MAKAR, IVAN IVANOVYCH

Interview with I. I. Makar

V. V. Ovsienko: Ivan Makar speaks on May 29, 2000. Recorded by Vasyl Ovsienko.

I. I. Makar: I am Ivan Makar, born in 1957. I was born on January 15. I come from a line of Carpathian Boykos. I was born in the village of Halivka, Staryi Sambir Raion—it’s now right on the Polish border, at the edge of the Turka Raion, in the Carpathians, on a remote farmstead. My mother’s family line goes back to the Dovbushes. According to legend, Oleksa Dovbush’s brother, after they had a falling out, went to the Western Carpathians and settled somewhere in those parts. So my mother, in fact, comes from the Dovbush clan.

V. V. Ovsienko: Was that her surname?

I. I. Makar: By her family’s nickname—the local name for them—she was from the “Dovbush plot,” where the Dovbushes lived. It could have been the brother himself, or it could have been one of Dovbush’s opryshky—it’s hard to say now. But at the very least, my mother has the Dovbush temperament. She fought with the authorities her whole life, always getting into some kind of trouble. At one point, she was fired from her job as head of the local club for refusing to toe the authorities’ line. Even after that, though she was no longer the director, she was always helping out there—she would stage Shevchenko evenings at the club, put on various plays, and even organized a village ensemble that performed at the first Boyko festivals. And this was from such a tiny village…

V. V. Ovsienko: What is your mother’s name, and what was her maiden name?

I. I. Makar: Her maiden name was Kateryna Voloshchak. By the way, she is some distant relative of Voloshchak—there was a blind poet named Voloshchak in Lviv. She was born in 1934. And my father was Ivan Makar, born in 1927. My father has an interesting biography. Like most young people then, my father was in the youth nationalist organization “Luh.” Our relative was a company commander in the UPA. But it was already clear that the national underground was in decline, that it would be practically wiped out. So my father’s brother persuaded that relative to kick my father out of the UPA. Well, they staged some situation—and he was expelled from the UPA. And then the informants later pointed him out: “Oh, that kid? He was kicked out!” So they didn’t bother him after that. But he continued to work for the underground. He helped out by working as an accountant at the kolkhoz and receiving money. The partisans knew when he was bringing money from the raion center, so they intercepted him, gave him a few bruises, and took the money. And so he appeared to be a victim. Then he helped them clear out the kolkhoz storehouse. They had just brought in seed stock, and the partisans needed something to eat. So he helped. But when he saw that the whole area was saturated with informants, he essentially fled into the Soviet Army in 1950. He had a deferment as a kolkhoz accountant, but he volunteered for the army, served for three and a half years, and returned in 1953. And until the end of his working life, he worked as a record-keeper for a tractor brigade. He принциpally refused to join the Party.

So that is my lineage.

I finished primary school in my village. I received my secondary education at the Strylky boarding school. In the village where, incidentally, Mykhailo Horyn once began his career as an inspector for the raion department of public education. During my time there, Strylky was no longer a raion center, but Mykhailo started when it still was. It was a long way to walk to school from home, so parents would send their children to the boarding school to keep them from taking partisan trails instead of the road to school. And I would have done just that, because I had a wild nature in my youth, so they decided to send me to the boarding school.

V. V. Ovsienko: And did Horyn establish that boarding school?

I. I. Makar: Well, in principle, yes, with his active participation.

Let me tell you something. As a child, I read a great deal. And what was there to read? About Valya Kotik, Pavlik Morozov, and so on. You know, I was raised as what you’d call a true-believing communist. The fact that many of my relatives were in Siberia—from both my father’s and my mother’s side—that many had been exterminated, was perceived as something of a fairytale. And my parents, considering my straightforwardness, tried not to emphasize national issues too much at home. I lived by what I’d read about Pavlik Morozov and Valya Kotik. At the boarding school, I could get by on just a few hours of sleep a night. The teachers had already given up on me; no one bothered me, and at that age, I read voraciously. That’s what shaped me. I read all the volumes of Martin Andersen Nexø, the Danish writer.

Academics came fairly easily to me, especially the exact sciences. I once made it to the All-Union Physics Olympiad because I was the winner of the regional olympiad in both mathematics and chemistry. I didn’t get a medal. The teachers offered me a medal, but I refused on principle. I felt I wasn’t strong enough in the humanities, so I didn’t want to be a “padded” medalist.

I graduated from school in 1974, after 10th grade. And I immediately enrolled in the physics department at Lviv University. It was very easy to study there, too; there were no problems at all. The problems were financial because my parents were not wealthy. All the highlanders lived quite poorly at that time. My mother was often sick back then. I finished my first year with all A’s. During the summer holidays, in a student construction brigade in Vologda Oblast, I earned what was then a large sum of money—1,000 rubles. Now I think about how much money we buried in that development of the Non-Black Earth Region, where in the very same place they were simultaneously carrying out drainage and irrigation. On sandy soils. Look at the wonderful black soils in Ukraine, where it would have taken far less money to invest in land reclamation, yet it wasn’t done. Even then, I understood that it was an occupational government, clearly occupational, that wanted to make everything in Russia advanced while leaving Ukraine in the role of a periphery.

My active resistance to the authorities began, perhaps, as a game of war with the system. A friend of mine, with whom I had been at the All-Union Olympiad, came to visit. I represented Lviv Oblast, and he, Ternopil Oblast. A fellow named Petro Zhuk. He had enrolled in the famous Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, but for his second year, he transferred to our Lviv University because, first, he wasn’t in good health, and second, they provided technical training there, whereas he wanted more theory. There may have been other reasons—I don’t know. And he didn’t have the money to travel back and forth. Academics also came very easily to him. And when studies are easy, you have free time. Well, we talked about something, and we didn’t like something about the existing system. It turned out there were others who also disliked things. There was a Sashko Kryvoi or Kryvy at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. I think he was from Vinnytsia Oblast, but he got in there—a talented guy. There was also some Muscovite, I think he also studied at MIPT. I don’t remember it all now. And in Kyiv, at the Agricultural Academy, there was Petro Zhuk’s classmate—Bohdan Ternopilskyi and a fellow named Kytsai or Kytsak. So we created our own secret organization. It was conditionally called the “Union for the Struggle for Development.” It was a youth organization, seemingly oppositional, but communist. That is, we were for communism, just not for that kind of communism.

V. V. Ovsienko: Communist dissidents.

I. I. Makar: Well, something like that. This was my second year of university, 1975–76. I remember we were preparing something for the next CPSU congress…

V. V. Ovsienko: The 26th, probably?

I. I. Makar: I don’t remember. We were preparing some letter for the congress. Our own credo of sorts. Petro Zhuk was writing it. To be honest, in that organization, I was a guy who wasn’t too deep into theory. I wasn’t very interested in all the philosophizing. The one thing that suited me was that I was involved in this noble cause. I took on the purely technical aspects. I went to my village with that piece of writing, and the secretary of the local kolkhoz, who had studied at my same boarding school a year after me—she was already working as a secretary at the local state farm—typed it all up for me on onion skin paper. The kolkhoz party organizer was walking around nearby, and he was as dumb as a post, so I told him it was for some paper for the university, and he believed me. But she, I think, was a smart girl—she later worked as a party organizer in that same kolkhoz. There’s even an article by her where she criticized me when I started the revolution in Lviv in ’88.

V. V. Ovsienko: And what kind of materials were they?

I. I. Makar: Well, it was our organization’s credo, some letters to the congress. For some reason, we thought that Romanov, the secretary of the Leningrad regional committee, was an oppositionist. But it later turned out that he was the most conservative, dyed-in-the-wool commie. But for some reason, we thought he was more progressive, so we sent him some materials, letters. My function was to get this stuff typed up, then the guys took it to Moscow and dropped it in a mailbox. The conspiracy was so they wouldn’t find out where the letters were from.

V. V. Ovsienko: So, it was written in Russian? And the organization had a Russian name?

I. I. Makar: Of course, yes. It was, in essence, a Soviet organization. We were Soviet patriots.

V. V. Ovsienko: Was there any national element to it?

I. I. Makar: None at all! It was pure communism; we believed that there should be a more correct communism because the existing one was incorrect. To be honest, I can’t even properly define our ideological platform now because, I confess, I never even read our credo thoroughly to the end. I kept one copy later. My younger brother, who was “initiated” into the matter, kept it. He stored it at home in the unheated room, inside the stove. If anything happened, he was supposed to light it, and everything would go up in smoke. But that copy also disappeared: when the KGB took an interest in me in 1977, my brother burned it. And the guys sent off the original. What was the reaction? How could we know? And did anyone even read it? It’s clear that it couldn’t have been the pinnacle of thought; it was the creation of a second-year student.

But later, my national feeling began to emerge. Purely by chance. A friend of mine was supposed to come to Lviv and called the dormitory, asking me to find and book a hotel room for him. Well, hotels were hard to come by then. I sat down at the front desk of the dormitory and started calling hotels, trying to find a room anywhere. And one lady from some hotel tells me: “Why don’t you speak a human language? Tell me what you need like a human being.” That outraged me, and after that, in philosophy class—at a seminar on the national question—I spoke up, saying that we talk about the equality of nations, yet here I am being told that I have to speak “in a human language.” This was said openly, and after that, I received my first C in my grade book, for philosophy. Well, maybe it wasn’t so much that as the fact that I just couldn’t bring myself to study that dialectical materialism. I read what I could get my hands on in philosophy, starting with Aristotle. There were these little brochures, I read them all, and that’s where my intellect went. But I didn’t have the wisdom to grasp the communist philosophy of Marx and Lenin. I just couldn’t stomach it.

But my character was being forged. By my third year, I had already been elected chairman of the faculty’s student scientific society. Everything was going as it should; I had a chance to stay on at the department, to have a scientific career. In our fourth year, our group was already the leader of the faculty. We decided that if there was a Komsomol, it should be a proper one. Therefore, the people we thought were necessary should be elected to the Komsomol bureau, not the ones the party bureau recommended to us. And we succeeded. I spoke up and said that a certain man had embezzled funds in the student construction brigade, that people didn’t trust him, but the Party had recommended him because he was a candidate for Party membership. We shot him down; he didn’t get through.

We shot down two of their recommendations for the trade union bureau. Then the student council. Our group decided that I should be the head of the student council. The meeting is underway. And then the party organizers from two faculties whose students lived in this dormitory—journalism and physics—show up. There were more physics students. The students propose Makar and elect him. Apparently, the party organizers had instructions for someone else to be elected; they saw the situation was getting out of control and declared the meeting invalid. Then they started to work on us.

The processing, you know how it was: an extended department meeting, Komsomol meetings, trade union meetings, and they dragged us everywhere—to the dean’s office… I come home once, and the KGB had already been there before me, to my parents: rein in your little boy, he’s up to no good there. And I thought I was a true-believing Komsomol member! But apparently, I had misunderstood the Party’s policy—one thing is written, but two others are kept in mind. I didn’t want to keep anything in mind; I wanted what was written. And what was written was that I had the right to choose, that there was democratic centralism, elections from the bottom up. Well, that’s what we did. I actually came home because they had made such a fuss. Before that, my mother’s cousin had come from Lviv to see my parents, also saying that word had reached them that something was brewing over my head. At that time, I had a girlfriend who was on the university’s Komsomol committee. When I met her once, she said: “Are you leading some nationalist group here?” I was surprised myself: none of it had any nationalist motives. But in Lviv, it was immediately interpreted as nationalism. The entire system was geared toward fighting nationalism. Anything inconvenient had to be labeled as nationalist. But in reality, it was just our purely Komsomol efforts.

In an instant, my entire career went down the drain. In my diploma supplement, two-thirds of my grades are A’s, and one-third are C’s; there are almost no B’s. This at least does credit to the professors, that they didn’t give me F’s. Sometimes without even listening to what I was saying: “You used to know this better—‘satisfactory.’” The head of the theoretical physics department at the time, who was my thesis advisor, Professor Blazhiyevsky, later confessed to me. He still teaches at the same university. He confessed to me: “We were pressured to give you F’s.”

But at that time, they did expel two students, including Orest Chaban, supposedly for academic failure. But they specialized in a different department. Chaban later became the secretary of the Lviv Oblast Council of the first convocation. Then he worked as a secretary at the embassy in Uzbekistan because he moved there right after his expulsion. He had studied there from his first year, but he was expelled from Lviv in his fourth. He studied there, so he knew their language a bit. Whether it was in Uzbekistan or Turkmenistan, I don’t remember now.

Everything went to pieces for me; I became a person distrusted by the authorities. After graduation, I went to work at a school in the neighboring village. Not where I had studied, but in a neighboring mountain village, to teach physics. This was in 1979. A secondary school. The village of Mshanets. I worked there for a while. It was interesting. An authorized KGB officer would visit from time to time. I saw him quite often, but he never had any of those “prophylactic” talks with me. The only thing was, I had a lab assistant, a man who did practically nothing but constantly engaged me in some kind of conversations. My father had warned me, “Be very careful in your conversations with that man because he comes from a family where they all sold out the insurgents.”

I graduated from the physics department, the department of theoretical physics. At school, I taught physics and a little astronomy. I organized the instrumental support for a children’s music ensemble there. But I only worked there for less than two years and one more quarter. I got into a conflict with the administration and submitted my resignation. The director and I almost came to blows. I didn’t fit into that system. I didn’t yet understand that the system was: “I’m the boss, you’re the fool.” I didn’t want to understand or accept that system. Although the director himself treated me well until this conflict, because he was my father’s cousin. But a conflict is a conflict, and someone has to come out the winner. I didn’t want to be the loser, which meant I had to leave.

V. V. Ovsienko: And what were your relationships with the students like?

I. I. Makar: Oh, very good relationships, very good. I loved to work with them. Maybe I wasn’t such a great teacher, but one way or another, I prepared several Olympiad winners—they took second place in the raion. For a remote village school, that’s not bad. Even my F-students—I regularly gave them F’s in the quarters for intimidation, one quarter I’d give one, the next I wouldn’t—when they met me later, and I was carrying a heavy suitcase from the bus, they helped me carry it halfway home. So everything was normal in that respect; I had very good relationships with the students, no conflicts with parents or students.

In early 1982, in January, I got a job at Lvivnerhoremont—now Lvivatomenerhoremont. I didn’t work there for very long. I went to one power plant, then another—doing flaw detection. That’s checking welds with non-destructive testing. I went to the Novovoronezh Nuclear Power Plant. We were doing repairs there from Lvivenerhoremont, and I went with two flaw detection specialists to inspect the welds. It’s near Voronezh. We X-rayed the welds on the oil system—the photographs show inclusions, defects in the welding. The three of us looked at it—we’ll write a report to have it re-welded. But I stepped away for a moment, and when I returned, my guys were “under the influence.” I ask, what’s this? They say, come on, have some, they gave us some alcohol to clean the film. They’d already “cleaned” it… No, I say, guys, I’m not cleaning any film. I wasn’t a fan of that. I ask if they’ve made their conclusion yet. “Oh no, everything’s fine here, it’s minor, it’ll pass.” So “everything’s fine” now—they’d been bought off. Well, you know what an atom is? Even though it was just the oil system, things start with small details. And it’s a nuclear plant, what could be the consequences? I got into a conflict with the flaw detection specialists and the plant’s management. And there the system is simple: I didn’t please them—so threats followed: we’ll throw you out the window. I called the technologist from Lviv, the head of the laboratory. I saw that this was trouble, they really could beat me up and throw me out the window, so I took a series of connections and went to Lviv myself. They arrived, the разбирательства began, but it turned out that this flaw detection specialist was a communist. Well, how could they trust a non-Party engineer, and such an unreliable one at that? In the end, I turned out to be not quite right.

It was right around then that I met my future wife; we decided to get married immediately. We had known each other for a month or two at most.

V. V. Ovsienko: And what is her name?

I. I. Makar: Halyna.

V. V. Ovsienko: And where did you meet? Somewhere around there?

I. I. Makar: Well, yes, we were riding a bus to our home region, to our parents. She’s from the neighboring village of Ploske, in the same village council. From a farmstead, too. We were riding the bus on a Friday, and we agreed that on Sunday, I would pick her up on my motorcycle and take her to the bus. I had a motorcycle; I used to ride it to work at the school. I came for her on the motorcycle, but I couldn’t get all the way to her house because the roads in our mountains are such that you can’t get through. I had to walk a bit. By the time we rode the motorcycle down the mountain, we had decided to get married. It was that simple. We made an agreement. I went to that Novovoronezh Nuclear Power Plant for two weeks, came back, we submitted our application, and a few days later, we signed the papers. I got married on May 8, 1982. I did warn her, though. I said, you know, Halya, I have some sins against the authorities. What sins? Knowing roughly that people were imprisoned for such sins, I allowed for the possibility that I, too, might be imprisoned. I said it as if in passing, but I remember we had such a conversation. A gypsy woman had even told my fortune once. It seems strange, funny: “You will be in a state-owned house one day. Not for long, but you will.” I took it to mean that I had to endure whatever might await me.

I resigned from there and moved to Boryslav because my wife lived in Boryslav. The communists won the conflict because the brigade leader was a Party member, even though he was a drunk. And I resigned. I worked as an engineer at the Boryslav Foundry and Mechanical Plant. I got married in May, and from about June 1982, I started working there. I worked for about four months, until about September, as an engineer in the foundry and mechanical shop. Later, I got a job as a technician in a geophysical expedition. I had a bit of a penchant for tourism. We would go out into the fields, mainly measuring the state of wells, specifically their angle of inclination, the release of associated gases, and monitoring the drilling process. From there, they started sending us on business trips, on a rotational basis, to Novyi Urengoy. The work was actually quite good because I was my own boss. But there was nowhere to live…

V. V. Ovsienko: What do you mean there wasn’t? Rotational work—that means you go for a certain period of time, right?

I. I. Makar: Yes, but there was practically nowhere to return to. Her parents and mine lived on farmsteads; what kind of life was that… And in Boryslav, she worked as an accountant, and an apartment was nowhere in sight. So I decided to earn some money or maybe get an apartment there.

