—without God. Without God, there will be no generation, they will steal, they will kill, so I went so that there would be religion.” — “And do you know that Lenin separated religion from school? Do you understand what you are doing?” And then they held me for a whole month. And the little children, as a neighbor told me, ate raw potatoes like that, they were in great poverty—so the neighbor helped them a little. She came there and says: “You’re keeping her here, her husband is at work, and the children are hungry. And you’re keeping Antoniv.” And they say: “Why did she go to the school?” And the police chief says: “Don’t cross my door, or it will burn!” And I didn’t ask him when I crossed it. And they questioned me there, why I went to the school, beat me severely, you hear, kicked me, until blood came from my mouth. Blood was coming from my mouth. They were furious, why I went to the school.

I was imprisoned for a month many times. Once on the Feast of the Holy Cross, they took us to the police station in Kalush, held us for three days—and nowhere to sit, nothing. The Holy Mountain was surrounded, there were soldiers, FZO students, and when my mother bowed down, they said: “Granny, get up and go away!” My mother didn’t move, so we saw my mother’s entire skirt burning, all her shoulders were burned, and they were watching to make sure my mother wasn’t burning too.

V.V. Ovsiienko: What—they set it on fire?

M.M. Antoniv: They set it on fire! My mother was praying like that and was on fire! And her whole skirt burned up. And we saw from a distance, because it was a great persecution, and they put wire around the Holy Mountain, you hear... And this was the persecution, when the police led us into the water, and we go with them, we go, we go. And they didn’t expect it—they thought they would just shove us into the water, but we clung to them tightly. And we were in the water together with them!

V.V. Ovsiienko: With them? Who were they—police or who?

M.M. Antoniv: The police. They didn’t expect it like that. They led us into the water and thought they would let us go after that. But we held on lightly to the last, and they wanted to push us, but we didn’t let go of them. They didn’t expect that—and we all ended up in there together.

Volodymyr: But they were filming it on a video camera, so it must be somewhere in the KGB archives, it should be in Kyiv.

M.M. Antoniv: Ivan went, and they said that it’s not yet possible to release it.

Volodymyr: They still don’t want to give it back. Because I remember they were filming, because when I was still little, it was around 1962-63. There was no video then, but there was a film camera with film.

M.M. Antoniv: All three of them are small, and my brother says: “Mom, I saw in the movies how Mariika is praying on the Holy Mountain!” And our Ivan went to Kyiv—“It’s not time to release you yet.” Everything is there, the archives, everything is recorded—there is no order that it can be released. And the televisions, and everything—so what to do with us? Because it’s terrible—our communist showed what kind of believers still exist. And they showed us in the movies. Snow, mud, and they came to the Holy Mountain. They say: “People, you’ve taken the holy water—go, because we have orders to beat you.” But no one even looks back. “People, did you hear or not? You took the water, you prayed—go away!” — No one even looks back. “Well, we are asking you, we are asking you—we don’t want to beat you.” No one. So what to do? They had iron rods—and the iron rods just broke like this. No one obeyed the order. [End of track]. And no one even looks at them. Then they drag us from the Holy Mountain into the bus—by the legs, or by the arms, and kick and beat us severely—and it’s all in blood, and blood from the head, and from the arm. They won’t just drag you lightly, but when they drag you, they know what they’re doing! And then into the bus, all covered in blood, in mud, they bring us to Kalush—to the police station.

V.V. Ovsiienko: What year was this?

