MYKOLA ANDRIYOVYCH HORBAL

I n t e r v i e w with Mykola Andriyovych H o r b a l

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(Last corrected on January 7, 2008)

V.V. Ovsiyenko: On July 17, 1998, in the home of Mykola Horbal, Vasyl Ovsiyenko is conducting this interview with him. Please, begin.

M.A. Horbal: Vasyl, when these things are recorded, it’s obviously for a reason. Perhaps it’s necessary. I’m holding this short biographical note you wrote about me, and I must say it contains many inaccuracies.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: They need to be corrected.

M.A. Horbal: Obviously. So I will start with it. First, let’s clarify my date of birth. I was born in Lemkivshchyna. I’m holding a certificate from the Ministry of Labor of Ukraine—it turns out that documents on resettled people are now kept only in this Ministry. It states: “In 1944-46, based on the agreement between the Ukrainian SSR and the Polish Committee of National Liberation of September 9, 1944, a resettlement of citizens from Poland to the territory of the Ukrainian SSR was carried out. The family lists of resettlers from Poland to the Ukrainian SSR for the village of Volovets, Horlytsi County, include the family of Andriy Hnatovych Horbal, composed as follows: Andriy Hnatovych Horbal, born 1898—head of the family; Teklia Mykolaivna Horbal, born 1906—wife; Maria Andriivna Horbal, born 1928—daughter; Olena Andriivna Horbal, born 1932—daughter; Bohdan Andriyovych Horbal, born 1937—son; Mykola Andriyovych Horbal, born 1940—son. Place of birth—the village of Volovets, Poland. Date of preparation of the family lists—February 8, 1946.”

V.V. Ovsiyenko: A Polish document?

M.A. Horbal: No, I think it was prepared by a special deportation authority that operated under the aegis of the NKVD. You see, this paper is dated 1946, but we were deported in ’45. So, this was the only document for all family members. Now, I am officially listed everywhere as having been born in 1941. When I received this list, I asked my sister at home if it was true that I was born in 1940, as indicated here. My sister confirmed it. During those hard times, when we were resettled, we had no documents with us, only this list, and even that was lost when our house burned down here in Ukraine, in the Ternopilshchyna region. When I needed to go to the 8th grade after seven years of school, they required a birth certificate, which was issued to resettlers by the local ZAGS [Civil Registry Office] based on a parental statement. Apparently, my father decided then that I should be six months younger. (I was born on September 10, 1940; according to the ZAGS certificate—May 6, 1941).

What was the motivation for this? My sister later said: “We were so unfortunate, exhausted by the war, resettlements, wanderings, and hunger, that Father thought, let him be a year younger—he’ll grow a bit more by the time they draft him into the army.” Now, because of that, I’ll retire a year later.

So, I corrected one mistake, because I knew for sure I was born on September 10, and I always said the tenth, but my passport said May 6. But it was impossible to correct the year. How could I? I celebrated my birthday on the old date but wrote it as it was in the certificate of birth, according to my father’s statement. Such an inaccuracy. Obviously, when I have to write some biographical note about myself someday, I will write it as it was.

So, I was born in 1940, on the night of September 9-10, in the village of Volovets, Horlytsi County—that was Kraków Voivodeship in Lemkivshchyna. This is one of the westernmost parts of the Ukrainian Carpathians, not far from the village of Krynytsia—a famous resort with mineral waters. There was not a single Polish family in our village; it was a purely Ukrainian village.

Obviously, I should tell you a little about my father and my family. Vasyl, I’ll show you my father’s education certificates and his diploma from the cantor’s institute. (He takes out a large book with leather covers, which contains his father’s certificates. – V.O.) This book, a Psalter, is one of my relics that went through all the resettlements with us. Dad brought it from America at one time; his uncle (mother’s brother – V.O.) gave it to him.

All the Horbals come from the village of Bortne, which is next to the village of Volovets—the same Bortne from which the family of the composer Dmytro Bortniansky originates. It was a well-known, nationally conscious village. It so happened—but that’s a separate topic—that during the First World War, Lemkivshchyna, like all of Western Ukraine, was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which was at war with Russia at the time. I must admit that we had very strong Russophile tendencies (and they existed in Lviv, as in Galicia in general), but while in Galicia the intelligentsia slowly began to distinguish between the concepts of “Ruthenian” and “Muscovite” and to embrace the new concepts of “Ukrainian” and “Ukrainianness,” in Lemkivshchyna, unfortunately, these processes occurred much more slowly. And the imperial Russian structures indeed supported Russophile tendencies in every way in Galicia, to which Lemkivshchyna also belonged.

The Austrian government couldn't figure it out: part of their state’s citizens called themselves “we are Ruski,” “we are Rusyns.” (The word “Lemko” at that time was more of an external nickname, and the Lemkos themselves did not call themselves that at the beginning of the twentieth century). For the Austrians, who were at war with Russia, this segment of the population, which clearly sympathized with their enemy, was not unreasonably regarded as a Muscovite agency, so quite a few Lemko intellectuals were arrested and imprisoned in the Thalerhof camp. Many of them perished there. In the village of Bortne (I recently visited that village), there is a cross. “In memory of the victims of Thalerhof. Grateful residents of Bortne in honor of the Russian idea,” reads the inscription. The poor Lemkos could not figure out that the Muscovite State, which took the name Russia under Peter the Great, and their Ruthenian identity were not identical concepts. And the Muscovites exploited this.

This Psalter was a gift to my father from his uncle, who had invited him to America. I opened this Psalter and read on the last page: “To the glory of the One-in-Essence, Life-Giving, Indivisible Lord the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, in the reign of the most pious autocrat, our great lord Emperor Nicholas Alexandrovich of all Russia, and his spouse, the most pious lady Empress Elizaveta,” and so on. Our Lemkos, even over there in America, were praying for the Tsar-batiushka. Or more accurately, such spiritual literature was published there, obviously with Muscovite money.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: What year is it from? The date is written in Cyrillic letters. One needs to know them…

M.A. Horbal: I can't say for sure. But that's not the point. In 1927, there wasn't a single Orthodox church in Lemkivshchyna. It was a region of the Greek Catholic Church. But then a transition to Orthodoxy began. In my village, they built a new church. I never had a conversation about this with my dad; I was a boy—it wasn’t the time for it, and then my father passed away; he died in 1961. I terribly regret that I didn't ask him so many things! My father was the firstborn in his family. My grandfather died when my father was eleven, and a stepfather came—Dziubyna: my grandmother remarried. Since my father was the eldest, the greatest burden of the household fell on him. For some reason, he didn't have a good relationship with his stepfather, and he ran away from home as a minor. For a while, he was a servant at the cantor’s institute in Przemyśl. It’s noted here somewhere—he was like a ward, then he was admitted to this institute.

But that's not what I wanted to say. Here is my father's certificate...

V.V. Ovsiyenko: It says here: “a student of the cantor’s institute”...

M.A. Horbal: “A student,” he was a ward later. And this is a school report: “Andriy Horbal, born March 10, 1898, in the village of Volivtsi, of the Catholic faith, Greek rite, began his schooling in the year 1906-1907, has been attending the local school since September 1, 1906.” And here are his grades: “Conduct—satisfactory, second semester—commendable, diligence—satisfactory, in studies and religion—very good, in reading—very good, in writing—very good, in the Ruthenian language (obviously, Ukrainian)—very good, in the Polish language—very good, in arithmetic combined with the science of geometry and forms—very good, in knowledge of history and nature—good, in drawing—very good, in singing—very good.”

By this I want to say that the village of Volovets, Horlytsi County, Kraków Voivodeship, was a Ukrainian village; you see the language this certificate is written in. The village had a school, it had its own kindergarten. And if today the question arises as to what kind of territory this was, this document, dated 1907, testifies...

V.V. Ovsiyenko: 1911.

M.A. Horbal: Excuse me—eleven. Issued to my father after he finished school. Things like that.

In 1925, my father graduated from the institute in Przemyśl. Obviously, Przemyśl at that time was a center of Ukrainian culture not only in the San region and Lemkivshchyna, but also in Galicia as a whole. By the beginning of the twentieth century, Przemyśl had become a kind of center of the Ukrainian renaissance. It was in such an environment that the consciousness of a boy from Lemkivshchyna—Andriy Horbal—was formed. Unfortunately, when he returned to the village as a specialist, almost the entire village was already attending a different church, not of the confession to which my father belonged. In my village—I asked my aunt—only three or four families remained, as a rule, the village intelligentsia, teachers, who still went to the Greek Catholic church, while the rest of the peasants built a new church for themselves—an Orthodox one. They brought in a *batiushka*, as the Lemkos call him, for it.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: A *batiushka*?

M.A. Horbal: A *batiushka*. In the Lemko dialect, the stress is fixed, always on the penultimate syllable, so it’s *batiushka*, not *batyushka*. I ask my father's sister, Aunt Maria, how she converted to Muscovite Orthodoxy: “Why a Muscovite *batiushka*?”

– “Well, our men say that some *batiushka* came from somewhere (a refugee from Russia, which by that time was under the Bolsheviks – M.H.) and is calling on everyone to convert to Orthodoxy, because it is ‘our firm faith.’”

How were the Lemkos to understand that Greek Catholics are the same Orthodox, just oriented towards Rome and not Moscow? In a Polish environment, such a step by the Lemkos (coming under Muscovite jurisdiction) even looked like a kind of resistance, a manifestation of patriotism. They were not yet oriented in the political processes, that Ukraine was forming in opposition to the Russian Empire, but, being in a Polish environment, they were searching for their own identity, sincerely believing that Lemko-Rusyn and Russia were identical concepts. A huge mass of people was deluded by this.

Why am I bringing this up? The resettlement that began in 1945 was (according to documents) a “voluntary exchange of population”: from here, from Galicia, from Volhynia, Poles were leaving for Poland, and from Lemkivshchyna, Kholmshchyna, the San region, and Podlachia, the Ukrainian population was being deported. 480,000, almost half a million Ukrainians, moved to the Ukrainian SSR.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: Was this not connected to the national resistance?

M.A. Horbal: To a large extent, yes! Moscow was ready to give up this territory, although Khrushchev—there are documents—wrote that this territory (Kholmshchyna, the San region, Lemkivshchyna) should be annexed to the Ukrainian SSR because it is Ukrainian territory. But Moscow refused. It gave it to the Poles on the condition that this would knock the ground out from under the armed resistance. And so it was, because this was the region of Polissia, the Carpathians, where UPA detachments were actively operating. Our population, for the most part, supported this armed resistance.

I must admit that on the Polish side, the authorities were also interested in driving the Ukrainians out of there. There were numerous cases where armed Polish detachments massacred entire Ukrainian villages. People were forced to flee for their lives. So really, can such a departure be called voluntary? I later asked my mother how it happened that we left. “Well,” she says, “some military men came and said we had to leave. People didn't want to go, many didn't want to. We had lived there as long as we could remember, our great-grandfathers’ and grandfathers’ graves were there—but we had to leave it all behind.”

My father was among those who did not want to leave, but I must say that even my grandmother said: “Let’s go to Russia, because we are Ruski.” She was a convinced Russophile. When we were traveling through the Lviv region, my father said: “People, let’s stop here, there are empty villages here—a place to live, our people are here,” but his mother categorically objected: “No, we won't stay here, we are Ruski, let’s go to Russia!” And they arrived in the Kharkiv region—they weren’t allowed to go further, of course, because resettlement was only within the Ukrainian SSR. They settled in the Kharkiv region. However, half a year of that collective farm and that “Russia” was enough for our Lemkos to harness their horses and, by their own means, travel across the whole of Ukraine “back home”—and they ended up right at the border, in the Sambir region; they weren't allowed any further “home.” My entire family, the families of my uncles, whom we call *stryikos* (father's brothers), are still there today, in the Sambir region. And since my father was an intellectual, had no horses or wagon, he sold all the furniture for a train ticket. It was only enough to get to the Ternopilshchyna region. There was some family on my mother’s side here. We arrived in the village of Letyache after the harvest in 1947 and settled there. I won't recount our whole odyssey—I always say that after the deportation, we settled in the Ternopilshchyna region. Although by the time we got here, it was already 1947, and we were deported from Lemkivshchyna in the spring of 1945.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: And those *stryikos*—did they want to go back to Lemkivshchyna?

