MYKHAILO PETROVYCH LUTSYK

An Interview with Mykhailo Petrovych LUTSYK. Recorded on January 24–25, 2000

By Vasyl Ovsiienko (Skole, Lviv Oblast, 3 Symonenka St., postal code 82600).

V.V. Ovsiienko: We are conducting this conversation on January 24, 2000, in the city of Skole, at 3 Symonenka Street, in the home of Mr. Mykhailo Lutsyk. This is Vasyl Ovsiienko, recording.

M.P. Lutsyk: I will begin the story of my life from my earliest childhood years. The fact is, some of my poems date back to when I was just seven years old. I sometimes read them now and have the distinct impression that even then I understood life and had a good education. Why was that? The descendants of King Danylo of Galicia, as well as nobles of princely rank, particularly those who had long lived in the village now called Volosianka, always strove to obtain an education that would in no way be inferior to that received in academic institutions in the West, that is, in gymnasiums and universities. We had a gymnasium. It was called an academic gymnasium. There, we received the same knowledge as in the gymnasiums of Europe, but with more material concerning the struggles of Danylo’s descendants and his nobles. This knowledge was passed down from generation to generation.

There was also an academy, which was equivalent to European universities and academies, where additional material was also provided about the fate of Danylo of Galicia’s descendants and their struggle against both the Poles and the Hungarians—material not presented by historians from either Poland or Hungary, because it was not advantageous for them. This continued into our 20th century. When the Second World War ended, my parents—my mother and father—returned to the village from Kyiv. Incidentally, my mother wrote poems, some of which have survived, as did my father. By the age of 14 or 15, I had mastered the curriculum of the academic gymnasium. After that, I studied a university-level program, mainly history. And I must also say that both the nobles and the descendants of Danylo strove to acquire a military education. That is why, as early as 1938, a one-year school for officers of noble descent was founded. Only monarchists studied there. IN DEFENSE OF CARPATHIAN UKRAINE (1939) My studies at the officer school ended in March 1939, right at the moment when Carpathian Ukraine was being proclaimed. This was on March 13.

That night, an order was given for our entire school to cross into Transcarpathia to defend Carpathian Ukraine from the invasion of Hungarian troops. So, our school participated in the Second World War from its very first day. Our group of officers consisted of 55 people; among us were two or three female cadets, and there were also about 20–25 volunteers who were not nobles, but our people. Our group entered into battle on March 14. We held out for three days. By March 17–18, we were already effectively waging a partisan war, because the Hungarians had flooded all of Carpathian Ukraine with a massive force. They deployed, according to some data, at least 75,000 troops, and according to our data, around 100,000, if not more. We crossed back to the Polish side. I was wounded there. This injury led to my father and I being arrested by the Polish gendarmerie in July.

By that time, I already had a collection of poetry and many of my own melodies, as I had a knack not only for writing poems but also for composing music for them. I played musical instruments and had a strong voice. Some said that if it weren’t for my background, I could have become a good artist. Of course, I did not set my sights on being an artist; I was preparing for political struggle and acquiring knowledge of military affairs. When everything settled down in Transcarpathia after a few days and we returned home, our entire school was immediately enrolled in an academic course for staff officers. Colonel Petro Diachenko, who had previously graduated from the General Staff Academy of the Polish Army, was appointed commander of our school. The instructors included Colonel General Ivan Dobrovolsky, Colonel General Oleksandr Galkin, Colonel Treiko, and many other officers from as far back as the First World War. My father was the head of that school and, subsequently, of those academic courses. We completed the academic course in six months. At graduation, Petro Diachenko, speaking before the generals, said that he had passed on to us the knowledge he had received at the Polish Army General Staff Academy. So, he said, we were equipped with knowledge that could take us not only to the rank of colonel but even to that of general.

Admittedly, the military rank of major was granted only to those with a higher education; those without it received the rank of captain, and could only attain the rank of major after obtaining a higher education. This motivated everyone to acquire a higher education as quickly as possible. By that time, I already had a historical education, but it was not officially examined or certified anywhere, so I had no diploma. DISARMING THE POLES (1939) On September 1, 1939, the Germans began their war against Poland. Having the appropriate training, I began to organize military detachments. These detachments disarmed Polish border posts in the villages of Ialynkuvate, Khashchuvannia, and Vyshkiv—this is in the Carpathians. At that time, the Poles had delivered military equipment for an entire regiment to their bases in Slavske—clothing, footwear, ammunition, and even food. Having learned that there was no strong guard there, my detachments and I took it all on the night of September 9-10, 1939. About a hundred wagonloads of these goods were taken and transported to our storehouses and hidden, but not for long, because I immediately began to organize more detachments. These detachments engaged in battles with defeated Polish units with the aim of disarming them. So, in a short time, we disarmed about 20 to 30 such groups. These groups consisted of 10, 15, or 25 men—in short, we took all their weapons.

In all these actions, there were no casualties on our side, nor on the Polish side. They surrendered, seeing that there was nothing else to do, so it went without casualties. We did not violate any international conventions because we acted as professionals. We knew how to treat people who had raised their hands—we did them no harm. We took their weapons and ammunition and told them: “Go wherever you want.” They mostly went to the Hungarian side. When information arrived that the Bolsheviks had crossed the Zbruch River on September 17, the command was given to surrender all weapons, store them, and disband all military formations. Here, I want to read a quote from the book *History of Cities and Villages of the Ukrainian SSR: Lviv Oblast*. On page 716, it says: “Until 1938, an underground group of the Communist Party of Western Ukraine (KPZU) operated in the village (meaning Volosianka, where I was born). In September 1939, the members of this group, with the help of residents, disarmed a kulak gang that was attempting to prevent the peasants from welcoming the Soviet soldiers.”

In reality, this is evidence that we had armed forces. The information is presented in a Bolshevik manner; no residents were disarming any kulaks. We were identified by the KPZU members, who were mainly Jews. They reported to the NKVD that we had collected old weapons and handed them over to the militia they had organized. In this way, we saved the village from unnecessary suspicion and repression. The good weapons, we hid. I also skipped over the fact that around July 27, my father and I were arrested by the Poles, who suspected me of being wounded in the left arm in Transcarpathia. But we managed to escape from there after three days. That was a matter of chance. It must have been God’s will for us to live. They were probably leading us away to be liquidated, but in Skole there was music playing, young ladies were having fun, and there were many different gentlemen. The young ladies approached our guards and said: “Come dance.” To us, they said: “You just wait here.” They were taken to dance, and in the meantime, my father and I escaped, crossed the river, and entered the forest. We hid until the Polish-German war. UNDER BOLSHEVIK OCCUPATION (1939–1941) With the arrival of the Bolsheviks, the need arose to continue the activities of the OUN. On the one hand, the Poles had battered the OUN cadres; on the other, when the Bolsheviks approached, many OUN members, especially from the Leadership, fled abroad. It was necessary to create new structures. The Bolsheviks established two districts on the territory of Skole county: Skole and Slavske. My father suggested that I should create a leadership structure there as well. On October 9, 1939, under the Bolsheviks, I created the OUN leadership in the Slavske district. It included 20 people—referents headed by a leader, which was me. I was there for a month and a half, and then I was transferred to be the county leader in the Skole district.

I held that post until May 1940. During that time, I accomplished a great deal. First, I established “windows,” secret routes through which people crossed the border and returned. I established and regulated communication lines and made sure that the weapons were securely hidden so the Bolsheviks wouldn’t find them. I saw that people who felt they might be arrested or who were in an illegal status thought only of escaping abroad. I, however, thought the opposite. There was one incident.

A few days after the Red Army units arrived, a man with the collar tabs of a Red Army major came to my father. He acted somewhat hesitantly, then asked: “Where does so-and-so live?” That is, he was asking my father about my father himself. He evidently already knew. My father said: “That’s me.” He said: “I am the son of the man with whom you stayed in 1918–19 in Eastern Ukraine (somewhere in Zhytomyr or Vinnytsia Oblast). My father has passed away. They trusted me as being reliable. Although I am not a party member, I am a major in the Red Army. I survived the famine.” He spoke about the Holodomor. My father himself knew about the first famine, which was in 1921–1923, because he was there, but we only learned about the one in 1932–33 from the press and from people who crossed the border. My father asked what he could offer from his side. The man said: “There are many majors like me in the Red Army.

True, the commissars and politruks watch over us. But we have now understood a lot here, our eyes have been opened, and in a certain situation, we could turn our weapons against the NKVD.” This greatly interested me because I was already at the county level. I thought: aha, this is the moment to start an armed uprising—the army, it seems, is in our hands. And while my father thought more critically, I thought only one thing: forward, since there is strength. But my father told me that it couldn't be done, as there would be great sacrifices, and the chances of winning the campaign might be slim. He told me to go into exile. I thought that a coup in Ukraine was possible, because at that time in Western Ukraine there were more than two million Ukrainians who had come with the Soviet Army. Of them, maybe one percent, well, two, three—no more, let’s say five—were those who faithfully served Stalin. But the older people were more cautious, and perhaps that was not a good thing. I also posed the question this way: If a war breaks out between Moscow and Germany, then Germany will start promoting its interests here, and then we will have no hope of any success at all. But if we had raised an uprising here and the Germans entered the war, it would have seemed that they were coming to our aid, but we would have already had an established state. That was how we, in the monarchist circle, reasoned at the time. But I was obliged to submit to my father’s will and go abroad.

IN TRANSCARPATHIA (1940)

Finding myself in Carpathian Ukraine—this was around the end of May 1940—I immediately set about forming the Regional Leadership of Carpathian Ukraine. A pro-monarchist one, of course. I never shared revolutionary views. I put forward the question of divine concepts of a religious nature, which the monarchy upholds. After all, we had great traditions, our throne was constantly active, and this, in my opinion, was the only thing worth fighting for. The Hungarian gendarmerie tracked me down and, sometime in early July, arrested me. For my activities, according to their law, I was due a bullet. And they promised me as much.

During the investigation, witnesses must have said that I stood for the restoration of the state of Yaroslav the Wise. But since I was a foreigner, the case reached the president of Hungary at the time, Horthy. He considered that he was dealing with a monarchist structure. Horthy said that in his state, monarchists are not arrested or tried, and ordered my immediate release and expulsion from Hungary. That’s how I escaped the bullet. The Hungarians immediately gave me new clothes, as mine were already tattered, provided me with everything necessary, and took me to the Uzhok station—where the borders of the USSR, Germany, and Hungary converged, with the Slovakian border a little further on—and told me to go wherever I wanted, as long as I left their territory and never returned. They treated me with marked respect, befitting my status.

KRAKÓW PRISON (1940)

From there, I went toward the territory occupied by the Germans—Polish territory, which is our Lemkivshchyna. After a short time, the German border guards detained me there and took me to the town of Balyhorod, where there was already a group of our monarchists. It was mostly the elite, our professoriate—up to ten professors, and the rest, about twenty, were officers who had a respectable education for that time. They arranged a job for me there as a teacher in a school. The school year was already ending, but there was still a lot of work to do. Of course, in such a position, one had to know both the village and the people. But at that time, as always, I was writing poems, and some of them already had an anti-Hitler character. Somehow those poems—they were being copied and distributed—fell into the hands of the Gestapo. This led to my arrest sometime in the middle or last decade of July 1940, and I was sent to the Montelupich prison in Kraków. I can’t say there was any torture: they simply asked me if the poems were mine—“Mine.”

I had no way of wriggling out of it. They drew up a short report, a few lines, maybe two paragraphs. Based on that decision, the Gestapo sent me to a death row cell, from where people were taken to be executed. Well, alright, I awaited my fate. I was there with Polish professors, a solid elite. We had our battles there too. Although people were awaiting death, the political struggle continued, even intensifying for a time, before settling into a normal course. During one such discussion, three individuals in Gestapo officer uniforms entered the cell—which was unheard of. I recognized one of them—it was Professor Mykola Palii-Vilshanskyi, whom I had seen back in Balyhorod, an émigré. I wondered, what's going on? He immediately turned his attention to me. The other was also an acquaintance. Hope began to stir within me. And not in vain, because an hour, maybe an hour and a half or two, later, two Gestapo men came in, called me out of the cell, and led me away. In the corridor, they told me not to speak to anyone, that they would answer for everything. They led me like this through two checkpoints out of the prison and onto the street. About half akilometer away, they told me to go to the building at 10/12 Jabłonowskich Street, and there to report either to Captain Dumyn or to Volodymyr Horbovyi, who were in charge there. They showed me where to go, and I went on my own. When I arrived, it turned out they were already waiting for me and directed me to room 44, where the professors from our village were. They told me how they had spread the word about me, who had initiated my release, and how and who they managed to persuade to free me.

They went through their old connections and reached Stepan Bandera. Stepan Bandera, of course, was afraid, as it was a great risk, but later decided to give the instruction to find out which cell I was in and to get me out of there—or rather, to free me without making a fuss. That’s why those three Gestapo men had come. Stepan Bandera entrusted this to Yevhen Pryshliak. He’s from Mykolaiv, a good man; I later met him in the camp. He was the one who organized my 50th birthday celebration for me. In Kraków, having been freed from prison, I naturally had to be careful not to run into any Gestapo officers who knew me by sight. I got in touch with our intelligentsia. Bandera’s side assigned Stepan Lynkavsky to me—probably because he quickly established contact with me. This man was highly educated, with a natural gift for aesthetics, not a revolutionary type. I spent most of my time with him. Besides that, I had the opportunity to be with Bohdan Kravtsiv, a writer, with General Mykola Kapustiansky, and I even caught Bohdan Lepky while he was still alive, though ill, and others. Babiy also appeared there at the time—he was in Warsaw.

Eventually, the question arose of what to do about the split in the OUN: to support Melnyk or Bandera. Our professors said that the Melnykites didn't lift a finger when they were told I needed to be freed. They didn't take a single step, pretending that one person wasn't worth putting everyone at risk. Such behavior showed that Bandera should be supported. But for Bandera to be able to lead the OUN and conduct an active struggle like Konovalets, he needed the sanction of a descendant of Danylo of Galicia, who was then considered the person heading all movements, including the former UNDO. That is why Bandera, sometime at the end of August or the beginning of September, crossed the border and, together with his liaisons, came to my father. A conversation took place between them there, which settled this matter. He received the mandate to prepare for the Grand Assembly, where it was already clear that he would be supported and would become the Leader. Today, some people have veered so far to the left, they've become almost Bolsheviks and don't believe in such things...

V.O.: Can we clarify where and when that meeting between your father and Stepan Bandera took place?

M.L.: Yes, I can tell you the route. They traveled in the direction of Zakopane towards Slovakia. With him was Palii—a calm, balanced man—and a girl from the émigré community, Ahafiia Kuvak. She had graduated from the officer school, a talented intelligence agent. After crossing the border, they arrived near Transcarpathia, crossed the Slovak-Hungarian border, and moved towards the village of Studene in Transcarpathia, emerging in the territory between Khashchuvannia and Ialynkuvate. Both of them were from this village, so they knew how to connect them. I can't give the exact date of the meeting, but it was around the end of September—perhaps September 27, 1940. Stepan Bandera returned to Kraków around October 9, and active preparations for the Grand Assembly began. BERLIN (1940–1943) Around St. Michael's Day in the autumn, near November 21, the Germans rounded up those of us who were incautious in Kraków and took us to Berlin. I was just preparing my poetry collection at that time; almost everything was ready for printing, but I didn't manage to publish it in Kraków. In Berlin, I ended up at the Siemens concern. Soon, Professor Lenkavskyi and Colonel Bushuienko got in touch there. He connected us with Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky.

The historian Doroshenko would come there; it had its own elite, quite interesting people. People who could have saved our state in 1918–19, but, as they said—and I believe they were right—Petliura and Hrushevsky were to blame for everything. They ruined a ready-made state that had such armed forces that it could have fought off the Bolsheviks. Interesting people used to visit Skoropadsky. Petro Verhun, the apostolic visitator for Ukrainian Catholics in Germany, would stop by. He served in a church there, there was such a church. Dontsov would come there; they would gather students at the Ukrainian university on Mackensenstrasse 75. There was a large hall, and it was a bit sad that only about 80–90 people gathered when 200 could have fit. At first, Dontsov didn't give the impression of being a good speaker, but when people started asking him questions, he answered beautifully, sometimes with humor, emerging as a true ideologist of nationalism, a critic, capable of a bit of political jest. There, in 1940, I was given the opportunity to take external exams for the history faculty. I completed three years of coursework, then audited some lectures there, on Mackensenstrasse.

I was bored there because I already knew the material. I couldn't enroll as a full-time student, lest it be discovered who I was, since I had been snatched from the Gestapo's jaws in Kraków. I could only be an auditor. One discussion I had with my opponents led Doroshenko to say that there was no problem with a history diploma, that I could get it right away, and Verhun said that I could also get a theology diploma from the Lviv Theological Academy. As for a law diploma (because I really wanted one and was prepared), I had to go to Czechoslovakia, to the Ukrainian university, and pass some exams. I received a Doctor of Law degree there. Thus, by the end of 1942, I had three diplomas in hand.

In addition to this, I diligently studied psychiatry. Why? Because in political activity, one can encounter sick people. Pathological phenomena can manifest in a community, which can lead to the demise of an entire formation. True, I didn't have a diploma in psychiatry, but I had a consultant by my side, a good doctor-psychiatrist, a Czech, who saw that his work would not be in vain.

Well, there was a time—I'll get to it later—when Lieutenant General Nikitchenko, the head of the KGB of Ukraine, after three and a half years of investigation failed to break me, summoned me after the Lviv trial and said: “You turned out to be the strongest lawyer in the USSR because you wrapped everyone around your finger. In fact, you created an underground, you led it, but only two were tried—you and Vodyniuk.” This was said in 1961, and then, in 1978, at the Serbsky Institute, Dzerzhinsky's daughter, Margarita Feliksovna, said: “You turned out to be the best psychiatrist because this is the first case in the USSR, in Soviet psychiatry, where a diagnosis has to be rescinded.” I don’t know if I’ll get to that part of the story, so I’m pre-empting it. And these were my studies in my youth.

In Berlin, besides working at the Siemens factory, I was involved in socio-political activities, working in various underground Ukrainian political formations, such as the OUN. I had to work with the monarchists and set them on the right path because ideas and traditions were being lost. For instance, take Dontsov—he’s a nobleman. When asked if he knew about it, he said: “I know that I am of noble status, I even have a coat of arms.” Doroshenko is also a nobleman with a coat of arms, and there’s no question about Skoropadsky. Many nobles participated in that struggle, and in high positions, so someone needed to revive them a bit. These were capable people, but the most active were those who remained within the OUN-Bandera underground structure. But they were young lads, we needed to work with them, and we worked on that, and I was part of that leadership. The Ukrainians who were captured in German POW camps during the Polish-German war also needed to be rescued. I went to Watenstedt, where they were in a c whole groups of us went, took down their personal data, and then, through the *Ukrainische Vertrauensstelle*, the “Ukrainian Office of Trust in Berlin,” we prepared the necessary documents for them and got them out of there, arranging jobs for them. They enjoyed the same rights as we Galicians did. It was a noble mission; we helped thousands of Ukrainians get out of that captivity. I also want to mention that I traveled to museums with that Colonel Bushuienko. He realized that I loved visiting museums, so we toured the Berlin museums, the Dresden Gallery, and those in other cities. Then he says: “I’m going to Paris, because that’s where I’m from, so let’s go together, you’ll see the Louvre.” Of course, he didn’t have to tell me twice.

We arranged for our vacations to coincide, and we went. That’s how I saw the French capital and some other cities. It's interesting that Bushuienko introduced me to a French millionaire-communist. I asked him how it was that he, a millionaire with such estates, was even supported and left alone by the Germans—and yet he was a communist? If the communists came to power, did he know what awaited him? He said: “They’ll give me even more.” I laughed. He showed me whole stacks of the newspaper *L'Humanité*. He subscribed to it, though he didn’t read it. Such was this communist.

This is a fact that cannot be ignored. It speaks to what French communists were like, what communists in the West were like in general, how romantically they perceived it all, not knowing what was happening here. I spent another vacation with Italians in Italy. This was prompted by an incident. I had listened to Italians singing and then to Caruso records. I memorized it and, in the presence of my colleagues, I sang. This was in Berlin on Berliner-Strasse, Gemeindelager Lichterfelde-Süd. Next door was a barracks where Italians lived. Two sections housed Italians, one had French, and further on were Belgians, Danes, Dutch, and Germans. There were four barracks in total. [End of track]. It was a small camp, with maybe about three hundred people.

So one day, in a good mood, I was prompted and provoked to sing those various Neapolitan songs at the top of my lungs. I sang a few—when the blackout curtains, as they called them, the *Verdunkelungen*—when Germany was being bombed by Anglo-American aircraft, they covered the windows—were raised. But they kept them covered during the day too. One of them lifted a curtain, looked out, and saw the Italians had surrounded our room, listening. When I stopped, they came running, clapping and shouting: “Caruso, Caruso!” So they nicknamed me Caruso there. It wasn’t so easy for me to get out of that one. The Italians urged me to go to Italy with them. And they considered my surname, Lutsyk, to be connected with some of their patricians. Because Lutsyk means light. Luminous princes, luminous patricians. In short, they attached a lot to it and gave me a beautiful violin. I even joked whether it was a Stradivarius by any chance. They said no, but it was just as good. I loved to play some melody in my spare time. By that time, I had about thirty beautiful melodies I had written, mostly to my own poems. During one of those short vacations, I went to Italy. There, the Italians also provoked me a bit into singing, saying that no one was listening, only them, but it turned out there were Italians all around. They gave me a mandola there, so beautiful I had never seen one like it in Germany. Not a mandolin, but a mandola, custom-made, very beautiful. And when I returned, they gave me a guitar. A very fine model of a guitar. I didn't particularly like playing the guitar, but I accepted the gift. In short, they decked me out with instruments.

In 1943, I took a vacation. Something was unsettling my soul, so I took a vacation to go home. Some other lads went with me, taking all my belongings. In my belongings, there was a rather substantial library, those musical instruments, and besides that, five sets of German officer uniforms. I thought they would come in handy there. As a military man, I always had the desire to have everything I needed, so as not to have to search for it. Moreover, there was an opportunity to get that uniform cheaply. I must say that Skoropadsky, knowing about the course at our military academy and knowing that they didn't hand out military ranks lightly there, decided to certify five from our group. He gave them the rank of colonel, and me, general-khorunzhyi. And then, at the end of 1943, he awarded me, with certification and a seal, the rank of general-colonel. I was young, but he said: “Your status requires it.” So I went off with all that. That document was well kept by me, but it did not survive to our times. But it’s not needed now anyway.

