Mykola Oleksandrovych SARMA-SOKOLOVSKY and Varvara Stepanivna SOKOLOVSKA
V. V. Ovsiyenko: Mykola Stepanovych Sarma-Sokolovsky and his wife, Varvara Stepanivna, from the city of Novomoskovsk, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, at 1 Ukrainska Street, Apt. 35, postal code 51200, home phone 05693, number 229-43.
Father Mykola Sarma-Sokolovsky was born on May 23, 1910. He can no longer walk, his vision is poor, he no longer speaks very well, and his wife is also unwell at the moment. That is why I, Vasyl Ovsiyenko, did not travel to them in Novomoskovsk in April 2001. However, on April 5, 2001, the editor-in-chief of the Dnipropetrovsk regional radio, Taisa Mykolayivna Kovalchuk, gave me a cassette with recordings of radio programs about Mykola Sarma-Sokolovsky. They are titled as follows: "In the Background of My Portrait," Part One, aired on August 12, 2000, and Part Two, on August 24, 2000. There was also the program "Shores," dedicated to the eightieth birthday of Mykola Sarma-Sokolovsky’s wife, Varvara Stepanivna. It was broadcast on December 12, 2000.
There is also a 224-page book by Mykola Sarma-Sokolovsky titled "My Involvement with the OUN," published by the journal "Independent Ukraine," Kyiv-Toronto. The year of publication is not indicated, but it is 2000, as it was published for his ninetieth birthday. What follows is the recording of the radio program.
Host: Dnipropetrovsk is on the air, this is the regional state radio. Esteemed listeners, with you are director Tetyana Datsova and journalist Nataliya Staryuk. Today’s program from the artistic association "In the Background of My Portrait" is dedicated to the poet, kobzar, artist, and hero of the national liberation struggle, Mykola Sarma-Sokolovsky, who became a laureate of the Taras Hryhorovych Shevchenko International Foundation Prize, “In one’s own house, there is one’s own truth, and strength, and will.”
When a man lives in this world for his ninety-first year and has a perfect memory and an undiminished capacity for reflection, they say of him: he has conquered time. Yet the hero of this story, ninety-year-old Mykola Oleksandrovych, conquered not only time but also the timeless void, for what else but a timeless void could one call the days and nights, years and decades of imprisonment, or the moments and hours spent on death row, or wandering through the forest branded as a "particularly dangerous" fugitive? It is a timeless void precisely because a year there is like a century, and a single minute can contain a lifetime.
But there existed an even deeper and foggier ravine of this void, a looking-glass world, into which the entire country was thrown. And that great, mass timelessness, that narcosis of frightened existence, was also overcome by Mykola Sokolovsky as a nineteen-year-old youth, when he was suddenly arrested in the center of Dnipropetrovsk as a member of a bandura players' circle and an admirer of native art, and therefore, a potential terrorist. Behind the bars of his cell on Korolenko Street, he understood for the first time: a thorny path lay ahead. And since he was already an artist at that time, a student of Fotiy Krasytsky—Taras Shevchenko’s grand-nephew—he painted self-portraits, at least in his imagination, and not academic studies, but shifting and enigmatic ones, against the background of the entire world and of fate itself. From that moment on, he always did so. Even within our memory, he wrote: "Головне – тло, що міниться, мов бите скло, і відбиває те, що є і що було. У тлі мого портрета не портьєра потерта і не якась верета, а цілий концерт космічний, незбагнений, одвічний. У ньому і моя земля із могутнім Дніпром, з її добром, ще й Карпатські гори з людським та моїм горем."
M. S. Sarma-Sokolovsky: In 1929, I was arrested on Karl Marx Avenue for my involvement in the underground organization SUM [Union of Ukrainian Youth]. And in the GPU [State Political Directorate], I was held with the writer Vasyl Chaplya, who was the editor of the magazine "Zorya" [The Star]. Dr. Pavlovsky was there with me, and your first colleague, the head of radio broadcasting Volodymyr Chopovyi, in the SVU [Union for the Liberation of Ukraine] case. Serhiy Yefremov's brother Mykhailo and his son Kostya were imprisoned. And in the prison, the last autocephalous priest Kost Sharay from Chorney Lis was with me, as was Hnat Kolyada, who was executed. And in the prison, a man named Petrov carried out the shootings, and then he went mad and was taken to Igrin. And then the commandant of the GPU did the shooting—a tall, handsome man in breeches. They would start the truck engines in the garage and shoot; I know this. You should do a special program about this someday.
