RIZNYKIV, OLEKSA SERHIYOVYCH

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An Interview with Oleksa Serhiyovych Riznykiv

(Final corrections by O. Riznykiv made on December 20, 2005).

V.V. Ovsienko: Today is March 25, 2000. At a rally on Independence Square commemorating the anniversary of Viacheslav Chornovil’s death, I met Oleksa Riznykiv from Odesa. At 6:00 p.m., I began recording a conversation with him at the RKhP office at 27 Sahaidachnoho Street. We later continued our conversation on the street and finished it at the home of Ivan Malyuta on Sholom Aleichem Street, with Mr. Ivan Malyuta participating. So, Mr. Oleksa Riznykiv speaks, and Vasyl Ovsienko records.

HOW WE WERE ZOMBIFIED IN SCHOOL

O.S. Riznykiv: I am Oleksa Riznykiv, son of Serhiy. The village my father comes from, in the Donbas, is called Riznykivka. I visited it in 1983, and with some ineffable feeling of piety, I gazed at the huge letters at the entrance to the village: “Riznykivka.” And then a bus comes up from the hollow, and on its front windshield is the same inscription—RIZNYKIVKA!! Can you imagine? A village with my name!

It used to be the Yamskyi Raion, and now it’s the Siverskyi Raion of the Donetsk Oblast. So, the Riznyks or Riznykovs live there—the surname varies like that. In my passport, it’s written “Riznykiv” in Ukrainian and “Reznikov” in Russian. And in prison, the cops would call me out: “Prisoner Reznikov, with your things, to the exit!”

My father was born in this village in 1907. He grew up there, and around 1928–29, he and his family were dekulakized. So he was twenty-one or twenty-two then, about the same age I was at my first arrest. I didn't know about this dekulakization until 1973. And when I was in prison for the second time, my father came for a visit and said, with tears in his eyes: “Lyonya, what is this? These villages—Chusova, Vsekhsvyatska, Lysva—I walked through all of them on foot when I was escaping from here back home to the Donbas.” I ask: “How so? Why were you here?” And he says: “Well, we were dekulakized.” “Why didn’t you tell me this before?” “We didn’t want to turn you even more against the authorities…”

My father had two sisters—Oksana and Polina. The fascists walled Polina up alive somewhere around 1943–1944, before the liberation of the Donbas, for helping partisans. They walled her up—alive!—and she died there. Oksana lived for a long time after that. There was also a brother, Semen—there were four of them in the family. They were dekulakized and sent to the Perm Oblast, where I later served my sentence.

My father told me how they managed their farm, how the land kept shrinking.

My mother, Kateryna Ivanivna Solohub, born in 1905, was from the village of Liudvynka, or Osypivka, or Yosypivka, or Yuzefpil. It’s all the same word. And Liudvynka is not far from the Osypivka station, on the narrow-gauge railway line from Kirovohrad towards Haysyn. Vilshanskyi Raion, Yosypivka village. She had eight brothers, all deceased now. Her brothers—my uncles—were very interesting. I knew almost all of them, except for those who died in the war—two were killed, Prohor and Yustym. But Uncle Demyan lived a long time. He visited us often, a bachelor, a drinker, a real Cossack character. His story stuck with me—this was when I started thinking about the reasons for the Bolsheviks’ victory over the young Ukrainian Republic in 1920.

He would say: “In 1918 or 1919, the haidamaks came to our village. They called a meeting and said: ‘Whoever wants to join us, sign up, we’ll shave your heads, you’ll have an oseledets on your head.’ And he signed up. Well, my mother told me this too. My uncle didn’t talk about it much, but my mother said he came home and said: ‘Dad, I’ve already signed up for the haidamaks.’ When his father heard this: ‘Are you crazy? What do you mean? Get in there!’ He forced him into the cellar and locked him in until the haidamaks left the village. They had shaved his head, so he hid for maybe a week so people wouldn't see his shaven head. A little later, the Bolsheviks came, gathered a meeting, and took all the men with them. They didn’t ask: who wants to come with us. They forcibly conscripted everyone, and the boys went and fought for the Bolsheviks—that was their tactic. And we Ukrainians, so soft, so gentle: ‘Whoever wants to—go and fight.’ Like in the song:

А хто піде з нами – буде славу мати!

Ми йдем за Вкраїну воювати!

But if we had mobilized all the young men back then, we would have had an army, we would have had strength. Our Ukrainian soft-heartedness was our undoing… And what a State we would have now!

My father was Serhiy Ivanovych. His grandfather, Vasyl, lived to be one hundred and one. At around age 90, he made himself a coffin and slept in it for a long time, wanting to die in it. But death wouldn’t come, so he chopped up the coffin and lived on and on!

My father told me about the Perm region: “My father and mother told me that they would probably die here, in the Urals. ‘But you, Sirozha, are young, you need to live… So, run away.’ They got some fake documents, and there were six of us boys, we set off with those forged papers to the West, towards Moscow. We rode on freight trains at night and slept somewhere in the taiga during the day.” My father said that he was the only one of the six to reach Moscow. It was simply a miracle. In Moscow, he got lucky again—there was a man who bought him a ticket to Yenakiieve.

My father believed he was so fortunate because he was a believer, that God was helping him. He made it home to Yenakiieve. He gets off the train at the station and comes face to face with the man who had dekulakized them. The man looks at my father, my father at him. “And then it dawned on me—I spun around and fled!” He had to live under a different name for a whole year. He started trading something, some vegetables, and then became a professional salesman. That was his profession; he worked his whole life as a salesman, then as a store manager—once they moved to Pervomaisk.

So, my father and mother met and married around 1936 in Yenakiieve. I was born there on February 24, 1937—right when the executions were happening, when thousands, millions of people were being killed. I sometimes imagine that I inherited someone’s soul… In my collection “Ternovyi Vohon” (The Thorn Fire), published in 1993 in Kyiv by Ukrainskyi Pysmennyk, for which I received the Pavlo Tychyna Prize, there is this poem on page 26:

  BORN IN THIRTY-SEVEN

У тридцять сьомому, вночі,

Коли із крику, болю, крові

Дитям надії і любові

З'явився я – іще  нічим –

Матерії рухома крихта,

Без тіла ще і без душі, –

Чекали мого вдиху-крику

Десятки душ, іще чужих.

Чиї то крила шелестіли,

Чиї то душі прилетіли,

Кого покинули, чого?

Чом спрагло прагли і хотіли

Дев'ятимісячного тіла,

Іще бездушного мого?

(These souls that flew above me—they were the souls that had escaped that night from the people arrested and shot by Stalin's Chekists)

В лютневій лютій заметілі

Палахкотіли, мерехтіли,

Як рваний бурею вогонь,

Роїлись, кублились, сплітались,

Ясними іскрами здавались

Прозорі краплі з рваних ран,

Бо були з коренями  рвані

У їх останньому світанні,

У першому з моїх світань.

Із першим, із судомним вдихом

Чию вдихнув, якщо одну,

Таким несамовитим криком

Її зустрінувши – чому?

Чию верстаю далі долю

Із тридцять сьомого, того?

…Спадковість полум'я і болю

Народу їхнього, мого.

Perhaps I am continuing their fate with my own.

You see, Mr. Vasyl, I was born into a family that spoke Ukrainian. There was almost no national consciousness there. Well, there was a normal consciousness. What always surprised me was that my mother clearly distinguished between a Jew and katsaps. “Well, she’s a katsapka! What are you thinking, katsapkas aren’t good homemakers, don’t take a katsapka, don’t marry a katsapka, are you crazy? And that one—he's a Jew. There were many of them in our village, in Liudvynka, a whole neighborhood. Now they’ve all moved away to Odesa, to Pervomaisk.” There was no hatred or contempt from my mother towards them, just a clear distinction—that’s us, and that’s them. But there was also none of that pride in their own people that the Poles, Lithuanians, or Latvians have, the kind we want to instill in our people now. I believe it was due to a lack, a shortage, or even an absence of national upbringing. At home, I spoke Ukrainian.

It was in Yenakiieve that I started writing poetry. It happened in the fall of 1947. Our Ukrainian language teacher gave us a homework assignment—to write a composition using the words: forest, partisans, roundup, fascists, shooting, battle, victory… For some reason, I decided to write it in verse. I turned in my notebook. The next day, I see the teacher take my notebook from the pile and say: “Children, we have a poet in our class!” And she reads it aloud. From that day on, they started calling me a poet.

In 1944, I started the first grade in Yenakiieve. I was already in the second grade when my father returned from the war in 1946.

I should mention that he went to war the day after it was declared. I was about four years old then. We lived on the edge of Yenakiieve, near a marketplace. The dust was about ten to fifteen centimeters deep. I’m running, barefoot of course, the scorching hot dust squirting between my toes, and suddenly—I hear sirens. All the sirens in Yenakiieve started wailing. I think: “My God, my God, what is happening?” I run home and ask: “Mama, what’s wrong?” “The war has started,” she says, crying.

Sometime towards evening, the draft notice arrived. The next day, they packed my father’s things, he put me on his shoulders and carried me to the station. They got into the train car, my father stuck his hand out of the window and waved to us, and the train shunted back and forth. My mother and I stood there, she was crying, and I was crying—or maybe not. My father went off to war. A week or two later, the Germans were getting closer. My mother and I put some things on a wheelbarrow and started to retreat. A whole column of people was walking east across the fields. We walk and walk, past forest belts, the corn is already tall—we’ve gone quite a distance, maybe a few kilometers. I remember it was raining; we spent the night somewhere in the hay. Then German planes flew over us, swooping and shooting, and then a rumor came: “Where are you going? The Germans are already ahead.”

We turned back. I approached the house, and I see my wooden rocking horse standing by the house. I got on it and started rocking, waving my saber…

Then the Germans and Italians came, dressed in black. The months of occupation began. To save us from the roundups, my mother came up with a ruse—she got a piece of paper somewhere with a German inscription saying there was a typhus patient in the house. I remember during the roundups, my mother would sit me on the windowsill, I’d press that piece of paper to the glass, the German soldiers would come to the window, read it, grumble something, and walk away. And my mother would hide, even crawling under the bed, thinking they might burst into the house. But they would read it and go on their way.

I remember the dozens, hundreds of bombs, shells, and cartridges lying around the streets, and we boys would take them all apart, burning the gunpowder. It would burn and jump. There was all sorts of gunpowder—big tubes, small ones, and sand-like powder—my whole childhood was spent amidst this stuff.

And then the Soviet troops arrived. In the fall of 1944, I entered the first grade in Yenakiieve. I remember the high slag heaps; I loved looking down at the city from them—tiny buses, tiny people! And a strong wind blowing! And sometimes I would slide down on my schoolbag or on some board. Those were thrilling moments!

My father didn’t return until 1946. He had been in a fascist prison camp for a while and probably in some Soviet camp too, near Moscow. I remember we were visiting my mother’s village that year, in Liudvynka. It was summer, and I was playing with my cousin Valik. They came running and told me: “Your father is back, go to Aunt Vira’s!” I arrived, anxious and agitated. He caught me, lifted me into his arms like this, hugged me, and pressed me to him. I started addressing him formally as “Vy,” because he was some unfamiliar, estranged man… I used the informal “ty” with my mother, but the formal “Vy” with my father. And I addressed him as “Vy” for the rest of my life. I started addressing my mother as “Vy” in 1961, when I returned from my first imprisonment. Because I had realized there was this Ukrainian custom, that children address their mother and father as “Vy.” And I became a Ukrainian in 1960… But I’ll get to that later…

So we are living our lives. My father had promised God that if he returned home alive, they would have a child. And my little sister Valya was born. My mother was forty-two at the time—she had me at thirty-two and my sister at forty-two, so Valya is ten years younger.

She’s a year old—and there’s a terrible famine in the Donbas; we have nothing to eat. Oil cake—I walk around, sucking on a piece of oil cake like a candy. And when we boil oil cake—it bubbles and bubbles like that! We eat the steamed oil cake with a spoon, like some kind of delicacy. One time, my mother found half a bucket of potato peels and said: “They threw these out behind the restaurant.” She brought them home, washed them, somehow chopped them up, and made cutlets. I took one of those cutlets, started to eat it, but it wouldn’t go down, I couldn’t swallow it! Those peels, one on top of the other, got stuck in my throat, and I started to vomit, to bring them up. My mother cried and said to my father: “No, we can’t live like this. Let’s go to my homeland.”

My mother had some relatives in Pervomaisk; she was from the Kirovohrad region, Vilshanskyi Raion, the village of Liudvynka, 25 km from Pervomaisk. Some “host”—that’s what we called the relative we stayed with. It was the spring of 1948, Valya was still little. We arrived in Pervomaisk by train. We got off at the Holta station, and to get to the “host,” we had to go to Orlyk, crossing two rivers called the Boh and the Syniukha. The bridges over them are right at their confluence—one bridge to Bohopil, the other immediately from Bohopil to Orlyk. The bridges there are wooden, and every year the ice floes tear them down. This had happened just before our arrival. There were pontoons—large boats for about 40–50 people. With difficulty, we got on a pontoon and crossed to the other side. We came to the “host’s” house and started living there. My father went to look for work in some stores, and he enrolled me in school. Near us was School No. 12, a Russian-language one. He says: “You know what? Go to the Russian school. Because you’ll have to apply to an institute, and everything there is in Russian, so it will be easier for you.”

Well, what could I do? My father enrolled me in the Russian school, and there began my torments, which lasted for more than a year. I barely made it through the spring quarter: I didn’t know any Russian at all. In the Ukrainian school in Yenakiieve, I was a straight-A student, but here I dropped to Cs and Ds because I didn’t know what ‘umnozheniye’ or ‘deleniye’ was…

This is 1948—I’m only in the fourth grade. They laugh at me for my Ukrainian “h” sound—I can’t pronounce the hard “g” like they do. The children mock me, bully me, I can’t answer in class, I don’t know what “sever” is, I don’t know what “yug” is, I’m ashamed to say the word “kak”—I can’t say “kakat” [which sounds like the word for “to poop”]. It felt awkward, and there, every other word is “kakoy,” “kakaya,” “kak.” It was a real joke, yes.

But, one way or another, over the summer and fall, I got a bit used to it and continued my studies at that school.

A year later, we moved from that Orlyk district to Bohopil—it’s between the Buh and the Syniukha. By the way, Buh is the Polish name; our ancient name was Boh. Here, the Boh and the Syniukha merge, and between them is Bohopil—not Buhopil. The name Bohopil preserves the old name of the river BOH! That is, the city of God or the city on the Boh. And not far from our shack was School No. 17, a Ukrainian one. My father, instead of transferring me here, to the Ukrainian school, stuck with No. 12, the Russian one: “No, you go there.” That meant I had to cross the Syniukha River. I continued my studies there. Only every spring, when the bridges were washed out, I would attend No. 17.

And at School No. 17, Mykola Vinhranovskyi and Vitaliy Kolodiy were students—these were the boys I met and became closer with in 1952, when Vasyl Poliryanovych Hodovanyi went around all the schools, gathered the poets, and created a literary studio—first at the library, then at the newspaper “Prybuzkyi Komunar.” We went there—Andriy Yarmulskyi, Vitaliy Kolodiy, Mykola Vinhranovskyi—those who later became members of the Writers’ Union.

Back in Yenakiieve, I had also started writing poetry. It happened in the fall of 1947. Our Ukrainian language teacher gave us a homework assignment—to write a composition using the words: forest, partisans, roundup, fascists, shooting, battle, victory… For some reason, I decided to write it in verse. I turned in my notebook. The next day, I see the teacher take my notebook from the pile and say: “Children, we have a poet in our class!” And she reads it aloud. From that day on, they started calling me a poet.

While studying at this Russian school, I wrote in Russian, and less often in Ukrainian. My first published poem, in 1952 in the district newspaper “Prybuzkyi Komunar,” was in Russian:

Ветерок весенний повевает,

Он приносит радость и весну,

Экскаватор по полю шагает,

По морскому будущему дну…

And when Stalin died in 1953, our homeroom teacher came into the classroom with these terrified, tear-stained eyes: “Children, the great leader Stalin has died!” Right then, as the girls started crying, I sat down, took my pen, and began to write a poem:

Клянемся Вам, родной товарищ Сталин,

Что Ваше дело будем продолжать.

I already had several poems about Stalin. I wrote that we vote for you, that Stalin is our sun, Stalin is our light. I don’t know if I can be condemned for this, but deep down I knew that Stalin was the antichrist. My mother had told me so: “Stalin is the antichrist, Lenin is the antichrist. But at school—you watch yourself, don’t tell anyone about this. And know that God exists in this world.” I knew the “Our Father;” she had taught it to me from a young age, since I was two or three, and I went to church when it was possible. But when I started school, she said: “You be careful there, don’t let it slip that God exists, that you believe in God. Somehow, avoid the question, just stay quiet. And Stalin, Lenin—they are antichrists, a gang that has seized everything and destroyed it!” And she spoke of the number 666, that it was in Lenin’s name. My parents always went to church and were not afraid, no matter what anyone said to them: “We believe in God and we go to church.” Some neighbors laughed at us. There was one communist woman who was always reproaching us: “Aha, you go to church?” When it was Pascha (Easter) or Christmas—those were the biggest holidays for my mother. May Day and the October Revolution holidays—she didn’t recognize them and never prepared for them—psh, is that a holiday? Well, if someone came over, she would prepare something. But Pascha, the Birth of Christ—she would prepare for a week or two, buying meats, my father would bring home pork belly from the market, she would stuff it, marinate it with spices, and cook it. And for Christmas, we would also slaughter our own pig. And I got used to it, I knew these were major holidays.

My mother knew all the religious holidays; she didn’t live by dates, but from one holiday to the next: “This will be Makoviya, and this is that, that, that.” When she saw that book by Voropay, she said: “All of this was preserved in our village.” She knew everything, and she and my father lived by it. My God, when she died—a whole culture died with her, a whole universe of Ukrainian culture passed away with her! For her, everything Ukrainian was organic, natural. And those katsaps, Jews—they were foreign, not ours! My cousin had some katsap, Volodymyr, who started courting her. He latched onto her on the train—she was beautiful—and fell in love. And my mother: “Tsk, but he’s a katsap!” “Yes,” says Lida Mykytova, “but he’s latched on so tight I can’t get rid of him.” They live together for a month, two, three. When he showed his stupid character, my mother said: “See, that’s what katsaps are like.” And he’s jealous of her, runs around looking for her wherever she goes. My father even beat him once when he came to our house and shouted: “You’ve hidden her there, she’s sitting in there somewhere.” And my mother: “That’s what katsaps are like.” Such was her organic Ukrainian culture.

V.V. Ovsienko: And how long has your mother been gone?

O.S. Riznykiv: Since 1990. So, I wrote that poem about Stalin. The teacher put it in the wall newspaper, in a black frame, hung it on the wall that same day. I came home, and my mother says: “Finally, that bandit is gone!” My God, and some people were afraid to even talk about it!

“SOBOZON”

In 1954, I graduated from school. I went out into the world so divided, because deep down I believed in God, but school had taught me that He doesn’t exist. By then, they had started criticizing Stalin, his personality cult.

That year, 1954, I applied to the mathematics department at Odesa University because math came easily to me—I wouldn’t go to school until I had solved the problem. And then everyone got used to copying from me. I would arrive about ten minutes early, and my classmates would copy. And if I was late and they didn’t have time to copy, the teacher would ask: “Well, who solved the problem?” I would stand up. “Oh, once again, only Reznikov managed it.” I loved solving problems, so I went for mathematics, but I didn’t pass the competitive admission.

I returned to Pervomaisk and worked at the inventory bureau for a year, maybe less. I performed in an amateur theater in Bohopil; we staged Nekrasov’s play “Autumn Boredom” with Mykola Vinhranovskyi. I wrote a lot, prepared to apply again, but this time to the philology department, because I write poetry, and the newspaper editors gave me a recommendation, stating that I was published in their paper. I applied to the Russian department. Then I heard that the competition for the Ukrainian department was lower. I withdrew my documents and submitted them to the Ukrainian department. And again, I didn’t get in—I had some Cs, I think. In history, it seems, and I needed an A… It was a tragedy! I couldn’t go back to Pervomaisk again.

So, a friend and I decided to go to ODKhTU—the Odesa State Art and Technical School, to the lighting technology department. They had a shortage of applicants, so Volodia Kovalenko and I passed a couple more exams and became theater students! There were only seven people in our group. We settled into the dormitory. Next to us was the makeup department, where Leonid Osyka was studying—he was about three years younger than me, or so. He’s still around, became a famous film director, but he’s very ill. His friend, Borys Savchenko, became a well-known film actor. They are artists; they paint. There was also a props department and a costume department. You have to be able to draw for those, too. But in the lighting department, we didn’t have to take a drawing exam. We just passed the exams—and we were theatrical lighting technicians. We live in Odesa and do our practical training in all the Odesa theaters. The studies were very interesting! We studied the history of world culture, theater, we watched performances at all of Odesa’s theaters, and we were extras in crowd scenes…

I enrolled in 1955, for a two-and-a-half-year program. I studied until the spring of 1958. I listen to how people talk, and I do the same: in Russian, sometimes in Ukrainian. Eleven people live with me in my dormitory room. That Lyonya Osyka was already telling such jokes back then—you could already see he was a talented boy. But he was young, he enrolled after the eighth grade for a four-year program, and I was older, after the tenth grade.

Everything got mixed up there, that Odesa language… Well, and the swearing—but I dealt with swearing back in school. Now this profanity has become much more widespread. But at home, if I said “chort” [devil] in front of my mother, she’d say: “What?! Don’t you dare use that word!” “Then what should I say?” “Well, say ‘the unclean one,’ don’t name him. If you name him, he’ll be right here.” I stopped talking like that. At school, all the kids, boys in the ninth, tenth grade—they swear all the time. I think: well, can’t I? Let me try. I tried to swear once or twice—but it was as if my lips were frozen, my tongue wouldn’t turn. I thought to myself: what do I need this for? Ah, I won’t. So to this day, I don’t use swear words. And later I learned from the Bible that what defiles a person is what comes out of their mouth. Even when I tell a joke, I use different words. But the Odesa slang—it was there then, and it’s still there now among students. They were like that back then, too. We live in the dormitory, communicating in Odesa slang.

One time, I was standing on the street reading newspapers, because I loved to read. It’s been like that since childhood. I started buying books in Pervomaisk around 1948. My father would give me money for the movies or something, and I’d go buy a book. I especially loved technical books. About the Moon, stars, planets—astronomy books. I collected books in series. I still have them, and on each one, I wrote the year I bought it. So, I’m standing there, reading a newspaper. Well, what was there to read—maybe a feuilleton on the fourth page. I hear someone stop behind me: “Oh, oh, what a gang, what a gang, just look at this! This is the organ of the Communist Party, and look, ‘the Communist Party is the smartest.’ How can they do that, how immodest.” He’s cussing out the party in Odesa slang: “How can they praise themselves like that, it’s the organ of the Communist Party—the newspaper ‘Pravda.’ If I started praising myself, everyone would say I’m crazy—and here the party is praising itself!” I look at him cautiously—an ordinary, normal man.

Later, I began to suspect he did it on purpose, to influence me. Because later, I myself would sometimes come to Kyiv and ask a boy something in Ukrainian on the street, strike up a conversation, and say that the commies are such bandits. I thought, now he too will go on his way and wonder why that man said the communists are bad. But at that moment, I just listened silently, yet it stuck with me. I told my friends in the dormitory: “Look at this, it’s the organ of the Communist Party, and it’s praising itself for being the smartest party. That’s somehow not right.” That was probably the first step towards consciousness.

I often visited Pervomaisk. There was a literary studio there, and I would meet with the boys, we’d read poetry, talk about various topics.

