OLES TERENTIYOVYCH NAZARENKO

An Interview with Oles NAZARENKO

January 6 and 18, 1999, in Kyiv, and January 18, 2001, in Skadovsk.

Corrections by O. Nazarenko were made on August 6, 2007.

Listen to the audio files

Vasyl Ovsiyenko: It is the morning of January 6, 1999, at ten o’clock, and we are speaking with Mr. Oles Nazarenko. The interview is being conducted by Vasyl Ovsiyenko on the premises of the Republican Christian Party. So, today is the eve of the Nativity of Christ.

For us at the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, we need to record your, Mr. Oles, autobiographical account because, as we know, we knew how to resist, but not everyone wrote down how it happened. And time passes, people pass away, and eventually, they forget.

Oles Nazarenko: They forget. And I’ve already forgotten a lot.

V.O.: I repeat this piece of wisdom to everyone—I don’t know who came up with it—that history, unfortunately, is not always what happened, but what was written down. And if the people who know how it was don’t write it down, new people will come and write it the way it suits them. And that will become history. So let’s act in such a way that the truth finally becomes history...

O.N.: May I interrupt for a moment? You just reminded me of something with your “what was written down.” When I returned from the camp, they started broadcasting “The Gulag Archipelago” on the radio, and my father cried. He said, “And I thought that humanity would never know about these horrors.”

V.O.: And so, we are now creating an International Dictionary of Dissidents. The project's center is in Poland. There will be 120 Ukrainian names. But after that, we will start creating a Ukrainian dictionary, which will have several hundred names—as many as we can collect. This period covers the time after Stalin until Independence. Since you were also in this circle, it is certainly necessary for you to tell your story, and it would also be desirable for you to write it down.

O.N.: I was born in the Donbas, in the village of Zemlianky in the Makiyivka district of the Donetsk oblast, in 1930, on September 27, right on the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. I was only born in the village, but my memories begin elsewhere. There is a settlement called Panteleymonivka in the Donbas—where there is a large Dinas brick factory. My father worked there as the economic director. I don’t know what that position entailed, but he later told me that he couldn’t stand all the pressure; he wanted to pay more attention to the workers. They started complaining about him, so he quit that job, returned to the village of Zemlianky, and started living there. He found another job in Yasynuvata. It was the Yasynuvata branch of the Donetsk Railway. He got a job there as some minor accountant in the payroll department. It was a very large department with many people working there. And then came 1938. “You come to work,” he said, “and some employee is missing. Everyone is silent, nobody says a word. A day, two, three pass, and they’re still gone. A week later, another employee is gone. And everyone is silent. Then a third one is gone. I’m thinking, what on earth is happening? I already suspect that the repressions are underway. I think: I have to run. But where to run? And why run? I don’t even know. Well, I continue to sit there,” he says. They had already transferred all the management duties to him because the other employees were no longer there, so he took over the work. “Some time passes, and then,” he says, “they come for me. Right at work. I was surprised because people had been disappearing from who-knows-where, but they came for me at work. And they said, ‘We’ve been checking on you for a while and have found that you are not guilty of anything. But we need a good accountant at the transport MGB.’ Well, what could I say? Refuse? I couldn't refuse.” And so he went to work as an accountant in that MGB. Later it became the NKVD. And he worked there until the war began. Then he was evacuated.

V.O.: You haven't mentioned your father’s name...

O.N.: My father was Terentiy Kostyantynovych Nazarenko. He was born in 1905. He died in 1984. I now regret so much that he did not live to see our Independence, our state. He had already come to hope that it would happen. Before, he didn't believe there would be a Ukrainian state. But when I returned from the camp, he said, “If there are people like you, then someday there will be a Ukrainian state.” He said it that frankly.

My mother, Kylyna Ivanivna, was born in 1908 in the village of Zemlianky.

V.O.: And what was her maiden name?

O.N.: Her maiden name was Iordak. It's a Vlach surname. My mother belonged to the Vlachs by lineage, about whom Shevchenko said, “Vlachs, oh Vlachs, there are but a few of you left.” We have two Vlach villages there, including Zemlianky. I heard a story about this village. When Catherine the Great allowed the Vlachs, who had been defeated in the war with the Turks, to settle in these Donetsk steppes, they first settled in Selidove. But the Cossacks came and said that these were their lands. And they took these lands for themselves. A Cossack village began to develop, and these Vlachs were resettled to the present-day Makiyivka district. They were resettled into that ravine. And there they built not houses, but dugouts. That's how the village came to be called Zemlianky (Dugouts).

My mother was illiterate. She had no education whatsoever. She died just recently, in 1989.

I can tell you about my grandmother, Nazarenko. I had an interesting grandmother. She called all the communists, especially members of the government and the Central Committee, bandits and dog-heads. She wanted her children to get a higher education. But she did not want them to be communists. There were no communists in our family. My father wasn't a communist until he joined the MGB. He joined the party only in 1944, when the Reds returned. We used to say “the Reds” or “the Russians.” We never said “the Soviets.” “The Reds” or “the Russians.” My grandmother called those communists dog-heads. And my grandfather was passive about politics. He didn’t get involved in anything and didn’t understand what it was all about and where it came from.

I studied at Yasynuvata Secondary School No. 1. I enrolled before the war, in 1938. I finished three grades before the war started. Even then, before the war, I began to identify myself as Ukrainian, as early as 1938. Although from my grandmother I already felt this difference... We didn't say “Russians”—we said “katsapy.” When we played with other children, the biggest insult was to be called a katsap. In our childish understanding, a katsap was a drunkard who cursed, was arrogant and dirty. (Laughs). That was the notion. And so one day, I think in the third grade, I wrote a dictation in Ukrainian. I got a “three” [C grade]. And in Russian, I got a five [A grade]. I remember I started crying and said, “Kateryna Andriivna, I’m going to transfer to a Russian school.” I didn’t say “Russian-language” back then, but a “Russian” school. “How could you? You’ll transfer to a Russian school? Do you really want to be a katsap?” I said, “No. Are Russians katsapy?” She said, “They are katsapy.” From that time on, I began to understand that we are Ukrainians, and they are katsapy. I got that information at school.

I did not finish ten grades in day school, only seven. I then enrolled in the Sloviansk Railway Technical School. I worked at a factory as a lathe operator...

V.O.: You didn't study during the war, did you?

O.N.: I did not study during the war. I finished seven grades, I believe, in 1947. Then I entered the technical school. I studied there for two years. When I lost interest in steam locomotives, I decided to leave the technical school, went to night school, and got a job at the factory. I finished ten grades. That's my education.

In 1949, I was drafted into the army and served there until 1954. I spent four years in the air force—the service term was four years back then. There I finished a school for reserve officers in the ZOS service—“zemnoye obespecheniye samoletovozhdeniya” [ground support for air navigation]. But I did not become an officer. I refused when we were sent to Transbaikalia for a six-month practicum, and we ended up staying there for two whole years. When they announced it was time to go take the exam after the practicum, I refused, because the demobilization for my draft year had already been announced. I was demobilized as a sergeant and went home. I never became an officer.

V.O.: In what regions did you serve?

O.N.: In Transbaikalia—in Chita and the Chita Oblast: Ukurey and Borzya. I worked on radio direction finders and on communication radio stations.

In 1954, I returned, worked at a factory, and decided to try my hand at journalism, at writing. I applied to the pedagogical institute that same year, in 1954. But I didn't get in due to the competition, although my grades were decent: I wrote my essay for an “excellent,” passed German with a C, and the rest were Bs and As. My score was high enough to pass, but why I wasn’t accepted, I don’t know. Perhaps it was because of the professor, Fedorchuk, who graded my essay as “excellent.” I suspect he was considered a nationalist at the pedagogical institute. He treated me very well.

I went to the editorial office of the Selydove district newspaper as a literary contributor. The newspaper was called “Zorya Komunizmu” (The Star of Communism). I can recall a very interesting story. The editor at the time was Anatoliy Markovych Zinchenko. He had no formal education at all. He had come to the editorial office with a fourth-grade education back in the twenties. He says, “This happened back in Stalin's time. One day they bring the layout page. I'm reading—where it was supposed to say ‘Stalin,’ it says ‘Sralin’ [Shit-lin]. What's this? I told the secretary and the proofreader to fix it. They fixed it, took it to the print shop, and had the galleys redone. They bring the new galleys—again: ‘Sralin.’ I couldn't take it anymore,” he says, “and ran to the print shop. It was in the same courtyard: the editorial office was on one side, and the print shop on the other. I went to the type case myself and set it. I set it, and no matter what I did, when I made a proof, it came out ‘Sralin’ again.”

V.O.: How is that possible?

O.N.: How is that possible? Someone had slipped the wrong letter in, or incorrectly placed the ‘r’ instead of the ‘t’ in the type case. And the typesetters don't look at the letters—they know which compartment holds which letter. That was the story, he said. And if the issue had been printed...

V.O.: Heads would have rolled.

O.N.: Heads would have rolled.

I didn't last long at the editorial office. I was eaten up and tormented by all that: “Raise higher the banner of socialist competition!” and “Who is ahead today?” Sometimes I would reach a breaking point where I didn’t know what to write or how to write. I couldn’t even put together a single decent sentence. The only thing I managed to produce were some sketches or short stories for entertainment. I stayed there for two years and then went to work on the construction of the Siverskyi Donets – Donbas canal. I think that was 1959. I built the canal. When it was launched and the water began to flow, I started to service the fourth pumping station. The water there was lifted 16 meters, and from our pumping station, located at Krynychna station, the water flowed through the canal into the Kalmius gully. A reservoir had been built there. This water was then used to supply the city of Donetsk. Well, that’s not the main thing, just an aside.

But I was worried—I was approaching thirty, and I had, essentially, no friends there. I really wanted to move somewhere deep into Ukraine to hear Ukrainian songs, to hear the Ukrainian language, because before the war, everyone in our area spoke Ukrainian. And after the war too. But starting from the sixties, when the Ukrainian schools were closed, everyone wanted to avoid being a *khokhol*. And so they competed with each other to master the language of our masters. I wanted to go to Kyiv. When I heard that workers were needed at the Kyiv Hydroelectric Power Plant, I went to the Kyiv HPP. That was in 1962, sometime in the spring I arrived. For two years, I couldn't find any like-minded people at the Kyiv HPP either. True, I had already heard about Chornovil. Chornovil, along with his wife Olenka... What was her last name? Stasiv? Or what?

V.O.: That was Olena Antoniv. (Born Nov. 17, 1937 – died Feb. 2, 1986. A participant in the Sixtiers and human rights movements. Wife of V. Chornovil, later Z. Krasivsky. – V.O.)

O.N.: Antoniv. She worked at the hospital. They published a newspaper—a large newspaper in Ukrainian right on the main square of the construction site.

V.O.: So, a wall newspaper?

O.N.: It was a wall newspaper in Ukrainian. For me, that was surprising and pleasant. But I had no opportunity to meet Chornovil. Although I wanted to, I was shy. To just go up and say: I am so-and-so... I have been timid since childhood. You know, the kind who doesn’t initiate acquaintances. And only two years later, in 1964, I met a worker, Volodymyr Komashkov (Born 1935, died Oct. 10, 1997. – V.O.), who was very close to Chornovil—they lived in the same barracks in Vyshhorod. We started talking, got to know each other better. And he began to give me literature. I realized that he was getting it from Chornovil.

V.O.: Typewritten literature?

O.N.: Typewritten. All sorts of memoirs about the repressions, written by our writers. I don't remember now who wrote what. There was Sosyura's “Rozstrilyane Bezsmertia” (Executed Immortality). Well, and more books. For instance, I had already read Holubets's “History of Great Ukraine” by then. A blue book. Doroshenko's “History of Ukraine.” The poetry of Yevhen Malaniuk. I still remember these words: *“Вчини мене бичем, своїм ударом, вистрілом, набоєм, щоб залишивсь хоч чорний дим над неповторною добою.”* ‘Doba’ [epoch]—I really liked these lines. Another thing I liked by Malaniuk, from a poem—I can’t recall the title now—was about Ukraine: *“Тебе б конем татарським гнати, поки аркан не заспіва, бо ти коханка, а не мати, зрадлива бранка степова. Стрибати в гречку тільки вмієш, та в муках зради завмирать.”* Then I came across the poem “Popil Imperiyi” (Ashes of the Empire) by Yuriy Klen. That also made a big impression on me.

I gave all those books to my close acquaintances and friends to read, people I trusted, who were interested to some degree. Then I read Dmytro Dontsov's book “Nationalism.” That too is a profound philosophical work, very profound. I read it for a very long time and thought about it. There was a book, “Vyvid Prav Ukrayiny” (A Deduction of the Rights of Ukraine) by Pylyp Orlyk, “Ukraine and the Ukrainian Policy of Moscow” by Pronin, “A Collection in Honor of Scholars Destroyed by Bolshevik Moscow,” and Chornovil's manuscript “Justice or Recidivism of Terror?”. That was the first work he wrote. That same Volodymyr Komashkov said that a copy needed to be made of it. I made photocopies of all the books I have just listed. At first, I made them for myself, then for my friends, acquaintances, workers whom I trusted. And then I was asked to make more copies for people in Kyiv. I don't know where or to whom they went.

V.O.: So it went through Chornovil, right?

O.N.: Through Chornovil. Until he was arrested. (First imprisoned on Aug. 3, 1967, under Art. 187-1 for 1.5 years. – V.O.). I suspected (Komashkov didn't tell me) that he was getting it from Ivan Svitlychny. Because after I had been working like that for a whole year, one day Komashkov said that Ivan Svitlychny wanted to meet me. We went into the woods...

V.O.: What year was that? After the arrests of 1965?

O.N.: It was around the middle of summer, I think, 1966.

I want to add something. I already mentioned “Justice or Recidivism...”. A second book followed that one. This one had illustrations, with photographs: “Grief from the Mind, or Portraits of Twenty Criminals.” I made about five photocopies of these books. They circulated around Kyiv at the time. Then one day Komashkov brought me a manuscript. Handwritten, almost a rough draft, of “Regarding the Trial of Pohruzhalsky.” I rewrote it in block letters. I made a photocopy and gave it back to him. There were a lot of harsh words in it—“swine” and so on... It seems the manuscript was cleaned up a bit, and they brought a second version. I rewrote it again, copied it, and passed it to Komashkov. I prepared this film to be sent abroad. The article “Regarding the Trial of Pohruzhalsky” got abroad and was printed in a newspaper. Later, during the investigation, they showed me this newspaper and excerpts from my manuscript. Yes, and the forensic examination established that it was my handwriting... I wasn't as afraid of the documents—I was most afraid that they might make me out to be a spy. They told me, “You see, you don’t want to name the people who were directing you, you’re sparing them, but they didn’t spare you—they threw you under the bus, published something written in your hand, so that you would be arrested.” That’s what they said.

V.O.: By the way, do you know who authored that text?

O.N.: I do. The author is Borys Antonenko-Davydovych. That’s what they told me.

V.O.: That's what you knew at the time?

O.N.: Uh-huh.

V.O.: But that’s not what they say now. Yevhen Sverstyuk says that he wrote that text, and Vyacheslav Chornovil edited it so that the author's style wouldn't be recognizable.

O.N.: I don’t know, it must have come from Chornovil. I think Chornovil wasn’t in prison yet at that time. I don't recall exactly.

V.O.: He was imprisoned in 1967, on August 3.

