Interview with Myroslav Mykhailovych MOSYUK
(On the website since March 2, 2008. Corrections by M. Mosyuk April 11, 2008).
V.V.Ovsienko: On February 10, 2001, in Odesa, we are speaking with Mr. Myroslav Mykhailovych Mosyuk. Vasyl Ovsienko is recording.
M.M.Mosyuk: My name is Myroslav Mosyuk, I come from the good old, very ancient city of Volodymyr, which is in Volhynia. True, under the influence of Vladimir-on-Klyazma, it was renamed Volodymyr-Volynskyi, but since the principality was Volhynian, and later Galician-Volhynian, it seems to me that Volodymyr should just be called Volodymyr. Let the others be called Vladimir-on-Klyazma; we have our own.
I was born in 1949, studied there, all my early years were spent there, we never left or moved, until I finished school. Very fond memories of school...
V.O.: But please state your date of birth.
M.M.: I was born on March 11, 1949. Our family was small—my parents, my older brother, and me.
Since this story is supposed to relate to the Ukrainian human rights movement, the resistance movement, when I started recalling all this, I noted with surprise that our parents shielded us from it all, they told us absolutely nothing. We knew nothing about what was what. Much later, after I had studied and finished my education, when that Soviet system brushed me with its harsh wing, to tell the truth, I found out that my godmother’s husband had died in the UPA. And with surprise, I learned that my father—and my father was born in 1896—had apparently served in the Ukrainian Army and fought for the Ukrainian People's Republic. It so happened that I first heard a little bit about this when my father came to visit me in Odesa—again, for the first time since the revolution (it was in 1967 or 1966, I was seriously ill and in the hospital in Odesa at the time), and my father and I were walking, strolling through the streets, and my father says: “Right here was a rally, right here we stood...” The place of the rally my father pointed to was near the former velodrome of the SKA stadium (1967). Now the Operetta Theater stands on this spot.
It turns out that in 1917 he happened to be serving in the tsarist army in Odesa, and during the revolution, the Ukrainian wave swept up my father as well—his name was Mykhailo Yosypovych—also Mosyuk, of course. I can still see my father's face as he said: “They approached me and said: ‘Sir-comrade, are you Ukrainian?’” “I am Ukrainian.” “‘Come with us!’” And my father went with them, and he went so well that he didn’t find himself back in Ukraine until the mid-1930s, sometime after 1930, I don’t know the exact date. My father never told me or my brother anything about it, as I've already said. Only when my father was already ill (he died in 1972), when I came for winter break (I had just gotten acquainted with politics then), he told me something one last time. And what's interesting—I say my surname, I've lived with it my whole life, it’s mine, native, from the day I was born, but I don't know if it's our real surname or not. My father seemed to say he was from Volhynia, from the Sokal region, but he told my brother that their village was somewhere across the river from Kamianets-Podilskyi, and that he had either 5 more brothers, or there were five of them in total. They must have come from a well-to-do family. Looking at all this, it seems to me that he was in hiding from it all, because the Soviet authorities would not have forgiven him for that war. I know he was in the Czech Republic, as he once said, he was in Belgium, and that an émigré’s life was hard. This is perhaps the only bridge between the generations. But he always said: stay away from that politics, don’t get involved in anything. And funnily enough, I grew up a convinced Ukrainian, while my older brother grew up a convinced communist, and we fought about it our whole lives. In our conscious years, we had a very good, brotherly relationship—my brother lives in a village in Crimea (and he is no longer with us—he died in 2006. – M.M.)—but ideologically, we were always at odds. But later life turned him around a bit, and he saw Ukraine and, so to speak, returned to his paternal heritage as well.
I came to Odesa in 1966, after finishing 11th grade, and enrolled in our Odesa State University in the Faculty of Chemistry, which I graduated from. By education, I am an organic chemist and worked a little in this field. Life twisted and turned, as it probably does for everyone. But all my life, I was interested in books—you see, there is something to look at here.
V.O.: I see you have a Ukrainian library—there’s Stus...
M.M.: I have the complete six-volume set of Stus. We have guys here who have books, there are people who are into that. I even was at the editorial office, I have acquaintances at the publishing house. There are books, I love all this. And you see this, on the shelf, a row of identical bindings—this is the “Life of the Glorious” series. You read different books, of course, and then I realized that you can't grasp everything, so I focused on Ukrainian literature. I have a particular fondness for poetry. Of course, I love all poetry, from different nations, but your own is somehow more kindred. It seems to me that this is natural and normal. I became interested in this series. But I look, and a catalog for "ZhZL" [Russian "Life of Remarkable People" series] came out. I see: one volume, then a second is missing. I ask in the library—I used to go to our university library, where, as always among librarians, there are many such passionate people dedicated to their cause, there are real enthusiasts of this work—my deepest bow to all of them, somehow all my life they drew me to them. And I began to ask about this and that, searching in stores, picking things up. It never even occurred to me then that some books could be withdrawn. At that time or a little earlier, the book about Yuriy Kondratyuk, “Through Thorns to the Stars,” had been withdrawn. Then “The Unburnt Bush” by Serhiy Plachynda and Anatoliy Kolisnychenko was withdrawn. But I already had a nose for it, and I, sin as it is to say, had not returned it to the library before that, because I saw that it would be withdrawn. I paid the fines, everything as it should be, but the sin still lies on my soul, because one must have a high piety for the university library.