M.A. Horbal: Obviously, but no one was allowed into Poland anymore—the border. Many people who were deported to the Odesa, Donetsk, and Dnipropetrovsk regions fled back. At one time, they believed that “there are beautiful lands there, people live joyfully all together in collective farms,” and so on. In Lemkivshchyna, the land is mountainous; you can't get very far on those stones. They sowed oats because wheat didn't grow well there, so they really lived hard. And they remembered from the First World War, when the Russian army came—they were uhlans, well-dressed, on fine large horses. My grandmother used to say that they would sometimes be given bread from the military field kitchen, white wheat bread. She would say: “My God, that bread is like the sun.” And here an NKVD officer is telling them: “We all live together, all the orchards are ours, the fields are ours, we grow things, then we share everything together, there are bees, they give honey.” I remembered that “honey.” Grandma says: “Let’s go there, they give honey there.” So when I was imprisoned, I wrote a letter to my uncle from Mordovia. Because he was surprised: I was a teacher and had some success, although we lived separately, me in Ternopilshchyna and them in the Drohobych region—“What happened to Mykola, why is he suddenly in prison?” So I wrote to them: “Uncle, so that a Lemko wouldn't complain too much, ‘where’s that honey?’, they gave him a bit of honey.” So that I wouldn’t complain too much about where the honey was, they gave me a bit of it. So now I’m eating that honey in Mordovia. Such is the irony of fate.

And Operation Vistula? That was a completely different action, because those Ukrainians who managed to remain in Poland, the Polish government, now as its own citizens (just of Ukrainian nationality), deported them to the western territories of Poland, the so-called “ziemie odzyskane,” lands that had become the property of Poland from Germany during the post-war redrawing of borders in Europe. This was a truly criminal action. Because we could at least gather, pack our things, could refuse to go, could demand something, could take property with us, including livestock and equipment, while they were given two hours to gather their bundles—and this population was scattered, one or two families at a time, into a Polish environment for complete assimilation. The intelligentsia was arrested and thrown into the concentration camp in Jaworzno. That was Operation Vistula.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: And in terms of time, how would you mark this? Your resettlement was in 1945, but what month?

M.A. Horbal: In the spring of 1945.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: And Operation Vistula?

M.A. Horbal: Operation Vistula was also in the spring, at Easter, but that was 1947, two years later. It lasted exactly two months. That is, the Poles did it all very quickly, because the troops came in and deported them. There were, in fact, two actions to destroy Ukrainian identity in Poland—in 1945-46 and 1947. I was recently in the village where I was born...

V.V. Ovsiyenko: Does the village still exist?

M.A. Horbal: Yes. Four or five families who returned from western Poland live there, but there are also two Polish families now. They showed me the place where our house was. It’s overgrown with weeds, but you can see that there were foundations there. It was a new house, made of brick. As a rule, Lemkos built wooden houses, but my father, having returned from working in America, had a little money. It was large, had four rooms and a kitchen. It was already in a new European style.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: When was the house built?

M.A. Horbal: Actually, it wasn't completely finished; one of the rooms didn't even have a floor yet when they started deporting us.

After graduating from the cantor’s institute, my father was assigned to work in the small town of Wola Michowa. He was a cantor, a choir conductor, and he also worked part-time as a forester.

There he met my mother—a young girl, eight years his junior. They got married, and my two sisters were born there. Their firstborn, Dmytryk, died as an infant. So when Bohdan was born—he was already the fourth child—and he also fell ill, my mother was terribly worried. I describe this in my essay about Bohdan, “Bohdan—My Brother.” They applied leeches to him, and perhaps after that, he barely breathed for about six months. My mother carried him in her arms; the child was neither living nor dying. Then there was a developmental delay; his teeth started to grow in at the same time as mine, and I was three years younger. Obviously, this affected his overall development and his mental state. Such was Bohdan’s fate.

So we arrived in the village of Letyache in 1947. That same year, I went to first grade.

In 1957 I finished ten-year school. When I applied to the music department of the Chortkiv Pedagogical College, I failed the exams. For several years I worked in my “native” collective farm in a road crew—breaking stones on the road with a hammer, crushing them into gravel.

In 1960 I finally got into the music and pedagogical department. I graduated in 1963. What’s interesting is that I only picked up a violin at about sixteen—it was my father’s violin, which he had brought from America. But a Lemko acquaintance of ours borrowed it from my father and played it at weddings. My father only took the violin back from him when I said I wanted to apply to the music department. So at the time of my admission to the college, my command of the instrument was not very high. Under such circumstances, I could no longer have great achievements as a violinist. You have to play the violin from a young age. Although in college, I was an above-average student.

Later, at work, after graduating from college, the artistic ensembles I created stood out for their novelty—breaking the stale stereotypes of Soviet pop music, I had some success. In the town of Borshchiv, I organized a children's ensemble—a song and dance group, which was recognized at the regional review in its second year.

I unleashed children's creativity and clearly went beyond the bounds of Soviet music-making. We went beyond that accordion; I managed to secure funding through the district department of public education—they believed in me there—and purchase good-quality pop music instruments: an electric guitar, a Czech double bass, a saxophone, a trumpet, a xylophone, and drums. That was the children's musical accompaniment for the ensemble. I won't even mention that I had no problems with the vocal groups. The dance groups were led by a good young ballet master. We created an interesting children's collective called “Sontse” (The Sun). Most of the songs were my own.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: “Sontse” or “Sonechko”?

M.A. Horbal: “Sontse.” There was also a younger group called “Sonechko” (Little Sun), but the song and dance ensemble was called “Sontse.” There were two vocal groups—an older and a younger one, a dance group, and an instrumental group. Obviously, the kind of repertoire I wanted was not in all the repertoire collections of that time. This prompted me to write myself. I knew what I wanted, so why should I go around searching when I could do something myself? That's how I became a composer—the times simply prompted it. The district youth teachers' ensemble I created, “Podolyanochka,” was an emphatically national group. I somehow spontaneously entered the renaissance of the Sixtiers.

Then, in the 60s—that was Oles Honchar’s “The Cathedral,” Romana Ivanychuk’s “Malvy,” the poetry of Lina Kostenko, Vasyl Symonenko, even some samizdat reached Borshchiv. Oh, I was simply inspired then! I was on close terms with Volodymyr Ivasyuk. The boys from my orchestra, schoolchildren, entered the university in Chernivtsi, and they played in Ivasyuk’s first orchestra. Ivasyuk would come to visit me; we talked, consulted. Perhaps I was one of the first to hear his “Chervona Ruta,” which had not yet been published. But that's by the way. I'm talking about that time and the environment in which I created. It gave me a certain confidence. I allowed myself to joke, to mock the Komsomol when I went to the district Komsomol committee—and there were those worthless officials... Well, my position, my independence, obviously irritated them, but since my ensembles brought honor to the district, they tolerated it. As it turned out later—for a time...

In 1967, I enrolled in the Kamianets-Podilskyi Pedagogical Institute. Why Kamianets-Podilskyi? Because they had opened a new faculty at the pedagogical institute—music and pedagogy. In the summer, I rode my motorcycle there a few times and passed the exams. They accepted me. It was a shame to leave Borshchiv, my ensembles, but the institute only had a full-time program. I studied full-time for a year, but I would travel to Borshchiv for rehearsals because it was also a way to earn extra money. Then I transferred to the correspondence program in Ivano-Frankivsk and returned to work in Borshchiv. At the Borshchiv College of Agricultural Mechanization, they introduced a subject called aesthetics. It turns out they had introduced this subject in all technical schools. It was a new trend.

Since I was involved in art and music, they invited me to teach this subject. I gladly agreed, even though there were no textbooks for this subject yet. I even took advantage of this opportunity: I had a pile of poetry books, patriotic prose, so wasn't there something to talk about with these young men? I also went there with another goal—to create a powerful male choir: a thousand full-time students—as a rule, boys from villages, usually after military service, usually with strong voices. Moreover, in Borshchiv, there was a choir at the House of Culture that had the title of a people’s choir. Most of the members of that choir were teachers from that college. The foundation was already there, as most of the teachers were already singing and had professional academic singing skills. It was impossible not to gather a hundred singing lads from a thousand students. True, I was overloaded with hours of aesthetics—many groups. But it was a joy for me; I had things to say about poetry, painting, and the new trends in Ukraine.

They became interested in me as a teacher. They proposed that I conduct an open demonstration lesson in aesthetics for teachers of this subject from the entire Ternopil region.

I felt uninhibited. After all, one must teach these boys, who would soon become tractor drivers and mechanics, that besides this, there are some higher values, a spiritual life!

I had no idea that all those who came to the open lesson were KGB men.

Just a few days later, they arranged another “open lesson” for me. A telegram arrived: I was being summoned to a seminar for aesthetics teachers in Ternopil. It turned out they had summoned me to “tie me up.”

During the search, they seized my poem “Duma.” My songs, although completely devoid of Soviet patriotism, were not such that they could be used in an accusation as anti-Soviet. They were emphatically Ukrainian songs, works with a pronounced civic position, but in my opinion, there was nothing to find fault with. Well, the poem “Duma” was obviously an anti-Soviet work. I later realized that they had been following me for about six months, that they already knew about “Duma,” that it had already been reported. I’ll show you this work later; I have it.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: Do you have the manuscript?

M.A. Horbal: I have the manuscript; the SBU returned it to me. And so it happened, Vasyl, that I ended up in Mordovia.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: Just specify the dates.

M.A. Horbal: I think it was around the 17th or 18th (of November 1970. – V.O.) that I went to Ternopil for that “seminar.” Suddenly in Ternopil, there were an awful lot of friends from college whom I hadn't seen for three or four years. One after another, we'd meet, go to a café... Obviously, these were scenarios developed by the KGB to dig up something else, to get some more information, maybe I would offer them something, maybe I would “blurt out” something else at the last minute. It was important for them to find out if I was forming some group, some organization. Later, when I was in the camp, I remembered that friends had come to me several times: would I like to have a typeface, to print something, because there was such an opportunity at a printing house... A few days before I was to be taken, a friend of mine from the music school came up and asked if I wanted to buy ten volumes of Hrushevsky. They needed materials to confiscate, because they knew everything I had, they had rummaged through my things when I wasn't home, it wasn't a problem for them to rummage through my belongings. I ask: “How much?” He offered ten volumes of Hrushevsky for a very affordable price. Something made me suspicious—I refused.

So they were very actively working on all fronts with those “friends” to get more episodes for the accusation. That day in Ternopil, I “accidentally” met another friend; he had graduated from the same college three years earlier and was in charge of amateur arts at the cotton mill in Ternopil. I tell him: “They summoned me to a seminar, I went to the cooperative college—no seminar, to another college—also no. And he says: “What's with that seminar? You'll go tomorrow. Maybe it will be at the music college. Come stay the night at my place, and tomorrow you'll go to the music college.” So I spent the night at his place. We even went to a restaurant, and some friends met us there, told various anecdotes... The next day he says: “Mykola, there's the music college, you go that way, and I have to go this way.” I just turned away from him, he had maybe walked 50 meters from me—and then some guys grabbed me, twisted my arms, and threw me into a car. I didn't even realize what had happened. There were some rumors going around at the time that people were being kidnapped, their blood was being drained, something like that. My first thought was—bandits. The car sped off, turned around near the department store and went uphill, and it was about 150 meters from the KGB building. We drove up—“Get out. See where you are?” I see—the Committee for State Security. “Get in!” And so it began.

As a legal ignoramus at the time, I didn't yet know that they only had the right to detain someone for three days, and then they had to release them if there were no grounds for arrest. Back then, I thought I was already arrested. They kept me at the KGB until about eleven o'clock at night. First one interrogates, then another, then a third, then they leave me alone in an office for a long time, then they take me to some other office... Probably everyone who has gone through this knows all those first-day procedures: they run around, make noise, open doors, come in, creating the appearance of frantic activity, the appearance of a powerful, effective organization; all this is supposed to create a state of hopelessness in the detainee—a psychological workover. And indeed, it was terrifying; I got the impression: that's it, I'm caught. All sorts of thoughts race through my head... That notebook with “Duma”—it has edits. This notebook was in the hands of a person who works in Ternopil. I knew about those edits. The thought: I was caught because of that notebook; it fell into their hands.

It got dark, it was already pitch black when they led me out into the courtyard: “Get in the car!” On one side was a broad-shouldered KGB agent, on the other, I was squeezed in the middle. We're driving. I see we’re leaving Ternopil. In the front, another one is sitting—shoulders like a wardrobe. They turned on the music, playing loudly. They drive out of the city on the highway to Lviv. I'm thinking: now they'll take me somewhere into the woods and beat me, or kill me. I know what they are capable of; I know perfectly well what kind of organization this is.

They took me to some small town, I think it was Kozova. They brought me to a hotel and said: “You'll spend the night here. Do you want to eat?” I refuse—what kind of food in a situation like this. They brought a bun and a bottle of kefir. “Eat.” Two of them sat on stools by the door. They say: “Have your supper and go to sleep. You'll have a fun day tomorrow.” And they themselves sat down to play chess. It was an interesting game. They play, saying: “Oh-ho, so you decided to move your knight? Don't you see there are two bishops here, and you're playing the fool? We're about to back you into a corner! What, you've put up a pawn? We have to take it, take it!” And so they played chess all night. And so I didn't sleep all night. Then a whole day of moral torture at the Ternopil KGB. On the third day, they took me for a search in Borshchiv. I was living with a math teacher in a building next to the college. I open the door, we go in. I had a “Spidola”—it was a good radio, you could listen to “Radio Liberty.” I open the room—no one is home, the “Spidola” is tuned to “Liberty,” “Liberty” is talking at full volume... Obviously, they did this themselves with the help of that colleague-mathematician. “Whose radio is this?” I say: “Mine.” “Oh, ‘Liberty’! You listen to ‘Liberty’?” – “I listen sometimes.” They started the search. They turned everything upside down. They found the notebook with the poem “Duma.” It turns out that on the same day, there was a parallel search at my mother’s house in the village. There they took all the papers, all the books that had even the slightest underlining.

