A PORTRAIT ON AN AUTUMN LAKE
PREFACE
I did not paint this portrait. My job was to guess the weather and to patiently and correctly capture the reflection. The reader will add the finishing touches.
I recorded this autobiographical narrative by Yevhen Oleksandrovych Sverstyuk for the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group’s program on December 26, 1999, and January 9, 2000. It was supplemented between July and November 2005.
Vasyl OVSIENKO, laureate of the Vasyl Stus Prize.
Ye. Sverstyuk: Let’s begin with the preamble.
Memories are islands of recollection. Most often, involuntary. A life lived is like something spilled. I recall my intentions to remember a certain event forever. But later, I no longer remember what it was about.
Beginnings and actions that are reinforced by motivation are well remembered. For some reason, I remember episodes from my exile more than those from prison and the camps. The lack of freedom and positive emotions is not conducive to the internal illumination of episodes, even when they were significant. Malnourishment. The incompletion of beginnings under the press of circumstances and the lack of a finished form.
Moods are formed by something distinct and vivid—and that which “hurts, and weeps, and does not sleep…”
So, what we were, what we have become. We have become old. But old age carries memory like karma...
I think a man is always the same as he was. I, for example, have been chosen for the role of “peacemaker” since my childhood years. They must have thought that a child possesses a sense of truth and is incapable of any cunning. I was trusted with errands, with keeping things safe, with secrets...
Likewise, since childhood, I have been of an unalterably pro-Western orientation, with a penchant for idealism. I knew of the East only from postage stamps—red ones, with sickles and hammers.
The absolute presence of God was revealed to me even in childhood. Not in the trusting repetition of the words of the “Creed,” “Our Father,” “Hail Mary,” and the Ten Commandments after my mother, but in that typical, classic “When in trouble, turn to God.”
In early childhood, I was sickly. Where I’m from, they would say “unfit” (nezdalyi). It was called “scrofula” or “the king's evil,” or “lumps” (guli). The complications spread to my eyes...
When on a summer day in August, probably in 1932, my father and mother brought me (30 km by cart on a bumpy road) to Sokal, the doctor examined me and said: “Why did you let it get so bad—you’ve ruined the child: the boy is blind.” He knew the state of ophthalmic surgery in the early 1930s but advised taking me to Lviv—perhaps they would agree to operate.
On the way back, the abyss of blindness opened up to me. In such moments, children become adults...
Evening fell, and on the way, my parents decided to visit my mother’s sister, Stepanina, who never lost heart and always gave good advice. A phenomenal woman of Cossack spirit. She combined peasant pragmatism with a deep mysticism.
They left me with my aunt: in the village of Mativ, there was an old woman, Baba Khymka, who performed incantations... My parents weren’t sure, my aunt wasn’t sure, I wasn’t sure, and neither was Baba Khymka. But before sunrise and at sunset, she would come in her rustling sheepskin coat, recite prayers, and apply the blade of a knife. When asked, she would answer: “As God wills.” And everyone agreed on that.
Two weeks later, they brought me home healthy. Dad came in the same cart, and I looked at the forest, the bushes, and the half-stacks of hay along the road in the villages of Mativ, Pidberezzia, Okhlopiv, and Siltse.
In Stepan Vasylchenko’s story about Shevchenko’s childhood, “In the Weeds,” there is a brilliant formula: “He lived at nature’s expense and under God’s care.”
Ask people, and 99 percent of them, especially those of rural origin, will explain what “at nature’s expense” means. But they will also tell you that “under God’s care” is a metaphor that means—without any care at all... And few will reflect on the poet's words:
Ти взяла
Мене, маленького, за руку
І в школу хлопця одвела
До п’яного дяка в науку.
“Учися, серденько, колись
З нас будуть люде”, – ти сказала.
So, above nature, there is a Hand that guides. In my life, I have wavered between moments of clarity and darkness, but I have often felt that Hand, which invisibly led me over abysses and silently guided me to a destination unknown to me.
When you think about it, God’s care means much more than a parent’s care. Although, to some extent, it is realized through parents. But no one can protect you or look after you, and no one can give you a guarantee even for a single day... As the English proverb says, there is many a slip ’tween the cup and the lip.
However, we swim in the shallows of appearances and remember the obvious facts...
When we were in exile, we became more Western European because our correspondents were. We were part of that cultural space that defined something and spoke, while our “Orthodox” space was always silent. Therefore, we were also a little bit Catholic. On Latin Christmas, I could feel an organ filling half the sky. I shifted it slightly: I extrapolated the world and faith of our fathers onto Western lands. All of this, I thought, still exists in the modern Western European world. And of course, to some extent, Krista Breimer nourished this, as she herself was a religious woman. But she constantly hinted that I shouldn’t make generalizations, because she was religious, but the world around her was not. So, one shouldn’t have any particular illusions.
V. Ovsienko: So, what’s fated cannot be avoided...
Ye. Sverstyuk: By the way, regarding memories of participating in events—somewhere in Dostoevsky, I think in the novel “The Adolescent,” there is a reflection on motives: I tried to present the sequence of events as it really was, so that you could deduce the motivation and judge the causes from the sequence of events itself. I think this is an effective psychological device long tested by novelists. Ultimately, this is also the source of erroneous judgments: post hoc ergo propter hoc.
However, it seems to me that when we talk about people's biographies, what should emerge may not emerge from the sequence of events alone. Well, let's say there is a sequence of events where you come across a person called a “benefactor” (dobrodiy) who participated in positive actions. But from the same sequence of events, it also emerges that one very perceptive co-participant called him a “malefactor” (zlobrodiy). So how can one penetrate the truth that lies at the heart of the sequence of events? How can one penetrate the truth of the motivation?
Obviously, that is the main thing—motivation. People, as a rule, give their participation in events a slightly different explanation than it appears from the outside. They either do not fully understand the motivation for their actions themselves, or they convey this motivation in an accepted literary manner. And this literary manner already provides them with positive stereotypes. Or they conceal what really lay at the heart of their actions.
V. Ovsienko: Maybe God simply led them by the hand, and that's all?
Ye. Sverstyuk: Well, God leads by the hand in a providential sense, but still, a person makes a certain choice every day, and makes it according to his character and the circumstances that pushed or restrained him.
Thus, we must distinguish this providential sphere from the psychological or social-psychological sphere. This, in fact, is where the subtlety of the approach lies: to understand what really lay at the heart of the act. On the one hand, someone will say it was courage and directness, while someone else says: it was the pig-headedness of his nature, which found itself in such circumstances. And as a result, directness turned into heroism: the boar destroyed the bastion with its snout. This is what we ultimately see in the biographies of the Bolsheviks of the revolutionary era—how they became heroes. Especially those who remained unscathed and, probably, had long been trained in conformism, had a good nose for things, and the ability to survive under any conditions. All this, of course, applies not only to public figures. That is why I am very cautious about concepts like patriotism (because it has a very wide range) and concepts like heroism, because heroic undertakings and the assessment of heroism are different things. I think that normal, human, modest undertakings are more plausible. And in general, I don’t really understand what a heroic undertaking is. It seems to me that there is falsehood here from the very beginning.
V. Ovsienko: Often it's just the normal behavior of a person at a time when the vast majority of people behave abnormally.
Ye. Sverstyuk: Yes, in accordance with their character... But, again, one must determine whether it was a person's desire to behave normally in spite of the temptations at every turn and the precedents that were always in plain sight. I recently, for example, read the story of a brave, intelligent, decent man who truly took courageous steps. He mentions the spies who were tailing him and his friends. From his story, I saw how afraid he was. He doesn't write that he was afraid, he just tells the story, but I see what it meant to him, how he noticed it, how he couldn't distract himself from it and rise above it! And I begin to remember that this is the story of each of us. Only each of us experienced it differently.
V. Ovsienko: There's a saying: everyone is afraid, and anyone who says they aren't is a liar. But courage lies in how a person is able to overcome their fear.
Ye. Sverstyuk: And sometimes it’s that a person is either blind or stupid. That happens too. Then—there are people who are easily wound up, who love a fight. Caesar, they say, chose such men—by the sign of their face flushing in a situation of danger.
V. Ovsienko: Yevhen Kontsevych recalled how his mother used to say about him: “Oh, he’s already taken the bit in his teeth!” This was even before his injury...
Ye. Sverstyuk: Kontsevych, in general, belongs to the class of internally strong people, I would say, of morally secure characters. When he speaks about something—there is no sentimental mush. Here you feel a whole man.
PARENTS. “THE HOUSE WITH THE IRON ROOF”
Characters reveal themselves to you even in childhood. Of course, when you live with your father and mother every day, you hardly see them, except in some trivial domestic circumstances. But my father often found himself in some extraordinary circumstances. If he did something foolish, it would be remembered for the rest of his life. Once he sold a calf somewhere—and lost the money—there was some game, right there at the fair. It was such a disgrace that this episode was brought up to him later, although it was the only time in his life he took such a frivolous step. And he never made excuses.
But in general, he was a courageous man, and everyone understood that. It was evident everywhere. On the eve of the First World War, he was courting my mother. He himself came from a wealthier family, but it was not held in very high esteem, it didn’t have a special reputation. They were the Zablotskys, who lived somewhere “on that corner of the village.” He had one brother, Ivan (he “disappeared somewhere during the revolution”), three sisters, and his father was the fifth child. As the eldest, he had the right to receive his six hectares, while the sisters were given one hectare each when they married. And here, across the hollow, not far away, was the family of Yakiv Prysyazhnyi. My mother was also the eldest in that family.
And so my father came to ask for her hand. My mother received this without much enthusiasm, and her parents also received Liksander’s courtship without enthusiasm: he was “a bit reckless.” I didn't know what this reputation was based on, but apparently, there were such situations among the young men, that where there was a fire no one would go—Liksander would go. Well, in a peasant environment, such a deviation from the middle ground is never treated positively. “He’ll go through fire and water.”
So, my father began his courtship. Of course, my mother’s parents approached this prudently: why not—the house is full of girls, a hardworking and not-poor lad is courting the eldest—so let her marry him. But they immediately started bargaining over the dowry. And they gave my mother one hectare of land somewhere far away, beyond the village. It was a hectare four or five meters wide, a very, very long strip of land, and very sandy and clayey. And either my father didn't want it, or my mother expressed dissatisfaction with the dowry, as if to say, am I your daughter or what? And my father said: "Alright, I'll take Yevka with nothing." Well, that was unprecedented—who takes a girl with nothing? So again—he was “reckless.” But this was said with the kind of decisiveness of a real man, that the question was not postponed for “later.” He took my mother, though, with that hectare... (Laughs). I remember I also once reaped on that strip of land (I can still feel how hard it was) a sparse patch of wheat, because nothing grew there. It was very difficult to bring manure there—over the hills, far away. In short, I am familiar with this “dowry,” and that's why I remember this story.
Things didn't work out for my parents at first, because their marriage coincided with the start of the war. His sisters, my father's sisters, had to be married off. Then the war, the Germans. True, people spoke very well of the Germans from the First World War. But the girls had to be protected from them... In fact, I remember the only vivid memory from that bleakness: the house burned down! They were left without a roof over their heads and quickly had to rebuild. The first children were Leontiy and Nadia. They died before they were two. My mother was indefatigable. Even more: for as long as I remember her, you could not even count the morning task of feeding the livestock and the family. The real work began only after that—until the evening. And in the evening, again, in between other things, feed the livestock and feed the family. And feeding the family meant—father's parents (grandfather and grandmother) and five children. And Grandma Maria suffered from epilepsy, and in a village setting, this is not a “divine illness.” It is a disease that makes a person disabled, and you cannot rely on her in the household.
As long as I can remember myself in early childhood, in our house “under the black tin roof” there was an entrance hall, and from the hall, through a creaky door, you entered the main room on the right—this room was called the “khata,” and beyond it was an alcove. In the khata there was a stove, and in the alcove, there was a kitchen, a bench, and a small table. So, grandfather and grandmother, father and mother, and the five of us, which made nine in total.
V. Ovsienko: And which one were you?
Ye. Sverstyuk: I was the last, the youngest. And in that respect, I probably had some privilege. But in general, there was no time to fuss over the children, and there was no point in разбираться in the justice of who hit whom, and my parents didn't get into that. Because of that, I was always at fault, because I wouldn't back down from my older brother Yakiv. And Yakiv had such a nature: you see, I beat you, and you're still the one to blame—for not picking a fight with your elder. His dishonesty always shocked and amazed me.
At home, I was a kind of pampered oracle—for lack of anything better to do, I’d calculate how many loaves of bread were eaten in a day. Because my mother baked the bread herself—and for nine souls, you can imagine how quickly it disappeared. I remember that in my childhood they would sometimes ask me “philosophical questions,” even when I was sitting on my mother’s lap. For example (I don’t think this was at a very early age, but of course, no more than five years old, something like that), I remember being asked this question: now here, in Volyn, they are giving land to the Poles. And to those who convert to the Catholic faith, they can give land for free, the very land we buy with such difficulty! “No, do not convert to the Catholic faith,” I advised. Of course. I was praised “for my wisdom.” But they were especially surprised when, to the question “what do you want to be,” I answered: “I want to sit in prison for Ukraine.” Of course, this speaks first and foremost to the moods that a child absorbs like a sponge. They must have told this story many times, which is why I remember it. My father’s industriousness was amazing: he bought land every year. It seems to me he bought a desyatina every year. Of course, we ate no butter, no eggs at home, because all that was sold. My father had countless connections with Jews, to whom he sold produce and from whom he borrowed money. I remember those long papers—promissory notes—I’ve known the word “promissory note” (veksel) since childhood. My father’s signature was there—he either put a cross or signed it: “Sverstyuk.” There were several of those notes, and I was told not to rummage in the drawer and not to take them. But they were always lying around there among the threads and buttons.
My father had a clock—“Le Roi à Paris” or something like that, in short, a royal clock with a French inscription. It was always breaking. My father had “his” watchmaker, to whom he always took it. This went on throughout my youth.
V. Ovsienko: What kind of clock was it?
Ye. Sverstyuk: A large wall clock. It broke down very quickly, and the watchmaker had no parts and made them from a piece of wire or a bit of tin. The clock would run for a few weeks, and then it would break again. My father would patiently take it back, taking a pood of grain to pay for the repair. All this caused smiles at home (laughs): “Old man, fix the clock!” My father would take the clock down, because it wasn't running, and bang it against the bench. I would intervene: “Bang it one more time, it needs to remember.”
My father patiently endured all kinds of mockery, with self-control. But in general, he would get worked up and curse the cow or the horse: “May you drop dead!” Those curses are one of my difficult memories. The cow, the horse were cursed with every name under the sun—for misbehaving. And how many times did I myself chase a cow to teach it a lesson for its disobedience and for being so cunning as to pretend it was grazing near the boundary because the grass was there, but as soon as I turned away—it was already over the line, in someone else’s wheat. So the war with the livestock and the idea that they understand—these were my first excursions into animal psychology. But when my father cursed them, I understood it was ridiculous, but when I myself cursed them—I understood that I was right in wanting to re-educate them. Later, when I was older, I would jokingly ask him when he was talking to the cow: “What is she telling you?” But he would pretend not to hear.
I remember that with my father, everything had to be as befits a good farmer. The equipment had to be in good working order. The dog had to be the best, and he knew how to find one somewhere beyond the forests, about sixty kilometers from home. A shepherd dog. He was looking for a dog that was part wolf—a mix like that. But in reality, they turned out to be large, cheerful, and good-natured dogs (laughs). As far as I remember, we never had that truly “wolf-like” dog my father was looking for. There were always two not-so-vicious dogs.
For Christmas Eve, you’re supposed to have fish. But where to get fish? My father would travel about ten kilometers—in winter, with the sleigh. Or in a blizzard. My father always had two or three horses, and he spared no effort. He had no concept of bad weather or external obstacles—he didn't recognize them and didn't know how a person could be lazy. Before Christmas, you have to get fish. It must be done, so it must be done, and my father went. And there, in Starostav, the ice had frozen so thick that the fish had to be pulled out from under the ice, suffocated—well, my father brought back suffocated fish from under the ice. But there was always fish. Most often, it was “suffocated.”
My father was very religious, and it was noticeable when you compared him to the neighbors, who just went to church or didn't go very often. Well, everyone probably went, because what would people say: “That one doesn't even go to church.” He always read the Bible and very often wanted me to read something to him—I was supposed to be able to read better. But I read all sorts of literature and could read better, including the newspaper, but not the Bible. Not because it wasn't in our language (of course, the Bible was in Russian), but because I had no prior knowledge of it. We studied the Law of God in school, but apparently, it was so episodic and so superficial that what my father knew was incomparably more than what I knew. And I couldn’t read the Bible to him—I admit with shame that this book was untamed territory for me. And once, with a neighbor who was about five years older than me, I took the Bible to the field to read. We started reading and stopped at how the Earth was created and how man was created. All of this seemed very funny to us, and with that, we finished reading the book. So, shepherds can criticize best, with the certainty that they understand every word they read, and since it doesn't align with their knowledge, it is therefore of no importance.
What else do I remember about my father? You see, I now love to reminisce about my father. As I recall various episodes now—he was a very extraordinary person.
MY BIRTHDAY
I found out my birthday purely by chance. They didn't attach importance to when a child was born: before Christmas—that was enough. Or shortly before Christmas. I was registered in the metric book as being born on December 8, 1927. My father often told me that he even insisted with the priest not to write down the “old year” for the child—write him a new year, write him 1928. But how to write it—you need a date, right? Obviously, the date had no meaning for him. The main thing was that the year should be 1928. For some reason, that was important to him. And I didn't understand what difference it made. He kept telling me that it was very important to him.
Then one day I was talking to my mother about my birthday. The thing is, our metric books were destroyed during the war. And not because a bomb or a fire destroyed them. The church survived, but the peasants themselves didn't want the metric books to be preserved because everyone was falsifying their birth years then. For some reason or other, everyone wrote down a fake year for themselves. It saved some, it didn't save others—but it saved me.
But first, I’ll tell you about the date, how I established it. “You were born,” my mother says, “on St. Andrew's Day.” I say: "Really?" – "Exactly on St. Andrew's Day!" – "On St. Andrew's Day itself? Is that a fixed date?" A fixed date, it turns out—it's December 13. I say: "So why was I registered as December 8, when I was born on the 13th?" – "Oh, I remember that, because the old man went to…”—What kind of old man was he back then? But already “the old man,” because there were many children.—“He went to register a deed of purchase. In the evening, or towards evening, he returned, came into the house from the cold, and I told him: ‘Father, we have a baby boy!’”—“That’s good,” says my father, “I bought him a morgue of forest.”
Thus I established my date of birth. But, looking ahead, I will say that my father had some kind of premonition. In 1944, when the “second Soviets” arrived, a total mobilization began immediately. My brother Dmytro and my brother Yakiv were taken into the army. They were born in 1921 and 1925, respectively. The children in our family were born two years apart, so it’s easy for me to calculate the ages of my older brothers and my dearly departed sister Lida. So, when the “second Soviets” came, they began to mobilize, and the 1927 birth year was mobilized into the “yastrebky” (destruction battalions). Those boys who studied with me under the Poles—they were “yastrebky”! In the “strybky”... It was a very, very nasty service—you probably couldn't invent a nastier one. And with my character—it’s absolutely certain—I would have gone into the forest. Under any circumstances, I would have gone into the underground and perished in the very first clashes. My mindset was Nietzschean, resolute.
But I went to school with the 1928 birth year and, accordingly, moved from class to class, from school to university, from university to postgraduate studies—as if I had been born in a normal country under normal conditions. And that was precisely the hand of Providence. But how my father sensed it, how he insisted: "You’re a fool, be quiet!" The fact is that despite being anti-Soviet, I really wanted to go to the front. For me, it was such an unbearable romance! The only thing that seriously held me back was that my older brothers had gone—and who would my parents be left with? So, you sit in the corner and keep quiet, you fool, and they’re right to call you a fool, because you have to have a conscience: who will be with your parents?
And indeed, in those terrible conditions, I had to play the role of some kind of protector. We escaped being deported to Siberia by a hair's breadth.
BROTHER DMYTRO
The fact is that somewhere in the very first months, that unprepared unit where my older brother Dmytro was, was thrown to the front. Thrown to the front, as is usual with the Soviets, almost unarmed and in civilian clothes. And Myt’ka was very defiant towards everyone, including our parents. By the way, I always had conflicts with my brothers on moral grounds—I couldn't understand how he could, how he dared to speak ill of our father—behind his back, of course—or not do what he was told!
His nature was not malicious—but in everything, he did things his own way. He then deserted from the front. Well, no one would have condemned him for deserting, because everyone was of that mindset. But he ran away home, to his wife, and they caught him there purely by chance. They didn't know yet, but for some reason, they were always snooping around houses. Some military unit from the district—they came in and found him in the house. They checked his documents and saw that he was a deserter. They took him to the district, to the military commissariat. He probably could have done some menial work for them there, but he ran away from there too—he ran away home again! Well, that was already very irresponsible towards his wife as well. I'm not even talking about the fact that his wife was not at all the kind his parents would have advised—she was from a very poor and helpless family. It’s clear that for the children of Liksander Zablotsky (as my father was called), marrying a good girl from a good family was not a problem. But he was the type to do everything his own way.
I didn't see him, because I was staying in an apartment in Horokhiv at the time. I was only told that they had searched our house again, took everything, even the cow, and found an old chest of clothes in the barn, buried during the German occupation, because everything was buried in the ground during the German occupation. When the front passed through, all the peasants' belongings, like festive clothes, rugs, and so on—everything was buried in the ground. The Germans were incapable of finding all this, but the Soviets found it instantly. So, they dug all this up when they were looking for Myt’ka, and they took the chest, and they took the cow—but they didn't find him. And he had a cold and was even coughing. They completely overturned the sheaves of grain, and he was hiding under the sheaves in the barn. And they walked on him—but he survived. After that, he guessed that his wife's home was no longer a hiding place.
And what did he do? He was the complete opposite of me—I, like a German, couldn't find anything. But Myt’ka could find anything. Anything that was hidden—whether it was honey, or sausage, or something like that in the pantry—Myt’ka would find it in an instant. During the war, when the front had passed, I had a very large stash: I had thrown a lot of grenades with the boys, and I had saved a lot for later. I don't know for what occasion, but I had about a dozen of my own grenades, of various types. I had a Soviet rifle and a German rifle. And I assembled all this from pieces—a piece of the bolt here, a part there. I had already learned to assemble it all myself. The German rifle was well-oiled and hidden in a haystack in the field. And Myt’ka found it. People saw him walking with it in the direction of the forest towards Skabarivshchyna.
Unlike me, who was very ideological, ready to go and burn up like a moth, Myt’ka was completely without ideology. Unlike Yakiv—he mocked the partisans, our boys who wanted to go against tanks with a rifle or a sawed-off shotgun. It was such a typical mockery. From my point of view at the time, it was a philistine position. But common peasant sense placed Myt’ka on the other side of this movement. Well, now he went into that movement because he had no other choice. Somewhere he came across partisans. Obviously, he couldn't fit into their environment. Obviously, somewhere he failed to cope with the tasks. They began to suspect him, because how could it be—the Bolsheviks shoot everyone right away, but him, you see, they let him go once, and they let him go a second time. It ended with them shooting him. Later, they told my mother that “he was there too.” And what he was like—that was a fairly common story of that time. There were many people shot by the partisans—both the guilty (in the sense of informers) and those on whom suspicion simply fell. So, all that was left of Myt’ka was his daughter Valia; she still lives in that mother’s house. His wife later remarried and had many children. I’ll cut this storyline short.
BROTHER YAKIV
Yakiv’s story was also very, very sad. They took those young men for a driver’s course with the plan of teaching them for a few months and then throwing them to the front. They were taken to a driving school all the way in Kharkiv. And in Kharkiv, it was discovered that they had been “youths,” that is, they were in the youth organization of the OUN. And all of them, eleven boys from the village, were arrested. What were they accused of? Firstly, that they were involved in the OUN, that was quite clear, and secondly, that they took part in battles against the Germans and against the red partisans. But the fact that they fought against the Germans—that wasn't counted in their favor, but the fact that they fought against the partisans—that was counted against them. Yakiv was given 8 years.
Yakiv was in Mordovia, at the Yavas station—I know this address very well from my eighth grade, because letters immediately started coming, and my father would systematically look for planks—my father was a bit of a craftsman, he could do a little of everything—to knock together a small box, and every month—come hell or high water—a parcel had to go to Yakiv. Every month. Later I learned what that meant, a parcel every month—no one else received parcels like that. One person would get a parcel once every six months, another once a year, and some not at all. But here, systematically, every month.
Accordingly, Yakiv had a special status in the camp. The thing is, he couldn't—this was from his father’s nature—he couldn't hide anything for himself. He was a generous soul and gave everything to everyone, and didn't really look at who was who: if a person was hungry—you had to give. He was simple. And there, accordingly, he had a good reputation among the guys. But, as I later learned, his reputation came not so much from what he had and gave away, as from his father's defiant nature. For example, in the village, there was this Vanka Kovaliv—what a guy! He sang, he was an artist, witty, and well-read. He seemed to me the pinnacle of giftedness, but in the camp, he turned out to be a coward and an egoist. Once he received a parcel—his parents sent him a parcel once a year—and the common criminals, the urki, took this parcel. Then he went to Yakiv Sverstyuk and told him that his parcel had been taken. "What? Who took it?" Yakiv started to sort things out. He summoned these crooks and held them accountable. "Well, Yasha, we can't—it's already gone." – "I want that parcel here now!" – "Well, we'll bring what's left." They brought the remains—but they brought them.
Then some fantastic stories reached us. Unfortunately, I didn't write them down then, and it wasn't the time for it, but I think Yakiv's biography would be more interesting than mine. Somewhere he befriended some hothead from Kharkiv, not exactly a common criminal, a Jew, a brave guy—Mishka. Somewhere, he and this Mishka had already earned six months in the BUR (punishment block), and after the BUR they were being transferred. They were thrown into a wagon with common criminals. And the urki were sharpening knives. Yakiv was about one meter eighty-five tall, maybe, and weighed a fair bit—in short, he was of a strong build. And this Mishka, when they entered: "Hand over the knives!" And they just smiled. Others came from the side. Then Mishka knocked one of them down with a single blow and took his knife. Yakiv immediately rushed in too, and they disarmed the entire wagon, collected the knives: "Guards! Take the knives from your crooks!" That was one episode.
Another episode reached me, from another transport. The urki were distributing food. There was just empty gruel for people like him. Yakiv made a remark to the "gruel-server," and the guy answered him rudely. Yakiv snatched the pot from him and poured it over his head—all by himself! They beat him terribly; he survived almost by chance.
Those two episodes from his story stuck in my memory. Now, when I met some former prisoners somewhere in the Lviv region, they told me that Yakiv was of a very cheerful disposition. When the guys lost heart—Yakiv would sing, cheer them up. It was good to be with him. That was Yakiv. I visited him in the Krasnoyarsk Krai in 1953. He was already in “permanent settlement.” It was a fantastic story, but I don't know if I'll have time to tell it now. So I'll just say that Yakiv married there, had an apartment in Krasnoyarsk, then moved to Ukraine, to the Lozova station in the Kharkiv region. A son was born to him there. He lived to see my arrest, they even conducted a search at his place, and he once came to visit me with my wife Lilia. But the next year he didn't come—he was a driver, died in a car crash. It's hard to understand what happened: it was as if his heart stopped or he lost consciousness.
Now, about my brothers. I, of course, wrote my autobiography almost straightforwardly: that in 1944 my brothers Yakiv and Dmytro were mobilized to the front, I went to school—I wrote nothing more about my brothers. And it passed, they never bothered me, because, in fact, there were no grounds to bother me. They had their own story. I think many people used that formula: you had to avoid blabbing unnecessarily. It would have been a different matter if my brother Dmytro had settled in with the UPA—then, of course, the family would have been deported to Siberia. Moreover, the deportation to Siberia was already prepared. In my case file No. 50, you can find such an order: “By decree of the MGB dated such-and-such, assigned for deportation to remote regions of the USSR.” So, the deportation document was already ready.
I recall there were some minor cataclysms in the district when the head of the KGB was dismissed for abuse of power. But that couldn't have affected our fate. Most likely, the family's fate was influenced by the fact that my brother perished. After all, they probably knew who shot him. He belonged to the category of those written off and, therefore, not dangerous, not the ones who return with weapons. In the exposé articles after my arrest, they wrote that Dmytro was killed in action.
UNIVERSITY
V. Ovsienko: How did your parents imagine what their son Yevhen would become after his education?
Ye. Sverstyuk: It’s hard to imagine the future when yesterday you were a respected farmer in the whole village, and today they’re “dekulakizing” you, and you’re handing out sacks of grain to your neighbors for safekeeping. My mother dreamed of seeing me as a priest, but she understood that there was no place for a priest now. My father would remind me: “Whatever happens, don’t forget God.” My father said that the “Soviets will ruin everything,” reduce it to nothing. But my mother secretly believed in my unusual future, and when she spoke of acquaintances who were “already a boss, and already with a belly, and you’re a student again,” she clearly didn't want to see me “with a belly.” But it was hard to explain to people “what he’s studying to be…”
V. Ovsienko: When you were arrested, things became a bit clearer.
Ye. Sverstyuk: Only on one side, because there was no information. Except that the doctors my mother happened to see would say something to her with reverence.
After finishing school, I was able to enter Lviv University in 1947. I went with such self-confidence! I thought all the doors at the university were open to me. It turned out that this was far from the case. I wanted to study English philology. English philology only because I was a “Byronist,” and the spirit of Byron permeated my school years. I was going to learn English and translate Byron. But I didn't pass the competition. I got into the department of logic and psychology—and in this too was the hand of Providence. It was the only possible department for me. It was much better than Ukrainian philology, which was all stuffed with false information.