In February 1958, I graduated from my school and received an assignment to the Kirovohrad Ukrainian Music and Drama Theater named after Kropyvnytskyi. In April, I got a job as a lighting technician, and they issued me a work record book. I get to know the guys, they give me a room in the dormitory on the main street of Kirovohrad—that building has since been demolished. Four of us live there: Hryhoriy Cheriomushev, a chorister, who has since passed away as an Honored Artist. Kubyshkin, also a budding artist, and Andriy, from the village of Adzhamka, a handsome young man, but he really loved to drink. The four of us lived in one small room.

One time I’m standing backstage, by my spotlight, during a performance of “Natalka-Poltavka.” The actress is singing: “The winds are blowing, the strong winds, bending the trees. Oh, how my heart aches, but the tears do not flow.” She sings so beautifully, in such a beautiful language, that tears came to my eyes. The curtain falls, she bends down to her leg and says: “Akh, chort, kak ya udarilas” [Oh, hell, how I hurt myself]. It struck me so sharply, I thought: pfft, damn, what is this—“Akh chort, kak ya udarilas.” Those words still echo in my ears, 42 years later. That was also a push towards Ukrainianness. I wrote down somewhere on a piece of paper:

  Я забув українську мову

  Я забув Запорізьку Січ.

  Як мені повернути знову

  Ту свободу і рідну річ?

One day, Cheriomushev and I are walking from the theater, speaking Russian—all the actors speak that way. Well, there were two or three people in the theater who also spoke Ukrainian in their daily lives. But the others—only on stage, and among themselves, po-russki [in Russian]. We’re walking along and see a banner hanging: “Week of Street Traffic.” I say: “Hryts, let’s have a week of the Ukrainian language, so we don’t forget it. We work in a Ukrainian theater, but we speak Russian.” “Why not, let’s do it, you’re right. Let’s give it a try.” And he himself is a bit of a Gypsy. Half-Gypsy. He played Stetsko his whole life—that famous character. A talented guy, he had Gypsy blood. Handsome—all the girls fell for him. So, for a week, we speak Ukrainian. We made a promise to ourselves. During that week, I even wrote letters home in Ukrainian. I came to Pervomaisk—I speak Ukrainian with the guys on the street, and they’re surprised: “Chto takoye, chto takoye?” [What’s this, what’s this?] “Well, we’re forgetting the Ukrainian language. So we’re having a week of the Ukrainian language.” In that week, I wrote several poems in Ukrainian. Such was my approach to Ukrainianness. This was the spring and summer of 1958… That’s when Khrushchev denounced the cult of personality, and troops were sent into Hungary.

V.V. Ovsienko: That was back in 1956.

O.S. Riznykiv: Yes, they were sent in 1956. But over those two years, something was brewing in my head. I go to Pervomaisk, it’s a four-hour train ride from Bohopil to Kirovohrad. Saturday, Sunday, on the weekends—we meet with the guys, grab a bottle of wine, and go to the main street, Shevchenko Street. There was a bread factory there where a plumber or mechanic named Gavrilov worked. And Stanislav Shvets worked at this factory. We would start a conversation, and Gavrilov would talk about what the NEP was, how in one year everything appeared—all sorts of goods, leather appeared, people began to live, organizing small independent enterprises, shops. Gavrilov praised the NEP, and we, like a sponge, soaked it all in (he spoke Russian). Then we’d walk on, discussing it among ourselves: “My God, what is happening? So, the communists seized power—they’re a gang, this Stalin is such a bandit? Beria—he was a scoundrel too! And this is what ruled over us? Organized famines, repressions, trampled the people?! No, boys, we have to do something.”

But what to do? We were taught in school—the Bolsheviks in 1917, and our Ukrainian parties, made leaflets, held May Day rallies. Let’s write a leaflet. Volodymyr Barsukivskyi and I take it upon ourselves. After finishing his technical school, he had come from Odesa to work for three years as a foreman at a food processing plant. This is his second year. He writes pessimistic poems. I also write pessimistic poems, things like:

Если жизнь со мною сыграла шутку,

Не пора ль трагедией кончать?

I love Mayakovsky, I learn his poems by heart, I write in the style of Mayakovsky myself. His twelve-volume collection was just coming out then. I write a poem:

Вам, не знающим с жиру делать что,

Тратящим тысячи на пустяки,

Как вам не стыдно отделываться мелочью,

Брошенной в ладонь народной руки? (the people as a beggar)

О ней  толпы крика гуляют везде,

Лезут в глаза, в уши и в рот,

А шепотку о том, что вами народ раздет,

Не откроют даже ворот.

In the style of Mayakovsky. It’s interesting, why did Mayakovsky die—we also wondered why he shot himself. That’s another interesting thing. I think and think, and I come to the conclusion that he must have also become disillusioned with communist ideas. I write a poem:

Вы, Маяковский, наш поэт,

И потому кончина Ваша

Не поднимает вас, о нет.

Она не делает Вас краше.

Я понимаю ваш конец

Как, может быть, никто на свете:

Мчать Дон Кихотом на коне,

И что он мертвый, вдруг заметить.

Среди пустыни в знойный день

Увидеть странником гонимым

Родник и пальмы, жизнь и тень,

Стремится к ним неукротимо –

И вдруг с отчаяньем узнать,

Что это лишь обман природы,

Пустой мираж, виденье сна,

Ии неизвестно, где же отдых.

Вы это все перенесли.

Сначала до войны, до первой,

Тупых мещан начавши злить,

Трепая их сердца и нервы.

Вы научились убивать

Порок и подлость острым словом.

И доставляло радость Вам

Орать в глаза тупоголовым.

Вы это делали, но вот

Прошел по камням Петрограда

В году семнадцатом народ

Ккровавой поступью парада.

Что было ждать, чего бояться?

Не груды омертвевших тел,

И целый ворох прокламаций

Из "Окон РОСТа" полетел.

Безоговорочно принявши

Все, что сулил вам новый век,

Отбросив мысли, чувства Ваши,

Вы стали верить голове.

И, прославляя путь, которым

Мы только, только лишь пошли,

Вы снова те же разговоры

На новый лад перевели.

There was something about how he berated philistines:

Что о Есенине писали

Вы в эти пьяные года

К нему, к его уму взывали

Вы справедливо, это да.

Ведь разве выход –  резать вены,

Петлю на шею –  и конец?

Нет, как и стойка на коленях,

В какой находится подлец.

Искореняя «пережитки»,

Порок и пошлость, и разврат,

Всю душу без малейшей скидки

Хотели Правде вы отдать.

О Дон Кихот, вошедший смело

В двадцатый век, проклятый век,

Когда кончает жизнь без дела

Гигантской силы человек!

Что о Есенине писали

Вы в эти пьяные года?

К нему, к его уму взывали

Вы справедливо, это да.

Ведь разве выход – резать вены,

Петлю на шею – и конец!?

Нет, как и стойка на коленях,

В какой находится подлец.

Есенин водкою убитый.

И не о нём ведётся речь,

Но, Маяковский, вы то, вы то,

Как не сумели уберечь

Себя от вечной тьмы могилы,

Где всё – покой  и тишина

Не сберегли могучей силы?

Настали хуже времена,

Являлись признаки регалий,

И вот тогда во цвете лет,

Вы тем же кончили, поэт,

За что Есенина ругали.

На зелье Вы не очень падкий

И потому-то сгоряча

Вы предпочли уж замолчать,

Чем петь вполголоса с оглядкой

И бить всего лишь в полплеча.

О, та ненавистная пуля,

Что ум стегнула, словно кнут -

Она тогда Вам рот замкнула,

А нам сейчас не отомкнуть.

Ужели выхода другого

Вы не могли никак найти,

Чем просто молча и сурово

Сойти из трудного пути?

И потому, хоть Вы поэт

не рядовой, кончина Ваша

Не поднимает Вас, о нет,

Она не делает Вас краше!

I remember this poem, but unfortunately, I barely remember another, wonderful poem. It goes something like this:

  Меж прозаичных буден

  Что-то должно случиться:

Ходит звонарь по людям,

  В души людей стучится:

  “Люди! Откройте души

  звон мой весёлый слушать!

Поотпирайте двери –

Будет по вашей вере!”

Но, в рот воды набравши,

Люди молчат, не веря…

  “Жены и дети наши –

  Тюрем живые двери!..»

In short, we have children, and we cannot sacrifice our wives and children. That was the gist of this poem.

One time I wrote these lines:

Денег рубля не нужно,

Лишь бы свободным быть!

Было бы что покушать,

Было бы чем запить!

And that’s all, nothing else is needed, freedom is the main thing. I had a poem like that. Unfortunately, that’s all I remember of it. From those times, I have preserved those two lines:

Я забув українську мову,

Я забув Запорізьку Січ, – 

that’s what I had written on a piece of paper.

This is how I came to the moment when Volodia Barsukivskyi, Stanislav Shvets, and I sat down to write a leaflet. We wrote it over several months. It was summer. We would sit on the bank of the Syniukha in a place where we could see anyone approaching, so we could hide the sheet of paper. We used dictionaries of foreign words, we chose our words carefully, thinking: how should we begin? We needed to start in a way that would make the reader stop and read the leaflet:

“An appeal to the people.

Dear friends and comrades, you are being addressed by people who have found the courage to speak out against the handful of communists who have seized power.

Don’t you smile ironically when you listen to the radio or read the newspapers?”

Let’s read the leaflet, paragraph by paragraph, section by section.

Volodymyr BARSUKIVSKYI, Oleksa RIZNYKIV

“AN APPEAL TO THE PEOPLE

DEAR FRIENDS AND COMRADES!

  People who have found the strength and courage to oppose the hateful dictatorial policy of the party and the current rulers are appealing to your minds and hearts.

FRIENDS!

  Look at the world with enlightened eyes, cast off the veil of deceitful words with which the handful of communists who have seized power entangle you through newspapers and radio.

  Don’t you smile ironically when reading newspapers or listening to the radio, are you not outraged by the vile lies and duplicity that permeate every phrase, every speech?

  They shout about freedom and democracy, but it is freedom in a cage, and the people’s rule has been stifled and replaced by the rule of the party elite.

  They shout about the wealth of the people, about the rise in their well-being, but the people, meanwhile, are poorer than before the revolution.

  A worker cannot feed himself on his meager salary, let alone a family.

   And how does the peasant live? The land, watered with the sweat of his grandfathers and fathers, was taken from him. Forced into a collective farm, having no interest, no attachment to the land, he leaves for the city to escape the rural misery.

  But what will he find there?

  The same lack of rights, poverty, and a downtrodden existence.

  Shortages of food, shoes, and clothing, high prices, and meager earnings—these are all the achievements of over forty years, during which the people have seen nothing but wars, ruin, famine, tyranny, and deceit.

  The foolish and dictatorial policy of the Communist Party, both at home and abroad, is leading the world to a split, to an unbridled arms race with the expenditure of countless public funds, and brings confusion and fear for the future into the hearts of people.

   FRIENDS AND COMRADES!

  We desire brotherhood, true brotherhood, not enmity between the peoples of all countries of the world!

  Enough of splitting the world into two so-called “camps”!

  Down with the fascist dictatorship of the party!

  We need genuine freedom of thought, speech, and the press!!

  We stand for the recognition of religion and the church by the state!

  Down with atheistic propaganda!

  Long live the genuine freedom of the people!

  Union for the Liberation of the People (“SOBOZON”)

To make it more convincing, we signed the leaflet: “Union for the Liberation of the People (SOBOZON),” although no such organization existed. The text of this leaflet has now been published in the journal “Zona,” No. 7, 1994, then in my book of prose “Z Liudei” (From the People) (Drohobych, 2000, on page 368). And recently, the book “My iz GULAGa” (We Are from the GULAG) was published by the Odesa “Memorial.” It includes my story about our leaflet and my first conviction. The text of the leaflet is essentially reprinted from “Zona.” The title of the article is “The Boys Who Revealed the King’s Nakedness”: Oh, look, the king is naked! That’s who we were back then.

We wrote a unique leaflet. Anyone I read it to now is amazed and says: “You wrote this? Someone must have written it for you!” “No, we wrote it ourselves.”

Volodia Barsukivskyi came to see me in Kirovohrad a couple of times. We would lock ourselves in the room and quietly write the leaflet. Volodia would then roll it up and hide it in the cuff of his trousers. We knew very well that this had to be done very carefully.

We wrote the leaflet and started printing it. Barsukivskyi had typewriters at the food processing plant; he had access to them. We would go to that room around seven or eight in the evening. The security guard? We talked to the guard, and he went to inspect the plant. We would load the typewriter with thin paper, the kind used for cigarettes. We would insert about eight to ten sheets. The text took up the whole page, I think there weren't even any margins. These leaflets are now in the KGB archives; I have already made a copy of them and published them. The Shvets family also had a typewriter. And Volodia and Stanislav Shvets also printed them. In short, we made about forty to fifty leaflets.

I take half of the leaflets and go to Kirovohrad to distribute them there. We agreed to distribute the leaflet on November 7–8, during the communist holidays, because that would create a bigger impact. Volodia goes home to his mother in Odesa; he will also distribute them there on that date. We won’t distribute them in Pervomaisk, because they could trace the typewriter there. But Kirovohrad and Odesa are far apart. Who would find out? But one leaflet, I think even a handwritten copy, was left in the pocket of Stanislav Shvets, the one who worked at the bread factory. There were several of us, but only the three of us were privy to the leaflet.

We waited for the holiday for about two weeks. Meanwhile, the military enlistment office is pestering me; they are drafting me into the army. They told me: “You’ll celebrate the holidays, and on the 9th, you’ll go into the army.” I say: “Okay, it’s a deal.” I think, all the better: I’ll distribute the leaflets and then go off to the army.

On the seventh and eighth, I went around Kirovohrad and posted the leaflets. I gave some to an artist from the theater, Volodia Volokhov. I gave him about eight, but he says it was five and that he burned them. He says that when he read it and realized it was anti-Soviet, he burned them in the theater restroom.

I distributed the leaflet, and on the 9th, with a sense of accomplishment, I leave from the enlistment office for Crimea, for Sevastopol. I don’t know if Volodia did his part, but later he sent a letter to Sevastopol saying that yes, he did. It had just been three years since he was sent to work in Pervomaisk. He had worked his three years and was returning to Odesa. I am serving in Sevastopol.

Here I experienced a divided soul. I think it’s common to everyone who lived in the Soviet era, when you couldn’t say what you thought.

Can you imagine, Vasyl!? They elect me secretary of the Komsomol organization. Captain-Lieutenant Malyshev says: “Who else? They’re from the village, and you write poetry! You’ll be the secretary. You’ll get to go on leave every day, to Komsomol meetings.” I agreed and became the secretary. My poems are published in the Sevastopol naval military newspaper “Vympel.” I am a radiometrist; there are sixty of us in our platoon—two squads of thirty. We sleep on three-tiered bunks, on a large, wide deck. That school is still there in Sevastopol. I went there three or four years ago. But they wouldn’t let me in, they said: “Nielzya” [Not allowed].

I’m studying there, working. Sometime in February, they summon four of us: “Report to the school commander.” We go in. A kapley [captain-lieutenant] we don’t know is standing there in a white tunic. I glanced around the office, and my eyes fell on typewriters: on one windowsill, on another, on the table, on a chair—four typewriters are standing there. My heart went thud-thud-thud. I think: could it be? I had a little notebook then, and that day I wrote: “Could it be?”

“So, comrades, a new type of weapon with push-button controls is being introduced. We are selecting people for it. Did you bring your notebooks?” “We did.” “Sit down and type. Here is clean paper, make your copies, and type.” Sichovyk says: “How—should we type with our feet or hands?” “Sit down.” “But I don’t know how.” “Sit down.” He made us sit. Well, I’m typing, and I’m thinking to myself: what should I do? Should I pretend? If I’ve been exposed, they’ll arrest me anyway. So I type as well as I can. I do better than the other three. This captain-lieutenant comes up behind each of us and watches. He came up to me: “Have you typed before?” “Well, I used to go to the newspaper office, I often typed my poems.” “Aha, good.” He took our typed sheets: “Just don’t tell anyone, this is a secret weapon.”

Everyone else is sent to ships, but they send me to Odesa. My fellow student Holovozynskyi heard it and said: “What’s this, I’m from Odesa, I would have gone to Odesa.” I say: “But I want to go on a ship,” because I really did want to go on a ship. I went to the school commander and said: “Take Holovozynskyi to Odesa, and send me to a ship.” He looked at me in a way—I remember that look. He must have known, it was the KGB, and he says: “Alright, I’ll find out.” The next day, they tell me: “It’s too late, the documents have already gone to Odesa.”

We board a ship and are taken to Odesa. There are many from different schools, not just radiometrists, but submariners, you name it. We arrived in Odesa at the transit point (that’s what we call it—peresylka [transit], although there was some naval term). We’re sitting near the Peresyp Bridge, and they’re calling us out and sending us to different units. They called me three times: “To the ship.” I arrived at the ship, they processed me, I had dinner, washed the deck, and went to bed. In the morning, I get up to scrub the deck. I had breakfast, I’m scrubbing the deck, and I hear: “Sailor Reznikov, report to the commander.” I go in, and he says: “They’re sending you back—they say it’s the wrong place.” “But why, I like it here—an SKR, such a nice little ship…” “They said to go back.”

I go back, and sit there for two more days. They call me and say: “You graduated with honors, you’ll be the senior commander here. There’s a radar on the shore, the antenna spins. You’ll monitor it. You’ll have two sailors under you. You’ll be in charge.” They assigned me. The next day, the same lieutenant calls me and says: “What is this, I don’t understand.” They’re taking me to the 16th station of Velykyi Fontan, sending me ashore. There’s a lighthouse near the monastery, an antenna spins there, and underground there’s a screen where we monitor who enters and leaves the port. There are 12 or 13 of us on duty there; we have a michman and a senior lieutenant, the commander. The michman was our ideological educator. It was already summer, around August or September 1959. It was nice there, interesting.

One time, the senior lieutenant calls me and says: “Listen, you lived in Odesa?” “Yes.” “I have some medicine here, take it to this address.” “Are you giving me leave?” “Yes. Deliver it.” “Where to?” “To Blyzhni Mlyny.” Again, something strikes my heart. Because that’s where Volodia Barsukivskyi lives, in Blyzhni Mlyny; he has already moved from Pervomaisk, to Spartakivskyi Lane, 5. I know where he lives. I say: “Alright, I’ll take it.” Well, I think, I’ll drop by his place. But as I’m going, I have doubts: listen, something’s fishy here. Maybe they’re sending me on purpose so I’ll meet up with Volodia, since he doesn’t know I’m here yet. Ah, what the hell, I think. I walk past his house, knock, and he opens the door. When he saw me, he flinched: “Wait, I’ll come out now, so my mother doesn’t see,”—he too had already noticed he was being watched. He came out to me: “Well?” “Listen, how are you doing here?” “Everything’s fine.” “What about the leaflets, did you distribute them back then?” “Yes,” he says, “at the university, at the polytechnic institute, I pasted them up, gave some to someone else,” he explains. “And you?” “Well, I have to deliver some medicine.” “Where to?” “Right here, nearby.” The two of us enter a courtyard, some soldier is standing there, looking at us. I say: “Here’s the medicine for you.” “Yes, yes, thank you. What, met a friend?”—such a KGB-like question. “Yes, I met an acquaintance.” That was it.

Volodia walks me to the 16th station of Fontan, sees where I’m serving, and starts visiting me. Once he said: “I was called to the military enlistment office and I met a poet there. Such an interesting poet—Yuriy Mykhailyk. Ooh… He writes such poems. You know, he also seems to be against the system. He wants to talk to you.” A week or two later he says: “Oh, Mykhailyk wants to meet you.” We meet with Mykhailyk. Here, in the Resolution to Conclude the Investigation, it says: “Witness Mykhailyk, Yu. N., Yashayev, Gaponov, and Roshchin testified to the court that in their presence and in conversations with him, Riznykiv made certain anti-Soviet statements regarding the suppression of the counter-revolutionary rebellion in Hungary, praised the American way of life, and distorted the essence of Soviet democracy.”

This Mykhailyk is a famous poet now, but when he saw that I had returned to Odesa, that I was being published (this was already 1991, my first book came out in 1990)—he fled all the way to Australia. He’s in Australia now.)

Volodia says: “I’m going to Pervomaisk to get my work record book.” I say: “Well, drop by my place and get the folder with my poems.” “Where is it?” “Tell my father,”—and he knew my father—“that there’s a suitcase in the attic, get the folder and bring my poems to me.” “Okay.” He comes back, brings me the folder and says: “Oh, you know, Mykhailyk went with me.” “Why?” “He needed something in Pervomaisk. He went with me, climbed into the attic, and looked where the suitcase was…” “Are you serious?” “Yes, yes, you know, this is suspicious.” We discussed it. “You know, this is suspicious. Look: you were called to the enlistment office, he gets acquainted with us, but he doesn’t want to write leaflets, says, ‘It’s harmful, don’t do it,’ but he himself tries to find out what we think. And he even went to Pervomaisk! Why did you take him?” “Well, I couldn’t help it: we met on the road, traveled together…” “Well, alright.”

AN EPIPHANY IN THE DARK (1959–1960)

And so comes October 1, 1959. On this day, they searched the homes of Stanislav Shvets and my father in Pervomaisk, and of Volodia Barsukivskyi in Odesa, and Lieutenant Colonel Menushkin came to my military unit. I was sitting at my screen, monitoring the ships entering and leaving the Odesa port. “Go, Aleksey, you’re wanted.” I come out, and our senior lieutenant is standing in the yard, playing with a little dog and looking at me with a long gaze. I say: “What is it?” “There, in my office. Go in.” “Who’s there?” I ask. “A lieutenant colonel.” I enter: “Comrade Lieutenant Colonel, Sailor Reznikov reporting as ordered.” “What’s your name?” “Aleksey Sergeyevich.” “Year of birth.” “1937.” “We’ve come to conduct a search of your belongings.” I say: “A search is a search. But what’s this about?” “You should know that yourself.” I say: “I don’t know.” “You don’t know?” “I don’t know.” “Well, let’s go.” We went into the barracks; my folders were under my pillow and mattress. They confiscated them, made an inventory, and drew up a report. Two other comrades were with him, walking with their right hands in their pockets—they probably had pistols there.

They took me to the mess hall, the galley, I ate some more there, the guys poured me two or three huge mugs of compote—we had very good compote. I’m drinking and thinking: “Well, this is it, the last time.” And the cooks understand, because the rumor has already spread—it’s all over. We walk away from our military unit—a “Volga” is standing there. Menushkin gets in the front, the two on either side of me, I’m in the middle, and we drive off. The 16th station is far, we’re driving to the city center, to Bebel Street. I’m riding and thinking: “My God, this is it! They’ll probably give me ten years, maybe even shoot me… Well, they should give me 10–15 years.” I ride on, saying goodbye to Odesa…

We arrived at Bebel Street, at the KGB headquarters. Massive doors… The building takes up a whole block. In Odesa, they say it’s the tallest building because “from it you can see Magadan and the Solovetsky Islands.” We went inside. “Well?” They took my watch from my pocket, took my shoelaces, my belt. I’m in my naval uniform. I sit in a cell for a day, a night—they’re letting me feel where I’ve ended up…

The next day, Menushkin calls me in: “Well, Aleksey Sergeyevich, have you remembered what you’re here for?” I say: “No.” “Eh, in vain, you should have told us.” I say: “I don’t know what to tell.” “Well, then what, shall we begin the interrogation?” It seems that’s when they presented me with the arrest warrant and began questioning me as a suspect.