So about these withdrawn issues, I was told that they are in the Department of Art History. There is one man there who knows Ukrainian literature, a certain Vasyl Barladianu—you should go to him, and maybe he will tell you. That’s how Vasyl and I met.
V.O.: And when was that?
M.M.: That was right after I graduated from the university in 1973. So it was around 1973-74. I was teaching for my first year after university. I worked for a year after university, but we are chemists, pedagogical work never attracted us, we all strived for science then, science, to do something more important, although it’s not clear what’s more important—probably everything is important. But we were striving for science. And I, after looking for a job, left the school. Here in Odesa, we have the Selection and Genetic Institute. (Now it is called the Selection and Genetic Institute – National Center for Seed and Variety Studies. – M.M.). An excellent institute with great traditions, both good and bad. It’s an agricultural institute, selective breeding, growing grain—something that always appeals to us somehow. A laboratory of molecular biology was established there, where I was engaged in electron microscopy of nucleic acids at the time. A completely new direction, there was nothing like it in Odesa, but it was funded more or less well back then and we had good equipment. That’s where I worked.
So, back to Vasyl. We met. He turned out to be a smart guy, intelligent, well-read, very literate. Vasyl, by the way, was a Lenin scholarship recipient, and no matter what the scholarship is called, they don't give it for pretty eyes, but for knowledge and work. That’s how our acquaintance began, which later grew into a better relationship, you could even say a friendship. It was then that it became clear that some books had been withdrawn from circulation. At that time, I was completely innocent in those matters, I didn't know all that. I read books, yes, there’s a lot in the university library, some things hadn't even been withdrawn. In my student years and later, when I worked at the school, I had a lot of time. At school, I managed to get everything done—you'd sit for a bit after work, until the students came, to consult someone, to help, etc.—and there was a lot of time. And so I started going through the entire Ukrainian section of the library. In our university library, there is a catalog of Ukrainian publications, and I went through it from A to Z. I remember finding a small book, a brochure by Andriy Richytsky titled “Volodymyr Vynnychenko in Life and Politics,” which I quite calmly checked out and took home to read. By the way, it has been preserved in the library to this day. But some books disappeared. There was another collection—I still have the card to this day—“100 Best Ukrainian Songs,” where I was surprised to see one song that my mother used to hum: “Ми гайдамаки, ми всі однакі,” “…проти вражого ярма,” etc., meaning Makoveiskyi’s “March of the Haidamakas.” And there it was, published. So, you can’t hide an owl in a sack, it will pop out somewhere...
Returning to my acquaintance with Vasyl—well, we talked about this and that, about ten different things. At that time in Odesa, there was a certain circle of acquaintances—like Taras Maksymiuk, a good friend of mine with whom we’ve known each other for probably 25 or even 30 years. He is a local historian, a great expert on Ukrainian literature, geography, the history of our region, and art history.
Speaking of my relationship with political life—I can't say it was particularly close. It was my friendship with Vasyl; we did some things together, something, as they say, outraged us, we disagreed with it, we talked and spat about something. I always expressed my thoughts calmly and openly. Of course, in Odesa at that time—well, it's much less so now, but back then a person who spoke Ukrainian and expressed such pro-Ukrainian views looked like a “white crow.” A white crow is a white crow, but what’s good about this city, Odesa, is that people can laugh at something, etc., but there isn’t such sharp opposition and hostility to the opposite. Because I remember, Taras Maksymiuk and I were once walking through the city, we went somewhere for coffee or a drink. We always spoke Ukrainian with each other. (Taras is now a Merited Artist of Ukraine.) And when we spoke Ukrainian, in one place people looked at us in amazement, and in another, they said: “Oh, guys! How nice that you are speaking!” People were happy about it. But I will say, not once was I told to shut my mouth or anything else, or insulted for speaking Ukrainian and so on. Sometimes something like that happened, hints were made, but you see, I’m a big guy—maybe they didn't really want to say anything bad to me.
I then left the school and went to the Selection and Genetic Institute. I often communicated with Vasyl Barladianu, we saw each other, talked. I had photographic paper because sometimes it was necessary to re-photograph something. I mentioned Plachynda's book; in our Petrun Fund, we had Kubiyovych's geographical atlas, “Atlas of Ukraine and Adjacent Lands.” What a stupid time it was—that this book could be withdrawn! What was to be done? I take that book, go to another guy, get some “Mikrat” film, which was used for making photocopies, and I re-photograph this entire book—in black and white, because color film wasn't available then. Just in case, so it wouldn’t be lost. That film was lying around my place for a very long time. That’s what was a shame!