M.M. Antoniv: This happened almost every year. It happened on all the major holidays—on the Immaculate Conception, on St. Nicholas Day, on Christmas, on the Epiphany. They brought us there, to the Kalush militsiya: “Get off!” No one gets off. And then they take us from the bus one by one and onto the grounds. We could be there for a week, with nothing to sit on, nothing to drink, nothing to eat. They locked us there on the grounds of the militsiya station and didn’t even look in on us—whether we were dying or whatever. And when they saw that we were completely exhausted, they’d say: “Get out of the militsiya station.” But no one would leave. We would say: “We are fine here with Jesus.” Then they would drag us out of the militsiya station, into the street beyond the gates, and then we had to go. And as they were dragging us, we would fall at their feet, kiss their feet, because the Lord God revealed that if we held any hatred for them, it would be hatred for God Himself. We have to accept everything as penance for our sins. Do you understand? We thanked the Mother of God, thanked her that it was our own sins that were beating us... Then the chief tells us: “You are against the state.” We say that we were never against the state. “How so? You are against the Soviet Union, you are undermining all authority. We wanted to bring the whole world along with us. You could undermine the whole world, even though there are few of you, because a little worm can gnaw through the thickest tree. And you are a great hindrance to us in the whole world.” “How are we a hindrance?” “Because we want to abolish religion so that there can be a commune. And we have strict, strict orders to fight against you because you are a great hindrance to us. So go on, and don’t go to Serednie anymore.”

But we continued to go, and the struggle with the Antichrist was very intense. It is written in the Holy Scriptures that there, on that mountain, a terrible battle with the devil will take place. The Lord said that if we rise to the struggle in the village of Serednie, if we surrender our passports to the devil, do no work for him, and rise to fight him, then the whole world will rise to the struggle. That is what the Lord said. And I thought to myself: Lord, even if I have to die of hunger, I will go to this struggle.

They brought us in. I had a small cross, a rosary on my chest—they tore the rosary to tiny pieces. He says: “Let's take the cross from her—and not just from her, but from all of them. And what will we do then?” “We will,” he says, “steam them.” Were you there when they steamed us? Scalded us?

S.F. Skalych: No.

M.M. Antoniv: And then they strip us naked (and it was a bitter winter!), and they steam all our rags.

V.V. Ovsiienko: Where and in what?

M.M. Antoniv: In a steam room like this... [unintelligible].

Volodymyr: I know that in the zone there is also something like that, where they steam things.

V.V. Ovsiienko: Yes, in the zones, there is a large metal chamber called a “prozharka.” It's for killing lice. Because sometimes prisoners arrive from transit with lice—so all their clothes are sent to the prozharka, and the prisoners are sent to the banya.

M.M. Antoniv: But we didn't have that.

Volodymyr: And what did they tell you—that they were going to steam out the Holy Spirit? Or lice?

M.M. Antoniv: Yes, the spirit. They took everything off us; we stood naked. They wanted us to take their clothes. But we wouldn't take them. And we did manage to get our own clothes back. And we didn’t accept the “birka” [prisoner tag]. So they would strip us naked, and we would walk around the zone naked. Mariyka from Ternopil, so young, 18 years old, walked around the zone for three days in her birthday suit. For God's sake—to walk around the zone naked! Three days naked! They say to her: “Aren't you ashamed!” And she replies: “You should be the one who is ashamed, because I have clothes.” But the poor thing told us she was very ashamed... And we didn't go to the “minutka” [roll call] at 9 o'clock...

V.V. Ovsiienko: Was this in Odesa Oblast where they held you?

M.M. Antoniv: In Odesa.

V.V. Ovsiienko: And what was the colony number?

Volodymyr: It's UIN-74, a correctional facility [Uchrezhdeniye Ispolneniya Nakazaniya].

M.M. Antoniv: When we were brought to the colony, the head of the colony, Kushch, said to us: “What is that Brezhnev do-i-ing? I tell him: don't send me pokutnyky [penitents], because they are honest people! And he keeps sending me pokutnyky. What am I supposed to do if they are good people? I write to him, telling him not to send me these people!”

Because we say: why are you bothering with us? You have others to deal with during investigations. You have a whole world of young people; you’ve already corrupted the youth, the prisons are full. Our ancestors used to build churches, and now you build prisons. Then the head of the regime summoned an old woman, Marta Starynska, and says: “Marta, what should we do?” And she says: “You need to throw out that old fairy tale, get rid of that Lenin, and teach the youth about God, introduce religion in schools, because that Lenin is an old fairy tale.” That's what Marta says.

Volodymyr: That was in 1972.

M.M. Antoniv: Yes, seventy-two. “You,” says Marta, “don't know what to do?” And the regime man says: “Well, how? We turned the whole world upside down, we were going that way, and now what, we’re supposed to go back?” Do you understand? That’s how the interrogation with her goes. And she says: “There is no other way, you have to turn back, throw out that fairy tale, that bald Lenin, and turn to God.”