“You have a poem titled ‘To You.’ It has these words:

Вам, не знающим с жира делать что,

  Тратящим тысячи на пустяки, –

  Как вам не стыдно отделываться мелочью,

 Брошенной в ладонь народной руки?

  О ней толпы крика гуляют везде,

  лезут в глаза, в уши и в рот,

  А шепотку о том, что вами народ раздет,

   Не откроют даже ворот…

Tell me, who are these people who don’t know ‘what to do with their fat’ and ‘spend thousands on trifles’? Who are these people?”

I answer:

– Speculators. There are speculators who trade and deceive people.”

– Aleksey Sergeyevich… – he shakes his head reproachfully. But he writes it down, he records it.

– You have a story, ‘And Yet It’s Good.’ It says that we shouldn’t try to overtake America because our bare behind will be visible, they’ll see the patches. What did you mean by that?”

– Well, maybe it was some kind of joke, I wrote it for a laugh.

– So, you don’t know anything, you won’t confess to anything?”

– That’s right.

– Go.

I left, and sat for another day. They took me to a cell, saying: “What, bored sitting here all by yourself? Get your things.” They move me to another cell. They bring me in—it’s full of smoke! A guy is sitting there, some kind of bum, looks at me: “Volodia Kryzhanovskyi. How’s it going.” “How’s it going.” He tells me his case, but I don’t say anything about mine. Somehow I intuitively know that either they’re listening in, or he’s an informant—I don’t tell him anything about my case. And he’s telling me he’s from Bobrynets, an artist from the house of culture. I look—he doesn’t look much like an artist, he seems very much like a street thug. And it’s a fabricated story, specially for me, that our Kirovohrad theater had toured there. “Well, I know an actor—there’s this actor there, and that actor there.” “So what did they get you for?” I ask. “Well, you see, I drew horns on Stalin—there was a portrait of Stalin, and I drew horns on it, then I got scared and painted over them. But then the paint peeled off and the horns became visible. Someone reported it, they came and took me.” I say: “But Stalin has been denounced, the cult of personality has been denounced—so why?” “Well, that’s what I’m hoping for, that they’ll release me—they’ll figure it out and let me go. And I also had some drugs on me. That’s what I was up to…”

Well, I think, they’ve planted someone. That they’ll take him to Odesa to find the house where he got those drugs. And he himself is writing a letter, hiding, covering the peephole and writing. He somehow got an envelope, or maybe he had one specially. “I’ll write it, take it with me, and then I’ll drop it on the ground somewhere, people will pick it up, see the envelope is addressed, and put it in a mailbox.” This is to get me to write something too—he’s feeding me this line. But I don’t tell him anything of substance about my case. (It would be interesting to see the documents now, what he told them).

But, Vasyl, this is where it begins, what I told you about—how I was spiritually reborn, how I became a Ukrainian.

Two weeks passed. On October 15, 1959, Stepan Bandera is assassinated in Munich. The next day, they give me the newspaper “Pravda,” and I read there—a tiny little note: “In Munich, Stepan Bandera, leader of the OUN, has died.” The next day, the investigator calls me in and says, among other things: “You know, Stepan Bandera died there in Munich.” I say: “I know.” “How?” “They gave me the newspaper, I’ve already read it.” The investigator starts saying something, I answer him in monosyllables. Although, a man older than me who studied at the school with me told me that he had served in the NKVD troops and suppressed, shot OUN members, Banderites. That was the idea I had. In a national sense, I was an absolute zero. The investigator evidently noticed this, and they recorded somewhere in their KGB annals that I had no national element. And the leaflets were written in Russian. So they noted this and passed the case on to the court.

And for me, the work begins. Maybe, like in that poem about the souls of the executed… Maybe Stepan Bandera’s soul somehow grazed my soul…

So I’m reading a book by Ilya Ehrenburg, “Years, People, Life.” In one place, Ilya writes: “I am moving from France to Belgium. There are slogans hanging: ‘Ilya out, don’t let Ilya in here!’—in French, because, as is well known, in Belgium they speak French.” This hit me like an electric shock. The two beds are like this, and Kryzhanovskyi happened to be out—they had called him somewhere. I start pacing the cell from the door to the window. I’m thinking: how can it be—one language, French, but two different states? And we have two languages—and it’s “forever with the Russian people”? How can that be? My God, this is some kind of nonsense, it can’t be like this!

I walk around for a day, two, thinking. I came across a book by Ivan Franko, translated into Russian. Good translations, a thick book, about 400-500 pages. I’m reading the “Prison Sonnets.” I find a sonnet there that I immediately learned by heart because there was such a striking parallel with the Soviet Union. He was writing about Austria-Hungary, but I’m thinking, this is written about the Soviet Union:

О, среднеевропейское болото

Подернутое плесенью густою,

Рассадник безнадежного застоя

И тупоумия –  ты символ гнета.

Где станешь ты ногой, там стон народа,

Там с подданых сдирают третью шкуру.

Ты душишь с криком: "Двигаю свободу!"

И давишь с криком: "Двигаю культуру!"

Ты не сечешь, не бьешь, не шлешь в Сибирь,

Но соки сердца пьеш ты, как упырь,

Болотным смрадом душу отравляя.

Лишь мразь и гниль несут твои порядки,

Живьем здесь погибает мысль живая

Или бежит отсюда без оглядки.

My God, I’m blown away, listen, my God, look what a great man Franko was, look what he wrote! This was written a hundred years ago, but it’s about our time. Then I read something else, but mainly, this all happens on the level of my soul and mind, it’s all thoughts. I come to a conclusion: My God, what a fool I’ve been! Ukraine is in bondage, Ukraine is oppressed, and I’m learning Mayakovsky’s poems by heart, writing letters home in Russian when my parents don’t know Russian. Well, my father also wrote to me in Russian. Evidently, I got it from him. How can this be? My God! I’ve lived twenty-one years on this earth, and it’s all gone to waste, all for nothing. I know absolutely nothing about Ukrainian culture, I don’t know its literature, its history—I have to learn all of this! Such thoughts gnaw at me through November and December.

The investigation lasted three months. Well, they release that Kryzhanovskyi, I gave him my home address. He went there, wheedled something out of my father or stole it, borrowed money—25 rubles. He didn’t pay it back, he fled. And my mother was such an underground conspirator: “I told you, Seriozha, don’t do it!” But my father sat him down at the table, poured him a hundred grams—“He was in a cell with Lyonya!” He asks him what it was like. My mother says: “Don’t you dare, throw him out, he’s some kind of liar. You can see he’s a liar.” That was my mother, a conspirator. They remembered and talked about this for the rest of their lives.

The investigation ends. They had arrested Stasyk Shvets too, but released him the next day. It turns out his father found the leaflet in his pocket, beat him, and burned the leaflet—that’s what they officially say. But I think he handed it over to the KGB and that’s how the investigation started, because otherwise they would have had no way of finding us. Although they were taking font samples from all the typewriters in Odesa, the leaflets were printed in Pervomaisk. That’s what I think, but I don’t know the truth. And Stasyk Shvets still tells me: “Well, my father beat me badly, and then I also noticed they were watching me.”

And Volodia and I are sitting, coughing to each other when we go to the washroom and take out the slop pail. In the morning or evening—I cough, then he coughs. They look through the peephole: “Stop coughing!” “Well, I’m coughing—how can I stop?” We were writing notes to each other, thinking no one saw—such conspirators we were. But they were intentionally letting us: go ahead, write. And they themselves were reading those notes. And then sometime in December, they call me in: “Here is a report from the prison chief and such-and-such guard, that he found a note to Barsukivskyi after your visit, and here—that Barsukivskyi is answering you. Here are the texts of the letters. What did you mean by all this?” And in it I write: “Volodia, don’t give anyone up. Don’t name Valia Kravchuk, don’t name anyone, we’ll take it all on ourselves.” I, too, mostly took the blame on myself.

Oh, I forgot to say. After about five or ten days, we confessed about the leaflet: “Yes, we printed the leaflet.” They took me in a “stolypin” car to the Kirovohrad prison, photographed me, it’s all in the case file. We went to the locations, I showed where the leaflet was. Guys with pistols are standing next to me, and another one is taking pictures, they’re taking me everywhere. I think three people in Kirovohrad and three in Odesa turned in leaflets to the KGB. The places they indicated—I showed those same places. And I didn’t name the others—why would I? One writes that he found a leaflet at the pharmacy. “This one?” “Yes, yes, I put it there.” And we drove there, I showed them. We confessed and repented, said we were foolish, that we had done wrong, that we did it under the influence of the criticism of the personality cult. We saw what Stalin had done, so we wrote the leaflet. The KGB chief, General Kuvarzin… I’m a sailor, I was in my naval uniform the whole time, tall and lanky, standing there, and he’s so short, his pants with wide stripes, standing in front of me, his fists raised, shouting: “How could you call my party fascist?” I say: “I swear to God, I don’t know. Well, we went through a lot of literature, we searched, we thought, and we came to that conclusion.” “U-du-du-du-du-du-du!”

The investigation ended. They’re charging us with Article 9—“organization,” and Article 7—“anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda.” These are articles from the new Fundamentals that had just been released, where the maximum sentence is 15 years. Oh, I think, that’s better, they won’t give me 25. They take us to the trial—at 17 Korolenko Street, to the military tribunal. They told us our case was transferred to the tribunal because I was a military sailor.

Fine. They called me in on January 1, 1960, and asked: “Did you quarrel with Barsukovskyi?” I say: “No.” “No complaints, can we put you in the same cell?” “You can.” “This is so we don’t have to occupy a second cell. We’ll transfer you to the prison so we don’t have to bring food for both of you here and keep a special guard for you.” I say: “It’s your business.”

They transfer us to the Odesa prison, because it turned out we were the only two being held at the KGB. By the way, Volodia also had an informant, a nark, planted in his cell. They bring us together. I walk in and say: “Volodia, dobryi den” [good day]. I don’t say “Zdrastvui” or “pryvit,” but I say “dobryi den.” He replies: “Dobryi den.” I decided to warn him right away: “Volodia, you know, I’ve switched to the Ukrainian language.” And I explain to him why, that we are Ukrainians, but we speak Russian—that it’s somehow abnormal. He says: “I can speak Ukrainian too.” “But you’re from Odesa.” “My mother is from a village, we speak Ukrainian at home.”

That’s it. We start learning our language: there’s a radio speaker in the cell—as soon as a Ukrainian song comes on, I write the first line, he writes the second, I write the third, he writes the fourth. And we manage to write down the whole song, learn it, and sing it. That’s why I now know so many songs from beginning to end. I’ve loved to sing since childhood. It’s in my nature—or maybe it’s a Ukrainian trait—whether I’m digging, or hoeing, whatever I’m doing, walking, even talking to someone, a melody is always playing in my head. I catch myself: pfft! I switch my thoughts, but a few minutes later I’m humming another melody—a different one. The tempo of the melody depends on the tempo of my work: sometimes, if I’m walking fast: “Doshchyk, doshchyk, kapaye dribnenko…” [The rain, the rain, falls in tiny drops…]. And if I’m walking slowly, I’ll sing: “Oi ne puhai, puhachenku…” [Oh, don’t frighten, little owl…]. It’s my singing essence. We sit in the cell, singing, tears in our eyes, we cry. Later, in the “stolypin” car, we sang that song by Nekrasov:

Назови мне такую обитель,

Я такого угла не видал,

Где бы сеятель твой и хранитель,

Где бы русский мужик не стонал.

That’s about our people too! My God, we ride along, crying…

On February 15, 1960, they call us to trial. The judge is Colonel Gorbachov, two assessors. They gave us some lawyers. I’m in my naval uniform. The trial begins, they call witnesses. Yashayev, Mokliak, Gaponov—they served with me. And Roshchin. They brought some from Sevastopol. Here they brought in Volokhov, they’re questioning him about me giving him the leaflet. They go over everything in detail. The judge turned out to be a smart, wise man. He examined everything in detail. The prosecutor made his speech, asked for four years for me and three for Barsukivskyi. I think: well, that’s better—not ten years, but four. But it’s still a lot. I’ll get out when I’m 25…

Tomorrow I have to give my final statement. I don’t sleep half the night, I sit, walk around the cell, and compose-write a poem. Well, for some reason I want to write such a poem. I think I even intended to read it to them in court. They bring us to the tribunal. The judge says: “Defendant Reznikov, your final statement.” I stand up and ask: “May I read a poem?”

This was the last poem I wrote in Russian. I intuitively knew that I shouldn’t admit that I had become a Ukrainian. I felt it: let the case be as it is. And I read the poem:

Я долго думал.

Дни и ночи,

И, как машину мастерской,

Своею собственной рукой

Я жизнь свою не между прочим,

А специально разобрал,

И каждый день, как винтик малый,

И каждый месяц, словно вал,

Я со вниманьем небывалым

Пересмотрел и перебрал.

О, сколько грязи, сколько пыли…

Когда, откуда, почему

Детали эти запылились?

Я не пойму!

Нет, не пойму.

Все было –  глупость, заблужденье,

Мечты о чем-то неземном,

Незнанье жизненных явлений

И самомнение притом.

Я все прочистил, все я смазал

Суда, раскаянья слезой,

Пересмотрел душевным глазом –

И вот они  передо мной:

Из тех же мускулов и кожи,

Из тех же губ,

из тех же рук –

Другую жизнь собрать я должен

И я клянусь,

что соберу!

The judge nearly applauded. But they didn’t know what kind of “different life” I was talking about—“I must build” the life of a Ukrainian. I am renouncing that past “life”—I was a fool then, unconscious, because I knew nothing. I read this poem. Then Volodia also gave his final statement: “Well, yes, that’s how we were. We will reform. We have understood our mistake, we will not do this anymore.” The court went to deliberate, returned, and read the verdict, saying that Article 9, for organization, was being dropped as it was not proven.

“The court found the guilt of Barsukovskyi and Reznikov in conducting anti-Soviet agitation, and in producing and distributing leaflets of an anti-Soviet nature, that is, in committing a crime under Article 7 of the Law on Criminal Responsibility for State Crimes, to be proven. But as for the creation of the union ‘We Are People Too’…” (This was a union I created in the army, “We Are People Too.” Our anthem was: “We are people too, we love too, even if our skin is black, our blood is pure.”) “Polskyi and Portnyk explained that neither the name of the union ‘We Are People Too,’ nor the initiative to create this group belonged to Reznikov, therefore the court considers the charge against Reznikov and Barsukovskyi of committing a crime under Art. 9 of the Law on Criminal Responsibility for State Crimes, and for Reznikov, additionally, the charge of gathering anti-Soviet-minded people around himself and creating the union ‘We Are People Too,’ to be unfounded.

During the court proceedings, it was established that Reznikov, while in the training detachment, was elected secretary of the Komsomol organization, was an active military correspondent, and published patriotic poems in the fleet’s press. He was an excellent student in combat and political training, and Barsukovskyi had a positive work record.

Guided by Art. 226, Art. 297, the military tribunal of the Odesa Military District has sentenced: Riznykiv and Barsukovskyi to be considered acquitted under Art. 9 of the Law on Criminal Responsibility. They are to be deprived of liberty under Art. 7, part one of the aforementioned Law, with their sentences to be served in a corrective labor colony for one year and six months each. The term of punishment is to be calculated… (well, you know how). The material evidence—eight anti-Soviet leaflets (you see, eight of them were turned in), placed in envelopes—four each… The ‘Olympia’ brand typewriter is to be returned to its legal owner, Shvets” (Stanislav’s father. I need to check the text against the verdict).

The prosecutor stands up and declares: “I will file a protest!” Gorbachov says: “That is your right, go ahead and write it. That’s all, the trial is over, you may go. Goodbye.”

THE FIRST TOUR (1960–1961)

We returned to the cell, Volodia and I laughing, overjoyed: “Listen, it’s only a year and a half—and we’ve already served half a year, essentially. And we’ll wait another month while that guy writes his protest.”

We sit in prison for another month or a month and a half, waiting. The response comes from the Supreme Court: “Uphold the sentence, one and a half years. That’s it, prepare for transport.” “Where to?” “You’ll find out there.” My father and mother come for a visit, they bring us packages. Life got more cheerful. You probably don’t know, you’re younger, but in 1960, being in prison was much easier than it became a year later. We even had money in our pockets in the camp. A photographer would come to the camp, we’d pay him, and he’d take our pictures. I have photos—Serhiy Babych and Volodymyr Andrushkiv sent me a picture of the four of us standing together. We paid the photographer in the camp with cash—it’s a joke! You know what happened later.

In short, we get ready for the transport, we go to Kharkiv, through Pervomaisk, looking at our homeland… We ride along, singing songs. I think it was in Kharkiv that Andrushkiv joins us, and he’s already savvy, he says: “Boys, are you from Odesa?” “Yes.” “Why are you speaking Ukrainian?” I say: “We’re Ukrainians.” He looks at us—maybe he thinks we’re plants, and we’re thinking maybe he’s a plant. But what can we do? The three of us ride on together. And he has a co-defendant, Protsiuk, Vasyl, I think. Then we cross the border of Ukraine. Here for the first time I saw what Russia is like. While we were riding through Ukraine—little white houses, orchards, such beauty, and then in the morning I look—what is this? A bare plain, some black shack standing there, not a single tree, a crooked gate. As Mickiewicz wrote, they lay a few of those broven [logs] on top of each other and call it a dom [house], and a few such houses they call a grod [city]. Remember, he has “Droga do Rosji” [Road to Russia]: “Kraina biala, pusta i otwarta, jak zgotowana do pisania karta” [A land white, empty, and open, like a sheet prepared for writing]—a wonderful poem. And so I write a little poem:

Жевріють на обрії зорі,

І місяць, самотній юнак,

Когось вигляда на просторі,

але не знаходить ніяк.

  Мовчать тополеві алеї,

Схилилися верби сумні,

Верхів’ям своїм над землею

Вклоняючись низько мені.

  Прости, дорога Україно,

я кидаю вперше тебе,

незвідана доля закине

мене за Уральський хребет…

  Чарівнії ночі духм’яні,

як довго не бачити вас?

Як довго в важкому чеканні

Вбирати в багаття прикрас?

  Як довго надією душу,

жалем і тугою палить?!

Я вірність тобі не порушу.

Та серце щось дуже щемить..

  Про тебе там хто нагадає,

чарівна веснянко моя?

Лиш місяць, що зараз сіяє,

І там буду бачити я…

We arrive in Sverdlovsk, then Ruzaevka.

V.V. Ovsienko: Ruzaevka is closer, in Mordovia. And somewhere nearby is Serdobsk. The Serdobsk watch factory, where we worked.

O.S. Riznykiv: I was mistaken. My second imprisonment was in the Urals. From Kharkiv, they brought us to Ruzaevka. In Ruzaevka, I remember, there was a wooden barrack, an exercise yard, for some reason wooden walkways, we walked on them for our stroll. Large windows. A Jehovah’s Witness gets on his knees and prays in front of all of us. And for us, it was strange that he wasn’t afraid of people, praying loudly: “Lord!” Then he tells us about demons, with what kind of wings. We are amazed—what an iron man! The Jehovah’s Witnesses, you know, are iron people, good for them. Unfortunately, I don’t remember his name. They gave him five years. And then they transferred us to the camp. I have letters, I’ve collected them all. The ones I wrote from Mordovia, I have them bound, because I asked my parents not to tear up my letters, but to collect them.

We enter the camp. I think it was Zone 11. I don’t remember how many people were there, but about three thousand, or two and a half thousand—they were UPA soldiers, prisoners. They had 25-year sentences. When they heard we had a year and a half: “Ha!” they laugh, “ha-ha-ha, you’re kidding!” I ask: “What are you laughing at?” “A year and a half—we spend a year and a half just on latrine duty. You can serve that sentence on the latrine.” We feel a bit awkward, but on the other hand, happy that we have short sentences. And they were just being resentenced to 15 years—to time served. Every day, 30–35 men are released.

One day, feeling a bit sick, I didn’t go to work but went to the court, sat and listened as they were tried. There’s a prosecutor, and a representative of the administration reports on the case. He talks for about three minutes, that he fought here and there, killed some KGB agent there, and here he took part in battles. What surprised me was that where he took part in battles—that wasn’t considered a crime. But when he liquidated someone—that’s what they incriminated them for. But a war was going on. Because of this, these people should now be recognized as participants in World War II and as fighters for a free Ukraine. War is war, they weren’t tried for the battles.

A judge, a prosecutor—and that’s it. A few minutes like that—and “reduce the sentence to time served,” “uphold the verdict, go and finish your time.” So our brigadier (our brigadier was Moroz—a clumsy, large, calm man) was left with 25. He, poor soul, was even crying. He had some bigger case.

The UPA soldiers are being released, they give us books, leave their wooden suitcases. I brought home about six or seven of those suitcases, full of books. And “Books by Mail”? I received Mahatma Gandhi, and Hrynchenko’s four-volume dictionary, and Oleksandr Oles was published for the first time! I was swooning over him, what a wonderful poet, what beautiful language. And Samiylenko! There was some kind of revival then. It was the Thaw. Such books were being published: “Should People Starve?”, “Limited Wars”—such a treatise, translations from English. You won’t believe it! I’m subscribing, I have money—we’re earning some money there. My parents send me money, packages are arriving.

They take us out to work, we’re building a fence. Stakes and poles across them like this. Later I had a different job, hauling logs. You load three logs, harness a horse. I worked with horses. We travel through the forest in a whole convoy. We stop, gather mushrooms.

About a month or so later, a stocky fellow enters the zone: “Zdrastvuite, rebiata!” [Hello, guys!] “Where are you from?” “From Zhytomyr, Serhiy Babych.” “What are you in for?” “We wrote leaflets, posted them on poles.” “How?” “By hand.” “Tsk,” I say, “I’m in for the same thing.” “You don’t say?” “I do.” “And why are you speaking Ukrainian, what’s this?” “Well, how else, we’re Ukrainians.” He listens—another one speaking Ukrainian, and those ones too… Two weeks passed and this Serhiy Babych comes in: “Boys, this is Ukraine, we were fools! Why are we speaking Russian, there’s a Ukrainian language!” He became such a fervent nationalist! We know what he’s like now. I met him last year. He visited me in Odesa. And he remembers: “Oleksa, do you remember when we were seeing you off at the gate when you were being released? And you said: ‘Boys, watch out for Serhiy, he’s very hot-headed.’” I say: “I don’t remember.” “I remember those words…” And three months after his release, Serhiy was arrested again…

That’s Babych. A wonderful Lithuanian is imprisoned there, from the fifth year of the law faculty at Vilnius University. I can’t for the life of me remember his last name, and for some reason, Volodia doesn’t remember either. Maybe Yendrikaikes, a name like that. I haven’t heard about him since. He was a unique person. How he knew everything, how educated, calm, how he spoke with us, how nationally conscious he was! It might be because of him that when I was imprisoned the second time, I started learning Lithuanian. I generally loved Lithuanians. They are good people, and this young man was unique. They took him from his fifth year, he was about to defend his diploma, and they gave him five or three years.

I remember writing a poem in the camp for Pentecost (this was for Pentecost in the camp):

Лапате листя клена

Схилилося до мене,

я кленом цим зеленим

Вквітчав свою постіль.

В цей тихий вечір синій

Я знов до тебе лину,

Далека Україно,

І знов молю: “Прости!

Прости, моя кохана,

Страднице безталанна,

навіки нездоланна,

дорожча за життя,

Що я не знав про тебе,

Що я не чув про тебе,

Не бачив те, що треба,

За купою сміття.

Тепер я бачу, ненько,

Твої хати біленькі,

Твої річки бистренькі,

Степи твої, й поля,

Козацькії жупани,

Сміливі отамани,

Твої відкриті рани,

Страдалице моя…

А я співав про квіти,

про сум душі своєї

І мову, рідну мову

Вже починав втрачать.