By then, Vasyl had started to introduce me to things a little—I’m the type that when I see a book, my hair stands on end like a hound's, I'm curious, I stick my nose everywhere: let me read it, let me see it! I can say that not once in my life has there been a library where I was not allowed to read a book I wanted. And there were people who gave nothing to anyone. Maybe I inspired trust—I’d like to hope that it was as a decent person, because I always return what I borrow. So one time I borrowed Solzhenitsyn's works from him—there was some part of “The Gulag Archipelago.” I remember borrowing a typed copy of “The First Circle” from him. We didn't quite get to Ukrainian literature. And then later—you probably know Mariia Ovdienko? Once I was on a business trip to Kyiv, and since I had free time, as I was going for a longer period, what was there to do in the evenings—sit in a dormitory or a hotel? It was kind of boring. You can’t sit in a library for too long either. So I went to visit my acquaintances—Mariia and her husband, Dmytro. I recalled that once, while at the library, I had, as usual, checked out chemical literature. And for a break, for relaxation, I took something from Ukrainian literature—that’s how it was in the Lenin Library in Moscow, and in the Vernadsky Library in Kyiv, and here as well. And somehow we got to talking with the girls. It turned out they were from the Faculty of Philology. And that was when, perhaps for the only time, I came across that poem by Lina Kostenko about Adam and Eve, “Paradise Elegy” (Lina Kostenko. Selected Works. – K.: Dnipro, 1989. – p. 170. – M.M.)—do you remember: “Eve grew sad, and Adam walks about troubled, and the clouds are all tousled...” and so on, that poem. Of all the Ukrainian literature that appears today, you see its power and beauty—we were somehow limited in all this, robbed. These, as I see it, are the best manifestations of the human spirit, dignity, honor, and so on.
And then things got going. Vasyl was writing something; I, unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately (because there are many who write in a way that makes you question whether it’s worth publishing), had no talent for writing, but I could help with something, get some books... I remember once I checked out a bunch of literature from the institute library, the classics of Marxism-Leninism, because Vasyl was writing some of his articles, and I was helping him with that. There was a moment that even the investigation didn’t know about: he and someone else were retyping something, they needed photographic paper for copies, and one time Vasyl says to me... And in my lab, for my work, I had a typewriter, because I needed to write something, type scientific articles, so he asked me to retype one of his articles. If I’m not mistaken, it was called “Such Is the Soviet Court.” Which, by the way, was later incriminated as a crime for me, as it clearly falls under the article “Production and Distribution.” Well, not distribution, but “production of anti-Soviet literature.” If it had to be done, it had to be done. To help a friend, a comrade—that's a sacred duty. But I understood what it was, and after work, when no one was around, I would lock the door to the lab room and clack away, all quiet and calm. We were young, we worked a lot, and it didn’t arouse any suspicion in the management or anyone else that you were sitting there after work. Some colleague who was also staying late might drop by in the evening for a smoke, to sit and talk, to take a little break, a one-minute rest from work.
That was my political involvement, so to speak. As for me, there was nothing of the sort. Well, I understand that from the point of view of the authorities, a person could be nabbed and repressed for something. Vasyl and I were already communicating quite closely… My daughter was born in 1973, we would walk with our children together then, because we lived near each other, we saw each other in the park, he with his daughter, I with mine. This was practically right up until his arrest, which happened in 1977. And the trial was in 1977.
Working at the institute, I had to travel relatively often on business to Moscow and Kyiv—and at that time, somewhere in Kyiv, our “unforgettable organs” began to take notice of me. Because I communicated with Dmytro Obukhov, Mariia Ovdienko, went to their home, saw them.
Then a provocation was committed against me that I didn’t fully understand. When I was on an internship at the Kyiv Institute of Molecular Biology and Genetics, they did something nasty to me there—they accused me of taking a program for calculating experiment results without the permission of my consultant. Although, thank God, I had some foresight: I didn’t take it alone, but with colleagues, employees of the institute. I was already preparing to return to Odesa, and the calculations needed to be done quickly. So, my buddies and I sat down in the evening and they helped me do it all.
Sometime in 1976-77, Vasyl warned me that he had been summoned to the prosecutor's office, to the KGB. He says, watch out, they might take an interest in you too. Let them be interested, I felt practically no guilt, except for that one thing for which I could be grabbed by the scruff of the neck, accused, so to speak, of violating Soviet law. And another thing—guys from Western Ukraine used to visit Vasyl back then. And there was one incident—events began to unfold quite rapidly, Vasyl was already being pressured… A Galician man came to visit him—I don’t remember his name—and they wanted to grab him one evening, but the guy was built like an oak, so he socked one of them in the head, broke free from the other, and escaped.