IN THE SKOLE REGION (1943)

Having arrived in my native land, in my Skole region, in my home village of Volosianka, I had no intention of returning. Especially since, about a week or maybe ten days later, I received a letter from Berlin informing me to be careful, because Gestapo agents had come to arrest me there, in Berlin. This meant that since they came there and I was gone, they would send word here. In Skole, I managed to get in touch with a person who worked in the county Kripo and had contact with the Gestapo.

V.O.: What is Kripo?

M.L.: Kriminalpolizei. And it's not Gestapo, but *Geschtapo*—*Geheime Staatspolizei*. He was an officer named Iliashevskyi. He informs me: “Your photograph and information are already here, with orders to either kill or arrest you.” In addition, we had an Ilko Korenevych. He worked in the Kripo and as the deputy chief of the Ukrainian police. These were our people; we had to have our intelligence within that enemy environment.

Soon I arranged it so that the commandant of the Stryi Ukrainian police, Lieutenant Petro Korenevych, was also our man. Another Korenevych worked in the police in Tukhla. In Lviv, Pavlo Terenchyn was the head of the police school, training investigators and officers for the entire General Governorate. He was also our man. He had lived most of his life in our village. Thus, it was not difficult for me to have my people everywhere to provide the necessary information. When I learned that the little tail from Berlin had followed me, I was cautious. There was one such incident. I went to visit my aunt in the village of Khashchuvannia, where an officer, the chief of the border post, was quartered. When he came in and saw me, he called my aunt and asked who I was. She said: “This is my brother’s son.” “And where is your brother?” “Arrested by the NKVD.” “When?” “He was arrested on May 18, 1941, and disappeared.” He then showed her my photograph: “And I have orders to arrest him now or shoot him if he attempts to escape. So tell him not to come to you anymore and to leave here unnoticed, especially since not only I, but all our border guards have his details to arrest him.” Such were the vicissitudes of life.

There were very many of them, but I had to take all of it into account in order to get things done. But most importantly, all of this pushed me away from a legal status and into an illegal one. I was forced to go underground and continue my clandestine political activities. I soon got in touch with the Leadership, with Stepaniank, who headed the regional command here. He immediately offered me the leadership of the OUN in the Drohobych Oblast. At first, I didn't say yes or no, but then, having arrived here, I studied the situation, weighed the options, and got in touch with other nobles, with monarchists like Lutsky, Hoshovsky, Vytvytsky, and told them that I would be launching an armed struggle. So it wasn’t simple for me to get involved in that. If I had taken on a scale of work like the Drohobych Oblast, I practically wouldn’t have been able to do it all. So I asked that they not interfere with me in the Skole region.

I took the Skole region for myself. This territory was enough for me to deploy the creation of military detachments. The terrain here was familiar to me, I knew many people, and there were many graduates of our school here. Of course, no one objected to this. So, I am heading the county Leadership in the Skole region. Having met with Terenchyn in Lviv, I got a contact in Volhynia from him. There, I met with Dmytro Kliachkivskyi, who had already distinguished himself as a promising commander, leading the troops of that region. Shukhevych was still in Belarus at that time. All these individuals were familiar to me from my time as an émigré. They knew me, I knew them, and, of course, I felt not only wings behind my back, but also a sense of duty, that I must do exactly what the situation required. The situation was as follows.

If in Volhynia the Germans had pushed things to the point where armed action was truly necessary, in our Galicia, to raise an armed uprising would have meant helping the Bolsheviks. Let the Germans and Bolsheviks fight each other; they weren't bothering us here, and we should act where it would be necessary. THE RESCUE OF PRISONERS (1943) I saw a camp here at Sviatoslav, near Skole. It was a penal camp where the Germans held about 500 prisoners. They were abused worse than in the German concentration camps. There were acquaintances of mine there, even a relative, and so I set the task of developing a plan to free them from there. The camp was heavily guarded, and by professionals, well-armed. It was impossible to attack there during the day, as a regiment of the German Wehrmacht was stationed in the city of Skole, along with various German Einsatzkommandos, the Kripo, the Gestapo, and a strong company of Hungarians guarding Hungarian hospitals. Skole was flooded with German and Hungarian troops. In addition, the AK, the Polish Home Army, was active along the railway line, carrying out various operations for which Ukrainians suffered. They would kill a few Germans, and of course, the Germans would seize Ukrainians as hostages and shoot them. This had to be put to an end. It was a forced situation. So, if we were to engage in battle with the Germans, we had to calculate whether we had such strength. We did not have such strength.

In fact, it was small, just about a hundred professional soldiers. I developed a plan of attack and liberation for those prisoners, and I selected the people who could do it. Not just anyone could do this, not even good military men, because only a small group could operate there, some 20-25 men. A larger group could have been discovered in advance, and the whole operation could have failed, resulting in casualties. For this operation, I chose men like Baida and Tolubas Luka from Volosianka (he led the first detachment). There was Lev—he led the second detachment. Dmytro Suslynets with his group—about 17–18 men—was to neutralize the guards, cut the power and telephone lines, infiltrate the camp, and release the prisoners from the barracks. Among those prisoners, about 250 were bedridden. Those who were no longer able to work or walk were no longer fed and were generally being eliminated; they would even take the living, transport them somewhere, bury them, and that was the end. Nearly half, if not more, were already slated for destruction. There is literature on how they did this. These were Volksdeutsche.

In fact, they were Poles who took pleasure in torturing, tormenting, and driving Ukrainians to death. They registered as Volksdeutsche to be able to sadistically abuse our people. Of course, we survived various occupations, we endured horrors in the dungeons of the NKVD, but we must not forget that it was no better in the hands of Polish, Hungarian, and Romanian executioners, and then the Gestapo.

In short, we weren’t dealing with mere “foes,” as people like to sing—we were dealing with sadists, butchers, who craved our blood and sought to destroy us in order to seize our lands. They did not trifle with us, and I am convinced that they have not changed their characters or plans to this day. Therefore, anyone who gets involved in politics must be aware of this, and if they are, they must act so that we are never again subjected to such abuse. If they do not understand this, they must be removed from politics. I adhered to such principles back then, in the underground. I watched to see who could do what; I had a well-oiled underground apparatus, it was an underground government. After we broke up that camp, it was necessary to immediately transport over 250 people into the mountains and treat them. Perhaps sixty, maybe more, wagons, which we then called ambulance carts, transported these people. It had to be done quickly, moving them 50–60 kilometers in one night. We moved them to the village of Volosianka. Well, in historical accounts, they write that they were distributed among some small hospitals in the mountains. But this is not true, because at that time, no one was thinking about small hospitals, no one was preparing them, no one was thinking about any armed actions.

It was an action that was like snow with whole sheets of ice falling on our heads in the middle of summer. Even here, in the town of Skole, for several days they could not believe that it had happened. They said something had happened, but no one knew exactly what. Neither the Leadership, nor the command, nor the Central Leadership knew anything, because I didn't tell anyone, so as not to ruin the affair. Thus, the credit for this mission belongs entirely to the monarchists, who carried out the operation at a high level, without casualties. Soon after these people were evacuated, an experienced doctor, who is not known anywhere in the underground—Dr. Ilko Seika—took charge of their treatment. This doctor had treated the Sich Riflemen and had been in the Ukrainian Galician Army. In addition, he had knowledge of phytotherapy: he made his own medicines, various ointments, which were effective. They could boldly compete with those produced by pharmaceutical institutions.

In addition, we had highly qualified medical personnel. Beardless boys of 18–20 who ended up in that camp were tortured; worms were already breeding in their wounds, and gangrene was setting in. They were on the verge of death and had to be saved in underground conditions, on forest clearings, near streams, and most importantly—they needed to be fed. At that time in Galicia, no one had any idea that an army needed to be fed, that such a problem existed. I didn't know what to do. Having freed them from that hell, I found myself in a situation where they now had no way out, except to die of hunger. Conspiracy required that not a word be said to anyone. Although there were many members of the OUN, they were unable to provide food for such a mass of people. That’s about half a thousand people. For one village to feed ten men is beyond its strength, especially since these were starving people. When they were brought there, a person had to be stationed over each one, because they were plucking grass, grazing, eating; where there was water, they would rush to drink water. It was simply a horror that is hard to imagine. And we saw this with our own eyes. Finding myself in such a situation, I went to my aunt in the village of Khashchuvane. She was called Pavlunka—she was my father’s older sister, a highly educated woman who loved literature, a great patriot, and was proud of her origins. I told her about the situation those people found themselves in, partly because of me. And that I saw no way out. She takes me by the hand and leads me to her cellar with potatoes. She opens it—and the cellar is full of potatoes. It was July, sometime after Kupala, the 7th or 8th. She showed me these potatoes and said: “There are probably about 25–30 centners here. I can give it, because I have another pit of potatoes for my own needs, for feeding the pigs. But I can give this.” I was overjoyed. Then she took me up above the cellar. There were two large barrels of cabbage that they hadn't managed to eat. Each barrel could have held about one hundred and fifty, maybe even two hundred kilograms of cabbage. She says: “This is yours too.” Good. I went out with her, and in a pen lay a pig, as big as a three-year-old bull or a good horse. I say: “Auntie, I’m taking this pig.” She says: “The Germans will shoot me—me and my whole family. They’ll say I slaughtered it.” I say: “We’ll make it look like the pig disappeared.” Her house was maybe half a kilometer, well, not a full kilometer, from the Hungarian border. I say: “We’ll make it look like it was stolen from over there, from across the border. In this way.” “Well,” she says, “if so, then take it.” Her husband, Luka Savkovych, says: “I’ll bring the potatoes myself, so as not to involve anyone else. Find a place with someone where I can bring it, and from there people will take it, and no one will know it’s from us. I’ll bring the cabbage too.” The pig was also taken to the border, and from there it was moved along the border in another direction. The pig was killed quietly, without noise, and the blood was drained. It was two centners, not less. There was a little for seasoning, and there was meat.

In this way, my aunt saved both me and these people. That's how a pressing problem with feeding the people was solved. They cooked good borschts, and there were potatoes and cabbage. The boys started to get better. We positioned ourselves so that the German reconnaissance “frame” plane wouldn't fly over us. They took a course towards Rozhanky, Slavske—the lower end, Lybokhiv, and then scouted other villages. But they didn't reach the Volosianka territory. It was by God's providence that this place was chosen. Doctor Seika, whom I already mentioned, took up the treatment and said: “I will cure everyone—I will save every last one.” He saved them all. They heated water, washed wounds, made various ointments, there was some iodine, some potassium permanganate, so the washing was done. There were medicines like plantain. All this was used by our local nurses from Volosianka. The girl-cooks—they were all underground members, very active, intelligent, educated; they did everything as it should be done. The boys got back on their feet. Those who were already up were immediately trained. They underwent military training with weapons and stood on guard duty. It must be said that Dmytro Suslynets took with him about a hundred of those who could walk—not ride, but walk. But when he saw them rushing to graze on grass and go to the stream, he was shocked and said to take them to me: I wanted such music, so I should feed them. They brought about another hundred mouths to me. It was a heavy burden. But I am grateful to my aunt, and may those who are still alive be grateful too—she was their savior.

ACTION IN SKOLE (DEMONSTRATION OF FORCE IN SKOLE, 1943)

At that time, information came from Skole that the Germans were planning a retaliatory punitive action—to destroy the villages of Rozhanky, Volosianka, Lybokhora, and Korostiv on July 19. In light of this, it was necessary to urgently prepare our people for an action on our part to stop the Germans. A few days later, Terenchyn brought his school of non-commissioned and commissioned police officers, which was intended for the entire General Governorate. There were about a hundred of them who had previously been in the police, and there were also those whom the Germans were taking into the SS division from the Lviv Theological Seminary. Some boys, to avoid joining the SS division, went to Terenchyn's police force. These were boys with a secondary education, fully suitable for officer training, and Terenchyn took them all. There were 150 of them. They arrived well-dressed, in new uniforms, with new weapons, shod, prepared, and trained. They disembarked in the village of Synevidne-Verkhnie, and from there a liaison was already waiting for them at Kliuchi. Dmytro Suslynets, along with five other men, went to meet them at Kliuchi. One of them is still alive—Fedor Korenevych. He now lives as a disabled person of the first group in Rozhanka-Verkhnia. Terenchyn's detachment—these were effectively the officer cadres for an entire regiment, if not more. He came with all of them to the Volosianka forests, because there was nowhere else, and there was nothing to eat there. He arrived just when Suslynets had played a bit of a joke on me by sending over those men for me to feed myself. And Terenchyn told me: “I won’t burden you, I’ll go to other territories with my detachment. From there we’ll go to the Stanislavshchyna region and form raiding detachments, we’ll finish our training.” He held the military rank of major because he had completed the academic course of the officer school. His actual rank was a secret to everyone. Some considered him an ensign, others a lieutenant, but according to our data, he was already a major who could easily have been a colonel.

When the information appeared that the Germans were preparing to go and burn these villages, Terenchyn and we broke open our secret caches and began a rapid mobilization to form detachments that could demonstrate our strength to the Germans. I thought the best thing to do was to conduct a military raid through the town of Skole, with weapons in hand, in broad daylight. The date of the raid was set for July 18.

Over a thousand men were mobilized from our villages, plus those who had been liberated, plus the 150 who had come from Lviv. In short, it was a solid force. There were professional cadres, there were eight regiments (because there were eight colonels), there was a brigadier general, and a divisional general. The Banderites and the UPA didn’t have that, but for us, a monarch has the right to grant any military rank, can give the title of prince—it depended on the needs that required it. Thus, we had cadres, and they were quite solid. We had Colonel General Dobrovolsky—an old expert in staff work. This is not recorded anywhere by our woeful historians, but we have confirmation of this German retaliatory punitive action in the book *History of Cities and Villages of the Ukrainian SSR: Lviv Oblast* on page 698. There is a paragraph that reads: “The Carpathian raid of S.A. Kovpak’s partisan formation, whose detachments passed through the city in 1943, was of great importance for the expansion of the struggle against the fascist occupiers.” The city of Skole is meant here.

What is the issue here? The issue is that the Bolsheviks tried to attribute our heroics to themselves. That is why they recorded it in such an authoritative encyclopedic publication. But we know that on July 18, 1943, there were no such troops in Galicia at all. And as for Kovpak, his partisan detachments had at that time reached, or were still reaching, the Zhytomyr Oblast. They didn’t cross the Dniester until September 1943 and were soon destroyed (there, as at Dvir, near Deliatyn). Kovpak himself writes about this in his book *From Putyvl to the Carpathians*. So that question is settled. The only thing missing is data on who destroyed those Kovpakites. They were destroyed by those who marched through the town of Skole. So what happened in Skole? Soviet intelligence and German agents recorded the fact, and their military experts concluded that a regiment was stationed in Skole on that day. They write: “detachments, a formation.” What are detachments? It is generally accepted that these are regiments, brigades. And a formation is a division or a corps. In Ukrainian terminology, a formation is no less than a division and no more than a corps.

Detachments, I emphasize again, can be regiments or brigades. Thus, it must have been a force of the order of 3–5 thousand, or even 10 and more. If we consider it in terms of cadre, we had about 6 regiments’ worth of cadres there. We, the monarchists, had strong cadres. Besides, we had the right to grant people military ranks—even generals, if necessary. We could grant titles of nobility, even princes. So our situation was completely different from that in the UPA detachments. In addition, Leonid Stupnytskyi in Kliachkivskyi’s UPA—he was a nobleman from under the Sas coat of arms, our man. He never considered anyone above him as a superior, except for a monarch of Danylo’s bloodline. This shows that the UPA cadres were effectively subordinate to us. So, on the night before July 18, 1943, we moved that entire mass of troops to Skole, into the forests near Kamianyste. We had about 25 good horses, good saddles, so we showed that we also had cavalry. The troops rested a bit after the journey, and around noon they were roused, and the combat march through the town of Skole began.

We, with the exception of those who came from Lviv, took the weapons we had acquired in 1939, that clothing—everything was preserved in the best condition. The Germans noted that the army was marching in brand new, pressed trousers, that they did not bother the Germans, paid no attention to them, as if they were not there. By this, we were demonstrating strength; the order was to march. The distance between individuals was about 4–5 meters. Of course, we calculated that while such a force marched from the beginning of Skole, which is about 3 kilometers, or maybe not even that, from that spot at Kamianyste to the next stream, we could display some military cunning. They would emerge above the town, turn right, run through the forest, and march again and again. They marched like this four times, and that could have been four hours, because it's hard to manage one such loop in an hour. That’s why the Germans wavered. The German staff, obviously, counted well. Although their barracks were surrounded by machine guns, they couldn’t come out. They saw that they just had to sit and watch. They, with their ladies and lovers, were simply spectators. They walked around the town, stood on the sidewalks, and watched as the army marched by. It was very strange.

It's clear the Germans concluded that these were not Bolsheviks, not Poles, and not even Banderites, because all of those might have launched some armed actions against them. But here, everything was done tolerantly. And it's clear that this was probably blackmail—showing them that no actions could take place here, because then they would all perish. Indeed, the next day, on the 19th, those punitive police Gestapo units that had been brought from Stryi to Skole returned to Stryi. They abandoned their punitive actions because they understood that not one of them might make it out of there. If they had gone ahead with it, we could have destroyed them, any force, even their regiment. We were, after all, the masters in our mountains, and if we needed to defend ourselves, we would have defended ourselves. So that was the action. And what was happening in the Leadership then? As I already said, neither the first nor the second action was reported to the Leadership. Later it was reported, but not as a report, but just to inform the UPA in Volhynia, those Stupnytskyi and Kliachkivskyi. Just as a colleague, that such a thing happened, and they sent back many praises for those who took part in the action, and personalized pistols for each one. So our solidarity, intelligent, purely military-like, was already known there.

What happened next? After some time, maybe not a week, but a month later, in the Leadership of the Drohobych military district, where the military was led by Bohdan Vilshynskyi from Skole, Lebed and Shukhevych were given the task of finding out what had happened there, what was this large force operating in the Carpathians in the Skole region? Had a figure similar to Taras Bulba-Borovets, as in Volhynia, appeared, and what should be done with him? They had already delicately removed that one. Because there wasn't a force like some think, but here there was a great force. This force, therefore, needed to be investigated, and the initiators probably liquidated. For this purpose, they sent the SB man, Yevhen Pryshliak, who then headed the referentura of the Drohobych regional Leadership. He came to Koniukhiv and there told Yurko Hasyn—the brother of Oleksa Hasyn, who was later a colonel on the UPA staff—what his purpose was, and asked for his support. Our SB happened to be there. They delicately told him: “We will help you with this.” They took this Pryshliak and that Bohdan Vilshenskyi, ostensibly to show them what was there, but in fact, they were delicately arrested. They were not disarmed, but they were told, let’s go. So they traveled by train all the way to Slavske. On the way, they heard songs being sung in praise of the troops and the command that marched through Skole. They are traveling and thinking: what is this? This is a complete state here. And they are praising not Bandera, but some monarch. They brought that Pryshliak to Slavske, and he sees that these are some “tall people,” as he said, all two meters tall. These “tall people” bring him, give him a horse in Slavske, ride with him towards the village of Volosianka, and there they blindfold him and lead him to a place he does not know. And suddenly he finds himself in a wooded clearing, they lead him into such a terrain, he enters, looks around—troops, posts everywhere, like in some military camp. The army is dressed handsomely, everything—command, discipline, that could only be in a fairy tale. They lead him to me, he looks—and I look. He says: “Is that you?” I say: “It’s me.”

Second Cassette:

Well, of course, we embraced—after all, he was my liberator from that Kraków prison. Everything was clear then, we laughed and laughed again, because it turned out to be such a huge misunderstanding. He already understood that there could be no arrests. Because at that time, both Lebid and Shukhevych knew whom he had freed. They understood that I might have my own peculiar whims, but they wouldn't be directed against them. He stayed there for a while, they let him see the military encampments. Then they let him go among those elders, where they showed him the relics. There were relics from the time of Danylo of Galicia, which had been preserved in our church until our day. He examined it all and later said that it all breathed ancient history, that he was simply captivated. Such were his epithets. By the way, he later told this story when they celebrated my fiftieth birthday in the camp in Mordovia, in camp No. 19. Having stayed with us for perhaps a week, Pryshliak returned to give his report. It was there he became convinced that Bohdan Vilshynskyi knew everything but had not reported it; it remained a secret because he considered himself part of the nobility and couldn't have not known. When Pryshliak was returning, I sent Mykola Savkovych with him, a lawyer who was from the Dubrovsky nobility. He represented us in the Leadership—with Lebed and Shukhevych, so they would know that everything was going well. What happened to those troops?

After that action, it was impossible to maintain such a mass of troops without a food supply base. You could still walk around in that uniform, but it too had to be stored. Ammunition, weapons had to be stored. So everyone was disbanded. Those who had been liberated remained, as they had nowhere to return. But all the others were sent away to go work, feed their children, their families. Everything was cut down to a minimum. Terenchyn went [unintelligible], then he was at the officer school, held various posts, and worked at the headquarters. He was a very gifted man; I want to say as much as possible about him, but there’s no way here. He was a painter; at headquarters, he did excellent drafting, which was very necessary, as not everyone can do that. He made maps as if they came from a German publisher—meticulously, competently. So he was a great, very useful person. He perished along with Pol somewhere in 1944. There is data on this.* *(See about Pol, about the Second UPA-West "Oleni" Officer School in Rozhanky—in the autobiographical account of Petro Sichko // – Three Uprisings of the Sichkos: In two volumes. Vol. 2: Memoirs. Interviews. Letters. – P. 81-82. – V.O.). Part of his archives, which he maintained, also fell into the hands of the NKVD. Other archives were not with him, but with someone else, but his handiwork fell to Hasyn. Where Hasyn put those documents is unknown. He still has a brother who lives in Senechiv, in the Dolyna district. There is a family there; they remember him. Thus ended the story of this person, also forgotten.