At the university, I had quite interesting adventures from the very beginning. Despite it being a “Banderite” region, there was very weak control over who entered the university. During my entrance in 1947, I did things that I would give a lot for a movie about. I took exams for someone else (they forged a stamp for me), sometimes stupid exams, I even tried to take physics.
V. Ovsienko: And successfully?
Ye. Sverstyuk: No, not successfully in physics—without preparation, well, but in philology—of course. But those guys knew absolutely nothing—there were some like that.
I remember how we held rallies there—“children of different nations.” In any case, I remember one assessment. A boy from the Kirovohrad region said: "I am a non-believer, but I will pray to God for you to get into the university." Something about my audacity impressed him. But later, when he got in and I got in—and he got into the law faculty, which in Lviv at the time was the future nomenklatura—he was already cautious. You have to imagine that time: hungry people from Eastern Ukraine are walking through the villages—a living advertisement for collective farms. The militia is throwing frozen corpses off the roofs of train cars. The authorities are afraid to show their horns. The petitioners from Ukraine in Volyn were called “Americans.” And the university was an island.
When I was the elder of my first-year class, I introduced a policy of free attendance. Why should we go to lectures where there's nothing to listen to? I'll take notes. Let's take turns not coming to lectures: you have the right not to come on such-and-such a day, and the register will be okay, as long as I'm the elder. Of course, I was fired from the “position.”
In my second year, they expelled me from the university. This was already 1949, the time of the pogrom against “cosmopolitans.” There was a campaign against “cosmopolitans,” and I just happened to get “swept up” in it. I was accused, mainly, of telling someone that Stalin and Hitler were one and the same, two peas in a pod. I won't go into the details of this story. I can only say that when I was summoned to the course meeting (and a course meeting was a terrible inquisition: a room full of people, you are called to the table, you have to confess)—as I was walking to the table, Mikheyev, a former partisan with the Order of the Red Star, tugged at me: "Zhenka, keep your mouth shut!" Because he knew my directness.
And this, to some extent, also influenced me. I started being ironic (“He’s still laughing!”), saying that, as far as I understood, I was being accused of both practical and theoretical activities. The practical activity consisted of the fact that a three-letter word was written on the schedule at the military department. Such a word was indeed there, but since I was the class elder, I was asked what should be done, and I said that it was a disgrace for university students—this is not a public toilet, let's wipe this word off. We couldn't wipe it off, so we took down the schedule and didn't show it to the head of the department. But it later reached them. It was clear to everyone that this was in no way connected to me. This was a huge win for me—the first accusation was dropped due to its absurdity. And the second accusation they were simply afraid to repeat (laughs).
V. Ovsienko: Which one?
Ye. Sverstyuk: Well, that Stalin and Hitler were one and the same. This was during Stalin's time.
V. Ovsienko: Ah! Who could say such a thing out loud!
Ye. Sverstyuk: Yes, who could say such a thing out loud—and who would dare write it in the minutes? And who is confident that he would hold on to his position after such a handwritten record?
Thus, to some extent, the warning and, ultimately, my instinct for self-preservation worked. In the end, the informant they had was under a codename, they weren't ready to expose him. He was in the English department. Later, Mikheyev and I figured him out. It was a certain Pohorilyi, who said his father was a watchman at a collective farm chicken coop—“a plebeian of plebeians.” But he was clearly engaged by them and got into the English department of the university on that condition, as “their man.” Since they had no evidence, and a certain old horse, a colonel from the military department who was leading this case, testified on his behalf, to my questions of who said it and who could confirm what in the eyes of normal people was absurd—to compare Stalin with Hitler in 1949—it was both scary and absurd—it worked out for me.
They stopped trying to drag me into the Komsomol, they immediately stopped agitating me. I was in some zone of suspension, of uncertainty. At the same time, I behaved very directly at the university. I was friends mainly not with the locals, but with those guys who were not afraid. Like Petro Mikheyev. I refused any contact with those liars from the department of Ukrainian literature, I became passionate about psychology, and I wrote my thesis on a philosophical topic as well. What neutral topic could there be then? – “The Problem of the Concept in the First Chapter of Marx's 'Capital'.” My supervisor was among those who came to the course meetings then—Kovalyov, a war invalid, a bruiser. But I once, during the pogrom, asked him a very reasonable question: they were judging me, ignoring the law of sufficient reason—the fourth law of logic. He liked that. And then, when I was his thesis student, he carried my thesis around and showed it off, saying that he had a thesis—now that's a real thesis! He gave me Aristotle's "Metaphysics" to read. He had philosophical literature, and he liked it when students came to him. He advised me to join the party—he would support me and take me into postgraduate studies. Here I told him a firm "no," and he also treated this with understanding. I think that to a large extent, the girls saved the situation—there weren't many of us guys, so they, I would say, covered for us. I studied together with Vasyl Horbachuk.
V. Ovsienko: The one who now lives in Sloviansk?
Ye. Sverstyuk: Now he is the head of a department at Sloviansk University. We were in the same year, they tried to drag us into the Komsomol together. And then, in our fifth year, the question of graduating from the university and getting a job came up.
V. Ovsienko: What year did you graduate?
Ye. Sverstyuk: In 1952, still under Stalin. And they advised me very reasonably: “Listen, you’ll go to a school—where do you want to go?” I say I want to go to Volyn. – “So, maybe even to your own district?” – “I want to.” – “Well, you’re a fool. You shouldn't go to your own district. And maybe you shouldn't go to Volyn at all.” – “No, I only want to go to Volyn.” There were no vacancies in Volyn, and only for that reason, I didn't end up there. – “And do you know that they will dig into your biography there? And if you go to school not as a Komsomol member, you will immediately be like a hare that wolves pounce on.” – At that time, for a young man to go to school not as a Komsomol member—you had to think about that! So Vasyl and I thought, weighed it up, and I said: “Listen, Vasyl, we'll have to get these Komsomol papers.” Well, then the girls who were party members said: "Oh, Zhenya! Well, finally—let us do it! Just you know what? We’ve already talked here—they'll summon you for a talk at the district Komsomol committee, so we'll conduct that talk ourselves." They were afraid for me, that I would say the wrong thing. And everything went smoothly, they brought us already completed membership cards.
V. Ovsienko: And without a meeting, without the district committee?
Ye. Sverstyuk: Without. They exempted me from all that, everything was so nice. And it was extremely timely. Extremely. I don't know the details of how it worked out for Vasyl, but we were sent together: me to Pochaiv, and him beyond Pochaiv, to the village of Zholobky.
POCHAIV
In that Pochaiv, I had to play such a dynamic and revolutionary role, and they simply didn't know how to get at me. Because formally—I had just graduated from university, a Komsomol member. And they hadn't studied my biography, they didn't know what had happened at the university. This was a district, with its own mafia, closely connected—the school principal, the head of the district education department, the regional education inspector—people who always drank together. That, in fact, is what united them.
V. Ovsienko: A “blood brotherhood”—based on vodka.
Ye. Sverstyuk: Yes. They get their joy from that.
I arrive in this Pochaiv and from the very beginning, even before the start of the school year, I see that it is a terribly neglected school, that there is no elementary order, no elementary cleanliness and neatness. That they hadn't even thought about the teacher—where to house him and where to give him an apartment. No one even wants to hear about it, there's no one to talk to about it. This petty-bourgeois principal—the only thing she prepared for was to take three parallel eighth-grade classes for herself, and to give me the seventh, ninth, and tenth. But since that wasn't a full load, they gave me a little more: Darwinism, and logic and psychology. So, logic, psychology, Ukrainian language, Ukrainian literature, Darwinism—for a young teacher who had just arrived, who was practicing for the first time!
There we met Petro Rozumnyi and two other local teachers. Nalyvaiko and Pavliuk—boys who had wonderful voices...
V. Ovsienko: And interesting surnames—Rozumnyi (Wise), Nalyvaiko, Pavliuk...
Ye. Sverstyuk: Yes, you could say, Cossack colonels: Rozumnyi, Nalyvaiko, Pavliuk. We quickly formed a quartet there. Pavliuk taught mathematics, Nalyvaiko German and later Russian, Rozumnyi taught English, and I taught my subjects.
It was extremely difficult for me. Just to give you some details: I started looking for an apartment myself, one that included meals. It was almost impossible. I came across a house where the landlady agreed to cook meals—as soon as the painted floor dried, and for the time being, I could sleep in the attic. A teacher going to sleep in the hay! And it doesn't dry for a week, then another. I go to school, having washed myself somehow, and I get lice. I'm scared, I don't know what to do. Finally, I realize that I can't endure this state. It's autumn, and my mother is having bad dreams. And when my mother dreams, my mother is a clairvoyant in her dreams—so she will come. My God, when will she come? She will come to Pochaiv—to see me and the Pochaiv Lavra. When she comes and sees all this—how will she live? I find another apartment—without meals, but a normal one. I go to the market, buy DDT, take off everything—and I have nothing, only what I'm wearing—I take off everything, douse it in DDT—and I'm free. Such a domestic revolution!
Meanwhile, an intense life continues at school. The principal, when she saw that I looked at her as a petty exploiter, started to undermine me, coming to my lessons. At my literature lessons, she could only marvel at me—I simply read easily and knew the subject. Although I hadn't studied it at the university, I had brought a sack of books with me. I never read from a textbook—I couldn't stand textbooks. They were so loathsome, talentless, and useless to me that it's hard to put into words. It was, as one artist said when asked: “Why don't you join the Union of Artists—do you have some principled objections?” – “No,” she says, “my legs just won't carry me there. Somehow my legs just won't carry me.” (They laugh).
But in language lessons, you could always find something to nitpick. The principal started checking my lesson plans before every class—always. In short, I found myself in a very tense environment, so there was no time to think about my domestic troubles. And the atmosphere at school was very unpleasant. For example, the principal had a sister there—an “excellent worker in public education.” She looked intelligent. She taught Russian literature, spoke only Russian. But how she treated others—that immediately struck me. How she treated her own colleague in my presence, after visiting her lesson! Okay, so she teaches a bad lesson: "Listen, you are a nobody, you absolutely don't understand the material! And aren't you ashamed of yourself!" And so on. Well, I think to myself, what kind of person are you? Okay, so you're an order of magnitude higher than her—she teaches Russian in the fifth grade, and you in the senior classes. But you can't treat a person like that! This outraged me terribly. And that principal doesn't treat us like people.
We, of course, responded in kind. We treated the administration and the party organizer with mockery. And there was a party organizer there—a former Soviet partisan and a scoundrel named Dudchenko, who boasted that he had burned a man alive who was shouting, “Glory to Ukraine!” They established a custom for teachers to attend political information sessions. I ignored this custom, considering it humiliating, and did not attend. But Petro Rozumnyi would go and take notes on this Dudchenko. From there came those famous aphorisms: "Comrades, we see that when Marko Ozernyi became world-famous, corn is being sown in Transcarpathia. There, by the way, corn has always been sown.” Things like that. And every time Petro Rozumnyi would go with a pencil and a notebook—and catch a fish, because this Dudchenko had some kind of paranoid complex. He gave us colossal material. He complained: "And they are young boys, and intelligent boys, and seemingly not bad boys—but they laugh!"
So, we somehow saved ourselves with that laughter in that pitch-dark atmosphere. When the principal sniffed out that I was actually the instigator among those who laughed and rebelled, and the young female teachers were also starting to take notice that, look—there are people who resist. Until now, they were treated as nothing, much like that teacher. So they summoned us to the party district committee, the secretary of the district committee painted us rosy prospects, that the Lavra would be closed, the Pechersk Lavra in Kyiv had already been closed. And the school was within the walls of the Lavra... In general, it was an amazing phenomenon: a path to the Lavra, a beggar by the bell tower who was barefoot in summer and winter, and he was always there—in the morning and in the evening. Then the school, behind the school the police, then the KGB. And here on the left, the Lavra. We, of course, did not go to the Lavra. I went in once or twice, quietly and, I would say, detachedly—the chill of alienation was very, very palpable.
I flew out of Pochaiv school and from Pochaiv like a cannonball—with a great deal of noise. It started when they announced an open lesson by the aforementioned “excellent worker” in Russian literature, and the cunning head of studies came up with the idea that I should act as the opponent. This principal’s sister was, in her own way, a diplomatic person: she even once proposed an alliance to me: we are, after all, the “leading teachers” and so on. I didn't quite understand what an alliance with her meant; her brutality in dealing with others repelled me. Was this supposed to be an alliance of two sharks? But, firstly, I was not a shark, and secondly, from her point of view, I taught "merely Ukrainian literature." True, I was the homeroom teacher for the ninth grade. In this class, the children didn't listen to her and told me they would only listen when I ordered them to. That is, they expressed a special trust in me. I was a bit ironic, but of course, I didn't engage in frankness with the children and couldn't speak against another teacher with them.
The open lesson was organized pompously, she prepared it diligently, and they brought several dozen teachers from all over the district. During the discussion, they praised it, saying everything was as brilliant as in an opera house, it was extraordinary, instructive, and so on. When I was given the floor, I began to analyze this lesson demandingly and severely. And somehow it turned out that at the end of this analysis, the principal asked me in a fallen voice: "So what do you think, Yevhen Oleksandrovych—can we give a 'satisfactory' for that lesson or not?" I said that I didn't want to give a grade, because I was probably not invited as an official opponent for that, but only to express remarks with which one could agree or disagree.
It was very difficult for them to refute these remarks. I showed that the questioning was just a parade of top students. Then, most importantly, I showed that the material was not uncovered and the teacher herself did not understand what she was supposed to explain. She was supposed to explain "Reflections at the Main Entrance" to the children, but she had no "reflections" at all, she only had the image of the nobleman and the image of the submissive peasants. But there were no "reflections," and it was not clear why—after all, the title of the work has "reflections"? This is an extremely important problem—in fact, this is all of Nekrasov, his thoughts on the fate of the Russian people: "Will you awaken, full of strength, / Or, obeying the law of fate, / Have you already done all you could— / Created a song like a groan, / And spiritually passed away forever."
I found a great many mistakes in her Russian. I analyzed in Ukrainian—which, by the Stalinist customs of the time, was also a challenge. This caused her to have a fit. She could not refute anything.
After this analysis, this woman fell ill. I think she truly fell ill. Although the review of the lesson was not malicious, it was all the more painful for it. Not malicious in the sense that I didn't want to find so much wrong with her—she was, after all, a good teacher. She was apparently a bad person, but as a teacher, she was indeed among the best at the Pochaiv school. But it turned out that I became her “fate.”
After this, they decided to get rid of me. The principal came to an understanding with the authorities and decided to arrange a pogrom for me at the end of the semester. A representative from the Ministry of Education in Kyiv arrived, a regional education inspector arrived, and she presented me as an example of those teachers who do not submit to the administration and do not want to cooperate.
They gave me the floor. I remember that the representative from the Ministry of Education kept interrupting me, and I calmed him down: "For now, I have been given the floor, and when you are given the floor, you will have your say in support of young teachers. I ask you not to interrupt me." Such behavior towards a representative from the center was also unusual at the Pochaiv school. I’m not even talking about our petty school or near-school officials.
I remember, a meeting gathered in the large hall. The secretary of the district party committee was at the table, the representative of the regional education department, the inspector, was speaking, opening his little notebook and quoting Tolstoy: "Man is a fraction, where the numerator is what he is, and the denominator is what he thinks of himself." And right there he refers to the young teacher Sverstyuk, who thinks too much of himself. I'm in the front row, I stand up and walk out demonstratively. They start to hold me back from the presidium. I left. Petro Rozumnyi also walks out demonstratively after me. We walk silently to my apartment, I gather my things and say: "Petro, I'm leaving." – "Where to?" – "To my mother's, for Christmas." – "Well, I'm going too." – "Well, let's go, if you agree. Just keep in mind that there will be a serious price to pay for this." – "Well, if there is—we'll pay it."
And we went to my mother's for Christmas. At home, it was a very big surprise, because all the teachers were at the winter conference. And at my mother's apartment, the local teachers were also surprised that I had come. We had a nice Christmas at my mother's, and after Christmas, we returned to the Radziviliv station (formerly Chervonoarmiisk), and from there it was thirty kilometers on foot through a snowstorm—it was a good snowstorm then.
We arrive at the school. I still have time to write a lesson plan because I know there will be an inspection. And indeed, Kikimora, as we called the principal, is already waiting for me in the corridor. She says: "You don't need to go to the lesson—go to the head of the district education department, you are being summoned." The head of the district education department with mouse-like eyes: "Yevhen Oleksandrovych, what do you want?" – "Well," I say, "how can I put it? I know what I don't want." – "And what don't you want?" – "I don't want to work with you." – "What do you mean, you don't want to?" – "Just like that, you know how yourself. I don't want to work with you—you are dishonest people." – "Well, if that's the case, then here you are." And he takes out a transfer slip from his drawer—already prepared and stamped—stating that I am dismissed from my job at the Pochaiv school.
I gather my things into a sack, there's more than a sackful now—two sacks of books, and not even dark sacks, but white ones. Petro Rozumnyi and I drag them through the snow to the bus and say our goodbyes. But not forever: he remains a faithful friend for life.
The head of the Regional Education Department receives me, for whom I have already prepared my answers. And I prepared for the conversation with him in a far from pleading tone. But I understand that they had never had anything like this before, a teacher behaving so demonstratively in the presence of Kyiv and district committee officials. And this was in the first months of working at the school. That's why—an unbroken horse. Meanwhile, that head of the regional department (Krahlyk, former director of the Kremenets Pedagogical Institute) calmly listened to me and said: "I know they are fools, but you still can't behave the way you did. Here's what, son, in one of our schools, literature hasn't been taught since the beginning of the year—the teacher went to postgraduate studies. It’s the tenth grade, a graduating class—you need to help out." It seemed to put an end to further conversation...
Meanwhile, that inspector from the regional department comes in, the one who spoke with his notebook about man being a fraction. And he's carrying a whole folder of materials, the district department's resolution regarding my behavior, the condemnation from the district teachers' meeting, and other such materials that I was later told about. He saw me and said: "That's him, the one from the Pochaiv school! And here's the folder of materials." But the head of the regional department says: "There's a person sitting in front of you, and you with your folders. Go away!" He chased him out. (Laughs).
I say: "Well, of course, I would like to ask for a school where there would be some conditions for work. But after you told me about this school, what can I say? The only thing I still want to ask is: is the school principal an intelligent man? Because I can't work with fools." – "Well, as it happens, the school principal there is an intelligent man! But I can't vouch for anything else."
BOHDANIVKA
So I went to Bohdanivka in the Ternopil region, Pidvolochysk district. I also had a lot of adventures in this Bohdanivka, but the principal was an older, intelligent man, Oleksiy Valerianovych Belinsky. He would only sometimes ask: "Yevhen Oleksandrovych, please don't pour salt!" He asked me what the reason was that I behaved, how to put it, uncommonly. I said: "Do you remember, in Gorky's story about his childhood, there is an episode when at the Kashirins', where it was unbearable to see all that day after day and live among those people, he would sometimes throw a handful of salt into the borsch, and they would go crazy from it. Or he would climb onto the roof and stuff the chimney, and they could never figure out why there was smoke. He wanted to create at least some adventure in this world." So the principal asked me: "Don't pour salt in the borsch!"
And I would say that there was a rather diverse environment there—also youthful. I developed good relationships with the children. I had the reputation there of "the Ukrainian gentleman." After all, a Galician, more intelligent atmosphere was preserved there. The teacher of the Ukrainian language is “the Ukrainian gentleman.”
In Bohdanivka, there was no such hostile environment that in Pochaiv caused a confrontation that shook the teachers of the district because it went beyond the limits of imagination. In Bohdanivka, I received a letter from a student of unusual modesty and diligence: “Where are you now, our Ukrainian Byron?” Although it was known that I was only on the other side of the Ternopil region. It was too quiet in Bohdanivka, and there was a lack of ninth-graders ready to support a rebellion “against the infidels.”
I remember one episode—on Easter. Well, the living conditions there were terrible. Not only was there no one to cook and no canteen, but there wasn't even any heating. I lived in an unheated house during the winter of 1953—January, February, March, and so on. Because there was nothing to heat it with, they hadn't brought fuel for the teacher who wasn't there. But youth somehow triumphs. I remember, I'm walking down the street on Easter—a frightened Oksana, the English teacher, comes running. She had gone near the church, and they threw a stone at her and hit her in the shoulder. Obviously, they drove her away so she wouldn't be a scout—as a teacher who watches who participates in the Easter haivky (spring circle dances). I stopped her, asked her what happened, and said: "Let's go together." I was sure they wouldn't throw a stone at me and that it could somehow be smoothed over.
Indeed, we stood there to the side. The village boys looked at me somehow shyly, as if they were not hostile. Not the schoolchildren, but the older ones. And the schoolchildren, of course, were embarrassed. Then the girls dared, took me by the hand, and pulled me into the circle dance. And I pulled Oksana. We went with them, had a little fun. We legitimized their haivky—and left. Well, of course, this immediately became known in the district committee—haivky with the participation of teachers! The principal asked that “not to that extent—you can’t.”
There were a few more acts of defiance towards the secretary of the district committee and others—nothing, it all passed. Then, to my great fortune, Comrade Stalin died. We were sitting in the teachers' room. I sat down on a table, the radio was nearby. The radio announced in Levitan's voice. And when it said that he had “passed away,” our Pioneer leader said: "Stand up, comrades!" I remained seated. Others didn't stand up either. That is, I effectively set the tone.
I must say that I experienced this event deeply. Firstly, it was my long-held dream: when would he finally “pass away”? And when he did, there was such music... If you had looked at me at that time, you could have said that I belonged among the most decorated people. This music—it was incredible! This funeral music filled everything. I believe it was one of the best spectacles of the Stalin era—this funeral music.
That year, the frosts, so to speak, broke. You could feel some kind of warming. An amnesty was declared—of course, for criminal offenders, not for political prisoners. In the same year—news of Beria's arrest. Event after event. And you feel with your shoulders that the world has somehow cleared up a bit.
Meanwhile, my brother Yakiv was released into exile in the Krasnoyarsk Krai. He had been through many camps, I don't even know which ones. I know that he was released into exile. But he was in the Kansk district of the Krasnoyarsk Krai, in the “Khondalskoye settlement.” And the logging site—there was no number there. On the bank of the Biryusa River.
I decided to see my brother—after so many years! I told my mother and father. They supported me.
I'm skipping over many such piquant details. For example, the graduation party. At the graduation party, at the table, my students are in new suits. I hear their parents: "And where is the 'Ukrainian gentleman'?" And they point: "That one?" My sleeves are almost up to my elbows, a jacket of good material, but the sleeves are short. Poverty—well, 65 rubles! I had to spend a lot of that on books, because I bought everything that was published. There was practically nothing in the library if you didn't bring it with you.
THE ATMOSPHERE OF THE ERA
I would like to talk about the general atmosphere in which my life took place. It is a gift of fate when a person in childhood has something to compare with, without traveling abroad. For example, in childhood, the Polish government, which is perceived by the people as an occupying power. It is replaced by the Soviet government, which sharply devalues yesterday's values and is also perceived by the people as an occupying power. Finally, the German government comes, which also sharply changes all orientations and values, and that one is absolutely an occupying power. Finally, after the German government, the “second Soviets” come—they are brutal occupiers. But everything has its nuances and everything is very relative. Under that occupation, I studied, under that occupation, I even had some privileges. Each occupation also had its own advantages, gave some information for comparison, for juxtaposition, and most importantly—it gave a spirit of resistance. There was something to resist, with the exception, perhaps, of the first Polish one, when it was still childhood and only the first impressions were accumulating, there was not yet any political position.
I told you that my parents asked me in childhood how I felt about converting to the Catholic faith, and then those desyatinas of land that we had to buy would be given to us for free. Of course, this question was put to me cunningly. For my parents, it is quite clear, this question did not arise.
And I also remember well: girls and boys went to Pliasheva, near Berestechko, every summer, and the Polish police would cut their embroidered shirts and beat them with whips. There were boys who were arrested and sat in prison, in Kartuzka Bereza—this impression from childhood remained, and the fashion of “suffering for Ukraine” was instilled back then, in childhood.
Then, the orientation—towards what kind of people? I would say that under all those conditions, I was saved by my orientation towards the braver people, towards decent people with whom you could deal, who would not inform on you—even if they were not like-minded and even if I spoke a foreign language with them.
By the way, I will recall another episode that happened to my father during the occupation.
V. Ovsienko: Which occupation?
Ye. Sverstyuk: The German one. For some reason, the Soviet one is not called an occupation.
V. Ovsienko: The “first Soviets” and the “second Soviets”?
Ye. Sverstyuk: Only in Volyn did they say “Soviets.” And this was in the autumn of 1941 or 1942. So, my father kept close to my uncle—my mother's younger brother. He was a Baptist and a kind of man who was inquisitively searching, a man who asked questions. In its own way, this was also a revolution—to change one's faith. Although there were quite a few Baptists in the village. So, they took potatoes to deliver to a procurement point. They were traveling at night, late in the autumn, and a man with a pistol in his hand stopped them. My uncle was about fifteen years younger than my father. A young man. And my father was maybe in his fifties. And that man ordered my uncle to take off his sheepskin coat. Well, my uncle takes off his coat. And my father also stopped his cart and approached: "What's going on?" – "Don't come closer, or I'll shoot!" – "Well, why," he says, "shoot? I just want to see what's going on." My father approaches, looks—on the cart are drale (drale are pitchforks with knobs on the ends, used for loading potatoes), he grabs these pitchforks—whack!—and hits the man with the pistol on the hand! The man runs off! My father started looking for the pistol—it's gone. My father unharnesses the horse—and goes after him. My uncle holds him back: "Don't! What for—let him run. Well, he ran away—and that's good." No, my father was trying to catch him! But it was night! A dark night! He rode around for a bit, didn't find him, came back, and they went home.
V. Ovsienko: He could have still had the pistol, couldn't he?
Ye. Sverstyuk: He could have, because my father didn't find the pistol. But that's what he was like—a daredevil, as they said. I think this atmosphere was passed on a little to the children.
Now I remember many such episodes, especially under the Germans—also defiant episodes. My father could spend two days, when I wanted him to, looking for skis... Where to get skis? They said that when the Soviets retreated, they left a lot of skis behind. My father harnesses the horses—when a child wants something, you have to look. For two days we drive around, looking. We didn't find them. Then we found some old Polish skis from an old Pole, paid him a fantastic sum—my father got the skis!
Now, regarding the horror, the terror that came with the arrival of the second Soviets. On the one hand, it was a brutal occupation—a merciless extermination of people suspected of complicity in the UPA. But, on the other hand, it was also a great and defiant struggle against them, against the Soviets. This had a very strong influence. Heroic legends circulated about Chornomorets, about Slavko—those boys who died in ambushes and hideouts. That legend went around the villages. Someone was scared, someone prayed to God for them, and someone told their children about the amazing bravery and fearlessness of those boys. So, it had different effects. I, of course, can say that I was born in a region where they wrote on the walls: "Death to Hitler and Stalin!" But to this, one must definitely add that those who looked at such inscriptions with great joy were maybe five percent—and the rest looked with fear. Because these slogans were written under both Hitler and Stalin—especially under Hitler, but not so much under Stalin.
I remember when I was a student, walking from Stoyaniv station to my parents' village with other students—my God, how I talked to them! It was like kneading this clay over and over, and it remains clay, and nothing will come of this clay. It is pliable, it is indifferent, it does not want to think about character, about honor, about other “invented words”—it doesn't want to! It wants to meekly adapt to circumstances. And there were a majority of such people at the university too. That's why I dealt mainly with the guys who were not afraid, and this gave me the ability to orient myself well. I felt good among such people. For example, Yarikov—a staunch anti-Soviet. He knows all of Yesenin by heart. Maybe he poisoned his soul too much with that Yesenin—he is a poisonous poet, but at the same time—he is a poet! Maybe Byron also had a dark side. He did, but that is what develops you the most. And Dostoevsky is also poisonous to a large extent, but I studied him in the ninth grade of secondary school when I found out that he was a forbidden writer. Everything—against the current. When you are not intimidated, no one even chases you—this is also very important. You feel free. I think this gave me the opportunity to behave so independently in my teaching work as well.
POSTGRADUATE STUDIES. A TRIP TO MY BROTHER IN SIBERIA
After Stalin—this was already a period of a certain thawing and emancipation. In particular, from university science. This was 1953-56.
V. Ovsienko: Did you go to postgraduate studies from that Bohdanivka?
Ye. Sverstyuk: Yes. The story with postgraduate studies was this. I went to my brother in Siberia with a naive “travel order” issued to me by that same village school. They wrote it just as I told them to. None of those railway cashiers even wanted to read that piece of paper; they would just return it to me with a smile. Well, somehow it worked out—you always find a way when you're 25 years old.
So, I arrive in Kansk and buy a ticket for some bus, I go to Khondalskoye. I arrive there, there is nothing there except some point, a "leskhoz" (forestry enterprise) or something like that. I ask when a truck might be available—it's a 75 km drive through the taiga. They say that trucks come here once a week, sometimes more often. I went out with my suitcase, in which there was a bundle of korzhyky (flatbreads) for Yakiv, and, in fact, nothing else. And the suitcase was huge, like they used to have.
V. Ovsienko: Wooden, probably?
Ye. Sverstyuk: Not wooden—cardboard. Well, and so I walk around in the twilight. It's already getting dark, gloomy. I'm thinking, where will I spend the night—not a soul around. I want to gather my thoughts. Opposite me is a man with a bicycle in his hands, looking into my eyes and saying: "Zhenya?" – "Yakiv!" – "Oh," he says, "if you only knew—we finally met! If you only knew how I got here!"