Host: Not once and not twice will we hear from Mykola Oleksandrovych today: "You need to do a separate program about this." So many themes, events, figures, and experiences fill our hero's memory! Mykola Sarma-Sokolovsky once wrote: "Що таке пам'ять? Це велике вікно в минуле. Ні відчинити, ні розбити."
M. S. Sarma-Sokolovsky: You are my dear guests, and you will do a program about Tryfon Hladchenko. There was a Ukrainian gymnasium in Sursko-Mykhaylivka, and the teacher Tryfon Hladchenko led an uprising. At that time, the Whites were in Katerynoslav, and they fought with them. The Whites came from Katerynoslav with a cannon. When the Whites died, they were taken away by cart, and my father buried the Cossacks in the burial mounds. My father was the first Ukrainian priest, Father Oleksandr; he had a parish in Pryvilne. They buried the Cossacks in the mounds, and then they sang "Shche ne vmerla...", "Zaporit," and my father sang, and so did Tryfon Hladchenko. And then on the Cossack graves, they erected large crosses and adorned them with embroidered rushnyks. I wrote about this. When the Makhnovists were driven out of Katerynoslav by the Whites and the Reds came, they surrounded Hladchenko in the steppes of Solone. Many of them died. Hladchenko's death was a terrible loss for my father; he prayed for him for a long time. He knew they would come for him; he hid among his parishioners. But there was a typhus epidemic, and Dad was lying in the house, delirious, singing "Shche ne vmerla Ukraina," and talking with Tryfon Hladchenko as if with his sworn brother. And one day, a tachanka drove up, and two men entered: one tall with a small beard, the other short—it was Commissar Dybenko, and Dad died in their presence. My father was buried in Pryvilne; it’s all written down. You should do a program about Sursko-Mykhaylivka and the uprising.
Host: This is the voice of a man who was not heard for too long. Finally, he can speak, at the very end of his tormented life. "Я у собі, неначе в боксі," Mykola Sarma-Sokolovsky wrote, already free, in Novoselytsia-Novomoskovsk, where he now lives with his wife, Varvara Stepanivna. And although Mykola Oleksandrovych was honored as an artist with numerous publications in Toronto, London, Paris, and Dresden, his first small book in Ukraine was not published until the author was seventy years old. It was called "Na osonku lita" [In the Summer Sun]. Then there was a collection with the decisive title "Anathema" and a new book of select, masterly poems, "Korinnia pamyati" [The Roots of Memory].
M. S. Sarma-Sokolovsky: They published me very little because I was under surveillance. My manuscript lay for a long time at the "Radyanskyy Pysmennyk" [Soviet Writer] publishing house. Then I took the pseudonym Sarma, and a sarma is a place in a river that doesn’t freeze in winter and doesn’t dry up in summer. And so I became Sarma. "Живу, наче у скляному димарі, де ні сонця, ні зорі, утративши прозоре тло, і бачу лише дивне скло. У зболеній журбі я сліпну далебі. Однак мене хвилює творча тиша, в якій плекаю, мов дитя, весняну ґроздь нового вірша, що пульсом став мого життя."
Host: "I live as if in a glass flue." Only a few of Mykola Sarma-Sokolovsky's poems have been quoted here, but this image has already appeared several times—glass. It is both the windowpane of memory that could not be broken and the background of his imagined self-portrait, "which shimmers like broken glass," and finally, "a glass flue." Is this not a modernist vision, open to numerous associations? And there is in this image of glass a solemn duality, inherent in the author’s own fate: a festive brilliance, a transparent sincerity, and at the same time, a treacherous sharpness and the capacity to inflict bloody pain. The main thing is "the background, which shimmers like broken glass." And yet, glass with its distinct optical effects remains behind the figure; ahead lies a path strewn with broken glass.
M. S. Sarma-Sokolovsky: Now, my dears, on my record are 15 days on death row, 17 years of thickets, of barbed wire. My wife—8 years. And also, when I turned 20, in 1930, I was already convicted of nationalism for my involvement in the underground youth organization SUM. And I served my sentence in the Karelian forests. First on the Parandovsky Tract, and then at the construction of the White Sea Canal.