I have a photograph of him both separately and with me as a memento. His figure is forgotten, erased by everyone, because now thousands of such people have been covered up by the single figures of Shukhevych and Bandera, and that is not right—everyone should be shown, because each of them could have been a Bandera or a Shukhevych, but they didn’t do it because they didn't want to create splits. They concealed their ambitions but possessed great talent, intellect, human dignity, and are worthy of not being forgotten. Terenchyn (he had various pseudonyms, he was also known as Khmel) took a part of the people from that camp with him and formed a *kurin* [company/battalion] out of them. Others were taken by Baida. He too preserved a cadre *kurin*. A cadre *kurin* might have about thirty men. When needed, a mobilization was carried out, and they would take command. The other one, Baida, was Luka Liubas—an officer from the Polish army, who then graduated from the officer school. There was a Mykola Krilyk, who was also an officer with the rank of major. He had the second cadre *kurin*. So we were left with cadres. Even the *kurin* commanders worked at home, feeding their families. We didn't demonstrate anything that wasn't necessary, otherwise we wouldn't have had cadres. In Volhynia, it was necessary to defend themselves; the situation was different there. But here, the Germans behaved tolerantly.

Having liquidated the Polish AK and this camp, and having averted the German attempt to carry out punitive actions, we had no need to do anything else. Those who were on the Gestapo's list and were to be arrested—they remained in an illegal status, holding various underground posts. I did too. We worked underground for a certain time, and then in 1944 I went to Transcarpathia again to re-create the leadership of Carpathian Ukraine that I had established in 1940. This was known to Shukhevych, and Lebed, and Starukh, and Maivskyi, that I had gone to Transcarpathia, selected cadres, and created a regional leadership of Carpathian Ukraine, which was fully functional by July 9, 1944. It had four cadre *kurins* formed within it. For the record: there are tactical, active *kurins*, and there are cadre ones. So it was until August 22, 1944. On that day, I was wounded in the left arm in a battle with the Hungarians and was in serious condition for about a month. The wound was severe, I lost a lot of blood, but I continued to lead. I still didn’t let go of the Skole region, because I needed it as a staging ground. Because it was not possible to station any military units in Transcarpathia; the conditions there did not allow for it. The territory there was nothing like ours, and the people were not the same, so all the cadres designated for Transcarpathia were here. There, it was mainly girls, women, who did all the work, recruiting people there.

RESCUE OF THE OFFICER SCHOOL (1944)

In 1944, it happened that the “Oleni” officer school, the second graduating class, pressed by the Bolsheviks here on Mahura, moved to the village of Rozhanka Verkhnia.*(See about the Second UPA-West “Oleni” Officer School in Rozhanka in the autobiographical account of Petro Sichko // – Three Uprisings of the Sichkos: In two volumes. Vol. 2: Memoirs. Interviews. Letters. / Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group; Editor-compiler V.V. Ovsiienko. Kharkiv: Folio, 2003.─ P. 81-82. – V.O.). There were up to three hundred and fifty young men there. This is an inexact figure, but it doesn't matter, it was around that number who moved to Rozhanka. They arrived very exhausted. They had grazed on grass, drank water, and were thus swollen. They needed to finish their training. It was for three or four months, but food was no longer being delivered to them there, because the front cut them off from the lowlands—from the Bolekhiv and Dolyna regions, and no one here was prepared for this. So Hasyn comes to me, the commander of that school, Pol, comes, Yaroslav Bachynskyi, pseudonym Kruk, comes, Oleksa Kovalchuk, who was the *bunchuzhnyi*, meaning the one responsible for supplying food and provisions, comes. Petro Maniuk from the Stanislavivshchyna region came with him. They were both in the Stanislaviv police, and here, when the Bolsheviks moved closer to what was then Stanislaviv, now Ivano-Frankivsk, they joined the detachment. They all came: “Save us.” I was lying wounded in Slavske. They said: “Save us, for we are perishing—the school is perishing, the guard company is perishing.”

In the area of the villages Rozhanka Verkhnia and Rozhanka Nyzhnia, there was no food at that time; the company of Iasmin and other companies were stationed there. They had eaten everything there was. They were probably about to start eating the last cows. Therefore, it was necessary to expand the region for food procurement, but to take such food from Slavske—though it was a large village, it wasn't very wealthy. Tukhla and Vybukhol were located in such a way that it was inconvenient to get supplies from there. Well, as the Muscovites say, *na podkhvatie* [on the fly], but the convenient places were still Volosianka, Khashchuvane, and Ialynkuvate. I say: “Go, the members of the regional leadership are there.” But they say: “No one can do anything—we’ve talked to them nicely and not so nicely, but no one is responding to our demands. People aren't giving anything. We need you.” About thirty guards from the school come for me; they brought me a horse. We leave the Slavske hospital for Volosianka. Soviet planes strafed us. The guards on their horses quickly hid in the bushes, but I am sick, I can't, the horse jumps faster—my wound hurts, I am exhausted, I can't. The casings from what the Bolsheviks called their large-caliber machine guns fell around me. But somehow, I wasn’t hit, and so we arrived.

I went straight to the village head, who was Petro Dobrovolskyi—a fine man, very talented. First of all, he had won first place in a competition for beautiful, fast, and literate handwriting. That was a kind of phenomenon in itself. I say to him: “Give me all the books for the quota deliveries to the Germans.” I arrived and did what needed to be done. I say: “We will not be delivering the quota to the Germans. We will feed our school. This must be announced to all the people, and immediately. Today, two cows and one pig must be sent there.” I asked how much was needed. “Ten centners of potatoes and bread. The Germans have put seals on the mills. The mills are to be unsealed and grain milled; the mills must work.” In this way, we began to supply the school. They didn’t know that I was already on the case—they had gone to the headquarters somewhere and were sitting there. Well, they dispersed, and a mass of OUN members stood there, listening to all this. I say: “Yes, go and start selecting what from whom—the poor, those with many children, they should not be included.” — “Alright.” They left. A short time later, they called for that Pol, that Nanashko, that Haisyn: “Go, you will receive the food, the provisions. There is no bread yet, because they haven't had time to mill it. But it needs to be milled, it needs to be soaked first, then dried, and then milled.

For two and a half months, the officer school was supported by the village of Volosianka and the villages of Khashchuvannia and Ialynkuvate. In the area of Rozhanka-Vyzhnia—that was the name of the “Oleni” officer school. That school, although it celebrated its graduation and took an oath, had a tragic fate—the entire staff perished due to the betrayal of a Caucasian man with the pseudonym Katso. This has been historically proven, so I will not dwell on it here, I will move on. Despite being wounded, I still had the need and opportunity to meet with many political figures who were mainly concentrated in the villages of Volosianka, Kalne, and Khiter. There were people with whom I had been in Kraków in exile, in Berlin. Various commanders, from the leadership, from different military formations. It was good that we met. But the fact is that as soon as the front broke through at Skole... And the front stood at Skole for two or three months, from about August 7 until... I was arrested on October 28, 1944—just as the Bolsheviks arrived there. All those people, the *kurins* of Yevhen, Rem, dozens of different companies—they all crossed the front, and soon there was news that Yevhen's *kurin* was defeated. There are also various historical references to this in contemporary literature. DEMOBILIZATION (1944) It happened that as the regional leader, though wounded, I gathered four *kurins*. They all formed a "П" [Cyrillic P] shape in a forest clearing. It was toward evening. Our colonels were also there with the staff. Our troops were called, in contrast to the UPA, the "Army of the Crown of Kyivan Rus."

So, we didn’t have functions like company commander, *kurin* commander, and so on, as in the UPA. We had specific military ranks—ensigns, lieutenants, colonels, generals. And on that clearing, there were some four thousand troops. All were armed, shod—relatively speaking, for the summer season. Each of them, myself included, had been hungry for two days. Well, there was the opportunity to drink plenty of water. The people were exhausted. The detachments, including those stationed with us, the evacuated ones, had in fact left those villages without food. There were families who did not know how they would survive until spring. At this meeting, I addressed the army as the regional leader and commander with a speech in which I simply said that we cannot forcibly take food from anyone, people cannot give it, there are no reserves, and although we have weapons, the ammunition might last for three or four hours of battle, and if the fighting is intense, then maybe for two hours. I approached this as a professional—there was no romanticism here, one had to face the truth. And so there is one way out—to cross the front. But where to? To clothe and shoe the army—one must have a supply base, which we do not have. So it turns out that one must save oneself as best one can. Approaching this rationally, there was no other way out.

As a professional, I understood that a command that cannot feed its army should not maintain it. On the one hand, the command must understand that if the army does not have an adequate supply of arms and ammunition, it cannot engage in battle with regular troops who have a supply base behind them. On the other hand, if we do not have all of that, we cannot allow anyone to obtain food by force of arms. That is a crime. Therefore, it is better for everyone to leave honorably, either home or wherever. It was said in this spirit. The speech was short. I asked: “Are there any questions?” One asked: “What will be the consequence of this, will it not be considered desertion, and will there not be punishment for it later, if someone leaves?” I said that it followed from my speech that everyone could dispose of themselves from that moment as they wished. There were other speeches. After that, the command was given to sleep, to set a guard. Everything was done in a military fashion, but when we woke up in the morning (having frozen, of course, because it was cold), out of that large army, only about thirty men of the higher command remained. Everyone had dispersed. We thought about it and said: “Well, thank God.” They left honestly; there was no news of anyone taking anything from anyone or demanding anything against their will. Some went abroad, some went home, some went into hiding on their own—there were many ways out. The cadres remained in the underground—Baida and others. But they were, as they say, generals without an army, colonels without adjutants. They were simply underground fighters. Perhaps their fate should have been decided differently.

The best way out would have been to send them into emigration, but they would have said: “Why didn't you stay with the people?” Although today, unfortunately, the people do not reckon with this. Such was the situation. ARREST AND INTERROGATION (1944) On October 28, 1944, after that action, I simply went to my house and was arrested there. It’s true they didn't find any weapons on me. When I was going to the house, for some reason I left my weapon in a place where I was supposed to return and retrieve it. It was probably fortunate that I didn’t have a weapon on me. But a note was carelessly hidden. I thought they wouldn’t find it. I was arrested there and taken away. The next day they conducted another search of my house and found the note. It was a secret message from the district leader Bohun to the county leader Chornohorskyi. During the investigation, when they showed me that message, I was forced to take the matter upon myself, because if I hadn't, they would have arrested the whole family that lived there. Of course, they lived in my house, but I didn’t say it was my house—I said it belonged to that family. I also never mentioned my education—I said I had attended school for about two years and hadn’t finished. That’s how I behaved during the investigation, like a village boy. The fact that I was dressed a bit like a general, I explained by saying I was planning to get married, so I dressed up. Of course, the Bolsheviks didn't really believe me. But there were various such incidents.

When they were leading me away under arrest, at that same time they were leading four others from another house. All were OUN members, all our officers. When we were placed in the prison at the border post in the village of Ialynkuvate, because it was SMERSH that arrested me, I managed to ask them: “Who was killed?” They said that Colonel Mykola Palii-Vilshanskyi, who was a member of the Leadership of Carpathian Ukraine, a professor, had been killed, and Mykhailo Hrytsovka—the district leader of the Mukachevo district in Transcarpathia—had been killed. And they found nothing—only maps. I said: “Say that you were playing cards (in reality, they were fortune-telling) and that you know me simply as a boy in the village who liked to joke with the girls, has no education, went to school a bit, but you don’t know how much he finished. If the question comes up whether I was in Germany, in the extreme case say that the Germans took me in 1941. Talk like that—and they’ll let you go. When you get out of there—make it so that people in all these three villages say that I was accidentally wounded by Hungarians. Well, that’s it. As for the organization—no one should admit to it, not to the UPA, say that you are village boys, from farming families, that you worked to live.” Indeed, just as I finished this short consultation with them, a window opens (it was a cellar) and someone says: “Out!” They all come out, I go after them too, but I am told to stay. I stayed. The next day, I heard them calling various people from the village—I could hear it, because the interrogations were being conducted above me, and people were indeed answering as I had taught those men. I understood that they had all been released. About ten days of investigation passed.

Finally, a captain comes in, I look—he’s in a brand-new uniform, and says: “*Zdravstvuyte, tovarishchi!*” [“Hello, comrades!”] They answer him: “*Zdravstvuyte, tovarishch kapitan! Sadites. My vas pozvali v kachestve svidetelia po voprosu nashego arestovanogo. Znaete li vy ego?*” [“Hello, comrade captain! Sit down. We have summoned you as a witness concerning our arrested person. Do you know him?”] He says: “I know him. It’s Mykhailo Lutsyk.” — “What can you say about him?” (I think it is appropriate here to show how the investigation went and how one can behave during an investigation). He answers like this: “I saw him.” The investigator speaks Russian, and I am now retelling it in Ukrainian. “I saw this person in such-and-such a house, when I was riding in a cart, and there were girls there, fair-haired, curly, blondes, typing something on typewriters, and he was walking behind them and showing them something.” That was a very dangerous testimony for me, considering that I was pretending to be illiterate, and then suddenly this thing comes up. Well, I can't deny the fact, because I know they won't believe me, and it will end tragically. So I answer: “Yes, those were evacuated girls.”

And they ask me: “Who were they, where are they, where are the typewriters, whose typewriters were they?” I answer: “These are girls who worked in some unions, they had typewriters with them, and when they evacuated, they took the typewriters with them. And now it seems they were all returning home.” — “Aha, what were you showing them there, what were they typing?” I say: “I am illiterate, I don’t know, but it seems to me they were typing love letters to boys.” I just said that off the cuff. — “Aha, well, what about what you were showing them?” — “I wasn't showing them anything, I was just pressing those little buttons there.” Well, that was my naive answer. “And what did they do?” — “They slapped my hands.” I understood that the witness from the street didn’t know what I was doing there with my hands—whether I was really such a simpleton, or if I was giving them some kind of correction, what was needed and how. Thus, that question was dropped. The second question is this. He testifies: “I was once lying on what... Well, we call it a *pylyvnyk*, a hayloft. And a man with a mustache, dressed in military style, is walking by, and Lutsyk is walking. This man salutes Lutsyk. But he had his back to me. And Lutsyk shakes his hand and says: ‘How are things, Colonel, sir?’” As soon as the witness said that, they were on me: “*Kto ty takoi, chto tebe polkovnik chest otdaet, kozyriaet? Govori, govori!*” [“Who are you, that a colonel salutes you, snaps to attention? Speak, speak!”] — they rushed me from all sides. I look, reacting little to this, and say: “The colonel, you ask? Yes, because everyone called him that.” — “Who was he?” — “Well, the evacuees who were with him said he was a bit crazy.” And I showed them like this, with a finger to my temple. “That’s what people said, that’s what they called him, and he was happy about it. Well, a fool is a fool.” And so that question was dropped too. They say: “Where is he from, where is he now?” I say: “Probably gone, his family was from somewhere else.” — “And his last name?” I say: “I don’t know—I know they said there were a bunch of crazy people there.” And that’s it, the second question was dropped. I just think: God, help me shake all this off!

One more question. The witness says: “I am sitting in the house of so-and-so (I’ll get back to him), I look through the window—Stefan Siushko is driving by. He’s driving, the cart is covered with a tarpaulin, it's drizzling, behind him are 15–20 armed soldiers, an officer is there, it seems, and opposite that cart and those soldiers, who are walking away from the cart, about 15–20 meters away, Lutsyk is walking with his arm in a sling, in a bandage, after he was wounded.” Here they stop. “Where were you wounded, speak, who wounded you?” I say: “I told you, the Hungarians wounded me as I was coming from my aunt’s.” Then they ask him what he knows. — “Well, they said the Hungarians wounded him somewhere, but under what circumstances, I don’t know.” And that's all, they dropped it. The witness continues: “So, when the cart and Lutsyk met, the cart stopped. Lutsyk started talking to that Stefan Siushko, who was sitting on the cart. The cart was covered with a tarpaulin, the soldiers stood further away, they talked for maybe ten minutes, then Lutsyk lifts the tarpaulin and I saw that the cart was full, loaded with heavy small arms—machine guns, mortars, and so on.” Then they turn to me: “*Gde to oruzhie, kuda on vez to oruzhie, chto eto za soldaty, chto eto za banda?*” [“Where is that weapon, where was he taking that weapon, who are those soldiers, what is that gang?”] I say: “I don't know if that's a weapon—there were some pipes. I don't know for sure, I wasn't in the army, I don't know about that. He was transporting it because the Hungarians had taken him for *forshman*.” (And this was our county supply department, which was warehousing weapons at that time). I say: “I don’t know—that’s Stefko, we're the same age, we used to graze cows together.” They to me: “*Khvatit za etikh korov, davai kuda oruzhie vez*.” [“Enough about those cows, tell us where he was taking the weapons.”] I say: “They took him for *forshman*, and that’s all, I don’t know.” — “And what is *forshman*?” — “It’s like this. You are a farmer, you have horses. We had Germans, and Poles, and Hungarians, and Italians here. They come and say: ‘Hitch the horses to the cart and let’s go.’ He doesn’t know where they are going. And they ride and ride. Then they say: ‘Stop.’ There they load either potatoes, or sacks, or something else, or weapons and say: ‘Drive.’ And they go with him, where he has to take it. He drives, not knowing where, and there they say: ‘Stop.’”

There they would take it, and they’d tell him: ‘Go home.’ And that’s all. That's how the Hungarians took Stepan then.” Aha, they figure out for themselves that it’s “*podvody*” [requisitioned carts], and they recorded it all as requisitioned carts. I think: praise the Lord! Because that was the most terrifying part. Well, those were almost all the main questions. So who was this witness? This will be interesting. Three months before that, I had come back from the field, slept a bit, and at about 10 or 11 o’clock, I went out to the washbasin. Well, a towel over my shoulder, toothpaste. I see the district SB man with his group leading a German captain. He has a German submachine gun on him, that “Schmeisser,” a German pistol in a holster, a pouch with magazines here, and the three of them with German stick grenades walked further, about a hundred meters away, and stopped. This one came up to me, greeted me. I say: “Where did you get this German?” He says: “He’s not a German.” — “Then who?” — “A Bolshevik.” — “Well, and where do you get such information?” — “Well, you know perfectly well yourself that every night the Bolsheviks drop paratroopers, like sheaves from the sky.” — “Well, I know, it’s a paratrooper, but that’s no paratrooper—that’s a German.” — “That's not a German, that's a captain in the Soviet army, a battalion commander. We interrogated him. How did it happen? Children reported to us that some German was hiding behind the bushes. They had driven the cattle out to pasture in the morning, saw him, and then quickly let us know.” It turns out the children knew who to report to, who the district SB leader was. He says: “We went there. We went there, tracked him, surrounded him. He, truth be told, immediately raised his hands, we disarmed him and interrogated him on the spot.” I say: “How did you conduct the interrogation?” — “We just asked questions, he didn’t resist at all. He said he was from an orphanage, his parents died of starvation, he was taken to a home for homeless children. There he finished ten grades. He was born in 1921.

The war started. He was sent to officer school, as they called it. He finished it, was sent to the front with the rank of lieutenant. After some time, he got senior lieutenant, and then he was appointed battalion commander, promoted to captain. Then on to the front, there was a difficult situation, so he sent his truce-bearers to the Germans, saying: “The boys were all like me. So that the Germans wouldn’t take us prisoner, but we wanted to fight on their side against the communists.” The Germans agreed, and they switched over completely, the whole team. There was a political officer, so they shot him and that was it. “The Germans really didn’t take us prisoner, we went to guard bridges, various such military objects. Some went, he says, and fought.

When I was the commander of a bridge guard detachment, some guys from the UPA, from the underground, approached me to give them weapons and ammunition. I gave them some, then somehow it reached the Germans. The Germans were coming to arrest me. I happened to be away at that moment, and I fled. After that escape, I'm hiding like this, searching, maybe I'll find someone so I can go into the underground. That’s all.” I say: “What do you plan to do?” — “I,” he says, “will talk to him some more and then shoot him.” I say: “And what if it’s true, what he said? Then you’ll have it on your conscience.” — “What am I supposed to do with him, he could expose everything here, he already knows four of us, now you.” I say: “Let him know all that, but he could be useful to us—he’s a ready-made *kurin* commander. We’ll assign a few of our own men to him, he can command, in a pinch. We have a big problem with cadres.” — “So what should we do?” — “We need to house him somewhere where there are older people to watch him, keep an eye on him, and so they don’t let anything slip, so he knows nothing. And you’ll give him an order to provide the exact coordinates of where he gave weapons to whom. We’ll send inquiries through our communication lines, they’ll answer, and maybe it really is true.” Good, an order is an order. After that, they didn't talk to him anymore, just told him to provide the location where he was, to whom he gave what, what the people looked like, what their pseudonyms were, etc. So, after this, he was there watching me and everyone else.

When Major Voron’s company came to us—a wonderful man, an Easterner, this company commander (he held the military rank of major) had only Easterners. I went to him, say: “Listen, we have such a passenger. Can you take him into your company?” He says: “I can, bring him here.” I say: “No, I won’t go, you send your soldiers there, he lives here and there, pick him up, and that’s it. Talk to him, he told us this. Maybe you’ll find out something different?” He says: “Alright.” He took him and left. He went east, crossed the front with him—and then he shows up for a face-to-face confrontation with me! This confrontation ended in what you might call a draw. The next morning after that confrontation, suddenly: “*Pod"em, vykhodi!*” [“Up, get out!”]. I come out. They lead me out of that cellar and walk me. They lead me—two lines of NKVD and SMERSH men on either side, shoulder to shoulder. They lead me about ten meters. I look, there’s my investigator, his assistants are walking ahead and they enter a stable. One jumped in first, the second in first, the third in first—and me in there. I think: they’re probably going to shoot me here. I walk in, look—lo and behold, there's that Stefko Siushko. Just like in the investigation I say: “Stefko!” And they to me: “*Kakoi Stefko – Stepan! Davai tak govori*.” [“What Stefko—Stepan! Speak like that.”] And I just keep playing the fool. It immediately clicked in my mind—a confrontation! How do I make him understand with the first word what this is about, [End of track] because I understand they won’t let me say enough for him to understand how to get out of it. I already understood that he wouldn’t confess, but they have the fact. And you can’t go against the fact, because then the whole case collapses. And they to me: “So, do you know him?” I say: “That's Stefko, we grazed cows together.” They: “*Khvatit za tekh korov!*” [“Enough about those cows!”] Then to him: “Do you know him?” — “I know him, it’s Mykhailo Lutsyk.” Then to me: “Did you see him transporting the weapons?” I immediately started: “That was when the Hungarians took him for *forshman*.” — “*Khvatit!*” [“Enough!”] I think: that's it! And they to him: “*Bylo takoe?*” [“Did that happen?”] — “It did.” — “*A chego ne govoril?*” [“Then why didn’t you say so?”] — “I didn’t know what you were asking about.” I think: thank you, Lord! BOLEKHIV PRISON (1944) That confrontation ended my investigation. From there, they took me to Bolekhiv. They gathered more people in the Bolekhiv prison, and from there they would be sent to Stanislaviv—now Ivano-Frankivsk. There I met many acquaintances from the detachments—Vasyl Revinskyi, he was studying in that officer school. There was Slavko from Lviv, I forget his last name, and many others. We were there for a short time, about two weeks. True, for about a week there I couldn’t eat what they gave me—neither the porridge nor the soldier’s bread, because it reeked of machine oil, and I just couldn’t get used to it.