O.N.: In 1967. Because when I was arrested in 1968, Chornovil was already gone. One day Komashkov came and told me, “If I get arrested, I want to show you where Chornovil’s library is hidden. So you’ll know.” It was buried in his uncle’s garden, in a washtub—this library. Of course, this did not come up during the investigation. So I don't know if Chornovil's library was preserved or not. Whether it was really buried there or not, I certainly don't know. I only heard this secondhand.

And then the book by Ivan Dziuba, “Internationalism or Russification?”, appeared. I also made three or four, maybe even five, copies of this book.

V.O.: Photocopies?

O.N.: Photocopies. Then we learned about our arrested comrades from Valentyn Moroz’s “A Report from the Beria Reserve.” And then came documents from Levko Lukyanenko and Ivan Kandyba. There was a whole pile of papers. I made copies.

V.O.: What were your conditions like? You needed to have photographic equipment, some kind of space.

O.N.: I had a spot in the workers' dormitory where I lived. I asked the building manager to give me the drying room in the restroom—a room for drying clothes. They gave me a little room. That’s where my library was kept, and I had a photo enlarger and a camera there. In fact, that's where Oleksandr Drobakha began to write—I used to laugh—his brilliant poems. In that drying room. I used to tell him, “When you become a Nobel Prize laureate—and he was aiming for nothing less back then, said he would definitely become a laureate—then I'll write my memoirs about you and say that you wrote your brilliant poems in the restroom.” (Laughs). Drobakha also lived in this dormitory, just in a different room.

V.O.: You had something like a laboratory there?

O.N.: Something like a laboratory. Sometimes we could gather there to talk quietly, because the room was isolated, and no one could eavesdrop.

Now I’d like to say who they were, my friends to whom I gave those books. First of all, I met Vasyl Kondryukov. He was from the Donbas. I heard from a worker that he had supposedly created a “Party of Honest Communists” at the HPP (and he was a party member). I said, “I want to meet him.” So I was introduced to him. And we became friends. I started giving him all the literature that came my way. He was a Russian-speaker. But gradually, he began to understand that to change this system, one had to go through the national idea. I convinced him: “These honest, dishonest—there can be no honest communists, because the system itself is both utopian and thuggish.” I already understood this at the time. I gradually convinced him as well. And he joined me. And later, at the trial when we were arrested, he received three years of strict regime. I got five years, and he got three.

There was also Valentyn Karpenko. He was a technician or foreman at the production facility at the HPP. He also lived in the dormitory. I noticed he was not a stupid guy. Although also a Russian-speaker, he easily switched to Ukrainian when I spoke to him. I realized he was interested in literature. One day he says there's this kind of literature and asks, “Don’t you have any?” I say, “Yes, I do. But it's dangerous.” He says, “So what if I'm reading Hitler's ‘Mein Kampf’? What business is it of anyone's?” I say, “Don't be in such a hurry!” In short, we came to an understanding. Karpenko was sentenced to a year and a half of strict regime at the trial.

I've already mentioned Komashkov. This was our circle. Officially, we were not a group or an organization.

Bohdan Dyriv. Also a worker, an electrician, like me. Bohdan read everything. He was a reliable guy.

Oleksandr Drobakha. I met him as soon as I arrived in Vyshhorod. He came with a friend, a teacher—Vitaliy Riznyk. Someone in Vyshhorod told Drobakha that there was an archeological museum on the houseboats. At that time I wasn’t yet living in the dormitory—this was around 1963 or 1964. A houseboat is a floating house or dormitory on the water. There were cabins there. And I had an archeological museum in my cabin. I was working on a dredger, we were excavating sand. Mammoth bones, grindstones, a stone cross would get caught in the pump... And one day, from that excavation site (it’s called a "karta" where they dredge sand), I brought a whole bag of these mammoth bones and laid them all out in my cabin. People would come to look at these things. When Drobakha and Riznyk arrived in Vyshhorod, they heard about it from someone and came. The skipper said, “Some guys are asking for you there.” I came out. That’s how I met Drobakha and Riznyk. Drobakha also read all the literature that Komashkov brought. Komashkov, though he brought it, was rarely in our company. I did, however, see Chornovil once. We were at Lyuda Sheremetyeva’s birthday party. He was there, Svitlychny was there. The poet Hanna Mohylnytski and her brother Oleksandr came from Odesa. Chornovil came with Pavlo Skocho. (A journalist, later a political prisoner. – V.O.)

V.O.: Was this in Kyiv or Vyshhorod?

O.N.: In Vyshhorod. This was 1967. Lyuda Sheremetyeva was twenty-one at the time. Chornovil didn’t approach me there. I met Chornovil, I think, in 1990 in Lviv, when I went to see Mykhailo Osadchy and helped him with the layout of the journal “Kafedra” (The Cathedra). I was filming; I had a movie camera. I also made a film about Mykhailo Osadchy. Has he passed away already? (Writer, philologist, born March 22, 1936, died July 5, 1994. Imprisoned on Aug. 28, 1965, under Art. 62, Part 1 for 2 years; a second time in January 1972, under Art. 62, Part 2 for 7 years plus 3 years of exile. – V.O.). And our group, if you can call it that, also included Mykola Ponomarenko—he was a fellow student of mine. He worked at the Central Committee as a courier, delivering pencils and paper to the offices. He sometimes brought newspapers published abroad. He was instructed to burn them. The supervisor would watch him burn them. “When the supervisor turns away,” he said, “I slip a newspaper into my shirt.” And he would bring it to me. (Laughs). But he didn't want it to stay with me—I was only to read it, then he would take it back and burn it. That's the story with those newspapers. Once he said, “I brought two whole sacks of books to the Central Committee with inscriptions for Ivan Drach and Dmytro Pavlychko. These were their gifts or packages they brought from Canada or America. They were stored at the Central Committee. I don’t know if they ever got them back, but they were at the Central Committee at the time.” So Ponomarenko carried those books on his own back. (I. Drach and D. Pavlychko were included in the USSR delegation to the UN General Assembly. This was a kind of payment for abandoning dissidence. – V.O.)

V.O.: It’s interesting that the books given to them by Ukrainians abroad were not returned but confiscated by the Central Committee.

O.N.: Then Ponomarenko brought one book, “The Ukrainians.” A thick book, it was a printer’s proof. It was published later. And this proof copy was numbered. So Ponomarenko cut out the number and gave the book to me. When I mentioned that I had such a book, Chornovil, through Komashkov, relayed that he wanted to see it. I gave it to him, and that was the last I saw of it. I don’t know where it is—whether Chornovil has it or not.

There was also Vasyl Gedz, a worker from the Kyiv HPP. And his brother worked in the Central Committee. When I was delayed in Kyiv, I would spend the night at Vasyl's. When I came to Vasyl's, his brother would leave the house. But I brought literature for him. He was in the middle ranks of the Central Committee, not at the top. He worked at the Institute of Culture, perhaps as a scientific secretary.

By the way, it was Vasyl Gedz who gave me Volodymyr Sosyura's “Rozstrilyane Bezsmertia” (Executed Immortality) to read. Directly in his own handwriting, with corrections. How did Vasyl get this document? Sosyura and Vasyl's brother were vacationing in the same room somewhere in Crimea. Sosyura was urgently summoned, and he forgot this manuscript of his. I don't know why he didn't return it to him, because Sosyura died not long after (January 5, 1965. – V.O.). So Vasyl gave it to me to read. I only made a copy of it. And, I think, I didn't even have time to return it. When they searched my place, the KGB took everything. I don't know if Vasyl's brother suffered because of that manuscript, because I haven't even seen Gedz since. I don't even know where to look for him.

We also had Ivan Honchar from Havrylivka. He was a worker, a former political prisoner from the Stalinist camps. Ivan Honchar lived in the village of Havrylivka, but he often came to Vyshhorod to get literature from me. In 1952, while Stalin was still alive, he was sentenced to 15 years, but then there was an amnesty, and he was released early. He served as a witness in my case. (Honchar, Ivan Nestorovych, b. Aug. 22, 1935, in Havrylivka, Vyshhorod district, Kyiv oblast. Political prisoner 1953-55; 1955-56. In 1951, at a railway school in Kyiv, he created the youth “Ukrainian Social-Communist Party of Narodniks,” later renamed the “Ukrainian Social-Democratic Party of Renewalists.” In February 1953, 28 people were arrested. On May 16, 1953, six individuals were convicted by the Kyiv Oblast Court under Articles 54-10, 11 of the Criminal Code of the UkrSSR, Honchar to 10 years. He was imprisoned in the Komi ASSR and Arkhangelsk Oblast. Thanks to a case review during the Khrushchev "thaw" and "workday credits," Honchar spent 2 years and 4 months in captivity, released in May 1955. He refused to join the army and was sentenced to 5 years imprisonment, 5 years exile, and 5 years loss of rights. He again ended up in the camps of Arkhangelsk Oblast. After 5 months, he was returned to Lukyanivska Prison, where they tried to convince him to agree to military service. Since Honchar refused, he was sent to the Pavlov Psychiatric Hospital in Kyiv. In July 1956, he was sent back to his home village. In 1971, Honchar was rehabilitated. He writes poems, articles, and prose, published in the district newspaper. In April 1989, Honchar became a member of the People's Movement of Ukraine (Rukh). He heads the primary organization of "Prosvita." He works as a teacher in his home village. – V.O.)

There was also Mariya Ovdiyenko. At that time, she worked in the Botanical Garden. Vitaliy Reznikov, or Riznikov, introduced me to her. And through Mariya Ovdiyenko, I met Nadiya Kyryan. When she was expelled from the university, she also came to work at the Botanical Garden. When I brought them literature, they were there spreading manure... Mariya typed various materials, including my appeal to the citizens of Kyiv, which I had written by hand. In essence, I was arrested because of that document. It was an appeal regarding May 22, 1967, when they sprayed demonstrators with water near the Central Committee building. I wrote it because what kind of thing is that? People had gathered for a memorial service, for the anniversary of the reburial of Taras Shevchenko from St. Petersburg on Chernecha Hora. I also wrote there that Russification was happening in Ukraine. My document ended with: “Shame on the Russifiers! Long live Leninist national policy!” It even said that. (Laughs).

V.O.: Was that leaflet handwritten?

O.N.: No, it was typewritten. I had money at the time. My father had given me money for a house, for me to build a cooperative, but I spent some of it: I bought a typewriter. Kondryukov and I hired a typist in the Vitryani Hory neighborhood. Larysa Panfilova, or something like that. I don't remember, I basically never even saw her. Kondryukov hired her. (V. Kondryukov says: not Panfilova, but Filatova, her surname later became Savchenko. – V.O.). We agreed to pay her 20 kopecks per page. But when we gave her the material to type, she refused payment. She said, “I thought it was the kind of literature I used to type for Jews. But for such truthful literature—I find this literature interesting—I won’t take any money.” I’ll say more about her later.

Nadiya Kyryan was a witness at my trial. And so was Lyudmyla Sheremetyeva. I've already mentioned her. In total, more than 30 people were interrogated by the KGB in connection with my case (they said it was the “Nazarenko case,” which is why I call it that).

When I returned from the camp, I found out that people even had a poor opinion of me, as if I had given up many people, because they all started to be hassled and dragged in. The thing is, my memory isn't very good, and I used to write down phone numbers and addresses. They found two notebooks in my laboratory. There were dozens of phone numbers in them. The KGB started questioning everyone, and each one told them a little something.

When I was in Lviv, I was invited to the Institute of Ukrainian Studies. I also gave testimony there for 15-20 minutes. There they showed me the journal “Ukrayinskyi Visnyk” (The Ukrainian Herald), which Chornovil published. There was a note that such-and-such a group had been arrested, and that Nazarenko had probably cooperated with them, because very many people were questioned and suffered. But it's strange that he took all the blame upon himself. I really did admit that I had produced everything. That's how it was. “Took it upon himself.” I'm not offended by him. He couldn't have known back then. (See: Chornovil V. Works: In 10 vols. – Vol. 3. (“The Ukrainian Herald,” 1970-72) / Comp. Valentyna Chornovil. Foreword by M. Kosiv. – Kyiv: Smoloskyp, 2006. – pp. 76-78). All sorts of rumors could have been circulating. And the KGB could have spread various rumors. But when I was in the camp, many people received packages with books, but no one sent me anything from Kyiv.

V.O.: Was it still possible to send books to the camps back then?

O.N.: Back then, the number of book parcels was still unlimited. But only two food parcels per year were allowed.

V.O.: When I was in Mordovia starting in 1974, you could no longer receive books.

O.N.: It became impossible while I was there. But at that time, you could still receive books and stationery almost every day.

V.O.: You’ve described your circle. But how did the case itself begin? How and when were you arrested?

O.N.: How it happened? I wrote the “Appeal to the People of Kyiv” in 1968. I wrote that this time the KGB agents are preparing enforcers for a crackdown. A young woman or a girl told me that they, the Komsomol activists, were gathered at the Central Committee of the LKSMU and told to occupy their assigned posts throughout Kyiv on May 22 and watch for nationalists who would be rioting, demonstrating, and breaking things. She also said then, “I was standing in the corridor. A semi-dark corridor: ‘You will go there, to such-and-such an object, and you will go there...’ And I’m standing there thinking, ‘Will they really not send me anywhere?’" Later, when she got to know me and found out who the nationalists were, she, of course, laughed at the fact that she had been so eager to get in on this roundup to watch the nationalists. I knew that workers at the "Arsenal" factory were also preparing. They were also told to be ready in case of any riots or demonstrations. You saw how on May 22, 1968, there were rings of people around the Shevchenko monument, didn't you? It was impossible to get through to the monument. I had an acquaintance, though he wasn’t from our group. That was Volodya Melnyk. He wrote beautiful poems back then. He wrote a poem at that time, "Idu v tuman" (I Walk into the Fog). He read it, I liked it. He says, “I’m going to read it by the Shevchenko monument.” I say, “When are you going to read it? They’ll grab you right away!” But somehow he broke through all those cordons—right up to the monument, to the microphone: “I walk into the fog…” Right away, they swarm him, grab him. He somehow wiggles free—and runs. He runs, and about half a hundred people chase after him through the little park. I chased after them from behind, thinking I'd see if he'd get away. Volodya did get away then; they didn't catch him.

V.O.: Was that text of yours distributed in any way at the time?

O.N.: Yes, it was distributed. We printed a hundred copies on a typewriter, maybe a little more, maybe 110 or 120, and sent them out to all the higher educational institutions. We sent them to party organizations. The idea arose that high-ranking people should know what was happening in Kyiv.

V.O.: Lenin was very aptly quoted there from 1914: “The prohibition on honoring Shevchenko was such a marvelous, beautiful, exceptionally fortunate, and successful measure from the point of view of agitation against the government that better agitation could not be imagined. (...) After this measure, millions and millions of ‘common folk’ began to transform into conscious citizens and became convinced of the correctness of the conclusion that Russia is a ‘prison of nations.’”

O.N.: It was quoted, it was quoted.

V.O.: You know, in 1968, I was a first-year student in the philology department of Kyiv State University. Our yellow building is near the Shevchenko monument. On May 22, they organized something for us in the dormitory on Lomonosov Street, near the Exhibition Center, so that we wouldn't go to classes at all that day. And they checked against a list to make sure everyone was there. And then they told us that some leaflets had been scattered in the university's yellow building. And they were supposedly photocopies. And that quote from Lenin was there. So, maybe that was your work?

O.N.: Possibly my work. But we didn't make photocopies, we used a typewriter.

V.O.: Well, maybe someone re-photographed it and reproduced it.

O.N.: Possibly. The leaflet was widely distributed. Of the one hundred and ten distributed copies, ... I've already forgotten how many were returned to the KGB. In short, one-third was not returned. (Laughs).