And when I was free, I had no freedom. I was constantly harassed by KGB agents, summoned for interrogations, demanding that I reveal who I associated with, that I betray my friends, my like-minded nationalists. And they told me it was an accident that I wasn't shot in 1948, that by the "people's will" I would be convicted a second time and the sentence would be fatal for me.
I am a convinced nationalist, but not a chauvinist. I love my people very much, and therefore I respect and treat every nation with reverence, especially those who fight for their independence. In December 1941, in Kyiv, I swore an oath of loyalty to the OUN, and I was immediately appointed by the Leadership to be the head of the OUN underground in Poltava, which was occupied by the Germans. Lying low, I studied at the pastoral courses of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church. When I finished the courses, I was ordained a priest. After serving in several of my parishes, my last one was in Bukovyna, in the village of Rarancha, Sadhora Raion.
Host: Father Mykola is an unusual priest; he is not inclined to merely kneel before icons in complete submission to a higher will. Once ordained a deacon by the Most Reverend Mstyslav, and consecrated a priest under the vaults of the Pokrovsky Cathedral, built with funds from Petro Kalnyshevsky, Father Mykola chose inherently Ukrainian, Cossack guideposts. Thus, he wrote in his poem "My Faith": "Але одне 'Господи помилуй' без України нічого не варте." And there is a photographic portrait where the elderly Archpriest Father Mykola is depicted in priestly vestments, but wearing a Cossack hat—a byrka—and with a saber in his right hand.
And a second, important image in Sarma-Sokolovsky's poetry emerges when looking at that portrait—the blade. "На лезі скелі – мертві два крила" ["On the blade of a cliff—two dead wings"]—from his camp poems of 1952. From later memories of the insurgent winters in the Carpathians—"У січневому морозі гострих лез повно" ["In the January frost, it's full of sharp blades"]. And the harsh lines of the poem "The Flag": "Крізь сталі вражої вогненний ліс" ["Through the enemy's steel, a fiery forest"]. Blades all around and in his own afflicted consciousness: "Часом в голові мов розтинь бритви – яка фатальна і безбожна сила. Однак, не можу жити без молитви – матінка навчила." Our priest with a saber—it was Mother Ukrainian History herself who taught him this kind of portraiture. "In the background of my portrait..."
M. S. Sarma-Sokolovsky: In December 1944, one Sunday, when I came out of the church, I was arrested. In Chernivtsi, on Olha Kobylyanska Street, the interrogation lasted all night at the counterintelligence headquarters. They interrogated and tortured me, and in the morning, beaten, they transferred me to the old Turkish prison. Lying on the bunk in cell sixty, where the ceiling was vaulted, I was groaning. Around me were imprisoned partisans; they sympathized with me.
Host: From Chernivtsi, the prisoner is taken to Poltava, because a thick "file" has long been kept on him there. Back in the thirties, Mykola Sokolovsky, a young man with the experience of a political prisoner, a fugitive from a Far Eastern transport train, began a seemingly second life under a false name. Dnipropetrovsk, Kyiv, studies at the Art Institute, Crimea, and again Poltava. The life story of Mykola Sarma-Sokolovsky is so saturated with both interconnected and paradoxically unexpected events that it is impossible to recount it without going back, without stopping at the junctures, at the convergences of fated circumstances. It is as if it were a weaving with raw threads, or perhaps, a mesh of barbed wire. And again, a significant image from his poetry: "Оті дроти гадючі, як плетиво колюче." And most often in his poems, in his conversations about the past, Mykola Oleksandrovych simply calls them "thickets." "Living in the thickets"—in conversation, this is the same as "дротів колючих чагарі" [thickets of barbed wire] in his poetry. But even those loathsome Chekist thorns one day in 1950 appeared in the imagination of the poet, painter, and musician as a vision of forgotten comfort. "На колючі дроти з вишки прожектор світить, а мені здається, що сушаться на осонку рибальські сіті."