Дозволь же над тобою,

Над долею твоєю

Оновленому серцю,

Коханая, ридать”.

Well, of course, you’ve heard about Sashko Hryhorenko from the Dnipropetrovsk region, the village of Borodaivka. He’s the son of teachers. He was a unique man. My God, what a poet he was! He would have been a Symonenko, a Vinhranovskyi, a Stus—he was a colossal man! We became friends: I write poems, he writes. We do yoga gymnastics. Back when I was in the KGB prison, I had a little book, “Yoga Exercises,” in Ukrainian, a translation from Bulgarian. I practiced from it every day, even learned to do the “lotus” position. I spent about three or four months twisting my legs until I learned to do the “lotus.” Headstands—I did all of this for half an hour at a time. And in the cell, you have nothing to do, so I did it in the morning, evening, and during the day. And here’s Sashko. We go behind the barracks, stand there—breathing, bending, sitting. We do exercises. Sashko Hryhorenko—my God, my God, may he rest in peace, what a person he was! He wrote this unique poem:

TO A DESIRED BRIDE

Ти мене полюбиш не за пісню,

Ти мене полюбиш не за вроду –

Ти мене полюбиш за залізну (sighs)

Відданість вкраїнському народу.

Бо й для тебе іншої любові,

Відданості іншої нема,

(I can’t talk about him calmly)

Бо пісенній придніпровській мові

Поклялась ти в вірності й сама.

І коли я душу буревісну,

Переллю в живе життя своє,

Ти тоді полюбиш і за пісню,

І за вроду, вже яка не є!

Who, in 1961, could have said: “You will love me for my iron devotion to the Ukrainian people”? How simple, how brilliantly said! I have never forgotten these words. It’s such a shame. He would have been a Vinhranovskyi. Listen, he had such a proud posture, my height. He had a posture like Vinhranovskyi’s. A proud young man…

What was he imprisoned for? They gave him three years. He was serving in Hungary and wrote poems there about the uprising. “Imre Nagy raises the flag!” He read them to the guys, and the next morning they took him. He was tried for these poems, given three years—for supporting the uprising in Hungary, which he was supposed to be suppressing. This Sashko wrote such beautiful poems, and so easily. He could write two or three poems in a day. Everything was fine with him, a boy from the village, had only served in the army, that’s all. His parents were teachers, so he was an intelligent, smart boy. He was self-conscious about his snub nose. He often mentions it in his poems: “my snub nose.” A proud, confident young man. It’s precisely people like him that the gang destroys.

Sashko dedicated an unforgettable poem to me:

  TO OLEKSA

В краю чужім звела нас доля,

Мабуть, для того, щоби ми

Сказали людям правди голі

І збереглись самі людьми.

І ми йдемо шляхом чесноти,

Йдемо без гімнів і без од,

Щоб нам не міг очей колоти

За лицемірність наш народ.

У світ письменства, світ строкатий

Ми переступимо поріг,

І мусим те удвох сказати,

Чого до нас ніхто не міг.

Щоб наше серце променисте

До читача могло дійти,

То мушу я творити змісти,

Творити форми мусиш ти.

Слова незвичні, дивні теми,

Не чута досі гострота –

Хай все це з віршу, із поеми

У душі людські заліта.

І як би деякі не злились,

Нам будуть слати і хвали,

Бо, друже, так уже судилось,

Щоб ми поетами були.

Та не забудь, що в дні похмурі

Звела нас доля, щоби ми

Були в своїй літературі

Крім всього – чесними людьми!

July 21, 1961

V.V. Ovsiienko: And what happened to him?

O.S. Riznykiv: I’ll tell you now. We were writing poems. In the book Alone with God, there’s a poem he dedicated to me. That if we came into literature, we must first of all be decent people. And: “Olekso, I will create the content—you must create the form.” Because he considered me a bit of a formalist. He wrote traditional poems. He corresponded with Oleksa Hirnyk. I’ve already spoken with Hirnyk’s son twice, but you see what kind of man this Hirnyk is. He says: “My stepmother took all the archives. I,” he says, “don’t know where they are now.” “Then find them,” I say, “Sashko Hryhorenko’s letters.” This Hirnyk, the father, was also a hero, because he wrote to Hryhorenko in the camp! Sashko would sometimes come to me: “Oh, Olekso, a letter from Hirnyk arrived! He’s reviewing my poems and wants to publish them in Literaturna Ukraina.” Hirnyk’s son can’t find anything. And I can’t get to the stepmother. I’ve already spoken with Osyp Zinkevych about publishing Sashko’s poems as a separate book. I have many of his poems; I photocopied a whole notebook.

There was a young man from Kherson in the cell with us. We called him “Ivan and a Half”—tall and thin. He had this idea that everyone thinks only about their stomachs, that they have a gastronomic philosophy, only about grub and nothing else, and no one thinks about higher things. That’s how I remember him. He was suddenly released in the middle of summer. Maybe he was sentenced incorrectly, or something else. I recently met his son, Oleksa Falchenko; he serves on a ship in the Ukrainian Navy. He was born in 1964. Pavlo was released in 1960, met some woman… I have their family photo. The boy, Oleksa, is still small. Thirty-five years have passed, but it feels like it was two years ago. He brought me a notebook into which his late father had copied many of Hryhorenko’s poems. Pavlo Falchenko… He’s already passed away…

Sashko and I corresponded for a little while longer. In 1962–1963, Literaturna Ukraina published poems by Olena Zadvorna with her small portrait. A beautiful girl, lovely Ukrainian poems. All the boys, like me, like you probably, noticed her, because she later told me she received 150 letters, but she singled out one—from Sashko Hryhorenko. She answered him. He came to Kyiv. They were like, you know, in Oles Berdnyk’s works, two people meet, fall in love, walk along the banks of the Dnipro. And they had such a love! They decided to get married. Olena came to his village, and they were preparing for the wedding. Two days before the wedding, he went to the Dnipro to swim and drowned, even though he was a good swimmer. She wrote me a letter afterward, I came to Kyiv, and we met. They found her a job at the city council. For some reason, she didn’t get enough points to get into the university, so she worked at the city council. Olena Zadvorna. She was the one who told me about Sashko. He had given her my address, so she wrote to me.

That’s how Sashko Hryhorenko died. I don’t know, doesn’t this death resemble the deaths of Ivasiuk, Horska? I mean, how is it possible? He went for a swim and drowned!?

V.V. Ovsiienko: What year did this happen?

O.S. Riznykiv: In 1963, I believe. I have the exact date somewhere. I keep meaning to go there. I once met his relatives, people from that village. They said his parents were gone, but there were some relatives. I need to go to that Borodaivka on the Dnipro. When we met, he would introduce himself: “Sashko Hryhorenko, from revolutionary Katerynoslavshchyna!” And then Sashko was gone…

THE ODESA ODYSSEY,

or “HAVING BROKEN FREE FROM UNDER THE PRESS”

(1962–1971)

Well, what happened to me next? I was released from the camp on April 1, 1961. For some reason, I couldn’t even stay in Moscow for a night. I bought a ticket and fled Moscow. I came home, and it was Pascha, Easter. My God, my mother had prepared all sorts of food! And I brought five suitcases of books—wooden suitcases that the zeks make themselves. Such wonderful, beautiful suitcases, with metal corner pieces! I brought those books, laid them out, and sat down at the table. My mother served meat, and I said, “I don’t eat meat.” My father poured a shot, and I said, “I don’t drink.” “What’s wrong, what’s with you, what?!” And my mother had prepared so much for every religious holiday, baking this meat, stuffing pork belly. But it was carrion—I don’t eat it. “What’s wrong with you?!?”

In the camp, there was a guy in my cell who didn’t eat meat. He would eat borscht that meat was cooked in, but he’d give the meat itself to me. He said, “I’m a vegetarian.” Later, I also read in Gandhi’s My Life what vegetarianism is. So I decided to try it myself… And so I tormented my parents for nine months. Well, my mother could never get used to me only eating vinaigrette and cabbage. “God, what is this?” She would just cry. But my father said, “If you don’t drink, that’s good. So be it, why do you need it, don’t drink. But you have to eat meat!” So I didn’t drink for a long time, and I think I only started eating meat after nine months.

I got a job at the granite quarry. I’m a lighting electrician, and I got a job there as an electrician. But two months later, I went to Odesa University, to the philology department, because I had firmly decided:

Другую жизнь собрать я должен,

И я клянусь, что соберу.

That is, to the philology department; I needed to learn the Ukrainian language. I regretted it later, but back then, I was sure I had to learn the language, that I would know the history of Ukraine, and I would know the writers. I arrived, and the dean there was Ivan Duz. He thought for a day, or maybe consulted with the KGB, and the next day he tells me: “You know what, work for a year, and then come back next year to apply.” “Alright,” I say. I worked as an electrician at the quarry for a year, got a character reference, and in 1962, I applied to Odesa University’s correspondence program, because there was no money to study full-time. I was already old, so I thought I’d enroll in the correspondence program.

I noticed a man who was the oldest among us. Back then, in 1962, he was already 42. We were taking exams. I see the girls flocking to him: “Sviatoslav Yosypovych, Sviatoslav Yosypovych, don’t go to the exam just yet. Don’t go, you’ll help us.” It was Karavanskyi. He was very good at passing cheat sheets. He had spent 17 years in prison, so he learned how, and now he was helping the girls. We studied with him until 1965. None of the girls would go to take those exams without him. And he got straight A’s effortlessly. The professors knew who he was; they must have guessed. He was an erudite, publishing “biographies of words” in the journal Ukraina. He published translations of Shakespeare from English. All the professors were fond of him.

A year passed. In 1963, I moved to Odesa. I had friends there. Maybe they were sent by the authorities, I don’t know, but we moved to Odesa together and lived in the same apartment. They were studying at the law school. One of them really wanted to get into the KGB, but he wasn’t accepted for some reason, because he was a partier or a drinker. So, they were law students, I was a philology student, and we lived together. We managed to get a temporary residence permit with some difficulty. I got a job as an electrician at “Odesaenergo.” I walked around Odesa, changing electricity meters. I had to change about twenty a day. I managed to do that, and then I had free time. I would go to the university to attend lectures for the evening students, got to know them, because Volodia Barsukivskyi had also enrolled in the evening program.

That’s how my Odesa period began. I think I worked as an electrician for a year. And then Andriy Yarmulskyi, a fellow countryman of mine, already a member of the Writers’ Union, says: “Olekso, listen, I’m going to Cherkasy.” He was working at the newspaper Odeskyi Politekhnik at the Polytechnic Institute. Vasyl Symonenko had just passed away, so he was going to take his place. He thought he’d go there and write about Symonenko. I think he had just divorced his wife then. So he’s going to Cherkasy, and he’s getting me his job. I was doubtful: “They won’t take me, I have a criminal record, and it’s a newspaper.” “I said they’ll take you.” He brought me to the party committee: “Look at this!” The party committee secretary was Mykola Pokora. They hire me as a lab assistant in some department, but in reality, I’m a literary contributor for this newspaper. It was called Za Industrialni Kadry. I was the one who renamed it to Odeskyi Politekhnik. I worked there in 1964, 1965, 1966, until they fired me in 1967. They found a pretext to do it.

So I’m working at the polytechnic newspaper. Ivan Maliuta, whom you saw today, studied there. A Ukrainian, he’s passionate about Ukraine, writes poems in Ukrainian. For me, this was like a balm for the soul. I speak Ukrainian everywhere in Odesa, because I made such a vow. Whether we go into a store, or are traveling somewhere—I speak Ukrainian everywhere. People would look back at me, but I got used to it, and they got used to it too. I also speak Ukrainian in the editorial office, because the newspaper is Ukrainian, and I write poems. From all sides, I must speak Ukrainian! So they all got used to it and tolerated it. The rector of the institute also spoke Ukrainian with me. The mother-in-law of the poet Ivan Riadchenko was the head of the personnel department—she spoke our language beautifully.

And so Karavanskyi introduces me to his wife. Oh, no, even before that, Karavanskyi found a letter in Literaturna Ukraina from Vasyl Orel from Kuban, who was asking for Ukrainian books to be sent to them. And right then we were talking: why are entrance exams only conducted in Russian, and a Ukrainian has to tolerate this? A Russian will pass the Russian language exam with an “A,” and a Ukrainian with a “C.” We must demand to take the entrance exam in Ukrainian. We wrote letters; this went on until 1970. I have copies of the replies to my letters. Karavanskyi wrote, the guys wrote, I wrote. We would tear down announcements about student admissions and send them to Kyiv, to the Ministry of Education: “Look, here’s an announcement from the technical college of industrial automation. It says that exams are only ‘in Russian.’ This is discrimination against Ukrainians.” They would reply that yes, you are right. We sent letters to Literaturna Ukraina, to the Ministry of Education, to the prosecutor—everywhere. That’s the kind of work we were doing. And then Karavanskyi reprints that letter from Vasyl Orel from Kuban in the university newspaper Za Naukovi Kadry. Now it was easier for us: look, the Odesa University newspaper published Vasyl Orel’s letter: “Please send us Ukrainian books to Kuban, because there are none here.”

With that letter, two, three, four, five of us would go through the dorms, room by room. We’d knock on every door in a row and go in: “Guys, we are university students. Here’s a letter from Vasyl Orel from Kuban. He’s asking for Ukrainian books. Do you have any Ukrainian books?” “Yes, I do.” “Well, then donate it.” “Here, take this one.” I’d say: “Why are you just giving it like that? Sign it: ‘To our dear Ukrainian brothers in Kuban from an Odesa-Ukrainian, so-and-so…’” “Really?” “Of course.” He’d sit down and sign it. We’d take the book, and in one evening, we’d collect twenty or thirty, and Karavanskyi would send them at his own expense.

What else did Sviatoslav do? He would go to the post office, take subscription forms, and fill them out for the journal Ukraina, the newspapers Chornomorski Novyny, and Ukrainskyi Dim. He’d go up to the 9th floor and work his way down, visiting apartments, and he would always persuade someone to subscribe to Ukraina or Chornomorski Novyny. Back then, people still let you into their homes, not like now when they’re afraid. That’s how he conducted subscriptions for Ukrainian publications.

Then Sviatoslav Karavanskyi was hired as a translator at the Chornomorski Novyny editorial office. Now they boast that Karavanskyi worked for them. When Yar Slavutych visited, I said in front of everyone in the editorial office: “Mr. Yaroslav, do you know where you are? You are in the editorial office where Sviatoslav Karavanskyi worked.” He said: “You don’t say?” “Yes, he worked here as a translator.” The editor then jumped up: “Yes.” A few minutes later, Yar Slavutych pulls out fifty dollars: “Well, here you go, for your support.” I later told the editor: “You should be telling people about Sviatoslav!”

Once we went to the opera house. I think “Kateryna” was playing. I was in the stalls, and I saw Karavanskyi sitting on the balcony. I approach him: “Good day, Sviatoslav Yosypovych”—that’s how everyone addressed him. And he says: “Meet my wife, Nina Yosypivna.” I didn’t know then that I would have to sit with her on the same defendant’s bench. “This is my wife.” We were introduced. A young lady, so elegant, sharp—she had something in common with Oksana Meshko. That’s how they were: “You loafers, why are you drinking vodka? You should be doing something for Ukraine!” Because we often went to the “Kumanets” bar to have a drink.

Ці їдальні, хай їм грець,

Завітаю в “Куманець”:

Кава біла, кава чорна,

І роздатчиця моторна.

In 1965, we went caroling for the first time. I had just written a short article, Chornomorka for some reason didn’t take it, but the Russian-language newspaper Znamya Kommunizma published it on January 6th, about the caroling:

Нова радість стала,

Яка не бувала,

Що ми колядували.

I named who was caroling: students, workers. About twenty of us went caroling. Then we formed a choir. About a hundred people passed through this choir, at 100 Ostrovydova Street. Everyone said that before the revolution, the “Prosvita” society was in this building. A beautiful building. Now it’s the House of Culture for some trade union. Our choir gathered here. One leader-elder would say: “Guys, this is a Ukrainian choir. We don’t speak Russian here, only Ukrainian.” Oh, the KGB gave it to him for those words, my God! The poor man wrote: “I am a member of the Party, how could I have gone to this choir, how could I have said that we shouldn’t speak Russian! I don’t know if the Party will forgive me after this.” The poor soul, he repented so much!

In 1967, we were already chartering a LAZ bus, because getting around Odesa by tram took a long time. We’d get on the LAZ, all in embroidered shirts. Chernoboh, the goat—that was Liuda Avdiievska, Anatoliy Avdiievskyi’s own sister. They were from Tsebrykove. Liuda-the-goat, with such beautiful horns, and artists with us—maybe you know Yurko Lesiuk from the art school? We called him Yur. He sewed a sack for us. Yurko Lesiuk was from Lviv. He’s still in Lviv now; I was at their home recently. He has two sons. And his own brother is the dean of the philology department in Ivano-Frankivsk, Mykola Lesiuk.

In short, boys and girls like that, about a hundred of them. They sewed sacks… I was Malanka—I wore a long dress and a woman’s mask. We walked around Odesa, and the old ladies were like: “What’s this, are these Bulgarians? Are those Bulgarians?” And then we’d start caroling! We came to the Ukrainian theater, waited for the end of the performance, went up on stage, and started caroling! And we had already collected a half-liter bottle or something in our sacks. We joined the actors, had a drink, and went to the actor Tverdokhlib’s house to carol. Listen, the poor man started to cry! A wonderful actor, a genius! He wasn’t tall, but he acted so well! When he heard us, he burst into tears. He said: “My God, my children, I haven’t heard this since 1933. Thank you!” He pulls out twenty-five rubles and throws it into the sack. “Forgive me, I don’t have anything else.”

We visited our professors, including that Duz, and Markushevskyi, and Fashchenko, and Zhaboriuk—everyone we respected, loved, or who invited us, and writers. We traveled by bus. All the seats on the bus were taken, and people were standing. Can you imagine, sixty or seventy people on a bus!

We arrive at the university dormitory—this was either in 1967 or 1968—and we poured out of the bus. Five floors, all the windows opened, everyone leaned out: “What’s going on?” And we were singing, dancing, having fun. The students came out, surrounded us, and Mykolaukhovetskyi comes up: “Olekso, I’m having my wedding right now. Let’s go to the third floor, you can carol there. It will be such a celebration!” We all pile in there. Some stay behind to entertain the people, and we go to the wedding, carol there, they treat us, we all had a drink. Everyone was cheerful—well, a wonderful New Year! We caroled until about one in the morning.

This started in 1965, and every year there were more of us. Sukovetskyi’s wedding was around 1967. But Mykola is still alive, I should clarify what year it was. That’s what we did.

For the KGB, this was a terrible thing. They started getting very angry with us for it, paid attention to us. They followed us, watched us, and we would run after them. And then Mykola Kholodnyi arrived. I was graduating from university in 1968, and Kholodnyi had been expelled from Kyiv University, so he came to us and was defending his thesis at the same time as me. He read his poems, the guys liked it, especially the one about the ghost that follows us. Here is a poem from the epic poem about Nina Strokata, “New Year’s Caroling”:

Коли усе лиш біле й чорне,

Строкатість є смертельний гріх,

(and her name was Strokata),

Та ще така ось неприборкна

Аж вибухова, ніби сніг.

Щорік строкатіла Одеса

Коли святі колядники

Повиривавшись із-під преса

Стікалися під ялинки.

Чи уливалися в квартири

Строкатістю вишиванок,

Чи закрутившись граєм-виром,

Вливались в пісню і танок.

Цвіли Циган із Білобогом,

Лупив жидка міцний козак

І Авдієвська круторога –

Примхлива дідова коза.

І тало серце у Мороза,

І Гетьман відпускав гріхи,

І Твердохліба чисті сльози

Збирали ми в свої міхи.

Там Жаборюк вино виносив,

Швець, Маркушевський розцвітав,

Прісовський маску брав на носа

І Ткач з Данилками світав.

Це так строкатило Одесу –

Різдво у душах, мов свіча!

А змій-горинич кагебістський

З досади голову втрачав.

I wrote this epic poem about Nina Strokata for the anniversary of her death. It was published on July 19, 1999, in Chornomorski Novyny. This part is about the OUN-UPA, and here they are in the photo, see: Strokata and Karavanskyi sitting together.

Філфак Одеси – диво з див,

Жива оаза українства,

Приваблював, кував, плодив

Майбутнє наше якобинство.

Філфак нам був екскурсовод,

По всіх століттях нас проводив.

Ми пізнавали свій народ

Себе шукаючи в народі.

Ми мову, вигнану вікном,

Назад заводили дверима,

Її прикрасивши вінком,

Її оздоблюючи в рими.

Між одномовних інтерна-

ціоналістів ми пишались,

Що кожен з нас дві мови знав,

А їм вкраїнська не давалась.

Мов Голіаф, наш Святослав

Між нами, юними, здіймався.

Він жартома таке здіймав,

Що кожен з нас би підірвався.

Ледь усміхавшись, коли ми

Звертали мимохідь увагу

На жаргонізми Колими,

Крилаті вислови ГУЛАГу.

Він був між нас один, як перст,

Коли натхненно і голінно,

Уперто пер святий свій хрест

На ту Голгофу України.

О, пані Ніно, знали Ви,

Що він не думав скласти зброю,

Що не схиливши голови,

Піде осінньою порою?

Туди, де був, за честь, любов,

До України, до свободи,

Бо він не знав або-або,

Не вибирав мілкіші броди.

І Ви підставили плече

Під хрест, щоб легше Святославу,

Не осквернившися плачем

Ані угодою з лукавим.

  * * *

Душі нам ятрила "Чорноморка",

Третій поверх, світло угорі,

Що ні КГБ, ні лях, ні шторка

Не могли те світло перекрить.

Ви нам уособили Одесу,

Силу моря, степову могуть,

Що якась псковськая неотеса

Силилась зігнуть і підімнуть.

Ваша віра, певність, гідність, Ніно,

Доказом були нам правоти.

Вас хотіли бачить на колінах

Та й піймали облизня кати.

Ви у парі з мужем Святославом,

Нам являли ту козацьку суть,

Що коса імперська обтинала

Та й не спромоглася обітнуть.

І коли, бувало, вже несила,

Зовсім непереливки було,

Ваше світло нам з вікна світило,

Додавало сили і вело.

Навіть тим, які Вас обминали,

Було ясно, ніби Божий день:

Ви із благородного металу,

Ви із найшляхетніших людей!

I would like to publish this epic poem as a separate book. These are fragments. In it, I have sections about Lina Kostenko, and about Oksana Meshko—Strokata knew them, brought us postcards from them. Here is Ukrainskyi Visnyk, 1970. See, Ukrainskyi Visnyk—the harbinger… Today is the anniversary of Chornovil’s death:

"Український вісник" – благовісник

Увінчав наш молодечий рух.

Він у душі влився, наче пісня,

Залунав не слізно, а залізно

І воскресно ожививши дух.

Чорновіл со други благовістив

І, мов з церкви свічечку святу,

Ми несли зі Львова в кожне місто,

Щоб із форми не розхлюпать змісту –

Вісточку правдиву, золоту.

Ми взнавали те, що знать не можна,

Ми пишались, замість чути стид.

Наше слово, голосно розмножене,

Зазвучало сильно і вельможно –

Залпом, врешті-решт, не холостим.

(Like from the “Aurora”)

Як тоді казились бісенята,

Що не в змозі свічку загасить.

Ми її носили з хати в хату,

Щоби тухлу темінь розганяти

І в очах надію прояснить.

Це вже мала бути наша меса

Без обридлих брехонь і наруг

З партитур божественних, небесних,

Свічка цього "Вісника" в Одесу

Нам явилась з Ваших, Ніно, рук.