V. V. Ovsienko: Where there? In Urengoy?

I. I. Makar: In Novyi Urengoy, yes.

V. V. Ovsienko: You even considered that?

I. I. Makar: Well, of course. That’s why I went for it. A job found me there—I was hired as the head of the radiation safety service at the Urengoytruboprovodstroy trust. That is, right at the very beginning of that pipeline branch “Urengoy–Pomary–Uzhhorod,” where it started from the wells. That trust was building the pipeline. And our enterprise was directly responsible for inspecting the welds. I served as the acting head of the radiation safety service.

And there I had a major conflict when I saw how people’s health was being neglected. Those flaw detection specialists, after working for a few years, would find some driver or someone else to go give blood for analysis in their place. This flaw detector—a container, a source with radioactive elements. They might literally keep it under their beds. There was practically no real control at all; the gamma storage facilities where they were kept were completely unguarded. It was simply horrifying. I tried to bring some order there somehow. As a physicist, I knew what it smelled like, but bringing order interfered with the work. That is, bringing order automatically reduced the intensity of the work. Something had to be cleaned up, something had to be put in storage. This bureaucratic work had to be done. I wanted to establish order, and they immediately started slapping my hands. A conflict flared up. But the personnel department, even when I was hired, knew that I was a “disloyal element.” I went to the prosecutor’s office, and the prosecutor’s office was interested in it until my head of personnel went to the prosecutor’s office. As soon as she went there, the tune changed in an instant, and suddenly I was to blame for something. They threatened me to the point where the head of the trust said: “You understand, around here in the spring, they find ‘snowdrops.’ Anything can happen. And anything can happen to you.” At that point, there was no turning back. I even went to the secretary of the Urengoy City Party Committee. But for them, what was important was not what I was saying, but who I was. That’s how I understood it. That I was an enemy was apparently a foregone conclusion. To them, I was “not one of their own”—and that was that. And I began to feel it in my gut that the circle was tightening. Aha, it’s tightening—I’ll go on the offensive. I wrote a letter to the KGB: so and so, such negligence threatens state security. They called me into the KGB; I remember an authorized officer, Panov, spoke with me in the reception area. I later knew Ukrainian KGB officers in Lviv—how much smarter and more decent a man he was. At least he said: “Keep fighting; even we can’t do everything. But you’d be better off leaving this place. It’s unlikely you’ll be able to accomplish anything here.” I at least warned them about the situation. Besides, in doing so, I demonstrated my loyalty to the system by saying that I wanted to bring order to the state. I sensed that they really knew much more about me than I could imagine. Because they had everything on me—my biography, everything, everything.

Sometime just before March 8, 1984—and the frosts there were still severe… So, I was hired there at the end of November 1983, fought through the winter, and on March 5, they fire me from my job for “absenteeism,” seal and lock my trailer where I lived, leaving me with only the clothes on my back, with nowhere to even spend the night. I become a homeless person. All my belongings are in the trailer. And then comes March 8—a holiday, which means Saturday, Sunday—several days. Well, you could just howl. Everything starts to reek, I’m starting to stink. Like a homeless person, because there’s nowhere to wash, it’s Siberia. I complained to the Komsomol bureau, and some Komsomol member opened up a utility room for me, which didn’t even have heating. But at least it had single-pane windows. Because there, in Siberia, windows usually have three panes of glass. And there was also a bed frame and a mattress. Somehow I managed to get by there for three days, sleeping in my clothes.

They fired me for supposedly being absent from work. But I couldn’t have been absent in principle because I lived in the trailer, and the other half was my office. I was indeed sick for a few days, but I didn’t have a doctor’s note for it. My throat was sore, and I sat in my office doing paperwork. I knew they were watching me, so every day I made sure to leave a mark at the sites—a report here, an order there, something else, so it would be constantly visible that some concrete work was being done. One way or another, they later reinstated me at work, but instantly, a few days later, they demoted me for three months. They sent me to a site far north of Novyi Urengoy. They sent me there as a foreman. There were already two foremen there. There were about seven workers, two foremen, one superintendent, and they sent me there as the third foreman. No duties, nothing. The only duty was to show up in the morning, check in that I was there, and nothing more. Nothing to read, nothing, and no right to leave. So that you don’t travel around Urengoy, so you don’t go to various offices—here you go…

V. V. Ovsienko: Like exile.

I. I. Makar: …something like exile. But then they decided to get rid of me in a different way. A lab assistant was having a birthday. I was supposedly reinstated to the position of superintendent because the previous one had gone on vacation. And then this birthday. She wanted to have it at lunchtime. No, I say, let the workday end… I notice they’re showing me a lot of respect, “Ivan Ivanovych…” And there, the work was in hazardous conditions, so the workday ended at four; we had a one-hour shorter day. I waited until that time, went there, they poured me one shot, then a second—two small 100-gram shots. I look—something’s not right, I’m not usually that weak when it comes to this stuff, I could drink it by the kilogram on occasion… But I see—something’s wrong. I say I’m just stepping out for a moment. And—bam—literally on autopilot, as they say, I staggered to my trailer. I had a Bashkir friend there. He had gone to the night shift. So I didn’t go to my own place, but to his bunk. It was literally around five o’clock or even earlier, and I locked myself in there.

I wake up in the morning around eight o’clock. My head is splitting. They must have slipped some poison in my drink or something; you just don’t get like this from a couple of small shots… And my Bashkir bunkmate is already knocking, saying: “Your boss came by yesterday, he was looking for you, but I didn’t tell him where you were.” They wanted to set it up to accuse me of drinking on the job, to take me to the sobering-up station. But one way or another, they documented it, took statements from those who were with me. They all repented for having a birthday party for so-and-so with the superintendent. So they repented, and I was fired.

V. V. Ovsienko: That was right during the anti-alcohol campaign. The Andropov regime.

I. I. Makar: Yes. In June 1984, they fire me again with cause. I don’t remember now if it was Chernenko or Andropov… Andropov had just died then. Andropov died in the winter, around February, and I was fired in June. I went to Moscow, I go to the Central Committee, and they tell me: “Well, how can it be that everyone is bad, and only you are good?” That was the argument. That I was the “white crow.” I wrote a few more letters here and there, but one way or another, I needed to work. I tried to find something in our areas, in the Carpathians, maybe teaching somewhere—they wouldn’t hire me. They wouldn’t hire me for other jobs because of two dismissals for cause in my work-record book. I have a very interesting work-record book in general. Well, with a record like that, no one will even let you on their doorstep—it’s obvious you’re unreliable. But I got lucky. My younger brother was returning from the army. He had taught for a year in Odesa Oblast. They drafted him into the navy. He had proven himself to be a very good teacher, so they held his position for him at that school. I tell him I have nowhere to work. And he says he’ll try to get a job here, in our area. If he gets a job here, he’ll send a telegram to the Shyriaieve raion center, general delivery, so that I, as his brother, can take his place.

And indeed, he got a job in the neighboring village teaching geography and sent a telegram to Odesa Oblast. I went to the raion department of education, said that my brother had stayed there, and here I am, a ready-made physics teacher. But I don’t show my work-record book; I say my work-record book is in Urengoy, but I want to teach, you have a position here, here’s my diploma, everything is in order. They say, excellent, we need people like you, go to the school where my younger brother used to work. This was the Novoandriivka eight-year school, Shyriaieve Raion, Odesa Oblast.

In August 1984, I managed to get in there. Basically, I got the job through deceit, but that couldn’t last long. My desire to be a respectable citizen was my undoing.

V. V. Ovsienko: How so?

I. I. Makar: They received me wonderfully there; I had a full teaching load and even extra work in the workshop—I do a bit of carpentry myself. I even organized a small sopilka ensemble at the school. Everything was fine. My undoing, as I said, was my desire to be a respectable citizen. I needed to go to Boryslav, give my passport to a friend who was going to Urengoy so he could de-register me from there, so I could register here, in Shyriaieve Raion, to be a law-abiding citizen. I had barely registered when the local party organizer tells me (she had previously taught at the school, was the school director for many years): “Oh,” she says, “the KGB has been asking about you.”

I started to shake. Can you believe it—I’m working as a teacher in a village with only 47 children in the school, a tiny eight-year school, a remote village, doing some carpentry work for the kolkhoz on the side—and the KGB is interested! There’s no one to conduct “subversive activities” with there. And I was already starting to put down roots, starting to feel independent. The carpentry at the kolkhoz, people coming to me for help, I no longer depended on how many hours they gave me at school. I started to get into beekeeping a bit, to be a somewhat independent man.

V. V. Ovsienko: Well, and your wife?

I. I. Makar: And where would I put my wife? I wanted to earn a little house for myself at the kolkhoz. The head of the kolkhoz had already promised to give me a house from the kolkhoz. You can’t build one yourself. I worked dutifully for two months on the kolkhoz chairman’s house, for free. But they kicked me out of there too.

V. V. Ovsienko: And very quickly?

I. I. Makar: I worked at that school for two years. In 1986, they transferred me to another school there, in Shyriaieve Raion. They transferred me as a teacher of physics and physical education. They gave me more physical education because I had then enrolled in a correspondence course in physical education at the Odesa Pedagogical Institute. They transferred me there because there was supposedly no place for me at the previous school.

V. V. Ovsienko: And what is the name of that village?

I. I. Makar: Sakhanske. In the same raion. Well, there’s nothing there, you have no base to get housing. They put me in such a tiny room at the school—do what you want. And I also needed to help my child with something.

V. V. Ovsienko: And what year was your child born?

I. I. Makar: 1983. Natalka.

V. V. Ovsienko: The one we saw today?

I. I. Makar: No, that was Olha we saw. Natalka is actually taking her final exam today; she’s finishing eleventh grade, a graduate. And this is Olha, born in 1991. She’s a deputy’s daughter.

They transferred me there by force. I started another war there because they don’t give a person a chance to just live. Inspections from the oblast started; I even went to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine. Sometime at the end of 1986, in winter. Or early 1987. I went to their reception office at the Central Committee to complain. I came out onto Khreshchatyk in Kyiv, asked where the Central Committee was, and a passerby showed me: “There it is, that ‘hornet’s nest.’” It was already a “hornet’s nest.” Well, I thought, Kyivans already have a normal perception of it. I went to that “hornet’s nest”—and heard almost the same phrase: “How can it be that everyone is bad, and you alone are good?”

I left there, thinking I wouldn’t find any justice here. I thought I’d just have to make it through to the summer and get out of here. The workload was very light, the salary was small, and there was nowhere to earn extra money.

One day I came to visit my friends in the raion center. One of them was the director of the House of Young Naturalists, and others worked at the House of Young Naturalists and the House of Pioneers. And I happened to arrive just as the head of the KGB was giving a lecture for the methodologists and staff about metalheads and hippies. He was showing a metalhead’s jacket—explaining how harmful it was. He finished his talk, the women who had farms at home listened and then went home. Only the young people were left to ask questions. The director of the House of Young Naturalists says: “And what is there for you to do here, in Shyriaieve Raion, why keep a KGB apparatus here? We have a small butter factory, a few kolkhozes, and practically nothing else here, just the town of Shyriaieve.” He says: “What do you mean? You understand, we have three former Banderites in our raion!” So, the apparatus must be maintained—because there are three former Banderites. “There’s one, in Sakhanske, who called the chairman of the village council a bandit! And in that same Sakhanske, there’s also a teacher named Makar…” And he looks at me like that. He didn’t say what exactly that Makar had done. But Makar was a “lefty!” You know, I started to shake. But there was still, obviously, fear of the KGB, because my friends said that when I was asking him questions, there was a little tremble in my voice and my knees were shaking. I say, you know, we have a mafia in our raion—that’s what you should be dealing with, you know, earn an extra star on your shoulder. “Who, where?” – “Well,” I say, “the secretary of the raion party committee, the head of the raion executive committee, the head of the raion education department—a mafia.” He says: “Do you understand what you’re saying?” – “Yes,” I say, “I understand, and I stand by my words.” He says: “Come see me next week with your passport.”

Well, what could I do—an order from the KGB. I go there with my passport, hand him the passport—he has nothing to say to me. He took the passport, shoved it in a drawer, and said: “Go.” What could he have said to me? I have arguments for everything, and he, apart from hackneyed commie clichés, has nothing. For about a month and a half, I went to get my passport back: “Give me back my passport.” They gave me the runaround. Then they passed my passport to the police. The only positive thing: that was the moment I stopped being afraid of them. When I saw a live man in front of me who had no arguments, who was afraid of me himself, who had become so small. Your only argument is that you have power and you shoved my passport in a drawer, and then I have to run around and beg until the police finally gave it back to me. But I already felt that the circle was tightening—they broke the windows in the shack where I lived. After that, I went into a store—they were provoking a conflict with me. I think, there’s going to be trouble here. I see the circle is tightening, they’re looking for a way to get me… So I often went to the raion center, stayed overnight with my colleagues in the dormitory, or sometimes just slept in a tent in a field.

I found out that the same Petro Zhuk had already become a department head at the Special Design and Technology Bureau of the Institute of Applied Problems of Mechanics and Mathematics. This was the institute that was then headed by Academician Pidstryhach, now deceased. And that Petro Zhuk offered me a position as a first-category design engineer at his institute, so I should come work for him. I agreed. But I was already, so to speak, taught by experience, knowing our good Soviet government, so I went to settle my accounts there, in Odesa Oblast. I’m settling up, and the head of the raion education department asks me: “And where are you going?” And I say that I’m going to the Altai, that I have an aunt in Barnaul who is the executive secretary of an institute, and I’ll be teaching students. Just like that, “off the top of my head,”—I had once been on a “shabashka” [moonlighting job] in Barnaul. I thought, let them look for me there, not in Lviv. Well, the fact that I was going to Lviv—I would first visit my wife and parents. So, they would be waiting for me in the Altai, and I would pop up in another place. I told him that, and he was so pleased that he knew where I was going, that I had told him so “confidentially.”

I went to Lviv, managed to get registered in a dormitory somehow because a university friend of mine, Roman Hrabovsky, was a party organizer in some construction trust. I quickly—one, two—got everything sorted out. And then, when my file arrived, that director, Komisarchuk, was horrified that they had hired such an anti-Soviet element. But, to be honest, I was already so worn out by this whole system… When Hrabovsky asked me if I would get involved in politics, I told him sincerely: “Only science and sport.” That was, I think, in July 1987. I had worked for three years in Shyriaieve Raion and was sincerely convinced that I would become a normal scientist, that I would engage in science and sport. I really did start running intensively in the mornings, signed up for swimming at the pool, and sat in the library. I really wanted to do my dissertation, and I had already started.

V. V. Ovsienko: You were in the dormitory—but where was your wife?

I. I. Makar: My wife was living in Boryslav. By then, her parents had somehow scraped together some money and bought a small house in Boryslav. Everything seemed to be going well until my friend Ihor Yurchyshyn, during a discussion after the workday, said to me: “What are you bothering me with all this price formation for? There’s a discussion club here at the Builders’ House.” And that was literally 50 meters from my work, that Builders’ House in Lviv. Such a coincidence. He says, go to that Builders’ House and debate as much as you want. And so, without any, as they say, ulterior motive, I went to that discussion club. And it was discussing the directions of democratization of society. The language there was the “common language” [Russian], and they discussed democratic “common” topics. I didn’t want to speak the “common language,” so I interjected in Ukrainian, and they looked at me with such spite, with a smirk or with contempt—he came here, doesn’t know the “common language.” But, you know, you just don’t want to speak a foreign language in your own land anymore. Well, why? For what reason?

The discussions were on Thursdays; I think I came to the meetings twice, and on about the third time, Bohdan Horyn came there.

V. V. Ovsienko: What month was this?

I. I. Makar: This was 1987, around November. Or early December. Bohdan Horyn already had a prepared lecture on the state of Ukrainian affairs in general. The things he said… Where did the man get such information?

V. V. Ovsienko: Like a revelation.

I. I. Makar: Especially since I didn’t even have the habit of listening to Radio Liberty. That is, I was active, I didn’t like things, I felt constrained living in this world. In general, I’ll tell you something, Mr. Vasyl. I came to the national movement and the national idea not with my soul, but with my mind. Until I reached a conscious age, I was raised on those standards—Valya Kotik and Pavka Morozov. And when Horyn read that… I remember then, I was walking him home and begging him for that “Ukrainian Herald,” how could I read that “Herald.”

V. V. Ovsienko: Chornovil revived the journal “Ukrainian Herald” in July-August 1987.

I. I. Makar: Yes. And Horyn looked at me so suspiciously, as if I were a KGB agent. He was somewhat wary, especially since I’m a physically well-built guy; I was still involved in physical training then, looked pretty good, and he’s such a small fellow. Well, he was keeping his distance from me. But one way or another, he told me to come to the Picture Gallery where he worked, and he would give it to me. I went there one day, and I remember this gesture of his. He was giving a tour in Russian; apparently, the visitors were from Russia. But when I stood there, he said to me: “Mr. Ivan, please wait a moment, I’ll be finished shortly.” That is, he interrupted his lecture. You know, that gesture was so pleasant: he showed the foreigners that we were here on our own land. He gave me the last copy of the “Ukrainian Herald,” typed on a typewriter. You could make out every third word, and the rest you had to guess. But one way or another, he gave me that “Herald.” My friends and I read it. That was my first acquaintance with representatives of the national movement; he was the first—Bohdan Horyn, somewhere in December 1987. And later, maybe in January, I don’t remember exactly, Mykhailo came. They began to collect signatures for the release of political prisoners who were still in the camps, including, I think, you were there. I didn’t really know then that anyone was imprisoned. Me, a person who wanted to do science and had a talent for it—the system itself pushed me into dissidence. Automatically. A person who had no particular humanitarian inclinations—the system itself pushed him toward dissidence.

V. V. Ovsienko: And that discussion club, was it affiliated with some institution? Can you give the address where it operated?

I. I. Makar: It was the Builders’ House, on Stefanyk Street. Many Lviv events are connected with it. It was about 50 meters from my work at 15 Lermontov Street—now Dzhokhar Dudayev Street.