After all, in our underground, we lived better than those front-line soldiers. Those boys, those dying ones, immediately gravitated towards me: “Do you have any bread?” And those Chekists, when they were taking me for transport, said: “Take the bread.” I took the bag. Now the boys took it all apart, I see them shaking out the crumbs, eating them. I think: oh God, where have I ended up? Well, so be it. Two days later, something happens. Out of the blue, they started shouting: “Lopachuk has escaped!” In the neighboring cell were two Lopachuk brothers. They somehow went to the toilet together. One stood here, and the other went in there, pushed a board aside, and escaped. The second one wanted to escape too, but it was no longer possible, because the first was supposed to come out, but he didn’t. So they immediately rushed in pursuit, and the one who remained was beaten to death. They beat the whole cell. According to some information, the one who escaped made it to his own people, but they didn’t trust him and shot him. What a tragedy, what distrust there was, that they thought he was released on purpose, that it was impossible to escape! With this I want to show what such extreme distrust led to, that if a person fell into the enemy’s hands, he had already betrayed them.

But it was never like that—our people held on very strong, everyone got out of it however they could. There were those who were killed during the investigation, and there were those who, like me, got out of it and remained alive with a clear mind and everything. After this, we were taken for transport. They marched us, it seems, from Bolekhiv to Dolyna. There were Hungarian officers with us. Somewhere, women, near Dolyna, brought out potatoes—they just had potatoes prepared for pigs, tiny ones like that. And the prisoners are walking and saying: “Ma'am, maybe you have some potatoes?” — “Well,” she says, “I have some for the pigs.” — “Even for pigs, bring them to us, bring them, bring them.” Well, and the women brought them out, as they do in the village. One brought out a bucket of potatoes, another, another, another. There were maybe thirty of us there, maybe more. Their hands were all tied, especially those Hungarian officers’. They want to eat the potatoes, but they can’t take them—the guards won’t remove their shackles. So, having one good hand, I walk around and feed them. I say: “They’re unpeeled.” — “Let them be unpeeled, just give us food.” In a moment, they ate all the potatoes. They fortified themselves that way. I couldn’t eat such a thing yet, but they were so exhausted that it was a delicacy for them. So they brought us to the prison. From Dolyna, there was some kind of train.

STANISLAVIV PRISON (1944–1945)

They brought us to the Stanislaviv prison, to cell 21. A cellar-like room downstairs. I think we were in cell 19, and then for some reason they moved us to 21, I don’t know why. It was a cell where you could fit, at most, 12-13 people. But they brought all of us there, some 30, maybe even more. There were no less than thirty. So you couldn’t sit, only stand. Lying down was out of the question.

They kept us in this cell for two weeks—it was a kind of quarantine. From there, they first took us to the bathhouse. And my hand was festering. My hand was festering, and I thought: now gangrene will finish me off for sure. But when they brought us to the bathhouse, I look, and a girl is handing out soap. She looks familiar. She too, when I took the soap: “Is that you?” I got scared, because I think, if she's familiar, she's an underground member and will say a pseudonym. I say: “It's me, Mykhailo.” — “Ah, yes, I know you.” Then she asks if I remember, it was in the Dolyna district, when I met with the regional leader Robert, and she was his wife and the district head of the women’s organization. So we understood each other. “How can I help you?” I say: “My wound is already festering.” — “Alright, wash it well, here, wrap it with this, and I’ll prepare something else for you right now.” And she immediately found me some rags. I went and washed, she gave me more water, because the water there was just one scoop—and that was it. She gave me more, I soaked the wound a bit, she wiped it, and the other prisoners are washing, there are no guards there, they had locked us in. I was just afraid for that hand. She gave me those few pieces of cloth and says (I forgot her pseudonym): “I am Mariia Ivanovska, so you know, and your name is Mykhailo Lutsyk. That's it, pseudonyms no longer exist.” She says: “They will bring you to this bathhouse in about a week, or at most ten days. So change the bandage somehow.” In short, I think: My God, even in these conditions, there is an angel of salvation. From there, once we were sorted, they took us to the cells, each to a different one. They take me to cell thirty-seven—this is for those under investigation. I go in there: people are standing, prisoners, and suddenly I recognize a man—tall, pseudonym Olyk, worked for the Central Leadership in the Drohobych regional leadership, an engineer. When he saw me, he immediately turned away and lay down. I think, he’s scared, I think it’s all over. It’s an investigation, after all. I pretended not to see it. I found a spot and sat down. But I always loved to walk in the cell. I lay there for a bit, then got up. Everyone there was walking, so I joined in to walk—a circle, with bundles in the middle, bundles along the walls, and they make a space for themselves to walk a little. And they trudge one after another, in a line. So we walked, and he would glance to see what I was doing. And I just walk. I was far from any smiles or anything, everyone there was crushed by sorrow. This cat-and-mouse game lasted for about three days.

When they serve lunch, everyone gets in line. When I get in line, he stands a distance away from me and observes. Then somehow he gets behind me and right away: “Are you here on business alone?” “Alone.” “So how’s it going?” “Well,” I say, “what can I say? I'm an illiterate boy, I don’t know anything, and I think maybe I’ll even get out.” “Aha. Good.” And I missed one detail. I’ve already started talking about this. During the investigation, they found that clandestine message. From that message, it was already clear that a district leader was writing to a county leader—meaning, it was a line of communication. And I, in order not to involve that family, said that she knows nothing, that I placed it there. “And how did you place it—do you know what it is? You say you’re not a member of the OUN, but you were a courier, and on an important line at that—the Leadership. What was it? Explain.” So then I tell them this cover story, that after the front had passed, a certain man (I already know this person is no longer alive) approached me and said: “You’re wounded, they won’t take you to war, you’ll be here and you’ll pass on notes like this. I’ll give you one, someone else will give you one, and you’ll give the note to a person who will come and tell you a certain password.” I took it and put it where you found it. They say: “How did he give this to you? This is an underground organization, so he must have recruited you into the OUN. Did he tell you this?” To which I reply: “What-what did you say?” “Into the OUN.” “Ah, the OUN? He said something like that, but I don’t understand these things. He told me that the other person would say such-and-such, because that’s what he told me.” “And how did you remember?” “He had me repeat it three times.” “Well, that means you were a member of the OUN.” And he writes: “Was a member of the OUN, served as a courier. Correct?” I say: “Well, maybe so.” Because I had no better way out. And so, when we met once during a walk... No, they didn't take us for walks. I told him what they were charging me with and why I had to take the blame. Then he tells me his story. He was from somewhere around Berezhany, had a university degree—an engineer, either in bridge construction or something of the sort. They sent him here to the village of Yemelnytsi in the Skole district. The Leadership was here then: Yaroslav Starukh (he had two pseudonyms—Lav and Stiah), Hasyn was there, General Perebyinis was there.

In short, everything was there. There was the “Afrodita” radio station, in my area of responsibility. I was responsible for it, I knew everyone, I supplied the guards. And, of course, I had influence on events. This fellow, when he arrived, also knew who I was and what I did. Although he had moved to Transcarpathia, that territory was still part of the Skole district, over which I had control. If not me personally, then my deputies, the Leadership referents. I told him how I had gotten out of that situation. And he says: “I was returning alone, they detained me, and I said the Hungarians had taken me to dig trenches, I escaped from the Beskids and was going home. But,” he says, “I also had this problem that someone said something about me, I don't know for sure yet how it will end, maybe I’ll be released if they don’t find anything at home, at my place of birth.” In short, he was tried, and they gave him either 15 or 10 years, and I was given 15. I was there until December 29, 1944. On that day, I was summoned to court and given 15 years of hard labor and 5 years of disenfranchisement and exile, with confiscation of property. After that, I end up in the cell for convicted prisoners, number 52—it was a corner cell on the second or third floor of the prison. There were about 60 to 70 men in it. Everyone was also lying down; there was no place to stand, no place to walk. To lie down, you also had to bend your legs. In short, it was torture. There were engineers there, a certain Kishyk from Stanislav, and an engineer, Hnatyshyn. There was a fellow named Tatunchak (I forgot his first name), who owned a butcher shop. He had such biceps that you could stab him with a knife and the knife would bounce off. There was a priest from Dolyna—last name Melnyk. There were many of my acquaintances. Fenoshyn was there, Vengerchuk was there—the ones I remember. Many good lads, good people. Suddenly, they throw in three *vory v zakone*. The *vory v zakone* show their initiative. Right away they say: “We are *vory v zakone*, that is, we are honest thieves. And in prison, since you are all convicts, you should know that in the camps and prisons, everyone must obey the thieves, the authority is ours, and do what we say.

“Now untie your sacks, your bags, and show us what you’ve got.” Well, there were people who had received a package, some kind of parcel. There were people who had clothes and other things. They went and dumped it all out of their bags. Whatever they liked, they took for themselves—some better clothes, food, especially meat—they took it all. Everyone just watched. The days pass like this, with them checking those bags. Whoever gets a package goes up to the window and signs for it. He barely has time to sign before they are already taking it, already dividing what’s there: “This is for you, and this is for us.” Well, I’m watching this whole spectacle, and they don’t touch me. I think: they’re not touching me, so they’re not touching me.

But it got to the point where they had checked everyone, gone through their things several times, and taken what they could. Then they come up to me: “You’ve got general’s boots, breeches—that is, general’s trousers, a jacket, so, everything, let’s make a trade.” I say: “I’m not trading.” “Well, we’re not going to ask you. Come on, take off the boots.” I say: “They don’t come off.” Well, anyone who knows boots, we called them *libiv’yaky*—those were the kind of boots that if I didn’t want them to, nobody could take them off me. Only I could take them off with the help of a special boot jack—I’d set it up and then pull them off, or with someone's help, if I was a brawny fellow. He would grab the heel, stand with his back to me, and I would push him with my other foot. That's how you could get those boots off. Well, they set about taking them off. I say: “Go ahead, pull.” The head thief pulls and pulls, then his assistants—they pull and pull, but they can’t get them off. They pulled and pulled, but no one could do it; they just couldn’t “make the trade.” Well, I’m starting to boil inside. They walked away because lunch was being served, and they ate. They’re furious that they couldn’t get my boots off. They start again. They come back: “Come on, let’s try again.” They try and try, then the head thief, now angry—and he was big as an ox, they were all huge. Well, as he pulls, I pull my leg up and kick out with all my strength! He falls, the second one comes at me—I punch him, I get up and start fighting. One of my arms is wounded, but I fight with the other. The third one ran and started banging on the door: “They’re killing him!” The door opens: “Who’s being killed? Get out.” He was the first to jump out. The one who was hurt was holding his cheek, and I gave him another kick right in front of the guard who opened the door. Nothing, he closed the door. “And who is that lying there?” And they go: “He’s dead, they killed him.” “That’s good.” Everyone in the cell stood up: “Oh Lord, what’s going to happen now?” I’m standing there too. Well, I think, what can happen? They wanted to strip me. They open the door, a team rushes in: “Where’s the dead one?” Everyone is silent. I say: “He’s lying over there.” They grab him and leave. “No one else? Everyone alive?” Someone says: “Now they’ll come with machine guns and shoot us all.” Nothing. And so it went until evening.

They served dinner. And the next day, not a word. In the evening, they do a roll call and ask: “What happened here?” I say: “They were trying to take my clothes, so I kicked him.” And that was it, they left, and that’s how it ended. After that, I was so fired up that whenever they said something, I would tell them: “Aren't you ashamed? You watched while trash like that emptied out your bags. I defended myself with one arm. But you,” I say, “you fought with weapons in your hands, you went with your bare chests against the Germans, against all sorts of filth, and here you let scum like this mock and rob you.” Everyone is silent—there’s nothing to say. I say, but bite my tongue: “And now we must fight them in an organized way. It’s true, they are the same in the camp. But if you give it to them like I gave it to those guys, there will be order in the camp. And we will establish our own order there. If they have a thieves' order, then we will make our own, an UPA order.” And I start talking about it with some of the men. Good. And an idea is born in my mind. I didn’t tell them everything, but I already know that engineer, I know this one from before my arrest, and I think I'll find more like them, and I'll form an organization from them. He will follow me, because he knows that I am a member of the regional leadership, he knows that I am automatically a member of the Central Command, because a regional leader is a member of the Central Command.

There weren’t many of us—there was Robert, there was Klyachkivsky—in total, there were six of us at that time. These were major figures. The fact that I was young, but I was an educated man—firstly, in a military and organizational sense, a historian, a lawyer. I always adhered to international law, because you have to know the conventions so you don't do something forbidden. But you have to fight within that system, too. When someone comes at you, tries to take your food ration or something—hit them! If there are many of them—help each other, because they swarm you—they are organized, and the administration supports them. What else was there? There was dysentery. That dysentery wiped out almost half the prisoners. That Tatunchak I mentioned—the one with the biceps. He was a kind of Poddubny—in three days he became a skeleton, you can just imagine. For three days, the bloody flux poured out of him, he sat on the slop bucket, stinking… He became a skeleton, lived for another day, and that skeleton lay there and died in the cell within four days.

That's dysentery for you. And he wasn't starving; he received rich packages almost every week. I drew a conclusion from this: they used to say that dysentery is a result of malnutrition, a lack of vitamins. But he was getting packages. They had everything in them, he ate it all, and barely shared. So, the dysentery was intentionally introduced, it was one of the ways to eliminate those who were already in the cells for convicts. To get rid of them. A kind of bacteriological warfare of annihilation. THE TRANSPORT (1945) From that cell, they took us for transport somewhere around late April, about April 24, 1945, somewhere around there. To Lviv, to the transit point on Poltevna—that’s what it was called. It was a transit camp from which the human tribute was sent to Siberia, to the GULAG. That was the first point of the GULAG from Lviv. There I met a great many people I knew from the Leadership, from the UPA, from the command, and from our units of monarchist nobles with coats of arms. On May 9, the order came to prepare, for us to be taken to the barracks for transport. They had already divided us alphabetically. The command to leave had even been given, some were already being taken. And then, in the evening, shooting. Machine guns firing, flares in the sky, frantic shouts everywhere, what’s going on—we don’t know. I think: aha, our boys are attacking Lviv. The UPA. Well, I think, this is it. My spirits rise, but others are saying: “They’re going to shoot us all now, because the boys are attacking and there will be...” I think: no, this camp is not a prison. It's situated in such a way that you can’t do something like that. It’s a camp, not a prison—there's a difference in the fencing, the structure, the layout of the barracks. These are already barracks, not cell blocks, though they are two-story. We were on the second floor. And then they come and shout down the corridor: “Victory, victory, the war is over!”

I thought: that’s it. Siberia. The next day, they lead us through Lviv to the wagons. The people of Lviv are watching. They are marching us in such a way that no one can escape—strictly in columns of five, holding on to each other, the convoy forming a solid wall, and that’s how they load us onto the train. We’re moving—they loaded us, locked us in, counted us, and we see hammers coming at us—they are counting with hammers to make people scramble faster, and anyone who doesn't scramble is hit harder, in those “cattle cars.” They’re transporting us. Through Ukraine. There were cracks in the walls, and what do we see? We enter the first eastern region—it’s Proskuriv, now Khmelnytskyi. The orchards are blooming, covered in what looks like milk, but we see near these miserable little huts that the children are almost naked, the women are in such rags, women are pulling harrows in the fields, cows are pulling the plows. My God, I think, what have we come to in our 20th century! At the stations where we stop or pass through, we see all sorts of broken equipment and weapons, cannons, various carts, wrecked cars, smashed up. In short, scrap metal.

TAYSHET. THE UNDERGROUND (1945)

We traveled like this and arrived at the Tayshet transit point—the ninth transit camp unit. There we were unloaded. Already on the train, I was thinking about how to organize a resistance or an uprising, an organized escape. If an uprising, then with the aim of seizing weapons and advancing from there to Ukraine. I knew the scale of Siberia, those thousands, ten thousand kilometers from the Far East. I calculated how many thousands of kilometers it was from that Tayshet. But still, the thought persisted that we had to organize. We'll see what happens there.

Where they unloaded us, I took stock of who was there. I call a meeting, I say: at such-and-such an hour—that was for the next day—by such-and-such an hour, try to be there, in the mess hall, in that corner. Then Professor Fedir Seiko was summoned, Petro Dobrovolskyi, also acquaintances of mine from the regional leadership, Petro Kliuchka (he was in the county leadership), Rozhko, I forgot his first name, either Ilko or Petro from Nyzhnia Rozhanka. There was a young man named Skolskyi from Vybukholi, a young but quite developed lad, Kruk from the Lviv region, though he had a wounded leg, but I had already talked to the prisoners—he would do, Yaroslav Bachynskyi, who had survived the Sambir prison, had been among the corpses in 1941 but was still alive. He was a centurion, Kruk was his pseudonym, and he himself was from Boryslav. He was a centurion, and then for some time was the commander of my guards. So, these were my people. Now, that fellow Oleh, his last name ended in "-chuk," I could probably find it somewhere... So, I say at such an hour. There were nine of us. I read them a short program text. I say: "You can sit, you can stand, as if you're waiting for food." Second, I read the camp oath and say: “From this day on, an underground organization exists in the prison camps. No matter where they send you from here, you will continue to act. This is the structure, this is how it works, so that you know.” This structure is detailed—I won't dwell on it here—in my work "From the Origins of the OUN." It's there.

On that note, our meeting ended. It was the first blitz-meeting where these orders were given. We didn't vote on things: an order is simply given, a command, and that's it. Such authoritarianism was the way of our underground, and even more so among the monarchists. The organization began to function. You’d meet someone somewhere, talk, and so on. But it was established so that they would know each other, support one another, be subordinate, so that the structure would be disciplined and active. For the time being, the struggle was against those bandits, because there was no other way to get them off our backs. They had already started in with their, “What have you got, fellas?” We made it clear to them: what we have is our business. They approach with knives, so one had to react to those knives accordingly. To be fair, in the camp, besides a mop handle, you couldn’t find so much as a cudgel. But there were mop handles, and they were such that, if you knew how, you could take on ten men with knives. From that moment, the struggle began, and those *vory* began to retreat. Some of them, when pressed, would say: “We’re not doing anything, just beat the *sukas*, we’re not setting you up, we’re honest men.” “Well, if you're honest, then be honest, but don't mess with us.” Then they’d say: “You guys are good, you can even beat the *sukas*, we’ll help you.” “Fine, let it be so.” Thus, a difference emerged; we understood their weak spots.

We were there for a short time, maybe two weeks. At the transit camps, quarantines could last up to twenty-one days, but they could be shortened to two weeks if the distance was short. So they dispersed us from there to wherever—some to other camp directorates, others within the Tayshet directorate. I ended up in the so-called Verkhnia Dachna. There, at that Verkhnia Dachna, there were about a thousand of us—from May to mid-August, barely half were left alive. Twenty, twenty-five, thirty people a day were taken away, that wasn't even a lot—they were all dying from scurvy, from dysentery. There, they asked me to take charge of the medical services and do something to save them. Well, what could be done? With me was a doctor of biology—from Kharkiv, I think—named Kovalenko. We walked around for a long time, horrified, watching people grazing, going to the garbage pits, rummaging through them, looking for some kind of mushrooms, because it was mushroom season. And then, the next day, they had dysentery. He was an erudite, very pleasant, cultured man. And then I look—and he's grazing too! I go to him: "What are you doing?" I start giving him various arguments. He says: “Don’t teach me, I'm a biologist, I know how many vitamins are in this.” I see: the man's mind is no longer working properly.

The next day, he too was a corpse. There was a priest, Makarenko, he was from the Smolensk region, had purely Ukrainian patriotic feelings, and suddenly that Makarenko fell ill. I went to him, and he says: “I’m dying.” He had maintained his dignity; he had simply wasted away. And I had two neighbors—this fellow Skulskyi and another one, I forgot his last name. We went to sleep in the evening, sleeping on the same bunk. In the morning, reveille, I wake up, nudge Skulskyi, and he’s all shaky. Younger than me, he was a healthy lad. The other one—he was dead too. You see, these were the conditions we lived in... DZHEZKAZGAN. THE ACADEMY (1945 – 1947) Suddenly, somewhere at the end of August (1945), the command: everyone to the transport. Everyone would have perished there. That Verkhnia Dachna and Nyzhnia Dachna—they were graveyards. They sent a category of invalids there—that's how they decided to get rid of the invalids, and they put us on a transport. They rushed in: "Come on, everyone out." We went out, they immediately marched us off on foot, then they drove us somewhere for a bit, brought us back to the transit point at the ninth camp unit, and there they hastily loaded us up. They brought us to Dzhezkazgan in the Kazakh SSR (to the 3rd camp unit).

For us, that Dzhezkazgan was a paradise compared to Dachna. A loaf of bread, the bread was white and fluffy, the soups were so fatty—they cooked gophers in them, cabbage, everything... That bowl of soup was really something! And we began to recover. The young lads who were very emaciated, just skin and bones—a commission immediately sent them to the OP [Health and Recuperation Point] for six months. They were given double rations. This double ration was supposed to bring them back to condition. They didn’t work anywhere. After three months, the commission would again grab each one by the buttocks to check his "degree of fitness," how much weight he’d put on. Then again, and again, and some were selected for work. All our youth were being prepared for the copper mines, so they would have the strength to work there. And in reality, so that they would all get silicosis.