A docking like in space—perfectly timed! And I had sent a telegram "to the village, to grandfather's," saying that I was leaving on such-and-such a date, to his address. And that was all, because I didn't know how long I would be traveling—a week or two, and where I was going—I was generally buying a ticket to Krasnoyarsk, and then it turns out I have to travel another 200 km. And of course, no money—what money? There was none at home, and I only had my vacation pay—for such a long journey!
And it turns out that my brother received the telegram. More precisely, my brother did not receive the telegram. He had gotten lost in the taiga before that and they had already given up on him, because people don't return from the taiga. He walked through that taiga until he reached some river. And there, after three days of wandering in the forest, he made his presence known. The KGB and a helicopter immediately appeared, because—a political prisoner! They immediately transported him to the place. Well, here the guys are rejoicing: “Yakiv has appeared, we knew he would manage... Yakiv, there's a telegram for you here." Yakiv—a resolute man—looked at the telegram: "Oh," he says, "I have to go!" He took someone's bicycle without asking and rode off through the taiga. And he met me, to the minute!
It was a very romantic journey. I returned from it thin as a skeleton. At home, I found a letter from a former acquaintance from the university, who wrote that she had entered postgraduate studies in psychology. Well, I think, if she got into postgraduate studies, why should I have any problems? And so I immediately wrote an application for postgraduate studies. I, of course, hadn't prepared, because when did I have the time. But it was good that I was applying that year, because it was then that this devilish machine stalled: they arrested Beria then. Only then could I have been accepted. I came to Kyiv to the Institute of Psychology, at 10 Lenin Street. I'm taking exams without preparation. I start to bluff my way through something, they are delighted with some improvised answer of mine on Marxism-Leninism—it was called “philosophy.” Then the psychology exam. At this exam, they ask me how I feel about Pavlov's teaching on conditioned reflexes, on higher nervous activity, and its significance for psychology. I expressed my almost negative attitude towards this cult in science, that it has no direct relation to psychology, and so on. They were a little shocked by such foolish directness in the exams, but they also liked something about it. They gave me a "five." So I entered postgraduate studies as a “dissident.”
And then there were no job placements for psychologists. The director, Kostyuk, who generally had a complicated attitude towards me, didn't really want me at the Institute as a staff member. Not really. We would later have many adventures, and he would even accept me through a competition when I was fired... for ideological reasons. Then I would speak at conferences in the mid-sixties, and these speeches would figure in my verdict. Then I am fired from my job at the request of the KGB. Such “secret Nicodemism” and sympathy from Professor Hryhoriy Sylovych Kostyuk.
POLTAVA PEDAGOGICAL INSTITUTE
I loved literature, but I never studied it properly, and at the university, I hardly studied it at all, except for foreign literature. And that even gave me advantages. I was engaged in psychology at the Institute of Psychology, I wrote a dissertation—true, on a related literary-psychological topic.
V. Ovsienko: And what was its title?
Ye. Sverstyuk: “Peculiarities of Senior Pupils' Understanding of the Motives of a Literary Character's Behavior.” The perception of a character. After postgraduate studies, I ended up with a smart deputy minister, who talked to me with interest, told me how literature should be read, and asked if I could read in such a way that people would be captivated. "Well," I say, "maybe I can't, but no worse than those who read to me." And he gave me an assignment in Poltava. I end up at the Poltava Pedagogical Institute.
V. Ovsienko: What year was this?
Ye. Sverstyuk: This was 1956. The time of the Hungarian uprising. In fifty-eight, I was fired—I didn't even last three years. Transferred to the correspondence department “due to staff reduction”—which effectively means fired. To this day, I don't know—the motives were obviously that I didn't fit “the format,” I mocked the comical rector who never gives lectures but is always on the schedule. The rector of the pedagogical institute, M.V. Semyvolos—one of those ideological-police yappers who barely scraped by to become a candidate of sciences and were supported by the relevant authorities. In general, I stood out—I gave students Yefremov's “History of Ukrainian Literature” to read. Not to everyone, but I did. It seemed to me that there was nothing special about it. But now I have met graduates of the Poltava Institute, and they remember that at that time they heard from me what they had not heard from others. So, there was something. It seemed to me that I wasn't starting a revolution there, but they have something to compare it with: everything was very intimidated, very loyal. So I think it's no coincidence that he figured out that he needed to get rid of someone who gives lectures without notes, and instead says what he thinks.
KYIV
Once, a friend from my postgraduate years, Ivan Benedyktovych Brovko, who was very friendly towards me, visited me. He is a business-like, practical man, and he says: "What is there for you to do here? Nothing is in the cards for you here—neither an apartment nor a job, since you've already been fired. And there's nothing for you to do here—move to Kyiv, you'll live with me, and you'll find something there. You're young, with your abilities—you'll get a good job in Kyiv. And it's easier to get an apartment there than here, in this Poltava."
He convinced me. I moved first by myself, and my wife and child stayed there. 1959... I think Bandera was killed in 1959, right?
V. Ovsienko: Yes, in fifty-nine. October 15.
Ye. Sverstyuk: It was right then, when the newspaper "Izvestia" had an almost sympathetic report about this murder by some “German intelligence officer Oberländer”—at that time I was at Ivan Benedyktovych's place. And it was then that they were listening to us through the wall. Then they became interested—in him, of course, not in me. I was a nobody to them, and he was, after all, a major in the General Staff, a communist, almost a department head. It was a sensation for them when they heard what he was saying about them, about Bandera, and so on. He loved to speak loudly. He spoke with inspiration.
V. Ovsienko: He said about this murder: "Look, they got to him there too!”
Ye. Sverstyuk: “It was them who killed him, the scoundrels!" In short, after that I was fired from the institute, where Hryhoriy Sylovych had just hired me as a senior research fellow. In fact, they were quoting Ivan Benedyktovych, and I probably didn't have any impressive expressions. I generally feel when I'm being overheard. I probably felt then too that something was wrong—and I told him. But he assured me: "What could possibly happen here!" Or maybe they just weren't interested in my figure compared to his. So, it ended with me not giving them confirmation of what he had said. I told them: "I can tell you what I said. Although I don't remember that conversation, I will tell you frankly what I think about what." – "No, that doesn't interest us." – "Well, then why are you calling me?" – "We are interested in you confirming what he said." – "If you know, then what you know is enough for you—you know more than me." – "No, you listened, you understand it." Then, after sleepless nights, it dawned on me how to talk to them: “You know what: he's a big joker! He loves to make fun, to be ironic. He quotes Samiylenko about patriots on the stove and so on. Everything he says—he's mocking. You can't take it at face value when Ivan Brovko is making fun of something." At this, the KGB agent turned green: "So—you take us for fools!?" They kicked me out then and didn't call me again—they didn't want that version to get into any protocol. They got angry and called to have me fired from the Institute of Psychology.
Thus, I lost my job. I found a job with difficulty, after long ordeals—the people I met and the blockheads I talked to...
And after that, I get a job at the journal "Vitchyzna," where Ivan Dziuba was the head of the criticism department. They let the pike into the river. We immediately found a common language, from the very first day. I was the head of the essays and publicism department—what publicism, what essays under the Soviets? It was all barren. In fact, I read mountains of literature, piles of graphomania, to which I had to respond something. They needed such a workhorse, and I was used precisely in the role of that ox. But I was not satisfied with that and immediately published several articles. From these publications, it became clear that we had “another one.” Then Dziuba began to criticize “how they write here.”
And then: what is this at "Vitchyzna"? Who have you hired? The editor Davyd Demydovych Kopytsia—a decorated man. He worked in the Central Committee, he was a war veteran, and so on... But all these Sobkos, Dmyterkos, and others came down on him. They threw him out with a bang, and Dziuba and me too. All three of us were thrown out.
V. Ovsienko: So how long did you last at the journal?
Ye. Sverstyuk: I think about a year—until 1961. I apply for a competition at the Institute of Psychology. Meanwhile, denunciatory articles are being written about me with hints... The editors shortened the very far-fetched denunciations, but in general, it was the hand of an experienced person. A former informer, Petro Kolesnyk, who had informed on Mykola Zerov. After ten years of imprisonment, of course, he remained a die-hard informer. They obviously hinted to him who was who, and he wrote "Resistance to the Environment or a Critic's Fiction?" I wrote that Shevchenko created himself through resistance to the environment. Such a concept... And in connection with that—a very critical review of all Soviet literature about Shevchenko—both talentless, and over-ideologized, and sycophantic, and so on. At the Institute of Psychology, they read that article about me and my article, and decided: that Sverstyuk who worked for us—he must be worth something, if they're writing against him. And in general, if you compare what they write and what he writes—it's interesting. And they accepted me. But I didn't last long there. I was fired again with a thunder for a speech in Volyn before the pedagogical activists at a conference.
V. Ovsienko: This speech was later incriminated against you. What did you say there?
Ye. Sverstyuk: Actually, my report was innocent—about aesthetic education. But I started by saying that aesthetic education is already a luxury, it is freedom. But this freedom must come when a place is cleared for it. First, you must become a person and learn to speak the truth, and then move on to aesthetics. Truth first—then beauty. We must learn to look each other in the eye, not to lie to children's faces—whether we are teachers or school principals. And this was a speech before school principals. In fact, all party members, about five hundred people. There was some “criticism of the cult of personality,” but since it was 1965, it was already a criticism of the current state of affairs. There was a huge commotion, there was even a question whether it was a report on behalf of the Central Committee, or on my own behalf. They thought that there, in Kyiv, there had already been a coup, that it had been ordered to look at things this way. Well, I got ovations from the right wing... But when I went out into the corridor—not a single person approached me.
By the way, I am telling this episode, but in reality, it is one of many, and far from the most vivid. Once, during the investigation, one of the majors hinted to me: “And now let's take one of your speeches before an audience. Which one would you advise us to take?” I answered: “Take them all. They were truthful, in any case, honest.”
I think the KGB knew far from all of my speeches. Even the day before Novovolynsk, Oksana Zabuzhko's mother, Nadiia Nykyforivna, organized a good audience of teachers for me in Lutsk. The speech was successful because it provided an example of how a teacher can speak, and there is nothing to be afraid of. Most importantly, I felt like-minded people in front of me.
AT ZEROV'S
After being “dismissed at my own request,” I got a job at the Institute of Botany—simply thanks to a stroke of luck: Hryhoriy Porfyrovych Kochur was acquainted with the botanist Dmytro Kostyovych Zerov. I worked with him, in fact, until his death and my arrest, which almost coincide. He died at a meeting of the academic council—a stroke. He was, in fact, hounded by a “colleague” who at that time was much more active, inventive, and brutal than the KGB organs. But I have already written about this.
In general, this is a very typical situation. Zerov, much like Vavilov, gave the Lysenkos a clear path and never stood in their way—he knew you couldn't do that. But Lysenko couldn't breathe freely knowing that Vavilov existed. And Kostyantyn Merkuriovych Sytnyk also couldn't feel at ease knowing that Zerov was at the institute. This is a completely different dimension, a different caliber… By then, Sytnyk was already an academician and the director of the institute—he had it all. But it was crucial that a true academician not be around. In fact, I was a witness, like the ghost of old Hamlet. Nobody wanted to understand this, although everyone was a witness. Everyone knew how the new director would come to his office: “Dmytro Kostyovych, we’re having a renovation here. You’ll have to move out of this office.” Dmytro Kostyovych turned pale; he was nearly speechless. He says, “What?! I built this laboratory here before the war, after the war, and you’re telling me to move?” Then some rumor started that Dmytro Kostyovych Zerov was hiding my manuscripts there, and just in case, they decided to “get at” Zerov.
Somewhere, G. Pomerants writes about four categories of Soviet intellectuals. The first, a small one: those who do not think, speak, or do evil. The second: those who avoid it. The third: those who inform a little, but without pleasure. The fourth: those who inform, and with pleasure.
V. Ovsienko: With particular cynicism.
Y. Sverstyuk: Yes. But finally, the director, in the absence of editor Dmytro Zerov, throws our editorial team out into some space at the Institute of Mathematics that he had “secured.” That institute didn't agree, they broke through the ceiling, and it sagged with holes. And he placed us there…
It’s hard to recall everything. I’ll tell you, they had a special program to terrorize me in the 36th zone in 1974 because they needed some kind of “statement” from me. That, it seemed, would have been a victory. The camp chief, Kotov, who was later promoted, was inventive. But the academician was even more refined.
V. Ovsienko: Well, he's an academician, after all!
Y. Sverstyuk: Sytnyk brings his article about the 50th anniversary of research in plant physiology: “What is your opinion, Yevhen Oleksandrovych, about this article?” I say, “Strictly speaking, I’m just the secretary who registers things. But I wouldn't advise writing about great achievements in connection with Lysenko’s work.” “You think so?” “I do.” “Well, cross it out.” “You cross it out yourself—it’s your article.” “No, no, you cross it out if you think so.” We still had conversations like that.
And one more episode, which brings all the figures from the Institute of Botany together. You might recall that in the protocols for opening a criminal case, there was this concept of a “warning.” It turns out that everyone was supposed to have been issued a warning beforehand. An arrest was already an extreme measure. If a warning doesn't help, then what’s the alternative? So, during the investigation, I delved into the history and said, “By the way, you mention some warning here—but I don’t recall any warnings.” “What? But we summoned you to a meeting of the *aktiv* at the Institute of Botany.” “I don't recall.” “Here, we have the resolution from that meeting.”
And what was it? It was a conversation at the party bureau: “Yevhen Oleksandrovych, are you aware that your name is being mentioned on Radio Liberty? Not just your name—they’re broadcasting materials. Are these your materials, *Cathedral in Scaffolding* and *Ivan Kotlyarevsky Is Laughing*?” “They are my materials,” I say. “What do you mean, yours? How did they get there?” “What’s the point of talking about how they got there? Let's talk about the materials themselves. If you’re interested in my materials, I’ll give them to you to read. You are educated people gathered here—you’ll read them, and then we can talk about how they get there.” “No! We will not read them!” said the party organizer, I. Dudka.
Then Sytnyk spoke very briefly, but very characteristically: “What are you telling Yevhen Oleksandrovych about his materials being on Radio Liberty and what their nature is? He knows that perfectly well. He knows better than we do what kind of character they have. I must say that this government has given me everything. I’d be digging in manure if this government hadn’t brought me up in the world.”
I didn’t tell Dmytro Kostyovych about all these adventures—he was on vacation somewhere at the time. He never traveled far; he worked in Koncha-Zaspa. Sometimes, when something needed to be signed, I would go to him there. But I never told him about the summonses. I knew he had plenty of his own troubles, that his wife, Maria Yakivna, was being persecuted at the Institute—he had more than enough. In fact, he knew none of this. Only when others told him—because others did tell him: “Dmytro Kostyovych, do you know what’s going on in your editorial office, that the secretary is being summoned to the director?” It was all whispers. So, I only told him one thing: “You know, Dmytro Kostyovych, I was summoned to a meeting—a comical meeting, not worth talking about. But there was one episode. Sytnyk said this about himself: ‘Without this government, I’d be digging in manure—this government has given me everything.’” Dmytro Kostyovych disliked candor; he always refrained from making judgments, disliked talking about others. But here, he said it outright: “What a scoundrel!”
Strictly speaking, he wasn't the biggest scoundrel in this story—it was his confession. And it's true, isn't it!
V. Ovsienko: Please tell us, which of your articles were already circulating in *samizdat* at that time?
Y. Sverstyuk: Almost every year, something of mine was circulating in typewritten form. But the ones signed with my own name were “On Women’s Day” (1967), *Cathedral in Scaffolding* (1968), *Ivan Kotlyarevsky Is Laughing* (1969), and “The Last Tear.” But what was published under pseudonyms wasn't much different.
If we talk about the *samizdat* works of the sixties, these were pinnacle works for the authors themselves, weighty pieces. Of course, there was a competitive atmosphere—for novelty, for courage, for one’s position, for influence over people. But it was still very important to rise to a certain level. The level at which each of us existed was not sufficient to speak the deep truth. We had to rise above the general level, but very gradually. The knowledge we might have had from reading various foreign literature—that knowledge was too scarce. One had to generate that energy and develop that level of thought oneself. I think I owe a little to my psychological training. None of those working in literary criticism had psychological training. I think this is what brought us closest at *Vitchyzna*. From the philological school, especially Ukrainian philology, it was almost impossible to rise higher than sharp-witted journalism. As soon as Vasyl Stus went beyond the bounds of permitted literature, *The Phenomenon of the Era* appeared in *samizdat*.
V. Ovsienko: The conversation on December 26, 1999, ended here.
ARREST ON JANUARY 14, 1972
V. Ovsienko: On the third day of Christmas, January 9, 2000, we continue our conversation with Mr. Yevhen Sverstyuk in his home.
Y. Sverstyuk: So, the arrests of early seventy-two.
The arrest itself was not a surprise to me. It was already hanging in the air. I recall that I had distributed the most dangerous things that I considered important. They never returned. As for literary *samizdat* pieces, I considered them legal altogether. But the book published in Paris in 1970—that was also given to someone.
V. Ovsienko: That's *Cathedral in Scaffolding*. Paris–Baltimore: Smoloskyp, 1970.
Y. Sverstyuk: *Cathedral in Scaffolding*. The future was already physically hanging in the air. The de facto murder of Dmytro Kostyovych Zerov was a symptom. I had learned to read the signs; I felt they were getting closer.
At that time, I fell ill and was at home—though without a sick note. So, I was at home reading, I think, Maksimov's *Seven Days of Creation*. It was a very fierce, anti-Soviet thing, an apologia for the White Guard resistance. I liked this work; I was reading with interest about the history of the officer class that fell under the Bolshevik scythe. After lunch, I hear a doorbell. Well, I think, it might be them.
V. Ovsienko: This was January 12?
Y. Sverstyuk: The 12th. Indeed: “May we come in?” “You may.” One enters, then two, three, four—I don’t remember how many. In short, a whole lot of them come in. What's very interesting—and I could document my mood at the time—is that I still tossed that book by Maksimov under the bed.
V. Ovsienko: Where were you living then?
Y. Sverstyuk: At 6 Plekhanov Street, apartment 40. So, I tossed it under the bed, which means I was clearly expecting them. The search began. I think it’s uninteresting to repeat what everyone went through: to hand over unauthorized, forbidden things, and so on. The search dragged on. I don’t know if it was a nervous state… But no, why nervous—I was indeed sick, since I didn't go to work. I had a fever.
Sometime in the evening, they got to my secretary desk. It’s actually a completely open piece of furniture. The most accessible things are in the secretary, that one over there. They find something sealed in an envelope and ask what it is. “I don’t know.” “Well, let’s open it.” They open it: “Program of the U-Communists.”
It’s hard for me to explain… It certainly wasn't a normal state, because if I had been in a good, active state, then when Ivan Svitlychny gave me that thing to read, I should have glanced through it that very evening and either hidden it somewhere or thrown it away. But I just put it aside. And Ivan had warned me. I had asked him to take it back because I didn't have time for it then, my heart wasn't in it—I saw no point in it. “Well, it won’t happen without you anyway. One way or another, you’ll have to read it. Try to hide it.”
They opened the envelope, saw it, and made a phone call—they immediately went to the neighbors, obviously to their own, the neighbor-spies. Late in the evening, around eleven o’clock, that evil spirit of the era arrives—Parkhomenko.
V. Ovsienko: I know Parkhomenko—ash-colored, head of the investigative department. He was considered very capable and promising among them.
Y. Sverstyuk: Yes. This ashen-faced lieutenant in a gray greatcoat commanded the whole parade. When he saw the envelope—“Well, then, get your things, Yevhen Oleksandrovych.” “Get my things for where?” “Well, you see how much we’ve found—we need to sort it all out.” “Well, you found it, so you sort it out, but I’m sick.” “We’ll call a doctor.” They called a doctor. I had the impression that the doctor was genuinely very neutral and said, “Yes, the man is indeed very sick.” I wasn’t very sick, but I evidently had a temperature. So he had grounds to say that. “Alright, then,” and they left for the night.
Of course, I didn’t feel well at home. I think it would have been better if it had all happened at once. I was no longer at home, and not yet there.
V. Ovsienko: Between “here” and “there.”
Y. Sverstyuk: My wife, Lilia, was also in a traumatically difficult state. The next day, I think, she went to work, of course, because what else… I was at home. Lyonya Plyushch—a neighbor—came by. He lived here, across the canal, on Entuziastiv Street. I showed him the search protocol. He says, “And what’s this you have—‘Program of the U-Communists’? That surprised me a bit,” he says. “It surprised me too,” I say. “I don’t know what it is.” I really didn’t know because I hadn’t read it, as I hadn't paid attention to Ivan’s warning. *(The author of this typewritten project, “Program of the Ukrainian Communists,” was Vasyl Ruban. – V.O.).*
I’m talking so much about this because, for maybe the first ten months, the investigation revolved around this damned document. It exhausted a lot of energy—mine, Ivan Dziuba’s, and Ivan Svitlychny’s. Because they attributed it to Dziuba. First to me, then they saw that I supposedly shouldn't have anything to do with communists. On the contrary, from the very beginning, they suspected I was an anti-communist. And I did nothing to refute this. I never pretended to be sympathetic to their ideology or to accept it—I simply remained silent on the topic. They had their own information, and so they didn't insist much. But Ivan Dziuba suited them better—as the author of *Internationalism or Russification?*, where Lenin figured so often. But at the same time, he didn’t fit, because—it wasn’t his cultural level.
Getting ahead of myself, I somehow left home calmly then, as if in a dream. I thought: clarity is needed. It will be easier for me, and easier at home.
V. Ovsienko: This is now January 14?
Y. Sverstyuk: Yes. Some KGB agent in civilian clothes came, a so-called doctor came. The KGB agent looked around the corners, performed, so to speak, a “cursory search”—not rummaging anymore, but just to see if anything turned up. “Well, then, let’s go, Yevhen Oleksandrovych.” I dressed in silence, silently kissed my wife, my child. Virunka was a little over a year old… The only thing they allowed to be sent from home with a note was a photograph of the child…
V. Ovsienko: So what time were you taken, that your wife was at home?
Y. Sverstyuk: It could have even been a Saturday or Sunday. I'd have to check a calendar. By then, dates and days had already gotten lost, lost their meaning. It was in the afternoon.
So, they led me in through a side door, not from Korolenko Street, into some long, enormous hall where I had to wait. I was flipping through the magazine *Krokodil*. It was still biting back then; there were many allusions that amused me quite a bit, if one can put it that way. I quoted something to the guard. Apparently, I quoted something that applied directly to him. He remained silent, since he wasn't “supposed” to talk. Then they called for me—the same Parkhomenko. In his behavior, I saw a devil wagging its tail with joy: “Well, here you are, Yevhen Oleksandrovych, with us.” I ask, “What’s today’s date?” “The fourteenth, Yevhen Oleksandrovych, January 14th.” I say, “Is that the old New Year?” “Yes, the old New Year, Yevhen Oleksandrovych.”
Meanwhile, he contacted someone by phone: they didn't have an arrest warrant! He was processing the warrant right there in front of me. He received approval and, right there, wagged his tail with joy that everything was in order.
THE INVESTIGATION
I think that this “Program” played a very important role in the issuing of the warrant. I had the impression that they had a certain ambiguity regarding me, just as with Dziuba. Although I could be mistaken. That is, I assume I was supposed to be arrested a few months later, judging by the fact that they had no specific questions for me at first. They started questioning me about some Nudel who had written a denunciation against me—he figures in the case file. What is a denunciation about some conversations with Nudel—it's a very obscure and stupid thing, this drunk Nudel and his denunciation. And at that time, they didn't yet have instructions regarding my *samizdat* materials. It was considered that these were not anti-Soviet materials. Later, after a few months, they evolved to the point where they recognized these materials as anti-Soviet, and only then did they move on to the accusation. But until then, when the prosecutor summoned me from my cell and asked about this Nudel, I answered rather contemptuously: “I don’t know what Nudel you have or what your Nudel said—you sort that out with him, not with me. It doesn’t interest me.” Thus, the conversation came to nothing. But they had this “Program.”
V. Ovsienko: Did you manage to find out who its author was?
Y. Sverstyuk: Essentially, for six months the investigation revolved around this “Program”—where did you get it? With a very indifferent look, I would say, “I don’t know. I won't insist it was yours, but that's not out of the question either. But it's possible that someone brought it to me in my absence.” From the very beginning, I cut out, as if with a knife, the fact that Svitlychny had given it to me—that was out of the question. So, I started building a narrative around the fact that I didn't know—and let everything else be what it was. I insisted: “You opened the envelope—before that, it was unknown to me. The envelope was opened in your presence. Do you remember that?” And they would hedge this way and that—they evaded it. I said, “I insist that you record this.” They twisted and turned to the very end to avoid recording this fact, to leave themselves some room.
There were some edits in the text of the “Program.” They spent a terribly long time testing my handwriting—both with block letters and by having me copy some article. This was tediously repeated every day. They summoned everyone they could in connection with this, even my poor mother-in-law, which was the most scandalous part of this whole story because she was in very poor health. And she couldn't restrain herself. But she had nothing to say—she knew nothing. Well, but the protocol remained.
Finally, they somehow got to Vasyl Ruban. Either they conducted a search and compared the texts—he had a typewriter with a small font. I saw that they didn't have all that we had assumed. Those fingerprints, the constant surveillance, the eavesdropping—it was all shoddy. In reality, they had no prior investigations, they had no leads. All those denunciations they had—they were all crude and foolish. They didn't know about the distribution of my *samizdat* works—how they were distributed. They wanted to find all this out from me. There could be no talk of any fingerprints. I even think that if it weren't for the specific small font of Ruban's typewriter, they wouldn't have stumbled upon him either. But here, it was very easy to recognize. Because, it seems, the color of the carbon paper also pointed to it.
When they got to Ruban, they started to clarify our relationship, and it turned out there was no relationship. Did I know him? I knew him—he was a poet, sometimes came to my workplace, showed me his poems. It’s very possible that those poems were confiscated from me. But nothing more. Did he give me anything? No, other than poems, he gave me nothing. Accordingly, he also didn't know that I had this thing—he hadn't brought it to me. So they were very surprised and were desperately looking for a way out. And then, when Lieutenant Colonel Chornyi took over the case, he wanted me to say something against this Ruban. I laughed and said, “What are you proposing to me? The scenario is ridiculous for me and stupid. Because I have nothing against this man—neither good nor bad. I barely know him.” “And what if I tell you that he is the author of this piece—the ‘Program of the Communists’?” I say, “That’s very interesting, but not for me—for you. It’s not interesting to me at all. Firstly, you are familiar with this ‘Program,’ and I am not; you’ve read it—but I haven’t.” “Because you didn't want to read it.” “I really didn't want to read it.” I think to myself that I was right not to have read it. Of course, it would have provoked negative emotions.
V. Ovsienko: Did they offer you to read it during the investigation, and you refused?
Y. Sverstyuk: I refused. I said that I had nothing to do with this thing, and I'll tell you, I’m up to my neck in communist programs, starting from secondary school—and for every exam at the university and in graduate school. So I’m not interested in the further development of this genre. “So what—you’re not interested in communism at all?” “No, I’m not interested.” “And politics?” “Politics has always interested me the least. In short, I can tell you with certainty that I haven't read a single program. I don’t even remember if I read Lenin's program, though I must have, because I had to pass exams.” And that was the truth! To some extent, this eased my internal state, because I had to free myself as much as possible from what was unnecessary there.
I rejected a line of defense that involved flirting and demonstrating loyalty altogether: “Since I’m already here, under guard, what loyalty can we talk about, people? If you are people. What can we talk about regarding any ideas? This is violence, this is a bayonet, a convoy—so what words do you expect from me? What can I have in common with you, besides the convoy?” I brought that clarity to myself and tried to bring it to them. Of course, they didn’t like that.
I think that achieving that clarity and returning to prayer helped me a lot during my time in prison, because that stay was very difficult. The extension of the investigation term every three months. I see that there’s nothing to investigate, there is no “investigation.” From the very beginning, I said that these were my *samizdat* works, that I, of course, distributed them because they were my thoughts. That’s why I wrote them, to give people to read, and I did give them to people to read. As for who exactly I gave them to—“To anyone, I could have even given them to you to read.” “No, no, we need to write down: to whom exactly, when, and under what circumstances.” I say, “That doesn't interest me; those are trifles for me. What is important to you is not important to me. I told you the main thing—why I wrote it.” “Well, but they published you abroad.” “Well, they published me abroad.” “So you’re not against them publishing it?” “But they didn’t ask me whether I wanted to be published or not.” “Well, they published it—and you should protest against it, shouldn't you?” “And why should I protest against it? It fell into their hands, it was circulating in *samizdat*, it got abroad—that’s a natural process; you can’t close yourself off from the world.”
They were very persistent in their questioning: “And you have this epigraph in *Cathedral in Scaffolding*—you chose this epigraph, didn’t you? Are these your words or not: ‘The creators of Ukrainian literature gave their best efforts to art, without receiving a single penny for it. If not all of them were familiar with prisons, then all at least with the gendarmes. How can such literature be understood by a person who has never felt what civic courage and the duty of conscience are?’” “Did you write this or not?” “I wrote it. By the way, I told you from the very beginning that all the pieces I wrote were signed with my own name. I didn't play at being underground; it was my principle—to speak the truth to one’s face, not quietly behind their back, and not in a tavern, but from a rostrum.” “We know that, we know that. But the epigraph—it seems intentionally written?” “Why intentionally? Just read it—it was published in a magazine.” “Impossible! How could it be published?” “Have you read this book or not? ‘From the Thoughts of Y. Sverstyuk on Contemporary Ukrainian Literature’—there’s such a section here. And there are excerpts from various articles. This article, from which this quote is taken, is here—or at least a fragment of it from the magazine *Zhovten*.” They reconciled themselves to that; you couldn't find fault there. And most importantly—that I don't want to speak out against the publication and against those who published this book, that I refuse to talk about this topic at all.
V. Ovsienko: And I once came across your little book. It had the essay *Cathedral in Scaffolding* and a few articles. A small one, green, I think.