V.O.: So there was a point in doing it?

O.N.: About 30 or 40 were not returned. And I had a single copy left in my pocket. By this time I was no longer living in Vyshhorod, but in Kyiv in a dormitory on Harmatna Street, because I was working for a construction company in Kurenivka. It was hydro-mechanization or something like that. On June 26, 1968, I had a dream. I dreamt that I was walking with my friends: Mariya Ovdiyenko, and I think Valentyn Karpenko. We were walking along some body of water. A dredger had removed sand, there was water, and we were walking along the edge. Suddenly the bank collapses and I slide into the water, and the others remain. I’m scrambling but can’t get out. The water has reached my lips, I can’t touch the bottom. And they just stand there watching, no one is helping me. A bulldozer appears out of nowhere and starts clearing a way out for me. At this point, I woke up. I'm walking and thinking, “What kind of dream was that?” I saw it all so vividly. I'm walking and thinking that this is no ordinary dream.

V.O.: Prophetic.

O.N.: No ordinary dream. And suddenly I'm... I wasn't called Oles back then. I was renamed in the camp. I was Oleksandr. In the camp, I learned that in Ukrainian it's Oles, so since then, everyone in the camps knew me as Oles. But before my arrest, they knew me as Sashko. So someone calls out to me, “Hey, Sashko!” I looked up—four men standing there, big burly guys. I say, “I don’t know you. Who are you?” “But we know you. You were wearing gray pants, and today you're in green. Where are you off to?” “I’m going to the university for lectures.” “Well, get in, we’ll give you a lift!” I say, “Here comes the tram, I’ll just...” And I was about to go, but they lifted me up like a feather, so that the people walking on the sidewalk didn't even notice as they took me and put me in the car.

V.O.: They knew how to do that!

O.N.: I had no literature at home anymore. Because when I moved to Harmatna, I had partially given some documents to Mariya Ovdiyenko for safekeeping. And the main documents, our archive, so to speak, were kept by Kondryukov. And I gave a bag of various papers to Karpenko, who was living in a dormitory somewhere in Svyatoshyn at the time. By then, we had already moved from Vyshhorod.

But I’ll tell you now what happened just before this. Mariya Ovdiyenko invited me to a housewarming party for one of her acquaintances. About a week before my arrest. A building in Rusanivka, about seven or ten stories high. I went there with Mariya. This acquaintance had no furniture yet. A lot of people had gathered. They put a door on top of stacks of books and started celebrating the new home, drinking vodka. I see that such a wonderful Ukrainian company has gathered. My soul rejoiced: I had fallen in with such company! I hadn’t socialized with many people. I already knew my own circle, but this was in Kyiv, after all. Well, I decided to read aloud this “Appeal to the People of Kyiv.” And sitting across from me was a young man. An ordinary guy, maybe younger than me, or maybe the same age. I remember: he was in a white shirt, his forelock sticking up like a mohawk. He reached out his hand: “Let me see that.” I gave it to him: “Take it.” He folds it—and puts it in his pocket. I say, “Excuse me, that’s my only copy. I can’t give it to you for good. Give it back to me.” But he doesn’t give it back. So I say to the host, “Listen, your acquaintance took my document and won't return it.” They go over to him. But the guy gets up—and runs. About five men from the party, from the table, chased after him. They chased him, blocking his way to the lower floors. So he ran to the top floor. They cornered him on the roof. They caught him there. It turned out that the piece of paper was already hidden in his underpants. They took it from him. They started asking who he was and who he came with. No one knew who he was or who he came with. The doors were open—and that’s how it happened. That’s how I, as they say, led the trail right to myself.

This happened about a week before my arrest, maybe ten days.

V.O.: You missed one detail. You said you were studying, but you didn't say where. Was it correspondence study?

O.N.: Evening division of the history department at Kyiv University. I enrolled in 1965, and in 1968 on Harmatna Street, they grabbed me and took me first to the oblast KGB headquarters on Roza Luxemburg Street. There they summoned some witnesses, opened my folder, and took this letter. I had nothing else there. They brought me to the republican KGB headquarters, at Volodymyrska, 33. Then they started leading me through all the corridors, through some basement rooms. Some dark corridors... You know, I was a bit anxious then, that they were leading me around and around, and not putting me in any cell. They must have led me around for half an hour, back and forth. Maybe they were looking for a free cell? Then they put me in a small box, where you could only sit. I thought this was going to be my cell. Well, even if it's uncomfortable to sleep, I thought, I'll manage somehow. I sat there for three or four hours, and then they took me to a cell.

I was with a gold and currency speculator, who, as I later found out in the camp, was a “nassidka,” a stool pigeon. When one person arrived from Kyiv, then another—they all had the same cellmate. But I didn't tell him anything particularly special.

The investigation was conducted by Major Mykola Koval, maybe Hryhorovych. He was a captain at first, and then they promoted him to major just before the end. And at the trial—who was at the trial?

V.O.: Have you kept your verdict?

O.N.: No, I haven't. It got lost. It disappeared when I was already out of prison, in Skadovsk. It was probably left with my ex-wife, whom I divorced.

V.O.: You can appeal to the court that tried you to provide a copy. How long did the investigation last?

O.N.: My investigation lasted for ten months. For ten months, I sat in a cell with that gold and currency speculator. And in January 1969, I was tried. I remained in that same cell until April.

V.O.: Did you file an appeal and wait for a response?

O.N.: I waited. The verdict was upheld.

When I was taken by transport, on the way in the "stolypin" car, I met Valentyn Moroz. This was around the end of March or the beginning of April 1969. He was being taken to the “kryta” [high-security prison], to Vladimir. We traveled together from Kyiv to Mordovia. There was a stop in Kharkiv. They put the three of us in the same cell, but for no more than two or three minutes. Then they immediately separated us. We didn't even have time to talk. But in the railcar, when I found out Moroz was there, we started to communicate. He asked to read my verdict. I passed him the verdict. The guards freely carried it over. He read it, congratulated me. He said he really liked my verdict and gave me a down pillow as a gift.

When we arrived in Kharkiv, my co-defendants Kondryukov and Karpenko were thrown into a general cell, while I was put in a death row cell.

V.O.: I know those cells... I was there in April 1974.

O.N.: When they brought me in there, the floor had a puddle of dried blood about a centimeter, a finger's width, thick. I walked, and the blood crunched under my feet. The walls were also splattered with blood and had bloody handprints. And there was broken glass everywhere. The bunk was iron, embedded in the wall and the floor. The table was also iron, like a pedestal, and the stool was a smaller pedestal. They brought me a mattress so old and smelly that it was disgusting to even touch. It took me a long time to get used to that cell. I understood that they wanted to scare me and intimidate me a little, because when they were sending me off, they said, “Maybe on the way you’ll think about who was leading you?” (Laughs). They kept wanting to find out who was in charge. I said, “I was my own leader.” And in fact, no one was in charge—I was interested myself, I did things myself. I understood that someone had to do this, not just for myself.

I was there for one night, then another—for about a week. And then, in the middle of the night, the small window in the cell door opens and someone addresses me: “Believe me, I am not a KGB agent. I want to know, how much do they pay for such work? I'm curious.” I say, “Nobody paid me anything.” “What do you mean, nothing? That's impossible! Then why were you isolated in a death row cell? It means you are dangerous.”

V.O.: How can they not pay? And what about five years!

O.N.: I said, “No one gave me anything. I even spent my own money.” He kept trying to persuade me, begging me to tell him how much they paid. We never came to an understanding.

I arrived in Mordovia, at Yavas, and was taken to the 11th zona. It was a large zona, with up to two thousand people. This was April 1969. What struck me was that there was a sea of flowers there.

V.O.: And you had just come from a cell—what an impression that must have been!

O.N.: Flowers, fountains, benches... Old men with beards walking around... There were many former collaborators there. There were even members of the Young Guard. The burgomaster of Krasnodon was there.

V.O.: Wasn't that Stetsenko? I've heard about him too.

O.N.: Later I spoke with two collaborators. I spoke with the investigator who handled the case of the Young Guard members. But I want to talk about my own case.

When I was taken into a small building in the zona, where I was supposed to change clothes, a prisoner dashes in and says, “What do you want to keep for yourself? Don't be afraid, everything will be yours.” The guard had stepped out for a minute. I gave him my shoes, my jumper—things that would be useful in the zona. As soon as I was settled in the barracks, he brought everything back.

As soon as I was changed and led out of this little building, some Muscovite approached me and asked, “Where are you from?” I said, “From Kyiv.” “Ah! One of our own!” I said, “How am I one of your own? And who are you?” “I’m from the Narodno-Trudovoy Soyuz party, the NTS.” I said, “I don’t know that party.” “Well, you might not know it, but I know that everyone in Kyiv works for this party.” “I don't know, I didn't work for anyone.” He then said, “And what were you in for?” “I spoke out in defense of the Ukrainian language.” “Ah, you’re a nationalist?” And he walked away, didn't talk to me anymore.

They put me in a barrack. In the evening, the prisoners came back from work. They found out about me, surrounded me, started asking questions. They threw a feast, maybe thirty men. Brewed tea. The tables were long, maybe ten meters. This was outside. It was still warm. Well, I’m telling my story. It’s interesting, after all—a new man has arrived...

V.O.: Everyone is asking questions, and you don’t know what to say and what not to say.

O.N.: No, not really. I immediately started looking for my own people. Who were these ‘own people’? These “twenty criminals” about whom I had been distributing Chornovil’s work. I only found Panas Zalyvakha and Anatoliy Shevchuk there. (Zalyvakha, Panas Ivanovych, born Nov. 26, 1925 in Kharkiv region. Died April 23, 2007. Artist, political prisoner 1965-71. In 1933 his family moved to the Far East. Graduated from the Leningrad Institute of Painting (1960), returned to Ukraine, lived in Ivano-Frankivsk. Participant in the Sixtiers movement, the Club of Creative Youth. Co-author of the stained-glass window for the 150th anniversary of T. Shevchenko at Kyiv University, destroyed in 1964. Imprisoned in September 1965 under Art. 62 Part 1 for 5 years. Served time in Mordovian camps. Shevchenko Prize laureate 1995; Shevchuk, Anatoliy Oleksandrovych, born Feb. 6, 1937, in Zhytomyr. Writer. Arrested May 23, 1966: 5 years of imprisonment in the camps of Mordovia. – V.O.).

I fell in with those who held a principled stance towards the administration. In this group were guys from the Ukrainian National Front: Yaroslav Lesiv (he was the one who maintained discipline among his guys), Hryhoriy Prokopovych, Mykhailo Dyak, Vasyl Kulynyn. (Lesiv, Yaroslav, poet, priest, Jan. 3, 1943 – Oct. 19, 1991. Member of UNF. Imprisoned Mar. 29, 1967, under Art. 62 Part 1 and 64 for 7 years, a second time on Nov. 15, 1979 for 2 years, a third time in May 1981 for 5 years. Member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group; Prokopovych, Hryhoriy Hryhorovych, b. 1928, insurgent, political prisoner 1950-58, member of UNF since 1974. Arrested Mar. 21, 1967, 6 years imprisonment, 5 years exile. Now lives in the village of Urizh, Drohobych district, Lviv region, church elder; Dyak, Mykhailo Dmytrovych, born Aug. 23, 1935 in the village of Kalna, Dolyna district, Ivano-Frankivsk oblast. – d. Aug. 18, 1976. Policeman, member of the Ukrainian National Front since 1965. Arrested Mar. 22, 1967. Charged with treason (Art. 56 Part 1 of the Criminal Code of the UkrSSR), creation of an anti-Soviet organization (Art. 64), illegal possession of a weapon (Art. 222 Part 1), sentenced to 12 years of imprisonment with the first 5 years to be served in prison, and the remaining 7 in a strict-regime labor colony, with confiscation of all property, and 5 years of exile. Served time in Vladimir Prison, in the camps of Mordovia and Perm oblast. Released in May 1975 due to cancer. Died Aug. 18, 1976; Kulynyn, Vasyl Ivanovych, born Nov. 21, 1943, village of Lypa, Dolyna district, Ivano-Frankivsk oblast. Participant of the UNF. Arrested May 26, 1967, convicted under Art. 56 Part I of the Criminal Code of the UkrSSR (“Treason”) and Art. 64 (“Organizational Activities”) to 6 years of imprisonment in strict-regime camps. Served time in Mordovia. Lives in Kherson region. – V.O.).

O.N.: In the 11th zona, they immediately sent me to work unloading cement. There were these carts, the Latvians used to push them, weighing two or three hundred kilograms. They had one wheel but with wings welded on. A big box. We had to haul the cement from the railway to a barrack and stack it in a pile. I was hauling and hauling, couldn't hold the cart, it fell and I fell with it—up to my neck in cement. Ivan Pokrovsky, from the Chernihiv region, from Horodnia, a fellow countryman of Lukyanenko's, found out about this, got me out of there, and assigned me to light work: carrying stones. I forgot to say: Pokrovsky assigned me a guardian. He, as I understood it, was in charge of discipline in the camp, to make sure, God forbid, that the Ukrainians didn't quarrel among themselves. He smoothed over all the quarrels. That was Pokrovsky's job. Well, and we would read the Decalogue when we gathered to talk. We celebrated all the holidays: the IV Universal, religious ones...

V.O.: It was a real Ukraine there.

O.N.: A real Ukraine. They assigned Oleksandr Okhrymovych to me. An erudite man, he could speak so logically, objectively, and persuasively. He was my teacher there, to ensure I understood everything correctly. I liked that. When they transferred me to the 19th, Pokrovsky recommended me for a position as an on-duty electrician at the substation. There was a furniture workshop there.

At the 19th, I started writing a piece. I wrote it, gave it to Pokrovsky to read. Then I decided to copy it in minuscule script on cigarette paper. The letters were about one and a half millimeters high, line after line. And Okhrymovych was just being released. I wanted to conceal this information in the heel of his boot so he could get it out to freedom. But they caught me: a guard came in during the middle of the night—and I was writing. I just—bang. If I hadn't flinched and covered it with a sheet of paper... But he said, “What is this?” And they sent me to the 17th zona.

V.O.: That zona was sort of a punishment one. When did this happen?

O.N.: It happened sometime in the spring of 1970—the snow was melting. Only they sent me not to the small zona, 17-A. There were two zonas there. Mykhailo Masyutko, Mykhailo Soroka, and Mykhailo Horyn were in 17-A at that time. (Masyutko, Mykhailo, Nov. 18, 1918, in Chaplynka, Kherson region – Nov. 18, 2001. History and Philology Dept. of Zaporizhia Pedagogical Institute. Writer. Imprisoned: 1937-42, 1965-71; Soroka, Mykhailo Mykhailovych, b. Nov. 27, 1911, in Velyki Hnylytsi, Ternopil region. OUN member. Imprisoned in 1937 for 5 years in Bereza Kartuzka. Released in 1939, imprisoned again in 1940 for 8 years, served time in Vorkuta, where he created the underground organization “OUN-North.” In 1952, sentenced to death, commuted to 25 years. In 1954, participated in the Kengir uprising. In the 60s, he was in the Mordovian camps; Horyn, Mykhailo Mykolayovych, b. June 17, 1930. One of the leaders of the Sixtiers movement. Imprisoned Aug. 26, 1965, under Art. 62 Part 1 for 6 years, a second time on Nov. 3, 1981 under Art. 62 Part 2 for 10 years and 5 years of exile, released July 2, 1987. Member of UHG, UGS. – V.O.)