That's the kind of life that began there. Seiko arrived there with me, and others. But that tall fellow, Oleh, had already died in Tayshet. His rations weren't enough for him. There were Latvians with us, also very tall—all those men died. Anyone with a large frame, who was tall—died. I don't know how I survived, I have big bones too—somehow I managed to endure it. And here's what I came up with. Aha, there are no people, no cadres. What do I do? I call a meeting of sorts. First, I talk to each person one-on-one, and then I say that we will gather and decide this question: who will be the rector of the academy and who will be the deans of the departments. At first, some looked at me like—what are you talking about, everyone is dying of hunger, and you’re talking about learning. I say: “People aren't dying here anymore. There's food here, and we need to replenish our cadres.” At first, they treated it as a joke, but then they agreed that it was actually a good idea. Thus, our underground academy was founded. We admitted those with an incomplete higher education. Those with a higher education, if they had completed a certain course and were able to teach, would teach. The academy operated for about a month, maybe a little more. And then—wham—they arrested us all and took us from there to Kengir, to prison, for investigation. Investigators flew in from Alma-Ata, and the investigation began. For them, it was also a kind of emergency. They separated us into different cells. We tried to figure out what they knew. It was immediately clear that they had heard a bell tolling, but didn't know where it was coming from.

Someone told them something, that people were attending lectures, that there were students, that professors were coming to the barracks and teaching. They had identified some of us, but not all. They didn't even arrest Seiko; he remained where he was. This meant we had to hold firm. The investigation lasted six months, then they sent us to different places. The biggest shadow of suspicion fell on me, and I was taken to a punishment camp. It was a copper mine, the sixth camp unit. I was there for another six months, then they moved me to the second one. Not to the third, because the academy had been in the third. And the second camp unit was right next to it. And when I made contact with the third one through a friend, I realized that our work was continuing there, though not on the same scale, but simply on the go. Two or three men would walk together, one would talk, the others would listen. And that was good. Because there are lads who have great knowledge. Cassette Three: The organized work of our academy in the Gulag, which began sometime in October-November 1945 at camp unit No. 3 in Dzhezkazgan, continued. The point is that when we ran out of cadres, we continued the education for people who had a completed secondary education, for the prospective students. At first, we wanted to do it in groups, so that a particular course would be heard by the appropriate audience, sitting in the barracks. Those who weren't prospective students wouldn't know what was going on, while those who knew what it was about would memorize the lessons.

We had good specialists as deans who knew their material well; they could teach in such a way as to conceal the actual focus of the discipline. After all, this was done in the presence of people who did not know that it was a lesson. Therefore, after the arrests, we switched to a form of instruction where a professor would take two or three lads with him, they would walk around the camp zone, talking, and no one would overhear them. It was a common sight—people walking around in their free time, that’s all. In this way, the necessary material was taught. All the same, the Soviet authorities tried to keep an eye on us. There was no proof, because there were no written materials, everything was oral. Organizational work was also conducted there, and various instructions were passed along. In short, our cadres were being appropriately trained—both as military specialists and as political propagandists. History, law, and all other subjects of a higher educational institution were taught there. VORKUTA. THE UNDERGROUND (1947 – 1956) In 1947, about 400 of us from that Dzhezkazgan, from the second and third camp units, as well as from the sixth, were arrested, put in the BURs [punishment barracks], and then sent by transport to Vorkuta. We arrived in Vorkuta probably in November, around the 27th. When we left, it was still warm, but when we arrived in Vorkuta, it was a brutal winter. What I remember as a precedent? When we were led out of the wagons and taken to the transit camp, they set German Shepherds on us. We were already half-dressed, and those dogs were snarling and tearing our numbered quilted jackets, hats, and padded trousers. A blizzard was raging outside, and that's how they welcomed us. We ended up at the Vorkuta transit camp. It was the 59th transit camp. At that time, a large transport arrived from Lviv.

It was interesting for us to meet people who had arrived from Lviv because they gave us concrete information about what was happening in Ukraine, in the underground, what the movement was like, and what life was like in general. This was not what the Bolsheviks were saying in their press and on the radio; this was information from our side. Although the news was unpleasant, we still knew that the struggle was continuing, if only judging by this transport. In that transport were young lads, students from various faculties of Lviv University, from Stanislaviv, from Ternopil. There were lads with fire in them. Oleksandr Vodyniuk, who was later tried with me, also arrived then, as did many others. In our transport from Dzhezkazgan, about 90% were members of our underground from Kazakhstan. And here this transport from Lviv arrived. We tried to get a handle on these people, we assigned our cadres to study them right there in the transit camp, so that we could replenish our ranks at their expense. That's the kind of work we did. After four or five days, it was already known who was who, who you could talk to. I'll say you could talk to everyone, because the people who ended up there were decent people, honest, combative, anti-communists, people who understood what freedom was, understood how to fight, and wanted to fight. It was clear that they understood that the best way to wage such a struggle was in an organized fashion. We told them that it was necessary to maintain discipline, that it was necessary to stay in contact with each other, in order not to allow all those criminal types to dominate us, who, in fact, carry out the will of the administration, that they and the administration are one and the same.

The administration can have you shot, but as for them, if you give them a punch in the nose when they come to rob or bully you, almost nothing will happen—some might be jailed, but that’s the end of it. The propaganda was carried out in various ways. The fact is that the newcomers felt that an organization existed. And when they distributed us, 10-20 men per camp, this was, in fact, an organization seeded in every camp unit. In Vorkuta, as I already said, the transit camp was number 59, and there was another transit camp, No. 62, and from this, one can conclude how many camps there were in Vorkuta. Not all the camps were large; some were just camp units of 100-200 men, but even in those camps, one of our own was present. But there were camps that had 5, 6, 7 thousand and more, there was the Ayachaga [name unintelligible] camp—that was three mines—mine directorate No. 2, which had more than 10 thousand prisoners.

V.O.: A whole city.

M.L.: Yes. Among those who arrived from Lviv were also those sentenced to hard labor. We who came from Dzhezkazgan were also hard-labor prisoners. In Vorkuta, more than half the prisoners were hard-labor convicts, whose sentences stated: "Sentenced to 15 (or 20) years of hard labor." Today, some are surprised, saying that such a formulation couldn't have existed, but it did. Maybe someday, in the future, it will be impossible to find even those codes in the archives where this was written, but that's how it was.* *(Katorga in the USSR was introduced on April 19, 1943, and abolished in the spring of 1948. – See: Jacques Rossi. The GULAG Handbook. Part 1. Moscow: Prosvet, 1991, pp. 175-176). Living in that system, some people lost heart, thinking that it was all over, the end, that there was no getting out of here. They saw the casualties, and of course, that was morally devastating. But the existence of the organization, of an underground life, inspired those who were fortunate enough to be admitted into it. When they were taking us from the Tayshet camps westward, not a single corpse was thrown from the wagons until the train turned towards Dzhezkazgan. Spiritually, people were more resilient, and even death didn't take them, but as soon as they turned towards Dzhezkazgan, corpses were thrown out at every stop. It was the same here. Among the organized, very few died—he believed, he hoped, he prepared himself, he craved action, he was morally ready to do something, he would say: "If I die, I'll die in action, not without a cause."

Thus, when they dispersed us from the Vorkuta transit camp and people ended up in different camps, the criminals and the *sukas* who held the camps in their hands got it in the head, and people's lives changed, their mood changed, faith appeared. And clearly, death began to roam less freely. I ended up at mine No. 17 then. Mine No. 17 was new, large, planned to be almost a "million-tonner." In that mine, there were about 5-6 thousand people. More than half were hard-labor prisoners, the rest also had a political article, but not hard labor. These were people sentenced before the introduction of the hard-labor article. Hard labor was introduced in March 1943, so as not to execute everyone who fell under Article 54-1A-11 (treason against the homeland). They decided that these people would die anyway, but first, let them mine coal, build cities in the North. That's why they applied that decree on hard labor. Even those who were sentenced to death, in many cases, they tried to pardon them so that they would work. It must be taken into account that the people who remained alive always thought about freedom and about their state, for which they had fought. These were people who were politically educated, politically convinced, who had an idea. That's why in the camps, we fought to strengthen the network of the underground. It operated under the abbreviation OUN, UVO—in various ways, but it had its own single center, a single centralized leadership.

UPRISING IN THE GULAG (1952-1953)

The Vorkuta camps were divided into four districts. There was the Northern, Western, Central, and Eastern, or as it was called, the Predshakhtny [“Pre-Mine”] district. The camps had about 4.5 thousand prisoners each. The Western district consisted of mines Nos. 16, 18, 19, 20, and 25. The Northern district—mine directorate No. 2—consisted of mines 14, 14, 7, 29. For example, Ayachaga [name unintelligible] had about 10 thousand, the seventh had six thousand, the 29th had about 5 thousand. They were also building a thermal power plant there. There were 30,000 political prisoners in one district. We discussed this in our headquarters, and it turned out that in such a district, no less than three divisions of troops could be formed. From this it follows that we need to prepare the cadres for such divisions, from top to bottom. We also thought about weapons. Therefore, a technology for manufacturing grenades was developed. There was an opportunity to make grenades there. We worked out the entire technology—what to make them from, how to make them, and we sent this plan to all the mines. The conditions were present at every mine. We sought out specialists, and, one might say, well, not mass production began, but we already knew how to make them. A general uprising was being prepared for June, for June 27, 1953, across all the GULAG camps. We had contacts. For example, in Vorkuta, there was a locomotive engineer, one of our men, originally from Synevidsko Verkhnie, who had come as a civilian employee. His last name was Karychort, I forget his first name. With his son, he would haul out full wagons of coal, bring in empty ones, and deliver food. Those trains were sent to Leningrad. Through him, our mail could get out, bypassing the camp censorship. This gave us the opportunity to have contacts. In addition, this Karychort would travel to Ukraine for vacations, as he was a civilian employee. The vacation was long, so people in those conditions looked for various opportunities to have contact everywhere. We had that colonel-general in the village of Volosianka, the former chief of staff; he served as our communication point. He decrypted our letters—we wrote in secret ink, in code. We had many different methods of contact, and he understood and did this. He sent such coded letters, which even the NKVD and MGB of the time couldn't decipher, to Norilsk, and to Kolyma, and to Kazakhstan, and to other camps, wherever there were people whom he knew personally and who knew him. But then, in 1952, several failures occurred—accidental or not. There was an arrest at mine No. 7, where the production of grenades was uncovered. Later, the Bolsheviks themselves conducted an expert analysis and concluded that these grenades were of powerful force, they had to be thrown from a covered position because they had a large blast radius.

The organizer of this production, as everywhere, was Volodymyr Yurkiv from the Ternopil region, Terebovlia district, I forgot the village. They arrested 7 men. When the investigation in that case began, Yurkiv died, but Volodymyr Korotash remained, he was from somewhere in the Kirovohrad region. He took the blame for the affair. It is worth noting the solidarity that existed between our people. Why did he take the blame for this case, compounding his already difficult situation? Because Yurkiv had already been sentenced once to the highest measure of punishment and had his death sentence commuted, and if he were to be tried now, he would certainly be sentenced to death and executed. But Korotash did not have such a sentence, so he took responsibility for the case, claiming he had directed it, and thus, he became the primary defendant. So, this was one successful MGB operation, when they managed to uncover and arrest one group. Tunnels were dug from every mine, since both the mines and the camps were surrounded by good barbed wire, they had pre-zones on all sides, it was impossible to get through there. In other places, if it was possible, tunnels were dug from the camp. Therefore, each mine had an exit through various tunnels, which were kept secret and camouflaged. Through such tunnels, a commando unit armed with grenades could be deployed, suppress the garrison, seize weapons, and thus, take control of the situation.

If this were done simultaneously throughout all of Vorkuta, it would have been possible to completely paralyze the Vorkuta security, seize all the garrisons, and, having transport in hand, quickly move prisoners into the taiga and, in the summer period, launch combat operations in the taiga and break out towards Kotlas and onto the plains of Russia. We believed that there were camps everywhere, security everywhere, so we would be able to seize weapons. Each man, if well-armed, was such a daredevil that he could boldly take on ten armed Chekists. This would have instilled such fear that the Chekists would not have been able to withstand it psychologically, especially when such a force appeared in the center of Russia, where anti-communist sentiment was no less than in Ukraine, because nobody liked the communists anywhere. At that time, 18 people were arrested.

The case turned out in such a way that Mykhailo Soroka appeared at its head. They tried to sideline me then, although they mentioned me and asked about me, but Mykhailo Soroka took the entire case upon himself. Thus, these were two trials in 1952 in the city of Syktyvkar, the capital of the Komi ASSR. If one could at least obtain the indictment and the verdict in the Soroka case, one could get a sense of how that case went, because I personally do not have precise information about it. In the grenade case, no one was executed. They added to Yurkiv's sentence to make it twenty-five years, and it seems the same for Korotash, and the case was closed. After this, that Yurkiv arrived in Vorkuta and was appointed the leader of all the Vorkuta camps. That's how he later featured in the Lviv trial, where I was tried along with Vodyniuk. Vodyniuk headed the security service referentura with the rank of colonel. Why did the uprising not happen? The uprising did not happen because Stalin died, and then Beria was arrested, and at that time it was no longer necessary to start an uprising, as we saw that we would be able to gain freedom without bloodshed, without casualties.

We knew for sure that Moscow would change its political course. And so it happened. The Vorkuta uprising was actually organized by Dobroshtan and his colleagues, that is, Heroes of the Soviet Union, or not exactly heroes, but those who believed they had great merits before the Soviet government, and instead of awards and privileges, they were given prison. It seems there was even a film made about Dobroshtan, "The Unknown." Dobroshtan wrote a large piece about this. I heard that his entire book was published by the "Kontinental" publishing house in France. I believe that Dobroshtan, although he had his own position, wrote objectively. That material should be considered accurate, even though it doesn't take into account some of our positions. But we do not deny what he did. At the same time, an uprising took place in Norilsk. It was organized by similar Heroes, and Danylo Shumuk joined them. Our people there had to fight to prevent casualties, to prevent the death of a large number of prisoners. We understood that we had to save the people, because soon, one way or another, they would be released. People like Dobroshtan and those in Norilsk—they did not want to understand that.

Some time later, there was an uprising in Kolyma; we have some data on it, but it is very scarce. A year later, there was an uprising in Kengir. Not an uprising, but something of that sort. There were no provocations—one must look at what is a provocation and what is not. But in Kengir—you can't say it was a provocation and you can't say it was an uprising. A situation spontaneously arose there that led to the forty-day Kengir Uprising, which was suppressed. They brought tanks into the zone, crushed women, fired from machine guns, even from cannons, threw gas into the barracks. In short, it all ended tragically there. Our people were led by Fedir Seiko, and under his command was Mykhailo Soroka. That was the organization for all the camps in Kazakhstan. There was also a small uprising at the third camp unit. There were various such local actions that did not have a political coloring, but were protests by separate groups of people that did not spread to everyone. Be that as it in may, in 1954 there were already decrees on the release of "minors," women, and by 1956 a commission of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet was created with the goal of "reviewing sentences in connection with the excessive severity of punishment." As far as we know, that was the wording. The mission of those commissions came down to the fact that in the very first round of summons—around May, June, July 1956—up to ninety percent of all prisoners were released.

According to our data, more than half a million were released; others say less, still others say more than a million. Well, we take what we have, but we do not guarantee that we are providing precise information—it's an approximation. So what happened to that mass of prisoners? When those strikes began, my orders went out through our Gulag underground that everyone should prepare for the revival of the underground in Ukraine after their release, that they should make arrangements ahead of time on how to contact each other once free, to give coordinates for the future. That is, the addresses of relatives were used, for those who had them, and sometimes they simply agreed on where and when they could meet. It was already possible to pick a day somewhere in Lviv where they could meet. The same in Stanislav, in Ternopil, in Lutsk, in Rivne. No one knew about this, only the organization knew.

As for the numbers of our organization, according to our reports, it exceeded 400,000. And some said it exceeded half a million. Whether that is so or not, we do not have precise data. At the Great Assembly (1957), those figures were read out, but they have not been preserved, so today I can only say that there was a great mass of members of the organizations. The only ones who were not members of the Gulag underground organization were those about whom there were some doubts. There might have been someone who was considered a decent man, but he was a wiseguy, he liked to argue, to talk a lot, and we didn't need people like that. We didn't need advice—we needed those who would carry out what they were told. So people like that were not part of the underground. And those people had no idea about the existence of the Gulag underground. This must be taken into account.

THE GREAT ASSEMBLY OF THE OUN (1957)

Having found ourselves free* *(M. Lutsyk was released on June 14, 1956, by decision of the commission of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR for the review of judicial cases. In November of the same year, he was rehabilitated. – V.O.), we immediately began to prepare for the convening of the Great Assembly. Such an assembly took place on September 9, 1957, in the area of the village of Volosianka, in what was then the Slavske district of the Drohobych region. According to our data, there were around 120–130 delegates there, and the rest of the participants were tasked with standing guard, ensuring communications, and servicing the assembly, that is, providing support for its work. The people who went to the assembly were prepared for the fact that they might not return from it, but still, they were all fearless. It should be noted that at that Great Assembly, there were representatives from Kuban, Rostov Oblast, the Don region, Voronezh Oblast, Bryansk, Kursk, Oryol, Lipetsk, even Smolensk, representatives from Belarus, from Moldavia, and from all regions of Ukraine. And these were solid people, for example, there was Samarin—a colonel, he graduated from the military academy with Zhukov, with Stalin's son, but during the war, he did not rise through the ranks because he was encircled with Vlasov and found himself on the other side of the front, and there, although he commanded a division, his military rank was not increased. Samarin, although he had a surname that some say is Russian, said that he was of Ukrainian origin, felt himself to be Ukrainian, and could be useful to the cause in military matters as well as in diplomatic work.

This man was not only educated, but also naturally very gifted, intelligent, honest, a model of a cultured person, an aristocrat of the spirit. There was Radchenko from the Bryansk region, also a solid figure. These people were with me in Vorkuta at the Ayachaga [name unintelligible] mines, in that large c they worked in our underground. They considered themselves Ukrainians, believed that the Bryansk region, Oryol, and others were lands belonging to the Chernihiv principality. They said that even the Tula and Ryazan regions belonged to the Chernihiv principality. A hundred versts from Moscow—those were Chernihiv lands. There was a fellow named Makarenko who said that Belarus and the Smolensk region are lands that belong to the Grand Principality of Kyiv as a patrimony. Well, and Novgorod and Pskov had their own lands. So those people approached things with a different measure; they said that the borders of Soviet Ukraine are what Lenin drew as a joke, and Stalin affirmed, and thus they trimmed Ukrainian lands. And the Ukrainian people who lived there, they were forced to register as Russians. The representatives of those lands said that they fought for the Kyivan state no less than the Galicians did. They say: "Don't claim the palm of victory for yourselves, because we experienced Moscow's slavery earlier. But you try living under Moscow for so long, and you'll see what's left of you." And they were, in fact, right. "But we survived, and today we stand beside you." The Great Assembly considered a number of issues.

At that Great Assembly, a plan was introduced for an uprising in Ukraine in 1958—both armed and political. It was believed that at that time, if a situation like the one in Hungary in 1956 did not arise, it could be created here. With those cadres, especially since they were former political prisoners who had just returned from confinement, and there were also many people here who sympathized with the OUN's activities—all these forces coordinated, disciplined, organized militarily into detachments, regiments, divisions, corps—if necessary, they were fully capable of seizing power, not only in the territory of Ukraine but also in Kuban, on the Don, etc. Success could be achieved if turmoil was stirred up in Moscow and Leningrad, in the center.

The plan was that the emphasis should not be on the OUN, because that is perceived as a one-sided movement, but something more like a nationwide movement. Like the later People's Movement, popular fronts—directions like that, but led by the delegates of the Great Assembly. Preparations began, literature started to be produced, our *bofony*, that is, our currency, were designed with denominations of 5, 10, 20 karbovantsi, and were distributed. With that money, we bought nine printing presses and began to produce literature. We printed various poems, reports, and this slowly began to spread. ANOTHER 15 (1957 – 1972) I must say here that as early as April 1957, they were coming to arrest me, but I evaded the arrests and went into hiding. They arrested me on November 19 in Stryi, confiscated a TT pistol and the poem "O, My Native Land," as well as the article "We in Khust." I was tried for that. I have a copy of the verdict, I'll provide it. There I am tried as a writer, this is emphasized. Since the case was not fully uncovered and they had a lot of material, they take me to Kyiv. I must say: seeing that they had quite significant material on me, I tried to feign insanity. They took me to Lviv for an evaluation, where they found out I was preparing an escape and wrote that I was sane, then sent me to Drohobych for further investigation. I continued to feign there, so they sent me to the Serbsky Institute in Moscow. There I met Viktor Rafalsky, a writer, a poet, a very cultured and talented person. From there, they bring me to trial as sane.

After a year and one month, they try me in Drohobych, give me 8 years, essentially for the poem and the pistol. Then they take me to Kyiv to continue the investigation. In total, the investigation lasted three and a half years, from November 19, 1957, to April 1961. The investigation was harsh; 14 volumes of investigative material were compiled, which were later presented at the trial. I think that the materials of this case will someday be obtainable. It seems to me that this case is in the archive of the Kyiv KGB; it's not in Lviv. That's why it's difficult for me to get even a copy of the verdict and the indictment, which is valuable material. What else did I want to add here? During that time, they took me four times by elevator to the fourth floor on Volodymyrska, or as it was called, Korolenka, 33, to Lieutenant General Nikitchenko. There were always only colonels there, members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine and the Union, with Nikitchenko always flanked by Fedorchuk and that fellow Poluden—two KGB major generals. Well, and the rest were Colonels Zashytin and Shulzhenko.

V.O.: And Shulzhenko was there?