Y. Sverstyuk: Yes, that's the same book, only it was also published in a miniature format, so it could be easily hidden during transport. It also has a regular format. I'll show you now the form in which things were printed back then, and some of my works in particular. This is about the size of a matchbox—“Appeal of the OUN Leadership on the 25th Anniversary of the Heroic Death of Shukhevych-Chuprynka.”
V. Ovsienko: Oh God, you’d need a magnifying glass to read this!
Y. Sverstyuk: Yes. Some of my works were also published in this format, I just didn't keep them. But I've seen them. The one you saw was medium-sized.
They also insisted that I give a harsh assessment of the broadcasting of my works on Radio Liberty. I refused to give an assessment. I said that the word has freedom. If I don't hide this work and sign it with my own name, then how can I accuse someone of using it under my name? I see no legal grounds for protest.
V. Ovsienko: Especially since they don't distort your text?
Y. Sverstyuk: Yes, they broadcast it correctly. I see, I say, no legal basis for such accusations, and I see no moral basis either. It's another matter whether it's advantageous for me in my current situation or not, but that's a different question. But we are talking about the legal side—they use it as material that fell into their hands, and they write right there, it seems, that they do it without the author's knowledge, and that's true. This is what troubled the investigators most. During the investigation, they changed my investigator: instead of that Baranov (who had previously handled Valentyn Moroz's case)—they got rid of him because he was some provincial, yet he was handling Sverstyuk’s case. And for them, this was a case on which someone needed to earn a star. They deemed him incompetent and dismissed him. Then came Lieutenant Colonel Chornyi.
V. Ovsienko: And what rank did that Baranov have?
Y. Sverstyuk: Major. Chornyi was well-trained and obviously a very reliable man who knew how to use various techniques. He didn't speak like Baranov: “Sverstyuk, I have such-and-such a question for you.” No, this one didn't play the official: “Yevhen Oleksandrovych, good day!”—kindly and peacefully. He was allowed to, of course. Then he essentially repeated the same things the previous one had done, but it was considered that he was conducting the investigation “from the beginning.”
V. Ovsienko: All over again?
Y. Sverstyuk: Yes. At the same time, he immediately laid out his plan of action for me: “I will be asking you questions about these materials. I would like you to provide explanations that would serve in your favor. For what purpose did you write this piece—*Cathedral in Scaffolding*?” “If you were a literary critic, for what purpose would you write an article?” “Did you know it wouldn’t be published here when you wrote it?” “Who knows,”—here I was being cunning: of course, I knew, not one hundred percent. “One day it might not be published, and the next day something changes—and they publish it. We’ve seen that happen more than once. So, I wasn’t obliged to know that.” “But there are things here that cannot be published.” “What things do you have in mind?” “You know yourself.” “No, we’re not going to talk like that: I know myself, I am guilty myself, I accuse myself. What I know, I know as the truth; I had to say it. It is precisely this truth that you consider a falsehood. So, show me specifically where there are slanders, as you say, and deliberate falsehoods.”
They dug around there for a very long time. Every page turned their stomachs. But they only stumbled upon moments like “the deputies of the working people of the UkrSSR will not be able to create anything greater.” This was about the demolition of the bell tower of the Pyatnytska Church in Chernihiv, and there was a resolution to build a public latrine in its place. They started digging: “Where did you get this from?” I say, “Everything I wrote, I never wrote based on street rumors. I write based on documents.” “And what documents did you have?” I had conditioned myself to amnesia, to not remembering and not recalling, to such an extent that I couldn't recall what I now needed. Where did I get it from? I knew I got it from very reliable sources, but from where? Maybe only a month later, still in a conversation with Baranov, I say, “Wait, I read this in an article in the journal *Istoriya SSSR*.” “Whose article?” “Mykhailo Braichevskyi’s. There’s such a publication in this journal.” He checked and says, “Indeed, there is such a publication.” The only thing that bothered me a little was that I had named the author—but how can you not name the author when you refer to a journal? If you're referring to a publication, you can't hide it. But I thought: well, what can happen to him if he was published in Moscow?
They probably summoned Braichevskyi, as I sensed at the time. Obviously, he also had to provide arguments for what he wrote. And then I remembered that I had even questioned him tediously—we were walking somewhere on a winter evening, Mykhailo Braichevskyi and I, and I told him I would use this fact, but I would still like to have some documentary basis. “Why do you need a documentary basis when you have my publication in an official journal?” I say, “Right, then that's enough for me.” That is, I had an agreement with him, and everything was clean here, although at the same time it was a bit unpleasant that I had to refer to him.
They attached a copy of this article to the case file and a certificate from the Chernihiv administration stating that a public latrine was not built.
V. Ovsienko: Even a certificate?
Y. Sverstyuk: Yes. And that they couldn't find such a resolution among the documents of the City Council. They couldn’t find it. “Well, and what can you say?” I say, “What can I say? Of course, they didn’t find it. What do you think—that when you ask them for such a resolution, they’ll immediately find it and present it to you? They know perfectly well who is asking and why. It’s clear that this resolution doesn't exist and won’t exist anymore. And as for whether they built the latrine—with you, it’s never the case that you build; to destroy—that’s immediate. So, regarding the destruction, I guarantee one hundred percent that the Pyatnytska Church was destroyed. And that it didn't even get to the point of building a latrine—that’s also normal.” On that, this episode was exhausted.
In other cases, they also started to nitpick. They were most troubled by expressions like “under this regime, an artificial selection based on the worst traits took place.” They understood, of course, the phrase “a type of person developed who, instead of restraining the hysteria fanned from above, supported the hysteria.” “So what, Yevhen Oleksandrovych, are you going to say you’re not talking specifically about the Party? Who are you talking about when it comes to ‘hysteria fanned from above?’” I say, “Well, let's say, about the wise leader and teacher, Comrade Stalin—is that not correct?” “Well, you’re not just talking about him.” “But about him too.” That was the kind of conversation we had. After that, they stopped clinging to individual expressions and issued a general resolution that it was an “anti-Soviet document.”
V. Ovsienko: But someone must have written it…
Y. Sverstyuk: Petro Morhayenko wrote the review. It’s there, quoted in full in the case file. This review was taken as the basis for the accusation. Of course, I had conversations about it. For example, with the major: “You’re an educated man—aren’t you ashamed to hold this, this slander, in your hands?” “No,” he says, “it’s enough for me that a candidate of philological sciences wrote it. He has an official title.” “But you can see that this is a disingenuous man, who is obsequiously trying to please? He knows perfectly well for whom he is writing, he also feels perfectly well where he is being false.” “No, I will not evaluate it, I will not express my opinion on it—for us, it is an official document.” That is, he evaded conversation about the review, and I was the one who most wanted to talk about that review. But they deprived me of the joy of talking on a literary topic and debating. They dodged it in every possible way and even… “Well, Yevhen Oleksandrovych,”—there was this Necheporenko—terribly petty and dull-witted, a nasty type, a young major. “Today we will have a very pleasant conversation for you—about your publications. It seems you love to talk about this?” I say, “You are very mistaken—I don't like talking about it with you at all, because my publications were not at all for you. They had a much better reader and a better connoisseur. To talk about my publications in a prison cell—I consider that indecent, in general. What is there to talk about?” “Well, still, let’s list what publications you had.”
They started listing them, and then I saw that they had summarized it very briefly: they named only a few—“and others.” That is, it was important for them to show that this man, “who calls himself a man of letters,” has a few episodic publications. They even got the formula from somewhere: “calling himself a man of letters.” When they used this formula in reference to me, I shrugged my shoulders, but then it really got under my skin. During a sleepless night, I started to dig for an answer that I should still give them. A literary answer, for the next time they called me, because that conversation wasn't over yet.
I prepared an answer for them. When they returned to this question again, I say, “You know, I thought that brown sow had jumped out the window and disappeared—but it turns out, she found a home at the KGB.” “What brown sow?” “Gogol’s.” “What are you talking about? What Gogol’s brown sow?” “Well, that same brown sow that stole the slanderous letter that Ivan Ivanovich wrote about Ivan Nikiforovich.” “You’re talking nonsense—what is this?” “What? You simply don’t know that Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol wrote a story about how Ivan Ivanovich quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich. And there, Ivan Ivanovich wrote about Ivan Nikiforovich (or vice versa—that’s not essential): ‘Ivan Nikiforovich, who calls himself a nobleman…’ He left this slanderous letter on the table, and the brown sow jumped through the window and stole it. I thought it was lost, that slanderous letter… But our brave Major Pronins stole it back from the brown sow and are now using formulas from it: ‘calling himself a man of letters’ and ‘calling himself a nobleman’—it doesn't take much imagination. I thought she would have at least gnawed those words out with her teeth.” Then he turned red, quickly wrapped up the interrogation, and they never brought me any more of those “calling himself a man of letters” or other such barbs—they decided it was ungrateful soil, and they wouldn’t win on it.
There were other moments when I steered them towards literature. I'll write a story about it someday—about how during a second search in April 1972, they found an ampoule of sodium cyanide in my coat. And they didn't inform me that there was a second search. This hit me hard—I say, “So what—you go and rummage around there every day and conduct searches? What are you looking for—just to terrorize the women?” “Well, that’s our business, it’s a matter that has the appropriate legal sanctions. It's not done so simply. Here, familiarize yourself with the protocol.” But they let me familiarize myself with this protocol in such a way that I didn't have time to read anything.
One day, that nasty and stupid Necheporenko comes. This time he sat cautiously far away, on the edge of the table, so there was a distance of more than three meters between us: “Yevhen Oleksandrovych, what is this—can you tell us?” And he takes it out from under the table, holds it on the table, but doesn't lift it, so I can’t snatch it from his hands—though I can't from such a distance, but still he keeps it under the table again: “What is this?” I was without my glasses then, but I could see well. I say, “Some ampoule.” “We found this at your place during a search. Don’t you recall what kind of ampoule it is?” “As far as I recall, it’s poison.” “And what kind of poison?” “It doesn't matter what kind—some kind of poison.” “And where did you get it?” “Well, I had it—I didn't expect you to be so ubiquitous and all-pervasive as to find it there too.” “And where did you keep it?” “I don’t remember anymore, I kept it somewhere—put it down and it lay there somewhere.” “And why did you need it?” “It’s not so simple to explain to you why. This, again, is a literary detail that runs through many novels and dramas, in particular, through *Faust*. Do you remember when Faust raises the cup of poison on Easter?” “What are you telling me about Faust for?! What do I need Faust for?” “Well, how can you ask what you need Faust for? You may not need Faust, but I do. How can I be without Faust—if I quote him, it is a part of my life. That means I am present there too. If Faust has a cup of poison, then why shouldn't Sverstyuk have an ampoule of poison?” “I don’t understand. And why did that Faust have it?” “Faust heard the Easter bells, and that deterred him from drinking the cup of poison. The voice of life prevailed. And he wanted to drink it not because he encountered people like you. He was not in the face of the police, but in the face of world sorrow, spilled across the Universe.” “But we don't need that literature—you’re not Faust! You tell us why you needed it?” I say, “I’ve already told you everything. If this tells you nothing, then I can’t explain it further.”
They dragged this out over several interrogations. I also mentioned Knut Hamsun to them and Dr. Nagel from *Mysteries*, who also had poison. And that every student once had poison, or at least a skull—that very same skull, I say, as in *Hamlet*. “What are you giving us Faust, then Hamsun? What do we need that for?” “Well, if you don't need it, then close this case—I won't be able to explain it to you intelligibly.” “Where did you get it? This is what interests us: who gave it to you?” Here I invented a version that I had been at a friend's house, who was gravely ill, and I saw this ampoule, and asked him what it was. He told me it was poison. I took it with me—that’s all. They didn't believe this: “And what’s his last name?” “He didn't authorize me to talk about it.” “So, you won't say?” “Not only will I not say—I cannot say it, I don't have the right.” They spun their wheels around this for a long time. There was an expert examination; they determined that one of these ampoules would be enough for 17 or 18 people. One of them had a fleeting thought that you could poison a cow farm at a collective farm, and he says, “But what does that have to do with anything—you don't have anything to do with a farm, do you?” “No, if I had anything to do with a cow farm, I would have thought not about poison, but about fodder—there's usually not enough fodder and straw there.” The interrogations about this poison ended on that note. They desperately needed “criminal material,” but they couldn't make it happen; it all fizzled out.
They wanted to make criminal material out of one of my statements. When we were talking about Nudel or someone else, I said, “You are all the same kind of cardsharps. That scoundrel you brought in, and you—you all speak the same language. What can you talk about with me?” “You are insulting the investigation! You are insulting the prosecutor’s office! We will open a separate case against you.” “That would be wonderful, if you open a separate case against me—that's where I'll tell who you are and what you stoop to. You should at least behave decently when you talk to decent people.” “You think too much of yourself!” And so on. Those were the sharpest moments.
I remember, sometimes, like a beaten dog that thoughtfully drags its tail, Parkhomenko would look in: “Got a smoke?” The investigator, of course: “Please, please!” He gives him a cigarette, and he looks around and leaves. The impression was that he couldn't get a smoke anywhere else, only here. But he never spoke. He always avoided talking about the substance of the case. And he was precisely one of those who didn't get into such trifles as which typist typed what. Because they asked me which typist typed for me. I said, “So what do you want—for me to name the girls who typed for me? Aren't you ashamed to ask such questions?”
But one day Parkhomenko summoned me and did speak on the substance: “It’s strange to me that you’re doing nothing to have some kind of defense. With such a position, it’s very difficult to defend you. The impression is as if we are the guilty ones here—we are guilty, not you.” And I say, “And what do you think—that you are not guilty?” “What do you mean—you want to accuse us here?” “It would be a bit strange if I accused you here. There is a chair here for you to accuse me. But the fact is that your predecessors have also sat in that chair. They have already been accused and have already received their due from the same party from which you receive instructions. They too have been accused and sentenced according to the instructions of the same party.” “So, you think that we will be judged too—is that it?” “I think so.” “And when will that be?” And he looks with great interest. I say, “I am not a prophet to guess and foretell. It will happen for sure—maybe in ten years, maybe in fifteen.” “Ha-ha-ha!”—he said so, in his joy. “In ten, fifteen years!” On that, we ended our conversation.
V. Ovsienko: My investigator, Mykola Pavlovych Tsimokh, said this in a similar conversation: “Don't worry, our cause will outlive us!” That is, we'll die off first—only then will they be judged.
Y. Sverstyuk: “Our cause will outlive us?”
V. Ovsienko: Yes, very simply. That his descendants would answer for it to the seventh generation—he didn't care.
Y. Sverstyuk: It’s perfectly clear that there could be no talk of a moral foundation there. The prosecutor, Pohorilyi—such a nonentity compared even to the investigators, to the KGB agents: “You have anti-Soviet views in everything! You believe that religion is the basis of morality?” “And what do you believe is the basis of morality?” “Well, that is precisely your view, and your views are in your questions. Those are anti-Soviet views!” I thought to myself: he’s right—these are indeed anti-Soviet views. Although these are supposedly not matters for investigation, I am, in fact, dealing with the philosophy of Marxism—as I always have. All the things I wrote are, of course, anti-communist, not in the sense of being posters, but in the philosophical sense. They are fundamentally anti-communist. This pipsqueak talks about some anti-communist thesis of mine or about socialism being wage slavery… There was a brochure by Kautsky in 1919—“Socialism and Wage Slavery.” I insisted that I had read about this brochure in Lenin, but he said that I had read Kautsky himself. He was right: I had read Kautsky himself in a Ukrainian translation. But Lenin wrote about it in his own manner—in his cunning, insidious, and devilish manner—to cover up all the facts with his tail and leave only curses addressed to Kautsky. I had some factual material from the work itself.
V. Ovsienko: So he exposed you there?
Y. Sverstyuk: Yes, he guessed that my knowledge was much greater than I was letting on. Then some things by Dontsov, in particular, “The Poetess of the Ukrainian Risorgimento” about Don Quixote. I said that I had been collecting all materials about Don Quixote in general because I was researching this issue. “And where, for what purpose did you research it?” “You know, it’s very difficult for you to understand why I researched it—it’s my area of study, not yours.”
V. Ovsienko: Perhaps, “with the aim of undermining and weakening Soviet power”?
Y. Sverstyuk: Of course. At first, they wanted me to give them a whole list of materials about Don Quixote. In five minutes, I gave them a bouquet of this literature. They saw: what's this, are they going to get into a literary topic with me when they need accusations? And they rejected it, leaving: “Kept and stored at his home articles by the nationalist Dontsov.”
I could also mention such a brazen moment—my conversations with Vasyl Stus. This was in the first half of our year of arrest. When I was talking to him in the cell that faces south, towards the courtyards. Or maybe not south, but in any case, towards St. Sophia's Cathedral.
V. Ovsienko: The courtyards for walks are there, under the eastern wall of the prison.
Y. Sverstyuk: Yes. And Vasyl was coughing there—he always had this demonstrative “ahem-hem-hem!”—and everyone knew it was Vasyl…
V. Ovsienko: And the sound from down there is like from a well.
Y. Sverstyuk: You can hear very well from here. I said, “Vasyl,” or he said, “Yevhen…” I don’t remember who spoke first. And we had a conversation… Of course, we felt that it was a conversation with witnesses. Firstly, my cellmate spy would report everything—that was clear. Secondly, the convoy guard standing over Vasyl. But the guard was silent; for some reason, he let us talk. We talked for maybe fifteen minutes.
V. Ovsienko: So they needed to record this conversation.
Y. Sverstyuk: I thought they needed to record it. But then I found out that they fired that guard. And he was some good-for-nothing from the Oryol region, a blondish fellow. I even knew his last name. He treated this job like a transient—for our lackeys, he was, of course, an “elder brother.” But he himself thought, “I don’t give a damn about you and your business—I’ll find a place somewhere.” They fired him. And he let me know: “I let you talk—why are you shouting so loud that they can hear you on Khreshchatyk?” I say, “Try regulating your voice—how do I know if he can hear me or not?”
What did Vasyl ask me then? He asked me how things were with my sentence. I told him that I still didn’t even know what I was being accused of. He told me that my works were being treated as anti-Soviet in his case. So, that’s what they were accusing him of. I hadn't been told yet that I was being accused of them, but he already had. He asked if I had the “paper” yet. I didn’t understand what that was. He explained that it was the indictment. He already had this “paper.” They dealt with him very quickly, in about six months…
V. Ovsienko: He was sentenced on September 7.
Y. Sverstyuk: They finished his case quickly, and then, in the fall, I tried to contact him again. When they moved me to different cells, I would call out, “Basileus!” No voice and no cough. And this happened more than once. And my stool pigeon, who was with me, couldn't understand what I was saying and to whom. He thought I was just howling like that. But one time I called out “Basileus!” and thought: why keep shouting—if he were here, he would have answered. I call out again from another cell—and not once did he respond. I think he heard: “That voice of yours, like a horse’s neigh”—it’s in his poems and his letters. That referred to these very call signs of mine. But he was in some state, under such pressure, that he couldn't respond. Well, and the prosecutor put a stop to it. He summoned me and said, “Here is a report on a regime violation. You are being deprived of your next parcel.” Around that time, Lilia brought me a parcel, and they sent it back.
V. Ovsienko: Was it possible to receive a parcel every month during the investigation?
Y. Sverstyuk: Yes, they were sent monthly. I wrote some complaints that it wasn't proven—but what was there to prove?
Ideological diagnosticians and investigators always wanted to establish what led to anti-Soviet sentiments.
V. Ovsienko: In my case, they dug into my uncle’s biography—whether he had influenced me. They even put a copy of his verdict—two sheets of paper—into my 1973 case file. That's how I found out why he was repressed. Once—during the German occupation—he accompanied a cart with a rifle from Stavky to Radomyshl, and a second time he was seen near the *uprava* with a weapon. Although after that he joined the Red Army and fought until the end of the war, in 1948 he got 25 years. I remember when he returned around 1954—incredibly emaciated. This was not discussed in the family. And what could they establish in your case?
Y. Sverstyuk: They probably, without much thought, attributed everything to my origins (from Volyn, well-off parents, sons in the UPA). But how many people from Volyn do I know with the same biography—loyal as sheep! Of course, family and environment have an influence. But my rejection of Bolshevism was active, on an aesthetic, ethical, religious, and philosophical level. The cultural primitivism of the leaders in caps and boots, the gray language and the hopeless lies and falsehood in everything, the boorish style of intolerance towards all who do not share their tastes, the indecent self-praise and stupid pride. But what oppressed me most was the primitive materialistic explanation of the deep mysteries of life and the human soul. The peasants said of this shallowness and dishonor of the communists: “They have ruined our lives, and they want to ruin the whole world.”
THE TRIAL
Then the trial. My lawyer was completely demoralized. A few meetings with me—he was interested in getting acquainted with these materials. He didn't understand them. And then he boasted that he now understood. In short, it was interesting for him to read it. He had no voice against the investigator. In fact, the investigator treated him like a wolf with a lamb. Here I see a sheer disparity of persons and authority. The investigator—Chornyi, a lieutenant colonel who had cut his teeth on grinding down the weak. But I had time between summons for interrogations—sometimes for weeks. I wrote my final statement. Then I rewrote it—just in case. I think to myself: if I have a lawyer, he’s good for nothing more than to pass on my final statement. If they catch him—they catch him, what of it? I'm not writing proclamations—I'm writing what I intend to read at the trial.
I did it very carefully. He had a meeting with me there, in the prison, in a separate cell. Since I was summoned not for investigation but to a neighboring cell, they didn't search me very thoroughly—just a formal pat-down. Then the lawyer said, “Well, how do you imagine—how can you be defended?” I say, “I don’t know. I can’t even imagine the role of a lawyer in this process. By the way, can you see my wife or not?” “Well, why not—of course I can see her.” “Can you pass on my greetings to her?” And I quietly take out and pass him this paper, so that the listening device would only record the conversation and nothing more. He says, “I will, of course, pass on your greetings.” “Well, then tell her that the case is in such-and-such a state, that I send her my greetings.” And that was all.
V. Ovsienko: And he did it?
Y. Sverstyuk: He did it. I wondered if they searched him. For some reason, I thought that every mouse was searched there and that even a lawyer was searched—that was the impression I got there. But on sober reflection, of course, a lawyer cannot be searched—unless they are 100% certain.
V. Ovsienko: Can you name him?
Y. Sverstyuk: Mykhailyuk, I think. No, Mykhailyk.
V. Ovsienko: It’s well known that the KGB had a specific list of lawyers who were permitted to take on political cases.
Y. Sverstyuk: Yes, that’s known. After one of my speeches, already in the perestroika years, a man approached me who said that he had also been such a lawyer. I asked him if he knew Mykhailyk. He says, “I knew him. He was a very good and gentle-souled man.” “Well, it was through him that I passed my final statement to my wife.” “Well, he’s no longer alive.” I won't dwell on him any longer—as a person, he is of little interest. And he couldn't have been interesting under conditions where we were being eavesdropped on—that's completely understandable. But he conscientiously carried out that one task, because he couldn't in anything else. For example, he tried to defend the fact that I hadn't read the “Program” because the envelope was sealed, but the investigator dismissed it: “What are you talking about? You don't even know what you’re talking about.”
V. Ovsienko: The judge?
Y. Sverstyuk: The investigator, the investigator. This was still at the investigation stage. And the judge already treated the lawyer very contemptuously when he saw that in such an elementary matter as defending the integrity of the envelope, he was also incapable.
V. Ovsienko: And when was that trial and who judged you?
Y. Sverstyuk: My trial was supposed to be a week earlier. But this poor Mykhailyk ran away. When everyone had already gathered and I was brought in, they were waiting for the lawyer—no lawyer. It turned out he wasn't in Kyiv. He probably decided, what's the use in defending? So he ran away just in case. They found him within a week and brought him in. And it had to happen right during Holy Week of 1973! The trial lasted for the week before Easter. In the last ten days of April.
V. Ovsienko: Was it then, in 1973, that you heard Stus’s voice? No, you probably heard him on Easter 1972: “What a sky!”
Y. Sverstyuk: “Lord, what a sky!” That was a little before we spoke, but in 1972.
At the sentencing, I looked—Lilia was in the corner of the room. It was full of some faces…
V. Ovsienko: Was your wife present for the whole trial or not?
Y. Sverstyuk: No, I think only at the sentencing. They read the indictment for a very long time, then it was repeated. I turned my back to the court and looked at Lilia—and consequently, at those faces. They reprimanded me, but became convinced that nothing would come of it. And they pretended not to notice. They said I was disrespecting the court, told me where to look, but saw that they would only complicate matters for themselves, so it was better to get it over with.
Judge Dyshel presided over my trial. The prosecutor was Pohorilyi. And the investigator, who, true, did not figure in the trial, but his work did—that was Lieutenant Colonel Chornyi. So, Chornyi, Pohorilyi, and Dyshel—a troika like that.
V. Ovsienko: Such sinister-sounding names…
Y. Sverstyuk: Dyshel once told me: “Stus was sitting here recently, on the very same bench—but did he behave like that? He begged, he cried!” At that, I laughed. It’s a standard trick of theirs, of these judicial rats, to provide a “positive example.” I just imagined Stus crying in front of this little cockerel…
And he also said that these poems here—are these really poems? Are these real poems? Such was his assessment of Stus's book of poetry. I think his assessment was sincere because he didn't understand a thing in it.
V. Ovsienko: It's interesting, who did they call as witnesses in your trial? Did they call those who were arrested?
Y. Sverstyuk: They called Nadiyka.
V. Ovsienko: Svitlychna had been under arrest since May 18, 1972.
Y. Sverstyuk: Of course, they didn’t call Ivan Svitlychny. They called Leonid Seleznenko. To the investigation, I think. To the trial, they called teachers and principals from Volyn who were to testify about my speech in 1965 before the administrative staff of the Volyn region's education department. They called Hryhoriy Porfyrovych Kochur. He had the imprudence to admit that he had read *Cathedral in Scaffolding*. I had indeed passed the manuscript through him to the editorial office of *Vitchyzna*, and it seemed to him that such a fact as passing something to an editorial office was not criminal.
So, poor Hryhoriy Porfyrovych, of course, testified intelligently that under other circumstances we would not be meeting with Sverstyuk here, not in this hall, not in front of you. At this, they issued a “special ruling” against him. I think it was planned; they were supposed to issue this ruling against him at one of the trials because they especially hated him. As far as I know, him and Svitlychny for some reason. Their General Fedorchuk wanted to “hang them on the same branch.” So, Hryhoriy Porfyrovych very correctly and delicately recounted, without the subtleties that were needed for the investigator's inquiry. For instance, it would have been very advantageous for him to say, and I even led him to it with my questions, that this was at a time when these things were being published, that he simply took the work of his colleague to the editorial office of the magazine where I was being published at the time and which I often visited. And he became acquainted with the work. In short, somehow it would have been easier if he had said it that way.
But these older people, the generation of Antonenko-Davydovych, they don't know how to wriggle out so flexibly and don't know how to dialectically invent verisimilitudes—instead of the truth. And if a man tells the truth at such a trial or investigation, it's clear that he implicates others and allows himself to be entangled. Fact by fact, fact follows from fact. But here, you need something oblique, which would result in a zero. In fact, it was only through such operations that we managed to win where they thought they already had something in their hands. As in that case with the poison: they could have very easily gotten to the candidate of chemical sciences… If I had played it straight, they would have simply gotten to Seleznenko, who was right there in their hands, even though he was supposedly working with them, but… And that's a prosecutable offense—poison. If you don't give a description, if you don't name it, if you just say “some poison,” from an unknown source, for an unknown reason—then you can't pin it on anything.
But in general, it seems to me, I made mistakes in many moments. It seems to me that I shouldn't have signed the protocols. Vasyl Stus was more right in that he didn't sign many protocols at all. It's for internal satisfaction, because now, looking from a distance of time, everything has different dimensions and different assessments. For example, it turned out that getting 12 years was much better than getting 8 years. But who could have thought about that then?
THE URALS
And in general, they released me not just with the longest sentence—they released me with the gravest warnings and malicious instructions. And investigator Chornyi warned me about this. He said, this isn't all: you can do your time, and do it—in different ways. Not everything depends on the years—the “regime” will turn out differently.
And indeed, I felt it from the very beginning. They didn't even give me a sack for the road. My stool pigeon, who was in the cell with me, gave me some white sugar sack. I left with it. At the same time, Lilia brought a prepared backpack before the prisoner transport, but they simply didn't give it to me. They told her that I had already departed. The KGB searched this sack and returned it. And then my entire journey was filled with provocations—very crude, brutal, confrontations with criminals who were playing the part of “one of us” or trying to pick a fight.
Well, and then—I already understood this in the fall of 1973, after Ivan Dziuba's “penitential” statement appeared—the persecution was so vicious that it made an impression not only on me but on the entire camp, even on such hardened zeks as Makarenko, who said, “Well, they are killing a man before our very eyes!” All this was done before the arrival of the KGB agents, who were supposed to prepare you accordingly… Of course, this provoked the opposite reaction.
But gradually, things in the camp began to develop not as they had planned. The movement for the status of a political prisoner began, they started having camp problems that needed to be solved. My position in the camp was constantly active in terms of participating in hunger strikes, in all sorts of mass actions, in constant opposition to the administration. And, at the same time, I was never the initiator of any internal camp conflicts with the administration. In short, I did not make it my goal to fight with the soldiers and majors. I did not communicate with them. It could be like this: I wouldn't greet and would walk past, not paying attention to the camp chief Kotov. He catches up with me: “Sverstyuk, why don't you say hello? Do you think that will benefit an independent Ukraine?” “I just don't think it's very necessary for great Russia that I say hello to you.” We exchanged such pleasantries with, so to speak, complete mutual understanding. He didn't communicate with me personally anymore, but it's clear that he was constantly signing off on solitary confinement and deprivations—not because anything depended on him personally. Everything depended on the KGB agents, on their plans. You could commit some astonishing violations, but if you weren't ordered to be touched, they wouldn't touch you. And conversely, you could walk around like a little bird, but at some step they would be lying in wait for you, write you up, and deprive you of a visit with your wife, who had already arrived.