When Mykhailo Horyn came, we were collecting signatures there. As I understand it, those signatures were not so much important for the dissidents themselves, or for the authorities, as it was important to get a person to sign, that is, to show solidarity with those who were imprisoned. But one way or another, the Komsomol members came and stole that letter…

V. V. Ovsienko: The sheet with the signatures?

I. I. Makar: Yes, the Komsomol members stole that sheet. After that, I got a scolding from Mykhailo Horyn. He says, and where were you? Well, I say, Mr. Mykhailo, a whole crowd of those Komsomol members came to that discussion club…

Then—sometime in January 1988—Viacheslav Chornovil came and gave out a few duplicated sheets of paper—theses for a future discussion. He asked for them to be passed on to the oblast party committee so they would send their own lecturer who could debate. So, Viacheslav Chornovil came with prepared theses for his future speech and challenged an official representative from the oblast party committee to a debate. It was then that the Komsomol members stole that signature sheet in defense of you, too, Mr. Vasyl. You would have served one day less, but I didn’t watch it closely enough. Although I doubt anyone even looked at those signatures. It was more for those who signed than for those who were imprisoned.

V. V. Ovsienko: Yes, one had to dare to cross that line.

I. I. Makar: An act of civic expression. You become a citizen; you cease to be a slave. The next meeting was scheduled—unfortunately, I don’t remember the date, Mr. Bohdan Horyn is more meticulous, he has everything like an archivist—the following Thursday we arrive, and the Builders’ House is occupied. It turns out the Theater on Podil from Kyiv had arrived, and they were given the venue to perform. The authorities wanted to organize a sort of inter-ethnic conflict. The Theater on Podil, I believe, is a Jewish theater, so the authorities wanted to organize an inter-ethnic conflict and warm their hands on it. Well, the people didn’t fall for the conflict.

A whole crowd of people gathered in the courtyard. Viacheslav handed out leaflets with what he was going to say, and I say: “Mr. Viacheslav, well, why didn’t you call on people to gather at the Franko monument? They don’t want us here—so the discussion will be at the Franko monument. You can lead the people there and calmly say everything you want from that pedestal.” Today, that’s simple. Freedom of speech, meetings, and demonstrations… But he says: “And why didn’t you do it?” Why didn’t I do it? Well, I didn’t do it because I didn’t feel like a leader in that situation. That is, I felt I was playing a somewhat secondary role. There, say, to say something strong… Because my education in the humanities at that time clearly lagged behind any of them—Chornovil, the Horyns. Especially since, having an education in physics and having gone through Urengoy, my language was impure, quite cluttered. These technical books were mostly in Russian, and no matter how you resisted, your language was maimed. With those words, “and why didn’t you do it,” he essentially told me: “I’ve already served my time, it’s time for others to sit.” So I got a push, you could say, I received a visa: you are allowed, and you can do it. That is, it’s time for your generation to take over this function—of going to prison.

After that conversation, I was already morally prepared to lead people to a protest, to the first rally. But then the people dispersed. A few more times people tried to get into the Builders’ House on Thursdays, but they weren’t allowed in. Since the discussions were getting out of the authorities’ control, the authorities no longer wanted to take part in them. And it began to fizzle out. I met with the organizers of that discussion club, but I became convinced, I felt, that most of them were not the organizers; they were organized by someone else. This continued until the beginning of June.

V. V. Ovsienko: I believe the first major rally took place on June 16.

I. I. Makar: It all started on a Monday, I think June 13. Sometime around six in the evening, I left work at 15 Lermontov Street (now Dzhokhar Dudayev), where my SDB was, and my friend Yurchyshyn told me that they were supposed to be organizing some Ukrainian Language Society today. I hadn’t been informed about this, even though I was already connected with those “extremists.” The Kalynets couple was there, Stefania Shabatura, the late Vasyl Repetylo—a friend of mine, a physics graduate from the same year as me—engineers from Lviv enterprises, university professors, and also the official figures—Roman Ivanychuk and so on. They came to the Builders’ House. They had supposedly been promised that they would be given a room to hold the founding meeting of the Ukrainian Language Society. They arrived, and the Builders’ House was locked. They say: let’s go to Adam Martyniuk—he was the second secretary of the city party committee at the time—and tell him that we’re not extremists, that we’re only for the preservation of the language—such were the lamentations there.

V. V. Ovsienko: Ivan Makar, May 29, 2000, cassette two.

I. I. Makar: I happened to arrive when they started talking about asking Martyniuk to provide a venue to create the Ukrainian Language Society. You know, I, a bit brazenly, a bit, perhaps, with bravado—still young—said that we shouldn’t ask. I was already ready to demand. I stood before them and in a loud voice said: “Who are we—sheep or Ukrainians? If they don’t open this House for us in five minutes, we will go to the Franko monument and hold our founding meeting there.” This was said with such confidence by a man who knew what to do, so that everyone understood that there was a leader. There was a mass—but it lacked a leader. Just like in Vysotsky’s song. It’s the psychology of a crowd: a man appeared who knew with absolute certainty what to do—that’s it, we’re going now, five minutes have passed, they haven’t opened, let’s go. We went to the Franko monument. Here, Stefania Shabatura took me by the arm, and we stroll along lightly, and the people—we look back—whether they want to or not, they are also strolling behind us. It was a very small group, about 30 people, that had gathered in front of the Builders’ House. But as we walk along Stefanyk Street, over there, past the Stefanyk Library, past the main post office—everyone asks where this organized crowd is heading, and since it’s the end of the workday, the group gradually grows.

We arrive at the Franko monument. I say: “Alright, who’s here?” A kind of hooliganism, a bravado, stirred within me: “Alright, who among you are the organizers? Get up here on the pedestal, get up, stand… Alright, the list—who’s on it? Read out the list of who’s here, to create the society? Right, everyone ‘for’? Everyone’s ‘for.’” I’m kind of directing from below…

V. V. Ovsienko: And who was leading?

I. I. Makar: And the leader was supposedly one of the engineers, who later became one of the most active members of the Society, Ihor Melnyk. Roman Ivanychuk was among the leaders there. They were on that pedestal, at the foot of the Franko monument, where the rallies later took place. They climbed up, but it was unusual for them, because they were doing something… You know, their legs were trembling slightly. And I’m like: “Don’t let your legs tremble there, just read, read!” And they, as if under hypnosis, like a rabbit in the jaws of a boa constrictor… Well, unclean spirits were guiding me… I don’t know, clean, unclean…

V. V. Ovsienko: Some force was guiding you.

I. I. Makar: That is, I was guided not so much by noble thoughts as by simple bravado, the fact that, “you see, my legs aren’t trembling, but yours are.” “Alright, so, who do you have in the initiative group? We’re electing a council, read out the list. Yes, we’re electing. Who’s ‘for’…” You see, I was effectively directing from below, in such a brazen manner… Well, I say, the council is elected, go to the gazebo, solve your issues there, and we’ll stay here. And then people started speaking from the pedestal. Some bard came, took the platform, started singing Lemko songs, started talking about how Lemko culture was destroyed, about Operation Vistula. Then someone else came out, started reading poems. Then some Lviv art teacher came out—I don’t remember his name. He says, here are the delegates going to the 19th Party Conference in Moscow. They’re going to the Party Conference, but they don’t ask us, the people, what they’re going with to decide our fate? They should have asked us… Until then, it was “the people and the party are one,” meaning the party was supposedly the representative of the people. There wasn’t yet such a complete psychological separation. For you, after you had served your time, there was a psychological separation, that the party wasn’t so dear…

V. V. Ovsienko: That it was a hostile force to us.

I. I. Makar: But here it was normal: they’re going, they say they are the people’s party, so let them consult with the people about what they are going with. And it was expected that the 19th Party Conference would be decisive in the life of the entire Union. And then an idea struck me. I climb onto the platform and say: “So, on Thursday, here, at this spot, at seven o’clock, there will be a meeting with the delegates to the Party Conference.”

V. V. Ovsienko: So, without knowing anything and without having arranged anything with anyone?

I. I. Makar: No, I just announced it like that: “There will be a meeting here with the delegates of the Party Conference, on Thursday.” Just like that, “off the top of my head.”

V. V. Ovsienko: What date was that?

I. I. Makar: On Thursday. You know, there were many of those Thursdays… But this, the creation of the Ukrainian Language Society, took place on a Monday, maybe June 13…

V. V. Ovsienko: I believe those first big meetings were on August 16. That’s how it’s recorded in history.

I. I. Makar: It’s hard for me to say now. But that initiative group for the creation of the Ukrainian Language Society was on a Monday. Evidently, the 13th. A council was elected, this structure elects its governing bodies in the gazebo, the Society exists. I announced the meeting with the Party Conference delegates for Thursday. I announced it and said: “We need to elect an initiative group.” Down below was Ihor Derkach, Oksana Krainyk was there, and we created an initiative group. I was the head of the group, and there were two members—Derkach and Oksana Krainyk. By the way, she is the daughter of the dissident Krainyk, what’s his name—Vasyl Krainyk, or what?

V. V. Ovsienko: Mykola.

I. I. Makar: I say that I take it upon myself to inform the delegates about this. Everything proceeds in its own course. Wait, it’s not all so simple, I’ll tell you…

V. V. Ovsienko: “To the Director of the SDB…”

I. I. Makar: “…Komisarchuk. Application. I request a day off on 20.06.1988 and 21.06.1988 for work done on 19.06.1988 (which was, accordingly, a Sunday). The day off is needed for the organization of a rally in support of perestroika.” Further: “To the Director of the SDB…” and so on. “I request a three-day unpaid leave in connection with the organization of a rally-meeting with the delegates of the XIX Party Conference of the CPSU. The rally will be dedicated to the support of perestroika. I will be absent from work from 20.06 to 22.06.”

This means that the meeting with the Party Conference delegates was, after all, on the 23rd, evidently a Thursday. There is a document. If it was Monday, June 13, and I wrote the application on June 17, then I scheduled it for Thursday the 23rd. So, the founding meeting of the Ukrainian Language Society was on the 13th, and the meeting was to take place on Thursday the 23rd.

On June 17, I submitted the application, and the department head, Zhuk… No, Zhuk was on vacation then, Ihor Yurchyshyn was filling in for him, he wrote “no objection” and then “in accordance with the instructions on providing leave without pay.” They granted me leave so that I could prepare for the meeting with the Party Conference delegates.

What do the authorities do? The authorities consider that the Ukrainian Language Society was created, so to speak, illegally. The authorities declare the meeting illegal and want to hold a new founding meeting on June 20 and provide that ill-fated Builders’ House. And a whole crowd of people came there. If the first time about 30 people came, then this time the hall was packed.

V. V. Ovsienko: And all our people, right?

I. I. Makar: Well, where else? They can’t gather that many of their own employees. On June 20, a whole bunch of our people come. These were real people, not yet worn out by rallies; there was a purity, an idealism, none of the superficial dirt that came later. “Well, then, we will elect a council.” I say: “Let’s also bring Mykhailo Horyn into the council.” But he hesitates somehow. In principle, maybe he was right, because Mykhailo Horyn had just been released from prison. And someone proposed electing me. Mykhailo Horyn turned out to be a prudent man, he says: “My brother Bohdan has a legal position, a tour guide, a research associate at the art gallery. Let him be, I withdraw my candidacy.” But I didn’t withdraw mine. And people were shouting: “Makar!” Because they already knew me from the discussion club. Despite the fact that the initiative group there didn’t like me, I still became a member of the first council of the Ukrainian Language Society.

I’ll tell you something. Just as they didn’t invite me when the report-and-election conference was held a year later (meaning I was somehow redundant there from the very beginning), they also didn’t invite me to the celebration of the tenth anniversary of the Ukrainian Language Society in Lviv, even though I was a member of its first council, nor to the celebration of the tenth anniversary of the “Prosvita” Society here in Kyiv. I didn’t turn out right, I didn’t become a true “patriot.”

Actually, it was then that we started organizing such large events, like the commemoration of Charnetsky—a bishop of the Greek Catholic Church. In Lviv, any occasion would gather a circle of conscious people—some who could say something, others who only dared to listen.

So, later, Iryna Kalynets and Yaroslav Putko were co-opted into the initiative committee. The authorities decided that something had to be done. They summoned me to the city council and said, let’s make a speech, hold a meeting with the delegates to the Party Conference, but not on the street, but inside the Builders’ House. I said that people might not fit in there. The deputy head of the city executive committee, who was assigned this task, decided to drive the meeting from the street into the building, to make it more official. I say that I cannot make such a decision on my own; we have a collective body, a committee, I must consult with my colleagues. I go to Iryna—we had set up a headquarters at the Kalynets’ apartment. Kalynets’s wife says: you know what, you agree, and we’ll lead them out onto the street later. People will demand it—we’ll seem to be “for” the building, but the people will demand to be near the Franko monument. A cunning vixen: it turned out for the best, just as she advised. The authorities agreed; I delivered the notices to all those delegates, personally to the head of the regional KGB, the first secretary of the city party committee, and the regional party committee.

V. V. Ovsienko: And do you remember their names?

I. I. Makar: The first secretary of the regional party committee was Yakiv Petrovych Pohrebniak, of the city party committee—Volkov, the head of the regional KGB was Malik. There were several delegates from industry, scientists, like Ihor Rafailovych Yukhnovsky (by the way, a former professor of mine). We delivered those notices to them. And at night, Derkach and I ran around putting up announcements. Putko and Kalynets’s wife printed them on a typewriter, Oksana Krainyk added a little something with a marker, we bought glue, and Derkach and I ran around Lviv at night like two greyhounds, pasting them up. What’s interesting is that they were running after us too, but they still wanted to get a little sleep, while we worked conscientiously.

We came to the Franko monument. Iryna stood on the pedestal and said: “Let’s open the rally. But, you know, our Party Conference delegates have gone to the Builders’ House. And there are so many of us, will we fit in there?” The question was posed in such a way that the answer could only be unequivocal: “No, we won’t fit.” – “So, maybe we should call our delegates here?” – “Yes, call them!” – “So, maybe you’ll delegate me to go there, maybe they’ll listen to me, a woman?” It was decided that a woman should go. Well, Iryna Kalynets goes with a delegation to the Builders’ House.

V. V. Ovsienko: Is that somewhere nearby?

I. I. Makar: About half a kilometer from the Franko monument. She goes there, and I have the task of warming up the crowd here. It was such a beautiful day. I hadn’t worked up my anger yet. And to let someone else speak—you know, there’s no one, people are afraid. But in the end, I did manage to warm up the people a bit. We look, and Iryna appears with her entourage—with the Party Conference delegates.

V. V. Ovsienko: And in the meantime, were you saying something?

I. I. Makar: Yes, of course, I was warming up the people for the rally. We brought megaphones.

V. V. Ovsienko: This was sometime in the evening already, right?

I. I. Makar: Yes, it was around six or seven in the evening. They approach, and just then Viacheslav Chornovil, and Mykhailo, and Bohdan Horyn arrive. We already have something to say. We let the delegates speak, then our people.

V. V. Ovsienko: And who from our side spoke?

I. I. Makar: From our side then, Iryna Kalynets, Viacheslav Chornovil, Bohdan Horyn, Mykhailo Horyn, one of the activists at the time, Sheremet, I think Ihor Kalynets spoke…

V. V. Ovsienko: And who among the Party Conference delegates was there?

I. I. Makar: Volkov was there, and a few other delegates. But Malik, the head of the regional KGB, and Pohrebniak—the first secretary of the regional party committee—did not come. Yukhnovsky was there. He was the director of the Institute for Theoretical Physics here. A rather Ukrainianized institute. Oh, we gave it to them there! As they say, we beat them like punching bags, hammering away at those party members. The people, as they say, let themselves have their fill.

V. V. Ovsienko: And what issues were raised? The national question, the language issue?

I. I. Makar: Mainly the national and language issues. I was actually leading the rally. And what I remember is that it was so unusual for them that I was leading… Volkov thought that since he was the first secretary of the city party committee, he should be in charge here, but I considered that since I was the chairman of the initiative committee, I was in charge. Volkov himself, as a person, was not a bad man, but it was the system… And I sidelined Volkov, giving the floor in turn. We talked about the closure of national schools.

We scheduled the next rally for the following Thursday, June 30. Someone from below prompted me—I now understand it was a provocation, but I fell for it—near the stadium. Firstly, the Lviv stadium is far from the center, and secondly, that square near the stadium is like being in a bag. But the rally was scheduled there, and there was nothing to be done about it. The day of the rally approaches, and I feel that we have scared them. Rumors started about troops being brought in or something similar. I see that people are starting to avoid me. At the rally, Kalynets asks people to disperse because there will be a crush. I didn’t understand. I ask for the megaphone, but Putko and Kalynets won’t give it to me. I understood that something was wrong, it was clear they had been intimidated there, at the KGB, told that troops were being brought in. Although it’s unlikely that Iryna personally could be intimidated by anything. Obviously, they were scaring them, that people would be crushed there, or who knows what. They didn’t give me the microphone. And there was also this Viktoria Andreyeva from the newspaper “Leninska Molod” [Leninist Youth].

V. V. Ovsienko: “The progressive journalist.”

I. I. Makar: Yes, yes. She truly had a gift for oratory. She captivated with her voice. But I think to myself, I have a pretty good voice too. I stood up and with a loud voice condemned the authorities and said that the next rally is scheduled for July 7 at the Franko monument. I realized that the stadium was not the right place. The Franko monument has a good spot—a ready-made pedestal that elevates you. And people automatically flock there; it’s the city center, it’s hard to disorganize things there.

And another interesting thing. Just before the rally, I saw a bunch of police arrive at the square near the stadium and line up their cars. I see that people are afraid to come out onto the square. I approached the police chiefs, saying: “You see, people are afraid. Let’s move those cars over there into the bushes, and spread out a bit.” I went up to the highest-ranking officers and explained, gesturing confidently with my hands. And what’s interesting is: if a man gives an order, it means he has the authority to do so. Maybe this is some high-level game of perestroika, and I am the man appointed to lead this event. They obey, so politely they obey, running around, repositioning cars, waving their arms this way and that—well, it was a joke. The little devil in me started acting up again.

This was on June 30, at the stadium. It was then that I managed to announce the next rally for July 7.