M.L.: Yes, Borys Shulzhenko. Well, I don’t know how he sang, whether like that Klavdiya or not—in short, he was there too. Lieutenant Colonel Tarasenko conducted my investigation. Oleksandr Vodyniuk’s investigation was conducted by Sapozhnikov or someone like that, a major. They tried the two of us; they didn't manage to uncover and bring anyone else to trial. The investigation methods were uncovered by me. [End of track]. At one of the last meetings with Nikitchenko in that large hall, where besides those generals Fedorchuk and Poluden, there were also colonels, representatives of the Central Committee from both Moscow and Kyiv, Nikitchenko announced to me that they had material on more than a thousand people—the leadership of the Gulag underground. And they would arrest all of them. It was clear that besides a bullet, there was nothing more for them to expect. He didn't say "bullet" so directly, but “an appropriate punishment from which they would never return.” And he alleges that there were acts of sabotage, murders, etc. Listening to that, I said: "It wasn't like that." It had already been three years of investigation, and right then, for the first time, I spoke on the substance of the matter, that it was not like that. Nikitchenko and all the others stood up and froze in those poses: "Then how was it?" I say: "Yes, the organization existed, yes, I created it, I led it, but this organization was not political." At this, they said: "Then what was it—a trade union?" I say: "Not a trade union either.

This organization was of a completely different character; it was necessary in our conditions. The summary of the preventative information document reads: ‘The general line of the organization is the struggle for self-preservation in conditions of imprisonment, regardless of national affiliation and political or religious beliefs.’ And only that. ‘So, as you can see, there is no politics here—neither anti-Soviet nor pro-Soviet. There is simply a forced situation. In the Soviet Union, there is no law and no article that would provide for punishment for such activities. Therefore,’ I say, ‘not only those you are planning to arrest, but also those who have already been arrested, including myself, must be released immediately. Because there is no such law.’” The reaction was: "Listen to the tune he's singing now!" I say: “I told you the truth. You wanted the truth—there, I’ve told you.” After this, they didn't call me for interrogation for a long time. They must have really had plans to arrest a large number of people, but when they heard this, they understood that in the process of investigation and face-to-face confrontations, all those people would follow my lead, because there was already a precedent when I had a confrontation with Volodymyr Yurkiv and Sokhatskyi, also a member of the Leadership, they immediately supported me. They already had the experience that if those men supported me, then others would too. Moreover, there was another person with me at a confrontation, but he was free, so after that confrontation, he went and informed everyone who remained free about the line I was taking, so that everyone would adhere to that line.

That was Ivan Savchuk. He was a special courier between Vorkuta and the homeland, a very useful and very active person. He sacrificed everything to get something done. And he was the one who thwarted their plans. And Sokhatskyi too, obviously. (Sokhatskyi was also in Vorkuta as an organizational referent of the Leadership). On that, the investigation ended. They did not open cases against other people, and in April 1961, they sent Vodyniuk and me to Lviv for trial. Why to Lviv? Because when they were closing my case, prosecutor Malyi and prosecutor Yanovskyi in Kyiv (a thin man)—they were deputy prosecutors of the republic—say: “Well, here is your case.” And I say: “The Supreme Court will sort it out.” I thought that the Supreme Court would be handling the case. And prosecutor Malyi says thoughtfully: "The Supreme Court?" It seems that I myself did what was to their advantage. It’s possible that in the Supreme Court I would have played a different card, they would not have had influence on the Supreme Court, so they quickly redirected the case to the Lviv regional court, which did their bidding. We were transported to Lviv. On the way, we had the opportunity to make arrangements with Yurkiv through the bars. Yurkiv says: "I will retract my testimony against you, because," he says, "I later repented for not supporting you at the confrontation." I told him: "Don't change anything now, because it won't help either me or you, quite the opposite." So we were brought to Lviv. On April 4, 1961, the trial began.

This trial lasted until April 12, just until the day when our judges went to write the verdict, and the lawyer, Yelagin, comes in and says: “Oh, today will be written in golden letters in the history of mankind.” I say: “Of course—they’re writing my verdict today!” That’s me, with humor. And he says: “No, it’s Gagarin, the first Soviet man in space.” I want to say that the prosecutor, Starikov, asked for the highest measure for me—execution—motivating it by the fact that my activities had spread to the youth, who were poisoned by nationalism, that youth training sessions were conducted in many districts of Galicia and, as established by the prosecution, all of this was done under the leadership of members of my organization. There were many such nuances there. The guards who were guarding us on the defendant’s bench noticed that in his statement, Vodyniuk had been aggressive towards me, but when he sat down, I shook his hand. And they reported this to the captain, the head of the convoy. The convoy commander mentioned this after the prosecutor had left, when only the secretary was sitting there: “They prepared us for a month. They ordered us, told us what terrible criminals you were. But when I heard your first statement, I saw something was off. And they also told us to be very vigilant, so that you wouldn't kill each other.”

V.O.: That you were supposedly enemies?

M.L.: Yes, yes. That we were such terrible enemies, and here the convoy noticed us secretly shaking hands. Then they understood that we had completely different relations. Well, the secretary also said: “Don't think, Mr. Lutsyk, that there aren't people on the court panel who sympathize with you and are trying to help.” I said: “Please convey my thanks to them for that.” The judge was Ziber, and the assessors were a woman named Makarenko, and some Brailov or something, I forget how. They read the verdict: 15 years for me with all the trimmings, and for my co-defendant Vodyniuk—12. The trial was secret; not even the witnesses were admitted. Many witnesses passed through the case. I have no complaints against any of them. Some might later speculate—that they cracked. All of this is untrue; these people knew a great deal. What they could, they concealed, which is why they weren't arrested, and I remained alive, and so did Vodyniuk. Oleksandr Vodyniuk is from the Sokal district of the Lviv region, from the village of Tartakiv. He died, most likely, he was poisoned and delivered to his native village from Berdychiv in the Zhytomyr region, and he is buried there.

V.O.: His dates of life?

M.L.: Vodyniuk's date of birth is November 27, 1929, and the date of death is February 8, 1983. He lived 53 years. Well, at the trial, they almost put Volodymyr Yurkiv, Vasyl Sokhatskyi, and some others in the dock with us. The prosecutor raised the question of also imprisoning Volodymyr Zdanevych from Lviv. That's how that trial ended. After that, they take me to Kyiv. Why to Kyiv? Apparently, God willed it so. We were tried in such a period that the old Code had ceased to be in effect—it was valid until April 1, 1961—and the new one had not yet been approved by Brezhnev. It was approved by the Supreme Soviet sometime in May, so the KGB insisted on filing a protest against the verdict of the Lviv court, that it had given too lenient a sentence, and demanded that we be retried, because such cases stipulated execution. But some force intervened, suggesting that since we were already sentenced, there was no point in making fools of themselves. So, they failed to have the verdict of the Lviv regional court overturned, which Starikov, under pressure from the KGB, had insisted on. But he himself was a KGB man. After that, they send me to the Vladimir Prison, because the verdict stipulated the first 5 years to be served in prison. And the remaining 10 years in a labor camp. A total of 15 years. My term was counted from the day of my arrest, that is, from November 19, 1957.

I served that term in Vladimir Prison. They took me back to Kyiv again. Apparently, they still thought the case was not fully uncovered and the investigation needed to continue. MORDAVIA. THE SIXTIERS (1965 – 1967) After this, they transfer me to the Mordovian camps, to the 11th camp unit. That was around 1965, I believe. In that camp, the first person to meet me was Mykhailo Soroka, as an old acquaintance. There I also got to know Ivan Kandyba, Yurko Dolishnyi—a good man from the village of Tiapche in the Stanislaviv region, from Bolekhiv, Mykhailo Markovych Klymenko from Boyarka, near Kyiv. The Sixtiers arrived there later—Karavanskyi, Horyn, Mykhailo Ozernyi, who else?

V.O.: Perhaps Anatoliy Shevchuk?

M.L.: Oh, Shevchuk, we became very good friends with him—a very good person, such a refined person—his brother Valeriy is a writer. And he also did some writing, apparently had that talent. Mykhailo Osadchyi—also a man who stood out for his refinement.

V.O.: Was Valentyn Moroz there?

M.L.: Ah, Moroz? Yes, I'll get to that. At that time, I had accumulated many manuscripts. A man came from Lutsk, his name ended in "-enko," a lecturer at the Lutsk Pedagogical Institute, and with him came Voznytskyi, to whom I showed my manuscripts.

V.O.: Maybe Martynenko—no?

M.L.: No, it ended in "-enko," a similar surname, but not that one. So that Voznytskyi says: "I can get these manuscripts of yours out to the free world." And I say: "How?" “Well, we can think of something.” I say: “Well, maybe make a suitcase with a false bottom?” He says: "I'll do it. Buy a suitcase somewhere, I'll make a false bottom and that's it. My wife will come, I'll pass it on through her." Well, he made such a suitcase, brought it, and I packed everything in it. He comes and says: “Well,” he says, “my wife is coming any day now. Is everything ready?” I said: “Yes, it's ready.” Suddenly, they conduct a selective search.

They enter our section and say: "Everyone out and take your things." No, first they came in and said: "Lutsyk, where are your things?" "Which ones?" "Well, your suitcases." "I don't have any suitcases, haven't gotten around to getting one yet." "Alright, we're being serious with you." "There aren't any." Then they gave the command for everyone to get their suitcases from the storeroom. Well, no one thought to grab mine as well, so mine was left behind. They took it to the guardhouse. They also took Mykola Apostol's suitcase, because he was somewhere else. He went to the guardhouse, and there they were, inspecting my suitcase and saying: “This is it. Give the command to stop the search.”

V.O.: They found out it was yours specifically?

M.L.: Yes, but the search was throughout the whole camp. When they found it, they gave the command to stop. Yes, that suitcase, everything according to the description. Only one person knew about it. So, the next day they summon me to the headquarters. There's a KGB major for those Mordovian camps, I think his name was Postnikov, there are other KGB men. They conduct an arrest. There’s a prosecutor’s warrant, they brought a censor, witnesses, as they do—everything formally observed, everything polite, because they already have the bird in hand. And then they say: “What’s in here?” And on top there were shoes, a tied-up packet of letters that I had received from the outside from a very dedicated person, who wrote without regard for anything, so fearless she was—from Mariia Zelyk from my village. And they say: “Well, and what's next?” "What's next? The bottom.” Well, they took measurements, the thickness was so-and-so. “Too thick,” they say, “the bottom is too thick.” Then the commission decides they need to take a look. They opened it—there were the manuscripts. They read, re-read, find my statement to the UN. It states that the Bolsheviks did to us what neither Batu Khan nor the Hitler regime did. In that spirit. The issue was raised there that in Ukraine, it was necessary, before it was too late, to expose the Holodomors and repressions that had claimed a massive number of lives. It amounted to 25 million killed in the repressions and the Holodomor.

The conclusion: before it's too late, establish this and bring this communist regime to an international tribunal, like the Nuremberg trials. “Well,” they say, “and why did you write this?” I say: “Well, once I wrote it, I wrote it, what am I going to say now, why did I write it? I wrote it to have it and forget it.” “And why did you want to pass it on?” "To whom?" "Well, since you prepared a false bottom, you wanted to pass it on.” "No, I wanted it so that I could carry it around with me.” Here I'm already protecting the one who made the false bottom. Forty days later, on January 6—that was already 1967—they summon me to trial. I was sick with the flu at the time, my temperature was up to forty [Celsius], but they summon me to trial in the camp and sentence me to three years in prison.

V.O.: In which camp were you tried?

M.L.: That was in the 11th camp in the Mordovian ASSR, the settlement of Yavas. Of course, they didn’t give me a copy of that finding (in fact, the verdict). Immediately after the trial, they put me in the isolator. I end up in a cell where there's a certain Gorokhov. He shouts out to the whole prison that he's no longer alone, and they ask: "Who is it?"—I hear Karavanskyi shouting. And I was very sick, the flu had hit me hard. He says: “Lutsyk.” And the other shouts: "Do you smoke?" "No," I say. That one says: "Do you smoke?" I say: "I'm a non-smoker." That means it’s all set, nothing to pass on. Acquaintances from all the cells responded; Karavanskyi and I got acquainted. The next day, Gorokhov and I go to the toilet—to wash up, etc. A man walks past us with a flourish, a towel over his shoulder, sees no one, walks straight ahead, step aside, earth, for a man is coming. Gorokhov says: “Do you know who that is?” And Gorokhov is a Jew. I say: "No, I have no idea.” “That’s Moroz.” And I say: "It shows that..." "He's cultured." I say: “A cultured man doesn’t walk like that. When a cultured man walks, he looks carefully at who is there, especially in such conditions. I came to you—how did I treat you?” "Oh, oh, you're right." That’s how I saw Moroz then. VLADIMIR PRISON (1967 – 1970) On the second or third day, they took me away from there and transported me to the prison in Vladimir.

There they gave me 6 months of strict regime, because it was my second time in Vladimir. I said that the first time I was there by verdict, not from a camp, but they gave it to me anyway. I was swollen from hunger there; they were already leading me out of that place. They lead me out, put me in a cell with all sorts of idiots, thugs. By the way, Krasivskyi writes that they put all sorts of provocateurs, loudmouths, criminals, wanna-be criminals, etc., in with me. Well, I behaved well, but I had my fist at the ready, and my blows were such that even an ox could fall if I aimed right. So all of them thought it was best not to overstep in their behavior. When I arrived, they quieted down. The administration thinks: what is this, why are they so quiet? It bothered them. From the first block, with small cells where it's very difficult, they moved us to a cell in the third block. The cells there held 16 men. This was a blessing for me because, firstly, there were many people, you could already get lost, you could talk to someone one-on-one. And you could walk around, there was a passage between the bunks, that was my territory.

Even in the camp, I had my own, as they called it, "Lutsyk's Road"—that was in the 11th. I always walked there, and someone would walk with me—already two lanes. And if a third person was walking, they’d say: "A three-lane street." Who did I meet there? Ivan Kandyba was there, Levko Lukianenko, Mykhailo Horyn, Zinovy Krasivskyi, Mykhailo Diak—from Krasivskyi’s case—Kvetska. A very good man, a police captain. There was Bezuĥlyi from somewhere in Dnipropetrovsk, Mykhailo Masiutko, Sviatoslav Karavanskyi. There was a Lithuanian, Jonas Gimbutas, another Lithuanian, Skačkauskas, there was Narkhov. This Narkhov had escaped to the West from the German occupation zone, and there he stole and stole, until they caught him and handed him over here. In a word, there were 16 men there. Whoever I missed, I can recall later. In that cell, everything was fine. A Chekist from the North Caucasus was lying below me, supposedly from the Terek Cossacks.

One time I'm pacing like that. And he says to me: "How long are you going to pace around?" Because he's lying there—the big shot. You're sitting in prison. I'm not pacing—you are. There, a warm-up. And he said: “Your motherf...” I kicked him with a single blow right on the kneecap and dislocated his whole jaw. And in that instant. And just as I landed the blow, a key rattled in the door: "Out for your walk." Well, everyone out for the walk, and me too. I was one of the first out into the corridor, where they counted us. "Aren't the rest coming?" "They're not coming." He closed the door, we left. We return from the walk, and I see him sitting there, the doctors are already there, the block officers are standing there, a KGB man, even the head of the medical service, Yelena Nikolayevna Butova.

V.O.: The famous Butova.

M.L.: Yes. She performed an operation on me, I'll tell you about that too. And he points at me: him! They then put everyone in the cell, and to me: "Stop. What did you do to him?" I look: his whole this-and-that is like so, his leg is twisted, kneecap smashed—a wounded man. Fine. They immediately put me in another, empty cell, and an investigator comes in with me. He says: "What did you hit him for?" "Who?" "Well, him." "Who is 'him'?" "Well, that one,"—I forgot his last name. I say: “I didn’t hit him at all.” "Then who did? They tell me it was you." I say: “When? I was out for a walk, wasn't I?” "As you were leaving for the walk. He said something to you, and you hit him immediately.” “I don't know anything.” Well, he wrote that down in the report. "If you don't know, you don't know, you didn't touch him. Well, what could be wrong with him then?" I say: “It could be a simulation.” “What simulation?” "He wanted to be moved to another cell, and you aren't moving him, so he staged a simulation, and overdid it, and now he's blaming me.” "Did it happen like that, or do you just think so?” “I think so.” And the investigator says: "Well, he's that type." (Laughs).

They take me to another empty cell and start taking everyone from the first cell. They questioned everyone—no one saw it. It was a split second! That one kick—whack-whack—and the guy is down. Then they call us for a walk—and I just go. (Laughs). So, you understand, that fist was something you didn't want to get hit by. You can imagine that those criminals knew it was better not to mess with Petrovych. After this, they transfer us from that cell to cell 30. The conditions in this cell were even better. I liked it there very much. Then they bring in someone from the Ogurtsov group, VSKhSON. (“All-Russian Social-Christian Union for the Liberation of the Peoples.” A monarchist organization that emerged in Leningrad in 1964; its members Yevgeny Vagin, Averychkin, Sado, Igor Ogurtsov, Vladimir Osipov, Leonid Borodin and others were convicted in 1967. – V.O.) The first Russian underground, well, semi-underground group. They thought they could do it more or less legally. The guys were decent. I knew them all well—thinking, educated people. Although they didn't call themselves monarchists, they were on that path. Well, what else was interesting there? I already told you about how Kandyba declared a hunger strike because Masiutko was blowing cheap tobacco smoke at him. And it ended with Kandyba achieving (admittedly, everyone declared a hunger strike) the arrival of Colonel Vodin and Colonel Putyavin.

One was the prison warden, the other was the head of the regime. And they immediately come at them with their deep voices and coarse words. Masiutko lunges at them, he also had a good bass and knew how to talk. They at him: “Shut up, shut up.” And he: “What do you mean shut up, what do you mean shut up?”—he in Ukrainian, they in Russian. Finally, that Putyavin comes up to me: “And you, Lutsyk, why didn’t you take your food?” I say: “In my circumstances, I cannot act otherwise.” I'm making it clear that although I don't share such foolishness, in this case, it's prisoner solidarity. Masiutko then shouts: “And why do you talk to us like dogs, but to Lutsyk with the formal 'Vy'?” And that Vodin replies: "Because he is not ours, but you, you dogs, ate our bread, we taught you, and look what you're doing now. But he is not ours, and we treat him as a foreigner.” In short, one could even joke around there. There was another conflict. One time Karavanskyi started a feud with Horyn. And not as a joke, it came to blows. The hostility was such that Horyn had apparently gotten jealous of Karavanskyi over his own wife.

V.O.: But how—weren't they both in prison?

M.L.: He got jealous in prison. Well, this is how it was. They were somewhere in the 11th camp. Karavanskyi was passing something through Horyn's wife to his own wife, for her to pass on to someone else in Moscow. Horyn put forth that he had no right to do that himself, he should have done it through him. You see, that was Horyn’s position. And the other says: "If I had known, I wouldn't have said anything to her at all." That was the foundation for various petty conflicts. One time Horyn lunged at Karavanskyi, with a shoe, I think. And the other was fending off the shoe with a broom. (Laughs). It was funny to me, I thought: I wish they’d fight longer, I wonder what that would look like? But what happened—the Lithuanian wouldn't let them, a man named Gimbutas was there.

V.O.: I know Gimbutas.

M.L.: Yes, he didn't let them, so that it wouldn't come to bloodshed. Although you can hit someone with that broom all day and nothing will happen to him. In short, it was that kind of war. After that, Karavanskyi was exposed... No, there was one search. They rushed in, everyone to the side, come up one by one, they went through everyone's pockets—every last ruble. And I have material in my hand. I have nowhere to put it, so I took it and clenched it in my fist. Horyn has already gone through, Krasivskyi has gone through that search. I signal to them this way and that to help me out—they’ve already been frisked, I could find a moment and pass it. Nothing. They’ve got their heads tilted up, talking about higher matters, about what whose wife is doing on the outside. And at that time, that Narkhov—a petty thief, they said he was the first snitch in our cell—he gives a glance, I show him to take it. He glances, glances, like a thief—you know, a good thief—and snatch, he took it. I breathed a sigh of relief. Because if they search me—I'm done for. But he took it. I’m through the search. And when that Narkhov snatched it—Horyn and Krasivskyi noticed. Only then did they notice. I happily passed the search. The guards left, and Narkhov gives it back to me. Krasivskyi says: "How could you give it to such a snitch?" I say: "And who was I supposed to give it to—wait until they took it from me?" "Well, you should have done it differently." "How differently? You see a search is going on—you have to look out for one another—maybe someone needs help. That little thief, and you even say he's a provocateur, a snitch—he could be looking everywhere, but you couldn't, because you're so great, what do you care." "But he could sell you out." "What the hell is he going to sell me out for now, after this? He'll go to them, he'll eat sausage with them, drink tea—he's a Muscovite. He'll promise them he'll work for them, but in reality, he'll be working against them. I'm not as stupid as you think." Well, they fell silent after that. That was an interesting episode. Karavanskyi once passed on material, it went abroad, they made a lot of noise there... His wife came to visit him, he was let into the visiting room first and they went to get his wife. And he placed the material where she would sit.

V.O.: He did that once, and the second time...

M.L.: And the second time, they were already thinking, how could he have passed it? He placed it again. They let the wife in, but before that, the female guard had gone in there and taken it. After that, they dispersed us from that cell completely. He wrote in secret ink on such small pieces of paper—you’d take a piece of paper as if to roll a cigarette, and text would appear on it. Various medications were suitable for that. Well, you know about this too. These are my observations. The cell is being shaken up, people are being moved back and forth, and Horyn sees Gimbutas coming out of the KGB officer's room. He comes out of the KGB, and Horyn flies at him: "Ah, so he's the one who works for the KGB!" And that Gimbutas says: “Can't you be quiet, you fool?” “What do you mean, I’m a fool, you're going there, selling us out. You were in the KGB, weren't you?” “I was.” “So why do you go there?” "I have to go there." "What do you mean you have to go there?" “I have authorization.” "From whom?" “From Lutsyk.” So Horyn says to me: "Why didn't you warn me that your people are working here in the prison as snitches for you?" I say: "They snitch what I said they can." "And what can they?" “To say that he’s not doing anything. ‘What is Lutsyk doing?’ — ‘Oh, nothing.’ ‘And what does he talk about?’ — ‘Who knows? He doesn't talk to me.’” That’s all. And for that, they might tell him: “Well, look into this matter, talk to him.” And he will already tell me that they are interested in such a matter. I already know how to act. Horyn says: "So you have your own network of agents?" "I do. I have them in the Party and in the Central Committee, if I need them. An organization cannot exist without its own agent network." That Gimbutas told him how it was. And it was like this. He had a 25-year sentence. A mother at home. He's miserable. His elderly mother writes, she begs. They could take 10 years off his sentence. They summon him. They try to recruit him.