So, in the camp, a Latvian KGB agent, Kronbergs, warned me—he was quite frank compared to the others. He looked at me almost with sympathy, this man. He said, “It is written for you to pass through all the circles of hell.” That is, he showed me my cards. But I was not in Vladimir Prison. Although it was written that I had to pass through it, in the camp everything develops in its own way—they started taking the “instigators,” those who adopted the status of a political prisoner, to Vladimir Prison. There was even a time—perhaps in seventy-seven—when I went all-in, when I felt that it wasn't me they needed now, when I announced: “And you will be left here with only the *suky*.” The KGB agent stammered: “No, no, no, we don't need that, you’re wrong, we will return your visit, we will return it to you.” And they returned the visit. I am very sorry that I will never be able to reproduce what I told him—I had such improvisations, for which I would give a lot: they stunned both me and him. In particular, when Kryzhanivskyi came, there was such an improvisation.
V. Ovsienko: Kryzhanivskyi—who is that?
Y. Sverstyuk: Stepan Kryzhanivskyi—a literary critic who came to meet with me.
V. Ovsienko: Is that so?
Y. Sverstyuk: Yes. Actually, I say that he came to meet with me, but he came to the 35th zone when they transferred me there, when they yanked Svitlychny to the 36th—Svitlychny, Marchenko, Kalynets, and Gluzman.
V. Ovsienko: Do you remember the chronology of which zone you were in and when?
Y. Sverstyuk: I was in that foulest, most rotten 36th zone the whole time, from beginning to end. It was always “special.”
V. Ovsienko: That's in Kuchino?
Y. Sverstyuk: Yes, in Kuchino. And in the spring, probably in February of '78, they transferred me to the 35th. Until the fall of 1978—so for about six months. But I felt like I was at a resort. Even though I spent two months there in the PKT—I still consider that I was at a resort: the nature, the regime, the water, the food—everything was so different that I can't even compare.
V. Ovsienko: The climate is different there; the 35th zone, at Vsekhsvyatskaya station, is at a higher elevation, while in Kuchino, near the Chusovaya River, it's a swamp, and the water is rusty and stinks.
Y. Sverstyuk: The psychological climate, too. They already knew my comment, because when they brought me back, they said, “So, you’ve been to the resort?” Someone had already reported my assessment of the 35th zone. They immediately met me here with hostility: “Why did you steal this bag?” The thing is, I arrived with a green bag—made from the same material they used in the thirty-fifth to sew bags for chainsaws and, I think, gloves. I probably still have that bag somewhere. I say, “Captain, it seems to me you’ve confused me with someone. You allow yourself to speak to me as you would to a colleague of yours: ‘You stole.’ Why do you think I could have stolen?” “Because you were sewing from that material there.” “Well, go ask Major Fedorov how this bag was passed to me after your scoundrels sent me off on transport with a little white bag. And then they brought me this bag for a visit.” Major Fedorov looked at this bag—of course, he recognized it. If there’s one thing he’d recognize, it’s a bag. This time he didn't lie, because he could have played the “scoundrel.” But they didn't have orders to “pin” something extraneous on me—they had enough more important things against me.
The fact is, I had a poem called “The Bells,” which was intercepted by them because of our naivete in the camp: we were passing materials through the guards—we reached that level of naivete. There really was one guy through whom something was passed and got through. And each of us showed the same naivete—Gluzman, Kovalev…
V. Ovsienko: Paruyr Hayrikyan got five years of criminal charges for similar things—for trying to pass something to the outside through a guard.
Y. Sverstyuk: Of course, you could get time for that if you were passing something very important. But at that time, they had a different game: I was supposed to be released; my term was ending. Right before the end of my term, they took me back to the 36th zone and created the strictest possible regime for me. But the plan was to release me into exile.
THE PRISONER TRANSPORT
Finally, in the winter—it was already December 1978—they took me from the zone for transport. In January 1979, my seven-year term ended. Major Fedorov, the camp chief, and his company were waiting for me. They lead me to the barbershop: “Cut his hair!” Every zek was, so to speak, prepared before release, so he would more or less resemble a human being…
V. Ovsienko: Yes, they wouldn't cut hair for three months before release.
Y. Sverstyuk: But me, right before transport, suddenly—“Cut his hair.” And they are all watching to see if there will be a shock, if there will be a heart attack. Of course, I turned pale and thought for a moment, and then I calmly sat down, bit my lip, they cut my hair and took me to solitary confinement—“15 days.” Without explanation. This was for that transfer, for the poem “The Bells.” And later—I think it was already in Perm, during the transport—they summoned me. There was an official from the prosecutor’s office, an investigator, and some other types looking me in the eye and asking what this was, if I knew what it was. I asked, “What do you want?” “We need you to sign that you have been familiarized with this case. This is your poem, and this is its Russian translation, *Kolokola*. This is your final bell.” I say, “Well, fine, I don’t mind going back to the camp.” “No, no, no, you will go to exile. You’ll still get what’s coming to you.” Thus, I signed. Can you imagine how I stunned them by signing? I effectively admitted that it was my work, instead of denying it. I myself can’t understand it: the text wasn't written in my handwriting, but it was my work, and I signed.
V. Ovsienko: Was it a literary translation or a literal one?
Y. Sverstyuk: A literal one, I think, of course. But they showed me the original in a folder labeled “Case.” I can't recall the number now. But I understood that it was a serious conversation.
On the transport to Irkutsk, I was with Oles Serhiyenko. Serhiyenko and I hadn't been in contact even on the outside—he had taken steps regarding both my mother and me that were so brutal that I don't consider it possible to even talk about it. But in the camp, when I saw him, I said, “There was nothing between us—in the camp, all Ukrainians must stick together. We don’t have the luxury of settling scores.” Thus, we were neutral towards each other.
I remember a moment during the transport. They are leading us together, I’m carrying two suitcases with my books, and some guards ask, “What do you have there?” “Books.” “Wow! And where are you off to?” “To exile.” “To exile? Like Lenin?” I say, “Lenin? And who is Lenin?” They look at each other, stunned. And Serhiyenko says, “Why provoke them like that?” But I wasn't provoking them—it was just a casual conversation.
V. Ovsienko: And Oksana Yakivna recalled that when she was being transported after you, she behaved very badly, and they held you up as an example: “Some guy passed through here, started with an ‘S,’ something with an ‘S…’” “Sverstyuk?” “Yes, yes, Sverstyuk!” This episode is in her autobiographical narrative to Vasyl Skrypka—that you, it turns out, behaved very well on the transport, since they remembered you there.
Y. Sverstyuk: Well, is that bad? It’s not bad at all; I just asked in surprise what other Lenin had been scurrying along these transport routes before me.
Then they arranged some very interesting exams for me, already in Ulan-Ude. Firstly, Ulan-Ude is a well-scouted place. That famous eccentric physicist, Alexander Bolonkin, was there; they took him from Bagdarin. They caught him there doing side jobs…
V. Ovsienko: For “private enterprise”—he was repairing irons for people.
Y. Sverstyuk: No, no, no, he was repairing televisions. He is a very good specialist.
V. Ovsienko: Of course—a Doctor of Technical Sciences!
Y. Sverstyuk: Besides, he’s sharp. But he thought he could do what others did. People pay something for repairs, and all he had to do was write out receipts and nothing more. He was so naive that he took what they gave him. Because everyone takes, and he thought he was like everyone else. Right away, they sicced several stool pigeons on him, who testified that they gave him money—and he got three years, and then a “spin-up.”
They sent me to this very place because everything was ready there—a warmed-up spot.
In the transit prisons, I would remind them that they had no right to hold me for more than 15 days; I wrote a letter to the prosecutor—and it worked: they wanted to get rid of such a person.
V. Ovsienko: Did your prison term end during the transport?
Y. Sverstyuk: Yes. There I wrote a poem to my mother that I never sent—*“Коло останнє в тій ямі повторень.”* And in Ulan-Ude, they planned something like 15 days of solitary confinement for me. They detained me for a long time. They thought there were no limits for them, but they realized that I was familiar with the rules. They put me in a cell with two criminals. Both were predatory, especially the young one. I understood what they needed, because later the chief of police asked me: “How did you manage to avoid conflict with them?” So, he knew. And they waited and waited for a conflict to happen. I was in the worst conditions there than ever before: they didn't give me any linens, I only had a dirty, greasy, and stinking mattress, they gave me a burnt sheet, which I refused to take. At any other transit point, I managed to get a sheet, but here nothing worked. So, I did my time with those guys, and on parting, they even gave me a small icon.
V. Ovsienko: You were like in a cage with lions.
Y. Sverstyuk: Yes. Firstly, I began to educate this young one. The boy is 19, and he’s already predatory; he strips anyone he comes across among the zeks, and doesn't hide it. I pointedly addressed him formally, as a pedagogue. I tell him, “You are just starting your life, and you don’t need to get dragged into this. It seems easier to you, but it’s endless—it’s for life. Try to get out of here now.” I spoke to him like a teacher. I even said, “Keep in mind that I’m talking to you roughly like an investigator, except that my goals are not an investigator’s. I can tell you what he wants from you, what he’s counting on, and what could help you.” They were interested in me, and we parted on very good terms, so they not only didn’t take anything, but when I got some postcard, I gave them a little picture, saying, “Maybe this will be useful to you, boys?” “You don’t say!” And they practically sang—it was such a treasure for them! It’s a good thing I gave it to them. Somehow, the conversation came up that I had nothing. “Well, what of it, you can always rob someone.”
In short, I had such adventures. I had another strange adventure during the transport. In Irkutsk, when we were being herded from the police van, I saw that somewhere far on a hill, someone was being dragged. His pants had fallen off, and they were dragging him naked through the snow. When they asked us at the roll call, “Any questions?” I said before the entire transport group, “There is a question.” And in the style we were accustomed to in the camp, I fired off my complaints about their mistreatment of people. That they are so brutal that they aren’t even afraid of witnesses. That they are very mistaken if they think they will get away with it. “And who are you?” I say, “First of all, I am not your ‘ty.’” “Political? Well, go on, go on, write to the UN!” I say, “To the UN or not to the UN, but your prosecutor will take you to task.” And when they threw me into the crowd, they looked at me completely differently—like a white crow. I was with them for only a day. “So what, you feel sorry for him? Then give him your pants!” And I had a spare pair, I took them out of my suitcase and gave them to be passed to that unfortunate man.
And the final performance. When I wrote that they had no right to keep me in transit any longer, a convoy immediately comes and takes me to the prison guardhouse. Some chief is there. I demand from that chief that they return the icon they took from me during a search. He speaks to me in crude prison language: “Return what? And who are you? You are manure; we’ve rotted you and we’ll keep rotting you. You still have some complaints?” “You,” I say, “are an utter nonentity. I have seen many insignificant people, but I have never seen anyone as fallen as you.” We exchanged compliments on that level with this officer.
And meanwhile, two captains in red caps arrive and say, “Where is Yevhen Oleksandrovych?” The prison chief says, “We don’t have a Yevhen Oleksandrovych.” They look at me with my suitcases, and I’m there on the side after a heated conversation. I say, “Perhaps you mean me? I am Sverstyuk.” “Yes, yes, yes, Yevhen Oleksandrovych, we have come for you. But, you know, we don't have such comfort, and you will have to ride in a regular ‘ambulance’ to the airplane. Please excuse us—where are your things?” One takes one suitcase, the other the second, and they walk off, and I follow them. The stunned prison guard stares with dazed eyes and doesn't know what is happening. Of course, I feel sorry for the guys carrying my suitcases; I should help them somehow. “No, no, we’ll carry them!” So they carried them to the vehicle. We slowly board the plane.
I am sitting with a Buryat—one of them is a Buryat, the other a Russian. Of course, the Russian is in command, and the Buryat is silent, though they are of the same rank. I had a pleasant conversation with the Buryat. I talked with him about Buryat-Mongolia and the history of Buryatia; he complained about the situation of the Buryats—for what purpose, I don’t know, but it’s not out of the question that he thought, why not talk, if this man knows a little something about us.
So, on this plane, we fly to Bagdarin, and they throw me again into a cage without windows or doors—almost the same as the one back in Ulan-Ude.
V. Ovsienko: And they talked about comfort?
Y. Sverstyuk: Ah, that was over! The performance was over: I had been in paradise: I had servants in the form of captains, and then, to make me feel the contrast, they—bam!—gave me a cell without windows or doors. This was the prison in the settlement of Bagdarin.
EXILE IN BURYATIA
But all this, in the end, is details—how those few days passed, how they tried to get me drunk in the hotel—these are all details. One thing really helped me in exile. They decided to establish strict control over my every step, and that saved me. That is, they gave me an apartment, not a dormitory. That is, they gave me the opportunity for things like “The Bells” to appear—and they would pick up a few more such things during searches and give me a new sentence.
V. Ovsienko: So they brought you to the settlement of Bagdarin. What district is that?
Y. Sverstyuk: Bauntovsky District. Although that Baunt is an even smaller village, and Bagdarin is supposedly the center there.
V. Ovsienko: Do you remember when you arrived there?
Y. Sverstyuk: I think it was sometime in the last ten days of February 1979. Here, I have a piquant passport, issued then. It was issued on February 26, 1979. They gave it to me immediately, without delay. The thing is, while I was shorn, before my hair grew back, they wanted to fix me in this passport forever, so it would be immediately visible. Moreover, they wanted to fix me in a zek's uniform. But it so happened that my little suit, in which I was arrested, survived outside the zone. Thus, I had a suit for the photograph. And one of the zeks gave me what zeks used instead of a sweater. A kind of knitted woolen collar, like a necktie. Thus, my appearance is not quite what they hoped to have for the passport. And my hair had grown back a bit, after all, you can't drag a zek along the transport routes for long and at the same time maintain his buzz cut—it grows back against all rules.
I also remember how they photographed me. First, I went to get a haircut. In the barbershop, everyone started staring, although a new zek is not news there. They asked who I was. I said I was Ukrainian, because they asked where from. I said I was a Ukrainian from Kyiv. Some guy who was getting his hair cut expressed the opinion: “Ah, Ukrainians—they’re the same as the Chinese.” (At that time, they were fighting with the Chinese over Damansky Island). And I said to the barber, “You know—you can give him a buzz cut. It’s all the same to him; he can’t tell the difference.” And someone started to shush me: “You don’t know who that is!” And it was some thug, one of those they were afraid of. But the thing is, I was under such good protection that I could fully rely on my convoy.
So they gave me a separate room. And in order to properly arrange surveillance, they gave me a carpenter's job. That is, in a workshop, indoors—and not a woodcutter's job, for example, where people in padded clothing work with an axe in thirty-degree frost. That is, in fact, everything that was measured against me went in my favor. What is especially interesting—this is a permafrost zone. It's hard to imagine anything worse in this region. And at the same time, it’s a place with the most sunny days. It’s hard to imagine anything better for me than a sunny day—I am very sensitive to it. Thus, I ended up in very strictly measured, but not at all so terrible, conditions. Here I am reminded of a generalization we made in the 36th zone: never tell them what is good for you and what is bad for you. So that they understand nothing, so that they apply their general measure to you. And in this case, it turned out for the best: they had no idea that they had created optimal conditions for me—for my solitude, which suited me perfectly. For all five years in exile, I essentially lived in a solitary cell, and that was just fine for me. Children would come to me, mostly Buryat children—they were curious, they had someone to talk to, they were interested in finding someone who was interested in them, who would give them something. I always had swarms of children. As Vasyl Stus wrote from Kolyma: “Boyarmushka—that is the best communication that can be.” Boyarmushka is a little Buryat girl, about four or five years old, who used to come to me. True, recently she stopped coming, because the clouds were gathering, the surveillance on me intensified—at the end of my exile, they decided to find some pretext to arrest me.
They themselves almost openly admitted that this was the case when they conducted the final search. They confiscated a knife from me—I could show it to you now. With a wooden handle, a cobbler’s type of knife, two or three centimeters long, made of such brittle steel—a cobbler's knife, which a carpenter needs for cleaning sharp corners.
V. Ovsienko: I know, it’s triangular, with a slanted blade.
Y. Sverstyuk: Yes, it’s a cobbler’s and carpenter’s knife. They found nothing during this search. There was a “prosecutor of the 2nd rank”; he kept circling around this knife. They confiscated the knife, wrote a protocol about its manufacture, and very pointedly—for what purpose it was made. But they couldn't make anything out of it; it was all very ridiculous. Firstly, it's not made of the right metal; secondly, there's no guard on the handle; thirdly, in all respects, it is not a knife. And they were tempted by the knife version because they had caught Petro Rozumnyi, who had come to visit me, with a hunting knife that he had bought right there in Bagdarin for six rubles.
V. Ovsienko: He visited you twice—on Easter 1979, and then in the fall of the same year.
Y. Sverstyuk: After that second time, he was detained.
V. Ovsienko: On October 8, he was arrested for the knife, which had been confiscated back on Easter.
Y. Sverstyuk: I see you know more about that case.
Well, with the Helsinki Union, the story there was a bit more complicated. I would like to tell it. The fact is that Petro had a mission to persuade me to join (or to head) the Helsinki Union.
V. Ovsienko: The Group, because it was still the Group then. The Union was from 1988.
Y. Sverstyuk: The Group, yes. I don't recall anymore—it doesn't matter whether it was to join or to head it. I was receiving letters from the Kalynets family, who were nearby—in Chita. There was some letter, I think from Iryna, written in such a hysterical style, that they took them, and we put out more, they took them—and we threw out more! It was in the style of what happened at Austerlitz in Tolstoy: “Erste Kolonne—marschiert! Zweite Kolonne—marschiert! Dritte Kolonne—marschiert!”—and they all drown. This outraged me; I simply couldn't find the words! I couldn't write all of this to them in a letter, although I did write something, that I didn't like this game. And when Petro started talking to me about the Helsinki Group, I say, “There is a man in prison now who is from the Helsinki Group. If you need a name—sign Rudenko or Marynovych. He is from the Helsinki Group, it makes absolutely no difference to him who signs his name where, it's even better while he's sitting there. But if this is a game with names in such a way—God forbid I should play such foolish games without a purpose and without a clear result. I am simply amazed at how easily one can gamble with the fates of people, of whom we have—on the fingers of one hand. How is it possible? Who takes this upon themselves?” He says, “I also want to go to Slavko Chornovil.” “God forbid, Petro,” I tell him, “don’t go to Slavko.” He still wanted to go to Slavko in Yakutia. From his side—it’s very risky.
I don’t know if he told them about my resolute position against it. I was constantly tormented by the thought of the moral right to so easily dispose of a life, dispose of a family’s fate, put another at risk, organize and draw others in.
I was very strongly influenced by a conversation with Mykola Bondar. And the conversation was very gentle and neutral.
V. Ovsienko: And who is Mykola Bondar?
Y. Sverstyuk: Mykola Bondar is the guy who (he's probably in emigration somewhere now) brought out a poster “Shame on the CPSU!” at the October parade here in Kyiv. This was after the Prague events, after Czechoslovakia. He was immediately knocked off his feet—and they gave him seven years. He held up very well, an intelligent man—a graduate student in philosophy, I think, I don't remember which university. When Mykola Bondar came out after 15 days of solitary confinement—whether he had declared himself a political prisoner or what, I don't remember now—he always kept his distance. I was not well acquainted with him, but I just wanted to warm the man up a bit, because I knew what 15 days were like. And Mykola, after a conversation with someone—I think it was with Yasha Suslensky—said thoughtfully: “It's clear to me when a man is offered bread, but I cannot understand those people who incite a hungry man to a hunger strike.” I thought about that “law”—I thought about the moral right. About the moral right to pass “containers” through one’s wife and send her to Moscow, and then to send them into the cold, into the suspicious, hostile atmosphere created around them where they work. They have no protection, no one looks after them, no one is interested in them except the KGB. They have no warmth. There is something terrible in this. And isn't there some devilry in it? Let it be covered by other motives, and not just covered, but connected with other motives, like, this is a struggle. But one who has chosen should enter the struggle. But to impose from the side, to dispose, to pressure, to use, without even reaching an understanding, and to throw in the “Zweite, Dritte Kolonne” and show how brave and generous we are, so to speak—there is something truly devilish in that.
In short, I was for intransigence in relation to the executioner's system and against collaboration with it, but I was categorically against self-destruction and against war with policemen. I was always aware that against me alone—and I am, after all, alone, and there is no other—they could always release even to their death thirty policemen. And here, not even three are needed; one is enough. And one-on-one, you burn out, and he doesn't. He lights a cigarette.
In short, these moral collisions of our resistance were very, very important to me. I noticed how morbidly and delicately Maati Kiirend, an Estonian, reacted to what his wife was exposed to. He says, “I don’t understand in Russian.” And I only spoke Russian with him. “And I can not understand this.” I liked that. After all, our world, that international one, was very different. There were very isolated but loyal Zionist guys.
So, in that international community, a certain culture, a certain ethic, duties, and, ultimately, a measure of what you can take upon yourself and what you should not take upon yourself, were developed. Firstly, what you can carry, having taken it upon yourself, and secondly—are you taking it upon yourself, or are you also taking it upon your wife, your mother, and your loved ones, who, after all, have reason to expect from you that you are thinking of them too. This is very important. I was categorically against writing in letters to my wife about the worst things in my life. I wanted to create a kind of aestheticized world in my letters. I don't know how successful I was—I have never reread those letters, which are lying somewhere. But I tried to get beautiful stamps somewhere, so she could see what beautiful letters one can write and send from here. She would send me color photographs, I would show them to others—look, I'd say, what oases of life exist even in hell. That is, I wanted to exchange positive information with people, and in the camp too.
It was absolutely clear that Ukrainians in the camp were in a special situation, that Ukrainians were marked for destruction. While a Jew had to be reckoned with—because even if no one cared about him, he was accounted for, someone would pay a ransom for him; while a Russian would be reckoned with because, one way or another, he was “one of their own”; while people from the Baltics were treated half-heartedly, because for the most part they weren’t of particular interest—we were the object of a special kind of terror. This was palpable in those years. After all, Major Kotov would never have chased down some Estonian, Lithuanian, or Jew to ask them about an independent Lithuania or Israel. But he did ask me, and he showed his hand. In the camp, I knew from Oleg Vorobyov what the attitude toward Russians was—he was an “insider.” He told me everything. He shared his fate with me, like a true zek.
And under these circumstances, to give them a pretext was to walk right into a trap just to demonstrate one’s courage. At a time when I was not 15, but 50 years old—and I hadn’t managed to do anything, I hadn’t been able to do anything, because spies had been following me my whole life! What I did write was all in the periods between stresses, and it was still not at all what I was capable of. And whether I would have a life or not, I had no right—neither a moral right, nor ultimately a basic, rational human right—to walk into a trap. That was my position. That’s why I didn't support such inflammatory decisions. Although there were periods when I, too, was ready to take on the status of a political prisoner and go to Vladimir Prison. Well, when things really start twisting you up, there’s something inside you that contradicts your rational stance, but you can’t do otherwise.
It was the same in that Bagdarin—not a single person who left me avoided a search. The only man who managed to take out a few letters from me to be passed on to the West was my son Andriy, who was a medical student at the time. We were under surveillance. Of course, he was secretly searched. I had prepared a sandwich for him for the road. I spoke loudly, saying: “Here’s a sandwich for you so you won’t be hungry.” And I stuffed two capsules into it, into the sandwich. In Ulan-Ude, of course, they immediately gave him a hotel room... The wife of the KGB chief had been waiting for a flight for two weeks. She gave him her ticket; he flew on her ticket. They didn't need to delay him. These are truly astonishing things. There were many such piquant incidents there. For example, my son and I went out to a small island between two streams. He didn’t want to walk on the stones with his pants rolled up. We went out there, sat and talked, and a helicopter flew over us. It circled, and circled, and circled—monitoring us, so to speak, “secretly.”
My term in Buryatia ended with them not finding a pretext to arrest me. And they decided, “we can always get him later.” They were right—what was their hurry? They had done everything they could there.
There were some bright spots there too, some good people who tried to help me. One quiet man would come by: “Alexandrovich, if you need anything, I’ll help you—hide something.” I did give him notebooks—after that search. But I still managed to pass on the poem through my kinsman Petro, in a capsule—he brought it to Zinoviy Krasivskyi, and they re-copied it there. I told him that my original should be destroyed.
V. Ovsiienko: Which poem was that?
Y. Sverstiuk: “The Bells”—the very one that was in that “criminal case.” It was passed on through Nina Strokata. She doesn’t remember anything, doesn’t know anything. And I understand her too—in the state she was in, what could she remember?
V. Ovsiienko: So the poem didn't survive?
Y. Sverstiuk: Some fragments have remained in my memory, but they become fewer and fewer with time. In a word, something survived.
V. Ovsiienko: But they showed you the Russian translation—so they must have it somewhere in their file?
Y. Sverstiuk: The translation and the original, I think, are somewhere in their possession.
V. Ovsiienko: On Russian territory—so maybe they also have the Ukrainian text?
Y. Sverstiuk: Last year, I tried to find out through Kovalyov if this was possible. He said he doesn’t have that kind of access. No one knows anything, no one preserves anything, everyone has other things on their mind, and there’s no one to talk to. We’re dealing with not just an “empire of evil”—we have a “non-latrine.” No part of it has been charted, and there are no blueprints. Although it’s not out of the question that it might still be in some archives, in some dumps.
In short, when I was finishing my exile, I gathered my fellow carpenters—they were all my overseers. To varying degrees. And they all reacted: “Way to go, Leksandrych!” Like for a marathon runner who has completed the distance. They had lived through many moments as if it were already... There were very slippery spots—very slippery and provocative.
FURLOUGH
One of the most provocative traps was at the very beginning of my exile: I received a response to my application to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, permission to go and see my mother. Based on this permission, they issued me a route sheet. I was already prepared, heading to the airport with my suitcase (there was no other way to travel but by plane, that was also thought through). A flustered MVD lieutenant arrives: “Listen, you don't have any vacation time.” I say: “What, did you just fall from the moon? You gave me the route sheet, you processed it, and you also processed the documents for my arrival here. You didn’t know I don’t have any vacation time?” He’s silent. Then they summon me to the administration. The head of the expedition, blinking, explains that I’m not entitled to a vacation, I haven’t worked long enough... This was a provocation orchestrated by the KGB “from here.” They were preparing for some kind of argument and expected a scandal from me. I told them: “What is there to argue with you about? You’re just sitting here to repeat someone else’s words to me—what is there to talk to you about?”
All that was left for me was to go to work. When I told the head of the expedition that it wasn't his policemen from Bagdarin who gave me permission to travel, but that I received it from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, here are the documents, he didn’t know what to say next: “I don’t know anything.” When it all became clear to me, I rode my little bicycle out of the village to a thicket where the birch trees were turning yellow. They were very, very calming—each one like a candle. I rode among them for about an hour, calmed down, and came back to the workshop. I got to work at my machine. Meanwhile, a KGB agent from Ulan-Ude starts a conversation with me. “Listen,” I say, “why are you here? Why are you bothering people who are trying to work? What do you want to talk to me about? I don’t need you, and you’re not needed here at all. People are working here, go on your way.” And he obediently left.
V. Ovsiienko: But you did manage to visit Ukraine, didn’t you?
Y. Sverstiuk: But that’s the whole point, that each of these episodes was a hard-fought battle. I just didn’t keep all that correspondence... I visited my mother twice. My wife came to see me with Vira, as did my son Andriy.
V. Ovsiienko: You went to see your mother in Volyn. What about Kyiv?
Y. Sverstiuk: Through Kyiv. Although it even seems to me... I’m starting to forget now. And each time it was so difficult! For instance, one time I declared a hunger strike. It’s ridiculous to declare a hunger strike there, but they saw that it was serious, and they saw that it wasn't a game. Some KGB agent came from Ulan-Ude, searched my place, and “gave permission.” Well, of course, I had written to the prosecutor’s office beforehand. The first trip was after I had worked for a year, so in 1980, the second was in 1981.
The provocations here and there were incredible! I was at my mother’s with my son, and it was terrifying to watch how he endured it. For example, I bought tickets for the Lutsk–Kyiv train, and my flight was the day after. They didn’t want me to stay in Kyiv for a day, so they wouldn’t sign my route sheet. A hired taxi was already waiting, and they started pretending that the police chief was nowhere to be found. The farewell to my mother was dramatic. She said she would never see me again. My son and I said our goodbyes and went to Horokhiv. I couldn’t just go back and tell my mother about the harassment. We spent the night in Horokhiv at the Kryshtalskys’ place. “My heart can’t take this anymore,” she had said.
And the next day—there you have it. That was the very day we met with Valeriy Marchenko and Zinoviy Antonyuk. But we only had a couple of hours for our meeting. Generally, it must be said that their agents even accompanied my wife on her trip to see me, which she became convinced of when they “arranged” a plane ticket for her in Moscow.
V. Ovsiienko: You once told me the details of your meeting with Marchenko and Antonyuk—they were odd and amazing.
Y. Sverstiuk: They truly were. The thing is, when I was passing through Kyiv, I stopped by the Marchenkos’ and left a note in their door, because I didn't find anyone home. “They” didn’t think to “check” that note. Valeriy got it; he knew when I was supposed to fly back. When I returned from Volyn, I again didn't find Marchenko at home. I didn’t find anyone. I took a taxi and went to Antonyuk’s. I knew his address, but he was impossible to find on that street; the taxi driver couldn’t find him. And of course, a second taxi was following us. Then I saw that the taxi driver didn’t want to drive around anymore—he could see we had a “tail.” The driver didn't want any part of this story, so he says: “Well, are we just going to keep driving around like this?” I say: “Well then, you can go on your way, I’ll just jump out and go on foot.” And the second taxi didn’t notice that I jumped out—it followed him. I was free! I was free for maybe an hour and a half! But I still didn’t find Antonyuk. I looked at my watch and realized I had to get home immediately. On the way, I stopped at the Demiivska Church for a minute...