And here is Nina’s meeting with Sviatoslav. You know how they met on a prison transport train? I played this out well: the transport to Ruzaievka. Nina was given four years, they’re taking her to Barashevo, and Sviatoslav to Sosnovka:

О, та мить між віків і літ,

Коли в зеківській дикій віхолі

Ви в "столипині", Ніно, їхали,

Ні, вершили Ви свій політ.

Мов стріла, в дике серце імперії,

Скориставши їх тятиву,

Ви – одна з золотої серії,

Сагайдачної по єству.

До ГУЛАГа Єжова-Берії

В замордовану вже Мордву

Ви летіли, і раптом: що таке?

В скреготливу печаль коліс

В матючню, в маячіння зекове,

Голос рідний – як в серце спис!

“Святославе, невже? Чи мариться?

Це твій голос живий отут?” –

“Ніно, ти?!” В ґрати білими пальцями

І чолом об холодний прут.

О, та мить, ті хвилини сплакані,

Та рокована зустріч, річ.

"Прекратить разговор", – налякано

Репетнули менти зузбіч.

Вся імперія у істерії,

З дєрєвєнь, полустанків! Та...

Жебонить, розцвіта містерія,

Аж ворушиться мертвота!

Голос – віддих і шквал чуття,

Серця рідного грім биття.

So, what else did I want to read to you? Ah, about the Carpathians, about the OUN, 1944–45. Here’s the epigraph: “Find your way in the forest, you who are daring: if you call yourself a mushroom, then into the borscht you go.” Karavanskyi, 1976, Sosnovka:

Карпатський краю! Отам, за обрієм,

Ти нас очікуєш, ти нас зовеш!

Там хлопці мужні, борці хоробрі є,

І наше місце – у горах теж!

Карпатський лісе!

Ти наш притулок,

Як птахам – гнізда,

Як бджолам – вулик,

Карпатський лісе,

Вирій омріяний,

Наскрізь прочесаний,

Наскрізь простріляний!

Сто раз термошений –

І все ж нескошений!

І все ж нескорений,

І все ж із коренем!

Не раз сполошений і кров'ю зрошений –

Не розпотрошений, не розпорошений,

Ліс нашорошений, весь наїжачений,

Ліс насторожений, ліс покозачений,

Покармалючений, подовбушачений,

Украй розлючений, вогнем означений,

Непередбачено

для зайди втрачений!

Ой, лісе-лісоньку,

Брате- товаришу,

Одвічний спільнику,

Збою-підпільнику...

Чекай нас, лісоньку,

Душею в тобі ми!

Коли ж ми, хлопчики,

В Карпати

спробуєм?

V.V. Ovsiienko: Well, you wrote that powerfully!

O.S. Riznykiv: That was 1945. Yes, you bet!

KHRUSHCHEV’S THAW

Відлига?

Відлига.

Крихка стає крига…

Розм'якне кормига?

Відлига!

Свободою диха,

Зрікається зла, ніби й кається стиха,

Соромиться лиха імперська вовчиха.

Забула, суціга, ідейну бешиху…

Відлига! Відлига!

З барлога ГУЛАГа задихав барига –

Оклига??

– Відлига… Відлига…

Ослабли

попруги, катюги наруга,

Знепружилась пуга...

І віл – вже відлигач –

стяга, нахалюга! –

налигач.

Відлига…

Well, here’s another one. “Sviatoslav Emerged from the GULAG,” December 1960:

З ГУЛАГу вийшов Святослав,

З малої зони – у велику.

Хоч тиск налигача ослаб,

(That was during the thaw, you see?)

Та кагебіст щоразу смикав,

Щоб нагадать, хто пан, хто раб.

І я тоді в ГУЛАГ шугнув…

Менти і пси гляділи строго,

Щоб я ні кроку не ступнув

Убік партійної дороги.

І хоч не хочеш – а іди

І не питай – чому? Куди?

„Шаг влева-вправа есть пабєг,

Стреляем без предупреждєнья!

Бить в єтой калєє тєбє

Да самой смєрти ат раждєнья!”

Я плентався… Але щораз

На небо глипав я, на зорі

І зрозумів: прийде пора –

І я втечу туди, угору!

Бо ж не сказав мені менток,

Що буде втечею с т р и б о к.

Yes, and people did come to see Nina. There were such people. Here’s 1972, May 18,

LAST WORD IN COURT

Ви сиділи, Ніно, на престолі –

Не на лаві суджених, о ні!

Метушились знічено, мов голі,

Підданці і вірні сатани.

Напинались, силувались, дулись,

Щоб значиміш чи бундючніш стать

(Так Христа, напевно, розіпнули

І пішли провину запивать).

Зверненням до них "Високий суде!"

Ви пігмеям дарували шанс

Стати вище, стати врівень з людом

Навіть стати лицарем на час.

Але кожний знає-відчуває,

Що назавжди у халепу влип –

Через Вас їх світ запам'ятає,

Ви їх у історію ввели!

Як їм душі курячі злиняли,

Як очиці глипали, коли

Ви спокійно-царственно сказали,

Навіть не сказали – прорекли:

"Знаю ваші дикі постулати,

Знаю, чий сповняється наказ.

Тому прошу – якнайбільше дати

І заслати якнайдалі нас".

Врешті, що вони могли змінити?

З них Система правила своє –

Вліво-вправо спробуй крок ступити –

То вона, як зеків, їх уб'є.

And why “Satan’s subjects”? Because it was like 1937. I have a piece here, “Song of the Demons”—this is where I broke my rule and wrote a few poems in Russian. Here, for example,

SONG OF THE DEMONS. 1937

Мы, бесы, славно веселилися,

В Расею, мать таку, вселилися,

Слюною брызгая, мы тешимся,

Всех заражая нашим бешенством.

Как занялись душ перековками,

Погнали верных на церковки мы,

Руками их – кресты срываючи,

Их ртами «каки» изрыгаючи,

А мы и сами удивляемся,

Что на веревках не качаемся,

Что, всех прикончив, не кончаемся,

Хотя людьми не притворяемся,

Ведь мы рогов своих не прятали,

Мы просто всех вас орогатили,

Кто ж быть хотел святым ли, правым ли,

Тем помогли мы – в рай отправили.

Но если ангелы небесные

Прервут нам игры наши бесные,

Мы в наше пекло эмигрируем

Или в безрогих мимикрируем.

You see, I believe that for eighty years, those demons of Dostoevsky ruled over us.

V.V. Ovsiienko: One must write about them in their own language—it wouldn’t have come out the same way in Ukrainian.

O.S. Riznykiv: Yes. Like this one here: “Ukrainization”

A LOWLIFE’S RANTING OVER A SHOT OF TAR

Я им вновь и вновь пишу напрасно,

Что игра с нацменами опасна,

Что она на грани провокаций

(This is August 1965, because that was the time of Ukrainization.)

Нам ужасных украинизаций!

Эти школы, блядь, на украинском,

Эти песни, танцы, шаровары…

Были прецеденты – польский, финский:

Оторвались, суки, от отары!

Так и с Украиной может статься,

Если будем с ней играться, братцы.

Все уже опробовали – лгали,

Голодовка сделана какая,

Триста лет Мазепу проклинали –

Нет, он снова, снова возникает!

Убивать? Убили вон Петлюру,

Коновальца, Ребета, Бандеру,

Симоненка – а какую бурю

Во всем мире поднимали, стервы!

Вроде всех уже завербовали

В янычары, в партию, в сексоты –

Нет, опять мальцы понарастали

И на мове требуют чевото!!

Я же им писал: они заразны

Эти украинские бациллы.

Это есть инфекция козацтва –

Шелеста вон даже заразили.

Совесть, Правда

юным гложет душу,

если в ней партийность не окрепла,

Божью Искру Ленин не потушит,

Искра ком. идеи жжет на пепел,

А из пепла украинский феникс

Вдруг встает, как у парнишки пенис.

(In the book, p. 38, it says “erupts like a neurasthenic.” – V.O.)

Ну-ка, бес, хлюпни смолы в рюмашку.

Как боюсь, что мы даем промашку…

Oh, what a gang, what a gang! And this is what I prepared for the end—I wrote it in 1998. It was winter, there was snow, just listen.

WINTER REFLECTION

День і ніч над Одесою хуга мете,

Ніби натяк прозорий, аж білий, на те,

Що не зможеш, Одесо, во віки віків,

Утекти від ГУЛАГів, снігів, соловків,

Від зубчатих кремлів, білокам'яних веж,

Степова утікачко, – ти не утечеш!

Ти саванами сниш? – Маєш саван оцей!

Мариш літеплом? – На ось вітрище в лице!

Знерухомить тебе, спелена, ляже на

Карки твоїх атлантів страшна, крижана,

Невблаганна закляклість, ота мерзлота,

Що нехай вона тричі буде золота, –

Але ж то – мертвота, зомбота, наркота!

Вітер з півночі свище, мете, просяка,

Через тіло, у душу: ти – бранка! Зека!

Скільки твоїх синів в крижанім бурштині

Повмерзало, Одесо, у ладозькім дні, –

Та любили усе ж тисячі твоїх вдів,

Карлуватість, картавість чужинських вождів…

Мабуть, справді не зможеш во віки віків

Утекти від вілюйських снігів, соловків,

Вони сковують рух твій і втечу твою

До свободи, до волі, до моря!

Молю:

О, Одесо, свою Одіссею поквап –

Попереду – свобода!

Позаду – Москва!

I used those famous words—“Moscow is behind us.” Listen, where did we leave off?

V.V. Ovsiienko: Somewhere in the early 70s. But everything got jumbled together.

O.S. Riznykiv: Yes. Karavanskyi was arrested on November 13, 1965. Nina Antonivna comes running to me at the polytechnic institute, to the editorial office: “Olekso, listen, Sviatoslav didn’t come home last night.” “You don’t say!” “He wasn’t home!” “Well, you have to call somewhere.” “I called 02, I called the ambulance, the morgue—he’s not there.” “Then there’s only one place left—the KGB.” “I called, they said they don’t know anything.” And in the evening, she calls me: “It’s all over.” “What, he was found? How? Where?” “At the KGB. They called me. They said to come for a visit, because they’re taking him to serve out the rest of his term.” He still had about 7 years left of his 25-year sentence. Prosecutor Rudenko… 1965.

V.V. Ovsiienko: So he was arrested on November 13 and taken away immediately?

O.S. Riznykiv: Yes. She went for a visit, spoke with him for about twenty minutes, and the next day he was put on a prison transport to serve out his 25-year term. They arranged it so that Prosecutor Rudenko protested his release, claiming he was amnestied incorrectly, that he hadn’t served his full term—so let him serve it. And the poor man went back there.

Well, we carried on. That was 1965, and in December we gathered and went caroling. We had such fine boys, such fine girls! They are still working today. Here’s 1970:

Важачи майбутнім і кар'єрою,

Покоління юного посли,

На очах у хижої імперії

До квартири Вашої ішли:

Стус Василь, Марія Овдієнко,

Обух Діма, Леонід Тимчук,

Могильницька, Ганна Михайленко,

Барладяну… Хто ще не зайчук?

Кожен ніс, мов бджілка, крихту віри,

Краплю честі, дозу доброти,

Порцію порядності і міру

Гідності чи дрібку красоти.

Ніби й мало

(In the book: “Far too much.” – V.O.)

в атмосфері здиху,

Підлості, плюгавства, страху – та

Вам ставало легше жити й дихать

І нести крамольного хреста.

We used to visit Nina Antonivna like that, hiding, well, maybe not hiding—it varied. Mariika Ovdiienko even lived with her for a time, helping her move: she took out and sold the furniture when Nina exchanged her apartment for one in Nalchik. Nina was detained there on December 6, 1971.

Here’s what happened. When 1971 began, my book was put on the “Mayak” publishing house’s plan. It had already been “killed” once in 1969, and now they call me in and say: “Alright, Olekso, your book is in the plan for 1971. ‘Spring Erupts.’ Come in January, sign the contract.” I say, “Okay.” I came in January, on the 6th, on Christmas Eve. They started looking for the desk—the desk where my manuscript was lying had disappeared. They were doing renovations there and had moved the desks around. “It’s not here, the desk is gone. You know what, come back in two days.” I came back on January 14. The desk was found—my manuscript was gone. Finally, the manuscript was found—the review was missing. And this cat-and-mouse game—with Oleksa Riznykiv as the mouse—lasted for nine months. This shameful empire played with me like a cat. I traveled to Kyiv, to the Committee on the Press, to Irlin, I went to Petro Osadchuk—he was somewhere in the Party’s Central Committee then. I went to see everyone, and they would tell me, “Go THERE.” I went to the KGB, Brazhko was there then, not Kuvarzin. I say: “What complaints do you have about my book? Why aren’t you publishing it?” “Us? Oleksa Serhiyovych, what are you talking about? We have no complaints about your book. That’s for the publishing house to decide.” And the publishing house points…(raises a finger upwards). I go to the regional party committee… I’m telling this story for the hundredth time, how tired I am of this game.

When they arrested me on October 11, 1971, that nine-month game with me ended, and I wrote the poem “The Hunt.” I even breathed a sigh of relief when they arrested me. I said: “Well, finally. You should have just said from the start that you were planning to arrest me, and that’s why you weren’t signing the contract for the book.” They did it on purpose, to get on my nerves. They loved to torment a person in that way. I wrote the poem “The Hunt” then:

Оленя гнали цілий день

По снігу, ствердлому в морозі,

Олень свої поранив нозі,

Лишав мереживо руде.

Що важче дихати було,

Що тяжче м'язи надимались,

То поступово смерти зло

Добром привабливим ставало.

І, як захекано упав,

Не хтячи бігти, ані жити,

Із серцем ножик розмовляв

Вже як не вбивця, а збавитель.

Well, I thought, that’s it. The second tour has begun. I’m not signing any protocols, I’m not answering questions, and they’re saying something or other. I say: “My God, why should I have to prove anything to you? You prove that I’m guilty. Why should I have to prove that I’m not guilty? We have the presumption of innocence,” I say. I even have a poem about it: you’re a camel—now prove to us that you’re not a camel. We’ll put a load on your back, right on these humps, and you’ll walk through the desert. If you don’t cross the desert without water, then we’ll be convinced you’re not a camel. Because a camel will cross the desert, but you’ll drop dead. That’s how we’ll know you’re not a camel.

That’s how I fought with them, fought, constantly arguing that we weren’t guilty. I’d say: “We didn’t have any leaflets, we didn’t create any parties, we had no weapons. And the fact that we read literature—it’s written in the Declaration of Human Rights that a person has the right to read what they want and express any ideas they want.”

And so the investigation went on. A cell plant, Orel, is with me. Some Orel. I forgot his first name. Supposedly in for drugs. And Nina had a cell plant too. And Nina, poor thing, believed her, because at the trial she tells me: “I passed on my final statement. My cellmate was released. I wrote my final statement on a piece of cloth.” I say: “Nina, my God, Ms. Nina, what have you done? That was a snitch.” “Oh, don’t tell me that.” “Ma’am, well, Sviatoslav, your husband, told you… How could you…” “Oh, stop it,” she was even angry with me.

And they have a habit of letting you know the next day that it was a snitch. They bring her to court the next day. She walks in, white as a sheet: “Mr. Olekso, it’s true—she’s a snitch.” I say: “What did you think?” “My God, I believed her!”

The trial began on May 4, 1972, and lasted until the 19th. That is, two weeks. The judge was Kotenko Volodymyr Mykhailovych, who spoke Ukrainian. The trial was conducted in Ukrainian; they were playing games with us like that. Our Nina Antonivna would address them: “Your Honor.” And I spoke that way too—“Your Honor.” Everything was cultured and polite with us. This spectacle lasted for two weeks. The prosecutor asks for six years for me, five for Nina, and for Prytyka he asks for less than the minimum—not three years, but two, for assisting the investigation. Well, I don’t know if I should talk about the trial?

V.V. Ovsiienko: You must, of course.

O.S. Riznykiv: Well, for example, there was this incident. A witness for Prytyka came and said: “I told Oleksiy: don’t wear a mustache and don’t speak Ukrainian, because the authorities pay attention to people like that.” Oleksa is sitting next to me. He stands up, strokes his upper lip like this, and his mustache is shaved off: “He’s lying, he forgot, he forgot, he’s not telling the truth, that never happened. I always spoke Russian, I always spoke Russian. It’s only recently that I started speaking Ukrainian here.” It was hard for Nina Antonivna, and it was hard for me at some moments. He says he gave me Dziuba’s work. And I say I don’t remember. “How can you not remember?” I say: “I don’t remember him giving it to me.” And Nina Antonivna would say this: “I don’t remember if I gave it to him—to her lab director, Shvedov—but if he says I did, then it must have been so.” You understand, she can’t directly say he’s lying. Nina respected him, so she couldn’t. Someone less conscientious would have fought back, shouted: “He’s lying, that so-and-so!” Then they back off from a person like that. But we are intelligent people.

V.V. Ovsiienko: It’s hard to lie.

O.S. Riznykiv: You can’t say it directly, but it’s hard to lie too. I’d say: “I don’t remember giving it.” Then the court believes the witnesses. That’s how the trial rolled on and on for two weeks.

My father and sister would be outside the courthouse, but they weren’t allowed into the courtroom. My sister was already studying at the university. I stand up and say: “Mr. Judge, I refuse to participate in the court proceedings because you have not allowed my father, sister, and wife in, and the trial is open to the public.” He says: “What, they aren’t here? Well, call them, let them in.” My father comes in and stands, Valia comes in and sits down. The judge says: “Then let’s begin.” We had to do this often, almost every day. They would only let the relatives in under pressure. Liuda Avdiievska once came in as a witness and threw flowers to us. God, such a commotion broke out, how they attacked her, you have no idea! They took her out of the courtroom, shouted… That was one incident.

(The recording continues in Ivan Maliuta’s apartment).

For that, Liuda Avdiievska suffered very, very much later on. That summer, she was expelled from the university, and when she went to apply in Dnipropetrovsk—she wanted to apply again, she was expelled in her third year—the rector told her: “You are on the blacklists, and you won’t get in anywhere in Ukraine.” He told her this informally. She asks: “What should I do?” “Go either to the Caucasus or to Moldavia.” She went to Moldavia, to Bălți, and got into the Russian philology department there. The rector or dean there also asked her: “And for which nationalism—Jewish or Ukrainian?” She says: “For Ukrainian.” “Ah, then we’ll take you.” She graduated, worked there for a very long time, and just recently wanted to defend her Ph.D. dissertation, but now there’s Moldovan nationalism there, so they didn’t allow her. Moldovans defend their theses, but they didn’t let her. So she returned to Ukraine, now lives in Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi, works at a pedagogical college, teaching Ukrainian to Moldovan groups.

There was another lady who constantly helped Nina Strokata. She helped before the arrest and after the arrest. She lived in her apartment. This was Maria Ovdiienko. They did something even worse to her. Either Duz or Leon Khachykovych—the secretary of the university’s party bureau—told the professors that Maria had to be given a failing grade. Yevhen Prisovskyi recently told this story. He said: “Leon Khachykovych summoned me and said: ‘You will give Maria Ovdiienko a failing grade.’ And Prisovskyi replies: ‘A failing grade? But she’s a straight-A student.’ ‘You have to.’ ‘Well,’ says Prisovskyi, ‘she came to take the exam, and she got the question on Ivan Franko’s poem “Moses.” She answered perfectly and I,’ he says, ‘gave her an “A.”’ My God, my God, what a terrible atmosphere it was! ‘I,’ he says, ‘wanted to bring someone else to the exam, to sit next to me and hear that the answer was excellent, that I couldn’t give her a failing grade. I called one, a second, a third. Saienko came as the head of the department’s trade union. He came, sat down, and after listening to the answers of the first three students, he saw Ovdiienko coming up to answer and said: “Well, everything is fine here, the students know everything, I’m off.” “Wait, wait,” I say, “let’s listen to this girl.” “No, thank you, I’m leaving,” and he fled. ‘I,’ says Prisovskyi, ‘was left alone and gave her an A. The next day,’ he says, ‘I’m sitting at home and I see some sycophant of the university rector—Bohutskyi was the rector then—scurrying across the yard. He runs up to me: “Yevhen, let’s go quickly, the rector is summoning you.” “Just a moment, I’ll change.” “Let’s go, the car is waiting.” ‘I,’ he says, ‘changed, went out, we got in the car, and arrived. Bohutskyi is sitting in the middle, no hello, no nothing, just throws at me: “And you want to work at the university after this?” “What’s the matter?” “What were you told—to give her a failing grade? And you gave her an A.” “But she knew the material for an A.” “You had to give her a two!”’ Prisovskyi says: ‘Well, we are communists, after all. We should understand that we are undermining…’ ‘That’s all nonsense, you had to give her a two!’ And,’ he says, ‘he yelled at me so much that I wanted to resign, but then I thought: they told me to give her a failing grade in private. Let them prove it.’ And he didn’t submit his resignation, and for four years, he was treated like a dissident.” They pinned some kind of “-ism” on Prisovskyi, persecuted him. Now he tells this story to everyone. Prisovskyi is now a Doctor of Sciences, a professor, and he is still actively working, although he is elderly…

But, Vasyl, they found three others who gave Maria failing grades. She was expelled during the winter session—that was while I was still under investigation. That’s how they dealt with Maria. She went to the Kyiv region, lived somewhere in Brovary, worked as a construction worker, a plasterer. When I was released and came back, she was still working as a plasterer.

And her husband became Dmytro Obukhiv, Dima. They met in Nina Strokata’s room, talked, fell in love, and got married. In the summer, the investigator brings me the news: “Did you know, Obukhiv married Ovdiienko.” Wow, that hit me hard! And a year later, they write to me in the camp that a son was born, and that I am the godfather. They had me down as the godfather in absentia, and Nina Antonivna as the godmother. Roman has grown up now, a handsome young man…

Well, what else was interesting there? They hired a translator. Shvets, a professor from the university. They hired him as a translator to sit there and translate some Ukrainian words into Russian. He recently told me: “God, as I sat there, listening to your trial—it was such a revelation for me! I even got acquainted with samvydav materials there. I,’ he says, ‘saw such people, people like you… Many people were standing outside the doors, and they weren’t allowed in.”

Another peculiar thing, Vasyl, is that all the Sixtiers were arrested on January 12, 1972. But we were taken earlier, so our trial took place earlier, in May. None of us were given exile, just a straight prison term. We were like a test case. Odesa was like a test case. And everyone who was convicted after us was already getting seven plus three, seven plus five, meaning they were adding exile.

What else needs to be said? Nina Strokata was arrested on December 6, 1971. She was also held in a KGB cell. I heard her cough; we communicated that way—with that cough. They say she was taken on the train. She was traveling from Nalchik to Odesa. She didn’t make it to Odesa. She had exchanged her apartment and was supposed to live in Nalchik with Yurko Shukhevych’s family, who had a small child and no apartment.

V.V. Ovsiienko: But she never actually lived there. She just managed to make the exchange and was imprisoned. Shukhevych lived there.

O.S. Riznykiv: That’s right. But I want to say that Chornovil immediately created the Committee for the Defense of Nina Strokata. It included Yakir, Krasin, Meshko, Vasyl Stus, Chornovil, and Tymchuk—he’s our sailor who was friends with Nina, and even earlier with Sviatoslav. He’s a patriot. He’s still alive; I saw him for the first time recently at Hanna Mykhailenko’s 70th birthday celebration—he came. They formed the Defense Committee and wrote a letter to the Odesa prosecutor: “We will defend her with all our might…” It was mentioned that Oleksa Riznykiv and Prytyka were arrested with her. This text was recently published in the newspaper Chas—a portrait of Nina Strokata, Chornovil, he was still very young. This shows Chornovil’s efficiency. He sized up the situation very quickly: we must rely on the law. We have legally created a Defense Committee and will defend her. They stated it so openly. Chornovil sent this letter to Odesa, the letter arrived on January 11, and on January 12, he himself was arrested and put on trial. So that Committee just went quiet.