V. V. Ovsienko: Well, and what happened near the stadium on the 30th?

I. I. Makar: On June 30, near the stadium, there were people as far as the eye could see.

V. V. Ovsienko: Well, just by eye, how many?

I. I. Makar: You know, it’s hard for me to estimate. On the 23rd, near the Franko monument, there were more than ten thousand. At that time, that wasn’t a lot. The largest crowd was in 1989 when the issue was the restoration and legalization of the Greek Catholic Church. They gathered up to half a million then. It’s just a blessing that the streets of Lviv are winding and there are no wide squares, because otherwise there would have been a terrible crush. And the second blessing is that there were no provocations, no sudden movements of the crowd, because a terrible judgment could have happened there. Well, near the stadium, maybe a hundred thousand were there. A huge number of people. I went up on a hill—wherever you could see, everything was covered with people. There were even fewer on July 7. And yet, I managed to announce the rally for July 7 then. And then the authorities decided to take the July 7 rally into their own hands.

V. V. Ovsienko: Well, and on June 30, who spoke there?

I. I. Makar: On June 30, there were practically no speeches. Iryna asked people to disperse, Putko said something, they didn’t give me the microphone, I said something into the crowd, Andreyeva said something from the other side, I think one of the Horyn brothers said something, because they also have quite loud voices. Practically everything was disorganized. It was the first serious failure. First and foremost, my failure. Because I fell for the idea of leading people to the stadium, and everything went wrong from there.

Here, Kalynets and I had a bit of a disagreement, a bit of a quarrel… Maybe she simply had more information, maybe someone had scared her, because there were indeed rumors that a tank division was stationed outside Lviv, which could really crush a protest. If they crushed one in Georgia, why couldn’t they crush one in Lviv? But, you know, it’s one thing to be a thirty-year-old lad who still lacks life experience, only has a fair amount of nerve, and another thing to be a person who has been through a bunch of camps, whose zeal is somewhat tempered. That is, her life experience was greater. I wouldn’t want to say that she was to blame, or anything else—simply, in her opinion, we had to disperse, and in my opinion, we still had to push through. Who knows? Even with today’s experience, it’s hard for me to say who was more right. But the authorities later wanted to take everything into their own hands.

On July 7, the authorities decided to take the initiative into their own hands. The application to hold the rally was made by the newspaper “Leninska Molod” and someone else, I think, some city Komsomol committee. They entrusted Viktoria Andreyeva with this. Andreyeva decided to coordinate with me—as if not to sideline me completely. We agreed on how to give the floor, so that everything would be democratic.

They told me that there wouldn’t be megaphones, but a car with microphones. On the 6th, I had just taken a group of university students with a professor to Peremyshlyany Raion to help us with our research… I felt it—I practically felt it every time they were about to take me. There’s this sixth sense. I felt that they were going to take me before the rally. But I decided not to let them. There’s a system—I used to hunt—the hare’s system. It runs straight and true, and then at one moment it jumps to the side—and the trail is lost. And I did the same, that is, I run straight, I go to Peremyshlyany Raion, I tell everyone I’m going on a business trip. But I’ll only be there on the 7th until noon, because at 7 o’clock I have to lead a rally in Lviv—I tell everyone this, everyone knows. I go with the students on July 6, place them in a summer camp, and say that I’ll lie down here by the door. And tomorrow I’m with you only until noon.

I arrived there, carefully studied the bus schedule in the direction of Lviv. And very early, around three or four in the morning, I put on my shoes, got dressed quietly, had everything ready, went out, and walked to the highway. It was about three kilometers away. I got to the highway from Rohatyn to Lviv, the first bus from Rohatyn came along, I got on the bus and rode. But I didn’t ride to Lviv—I thought, who knows, someone might report me, someone who’s watching me might call, and they’ll nab me in an instant. I rode to a fork in the road and jumped off to the side—I went to Bibrka. And then I went into Lviv and thought, where can I hide until seven o’clock? Well, I know for sure they’re going to take me, I just feel it! Where? Maybe lie low at the lake? The weather was nice, but they might spot me.

I think, ah, the best thing to do is go to my dormitory on Zelena Street. I went in so stealthily that even the person on duty didn’t see me, went into my room, and locked the door. Well, I think, now I’ll finally get some sleep after all the sleepless revolutionary nights. And I lay there until six o’clock, or half-past five. My worker neighbors had already come back, saying, we’re going to the rally, our Makar is leading it there.

I quietly go out and, as if under the protection of those workers, we all go there together. By the way, I guessed right: they caused such a commotion! On the seventh, they found my brother in Stryi, found my parents in the village—well, the man had disappeared! It would have been enough for them to detain me for two hours—well, some crime occurred, they suspected me, held me, and then: “Excuse us, Ivan Ivanovych.” Apparently, that was their plan. And I disappeared. A KGB agent came to my parents, and my mom says: “Well, what, lost his trail? You should have put salt on his tail.” She had also become a bit defiant. She’s a woman who never liked the authorities, in any era.

I arrive at the Franko monument, and the rally is already underway. On July 7, they started the rally half an hour early. And I arrived at seven, on schedule. I arrived, and people there were already shouting: “What have you done with Makar?” I walk up and say: “I am Makar, no problem.” You see, they couldn’t control everything! I climb onto the platform, push someone aside with my shoulder—I’m in charge here. You know, what mattered most was nerve. Perhaps I lack what is now called conventional intelligence. I arrived, so why should they not give me the floor or give me the floor—I announced that rally, didn’t I? I’m the chairman of the organizing committee. And that someone else wants to lead—that doesn’t concern me, that’s their problem. I took the microphone in my hands. The issue being discussed was where to place the monument to Shevchenko in the city. Then they stopped their speeches. I arrived and changed the tone. I say that this rally is illegal, the topic of the rally is announced—the formation of the Popular Front of Ukraine for Perestroika. Just as a hooligan in a domestic setting can completely disorganize everything, so I did at that rally.

V. V. Ovsienko: And where did this idea come from—to organize a Popular Front?

I. I. Makar: Well, in principle, this idea was already being discussed, it was already in the air, because fronts had already been formed in the Baltics. And what to form that front from? I had some list of organizations there—small organizations had already begun to form: the editorial offices of the journals “Kafedra,” “Ukrainskyi Visnyk,” there was the organization “Revival of the UGCC,” something else. I read them all out, and this was supposedly the initiative group for the creation of the Popular Front. The authorities feared organization as such the most. I give the floor in turn. But they won’t let Mykhailo Horyn, Viacheslav Chornovil, and Bohdan Horyn onto the platform. I have the microphone in my hands, and I have something to say to the people. Look, I say, they have been silencing us for years, and today they won’t let us speak. They did end up giving them the floor.

V. V. Ovsienko: The Horyns managed to speak there about the creation of the Ukrainian Helsinki Union.

I. I. Makar: Yes, they managed. And it was then that they said where the monument to Shevchenko should be placed. The argument was that it should be between the Russian Lenin and the Pole Mickiewicz. And why should the Russian Lenin be in Lviv?

V. V. Ovsienko: That’s a good question. Chornovil, it seems, didn’t manage to speak then?

I. I. Makar: He spoke, he spoke. Actually, he was the one they manhandled the most there. I played it up the most with him, with Chornovil… Because when they were dragging him, I shouted that, you see, the commies shut his mouth in prisons for years, and they’re shutting it now. And they did give him the floor, but he had already strained his vocal cords and was practically croaking. And let’s be honest, he, the deceased, was not a good enough orator. From the point of view of oratory, even for those rallies. Compared to both Horyns—hardly anyone reached that level. They are orators. You could feel it in the crowd. What can I say, I’ll never be such an orator. These are people who can lay everything out systematically; they have extraordinary diction.

V. V. Ovsienko: They specially studied oratory.

I. I. Makar: I’ll say it again, Mykhailo and Bohdan are colossal orators. At that time, people didn’t know how to speak in public.

V. V. Ovsienko: They read from a piece of paper.

I. I. Makar: Yes. There weren’t those who could speak coherently on a specific topic and hold people’s attention for literally several tens of minutes. In that sense, they both stood out for their oratorial gift. No, it’s not that they studied it; it’s simply talent.

V. V. Ovsienko: A gift from God.

I. I. Makar: Yes. Besides, Bohdan did lead tours in the art gallery. It was evident—both the clarity of diction and the purity of language. Then, on July 7, it wasn’t easy to get anyone up to the platform. We announced speakers as agreed: Andreyeva announced the party members, and I announced the nationalists. And Lubkivsky wanted to speak and says to me: “Announce me, I don’t want Andreyeva to announce me.” And I say that I can’t announce you, how do I know what you’re going to say. In the end, it wasn’t Andreyeva and not me, but Oksana Krainyk who announced him. So, the three of us led that rally. Mostly, it was me, Andreyeva, and sometimes Oksana Krainyk who announced the speakers.

When I was given a note about the monuments, I say that we need to erect monuments in every village to the people who died for our idea. But they give me a second note: “Do you mean the Banderites?” I say: “Yes, I mean those who are called Banderites.” And that, in fact, was the main point of the accusation against me as an anti-Soviet, that I was the initiator of erecting monuments to the Banderites.

As announced, this rally lasted from seven to ten. In those three hours, Mr. Vasyl, I’ll tell you… I have never, in my whole life—and there have been times when I spent a day, once 26 hours unloading a wagon of saltpeter, of mineral fertilizers in Stryi, because as a student I needed to earn a living—I was not as tired in those 26 hours, which we worked with short breaks to eat something, as I was in those 3 hours. I was so tired that I couldn’t sit, or lie down, or walk; I was simply a ruin. For that revolution to happen in those people, it seemed to require a bravado, that we had already established our truth, to be able to defend it. And, by the way, I wasn’t the only one who was so tired. After the rally ended, both Horyns, Viacheslav, literally sat down on the grass near the club.

V. V. Ovsienko: So it was a colossal psychological strain.

I. I. Makar: Colossal, it was simply a terrible strain. First the preparation… I arrived, so why should they not give me the floor or give me the floor—I announced that rally, didn’t I? I’m the chairman of the organizing committee. And that someone else wants to lead—that doesn’t concern me, that’s their problem. I took the microphone in my hands. The issue being discussed was where to place the monument to Shevchenko in the city. Then they stopped their speeches. I arrived and changed the tone. I say that this rally is illegal, the topic of the rally is announced—the formation of the Popular Front of Ukraine for Perestroika. Just as a hooligan in a domestic setting can completely disorganize everything, so I did at that rally.

At that rally, we announced that the next Shevchenko readings would take place near the Franko monument on August 4. The authorities began to think about what to do. At that moment, “Komsomolskaya Pravda” wrote an article—unfortunately, I don’t have it here—sometime around July 10-15, “The Fables of Batko Makar.”

V. V. Ovsienko: You even became a “Batko.”

I. I. Makar: Yes, “Batko” [Father/Leader]. They write: “How can such a young engineer know about the Banderites?” It was mostly about the Banderites. This was the central newspaper “Komsomolskaya Pravda.” The persecution began. The authorities decided to remove me. First, they decided to present me as someone who doesn’t understand history. And their reasoning was correct. They decided to gather a meeting in my village of Halivka. This meeting was supposed to be on Friday, July 15. They invited me there, the television station calls me (I think it was the same guy who still works in television in Lviv now, also became a great democrat. I forgot his name), so that I could go with their crew. They invited a historian there, so they decided to take me apart piece by piece.

V. V. Ovsienko: What was the name of that historian?

I. I. Makar: They invited a good historian and orator, the director of the Staryi Sambir school, Rashkevych. They decided to set up a debate between me and that historian to show the people and on television what an ignoramus I was, that I didn’t understand history. To get out of the situation that way. Well, I thought to myself that I would indeed be discrediting what I had said. So I persuaded Mykhailo Horyn to go with me. Mykhailo Horyn agreed, and we set off. Two of my friends, Slavko Fisher and Ihor Yurchyshyn, also joined us. Well, just along for the ride, they were my former classmates. We got into Fisher’s car and drove to Halivka, in the Staryi Sambir Raion, where the meeting and the television crew were supposed to be. Interestingly, my namesake and relative worked as a driver for the prosecutor’s office. And when he was driving from Sambir, they were stopped, buses were checked, and one of the checkers says: “Call the police, tell them Makar has passed the Staryi Sambir checkpoint. He’s already passed in a car.” Everything was under control. We drive up—and it’s a border zone—we arrive at the border post. They stop our car. “Who are you?” Well, we say, so-and-so, so-and-so. They say to Mykhailo Horyn and the other guys: “You are not registered there, you don’t have a pass?” – “No.” – “And that one?” – “My parents live there—I’m allowed to go there.” I say that I’m with my friends, in their car. “We will take you in our car.”

V. V. Ovsienko: Just like that!

I. I. Makar: Of course, they’re helping! And what’s more, you know, our border guards are basically occupation troops, but here’s this captain, so fit and trim, speaking in such pure Ukrainian. “We will meet you halfway.” – “No,” I say, “I won’t go without my friends.” And on this square in the village of Holovetske, a rally begins. You sons of bitches! A few people gathered, got off the bus. It turns out the local party members know about the meeting. One party member peeks out and says: “You go home by yourself, don’t bring your friends!”

They, of course, turned us back from that village, didn’t let us into Halivka. They even gave my father a car to go and pick me up. They turned us back, and at the police station in Staryi Sambir, they drew up a report that we were driving into a border zone, a violation—all correct.

By the way, it didn’t help my relative and namesake that he worked for the prosecutor’s office. About fifteen kilometers away, at a checkpoint, the border guards took him off the bus, and he had to make his way home on foot through the back gardens.

The next day, early in the morning, I set out from Lviv and went to my parents. By noon, I was at home, in the village. They were gathering hay there, and I was barefoot—I loved to walk around barefoot—already doing something. Two border guards walk by and ask how to get to the farm, they had a meeting there. I tell them to go this way and that. And I ask: “And what do you guys need there? Why are you here?” They say they were sitting in an ambush here. “And why were you sitting in ambush here?” – “Well, 4 nationalists were heading to Halivka yesterday with the aim of propaganda and agitation!” As it later turned out, all the surrounding mountains were cordoned off. Of course, they weren’t afraid of me—they were afraid of Mykhailo Horyn. Such fear that in some mountain village someone would be agitated, some propaganda would be spread. What more could be said than what we had said in Lviv? They’re afraid he’ll say something in a mountain village.

And it’s interesting how they reacted in my village. When they found out that the television was coming—and it was a Friday evening—a bunch of my former students gathered, came from neighboring villages. While the discussion was going on during the day, the official side seemed to be winning. The party organizer, the one who once typed my credo, spoke, as did the director of the Staryi Sambir school. But later, people started to speak, my cousin spoke, my mother, they told how the occupier-Muscovites came, how many people they tortured… And it began. And then they announced a break, and after the break—the whole cavalcade gets into their cars… And a former F-student of mine, a huge lad, in a simple way, as his “older brother” had taught him, saw them off: “Go to...!” The KGB agents were afraid to continue. Times had changed; that village would not have given me up then…

I’ll get closer to the point, because this is getting too long.

As far as I know—and the documents say—the criminal case was opened on July 21, 1988, another Thursday. On July 28, they took me in, supposedly for questioning.

V. V. Ovsienko: The case was opened on the 21st—did you know about it or not?

I. I. Makar: No, I didn’t know about it. They summoned me.

V. V. Ovsienko: How did they summon you? Did a summons come, or what?

I. I. Makar: Either a summons or they called me by phone to the regional prosecutor’s office, because it was a serious matter—a state criminal! They summoned me to the regional prosecutor’s office and began the investigation. They held me at the time when, on the 28th, they were manhandling people and setting dogs on them… You know, people were so hungry for it that even though the rally was announced for August 4, more and more people were coming to the Thursday Shevchenko readings. And so on July 28, they began the crackdown. They detained me; I sat in the prosecutor’s office until late. When they released me from the prosecutor’s office, I immediately went to the rally. I reached the post office, didn’t even make it to the Franko monument, and the rally had already been dispersed. This was around eight o’clock. Then some guys took me, obviously from the KGB. They didn’t show me any documents. They took me to the raion police department. Somewhere there in the center, near the university. They took me to the raion police department, searched me. And then one says to the other: “Why are you searching him?” As if to say, don’t just act any which way, you have to reckon with this person. Apparently, they were ordered to observe some procedural norms with the “ringleaders.” After that, they released me, and around ten-thirty at night, they came for me again, took me away. One of them was a huge guy, probably on purpose, for intimidation. About 2.20 meters tall, a real hulk. They took me to the police headquarters. It’s interesting, did they think they could scare me with something there? They sat me on a little chair under lamps in the middle of a room, a large room—and from a distance, those colonels were asking me something. It was unclear what they were asking; they themselves didn’t know what to ask me. They thought they could scare me, but it turned out they were afraid themselves. And I’m sitting there and answering them so brazenly. They decided it was a lost cause, and then they took me with that huge guy to the dormitory. At 11:45 p.m., they drove me to the dormitory in a car, so that everyone would see me being brought to my room.

V. V. Ovsienko: Well, and what did they ask about at the prosecutor’s office during the day?

I. I. Makar: They asked what I meant when I spoke at the rally on July 7. And then in the evening, the police took me. Well, why did they take me?

V. V. Ovsienko: Apparently, they weren’t sure what to do with you.

I. I. Makar: Yes, they were trying different methods. Maybe to scare me somewhere, maybe something else. They surrounded me with floodlights, directed the light at me. And I, you know, let them have it, asking what, where, what’s it about, what am I wrong about? And they decided to remove me from public activity.

On August 4, when the rally was supposed to take place, the prosecutor’s office came to me in the morning, conducted a search, and confiscated several printed copies of the UHU Declaration of Principles from my nightstand. Interestingly, I had a nightstand with a secret compartment, and they searched for a long time because they had been watching and knew it was there somewhere, but they couldn’t find it. Only later did they figure it out. One investigator during the search, later, when they were inventorying my property and handing it over for storage, that investigator stole batteries, power cells for a voice recorder. The investigator stole them, two of them. I have a statement here about it. My neighbor saw the investigator steal the batteries. And he himself stole about 30 rubles that were there under a chessboard in the wardrobe. When I returned from prison, I asked my neighbor where the money was. He confessed that he had filched it, but said that he wasn’t the only one stealing, the prosecutor’s office was stealing too. He said the prosecutor took two batteries. By the way, I have a statement he wrote to the regional prosecutor, that the investigator stole my batteries. I made him write it—I said write it, or I’ll write one about you, that you stole my money. He wrote it, but then I thought, they’re going to drag the guy around… So that statement is still with me; I never submitted it to the prosecutor’s office.