We arrived in Ternopil. Here they (finally!) showed me the arrest warrant. The third day of my detention was ending. (In the certificate, the date of detention is November 20, 1970, date of arrest—November 24. – V.O.) They took me to a cell in the basement of the Ternopil KGB.

During one of the interrogations, a whole group rushed into the investigator’s room: “That's it, get ready, we're going to the regional hospital!” I understand now that this was a performance that I fell for.

A doctor I knew from Borshchiv worked at the regional hospital. The second copy of “Duma” was in Borshchiv with his relatives, and this doctor had made some notes in it. I thought that it was because of this copy that I had been detained. It made no sense to remain silent about the existence of the second copy; it would mean setting up that doctor who made the notes, and I was terribly worried that someone would suffer because of me. I think: “They are going to arrest the doctor because of those edits.” I have to take all the blame on myself, I say: “I have another notebook, with such-and-such people.” They took that notebook from those people. True, I never told the investigator whose edits they were, but as we can see, they knew who made them anyway. To this day, I don't know what role that man, the doctor, played in my case. But it's a shame that I myself admitted to the existence of the second copy. If there hadn't been a second copy, there wouldn't have been the fact of distribution.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: It doesn't matter, Mykola, they would have charged you with “possession with intent to distribute.” And that’s the same as distribution. And the “intent” is pulled out of thin air.

M.A. Horbal: No, no, they knew that I had read “Duma” to people, there were testimonies from those informants that I had read it in such-and-such a park, that I was seen in such-and-such a place. So they were already following me.

I obviously wasn't very prepared for the cell. Because there were guys who knew what they could endure, but I hadn't prepared for something like this. But, fortunately, I didn't disgrace myself. I didn't point a finger at anyone; no one suffered because of me.

In the cell in Ternopil, there were two or three others with me, who were later released. From time to time, they would catch someone and then let them go. Apparently, they repented.

During the investigation, they took me to the madhouse in Vinnytsia for an expert evaluation.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: How long did that last?

M.A. Horbal: Well, probably about three weeks. When they were taking me to Vinnytsia, the car broke down in the middle of a field. They let me out of the car. It was chilly, as it was early spring. “Run around, warm up! Well, why are you standing there? Run around.” – I say: “I won't run.” I think it was a staged escape attempt. From such an insistent “run around, warm up,” I understood that they could just shoot me right there, because they had suddenly started caring about keeping me warm. They saw that I didn't want to “warm up,” started the car, and we drove on. It was a small van, a very modern paddy wagon. Like some foreign dry cleaner's van, or something, with small cabins for four prisoners—no one would have ever thought it was a paddy wagon.

We arrived in Vinnytsia. I was worried about the madhouse, I was afraid they wanted to make a fool out of me. Fortunately, the diagnosis was that I was “sane and responsible for my actions,” so I made it to trial.

When Major Bidyovka brought the indictment, I didn't want to sign it; it was full of terrible words: “Embarked on a path of struggle against the Soviet reality, hostile activity, this is hostile, that is hostile, overthrow of Soviet power...”—something like that... I say: “Listen, I'm not going to sign this—I didn't do that! What overthrow? In what way overthrow? I had my own point of view, I have a right to it, the constitution doesn't forbid it.” – “What are you telling me! The constitution was written for negroes, not for fools like you,”—he answers me in that vein. – “Take it, sign it.” I say: “I won't sign it.” – “So what, you want to keep sitting here in the basement? You've been sitting here for half a year already. Do you want to keep sitting? You wrote those two notebooks, engaging in nonsense! If I were your father, I would have given you a good thrashing! Look at him, such a great writer!”

I'm thinking: “Ah-ha, guys, you're trying to squirm out of this! You've held me for half a year for nothing—so now you have to write something terrible about me, to show you didn't hold me for half a year for nothing. And since the article starts at half a year...” Later it turned out they were deliberately leading me to that thought. “There was a wise guy here—Hereta, we confiscated two carloads of anti-Soviet books from him! So we really had to put him on trial—we gave him four years probation. Now he's working at the museum again. And you're here with your two notebooks—to sign or not to sign?” – Bidyovka continues.

And I believed his logic. I think, you can understand them—they need to somehow get out of this, to close this case...

V.V. Ovsiyenko: You had to help them… (They laugh).

M.A. Horbal: Help them… I reason to myself, they'll probably hold a trial, give me this half year that I've already served, because the article is from six months to seven years. Why would they give more? And they'll release me from the courtroom. If they took two carloads of books from Hereta and gave him four years probation? He's working, living freely, though silently, because if he says a word—the sentence can take effect.

I say: “Alright, I'll sign. But there will still be a trial...” “Of course, there will be,” says the investigator. “The article is from six months to seven. And if you start talking nonsense there, who knows how the court will decide.”

So at the trial, I didn't “push my rights” too much—what was I to “blabber”? – “Did you write this?” – “I wrote it.” I said during the investigation that I wrote it, I don't deny it. “How do you know this?” – “I heard it on the radio.” – “And where did you get such thoughts?” – “I heard it on the radio.” I'm not going to say that I learned it from someone, that someone told me, that I read it somewhere. Because how could it be: an anti-Soviet person formed right under their noses, when there's the Komsomol, when there's the Party—and suddenly a person with different thoughts! Where did this come from? Although—it's a normal phenomenon. I grew up when people were being shot, when I sat at the same desk with a boy in the first grade, and in the morning he was gone because, it turns out, he had been taken to Siberia with his family. Didn't I see people whispering among themselves, afraid to say a word, that the contingent (grain) was being taken away by men with machine guns? That in a neighbor's barn they were beating some woman with flails because she hadn't handed something over, she was crying out to God—didn't I hear this? Didn't I see where this government came from and what kind of government it was?

And they—that someone must have taught you this, that you must have learned it from somewhere, as if I had fallen from the Moon. I had to play the naive one—blame everything on the radio, the “enemy voices.” That's why the verdict said that “under the influence of listening to enemy radio stations, he embarked on a path of struggle against the Soviet reality by writing hostile, nationalistic...” and so on. That was the verdict.

The trial lasted exactly two hours, since I didn't deny anything—it was me, me, I wrote it. They went to lunch, brought me in a paddy wagon to the KGB, to the basement, gave me lunch, and took me for the reading of the verdict: “All rise, the court is now in session!” The court came in, read that for my anti-Soviet activities I was receiving five years in strict-regime camps and two years of exile in the Komi ASSR.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: Was the place specified—in Komi?

M.A. Horbal: That's what was written in the verdict, but it turns out the court has no right to determine the place of exile. But my verdict said— “two years of exile in the Komi ASSR.” However, I was later exiled to the Tomsk region. No one paid any attention to that part of the court's verdict.

So that's how I ended up in the camp, Vasyl. Obviously, I was shocked by the verdict.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: What was the date of the trial?

M.A. Horbal: It says somewhere in those papers that it was in April, either the eleventh or some other day. I've already forgotten. I arrived at the 19th camp in Mordovia.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: You were sentenced on April 13, 1971.

M.A. Horbal: Yes, on April 13. Seven years! It seemed like a whole eternity. Seven years! They led me into the cell and suddenly this tension, this waiting, this uncertainty finally ended, everything suddenly became clear—camp, seven years… I sat down on the bunk and cried. For some reason, I cried, probably I relaxed. I prayed for this cup to pass me by. I don't remember the last time I had prayed. Although I grew up in a family of believers, I had somehow moved away from the tradition of turning to God every day—and here, suddenly!..

When I arrived at the camp, I saw that people had been sitting for 25 years. And it was nothing, sometimes they even joked. When I arrived, a very calm man, a former UPA soldier named Vasyl Yakubiak, who was arrested in 1946 and had served 25 years, was due to be released in a month. And I felt awkward before him with my sentence.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: With your five years…

M.A. Horbal: They brought me on a Thursday, they lead me into the camp, pigeons are flying, flowerbeds with flowers...

V.V. Ovsiyenko: Is this zone 19, the settlement of Lesnoy?

M.A. Horbal: Lesnoy. The radio is playing, people are walking around—because there were many prisoners of retirement age who were no longer forced to work—they are walking around, strolling. They took me to the dining hall—it was relatively clean, they were serving some kind of borscht, I ate it and thought: “Well, somehow I'll survive here...”

On Sunday, a man approached me, from somewhere in the Lviv region. A fine man, he was a machine gunner in the UPA. He says: “Come, Mr. Mykola, our community has gathered over there, you can get acquainted.” It was there, behind the barbershop, on that patch of grass. It was warm, people were walking around, shirtless, so stately, mustachioed… I don't know, about fifty or sixty men were sitting in a circle on the grass, an enameled bucket of tea in the middle. It turns out—they had gathered to welcome my arrival in the camp. Vasyl Pidhorodetskyi was the barber in the zone, he cut the prisoners' hair, and this was next to the barbershop, he was the one who brewed that tea. I go around the circle, greeting each one: “Ivan Myron,”—he shakes my hand, states his term—“twenty-five years.”

V.V. Ovsiyenko: Was Mykola Konchakivskyi there?

M.A. Horbal: He was. Next was—big mustache—Fedorchuk, I think his name was also Ivan—“twenty-five,” “Basarab—25,” and me: “five,” “five.” I thought: What a disgrace, they should have given me more!

What am I leading up to? Even a year in prison is a lot, but everything is learned by comparison.

When I later met Ivan Svitlychny in the Urals, and Zinovy Antonyuk, and got acquainted with Valeriy Marchenko, I thought to myself, where would I have met these dear people if I hadn't been brought here? Such an argument is comforting. I admit: I was never so uninhibited, never had so much humor, and never was so ironic and laughed so much as in the camp. And truly, the best people were there—well, I don't need to tell you about it, you know this.

I promised myself that I would never complain to God, because God knows best which paths to lead me on. I repeat this phrase often, it is worth it. So that people know that you cannot complain about fate, because if this path is destined for you, then that's how it is meant to be.

Then there was a second term, I always reminded myself of this—“such is God’s will,” then a third trial... And this saved me. When they didn't release me after the second imprisonment but tried me a third time, I began to grumble somewhere in my soul: God, what is this? But then I remembered that I have no right to complain. I survived two terms with God's help—so this too is God's will, if I have to lay down my life here.

Later, when I was put in a cell with the Semyon Skalych you know, I even thought to myself: My God, to hear the revelations of this man, I really needed to end up in this cell, and to get here, I had to get another eleven years! This man told strange, mystical things, but that's a separate topic.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: But it would be worthwhile to say a little more about the camps. You weren't in Mordovia for long, were you?

M.A. Horbal: I was there for a little over a year. And then around July 1972, there was a large transport: they were opening three camps in the Urals. I think this was connected to the fact that the dissident movement had expanded—there were many arrests (mass arrests in January 1972. – V.O.), and the KGB didn't want these people to be together, because the camp is a certain consolidation of different forces: they took one from here, another from there, and in the camp they were brought together—they already start developing broader plans. It was necessary to disperse the prisoners. So the regime was ready to open more camps, even though it meant more guards, more staff, it was more expensive, but it was probably justified by their “better to be overcautious than not cautious enough.”

V.V. Ovsiyenko: Besides, Mordovia is relatively close to Moscow, and well-established channels for information getting out were already operating there.

M.A. Horbal: Yes. They wanted to move that new, active generation a bit further away, and they restored three camps in the Urals. There used to be political camps there, but recently they had been criminal zones. For example, in zone 35, in Vsekhsvyatsk, before our arrival, it was a zone for underage girls. They had fouled everything up, wrecked everything. Those girls didn't want to work; they couldn't even look after themselves. And they brought us there.

The transport was difficult. It took three days to get from Mordovia to Vsekhsvyatsk. A hot summer. As a rule, they transported us at night, and during the day they would shunt the wagons into some siding at a station, and this “Stolypin car” would heat up like a tin can… I remember there were about twelve prisoners in our cage. Sweat was pouring off us so much that on the floor, you won't believe it, it was about ankle-deep in sweat, that is, everything was soaked in sweat. Early in the morning, when they brought us to the Vsekhsvyatsk station and led us out of the train, I didn't recognize my friends—everyone was so terribly emaciated, I probably looked the same: everyone was dreadful, gray—in three days we had sweated ourselves out. There was no water; they gave us little, a cup twice a day. It was really hard. One prisoner died on the transport—unfortunately, I've forgotten his name...