And so, one fine day at work, in the late afternoon, I get a call from the personnel department, they say: “You need to sign some documents here, something in your file, could you stop by and sign.” I say: “I'm busy right now, maybe later?” “No, you need to come in today.” It was about four o'clock, the end of the workday. I say: “I have an experiment here...”—I behaved freely with our management, it was a normal state, I was respected at the institute because this was a completely new direction, and I worked with enthusiasm and great desire. This was probably felt, and so relations with the administration were good. They tell me: “You should still stop by today. When you're heading home—just pop in, it's just a signature.” And our laboratory building and the administrative building—the whole institute is a very large territory, with fields, many lab buildings—are about 300 meters apart. Sometime before five, I grabbed my briefcase and was already heading home, when a man approaches me and asks: “You’re not Mosyuk, by any chance?” I say: “I am.” And before I knew it, they—wham!—grabbed me “by my lily-white arms” from both sides and tossed me into a car. And there I am sitting in the back seat of a “Volga”! Two guys are sitting on either side of me, and I even say: “Well, I'll be damned, I thought that only happens in the movies. Turns out it happens in real life too.”
Well, they brought me to the building familiar to all Odesa residents on what was then Bebelya Street. And today this Bebelya Street is called Yevreiska [Jewish] Street, and the alley next to it is Roman Shukhevych Lane. True, they seem to have changed it back to Griboyedov now. Our authorities love to mess around: God forbid there should be something strongly Ukrainian. But for a time, that alley was named after Roman Shukhevych. So, they brought me there, where I became acquainted with the system called the KGB.
V.O.: Do you not remember the date of that detention? Well, at least the month.
M.M.: The date? It was probably in the autumn, because the weather was cold and frosty. Sometime, probably, if the trial was in 1977—because the investigation dragged on for a long time—this was sometime in late autumn of 1976.
V.O.: Vasyl Barladianu was arrested on March 3, 1977. (But the first search in this case against him was already on 06.16.1976. – V.O.)
M.M.: Arrested—yes, 03.02.1977. March. So, it was still in the autumn of 1976. Of course, when they brought me in—“Here’s a non-disclosure form for you, that we are...”—I don’t remember if I signed a pledge not to disclose all this, that I was summoned, or not? I don’t remember.—“Well, but you are obliged to keep all this secret...” and so on. Of course, they really wanted to turn me into an informant. But I see right through that whole crowd and I can feel it all.
But somehow I found the time, I slipped out—Vasyl was still free—drove over to his place, and said, here's the deal, so you're in the loop. I told him the story of how they took me. They probably figured that since that other guy had escaped, they were afraid something similar might happen with me. Although I always seemed calm—in keeping with my name Myroslav, I am a peace-loving person. Well, I say, so-and-so happened, I was summoned, for this, that, and the other—what could they grab me for? The only thing—that I typed it. That’s the pretext, clear as day. Vasyl says: “You know what? If it comes to it, you say this, that I used to come to your place in the evenings and I did the typing.” It seems childish now, but he was trying to shield me and protect me from it all. Well, what happened, happened, we can’t erase anything from the past. But I did it—I did it. I did it consciously, and I have no intention of denying it. It was a kind of boyish attitude. The only thing I can say is—I didn’t want to go to prison, of course, not to prison, not to a camp.
V.O.: Of course. Who would want to go there?
M.M.: Who would want to? Well, and so it began—they summoned me once, it dragged on for several weeks. Once, a second day. The first time they brought me to the KGB, I spoke with the investigator—Ivan Oleksandrovych something, either Zadorozhnyi or Zavgorodnii—I don’t remember his last name exactly, although I saw him later. One came in, another came in. Then they took me—as they put it: “We will take you to the general.” Well, to the general, big deal.
V.O.: What’s your general to me...
M.M.: And that was the one who died on the “Nakhimov,” Kuvarzin. Well, we came in, and he: “This-and-this-and-this-and-this...” he begins. The general didn’t make much of an impression on me; I didn't feel that subservience, any trembling in my knees. I even played it cool at first. I said: “Oh, thank God, at least one institution in Odesa where they speak Ukrainian properly.” They laughed. It lasted a long time. From about five o’clock until midnight, maybe even one in the morning.
V.O.: And what did they want from you?
M.M.: What did they want? “Here, write.” “Write what?” “Here, there is this Barladianu... Who are your acquaintances and so on.” “Well, am I supposed to describe everything?” “Yes, well, there are some people whose opinions don’t quite coincide with the government’s policy.” The cliché back then was “the policy of the Party and the government.” In the end, they did present me with it: such and such an article. “Are you familiar with this article?” I look: “Such Is the Soviet Court.” The article Barladianu wrote, and which I had retyped. But I had helped him type several articles because I had the opportunity. And he, of course, was inserting several copies, because he was sending them somewhere—I didn't know then that he was collaborating with Chornovil’s “Ukrainian Herald.” Vasyl didn’t let me in on that. That was separate.