I arrive home—and there at my table sit Marchenko and Antonyuk! Those are our photos from that meeting with Marchenko and Antonyuk...
They always had a problem. They didn't mind me going to the village: from Bagdarin to Siltse—that suited them, they weren't worried. But how to transport me? Either through Kyiv or Moscow. One time they let me travel through Moscow—to their own misfortune. Because where did I go in Moscow? To Kovalyov’s, of course. That is, Kovalyov wasn't there, but his son Vanya was, who was involved in the same “Chronicle.” Of course, information from me immediately went out into the world: I passed on to him what had been happening with me. I landed right “in the microphone.” They regretted it after that, and the next time I had to travel through Kyiv. So, I traveled a second time—after the hunger strike, and that's when I met with Marchenko...
I also want to say that what struck me in Moscow was the relatively free atmosphere there. A policeman might show interest in you when you’re getting your route sheet stamped—with curiosity and almost with sympathy. People there are not intimidated. I think they weren’t just unintimidated in those times—they weren’t as intimidated even in Stalin’s times as we were. Though people were taken there too, they were mostly taken from the higher echelons. The Russian working man there wasn't under much threat—he wasn't being arrested for nationalism. I think the level of terror there never came close to ours. It was always a pleasure for me to feel that kind of relaxed atmosphere in Moscow. I was in Moscow in transit only once, but when I was returning, I stopped there again. And later I was there many more times.
We had a terrible oppression even where it seemed it shouldn't exist. For instance, in the village. The village has no concept of surveillance, of a political exile, yet it's still afraid of something. The whole village could have come to see me, and nothing would have happened to them for it. But everything is passed on in a whisper: “He’s arrived!—the news is passed quietly.—He’s being watched!” It's the same effect as with Gogol's gendarme’s cap, remember?
I was in that situation at my mother’s. For her, it was both a joy and a stress. All my life I played the role of the “successful one” for her. That was my mission. After my brothers were gone, my parents got the impression from my school years onward that everything was fine with me—that I was studying, that I was managing, that I would come visit them. They would wait for me, and this festive ritual would continue every week when I came on Saturdays—that was while I was in school. And when I was at the university, I would come from Lviv almost every two weeks. I would knock on the windowpane, and they would be awake—waiting for my knock. And the celebration of our meeting would begin. Then a small trouble, because it was always hard to get horses to take me to the station—after all, it was about nine kilometers. Sometimes we rode on horseback through the swamp... The transportation problem was very difficult then. That, in fact, was the only trouble... So they had the impression that everything was carefree for me: they never knew about my troubles. I got so good at lying, or rather, at avoiding the truth, that when I came home, having been fired from work again “at my own request,” it was hard to tell from my demeanor. Only my mother was suspicious: “Why are you so quiet?”
I tried to play a similar role when I came to visit my mother from exile. That's why I couldn't allow myself to return to my mother and say that they hadn't let me leave Horokhiv—because she would guess. She understood everything and worried.
My friend, Andriy Kryshtalsky, who had served 10 years (he was taken in the tenth grade), comes up to me and says: “What a meeting!” And standing next to me is some policeman I was asking something. Andriy, as if nothing were amiss, says in front of everyone: “Well, you’ve been here for so many days and haven’t come to see me? That’s not right. Come on, let’s go over now.” — “Andriy, I’m still hoping to get to Lutsk.” — “Ah, to hell with all that—spend the evening at my place, and you’ll go tomorrow.” There was this kind of island, that Andriy, who in the presence of the police could invite you to his home, who knew how to rejoice genuinely—but he was a zek! A zek who spent ten of his best years, from twenty to thirty, in there.
And the others? For example, on that same summer day in 1981, I meet an acquaintance, a teacher, who had once rejoiced so much, who had once welcomed me as if I were Vasyl Symonenko himself. Posthumously, of course... But here he met me and pretended not to notice me, walking past. Although, it seems, there was no tail there. But every man who is afraid—he carries his tail with him—an inseparable one, and not just during the day, but at night too. And that is his fate. Sometimes I wonder why the apostasy “for fear of the Jews” offends us so much. Why I can count on the fingers of one hand those who came to me after 12 years. And there were people who were close and friendly. And I had already been working as a carpenter “somewhere in Kyiv” for 5 years... Why does a person forever remember the hand that someone extended to him in a moment of danger? “Do you know Lyuba Kheina?” I once asked Mykhailyna Kotsiubynska. — “What?” she said, offended, “don’t you know that Lyuba was the only one who spoke up in my defense?” And let’s recall how it is written in the Gospel about those who did not give a drink to the thirsty and did not visit the imprisoned... The situation is “archetypal”...
So, I returned from exile quietly, without notifying anyone, and they didn’t know anything at home. I bought some flowers somewhere—as if I had just gone out to the market and come back with flowers. Of course, they knew I was supposed to come, but I didn't say exactly when. I don’t know why—I think it’s not normal, that I was so inhibited and so compressed within myself that I had grown unaccustomed to the normal functioning of life. But it was my idea—to come home “just like that,” from the road, with gifts.
At that time, Semen Gluzman was already back, and Valeriy Marchenko was on trial. I think they might have been counting on us not meeting. But I think if we had met, I would have tried to exert a restraining influence on him as much as possible. I wouldn’t have wanted him to take risks, especially since there was no big game to play—we were left with a small game. And in that small game, there were no winnings for us. When something gets abroad, that’s not necessarily a win either. It depends on what gets out and where it gets out. It’s not always a win. In short, I looked at these things quite skeptically. I think that if Valeriy and I had met after my return, I would have advised him against any drastic steps. Although, he wasn't really taking any such steps—he was just making it clear with his posture: “I am unbowed and I will not repent.” But I would have liked for him to wait it out somehow. That was, in fact, a terribly difficult time, an uncertain time, the time of Chernenko. At the same time, it was clear that one after another, the dead were leaving the Kremlin for the next world, and, obviously, the Kremlin itself would soon be on its way to the next world. That process was already clearly outlined.
V. Ovsiienko: The Politburo started dropping like flies, like on a farm in a bad kolkhoz in the spring.
Y. Sverstiuk: By the way, I had an example of how a dramatic story can be turned into a comical one. They decided that in exile I would play the same role as in the camp. For instance, it was considered taboo to go and reinforce the zone, it was considered taboo to do anything related to visual propaganda. But in exile, the rules of the game are different. There are portraits of Politburo members, and one of them dies. They order glass from me. This snitch, who is my workshop supervisor, very carefully explains to me how to remove the frame: “Maria Ivanivna will help position it, and you cut the glass for this frame.” They thought I would run from that glass like a Jew from non-kosher food, so as not to touch the Politburo members. But I had long figured it out for myself: in the camp, we understood perfectly well what we were standing for and what a compromise cost. But when you’re alone, when they tell you to cut a piece of glass—to make a problem out of it is ridiculous. And for whom should I play a comical role here? Or a tragic one?
I arrive. There is that very nice Maria Ivanivna. I consult with her whether we should “position” it now, or wait a bit. She understands me in a heartbeat and laughs: “Or should we wait a bit until the next one flies out of this frame?” They give me time—unsupervised, as long as it gets done. One could have turned it into a joke, one could have just pretended for half a day that you were doing something or that the glass broke and you went for another one, and so on, and not make any problem out of it...
Or he orders from me: “We need forty of these for the May Day flags... Because, you see, the flags...” — “Why do I need your flags? I need the size of the sticks and the thickness—I’m a carpenter, and you deal with the flags. You can even take these sticks home with you.” In this way, I return this so-called political problem to him...
V. Ovsiienko: As a technical one.
Y. Sverstiuk: Yes, as a purely technical one.
That’s far from everything. I’m inclined to recall such things now, but I’m not inclined to recall the truly bad things. In the workshop in Bagdarin, there was a homemade circular saw. And a plank shot out from it, hit me in the shoulder, and broke the skin. Accordingly, if the matter were to be pursued, it would, of course, have to be dealt with by the safety inspector. The workshop supervisor would have to be fined, and the circular saw would have to be confiscated immediately. A circular saw that shoots planks! And it shot them every day, it could pierce doors. Once it knocked the hat off my snitch, and it was my good fortune that it didn’t hit him in the forehead—that would have been fatal for both him and me. That was great luck. Well, and then, when I was injured, they didn’t give me sick leave, so as not to document the incident. They organized a workshop meeting. At this meeting, they read out a condemnation, that I had intentionally engaged in self-injury—“to shirk work.” In this situation, I imagined how much I would have to drag things out with them and complain, exposing them—one scoundrel before another scoundrel. And my carpenters and locksmiths advised me: “Alexandrovich, just leave it, you won’t win. We all understand.” All those workers gathered for the meeting—they all understood it.
And I let it go. That is, I accepted this defeat silently, as I had many times before, without a fight. And each time it was very hard. I can imagine a different development of the plot around this, but I wanted it so that when my wife came to visit me, she would get the impression that everything was fine with me—the room was clean, the work was, after all, relatively easy.
Or, for example, I remember—it is forever in my eyes—I receive a telegram about my mother’s death. And they are forcing me to go to work. A blizzard, cold. At the police station, they tell me: “The telegram is not certified, it is not a document, you won’t win anything.” I understand that I won’t win. They give me a few old padded jackets to tear up, and in the piercing, sharp wind, I insulate the doors of the smithy. I layer one padded jacket on top of another and cover it with some kind of canvas, hammering in nails. The nails fly out of my hands. I go into the smithy to warm my hands, return again, and again insulate the doors—and my mother is lying alone on the table...
I don’t want to talk about how my mother died—they told me. But I felt it very strongly—perhaps I never felt anything through distance as much as I felt my mother’s passing then. I locked myself in the house all alone and listened to the ticking of the clock. It has been written about—one day I will get around to publishing, or rather, compiling a collection of poems.
V. Ovsiienko: And when did this happen?
Y. Sverstiuk: It happened when Brezhnev...
V. Ovsiienko: Was that the fall of eighty-two?
Y. Sverstiuk: Yes. November. November 19, 1982.
V. Ovsiienko: In this story, you never mentioned your mother’s name.
Y. Sverstiuk: My mother was Yevdokia Yakivna, from the Prysiazhnyi family.
V. Ovsiienko: And you know, that feeling that something is happening to your relatives, I had that constantly in captivity. It was precisely during the period when I was imprisoned that my uncles, aunts, and eventually my father died—and I knew all of this before the news arrived.
Y. Sverstiuk: Ah, that is a known phenomenon that has no name.
THE RETURN
A few more words about my return. So, I returned to Kyiv during Valeriy Marchenko’s trial. The atmosphere was oppressive, like in the darkest hour before dawn. I wanted to find a job with the help of friends, or rather, their advice. Antonyuk was sure that whatever they planned, they would do. Gluzman had a different opinion—he believed that one should try to find a job on one’s own. Since the situation was what it was, one should use it. And with God’s help... Although carpentry wasn’t a very good job, it could have been much worse.
I was immediately surrounded tightly. They terrorized my family—a moron from the police, Captain Rudnitskiy, would come systematically, even though I still had the right not to go to work, because my “time off”—one day of convoyed transit for three days of work—hadn’t ended yet. But I didn’t make any problems out of it—for the sake of my family. I didn’t count the days, didn’t haggle over trifles—wait, I’ll get a job yet. I have an idea of where I could have ended up, because I visited various workplaces. They could have placed me in an infernally difficult workshop. But malice and intolerance always bring foolishness with them. They pushed me with their malice, and their option was immediately discarded. I pretended that I was waiting for them to place me, and in the meantime, I was looking for a job myself. Where they tried to place me—it was truly a small hell: at a plywood factory, for example, as a general laborer. They wanted to place me in some institute—of course, as a gofer and, of course, into the arms of snitches. But I wanted to get a job as a worker, because I know that a worker always has the great right to tell them where to go and when—and they won’t fire a worker. Except maybe to send him to prison.
V. Ovsiienko: They did fire them, they did...
Y. Sverstiuk: They did, of course, but not as easily as in an institute. So, I was lucky. While they were backing me into a corner, I got a job quite unexpectedly. They thought I had run into some courtyard for my own needs, and I came out half an hour later, already hired—all the managers had just gathered, and they immediately signed the order. The mechanical workshop of custom tailoring factory No. 2, near the house of Ivan Benedyktovych Brovko.
V. Ovsiienko: Is that on Leningradska Square?
Y. Sverstiuk: I immediately found myself in a “healthy collective”—one that was never sober. The work was not regulated. Of course, from nine to six, that goes without saying—but it involved traveling around the city, because there were many workshops there. And that gave a lot of freedom—it didn't chain you to a machine at exactly nine o'clock.
V. Ovsiienко: And were you under administrative surveillance?
Y. Sverstiuk: No, I wasn't. The surveillance was serious, but there was no administrative surveillance.
The so-called literary environment made a heavy impression on me. I didn't expect that none of them would reach out. It happened that I would bring books to Yuriy Khorunzhy to sell. Yuriy is a very fine and fearless man. He was the only one who helped me—he would buy these books that I brought him for a ten-ruble note each. And his wife is very pleasant, friendly. He was also scared, of course, but he didn't stoop to showing his fear. So we talked as equals. I had “Notes of the Shevchenko Scientific Society” from the last century. One time I was selling them. He told me that he had one of the volumes, but his acquaintance who buys them didn't want to buy it because the cover was damaged. I asked if he knew whose journal it was. He knows, he said. That stunned me. This acquaintance—I don't want to name him, he is a very famous and not-a-bad man—he didn't take this Sverstiuk volume because the cover was damaged. That is no longer fear—it's something worse.
V. Ovsiienko: You had such small earnings that you had to...
Y. Sverstiuk: My earnings were seventy rubles. At that time, there was a joke about the “hundred-ruble husband.” But I didn't even make it to a hundred rubles. Later, I made up to one hundred and thirty. But in the beginning, the earnings were very small. A very meager life—materially and spiritually meager. But sometimes on sunny mornings, when I had to go to the other end of the city, I would get on a tram. The tram would be half-empty, I would take out a notebook and write something. Around that time, I was writing “The Reconstruction of the Tower of Babel.” I can't say I wrote it immediately after returning from exile, but I started writing it sometime after Chornobyl, after the explosion. I gave it to one of those frondeurs who hold themselves so “bravely” to read. He read it and said, “Well, I don't understand you. If they gave you what they did for what you wrote then, they’ll give you more for this now.”
V. Ovsiienko: But Gorbachev was already in power?
Y. Sverstiuk: They weren't imprisoning people, but nothing had changed for us. Things started to change for us maybe around eighty-eight, and even then, weakly. In fact, what started to change? They stopped imprisoning, stopped arresting—that was the only thing that started to change. Things began to appear in the Moscow press that one couldn't have even hoped for before.
V. Ovsiienko: But there was still nothing in the Ukrainian press.
Y. Sverstiuk: There was absolutely nothing in the Ukrainian press.
UKRAINIAN CULTUROLOGICAL CLUB
Then I got in touch with a certain circle of younger zeks who had served time for common crimes, but for political motives—people like Serhiy Naboka, Mykola Matusevych, Oles Shevchenko...
V. Ovsiienko: Serhiy Naboka had Article 187-1, which is also political, but under that article, they were held in a common camp. Mykola Matusevych and Oles Shevchenko had Article 62.
Y. Sverstiuk: Olha Matusevych?
V. Ovsiienko: Olha first had 187-1, and then 62—for three years each.
Y. Sverstiuk: And Lyonya Milyavsky, 187-1... This was a circle where rebellious ideas were brewing and there was a desire to gather and protest a little. The protesting was monotonous, but I would bring it to a general level and provide a more or less constructive summary. It was already taking on a literary character because of my participation. We held evenings for Stus...
V. Ovsiienko: That started in the summer of 1987—the Ukrainian Culturological Club.
Y. Sverstiuk: Yes. You know, I deeply regret that there is still no one to take on the task of collecting the facts. And I have things to publish, things that are important for history, but I'm afraid that not everyone is interested, because in fact, these are my materials. That is, only what became a literary work can be printed, and everything else can only be a backdrop—dates, events. The guys played a pretty good role in this. And that should be described too. For instance, Oles Shevchenko fought with them in a very interesting way. The meeting with Saliy at 10 Olehivska Street, in Podil—there were several such sharp and interesting reconnaissance-by-fire encounters. It was all a ferment that heralded the end of censorship. The end of fear is the end of censorship. I remember when we decided to organize—that was my idea—the millennium of the baptism of Rus-Ukraine.
V. Ovsiienko: That was 1988—what time of year?
Y. Sverstiuk: In the summer. We read in the newspaper that the celebration would begin in Moscow, then in Leningrad, and then in Ukraine. This caused laughter, and not just laughter. Then I decided: no, we will do it our own way, we will do it at all costs. There was nothing to do it with, so I asked Serhiy Naboka to record some bells on a tape recorder. I gave others something to read from Pavlo Tychyna's “The Golden Hum.” Then I handed out some other texts. No one prepared, except for Naboka, who recorded the bells. And these guys didn’t feel the Event. So then I was simply despotic: read what you have in your notebook. The entry into religion was difficult...
V. Ovsiienko: And where did you organize this?
Y. Sverstiuk: Near the monument to St. Volodymyr—on the very first day that Moscow was celebrating that holiday, we celebrated our own holiday. The entire Culturological Club gathered, only there was no vision for the celebration. I wrote a speech, which is now published in the book “At the Feast of Hopes.” Actually, I didn’t expect it to have a worldwide resonance—I thought it would just be our own demonstration of dignity. So, I read this speech... But wait, when we gathered there, they gathered too. Some guy in a hat, the one in charge of “religious affairs,” stood there: “And where did you get the candles, where did you buy the candles—at the market, or in a church? The church ones are not allowed! Disperse!” And so on. But he saw that all his orders were sounding in a void—there was no one to listen. We felt that he was without a gendarme, he was playing a ridiculous role: you need KGB agents with paddy wagons, and if they’re not there, you can’t scare a zek with a little hat. And he stood aside.
And then I stepped up onto the pedestal near the monument and began to read loudly, for the people. And there was a dead silence. It seemed to me that a little more than a hundred people had gathered, but I think there weren't that many. Of course, no priest could have been there. Even if he had known, he would never have come—that was understood. There were readings there, and it's not so important how well they were prepared. In short, it grew into something whole—it was a commemoration of the Event. And when information about it went abroad, they picked up the text of that speech and started reprinting it—Ukraine celebrated the millennium of the baptism of Rus, in Kyiv!
V. Ovsiienko: You don't remember the exact date of this event?
Y. Sverstiuk: It's in the book. I think it was June 6.
Then, the most targeted shot was my speech at the end of 1987 at the “Vzuttievyk” club about Vasyl Stus. They were watching us very closely. The main problem was the venue. After the well-known, scandalous for them, evening at the cultural center on Frunze Street, in a rather lavish hall, when the discussion about the Holodomor, I believe, ended in their disgrace—they decided not to provide any more venues. But then Serhiy Naboka used a ruse and said that we needed a space to gather in order to plan our future work. And they decided that this would be interesting for them. So they gave us the assembly hall at the “Vzuttievyk.” We fiddled around with work plans for about five minutes, and then they gave me the floor, and I read a report on Vasyl Stus. There was a dead silence, and then unexpectedly for me—thunderous applause. A large number of people had gathered—the guys had really brought people out! And then someone suggested we stand up and honor his memory—that was the first time people stood in honor of Vasyl Stus. During that moment of standing, “the one in civilian clothes” remained seated, he didn't want to stand up.
V. Ovsiienko: And he exposed himself.
Y. Sverstiuk: I then demonstratively declared that this text was an appeal to UNESCO to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Poet. The text was signed by three honorary members of the PEN Club—myself, Svitlychny, and Chornovil. (I told them, of course, after the fact. In general, that’s a separate story—meetings with Svitlychny: he still had a memory that flickered, but it no longer connected ideas conceptually). I then declared that this would also go to the International PEN Club, meaning it would be sent abroad. Well, that was zek-like audacity—when a zek sees that everything is going unpunished: there’s no SHIZO, no effective convoy, and no fearsome wardens.
They begin to expose us in the newspapers. Then an article by Shvets appears, the one who now publishes “Fakty.” In it, I think, he overestimates “Who is behind the scenes of the UKK.” I wasn't behind the scenes, nor was I pushing to the front—I simply participated, and participated firmly, in every action. And where a report needed to be made, of course, I prepared a report—whether about Shevchenko, or Stus, or Drahomanov. He wanted to show that Sverstiuk is afraid and hiding. I gave a response to this, which went into samizdat. Slavko Chornovil in Lviv had already started publishing the “Ukrainian Herald” again, and thus one could already speak of “glasnost by de facto means.”
Of course, one couldn’t even dream of being published then. But it was enough that they already had instructions to act through criticism—that was also good. Shvets was not the only one to speak out. Another—regarding the Shevchenko evening—was Serhiy Toma (Kichigin), who also criticized me. He criticized more softly, more liberally. Shvets criticized like a puppy on a leash, while this one criticized me like a big dog lying on a haystack. He says: “I just don’t understand what compels Sverstiuk to make a Christian out of Shevchenko?” There are such reflections there, as well as other similar ones.
So, that was already much more liberal. I wouldn’t say that everything was so clear-cut. I must say that it was a struggle, and a sharp struggle at that. And it was unknown what was behind it, what instructions. The answer to Shvets—it wasn't a completely frank conversation, that is, I wasn’t laying my cards on the table, challenging the party and the government, but I was speaking from a moral position. That, in fact, was the language of the time.
“TIME TO GET PUBLISHED!”
And in the meantime—in 1988—they suggested that I get published. Some Major Oliynyk came running to me: “It's time to get published!” I say: “What, are you tired of my restraint?”
V. Ovsiienko: The KGB is already pushing you to get published!
Y. Sverstiuk: “Tired of it. Well, maybe you have something?” I say: “I submitted my article ‘Cathedral Under Scaffolding’ to the journal ‘Vitchyzna.’” — “Well, ‘Cathedral Under Scaffolding’—what do you know! And what did they tell you?” I don’t remember the conversation exactly, but I really did submit “Cathedral Under Scaffolding” in 1988 to “Vitchyzna.” There’s a KGB woman there, Cherchenko, and she replied to me in roughly the same style as they replied to me in the sixties. Then I wrote a letter addressed to Volodymyr Yavorivsky. In this letter, I wrote something like this: “I received a response from the editorial office signed by Cherchenko, but that combination of sounds is absolutely not a signature for me. I want to know what the editor thinks, or what you, as the deputy editor, think about the materials I sent.” No reply, none! Only somewhere in the mid-90s, when Yavorivsky and I were speaking together, he said: “Well, Yevhen Sverstiuk should have been given the Shevchenko Prize for ‘Cathedral Under Scaffolding’ back then.” So, he did read that “Cathedral Under Scaffolding”—and he read it with trembling ears! But with joy.
V. Ovsiienko: In eighty-eight...
Y. Sverstiuk: Yes, but let’s not forget that in the Ukrainian cosmos, nothing had changed. But the overall situation was changing. I went to the “Vitchyzna” journal to get my article back. I approached the editor. Before me stood a gray, brand-new suit, and a quite decent one at that. He said that he hadn’t been there and hadn’t had time to familiarize himself with it. I say: “You were here and you did have time—one could have found the time, because it’s been more than half a year. I don’t think you get sent a ‘Cathedral Under Scaffolding’ every day. But I have no more questions for you—I want to take my manuscript.” — “Please,” he says, “take it.” But Cherchenko says she doesn’t know, that it’s not there somewhere. “It is, it is,” I say, “you know where it is. I’ll wait.” She says: “Well, here’s one half, but the other half is missing.” — “The other half is there too—look for it. I won’t have time to come to you again.” She found it: “Here it is, it is.” — “Very good, thank you. Goodbye.”
That was my encounter with that editorial office. But, to my great sorrow, Levko Lukianenko organized some sort of regular shindig before his departure to Canada, and he invited me. Well, I go to Levko’s. I look—and there is the entire editorial staff of the journal “Vitchyzna”!
V. Ovsiienko: He went to Western Europe in July 1989. And he became ambassador to Canada in May 1992...
Y. Sverstiuk: And how they rushed to kiss me, I still remember it!
V. Ovsiienko: That must have been at the Kontraktovyi Dim. There's a little dive bar there, and I was there. The feast amazed me—I, a zek just yesterday, had never seen such a feast and couldn't imagine that a living person could eat so much in one evening!
Y. Sverstiuk: I don't know what always draws Levko to such people.
V. Ovsiienko: In 1991, there was a presentation of his book “Confession in a Death Row Cell” there.
Y. Sverstiuk: And why were they there? Well, let it be a presentation...
V. Ovsiienko: The book was published by the editorial board of the journal “Vitchyzna” and the newspaper “Dilova Ukraina.” They probably organized such a presentation at their own expense—because where would Levko get the money for such a feast?
Y. Sverstiuk: No, it was very easy to organize that back then. Don’t forget that for 5 dollars back then you could buy a lot of dinners in a restaurant.
V. Ovsiienko: Still, that wasn't Levko's money—no, no, they were paying. I heard something like that at the time.
Y. Sverstiuk: Petro Perebyinis published me in the journal “Kyiv.” I gave him “The White Sailboat”—of course, after a conversation with the KGB agent. He asked, “Where?” And I said: “You choose—you’re in charge of the journals.” — “Well, what are you talking about—you can choose yourself. For instance, the journal—either ‘Kyiv’ or ‘Vitchyzna’.” I said: “I’ve had enough of ‘Vitchyzna’—how about ‘Kyiv’?” — “Well, let’s go with ‘Kyiv’.” And so I brought them the poem about Lieutenant Schmidt. They studied this piece at the KGB, and then, after about a week of deliberation, they gave their consent, and the editor published it immediately.
What particularly struck me—when I was in Washington in 1989 and was speaking to a wider audience. Mykola Rudenko—he was already living there with Raya at the time—came up to me and said: “You do want to return, Yevhen Oleksandrovych?” — “Well, of course, I will be returning.” — “But they are recording this here too. After this, can you return?” In short, what I was saying were unheard-of things—at that time, he perceived it as a man who understands the weight, so to speak, on the scales of the Criminal Code.
But after that I returned, having published “The Reconstruction of the Tower of Babel” in America under the title “A Chornobyl Parable.”
V. Ovsiienko: In which publication? Or separately?
Y. Sverstiuk: It came out as a separate book. It sold out in an instant. They published a second edition. I think the second edition came out in 1990. They brought me the second edition here—on nice paper, softcover. At that time it was a widely read piece, because even after the second edition, you couldn’t get a copy. I gathered my courage and gave it to the journal “Kyiv.” By then, you could submit it not just as a manuscript, but as a book published in America. Just yesterday that would have been a “malicious stunt”! But today, the journal “Kyiv” reprinted “The Reconstruction of the Tower of Babel” in two installments without any changes! And under its original title. That title was an irony on perestroika, and, I would say, the most bitter irony.
By the way, they “fired” me from my job.
Sometime in the summer or fall of 1988, an invitation came from the American Embassy in Moscow—for a meeting of dissidents. They delivered this invitation to me—by mail. Of course, I didn’t hesitate about whether to go or not. It fell on a Saturday. So, after work, I immediately got on a train... Ah, some prosecutor came in his full uniform, left only me and the workshop supervisor in the room, and started advising me not to go there. I say: “Did you come to forbid me?” — “No, no, I’m not forbidding.” — “Then I don’t understand—if you’re advising, what, couldn’t a simpler man than a prosecutor be found? Or are you not aware that when prosecutors advise me, I have always done the opposite?” He fidgeted, and that was the end of the visit.
We went... There was a meeting... Actually, not we: I think I traveled from Kyiv alone.
V. Ovsiienko: And who else was there from Ukraine?
Y. Sverstiuk: Maybe Vasyl Sichko? I don't remember anymore.
V. Ovsiienko: Wasn't Chornovil there?
Y. Sverstiuk: It was all like in a fog. Strange. What a pity that I didn't write it all down then. What a pity—but what can you do: your whole life you were taught to destroy your tracks. And this would need to be clarified somehow, who else was there from Ukraine then. Obviously, there were others—it can't be that I was alone!
V. Ovsiienko: Wait, and who received you there?
Y. Sverstiuk: It was a reception. A few words of welcome were said by the embassy staff, and then a modest reception with glasses of wine and some very simple snacks—their receptions are never Ukrainian-style, just wine and maybe some cheese and pistachios. I saw Nijolė Sadūnaitė, Merab Kostava, whom I met, and I think I saw Sergei Kovalyov. I saw him often in connection with other meetings and other occasions. So, it's hard for me to recall.
After that, I returned to Kyiv. The workshop supervisor summons me and says there was a gross violation of discipline.
V. Ovsiienko: But how—you weren’t traveling during work hours, were you? On Saturday, on Sunday?
Y. Sverstiuk: Yes, but on Monday I was either half a day late, or I didn't come in until Tuesday. I must have taken a train that arrives later, not in the morning. That’s most likely it. And if you get on at midnight, when will you arrive in Kyiv? In short, they suggested I submit a letter of resignation “at my own request”—otherwise they would fire me for absenteeism—“for gross absenteeism”! And meanwhile, the time for my retirement was approaching...
V. Ovsiienko: Yes, that was October, and you were supposed to turn sixty in December.
Y. Sverstiuk: But they couldn’t wait! They wanted me to leave earlier. I was living such a meager life that I was afraid to retire, because the pension would be even poorer than the salary. And I still wanted to work. Can you imagine the extent to which a person was enserfed? I still wanted to go to the workshop to work! And yet they set a date for me, a conciliatory, acceptable one, for my retirement—early. And what kind of early retirement was it? A month plus or minus—it doesn't matter for the pension. They assured me it wouldn't matter. And that they would settle up honestly. The workshop supervisor didn't want to get a reprimand for my “absenteeism.”