One time he comes like that, stands over me, and I say: "Listen, they're recruiting you." "Who?" "The KGB." "Well, yes." I say: “Why don’t you go work with them?” "What do you mean?" "Yes, for the good of the cause. For the benefit of the cause." "Which one?" “So that you can find out from them what they’re interested in, about whom, specifically.” "And who will vouch for me?" "I will." “Well,” he says, “I need to think about it.” I say: “Think the way I'm telling you, so that it happens that way.” Gimbutas went a second time. Supposedly he didn't want to, but then he supposedly agrees. Then they brought him sausage and tea, he ate there, washed it down with tea. He comes, I ask: "How are things?" "Ate sausage, drank tea.” “That’s the business.” That Gimbutas says: “Well, you have various moves.” “Yes, this is a struggle.” Are you already wanting to sleep?

V.O.: No, not at all. MORDAVIA AGAIN (1970 – 1972)

M.L.: From there, I went out to the camp. They immediately threw me into the 7th, but it turned out there were many of my acquaintances there, including Levkovych, others from the command. They saw that we all immediately bonded. That Andriy Sinyavsky was there. They see that I'm with these, and with those—with the old generation, and with the young, with the Jews, and with the Balts. And they move me from there to the 19th. Oles Nazarenko is there, with whom we quickly made contact, Yevhen Pryshliak, there was Ivan Kozhyn—he's from my region, who knew me from outside prison.

V.O.: Levko Horokhivskyi...

M.L.: Horokhivskyi. Yes, I had a war with Horokhivskyi.

V.O.: A war?

M.L.: I'll tell you in a moment. Prokopovych was there, Tsepko was there—see, I'm slowly recalling everyone.

V.O.: Was Ivan Myron there?

M.L.: Ivan Myron, yes, we met there.

V.O.: Mykhailo Zhurakivskyi from Yasen?

M.L.: He was, an old Sich Rifleman, I know, I know. Is he alive?

V.O.: He’s probably gone now.

M.L.: You see. There was a Makarenko—an art historian, a restorer of canvases in the Hermitage. There were those Leningrad Jews—Anatoliy Berger. A whole bunch more of them arrived—Voloshyn and others. Cassette four.

V.O.: Mr. Mykhailo Lutsyk. This is now the beginning of the day, January 25, 2000.

M.L.: Everyone, of course, was looking for contacts, someone gave them news about me, who I was. It happened that if any conflicts arose, they would come to me to judge the matter with the wisdom of Solomon. It doesn't matter how much anyone talks, what matters is who said it. This means my word carried weight. (The next three paragraphs were moved here from the section “The Action in Skole”) There, on the initiative of Yevhen Pryshliak, they celebrated my 50th birthday. They simply grabbed me in the middle of the camp zone after dinner and said I was under arrest. They brought me to a hall, to the dining hall, and there was a table. A new dining hall had been built there. It was already covered with newspapers for fifty people. Everyone was already sitting there and they say: "Here, we've brought the guest of honor." The one who brought me, he's still alive, is Mykola Kots.

V.O.: He lives in Lutsk now.

M.L.: Yes, yes, Mykola Kots. They sat down there, and Mykola Kots gave a speech. He has a degree from an agricultural academy and the physics and mathematics faculty. A fairly educated, decent, honest, active, hardworking person. And then Pryshliak. Pryshliak sat to my right, and Kots to my left, and at the tables sat our insurgents. To be honest, there were also many Jews, and Estonians, and Finns, and Russians, and Belarusians. Olexa Nazarenko was also there, one of ours—if he’s alive, he remembers* *(Oles Nazarenko lives in Skadovsk. – V.O). In short, it’s a story that if they were to read this account of mine, they too would remember, and probably add their own impressions. So they celebrated my 50th birthday. It was organized by Yevhen Pryshliak, Mykola Kots, Olexa Nazarenko—by the way, I have poems he dedicated to me. It's believed that Ivan Kozhan also took part, and Ivan Myron, probably, and that Petro Tsepko, who worked for one of the Lviv editorial offices back in the Polish era. Many such good people. If you look into each one's soul, into his head, his concepts—there were intellectually strong individuals there. I wasn't there for long, because the day of my release was approaching, so I've only briefly touched on these issues here. At that 50th anniversary of mine (by the way, it was the first in my life), they wished for me to celebrate my hundredth anniversary as well. I thanked them very warmly for that, of course, and wished them long lives, so that they could all be at that anniversary. I received a gift there from each of them—from one a postcard, from another a book with a corresponding inscription. It was a great memento, but I didn't manage to keep everything, because a lot was taken from me when I left. I don't know where it ended up.

V.O.: You can't give gifts there: "Alienation in any form is prohibited."

M.L.: Yes. On that note, I must say that there, Mykola Kots and I hid something under the dining hall, where they held my anniversary evening. We buried many of our manuscripts under that foundation—in various jars that we could get. They have probably all long since rotted away, because even cellophane paper—it deteriorates. Those were quite good materials. Mykola Kots knows, I know. I don't know if Nazarenko hid anything there, because he was with Kots the whole time. Hryhoriy Prokopovych was there—a rather good person, Levko Horokhivskyi was there. One time, Horokhivskyi invited me over. Before that, we had been very friendly. He was supposed to get several volumes of Herodotus. I made an agreement with him that one would be mine, I would pay him back or trade for it. He agreed.

Well, one time he calls me over to listen to his poetry. I went. It was known that Horokhivskyi suffered from epilepsy and had seizures that were severe. And he had a tall build—it’s clear that such a person falls very loudly. I arrived, no one was there. And so he begins to read his poetry to me. In terms of vocabulary, style, content, and expression, the poems were very rich. A large vocabulary, good thought. But it was all so atheistic, as if the bottom of hell had opened up, it was frightening to listen to. I listened to maybe five poems, and then I said some words that I do not want to repeat here. After that, I didn't want to speak with him. And Herodotus was gone... I'm not saying it was for religious reasons, but the Christian religion is our culture, our soul. There is some force that we may or may not know, but that force has spiritually protected us, protects us, and if we revere that heavenly or universal, divine force, then we too will be revered, that's what I believe.

After that, all my contact with Horokhivskyi ceased. Even when I spoke in Kyiv at the congress of political prisoners, and he was sitting on the presidium, he probably recognized me. I went over the time limit by, I think, five minutes, and he didn't stop me. But I couldn't go up to him and talk—I was so outraged by what I had heard then. I'm not sure he abandoned his ideas from back then—he stuck with them. That is my impression. FROM MORDAVIA TO MOLDAVIA (“I CHOSE MOLDAVIA...”, 1972) Before my release, I had chosen Lviv as my destination, because at that time they would ask where you were planning to go after release. I told them where. A short time later, they inform me: change your destination, they won't register you anywhere in Ukraine, choose a place outside of Ukraine. I chose Moldavia for myself, in Chișinău. I think, that’s also Ukraine, it just has a different name now. Fine, they wrote it down. There was no time to change my destination papers again, because November 19, 1972, was already approaching and I had to be released. I was released and I went to that KGB office to get my manuscripts back.

They took my manuscripts twice—once when they confiscated that suitcase with the false bottom. After that, they took my manuscripts during a special search. They took many manuscripts—it was poetry, publicism, various romantic writings that I needed to review. To a certain extent, it was coded, and I needed to review it because there were thoughts there that I would have refined once I was free. I went there again and again and again, I was late for that train because of it, but they say: "They're not here, by law we burned them, because there is such a law that stipulates all manuscripts created in conditions of imprisonment are to be liquidated." I said I would complain to higher authorities, and they said: "Go ahead and write." I left. They escorted me under convoy from Potma to Kyiv.

V.O.: They transported you in a "Stolypin car"?

M.L.: No, they transported me in a passenger car, but assigned to me, firstly, was the conductor who controlled the car, and secondly, there was "that guy." So I, not reaching Kyiv, what station was that... It wasn't yet the Kyiv region, not far from Chernihiv. About 100-140 kilometers from Kyiv, I got off the wagon. I had nothing with me. There I got on the first bus and arrived in Kyiv. I thought I had escaped. I arrive in Kyiv, get on a tram. I have a plan to go to Boyarka, here and there, I had acquaintances there. As I'm getting off the tram car—there’s already a car standing there, “those guys” are standing there: "Lutsyk, get in here." Well, of course, the "bobby" car is unfamiliar to me, but since they already called my name, I get in. They bring me to the train station police precinct. They sat me there—not in a cell, and they say: "Sit right here."

Two of "those guys" are already sitting next to me—one in a police uniform, and the other in plain clothes, but still a policeman. After some time, a tall man in civilian clothes comes in, introduces himself as a KGB major. He says to me: "Why are you doing this? You are only complicating your situation. You see how much energy we've spent." I say: “I saw a great many things. First of all, I saw how you work.” “Well, how?” “Excellent.” “Well, there you see, we found you in the middle of the night.” (I got off in Myrhorod. I got off unnoticed). “Well, now,” he says, “you will go on this train...” And I say: “But I want to walk around Kyiv.” "Well, you can walk. What's there for you to walk around for?" “I want to see the metro, in short, the 'sights.' Can I?” “You can, you can, go ahead. When do you want to walk?” “Tomorrow morning, because you can't see anything at night.” “Fine.” In the morning, I go, I look—they're already coming: one in front, one behind, at a distance. So I'm walking, I go down into the metro, thinking: I have to lose you. And so I walk, I walk, just as the train approaches—and they are walking around there, daydreaming, and I just—zip—into the car. The doors closed and it left. There, I think, that’s it. I rode three stops, got out—I have my route. I need to go where I want to go. I come out of the metro—and they are already waiting for me up there! I say to them: “Hello, you've arrived?” As if I were looking for them.

They say: “Don’t play the fool.” With the formal "you," politely, like decent scoundrels. They say: “You see, you can’t be trusted.” “I have the whole day at my disposal today. I’ll do whatever I want. The higher-ups said so.” So I spent the whole day like that, went somewhere and bought myself something to eat, they watched what I was buying and how. I bought bread, bought myself milk at the station because I hadn't had it in a long time, ate and went on my way. They followed me. That’s how I began to get used to freedom—under convoy even in freedom. When my train was announced, this major came, and another major. They gave their surnames. I tried to recall them many times, but now I’ve forgotten. They put me on the train to Chișinău. They say: “Take this train.” I go to Moldavia, to Chișinău. And just as I get out—two men approach me: “What, you don’t have any luggage?” “Why do you need my luggage?” "To help you carry it." “I don’t have any.” So I’m walking. “Where are you going? You’re coming with us.” "Where to?" "To the ministry.” "Which ministry?" "The Ministry of Internal Affairs." We went. We arrive—the minister of internal affairs is there, a lieutenant colonel. He says: "Why did you come to us?"—in Ukrainian. “What, is this not Ukraine?” “But you’re not allowed in Ukraine. And why did you come here—Ukraine is just a stone's throw away.” “Well, the wind from Ukraine will blow on me,”—I’m already in that humorous mood, “—it will be easier for me here.” “Well then, alright, may it be good for you here. Why did you come here?” “And where was I supposed to go? I’ve been to the North, I don’t want to be there—I'm going south, away from the North.” “Fine. Where are you thinking of registering?” "In Chișinău." "Oh-ho-ho! No, not there. Here, we'll give you a referral to Rîbnița.” “Fine. And why Rîbnița?” “Because we can’t keep you in the capital. After all, the capital is a restricted-regime city. That one is too, but since you want it so much, go there. We won't let you go anywhere else.” “I want to go to Tiraspol.” “No, not there. There are many like you there.” I go to Rîbnița.

They told me how to get there. I arrive—they meet me there. I just get out: "Mikhail Petrovich, good day, let's get acquainted. Let's go." They take me to the police station, the KGB are already there. You can already spot the KGB men—some are standing to the side, others are supposedly sitting there, but in the central seats are the ones asking the questions. There's a Ukrainian from the Zhytomyr region there, who almost starts cursing at me right away—why did I come there. I remained silent, because I see that he is an idiot, a bit off his rocker. After that they say: “We will not register you here.” “I have a referral to come here.” "You'll sit in prison." And that's it. At first, they let me spend the night in the temporary detention cell. They say: "While we figure out what to do with you, you'll be here." The next day they let me out, because it's 'not allowed'—they let me out and they follow me.

I’m walking, wherever I look—there's nowhere for me to settle. I go to the train station. I looked—I can sit here, I can buy something to eat here, well, and maybe I’ll see someone. I checked how the buses run, when, and where. I'm studying the situation. I walked around like that for three days, and they are watching me everywhere. I got an envelope from someone, wrote a letter to my sister, and dropped it in the mail. I gave my sister addresses, so she would inform everyone at those addresses where I am. My sister, having received the letter, immediately fulfilled my request and I began to receive information orally. A person comes to me from Chișinău and says: "You're supposed to receive money transfers." The KGB men knew that I had 19 karbovantsi. What was 19 karbovantsi? For a week, that was just barely enough. Well, and that man brought me a twenty-five. Bakhtalovskyi from Krasnoyarsk Krai sent me 250 karbovantsi. He had also been in Mordovia, in the 19th camp, I think. He had a three-year sentence and was released from there. I have money now.

I go to the post office, I ask: “Are there any money transfers for me?” “What’s the last name? Let me see your passport.” “I don’t have a passport.” “We can’t give it to you.” But another one says: "What other documents do you have?” "I have these documents—‘Certificate of Release.’” She says: "Is there a photograph?" "Yes.” “Does it look like you?” “It does.” “Well then, fine, give it to them.” And they gave me the money transfers there. The KGB men see that I've bought myself a briefcase, bought clothes to change into. They’re missing something here. They’re watching me, but I'm starting to live my own life. I bought an interesting book, I'm reading at the station. They followed me like that for three days and—wham—they take me and send me through the prosecutor (it was a kind of court) to a special detention-and-distribution center. That had nothing to do with my person at all. But I stayed there, the management was surprised, they say: “We haven't had passengers like you.” "Then why do you accept them?" "They order us—we obey."

I spent less than a month there, then got out. I got out, I'm walking down the street—two policemen are walking behind me and a "bobby" van is driving along—just in case, for any eventuality. I walked and walked like that, and then what do I do? I had studied a route there. I walk as if into a store, and between the walls there's a passage, from which you can quickly get to the station. I think: they will never figure out that I disappeared there. I went as if into the store, they followed me, but I went faster, there were a lot of people. They thought I went into the store, but I went past the doors. And I went, running, running. And there is a big cliff there, you have to fly through the air from about twenty-five meters—and you're right by the station. I had no other choice. From there, bam—I jump...

V.O.: Where to?

M.L.: Into that ravine, without a parachute.

V.O.: And what’s at the bottom?

M.L.: Well, you know, it’s just scree and clay there. So, I slid down in a cone shape. I didn’t even fall, but immediately started running across the mine gallery—just as a bus to Chisinau was arriving, and I got on it. It was a miracle. I sat down on the bus and headed for Chisinau. I arrived in Chisinau and went to Aidov’s place. He had sent me money before, which is how he blew his cover; they knew the address of that apartment. I went in—and they took me in right away, treated me as a guest, and I took a bath. I must have soaked for about two hours, washing off all that prison filth. Then I had dinner and spent the night. Mykola Ternavsky was already there, along with one other person whose last name I’ve forgotten. The next day, the Aidovs gave me more money and said, “Go do something about your appearance.” I went and picked out some clothes and shoes for myself, got myself in order, everything as it should be. I left all my old things where I changed, where I was trying on clothes. I put on the new outfit, paid, and left. I also bought myself a briefcase. I arrived back at their place in the evening. They opened the door and stared: “Oh, my God!”

V.O.: What kind of gentleman is this?

M.L.: “My,” his wife said, “what they’ve done to the man. You’re a completely different person now!” We had dinner, and then there was a long, persistent ring at the door. I knew right away that a normal person doesn’t ring like that—only a boor presses so hard. Aidov said, “Go to the kitchen.” I went to the kitchen, where a guest of his was sitting—an engineer, probably a Jewish man. They entered. I heard a loud conversation start—the whole place was buzzing. Well, I thought, some good friends have come over, and they’re just joking around. Then Aidov ran in, as if to get his slippers, and told me: “They’re taking us to the police station. Once we leave, after they take us, you get out and go to Mykola Ternavsky’s place.” “All right.” And he ran off. They left. I turned off the light there and left. But I didn’t go to Ternavsky’s; I went to the Voloshyns’. That Arkadiy Voloshyn had been in prison with me, I think in camp no. 19, for about a year. He had already left for Israel. I went to his parents’ home.

I saw that they even had a photograph of me—not a very good one, but it was there. “Oh, that’s you! Arkasha told us about you, it’s so good you’ve come.” I entered, and the place was full of people. In a large room, they were all sitting on sofas with their transistor radios. I was introduced as so-and-so, who had been with Arkasha. They greeted me and talked with me for about an hour. It was nine o’clock, and they were all listening to their transistors—one to this, another to that, and afterward they would discuss what had been reported. Then they left, and I said, “I’ll be staying the night, if I may?” “Of course.” “Good, but,” I said, “wake me up at six in the morning.” “All right.” They gave me dinner. They woke me—breakfast was already served. From their place, I went back to the Aidovs’. I rang, and the wife came out. She saw me and shouted to her husband: “Look, what a joy—he’s here, he’s not lost!” He ran out: “Oh, Petrovych, come in.” They both sat down and said: “A pure chance saved you yesterday. That man who was with us—he saved you.” “What happened?” “They came in: ‘Who are you?’ ‘I’m the owner of the apartment.’ ‘And you?’ ‘I’m his wife.’ ‘And you?’ ‘And I’m the daughter.’ ‘And you?’ ‘And I’m a guest.’ ‘Your passport.’ ‘What for?’ ‘Passport!’ And he says, ‘I’m not showing you my passport.’ ‘Why?’ ‘I don’t trust you.’ This was all in Russian. ‘You don’t trust us? Then we’re taking you to the police station.’ ‘Well, take me, even beyond the station.’ ‘And you, owner, and you, madam, and your daughter—we’re taking all of you.’ They were detaining him. ‘Here’s the passport. But I will give you the passports.’ ‘You’re already at the police station, what do you need, who else do you need?’ Well, in short, the Minister of Internal Affairs arrived. ‘Alright,’ to him, ‘passport. I am the Minister of Internal Affairs.’ ‘So what if you’re the Minister of Internal Affairs? On what grounds do you want my passport? I was visiting a friend, that’s all.’ ‘Show me your hands.’ ‘What hands?’ ‘Your own.’ ‘And why do you need my hands?’ And he hides his hands. He’s deliberately playing with them. ‘Show me your hands!’ ‘I won’t.’ ‘Stop your joking.’ Then he said, ‘Alright, here are my hands.’ The man glanced: ‘It’s not him.’”

V.O.: Not the right hands?

M.L.: Not the right hands. Mine were injured. “Oh,” they said then, “leave him alone. Last name.” “I won’t tell you. I’m going to,” he said, “write a complaint against you for apprehending me [unintelligible]. I came to visit these people, and you took me away.” “Alright, go on.” Not him, it meant. So they let him go. To Aidov: “Do you know Lutsyk?” “I do.” “How do you know him?” “How? I was in prison with him; he visited me.” “Ah, he was here? Alright, then, let’s write up a report.”

He wrote a report stating that he had sent me money, but the money was never delivered. And now I had arrived, they gave me that money, gave me warm clothes, and I left—he didn’t know where. They wrote up the report and let him and his wife go. The wife went to see that Ternavsky. As she walked, she saw that the bus stop where he was supposed to take the trolleybus or bus was teeming with police. It was clear they were waiting for me. Then she went to the third person who had been at their place. Just inside the entrance—two policemen. Up to the second floor—two more, on the third—two, and so on all the way to the top. She went to the apartment, rang the bell, and they opened. She entered and told them the whole story. They said, “There was no one here.” And she: “They’re on every staircase.” The owner said, “I’ll go down now and have a look, ask what they’re doing here.” “No need, they didn’t say anything to me, they let me pass.” “Well,” he said, “still, I’ll walk you.” But his wife said: “Don’t go alone; we’ll go together, all three of us. How will you get back?” Ah, well, women have a point, too. When she told me all this, she asked, “What are you thinking now?” I said, “I’m thinking of getting out of here. But I need someone to walk me to the bus stop because it’s clear the trains and wagons are being checked. I have to leave Chisinau by bus, but not towards Kyiv, because everything there is being checked, but towards Odesa. Odesa, Mykolaiv.” Alright. Aidov said, “I’ll go.” I said: “No, you stay home. Let your wife and daughter go.”

We said our goodbyes, and the women went with me to the bus. The bus station and the train station were right there together. They found the next bus, bought a ticket, and gave it to me. We waited a bit longer. The girl went to the train station and came back, saying: “The police are checking all the train cars, and now they’re doing a sweep of the buses, checking everyone.” I had a feeling I was in hot water: there must have been some kind of alert. The departure time for the Mykolaiv bus was approaching. We quickly went to it. All three of us got on; they were seeing me off, and then the police approached. The driver pressed the horn, signaling, showing them he was on a schedule, but they insisted on their check. He said, “That’s not my problem.” And he drove off. I ducked down a little, while the women looked out, and all the other passengers were watching something. We drove out of the city, they got off at two stops, having bought me something for the road. WANDERINGS (1972–1973) And so I left Chisinau and arrived in Mykolaiv. I was lucky. From Mykolaiv, I got a ticket to Kharkiv, and in Kharkiv, one to Moscow. I didn’t visit anyone in Mykolaiv or Kharkiv. In Moscow, I went to see Aleksandr Ginzburg, but his wife told me, “He’s in Tarusa, go there.” So I went to Tarusa. In Tarusa, Yuli Daniel’s wife, what’s her name, a Kharkiv native herself...

V.O.: Larisa Bogoraz?