I don’t really remember... “Well, here, this article. Where was it?” I can see from this article: yes, this is clearly the article I typed. And whether you like it or not—they can do an expert analysis, they’ll identify the typewriter. They didn’t present me with the results of any analysis. “Yes, I typed it”—and then the conversations began, meaning I was on the hook, clearly on the hook. Everything—"production and distribution." Because it's one thing to retype a single copy, and another when you insert four or I don't remember how many sheets of that paper into the typewriter—I think four copies came out clearly.
V.O.: They even put in 5 and 6.
M.M.: But that’s with thin paper; with paper like this—a maximum of 4 copies and that’s it.
“Okay, fine, this article. It describes some incident that really took place, so and so. Here, a person is quite rightly expressing his outrage about it. We have freedom of speech, don't we? It’s written in the Constitution? Does a person have the right to write?” “Well, it doesn’t quite, so to speak, coincide.” By the way, at first, they spoke Ukrainian, but then more and more they switched to Russian, because they argued, communicated at work, life, work—communication was mostly in Russian. And everything revolved around that. Of course, I twisted and turned, squirming as best I could. At first I was cocky, then I repented, saying yes, I made a mistake, it’s not really like that. “But you broke the law, didn’t you?” I remember, I even went to the library, took out the book “State Crimes,” since all this was in that section of the Criminal Code. First, I say, they gave me a ride home, then a car waited for me right after work several times. And you’re scared at work! Because you’ll get fired from your job—and here is work you love, that you enjoy. It was all understandable—and you hide with all this, God, like with some stupid, indecent disease. When you remember it, it’s not very pleasant to recall. The impression is that you’ve come into contact with something vile and disgusting, that something like that has fallen into your hands…
And so it dragged on for a long time. Now, you see, 25 years have passed since then, and many nuances of it all have been forgotten. I didn’t know what they could incriminate Vasyl with, and to this day he doesn’t really like to talk about it all. But in that I admitted to typing that article, and that article was clearly not Soviet, i.e., anti-Soviet, I had to act as a witness for the prosecution at the trial, which I didn’t like, and it’s unpleasant to recall to this day. But what happened, happened.
V.O.: But in a Soviet court, there were no defense witnesses—whatever you said, it all went towards the prosecution.
M.M.: That's right. They dragged me there, then I went on my own, because I was summoned—I went there like a calf on an invisible rope, because I had to go. I know they questioned my colleagues at work. And what I could appreciate later—a decent person would quietly approach me in a corner and say: Myroslav, so and so, this and that, they called me in, asked me this and that—just so you are aware of what's what. And I repeat, especially in the lab, we spoke calmly and openly about everything, without hiding, without any reservations. That is, we really had a democratic atmosphere, we could calmly express our views. But other people didn't tell me. There was, for example, a married couple where the wife said they had dragged her in, but the husband didn't. There were such rifts. And of course, this later left its mark on future interactions.
And so the case dragged on until it reached the court. The trial took place on June 27-29, 1977. I was summoned to the trial again. I remember, on the way there, some woman approached me and said: “You should retract your testimony, because it might be that this will all fall on you.” They could separate it “into a separate case.” It could have turned out that way, but it didn't. I testified at the trial that yes, I did all this and, perhaps, unfortunately, it was a sinful deed. In short, I testified against him. Maybe he could have denied it, somehow wiggled out of it—or maybe he couldn't, that’s another matter. I also remember the judge pricked me: “How do you assess…” This and that. And I say: “If you think I'm saying something wrong, I can sit on that bench, next to the defendant.” They saw I was getting feisty, so they took my testimony and showed me the door. And you remember, the witness came in and went out, he had no right... Or maybe he had the right, I don’t know to this day...
V.O.: The one who had given testimony had the right to remain in the courtroom, but they usually threw them out.
M.M.: After that, it was all disgusting. Of course, when the investigation was underway at the KGB, they supposedly promised there would be no “organizational conclusions,” no publicity or administrative punishments. They were hoping to recruit me as an informant. And I was squirming like a snake on a pitchfork, because I have such a disgust for that vile business. I generally don’t like to lie—like everyone, of course, I have lied in my life, but I don’t like it. And I remember my investigator was pressing me hard. Then they summoned me again, not to the KGB, not to the prosecutor's office, but they summoned me (and again, whether I wanted to or not, I had to go) to our “Chorne More” hotel. They had some kind of special room there, and I sat there. I remember the investigator twisting and pressing, and I'm sitting at the table, and sweat is running down my spine, down my back—that’s how much it… Oh! And when it all ended, I remember, I had the impression that my spine had been broken, that I was trampled, defiled—what the hell! And then in my first family, my wife gave in too, because, as I later figured out, if you go along with that system, somehow help that system, THEY would give you some kind of little gingerbread—later she made a pretty good career for herself. But it didn't last long. And after that, one thing led to another, and soon we divorced.