What else? This Ivan Maliuta, in whose apartment we are sitting, was a student at the polytechnic institute. Back when Karavanskyi was taken, in 1966 or 1967, he brings a poem to me at the editorial office. I was working as a literary contributor for the polytechnic newspaper. He brings a poem, and written at the top is: “To Sviatoslav Karavanskyi.” He says: “I dedicated this poem to him.” I say: “Let’s publish it.” But I thought, we can’t write “To Karavanskyi,” because the censor will immediately remove it. I say: “Write ‘S.K.,’ abbreviated.” He wrote it, and we published the poem. Come on, give it here.

Ivan Maliuta: Actually, I had a diptych dedicated to Sviatoslav Karavanskyi. But Oleksa published the first poem in the polytechnic newspaper Za Industrialni Kadry. It was called “I Summon the Spring.”

O.S. Riznykiv: “I Summon the Spring”—like I summon the fire upon myself.

I. Maliuta: And the second poem was already finished. So, with your permission, I will read the second one. So, Ivan Maliuta, at that time a student of the Odesa Polytechnic Institute, Faculty of Automation and Industrial Electronics. I will first read the second poem, which is called “The Gardener,” to Sviatoslav Karavanskyi.

Як ріка в береги, крізь усі перешкоди,

На свої на круги все вертає природа:

Дмуть північні вітри, щоби квіти згубити,

Нездоланний порив навесні відродитись.

Сад рубають до пня – залишається корінь

І росте молодняк – той же дух непокори.

Але я садівник нелукавого слова,

Дикий сад – чагарник, це ще тільки основа.

І коли сокорух обдаровує листям

Я щепити берусь тих дичок товариство.

Запевняє сусід, що він любить кислиці –

Я щепитиму всі із терпінням провидця.

Хай усе воскреса, що покликане бути –

І відродиться сад, диво предків забутих.

Of course, this may be an allegorical poem—the garden and the society. These are those young people—boys, young men, young women, like me, on whom, I would say, Karavanskyi had a magical influence, even when they didn’t see him, even just by listening to stories about him—so, let’s say, like me. I never had the chance to see him in my life; I only met his wife, after his second arrest in Odesa, Nina Antonivna Strokata-Karavanska. I wrote this diptych under the impression of what I heard from Oleksa Riznykiv about him, that he was such an indomitable fighter for Ukraine’s freedom…

For me at that time, it was a discovery. The truth was hidden from us; we didn’t even know there was a UPA army. From publications in the press, from seminars, we knew there were some “Ukrainian bourgeois nationalists”—but who were they? It was only under the influence of Oleksa Riznykiv and our circle that I learned that the so-called Ukrainian bourgeois nationalists were true patriots. But personalities like Sviatoslav Karavanskyi were a revelation to me. Later, in one of my publications from the early 90s, I called him a “Passionary.” This personality moved me so much. I think not just me, but many who knew him. We heard Karavanskyi’s appeal to the prosecutor of Ukraine on the “Voice of America” radio, to restore Ukrainization. At that time, Odesa was a kind of island in relation to other centers of spiritual resistance. We heard some things: somewhere over there, in Kyiv, there are some guys, in Lviv there are. Odesa was somehow separate. So for us, Karavanskyi and his wife were that connection. They united us with all the other centers of resistance. They were the locomotives—and Oleksa Riznykiv was with them. They created our Ukrainian community around themselves, they created the Odesa Ukrainian identity.

V.V. Ovsiienko: When did you study at the Polytechnic Institute?

I. Maliuta: I studied at the Odesa Polytechnic from 1962 to 1968. After graduating, I was assigned, at my own request, to a job in Lviv, where I had previously done my internship and where, as I believed, the true spirit of nationally conscious people existed; that’s where I had to go. I wanted to go to Lviv so badly… Of course, this was an idealization, because soon, in Lviv itself, I was very cruelly disillusioned. No, not in my ideas, not in my convictions. I can tell you more about that specifically.

Since I had a penchant for journalism, while working as an engineer at a military factory, I enrolled in the correspondence department of the journalism faculty at Lviv State University named after Franko in that same year, 1968. There, in my first year, they already took notice of me because I was reading unpublished poems by Vasyl Symonenko to the students, which were being passed around by hand, in particular, “Necrologue to a Corncob that Perished at a Procurement Point” and others. During a break. I felt like I was in Odesa, where you can communicate freely, and no one says anything. But in Lviv, there were spies, informers among the students. They immediately reported to the proper authorities. The first year was so-so, but in the second year, I was really in for it. How? I wrote a term paper, the title of which I remember for the rest of my life: “The Literary Process as a Manifestation of the Artistic Life of the Epoch.” Having some knowledge, I worked in the local Stefanyk Library. And I referred to publications. I recalled how Poltoratskyi once debunked Ostap Vyshnia, cited poems by Lina Kostenko that were published in the “Ukrainian Calendar” in Poland in Ukrainian.

I expected it to be just a term paper. But no. Troubles began with it—they called me in and warned me. They said that this matter would go all the way to the rector and beyond. It ended with the dean of the correspondence journalism faculty calling me in soon after and, closing the door tightly, saying: “You are a special student here, but I’ll tell you: it’s probably not worth staying here now. Where did you come from—from Odesa? I’ve seen your personal file, you’re working. But if you have the opportunity and if you want to continue studying, then leave us. Just don’t tell anyone about this conversation. You won’t be able to hold on here. Even if you pass one more year, they won’t let you defend your thesis later. Understand me correctly, because I myself feel that I will be leaving here soon.” In short, he was a decent man. We had, as they say, a one-on-one conversation.

I soon felt it. During that session that Oleksa Riznykiv talked about, they told me: “You can skip the theory of the party-Soviet press, because you won’t pass.” “How can I not pass?” Or was it Soviet literary studies… So I demanded that a commission be created in advance. They say: “No, first we’ll give you a failing grade, and then a commission will be created for a re-take—that’s the rule.” I knew that literary studies perfectly, even consulted other students, but still, they gave me a “B”—it was impossible to give me a failing grade. Then they decided to get back at me on the theory and practice of the party-Soviet press. There was a certain Hryhorovych there. Well, he did his best. He immediately said: “You don’t know it.” And that’s how it all started. I realized there was nothing more for me to do there.

V.V. Ovsiienko: Perhaps we can talk separately sometime? I would like Mr. Oleksa to tell his whole story today, because he has to go to Odesa. And there isn’t much time.

O.S. Riznykiv: You two can meet separately. Alright. Where did I leave off?

V.V. Ovsiienko: About the trial. You were sent on a prison transport.

O.S. Riznykiv: We were sent on a prison transport.

THE SECOND TOUR (1972–1977)

They are taking me to Perm Oblast, while Prytyka and Strokata are transported to Mordovia. I’ve already told you about Strokata’s meeting with Sviatoslav on the prison transport.

We arrived at Zone 36. It’s a famous zone—later, on the special regime section, Stus died there, in the village of Kuchino, Perm Oblast. There I meet Sverstiuk, and Levko Lukianenko, and Oles Serhiienko, and Jews—Dymshits, Mendelevich, Chornohlaz, Zalmanson. Jews who wanted to hijack a plane in 1970 and flee from Leningrad to abroad. They are imprisoned there, and many of our guys are imprisoned there. A little later, Marmus and Sapeliak arrived. Volodia Marmus from Chortkiv. You know him—a fine young man. They raised flags in Chortkiv—four Ukrainian flags and slogans. I have a copy of his sentence. Then Dmytro Hrynkiv, Roman Chuprei, and Volodia Roketskyi arrived. I met him once, about seven or ten years ago. We met at some train station—wasn’t it in Kotovsk.

V.V. Ovsiienko: He is no longer alive, he passed away.

O.S. Riznykiv: You don’t say? May he rest in peace.

V.V. Ovsiienko: He passed away recently. Just yesterday I had a conversation with his brother, Bohdan Roketskyi, and I asked him to also tell me about Volodymyr.

O.S. Riznykiv: Bernychuk was there, Kampov from Uzhhorod was there, you know that man.

V.V. Ovsiienko: I recently visited him and recorded his story.

O.S. Riznykiv: Oh, Kampov knows how to tell a story, I know.

V.V. Ovsiienko: He spoke for seven and a half hours.

O.S. Riznykiv: So I need to speak for eight hours, then, or what?

We arrived at that Zone 36 and I was there the whole time. Only once was I taken to Zone 37, to the hospital.

During my first imprisonment, when I was in Mordovia, I learned Polish. And here I decided that I needed to learn Lithuanian, since I am a bit of a linguist, having graduated from the philology department in 1968. I decided that I needed to master Lithuanian and Latvian, because Lithuanians and Latvians were imprisoned nearby.

I also had an idea to create a root dictionary, one that didn’t exist anywhere yet, a “Concise or Compact Root Dictionary.” In 1973, I found a way: I developed a scheme for how to compactly present all words with the same root. I began working on this dictionary in 1973. I studied all the dictionaries that existed, gathered everything. My dictionary had up to four thousand roots. The Lithuanian and Latvian languages also helped me with this.

While still in the KGB on Bebelia Street in Odesa, both during the investigation and during the trial, I was constantly writing. I made it a rule to write as many poems as possible every day. I wrote them down in general notebooks. Fortunately, all of them remained with me, except for the first one—the first one was lost in Odesa. But here, they would take them for inspection and return them, because I didn’t write anything forbidden—only poems. They would check them and return them to me. Thus, my poems have been preserved. I have already published many of them—such as “Alone with God,” the epic poem “The Sacrificial Site”—about a village that was burned by the fascists. The epic poem “Why Are You Silent, Stryboh?” was written before my arrest, in 1966. And I have published many of those poems. The most famous is a short poem of two stanzas:

А він рубав урочисто і гнівно (this is the investigator)

І погляд його втіхою сіяв:

«Ти винен тим уже, що українець,

І ця вина з народження твоя!»

Йому я не повірю до загину,

Що ми злочинці: мій народ і я,

Що є антирадянською Вкраїна –

Зростаюча республіка моя.

The historian Yuriy Zaitsev really liked these words. In his book “History of Ukraine” and in an article in the newspaper Molod Ukrainy, he used these words and wrote that in 1971, a certain Oleksa was arrested, who very aptly formulated the essence of the accusations: “You are guilty simply for being Ukrainian, and this guilt is yours from birth.”

In 1989, in the journal Ukraina, issues 37 and 38, my long article was published, which was called “I Am Guilty for Being Ukrainian.” Then I inserted it here, into the book “Thorn Fire” (Kyiv, Ukrainskyi Pysmennyk, 1993)… At the suggestion of the Head of our Union, Yuriy Mushketyk, who advised me: “This article should be published as a separate booklet.” I went to Skomorovskyi, where my book was supposed to be published, and I say: “Let’s also add this article.” He removed some poems and added this article.

I. Maliuta: It needs to be republished.

O.S. Riznykiv: We’ll do it, we’ll do it, when there’s money.

And what is this article about? It’s a petition for rehabilitation that I wrote around 1973, in the camp. In it, I wrote that I should be rehabilitated. In my final statement at the trial, I said that this is not 1937, I demand rehabilitation not after 19 years, like the people who were tried in 1937, but now, at this trial. The judge smiled, gave me five and a half years, and the rehabilitation came exactly nineteen years later, in 1991. When the law on rehabilitation was passed, I was rehabilitated in both cases. But I interspersed this article with poems and emphasized that I was tried only for being Ukrainian. We had no leaflets, no party, no weapons, no organization. Only for the fact that we felt ourselves to be Ukrainians, that we caroled in Odesa, created a choir, spoke Ukrainian—only for that were we tried.

V.V. Ovsiienko: But something must have been written in the verdict?

O.S. Riznykiv: Anti-Soviet agitation, propaganda. And samvydav literature.

I. Maliuta: They found samvydav at Prytyka’s, but with you, it seems, they only found two jokes.

O.S. Riznykiv: Yes, they found them in a notebook…

V.V. Ovsiienko: If you could somehow get me the second verdict as well…

O.S. Riznykiv: Alright, I’ll send it. What else did I miss? The investigation had nothing on me. Even Yefimov, the lawyer, a former judge, came, familiarized himself with the case, and said: “But you have nothing here. I think they’ll give you time served.” I say: “No, you must demand rehabilitation, that I be released altogether.” “Yes, yes, there’s nothing here. They found samvydav at Prytyka’s, but you don’t have any.” And the KGB agent says: “You knew he had already been arrested, so you hid the samvydav or gave it away. You hid it somewhere?” And at Nina’s place, they found Sviatoslav Karavanskyi’s poem “To Beria’s Heirs” and other poems written by Karavanskyi—and they charged her for them.

V.V. Ovsiienko: “Possession with intent to distribute”?

O.S. Riznykiv: Possession of her own husband’s poems!? Well, and a letter to the international journalistic organization in Prague. When they came to her with a search on January 3, 1967, she tore up this letter and threw it out the window. They ran downstairs, collected all the pieces, and glued them together. And this letter was filed in the case.

I. Maliuta: It seems they also found this poem of mine at her place.

O.S. Riznykiv: Yes, and your poem. They scraped up everything she had, and they blew it all out of proportion.

V.V. Ovsiienko: You’ve already started talking about the Perm camp No. 36. How was it for you there?

O.S. Riznykiv: How was it? We wrote an appeal to the Supreme Court, but we didn’t receive a response in Odesa. They took us to the Urals, a month passes, a second, a third, a fourth. I hoped that the Supreme Court would sort it out and overturn what that foolish judge had given. But they say: “Everything remains in force.” “Let me read it.” They didn’t. They only let me read it at the end of November. When I read that ruling, I saw that they were even bigger liars than the Odesa judge. And I declared a hunger strike for seven days—from December 5th to the 12th. Until Human Rights Day. I had three days off and three weekend days. At first, I worked a little while on hunger strike, and then I lay down and lay there for another three days. Zhuravkov came over, said something. I said that I had days off, everything was legal. I wrote a statement that I was outraged that the Supreme Court turned out to be even more deceitful than the Odesa court, and therefore I was declaring a hunger strike. So I went on a hunger strike for seven days.

Here’s another interesting story. When we arrived at the camp, people found out that I write. I read some of my things there. A Jew from the Dnipropetrovsk region, Arye Vudka, approaches me and says: “Mr. Olekso, do you want your poems to get abroad?” “Well, who wouldn’t want that?” “Well, give me a few, about ten.” I knew he had been tried and given three years in a high-security cell for not going to work on Saturdays. This meant he still had three years to serve in Vladimir Prison, then a few more weeks in the camp, and only then would he be released. I say: “But you still have Vladimir Prison, you’ll forget.” “No,” he says, “I have such a memory that I’ll only forget when I pass them on.” “Well, as you wish.” I prepared the poems and gave them to him. The next day, he calls me over, we walk along the restricted zone, and he recites all those poems to me from memory, poems that I didn’t even know by heart myself. I say: “Mr. Arye, how do you do that?” “Well,” he says, “it’s enough for me to read it two or three times, and that’s it.” Soon he was taken away on a transport. They took him to Vladimir Prison, I never saw him again.

I gave him a few poems. There was one he didn’t take for certain reasons. He says: “Are you crazy, those KGB agents will be terrified.” It was this poem:

Виходимо гуляти, як на бій –

Беремо кулаки, розслаблені в долоні,

Беремо м'язи, напхані у шкіру,

І ноги, вже натравлені стрибать.

Виходимо гуляти, як на бій.

З дороги геть усякий, хто слабий,

А дужий – приготуйсь до оборони!

Ми звикли вартість кулаками мірять,

А замість грошей – зуби рахувать.

Несемо кулаки, розслаблені в долоні.

Ми ними славу виб’ємо собі!

У них дрімають дратівливі звірі,

Ізвиклі, мов шаблі, до боротьби –

Лише намірся рух один зробить,

Лиш думку допусти об обороні –

А вже кулак на скроні й на горбі!

Виходимо гуляти, як на бій.

І м’язи, запаковані у шкірі,

І ноги, вже натравлені топтать.

Так прагнуть дії, що лиш смерть хіба

Їх може зупинити, коли встигне…

Йдемо, готові зуби рахувать

І черепи ламати і трощити.

Супроти нас, коли бажаєш жити –

Не слід ставать.

Виходимо гуляти, як на бій…

Ми б так хотіли силу нашу змірять –

Та підлабузнюють зустрічні, мов раби,

Або ховаються лякливо у подвір’ях…

Несемо кулаки набряклі,

Ніби гирі.

Гуляємо…

А маримо про бій.

He says it’s a very scary, extremist poem, so he didn’t take it. But he took the other six and learned them. I corrected a few mistakes in them. He left. A few years later, when I was already free, I hear my poem “Meteorological” on the radio, read by Ihor Kachurovskyi. He says: “Oleksa Riznykiv has poems like this, such imagery.” It’s a short free verse poem… I see trees through the bars of my cell. In the morning they were still bare, but by noon their branches were covered in green. I wonder if that barbed wire, which runs like a wall, will also turn green? And there was another poem, “Ozone.” It turns out I wrote it in 1973. Vudka was imprisoned until 1976… So, the poem “Ozone” was already there, dedicated to the memory of those who gave their lives for the independence of Ukraine:

Назбираю склянку граду з градопаду,

А він тане і тікає – нема зладу.

Назбираю склянку граду, назбираю

Серед літа, серед липня, серед раю.

На листочки на зелені, на травини

Понизалися градини, мов перлини.

Ці небесні самозванці, нечеканці,

Неболюбці, себегубці, себеданці.

Відчайдушно, занедбавши небезпеку,

Просто в затхлість, у задуху, в спеку, в пекло,

Так прозорокришталево, так відверто:

Ппросвіжити, проозонити –

І вмерти.

Назбираю склянку граду, назбираю,

А він тане і тікає, і стікає,

Він зливається з травою і землею,

Не годиться для оглядин і музею.

Today is the anniversary of Chornovil’s death. These are people who consciously went to their deaths. There were few of them, but also many. This Oleksa Hirnyk from Kalush, who set himself on fire near the Shevchenko monument… You were there by the monument then, when we arrived—the II World Congress of Political Prisoners, in June 1993? His photograph was there. I started composing a poem in his memory right there.

And this is a letter his son sent. They threw out my article, but published his son’s, with a photograph, a very nice one. And in mine, there was a poem that I started writing in Kaniv. Remember, we were on our knees and singing a memorial service for Oleksa Hirnyk?

Олексо, грішнику святий!

В тобі була не іскра Божа,

А ватра! А вогонь жахкий!

Те полум’я святе і гоже

Нас досі спопеляти може

І буде. Й будить крізь роки.

Як ти Україну любив!

Як волі їй тобі кортіло!

Як ти поставити хотів

Не тільки Слово, але й Діло

На сторожі нас, рабів.

Але – не ближнього ти вбив…

Себе самого.

За нас, рабів оспалих, стлілих

Ісус офірував лиш тіло,

А ти – і душу погубив.

Олексо, грішнику святий,

Молю, упавши на коліна,

Тебе, щоб ти мені простив

Мою ятріючу провину –

Що я живий стою, а ти

Сконав, згорів за Україну...

Благаю Господа уклінно

Малу можливість віднайити,

Щоби гріха твого частину

Мені вділити…

І – простить.

But among the poems I gave to Vudka, there was a terrifying poem. About the fate of Ukraine. You remember that fairy tale where they cut up the brother’s body, scattered the pieces across the field, and went home. But this poem came to me back in the cell in Odesa, when I was in the KGB building. You just sit there and think, what is this fate of ours, that they beat us and beat us and beat us, and we can do nothing. And this poem came to me:

Коли потяте на шматки

(In the book “Alone with God,” p. 24: “hacked into.” – V.O.)

Докупи знов зібратись хоче,

Плазує палець до руки,

В орбіти втискуються очі;

Коли вправляється кишка

І мозком звивини проходять –

Все місця власного шука,

Аж стогне, а таки знаходить;

Коли із горем пополам

Усе порубане збереться,

Води живої кілька грам,

Із неба післаних, проллється,

І груди, схлипнувши, вдихнуть,

І серце вдарить, як на сполох,

Тоді прочуняє від сну

Протверезілий раптом ворог.

Чатує подих, погляд, рух,

Ще несвідомий і невмілий.

Бере сокиру знов до рук

І нахиляється над тілом.

І знов, як перше, як колись, –

Не даючи воскреснуть, хекне.

Сокира шваргоне униз,

І череп, ніби диня, репне.

І знов, як перше, як завжди,

Дрібненько тіло порубає.

В чотири боки, що куди

Порозкидає.

І з матюками витре кров,

І з матом ляже подрімати,

Поки шматки зростуться знов,

Щоб знову встати – і рубати.

Remember, I read this poem at the “Zolotyi Homin” festival in 1991, here in the October Palace. There were twelve of us, former political prisoners, standing in the dark with candles in our hands, with only a spotlight on us, and I read this terrifying poem. About the fate of Ukraine. But finally, she was resurrected, she stood up, she is learning to walk…

Another poem that Arye Vudka also took abroad was about having many wings. I still marvel at how I wrote it, sitting in a cell—it was my third or fourth month in Odesa under investigation, and this poem came to me:

A MULTITUDE OF WINGS

На цім крилі до тебе примайну,

На тім приляжу, цим крилом укрикриюсь,

А те, залітане, надламане, утну.

Багатокрилість.

Залітане! Залатаних – нема!

Нема залежаних, а є лиш незалежні.

Я стільки крил бездумно наламав,

Б'ючись об світу боки протилежні!

Не шанував, не скнарив, не беріг.

З таких висот в такі шугав низини.

Лиш радістю хлоп'ячою горів:

Ростуть невпинно.

Ні! Обезкриліти і впасти не дано.

Мені судилось буряна рухливість.

Мене п'янить, сильніше ніж вино,

Багатокрилість.

Arye Vudka disappeared, they took him away. I heard this on Radio Liberty—and that was it. Then a break until 1991.

In 1991, Nina Strokata sent me a photocopy from America of a page from the journal Svoboda, which had six of my poems. She wrote in the margin that these were probably the poems Vudka took out of the camp. And they were published in 1977 in the journal Suchasnist, which was published abroad at the time. I saw them in print for the first time. Listen, not a single mistake—what a memory!

V.V. Ovsiienko: Yes, a phenomenal memory. He didn’t just take yours, but many others’. I had the chance to meet him for the first time in Israel. I hadn’t known him before that.

O.S. Riznykiv: Wait, didn’t you travel with us to Israel in 1992?

V.V. Ovsiyenko: In 1992, in September. On that meadow near the university, at night...

O.S. Riznykiv: That was when Yasha Suslensky, head of the “Israel-Ukraine” society, arranged the trip. He first came to Ukraine in 1991. I spoke with him then. And in 1992, we went to Israel. And there I met this Aryeh Vudka, and he gave me that book—Poetry from Behind Bars. That’s how I first saw that my poems were printed in that book. And he also gave me his Muscovy. It has three parts. The first is the investigation, the second is about the camp, and there is a page about the arrival of Oleksandr Serhiyenko and me at the camp. He writes about everyone, imagine—about each person’s case, he even gives everyone’s address. This is my article “The Exodus of Poetry from the Egyptian Gulag,” and this is a photo of us there. When I returned, I wrote an article. It was published on December 12, 1992, in the newspaper Radyanske Prybuzhzhia. It’s the Mykolaiv regional newspaper. And this is that Suchasnist journal, and that is Nina Strokata’s handwriting: “The journal ‘Suchasnist,’ 1997, number 7-8. The journal is currently published in Kyiv. Editors Ivan Dziuba and Taras Hunchak. I am sure that in that book are the very same poems that Aryeh Vudka took out of the camp”. She wrote this sheet for me, you see, what an illegible copy. You can take this.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: May I? Oh, thank you!