Finally, we arrived. The detached “Stolypin cars” are standing in the middle of the forest, and it turns out we still have to be driven about five kilometers to the camp in paddy wagons. When they led all of us out—the sun was rising, so red, they surrounded us with submachine gunners, sheepdogs were barking, a bunch of vehicles were brought in. There were no paddy wagons, but there were such flatbed trucks. The sides were lined with boards, and behind them were submachine gunners. As we drove through the forest, there was also a soldier with a submachine gun at every turn—they were transporting especially dangerous prisoners!

And so the new zone was opened. About one hundred and twenty of us prisoners were brought to this camp. The premises were quite decent—brick barracks, the kitchen and club were more or less decent. We had to put the premises in order. The work in this zone was metalworking; they were just bringing in the machine tools.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: Was this in Kuchino or Vsekhsvyatsk?

M.A. Horbal: In Vsekhsvyatsk. Zone 35. I worked on a lathe. The camp enterprise was a branch of the Sverdlovsk Tool Plant. We manufactured tools there, made taps, cutters—these are quite fine, precise jobs. The machine tools, however, were old; there were even American ones brought over during the war under Lend-Lease. So we worked on those machines.

I’m saying that my life hadn’t been easy even before that. I’ll go back to the beginning, that in 1947, when we reached the village of Letyache, there was no vacant housing; the Polish houses were destroyed, burned down. Some resettlers who had arrived here earlier had managed to settle in undamaged houses. We didn’t find any vacant dwellings; some undestroyed stable was left. We settled in that stable. We made one small room, a pantry across the hall, and behind it, a place for a chicken coop or a stable. That was our dwelling. And in 1949, it burned down. It had a straw roof, it caught fire and burned down. My father took 1949 very hard.

In that same year, they began to create the collective farm; those who didn't want to join began to be deported to Siberia… My older sister, Mariyka, who had completed two courses at a teachers' seminary in Krynytsia back in Lemkivshchyna, could have entered university without exams, but she had to go work at the sugar factory to earn some money—so she never became a teacher, never left the peasant life. She was the eldest among us children. Dad says: “Well, who will earn a kopeck, child, if not you, to at least put a roof on that burned house before winter?”

I remember my mother took a hatchet and went to the forest to cut down a small pine tree to make a rafter for the roof, and there was an ambush—an NKVD garrison hunting for Banderites. They caught my mother. They beat her with iron rods, so that good people brought her home half-dead on a sheet. We had our share of all kinds of trouble.

Even when we were in Lemkivshchyna, my father was always hiding from the Germans in the forests. He was a healthy young man, but those stresses, sleeping in the forests, took a toll on his health. He passed away in 1961, at the age of 63—not such an old man. I feel very sorry; he was a knowledgeable and soulful man. In Letyache, he—not a local resident—came and managed to organize the local community, to put the little church in order, he collected a bowl of flour or an egg from each household in the village, because where would you get money, he hired painters, and they restored the church. He led the church choir. I remember they would gather for rehearsals in our little hut. It was a good choir; the older people still remember and sing the church scores taught by my father. As a boy, I also sang in that choir. My father also led a drama club in the village; they staged plays. Despite the poverty, some spiritual life still flickered in the village. Considering those terrible times—I am proud of my father.

On the collective farm, my father worked as a carpenter. He was a good carpenter, because they said my father could make wheels for a wagon, and that, it turns out, is a higher qualification—if you can make a wheel. Because there's geometry, everything has to be calculated down to the millimeter. From time to time, my mother would send me to the workshop for wood chips, which we used to burn in the stove. Since my father worked there, I could bring a sheetful of chips. I would gather the chips and listen as the men told various stories and all sorts of witticisms. My father had a good sense of humor, he was an interesting man, it's a pity I couldn't communicate with him as an adult. And my father didn't always want to be open with us, the children. The times were such—he was probably afraid for us, that we might let something slip somewhere.

I must say I had one happy year—in 1960 I entered the college, and when I came home for Christmas, my father and I started singing carols in two parts from sheet music. Seeing my progress in solfeggio, my father was terribly happy. He formed a positive impression of me, that even if I hadn't made it yet, something could still come of me. From then on, my father and I became friends. Unfortunately, my father passed away just a few months later, in the spring of 1961. So our communication was not long. It was then that I became interested in his education and his life. He could have told me so much, but unfortunately—it didn't happen.

About the exile. I must mention the date of my release from exile, because they gave me a certificate...

V.V. Ovsiyenko: But you're skipping the Ural camp again?

M.A. Horbal: Well, there's probably enough material about that, because I served my time with Antonyuk, with Svitlychny, and with Marchenko, with Kalynets, and these people can tell no less about it. Valeriy Marchenko's book “Letters to Mother” has just been published. To a large extent, these are letters written from this very camp. When I read it, it seems that Valeriy wrote knowing that these texts should remain forever. I couldn't write to my mother like that—she didn't have a single year of schooling, because when she went to first grade in 1914, the war started, she studied for only six months, and then the school was closed, and that was the end of her education. The front passed through that Lemkivshchyna, and when the war ended, she didn't go back to school; she herded cattle. Later, when she was our mother, there was no need for her to write, because my father was literate. But when I was imprisoned, my mother started writing letters to me. At first, a whole letter was a single sentence. But by the end of my term, she was already using commas and even capital letters. That's how she learned to write, by writing letters to me in captivity. But they were extraordinarily interesting letters—a mother's letters to captivity. I have saved them all.

My mother was an extraordinarily interesting figure. To this day I can't comprehend it: not a single year of schooling, yet so much inner intelligence, so much warmth of soul. Fortunately, I managed to make a short video with my mother in the village. And then here, when I brought them to Kyiv. A strange figure, like my father: there was something mystical in this marriage.

My father could stand in prayer for an hour. I would still be sleeping, and in the morning he would already be at the table reading the Holy Scripture. I will probably write about my father separately someday. (Mykola Horbal’s memoir “1 of 60,” published in 2001, is dedicated to his parents. The author wrote warmly and vividly about his parents. – V.O.) As a boy, I was frail, perhaps somewhat stubborn, but with a heightened need to know the truth. I found it out...

Well, in the camp, I already started thinking: if God gave me such a path, then I must at least realize myself somehow. I started writing some sketches in letters, but, given the conditions, most of it was done conspiratorially. I tried to send that collection of poems “Days and Nights” to my mother in letters. But my mother not only didn't know what to do with it, she was also scared for me: “he's writing something there again.” I realized I had no right to complicate my mother's life. Ihor Kalynets helped out: he gave me the address of one of his Lviv friends. So from time to time, I sent her my poems-reflections, songs. In this way, some things were preserved. Svitlychna collected a lot, then some things through Kalynets. Eventually, Nadiya Svitlychna had the opportunity to publish it in America—the collection “Details of an Hourglass.” True, it also included some poems that I managed to send from my second imprisonment. And in Mykolaiv, during my second imprisonment, it wasn't a big problem for me to send something out of the camp: for example, this little book “A Kolomyika for Andriyko” I simply mailed in an envelope from the post office managed by a detachment guard (More details about this story in the memoir “1 of 60,” p. 234. – V.O.). It was later published in America as a separate booklet, with my own illustrations. The article that came out of my second imprisonment—“A Chronicle of Life in a Criminal Camp”—was passed outside the zone by fellow prisoners I knew; it was later published in Paris, in the newspaper “Ukrainske Slovo.”

Well, in the camp in the Urals, I just felt that I had to do something, because you can't just sit there with your hands folded. Back in Mordovia, Levko Horokhivskyi and I began to collect materials, at least to copy the verdicts of prisoners and pass them to the outside world. Even the text of a verdict—when you see what people are being punished for—became an anti-Soviet document. From the very first visit, when my sister Maria came to Mordovia, I passed information about the verdicts through her. She was supposed to take it to such-and-such a place. It's another matter whether those people passed it on, or got scared and didn't do it. But something did get out into the world, because if you do nothing, nothing will happen. I did get a little practice in this conspiratorial work, writing in micro-script on cigarette paper, so when the new “batch” of 1972 arrived, I already had some experience.

Obviously, it was a constant risk, “shakedowns,” you have to hide with it. I am absolutely convinced that one portion (an ampoule) of my information did end up in the hands of the operatives; they found it in a hiding place. Probably to catch me in the act of passing it outside the zone—they put it back, but I guessed—I had a mark that it had been in their hands, I understood—they had noticed it. There was a method of marking, with radioactive isotopes. Wherever you hid a piece of paper treated this way, they could find it with special devices. Apparently, they were so happy to have found a lead that they got impatient and started fussing: someone slipped me a few sheets of cigarette paper; suddenly my pencil disappeared—I wrote with a chemical pencil, it could be sharpened with a blade as thin as a hair. You write five or six lines, then sharpen it again, but it wasn't a problem, it wrote finely, better than a ballpoint pen. And this pencil of mine disappeared. It was gone for a week. Then they planted it back. Ah, I thought—the scoundrels. I rewrote everything from that ampoule, and destroyed the marked one. How much of an emergency there was! But that's a separate topic. They couldn't catch me “red-handed.” Despite everything, from zone 35, we managed to pass a lot of things outside the zone. We wrote a chronicle of the 35th camp.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: Was it published somewhere? In the “Chronicle of Current Events”?

M.A. Horbal: I think so. All those materials were there: who is on a hunger strike and when, when they came out of it and what they are doing, who was put in the punishment cell—all this was recorded, not to mention the statements. (See also: Mykola Horbal. The Weight of a Word. “Chronicle of the ‘Gulag Archipelago.’ Zone 35 (For 1977)” // “ZONA” magazine, 1993. – No. 4. – pp. 134–150. – V.O.). By the way, Vladimir Bukovsky doesn't even suspect that I was the one who copied his book on punitive psychiatry in micro-script. I copied it twice, because one time Semyon Gluzman lost this thing during a visit, it got drowned somewhere, so I had to write it again. So it was quite a large volume of work.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: You had to hide. There was a library there that the guards could enter at any moment and take things away.

M.A. Horbal: They could. But, firstly: a portion of the finished materials, which were not yet sealed and glued, was kept in my books. I guess it's okay to talk about this now? I would very carefully glue two pages together and stuff the papers between them. If you flip through this book or shake it, it won't fall out. Sometimes I couldn't find it myself. I just knew which page to look for. Glue the pages around the perimeter, and leave only one small place unglued and stuff things in there... That was in the books. Secondly: I didn't keep what was already written on my person. If a guard came in, I had the opportunity to eat one piece of paper. I never got caught. Not once. I wrote in the barracks and in the library. The best place to write was in the library, when Ivan Svitlychny was the librarian. He was the librarian for a while, so someone would sit, read, and watch the door. And I would sit with my back to the guard, so if he came in and I was given a sign, I could quietly hide it or eat it. And if it was written—on these small strips—I would stuff them between the pages. They never found them.

Through the library, we had a perfect connection with the PKT [punishment cell block]. We developed a system of communication through books. I've forgotten the mechanism now, but the pages were counted from back to front. Let's say, an even-numbered page, or every other page. In the second or fifth line from the bottom, a letter would be faintly marked with a pencil. No guard ever figured it out. Two or three letters per page—entire statements came out of the PKT this way. When you sit for years, you can develop any kind of technology. No secret compartments for you, no invisible ink or milk—just a faint dot on a letter. Once a week, books in the PKT were exchanged.

Conversations with Kalynets somewhat changed my understanding of poetry—rhyme became optional. Thus, a collection of captive reflections appeared. A lot was lost. During my first imprisonment, I wrote about two dozen songs. Most of them were sent in letters. For example, “Children's Carol”—it's a dedication to Proniuk's son, Myroslav. Proniuk sent this song in a letter to his wife. The song “White Stone”—Volodymyr Dziak, from Lviv, sent it for his daughter Vira's birthday... Most of the songs were sent by friends in letters to relatives as greetings on some occasion. Obviously, the authorship of the song was kept silent.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: What, you wrote them with musical notation?

M.A. Horbal: With musical notation! The first song (in the Lemko dialect) “Cemeteries”—Ivan Svitlychny sent it to Liolia (Liolia—Leonida Pavlivna Svitlychna, Ivan Svitlychny's wife. – V.O.). The letter with this song arrived around the time Dziuba repented, so they even thought the song was a dedication to this sad, depressing event. Because they all went through it, they were all depressed by what had happened, they felt very sorry for Ivan. And then suddenly they receive “Cemeteries,” so for some reason, they thought it was a reaction from the camp to that event. And that it was written in the Lemko dialect was, they thought, so that it wouldn't be too easy to figure out. I only wrote three songs in the Lemko dialect; the rest are in the literary language. “And the Field is Black”—also a children's song, I don't know which child it was sent to. Ihor Kalynets sent “By the Stream” to his daughter Dzvinka. Later, Nadiya Svitlychna included all these songs in the collection that was published in America.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: And what is that collection called?