M.L.: Bogoraz. I stayed with them for a bit. Well, it wasn’t quite for me there... I feel constrained in such an environment. Some people love that kind of commotion, a lot of people around. It was there that I raised the question of leaving the country as an Austrian citizen. That is, my father was an Austrian citizen, and I have the right to claim it. Sakharov took up the case. Sakharov raised this issue somewhere, but he did it in a Jewish manner, so that I didn’t get a concrete yes-or-no answer. They would say, “You need to say this, you need to do that.” That didn’t suit me. I left them and went to Leningrad. In Leningrad, I visited some acquaintances—both Jews and Ukrainians. Including the daughter of the priest Makarenko, who had died practically in my arms. She had three rooms, a big family, two school-aged daughters. She had a good income, so I wouldn't be a burden in terms of food. She worked where they sold sandwiches and had connections at a restaurant, so she said, “You can live here for years.” Later, she introduced me to the Aidovs (But didn’t Aidov live in Chisinau? – V.O.).

Now I hear on Radio Liberty that this Aidov is involved in the rights of the repressed. I went to their place and got acquainted. They showed me everything I needed. One time, they were having some guests, and Aidov’s wife—she was the daughter of the district police chief, who was already retired—asked in front of everyone: “Papa, did it ever happen that some criminal was hiding in Leningrad and you couldn’t find him?” And he replied: “Oh, my dear daughter, we had one like that, we searched for him for 15 years, and only found out three days after he died, after he was buried. And he was living just in the second building from our police department. You see how things are?” They gave such an example. And I lived there all of January, February, March, and April of 1973. I visited museums—the Hermitage, the Russian Museum, Pushkino, the Nevsky Lavra. It was already becoming too much for me. I already knew everything of interest; I wanted a change of scenery. On the other hand, I felt it was safer for me there. And so it was. I sat at the same table with the head of the district KGB, talking, enjoying the hospitality of that Lyudmila Stepanivna Makarenko.

But one day I was in my room when the doorbell rang suddenly. The daughters went out to let in whoever was ringing—the mother stood at the door, and he appeared. She addressed him by his first name and patronymic: “Oh, come in, come in, I’m glad to see you.” He entered, and I could hear what they were talking about through the wall. He said: “Listen, do you know a man named Lutsyk, does he visit you—Mikhail Lutsyk?” She up and said, “Yes, he was here.” “When?” “Sometime in January. Why, are the police looking for him or something?” “Oh no, I don’t know anything—I was just told to check.” “And if he comes, what should I tell him?” “No, really, I don’t know anything.” And that was it. He stayed for a bit and left. She ran to me with her daughters and told me what had happened. I said, “I heard everything.” Before that, some people had told her they were watching: “They know he’s with you, and they’re watching.” She asked me, “Could this be true?” “No.” “Why not?” “If they were watching, I would have known by now. But now they might start.” Then she took me to other people. I stayed with them for a while. In short, life there had become unsafe. And I had another incident. One day I was walking down the street. A man stopped in front of me: “Well, go on, take me, lead the way. Take me, you pig!” I looked at him and said, “What do you want?” “What do you mean, I know who you are, you’re going to arrest me now and take me away. I can see that official mug of yours.” I commanded, “A-bout-face!” He went one way, and I went the other.

I realized I must look like someone else. But then I thought: this might be something else entirely. I needed to be more careful. Finally, I decided to leave. I also visited the parents of Igor Ogurtsov. I left for Moscow, where I visited the relatives of Yuriy Galanskov. They were holding a memorial for him, as he had died in Mordovia. There were poets there, and the historian Iosifov. He came and declared him a hero. Then they got drunk and started arguing among themselves, like “Russian folk”—Muscovites with Muscovites. I left them. They treated me well, I can’t say anything bad, but we didn’t have things like that back then. Now, maybe it could happen with us too, since there are many drunks now. From there I went straight to Kyiv. I went to Boyarka, to Mykhailo Markovych Klymenko’s place. It was, I think, 4 Komsomolska Street. They received me well there. He has a daughter who is a beautiful poetess. Everyone else had left, so it was just the mother, the daughter, and me. I looked out and saw a woman walking across the street towards their house, in a real hurry. I said, “There’s a woman hurrying over—it would be better if she didn’t see me.” The daughter looked: “Oh, that’s,” she said, “my aunt.” “It doesn’t matter.” The mother went to meet her. As if she was going somewhere: “Where are you going?” “To your place.” “What’s wrong?” “Is Lutsyk at your place?” “No.” “Where is he?” “He left, last night.” Well, the aunt turned back, entered the house, and threw her hands up like this: “What is this?” she said to the daughter. And the daughter said, “It’s a miracle! We’ve,” she said, “unmasked a viper. How did we not know? It was she who was selling us out, telling them we were taking wood that we prepared for the floor. She informed on everything, and now,” she said, “they gave her a task from Kyiv to find out where you are.” And they say, “How could you just look at her and say it’s better she didn’t see you?” Well, never mind. We had some more breakfast and left by another road, headed to Kyiv.

It was clear I had no reason to return to Boyarka. In Kyiv, a day later, I met with that Klymenko’s son. He said, “Our Boyarka, the train station is so heavily guarded! Reinforcements came from Kyiv and one of them said, ‘What kind of man was here that the Kyiv KGB and police—everyone is on high alert?’ ‘What’s wrong?’ ‘They’re all over Boyarka, looking for him, showing his photograph.’ Some guy on a motorcycle drove up, they didn’t know who, they thought it was me, and they chased him all the way to Fastiv.” That’s the kind of stir I caused there. Seeing how things were, I went to Moldavia, because I had left some manuscripts with someone there. I went to Chisinau, to Rybnitsa… No. From there I went home, to the Lviv region, to my sister’s. I arrived at my sister’s place in Lavochne. My sister wasn’t in Lavochne; she was in Khashchuvannia. I had to cross a mountain—about six kilometers. It was a dark night, though the moon shone a little. I made it to my sister’s. Well, it wasn’t so smooth, because I fell… I had dressed nicely to arrive in a respectable state, but I ended up in a quagmire—I sank up to my navel. And it wasn’t water, but mud. I had all my papers in my briefcase. I barely managed to pull myself out of that muck. And it was just before dawn. I had traveled all night. I climbed out of the quagmire, soaked, and as I walked, the dogs started barking at me. I approached the house of my aunt, the one who had once helped me out—giving me a pig, potatoes, and cabbage for the sick. But it seemed to me that this couldn’t be my sister’s house (Or my aunt’s? – V.O.), because there was a lot of firewood stacked against the wall.

I thought: she lives poorly, so this must not be her place. I walked on. I began to doubt I was in the right place, that I had already crossed into Zakarpattia. Suddenly I came to a familiar street. Aha, now I was oriented. I turned back and it turned out I had already been right under my sister’s house. I began to tap softly on the window. Softly, because according to my sister, unreliable people lived on the other side. No one appeared at my tapping. I realized that neither my sister nor her daughter was home. I started looking for a way to get into the house because it would soon be dawn and I had nowhere to go. I tried one window—it wouldn’t budge. I tried the door—no luck. Finally, I found a window that pulled out a little. Somehow, I opened it, climbed into the house, and locked it behind me. I took off my pants and put on another pair of trousers. There was nothing to do but go to sleep. I lay down on the bed, covered myself, and slept. In the morning, when the sun had risen a bit, I looked through the curtains and saw the neighbor woman peering in—she was tiptoeing around, looking, peeking into the house. I just stuck my head out a little to see what was happening, thinking: I’m caught. I looked at the clock—it was already ten, eleven, twelve o’clock—and still nobody. I was hungry, having been on the road for a day already, and found myself in a house with no water to wash up. No water to drink, no water to wash, no hostess, and no one to tell. Finally, around two or half-past two, my sister arrived. She was a mistrustful person, God rest her soul, she knew the Bible and theology perfectly—a woman who looked ahead at the world. I hid so as not to startle her into a scream when she came in. I went into the other room, so she would enter and close the door behind her, and then I would appear before her.

She came in, walked to the table, and then I entered: “Hello, little sister.” To make her realize it was me, because anything could happen—we hadn’t seen each other for a long time, about twenty years. She said, “Oh, Mykhasyu, my dear brother!” We embraced quietly, so no one would hear. “The door,” I pointed, “did you lock it?” “Everything’s locked.” Then we began to whisper about this and that. She said, “There’s nothing in the house, not a crust of bread, nothing.” I said, “I have money.” She said, “But how can I go? They’ll ask, where did I get money? It’ll raise suspicion. Maybe my daughter Stefa will be here soon, maybe she’ll go and get something.” I said, “Let’s wait for Stefa.” We waited and talked. She went and brought water, washed all my muddy clothes, and dried them a little. Another tricky situation: drying men’s clothes would raise suspicion. It turned out there was no place to do it inside, and it wasn't possible outside either. Petrus, my cousin’s son, came over and sat down. I studied him—he was family, after all, what did he look like? I thought he didn’t see me. It turned out he did see me. He looked at me, I looked at him, and then he went home. My sister happened to be at their house just then. He came home and said, “Mama, Stefa has a gentleman caller.” And that Stefa had a friend there, and her mother was there too. So she said, “What, he came to see her, but not my daughter?” Women have their own politics. My sister said, “There’s no one there.” And he said, “Yes, there is!” He glanced at a photograph and said, “Look, it’s him.” And they said, “That’s Mykhailo, your brother!” “Yes, so, is he here?” “He’s here.” “Why didn’t you say so?” “What am I supposed to say, when he’s been sitting there for a day with nothing to eat? Not a crust of bread.” “That’s alright, we’ll find something right now!” They went: “Here, take this, and have him come to our place in the evening.” In truth, I didn’t go anywhere. I stayed there for two weeks.

After two weeks, the secretary of the Volosianka village council—the council for those villages—came and said: “Mariika, the KGB knows your brother is with you, and they’re already preparing to move in. There are,” he said, “a lot of them in Volosianka, preparing as if for the front lines. They say he’s armed. Be careful there’s no fighting here.” And he left. He had come with a briefcase as if on official business, just to let her know. He didn’t tell anyone and knew she wouldn’t tell anyone either. He left. It was already getting dark. My sister said, “You see, you need to change apartments.” “Well,” I said, “let’s not change apartments, let’s just leave tonight.” That night, she led me to Beskyd—the last station above Lavochne where trains from Uzhhorod to Lviv stop. We arrived there, and I stayed in the bushes. It was still dark. She went and bought a ticket. I waited until the train arrived, got on, she stayed behind, and I left. I didn’t stop in Skole, Slavske, or Stryi, because I knew they’d be waiting there. And in Lviv too. I got off in Mykolaiv and went to see Omelyan Pryshlyak. He was one of the leaders of the Gulag underground, a relative of that Yevhen Pryshlyak. I stayed with him for a bit. From Pryshlyak, I headed to Ternopil to see the priest Kurylas. This was a well-known family, he had many sons—one was a famous artist, and another had been in the camps. The daughter of the camp commander had fallen for him, and he brought her with him to Ternopil. By the way, she was a better patriot than some Ukrainian women—she learned the Ukrainian language well and taught it to her children. She said she was a child of Kyivan Rus’. I stayed there a while, then he took me to a village to his father’s place, and I stayed there for a bit. From there, I headed for Lutsk. In Lutsk there was a Yurko Savchuk; we were in the 11th camp in Mordovia together. He was a poet and also had some conflicts with the KGB, with poetry playing a certain role. Maybe it wasn't worth a conviction, but they convicted him anyway.

As it happens: I arrived in Lutsk, and the addresses he had given me—the buildings weren’t even there anymore. There was one other street he had mentioned—Tarasova. I walked and walked along that street—no one knew that last name. I was about to give up. I looked and saw a young woman coming out, pushing a stroller with a child. I said, “Excuse me, do you know a family with this name on this street?” She said, “I don’t know, but we can go to my father, and he has the voter lists, it should be there.” “Excellent.” We went. The father saw me and, evidently, thought I was some party boss and tried very hard to give me the list. I looked, found the street number, forty-one, and under that number lived Andriy Savchuk, the father of this Yurko Savchuk. I walked there, to that number, and thought: I was about to leave, and then I meet this person and end up with someone who has all the documents. I’m not superstitious, but there’s something to it. I arrived, they welcomed me, but said, “Yurko isn’t here; he should be at work.” Maybe I was there for half an hour. When I heard someone walking past the window, saying: “Someone must be here for me, my heart tells me someone has come to see me.” He entered: “Is someone here?” “Yes.” “Where?” “There, in that room.” He walked in—and there I was, sitting.

We sat there together, enjoyed their hospitality, and he said to me, “I’ll arrange proper living conditions for you. Let’s go.” We went to see a certain lady. On the way, he said, “This is a respectable, cultured family. Here in Lutsk, she is held in high esteem. I think it would be good for you to be acquainted.” It was the Gagalovsky family. I’ve already forgotten her first name, I think it was Iryna. Her brother was a doctor, and her sister was a teacher. I stayed there for some time and then left for Kyiv. ANOTHER CIRCLE OF HELL (1973–1978) Some time had passed—I wondered how things were in Boyarka. I went there and was spotted immediately. I took another road out of there to Moldavia, arrived in Chisinau, and stayed with my acquaintances there. They also said, “Lately, we’ve noticed we’re being watched.” From there I went to Rybnitsa, to the man who had my manuscripts. I wanted to take them and leave, but he began to insist I stay as his guest: “It’s too early to leave; we’re enjoying our talk.” And in the morning, around 11 o’clock, as I was walking from his place to the bus stop, I suddenly heard a voice: “Mikhail Petrovych, where are you going?” I said, “To the bus.” “To the bus where?” “Over there.” “But you should be going over there.” “I have no business there.” He pulled out a pistol and said, “Go over there.”—he was an officer of the Rybnitsa district KGB, the deputy chief. Well, so I went. He brought me to the police station; there was a man named Sereda there. He told Sereda to keep me in the arrest room until further orders. The order was to open a case against me, put me on trial, and give me two years for vagrancy.

V.O.: Here, in the Kharkiv Human Rights Group file, it says: arrested on June 31, 1973. Is that right?

M.L.: Yes, it was June 31, 1973. The investigation began. Well, what kind of investigation could there be? It was clear they just needed to lock me up. I don’t remember the exact date; maybe it’s there?

V.O.: Convicted on September 17, 1973.

M.L.: That's right. I was convicted on September 17. After that, I filed an appeal. On that appeal, the verdict was overturned, but this didn’t suit the KGB. Instead of releasing me, they used an addendum stating that the verdict was being overturned and the case sent for further investigation. That little addendum was the reason I was sent for a forensic psychiatric evaluation. No doctor examined me there; I just sat in a small corridor for about ten minutes. The ones who brought me went in there with the folders containing my case, came out, and said, “Let’s go.” We got into the paddy wagon or Black Maria and returned to prison. At the Chisinau prison, I was sent not to the investigative block, but to the hospital wing. There I ended up in a cell, I don't know the number, maybe six, seven, or eight—something like that. When I walked in, one guy said, “Oh, greetings, Colonel!” I looked at him: “What colonel?” “Well, you’re a colonel, I know you.” “How do you know me?” “I just know, you’re Lutsyk, right?” “Yes, I am.” “Then you’re a colonel.” “Where did you get such nonsense?” “It’s no nonsense—you were arrested in Stryi in 1957. The arrest was so major that half the streets of Stryi were blocked off, there were dozens of buses, six KGB and police cars, surrounded by machine guns and submachine guns—that’s where they took you. They confiscated a pistol, a radio, a heap of American money, and so on.” “Nothing of the sort. There was a pistol, there was money, but not American, Soviet—twenty-five-ruble notes, new bills—five hundred rubles, and there was no radio.” “Well,” he said, “that’s what they were saying.” “Where did you hear that?” “All the prisoners in the prisons and camps were saying at the time that they had arrested a colonel from American intelligence. You were dressed in an elegant officer’s uniform, not Soviet.” “I was dressed well, but there was no radio, no American dollars, I’m not a spy.” As for whether I was a colonel or not, nobody knew. But the KGB was spreading such rumors. He told me, “So they’ve diagnosed you.” I said, “Diagnosed what?” “That you’re mentally ill.” When I heard those words, it was like a wave of electricity shot through me, up and down. For a long time, maybe a minute, I couldn’t say anything. But then I said, “Where did you get the idea that I was diagnosed?” “Because everyone they bring here gets diagnosed. They diagnosed me. I was faking it because it was to my advantage; I would have gotten a 15-year sentence. But they diagnosed me, and now I’ll be out in 4-5 years. And you,” he said, “they gave you that diagnosis because the KGB wants to get rid of you. So,” he said, “it’s all clear.” After that, Captain Plishko came in—he was the deputy chief of the Chisinau prison for political affairs.

This Captain Plishko, when he found out about me, came to the cell, where there were about twenty zeks, and said he wanted to learn more about the history of the Middle East. According to his information, I was an Orientalist. He wanted to take lessons from me. I saw no crime in it and agreed, especially since I could refresh my own memory.

He would come to my cell. The zeks would sit there as I explained to him things connected to that, about the Bible. He listened with interest, saying, “We don’t have specialists on this subject in Chisinau.” One day he came in and asked, “Well, Mykhailo Petrovych, have they diagnosed you?” in Ukrainian. I said, “They have.” “Well,” he said, “if they’ve diagnosed you, then they can send the whole planet to the madhouse. Only there’s no one left to do it, because the ones who made the diagnosis are the same.” “Well, you see, they diagnosed me.” “How can I help you?” “Get me paper, envelopes, and something to write with.” “But,” he said, “after being diagnosed, you’re not allowed to write.” “Why not?” “Because they won’t let it through.” “Well, you try to make sure they do.” “Alright, I’ll,” he said, “talk to the prison warden and the head of the special section. If they agree, I’ll supply you with paper and everything else.” The next day he brought paper, envelopes, a pen, everything needed. I wrote. I had already made a plan. I wrote briefly that on such-and-such a date I was sent for a psychiatric evaluation where I was not called in, yet I was declared mentally incompetent. “Therefore, I request to be sent for a higher-level examination at the Serbsky Institute in Moscow to clarify my true condition.” And that was all. I wrote this to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Moldavia, of Ukraine, to the Central Committee of the CPSU, to the courts, to the Councils of Ministers.

Those applications were sent off. Replies started coming in. They put pressure on the Rybnitsa court, which had sent me there. Because that court now had to answer for me, it was receiving many replies. Not only that, but Plishko also raised the issue of me being familiarized with my case and given the opportunity to make copies of those replies. I documented everything well, making copies of every document. He kept supplying me with paper, and as I wrote, I thought about how life works: if I had refused him, I wouldn’t have had his help now. And so I waited for a year and a half until they sent me to Dnipropetrovsk. True, the Rybnitsa court had instructed the prison warden to forbid me from writing and sending mail, and also from receiving anything addressed to me. But in fact, I had already done what I needed to.

I had copies of those documents, and when they sent me to Dnipropetrovsk after a year and a half (because there was a queue there too—it turns out there’s even a queue for hell, you had to wait, and for so long), I took those copies with me. To Dnipropetrovsk, of course, they transported several of us in a special box, including this fellow Hanok. We were washed in the bathhouse, and the orderlies came to receive the new arrivals. An orderly came, a huge brute. All the orderlies there were like that. He asked, “Who is Lutsyk?” “I am.” “With me.” As we were walking, I asked, “What ward am I going to?” “The third.” “And who’s the head doctor there?” “The wife of a KGB colonel.” “And her last name?” “Butkovska (later Butkevych), Nelya Mykhailivna. Why do you need to know all that?” “I just want to know where I am and who will be looking after me.” “Ah, well, you’ll see in a moment,” he said, quite rudely. He brought me to the doctors’ office and handed me over to the nurse on duty. The nurse on duty was waiting for the senior ward nurse to arrive. She said, “Let him wait until Vera Pavlovna comes.” I already knew that this Vera Pavlovna was supposed to come. As I understood it, the diagnosis was of a nature that I was a being who had no orientation of the time he lived in, where he was born, who he was, and so on. It was clear that this whole Vera Pavlovna and all those doctors had already received my file and familiarized themselves with it. When the aforementioned Vera Pavlovna came in, she looked at me, bustled about a bit, and the nurse on duty said to her, “This is the new one they brought us.” She said, “Alright, just a moment.” She approached and asked, “Last name, where did you come from? Tell me why.” And, without finishing the sentence, she said, “Oh, I forgot that he doesn’t understand anything.” I immediately said, “No, Vera Pavlovna, I understand everything and I will answer your questions like a sane person.” “Good. In that case, answer: do you admit that you are ill?” “No.” “Well, even a little bit?” I answered that there’s no such thing as a little bit; you’re either sick or you’re healthy. “What, you know psychiatry?” “I do.” “Well, that’s a different conversation.” She wrote down all my identifying information as required and placed me in the “supervision ward”—that ward was watched by orderlies and a nurse around the clock. (This paragraph was recorded a few minutes later. – V.O.).

When Vera Pavlovna finished talking with me, I said, “And please pass this on to the intended recipient.” And I gave her the copies of the applications I had brought. She snatched them right up, looked them over, and gave them to Nelka—that’s what they called Nelya Mykhailivna Butkevych. They must have had trouble with those documents because, in this respect, psychiatrists are very meticulous. That is, they are not meticulous with the patients, but when it comes to any documents that have escaped and gone through the proper channels and for which they could be held accountable—they are meticulous. There were about thirty people in that ward. Well, maybe not thirty, but around that number. In that ward was a man named Anton, his last name was Demchenko. He had been there for 20 years—a man who had graduated from the Kharkiv Agricultural Academy. Another was from the Kirovohrad region. I’ve forgotten his last name, his first name was Anatoliy, and he lay in the bed next to mine, opposite me. I noticed his handsome face. A long face, even teeth, thin lips, eyes as blue as the sky, a thin, long nose, a high forehead.

In short, a picture of beauty. I thought, if women knew, they would be overjoyed to have children with him. I had that thought to myself. I established good relations with these neighbors. I saw who was around me. And when a fellow named Symonenko approached, they chased him away: “Don’t come over here.” I saw that they knew among themselves who was truly sick and wouldn’t let them near. It meant they were sane people. But in my situation, I wasn’t allowed to communicate with anyone. Why? Because they think: if you’re sane, what business do you have with the sick? I understood that. So I tried to communicate less, not to pay attention to anything at all, to withdraw into myself. Well, if someone asked me something, I would answer. I was counting on having the diagnosis overturned. And I was also demanding to be sent to the Serbsky Institute. But the judge from the Rybnitsa court who had convicted me wrote in his decision for the prison warden that only the institution I was being sent to could change any measures. Thus, this Dnipropetrovsk hospital, these doctors, this ward had the right to make one decision or another, or to offer their recommendations.