V.O.: Soroka died there.

O.N.: I know. I was right in the zona next to it. You could call out from one 17th to the other 17th. If someone stood on the balcony of the two-story barrack in that large zona, you could shout to each other. Masyutko and I used to shout to Mykhailo Horyn together. Mykhailo Horyn, of course, knew about me, but from Masyutko. I had never seen him in person. Stepan Bedrylo and Mykola Kots were also there, and then Levko Horokhivsky arrived.

One day the gates open and they bring some prisoner into the zona in a horse-drawn cart. It was Mykhailo Masyutko, brought from the small zona 17-A. He looked like a Gypsy: lean, agile, tan, with an unshaven beard. The more cautious ones were immediately wary of approaching him. I was the first to approach, greeted him, and started helping him carry his suitcases of books to the storage room. That’s how we became friends. In this zona, we sewed canvas work gloves. I didn't always meet my quota, and Masyutko couldn't manage even half, so he was always denied his *laryok* privileges (the right to buy five rubles' worth of products per month).

On his birthday, I organized a sizable gathering of prisoners for tea in the work zone, about 50 souls. Representatives of the Baltic nations were also invited. We maintained friendly relations with them. At this gathering, I told people who Masyutko was, about Chornovil's book “Portraits of Twenty Criminals,” which also mentioned him. This book in Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Lviv had awakened the creative youth to national resistance.

Everyone said then that I would definitely be put in the punishment cell, but, surprisingly, everything went calmly. There must not have been an informer among those invited.

In the camps, I already had a character assessment: “Incorrigible. Has a negative influence on those around him.”

For my birthday, I invited some Jews for tea, the so-called “airplane plotters,” who wanted to fly to Israel. I maintained friendly relations at that time with Mikhail Mishener, a native of Moldova. He was reluctant to accept the idea of Zionism because he was a staunch internationalist. Gradually, with my help, he finally embraced a national ideology and was even ready to leave for Israel. He invited me, too, to go to the “promised land” after my release, because the authorities in Ukraine wouldn’t let me live a normal life.

In the summer of 1972... You know the reason why we were taken to the Urals, right? Because information was getting out. So they decided to take all of us who were not amenable to re-education and move us out. They even took away our cigarette paper, even our newspapers, put us on a train, and our belongings separately, so we couldn’t take any information out. The heat was so bad that we were suffocating in there. There was nothing to breathe.

V.O.: People said that someone even died.

O.N.: Yes, someone died. Not in our car.

V.O.: And what did you do in the seventeenth?

O.N.: We sewed gloves there. I didn't always meet the quota.

V.O.: And that was a reason for punishment. So you were always on the hook?

O.N.: Always on the hook. But in the 19th, I had a very interesting incident with the camp chief. It was Usov, a lieutenant colonel. One day, I'm sitting in the barracks reading a book. The chief walks in, with some general, and some others—some commission had arrived. They approach me. They stop and stand there. And the chief says, “Inmate”—he called me by my last name or not. I had a tag, they could have read it. “Why are you not standing up and greeting the chief?” “I don't have the right.” And I continue to read. They turned around and left. About half an hour later, a guard runs up: “Nazarenko, the camp chief wants to see you.” I came, and asked, “Did you call for me?” “Yes. Now explain to me, Nazarenko, what right do you not have?” “The moral right,” I say. “How is it moral? There is a procedure, a charter, a daily routine.” I say, “I have no right to wish you good health, because you are holding me in captivity. It’s a nonsense. How can I greet a person who has taken away my freedom, wish them health? I can only wish you death.” He thought for a moment: “Well, alright. Go on, get some rest. I will not punish you.” That was the incident with the chief.

V.O.: Usov liked such frankness?

O.N.: Yes. And then there was the conflict with the doctor. She didn't want to send me to have my teeth treated: I had periodontitis. My teeth were loose and crumbling. She then said, “I cannot send you for dental treatment.” “Why not?” “We have an order to send people only if half of their teeth are missing.” I said, “Listen, are you Ilse Koch?” Oh, how she blew up: “I am not the camp chief to you! I am not going to bow down to some Nazarenko!” Something like that. She had already heard that the chief had not punished me for refusing to talk to the authorities. Well, maybe this is an insignificant story.

V.O.: What, she wrote a report?

O.N.: Yes, she wrote one, but the chief didn't punish me again. They didn't punish me in the 19th. But in the Urals—that’s where I did time. In the Urals, I was in the 35th zona, at Vsesvyatskaya station. I was in there twice. Once I was in the isolation cell for 10 or 15 days. It was in the middle of summer, warm. The guards would bring me cigarettes. But in the winter of 1973, before the New Year, they gave me 5 days in the punishment cell. What did they give me that for? We had a captain there, I don’t remember his name. A Tatar, as they said. When I was leaving the work zone, he frisked me and found a little drawing. I had drawn a night scene. Night, snow on the ground, stars, a horse is standing, a Cossack is sitting, a rifle across his knees, a candle is standing. And he is kissing his sabre. I signed it: "New Year's Oath." Such a scene. I wanted to send this little card as a greeting to Mariya Ovdiyenko. But they took it from me. “What is this?” “A drawing.” “And what’s on it?” “A Cossack.” “And why is he kissing a sabre?” “Cossacks had sabres—so he's kissing it.” “Well, I'm taking it from you. This is an anti-Soviet item. I'm confiscating it.” “You have no right,” I say. And I added that with his action, he was undermining Soviet power. He immediately had me: “Take him to the punishment cell.” They gave me five days. For five days, I didn't sleep: the walls were frosty, the floor was concrete. They stripped me—just in a shirt, no coat, no hat—nothing. I think, “If I lie down, I’ll catch a cold.” So I danced for five days. I could barely wait until they let me out. (Laughs).

In the Urals, I met Mykola Horbal, Andriy Koroban, and Ihor Kalynets. When Ihor arrived, he went up to the second floor, and we surrounded him. He said, “Guys! I’m not a politician. I’m a poet. I will not protest. And don't you bother me,” he said. He understood it as us bringing conflict upon ourselves. And he didn't want any part of it. But about a week or two later, he was already participating in all the protests and statements.

There I also met Zinoviy Antonyuk. This was the new generation, sentenced in 1972. I liked Zinoviy's stance: he arrived as if he were in his own home. No confusion, no anxiety, he came as if he had been living there for a long time. I saw him about four or five years ago. He was Yevhen Pronyuk's secretary. Did you know him?

V.O.: I know him, I know him. I saw him recently. We were at Mykola Horbal’s on the 29th.

O.N.: I'd like to see him. We were on good terms. He greeted me so warmly when we met at Yevhen Pronyuk's. He gave me his address then. I wrote it down on a newspaper and lost that newspaper. So I never managed to see him again. Although I was in Kyiv later, I didn't visit him because I didn't know where to find him.

What else is there to say? I served my full term.

V.O.: And how were you released from the zona? Did you travel on your own? Because later they started escorting people to their regional centers.

O.N.: I was released from the zona on June 26, 1973. I walked out of the gates and went on my own, got on a train, and came straight to Kyiv. I came to Kyiv, to my brother Anatoliy. A few days later, Oksana Meshko came with flowers, accompanied by Mariya Ovdiyenko. I stayed sometimes with my brother, sometimes at Klymenko's in Boyarka. They issued me a passport in Brovary, but wouldn't register my address. For ten months, I went to various offices. They gave me the runaround, as they say. On the one hand, “You have the right to be registered.” On the other, they couldn't register me because I didn't have a place to live. I would find a place to live—and they wouldn't hire me. They even offered a dormitory—but still wouldn't register me.

When I was leaving the camp, what was I thinking? For five years I had dreamed of this day, when I would return, to start some work again. Now I was, as they say, exposed, so I couldn't go to those who had been in prison. I started talking with Oksana Meshko, because an idea had come to me back in the camp to create some kind of committee or a women's society in Kyiv, in Ukraine. A committee of women-mothers who would petition for their husbands, for their sons who were imprisoned.

When I returned, I met Oles Shevchenko. Oles confessed to me: “I am working on opening my own channel to the West, to transmit information not through Moscow.” I think: “If Oles Shevchenko has his own channel, then such an organization is exactly what is needed. Mothers and wives will bring information, will write petitions, all sorts of applications—and all these documents can be sent abroad.” But I thought that it wouldn't be a political organization, so they couldn't be prosecuted so easily. Oksana Meshko listened and asked, “And whose idea is this?” I said, “Whose idea? It's the idea of all the political prisoners. Everyone wants some work to be done…” “Well, okay.” She spoke with Vira Lisova. I lived with Vira Lisova for two weeks. When she went to the village to see her mother, I stayed in her apartment there near the Chernihivska metro station.

Oksana Meshko went to Vasyl Stus’s wife, to Mykhailyna Kotsiubynska—and they all refused. They didn't want to. She spoke with someone else, probably Halya Pronyukova (Didkivska). She returned and said, “Perhaps it might even harm our boys.” Well, since that didn't work out...

Ten months after my release, sometime in the late spring of 1974, the police caught me and sent me to the Donbas to my parents, in Yasynuvata. They put me under administrative surveillance—for six months. I served those six months and came to Kyiv again. They caught me again. But this time it wasn't the police who caught me, but the KGB itself. How did that happen? When I was being released, they didn't want to check all my papers and manuscripts. There happened to be some KGB agent from Kyiv there in the Urals, Mykola, I've forgotten his last name. He said, “I'll give them to you there. You're going to Kyiv, aren't you?” “To Kyiv.” “I'll give them to you in Kyiv.”

V.O.: Mykola? A fair-haired one? Maybe Stetsenko?

O.N.: No, not fair-haired—dark-haired. I would call him, and he kept putting it off: no time, no time. And one time I showed up: “I want you to return my papers. You said you would return them, didn't you?” He says, “Alright. Where shall we meet?” I say, “Out there, on the street.” He drives up: “Let's go now, because the documents are not at the KGB, but in another place,” and he takes me to the police station. And the police escort me to the train station—and put me under the supervision of the train conductor. They buy me a ticket—and send me to the Donbas. (Laughs). Back to Yasynuvata. I think, “Well, they must be waiting for me there already.” And so it was. I didn’t even make it to Yasynuvata. I got off in Avdiyivka and took a bus home. I arrive home, and a policeman is standing at the gate. (Laughs). They take me right away, try me, and give me another year of administrative surveillance.

V.O.: Through a court this time?

O.N.: Through a court. The first time through a court, and the second time too.

I did not serve this term in the Donbas. My father helped me leave for Skadovsk. My father was still alive. He was retired. When they would come at night to check if I was at home (because I had to be home by seven in the evening), my father couldn't stand it, them coming at night, shining a flashlight. He went to his old workplace and told them: “Look,” he says, “he wants to go to Skadovsk. He has an acquaintance there, a fiancée—Lida Huk.” (Huk, Lidiya Larionivna, b. 1938, doctor, sentenced in 1972 under Art. 187-1 of the Criminal Code of the UkrSSR to 1.5 years imprisonment. – V.O.). And what do you know, the KGB gives an order to allow me to go there. And they transferred the surveillance there. But not immediately. First, they let me go to get married. I came back two hours late. They want to try me again—for being late. I say, “It wasn’t my fault—the train was late.” “We don’t know anything—to trial you go!” And so the judge says, “Tell us all about your guilt.” I say, “Well, I went to get married.” “And how can you prove that you went to get married?” “Well, how? I told everyone. I told the police. Everyone knows I went to get married. They let me go.” “They say you have no documents to prove you went to get married.” I say, “Well maybe... Here, they gave me a certificate to buy things at the store for newlyweds...” and I hand it to them. “And why didn’t you say you had a document?! Go home! The trial is canceled.” And they let me go home. And they didn't try me again. That's how it was.

I went to Skadovsk.

V.O.: And what about the marriage?

O.N.: I arrived, married Lida Huk. We have a child—a daughter, Yaroslava. And then we divorced.

When my idea of creating a women's group or committee with Oksana Meshko didn't work out, I came home and started thinking (already in Skadovsk) about how to create some kind of publication. I was developing a method for making stencils. And suddenly, Iryna Korsunska arrives from Moscow. She was from Sakharov's circle. Mykhailo Masyutko had recommended that she come to Skadovsk. She brought her two children for a vacation and for treatment at the sea. She stayed with us. She was so careless—I know that whenever someone visits us (and many did), they were definitely being listened to. I was already convinced that the apartment was under surveillance. But she speaks openly: “We have created a Helsinki Group in Moscow.”

V.O.: So that was in 1976?

O.N.: 1976. And she says, “You also need to create such an organization in Ukraine.” I know the walls are bugged, so I stayed silent, as if I hadn’t heard. She saw that the conversation on this topic was not being picked up. When we went outside, I said, “I've been wanting to talk to someone about this topic for a long time. It’s a pleasant opportunity for me that you’ve come from Moscow.” We went into a grove towards the sea and started talking there. I said, “Since a Helsinki Group has been created in Moscow, we need one too. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. But our Ukrainians don't trust me, they're holding back,” and I told her the story with the women. I said, “If you can help in Moscow, I can recommend people to you.” And just then, Nina Strokata and Nadiyka Svitlychna had returned from the camp. They were living somewhere near Moscow.

V.O.: Strokata was in Tarusa, but Svitlychna returned to Kyiv.

O.N.: I proposed these two candidates, Oksana Yakivna Meshko and Mykhailyna Kotsiubynska. I didn't know anyone else. I said, “Maybe there will be someone else.” “Alright.” “Just one request from me: don't call it the ‘Kyiv Group,’ call it the ‘Ukrainian Group.’” “What's the difference?” “A big one!” She couldn't understand at all what the difference was between the Kyiv and Ukrainian groups. “I know that in your circle they will insist on it being the Kyiv Group. But I want it to be the Ukrainian Group. But if they categorically refuse to create a Ukrainian Group, agree to the Kyiv Group as well.” She left. About two or three weeks later, she sends a telegram in plain text: “Congratulations on the successful resolution of your question.” I was terrified: the KGB knows already! They’ll ask what successful resolution? What “question”? Lida, my wife, read the telegram and burned it. I didn't reply to her. Thank God, no one came.

V.O.: The Ukrainian Helsinki Group was formed on November 9, 1976. And she immediately sent a telegram?

O.N.: Yes, yes. Indeed, I tune in to Western radio, and I hear that the Kyiv Helsinki Group has been created.

V.O.: They said “Kyiv Group”?

O.N.: Kyiv! And the head—Rudenko. Oles Berdnyk, Petro Hryhorenko, Oksana Meshko were members... I didn't even know those people. Some time passes, Ivan Kandyba and Levko Lukyanenko return from prison, join the Group and immediately rename it the Ukrainian Group. Right away, when they returned.

V.O.: They were released in January 1976 and became founding members of the Group.

O.N.: No. It existed before their release. Three documents were published on the radio from the Kyiv Group. I heard them myself.

V.O.: I know Rudenko's version...

O.N.: I spoke with Korsunska, but I don't know how it was done there. Maybe they did it without me. But I know they announced it as “Kyiv.”

V.O.: On November 9, 1976, Mykola Rudenko held a press conference in Moscow at Oleksandr Ginzburg’s apartment, where he announced the creation of the Ukrainian Public Group to Promote the Implementation of the Helsinki Accords, and named the 10 founders who signed the declaration of its creation.

O.N.: The first thing on the radio was “Kyiv.” Maybe Radio Liberty called it that.

V.O.: Well, alright. Let's move on. Did you submit any materials to the Group?