There was a young girl with me there, eighteen years old. We didn't obey their orders; we didn't go to interrogations. So we didn't go on our own two feet; they carried us everywhere. Because the Lord said: “If you submit in prison, they will torture you and keep putting you in prisons. But if you take nothing for yourselves, don't go to interrogations on your own feet, don't take food, don't work—they will stop putting you on trial.” And that’s what happened, because that Kushch, the head of the colony in Odesa, started writing to Brezhnev: “What am I supposed to do? There is a lot of work, but they have to be carried...”

Look, in the punishment cell, I got sick, my legs swelled up like this, you hear? My kidneys failed, and I wouldn't go to the infirmary on my own two feet. They tell me: “You, Mariya, go to the infirmary, because you are dying.” “I won't go.” “But it's good there; they'll give you milk, good food, not like here in the BUR [Strict Regime Barracks].” But I say: “I won't go.” So then they come, wrap me in a blanket like this, and carry me. I can hear them saying in the zone (they called us “bogomolky” [prayerful women]): “E-e-eh—the bogomolka is dead, they're carrying the bogomolka away.” And I'm laughing inside that blanket, even though I'm weak. They brought me to the infirmary. Then they have the trouble of carrying me from the infirmary back to the BUR in a blanket. And that head, Kushch, says she’s tired of carrying us—it’s not enough that they don't work, but they have to be carried in their arms too! And why, she says, is that Brezhnev doing this to me?

And then they stopped putting us on trial.

V.V. Ovsiienko: Can you name the pokutnyky who were tried? And when were they tried?

M.M. Antoniv: Marta Starynska, but I don't know how she spells her name. Myrosia, Marta, the Mariya who walked naked in the zone. [Name unintelligible] and Mariya—two sisters. Stefaniya, Nastunia... There were many. Nastunia was accused of having a book that gives children “pidpiy” (?) [a potion]. A lie, she didn't give children “pidpiy.”

V.V. Ovsiienko: Were all of you, the pokutnytsi, held in this 74th camp? Or somewhere else?

M.M. Antoniv: Those with a second conviction were in another camp, and if it was a third, they were sent to Siberia, like one girl, Paranka—she lived in Lviv.

V.V. Ovsiienko: And this zone—did it specialize in religious believers, or were there also common criminals?

Volodymyr: No, it was a zone for women with children who were first-time offenders.

V.V. Ovsiienko: Is that a general regime?

M.M. Antoniv: Yes, a general regime. But those with a second or third conviction were on a strict regime. And there were some who went four and five times.

V.V. Ovsiienko: And where else were they held?

M.M. Antoniv: Also in Chernihiv. And that girl, Paranka, was in Siberia somewhere not far from where you were.

V.V. Ovsiienko: So these were women. But the men were also tried, weren't they?

M.M. Antoniv: The men, too.

V.V. Ovsiienko: And where were they held, in which zones?

M.M. Antoniv: Oh, they were put in prisons, they were beaten badly... They were held in Stryi, in Bohorodchany, in Stanyslaviv for two or three months.

Women were held at the militsiya station for a week, locked in the yard. Marta was locked up for three days...

Volodymyr: She had four young children and a 2nd-grade education. They considered her an ignorant, downtrodden woman, so they made allowances for her. But for someone with an education, 10 grades or more...

M.M. Antoniv: I'll tell you how they elected me a deputy at work. The head accountant, a Jewish woman, I think, says to me: “Mariya, don't you disgrace me. You have to get up on that podium and say: I thank the Soviet authorities for nominating me as a deputy.” She’s telling me this as we walk through the park: “Did you memorize that or not?” And I'm walking and praying, but I don't admit it to her. Then I got there, all the deputies were there—and it was all bigwigs, all commies! And as I was climbing up to that podium, I didn’t know what I was going to say. I prayed the whole time, and I prayed as I was climbing onto the podium. And when I got up on that podium, I was speechless, so I just said: “Oh, oh, oh!” And they, all those commies, went: “Ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha!”