But let us return, let us return to previous events, following the principle of weaving-braiding, of a towel of fate and a wire fence at once. The year 1945. Mykola Sokolovsky, being transported to Poltava for reprisal, jumps from the train and hides among parishioners. He is captured again and again taken to Poltava. And so many friends already lie in the damp earth, persecuted during their lives first by the Chekists, then by the Gestapo. When Olena Teliha was shot in Babyn Yar along with her comrades from the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, the Poltava OUN members were being exterminated under the same Hitlerite order. Mykola Sokolovsky managed to escape, but they led his wife, the talented art historian Dina Shmatko, to be shot. A tiny daughter, Oksana, was left behind, along with her father, an artist in the flames of struggle, a priest armed with love. The Hitlerites had already fled Ukraine, but the hostile regime of Stalin's executioners remained.
M. S. Sarma-Sokolovsky: And they were taking me, taking me again, but on May 16, near the Zhmerynka station, it was warm in the train car, the window was open, and I escaped again, once more finding myself free! I made myself a certificate, and with such documents, I ended up in the Donbas. I lived and worked there as Hryhoriy Bodnar.
But I always dreamed of the UPA, and after two years, taking a risk, I came to Kolomyia, where I connected with the OUN underground. Not only did I connect, but I also led an OUN combat unit as Mykola Bida. Everything was going well, but in May 1948, the district SB [Security Service] leader, Oles, betrayed the underground, and thus, betrayed me.
I live at the cost of great suffering, I am tormented. But I am a partisan, I am a Cossack, and therefore I want to become a hero even in my suffering.
V. S. Sokolovska: By the way, everything he says—it’s all written down word for word. He remembers the prose. Sometimes, you know, I make some change, type a wrong word—I read it, and he says: “That’s not right there.”
Host: So, he has such a natural memory?
V. S. Sokolovska: Yes, he remembers everything, I don’t know… And I might put something somewhere, and not remember, and he gets angry: “Why don’t you remember!” He remembers everything—where everything is, where it's written…
Host: This gentle voice entered so naturally into the tense space of memory. Varvara Stepanivna is a beautiful, hazel-eyed woman from Poltava. She is always by his side. She will smile and put a hand on her husband’s shoulder when he says something with pathetic fervor. She shared and accepted all the harsh trials of his fate—not with submission, but with the deep calm of conviction: we will live as our conscience tells us. Varvara Stepanivna became a mother to Oksana Sokolovska. She bore Mykola Oleksandrovych two more daughters—Lesia and Zhenia—when the iron thickets and blades of danger were in the background of his portrait.
Question: Varvara Stepanivna, Mykola Oleksandrovych has a poem where he speaks of his captive wife, and that’s you. Please tell us, when did you meet Mykola Oleksandrovych, and how long were you separated?
V. S. Sokolovska: We met during the war, purely by chance. I was in Galicia, returning to Poltava, and he had just taken his oath in Kyiv. Later, we got married. And we were separated for 8 years—I was in prison, and my husband was in prison; he was in the North, and I was in Mordovia. And we even met in the camp, also by chance. He was constantly—because he was a fugitive—being moved to different camps, and by chance, they brought him to Mordovia. And so we even had a chance to meet in Mordovia. This was after Stalin’s death, in 1954; they arranged a visit for us. And then, when I was released, we were not together yet, because Mykola Oleksandrovych was not released for another three years. So he was imprisoned there, and I had already arrived, brought the children from Ukraine, and so we were there for 3 years. And then we returned. They wouldn't register us anywhere. This was 1961. We looked and looked, and went back to the Donbas; they took everyone in the Donbas. We lived there for 13 years, and then we moved here.
Host: "Коли кілька діб не бачив Карпати, крізь моє серце, мов крізь сито, просипалося терпіння. А залишалась тільки нудьга. Це відчувала дружина. А одного разу, звівши на мене кару-зажуру, сказала: "Любий, якщо хочеш, щоб я тебе ще дужче любила, не йди більше в гори, бо все кінчиться жахом. А в нас діти. Давай кудись поїдемо – далеко-далеко. Ти там малюватимеш, а я ж кравчиня, і жити будемо спокійно". Я ніжно обійняв дружину, а як ледь смеркло, пішов у гори знову."