Thus, I was, you could say, fired for the last time. And the workers gave me a nice farewell—some gifts, speeches... I still have some kind of emblem beaten on a copper plate for my sixtieth birthday. I didn’t pay much attention to it at the time, but then they explained to me: “Do you think anyone else here was seen off to retirement like this? Who would do such things, chipping in together?” In short, it was a moving farewell from the “hegemons.” They called me “the professor” there. That was generally accepted. They knew little about me—they knew I had been imprisoned under a political article. Then they started reading exposés in the “Vechirniy Kyiv” newspaper—I was still at work. And then they started to guess more and more. But by then, no one was afraid anymore.
V. Ovsiienko: And when did you go to Munich as a carpenter and return as a doctor of philosophy?
Y. Sverstiuk: First of all, it must be said that I went to Munich when the wall was still standing. I still went through that checkpoint in Berlin where they stamped passports.
V. Ovsiienko: The wall fell, I believe, in November 1989.
Y. Sverstiuk: Something like that. And I went after our first consultations about the trip to Vasyl Stus's grave. The first rejections came, and I remember, judging by that second rejection, I said: “They gave me a visa, and I have the opportunity to go abroad now.” That was a miracle for everyone, one of the first breakouts abroad. Only Berdnyk had traveled before that.
V. Ovsiienko: Lukianenko was in Western Europe around July-August 1989.
Y. Sverstiuk: So, Lukianenko had already traveled too. In any case, I was then talking with Yevhen Proniuk and, I think, with Zinoviy Antonyuk—we were consulting about transporting the remains of Vasyl Stus. The question of the others hadn't come up yet, but we were already discussing that if we were to go, if we were to transport them, it should be all three. But the question still stood: and if we bring them back, where can the church service—the funeral service—be held?
V. Ovsiienko: What priest would dare?
Y. Sverstiuk: Yes. Everything was still so unclear, but one thing was clear to me—that I could still go abroad three more times before their “epidemic situation” ended. This wouldn’t be resolved so simply and quickly—maybe in the winter. I never expected it to break so suddenly.
V. Ovsiienko: We went for the first time at the end of the summer, I remember, we were in the zone on August 31. And on September 1, we were filming at the cemetery, and we returned around September 3-4.
Y. Sverstiuk: But were you still far from getting the keys then?
V. Ovsiienko: I found the keys to the cells right then, on August 31. And on September 9, I spoke at the Rukh congress. It was the second day of the congress, Mykhailo Horyn was presiding, I went up to him with these keys and said: “Mr. Mykhailo, I need to speak somehow with these keys.” And Mr. Mykhailo gave me that opportunity. And the second trip was already on November 15-17—so you weren't in Kyiv then? You weren't there for the funeral on November 19.
Y. Sverstiuk: I was already gone. And what’s more, I knew about it—I knew the funeral was happening, I even have a poem written on a plane as I was flying over the Alps. I heard the funeral taking place.
V. Ovsiienko: I gave very detailed information then—I remember dictating my text about the trip to Dotsenko over the phone in Moscow. Radio Liberty broadcast that text of mine right away, a very fresh text.
Y. Sverstiuk: I remember being under such a strong impression from this. I had just had an audience with Pope John Paul II. Then they immediately arranged a flight to Toronto after returning from Rome. Munich, Rome, and from Rome back to Munich, then Düsseldorf and Toronto. And I “was at that funeral the whole time”... I was supposed to speak in Toronto at some very important gathering, timed for my arrival. True, there was another event there, some kind of tribute to a judge. I remember who I saw there—I think I saw Valentyn Moroz. He says: “See how they honor you!” And they had already stopped honoring him. There was no special honoring there. My head was ringing like a bell after the time change. I read a report there about the attempt to break the system and about the adaptation of Stus into Soviet structures—about enrolling him in the Writers' Union... I have the text of that report somewhere.
V. Ovsiienko: Was the piece about Tovkotsky written around then?
Y. Sverstiuk: And then I was in the United States, and at Nadiika Svitlychna’s place I saw an issue of “Literaturna Ukraina” (it must have been “Literaturna Ukraina,” because it’s unlikely she received other newspapers). There was an article by Mykola Zhulynsky, written in a judicious style—well, that's how the life of a man with a difficult character turned out, a difficult fate befell him, he himself was to blame, the circumstances of life were to blame... That kind of article about Stus. I didn't sleep that night and wrote a brutal piece about Tovkotsky and the Great Bird. I read it to Nadiika—Nadiika approved. I read it to Shevelov—Shevelov remained silent. Obviously, the tone shocked him a little. I read it to Koshelivets over the phone—my God, how Emma tormented him for calling me all the way in America and talking for a whole hour. How much that must have cost! But Ivan Koshelivets approved of everything. Koshelivets and I developed the closest of relationships. He said it was a pleasure for him to listen to that work.
V. Ovsiienko: I remember that it was then published in the newspaper “Holos vidrodzhennia”—that was the UGS newspaper.
Y. Sverstiuk: And “Holos vidrodzhennia”? But there was also the Prosvita newspaper “Slovo.” I didn't know Zhulynsky then.
V. Ovsiienko: What? You didn't know him at all?
Y. Sverstiuk: I didn’t know him as a person. There’s a name—and that’s enough for me. Well, and then it turned out to be a terrible insult. I think, maybe it really was a freshly baked, very hot pancake. But, probably, that was the only way it should have been. And I don’t repent, although it’s clear that he will never be able to forgive it.
V. Ovsiienko: Well, but he endures it.
Y. Sverstiuk: But he endures it, because he felt that there is truth in it.
V. Ovsiienko: And yet, that 1990 article was published in his book—that white book, “From Oblivion to Immortality”...
Y. Sverstiuk: Maybe he changed it a little? They told me that my pamphlet is a very harsh piece. Maybe so, maybe so, but I’ve written even worse things. It's a zek-style public condemnation. Zek-style. Later, I wrote another article against the KGB agents—a mocking one. I called Mykhailyna to ask if she would agree to sign it with me. She agreed, and then another polemical article in defense of Stus came out under Mykhailyna’s name and mine. But it’s more specific. I think Mykhailyna would not have agreed to sign “The Great Bird.”
V. Ovsiienko: That must have been when the retort appeared in the communist newspaper, that “Kotsiubynska and Sverstiuk are clawing their way to power”?
Y. Sverstiuk: Apparently, it stung them a bit. And by the way, I felt their sharpest gaze on me when there was some rally, maybe at the Central Stadium. We were on the attack then, rushing to the microphone one after another. It was hard to grab the microphone then, but they didn't even come close. They came at me from over there in a “flying wedge” and were rattling on about something. And I formulated it for them, how they rush forward in a “flying wedge”—that is their form of mass activity. There were direct confrontations then. Once I even met my prosecutor, Pohorilyi, on a trolleybus. He looked at me with the eyes of a wolf that has no teeth. I looked at him and turned my back. He is one of the vilest people I have ever seen. I challenged him in court with some humiliating formulation—as a person who shows no signs of qualification.
V. Ovsiienko: Your challenge was rejected as unfounded, and that was that?
Y. Sverstiuk: Most likely, yes... Yes, well, what else is there to tell?
V. Ovsiienko: And why don't you join any political parties?
Y. Sverstiuk: You know, from the very beginning I was interested in the mass movement—what was called “Rukh.” I felt that some different intonations needed to be brought in there, that all these incantations were being repeated. Already at the first congress, there was too much that was stalling, too many spinning wheels. So for me, it was important then to present my point of view about returning to some deeper sources, to the fundamentals. By the way, Oleksander Suhonako is now reading my speech from the first Rukh congress and is surprised that these problems existed from the very beginning—in fact, the very problems we are approaching even now.
You know, they never invited me to a party. I remember Horyn once told me: “You don’t need it anyway.” And that was self-evident. It doesn’t mean I would have gone if they had invited me. But from the very beginning, I think, it’s contraindicated for me. As Oleksiy Bratko used to say: “You were born for eternal opposition.” He was talking about himself, about a deep apoliticism, although he was closer to the party, because he was more in that vein... “The Phenomenon of Ukraine” is a political book.
V. Ovsiienko: Yes, formally he was in the URP. He published his very wise pieces in the newspaper “Samostiina Ukraina”—a whole cycle of his articles was published. But I asked about parties as a joke—it’s clear they are not for you.
Y. Sverstiuk: In parties, people fight for power, as a rule. There are few people there who are not interested in power, who have illusions. For example, my kinsman Petro Rozumnyi—he’s always in parties, but he doesn’t even think about power.
V. Ovsiienko: It was met with great laughter when they quoted from the newspaper “Komunist” that Kotsiubynska and Sverstiuk are clawing their way to power—the hall erupted in laughter.
CATASTROPHE
Y. Sverstiuk: Perhaps the hardest thing that happened to me at the end of the 80s was the crippling of my son Andriy and the death of my granddaughter Hannusia. It seems to me that it was then I began to feel myself going gray.
V. Ovsiienko: I heard about this very vaguely—can you tell me about it?
Y. Sverstiuk: My son fell from a cliff and broke his spine. He never left the hospital. It was the same hospital where he had worked as a doctor.
V. Ovsiienko: When did this happen and how old was he then?
Y. Sverstiuk: He was born in 1958, and this happened in 1988. And what finished us off was that it turned out his daughter Hania—here is her photograph—fell ill. Suddenly her eyes started to cross, and while they were taking her to all sorts of doctors, trying to find the right glasses, they came across a real doctor who diagnosed a brain tumor.
V. Ovsiienko: So she was born right under...
Y. Sverstiuk: She was born on May 2, after Chornobyl, right at the time of the radiation.
V. Ovsiienko: And how long did she live?
Y. Sverstiuk: She lived for almost 4 years. With the help of Sakharov, I managed, even when she was completely hopeless.... I didn’t ask myself, this was done for me “in absentia.” At that time, they didn’t let people go abroad for treatment. When Maria left with the child, the child was limp like a belt on her shoulder. Nadiika Svitlychna launched a campaign there. I can’t even tell you the details, but senators were also involved. They performed an operation. We had the idea that an operation meant a rescue, but for them, it was a sober assessment of the situation: it could only be a suspension. Then they started to suppress it with chemical methods, the child’s face was swollen. She held on for another two years, but she was no longer the same child.
You know, it seems no one loved me as much as Hania did. She was a remarkably bright, mature child. I don’t know if she recognized me when we met in America. Probably not. She probably no longer had those subtleties of recognition—everything was swollen, so the brain was too, of course. In the hospital, they called her “Fighter.” When they tortured her with injections and other things, she would throw whatever came to hand. They were delighted with such a child—so small and so strong. But that meeting with her there, abroad—that was already a farewell. She died in ninety-two.
V. Ovsiienko: And where does Andriy live now—in America?
Y. Sverstiuk: Andriy... So, before they were to operate on her, the doctors warned that it was a very responsible matter, and the parents' consent was needed. They gave permission to summon the father. Andriy is lying in bed and categorically refuses to go out into the corridor in a wheelchair. But here he agrees, and it was an amazing thing, simply on the level of Providence. I come to Andriy and say: “You know, Andriy, I received an invitation for you to go to America.” Andriy says: “Well, you can put it in your album for your collection. And for when?” — “You have to fly out in about four days.” He doesn't have a passport. But with such an invitation, they issued a passport quickly—I don't know how to do these things, but at that time there were no queues and they didn't create obstacles.
I go to the airport, because I still have to go to Moscow for a visa, and at the airport, the queue is huge. I say: “You know, I have a ticket to America—and I need to get to Moscow.” — “Well, everyone needs to get to Moscow, you’re not the only one.” And then something happened, someone started looking for me: “You have a ticket to America? They’re calling you to the ticket counter.” Unheard of. I get on the plane, fly to Moscow, and call Sergei Kovalyov. He says: “I’ll be waiting for you at the embassy.” A taxi driver charged me some fantastic sum—and what kind of money did I have at that time? I come to my senses and decide to take a taxi anyway, not a bus, and I still don’t make it in time. Sergei holds them up—because it’s a Friday—he holds up the embassy staff so they can issue me a visa after the end of the working day.
I get the visa, call Andriy: “I’ll be waiting for you by train tomorrow morning.” Andriy arrives by train, we take him by taxi, carry him, he gets on the plane, and alone, without an escort, he flies to America. Only his mother, Sergei, and I see him off from the airport. In America, he finds himself in this situation... True, a lot of people rushed to help then... Everything was beyond human strength... A catastrophe with the child, a catastrophe with her father at the same time.
V. Ovsiienko: A catastrophe with Ukraine, the Chornobyl catastrophe.
Y. Sverstiuk: No, no, it wasn't simultaneous.
V. Ovsiienko: But it was a consequence...
Y. Sverstiuk: Andriy stays there, takes his exams, that is, he retakes the entire medical school curriculum. He gets into a residency (for advanced training), and then takes more exams, which seemed incredibly difficult to him. But he’s a great test-taker. He has a fine intellectual instrument. He knows chemistry, biology. He has a good education, good preparation.
V. Ovsiienko: So is he in a wheelchair, or can he walk somehow?
Y. Sverstiuk: No, he doesn't walk. He uses a wheelchair to get to his car, opens the car automatically, and drives to work. Maria lives separately—evidently, one has to be, so to speak, a violinist performing some pathetic sonata, and not just a woman living among young people. He won’t say a word about it.
“NASHA VIRA” (OUR FAITH)
Y. Sverstiuk: You know, one ought to keep a diary. I sometimes jot down fragmentary notes about this virtual life that goes on around us. In fact, my biography is in what I publish, in what I produce. In fact, I have no life other than work. This could be chronologically ordered by my publications in the press or by my lectures in auditoriums, but beyond that, I see practically nothing.
V. Ovsiienko: Since when have you been publishing the newspaper “Nasha Vira”? At the beginning, it was called: “Pravoslavia—Nasha Vira” (Orthodoxy—Our Faith).
Y. Sverstiuk: “Nasha Vira—Pravoslavia.” Since 1989. It has already been 10 years.
V. Ovsiienko: Not many newspapers have survived.
Y. Sverstiuk: Not many newspapers have survived, that's true. And you know, thank God. One can talk about difficult and unpleasant things, but one must also talk about pleasant things. We have never begged and have rarely used the help of sponsors. There is a subscription base, there are quite a few connoisseurs—mostly abroad, because the 40 kopecks we sell it for here is only a fraction of the cost, and no one here would stay on the editorial staff for free.
I would say that this is also a very heavy cross, it has always been very difficult with people. A few pleasant people with whom I have worked—and what unpleasant people I have had to meet in the editorial office of our newspaper!
This newspaper also saves me, as it is a form of regular work and to some extent justifies my status, so to speak. I enjoy being the editor of the newspaper—honorary, unpaid, it makes me more independent. It is very difficult for someone to trip me up and “deprive me of privileges”—they have tried to do that. It is a truly independent newspaper. We don't get involved in any very sharp political matters, because they don't suit a newspaper like “Nasha Vira.” At the same time, we have to stay on the cutting edge of the times. This somehow constantly mobilizes me. It seems to me that it holds its own quite respectably and it is not getting worse.
Actually, if I had to work with a team—I wouldn't want that. I would prefer to put it in someone else's hands. In fact, without my publications, there is no point in even talking about this newspaper. There are no sharply political articles, we have no photojournalist, no columnist. The newspaper is made by two people—Raya Lysha and me. And each time you set out, it’s like a voyage—there’s no reserve of materials. Then, suddenly, you have to improvise some unexpected move... To frame some anniversary in a new light. Whether it's Olena Pchilka, or Sakharov, or Lukash. Many materials about Shevchenko.
They accused it of being Sverstiuk's newspaper. Others said that's precisely why they buy or subscribe to it, especially abroad. The truth must be told, that I still remain a person who is closer to Ukrainians abroad. In what sense? It's hard to imagine my name going unnoticed somewhere abroad, but it's very easy to imagine that in Kyiv or in Ukraine in general, my existence goes unnoticed. Either it goes unnoticed, or they don't want to notice, and in certain circles, they clearly will not notice. This is explained not only by certain psychological things, not only by a long memory for publications, but is explained in large part by the exclusion that existed in that era. I did not enter the context of their lives, but belonged to those names that fear had pushed out of their imagination, out of their memory. It’s a gray area, filled with a few surnames. If those surnames are of deceased people, they can still be tolerated, but what if those surnames are of active contemporaries? Well, in short, there’s a whole complex here, one thing is superimposed on another.
I think this can be illustrated with an example. Abroad, an audience gathers when they hear that I have arrived and am speaking in Washington or New York... They come up to buy books. It must be admitted, I belong to the authors who are bought. My books don’t just sit on shelves there, even now, although there are fewer and fewer Ukrainian readers there.
So, people are standing there, I'm signing their books. A man comes up, from Lviv, and especially if he’s from Dnipropetrovsk or Kyiv—he has no idea who you are... He is the only one who has no idea! But there, every taxi driver who just drove someone has an idea—not because he's so well-read, but because that name has entered the consciousness: “Listen, I marched with this portrait! I protested in front of the Soviet embassy and demanded!” And for him, that is more important than your books. There were people like that, especially in England. But they do read a little too.
I must say that I entered the life, the deep life of that older generation abroad as a contemporary, and that is my reading public. Those are the citizens for whom I mean something. But in our world, it’s different: for some, there is repulsion, for many, there is ignorance, for many, there are other complex and convoluted feelings. At every step, I meet this Ukrainian guest who has also moored himself to the queue—just to say: “And I’m from the Lviv region. I’ve heard your name before.” That’s all.
But I cannot complain, I get calls every day about my radio programs. I would say that this is the most effective work. But regarding the books—in fact, I live off them. Although no one financed them, they gave a little something to buy out the first thousand. So in a certain respect, I would say that I have a certain security and a life from literature.
V. Ovsiienko: Which is a great rarity in our time.
Y. Sverstiuk: Yes, it is indeed hard to imagine in our time that there could be any profit from books. And, I confess, I never received anything from my applications—I always received rejections regarding the publication of a book. Several foundations turned me down. The “Vidrodzhennia” Foundation never supported me once. I didn't go there myself and didn't ask, but they passed messages to me, and I turned away. Or the Bagriany Foundation, or the Olena Teliha Foundation. The book “Shevchenko and Time” was fortunate. The Paris branch of the Shevchenko Scientific Society published it. And this, undoubtedly, supported me greatly, because the book is sold inexpensively, but it sold out in an instant, for our times. In fact, it was thanks to the good graces of Professor Andriy Zhukovsky.
V. Ovsiienko: And what people nominated you for the Shevchenko Prize? It couldn’t have been that easy?
Y. Sverstiuk: I think in my case it was easy. The Writers' Union proposed it. I know little about it, and there was no direct conversation. They asked me for my consent through Yuriy Khorunzhy. Oles Honchar was very drawn to it when he saw that I had taken the first step. This was still during his time, although he did not present me with the 1995 prize.
V. Ovsiienko: Honchar died the same year as Patriarch Volodymyr. The Patriarch died on July 14, 1995, and Honchar a few days earlier.
Y. Sverstiuk: And the prize was in March 1995.
In general, I have some suspicion and caution, and at the same time, I understand that I cannot refuse, because I will remain a zek or an émigré. If I had refused and not received the prize, there would not have even been any talk of the Shevchenko Museum providing me with a space for the editorial office for several years. So it was a question of whether to fit into the context of this life or to remain a dissident at a distance, a far distance. Of course, there was support from those who wrote reviews of “Prodigal Sons of Ukraine.” I would say there were very good assessments—from Ivan Dziuba and from others. I had many reviews for my last book, “At the Feast of Hopes,” and for “Prodigal Sons...” And Honchar read it too, and also expressed his opinion orally. I wouldn't say we had such openness, but at our meetings, there was genuine respect, a serious attitude toward one another.
I think the Shevchenko Prize should have come a bit earlier—after the book's release.
V. Ovsiienko: Yavorivsky said it should have been back in 1988 (Laughs).
Y. Sverstiuk: In the case of Svitlychny—there I put in my effort, and Honchar himself thanked me. They were in a difficult position. They nominated Ivan Svitlychny and they nominated Nadiika Svitlychna—what were they to do? Then I published an article in “Literaturna Ukraina” about how they did the same work, just in different ways. Ivan Svitlychny was no longer with us, but Nadiika was alive—so the prize should be awarded to both Ivan and Nadiia Svitlychny as one. He was so glad that such a solution was found. And at the same time, there were many who were dissatisfied, I took a lot of flak for it, particularly from Lyolya.
V. Ovsiienko: Well, Leonida Svitlychna rarely has a good word for anyone...
Y. Sverstiuk: But she had her own reasons for it, and I am still glad that, despite all the flak, it turned out that way with the Svitlychnys. That was in 1993, I think—right?
V. Ovsiienko: In 1994. How did it happen with your seventieth birthday that the Ukrainian public, in fact, didn't notice it?
Y. Sverstiuk: Whose?
V. Ovsiienko: Your 70th birthday? Some figures organize lavish jubilees for themselves—at the Franko Theater, the National Opera, and even at the “Ukraina” Palace—Dmytro Pavlychko.
Y. Sverstiuk: Hold on. I can’t say that the Ukrainian public didn’t notice. The public that did notice—it can’t organize things, it simply comes to my evenings, and for them, that is more than the jubilee at the Franko Theater or in the “Ukraina.” And the public that organizes things for itself, well, it’s clear they won’t organize one for me. And they are right—why would they need me? I get in their way.
V. Ovsiienko: That's true. But your evenings have a constant and grateful audience.
Y. Sverstiuk: I think so. Given the current poverty of audiences, this audience is still grateful. Besides, for me, it was a greater joy when they organized my evening at the Museum-Archive, behind the fence of St. Sophia's Cathedral.
V. Ovsiienko: There? I wasn't there.
Y. Sverstiuk: It was sometime before that 70th birthday—at their initiative. I look—no one is there, just acquaintances have gathered, Nina Matviienko is worried: what is this? Then I look—they are coming, and coming, and coming. The place is full. Lyceum students came. They came—and it is a great joy to have such an audience. That was thanks to Alla Tkach, but not only her, of course. This is my permanent audience, all these graduating classes of the National Humanitarian Lyceum. I would say that this is a better audience than the one that comes to the theater. Although a very diverse audience comes to the theater, very diverse—perhaps partly the same. In short, I can say that I have a grateful reader. And that's starting from 1960. I immediately found a reader then—both from below and from above.
V. Ovsiienko: I am one of those readers too, because I read “Cathedral Under Scaffolding,” and “Ivan Kotlyarevsky Laughs,” and “On Mother’s Holiday,” and “The Last Tear.” It passed through my hands and my consciousness.
Y. Sverstiuk: That was already at the end of the sixties.
V. Ovsiienko: From the spring of 1968, I had access to samizdat, starting with Ivan Dziuba. Although, at the end of 1967, I had Symonenko's diary—that was the very first thing.
Y. Sverstiuk: Is that what awakened you?
V. Ovsiienko: In the fall of 1967, I became a student at Kyiv University, and that's when I became involved with samizdat literature.
Y. Sverstiuk: You know, I would like to touch on another topic here. In the 60s, the greatest interest was not in literature that was “against,” and not in that which was “sharp.” The greatest interest was in those works of Soviet classics that were not being published. You could send a hundred pages of Malaniuk, but in parallel, some average poem by Sosiura that wasn't being published would prevail. Or unpublished Tychyna—that makes a bigger impression, because he is already known and it’s a great surprise to discover that he, too, is not being published. I remember how the prologue to Sosiura’s poem “Mazepa” sounded then, how Dovzhenko’s diaries sounded. That is, the one who entered our world, who was experienced by us and to some extent understood—and it turns out that he, too, was like us. Because this is not just one of the poems, but that secret, main poem that is not published. That’s how we discovered all of this. And some thought that if they passed on the decision of an OUN assembly, that this literature would awaken people here... It would only awaken those who were in the ranks of the OUN and who were accustomed to this literature, accustomed to associating some prospects with it. But for the literary and broad cultural circle, the most important thing was still literature banned in the UkrSSR, so familiar and unexpected, which corresponded to our rumors—that Rylsky was arrested, that Sosiura was persecuted and hounded, and so on. Yuriy Lavrinenko’s “The Executed Renaissance”—that was a clarion call! But not widely circulated. I think that this draconian Soviet system awakened this spark in the literary environment, this interest in literature, in text and subtext, in the omitted line, in political problems—to a greater extent than anecdotes. Well, anecdotes were a general dessert. But here was such a trembling and dangerous string! And then to a large extent—the classics, who were also not published. If they had given us all of Samiylenko as they gave us almost all of Shevchenko, it would not have yielded a result. But when they showed us poems that slipped past the censor, banned works by Franko, we began to read precisely those things that are not included in selected works, that are not part of the curriculum.
People began to gravitate towards names that were not allowed. I would say that this censorship also played a stimulating role. I remember how in the 60s I argued with Ivan Dziuba: “Let them rather ban Ukrainian literature. Let them just ban it—that would be better.” — “Well, that would be fatal. Under the current regime, if they banned it, it wouldn’t be like under the tsarist regime. It would just remain banned.”
Of course, all these are thought experiments, because in practice it was impossible for them to ban it. There had to be a game. The Bolsheviks never managed without a game. There had to be half-truth, half-love-half-hatred, and so on.
V. Ovsiienko: We should be wrapping up, because it's almost midnight... Today is still January 9th...
Y. Sverstiuk: The third day of Christmas.
V. Ovsiienko: Of the year two thousand. You see, we still can't get used to saying it... On that note, I sincerely thank you. I've taken up so much of your time. But if it's recorded—it won't be lost.
Y. Sverstiuk: Well, maybe something will come of this.
V. Ovsiienko: God willing!
INSTEAD OF AN EPILOGUE (The Year 2005)
V. Ovsiienko: How do you see your life? Compared to the martyrologies I have recorded from the mouths of participants in the national resistance, yours, one might say, is an exceptional page. But it's hard to imagine in that story any clearings for a joyful life or even for quiet work. After all, you are now approaching 80, and they organized a pogrom in the editorial office of your newspaper “Nasha Vira,” one perhaps worse than what the Bolsheviks did, and on top of that, they were dressed in cassocks. This is a Mephistophelian trick... It's impossible to imagine this happening to anyone else...
Y. Sverstiuk: You know, when my head is tired, thoughts sometimes come to mind: “Enough... There will be no more searching for an apartment... Searching for a job... Anxious dreams before September 1st, when I so wanted to be with the children in school... Being fired from a job ‘at my own request’... Applications and explanations... There will be no more trials and justifications, no fear of being five minutes late, no searches, no transports to an unknown place of exile, no regular applications to the prosecutor's office, no spies, no denunciations, and no constant feeling of an evil force that follows you and sets traps. That's it: your world hunted me, but it did not catch me! But man has a penchant for the game. In fact, I mostly suffered defeats, especially when, during a search, they confiscated a diploma that would ‘no longer be of any use’ to you, and in camp No. 36, they handed you a diploma for the right to service steam boilers, but did not entrust you with this privileged work, because it was impossible to ensure constant supervision.”
V. Ovsiienko: Vasyl Stus called this the path of losses.
Y. Sverstiuk: And, on the other hand, Providence was constantly preparing an upward path for me. In the early 60s, I realized that an anonymous blow had saved me from the fate of a provincial teacher, eternally under suspicion. In the mid-60s, I realized that the ban on publishing had placed me above those whose books were being published. In the 70s, I realized that we, prisoners of conscience, were moving onto the field of international play, where Ukraine's place had hitherto been empty. And in the letters of the head of the Slavic department at the University of Toronto, Professor George Luckyj, I felt that one of my letters from Siberia weighed more for him than a visit from an official delegation from Kyiv. He even published my essays in his English translation from Ukrainian at Harvard, which meant a lot not only for a carpenter from Bagdarin. Of course, I didn't even know about this. At the end of the 80s, I felt that a long-unplowed field of spiritual culture was opening up before me, and on this field, there was essentially no one to work... It turned out that a normal education, even an excellent one, does not provide the knowledge and something else needed for work in this main field. I have been publishing the newspaper “Nasha Vira” for 16 years and am happy that many people all over the world read it from cover to cover—simply because it provides nourishment.
You will tell me with a smile that the members of the Writers' Union, mostly older ones, have not read this “Nasha Vira” or have heard of it and think that the editor has fallen into “clericalism and priest-craft” in his old age. One shouldn't be offended: after all, they consider Marx and Lenin to be great philosophers, and religion—a traditional supplement to daily life.
V. Ovsiienko: And yet, they all ritually cross themselves now. Maybe their descendants will cross themselves sincerely. And slowly, slowly our people will grope with their calloused feet for the lost road. That one: “the plowed black road seethes. There is no sign of the ancient path.”
Y. Sverstiuk: So, I have stopped on such a high road that I feel sharply: someone younger and taller is needed here. But if at least something has sprouted from what was sown, then that is very important, because that is the main field, where the face of the Ukrainian people will light up and from which its revival can begin.
V. Ovsiienko: And one more thing—about the open letter from Vasyl Stus, written after his trial, on September 22, 1972. There is an explanation from Stus himself. There is a tendency to savor it. And yet—what is it? Because who else to ask such a question?
Y. Sverstiuk: Vasyl Stus could not explain everything that lay behind that odious “letter,” which was one of the moments of his unequal struggle during the investigation.
In no criminal case of the 70s will you find such emotional outbursts and frank “confessions” (not recorded in the protocol) as in Stus’s. It is quite natural to expect desperate attempts at self-defense....
After his conviction, Vasyl had a meeting with his father. We do not know what the old, grief-stricken laborer said to his son. But he brought on his stooped shoulders his son's entire biography. And that biography was loyal, from Donetsk, Soviet. Its episodes could be started with the words, “I, like everyone else...”