Well, and they imprisoned me.

V. V. Ovsienko: Imprisoned—on what date?

I. I. Makar: On August fourth. They searched my place and took me with them.

V. V. Ovsienko: So they came in the morning?

I. I. Makar: They came in the morning, conducted a search, and took me. Then they went with me to my workplace, confiscated something there, took me to the prosecutor’s office, and there they conducted a personal search. They presented me with the charges.

V. V. Ovsienko: Under which article?

I. I. Makar: They charged me under Articles 71 and 187-prime.

V. V. Ovsienko: 71—what is that?

I. I. Makar: 71 is “mass riots.” That meant I was facing up to 10 years then. I have a copy of the indictment.

V. V. Ovsienko: We’ll have to make a copy of it.

I. I. Makar: And then they decided that was too much…

V.V. Ovsiienko: ...they came down hard on you.

I.I. Makar: ...they were too harsh. A month later, they decided to change the date; instead of 5.08, they wrote 5.09. This was when they were bringing charges under Article 187-3, a lesser article. Article 187-3 is “participation in public disturbances.” I said, no, don't change the article, and they were very angry about it. But Article 187-3 was in the case file. And so the case was closed.

V.V. Ovsiienko: I know that Article 187-prime (one) is “slanderous fabrications against the Soviet state and social system.”

I.I. Makar: Yes, yes, “dissemination of slanderous fabrications.”

V.V. Ovsiienko: So what articles were you charged with?

I.I. Makar: Article 187-prime and 187-3. Article 187-3 has remained in the Criminal Code to this day. “Organization of or active participation in group actions that disrupt public order.”

V.V. Ovsiienko: What is the penalty for it?

I.I. Makar: Up to 3 years. There have been changes, but the penalty of up to 3 years has remained. And for 187-prime, it was also up to 3 years. Article 187-prime has now been removed from the code. When the case was closed, the charge under 187-prime was dropped due to the absence of a crime, and 187-3 was dropped due to my unproven participation in that crime. That is, the crime had allegedly occurred—some kind of disturbance—but it was not proven that I had taken part in it.

V.V. Ovsiienko: What was the course of that investigation? Do you remember who interrogated you?

I.I. Makar: There was an investigative team—led by the head of the investigative department of the regional prosecutor's office, Shimchuk. In principle, he wasn't a bad man himself. He conducted it like this: “Listen here, well, they saddled me with your case, let’s just get the paperwork sorted out somehow.” But there was a second one, Dombrovsky, a Pole, I think—that one just fiercely hated me. And there was Khalimonchuk—the one who pinched those batteries. And there was another one—the last name, I think, was Leshchyshyn—he was the one who was very ashamed to be participating in that case, as I later found out from acquaintances. He was drinking heavily at the time because he was involved in such a dirty case. There were four investigators.

Dombrovsky loved to interrogate, and so he did. I could see that he just fiercely hated everything Ukrainian, a little Pole, nearing retirement age, or maybe already a pensioner. And I would torment him like this. He’d conduct the interrogation, ask question after question, and then ask me to sign. And I would start in about how the authorities were indebted to me, how I had worked so-and-so long in Siberia, and the authorities fired me illegally, and no one would accept my complaint. He even threw down his pen in anger. I’d say, “Pick up your pen so you can write.” And he’d reach for that pen, reaching... But the main thing was to repeat the exact same phrase absolutely verbatim. I’m thinking, will I drive you to a heart attack or not? I watch, and the man turns purple, then crimson. Well, I think, just a little more... He has such hatred, and I know how to get under a man’s skin. It was interesting, I’ll tell you, Mr. Vasyl, it was very interesting. Well, I didn't drive him to a heart attack, but he turned purple more than once. I think I shortened his life by a few years. What a terrible Ukrainophobe!

And the others... What was there to ask me about? That Shimchuk came in: “Well, tell me something! Were you there?” “I was.” “So you spoke?” “I spoke.” “Everything that everyone knows, just so I can write up some kind of record on you, you understand me.” You could talk to people like that—a sort of gruff military type. Maybe he was a good investigator or prosecutor when working with criminals. But this Dombrovsky just fiercely hated me.

V.V. Ovsiienko: But all of this was conducted in Ukrainian?

I.I. Makar: Well, of course, it was. And the investigation as such wasn’t really conducted much. In the cell, I immediately declared a hunger strike in protest.

V.V. Ovsiienko: Immediately?

I.I. Makar: Yes, immediately, as soon as they took me. I had breakfast at home that morning before the investigators arrived... They came to me for breakfast... Or maybe not for breakfast, maybe I'm mistaken... I think they came to my workplace. First, they conducted a search at work and then took me home. I immediately declared a hunger strike. In fact, during my time there, no investigative actions were carried out. They just threw me in a cell. I declared a hunger strike. I understood that everything in that cell was monitored.

V.V. Ovsiienko: Were you alone in the cell, or was there someone else?

I.I. Makar: No, at first there were two men, and then they added more—there were five of us in total. And after that, I think, there were six of us.

V.V. Ovsiienko: What kind of prison was it—KGB? On what street?

I.I. Makar: No, no. It’s on Chapaieva Street, now it’s called Horodotska, near the Central Department Store. A regular general-population prison. I was in there with guys for robbery, some guy was in for theft, another for robbery—those kinds of common criminals. But I understood that it was a special cell, not a random one. I declared a hunger strike, which immediately put me in a special status. To observe, to adapt, I just sat on the bunk and sat. They fed my cellmates very well at that time—they all had sausage. One would deliberately sit on his bunk, and it was narrow there—the cell was only two and a half meters wide, narrow—he would sit on the opposite bunk and chew his sausage, smacking his lips so loudly, the smells wafting over. They kept me in the general cell for about ten days.

V.V. Ovsiienko: And how long did you maintain that hunger strike?

I.I. Makar: 35 days.

V.V. Ovsiienko: 35 days?!

I.I. Makar: 35 days, yes. When I was arrested, I weighed 79 or 80 kilograms—they weighed me. I was relatively thin for my build, as I’m a big-boned fellow, but at that time I was practically flying, running around at night, putting up leaflets. By the end of the hunger strike, I was 64 kilograms. After that, they moved me to solitary, after about 10 days. Solitary was a blessing for me. I ordered them to bring me Marx's *Das Kapital*. You know, it's a very interesting thing! They didn't have all the volumes in Ukrainian, so they gave me two Ukrainian-language volumes and the third in Russian. It didn’t matter; I didn’t make a fuss about it. They, sinfully, thought that I had decided to re-educate myself. But that's not the interesting part—the interesting part is that after reading *Das Kapital* thoroughly, I realized that no one had ever properly read it.

V.V. Ovsiienko: That’s what Mykola Rudenko says: “I am one of the few who read *Das Kapital* to the end.”

I.I. Makar: (Laughs). In that solitary cell, the light was always on, but my mind was working. In my opinion, being in prison is a wonderful thing. You are a free man, sitting there with a sense of a duty fulfilled. When you get out, you realize you haven't done this, you haven't done that—it’s all a fuss. But here, everything is fine—you've already done everything, all that’s left is to sit calmly and think. You know, I sat there with great pleasure; those were the best times for me.

V.V. Ovsiienko: But still, the hunger strike—how did you feel physically?

I.I. Makar: The first week I felt hungry, but after that, I managed to perform certain hygienic procedures for myself, that is, I demanded enemas from them. The body still starts to absorb water—every time I was taken to the shower, my body would be completely cleansed afterward, meaning the toxins were flushed out. I’ll tell you, I felt quite well at that time. My body may have smelled of acetone, but in solitary, you have water to wash something, and in principle, the body eventually stops excreting, doesn't sweat. Well, I washed up, they took me to the shower. I tried it again later, a 37-day hunger strike, when I was on trial for the last time, for my newspaper “Opozytsia” (Opposition). I was on a 37-day hunger strike during the trial then.

V.V. Ovsiienko: So you're almost like Jesus Christ. 40 days is the critical limit.

I.I. Makar: Mr. Vasyl, that is far from the critical limit. In my opinion, if you lead a very calm lifestyle, and in prison, life is actually very calm, these are ideal conditions... You wake up in the morning and feel half-alive. That's after 20 days. If you sit up on the bunk, you start seeing spots before your eyes, the blood pressure is very low, your heart flutters a bit. I was very cold, very cold. I insulated the window, but my body was still cold. They gave me a second blanket at one point, but I was still very cold while on the hunger strike. The body wants energy. Then I adapted a bit. I’d sit for a while, go to the toilet to urinate. I drank boiled water they brought me. So, by and large, I was in greenhouse conditions compared to what political prisoners, like, say, Vasyl Stus, describe.

In general, Mr. Vasyl, evaluating all of that, I doubt I would have endured it all if I had been caught back in those times. Well, true, I was still quite young then, only 31 when I went to prison in 1988, and I was born in 1957. But as I say, it's unlikely. You see, the system is designed to destroy a person both physically and spiritually. Everything is aimed at humiliating you, at creating some kind of purely physiological discomfort. That is, a normal person must either break or die. And to come out of there... I bow low before those people who endured all of that; I can imagine how life twisted them. It's simply a horror, and it's not for me to tell you. But I can understand it all, and the current disrespectful attitude towards political prisoners often evokes revulsion in me, as someone who has had at least a small taste of that prison bread.

After that, my parents arranged for a lawyer... Well, eventually, I ended the hunger strike...

V.V. Ovsiienko: Did you have any motivation to come off the hunger strike?

I.I. Makar: No, I just up and ended it. There was no motivation as such. Considering that my brother came to see me...

V.V. Ovsiienko: They gave you visits during the investigation?

I.I. Makar: Yes, they did, to my brother, and then my parents came too. So my brother came...

V.V. Ovsiienko: This was during the hunger strike?

I.I. Makar: Yes, my older brother came during the hunger strike.

V.V. Ovsiienko: But they never gave visits during an investigation. Here, obviously, the point was to get you off the hunger strike.

I.I. Makar: Yes, to get me off it. My older brother Volodymyr is the kind of man who didn't participate in the movement, but he didn't grovel before the authorities, was never in the Party. He was the head of a geophysical party in Stryi. A sort of shock worker of communist labor, but never in any parties. He came and said: “Who needs you? What do you think, they’ll just be rubbing their hands together when you kick the bucket.” He scolded me like that. And I said: “Alright, I’ll listen to you, I’ll stop this. I proved to everyone, I proved first and foremost to myself, not to them, that I can do it, that I have a certain level of willpower.” In fact, my brother persuaded me to end the hunger strike.

V.V. Ovsiienko: Were you force-fed?

I.I. Makar: No. They pumped me full of glucose intravenously. I even lost consciousness right in the doctor's office, somewhere after 30 days. When I started coming off the hunger strike, they put someone in my cell... I didn't want them to put anyone in, I was fine alone, it was a blessing.

V.V. Ovsiienko: A limited person needs some kind of environment around them, but if you have some spiritual reserve, it's good to be alone.

I.I. Makar: They put him in with me on about the fifth day, a young guy. I ask, what are you in for? He says, robbery and rape. I say: “What?” And he says that they were in a group, had a little to drink, and there was a girl walking by, so they dragged her into a basement, gang-banged her, ripped off her earrings. He says he has connections here in prison, they bring him packages, he'll be well-fed. “You know,” I say, “man, I’m not going to eat at the same table with you. Get the hell out of this cell,” I say. You know, I was a skeleton, a 64-kilo guy at the time. But, apparently, my eyes were glowing with such rage... And the young guy, a lad of about 25, got very scared and started banging on the door. After that, they wrote in my file that I was abusing the prisoners. No, I didn’t touch him, I just said, get out of here, I won't eat at the same table with you. And after that, they put in the same ones I had started with. I understand that these were people who worked for the system. It came out later. About a year or two after my deputy career ended, when my newspaper was shut down and I was convicted, one of those who had been in the cell with me kept calling me, and I kept refusing to meet, blaming it on my wife, saying what a panther my wife was. But somehow he got her on the phone, Halia. He wanted to give me some gifts, they were offering apartments, first in Lviv, then here in Kyiv. That is, they wanted me to step away from the opposition. But Halia saw right through him quickly; I had told her about his calls. He asks: “Halia, where do you work?” And Halia says quickly: “In the agencies.” “Oh, I’m in the agencies too,” he says, provoked by her. She’s quick like that—one-two—and she blew the agent’s cover, and he never called again after that.

They released me from prison on November 9—I spent a little over three months under investigation.

V.V. Ovsiienko: Did you know what kind of campaign was being waged for you, were you given newspapers?

I.I. Makar: Well, very roughly. They didn’t give me newspapers.

V.V. Ovsiienko: Was there no radio there?

I.I. Makar: There was a radio, but the radio didn’t talk about it. The prison guards would tell me something here and there, by chance. So I felt that the campaign was very strong. Then my parents came, because I didn't want to accept a lawyer without their permission, I was afraid they'd slip me a provocateur. I knew my parents were in contact with the Horyn brothers. In fact, Bohdan ran the whole campaign, and later Ivan Kandyba helped him.

V.V. Ovsiienko: May 30, 2000, we continue our conversation with Mr. Ivan Makar. Vasyl Ovsiienko is recording. This is tape three.

I.I. Makar: About the defense. They offered me lawyers from abroad, from Russia. As far as I know, Bohdan Horyn made arrangements.

V.V. Ovsiienko: And who was your lawyer?

I.I. Makar: I can’t remember. It’s in my notebooks. Horyn suggested foreign lawyers. The authorities clearly didn't want to involve them; they wanted everything to be stewed in that one pot. But later I felt that they were just holding me there. Because it was a time when the authorities were telling everyone that they were releasing political prisoners, that the last ones were coming out, that is, the most zealous Soviet criminals.

V.V. Ovsiienko: Recidivists...

I.I. Makar: Recidivists, Soviet criminals. The remnants are starting to be released, and they are holding me, a new one, not connected to that system. I found out later—and for a while I worked together in a Verkhovna Rada Commission and was on good human terms with Potebenko—he told me that Lukyanov, the former chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, had insisted on my release. Well, he held that post later, but he was a fairly prominent man at the time. He said that for something like this, you'd have to imprison half the Baltic states. We need to release them, and here we are creating more political prisoners. That supposedly, when this issue was being decided, he insisted, and his word was decisive.

V.V. Ovsiienko: And do you know, when it came to your arrest, did some high-ranking official take responsibility for it? Who sanctioned your arrest? I don't mean the prosecutor, but a political official.

I.I. Makar: It's hard to say who sanctioned it. There's a very interesting thing. After the rally on July 7, which really shook Lviv—a bunch of new ideas, the public announcement of the idea of creating a People's Front for perestroika, openly speaking about national symbols, the national idea, about the Banderites—the official authorities didn't know what to do. That is, whether to put the brakes on or not. So, just in case, they called a press conference at the House of Journalists, on Chernyshevskoho Street in Lviv. They called me at work and told me to come. I came, I spoke there. But from Chornovil's behavior, I understood that I was an unwelcome participant at that press conference. Either the authorities wanted to hold a press conference with people who expressed less radical ideas, or Chornovil wanted to appear more loyal to the authorities—it's still unclear to me. That's how it looked. But, one way or another, I came to that press conference, sat at the table. The two Horyn brothers were there, Chornovil. And from the behavior of the journalists, I saw that I was an unwelcome guest there. Apparently, the authorities already intended to conduct a dialogue with the older, more cautious ones. And to scare off, silence, and isolate the young ones. But to silence me at that time or to isolate me in some way was simply impossible. For example, it was too late to draft me into the army; I was 31 years old and had just recently been in for retraining. By the way, they took Derkach for retraining then. But that wouldn't achieve anything. Then, as I understood it, the authorities decided to use selection: divide and conquer. That is, to divide those people who dared to say something. We'll allow these—we won't allow those. I’ll tell you something, sincerely and frankly. It always bothered me, and I spoke about it with Mykhailo Horyn: the strange sequence of releasing political prisoners. The most dangerous ones were released towards the very end.

V.V. Ovsiienko: For example, I was released on August 21, Mykola Horbal on the 23rd, and Ivan Kandyba on September 9. After us, Enn Tarto and Mikhail Alekseyev remained on the special regime.

I.I. Makar: That was 1988. Prykhodko was released then too, you even later, and Kandyba. Mykhailo Horyn was released in 1987, but he was essentially released to die, because he arrived as a wreck.

V.V. Ovsiienko: Yes, on July 2, 1987. On July 5, his brother Mykola brought him home. They were afraid he would die in Kuchino in the Urals. And they didn't need any more corpses.

I.I. Makar: By the way, Prykhodko arrived in the same wrecked condition. I saw him; he was lying in the hospital. And Mykhailo, practically before my eyes, transformed from a wreck into, well, a more or less walking man. It's simply a miracle to me. No one even imagined what a resilient man he was. Still, if he had stayed in prison—he would have perished.

V.V. Ovsiienko: Yes, you see, they didn't want any more corpses after Stus. The outcry in the world was too great.

I.I. Makar: Yes, that’s understandable. But explain to me, why was Viacheslav released long before that? If they fabricated that rape charge against him—it's clear that it was fabricated...

V.V. Ovsiienko: It’s absolutely clear that it was fabricated.

I.I. Makar: Of course it was fabricated. There was no attempted rape there. At most, it could have been, let's suppose, by mutual consent. And even that is doubtful.

V.V. Ovsiienko: But there wasn’t even that.

I.I. Makar: And even that is doubtful, indeed. But why was he released, when they formally could have held him for a long time?

V.V. Ovsiienko: He was on a 120-day hunger strike there. He could have died. And, maybe, he was given the condition that he would not return to Ukraine. And he lived there, in Yakutia, for almost two more years.