I. Malyuta: Olexa, but still, were there witnesses in your case? For example, Mariya Ovdiyenko and others were not allowed to testify.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: We’ve already talked about that. Now we are talking about imprisonment. In the concentration camps in the 70s, there were entire wars—hunger strikes of protest, renunciations of citizenship.

O.S. Riznykiv: There was that too. A famous Banderite, an OUN member—Bohdan Chuyko—was imprisoned with us. He had already stopped going to work, so every day he would sit and write complaints. He wrote them with very beautiful handwriting, formatted them elegantly. He said that this was the only way—to write, write, and write. It’s also mental training. Where he is now, I don’t know; it seems he’s no longer with us.

Stepan Sapelyak was imprisoned with us then. I’ve already mentioned Sergei Kovalyov—such a bright figure, close in his luminosity to Sakharov. He’s a true democrat; he understood everything about Ukraine. A lot of all sorts of Russian scum were imprisoned there. Someone from Crimea approaches me: “Aleksei, you’re Reznikov, so what are you doing with these hohols? Russia, you will be, you are the heir of the Holy Spirit!” I laugh and say: “What kind of Russia are you? We are Rus’, and you are not Rus’.” He gets angry and walks away.

I. Malyuta: But at the same time, there were people like Chichibabin, who wrote in Russian?

O.S. Riznykiv: Yes, there was Sakharov, there is Kovalyov. He also spoke out against the war in Chechnya just recently. There are such people in Russia, but there are few of them.

My main achievements during these years are that I learned Lithuanian and Latvian from the Lithuanians and Latvians.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: And from whom specifically?

O.S. Riznykiv: Simas Kudirka was the first. And we also had Hrylius Shymon from Klaipėda—a Jew who knew Lithuanian. He gave me my first Lithuanian lessons. He was so fiery. I said: “I’ll study it.” “Right, right, you must.” He gave me a literal translation of the poem “Heroica, or the Condemnation of Prometheus” by Marcinkevičius. My God, what a beautiful poem! He gave me the literal translation. I wrote down each line, and he translated it for me. He, apparently, knows Lithuanian well. I later checked with other people—Simas Kudirka helped. And so we translated that poem together (I still have it, unpublished!). Levko Lukyanenko writes in his book about how they wanted to take this poem from him. And he says: “But this is a translation from Lithuanian, Olexa Riznykiv translated it.” They kept pestering him, wanted to take it—they thought it was anti-Soviet.

The Latvian Gunārs Astra, with whom I always negotiated, was learning a little Ukrainian. Gunārs Astra had a 15-year sentence then. He had already been imprisoned for something like his 12th year. He was accused of some kind of espionage. Mainly for taking books from an American exhibition. He says: “I sewed large pockets on the inside of my coat. And the Americans,” he says, “did it like this—Ivan, are you listening?—they set up the exhibition deliberately so that when you enter, you end up in a corner where you see the books, but no one sees what you’re doing there. He says: ‘I take books from the shelf—and here, here, into my pockets. I loaded myself up with those books and walked out, and they don’t look too closely there…’” Astra knew English and German wonderfully.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: The Americans did that on purpose, so that books could be stolen at the exhibitions.

I. Malyuta: And what kind of books were they?

O.S. Riznykiv: American books—political ones, clearly. “I,” he says, “would grab some, take them out, then go back again. The KGB agents must have spotted me, because I was talking to the Americans.” They gave him 15 years—they saw that he was a smart man, very strong-willed, very strong. He kept all the Latvians in a tight fist like this. His word was sharp; when he said something, it was as if he cut it off. The Latvians before him: “Gunār, Astra skunks, Astra skunks…” Skunks is a prince or a ruler, and astra is a homestead. May the Kingdom of Heaven be his; he died.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: He was serving his second sentence on special regime in Kuchino in the Urals, and towards the end at Vsekhsvyatskaya, in the 35th zone, where we were held in the hospital building. In 1988, around February, he was released, and a month later we received news that he had died.

I. Malyuta: Already free?

V.V. Ovsiyenko: Yes, a month after his release.

O.S. Riznykiv: I probably didn’t pose such a threat to this regime, because I drank vodka, caroused… I couldn’t be like Astra; I’m not made that way. But he was a man of iron. They destroyed people like that. And Vasyl Stus was like that—they destroyed him…

V.V. Ovsiyenko: Gunārs’s last charge was that he undertook to translate George Orwell’s fantasy novel, 1984. He had already translated a large part of it. During perestroika, this book was published in Russian—and Astra was still in prison! It was published in Latvian—and he was still in prison!

O.S. Riznykiv: I corresponded with him until his last imprisonment. I know that he got married; it seems he had a child.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: Yes, he mentioned a daughter.

I. Malyuta: And where did he live?

O.S. Riznykiv: Wait. Rīga, Lāčplēša Street, No. 8. What if one were to write to this address? Someone would probably answer. I have his letters somewhere. He was a very interesting person. He held the entire Latvian camp diaspora in his hands. The older guys respected, honored, and feared him. The cops around him were like… Two meters and five centimeters—a huge guy. When we stand at roll call, everyone is like this to him, up to his chest. He stands there—so stern, so serious.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: In general, Latvians in the camps had a reputation for giving in.

O.S. Riznykiv: They loved to work. The most terrible job was stuffing sand into those electric iron tubes. They would produce 200% of the quota. They can’t live without work; they have a German pedantry.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: That’s right, Astra would rein them in a bit, so they wouldn’t drive up the quotas. Because when many people overfulfill the quota, it gets raised, but the pay stays the same.

O.S. Riznykiv: And he worked where they dried this sand. A press, a plate, like that. And then he worked on the press, stamping handles. And Kudirka also worked at this furnace. We would go to him—we’d slice some bread, put it in the furnace… And if you grease it with a little butter on top… The temperature where they dried the sand was 400 degrees. You put it in for just five minutes, take it out—and the rusk is ready. We ate them with relish.

So, Gunārs Astra gave me Latvian lessons. Oh, how many papers I have, filled with his handwriting! He even wrote down some songs for me. He had such beautiful handwriting. And the Latvian language is strange. It has short words, like English. That was the second step. For instance, in Lithuanian “rankas” is hand, but in Latvian it’s “roks”—the final syllable has fallen off. He would write down similar roots for me—a whole series of words that come from one root. He was learning Ukrainian. And he knew German and English.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: As they said, he “knew it perfectly,” meaning very thoroughly.

O.S. Riznykiv: Now, Simas Kudirka is an interesting figure. He was a sailor. In an American port, he jumped into the sea and swam to an American ship. They caught him, pulled him out, and he says: “I request political asylum.” The captain of that ship was a young, inexperienced man. He started contacting someone. The Russians lower a boat, sail over to them and say: “Give us this criminal—he stole one hundred rubles from the cash box.” The Americans say: “No, he is requesting political asylum.” “That’s a lie, he stole money. Give him to us.” That foolish captain just stood there, not knowing what to do. If there had been someone experienced, he would have kicked them out, and that would have been it. But this one thought and thought and then said: “You know what, let’s do this: you catch him. If you catch him, you can take him.” And he let them onto his ship. They started running around the deck: he runs, and they chase him. They say they chased him for thirty minutes before they caught him.

But someone managed to film the whole thing. Sometime later, when it became known that he had been given 10 years on a political charge for an escape attempt, they played this film on American television. There was a huge uproar in America; people started demanding to see the film again and again, the one where they are chasing him. Then the ship’s captain realized his mistake, resigned his commission, and headed a committee for the liberation of Simas Kudirka, fighting for him. In the fourth year of Simas’s imprisonment, they summon him (we were at work then) and tell him to go to the zone. We arrive—Kudirka is gone, taken “with his belongings for transfer.” And then he sent us a letter from America. That letter somehow made it to us. He says they took him who knows where, and then brought him to Lithuania, straight to the airport in Vilnius. He looks—and his wife and children are standing there. Onto the plane—and abroad.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: President Nixon had promised then that he would free Kudirka. And he did.

I. Malyuta: Then the question is: how were Karavansky and Nina Strokata released?

V.V. Ovsiyenko: That was later, in 1979. This was August 1974.

O.S. Riznykiv: Well, what else? I was traveling to the zone with Taras Melnychuk. He was given three years then. We met in Kharkiv and were transported to Sverdlovsk together—me, Taras, and Prytyka. Taras wanted to smoke so badly, and Prytyka had hidden a carton of cigarettes. Taras found out he had cigarettes—and he smoked a pack or two a day—and Prytyka says: “I took cigarettes so I can trade them for sugar, for bread there.” Because he didn’t smoke himself. When Taras found out he had cigarettes: “Ah, you kulak soul! Give me a pack, or I’ll kill you, I’ll strangle you!” Prytyka gives it to him, and whispers to me: “What is this—he’s robbing me!” Oh, my God, Tarasyk—Taras is gone now, he’s gone to a better world… Prytyka was not released after two years. He was released, I think, after a year and a half, early, from Mordovia. They say the zeks beat him there. Because everyone understood it that way: if the sentence is three years, and you got two—does that mean you were an informer? And he was released two months earlier than that; he returned to Odesa in 1974, I think. I was released in 1977 and never saw him, and then I heard that he had died.

I. Malyuta: Shortly before his death, I met him during a visit to Odesa. He was standing at a tram stop. I approach and greet him. He thought I would shake his hand. I ask: “How are things there, at the faraway resort?” “Ugh, it’s because of people like you…” “You knew what you were getting into. Olexa knew, you were warned.” “Oh, I suffered because of you, this and that.” He was trying to prove something to me, but I turned and left because the tram arrived.

O.S. Riznykiv: No, he was that kind of man… We were riding together in a Stolypin car, and he says: “You see, I did this on purpose. Now I’ll get out earlier and will continue the fight.” And I say: “And I’ll be serving five and a half years for you.” He fell silent, bewildered. They say he was beaten there. But why he died—I don’t know if the system dealt with him, or if God punished him. He was traveling by bus from Odesa to Bilyaivka. A wheel fell off, the bus overturned. His mother and he died there. Those people were taken away. I later saw his wife, Raya. She said that although she had divorced him, she had two children by him (Raya herself is Jewish), so she couldn’t abandon him, she had to take him—the body was already decomposing. She took him and buried him. And now his son is in Canada. I was told that he asked people not to talk about how his father had behaved. Because he is ashamed of his father there. He asked to just say that he had been imprisoned there.

There was one incident that I cannot forget and often recall. They took me from the 36th zone for transfer and drove me in a Black Maria about sixty kilometers away. I don’t know what station it was, but we drove for a very, very long time. It was thirty degrees below zero outside. I was in a pea coat and boots, sitting in that “glass.” It was cold. While we were driving, the shaking made it bearable inside the vehicle. We arrived at the station and stopped. The cop got out of the cabin, said he was going to find out when the train would arrive. He came back and said we had arrived too early—the train would be in an hour. We stood there for that hour. Then I hear the train has arrived. The cop went over and tells the driver and me that there is no Stolypin car: “Damn it, we’ll have to go back.” Well, we drove back, the same terrible road, the same freezing cold… And they never took me for transfer a second time. I understood it as them deliberately wanting me to catch a cold, get sick, or something. It’s a good thing I practiced yoga, so I sat there and warmed myself in such cold. God was protecting me then.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: They were taking you to the Chusovoy or Vsekhsvyatskaya station.

O.S. Riznykiv: Oles Serhiyenko was also imprisoned with me in the 36th zone. You remember, he had white spots here on his chin? I just met him at the founding meeting of “Yednist” (“Unity”), and his chin is clear. We recalled meeting Babych and taking a picture, but I haven’t seen that photo. Oles still has white spots on his chin, no hair grows there. We concluded that he was poisoned with something during the investigation. And Aryeh Vudka wrote about it in his book. And this photo you see here—this is when we met with Aryeh, when I called him in Tel Aviv from Jerusalem, and he came a day later. Because the next day was Saturday, and they are not allowed to travel on Saturday. So he came to us on Sunday, and gave me those books. We met at the Wailing Wall, and this picture was taken in a room with Sversyuk’s camera. And Vasyl Ovsiyenko was traveling with us then. There was a good meeting at Kuznetsov’s place in Jerusalem, there on the second floor. That’s where I first saw a mobile phone. We had a very nice visit there. Former zeks talked about an independent Ukraine. My God, there were such expectations, such hopes…

V.V. Ovsiyenko: Kuznetsov has a tiny garden under his window—for two palm trees…

O.S. Riznykiv: And it’s beautiful, what beauty! All of Jerusalem is burning with lights before us, night, stars, a clear sky. And Bethlehem! And the tomb where Jesus Christ was resurrected! I went in, Zhulynsky and Drach got on their knees and prayed. I’m thinking: “My God, communists are standing and praying!”

In short, things like that…

EXILE TO PERVOMAISK (1977–1996)

They are releasing me. They tell me to get ready for transfer, but I still have more than a month left. I say: “What transfer? I’m being released in a month!” “For transfer!” I take my suitcases—about eight of them with books… Yuriy Dzyuba from Kharkiv was imprisoned with me there. His mother worked at the post office, and he had applied to OVIR, wanting to emigrate. They stared at him wide-eyed there, gave him a year to think. A year later he applies again, and they sentence him to five years in prison. We worked together very well. We were allowed to buy five rubles’ worth of products at the kiosk, but you could buy books through “Kniga-Pochtoy” (“Book-by-Mail”) without limits. He proposed that he would order books for three or even four times that amount. I would take three packs of tea for a ruble at the kiosk, and he would take products for the remaining four rubles. He multiplied: 5x4=20, and he would order 20 rubles’ worth of books for me. He already knew my tastes. As soon as Knizhnoye Obozreniye (“Book Review”) arrived, he’d run to me: “Mr. Olexa, look: here’s your book! This one, this one, this one—you know, I’ve already sent the order.” “Everything’s right, good.” When the books arrive, he brings them to me, throws them on the bed: “Here are your books, take them.” We did this for a long time. I had huge piles of those books. When I brought them to the guardhouse, I got scared myself. I sent two suitcases of books by cargo. And the rest I had to carry myself. The cops helped.

One transfer, a second transit prison, a third—and they bring me to Mykolaiv.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: And wasn’t there a restriction back then that a zek could have no more than 50 kg of belongings? Because when I was last released in 1988, they didn’t let me take more than one sack. I lost a lot of books then. They never sent them to me.

O.S. Riznykiv: In 1977, there was no such restriction yet. There were searches, when they turn all those books upside down… They bring me to Mykolaiv, throw me in prison, and with those books—my God, it was so much trouble! When they brought me to some KGB agent, I walk in and say: “This is an abuse of people, what you are doing! How could you transport me on a transfer with these books?” And he laughed with such a kind smile, and then, when we met a second time, he says: “Well, you put it nicely—what kind of abuse is this? You said that well! We brought you here to the prison to acclimatize you, because we are not letting you into Odesa.” “You took me from Odesa—you should have brought me back to Odesa.” “No, we specifically brought you here so you would stay in Pervomaisk. You will live there. Because you have no place to live in Odesa, no residence.” “Well, alright.”

I “acclimatized” for two or three weeks. The days passed so heavily, and then a friend came for me, picked me up and brought me to Pervomaisk. My mother was sick, my father too, a pensioner. For two years I worked as an electrician in the maternity hospital. It was not far from us. And in 1980, by hook or by crook, through connections (I had some teacher acquaintances), I got a job at a boarding school for children with disabilities, in an auxiliary boarding school. And it was right over the fence from me—here I live, and right here is the school. So I just had to cross the fence, and I was already at work. And I worked there for ten years, from 1980.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: They didn’t put you under administrative surveillance after your release?

O.S. Riznykiv: At first, the police watched me. A policeman lived not far from me, he would come by. Interestingly, he was also around in the sixties. I was such a romantic, reading Franko to myself, “Народе мій, замучений, розбитий, мов паралітик той на роздорожжу…”—I was memorizing this prologue to the poem “Moses,” reading it aloud in the house because I knew no one was there: “Твоїм прийдешнім душу я тривожу, від сорому, який нащадків пізніх палитиме, заснути я не можу.” When I hear someone behind me. I looked around—Shelest was standing there. We had known each other since childhood, and now he was the chief of police. He came in: “So, what’s this?” “Good day!” “Good day.” That was back in 1960. And after the second release, there was no surveillance as such, but they came to see me often, watched.

We had a KGB department in Pervomaisk—that’s a whole story. They were watching me. And where could I go? My mother was sick in bed, my job was close by. But one time Andriy Yarmulsky comes to visit—remember him? That’s the Andriyko who got me his job at the polytechnic institute’s newspaper. He arrived, as always, having had a few drinks. At that time, he was a correspondent for the newspaper Literaturna Ukrayina at the nuclear power plant. He came to my parents: “Where’s Olexa?” “He’s working over there at the maternity hospital as an electrician.” “What—an electrician? In a maternity hospital? How can that be?” He comes to my work—and brought a bottle, I think. We drank that bottle, talked, and he went home. And Andriy was a kind of extrovert, such a boisterous soul that when he drank, he would shout, become like this Volodymyr Holoborodko.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: Do you have to tie him up and put him under a bench?

O.S. Riznykiv: No, not boisterous, but he talks a lot… It turns out, he went to the KGB. He came in and threw his writer’s union card on the table: “I am a writer, and who are you?” “I am the head of the Pervomaisk KGB.” “How can you keep Olexa Riznykiv in such misery? Why is he working as an electrician? He’s a poet, he’s a teacher, and you’re keeping him there!” That’s what he told them. He arrives in Kyiv, and Vinohradsky, who was then the editor of Literaturna Ukrayina, summons him: “What have you done? Who asked you to go there? Submit your resignation and that’s it! You’re not working at the nuclear plant anymore.” The poor guy got scared, submitted his resignation, but continued to drink, and that’s how he died. And later, when Ukraine became independent, he would always boast to me: “Oh! I suffered for you back then, I went to the KGB for you, banged my fist on the table there!”

So that’s how I got a job at the boarding school then. They wouldn’t take me at a regular school. I worked as a counselor at this school for ten years, until 1991. I retired from there on length of service, because I had accumulated over 30 years of tenure. How? I was arrested as a teacher, so the 5 and a half years of imprisonment must be multiplied by three—that gets added to the tenure. As of 1990, I became a special correspondent for the regional newspaper Radyanske Prybuzhzhia, because I was already known in the region as a poet, as a journalist…

I. Malyuta: And you would secretly come to Kyiv…

O.S. Riznykiv: Ah, wait, that was later. I used to go to Kyiv when Rukh was being formed, sat next to Kravchuk, Pavlychko, Mushketyk. We were creating Rukh, creating “Prosvita.” I was constantly traveling to Kyiv. And then I was at a meeting with Jewish people. About two thousand people gathered there. One of the organizers was Yakov Suslensky, who was in the camp with me. He is from the Odesa region, from Bessarabia… I approach him from behind, take him by the shoulders and say: “VOPL!” He turns around: “Oh, Olexa! Hello, my friend! And what’s with the vopl?” “Well, in the camp you were going to create the Vsemirnoye Obshchestvo Poryadochnykh Lyudey (World Organization of Decent People).” “Ah, I had already forgotten! But I learned Ukrainian! And can you hear my accent?” “What is it?” “A Tel Aviv one, because I learned Ukrainian in Tel Aviv.” And in the camp, Yasha always spoke Russian. So he was the one who took me on the trip to Israel in the fall of 1992. That was my first time traveling abroad, to Israel. I was sitting in the back of the plane with Vitaliy Kolodiy, a fellow countryman of mine from Bohopil. The plane was about to take off, and I kept saying: “It can’t be! Right now the doors will open, a cop will come in and say: ‘Prisoner Reznikov! With your belongings, to the exit!’” But no—we took off and landed at Ben Gurion Airport.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: But our road to the Holiest Places lay through Mordovia, through the Urals, through the Gulag. If we hadn’t been there, we would never have made it to the Holy Places.

O.S. Riznykiv: You’re right, Vasyl! Fifteen prisoners of conscience and fifteen deputies of the Verkhovna Rada flew with us then…

But let me return to the first book. They started publishing me in the press, even in the republican press, from 1987. After a long silence, when even the district paper wouldn’t print me!! I even gave birth to a poem:

  ГОЛОСИСТІСТЬ

На косу стало горло босе –

Так час у горлі полоснув!

Я, досі зовсім безголосий,

Зненацька зойкнув! Голоснув!

Який то біль скажено-дикий –

Із різі Голос добувать,

І хрипи, стогони і рики

Перелицьовувать в слова!

Вони летять, мов згустки крові,

Що серце, тужачись, жене

Мов гиря в силі відцентровій,

Що, розкрутивши, хтось жбурне.

Яка краса, яке вітійство

У хрипах, схлипах, в белькотні!?

Це привселюдне самовбивство,

Смерть на кону, мов на коні!

Замовч! Помовч, поки окрайці

Голосників загоїть час,

Поки дозріє у лушнайці

Мій Голос, мовби гарт меча.

А коли стане Голосина,

Чи Голосище, що аж-аж –

Тоді лиш Мову й Голосіння

Й галасування рівноваж…

Та як мовчати, коли ріже,

Дере, шматує печія,

Так пре вода по бездоріжжі,

Русло торує течія,

Руйнує чистість і врочистість

Шал безугавних веремій?

І все ж є щастям голосистість

По безголосості німій!!

And then comes 1989. They tell me at the “Mayak” publishing house (and this is the Odesa publishing house that twice refused to publish my book), where Malyuta worked as an editor: “Give us the manuscript for a book, we’re going to publish it.” “Are you serious! I have two convictions—what book?” “Give us the book!” This was Mykolaukhovetsky—the same one at whose wedding we sang carols. He prepared the book, Petro Osadchuk wrote a review. The Mykolaiv Writers’ Union also discussed my book, all the feedback was positive—from Dmytro Kremen, Valeriy Boychenko, Mykhailo Bozhatkin, and Emil Yanvaryov…

The book Ozon was published in 1990. My father died in 1989, and I looked after my mother for another year and two months. My father didn’t see the book, but my mother did. The title is Ozon, “Mayak” publishing house, 1990. It came out in the spring. The procedure for my admission to the Writers’ Union began. Osadchuk got involved, and Kolodiy, and Yarmulsky—everyone was working for me. My mother died on December 19, 1990, and ten days later we are sitting at school, celebrating the New Year. They are drinking there. I hadn’t shaved my beard—when my mother died, I decided not to shave for forty days. I’m sitting there with a beard, not singing with them. And then the postman brings a telegram. The principal took it, read it, and then asked for attention and read aloud: “Dear Olexa Serhiyovych, we congratulate you on your admission to the Writers’ Union! Mushketyk, Yavorivsky, Drach, Pavlychko, Movchan…” and that whole cohort that was in power then congratulates me. This is ten days after my mother died. And I was sitting like that, they take me with the stool, toss me up a few times, congratulate me.

And my second book is at the “Ukrainian Writer” publishing house, which had just become Ukrainian, it used to be “Soviet Writer,” it’s there with Skomorovsky. And the journal Ukraina published my little article “I am Guilty for Being Ukrainian” in two issues, and right then the World Poetry Forum “Zolotyi Homin” (“Golden Echo”) is starting in Kyiv. And I’m invited to it! And there are twelve of us poets, repressed by the communists, on the stage of the October Palace, where innocent people were tortured in the basements in ’37, we each read two poems. And I read those very two—“Koly potyate na shmatky…” (“When Cut to Pieces…”) and “Ozon”… Unforgettable impressions! Around that time, Mushketyk told me that my article from the journal Ukraina should be published as a separate book. I say: “Publish it.” And so in 1993, the book Ternovyi Vohon (“Thorn Fire”) came out, from the “Ukrainian Writer” publishing house, and they added that little article “I am Guilty for Being Ukrainian.”