Volodymyr: You started to laugh at them, and they at you. And everyone started laughing together.

M.M. Antoniv: I’m sitting on this stage, and everyone is roaring with laughter, holding their stomachs. And the Holy Spirit says to me: “Look what I have done through you! You have ridiculed the entire Soviet regime.” The next day, they say this to my husband: “If she had 10 years of schooling, she'd have gotten 15 years for politics. But since she only has two... Listen, she ridiculed the Soviet regime!” And you, commies, wanted me to thank you. They are laughing, and I am too.

V.V. Ovsiienko: And what—they still elected you as a deputy after that? It's written in the verdict that you were a deputy.

M.M. Antoniv: Well, hold on, I had to be one for a year.

Volodymyr: Because under Soviet rule, it was hard to remove a deputy.

M.M. Antoniv: You know, it was hard! I then went to the head of the city and said: “Give me a house, because I don't have a house.” And he says to me: “I don't have a house myself.” He was so angry with me, you know? Then I say: “Give me lighter work, because my work is hard.” And he says: “My work is hard, too.” And then he says: “You'll be one for a year because you have to be, and after that, you're no longer a deputy.” And that’s how it turned out. “But you could have,” he says, “done so well. Even though you only have two years of school, you should go to night school, and then you would have gone higher and higher. And you would have achieved a lot because you have a good head on your shoulders. I wanted to make a somebody out of you.” Yeah, right, I thought, so I would thank the Soviet authorities? So I would thank the commune? And so, he says, she ridiculed the entire Soviet regime! And, you hear, he was saying how they all roared with laughter, holding their stomachs. But, it's true, Baraniuk came in (he was a prosecutor, and his wife was a judge) and offered me a chocolate bar. I say: “Thank you. I don't want your chocolate.” Because he was a commie. And that prosecutor himself was amused that I had ridiculed the commies.

At that time, I didn't yet know about Serednie. So God was probably preparing me. Because when the Muscovites came and I was walking past the militsiya station, a thought came to me: those communists will beat you for the faith of Christ. I thought to myself: what will they beat me for? I didn't know then that God had chosen me for this.

Volodymyr: They just thought you were ignorant.

M.M. Antoniv: And that accountant says: “Girl, how you disgraced me! How you disgraced us! You disgraced the Soviet authorities!” But you see what holy prayer did! As I was walking, I only prayed, because I didn't know what I would say.

A very high-ranking official summoned me to Ivano-Frankivsk and says: “Listen, Antoniv, how is this supposed to work? You don't work on holy days. If all people stop working, what will we live on?” I say: “If we all stop working on holy days, there will be the Kingdom of God on earth: there will be no prisons, everyone will understand God's Law, they will live according to God's holy commandments, and there will be paradise on earth. There won't even be a need for the militsiya.” And he was a commie, and he says: “So you're forcing me to convert to your faith? Listen, Antoniv, you are so persuasive that I'm becoming afraid of God. But I can't...” I say: “So what—let's not work on holy days, the youth will turn to God, and life will be good.” They used to say to me: “So you, a tiny little worm, want to gnaw away at the Soviet regime?”

And the Lord revealed that party cards would be thrown into the garbage—and this was in the early seventies. And I asked him: “Volodia, listen, could this be possible? The Lord revealed to me during a divine service that they will throw party cards into the garbage.” He then says: “You know, Mom, the Soviet regime is so powerful, America is afraid of it, it's unlikely that would happen.” And when did it happen? Twenty years later? And I say: “See, Volodia, the Lord revealed that it would happen—and so it did.”

And now they also say that something will happen with Rome... In Rome, there are very many secret communists, right around the Pope of Rome. The commies have broken into the churches everywhere, you should know, Vasyl. Masons, masons, masons... I'm telling you... And they themselves don't know that there are masons around them. And they say that's worse than a communist. Because the communists went against religion openly, but these do it secretly. This is to bring the devil into the church, to prevent the church from becoming what it is meant to be before God. Do you understand, Vasyl? It's worse than the communists! Because it’s covert, they permit all sins. You see: drug addiction is spreading, the youth—how is it where you are, in Kyiv?—are the youth turning to God? Not a chance! [Dictaphone turned off].