M.A. Horbal: “Details of an Hourglass,” it's a collection of captive poems and songs, the songs with musical notation.

In the zone, I tried not to get into conflicts—I fulfilled my work quota, didn't violate the regime. I violated it like everyone else, together with everyone—I went on hunger strikes, wrote statements when everyone else did. That is, I wasn't passive. I saw my dossier, which the staff of the Perm “Memorial” copied from the materials of this camp. Interesting documents, some of which I had already forgotten. For example, Gluzman and I wrote one statement. It's interesting because we asked the Prosecutor General's Office if I had the right to dispose of my own body when I die in the camp. After all, the Soviet authorities didn't even give the dead body back to the relatives.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: It seems the Perm “Memorial” has the text of this statement.

M.A. Horbal: That's what I'm saying—they collected material on the activities of zone 35. To clarify: I took part in all the collective protest actions in the zone. There were several such mass ones. During that long hunger strike, in which we planned to come out of the hunger strike one by one (only Svitlychny, Antonyuk, Gluzman, and Balakhonov fasted for more than two months), I started having convulsions on the eighth day, and they suggested I stop the hunger strike. We knew it would be a long hunger strike, maybe more than a month. But on about the eighth day, a dentist came to the camp. He comes once a year, maybe once every two years. And I had a toothache, so my friends said: “Just go and have it pulled.” I thought so myself: I'll go and have it pulled, because who knows, maybe it will hurt, I'll pull it—and have peace. That medic pulled out the top part of the tooth, broke it, and the root remained. He gave me an injection and started splitting that root into pieces and digging it out piece by piece. Then he gave me another painkilling shot. The body had been hungry for several days, and apparently, those injections had some effect on me, because at night—and I was sleeping next to Kalynets—I started having convulsions. That is, my legs were contracting, my hands were shaking, and I couldn't do anything about it, I couldn't stop them. Everyone got scared, someone ran for the doctor, they took me to the hospital on a stretcher. I think it was from those shots.

Five months before being sent to exile, I was suddenly put in the PKT—for no reason at all. I think it was so they could prevent me from passing on information. One evening after work, at roll call, they read out that I was sentenced to six months in the PKT. I say: how can it be six months, I only have five months left until the end of my term? They gave me more than I had left. But the guards didn't leave my side for a step, they took me to the cell, locked it. True, they took me from the PKT for transport a week earlier, but they also transported me for another 50 days. So when they released me into exile on January 14, 1976, they counted those 50 days, in excess of my term, as one day for three. There is such a law. Because I should have been out of custody for 50 days, I was a relatively free man, and they were keeping me in a cell. Therefore, my term was shortened to June 24. So I served everything, you need to know this. And the fact that I got out in June, and not on November 20, was due to this transport.

It was a very difficult transport. In Sverdlovsk, they kept me in a punishment cell, because it was written on my file in red pencil: “To be escorted and held separately.” The prison warden comes and complains: “Well, where am I going to put you separately from the others? One and a half thousand people pass through the prison every day!” And this is the Siberian main line, transports to the Far East, to all of Siberia, go through this prison. Such a combine, a slave market. Dozens of vehicles—some bringing in, others taking out prisoners around the clock. And he threw me a board in the punishment cell—not a bed, but such a plank, so as not to sleep on the concrete. And the cell was narrow, just a toilet bucket, my head on the toilet bucket… I started demanding, “pushing my rights,” what I was entitled to, and this was “cell-type confinement.” – “Well, where am I supposed to put you? You see what’s going on here?” I agreed to it. And the prisons there are spat-upon, filthy, stinking, lousy, with bedbugs!

In Tomsk it was already easier, because there was a separate cell for exiles. It turns out, there's an article for exile, besides the political one, there's also one for murder. They served 15 years and still have 5 years of exile. Alimony dodgers, who were given exile without imprisonment. They went under convoy through the prison to exile. He didn't pay alimony, was hiding from his wife somewhere, they caught him, gave him two years of exile, he has to live there and pay alimony. He has no right to leave from there, because he's in exile.

The cell was full of exiles. They kept us in this cell for several weeks—a long time. Once during a walk, I said: “Let's not go back to the cell, we all should be free today, and they're keeping us here. Why are they keeping us?” I incited them, that we wouldn't go back to the cell after the walk. And really, why weren't they sending us on? We were being eaten by lice, the prison was old, wooden, infested with bedbugs. Well, what is this? The block guard came: “What's this?” I say: “We're not going into the cell.” – “Who are you?” – “What difference does it make who I am. Why am I not being sent on, I'm a free man, I should have been free for the second month now.” – “Hey you, come here! What's your article?” – “62.” – “What kind of article is that?” In Russia, it turns out, it's for something like alcoholism—something like that. “An alkie, are you?” – “No, this is the Ukrainian SSR, the Russian equivalent is 70.” – “Ah, so that's what kind of bird you are! So you're already starting to stir up trouble for us here? We'll fix you right now!” – “Don't you scare me. Sooner or later, I'll be free anyway, and in a few days the whole world will know what's going on in your prison here.” And indeed, the next day they announced that the whole cell was going to Teguldet. “Get your things together!” And I know that Mykola Kots is in exile in Teguldet, I have his address. I tried to get the addresses of all those exiled to Siberia while still in the camp. It was December 19, St. Nicholas Day—we were being transported. I'm thinking: “I'll be at Mykola's name day celebration today, what an unexpected meeting it will be.” They lead all of us into a “holding pen.” Suddenly the door opens: “Who's Horbal?” – “I am.” – “Come out!” They took me back to the cell.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: They left, and you stayed?

M.A. Horbal: Yes, they took them. They brought me to the same empty cell, locked it. But around ten o'clock at night, I hear a commotion in the corridor, clank-clank of keys, the door opens—all those prisoners are being brought back into the cell. I ask: “What happened?” – “Well, the weather's not flyable at the airfield, a blizzard.” They were supposed to fly on a “Kukuruznik” [An-2 plane], but they didn't. But they had already breathed freedom, they were at the airport. “Come on down, Kalyok!”—I was on the top bunk. One pulls a huge white loaf of bread from his bosom, another a stick of sausage—it turns out they had already “stocked up,” they had been to the kiosk at that airport. Someone else pulls out a bottle of vodka—and they managed to bring all that into the prison—thugs! So I unexpectedly celebrated St. Nicholas Day in prison. I got a piece of sausage, a swig of vodka (in prison!). That was a strange St. Nicholas Day in 1975. Of all the St. Nicholas Days in my life, it's perhaps the most memorable.

They kept me here for about another week and then finally took me for transport—by paddy wagon. They drove for about twelve hours and brought me from Tomsk to Kolpashevo. I was there in prison for about another week. It was a district town, the prison there was quiet, clean, they fed us well, I thought they would leave me there. I say: “Why aren't they releasing me?” – “Well, we don't know, we don't know.” One morning they took me and drove me to Parabel.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: How did they transport you?

M.A. Horbal: By paddy wagon. Also a long time, about eight hours, it shook terribly, on a frozen, roadless path, through the taiga...

V.V. Ovsiyenko: Is it a dirt road there?

M.A. Horbal: Probably. We were thrown around so much in there—I think there were three of us being taken there. They brought us to the police station. It was a Friday, the end of the week. So I sat there at the police station with the fifteen-day detainees until Monday. On Monday morning they called me and said: “Get ready for the plane, you'll fly to...” To some village there. Another hour by plane from Parabel to that village. Such are the Siberian expanses—by plane from a district center to a village. They brought me to the office, looked over my accompanying papers with unconcealed antipathy. And I'm in that stinking prison smock after those transports, unwashed, lousy. Some boss there said: “You will live in the cattle-breeding brigade, a tractor will be coming for the mail soon—you'll go on that tractor.” Indeed, a tractor-sleigh arrived. About an hour and a half later, I was at the office of the “cattle-breeding brigade.” There was only a farm and about ten wooden houses. The manager came, some old Latvian, probably one of the former exiles: “Oh, my God, well how are you, and what are we to do with you—well, you'll be a cattleman.” I say: “And where will I live?” – “Well, I don't know, we have one ‘keldim’ here (I, of course, don't know what a ‘keldim’ is)—well, we have to break open the door. Go, Fedya, get a crowbar.” They got a crowbar, the door was boarded up—they tore it off. “You will live here. Two exiles lived here. One killed the other, so we buried that one, and this one was arrested, taken away.” Thugs. No kitchen, everything is falling apart. The floor is torn up. I say: “But how can one live here?” – “Well, there is no other housing.” I say: “Then I won't live here.” – “Well, where are we going to get you a better one?” I say that the regulations on exile state that I must be provided with housing. I am a free citizen, I just don't have the right to leave here—and what is this? – “And where am I going to get it for you, what can I do? I don't have any.” Forty degrees below zero, January, I was just released on January 14, on the old New Year.

So I spent the night in a manger in the cowshed—with the cattle, it's a bit warmer there, the cows are breathing. In the morning I went to that office again to protest, but there was no one there, it was locked—some guy was standing there, he had come to the store for wine. So we got to talking. And it turns out, he's a Ukrainian, working at a logging site, there's a logging site nearby—well, he says, come and spend the night with us, maybe you can get a job at the logging site. And I went with him. A dormitory, well-heated. There were indeed guys from Ukraine, from Kuban, they received me with sympathy, I had dinner with them. Dinner, of course, with a drink. I say: “Guys, I have no money, I have nothing.” “Never mind, never mind—if you're alive, you'll have everything.”

In the morning I went to the post office. I had postage stamps, about three rubles worth, I approach the postmistress, I say: so and so, I'm in exile, from prison, a political, I need to send a telegram, but I have no money, I have stamps. If, I say, you take them, and tomorrow the money comes by telegraph, I'll pay you back. – “What difference does it make to me, stamps are money.” I say: for this amount. And I even had about a ruble left. I sent an urgent telegram to my mother to wire me 150 rubles. The next day I received the money at the post office.

In the evening, I treated the guys. Logging—they're tired from work. The work is bad, they pay little—not as promised, but they are on contract, and they have to finish their term here. There's a banya there, I washed, washed some of my clothes. The next day I went to their office, to the boss, and said: “Hire me to work for you.” He says: “I'm not against it. But I can't hire you without permission from your superiors.”

I had been in transit for two months, before that I was in the PKT... I say: maybe there's something easier to start with, because I'm a bit weak after the transports, I wouldn't want to let the guys down, it's a brigade, they all work together, and when I recover a bit, I'll work on par with them. “Well,” he says, “for now you can haul water with a horse to the kitchen, and we'll see from there.” So I agreed.

But I had to go to Parabel to the authorities for permission. I have money now, and the plane brings mail there twice a week. I washed, I'm in no hurry, the head of the logging site gave me four days off.

I’m getting ready to go to Parabel, to the police station for permission to work at the logging site. About a week later I arrive, I go into the police station. They: “Eek-eek-eek! Where have you been?” It turns out, they had already put out a search for me, the whole KGB was on its feet—they were looking for me, Horbal had escaped.

And there's a commandant over the exiles there. How he yelled at me! “I'm the commandant, I'm already looking for you, there's a search out for you!” Well, I say: “Are you making an idiot out of me? I'm not afraid, I just came from there. By law, you are obliged to provide me with housing—why did you shove me into a cowshed? No housing, nothing. I need to wash, to do my laundry... Who do you take me for?” And the chief: “Quiet, quiet! You're not going anywhere, you'll stay in Parabel.”

So they left me in the district center. I didn't become a “cattleman.” “You will go to the site.” This, it turns out, is six kilometers from Parabel itself, a construction site for “Tomskgazstroy.” They put me in a dormitory. They immediately set me up as a stoker. The work was hard: there were two of us stokers, working twelve-hour shifts, without days off. The heating was with oil, because there was a pipeline nearby. And the boiler room was made of concrete slabs—a suffocating stench, no ventilation. It had to heat their administrative building, a few houses for these civilian employees who worked there, and the dormitories of the “khimiki”—criminal prisoners on parole, who had to work off the rest of their term here. They were, in fact, the ones building the “oil pumping station.” These are huge tanks, a pumping station, reservoirs that they fill with oil, because sometimes something happens on the line, and the pressure in the pipeline has to be constant, and they turn on these cisterns through compressor stations.