O.N.: No. I didn't submit any materials to the Group. I had an incident. Once—it was around 1978 or 1979—I came to Kyiv and went to see Oksana Meshko. She asks, “What happened there in your Kherson? Was there some kind of uprising?” “Nothing happened.” “Well, how so? Everyone is talking about a big rally, that they were stopping and overturning cars.” “There was an incident where some gypsies killed a Komsomol member of the people's patrol from the ‘Bilshovyk’ factory. And people got outraged, went to the regional committee and demanded that those gypsies be deported from Kherson, because they were fed up with all of them. Traffic was stopped. It was right in the city center. There were political slogans shouted too. It was the ‘five-year plan of quality’ then, and the milk was bad, the food was bad... It was just a soap bubble, not worth anything.” “No. Write about it.” I say, “Alright. I'll write it. Just read it and rewrite it in your own hand. I don’t want to get a prison sentence for such information.”

And before that, they were already preparing a sentence for me. They had questioned my entire work crew, where I worked (I worked as an electrical equipment adjuster), that I was engaged in anti-Soviet activities. And they had already gathered a considerable amount of material on oral anti-Soviet agitation. And one document... Not a document, but a letter. I wrote to Ivan Pokrovsky that since I had arrived in Skadovsk, I had been fired from my job three times. They'd hire me, and two or three days later, they'd fire me. (Laughs). So I say, “I don't know how to go on living.” And I described all of this to him. This letter of mine was published in Belgrade at the Helsinki Conference. And now this document on top of it. And how did it happen? I had gone with Fedir Klymenko from Dnipropetrovsk to visit old Oksana Yakivna. I thought she had burned my manuscript. She said, “Here are the matches, I'm going to the kitchen to burn it.” But then it became known that she hadn't burned it. They summoned me to the KGB in Kherson and said, “We have a new case against you. We won't give you much, but we’ll give you three years.”

V.O.: That must be Article 187-1?

O.N.: 187-1, yes. “That time,” he says, “you got away with it for the letter that was published abroad.” Because I had said that I knew many Ivans, I wrote to many people. “And who did you write to?” “Well, to many people. But I didn't write for publication abroad.” “And now this document and your oral agitation—that’s exactly three years,” says this general, the head of the Kherson KGB. “You know, frankly speaking, we don't want to imprison you. But Kyiv insists. Give us at least something, so we can report back that work has been done.” They were trying to persuade me to repent. I tell him, “No, I cannot write a confession…” And my daughter had just been born then, in 1978. I say, “My wife told me that if I repent, she will divorce me immediately.” “Yes, yes, yes. That’s possible. We know Lida. She could divorce you. She's a principled woman. Well, at least write a paper saying that you will never go to Oksana Meshko again.” Well, I wrote that paper, that I would never go again. That's what happened, and they let me go.

V.O.: A soul for repentance.

O.N.: For repentance. That's all I wrote then...

Ah. Then, when I refused to write about that Kherson incident, she, Oksana Yakivna, said, “You are also a member of the Helsinki Group, only in the south.” I didn’t pay any attention to this. And then my wife says, “It would be great to create a Helsinki Group here, in the south.” Then I understood that Lida and Oksana Meshko had had a conversation about this. Well, I was having conflicts with my wife at the time. I let it go in one ear and out the other. And I didn't even think about it—why split the Group? I understood it was some scheme from Moscow to create their own, more pliable group, because the Ukrainian Helsinki Group was annoying them. It even started to take aim at Russia a bit... You know how we love to write about them, the Muscovites... I thought, maybe this is Moscow's doing, to create some second Helsinki Group organization? Well, I didn't attach any importance to it then, but later, when I spoke with the KGB a second time, they kept pressing me about whether they wanted to create a Southern Helsinki Group, which was to be led by either Mykhailo Masyutko or Oles Nazarenko. I said, “This is the first I'm hearing of it. I don’t know.” I didn't tell them what I had previously heard from Oksana and Lida. I said, “I haven't heard anything like that, I don't know.” And that was the end of it. But they insisted for a long time about the Southern Helsinki Group. I don't know whose idea it was.

V.O.: Maybe it was the KGB's idea?

O.N.: Probably the KGB's idea. But I didn't fall for it. And then, Ivan Sokulsky came to visit me. He liked it here, especially on Dzharylhach island—there's steppe, and the waves roar, feather grass. (Sokulsky, Ivan, July 13, 1940 – June 22, 1992. Poet. Imprisoned June 14, 1969, under Art. 62, part 1 for 4.5 years; a second time as a UHG member on April 11, 1980 under Art. 62, part 2 for 5 years in prison, 5 years special-regime camp, and 5 years of exile; a third time on April 3, 1985 for 3 years, released Aug. 2, 1988. – V.O.).

And I missed one incident. When they started writing very categorically about Russians in the documents of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, I went to Oksana and said, “Oksana Yakivna! Don’t provoke the Muscovites. Or they will cut off our only channel. Be more modest. Or they’ll cut it off—and that will be it. First, they’ll imprison us, and then they’ll imprison the Moscow Group.” And that's exactly what happened later! I said this quietly on Verbolozna Street. And she started yelling, “Who are you to teach us? Who do you think you are? You're a worker! And you're teaching us how to behave!” She was a little bit, maybe, unbalanced at times. Vira Tkachenko also told me, when I asked, “Why is it that you, all acquaintances from Kyiv, rarely visit Oksana Yakivna?” Vira said, “We would be glad to visit her more often, to help. But whenever we go, she inevitably attacks someone, saying they are provocateurs, that they were sent. And so people just start to be wary and don't want to go.”

V.O.: She was suspicious of many people, yes.

O.N.: Oh, one time she yelled at me so much—wishing me dead, that I should burn...

V.O.: Did she hit you?

O.N.: No. She didn't hit me. I ask, “What's the matter?” “The moment you left my place, they came the next day and conducted a search!” “What do I have to do with it?” “How? Before you were here, they didn't search my place.”

V.O.: She had 9 searches. They dug up her whole garden.

O.N.: Then she also told my wife, “I am convinced he is an agent. Because when I was reviling him with all sorts of words, he just stood there, looking, but didn't say a single word in his defense.” (Laughs).

V.O.: That was her way. Many people tell such stories. But may she rest in peace!

O.N.: May she rest in peace! I saw her for the last time before her trip to Australia. I saw her on the street in Skadovsk and approached her. Back then—because Lida and I are not on speaking terms—she used to visit Lida every summer.

V.O.: And you still live in Skadovsk now?

O.N.: I do.

V.O.: Do you work there or are you already retired?

O.N.: I've been retired for eight years now. I live alone.

V.O.: Please, tell me your address.

O.N.: My address is: the city of Skadovsk in the Kherson region, Tavriyska Street, 17. The postal code is 326400 (now 75701. – O.N.). I don’t have a telephone.

V.O.: It’s good that we’ve recorded this conversation. The value of such materials is very high. Because we are here today, and tomorrow we are not. But once a recording is made, it will be preserved. We will transcribe it onto paper and send you the text. Perhaps it will be easier for you to write about it more extensively later.

O.N.: I am always meaning to write an essay about Vyshhorod. We used to talk with Oleksandr Drobakha. And he was in love with poetry; it was through him that I understood what a poetic image is. Because before that, although I once wrote poems in my childhood, they were very weak, primitive. When I was 16, I wrote: *“Тарасе, друже мій єдиний, Тарасе, батьку мій святий! Поглянь, поглянь з-за хмар на землю, що тут твориться? Як у пеклі. Жиди Вкраїну поснували, як пні у лісі, посідали, куди не їдеш, куди не йдеш, останній гріш їм віддаєш. Сидять собі на нашій шкірі та вчаться люд потомлений дурить. Ще й прославляють Україну. Кричать: це наша вічная рабиня. Кричать: нікому не дамо, бо в ній вродилися і в ній помремо!”* Well, that was just something...

V.O.: So it turns out we are a colony of Israel? And not of Russia...

O.N.: Yes, that was right after the war when Israel was re-established...

V.O.: I want to ask something else. You named many people. I know Drobakha. Mariya Ovdiyenko is somewhere here near Kyiv.

O.N.: In Brovary. She is involved in publishing now, she publishes books.

V.O.: And the other people? It would be interesting to meet them and also record their stories. Where are they now?

O.N.: Vasyl Oleksandrovych Kondryukov, who was imprisoned for three years, is in Vitryani Hory, Chernihivska Street, 3, apartment 25.

Valentyn Karpenko. I don't know where he is now.

Lyudmyla Sheremetyeva is in Lviv. She was involved in the case. She was expelled from the university, from her fifth year. She was not imprisoned. She was a witness and was in a face-to-face confrontation with me.

Komashkov has passed away. He lived in Vyshhorod. (Komashkov, Volodymyr Ivanovych, b. 1935, d. Oct. 10, 1997. – V.O.)

Bohdan Dyriv lives somewhere in Kyiv. He was also one of the active helpers. We even collected money for photographic paper and developers.

Ivan Honchar is from Havrylivka, that's in the Vyshhorod district.

V.O.: You’ve told everything so well. Like at an interrogation. You probably didn't talk like this during the investigation. So, you are taking on a socialist pledge, at least, to write about the Vyshhorod group.

O.N.: It seems to me it should be called “Vyshhorod Legends.” Why “Vyshhorod Legends?” Sometime in 1967 or 1968, a rumor spread in Vyshhorod that nationalists wanted to blow up the HPP. A young Russian girl approached me (she was a girl then, we lived in the same dormitory, she might be sixty now)—her name was Tatyana Tonkova—and she tells me, “I’ve been watching your group for a long time. I like it a lot. But I have a female acquaintance from the KGB or something. She says that the nationalists held a congress here in Vyshhorod and that they are all going to be arrested soon. I want to warn you. I don't know if you are nationalists, but I think you belong to them.” That’s the information she gave me. Such rumors were circulating.

Later I figured out that when Chornovil had a birthday or something, guys from Kyiv came and had a little party on the Cossack Islands.

V.O.: Ah, so that was the congress! And what about the explosives to blow up the HPP?

O.N.: I don’t know where that came from. It was only when I was already arrested and sitting at Volodymyrska, 33, that my cellmate, the gold and currency speculator, Dr. Savchenko, says, “The one who wanted to stun fish was sitting here before you.” And he told this story. Some ballast was brought to the airfield testing ground, where the AN planes are tested, to be loaded onto the planes for testing. One time, they brought something heavy in boxes. When the workers were carrying them, something broke. Grenades spilled out. Complete with fuzes. They took these grenades to stun fish. They were from Petrivtsi, there were four of them. One got four years, and the others got less. This was told to me by that Savchenko—a surgeon and gold speculator. I said, “Ah, so that’s it! Someone brought grenades to stun fish, and they turned it all on the nationalists—to blow up the HPP.” Just like that. (Laughs).

V.O.: When you write such a text, I would like you to send me a copy. Maybe we can publish it somewhere when the opportunity arises.

O.N.: I don't have the opportunity to write right now. I will write later. But I'm not promising now. (O. Nazarenko's essay “Vyshhorod Legends” is available on the website of the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group http://museum.khpg.org in the “Memoirs” section. – V.O.).

V.O.: Alright, later then. So, the conversation with Mr. Oles Nazarenko took place on January 6, on the eve of the Nativity of Christ in the year of our Lord 1999.

You want to add one more episode?

O.N.: When I decided to appeal to the people of Kyiv in 1968, I passed that document to Ivan Dziuba. I wanted to know if I had written it correctly or incorrectly. Dziuba probably approved the document then. But I can't say for sure. That's what Volodymyr Komashkov told me.

When the Ukrainian Helsinki Group had already been imprisoned—in essence, it no longer existed then—Ivan Sokulsky came to Skadovsk to rest and informed me that a new Helsinki Group had been formed. He named new people, but I don't remember them now. But what I want to say is—I advised him that, in my opinion, it was not necessary to announce this lineup this time. Let the old lineup remain (they were already exposed), and call the new lineup the Working Helsinki Group, without announcing names. He listened and said, “That's appropriate, appropriate. But,” he says, “I will consult with the boys.” He was just on his way to the Ivano-Frankivsk region. I never saw him again; he was also arrested again. When his wife, Orysia, came to visit, I reminded her, “I told him.” “And they,” she said, “all refused. The boys said, ‘How can it be that we will work anonymously? Unknown?’” And indeed: then they were all arrested again.

V.O.: That was the Group’s tactic: to act openly.

O.N.: Before the elections last year, on behalf of the Skadovsk “Prosvita,” of which I am a member, I wrote this

“Appeal to the Citizens of the City of Skadovsk”

“Учітеся, брати мої, думайте, читайте!”

Taras Shevchenko.

“Citizens! We are the children of Mother Ukraine, in the past—a great and glorious Cossack nation. But today, many of us despise the language of our people, stubbornly refuse to love it, and have practically become shameful servants of our age-old enemies. How could this have happened? After the Battle of Poltava, the Russian conquerors abolished Ukrainian state autonomy—the Hetmanate, and forbade church services and the printing of books in our native language. When the appointed hetman Pavlo Polubotok expressed his dissatisfaction to the tsar, Peter the Great, after imprisoning him in the Peter and Paul Fortress where he died chained to a wall, lectured the indomitable patriot that he worried in vain about his Little Russian people, whose language could not survive in a unified state: in a hundred years it would be forgotten, and in two hundred—no one would even know that such a people existed. Thus, to appropriate our land, our name, and our cultural heritage and to become the full-fledged masters of what belongs to others, they set themselves the goal of liquidating us, Ukrainians, as a nation. Empress Catherine the Great, furthering the imperial policy, issues a decree: to convert all Little Russian schools to instruction in the ‘Great Russian language, so that they have no distinction whatsoever.’

Already in the first half of the 19th century, the old church name—‘Malorossiya’ [Little Russia]—no longer satisfied the empire and was renamed the ‘Southwestern Krai,’ and the Ukrainian language was called the ‘South-Russian dialect.’ To prevent a language problem from arising, in 1862 the tsarist regime issued the ‘Valuev Circular,’ according to which ‘a Little Russian language has never existed, does not exist, and cannot exist.’ To Russify the region, the state established a special monetary bonus for teachers in schools.

In Soviet times, this bonus amounted to 15 percent of the salary. Having overthrown tsarism, Bolshevik Russia allowed the study of the Ukrainian language, but not with Ukrainian, but with a Russian-like grammar, with the right to optional study of the subject. Over almost three centuries in Ukraine, the Moscow language became dominant, and the conquerors drove ours into distant, remote villages, imposing upon us a complex of linguistic and mental inferiority. In order to not belong to the ‘dimwitted’ and to have access to science, the demeaned began to eagerly adopt the language of their masters.

People, know this! A people that loses its native, mother tongue, its God-given face of the kin, gradually disappears from the face of the Earth and merges into a foreign, alien tribe.

The Stalinists did not want to wait long for our death. They wanted to immediately make the Russian people the sole heir of Kyivan Rus. They failed to kill the nation with the Holodomor of 1933. Only at the end of the victorious war in June 1944 did such an opportunity arise. And the Central Committee of the CPSU makes a decision: to deport from Ukraine, supposedly for treason, everyone who was under German occupation. At the same time, the Crimean Tatars were also repressed, so that there would be no legal claimants to the Crimean land. Marshal Zhukov and Lavrentiy Beria were made responsible for carrying out the Ukrainian action. The head of the Central Committee, Nikita Khrushchev, reported at the 21st Congress that the Ukrainians were not deported only because there were too many of them and not enough railcars to deport them, like the Tatars, in a single night. But this was only a sad irony. The real reason was the fear that the executors might not manage in time, and all of Ukraine would rise up. Soldiers, upon learning of this, would desert the front and join the liberation movement in the western Ukrainian lands. Frightened by this possible state of affairs, the Central Committee made a correction: to deal with the ‘Banderite movement’ in a short time, and then to proceed to the set goal.