Volodymyr: The newspaper “Ratusha” from April 30, 1992.

V.V. Ovsiienko: What's the title of the article? “Such Are They, the Pokutnyky.” Who is the author?

Volodymyr: The author is Yuriy Shukhevych, Lviv, April 11, 1992.

V.V. Ovsiienko: Can you read it?

Volodymyr: “Men and women stand before me. Stern faces, bearing the seal of faith and martyrdom. They look at me, hunted and persecuted. Why are they here? Probably because, having been hunted under the ‘second Soviets,’ they remain persecuted now, under the ‘third.’ They live in Lviv. Their flag flutters over a flowerbed. They are not allowed to build their own church or chapel. So they came to me—also unrecognized, also once persecuted and unrecognized by the democracy of the ‘third Soviets’—hoping to find at least some understanding here, and they do.

Who are these people? They are called pokutnyky. Pokutnyky—because they atone for the sins of humanity. And they call themselves the Slavic Church of the Holy Spirit.

And then came 1946. The so-called Lviv Sobor, with Stalin's blessing, destroyed the Greek-Catholic Church. Hundreds and thousands of priests, monks, and nuns, faithful to the Church, perished or were imprisoned. Others went into the catacombs. The penance for sins began.

It would seem that now, when the Church has come out from the underground, the sorrowful path of these people should also have ended. But no. In 1958, Pope Pius XII dies—the last just Pope, whom the pokutnyky recognize and believe did not die of natural causes but was poisoned by his personal physician. The Apostolic See is taken over by Masons, and the new pontificate of John XXIII begins—this is the second antipope with this name, say the pokutnyky. But even before his death, the blessed Pope Pius XII transfers his apostolic authority to Ukraine. The Masons intercept this document, but, despite everything, the pontificate of a new Pope begins in Ukraine—the last embodiment of Christ Himself among men, Emanuel I.

The era of Jerusalem ends, the era of Rome is completed, and the era of Ukraine begins as the center of the world. The village of Serednie in Prykarpattia becomes the ideological-mystical center. From here begins the renewal and revival of the Catholic faith of all Christianity—that faith which has been preserved in all its purity and truthfulness here, in Ukraine.

They stand—simple people, faith in their eyes, and above them a flag: blue-yellow-and-white, a combination of the Ukrainian and papal flags. They do not believe the democrats. For them, democracy is chaos, the rule of demons. Their ideal is a theocratic monarchy. And they hope for our help, the help of those who fought against Bolshevism. They believe in the divine chosenness of Ukraine, as we do, and, like us, they believe in the great future of the nation, in its mission to renew this world. That is why we stand, facing one another—not as enemies, not as adversaries.

Yuriy Shukhevych, April 11, 1992.”

M.M. Antoniv: Do you know what a theocratic state is?

Volodymyr: Theocratic means religion has supremacy.

M.M. Antoniv: It must be a theocratic state—then it will be God's state, from God. Not democratic, but theocratic. A Ukrainian theocratic Ukrainian state—there is no other. And democratic—that's a demon that has come out of the abyss. Theocratic—that is God's state. And it doesn't exist yet. But God will grant it, if we continue to struggle, it will be. That is what pokutnyky are.

V.V. Ovsiienko: Yes, I've known about the pokutnyky from grandfather Semen since 1981. [Dictaphone turned off].

V.V. Ovsiienko: End of the conversation with Semen Skalych and Mariya Antoniv on January 25, 2000. Mariya Antoniv's son, Volodymyr, took part in the conversation. He is in his forties. The pokutnyk Semen Fedorovych Skalych lives with Mariya Antoniv in the city of Stryi, Lviv Oblast.

Photos by V. Ovsiienko:

Skalych Film roll 7945, frame 18. Jan. 25, 2000, Stryi. Semen SKALYCH (pokutnyk).

Antoniv Film roll 7945, frame 20. Jan. 25, 2000, Stryi. Semen SKALYCH, Mariya ANTONIV and her son Volodymyr.