Let us say goodbye, for now, to the esteemed heroes of the program "In the Background of My Portrait"—the poet, artist, bandurist, and hero of the liberation struggle, Mykola Oleksandrovych Sarma-Sokolovsky, and his wife, Varvara Stepanivna. Next time, the story will continue, and illustrious names will be heard alongside the name of our 90-year-old artist. Fotiy Krasytsky, Opanas Slastion, Fedir Balavensky, Mykhailo Boychuk, Kateryna Bilokur, Hryhoriy Kochur, because Mykola Sokolovsky met them on the various paths of his life, and now he recalls everything, resting his head on the stone of his thoughts.
Working on the program were director Tetyana Datseva and journalist Nataliya Staryuk. Until next time. [Musical pause].
Dnipropetrovsk is on the air, this is the regional state radio. Esteemed listeners, with you are director Tetyana Datseva and journalist Nataliya Staryuk. It’s time for the program from the artistic association "In the Background of My Portrait." Part Two.
"У тлі мого портрета – не портьєра потерта і не якась верета, а цілий концерт космічний, незбагнений, одвічний." So wrote Mykola Oleksandrovych Sarma-Sokolovsky—poet, kobzar, artist, hero of the national liberation struggle, a 90-year-old resident of Novoselytsia-Novomoskovsk, who became a laureate of the international prize of the Taras Shevchenko Foundation, “In one’s own house, there is one’s own truth, and strength, and will.”
"А ще в тлі мого портрета мури-ґрати, а на вишках все солдати." And I remembered that very old painting of Cossack Mamay, the one they call a Haidamak, because in the background of the folk picture, amidst a lush grove and green meadows, there are figures of hanged men and riflemen on guard. So it turns out: the more meaningful, the more capacious and profound the background of a portrait, the more typical and recognizable—not just individually, but historically—is the figure of the hero. For Cossack Mamay, sitting under an oak tree, remembered the Black Sea, while our hero remembers the White Sea, because he learned the concepts of "Belomorkanal," "Uslon," and "Gulag" very early. "Чекістики-голубчики, катюги-субчики, мене ви били і по мені ходили, мою топтали кров, немов червону ту калину, за те, що я любив сердешну Україну." By the way, even in this small fragment of poetry, one can see how organically the author’s being rejects the criminal style. And yet, "chekistyky-holubchyky" ["little Chekist-doves"] sounds sort of flashy, dashing. Look how much money Moscow spends today to make criminal romance, Vladimirsky Central, into the "songs about the main thing" for the new generation. For Mykola Sarma-Sokolovsky, those two lines are quite enough for the figures of Stalin’s "subchyky" [thugs] to loom in an adequate stylistic field, and that’s it. And then that slangy veneer disappears, dissolving into native viburnum imagery.
And a few years ago, the poet created a poem about a peony. Is there anywhere else in world literature a vision of a flower that sends a chill down your spine? "Ніч жовчю точиться в сліпі глушини, вже допит загнано у кут німий, бо я мовчу, а слідчий мій від люті глухо: "Ты хочешь, чтоб допрос вничью?" І б'є мене у праве вухо. А з лівого – півонія кривава на стіну. Разючий біль і памороч липка, мороча, уся в рясних дзвіночках. Я падаю немов в обійми сну, а потім що, не знаю, із кляпом зболеної глухоти у камері вже досинаю, занурений у сниво, в якому бачу диво: там хата біла, а не мур, квітують квіти Катерини Білокур, схиляється над ними її слава, а з нею і моя півонія кривава." Tell me, have artists anywhere else had such a deadly, brutal school of figurative association? Was it anyone else’s fate in the free worlds to pay so dearly for moments of poetic vision? But ultimately, it is the phenomenon of Ukrainian camp poetry that answers the question of what preserved Ukraine in its constant borderline situations between life and death. We are saved by the light of many thousands of years of cultural sanctity. And when, next to the insane, bloody peony, another appears in the consciousness—the magically healing flower of Kateryna Bilokur—this flower absorbs the pain and horror, creating from that very infernal material something invincibly free and virginally healthy. And our repressed poet from Novoselytsia, Mykola Sarma-Sokolovsky, seems to expand upon the famous Akhmatova metaphor about the origin of poetry's flowers to the vast expanse of the great struggle for the very life of the nation. But why was it precisely the flowers of Kateryna Bilokur that appeared in the author's imagination at that painful breaking point, at the peak of pain that was meant to force—and failed to force—the prisoner to betray?