I. Malyuta. A novella.

O.S. Riznykiv. Let it be a novella, but it has poems in it. For this book, in 1994, I was awarded the Pavlo Tychyna Prize, along with Lida Palij from Canada. I received ten million (I’m a millionaire!) karbovantsi. But the accountant calls me in and says: “You know, I have to deduct 20%—income tax.” And she gave me only 8 million. I went and bought a pair of shoes with it.

ODESA—A MOTHER AGAIN (1996)

But in 1992-93, I initiated a case for my return to Odesa. Back in ’91, when I was rehabilitated, or maybe in ’92, I went to Odesa and submitted an application to the city council, requesting that I be provided with an apartment and a residence permit. “Did you have an apartment?” “I had an apartment, it was taken away in 1966.” The polytechnic institute had given me a small basement apartment. I spent three nights there, I come back again—and it’s occupied, there’s a little curtain hanging. I knock on the window, ask what’s going on. “And who are you?” “But this is my home.” “No, this is not yours—it’s ours, I live here, I’m the janitor, with a child, and I’ll scream if you try to break down the door.” “And where are my things?” “They were inventoried and handed over somewhere over there.” “Who?” “From the university.” The polytechnic institute gave it to me, but it was in a dispute with the university over this room. They threw me out, moved their janitor in. This was at 62 Ostrovidova Street. “And was your residence permit permanent?” “It was.” Then Volodya Domrin, an Odesan Russian-language poet, registered me at his home in 1970, about a year before my arrest, because he was friends with the main chief of the Odesa Military District, Babadzhanyan. For him, it was a piece of cake—he went hunting with him. I stayed overnight at his place a few times, so he got me a permanent residence permit. It came in very handy for me now.

I submitted an application to Hurvits, asking him to provide me with an apartment, since I was twice repressed from Odesa and have nowhere to live. And I registered at my cousin’s place, Lyudmyla Mastykash. Two years passed. Mushketyk from Kyiv writes a letter to Hurvits. By the way, Oleh Chornohuz, Mushketyk’s deputy, helped. I thanked him. He prepared a letter to Hurvits stating that we, the Union, do not have the 211 million to help pay for an apartment for Olexa Riznykiv, so we ask you to find the funds in your city and provide him with an apartment. And what do you think? Hurvits writes to the city council session, the session decides—

to give me an apartment. This went on for a year—my God, these moves, I kept going there until they chose that apartment. They offer one room—I say that I was imprisoned twice, so give me two rooms, a chamber for each sentence, so I can have a two-chamber apartment.

But this Hurvits, he’s such a joker! He renamed Hriboyedova Street, where the KGB building is, to Roman Shukhevych Street—just for laughs. Because Bebel Street was renamed to Yevreiska (Jewish) Street. The Security Service didn’t want to write “Yevreiska Street” on their official letterhead, so they started writing Hriboyedova (Yevreiska runs this way, and Hriboyedova crosses it like this). And when Hurvits found out about this, he says: “Oh, is that so! They don’t want Yevreiska because they don’t like Jews?” And he renames Hriboyedova Street to Roman Shukhevych. When some Western Ukrainians came, I introduce them to Hurvits and say: “Meet the man who named a street after Roman Shukhevych.” “Oh, thank you!” And they applaud him. And Hurvits laughs and says: “So, let them write ‘Yekaterininskaya’ on their letterhead—and I’ll rename Yekaterininskaya to Stepan Bandera!” That’s the kind of guy he was. So they decided to give me an apartment. This was already 1995. Two rooms, on the fourth floor. And the person who gave me this apartment was Stas, who later hid somewhere under Bodelan. And I, like a fool, was still running around with the idea that I should give him some kind of bribe. I was given fifteen hundred dollars for the house I had in Pervomaisk. I walked around and around, and then I think: why should I give him anything? The city council gave me the apartment.

And then we met somehow. Hurvits invited me when he found out that I knew Chornovil (and he was also friends with Chornovil). In short, it so happened that he invites me to the celebration of the 200th anniversary of Odesa. We enter the restaurant—amazing appetizers, drinks, everyone is standing around. He walks among the tables with a small glass, clinking glasses. And then the Stus “Memorial” society submitted a petition to the city council to elect me as the chairman of the commission on rehabilitation, because the former chairman, Malyavin, had died. The session agreed and appointed me, even though I’m not a deputy, as the chairman of the standing commission on rehabilitation, on a volunteer basis. It’s unpaid, but I have a document that says “Odesa City Council.” That was probably in 1997. Bodelan came to power. I think they’ll kick me out, but the session approved me again, so I stayed on. Then, maybe Bodelan changed his mind, because I was fired from my job at the Inspectorate-Methodological Center, where I had worked for two years under Serhiy Kozytsky as an inspector for the Ukrainian language.

Meanwhile, I arrive in Odesa, and I’m immediately elected chairman of the Odesa regional “Prosvita,” that Movchan-led one. There were 120 people, and 119 voted for me. But the previous chairman of “Prosvita”—Harbarchuk—was not there. Either he went somewhere, or he hid, but he did not recognize this meeting and would not hand over the official seal. And to this day, he has not handed over the seal. For a year or two I tried to do something, but without the seal, and Movchan gives him money and a salary, while I sit without a salary. The guys there collected some money for me, gave me a hundred hryvnias. But I feel uncomfortable taking money from them. So I relinquished these powers, shook off the dust, as they say. We created a city organization called “Pivdenna Hromada” (“Southern Community”)—it seems to be active even now. Movchan and I met periodically; he promised to come and install me as the head of the regional “Prosvita,” and to take the seal from that Harbarchuk—and to this day he hasn’t come once.

I came to the “Prosvita” congress with Pavlo Ahromakov—he’s the head of the board. We hoped that Kuchma would come there. They missed us, let us slip by. We arrived when the congress had already begun. Movchan was already speaking. I sat down, and he’s reading his report. I see Movchan glance at me and after the report says: “Let’s take a break.” He called a break just to get me out of the hall. This was at the Officers’ House. And before that, Burtovyi had distributed materials about Movchan’s violations to 50 delegates. In the evening, he gave them to me too, because I was staying overnight at his place. He asks me: “Tell me, did anyone there even mention me once?” “No one mentioned you at all.”

Movchan’s deputy in “Prosvita,” Yuriy Badzyo, didn’t come either. I called Badzyo, asking: “Why didn’t you come? You’re Movchan’s deputy.” He answers: “I told Movchan that he is a highway robber, and I’m not going there anymore.” “So what did you achieve by that? Movchan didn’t say a word about having a deputy named Badzyo.”

So when he saw me, he called a break. People ask: “What’s the break for?” He says a break is needed. Well, people got up, I got up too, I’m walking out, and two guys approach me, take me by the arms and say: “Let’s go out, you need to leave.” “Why leave?” “You need to leave because Harbarchuk has arrived.” “I won’t leave, because Movchan told me that three people could come from Harbarchuk and three could come from me. And that’s how we came.” I go to the presidium and say to Drach: “Ivan, look what’s happening—they’re kicking me out.” “What do you mean, kicking you out?” “Just like that, they’re kicking me out!” He laughed. Pushyk or Lubkivsky was sitting there too, Ivanychuk as well. I told them all. He asks where Movchan is. They say he’s with Zhulynsky. No, it wasn’t Zhulynsky then, but someone else. The one who’s from Balta.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: Ivan Kuras?

O.S. Riznykiv: Kuras, yes. I had just brought Kuras a stack of documents because we wanted to open the Museum of Steppe Ukraine, which was closed in 1937 in Odesa. As I’m walking, Kuras and Movchan come out. I go straight to Kuras: “Here are the documents for you, we demand the restoration of the ‘Steppe Ukraine’ museum.” And then I say to Movchan: “Excuse me, what is this? They’re kicking me out. I called you, we agreed that three people from Harbarchuk and three from me? And they are kicking me out.” And Lyuba Holota is here. I had met Lyuba before this and told her they were kicking me out. Pavlo says: “You’re not going to cause any trouble, are you?” “What are you talking about! Do I look like that type?” “Well, okay, then go and sit down.” And they continued the meeting. But Movchan still hasn’t taken the seal from that Harbarchuk. So everything remains at a standstill, that Harbarchuk does nothing, “Prosvita” has faded, disappeared.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: So you were the head of “Prosvita.” Did you engage in any other public activities, were you in any political parties?

O.S. Riznykiv: I was in Rukh from the very beginning, back in Pervomaisk. Chornovil gave me my membership card. T symb aliuk was the head in Odesa then, so Vasyl Barladianu and I were ceremoniously given our cards at the Ukrainian Theater, where Chornovil was speaking. They said that two writers were being accepted into Rukh. Then they introduced some new cards. So I’ve remained in Rukh to this day.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: You only mentioned two books that were published, but more came out after that, right?

O.S. Riznykiv: And then the book Naodyntsi z Bohom (Alone with God) came out, in 1998. It was published by “Ukrayinska Ideya,” Brovary, that’s Mariya Ovdiyenko. But Lyonya Kurakin—my classmate from Pervomaisk, from that 12th school—prepared, sponsored, and published it. He is the chairman of the joint-stock company “Krasnodar Printing House, AT KND.” He is the chairman of the board of this company; he published this little book for me as a sponsor. This is the third and, so far, the last one. I was thinking of publishing a small book, but Kurakin says: “Let me publish a real book for you, because you won’t have one like this anytime soon.” And he made a 400-page book. And here is our Pervomaisk riverbank, here is my little sister sitting. I included the poem “Ileyko, z Boha tureyko” here—it’s about Ilko Muromets, a huge one, 100 pages long. I put all the poems I had in here. The poem “Kopyshche,” written in 1972 in a cell of the Odesa KGB, in the camp, in the 36th zone. And the poem “Movchysh, Strybozhe.” The poem “Naodyntsi z Bohom”—this refers to our river Boh, as the Cossacks called it. I have a similarly large book of prose lying at the “Vidrodzhennya” publishing house, with Petro Bobyk.

This is “Oltar skorboty. Martyroloh ukrayinskoho pysmenstva” (“Altar of Sorrow. Martyrology of Ukrainian Literature”)—from the newspaper Literaturna Ukrayina, dated 20.03.1997—the victims, starting from the tsarist repressions (Taras Shevchenko and Panko Kulish) up to the victims of Brezhnev’s repressions, and at number 162 is Olexa Riznychenko.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: Olexa Musiyenko probably published that.

O.S. Riznykiv: Yes, Musiyenko collected it. What happened to me next? When Hurvits came to power, he appointed Professor Serhiy Kozytsky, a physicist, but a member of “Prosvita,” a patriot, as the head of the city education department. And at that “Prosvita” meeting where I was elected chairman, he spoke. They make him head of the city education department. He calls me and says: “Olexa, you will work with me too.” “Are you serious?” “Yes, I’m hiring you as an inspector.” He created an inspectorate-methodological center. Odesa had eight districts, and he and Hurvits merged two districts at a time, closed the district education departments, and created a methodological center. I was an inspector for the Ukrainian language there. We worked for two years. He began to transition schools to the Ukrainian language—in accordance with the fact that 72% of the population in Odesa are Ukrainians, so at least half of the schools should become Ukrainian. They started to enroll the first Ukrainian-language classes. They managed to enroll a first grade, a second, and moved on to the third. We wrote a book, My—odesyty (We are Odesites). Kozytsky was the editor, I was one of the authors. It was a book about Odesa as a Ukrainian city. There had never been anything like it—it was either a Russian city, or a Jewish one, or some international city, but we wrote from Ukrainian positions.

As soon as Bodelan came to power, he immediately removes Kozytsky. I worked for exactly two years, to the day. And I was also downsized. The new head of the city education department, Tetyana Urodova, calls me in and says: “Aleksei Sergeyevich, we know who you are and what you are, but, you see, we have to downsize. We can’t let that woman go because she has a child—we have to downsize you.” I say: “I will accept the downsizing without any fuss if I am put in charge of the literary studio at the House of Children’s Creativity, where they teach kids to wiggle their legs, do things with their hands, they teach them to sing, to read poems, but no one teaches them to write poems.” “Done, done—you will work there.” “And make sure the salary isn’t less.” “It will be even more!” She called there, and I’ve been working there for two years now, leading the literary studio. I taught this Urodova a little Ukrainian.

Working as an inspector is very interesting. You come to a school—they greet you, seat you, set the table, coffee and all that. “Alright. Now show me what you have here with the Ukrainian language?” “Oh, look, we have a special classroom here, and a Ukrainian heritage room.” They show everything, lead you around, make everything Ukrainian. There are such wonderful museums in schools! What the children have collected—well, they are amazing museums, just wonderful. All this was proceeding as a national revival. And we were going to all the schools, checking, writing reports. Now it has quieted down a bit, but it continues on its own accord. We are watching to make sure the Russian schools don’t start gaining the upper hand again.

The Ukrainian cause is making some progress; Bodelan himself has to speak Ukrainian. He met with us last Friday. I am a member of the board of the Congress of Ukrainian Intelligentsia. He gathered us, spoke with us, and I was the first to take the floor. I say: “When I heard that you were gathering the Ukrainian intelligentsia, I was overjoyed, thinking: ‘Oh, Ruslan Borysovych is following the President’s example—he wants to find Zhulynskys, Drachs, Bohdan-Stupkas among us, because personnel is key. Personnel decides everything. You must select your personnel.’” I’m lecturing him, and then I think: why did I say that? He’s probably laughing to himself somewhere, because he’s a communist and he takes the personnel he needs. He took Urodova, didn’t he? Balan sits next to him, who doesn’t know Ukrainian but is in charge of literature. Last fall, for this book Naodyntsi z Bohom, I was awarded the Konstantin Paustovsky Prize, because there is a series of poems about Odesa in it. This is the first municipal prize, just established. This Balan presents it. A lot of people gathered, there was a feast, I speak there. And the next day they say: “But this Balan was the secretary of the Suvorovsky district party committee and doesn’t know Ukrainian at all.” This is our municipal Odesa prize. No money—just a diploma. So I have two prizes.

So, I am a member of the board of the Congress of Ukrainian Intelligentsia, a member of the board of the Stus “Memorial” society. And about three years ago, I was elected to “Nuremberg-2.” I am the head of a commission there, but it is not working now, and Levko Lukyanenko has also gone quiet. We are not working.

But I haven’t said anything about what I’m doing. This dictionary, which I started in the camp in 1973, is finished in draft form, it just needs to be typed up on a computer—the Concise Root Dictionary. Here, one page presents a slovohrama (word-gram). My article about this dictionary was in the journal Ukrainian Language and Literature at School, where four word-grams were printed. 1988, No. 11. No one else has such word-grams. I have visually presented all the words of one root—there can be 200, 600, 700 words. They fit on one page for me. Six columns. The first column is verbs in the infinitive form: to walk, to run, to speak. Then three consecutive columns—nouns of the three genders. English doesn’t have genders, but in our language, each gender has its own suffixes. Then one column for adjectives, and the sixth column for all indeclinable words and adverbs. That makes six columns. I have such a dictionary. I worked on it for another ten years in Pervomaisk, when even the district newspaper wouldn’t publish me. There I made a dictionary of homonyms—400 pages of typewritten text, about 3200 Ukrainian homonyms, illustrated with poems. For example, a poem like this:

 "Козацькій силі немає спину,

хіба що вдарять ножем у спину",

"Футбольне поле рівне, голе,

як нам тебе забити, голе?"

The dictionary of homonyms is illustrated with little things like that. There has never been such a dictionary in Ukrainian linguistics, and one with poems—there’s nothing like it anywhere in the world. It’s just sitting there, unpublished.

What else am I doing? Right now, my article “How is the Ukrainian Language Richer Than Others?” is being published in the city newspaper Dumska Ploshcha. There have been five installments already. No one has written on this topic before, because it was taboo—how could Ukrainian possibly be richer? I remember how Astra taught me his Latvian language, that it has no neuter gender—that already makes it poorer. So far, I have given twelve examples of how the Ukrainian language is richer. This includes morphological richness. For example, there is no “будьмо” in the Russian language. It doesn’t have the vocative case.

I have a dictionary typed up on the computer called Yidlo trydtsyat tretoho (Food of ’33). I should be receiving a corrected copy soon. I’ve already proofread it. When they correct it, I will probably take it to Levko Lukyanenko, because he is the head of the commission for the investigation of the Holodomors… The dictionary is 150 pages long. There I wrote down what people ate, from acacia blossoms to lizards—everything. And belts, and leather, everything that was eaten then. With examples from that book that Manyak and Kovalenko published. At the beginning and end, I included two of my own short stories about the Holodomor. Maybe I’ll add poems too. This thing is also just sitting there unpublished, it needs to be published.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: We haven’t touched on one more topic, but this also needs to be recorded: are you married?

O.S. Riznykiv: I was married. My wife was Hanna Mohylnytska. We were not officially registered, but in 1969 our daughter Yaroslava was born. She is thirty-one now, she currently works in the administration at the committee for national minorities.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: And did you have anyone to visit you for meetings?

O.S. Riznykiv: I did, I did. Before my arrest, I officially married Halyna Shadyr, but when I was released, we separated. Then I lived alone, and now I have been living with Lida Mykolayivna for thirteen years. She has a daughter, Valeriya, who lives in Sverdlovsk. I have a granddaughter, Yulya, she is ten years old and goes to school.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: Such things should also be recorded somewhere.

It’s already 11:25. We have more or less concluded our conversation. I sincerely thank you and will be running for the last metro train.

I. Malyuta: I’ll walk you out.

O.S. Riznykiv: The interview was conducted by Vasyl Ovsiyenko.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: Yes. Mr. Ivan, did you want to read a poem?

I. Malyuta: Ivan Malyuta, “Ukrayinska Ideya.”

Нам кажуть: вона безнадійно стара!

Ми твердимо: вічна, як води Дніпра!

Із неї постала ще в давні часи

Соборна земля України-Руси.

З ідеї такої і вольниця Січ

Зростала, міцніла, єднаючи всіх.

Підтвердять Нечай, Кривоніс і Богун:

Була в України козацька могуть!

І гетьман Хмельницький зітхне од жалів,

Бо сам же накликав орду москалів.

З тих пір українство під "русский вопрос" –

Це значить в'язниці, сибірський мороз.

І справу святу засівали в думки,

Під прапор Мазепи зібрати полки.

І волю здобули –  триває борня,

"Вона не спрацює!" –  гуляє брехня.

Дарма, що за честь лиш березовий хрест,

Як пісня у нас, ця ідея не вмре!

Вона –  щоб не бути підніжком-рабом.

Єднаймося –  і допоможе нам Бог!

O.S. Riznykiv: An interesting poem, you know. You have such interesting rhymes in there, I don’t think I’ve ever come across any like them.

I haven’t even told you yet how we used to sing in Mordovia. In the middle of the camp, 200-300-400 men would stand up and start singing a Ukrainian song! And the powerful male voices would soar over the camp, over the taiga. And we would sing the song “Оксано, Оксано, я тут на чужині без тебе скучаю в далекім краю.” The cops would be running around, shouting: “Stop singing nationalist songs!” And we were singing normal Ukrainian songs. They would grab people and put them away—in the BUR, for 3-4 days. They took me once and gave me 7 days, that was in Mordovia. I sat there—but for a song! You know what another good song was? Shevchenko’s “Hamaliya”:

Ой, повій, повій, вітре, через море

Та з Великого Лугу,

Суши наші сльози, заглуши кайдани,

Розвесели нашу тугу.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: In Shevchenko it’s “Розвій нашу тугу” (“Dispel our sorrow”).

O.S. Riznykiv: Well, we sang “розвесели” (“cheer up”), because “розвій” doesn’t fit—it’s missing one syllable. And then there’s this:

Ой Боже наш, Боже, хоч і не за нами,

Неси ти їх з України:

Почуємо славу, козацькую славу,

Почуємо та й загинем.

A brilliant song! I first heard this song there:

У трембітоньку заграю

Заграю-загуду!

We were coming from the mess hall, and suddenly the loudspeaker started singing this song—I froze! How it, on some genetic level—it sent shivers down my spine, what a beautiful song it was!

V.V. Ovsiyenko: Especially when Dmytro Hnatiuk sang it…

O.S. Riznykiv: Oh, such a powerful song. We heard it for the first time then, and then it was played many times.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: Yes, it’s already half past eleven, I have to run to the metro.

O.S. Riznykiv: Go on, and I’ll just…

Twenty-five years have passed. Sometime in May, there’s a meeting of the regional commission on rehabilitation. I walk in with the head of the city commission, and I see: one member of the commission is V.M. Kotenko. I think, what’s this—I had a judge named V.M. Kotenko. I ask someone across the table: “Who is this V.M. Kotenko?” “Oh, he’s a former judge, he’s retired now—he’s also a member of our commission.”

And when the commission meeting ended, the women call us: “Let’s go ‘wash down’—Kuchma gave an order to the chairman of this Commission. He’s the head of the regional Council of Veterans, a general. I forgot his last name. Ah, Hursky! We went in, there were about twelve of us, we sat down at the table like this, eating our little sandwiches. And the head of our Odesa Association of Victims of Political Repression, Viktor Kazymyrovych Druts, nudges me and says: “Well, ask him, ask him—is it him or not?”

After the second shot glass, I lean across the table (Druts is sitting there, then some woman, then him) and say: “Volodymyr Mykhailovych, tell me: are you that one?” “Which one?” “Well, the one who sentenced me 25 years ago?” “What’s your last name?” As if he didn’t recognize me. “Riznykiv, Olexa. Strokata sat here, Prytyka here.” Everyone fell silent, and he lowered his head like this: “Mmm, yes, that one, that one. But that’s a separate conversation.” I had a shot glass in my hand, and I say: “Then let’s drink to Ukraine, to the fact that we are sitting here together like this!” Someone later said to me—many people said: “You should have thrown it in his face or hit him or something!” And I say: “And he would say he’s not guilty!” And I know myself that if it wasn’t him, it would have been someone else. And he would say: “The prosecutor asked for six for you, and I gave five and a half; he asked for five for Nina Strokata, and I gave four.” During the recess, he would approach us, so kind, so nice.

In short, everyone started talking, we drank to that, and he quickly got dressed and left. And Druts raises his fists and shouts: “My God, can you believe it, that the judge and the defendant are sitting at the same table!”

I. Malyuta: And now he’s a victim of that regime.

O.S. Riznykiv: Well, listen. A few days later, I’m walking with that Mykolaukhovetsky through Greek Square, and he goes: “Oh, Serhiy, hello! Come here, let me introduce you: this is Olexa, and this is Serhiy Kotenko.” I say: “What is this—Kotenkos and Kotenkos everywhere!” And he says: “And which Kotenko?” I say, Volodymyr Mykhailovych. And he says: “That’s my dad.” And Mykola says to me: “And this is Serhiy Kotenko. He is the organizer of the Ukrainian Club here in Odesa.” I ask: “And do you get along with your father?” Serhiy says: “No, not really.” God punished the judge—his son went with the one he had judged!

I. Malyuta: He was carrying out the orders of that system.

O.S. Riznykiv: In a word, everything is normal. Glory to Ukraine!

I. Malyuta: Glory to the Heroes!

V.V. Ovsiyenko: Glory to the Heroes!

Photo: Olexa Riznykiv at home on February 10, 2001. Odesa. Film 4946, frame 21. Photo by V. Ovsiyenko.

Olexa Riznykiv in his youth.