In the spring, when the heating season ended, I showed them the labor code, according to which the working day should not exceed eight hours and with two days off per week. For all the overtime hours and for work on weekends, I was due time off. So, in addition to my vacation, I had more than two months of time off due. I told them that I was ready to give up that time off on the condition that they let me go home to Ukraine for two weeks. And my nephew was having a wedding on May 9. They turned off the heating on May 5, I say: “If you would let me go, I'm ready to forgo the time off...” The head of the OGM [General Department of Mechanization]: “Well, I can't, it's the KGB that decides, you know... Call them. If they agree, we're not against it.” The head of the OGM was a Ukrainian. So I called the KGB and said, so and so, I have the right to be off for four months and not work, but if you would be so kind, I would go home for a week or two. “We'll think about it, we'll let you know.” Indeed, a day or two later they said: “Go for 10 days.” They gave permission. They said: “Just don't stop in Moscow!” I arrived in Novosibirsk by plane and bought a ticket to Moscow. Suddenly I hear over the loudspeaker: “Citizen Horbal, please come to ticket office number...” Three men in civilian clothes are standing there: “Why are you violating the agreement? Why did you buy a ticket to Moscow?” I understand that the best defense is a good offense, and I say: “And how am I supposed to get home? Should I fly through Vladivostok, or what? Is it my fault that all roads lead through your damned Moscow?” “Okay, okay. Calm down. Just in Moscow, go straight from the plane to the train.” Obviously, in Moscow, I visited Ginzburg, and I visited Grigorenko. And only the next day did I fly to Lviv.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: What year was that?

M.A. Horbal: That was in seventy-six, in the spring. No one at home knew, my mother didn't know, I arrived in the village in the morning on May 9, right for the wedding.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: How was it? You once told the story of your reunion with your mother.

M.A. Horbal: I enter the house—the house is open. Well, it's about six or seven in the morning. My mother is lying on the bed, and Bohdan is somewhere nearby. I say: “Praise be to Jesus Christ!” My mother so calmly: “Praise be forever!” I approach my mother, lean over and kiss her, and my mother has no reaction. My mother's eyes were a bit bad then, she already had cataracts, one eye was completely blind, the other—poor. I say: “Mama, it’s me, Mykola.” – “Oh, son, where is my Mykola now…” – and she cries. I say: “Mama, it’s me, Mykola!” Then I went to Bohdan. I kissed Bohdan. And Bohdan recognized me: “Ah, Mykola...” Although many years had passed, he doesn't know what prison is, these concepts don't exist for him—Mordovia, Siberia, or what... And then: “Mykola, Mykola, Mama, Mykola!” And then someone else—I've already forgotten myself—someone came in and already: “Mykola, Mykola!” Relatives who had come for the wedding were also sleeping in the house. My mother later told this story as something mystical, she says: “The Mother of God sent my son to me, just when he was gone, he appeared before me.”

I didn't have time to send a telegram, because I suddenly got permission, I wanted to arrive on time... So I arrived right for the wedding. I changed my clothes, my mother is crying and says: “Oh, run to the wedding, tell them Mykola has arrived!” And the wedding is at the other end of the village. By the time we got out onto the street, the whole wedding party was already coming towards us—one of the villagers who had ridden the bus with me had informed them of my arrival. That was an interesting meeting.

I sang my heart out at the wedding... Interestingly, they didn't let me fly back by plane from either Lviv or Kyiv. With my certificate, with my document, they said: “Never mind, you'll go by train.” I had to go to Moscow by train.

Regarding my life in exile, I'll note: I only lived in the dormitory among those thugs for a month; I finally convinced the authorities that I was “political,” and they gave me a trailer. I had my own trailer. The trailers were connected to the heating system. I made myself a nice electric stove there, bought myself a new radio, so I listened to all the “voices.” And the chief engineer was from Ukraine. There are many Ukrainians in those Siberias. We were friends. I think the KGB gave him certain tasks there, but he treated me well, he said: “Stay here, there's nothing for you to do in Ukraine, if I were in Ukraine myself, I would have been imprisoned long ago. And here, just yesterday a new bulldozer just went ‘plop’ into the swamp—they drowned it. And we'll just write it off. So what? If that happened in Ukraine, they would have dragged you through the courts. We'll give you a new apartment.” I say: “Not a single day longer! My term ends—and not a single day more! The last thing I need is to extend my own court sentence.” I think it was part of a KGB scenario to persistently persuade me to stay in Siberia. “You'll have housing, look how many people are here, you can live here.” I felt sad there.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: That Parabel—how many people live there?

M.A. Horbal: It's a village, but it has the status of a district center. God knows how many people there are—two or three thousand... Many Ukrainians. I could guess without fail where Ukrainians lived, because you could see—a neat house. There are many of our people there, and they remain good housekeepers even there. They have cattle, they fish—the rivers there are still full of fish. But I felt sad there, well, some kind of universal melancholy in that Siberia. So as soon as June 24 approached—I bought a plane ticket and flew to Ukraine. The Helsinki Group had already been formed there.

Earlier, during my leave, I had seen Mykola Rudenko, talked with him, I had already decided for myself that I should be among these people. But when I was released, Rudenko had already been arrested. I realized: as a member of the Group, I could do little in my village in the Ternopil region—I had to be in Kyiv. But how?—the propiska [residence permit]. Thanks to Valeriy Marchenko, I met his mother's younger sister—Alla. We got married in September, so I became a Kyivan. And in June of the next year, our son was born. Unfortunately, not everything worked out well for us; Andriyko wasn't even a year old when I was forced (not of my own free will) to live separately. For a while, I stayed with acquaintances, and then Nadiya Svitlychna's husband, Pavlo Stokotelny, says: “Why should you wander from person to person, sleeping at train stations, come to our place.” Nadiya had just left for the USA, so I lived with the Stokotelnys. Pavlo is a good-natured man. Whenever possible, I visited Andriyko and even submitted an application to the OVIR [Visa and Registration Department] for the three of us (me, Andriyko, and Alla) to leave for the USA; I had an invitation from relatives. It didn't work out—I was arrested. On the very same day that my trial began, Pavlo Stokotelny was expelled from the country. So he wouldn't be underfoot. He hadn't applied to leave, although he had the right to do so, because his wife was abroad, but he didn't want to go yet. So they did it by order. And on the very day of my trial, they threw him out. And he was perhaps the only one who could have come to this sham trial. Now even his relatives couldn't come—they were seeing Pavlo off, and all flights abroad were from Moscow. Mykhailyna Kotsiubynska was summoned somewhere by the authorities that day, Vasyl Stus was taken away by the police from in front of the courthouse... So, there was no one left to interfere with the travesty of justice against me. But these details have already been described in the “Chronicles,” and you are familiar with them.

Well, Vasyl, Mariyka has arrived (Mariyka is the granddaughter of Mykola's sister; she studies at a university in Kyiv and lives here. – V.O.), let's go to the kitchen, help her with something, and have a little lunch…

You know, Vasyl, I wasn't the first; you had already been arrested before this—I knew that sooner or later they would imprison me. In the last few days, two “Volgas” were following me. I'd be walking on the sidewalk, and the car would be driving right next to me. They followed me in a herd. There were hundreds of different incidents when you engage in dialogues with those “tails,” snitches, KGB agents. “Go on, go on, or we'll smash your head.” They had this surveillance service well-organized. Officially, I didn't declare myself a member of the Helsinki Group. Only a few people in Kyiv knew how much of that work we called human rights activity had been done. Malynkovych knew, Petro Vins knew, who were members of the Group. Besides purely humanitarian work, I helped the families of political prisoners. Most of the materials that were collected, passed on, and published in the world—it went through me. In the end, there was no one else to do it. There were sympathizers, but they didn't always want to get involved. I knew whole families who held good positions, but when I said that this needed to be done—“Oh, no, no.” Someone had to, someone needed to do it. The KGB suspected, but they never caught me at anything. A few good things were done, a few were not done due to the disagreement of some authors. I believe that the late Borys Dmytrovych Antonenko-Davydovych could have passed on his memoirs, which they later swept out of his place—and there was an opportunity to pass them on.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: And they were destroyed?

M.A. Horbal: I don't know, I don't know, I can't say that, but: “No, no—everything is well hidden, in three places, everything is fine.” And they took it from all three places. And there was an ideal opportunity to pass it all abroad. It didn't work out. But that was the fault of Borys Dmytrovych himself. (Antonenko-Davydovych's son-in-law, Borys Tymoshenko, bought these materials from a former KGB agent, though without the first 25 pages… – V.O.) About everything that was happening in Kyiv—I won't even talk about the arrests and searches—I could somehow transmit that information to the world. So it wasn't a big difficulty for the KGB to figure me out. I knew that sooner or later they would “tie me up.” Any day I could become a “hooligan,” like you or Smohytel, or a “drug addict,” like Yaroslav Lesiv. Truthfully, I was completely unprepared for the fact that the criminal code contained even more shameful articles.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: You caught their attention when you went to the Urals to bring back the texts of Valeriy Marchenko's articles, right?

M.A. Horbal: To the Urals... I think that after that, their patience simply ran out.

When I arrived in Perm to see this lady, I understood that the good-natured, philanthropic Valeriy did not know that this nurse in the camp was a KGB agent. All the materials he passed through her were already in the hands of the KGB. She said that Valeriy had passed on this, that, and the other... But she also said that she had destroyed them because she was being followed. But when I was with her, we were also being followed, and I saw that they were exchanging winks with this lady, exchanging coded signals. And I have a trained eye for this sort of thing. I told Nina Mykhailivna that she was a snitch. At one time, Valeriy wrote an article about a stewardess whom he once wanted to use, because she was a beautiful girl, to pass his articles abroad.

V.V. Ovsiyenko: This is Valeriy's essay about her, “My Fair Lady”...

M.A. Horbal: Unfortunately, this “fair lady” was also a KGB “informant.” Such a pleasant girl, a nurse's aide (from time to time, Valeriy was hospitalized due to illness)—and Valeriy couldn't help but evoke sympathy. Well, it's all the same to Valeriy today, he is in a higher world—but when he went into exile, he told his mother that a certain lady had his works. I went to Perm. She didn't give me anything, because she had nothing. There was supposed to be a pile of Valeriy's papers there. And then it turned out that all of it went into his second indictment; she had handed it all over to the KGB. But never mind that. When I said goodbye to that lady, the KGB agents, no longer hiding, followed me all the way to the plane, they didn't leave me alone in Moscow either, and a few days later in Kyiv, I was arrested.

I regret not having officially declared myself a member of the Helsinki Group before my arrest. At times, it seemed like I could do more that way. Perhaps so. And Oksana Yakivna was against it: “We already consider you a member of the Group. But if you declare it, you’ll be arrested immediately.” (An interesting nuance regarding “totalitarian dissidence,” about which S. Gluzman wrote on the website of the magazine Profil http://www.profil-ua.com/today/57/1112 – M.H.).

I often visited the Vintsiv family, and Petya Vints was in the Group. I attended all the events. I had the closest ties with Yosyp Zisels, who was tried a little earlier, and with his lawyer (Sofia Kallistratova – V.O.). I should have declared myself a member of the Group. In court, during my final statement, I read that from that day forward, I was officially declaring myself a member of the Group. I think that was more resonant than signing some document. And there was my collaboration with Svitlychna, because even processing her documents for departure—there was no one left to do it. Pavlo and I were the ones running around with that. In Kyiv, there was no one left—there were simply no people.

V.V. Ovsiienko: A void.

M.A. Horbal: Yes, a void. In my memoirs about Stus, I think I mention this moment. I was at Vasyl Stus’s place on that ill-fated evening. Vasyl hands me a bundle like this, of this format—oblong, half-sheet manuscripts of his poems. I carry them in my coat, take them to an address (the man was supposed to go to Moscow the next day), and everything was to be delivered to Tatyana Velikanova. The reason I keep saying that those poems survived, that they must be in the Moscow KGB archives, is because along with those poems, I gave Velikanova my own small collection of poetry. This collection would later be incriminated against me at my third trial, as having been confiscated from Velikanova during a search. This means that the package with Vasyl’s and my poems did reach her.

That evening, I would not return home—I would spend the night in Lukianivska prison as someone who intended to commit rape.

They kicked me, they threw me down just like this and pounded my face with their feet. Everything was bloody, my face was swollen and battered. The next day, I demanded a doctor, a medical examination. Nothing was done until the investigator arrived. The investigator told me: “Don't do this.” I said: “What do you mean, don’t do it? They beat me, look what they did to me, and it turns out I’m the guilty one—I supposedly wanted to rape someone.” – “Don’t do this, it will only be worse for you.” I finally managed to get a doctor to come and document the beatings. Five or six days later, the investigator comes and shows me an article—that I’ve been charged under the article for resisting the *druzhinniki*. He says: “Didn’t I tell you not to do this? Now you have a new article. It wasn't them beating you, but them defending themselves from you.” That’s how I got another article. It turns out they weren’t beating me; they were defending themselves from me, which is why I was beaten.

V.V. Ovsiienko: And how much did you get under that article?

M.A. Horbal: I got two years under that article.

V.V. Ovsiienko: And for the so-called attempted rape, how much?

M.A. Horbal: Five. Two for that one, and five for the other, but by the method of absorption, five in total.