I.I. Makar: Well, that's how it is. I warned Mykhailo Horyn more than once—jumping ahead a bit—because I felt with every fiber of my being that Chornovil had this unrestrained and uncontrolled inner desire to be on top, to step over anyone to be on top, to get his hands on power. It was noticeable in his little digs or attempts to rudely cut off Mykhailo Horyn himself, not to mention Bohdan and others. A kind of envy of someone else's achievement, that someone might be written about ahead of him, an inner resentment—I just, you see, felt intuitively that he would cause many problems in the future, and something had to be done to prevent it. I am inclined to think that the Rukh (People's Movement of Ukraine) would have gone differently if it had been led by either Levko Lukianenko or Mykhailo Horyn. Because Rukh made a great many mistakes.

V.V. Ovsiienko: The main features of Chornovil's character were very well captured by Mykhailo Kheyfets in his essay “The Zek General.” The character traits that manifested later were captured with genius.

I.I. Makar: I have the same impression. They say he went through fire and water but stumbled at the copper pipes. He was a man who could not withstand the copper pipes [of fame]. Those copper pipes blinded him to the end of his life. I say this not to tarnish his memory, but simply to understand our national movement.

When I was released on November 9... Actually, the decision had been made earlier, but they held me until November 7-8, to let those “gatherings” pass. They offered me a chance to repent there.

V.V. Ovsiienko: They even offered you a chance to repent?

I.I. Makar: Yes. And I said that I liked it here, I don’t have an apartment on the outside, so I’d rather sit here—it’s so good for me here, I say. His face changed. It was the deputy prosecutor. The head of the department, Shemchuk, also came...

V.V. Ovsiienko: The circumstances are important.

I.I. Makar: It was in the interrogation room. They came in with my lawyer, the deputy regional prosecutor Zaplatynsky, I think, and the head of the investigative team. The deputy regional prosecutor's face changed when I praised the prison, how good it was for me there. I refused to repent, and they left after that. That same day, they started processing my papers. What’s interesting is that my friends knew I would be released. I didn't have any clothes—they took me on August 4, in a jacket and shoes, and then I was hit by such terrible frosts. My friends came to the prison, waiting. But they waited until everyone had left, and then they threw me out. I didn't want to leave. It was about eight or nine in the evening.

V.V. Ovsiienko: Dark, right?

I.I. Makar: Dark—it was already November. They threw me out of the cell, took away the notes I had. There were notes where I described the events, how they abused me, how they twisted my arm, how they dragged me down the corridor and wouldn't take me for an X-ray. I demanded an X-ray. So they confiscated all those notes from me. I put on a bunch of shirts—everything I had. They made me into, you know, such a caricature, because I was unshaven, with a beard...

V.V. Ovsiienko: So you sat through the investigation with a beard?

I.I. Makar: Firmly with a beard. I didn't shave for a month after that either, I walked around with a beard. I came out like that onto the “stometrivka” (then Lenin Avenue), opposite the Lenin monument, there was an “Ice Cream” café, I went in and bought myself that ice cream—a bum, a real natural bum! I was just walking past where the Shevchenko monument is now. There, Bohdan Horyn is handing out my photos: “Freedom for Ivan Makar!”...

V.V. Ovsiienko: On the same day?

I.I. Makar: On the same day, in the evening. Bohdan Horyn had launched a flurry of activity there. A small group from the discussion club, then they had a meeting somewhere in a basement. I spent the first night, I think, at one of the dissidents' places, either Bohdan's or Viacheslav Chornovil's...

V.V. Ovsiienko: How did Bohdan take it, I wonder?

I.I. Makar: The man was just happy, what is there to say! I'll tell you something. Despite the fact that we had disagreements and quarrels, he did a colossal amount of work in that respect when these events were unfolding. He got this case going, he gave it momentum. He is a good organizer. I feel sorry that he is... You see, an underutilized man, a man whose potential was never realized. As an organizer... This government uses such slobs, such ministers... If they put him as a minister, or at least a deputy minister, he would organize everything perfectly, he would be there from start to finish... And there you have irresponsible people, bribe-takers. Put him in charge, and he will bring order to any ministry, everything will be paper to paper. He is a born statesman. And, you know, there are lots of people like that, lots of them!

V.V. Ovsiienko: Or put Mykhailo Horyn as prime minister...

I.I. Makar: I'm not even talking about Mykhailo Horyn, of course—this luminary should have been a national leader! But he was simply pushed aside, suppressed. In this connection, I will say that his inability, his unwillingness to claw his way to power—that is his positive quality, and our misfortune. Society is incapable of promoting a person who cannot step over something or someone to achieve something, to occupy some post. And there are so many such people—unrealized. Now, perhaps, Mykhailo wouldn't be able to handle being prime minister because of his health, he's already destroyed.

V.V. Ovsiienko: Yes, it's too late for him to take it on now.

I.I. Makar: But at that time—he could have been prime minister, a wonderful man, a wonderful speaker, photogenic, and so on. Not to mention that he was torn from society for many years.

V.V. Ovsiienko: But the authorities didn't need those people.

I.I. Makar: And who didn't go through that crucible! Such a great number of personalities! If that government had wanted to—it knew that that man would not steal and would not do anything against his state, would not pinch a single kopeck. But this government—it is a doomed government, it is an occupying government, nothing less. And it has remained so over the years—it is a fiction, not a state. It is a continuation of that USSR, of that Ukrainian SSR, only it has formally acquired the attributes, dressed itself in sharovary pants, but the system has remained the same. Well, there's no helping it.

When I returned from prison, cells of the People's Rukh were already being organized. There was supposed to be a rally in Kyiv on that topic when I arrived, either on the 11th or 13th of November. A rally supposedly under the banner of ecology. And when they gave me the floor, they turned off the microphones—the authorities were afraid I would say something wrong. True, I still had a loud voice then and shook the air without a microphone. I spoke directly at that rally about the occupying government, and about this, and about that. I came from prison—there was such an opinion, the newspapers had made a noise... It was a good reception.

But after that, I felt some kind of disillusionment. Around that time, in one of Kyiv's halls, a discussion took place between Drach and Kravchuk. The first thing I noticed was how inflated our leader Drach was. The way he conducted this discussion with Kravchuk, I thought: “Why did you even come out to debate? Just write your poems and be well.” Then he was elected chairman of the People's Rukh, and cells began to form in Lviv. I looked and said: I'm not going there. I could feel that it was all under control—with the fibers of my soul, intuitively. I guess a lot of things. Every time they were about to take me—I knew every time that they were going to take me. When I was arrested on the street on December 10, 1987—I took a photographer with me. That was the first arrest after my imprisonment. There were demonstrations by the Lenin monument then. When I was on my way to work, they picked me up half a kilometer away, near the university. The Spitak earthquake had just happened, I had transferred 10 rubles from the Main Post Office, and near the university, they took me. I knew they were going to take me. A colleague from work was with me with a camera, but he was afraid to take a picture, he was very intellectual. The next time I took a working-class photographer, and he took six consecutive shots of them grabbing me, dragging me into a car. Like a capture team taking a criminal in the middle of the street. There was no reason to take me like that. They took me on an empty street. I felt they were going to take me, I just felt it! I told many people about this. I felt that many of those people who went to Rukh were being directed by someone. Those people were the tip of the iceberg, and the guys sitting on Dzerzhynskoho Street were in charge.

That's why I didn't join Rukh and didn't go there. But in the UHG [Ukrainian Helsinki Group]—well, I was considered a member of the UHG. But then a discussion immediately began. The UHG Declaration mentioned a confederation of the then-union republics. Levko Lukianenko had just been released, and in January 1989 we gathered at Prykhodko's apartment—Kandyba was there, Prykhodko was there, I was there, Mykhailo Horyn, Viacheslav Chornovil, and Lukianenko were there. Bohdan wasn't there at the time. We gathered and talked. Prykhodko, Kandyba, and I insisted that the UHG program needed to be changed, that it had to be done immediately. We need to tell people the truth, so that everyone understands what we want. The Declaration said that there would supposedly be a confederation, but at the same time, in reality, we want something else. Lukianenko, Chornovil, and Horyn said that if we declared such radical ideas about full independence—people wouldn't follow us, they would be afraid. So there was reason in both opinions. That discussion continued, I even came to Kyiv. Sometime in December or November, Badzio came from the camps...

V.V. Ovsiienko: I'll tell you in a moment... Badzio, Lukianenko, and Dmytro Mazur were released by the same Decree of December 8, 1988. But by the time they arrived—I know that Levko was delayed in exile for a very long time and returned at the end of January 1989.

I.I. Makar: That's when he arrived. And Badzio arrived right away—I think it was at the end of December. I was under arrest until December 30, so it was somewhere in early January.

V.V. Ovsiienko: Lukianenko arrived from Siberia at the end of January.

I.I. Makar: And this was even earlier. We met here, in Kyiv, I remember, when Badzio arrived. And with Badzio, we talked about the same topic as at Prykhodko's. Badzio also agreed with us that it's not so important who we lead, but it is important what we tell people, what ideas we promote.

I spoke with Mykhailo Horyn more than once then, that it would be worth creating a parallel organization that would declare it wants independence. Mykhailo persuaded me not to split. So that there would be no antagonism between the leaders, because the entourage would feel that antagonism—that we are more right than you. I then—maybe I went along with it a bit—made the mistake of crossing the line of criticism. Perhaps I was influenced, gave in to emotions...

V.V. Ovsiienko: The influence of Prykhodko and Kandyba, right?

I.I. Makar: Not so much Kandyba, but Prykhodko, perhaps, I was influenced by.

V.V. Ovsiienko: And what was the matter about?

I.I. Makar: I got a bit personal there, and that wasn't worth it. After that, in September 1989, I left the UHG. Those disputes lasted through the summer.

V.V. Ovsiienko: From September 1989, the UHG was already openly agitating for independence.

I.I. Makar: This was probably before that. But if they were openly agitating, then the “Declaration of Principles” had to be changed.

V.V. Ovsiienko: The entire course had to be changed. There was talk of convening a Constituent Congress at the end of the year, but because of the need to participate in the elections, it was held only on April 29-30, 1990.

I.I. Makar: It's hard for me to remember the whole chronology of when that was. Perhaps I left by mutual agreement. I believe I crossed a line. There's no helping it. I was young and hot-headed. With Prykhodko, we then created the Organization for the Restoration of the Ukrainian People's Republic. Sort of an initiative group for the restoration of the UPR. We thought of eventually becoming a party. We started, but I felt that I was losing my independence, that there was some external force that was completely controlling me, all my actions were known, my circle was controlled. Whatever I wanted to do—I couldn't succeed, something would fall through, somehow it wouldn't work out for me. And our organization was becoming some kind of ultra-primitive, ultra-xenophobic one. That was the first thing, and the second was that I was just a formal leader who was supposed to say only what was decided. That I was a leader in the Organization only because I was popular. And two weeks before the congress, I resigned.

V.V. Ovsiienko: This was before the congress of the Ukrainian National Assembly?

I.I. Makar: Yes, from that came the Ukrainian National Party, and later the Ukrainian National Assembly, the UNA. I stepped away from that.

At that time, we had several interesting international meetings of dissidents.

V.V. Ovsiienko: One meeting was in Lviv.

I.I. Makar: For some reason, I wasn't invited to the Lviv one, but I did go to Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. I remember one time I came to Kyiv, and they were deciding what line to take. It was, I think, around the time Yuriy Badzio was released from prison. For some reason, Viacheslav Chornovil wasn't there, and we decided to send a delegation there: Oles Shevchenko, Mykola Horbal, and Viacheslav Chornovil. And a young representative was needed.

V.V. Ovsiienko: To where?

I.I. Makar: To Lithuania, I think, to Vilnius, the first delegation. That was in January 1989.

V.V. Ovsiienko: And in April 1989, there was a meeting in the town of Loodi in Estonia.

I.I. Makar: Yes, I was in Estonia.

V.V. Ovsiienko: Yevhen Proniuk, Lukianenko, and I went there from the UHG, and you, Hryhoriy Prykhodko, and Vasyl Sichko were also there.

I.I. Makar: Yes, I traveled a lot around Estonia with Sichko then. After that, there was another meeting in Latvia. In Latvia, we had a mix-up. But Lithuania was interesting. But Viacheslav Chornovil didn't want to go there. He said he wouldn't go. Why? Probably he felt he might get into an awkward situation. From Lviv, on behalf of the UHG, I and Bohdan Hrytsai went instead of Viacheslav. In Lithuania, we had to make a declaration of the captive nations. I'll be honest, I initiated that declaration. Unfortunately, I don't have the text in my dorm room. It was done on the fly. Declaration of the Captive Nations—that's how it sounded, that we, representatives of the captive nations, declare that we want independence. I'll admit to you that I initiated it to force the UHG to change its position. Today I assess it as, on the one hand, I did a good thing by declaring it. This declaration was circulated, went out into the world. We, Ukrainians, always edited such things. It was heard that there are forces in Ukraine that consider Ukrainians a captive nation. Bohdan Hrytsai and I signed the declaration. He's from Lviv. He has now withdrawn from political affairs. But Shevchenko and Horbal refused to sign—and you know, it looked as if I were a greater patriot than Mykola Horbal or Oles Shevchenko. You know, to doubt the patriotism of one or the other... But that's not the point. I put them in an extremely awkward position. I would like to apologize to them, although I believe I did the right thing. Maybe we are a little wiser today than we were then. But then we had to declare that Ukrainians are a captive nation and that Ukraine wants independence. Perhaps that was one of the pushes for the UHG to finally change its program and declare that it too is fighting for independence. There was such a fact, and after that, I was invited to events less often, they didn't let me speak at rallies...

V.V. Ovsiienko: Even so?

I.I. Makar: Absolutely. They didn't let me speak at a rally in Drohobych in 1989; there was such an order.

V.V. Ovsiienko: And who could give such orders?

I.I. Makar: Well, I don't know, but that's how it was. The last time I spoke at a rally was in the summer or on Mount Makivka in 1989, or on Mount Stiy, which is nearby.

V.V. Ovsiienko: Makivka—that was the summer.

I.I. Makar: Yes, I think I spoke on Makivka, and that was my last speech at a rally. Maybe they let me speak somewhere after that, but not at mass ones... On Makivka, I had a very radical speech, with pathos. I called the entire government an occupying one, the troops—occupying. I said it all then, I crossed that line. And after that, they didn't take me to rallies. And I realized that I had nothing more to say at a rally when they didn't imprison me for everything I said on Makivka. And I even stopped going to rallies, I began to withdraw from politics. I made that decision in the summer of 1989.

Before that, I was under administrative arrest five more times.

V.V. Ovsiienko: How so? Tell us about it.

I.I. Makar: Five times. The first time they took me was near the university on December 10, 1988, on Human Rights Day. I was just walking near the university. They suspected I was going to a rally and detained me on the way. And five days later, they came to take me, supposedly to court. I said: “I know why you're taking me.” I dressed nicely, to sit for 15 days, and they sentenced me to 15 days, supposedly for resisting the authorities. You have all those resolutions there. That was the first time. Then, I think, in February 1989 they imprisoned me... Then in March they imprisoned me again, then on May 5. They also took me on the street then. On May 1, I went to my parents' from work, and it seemed there was no reason to take me, but they took me because some events were supposed to happen near the Shevchenko monument or something, and they decided it was better to isolate me during those days.

V.V. Ovsiienko: And was that when Gorbachev was visiting?

I.I. Makar: And when Gorbachev visited, I was also sitting in jail.

V.V. Ovsiienko: In what month was that? In March 1989—right? And what's the name of that song? Who's the author?

I.I. Makar: Yes, yes. Andriy Panchyshyn. *“God forbid there are terrorists, or Makar pops out—the General Secretary could get upset.”* So they swept me up two or three days before that so I wouldn't pop out. So I didn't get to appear before Gorbachev's clear eyes. Then I boycotted the elections to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR—to the occupying power. I resigned from that organization...

V.V. Ovsiienko: The Ukrainian National Assembly?

I.I. Makar: No, it was later called the Ukrainian National Party. But at that time it was still called the Initiative Group for the Restoration of the UPR, when I resigned before the constituent congress. I saw that it was heading towards not participating in the elections to the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR. I thought to myself, if we boycott, they will get the people they need elected.

And after May 5, when I had served 15 days, they told me that I had conducted an unsanctioned meeting in the cell and added another 10 days. I asked the warden: “How could it have been sanctioned?” And he says: “You should have applied to me.” So I say, fine, give me permission to hold a meeting in the cell. And he says that it has to be applied for ten days in advance, and in ten days I won't let you out. So they held me to the end; I sat for 25 days in May—everyone got 15 days, but they added another ten to mine for an unsanctioned meeting in the cell.

An unsanctioned meeting on the outside is punishable by 15 days, but in a cell it's a little cheaper.

I then decided to withdraw from politics on that high note, that I was already so radical that there was nowhere further to go, so that it wouldn't look like some kind of retreat.

From the summer or autumn of 1989 until winter, I was practically in political retirement. I returned to my scientific work, thought about defending my dissertation. I returned to work, to seminars at the Institute of Problems of Mechanics and Mathematics. I had even thought a little about science in prison...

I had absolutely no intention of running for deputy in the 1990 elections. But my friend Vasyl Fedorchak, my countryman, from the same Holovetske where the border guards stopped me in 1988 when I was traveling with Mykhailo Horyn to a meeting in Halivka, comes to see me. Vasyl came to me in the dormitory and says: “Look what’s happening, you so-and-so, you’re holed up here, and look who they're nominating as candidates for deputy!” They were nominating Chaus there. Rukh was nominating Chaus, and he was the director of the “Polyaron” or “Elektron” factory; he was connected to the KGB. So Vasyl says to me: “Look who they're nominating—do you think he's going to defend our interests?” “No,” I say, “the train has already left, no one will nominate me now.” But he says that he will organize a meeting for me, to get me nominated. But the Dem-bloc had made a scheme of whom it would support. It would support that Chaus from the People's Rukh, from the democratic bloc. He wasn't in the People's Rukh. And the Dem-bloc—just as there used to be a bloc of communists and non-party members, now the only correct one was the Dem-bloc.