V.O.: So the KGB was involved in that?
M.M.: Again, I can't say for sure, and I don't want to lie. To some extent, yes, although personal relationships, you know, that’s a tricky thing… It just added to it. Maybe it was the straw that, as the saying goes, broke the camel’s back. Or maybe it was something else entirely.
But at work, it was different. I once spoke with my supervisor, the head of the laboratory. He told me that this is a system. And every system, every state, defends itself. You went against it—that means you are guilty. There is certainly logic in that. And the Soviet state knew how to defend itself. If only our state today defended itself like that one did—oh, how good that would be! Unfortunately, today's leaders take God knows what from experience, but not the good things. This is a genuinely good thing—the defense of the state. They don't really want to take the good things.
I remember, they also tried to scare me by saying they would publicize it all, because we were hiding it like some shameful disease. “Let’s hold a meeting,”—and then, in 1977, I was already 28 years old, still a Komsomol member—“let's have a Komsomol meeting and we'll speak out there.” I seized on that, saying: “Fine. I don't think I did ANYTHING so terrible,”—and my argument was that what I did was my constitutional right—freedom of speech, freedom of the press, it was supposedly my own business. Well, I found someone to play democratic principles with! “Fine,” I say, “then I'll stand up at the meeting and tell people what's what and how things are. Let them express their point of view.” And the institute, after all, was sort of an agricultural one, meaning more Ukrainian, meaning someone would be found there who would say a word in my defense. Whether anyone would be found or not was still unknown. But the fact is, they backed down from that idea.
In short, the trial ended with a so-called “special ruling” being sent to the institute concerning me. I had a talk with my boss, the institute director summoned me—I don't know if he's still alive or not—Oleksiy Oleksiyovych Sozinov, an academician.
V.O.: Sozinov—he’s in Kyiv!
M.M.: They say he was a relative of Shcherbytsky, something like that from his family. He summoned me, the conversation was one-on-one, strictly confidential. He says: so and so—well, we spoke in Russian—a paper has arrived. We must react to it in some way. You have your work—I was doing electron microscopy of nucleic acids at the time—but I, the institute, must make some move. Your whole topic and everything you have will remain with you, but we will transfer you to another department. And so they transferred me from the laboratory of molecular biology, so to speak, purely for show, to the department of genetics. But we could have had some incentives—to do something, defend a dissertation, go on an internship, improve our qualifications, because this is still traditional science, and regarding selection, you could do something here, but as for scientific work, especially high-tech—where there are very high technologies, expensive instruments, etc., it was only available in some larger centers, and Odesa did not belong to such centers and still doesn't to this day.
I am saying that I cannot blame Sozinov for anything; from his point of view, he was right. Moreover, he warned me frankly, told me what was what, and the conversation was professional—I can't say anything bad. Transferred. And I understood that from then on, that was it, the end of the line. Meaning, no advancement. Well, you probably also know how little research assistants were paid at that time. It was pennies, a pittance, and without a scientific degree, you couldn't count on anything. Then I saw the attitude towards me. At that time, we had this thing introduced—like a deputy head of a department or laboratory—but on a voluntary basis. That is, they dealt with all sorts of administrative matters. I, for example, held such a pseudo-title and was in charge of ordering reagents and equipment—purely logistical things. Even then, my boss had noticed me and trusted me with this. And now I see: no more business trips, and there’s a sort of vacuum around me at work, I started to feel it.
And at that time, a rupture occurred in my family, and one fine day I packed my belongings—and my belongings were several large bags of books and the clothes on my back—and moved into the postgraduate dormitory. Thank God, there was a lot of free space at the institute back then. And this was without a residence permit—I supposedly had a right to the living space where I lived with my wife, but I was living as an in-law. So, so to speak, I lived illegally in one place, then in another, because a new postgraduate student would arrive. When people were settled on a legal basis, you had to vacate the bed, the spot. So I was pushed around a bit. But some time passed, and I met another woman, whom I later married.
I saw that there was nothing left for me to do at the institute. The time came—I resigned from the institute. That was in 1979; I resigned and went to work at a factory.
V.O.: And what factory was it? Please name it.
M.M.: The Radial Drilling Machine Plant, the so-called “radialka.” It was a very large plant in Odesa—unfortunately, today it has also nearly died. I worked there from January 1979. I worked there for more than 15 years. And as I say: a person with a higher education, they couldn't hire you for a worker's position. I was a young, relatively healthy guy. My, so to speak, intellectual career was over, and I had to work in such a place or another to earn my bread. Here, my new relatives helped, although it wasn't easy to get a job. Through family connections, I went to work at the factory. They hired me in the department of scientific and technical information.