M. S. Sarma-Sokolovsky: I didn't have to invent tense situations—my life has been a series of tense situations. I wrote a novel, "The Red Shroud," which was published in journal installments in the magazine "Kyiv." I still have everything in manuscript form; this is about Kateryna Bilokur. In Poltava before the war, I worked as a methodologist at the House of Folk Art, and I was the first to receive a letter from her with a drawing of a lily of the valley in a hand. It was so perfectly rendered in watercolor that it was even a bit unpleasant to see the pores of the skin. Later, I visited her in Bohdanivka. I wrote about it, it is well written, and you should make a program about it.
Host: Those who listened to the previous story about the life and work of Mykola Oleksandrovych Sarma-Sokolovsky are already familiar with this phrase of his: "You should make a program about this." A program… Ultimately, it's not just about broadcasting information on the air, but about transmitting the treasures of memory, like regalia. They flash with the pure gold of truth in the background of our hero's portrait.
Having lived through the turbulent upsurge and radiant illusions of the 1920s, his generation was divided into two ranks. In one—the suppressed and wordless, intimidated by widespread repressions; in the other—those ready to perish, just so that Ukraine’s wings would not be clipped. In this shot-up, hacked-up rank was Mykola Sokolovsky, a young man from the village of Khoroshe, the son of one of the first priests of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Church, an artist from the falcon's nest of Fotiy Krasytsky—the grand-nephew of Taras Shevchenko.
Captured at nineteen on a Dnipropetrovsk avenue during a Chekist roundup of "terrorists"—that is, young men who loved all things Ukrainian—Mykola Sokolovsky subsequently endured hard labor. He returned to his homeland under a false name. He studied at the Kyiv Art Institute, joined the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, and became an active participant in the anti-fascist underground. Ordained as a priest, he suffered persecution from the Stalinist authorities. He escaped from custody, joined the ranks of the OUN-UPA, was arrested again, imprisoned, and exiled. 17 years behind barbed wire. His wife, Varvara Stepanivna—8 years; his second wife, whom God sent him as a second life after the days when the Hitlerites shot the Poltava OUN members, and among them, Mykola Oleksandrovych's first wife, Dina. Varvara Stepanivna is still a strikingly beautiful woman. The mother of three daughters, raised to be a homemaker, a seamstress, and an embroiderer, like all women from Poltava, yet at the crest of choice, her sense of justice outweighed the temptations of comfort.
V. S. Sokolovska: There are people who do nothing by half and feel nothing by half. If it's hatred, it's total; if it's love, it's total.
M. S. Sarma-Sokolovsky: "На білому чорне, на чорному біле, тому білий настій (?) круки укрили. Щоб зігнати чорну зграю, я сил не маю і тому малюю білих голубів, Україно, щоб над тобою новою добою світ голубів."
Host: This new poem by Mykola Sarma-Sokolovsky is titled "Black and White Graphics." And these are verses written with a poet’s pen, and at the same time seemingly engraved, carved with the burin of a graphic artist. And the thought reaches back to the past: how suddenly Ukrainian drawing and print graphics blossomed in the era of the national struggles of the early twentieth century. The Boychukists, Narbut, Kononchuk. The admirable artistic feats of seemingly ordinary peasants—Padalka, Pavlenko, Sedliar and their students, among whom was our own Maria Yevhenivna Kotlyarevska. Of course, those years also gave birth to timeless works of painting, sculpture, and monumental art, but graphics—refined laconicism and unerring wisdom, black-and-white flashes of insight, the highest culture of generalization, the ability to speak capaciously and exhaustively.
Where did all this come from in the generation of those boys in caps and girls in headscarves, in the generation of Mykola Sokolovsky? It only seems that it came from nothing. In reality, beneath it lay the quiet flow of traditions, and above it, the ozone of struggle, where ideas polarize, a conscious choice ripens, and where good and evil take on their primordial colors. "Минуле в пам'яті – естамп, заглиблений, болючий,"—wrote Mykola Sarma-Sokolovsky. And it so happened that even after those young geniuses of black-and-white graphics of ours were dispersed and shot, the black-and-white element continued to dominate the fate of the poet and artist Mykola Oleksandrovych, in the background of his portrait, because the endless winters of Inta and Vorkuta held the joyful colors of a free life under perpetual arrest. "А за вікном немов усе покрито білою піспою, на тлі якої самотній крук мусується над засохлою кісткою."