So that’s the story. On this occasion, I’d like to say one thing. You know, I don’t have any strange fantasies in life. I’ve seen sick people who say that someone is slipping them something, someone is poisoning them, irradiating them, or something else. Such people exist. But what I went through for a month and a half under that arrest—it was something strange for the body, you see? I couldn’t understand what was happening to me. Well, of course, my mood was bad, I had no one to talk to, no way to refute anything or justify myself. I could guess what they were weaving about me and what they were saying, and here I could just beat my head against the wall—and they would just laugh... The Gebnya knew what I did in the camp, they knew what I did in Kyiv—and they dealt with me cruelly.

They kept me in a cell with three other prisoners, even though the prison was packed. They had nowhere to put people, but the three of us sat in a cell.

V.V. Ovsiienko: This was at Lukianivka, right?

M.A. Horbal: At Lukianivka. This was right before the Olympics, when they were rounding up all the “undesirables.” It was, as the prison guards joked, the “Olympic recruitment drive.” The guards, lining us up in the corridor for inspection, would mock us: “Alright, Olympians, fall in!” I was in such a wild state of mind, I had never felt such emotional pain. I wanted to claw the walls; I couldn't sleep, I didn’t shut my eyes for several days. I didn't know what was happening to me, some kind of madness. Today, I’m convinced it was the effect of depressants. And Plakhotniuk confirmed to me once that there is some kind of powder to which the body reacts in exactly this way. I wouldn’t assert this, but after a week of being held in that cell, they throw me into a huge, separate cell. Bunks for maybe thirty or forty men—and no one there. They have nowhere to put people, but this cell is empty. They throw me in there for the night. It’s large, at least I have room to run around, because I can't find a place for myself. Suddenly, on one of the upper bunks, I saw a tied noose—a strip torn from a mattress cover! A ready-made noose, just put your head in—and peace for your soul! And then I realized that this hellish week was probably a kind of preparation: “Ah, you scoundrels! You think I’m ripe for it?” I don't know, maybe I wouldn’t have endured this torment if not for this “hint” about what I should do. And then it dawned on me: I will not help you in this crime. That night was perhaps the first I slept peacefully, and the next day they threw me into a full, packed cell with 60 men. And life went on. The experiment failed—I didn't hang myself. But it was a setup; they were giving me depressants because, as I said, I wanted to claw the walls, I couldn’t find peace, something was burning me so much—I had never experienced such emotional pain. I'm not discounting the fact that it was the arrest… But later, after my second imprisonment, I had another ten years waiting for me—and I took that more calmly.

After the trial, they assigned me to Novodanilyvka, to the stone quarries. I got five years, I'm going to the camp—well, I'd already been through the prisoner transports, but whichever of the *urkas* I talked to— “Where to?”— “To the ninety-third.” — “Kolyok! That's Buchenwald! You can only get out of there with a *raskrutka*.” I said: “Well, what can I do?” They sent me to the worst camp—whichever of the *urkas* I asked, it was the most terrible camp in Ukraine. The stone quarry in Novodanilyvka. Indeed, if you wanted to leave, you had to commit a crime. Because if you commit a crime in the camp, they transfer you to another zone. You could really only get out of there through a *raskrutka* [getting a new sentence].

Fortunately, they didn’t take me to that zone right away. I later figured out why: Ivan Rusyn was still serving a sentence in that zone for about another six months. They must have realized at the last moment that I couldn't be sent there because there were like-minded people. So, I was in Olshansk for up to a year. That camp was calmer; they surrounded me with informers there, but I had an interesting precedent. One of my friends, with whom I worked, suddenly came and confessed that he had been forced to spy on me. He was as white as a sheet, saying: “Mykola, I need to talk to you.” And he starts to tell me: “They told me to find an opportunity to arrange a *raskrutka* for you.” That is, even in Olshansk, during the first year, they were looking for a way to frame me for something in the camp and add a new term. He said: “So be careful.” I said: “Why are you telling me this? I thank you, but if they’ve decided on it, they’ll do it anyway. The only thing that can save me is to preempt them.”

This man agreed to write it all down. An honest and brave act. Then they took me to the quarry in Novodanilyvka, and they took him to a psychiatric hospital and abused him terribly. I don’t want to name him, because he is my best friend, the founder of the UHG in the Mykolaiv region.

V.V. Ovsiienko: I know him.

M.A. Horbal: He performed an incredibly heroic act for me—the man is imprisoned for a traffic accident (V.O.), and here they bring in some incomprehensible guy, so he agreed with the KGB to spy on me, but when they gave him such a criminal task, he honestly confessed everything to me and even agreed to tell the world community about it. And that paper of his disappeared. I told him: “The KGB has it. Get ready, they won't forgive you for this.”

V.V. Ovsiienko: What—did he write about it somewhere?

M.A. Horbal: Well, yes. I told him: a provocation can only be prevented if information about the preparation of such a provocation appears in the world. I assured him that I would find a way to transmit such a statement to the world if he wrote it. He agreed. I warned him that after such a statement his life would change radically. He showed his readiness to move to another level. One fine day he comes and says: “The paper is gone, it disappeared!” – “It's with the Gebnya.” – “Maybe not?” – “I’m telling you, it’s there.” The very next day they took me to Novodanilyvka. By the way, in your reference from the Kharkiv Human Rights Group, it says I worked there as an electrician. I don't know where you got that from. I worked with a hammer, breaking granite.

V.V. Ovsiienko: That wasn't my text; it was compiled by lawyers. We will correct it.

M.A. Horbal: I worked as an electrician for a bit in Vsesviatsk, in the 35th zone, during my first term, but in Novodanilyvka—it was a pickaxe, a hammer, and stone, twelve hours a day. Why? Because it took a very long time to march us to work. The MVD hands the prisoners over to the industrial zone. In the residential zone, it's one set of cops, but here, during the march to work, they hand us over to the troops, because this quarry is already in the zone of the convoy troops. It's a different administration, all these headcounts... The return from the quarry also takes a very long time. God forbid someone is missing, some wretch ate some thistle, one guy beat up another—these are all *urkas*, and so on. At night, the guards are removed from the quarry, and those *urkas* have acquaintances on the outside; they bring all sorts of trouble into these quarries at night, they get drunk… I worked hard there, but with God's help, I endured. The quota is large; they bring you this boulder, and you have to make a curbstone or stairs or a parapet out of it—so you have to chisel.

V.V. Ovsiienko: What kind of tools were there?

M.A. Horbal: There was manual labor, but I was on automated work because I graduated from the stonemason school there with honors. So I worked on special orders. I remember an order for the building of the Central Committee of Belarus; we made all those cornices. A simple pneumatic jackhammer, like a miner’s, but there are chisels, there is a hammer with teeth. To level that boulder, you beat it into dust.

V.V. Ovsiienko: This beating tears the muscles from the bones.

M.A. Horbal: That's the whole problem. You chip it away like that, blow off the dust. First, there are flamethrowers based on a rocket system principle—a small device like this, with gasoline, it throws out a stream of fire like this, and when you burn it with that fire, it flakes off. It turns out granite is layered. It’s a very hard material. It hums terribly, like a jet plane. And to split a slab, you drill a hole by turning it to dust. One, a second, a third, a fifth, then you drive in wedges, drive in plates, and split the slabs.

So I served my time there. In the third verdict, they wrote that I had already been under arrest for a week, although at that time I was still going to the quarry and working. They announced my transport a day before my release. I was supposed to be released on October 24, but on the 23rd they took me for transport. I knew that Olha Heiko had already gone from a criminal camp to a political one, that Ovsiienko had gone from a criminal camp to a political one. Lytvyn had already gone to a political one...

V.V. Ovsiienko: And Chornovil was framed with a criminal charge in exile...

M.A. Horbal: I knew that members of the Helsinki Group were no longer being released from criminal camps. So I already knew that they probably wouldn't release me either. True, I didn't know what they were imprisoning me for—for nothing. I had not repented; I remained a member of the Group. And not only remained—during this imprisonment, the book *Kolomyika for Andriyko* came out, the collection *Details of an Hourglass* was published in New York, and a huge article appeared in two issues of a newspaper. Back then, *Ukrainske Slovo* was published in the format of *Pravda*, so an article, “Life in a Criminal Camp,” took up two pages in two newspapers. About the conditions I was in. Later, a prosecutor in Mykolaiv told me: “I crawled on my belly to Berlin so that some scum could tell the whole world how we live here...” And I wrote about the prosecutors, about the guards, about the corruption, about the absolute lawlessness in that camp—I described everything.

So they opened a case under Article 187—slander against the Soviet reality. And it’s no problem for them to cook up slander against the Soviet reality—they brought two prison vans full of *urkas* from the zone to the investigator in Mykolaiv, most of whom I had never even seen, but they taught them what to say: “Yes, he walked with me, he told me things, he said this, he said that...” The investigator wrote it all down, often laughing at it himself, but testimony is testimony.

V.V. Ovsiienko: That you were going to derail trains.

M.A. Horbal: Yes, exactly that, that I urged them, when they were released, to derail trains. Well, an anti-Soviet, what else could he say? I laughed at it, but they slowly gathered material. It turns out they brought a collection of my poems from Moscow, which had been confiscated from Tatyana Velikanova. I had passed it on that last night before my arrest. Then I understood that those poems—both Vasyl's and mine—did reach Moscow, because I passed them on together. That same evening I was beaten and arrested, but I still managed to pass on those papers. I told Dmytro Stus: “Contact the KGB, there should be a whole package of Vasyl's manuscripts there—mine were in the KGB. I don't think they would have burned them.” They confiscated them during the search of Velikanova's place... But I've already told you about this.

They wouldn't have reclassified my article to Article 62; they probably would have given me 187-prime, and maybe they would have released me, because as soon as they took me, a prosecutor came and read to me... Ah. They brought me to Mykolaiv. I, as the *urkas* say, put on a show: “What is this?! I’m supposed to be released tomorrow, I should be free tomorrow!” – “You will be, freedom is tomorrow, you will be free.” Well, I think, to hell with you… But in the evening, around midnight, because after midnight I'm supposed to be free, on the 23rd before midnight they read me the warrant for my arrest, so that I would calm down and sleep peacefully in prison. They read the arrest warrant under Article 187, but they started bringing in all sorts of convicts who said whatever they wanted. They even brought in some pederast. It's ridiculous: it turns out they had posted leaflets around the zone saying that Horbal had been arrested, so I was supposed to feel sympathy for this “rooster” because he was supposedly speaking out for me and was being held here under investigation. I said: “Listen, stop playing your comedies. These are his rooster problems, scripted by the KGB.”

Well, they made things up, but when they brought that stuff from Moscow, it became easier for them; they had material. Some dean from the institute of culture, a certain Kiselyov, gave a review that “these are anti-Soviet works, one should be tried for this.” They brought my “Duma” from Ternopil (what does the “Duma” I served time for have to do with this?), it was in the case file—well, they gathered everything they could. They brought an article by Oles Berdnyk. It was made in a poster format (it was in *Literaturna Ukraina*; he published it sometime in the spring).

V.V. Ovsiienko: May 17, 1984, in *Literaturna Ukraina*.

M.A. Horbal: They made it into a poster like that and said: “You are a member of the Group, and this is your leader. Do you hear what he’s saying? So he’s free today, and you’ve served one term, served a second term—and you're still resisting. Out there beyond the gates, your wife is waiting for you... Well, why are you resisting? He says that this is all fabrications of Western intelligence services, about the violation of human rights in the USSR.” I said: “Those are his problems, Berdnyk's problems, if he had something to do with the intelligence services. After this outrage you have committed against me, to speak of any human rights in this country would be a crime before God. I will not do it.” By their logic, they thought, how can a person who is one step away from freedom, who is already being awaited, who has served two terms, not see what he is losing? To say: “Well, if the leaders say so, then I didn't know, I'm sorry.” And that's it—that would have been enough from me. But I suddenly say that this is what Berdnyk thinks, and I don't think so.

“Well, alright!” And they throw me into the death row cell. That is, into the death row block. This was also supposed to have an effect. They give me a mattress that was moving with lice. Why this, all of a sudden? It's a special block. A dog howls under my window all night long. It's impossible to sleep. For two weeks, I sat before bed, killing lice; my hands, all my fingers and nails were bloody because it was impossible to sleep. I think this was also planned. It was supposed to become so loathsome—and freedom so close, and this howling of the dog, and the screams of people hanging themselves, this madness... That's what I think now—back then I didn't think that way, I just knew I would have to serve more time.

I was taken in October 1979, but not released in October 1984, and I was transported for my third term only in August 1985. Almost a year. And there was no need to keep me there. Because my trial was in April, and I arrived at the camp in the Urals on September 24. Three weeks after Vasyl Stus died. Now I understand why they kept me in those cells, why they created such conditions… But, by God's grace, my mind didn't work in that direction then. And thank God for that.

V.V. Ovsiienko: It was already the Gorbachev era when you were tried, wasn't it?

M.A. Horbal: When I was tried, Gorbachev was already in power. They gave me ten and five, but considering that during the first two years of my term in a political camp I did not engage in anti-Soviet activities, because there were no dates on those poems and songs, they credited those two years to this term, and it became eight years. And the fact that I worked honestly in exile (because I really did work conscientiously as a stoker) and did not engage in anti-Soviet agitation, they credited those two years to my exile, and I got three years of exile. That’s what the verdict said.