Some time passed, and my wife’s late grandfather says to me: “Why didn't you say anything, that you had dealings with the KGB?” How could I boast about such a thing—who are you to me? “I didn’t know, this and that—you should have told me, I was the one who got you the job…” etc., etc. Well, whatever. Especially since the pay wasn’t much. After that, I moved to where they sent people after prison—to the foundry.
V.O.: Oh, yes, yes!
M.M.: As a foreman, true. But I worked there for a long time, 7 years I worked in the foundry. And what’s interesting, I liked it—simple, frank relationships, normal, though very far from the schoolboy enthusiasm for the “working class.” When you see it from the inside, you see it’s completely different. But there was another time, when I was already working in the foundry. One fine day, they called me to the foreman's office, saying: “They're calling for you in the party committee.” What the hell for? I have no business with the party committee, I'm done with the Komsomol, and since then I haven't been in any party, including, naturally, the Communist one. Well, I went.
I arrive, and I see—there sits my joy, my former investigator, a lieutenant colonel: “Hello, Myroslav Mykhailovych!” “Oh! Long time no see! What brings you here?” At that moment I felt a small opportunity to get a little bit of my own back. I came in from the foundry: my face black, my forehead all sweaty, in my work clothes—well, how does one look coming out of a foundry?—and the party committee secretary is sitting next to him, and I'm asking what he's doing here. “We have a proposal for you.” This and that. I say: “Why are you beating around the bush?” And I’m speaking to him like that, already with the right to speak as an equal. “You’ve read a lot, you know a lot, and you are still interested in all these things.” “What things?” “Well, the Ukrainian movement and so on.” “And how do you know that?” “What do you think—we keep an eye out, we keep you in our field of vision.” “You keep a good eye, if I don't even notice.” “We would like you to write something else about your acquaintance, Barladianu.” I don't remember what year it was—I'd been at the factory since 1979, but this was a bit later, probably around 1979-80, like that.
V.O.: Was that when Vasyl Barladianu’s first term was ending and they needed to give him a second one?
M.M.: Probably. When they wanted to pin something else on him. I say: “You know I’m no writer.” “But we’ll help you, we’ll give you materials.” And then I think to myself: to write or not to write is one thing, but to get into your library—that would be something! You see, that old, eternal pull of the bookworm. I say: “Well, if that’s the case—you know I work—then arrange a business trip for me, pay for it as it should be—and then...” “No, you do it after work…” “And if it’s after work—then you can write it yourselves after work! I work at work, and after work I have my legal rest.” The party committee secretary sits there, looking at me, and his eyes, I see, are turning square, or something angular—talking to a KGB lieutenant colonel like that! It was also incomprehensible. I say: “So you know: during the day or on my shift, I work, and then I rest. You want something done? Then you pay for the work.” Later it dawned on me that ‘getting paid’ can also mean different things. But, I said, I’ve told you my piece, and you can think about it. And without permission (!!), without anything—I turned around and went back to the foundry. If you need me, I said, you know where to find me—because you found me!
And with that, our communication with them ended. True, after 1991—they once confiscated several books from me, and like an utter fool, I brought them in myself: Arkas's “History,” the pre-war edition of “Essays on the History of the Communist Party of Ukraine” edited by Petrovsky. This was all from our famous Starokinnyi market—some things fell into my hands there. Well, I took them in to be reviewed, without a seizure report, without anything—and they were never returned to me. I did a stupid thing, but what can I say—to tell the truth, what happened, happened. So I went to the KGB—and again, out comes this “godfather” of mine, so to speak, Zadorozhnyi or Zavgorodnii. He showed me his official ID, that he was so-and-so, but it didn't stick in my memory. So I came and said I’d like to see my file—and you did confiscate books back in the day, right? He blathered on, this and that, it's a long process, do you really need it… And I have no time—we’re all busy people. It's one thing when you have time to wander around, you could come once or twice, insist on your rights. But this just happened to be during work hours when I was near the KGB, so I dropped in. But I never read my file, I never saw any of it. And that was that.
So what is there to say? If I were to summarize all this, about my personal experience, this system—maybe these are cliché, stock phrases—anyone who fell under the flywheel of that system… I said that the feeling of being broken, crushed, and, if I were a woman, I’d say raped, remained… I don’t know, thank God, what that is…
We see a certain, to put it mildly, imperfection in our current state, but it is terribly pleasant that this is already Ukraine, and that I can speak freely, and no scoundrel will point a finger at me and say “speak a normal language,” although even today there are enough fools who might say that... I am happy that I have my Ukraine—our Ukraine. This is my state. I once had the opportunity to leave, and even today I have the opportunity to go, but this is my country, whatever it may be. She is like a mother, I love her. If through my life, my actions, my mood, my conversations, I have helped someone somewhere to stand up, to turn their head in the right direction—because I don't see any great deeds to my name—then I am already happy, having my own state. Let’s end on that, perhaps. Maybe you want to ask something?