However, that did not happen. Thanks to the heroic struggle of the insurgents, the so-called “secret war” dragged on for years. And only with Stalin’s death did this criminal operation lose its relevance. The Party adopted a policy of traditional methods of Russification at the local level and encouraged people to be recruited to work beyond the Urals. Starting in the 1950s, writers were forbidden to use the words “Ukraine” and “Ukrainian people,” as they were deemed to carry anti-Soviet meaning aimed at undermining the friendship of peoples.

Now, although Ukraine has won its statehood, the government, surprisingly, does not want to stop the Russification, which has gained wide momentum and is no longer moving systematically, as before, but spontaneously throughout Ukraine. The question is: whose state are they building? Indeed, why has the government, in six years of independence, failed to eliminate the privileged status of Russians in Ukraine? Under what law do our children study the Russian language in schools? There are also more than ten million Ukrainians living in Russia, but our language is not taught there, and their passports are not written in Ukrainian.

What is this? Is the hereditary symptom of the eternal slave at work in our state? Taras Shevchenko hoped that we would be better when “the chained people are soon unfettered, and the shameful hour is forgotten forever.” It seems we have already been unfettered, but someone does not want to see us as true citizens and puts us to shame.

People! To preserve ourselves as a people, let us stop being ashamed of what is our own! We call on you to communicate with each other only in your native language! Always and everywhere, be worthy citizens of our immortal Ukraine! On Ukrainian land, everyone, regardless of nationality, should speak the language of the Ukrainian people and call themselves Ukrainians! Do not hide behind the unwritten rule of the privileged nation, as was done in the USSR: “I am Russian,” demanding a Russian-speaking environment, but live by the interests of the Ukrainian state!

Only when we manage to cast out the imperial fabrication that Russians are our blood brothers and begin to communicate with them on equal, parity-based terms can business relations take on a friendly character. For now, Russia, through its mafia structures, still governs us, hoping it will manage to completely destroy our economy and reunite. However, even there, some small forces are emerging that propose to stop this futile pressure.

Today, the greatest evil is brought to our people by the political leftist forces, which have strayed from the true, lawful path and are sowing darkness. They always arise in difficult times. These “sages,” mourning the USSR, do not understand that any single-party, strong, and monolithic government—be it German or Russian—is a fascist regime. Alongside the communists, progressive social-fanatics are pushing their way to the socialist trough, followed by pluralistic, dimwitted “elephants,” bringing deadly bilingualism to Ukrainians. The so-called “Peasant Party of Ukraine” and the “agrarians,” who consist exclusively of kolkhoz chairmen, want to preserve their collective-farm-feudal regime and continue to parasitize the countryside. All these gentlemen strive to bring back yesterday so they can once again be under the strong hand of the brotherly empire, because without Moscow’s rulers and Ukrainian serfs, they cannot survive on their own. The leftists do not know how to be guided by common sense. All their political propaganda is aimed at the liquidation of the Ukrainian state. It does not occur to them that they will never be able to gather three hundred votes in parliament to change the Constitution and peacefully return Soviet power. Whether they want it or not, they will have to make a choice: dissolve themselves, exist inactively, or start a civil war and spill rivers of blood. Is this really so hard to understand?

To prevent such a disaster, we must all see the light, proving ourselves to be people of a sound spirit, not a swamp—neither one thing nor the other—but Ukrainian patriots. And then no enemy force will be able to defeat us and tear Ukraine away from the European community of free nations for a long time again. Only then will our state become both independent and rich!”

The Taras Hryhorovych Shevchenko “Prosvita” of Skadovsk, 1998.

V.O.: A very good text.

O.N.: I wrote this document just before the elections to the Verkhovna Rada and sent it to various newspapers at the same time. I sent it to “Narodna Hazeta.” But they only printed an excerpt there, and not from “Prosvita,” but in my name, stating that such an event had taken place. “Svoboda” also reported that such an event had occurred. I also sent it to Pavlo Movchan with a request to distribute this document, to help me spread it throughout Ukraine, not in our name, but so that it, being persuasive, would be disseminated by every “Prosvita” in different cities and districts. I don’t know if he did anything—there was no answer. I also sent it to “Krymska Svitlytsia.” They say—I haven’t read it because we didn’t receive that newspaper—that this article was published in “Krymska Svitlytsia.” But I haven’t read it and don’t know what was there, whether it was in full or not. I received responses about my article all the way from Western Ukraine, that they liked it very much, that it was written convincingly, clearly, and concretely.

V.O.: Were there any of your autobiographical publications in the press? Or was your case written about anywhere? About Radio “Svoboda,” of course, there was something, and Chornovil wrote in the “Ukrainian Herald”…

O.N.: Yes. That was back then. Plakhotniuk told me that “Chas-Time” had published a mention of our group. Under his signature. A mention that there was such a “Nazarenko case” in Vyshhorod. I don’t know, I haven’t read it.

V.O.: That puts even more of an obligation on you to write.

O.N.: It was written about in all the Vyshhorod newspapers.

V.O.: Oleksandr Drobakha is probably writing it?

O.N.: No. This is Ivan Honchar; he has already written about our Vyshhorod group in three newspapers.

V.O.: You don’t have these texts?

O.N.: I don’t have them.

V.O.: I’ll ask Drobakha. Let him find them. So that we have them too. I’ll make a copy for you as well.

O.N.: True, our district newspaper wrote about me; they had my memoirs about the camp. Small excerpts. About one page. And I also published my essays on historical themes.

V.O.: Good. So, I think you will now get down to it and write.

O.N.: Maybe when winter comes. I’m building a house, you see.

V.O.: How can you build a house in winter? Just sit down and write before winter comes.

O.N.: Well, alright. I’ll try.

V.O.: I sincerely thank you for the conversation and for this text you read. I made myself a copy, but let it be in your voice as well.

O.N.: I’m surprised why no one wanted to take up such an initiative of ours.

V.O.: Other people wrote similar texts.

O.N.: These facts are, of course, well-known. But I collected and concentrated them. I strung them all together consistently, fact after fact, like beads on a thread.

V.O.: It’s a good text. It’s worth using when the opportunity arises. I thank you sincerely. We’ll be celebrating Christmas today. I wish you health, strength of spirit, and as one lady used to say, may you be as strong as pliers!

O.N.: Thank you, thank you. Well, God grant us all health, and may Ukraine become an independent state! Because I just don’t know what this Kuchma is doing. I can’t understand him. It seems to me he could be a second Pavlo Skoropadsky. Preparing this Slavic Union for us…

V.O.: Well, what do you expect from him? He was tormented by hunger in his childhood. He’s dystrophic; he was dying of hunger in 1946. He remains such a dystrophic person to this day.

O.N.: That’s one thing, but one must still be a patriot of Ukraine.

V.O.: The wave carried him to such a height. But he doesn’t measure up to the level of President.

O.N.: He doesn’t. Power should have been seized right away, back in the squares in 1990–91, not declaring that we want to raise national consciousness as a civic organization, that we don’t want power.

V.O.: But specifically, who was supposed to exercise that power? I was living in my district in the Zhytomyr region then—there were no organizations. There were a few Rukh members there. But you need an organization in every village, an organization in every district! One that could take responsibility. There was no one to take power with.

O.N.: Here, in Kyiv, when rallies were held in the squares, a provisional government should have been formed to create a Ukrainian state, not a pro-Moscow, Bolshevik, pro-Russian one.

V.O.: We have been too decimated. We didn’t have the strength to do it. What we could do, we did.

O.N.: So Chornovil set about transforming Rukh into a political organization. But he was a little too late.

V.O.: And what is needed now? Now we need to work. We’ve been working for seven years? We need to work another thirty-three years—and there will be a Ukraine.

O.N.: So, like that Moses?

V.O.: Exactly. No less. Because this isn’t a nation, these are the remnants of the Ukrainian nation. Besides, that foul-mouthed population was brought in here, all of this was mixed up—and now a nation is to be raised from all this? This requires a great deal of effort and time.

O.N.: We need to create a nation. There are good articles appearing in “Narodna Hazeta,” in “Svitlytsia,” in other newspapers. They need to be disseminated.

V.O.: Well, alright, Mr. Oles. Thank you.

* * *

O.N.: Today is January 18. Shchedryi Vechir. I want to make a few additions, Mr. Vasyl. I have recalled some other fragments that I think are worth adding to my memoirs.

Shortly after the creation of the Kyiv Helsinki Group, Oksana Yakivna Meshko came to Skadovsk to vacation by the sea. She informed us—me and my ex-wife Lidia Huk—that the Helsinki Group had been established in Kyiv, headed by Mykola Rudenko. We already knew about this Group from Radio “Svoboda.” Oksana Yakivna also told us that they wanted to admit Volodymyr Malynkovych and Matusevych to the Group and expressed her dissatisfaction with them, saying that “the last thing we need in the group are Jews.” She claimed that they could not be our friends to the end and would surely sell us out to the Muscovites, as they had sold out others before.

To this, I replied that without Jewish representatives in the Group, there would be no progress. Only together with them could we bring the Ukrainian issue to the free world. I told her then that this was the opinion of all educated political prisoners in the camps. I cannot say whether I convinced her then, but my words had a magical effect on her. She immediately calmed down, stopped being indignant, and did not touch upon this issue in conversations anymore. She did not say anything about who had proposed that she accept these people into the Group.

Then Oksana Yakivna named another candidate for the group—Oles Shevchenko, whom she also viewed negatively. She considered him a KGB agent, stating: “How can you just do that—come to Petro Hryhorenko in Moscow and call yourself a representative of some Ukrainian community?” In Moscow, according to her, they also regarded him with suspicion. Regarding Oles Shevchenko, I could not convince Oksana Yakivna; she firmly continued to believe that he was indeed an agent.

I met Oles Shevchenko in Kyiv right after my release, in the summer of 1973. I had no reason to suspect him. Once, when I was walking with him on the streets of Kyiv, we were discussing the problem of printing. I was hoping I had found a way to make printing matrices on film. He, in turn, confessed to me that he was looking for a Ukrainian channel to transfer materials abroad. Whenever I came to Kyiv, we met more than once. He always looked around in all directions and said that we were being followed everywhere. This was already good proof that Oles could not be a planted agent. For my part, I do not think, I do not believe, that we were being followed everywhere. In my opinion, the KGB had no real reason to spend so much time and money on us.

I did not tell Oles about my intention, after my release from the camp, to create a women’s group to defend their imprisoned husbands, who would pass their written petitions abroad—I thought that only in this way could a group or women’s committee exist that could not be easily accused of being a political organization. Since Oksana Yakivna did not succeed in organizing such a group, he would not have been able to rouse our women either. Only when Iryna Korsunska from Sakharov’s and Kovalyov’s society came to Skadovsk from Moscow did the thought come to me to use their authority, which could influence our frightened women. I did not consider Oksana Yakivna Meshko to be one of the timid ones. She was the only brave woman, “the only man in all of Ukraine.” Every person in our land should know and love this fearless heroine.

The fourth candidate for the Helsinki Group was Vasyl Barladianu from Odesa. (Barladianu-Byrladnyk, Vasyl Volodymyrovych, b. 08/23/1942, v. Shybka, Hryhoriopol district, Moldova. Arrested in Odesa 03/02/1977: 3 years in camp OR-318/76, v. Polytsi, Volodymyrets district, Rivne region. Arrested 02/29/1980: camp No. 28 in the city of Snizhne, Donetsk region, from 01/17/1981—camp No. 82 in v. Hostre, Chervonoarmiyskyi district, Donetsk region. Released 02/28/1983. – V.O.). I met him, I believe, in 1975 in Brovary at the apartment of Maria Ovdiyenko, who was involved in my case as both a co-defendant and a witness.

Vasyl made a good impression on me, fully and completely sharing the ideas of a Ukrainian state. But we could not agree on the Moldovans, whom he ethnically counted as Romanians and did not recognize as a separate Slavic nation. My efforts to prove that Moldovans are Slavs, and had assimilated the Romance language because they lived on the border of the Roman Empire, knew two languages, and served as interpreters in relations with the Ruthenians, were in vain. He came to Kyiv in search of work, because he had been dismissed from his teaching position at Odesa University for Ukrainian, Moldovan, and Greek nationalism. From Maria, back in 1976, I learned that Vasyl Barladianu also wanted to join the Helsinki Group. But Oksana Yakivna refused to recommend him. What her motives were, I do not know. When coming to Kyiv, I tried to meet with him to see if he really wanted it that much. Because I didn’t want to expose him. I knew from Maria that Vasyl was a great erudite and a prolific journalist. I intended to involve him in future underground work when we had our own printed organ and a Ukrainian channel. Unfortunately, we did not manage to meet, and he was soon arrested.

This is all I was able to recall.

V.O.: Thank you. Only there are some mistakes. After all, Mykola Matusevych has no connection to Judaism. And he was among the founding members of the Group, on the first list of ten. As for Volodymyr Malynkovych, he joined the Group a bit later, in October 1978.

O.N.: Wait, maybe I was mistaken. Perhaps the conversation was about Yosyp Zisels and Volodymyr Malynkovych, and I thought it was Marynovych. In that case, I apologize.

V.O.: Marynovych and Matusevych were in the original composition of the Helsinki Group; they are founding members. Malynkovych was announced as a member of the Group in October 1978, and Zisels in October 1979, although he was considered an unannounced member of the Group since July 1978.

O.N.: Perhaps that’s right. It was a long time ago, I didn’t think I would ever have to recall it.

V.O.: Yosyp Zisels is a very conscientious man. He managed to do a great deal. He was imprisoned twice: on December 8, 1978, and October 19, 1984. He served two three-year sentences in Sokyriany in Bukovyna. As for Malynkovych, the KGB agents terrorized him, threatened to accuse him of rape. And they proposed: either we imprison you, or you emigrate. On the night of January 1, 1980, he left for Germany. He worked for Radio “Svoboda.” He is the only member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group who was not imprisoned. He returned to Ukraine in 1992 and now holds pro-Russian positions. And why would a Jew be a Russian nationalist? Has he forgotten the slogan “Beat the Yids, save Russia”?

O.N.: Oh, I was so disappointed! I always enjoyed listening to Radio “Svoboda” in those years. And now he comes back: let’s have bilingualism and all that. It’s deadly for the Ukrainian nation.

V.O.: Zisels holds very good positions regarding Ukrainianness. He now holds very respected posts in Jewish organizations. I say he’s “the number one Jew in Ukraine.”

O.N.: Well, my memory is weak. It wasn’t very good before, and now it’s even more so.

V.O.: Well, alright. We have clarified everything. I thank you. Mr. Oles Nazarenko finished his story on January 18, 1999.

I n t e r v i e w with Oles N a z a r e n k o

from February 18, 2001.

V.O.: February 18, 2001. Oles Nazarenko is speaking with Vasyl Ovsiyenko in Skadovsk.