V.V. Ovsiienko: Why did they suddenly need to do that? Did someone's conscience bother them, or what? Everyone was given ten and five, just like that.

M.A. Horbal: No, no, he read out “ten and five,” but then: “In view of the fact that...”

The saga of the Kuchyno camp in the Urals began. I was going to this camp completely calm because I already knew who was there. I already knew that Lytvyn, Ovsiienko, Lukianenko, Horyn, and Kandyba were there—someone wrote to me about Kandyba. I already knew that Marchenko was no longer alive, because I had managed to receive a letter in Mykolaiv before my arrest...

V.V. Ovsiienko: And about Lytvyn?

M.A. Horbal: And about Lytvyn, I probably already knew. I went to Kuchyno calmly, I knew—such was my fate. They kept me in a holding pen in Mykolaiv, in that spit-covered, filthy “glass.” I think they were also creating a certain nervous tension with this. They tried everything they could for psychological pressure. I understood that, I had already said: God, let Your will be done, You know best. Well, and the rest, Vasyl, you already know.

V.V. Ovsiienko: Are you telling this only for me?

M.A. Horbal: No, this is just for you. I wouldn't want it to be heard anywhere.

V.V. Ovsiienko: Then it will have to be written down on paper.

M.A. Horbal: So, in this camp, I managed to pass on only my verdict, the original, from a visit, and, I think, a small selection of poems. I don't know what happened to the original verdict; I have a copy, later handwritten by Olha Ivanivna Stokolotna. That’s the verdict I have. But I didn't pass anything else from there... I was writing there, working in the kitchen... Some other statements went out with that verdict. In the kitchen, I had an ideal opportunity to write, so some other statements got out from there. I’m afraid they didn't go any further. I know whose hands it was passed to, but he is no longer in this world. They probably decided there was no longer a need for it, or something, I don't know.

V.V. Ovsiienko: Well, to pass something from there—you had to have an extraordinary talent. I know that Stus managed to pass the manuscript of *From a Camp Notebook* from there.

M.A. Horbal: There was no other channel—only through visits. That's how I did it. Olha took it to the address. The original was important to me. I had a problem with how to copy the verdicts of other prisoners. I remember, back in Mordovia, they gave me one to read for a few hours. I could only make excerpts. One of our mutual acquaintances gave me his verdict to read for two hours and was already running off, and if I had told him that I would copy it and send it to the outside, he would have died of fright.

I was in the transit prison in Kazan when Vasyl died. I remember that frost; it was cold in the cell when Vasyl passed away.

V.V. Ovsiienko: You learned about this when you arrived in Kuchyno?

M.A. Horbal: How did I find out? They kept me in that quarantine cell, and I worked in the cell across the hall.

V.V. Ovsiienko: Ah, somewhere in the seventh cell?

M.A. Horbal: It was the last cell, where I worked—I don't know the numbers there. I hear someone scrubbing the floor there. Later I found out it was Vasyl Kurylo doing the cleaning. Well, I think, a cop won't be scrubbing the floor. I hear him shuffling already by the cell door, so I say to him quietly: “Greetings to Vasyl Stus.” He walked away, silent. But then, he must have come back and says to the cell: “Vasyl is dead. In his cell.” I arrived on September 24, and around September 25-26, I learned that Vasyl was gone, they told me. How did he die? Why did he die?

Well, and then, as I see it, that direct terror lasted another two or three months, and then everything began to change radically. It seems to me that if Vasyl had held on for those four months...

V.V. Ovsiienko: Oh, but do you remember how much they tormented Sokulsky, Kandyba, Ruban, and Alekseyev in the punishment cells?

M.A. Horbal: That's a different matter, I don't know, but Ivan Sokulsky could demand some windowpane: “Why isn't it there, what's missing?” If you didn’t provoke them, they didn’t harass you anymore. I didn't serve time in the punishment cell on the special-regimen block, although I supported all the protests that took place there. I never once sat in the punishment cell on the special-regimen block.

V.V. Ovsiienko: I, by the way, was never there either.

M.A. Horbal: I don't know why they put Alekseyev there.

V.V. Ovsiienko: Well, there is some sense in what you are saying.

M.A. Horbal: Because look. I worked in the kitchen, and I never once cooked the gruel that was written on the menu. One time, Rak, or whatever his name was, that captain, came?

V.V. Ovsiienko: Rak was there sometimes.

M.A. Horbal: Yes. The DPNK. He came: “What's written here? And what are you making?” And there—you know—was a healthy aluminum pot, so I said: “I’m serving my third term. I’ll smack you with this pot…” So he didn't bother me anymore. I sometimes made crescent rolls and formed cutlets. Although it wasn't written anywhere that the fish should be fried—it was always supposed to be boiled. But I managed to fry that fish. There were leftover grains; I ground them up and made some kind of pie, something else—no one bothered me. And while I was taking the slop out to the guardhouse, on my way back—I’d grab an armful of nettles from under the restricted zone fence and cook green borscht. I’d say: “Everything will be fine, don't worry.” If someone got on my case, I’d say: “Wait a minute, am I doing this to make things better in the prison? You’re supposed to do this, not me. Logically, I should be making things worse, so that everyone here would be screaming their heads off. But I’m trying to make people happy, and you're hindering me.” So no one bothered me, I did what I wanted.

And then, when they transferred us—remember?—to Vsesviatska, I'm lying on the bed, the colony chief comes in, I jump up: “It's nothing, nothing, lie down, lie down.” But Stus was killed for such a “crime.”

V.V. Ovsiienko: That was already Major Osin.

M.A. Horbal: There were beds there already, not bunks. A hospital-style cot with a wire mesh base. You're lying down, he enters the cell, you jump up out of habit, because it's the authorities— “No, lie down, lie down...”

V.V. Ovsiienko: I remember that episode.

M.A. Horbal: Because they already saw that changes were coming. They were waiting for the order to arrive. Among those guards were primitives, morons, who couldn't be changed. There was a Novytsky, there was a Rudenko—such scum, who would walk around, peeking, looking for something to catch you on, but when you say to him: “Why are you trying to curry favor? You want to catch me on something?” The regime began to change, just like in the country. I know a case with Mykhailo Horyn. I was in a cell with Horyn then, he fell ill, and they ran around, summoned all the doctors until morning, brought him to the medical unit.

V.V. Ovsiienko: That was already Doctor Hrushchenko. And the one who finished off Oleksa Tykhy, Yuriy Lytvyn, Valeriy Marchenko, and Vasyl Stus was named Pchelnikov.

M.A. Horbal: Yes, times were changing, but I was convicted under Gorbachev, when perestroika was underway. We were reading such articles in the newspapers, in *Izvestia*, that even I wasn't incriminated with such things. But we were sitting in cells. Well, a little more time was needed. But everything is in God's will.

When I returned to Kyiv, a few days later there was an evening for Vasyl Stus, who was already so far, far away, so high, high above our worldly hustle. A few months later, I heard university students reading Stus—and I had the feeling that he was already some other person, not the Vasyl who beat his fist on the iron door of a prison cell... I think, perhaps, it was meant to be. And if Vasyl were here today—who would he side with? With Khmara, Chornovil, or Lukianenko, when each of them is now separate. Isn't it dangerous to find yourself in an environment of strife after flying so high? I think that God's providence is over all this. Maybe he was meant to remain in eternity on the highest note. On the highest note!

Perhaps Ivan Svitlychny was meant to remain silent, inactive (at a time when people were shouting, calling, and lecturing on all the squares of Ukraine)—to pass into eternity without fuss, as a bright ray of peace? (Ivan Svitlychny died on October 25, 1992. For the last three years, he lay speechless. – V.O.)

Obviously, both Vasyl and Ivan could have told the world so much more, but everything is in God's will. We will miss their generalizations of what they lived through. I am now reading Danylo Shumuk. I am pleasantly impressed, if only by the fact that it is well written, even from a literary point of view. I believe that if we had a good Ministry of Education, we should now organize discussions of this book in schools throughout Ukraine. After all, this is who we are, this is Ukraine—communists, nationalists, Red Army soldiers, Banderites, all this is woven into one destiny—that of Danylo Shumuk. There is no need to invent anything. No need to look for Pavka Korchagin or write a falsified *The Young Guard*. An ideal image.

But everything takes time. If there were a good minister of education, it would be possible to organize discussions of this book in schools. It’s an ideal thing—whether you want it or not, everything leads you to Ukraine. He tried everything. Who is to blame for our situation? It all comes down to the empire. Not any communism, not any tsarism—there is a powerful empire, whatever it calls itself—it is an evil for Ukraine. You can't draw any other conclusion after analyzing this book.

Well, that’s probably all, Vasyl.

V.V. Ovsiienko: You talk about analysis… But that requires material. Are you thinking of writing something?

M.A. Horbal: Yes. I hope that I will write something more. I am not undertaking a scholarly treatise, because I do not have the proper knowledge. To do that, you need prior knowledge. I won't even write a good memoir. Because I don't have a good memory. I don't remember. I read with pleasure that someone has collected some material about me, names the judges, prosecutors, witnesses by their last names—I don't remember them. For me, it's all like one day, so I won't do that. I might create some work of fiction—I feel the mood, I remember the smells, I remember the dynamics, I remember the good. If it manifested somewhere, then I remembered it. I don't remember evil people, but if there is a bright figure, then I remember them, and I often dream about it. At night, I walk through completely new camps where I've never been, but they are so real. It's as if on another planet, with a way of existence like the camps. I think I will do something in that regard.

V.V. Ovsiienko: The prison doesn't let go. Once, Danylo Shumuk, whom you mentioned, was asked if he felt psychologically free. He said: “No. In my dreams,” he says, “I am mostly in captivity. It will probably never let me go, I will probably never be free.” Well, he had 42 years, 6 months, and 7 days—that was his total sentence. I only had 13 and a half, and even so, the prison doesn't let go.

M.A. Horbal: That's what I'm saying—whether it's a cleansing of a certain karma for me, or, as they say, the untying of all those knots. You have to become so light to rise above yourself… So there is something to think about.

I must say that in many places I felt a kind of mystical hand. I would say: “God, if You help me accomplish this...”—and I would make some commitments. And everything I wanted came true. I preserved those materials in the most unbelievable conditions. It seemed there was no longer any possibility to pass them on—but they were passed on. I even came to the conviction that if you are working in a God-pleasing way, then whatever you want will be realized. Death is not frightening then, because death is only a stage. I had several blissful months, sitting with our old Semyon Skalych-Pokutnyk. I would ask, and he would tell me when this or that would happen... I asked: “Mr. Semyon, why should I believe you? It is written that there will be false prophets, and you are prophesying that it will be so, it will be so, this will happen...” He said: “Mykola, you don't have to believe me, but it is my duty to tell you this.” What was I to think after that? When this is a man of God.

I visited the old man, made a video clip—I don't know if I showed it...

V.V. Ovsiienko: But it only recorded his story about the teachings of the Pokutnyky. There's no autobiographical story?

M.A. Horbal: No, no.

V.V. Ovsiienko: That would also be important.

M.A. Horbal: I traveled to that mountain he spoke of, also filmed a little piece.

V.V. Ovsiienko: Is that the village of Synievyidne?

M.A. Horbal: No, he lives in Synievyidne. It's some village in the Kalush district (The village of Serednie. – V.O.). I was on that mountain, which the Pokutnyky call Zion. I got there on a weekday, but it turns out the holiday was supposed to be the next day. And I wanted to get to their holiday, when the Pokutnyky gather, but I didn't have time to wait, I had to leave. (Shows photographs. – V.O.). Here, according to Skalych, there is to be the temple of the Lord, here where the tall wooden cross is. That's a chapel, they've already built it. There are such rings, springs. And the Soviets once bulldozed all this so that people would not gather there. Now the Pokutnyky come there again. In the village, there is a church that still ignores them as a sect.

V.V. Ovsiienko: Did a little girl tell you there would be a temple here?

M.A. Horbal: A girl from that community accompanied me and said exactly that, that on this spot there will be the temple of the Lord, and this is the patriarchal cross. They believe in this.

Alright, Vasyl...

V.V. Ovsiienko: Thank you, Mykola.

M.A. Horbal: Somehow, with God's help, we managed to get through those prisons, Vasyl. We have a very similar fate, because you were also tried three times, like me, and all this is understandable to you. Who would have thought that we would one day be sitting in a warm house, in the capital, talking about those terrible things as if they weren't about us? Truly, one wants to exclaim “Hallelujah! Glory to you, God!”

What an unexpected stress—the first arrest, what a hellish pain—the second arrest, only to receive a third, and with it, peace of mind and faith.

V.V. Ovsiienko: Thank you. This was July 17, 1998, in the home of Mykola Horbal in Kyiv.