V.V. Ovsiienko: Well, why—there was Rukh, there was the UHG…

I.I. Makar: Yes, but, you see, it was the “only correct” bloc of democratic forces, predetermined, meaning people were not given the opportunity to choose; it had already been chosen for them behind the scenes. And there was a real need to choose.

The electoral law at the time required an absolute majority. That is, if a deputy was not elected in the first round, the two who received the most votes would compete in the second round. And there was no need to be afraid of competing against your own. And so, at least in Western Ukraine, someone from the democrats was bound to get through in the end. Many in the Rukh leadership were afraid to face someone and lose. They said that everyone who was not approved by the Dem-bloc leadership should withdraw their candidacies so as not to fight against their own. I said that wouldn't work.

Vasyl Fedorchak, in Holovetske, where there were still quite a few of my former students from my time working at the Mshanets secondary school, gathered a meeting. People came, but the communists still managed to disrupt the meeting. The meeting gathered, but the communists and their cronies walked out, and there wasn't a quorum. I say: “You know, Vasyl, I'll speak here and I won't go anywhere else. It’s a long way for me to travel from Lviv, it’s already late autumn, winter.” We came there with Yurchyshyn and my current godmother, Halia Vytvytska—the support group. I spoke, and then I told Vasyl that I doubted I could be nominated—the authorities wouldn't allow it. He went to every house, and the people did gather the following Sunday and nominated me.

V.V. Ovsiienko: This was without you?

I.I. Makar: Without me. In this village, in Holovetske of the Staryi Sambir district. It was one district, one constituency. They managed to get me registered. The authorities thought the Dem-bloc would force me to withdraw my candidacy. And I said: no, I don't play your democratic games. And that was it. To be honest, I had no intention of running. If, in that Staryi Sambir constituency, they had nominated a man who was not from the old system and not the head of such an enterprise, not connected by some family ties to the then-KGB leadership... To hell with him, maybe that Chaus isn't a bad man, I won't say, but he was from the old system. Vasyl convinced me. And that same Vasyl Fedorchak was then nominated as a candidate for the regional council. I was elected as a deputy in the first round. By the way, the regional Rukh fought hard against me then.

V.V. Ovsiienko: And what was the percentage of votes?

I.I. Makar: About 52%, not very high compared to what the nominees of the so-called “Dem-bloc” got, but I won in the first round.

V.V. Ovsiienko: And how many candidates were there?

I.I. Makar: I think, eight. There was that school director Rashkevych, who came to my Halivka to convince me that I was wrong to call for monuments to the Banderites. There was the Rukh nominee Chaus, there was also a man named Drak—a rather good man, Mykola Marianovych Drak. He did a colossal amount of work during the election campaign. Drak is a very good historian; he gave such lectures on history to those people... We were so ignorant that even for me, who had rubbed shoulders with people—even for me, much of what he said was new. So what can be said about those people who knew no literature, nothing. He did a huge, colossal job.

Overall, we parted ways amicably there. One of Chaus's assistants attacked me a little. I give Chaus his due as a worthy opponent: he at least apologized and did not allow his assistants to engage in outright dirty tricks against me.

V.V. Ovsiienko: And who was in second place?

I.I. Makar: That was the same Chaus. He had sixteen percent. We had the smallest constituency in the region. A Greek Catholic priest withdrew his candidacy in my favor. It must be said that no matter how one felt about the communists of that time, when during the election campaign I went to the first secretary of the district party committee and said, what is going on, when they didn't open the club for me in one village. That club manager got a good scolding from the authorities; after that incident, he apologized profusely. That is, the elite of that time at least knew certain limits, followed some rules. They did harm by spreading some false information about me, pasting it on the streets. Or when I had meetings, they would bring some goods to the store so that people wouldn't go to the meetings.

I'll tell you something, the moral character of the “new elite” is far inferior to the moral character of those last communists. In 1994, I was running in Drohobych. The Rukh members, led by Taniuk, dragged me off the stage, and this was in Drohobych. Good people, don't elect me, but I have the right to speak, and you have the right to listen to me—so listen and vote against me. But they dragged me off to the hoots of his people. Roman Zvarych was also there. He was a confidant, as a Western professor, who recommended electing Taniuk. This was wild for Ukraine, let alone for the West. But why did I go to Drohobych? My constituency was scattered among other constituencies in ninety-four, in the worst possible way for me. And I had no money, no transport at that time. Then in the KUN [Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists], they told me that they have their own people—we're nominating Demian in that constituency, and Bilas in this one, and if you step aside, we'll support you in Drohobych. Why did they give preference to Bilas, who once vilified the insurgent movement, and not to me, who was morally rehabilitating that insurgent movement? Just as I was not a member of the KUN—neither was Bilas a member of the KUN. But that's their problem. They promised me support in Drohobych. I considered it most important that they declare their support for me. But I read in the newspaper—it turns out they support Taniuk. So they, to put it in criminal jargon, just “screwed me over.”

It hurt me a bit—it seemed I tried to work honestly in the Verkhovna Rada... I worked so hard those four years; hardly any deputy had fewer absences from sessions than I did. I was on only one official delegation for two weeks in Germany, I didn't gallivant abroad anywhere else. I worked like an ox, and that's why it hurt. But, on the other hand, it lifted a terrible burden from me. I came to the Verkhovna Rada a strapping young lad who could bend horseshoes, and in 1994 I became a wreck. It's a terrible burden. I had a hypertensive crisis twice. My health deteriorated badly. The tension was terrible, and on top of that, I chose such a committee—legislation and legality. We held the largest number of meetings, while Taniuk's committee, I think, didn't hold even a quarter of the meetings we did. As if everything was great with culture and nothing needed to be done. There were official statistics on how many meetings each committee held in the first convocation. Ours—the most of all, Taniuk's committee—the least. We submitted a bunch of draft laws.

V.V. Ovsiienko: And which ones did you work on specifically?

I.I. Makar: On the law on notaries, on amendments to the Constitution. I did a lot then regarding the concept of transition to a market economy. As a physicist, I understood that our entire economic concept had followed the Russian lead. What does this mean? For example, when they freed prices on everything but held back prices on food and things that were produced in Ukraine, we were deliberately creating an unequal exchange. It was this bloc that I wanted to amend. Although I was not elected from the Dem-bloc, I was, of course, enrolled in the People's Council. The issue of the concept of transition to a market economy was developed in the summer. And then the laws on privatization, on price formation especially. I wanted the People's Council to listen to me, those luminaries. Pylypchuk and Yukhnovsky submitted their concept, but I still wanted them to listen to me. They didn't want to listen to me in the People's Council. I then said that I didn't want to be a mere statistic and announced in the Verkhovna Rada somewhere in October or November 1990 that I was leaving the People's Council. I took part in their meetings, but I officially declared that I was leaving the People's Council. So I no longer bore responsibility for their actions. You know, it's one thing when I'm a private individual—you do as you see fit. It's another thing when you have a bunch of people behind you who were not afraid to nominate you, then were not afraid to cast that ballot. Because at that time there was persecution from the heads of collective farms, other leaders—you know, it was difficult. And at the same time, people criticized me for leaving the People's Council. I met with people, but it was hard to explain.

I'll tell you something else. It was an extremely impoverished life for a deputy back then, if he didn't want to get his hands dirty with something. I was so poor, and my family was very poor, especially in the second half of my term.

V.V. Ovsiienko: And where did your family live?

I.I. Makar: The family was in Boryslav. In 1991, my younger daughter was born, and we had neither a roof over our heads nor a plot of land. Then my wife moved to Kyiv with the children in October 1991, we lived in the “Moskva” hotel—the child was not even six months old. On October 12, we flew in by plane with the whole family. My daughter was only 5 months old. There was nowhere to buy milk at that time, we weren't registered anywhere.

V.V. Ovsiienko: Yes, you needed ration coupons for food back then.

I.I. Makar: Yes, no coupons. I didn't want to use my connections in any way, and the family was struggling. The only thing was that from time to time my parents would send us something, or my mother-in-law. I kept a sack of potatoes in a closet in the hotel.

V.V. Ovsiienko: And this is a deputy! I was also living illegally in Kyiv at that time, had no registration and, accordingly, no those coupons, and was also struggling.

I.I. Makar: Yes, then my sister-in-law brought me a sack of potatoes—to the “Moskva” hotel. There was a dark little room for electricians or for the cleaning lady—she kept her mops there. So we shoved that sack of potatoes in there. A deputy's salary at that time was small, very small. When people say that deputies get a lot—people, people, how stupid you are! The less you pay them, the fewer deputies there will be who will live on their salary, automatically! If they had stopped paying me altogether, I would have organized some kind of business, using my official position. And the offers I got! One guy came and lived with me for three days, as soon as I moved into this apartment in September 1992, a former schoolmate of mine, who was in big business in Russia. He tried to persuade me to go work for him. And he would have paid me tens of times more than here. And, he says, we'll get you elected as a deputy again, you just work for us. I told him I'm for sale: I've already sold myself once to the people, and I can't sell myself to you a second time. Joking like that. But he says they'll need me, because they need a deputy to promote their business. And he says it openly. That is, there were plenty of opportunities!

And when I went to Germany—you represent the state. And how noticeable the discrepancy is between your status and your appearance... How to live with that discrepancy? They don't understand there that you came from a poor country, that your salary is so low, despite your deputy status, that you can't dress respectably. Obviously, in their opinion, if you're poor, then you must be some kind of drunkard, drinking it all away. I warmly welcomed it when they gave deputies in the second convocation bigger salaries, though far from what they should be. The newspapers raised a fuss! This is blatant vilification of the Verkhovna Rada. And it's common knowledge that the vilification of representative bodies is a clear sign of fascism.

V.V. Ovsiienko: Just recently, I think on March 18, deputy Pavlovsky put it well when he said that, for example, in Russia there is an image of the enemy—Chechens, and in Ukraine, the image of the enemy is the people's deputies.

I.I. Makar: The vilification of a representative body in any country is blatant fascism. Let's take fascist Germany. Everything there also began with the vilification of the representative body. That is, we officially have propaganda of fascism. Our official state doctrine is the propaganda of fascism. It's not officially stated, but the constant vilification of the representative body is unequivocally...

V.V. Ovsiienko: Before this referendum—it was disgusting to watch.

I.I. Makar: Yes, it is an absolutely fascist tendency—demagoguery, vilification of the representative body. It's hard for the people to understand that.

Even then, as a deputy, in the summer of 1993, I filed a report with the Prosecutor General's Office about a crime by Prime Minister Kuchma. He had signed some document with Russia, and I saw clear signs of a crime there. The Prosecutor General's Office didn't give me a response, not even to a deputy. But Kuchma was removed for six months, and then he was elected president, and on November 16, 1994, I again filed a report against him for a crime to the Prosecutor General's Office under Article 56 of the Criminal Code on high treason. This was after he signed the agreement on the creation of the IEC—the Interstate Economic Committee of the former Union, where the principle of sovereign equality was knowingly violated. One of the fundamental principles of international law was violated there—the principle of sovereign equality: Ukraine had something like 14 or 16 percent of the votes, and Russia had 50.

V.V. Ovsiienko: That's a controlling stake.

I.I. Makar: A controlling stake, yes. I made such a report of a crime on November 16. The prosecutor's office does not react, does not respond. I filed a second time in court. The court did not accept my application. So I decided to appeal directly to the people. I decided to publish a newspaper. I submitted an application, and on March 13, 1995, my newspaper “Opozytsia” (Opposition) was registered. Sometime in early April, I published the first issue, in which I included an open letter to Viacheslav Chornovil, where I drew attention to this act by Kuchma: how can you support Kuchma if there are signs of a crime in his actions, according to Article 56? I wrote this in an open letter to him.

Then I released a second issue, a third... But it was this article—that was the main accusation against me. They substituted the subject, that is, as if I had written that Kuchma had committed such a crime, but only a court can decide that. But I wrote clearly that in his actions there are such-and-such signs of a crime. And before that, I had submitted to the prosecutor's office: here, investigate, give an answer, and if you say there are no signs of a crime, I will appeal to the court. But they didn't give me an answer. I wrote that. I distributed all the newspapers in the Verkhovna Rada—many went, and deputies even took them with them.

V.V. Ovsiienko: I remember those newspapers. I think I even proofread some issues...

I.I. Makar: Yes, you proofread them very thoroughly, and those proofread ones still look like something. And from the autumn, I started publishing the newspaper regularly, that is, once a month. It was in the catalog, there was a subscription. And the authorities began to intimidate me and those who printed this newspaper. I first printed it in Brovary—in Brovary, they scared the director of the printing house, so she refused. I then found another place, then printed it somewhere underground for cash. Once I printed it at the “Kyivska Pravda” publishing house, and just before the New Year, they destroyed the entire print run.

V.V. Ovsiienko: Who, the printing house?

I.I. Makar: The printing house destroyed the print run. I acted foolishly—I went up and boasted to Hryhoriy Omelchenko that the issue would be out tomorrow, I showed him the layout. The issue came out. I arrived early in the morning to pick up the print run, it was already printed, and then, apparently, a call came—and they wouldn't let me in there with the car. And while all that was going on, in that time they destroyed everything.

V.V. Ovsiienko: And which publishing house was this?

I.I. Makar: “Kyivska Pravda.” Later, the journalist Svitlana Syniakova and I went into that basement, we even found a few copies there. They said that people had taken them. By the time it was taken to be destroyed, it had gradually disappeared, people had taken them—forbidden fruit is sweet.

V.V. Ovsiienko: What year was this?

I.I. Makar: This was just before the New Year of 1996, it was the end of 1995. That's how that print run of the newspaper was destroyed. Kuchma was very well depicted there. And what's interesting—exactly one year after I filed the report on Kuchma's crime (I filed it on November 16, 1994), exactly one year later, on November 16, 1995, the Deputy Prosecutor General Oleksandrov opened a criminal case against me.

A criminal case was opened, I know they are listening to me when I call on the phone. We were arguing about something with Larysa Skoryk on the phone, and she says to me: “Did you make a photocopy of that document I gave you?” And before that, for previous issues, she had indeed obtained a few documents, but on this day there was no document. Here, she says, we'll print this—oh, Kuchma will be scratching his head! I realized she was pulling my leg, and I play along: “Oh, Ms. Larysa, I'll do it tomorrow!” And she tells me that she trusted me as a person, and it might get lost somewhere...

V.V. Ovsiienko: You put on a comedy?

I.I. Makar: Yes. And early in the morning, at the crack of dawn—a search.

V.V. Ovsiienko: Where?!

I.I. Makar: Here, in my home!

V.V. Ovsiienko: And who gave the warrant?

I.I. Makar: The Kyiv prosecutor gave the warrant for the search. They ring in the morning, I haven't even properly rubbed my eyes, it's before eight, Halia is still in her nightgown—it's about half-past seven, because she leaves the house for work at half-past eight. I opened the door, they burst in. The investigator Pitsyk rushes into the bedroom, they're rummaging around here. Halia ran into the bedroom to get changed, and there's a crowd—three of them, the investigator and two other thugs, plus two witnesses, men. I took that investigator by the arm like this and threw him out of the bedroom. Well, I ask, why are you running in there? And then a commotion started. And Halia's brother happened to be spending the night, and he's a very combative guy, a real Boiko. Somehow I got him out of the house, away from trouble.

V.V. Ovsiienko: And what—they let him out during the search?

I.I. Makar: Yes, because that's not what they were interested in. They immediately went for the papers. Searching, rummaging, looking for documents on Kuchma. And then he looks me in the eyes: well, where is that document? They were told to find the document, but there is no document! They took the computer, packed it up without any paperwork.

V.V. Ovsiienko: What—they took the computer?

I.I. Makar: Yes, they took it, and they still haven't returned it. The computer, the printer. Then the court confiscated the system unit, but the monitor, printer, keyboard, cables—no one confiscated those. I say give them back—no, they took them and sold them on the cheap. This is a gangster government. You know, they confiscate, and they have their relatives' shops, they offload it to them, and they have something to sell, while the state gets pennies. I tried to get it back later, but to this day, nothing has been returned. And during the search, Volodymyr Yatsenko, a communist, a deputy from the Zhytomyr region, came into the house here. He was in the Presidium of the Verkhovna Rada then. By the way, one can condemn his views, but he himself is a decent man. So Yatsenko told the investigator to come to his senses, that life doesn't end today. But the investigator insolently told him: “Get out of here! Don't interfere with our work.” Such confidence from the investigator—because it's known that he's a member of the Presidium! That is, he knows he's nothing, but he has patrons: “Don't interfere!” This was at the end of November or the beginning of December 1995. I have documents about this search somewhere. I demanded a protocol be drawn up, because they would steal information from the computer, there was a book started there, there is an archive in the computer that has nothing to do with all this—but everything is gone. I warned them—it's absolute robbery. I took it to court—they said no, it's all normal, that's how it should be.

And then the investigation proceeded. It's not that they were abusive—that investigator was much younger than me. He summons me, I arrive, and he demonstratively sits in his office, drinking coffee: “Get out, I'll call you later!” That was deliberate—an setup for abuse. Another interesting thing—none of the deputies at the time stood up for me. Like calves. They knew they were cracking down on a newspaper, on a former colleague. They showed themselves somehow, at least they came to the trial—Volodymyr Yatsenko, Oleksiy Shekhovtsov from Kramatorsk, and Rostyslav Chapiuk from Volyn. And that's it! They all knew there were searches here, a bunch of deputy-neighbors, I'm on trial, and they're hugging Kuchma, receiving awards... Well, a fascist dictatorship: they came, took what they wanted from the house...

I went to the press service of the Verkhovna Rada, a very decent woman named Halyna Pavlivna worked there, she gave me the opportunity to work on the computer. I published a few more issues, and on March 13, 1996, exactly one year after registration, the Kyiv City Court shut down the newspaper.