O.N.: In 1979, I went to Kyiv and decided to visit Oksana Yakivna Meshko. I was not alone at the time. I visited her with Fedir Klymenko, who lived—and still lives—in Dnipropetrovsk. He wanted to meet Oksana Meshko. As we were talking about various topics, she said to me: “Such a major event took place in your Kherson, almost a revolution, some kind of riot.” I said, something like that happened, but it was just a Gypsy revolt. The Gypsies killed some druzhynnyk, and the people rose up… I’ve already told this story before. Oksana Yakivna said: “At least write this down, tell the story.” “No,” I said, “I won’t tell it, because you might be bugged here, I’d rather write it down.” “Well, then write it.” I took it and wrote it on the condition that she would copy it in her own hand and destroy my manuscript, because I didn’t want to go to the camps again over such a trifle. She said: “Here are the matches, here I go, I’m burning it now.” And she showed me a box of matches in her hands.

But, as I later learned, she did not burn that document, because the next day they conducted a search at her place and confiscated it. I found out about this when I was summoned to the KGB in Kherson in 1979. They summoned me and said: this is the situation, you had such a document. The head of the Kherson KGB—Shyshkin or something? A Russian surname, a general—said: “We are not interested in prosecuting you, but Kyiv insists. You must agree to cooperate.” I said: “I cannot cooperate with you, because my wife… You know I wasn’t married for so many years, and now I have a child, and Lida told me that if I cooperate, she will leave me—and I can’t, I said, because I want to have my family.” He took it as the truth. The KGB agents sitting there prompted the general that Lida Larionivna is so principled that she might do it—they confirmed my story.

And then they said: “We will have to imprison you. Or you must sign a pledge that you will not go to Oksana Meshko again, and condemn her activities.” Just like that. I said: “Well, how can I condemn her activities? I think that since she didn’t burn the document as she promised—it means she is not serious about our cause. In that sense, I can condemn her.” And I gave a written pledge that I would not communicate with her anymore.

They held me for about 5 hours—before I got to the general. They put me in some office and for 5 hours, no one came to me. Then they took me to the general and insisted that I cooperate. I said that I couldn’t. “Maybe later? When my family life is settled, then maybe something will work out between us.” The general said: “Well, I will be counting on you!” But I didn’t respond. The year 1979 passed, 1980 passed, and 1981 passed, and I didn’t offer to cooperate. And then a conflict arose between Lida and me.

V.O.: We’re skipping the story about the conflict and moving on to Bilynska.

O.N.: How did we meet her? We had an acquaintance, Lilia Trokhymivna Oborska. A simple woman, she was a bit friendly with Lida, though she was a bit coarse, you know, a Soviet person. And although she was a Soviet person, she supported Lida a little, not hostilely like others. I said to Lida: “How can you deal with Trokhymivna?” She answered: “I have no friends, it’s a long way home from work, so I go to her place during the lunch break, just sit there or have lunch.” I understood that.

One day this Trokhymivna came and said: “A woman wants to meet you.” I asked: “Who is she?” She said: “I met a woman in a hotel in Kherson, we spent the night there together. She speaks Ukrainian, she’s a Ukrainian patriot. I went and told her that in our Skadovsk there is a family, that they both were imprisoned and suffered for the Ukrainian cause. She says: ‘I want to meet them.’” And one day she brought this woman—Oksana Bilynska. I think she came at Christmas, she recited such prayers, so solemnly. We spent the evening at this Oborska’s place. And then, when we came home—Oksana Bilynska stayed overnight at Oborska’s—Lida said: “I don’t believe she is a decent, honest person. She was sent by the KGB.” That’s what Lida said. I said: “You shouldn’t be so quick to judge, there could be all sorts of motives.” So we talked.

Then I decided to check. I went to Oborska one day and asked: “And how did you meet her? Did you enter the hotel room first or was she there first?” I wanted to catch her on this. She seemed confused at first, and I noticed confusion in her eyes, but then she said: “No, when I came into the room where they put me, she was already there.” Well, if so, then I concluded that she couldn’t be an informant, because no one knew that Oborska would be spending the night in that hotel, to plant someone in advance. I said: “And no one knew beforehand that you would be staying there?” “No, no one knew.” I convinced Lida that Bilynska couldn’t be a KGB agent, that she wasn’t sent. She started coming almost every week. On Saturday, Sunday—she would come, bring us gifts, treats: grapes, big fish—they have an estuary there, lots of fish. She comes, calls from a payphone at the bus station to have someone come help her carry it all. I take my bicycle and help bring it. I say to Lida: “Something isn’t clear here…” But she and Lida became such good friends that Lida couldn’t be without her. The moment anything happened—she’d call Bilynska.

One day, Bilynska invited Lida to go to Kolomyia. She invited me too, but I said that I would gladly go to Kolomyia, but my boss wouldn’t let me. Now, I said, it’s the summer period, I have to service the whole district—I was an electrician at the consumer services center. They wouldn’t let me go. So they went to Kolomyia. When Lida returned, she was a completely different person. She completely ignored me. Later I became convinced that Lida was right when she said that Oksana Bilynska had been sent by the KGB. I became convinced of this when I ended up in the camp again, when I was sentenced for the second time to three years of a strict-regime for a purely criminal charge. This happened in 1981, when I slapped my wife for saying: “You will never see your daughter again.”

I was serving my sentence in Dniprodzerzhynsk, in a “red zone.” When Brezhnev died, an amnesty was declared. My charge fell under the amnesty, but the authorities said: “We cannot release you under the amnesty, even though you are an impeccable person with no violations. But you are a person of interest to the KGB. Settle your fate with the KGB.”

V.O.: Well, I’ll be!

O.N.: They laughed at me there. When I was brought to the zone in Dniprodzerzhynsk, they called me in for an introductory chat. Uh-huh, three years of strict regime—for what? No, it can’t be, that you get three years of strict regime for three slaps. That’s what the administration thought. I said: “Read on, read on.” They read on: “Taking into account the personality, particularly dangerous to society”—three years of strict regime. “Ah, now it’s clear why you got three years for three slaps.” So it goes.

And so, like it or not, I had to meet with the KGB agents. They began to ask me who I was. About acquaintances from the political camp, I spoke of well-known things that no one hid. I said that these were honest, decent people. One day I thought, I’ll try asking: “And why are you asking about those who visited us, who were guests, with whom I was in the political camp, but not asking about Oksana Bilynska?” “Who is she?” “She is Lida Larionivna’s best friend.” They corresponded, Lida called her her little sister, although before that she had told me that she hated women for submitting to men, for not having human dignity. And Lida was very principled in that. They said: “We don’t know anything about Bilynska, they didn’t tell us anything about her from Kherson.” When they came to me in the camp a second time, I asked them: “Well, did you find out?” “Yes, we found out. Well,” he says, “she’s the kind of person who doesn’t interest us. She’s a professional whore.” I realized: they would only say “professional whore” about one of their own, one of those who collaborates with them. Because they couldn’t say it otherwise. 

From this, I could suspect that Bilynska was cooperating with them… The KGB agents once said: “It has come to our attention that you wanted to publish a newspaper. But you only carried this idea around as if it were yours, but in fact, it was the idea of Iryna Korsunska from Moscow.” Here I understood that the information could only have come from Lida. But I would never have believed that Lida could have passed this to the KGB. This means she confided this information to someone, and that person confused it. Indeed, I wanted to find a way to make matrices for printing. And the second thing was what Korsunska said about the Helsinki Group. This means Lida confided in someone. Who could she have confided in? Only Oksana Bilynska. But Oksana Bilynska mixed up those two pieces of information. That’s why the KGB agents said that it wasn’t my idea. Indeed, when my relationship with Lida improved a bit, I started saying that I wasn’t idle either, that I was doing some work, and I reminded her that we had a small part in the creation of the Helsinki Group. But Lida did not react to my statements.

Secondly, this Oksana Bilynska is a very mysterious person. When she was fired from her position as head doctor in Stanislav, she decided to come to Skadovsk. Lida started looking for a job for her. But where to live? She settled in with Lida and lived with her for two years. Our hospital’s head doctor, Klymenko, told me that Lida wanted to arrange a position for her as the head of the medical unit. He said he agreed, such a person was needed, but he had no apartment to give her. So Lida arranged for her to be a general practitioner in Krasne. There is a two-story hospital there. She worked there for about six months, and when the position of head doctor became vacant, they wanted to appoint her. They gave her a two-room apartment in Krasne. Here, people had been on the waiting list for ten, fifteen, up to twenty years, and she, having just arrived, was immediately given a two-room apartment and offered the post of head doctor. And there the nurses and doctors rebelled: don’t we have good doctors to appoint as head doctor? Why should we accept some stranger? They put so much pressure on her that she was not accepted there. And she moved back in with Lida. Here she got a job as a therapist at the sports complex, and was given a two-room apartment, where she lives to this day. This is very suspicious. I don’t think she is such a distinguished person as to be given two apartments within two years during the Soviet era.

V.O.: Maybe so, but we are going into too much detail about Bilynska.

O.N.: Well, you can cut this part.

V.O.: Next, Oles Nazarenko reads his manuscript about the Sixtiers at the construction of the Kyiv HPP. He is still working on this manuscript. What is it called?

O.N.:

Oles Nazarenko. The Vyshhorod Legends

“I arrived at the construction of the Kyiv Hydroelectric Power Plant in the spring of 1962. It wasn’t high earnings that attracted me to the great construction site. At that time, I imagined that on the banks of the gray-haired Dnipro, Ukraine was not yet Russified, that Ukrainian life must still be pulsating there, and perhaps—I cherished the thought—the spirit of the unconquered nation was still warm there. Before the war in Donbas, where I come from, our people were not yet ashamed to be Ukrainians, they kept themselves separate from the Muscovites. The oldest generation remembered that they were of Cossack lineage, and among the children, no one wanted to be a *katsap*, a *kat-tsap*.”

I want to make a correction that, in studying history, I came to the conclusion that the word originated not as “katsap” but as “kat-tsap” in Petersburg when the Cossacks were building: “kat” from the word for “executioner,” and “tsap” meaning “goat”—for the beard. Because the supervisors, the Moscow foremen, were their executioners, pushing them to work. And they all wore beards like goats—“kat-tsap.” It later transformed into “katsap,” that is, it was shortened. Continuing.

“Every year with the first snow, snowball fights would break out between the schoolchildren of the Ukrainian and Russian schools, which sometimes escalated into stone battles. Among our people, the name ‘katsap’ was associated with dirty drunks, with vulgar cursers. After the war, the Ukrainian-speaking Donbas began to rapidly decline in spirit. The Ukrainian language was losing its advantage. The younger generation did not want to live a life without prospects and rushed to learn the ‘progressive language’ so that no one could call them an ‘uncouth *khokhol*.’”

“The year 1950 became catastrophic for the Ukrainians of Donbas. In the cities and workers’ settlements, all schools, supposedly at the request of the parents, were switched to the Russian language of instruction. My father, with whom I often had political discussions, once expressed the thought as to why our people so drastically changed their convictions. Because after the war, when the USSR defeated its strongest enemy—German fascism—people lost faith in their long-held hopes that the hated Soviet government would soon fall. My father’s lesson became a guide for me, because I saw with my own eyes how Ukrainians had changed. Before the war, they spat on party holidays, but by the end of the fifties and the beginning of the sixties, they began to celebrate what were once gangster holidays and even to love the government. My native Yasynuvata, where I grew up, became a foreign, suffocating city for me.”

“So I decided to leave in search of a better fate. I didn’t want to believe that there were no more Ukrainians, that there were no decent people among them who were indifferent to the fate of their dying nation. Love for Ukraine was instilled in my soul back in childhood, when my father often told of the immortal glory of the Zaporozhian Cossacks. And he, as a teenager, had read many works by the then-popular writer Andrian Kashchenko. (In that book, I don’t know why, it was written ‘Koshchenko,’ not ‘Kashchenko.’)”

“A whole sea of young people flocked to Vyshhorod for the HPP construction. But in this seething human mass, for a whole two years, I couldn’t find any like-minded friends. The newcomers to the construction site, although they spoke Ukrainian, did not understand the tragedy of their people at all. Their thoughts and aspirations were directed only at good earnings. However, I didn’t want to lose hope and continued to search for friends.”

“From the first days after arriving at the HPP and getting a job, I noticed a handwritten newspaper of a rather large size, written in Ukrainian. In Donbas, I had never seen such a marvel. I learned from readers that it was published by the Chornovil couple. Although I very much wanted to meet these dreamed-of people, I could not overcome my nature, for I was both shy and indecisive by birth. However, the newspaper did not last long. A rumor spread among the workers that a disguised Ukrainian bourgeois nationalist, who had been publishing a harmful newspaper, was exposed in the HPP’s Komsomol organization office. I could not have imagined then that similar rumors in Vyshhorod would have their own history and, like a snowball, would grow year after year with new and newer fabrications, and that all of Ukraine would be talking about the Vyshhorod nationalists.”

“I met my first brother-in-arms, Vasyl Kondriukov, through a roommate with whom we rented beds. He admitted to me that on their production site there was a worker who had created a ‘Committee of Just Communists,’ which operated secretly. Vasyl also turned out to be from Donbas, spoke Russian, but considered himself a Ukrainian. He had never been concerned with the problem of the Ukrainian nation but was able to understand it quickly because he had seen with his own eyes how Russification was carried out in the Donetsk region. I managed to convince him then that there could be no good communists, that they were all in the state service of Great Russian imperialism, performing gendarme functions—suppressing the spirit of the enslaved peoples. Thus we became friends, and he became my first like-minded person.”

“We didn’t have to stew in our own juice for long. God himself did not let our intentions wither and sent us Volodia Komashkov, also a worker, who was close with Viacheslav Chornovil—they lived in the same barrack. Volodia started bringing us poems by Vasyl Symonenko, Mykola Vinhranovsky, Mykola Kholodny, Lina Kostenko, and the prosaic memoirs of Petro Panch about his experiences. The author allowed friends to read these memoirs only in his presence. It was with difficulty that we managed to get them out of his house for just one night to finish reading the work. Although there was nothing criminal in it, the writer, frightened by the bloody Soviet system, trembled for his life until his very death. In one night, I had to photograph the thick, typewritten book on film.”

“Thus, books published abroad gradually began to come into our hands. To expand production, I bought a ‘Moskva’ typewriter. Vasyl Kondriukov found a paid typist, Larysa Panfilova (Filatova. – V.O.), on Vitriani Hory in Kyiv, who charged twenty kopecks per typed page. But when she started working, she liked our materials and refused to take payment, saying that she does not take money for the truth. All the used photo films and some photo prints on paper were hidden at her place. Kondriuk and I called this material our archive.”

“Perhaps few know today what literature passed through our hands. I will name only those that I remember. These were Dmytro Dontsov’s ‘Nationalism,’ Yuriy Klen’s ‘Ashes of Empires,’ poems by Yevhen Malaniuk, Yuriy Lypa’s ‘The Ukrainian Race,’ Pylyp Orlyk’s ‘Deduction of the Rights of Ukraine,’ Pronin’s ‘Ukrainian Politics and Moscow’s Politics,’ ‘A Collection in Honor of Scholars Destroyed by Bolshevik Moscow,’ Valentyn Moroz’s ‘Report from the Beria Reserve,’ Sviatoslav Karavansky’s ‘Ukrainian Education in a Chauvinist Noose’ and his other statements in defense of the Ukrainian language, Viacheslav Chornovil’s ‘Justice or Recurrences of Terror?’ and ‘Woe from Wit, or Portraits of Twenty Criminals,’ Ivan Dziuba’s ‘Internationalism or Russification?,’ and others. One day, Volodia Komashkov brought me a manuscript of ‘Regarding the Trial of Pohruzhalsky’ and asked me to rewrite the article in block letters and film it for transfer abroad. I fulfilled this request but remarked that the text needed editing because it would be indecent to release a document in such a form, with words like ‘bandits’ and ‘party swine.’”