Episodes of opposition are recorded only in 1965. And it was clear to the seasoned KGB agents that all this was under the influence of his Kyiv circle... Obviously, this was played up during the investigation. And there were reminders: you are just over 30, your biography started well, and your parents and family have a right to expect...
All of this was the plain truth, if you take personal truth...
V. Ovsiienko: Many of us have experienced these torments of the soul, about which “our beloved” Karl Marx once said something like this: “No one causes more suffering to his loved ones than he who has set out to make all of humanity happy.”
Y. Sverstiuk: And now let's approach the situation from the side of a creative personality who has not yet realized himself, and he is being offered dark corridors and a state-owned house...
During interrogations, the poet is offered someone else's game, on someone else's field. They drive him onto a slippery patch, hang crude accusations on him, and offer him to defend himself in a crude way, which is within their rules. They humiliate the poet, hint that he is not and never will be a member of the Writers’ Union. But the poet in his cell is again a poet, and an actor, and a director, who does not accept the game on a foreign field, does not accept the role imposed on him, according to which they are on the side of truth and law, and he is “hiding his activities, his true face, his essence...”
They professionally “tear off the mask of a nationalist,” just as in the same offices just the day before yesterday they tore off the mask of an “enemy of the people” from everyone who ended up there. And everyone who ended up there understands that this is a one-sided game, that he will suffer a defeat—a devastating and final one. And that the only chance they offer is self-exposure and “disarmament.” In these black offices, people racked their brains: what should they give up? What weapon? There are no secrets, conspiracies, or clandestine activities, but something must be thrown to the wolves... To the Deceiver. On the other side of the table, he sat and prompted what crimes to confess to and “sincerely repent” of.
Before Vasyl Stus in 1972 sat the Deceiver, called upon not to break spines anymore, but only to bend them and release them bent. However, the poet himself in his cell reasoned that in a game with the Deceiver, one can permit oneself some deception and seem to accept the rules of the game and shove an “open letter” into his teeth, renouncing the “nationalist platform” that was attributed to him. At the same time, without bending too much, he repented for the sharp expression “a den of bandits-KGBists, thieves, and rapists sat in the capital city as the Bolshevik party.” This was not enough for repentance, and the “open letter” was not put into play.
Today, naive commentators write about the violation of “one's own ethical norms” and about “terrible retreats,” but in reality, it was an attempt to adopt their language in order to be heard and to avoid the “road to nowhere.”
If we talk about the officialdom, this was a language familiar to it, and with “morality” everything was normal here. If we talk about the reader to whom this humiliating letter is addressed, he could have perceived it judiciously as the only possible form of self-defense for a poet who is being persecuted for nothing and hounded for years.
So, I perceive this letter as an emotional, but clumsy and unaesthetic move to free himself from the serpent's embrace. I emphasize—a natural move, over which one should not pause ponderously, with foolish comments and pathetic exclamations.
Why was the letter not accepted?
1) There were no bent-knee commitments here.
2) The “letter” did not correspond to Stus’s characterization during the investigation. After all, such “letters” summarize, they don't just resonate. It was clear that once free, Vasyl would go to the families of his friends, write letters to friends in the camps, and continue to defend them. He would spoil the game.
3) There was no investigator Kolchyk, motivated from above to “push through” Stus's release.
4) Vasyl Stus was not a problem for them. They had no idea who he was or of what stature.
So, quicker—and off to the transport...
In my case—there was a greater outcry in the world and a reason to “extract a statement.” But—I was an outsider. From a “Bandera family” (“No matter how much you feed the wolf...”). “Ideologically alien to us,” “prays to his own god.” So, there is no point in encouraging such a person either to repent or to cooperate.
Why do I understand Vasyl's letter? We all wanted to break free. There is an unwritten right to defend a God-given talent... None of us were against admitting some right on their part: I did not deny that I was going against the current for years... And they are the authorities!
I did not pretend to have sympathies for communism, but I demanded the right to live without breaking the laws. But for them, the non-acceptance of communism is a crime. After that, it made no sense for me to play at ideological loyalty. True, I was still writing “cassations” during my transport, but they boiled down to exposing the falsifications in the verdict. That was also a humiliating text. We became proud anti-communists only in the camps. There, the “cases” were already closed—a new act of the drama began. It was there that Vasyl wrote his commentary on this “open letter,” without reproaching himself: it was a self-defense tactic.
Why am I against the publication of this letter? It has already been published by those who, at the end of the 80s, were trying to show that Stus was almost as Soviet as they were—a “son of the Motherland.” And it was not their fault “that it happened so.” But when the son of Vasyl Stus reprints this 20 years after his father's death, it is already the use of an enemy publication, akin to savoring a father's tragedy, organized by the executioners to humiliate a proud poet. Everything has its nuances, and the whole matter is in the nuances. Especially when this book is good, written with a feel for the word. (Stus, Dmytro. Vasyl Stus: A Life as a Work of Art. – K.: Fakt, 2004. – 368 pp.).
Why am I against reprinting Stus’s “repentance”?
In general, I am against airing other people’s dirty laundry. And this is exactly that—dirty laundry, not a formal suit.
There are things we thought but never did.
There are rough drafts of intentions.
There are things that do not have the meaning an indifferent reader, for whom “everything is clear” anyway, might read into them.
All of this can be stored in an archive for researchers. But to display it as a special treat for the profane public is dishonest and improper.
Finally, a person has the right to choose, plan, and construct their destiny and to allow for a certain level of compromise with circumstances.
Both the hero and the saint—each has their own past, as Nietzsche says, one that is “human, all too human.”
You can put yourself on trial if you are Rousseau. But to put another, to put your neighbor, on trial before the mob—this is precisely the case about which it was said: “Judge not, that you be not judged.”
In a word, Vasyl Stus deserves more respect.
The current of life has a tendency to spread out into shallows. Most biographies, even those of knights, are but geographical latitudes along which the wind of time drives a person.
But life itself is defined by the questions you posed where it was customary to be silent. By the steps you took against the current. By the light you lit in the midst of darkness and amidst complaints about the darkness.
And in general, we are not much concerned with the events of the day before yesterday and the people who disappeared in those events, who were swept away by the current. History preserves for seed the example of those who carried a calling and a duty that beat in the rhythm of their hearts.
What questions did you ask of your time?
With what did you stop the mob that flew with the wind?
How did you awaken the sleeping?
How did you contend with the stagnant sea of the indifferent and the lukewarm?
How did you manage to turn a person to God and to the “faith that moves mountains”?
Of course, you cannot start a water mill with stagnant waters. But experience and example are an eternally living force.
V. Ovsiienko: In his work “The Phenomenon and Problems of Great Faith,” Roman Korohodsky contrasted the natures of Sverstiuk and Dziuba and considers the essay “Ivan Dziuba—Talent and Fate” to be subjective.
Y. Sverstiuk: It is not for me to judge the value of my works. Sometimes, one work evokes opposing opinions. Lina Kostenko liked the essay “Uncensored Stus,” but Mykhailyna Kotsiubynska and Roman Korohodsky did not. Perhaps this was due to some connection they had to the author of the book published by Korohodsky, “Canon and Iconostasis” by Marko Pavlyshyn, whose reflections on Vasyl Stus I read very critically. And things like “Tovkotsky and the Great Bird” completely divided readers. I think this is connected to my assessments of what is unacceptable in literature. False judgments about Vasyl Stus, whether due to a misunderstanding of his text or the opportunism of the times, provoke both denial and indignation in me. Other people react calmly to “human errors.”
As for the article about Ivan Dziuba, “Talent and Fate,” it is not so much an essay about the Author as it is a study of the fate of an outstanding talent under the yoke of dictatorship. Since I myself experienced the same oppression, I naturally act as a defender. There are plenty of people to defend talent from in our country. To begin with, a great many people judged Ivan Dziuba after the regime had already condemned him. This is understandable, because he was a standard-bearer. But it cannot be accepted, because not many people have the right to judge him. In my opinion, only people from a narrow circle and with a kindred fate have that right.
I tried to gather all my emotions and grievances into the basket of the past, and what remained was the old, great affection I have always felt for this person, from our very first meeting. Affection and respect. That is why I was always outraged when some X would tell me: “I will yet write everything I think about Dziuba.” I advised some: “Don’t rush, you'll be of more use to us.” I would put others in their place: “You do not have the stature to see Ivan Dziuba.” But they stubbornly wanted and wanted to “expose him for what he is.” And then I thought: it is not right for me to remain silent and watch such streams flow as flow in oral conversations.
So, I took up this topic, a thankless topic in advance, to stop those who were eager. It seemed to me that those who want to write must read it, and this would stop them. We have enough “against”; we need positive thought, honest testimony. At the end of my reflections, I, perhaps frivolously, played on possible accusations that, supposedly, I “wanted to talk about myself,” and I saw that Roman, such a subtle analyst, picked up on this “canard.”
It’s ridiculous. After all, I have things to say about myself under a title that is more encouraging. And I have publishers. And I have many who remind me: it’s time. Mykola Rudenko spoke very wisely to me about this; we always had an understanding and sincere conversations.
But my memoirs resembled a confession, and nowadays that is not interesting. And I don’t have the time: there’s the newspaper publishing and articles for newspapers, then memoirs about friends, then the restoration of defaced portraits of the classics, then literary evenings, then constant invitations due to my inability to refuse. I am catastrophically fragmented, patching up the holes in our disorganized cultural life, which resembles the random hunting of butterflies in a field.
Here, you barely have time to write essays for the radio and obituaries.
In my reflections on Ivan Dziuba’s talent, I was interested in touching upon the alluring theme of THE GREAT GAME. After all, a great figure has a great game in the prime of their life, or a prophetic flash, or an attempt to change the world, or the audacity to cross forbidden zones. After all, life is a game, and thank God when you are not thrown into someone else’s game as a paper soldier, but can choose an honest goal for yourself, the path to which runs along the edge of an abyss. In my lost camp poem, “The Bells,” there is even such an image:
На схилі гори, на краєчку безодні
Позбиралися діти
для чесної гри
під небом Господнім.
Так завжди під Сонцем:
хто входить в життя –
починає сьогодні!
Ivan Dziuba played a talented and courageous game with the dragon, which is why he was a favorite of the youth.
In a word, I was outraged when sparrows, who are completely outside the game, began to flock to him. And the role of the defender—that has been my natural role since childhood. Look at all my publications from that point of view—and you will see this “Chekhovian motif” in them.
Concerned with maintaining a sense of proportion, I, of course, gave the first version to Ivan Dziuba himself and to other cultured readers to try out.
For me, the most important thing is that there is no falsehood or false testimony. As for the subjectivity of judgments—let those whose judgments are objective be the ones to judge that.
By the way, after reading Iryna Zhylenko’s memoirs, I impulsively wanted to dispute some of her thoughts about Vasyl Symonenko and Alla Horska. But I told her about it, and she was not against it, as long as it was on the level of stating facts. And now I no longer have the desire to argue: write your own different vision, provide your own facts. What she writes is her own image.
V. Ovsiienko: Iryna Zhylenko’s memoirs represent a layer of perception of famous personalities that few dare to reach: very personal, emotional. And very insightful, although with a certain distance: she was not an “active participant,” after all.
Y. Sverstiuk: I like to remember those years and figures with a touch of idealization. Nowadays, people might not believe that such a cloudless atmosphere of goodwill existed among the literary fraternity. We rejoiced in each other’s successes, and if there was envy, it was, as they used to say, “good envy.” Obviously, the atmosphere of persecution and “honest poverty” contributed to this. But one must bear in mind that morally incompatible people were not admitted into our circle. And when they wanted to join, they had to reckon with our style of relationships.
I think this explains the proper behavior during interrogations: the adversary encountered an unusual phenomenon: an enemy whom they respected.
I think it would be interesting to make excerpts of the assessments we gave each other in response to the investigators’ questions. After all, this is a genre of both character reference and, above all, self-characterization. The investigation expected compromising material or at least “dissociation.”
V. Ovsiienko: It’s interesting that so many great historical events have occurred since then, yet one’s thoughts return to that time when events were planned from above.
Y. Sverstiuk: Byron has a reflection on this topic: “Seek not the glorious in history: the days of our youth are the days of our glory.” We happened to live in gray times, when history was made by the “collective wisdom of the Party,” and it drove the masses to “labor feats,” exposing those who “hid in the cracks.” Anyone who did not go with the masses and did not hide was already considered an enemy. But the one who dared to stand aside and point a finger at them, to smile, and even to create their own stage on which they played their own role, and on top of that defended the right to be themselves—that person was considered “especially dangerous.” Against such a backdrop, even small steps against the current were political and seemed great. When thousands of people, driven to an “October demonstration,” march along Khreshchatyk with banners—that is not an event. But when one person stands on the sidewalk with a banner reading “Shame on the CPSU!”—that is an event!
So we gather the crumbs where the days of our youth shone—like sparks. Some communist poets cannot find lines in their books that would attest to any position or dignity, so they recall how they were “persecuted,” like in that joke about the nomenklatura being like dumplings in a bowl: they all bathe in butter and are shaken together, but if one falls out, it will never be put back... Meanwhile, one of Vasyl Symonenko’s most innocent poems, “You know that you are a human,” was a word that becomes an event, because it reminds and stops you for a moment: pause and reflect!
We return to the days of our youth... To the place of our first acquaintance... To the meadow of our first meeting... To the school where, after our poetry evening, the principal quietly whispered: “It seems to me that Soviet power is no more”... To the piano where my current wife played a sonata... To the window in the shade of a willow tree, where the editorial office was, which the best people of that time visited... To the monument near which students were caught... To the site of the literary and musical evening from which people emerged with torches... To the chestnut tree near the courthouse, where small bouquets were handed out in case one managed to get in for the announcement of a political prisoner’s verdict... To the place from which we watched the library in flames... To a meeting where things were called by their proper names, frankly and riskily... To the last meeting with a poet who then disappeared from the horizon.
“All that has settled on the heart”—as a song of that time went—creates the image of the 60s, to which you return with your heart. The chosen paths have a special significance when firm, desperate steps echoed on those paths in the wary silence.
V. Ovsiienko: For some reason, such steps are not heard now...
Y. Sverstiuk: Events after the fall of the empire flew over our heads, because the acuteness of risk and the severity of personal responsibility disappeared. What is written in blood cannot be compared to what is written in ink.
Для чего мы пишем
Кровью на песке –
Наши письма не нужны природе, –
sang the bard Bulat Okudzhava. Nature may not need that blood. But human hearts clung precisely to what was written in blood... on sand.
Finally, I must say what we were rich in during our youth. The riches of the earth, “mass-produced” goods, and living space did not belong to us. But the blue Kyiv sky, the spring and autumn parks, the Dnipro River and the Kyiv hills, the electric trains and night trolleybuses, the almost clean air and water, and, as they used to say, the “gifts of the autumn gardens”—all this belonged to us. On the Kyiv slopes, the empty churches and museums belonged to us. Kyiv was our native home, although it was overpopulated with gray, transient folk...
When you calmly accept social inequality and elevate yourself with your thoughts above the realities of life, you become richer and even luxuriate. Indeed, you even sympathize with the perpetually preoccupied owners of dachas, rich apartments, and ungrateful servants who want more and more—at any cost!
When you love and are loved—what more do you need? You walk your own path to the great river of love that nourishes the world. You look around. And here, along their own paths, your friends or those who are becoming friends are also drawn.
One gigantic source of light was eclipsed. We could not read or popularize the Bible. We could not go to Church, because we saw no one coming out of it brave, noble, and enlightened. Or perhaps, captive to the times, I wasn't looking in that direction? We had no erudite Averintsev with his library; we did not even have a good priest around whom people could rally. That is why the Church was not under fire, because there was none... Whereas for Poland, the Church was a great salvation and a place of struggle. The nostalgic motifs of Exupéry pained my heart, and for some reason, I wanted this to be a repressed faith in God.
When Oles Honchar’s “The Cathedral” appeared and the hungry wolves of atheism began to howl around it, I rushed without a second thought to save it, myself, and everything that was threatened, trampled, and neglected. This was my breakthrough to the source of light. A breakthrough into Samizdat...
Still, the main thing we were rich in was this: we felt ourselves to be heirs. Not of material wealth, which had been collectivized “for the people” and alienated from the people. We did not aspire to that, and access was strictly forbidden.
We felt ourselves to be heirs to the spiritual heritage of Ukraine, which was essentially ownerless and “needed by no one.” The “beautiful future” was being built without it, but with the use of “individual elements” for decoration.
We saw our thousand-year-old heritage in the few churches, overgrown with weeds, preserved as historical props. We understood that our Apostles of truth and science had been turned into advertising billboards carrying agitprop material for the builders of communism. We felt that our language was for the time being allowed to live under close supervision, although it was already clear that it would not be needed even in the future “merging of languages,” because it would be replaced by Russian. We saw the sacred places of our ancestors and the sanctity of culture in a web of scaffolding, meant to imitate “concern for culture” and to show the intention of restoration and preservation—in the role of a museum for tourists.
But the main thing that everyone discovered with pain and shame was the substitution of words and concepts, the cunning “newspeak” at which Orwell laughs in London, while we are forced to use it and—oh God!—to realize ourselves in it! We were already living in it, since our school years. And few of us began to quietly peel it off, piece by piece, like dead skin.
The fundamental rejection of falsehood for many began, of course, with the official announcement that our yesterday’s “father, leader, and teacher” was in fact a great criminal against his own party, and that those he declared “enemies of the people” were innocent victims in his colossal, dramatic spectacle of “class struggle.”
V. Ovsiienko: So, if their “terrorist plans” and “criminal cases” were falsified, then who would believe that everything else was truthful and honest? But who would say directly that the entire Leninist ideology is a system of lies, falsified facts, and a web of verisimilitude that must be accepted as truth under threat of punishment? Who would stand before the wheel of progress in such a way as not to be seized as mentally ill?
Y. Sverstiuk: Thus, the creative youth of the 60s felt they were heirs to a spiritual heritage that lay scattered under the feet of the “masses” and was as priceless as air, sun, and water. “You know that you are a human?”—this is the first element of self-awareness. The artist began to think that he was an artist by the grace of God, not a performer of commissions. The poet exclaimed: “We exist again!” The literary critic began to read Shevchenko thoughtfully, without translating him into “newspeak,” and tried to lean on official calls for a “creative approach.”
When that small circle of brave people, without a heroic pose, begins from its own corner to clean the Augean stables of political reliability, “populism, and party-mindedness,” it is watched by both those from below and those assigned to watch. It comes under fire! And at the same time, it must do its work in a way that is beautiful and intelligent. This is why the Sixtiers rose up and understood one another.
The “days of our youth,” delayed and crushed by war, were filled with selfless and thankless work; they were a gathering of what was considered unnecessary and outdated, but also hidden and sealed. Ultimately, stigmatized. But how it sparkled, like a discovery!
V. Ovsiienko: Of course, a master’s self-respect and a mocking attitude toward the servants of the “party and people” also appeared here. And yet, you were reminded of modesty: “more modesty.”
Y. Sverstiuk: They were right to remind us. It never hurts to be reminded of that. But who is doing the reminding? Mostly, it was those with modest talent who reminded us. There were also sharper conflicts, as when Mykola Vinhranovsky said that in our literature, sergeants play the roles of generals, and some took offense, taking it as a reference to their military rank. After all, the entire consciousness was completely militarized, and life itself was considered a “struggle for victory”...
V. Ovsiienko: For the very attempt to demilitarize consciousness, they would beat you, as if for an attempt to “disarm”!
Y. Sverstiuk: Even for an attempt to assess and expose the phenomenon of militarization, when one pointed to the place where it hid with the mask of the “struggle for peace”... But the KGB majors were especially offended that they were not feared. That is, everyone is afraid, but these people have reached a point where they are not afraid...
V. Ovsiienko: After all, they are the main controlling and restraining force, and fear is an instrument of power.
Y. Sverstiuk: Yes, in fact, they controlled all institutions and covered everything with a network of agents, so that everyone had to feel they were under Orwell’s telescreen. They were outraged by the posture of those who felt internally free and behaved as if they didn’t exist. (True, there was a popular joke about a brave hare!).
V. Ovsiienko: And they were right to be outraged, because not everyone understood their omnipresence, and ignoring it is, of course, a challenge.
Y. Sverstiuk: There were, it’s true, spheres where they did not know how to control the ideological purity of an artist or a scientist. But there, they had their own academics who had to be feared.
So, the entire drama of the Sixtiers took place under a Sword of Damocles, which could fall on one’s head at any moment. And the drama had to be profound, lofty, and frank, because otherwise, it’s not a drama but a rude gesture in one’s pocket. And it had to be stoically calm, because the people do not believe in neurotics. You know, to carry on such a game for 10 years under the total pressure of official harassment, repression, “public” and “people’s” courts, material and moral infringements, and at the same time to preserve one’s mental health and dignity (because the “people,” of course, were waiting for an example of civic dignity!)—that is enough to remember for the rest of your life.
But all of this, one’s truth and faith, had to be sealed with the price of the rest of one’s life, because that was the price signified by the sentences of that time, which were often followed by a new term.
This was appreciated in the West, which now paid attention to Ukrainians, although throughout the history of the GULAG they had constituted half of the contingent there. In Europe, such a price was no longer paid for freedom of speech. It was unheard of and even captivating. The defense of truth, the defense of the word, and paying for the word with one’s life—young idealists in the West were drawn to such phenomena and often called themselves our sisters and brothers. They were in love with Valeriy Marchenko and Zinoviy Krasivsky and other kindred spirits. We had become accustomed to the fact that such things would be appreciated in the West, ever since the time of Mazepa. Phenomena of a spiritual order speak to the soul of a free person. Slaves and serfs in their field of vision do not appreciate them.
V. Ovsiienko: Especially when radars and television cameras are aimed here, watching.
Y. Sverstiuk: The information aspect is self-evident. But our people were also hindered by fear, official standards of evaluation, and servile complexes. Eyes cast downward do not look at what rises higher. A free gaze sees and distinguishes what is original and somehow bright. A servile gaze forces everything to fit its standards. Do you think it’s an accident that the Sixtiers were not included in the academic course on Ukrainian literature published in the 90s? Even Dovzhenko was included there in his old format...
V. Ovsiienko: Obviously, a characterization in the format of a Sixtier would not satisfy you. If you look at the bibliography, the list of your publications before your arrest takes up seven pages, while the list after 1972 is ten times longer.
Y. Sverstiuk: Of course, both in quantity and in weight, it is a completely different level of self-realization. For those who fought for it, freedom of speech means a great deal. Whereas for those who did not fight for it, it is an extra hassle and a complication for their entire lives, because thought seeks not depth, but a boundary that it yearns to cross.
If you compare the world of the 60s–70s with the world of the 90s and the beginning of the 21st century, they are different worlds, and the psyche of many cannot withstand this drop. Back then, it seemed that the earth was turning in slow motion, that the evil Kremlin dwarves had bewitched the planet to prolong their time in power. When I returned to Kyiv after 12 years, some KGB major kindly informed me of the changes: “The ‘Mother Motherland’ monument has been built in Kyiv, the Golden Gate has been restored, but overall, little has changed, you’ll see for yourself.”
– “I see that you haven’t changed either, you’re still in uniform,” I remarked. “The workers are overfulfilling their quotas, and I have a chance to strengthen the might of the motherland for another 5 years in the carpentry shop.”
And indeed, only faint rumors of “perestroika” were reaching us from Moscow. The factory workshops continued to work mainly “for the defense industry.” Workers lived from paycheck to paycheck. Old buildings and worn-out machinery were not being updated. People aged prematurely, drank themselves to death... News of our friends’ deaths came from the camps. The stability of stagnation lasted right up until the Chornobyl explosion on April 26, 1986. This explosion was also not immediately understood. The world of stagnation was so blind and deaf that it first decided to keep silent about it. Firstly, the explosion was not in Moscow, but somewhere out in the provinces. Secondly, they kept silent about the Holodomor of 1933—and got away with it. The lackey Shcherbytsky made a decisive masking maneuver: he brought children out for the May 1, 1986 demonstration.
But Moscow had already become a propaganda center for “glasnost,” foreign correspondents were visiting more frequently... And most importantly, radioactive clouds drifted west in the sky, and they reacted there. A radioactive explosion had already occurred in Europe!
In combination with the information explosion that rendered the “Iron Curtain” ineffective, and with the economic crisis in the “crisis-free system,” the nuclear explosion at Chornobyl moved from the category of an accident to that of a catastrophe. This catastrophe broke the iron spine of the communist system. I and my colleagues with our “hundred-ruble” salaries were still afraid of being 10 minutes late to the workshop. The more valuable workers of the “secret workshop” guarded “state secrets.” The secretaries of district committees and party committees took their cue from Shcherbytsky. Communism is forever! This total captivity would last, in any case, to the end of our lives... But the radioactive wind blew a great question mark over everyone—both those at the top and those at the bottom.
When did that great turning point in history occur? In 1986? In 1989, when censorship and terror fell? At the turn of the millennium? In our souls, that regime lasted for a long time, and in some, it lasts to this day... But in its very essence, the break occurred when the “Wormwood Star” fell...
I remember one day in May 1986. I was assigned to a custom tailoring shop on Petro Zaporozhets Street. I was led into a basement room, in the middle of which lay a pile of broken chairs and tables: “Repair these, no one will bother you here.”
A layer of dust lay on everything. I went to the small window, from which the wind blew in dust from the street above. And I felt it without a Geiger counter...
Those dusty chairs, like an allegory in a dream: chairs on which no one would ever sit again, and tables at which no one would ever meet again... But my attention was drawn to the green posters on the walls: what “everyone needs to know” during an atomic bomb explosion!
The fact is that in every institution, even the most innocuous, there was a “Civil Self-Defense Corner.” In some, they taught people to run in gas masks, while in others, they just hung up posters... I carefully examined all 12 of these posters—starting from the explosion of the mushroom cloud over buildings and ending with washing cows on a farm, disinfection, and washing hands with soap...
Here was already laid the model of that virtual world that would be the continuation of the “building of communism” tomorrow—from Kamchatka to the Balkans. A short cartoon of building communism in visual images, created by “artists” from Agitprop!
The relationship of those images to life corresponded approximately to the attitude of the leaders toward the people. After all, they prepared for war quite seriously and consistently. The number of missiles and tanks was a matter of their greatest pride. But the people were shown how to eliminate the consequences of a nuclear war... with soap and water.
Around that time I wrote a poem that began like this:
Одшуміли бенкети. Пропито медалі. Обсіли турботи...
Гей, озвіться, живі!!! Вже, здається, всміхнутись пора...
Та не чує юрба. Тільки постать висока, самотня
Задивилась в глибоку, неміряну темінь Дніпра.
So, already then, in 1986, I felt an abyss between the past and the future. The Chornobyl explosion played a colossal role in exposing the economic, scientific, and ideological achievements of communism. In short, it was the beginning of the end of a terrifying era.
Let me recall another metaphor of the time: in 1990, the journal “Kyiv” accepted my little book “The Perestroika of the Tower of Babel” for publication. At the peak of the CPSU’s policy of perestroika, to publish a work with such an ironic title—hadn't the world turned upside down? When I was writing this piece and gave one of the chapters to an acquaintance, a poet, to look over, he looked at me in astonishment: “That’s 15 years for this—minimum.” Indeed, just recently—in 1984 and 1985—news had come of the deaths of my friends in the camps. Vasyl Stus was given 15 years without a second thought. Valeriy Marchenko was sent to his death for texts like “Behind the Screen of Ideology,” “To Believe—and Only That,” “There, in the Kyiv Caves,” and so on. Their judges and their investigators are all still in their posts. So, by those rates, I deserve a life sentence—without any trial, because the Tower of Babel is the very essence of the system...
In the autumn of 1989, I was given a visitor’s visa. Berlin–Munich–Rome (an audience with the Pope)–Toronto–Montreal–Edmonton–Philadelphia–Washington–New York. Wheels, propellers, wheels... The slowed-down camp cartoon suddenly spun into a fast-forwarded serial. In New York, in my presence, “The Perestroika of the Tower of Babel,” which had been illegally transported abroad, was published as a separate edition. In 1990, the editor of the journal “Kyiv” asked for something for the journal: “It doesn’t matter that there’s no manuscript—give us the book published abroad.” Horrible dictu! Such words still echoed in my ears as the gravest accusation...
I felt myself in another dimension, where there is no gravity. And our history floated off into another dimension—into the virtual world of the post-communist comedy of changing clothes.
My boat moored at the island of Hope. But here the people are just as spoiled, and the same winds blow.
It seems to me that in all my publications, I remind people of the eternal meaning of words. Neither newspeak nor empty talk can replace the word that has become light. Humanity passes from one eclipse to another, and on a sunny day, it is amazed at how it was possible not to see—it is so obvious... And the Gospel parable of the sower is eternal: we will always sow on rock and among thorns, knowing that all hope lies in the plowed soil... And the metaphor of the voice crying in the wilderness is eternal. And everyone must gratefully carry their own cross, because a worthy life will never take place on a smooth and wide road. The Gospel warning to “choose the narrow way” is a lesson for all time.
Photos.
On October 27, 1997, Yevhen SVERSTIUK brought to the Sandarmokh clearing in southern Karelia and erected a cross made by Mykola Malyshko with the inscription “To the Murdered Sons of Ukraine.” Here, from October 27 to November 4, 1937, the Solovki transport was executed—1,111 prisoners of the Solovki special-purpose prison, including 290 Ukrainians, among them Les Kurbas, Mykola Zerov, Valerian Pidmohylny, Mykola Kulish, three members of the Krushelnytsky family... Photo by Volodymyr SHCHERBYNA.
Yevhen SVERSTIUK at the commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group on November 9, 2001, at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. Photo by Viktor ZILBERBERH of Kharkiv.
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