V.O.: Yes, very briefly. Did you take part in any public or political organizations during the perestroika and the struggle for independence? Did you show any activity?
M.M.: I went to rallies, but I don’t like to speak. I’m not one of those people, I’m not an ambitious person at all. This is obviously a flaw, but maybe also a positive trait. I don’t like to push myself forward. Actively, when there was the referendum for or against the Union, if you remember...
V.O.: Yes, in March of nineteen-ninety.
M.M.: That's when I went, we had the “Pivdenna Hromada,” the Ukrainian Language Society—I got a certificate from them, which I still have somewhere as a memento—and went as an observer, and honestly worked from “A” to “Z” with another Ukrainian guy. And we, unlike all the others, clearly made sure that the law was fully observed, that no one campaigned for “yes” or “no,” that everything was clear, so that a person could freely express their opinion. And, of course, that they didn’t cheat too much. That was the moment when I saw that one couldn’t just sit on the sidelines anymore.
All my life, with my friends and acquaintances, I fought and argued, trying to win them over to my side. I remember, as everyone has their social circle, there were birthdays. Well, we’d sit down, have a drink. This was around 1988-89, perestroika, when the newspaper “Literaturna Ukraina” was being snatched from hands. I went up to one guy: “Lend me 5 rubles.” “What for?” “I just need it. Lend me 5 rubles.” I collected them from about eight people. Back then, a subscription to “Literaturna Ukraina” cost about 5.60. “You each gave me 5 rubles, I'll add a little, and I'll subscribe all you blockheads to that ‘Literaturna Ukraina,’ so you’ll read a little and know something, instead of asking me all the time.”
(I couldn't stand it a second time in 2004. I worked as a member of the local election commission for Yushchenko's election.
And the last time it got to me was in 2007. We protested, very actively, against the monument to that regal slattern… We lost to the semi-occupational authorities. Which did erect that monument. I think it is not eternal. “Carthage must be destroyed…” – M.M. )
I, apparently, had had my fill of that Soviet system with respect to all sorts of organizations, parties, movements, the Komsomol, and so the last organization I took part in was the Komsomol. Because I never joined any parties, nor the Rukh movement—no political activity at all. I just didn't want any of it, had no pull towards it.
V.O.: Did I miss something, because I don't think I fell asleep, you started talking about how there was supposed to be a Komsomol meeting and you offered to lay everything out at that meeting. What came of that?
M.M.: The investigator immediately backed down. Why? As I figure it now, they didn’t want publicity back then either. Because there were no particular offenses on my part. Those were trifles, you and I understand that perfectly well—oh my, he retyped an article! And it didn't even contain calls to overthrow the government, or for some war or resistance—it was purely critical! And here it turns out the system beats you for that. He probably wanted to scare me with that meeting, but it turned out I wasn't particularly scared. That's why he immediately backed off.
V.O.: It could have worked against them.
M.M.: And so that topic had no continuation.
But here’s another interesting moment I just remembered—again, how the system spared no expense. This was at the time when the KGB was still dragging me around and I was going—and I was going to that same “Chorne More” hotel. And in my family, I had already started living separately. One fine evening, a knock on the door—my classmate appears. Where's Odesa, and where's Volodymyr! My eyes popped out: “What is it, Hrysha?” “Well, I'm on a business trip here, I came to Odesa.” Chitchat and such conversations, let’s go out somewhere, take a walk. And back then I was doing science and earning some 100 or 130 rubles, meaning my pockets were always empty. “Let's go to a restaurant somewhere.” I say: “But I don't have any money.” “I do.” We went to the “Chorne More” restaurant. And the conversations, he was asking me about this and that, and about Vasyl Barladianu. And Vasyl wrote poems, he had several very good ones. We used to talk about how he couldn’t get them published. And I liked those poems from his youth. “You know, we have an ensemble back in Lutsk…”
Why am I leading up to all this? In the magazine “Berezil” from some year in the nineties, there were memoirs of some person who had been repressed—I have that issue of the magazine somewhere. And there, in black and white, it was written: Hryshka Hrydasov was an informant, he snitched on his acquaintances. Before the publication in the magazine, of course, I couldn't put it all together, but when I read that… They didn’t spare the money for him to come here, to meet with me, to take me to a restaurant! So you see, I even profited from the KGB, because I had dinner at a restaurant at their expense. Such an interesting little detail.
V.O.: Well, alright, it seems I have nothing more to ask. Except: where do you work now?
M.M.: Now, somehow, thank God, things have worked out. I now work at a science and technology center. My job is scientific equipment, laboratory equipment, we supply equipment to various laboratories. I am a leading specialist in laboratory technology. Such is my current situation. (I am not working now—I am retired, on disability—my heart. – M.M.)
V.O.: Thank you.
Myroslav Mosyuk. Photo by V. Ovsienko, 10.02.2001.