“The next time, Komashkov brought me a text edited by Slavko Chornovil. Volodia then said that the author of the document was Borys Antonenko-Davydovych, who had suffered for many years in the camps for nothing and therefore wrote about the trial in such a sharp manner. Who the true author of the article that awakened the creative intelligentsia to resistance was, I do not know for certain. After the library was burned down, the creative youth was extremely outraged by the wild vandalism of the Soviet system and was ready to go on the offensive against the vile party dictatorship.”

“I was attending the republican literary studio ‘Molod’ at the time and felt this surge of hatred among those present. Later, when I was imprisoned, the document about the library burning frightened me the most. The investigator, Major M. Koval, began to scare me with a foreign newspaper that had my photographs of this text with corrections in my own handwriting. The investigator then said: ‘You don’t want to name the people who led you down the path of anti-Soviet activity, you feel sorry for them—but they didn’t feel sorry for you, they used you and threw you under a tank. Now you will answer for it.’ I thought then that the investigation might pin espionage on me. I stood my ground—that I made the prints for myself, for my friends, and how one of them got abroad, I did not know. My testimony was easy to refute, because this film was not in our archive. But the investigation did not think to turn the case that way.”

“Poet Volodymyr Zabashtansky was not part of our Vyshhorod group, but he was not an outsider in our affair. I don’t remember who introduced me to him. He wrote good poems, was published, studied at the university in the philology department, and led the literary studio ‘Sich.’ Volodia had been crippled by an explosive since his youth, completely losing his sight and both hands. Our boys from Vyshhorod often went to visit him in Podil to talk with him, to listen to his new poems. And I would bring him samvydav literature.”

“One day, Zabashtansky told us he wanted to see the HPP. We were struck by such a desire. After visiting Vyshhorod, he was very pleased, as if he had seen the construction site with his own eyes. It was through him that the student youth sought to establish friendly contacts with the HPP workers. One day, Zabashtansky suggested that I arrange an agreement with the Komsomol organization to hold a literary evening and an amateur arts concert in Vyshhorod. The secretary of the Komsomol committee, Vasyl Pcholkin, gladly accepted the proposal and set a date for the students’ arrival, but two days later, he informed me that the Party committee wanted to first review the program for the evening. I brought Pcholkin such a document, but it did not satisfy the Party leadership; they set new conditions: that the dean of the faculty take written responsibility for the evening, certified with the university seal. The students were extremely outraged and refused to hold the literary evening. This gave rise to even more rumors about the legendary HPP. I first heard this expression from the young poet Nadiia Kyriian, who at that time had been expelled from the university for nationalist convictions. She wrote good poems, was published in the almanac ‘Vitryla,’ and had published her first little book. She, along with Maria Ovdiyenko, worked as a laborer in the Botanical Garden, and they read samvydav literature together, which I brought for Maria. A photocopy of ‘Regarding the Trial of Pohruzhalsky’ was confiscated from Kyriian.”

“At the trial, these girls behaved heroically as witnesses. Nadiika claimed that this criminal document had fallen into their room from the sky, that she did not trust her memory and did not want to speak an untruth.”

“I don’t know for what reasons Volodymyr Komashkov never once suggested that I meet Slavko Chornovil. And I wasn’t particularly eager to get into his circle of friends, because I considered myself still weakly intellectually prepared and was afraid of embarrassing myself in front of educated people. Only in 1967 did we see each other up close at an evening celebrating the birthday of Liudmyla Sheremetyeva-Dashkevych, who was living in Vyshhorod at the time. Chornovil showed no desire to come over and introduce himself to me. In contrast to Slavko, Ivan Svitlychny acted differently. When Chornovil was first arrested, Svitlychny came to Vyshhorod and wished to meet me. Komashkov arranged a meeting for us in the forest. I was nervous, expecting some impossibly difficult conversation, but he did not ask about the cause or my political beliefs, only wanted to know where I was from, who my parents were, what I did at the HPP, and in which department I studied at the university.”

“Over the four years of my so-called anti-Soviet activity, a whole group of like-minded people formed in Vyshhorod. I met Oleksandr Drobakha, a teacher of the Ukrainian language, somewhere around 1964. He had learned from someone that a person with a museum lived in the ‘bronvakhta’ [armored checkpoint building]. Oleksandr, along with his friend Vitaliy Rieznik, came to meet me. In my so-called museum under the bed were stored two pieces of a tusk and a whole pile of mammoth bones, a rhinoceros horn, a bone hairpin of coarse workmanship—probably also from the Stone Age, and a stone neck cross. All these exhibits were washed out by the dredger during the construction of the HPP.”

“Besides Komashkov, Kondriukov, and Drobakha, the Vyshhorod society included Valentyn Karpenko, who worked as a foreman on the construction site, Bohdan Dyriv and Vasyl Gedz—electricians on the dredgers, and workers Petro Yordan and Ivan Honchar from the village of Havrylivka. Mykola Ponomarenko and I were in the same year of study, and Maria Ovdiyenko worked at the Botanical Garden. Vasyl Gedz, for example, took literature from me not only for himself but also for his brother, who worked in a mid-level party position in the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine. Mykola Ponomarenko also worked in the Central Committee in a working-class position, as a courier for household matters. He introduced me to the guards and had the right to enter the Central Committee building without a pass, and I had access. Mykola boasted that he trusted some of the guards to read samvydav. One time he brought me a unique book, ‘The Ukrainians,’ and told me how he managed to hide it in his bosom while burning Central Committee papers and books under the commandant’s supervision. I passed this book through Komashkov to Viacheslav Chornovil for review. What became of it, I do not know.”

“Oleksandr Drobakha was the most erudite person among us all. From him, we learned to understand true poetry and tried to write poems ourselves. He considered himself a genius poet and was confident that he would become the first Nobel laureate in Ukraine.”

Maybe this shouldn't be written.

V.O.: No, go on.

O.N.: “He eagerly read all the samvydav literature I produced, but he showed no initiative in multiplying and disseminating it. Oleksandr believed that my work was an inefficient affair that would not lead our people to a national revival, and that only great poetry of a world-class level could lead Ukraine out of Moscow’s bondage. We sometimes had disputes on this matter.”

“In Vyshhorod, Drobakha organized a literary studio, ‘Malynovi Vitryla’ [Crimson Sails]. But he did not get to work long in this noble field, teaching young people to learn the craft of poetry. The HPP Party committee, frightened by Ukrainian nationalism, forbade the young people from gathering for their poetry meetings, seeing a nationalist meaning in the studio’s name. Oleksandr Drobakha complained to the Writers’ Union. The well-known poet Abram Katznelson came to the HPP to investigate the incident, but even he could not convince the party officials that there was no nationalism in the name ‘Crimson Sails’ or in the poems of the novices.”

“However, the lie had already been launched and went on its way, first through Kyiv, and then across all of Ukraine. An acquaintance of mine named Mykola—I don’t remember his last name—told me that at their Institute of Communications, a lecture was given on Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism, in which the lecturer from the Komsomol Central Committee claimed that an underground organization called ‘Crimson Sails’ had been uncovered in Vyshhorod, which was preparing an uprising, and that it was led by a teacher of the Ukrainian language. The lecturer did not name Drobakha. Drobakha’s former classmate brought the same news to Kyiv from the Slobozhanshchyna region; he also told of a similar lecture that was given at the Kharkiv House of Writers. Drobakha and I were utterly amazed.”

“The KGB special services created the next legend about Vyshhorod to be even more horrific. A rumor spread through Kyiv that Ukrainian nationalists were preparing to blow up the Kyiv HPP to flood all the people living in Podil and Darnytsia. In our circle, we could not understand where this legend came from. Only when I was behind bars did I find out how the lie was created. The matter was this. To the Kyiv test site, where AN planes were tested for lift capacity, one day, instead of scrap metal, combat grenades with detonators were brought in boxes.”

V.O.: You don't say!

O.N.: “Four loaders took explosives home to stun fish in the Kyiv Sea. The reckless fishermen were punished with imprisonment.”

“Besides legends of, so to speak, a strategic scale, another legend began to form in Vyshhorod, but for some reason, it didn’t go far. Maybe because it was not very impressive for the Soviet everyman, so it quickly lost its provocative spirit. I learned about this legend from Tetiana Tankova, who worked as an engineer at the HPP, lived with us in the same dormitory, and was sympathetic to our Ukrainian group. She told me that her friend communicates with KGB agents and confessed to her in secret that a congress of nationalists had taken place in Vyshhorod, their names were already known to the KGB, and after the October holidays, they would all be arrested.”

“I told Komashkov about this warning, but he just laughed, because there had been no congress. On Kozachyi Island, there was an ordinary party of Chornovil’s friends who had come from Kyiv and Lviv to see the newly created sea.”

“Although Volodymyr Komashkov played a significant role in the work of the Vyshhorod group, he avoided meeting with everyone else. He only communicated constantly with Drobakha on matters of the literary studio.”

“One day I approached Volodia with a proposal to collectively discuss a pressing question: isn’t it time to call the Vyshhorod group an organization? I, Kondriukov, and Dyriv gathered at his apartment and talked together for the first time. Kondriukov proposed making our group a disciplined, party-type organization. Volodia did not support such an idea, and Dyriv was also against it. I hesitated for a moment on how to position myself and suddenly realized that in the event of our arrest, the investigation would not be able to pin treason on us, and this would be our salvation. We continued to act spontaneously, each on his own responsibility.”

“In early May 1968, when Chornovil was serving his first sentence, we learned that Komsomol members were being prepared at the ‘Arsenal’ factory to disperse students near the Taras Shevchenko monument on May 22. On this occasion, I wrote an appeal to all citizens of Kyiv, asking people not to believe the chauvinistic tales about Ukrainian nationalists and to come to the monument to pay homage to the great Kobzar. I ended my appeal with the words: ‘Shame on the Russifiers of Ukraine! Long live Lenin’s national policy!’ Although I no longer believed in the justice of this policy, there was no other form of protest at that time. Ivan Dziuba in his work ‘Internationalism or Russification?’ also defended the ‘purity of Lenin’s national policy.’”

“My work was the first and last attempt to test my abilities. Besides this document, I also sent a letter to Ivan Dziuba, asking him to speak at the monument with a new programmatic speech, so that the spirit sown among the people by his work would not lose its potential power. At that time, many hoped that Oles Honchar would raise the banner of national resistance, because the KGB would not dare to encroach on his authority. But after his novel ‘The Cathedral,’ he lacked the spirit to take up the fight.” Maybe I'm mistaken about this...

V.O.: Read on, read on.

“As soon as Komashkov brought me the news that Dziuba had approved my appeal, I gave it to Maria Ovdiyenko, who printed over a hundred copies. Together with Mykola Ponomarenko, I mailed them to all higher educational institutions in Ukraine and the trade union organizations of Kyiv’s factories. It seemed to me then that in this way, through the authorities, the information could better reach the masses. And perhaps I was not entirely mistaken, because during the investigation, I learned that half of our letters were not returned to the KGB.”

“Back in 1966, I learned from Komashkov that Chornovil intended to create a printing press, and he was complaining about how and where to get type, because, in his opinion, the time had come to produce printed materials. At my parents’ home in the Donetsk region, I had hidden a bottle with newspaper type. Once, back in the fifties, I also intended to publish some printed organ, but nothing came of it, because I didn’t have enough characters to set even the smallest text, and some letters were missing altogether. I brought the bottle and gave it to Chornovil. Volodia joyfully told me that it had inspired Slavko’s circle; they were all confident that now their cause would progress better.”

“After some time, Komashkov brought me a linotype set of a leaflet authored by Viacheslav Chornovil. My task was to find a way to make printing ink and produce hundreds of copies. For more than a week, I tried all sorts of options, but the prints came out very pale and were not readable. Whether someone else managed to print the text, I do not know. I never heard any talk of leaflets produced by typography.”

“Recalling the events of past years, it can be said without exaggeration that Viacheslav Chornovil was the first to initiate national-democratic dissidence; he was the first to break through the imperial prison walls and tell people who was being punished there and for what. The work ‘Woe from Wit, or Portraits of Twenty Criminals,’ which the world began to talk about, awakened the conscience of the tortured prisoners in the camps, who had been silent for years, pulling the prison strap, unable to make their voices heard outside. Chornovil’s book reached them behind bars, awakened a spirit of defiance, and they suddenly realized that one can fight the repressive regime even behind barbed wire.”

“For a whole five years, apart from relatives, no one in Ukraine knew about the Lviv group of lawyers who were being punished in Vladimir Prison and the Mordovian camps. Only when Chornovil, full of zeal, paved the way there through high fences and barbed wire with electric current, did camp information begin to penetrate from Mordovia. The first to pass his famous work ‘Report from the Beria Reserve’ to the outside world was Valentyn Moroz, which was eagerly read not only in Ukraine—it was also circulated among Russian dissidents in Leningrad. Following Moroz, Mykhailo Horyn, and Mykhailo Osadchy, Levko Lukianenko, Ivan Kandyba, and other Lviv prisoners of conscience told their stories.”

“Evaluating the past experience, I want to say from my own perspective that I have been fortunate in life. I am glad that I was a participant in the Vyshhorod resistance, and together with the tireless fighter for the freedom of the Ukrainian people, Viacheslav Maksymovych Chornovil, I took a feasible part in the public cause at the dawn of a new Ukrainian era.”

“I think history will yet give him an objective assessment, because he was not only the leader of Rukh but the only mature politician in Ukraine. Or perhaps it is truly the fate of our fighters that we are adept at ‘conquering ourselves’ for the benefit of our Moscow enemies? It is a shame that at the most crucial moment, when everyone needed to strike while the iron was hot, they began to divide, devouring one another, and could not appreciate Slavko’s brilliant mind. Symon Petliura was also eaten alive by his comrades-in-arms, but they could not eat all of him. He, like Christ, rose above Ukraine and illuminated the correct path to freedom. But only after his death were they able to evaluate him truthfully. Viacheslav Chornovil did not rush to create his own ambitious party, because he saw in the People’s Movement of Ukraine (Rukh) a real force that could lead the Ukrainian idea to victory.”

“Unfortunately, there were many of his opponents in Rukh who did not want the civic organization to become a political party. Thus, the Ukrainian revolution lost the prospect of coming to power. The former communists, frightened by Rukh, came out of their so-called trenches, repainted themselves as Ukrainians, and began to strengthen their shaky pro-Moscow government. The most difficult times began for the Ukrainian state and the national revival of the people. Pro-Russian reaction in Ukraine began to slander the leader of Rukh, Viacheslav Chornovil, ferociously, which indicated that he was a real danger to Russia. The Ukrainian revolutionary boat turned out to be unsinkable, for it was charged with Chornovil’s Rukh. For ordinary people, the Rukh members and Chornovil were one and the same concept; all other national-democratic parties did not pose such a threat to the enemies. The masses did not know them and did not want to know them. These were, in essence, zero-parties like clubs for fans of good beer.”

“A great man is gone from Ukraine, one who, starting with the Vyshhorod handwritten newspaper, for 38 years, like the Kameniar, tirelessly hewed the Ukrainian rock and burned out prematurely in the movement.”

“I recall with pleasure the words of Oleksandr Drobakha, who in our circle loved to rhetorically repeat: ‘First Vyshhorod, and then—Kyiv!’ I think these were not simple words, but prophetic ones. Chornovil’s Vyshhorod awakened not only Kyiv but all of Ukraine.”

Oles Nazarenko, Skadovsk, January 2000.”

V.O.: Mr. Nazarenko read this on February 18, 2001. End of the recording in Skadovsk.