They even found me guilty in a civil case, although the criminal investigation was not yet finished. They thought I would immediately stop publishing when the district court's decision came down. But I said no, let the city court issue a ruling that this decision is lawful. I was found guilty in a civil case, that Makar had committed such a crime, and that is grounds for closing the newspaper. And they sentenced me on June 27, on the eve of the adoption of the Constitution. Those were the peripeteia. And for the last issues, I had already sold my car, because there was no money at all. At first, Larysa Skoryk helped a little with money for the newspaper, there were a few other people. But for the last issues—the newspaper was already seemingly closed, no money. My wife Halia gave me 20 hryvnias from her salary (she is a minor official at the district Pension Fund office) to publish the last issue. We were struggling so badly then, like a mother dog.

This affected the children. The older child has poor health because there was no milk. There was bread and water. At least I sent the younger one to Halia's parents, they had a cow there.

Well, they closed the newspaper, they convicted me, so I go to the police with a clear conscience. The verdict says: two years of imprisonment with a two-year suspended sentence. That is, just so that amnesty doesn't apply to me. You can't go anywhere, can't earn money anywhere, can't get a lawyer's license, because a lawyer can't have a criminal record.

V.V. Ovsiienko: What, you had to go to the police?

I.I. Makar: Yes, once a week I went to the police, registered, what a respectable criminal I was.

V.V. Ovsiienko: What does “with a two-year suspended sentence” mean?

I.I. Makar: That if I don't commit another crime during that period, they will clear my criminal record in two years. And on July 17, 1998, they cleared my criminal record, so I became a respectable citizen, I had honestly “atoned for my guilt.”

In November 1998, I became a lawyer. And the period from the beginning of 1996 to May 1998 was just black—you couldn't go anywhere to earn money, you couldn't earn it here in Kyiv. There was an ad that a certain enterprise needed a legal consultant. I went there to apply. At first, everything was normal, they were hiring me, and then they looked somewhere, whispered, and the director tells me that it's a pity, but they've already hired someone. As in, we respect you very much, but we don't want to deal with you.

V.V. Ovsiienko: You say you are involved in legal matters—do you have a law degree?

I.I. Makar: Yes, yes, I received a law degree in 1996, on June 21, 6 days before the verdict.

V.V. Ovsiienko: At which university?

I.I. Makar: Here, at the Shevchenko National University, I graduated from the law faculty.

V.V. Ovsiienko: So you studied part-time or how?

I.I. Makar: At first, for two years, it was evening classes. There were such deputy groups, we had lectures consistently every Monday, 4 or 5 pairs. It was very hard to endure. But we had lectures from good professors, the very best. And then three years of correspondence courses. I studied for 5 years.

V.V. Ovsiienko: Ivan Makar, tape 4, May 30, 2000.

I.I. Makar: It was a pleasure to listen to the lectures. There was a professor Mykheyenko—of the highest legal qualification.

V.V. Ovsiienko: And now you live off your work as a lawyer?

I.I. Makar: I make a living as a lawyer, I write a little for newspapers, and I teach a little constitutional law. It's a semi-political, semi-legal subject. I realized: to be untouchable by the authorities, you need to have several sources of income, even small ones. And at that time, I just had nowhere to go. I'm not bringing any benefit to society, nobody hears me, they won't register my newspaper. There is a court decision from July 23, 1997, to register a new newspaper under the same name “Opozytsia,” but they don't register it. More than a year has passed since the previous one ceased to exist. I went to the Ministry and submitted an application. I had the right to submit such an application one year after it ceased to exist. I submitted all the documents for registration, I fought in court for a long time. The court delayed for a long time, but it had no choice but to issue a decision obliging the Ministry of Information to register this newspaper. The court issued a decision on July 23, it was not appealed by anyone, but the newspaper was not registered. I constantly remind the court bailiffs, the bailiffs write... They have already proposed that the prosecutor's office open a criminal case against the head of that Ministry, now the State Committee for Information Policy, Television and Radio Broadcasting. It was headed by Bai at the time. The court, of course, refused, the newspaper is still not registered. There was Kulyk, there was Bai, later Drach. When Kulyk and Bai were there, I would go to that Ministry or Committee and start making noise, that here's a gang, not registering my newspaper. Bai would come out: “Oh, Ivan, why are you making a fuss—well, make a fuss, maybe you'll feel better, what can you do. You understand that I won't register the newspaper for you before Kuchma's elections. Well, come on, tell me something, at least yell at me!” And he did, and Kulyk, though they made excuses that the Presidential Administration was pressuring them. But Drach—he does it better, he doesn't let you near him at all, locks himself up under guard. He's the most democratic. And once he tells me that he won't register the newspaper because I will write all sorts of things about Kuchma. What damn business is it of his what I will write?

I was already on the verge of leaving this place, asking for asylum somewhere, because there was nothing for the family to live on. But a job came my way. Yurko Haisynsky gave me the job. He, by the way, organized my defense, for free, I didn't give him any money. He gave me a good lawyer from his firm, Viacheslav Anholenko. At the trial, the lawyer was more worried than I was. I said: “Mr. Viacheslav, don't worry! Even if you were a genius, as the Russians say, nothing here depends on your word and your efforts. Everything has already been decided in advance.” They told me directly that there was a call from the Presidential Administration. It was a ridiculous verdict. For calling Tabachnyk an academician of the rear-end sciences, they got a certificate from the Ministry of Justice that there is no such academy, and therefore it is slander...

V.V. Ovsiienko: And why “rear-end sciences”?

I.I. Makar: Well, as if he slipped in through the back. I was at his dissertation defense. Undoubtedly, he is an intelligent man, Tabachnyk, you can't take that away. But the question is, why do you write that an article is so-and-so many pages long? It's only half a page or a quarter of a page. He also writes that there is such an article, but it doesn't exist at all. If you indicate a monograph, it must be written personally by you, not in co-authorship with someone else. That's what the Regulations on Defenses require. I suggested to him, I said, you are an intelligent man, in fact, a leader of the state—so withdraw your candidacy from the defense. I was at the defense. They thought I would argue with him about history—no, I only expressed those procedural issues. You describe there, I say, in your work, one of the moments of Brezhnev's biography, so be careful that someday they don't look for commas in your biography, as you are looking in Brezhnev's biography today.

After my criminal record was cleared, I passed the exams for a lawyer and a little work appeared. At least the children stopped starving. I had several periods when the children were starving. And this is a former deputy! Such is my biography. If you ask anything else, I will tell you.

I had other things. I managed to force the Prosecutor General's Office to give me an answer and issue a decision regarding my application to open a criminal case against Kuchma. I wrestled with them for about a year and a half, but I got them to issue that decision. I appealed it to the Kyiv City Court, Judge Vasylenko, a rather decent man, overturned this decision of the Prosecutor General's Office and sent the case to the Verkhovna Rada to resolve the issue of removing Kuchma from the post of President in the order of impeachment. Yes, that was in February 1998. I have those materials. But the Prosecutor General's Office got alarmed, appealed this decision of Judge Vasylenko, the Supreme Court overturned it and sent it for further investigation to the Prosecutor General's Office. They held the case for a while, again refuse to open a criminal case. I appeal again. Another judge of the city court again overturns the decision of the Prosecutor General's Office and sends the case for further investigation. They again refuse, arguing that one cannot believe the Russian newspaper “Komsomolskaya Pravda” of May 12, 1996, where it was written that Russia allocated $100 million for the election of our President in 1994—one cannot believe that, as it was published in the mass media of a foreign state.

By the way, on this very matter on May 13, 1996, that is, 2 months after the article was published, deputy Drahomaretsky made an inquiry in the Verkhovna Rada. In the second issue of the newspaper that I gave you, there is my article about this. He made an inquiry about this to the Prosecutor General's Office and the Central Election Commission. And on May 16, 3 days later, he was gone, killed in a car on the Kyiv – Odesa highway. The circumstances of his death are very interesting. I ask you to attach this article to those materials that I wrote in the newspaper. And on May 30, by the way, I called the police, that I wanted to give testimony in the case of the death of these two deputies.

V.V. Ovsiienko: Name them.

I.I. Makar: Drahomaretsky and Myaskovsky, two deputies from Odesa. And the police ask me: “What do you want to testify about?” “I'll tell that to the investigator.” They don't summon me. I call again—they don't summon me! I go there a third time—they still don't summon me, but instead, they summoned me to court, I was on trial at the time. They always summoned me to court for 10 o'clock. And the Vatutinsky court of Kyiv—that's quite far. And why there? It was the first time in my life I was in the Vatutinsky district for a trial. This was specifically so that representatives of the press wouldn't get there. But on that day, they summoned me for nine o'clock. And here, to the apartment, the police come and start scaring my Halia. I later wrote about this to the Prosecutor General and the Security Service, the Minister of Internal Affairs. Soon I receive a letter from Mykolaiv that I must urgently come to a certain investigator who was investigating the case, but they don't specify a date. I go to the Ministry again, I try to get an interrogation for three months, and only on September 5 was I interrogated. My testimony, of course, did not make it into the case file. One deputy, Drahomaretsky, fought for it—they destroyed him, he perished. It's a dark affair. Such is our entire history. And what is sad—for the communist Drahomaretsky, Russia was a “foreign state,” for our homegrown democrats it is obviously their own, since they all read that article about Kuchma, but not one of them made an inquiry. In short, there was a patriot—and there is no patriot.

That is why I am very skeptical about all this tearing of shirts on chests, when someone says he is a patriot—it's all nonsense! Drahomaretsky was a true patriot. And there was a deputy who sought an investigation into the deaths of Drahomaretsky and Myaskovsky—he was also a patriot, and he also perished. Despite the fact that they were communists. Maybe he was a communist, joined the party once, and then didn't want to leave, just like Borys Oliynyk. Why? Because he has the opportunity to persuade others, he is among them. Borys Oliynyk can convince them that they need to change, that Ukraine is our state. Their communism is becoming more and more ritualistic, not ideological. They are becoming normal market-oriented people, most of them are becoming patriots of this state. But only someone who is with them can convince those people and lead them. You can't shoot them all—you have to live with them. And not Drach or Yavorivsky, who betrayed them three times. I, Mr. Vasyl, why I categorically did not join Rukh—because people came out of prisons, organized, and young people like me joined them. And you, Draches, enjoyed the benefits, inhaling Lenin's fumes, as they wrote then. So continue to breathe them. Those Draches are always with the benefits, always on the surface. You and I have similar fates, you didn't get a taste of that pie and I didn't get a taste. But he—he always has it. That's why Oliynyk is a much more decent man. And that man, by the way, did a great deal for our State.

But I'm talking about Drahomaretsky. I filed a motion with the prosecutor's office to overturn the decision to close the case. They blamed it on him, that he was at fault, that he caused the accident himself because he was driving. They destroyed the evidence. The prosecutor's office denied me and the police did too. I went to court, and the court told me that it was none of my business.

V.V. Ovsiienko: Is that so!

I.I. Makar: Yes. There is an official response from the court that I am not a relative of either Drahomaretsky or Myaskovsky. That is, before getting into an accident, they should have come to me and drawn up a power of attorney so that I would have the right to appeal the decisions to close the case after they were killed. Such are the matters, Mr. Vasyl.

The authorities are artificially creating this conflict between communists and non-communists; recently they themselves threw those boys to storm the office. Who are you fighting with? Do the communists have any power today? No. They have even been deprived of the Verkhovna Rada committees that they used to lead. You disagree with them and I disagree. Well, let's be disagreeable. But everything that is done in the State—the authorities do it. And what do the communists have to do with it? It turns out that there is elderberry in the garden, and an uncle in Kyiv. [A Ukrainian saying for a non-sequitur].

V.V. Ovsiienko: Mr. Ivan, were there any attempts during the investigation to portray you as somehow mentally ill? Because we, political prisoners, almost all went through such a procedure—suspicion of mental incompetence. Almost all of us were put through an examination—for two or three weeks, or at least a few hours. Did they try to do anything similar with you?

I.I. Makar: Something similar happened to me too. When they summoned my wife to the prosecutor's office in 1988, they interrogated her hard, whether I had any oddities. They wanted to play on the fact that we were living separately. And when they interrogated my older brother as a witness, he got indignant and said that you want to put Ivan in a psychiatric hospital, as you've done to more than one person—so no, no, he has no oddities, don't pin a psychiatric case on him. He told them that straight out. And they told my wife that we ask him questions, and he lies down on the table, doesn't want to answer anything, and mocks us.

V.V. Ovsiienko: But was there a psychiatric examination?

I.I. Makar: There was an examination. A psychiatrist came, talked with me right there where the interrogations were conducted. But by that time, even the psychiatrist was afraid to fabricate cases.

V.V. Ovsiienko: Uncertain times, whether one might have to answer for it?

I.I. Makar: Yes, and those who guarded me were also afraid. They, without a doubt, pushed me around a bit, twisted my arms a bit, but there was nothing significant, because they already knew that you could be held responsible for it. So I behaved a little defiantly there. This is far from what my predecessors experienced.

V.V. Ovsiienko: It was already possible to allow oneself to behave a little defiantly?

I.I. Makar: Defiantly, because Lviv was rebelling all around. That's not what's regrettable. I compare the years 1988 – 1990 with 2000. The pressure on the average person then was far less, and the level of freedom for the average person was much higher. If you tell the truth as loudly now as you did then, what happened to Drahomaretsky will happen. The rest are not touched, they don't have the opportunity to speak the truth loudly, they are economically strangled. If they know you want to say it, they simply won't let you say it. And in general, now at any enterprise, a person is fired easily. If some loner is found, he will not find support from his environment. Practically all structures larger than a dozen people are all under the control of the authorities. The authorities disorganize parties, disorganize public organizations...

V.V. Ovsiienko: They destroy them very successfully.

I.I. Makar: And they even boast about it. For example, Volkov openly stated: we created Vitrenko's party and we can create more such parties. And they are creating them, by the way! Now they have destroyed the right-wing spectrum of parties, now they are successfully destroying the left-wing spectrum. For instance, they didn't like Vitrenko, she got out of their control—well, we gave birth to you, we will destroy you. In fact, there was a faction—and the faction is gone. It's not possible to be a little bit pregnant. And to be a little bit under control—also not. I am sure that Viacheslav Chornovil at the end of his life wanted to break free from control, understood the futility of all those trinkets, medals, and regalia, and understood that what he had been striving for, what he had given many years of his life for, was being destroyed. And, perhaps, he wanted to correct his line a little—so they decided to get rid of him. At least for the fact that he did not want to support Kuchma. And one way or another, he had high authority.

Despite the fact that, as I said before, he made a bunch of mistakes. Viacheslav Maksymovych's main mistakes were, first, initiating the Galician Assembly. If there can be a Galician Assembly, why can't there be some Sloboda Ukraine Assembly? This was, in fact, initiating the federalization of the state. And that was in order to lead something, to be the leader of the Galician Assembly. Chornovil's second extremely big mistake was when Kravchuk became President and declared that he wanted to rely on Rukh. One can say all sorts of things about him today—that he is a thief, and this, and that—but the fact is that he extended a hand, so surround him with your people, give people the opportunity to head structures, to control, so that, let's say, they don't steal so massively. At least, so that nationally conscious people come to power. Then Rukh was on the rise, had influence. You lost the elections then, but they offer you—take power. They refused. Why, I ask? What played a role—that Kravchuk was once in the Central Committee? But in that Rukh, you can't count the number of former party members, and KGB agents, and all sorts of trash. So, maybe, purely personal ambitions. And who really ran the Lviv region under Chornovil? Petro Lelyk came from Moscow, who worked near Yeltsin. Entrusting Varangians from Moscow to run the region? This was Chornovil's desire to occupy everything and everyone. I told him more than once then: you want to run the region—give someone else the opportunity to be elected deputy. A person cannot sit on two chairs. Are we such a poor nation that one person must hold ten posts? This is also the trouble of our “star-struck” behavior. It's not good when a person has no personal ambition, but when these ambitions are overflowing, and the person cannot realistically assess themselves—that is a great misfortune. When a person has no brakes, they face the most difficult test—the test of “copper pipes.” There is no remedy for that. That is the hardest test. A person who has been through fire and water has a great chance of hearing the copper pipes in their honor. Will they withstand it?

I'll say this. Why did I attack Tabachnyk and Kuchma so much? The plan to establish a dictatorship had matured in my mind when Kravchuk was still in charge. I understood that pro-Moscow forces would remove Kravchuk, and the only possibility was the establishment of a dictatorship. Then Kuchma established an anti-national dictatorship. But one could have tried to establish a national dictatorship. Although it's unlikely that would have succeeded. Because our nation is oppressed and the entire elite—it is not a national elite. Ethnic Ukrainians are mainly in villages and small towns, in the processing industry. But one could have tried. I understood that they would overthrow Kravchuk, and in the autumn of 1993, I spoke with Mykhailo Horyn on this topic. Mykhailo Horyn told me: “You write a few pages, and I'll arrange a meeting with Kravchuk.” He really did arrange it, but the apparatus twisted things so that the meeting did not take place. Kravchuk did not have his own entourage, Rukh led by Chornovil refused him an entourage. And the entourage that he had was playing against him.

I really had a developed plan for establishing a Ukrainian dictatorship led by Kravchuk, I had my calculations. Tabachnyk and Kuchma did almost the same thing. Kravchuk had power and was a far smarter man. I had a plan for establishing a dictatorship in Ukraine. But I doubt that even Kravchuk would have been able to realize it. Most likely, he would have been afraid. It would have meant taking on moral responsibility, not knowing if it would turn out for the better. It would have meant removing someone, firing someone, demonstrating a fight against crime, vilifying the parliament. That is, doing what Kuchma later did, starting in 1994, when he came to power. To take responsibility—you have to be absolutely sure that it is necessary and that it will bring something good in the future.

V.V. Ovsiienko: That's not Kravchuk's character, he couldn't have done that.

I.I. Makar: Maybe so. But if Leonid Makarovych had had the proper entourage... But as it was—a completely occupational power came in, which, by the way, the national democrats led by Chornovil then supported for some strange reason. Well, I guess that's enough.

V.V. Ovsiienko: Yes, that's enough. Today is May 30, 2000, Ivan Makar was speaking, and Vasyl Ovsiienko was recording.

[End of recording]

Recorded on May 29 and 30, 2000. Edited June 12 – 18, 2007.

Corrections by Ivan Makar on June 22, 2007.