But there were also glimmers of light in the life of Mykola Sokolovsky, when he lived and studied among the outstanding artists of Ukraine. That was a very long time ago, and now there is no one else, only Mykola Oleksandrovych, who can recall these knights of the spirit with a living voice, with the words of a student, a comrade, an eyewitness.
M. S. Sarma-Sokolovsky: And when I studied in the vocational school in Myrhorod, my teacher was Shevchenko’s grand-nephew, the famous artist Fotiy Stepanovych Krasytsky, who, in essence, raised me and made me a nationalist. Krasytsky taught drawing in the vocational school, and in the technical school, it was Panas Yuriyovych Slastion, an artist-ethnographer. And sculpture was taught in both places by Fedir Vasylyovych Balavensky. After the cross was taken from Shevchenko's grave, the first bust of Shevchenko on the grave was by Balavensky. And Fotiy Stepanovych had been exiled from Kyiv to Myrhorod, and I was friends with him. I played the bandura, and he played the "Myrhorod Polka" on the sopilka, and he would sing, his song was: "Olesiu, bez tebe sonechko ne hriie" [Olesya, without you the sun doesn't warm]. And when Fotiy Stepanovych was finally allowed to return to Kyiv, no one saw him off, only I walked him all the way to the station, and we said our goodbyes by the high, steep steps of the green railway car. I thought it was forever, but when I was studying at the institute, I visited him again. He was a strange man, Fotiy Stepanovych, his school, how he taught, how he spoke about the line, that one must begin with the line. A line drawn with a ruler is straight, but dead. So you must draw it by hand. Of course, it won't be straight, but it will be alive, but for that, you need to do exercises. And he would command: "Above the paper, above the paper," and we would wave our hands, and finally he would say: "Op!"—and we would draw a line. The walls of the dormitory hallway were all covered in lines.
Fotiy Stepanovych communicated with the kobzars. Do a program about it.
Host: Will we have enough life to make programs about all those figures who loom in the background of his portrait, who, in fact, created the portrait of the talented Ukrainian Mykola Sarma-Sokolovsky? "Дерево моєї душі вже настільки виросло, що тілові заважко його тримати,"—Mykola Oleksandrovych once wrote. He associated with Mykhailo Boychuk during his short life, the founder of the world-famous school of monumental artists. About one of our most outstanding artists, Vasyl Krychevsky, Mykola Oleksandrovych said: "I know him personally," although Vasyl Krychevsky has been gone for so long, and his grave is all the way in Bound Brook, in America, but in memory, such people live on and on.
M. S. Sarma-Sokolovsky: Fedir Krychevsky was under the occupation, and then they tormented him. When I studied at the art institute, the daughter of the artist Narbut, Maryna, studied in the same year with me; she also posed as a model. I also knew the artist Mykola Buravchyk—he was a Kharkiv artist, but he graduated from the academy somewhere in Warsaw. I'll remember and tell everything gradually.
Fotiy Stepanovych Krasytsky lived in Priorka in Kyiv. One day I'm coming down the stairs from the second floor, and suddenly I see Fotiy Stepanovych. And he says: "And what are you doing here?" I say: "I'm studying." — "But what if you don't become an artist? You should show me your drawings, bring them to my home." — "Alright," I say, "I'll bring them." And I went to his place. I walked past some plywood factory, some church, and came and found his little house, and there he is standing on the roof, tall, looking like Shevchenko, but like a monument. I say: "Fotiy Stepanovych, what are you doing up there?" — "Well, I'm fixing it—the roof is leaking." Then his wife comes out from the yard. He says: "Mykola, you see, here I am standing like a monument, and that is a peasant woman, my wife, she feeds the master artist, kiss her calloused hands." I kissed her hands, and then I had dinner with them. And Fotiy Stepanovych was painting a picture. He had painted a picture from Zaporizhzhia back in '05, it belongs to the Lviv museum. He was painting a version of this picture for Kyiv. I would squat down and look at this picture in the gallery.
Host: Varvara Stepanivna, and how important was it always for you that your husband was not only a partisan, not only a hero, but also an artist—a kobzar, a poet, a painter? How important was this for you as a wife?
V. S. Sokolovska: You know, when you have something, you don't really value it; it's when you lose it that you start to feel it. First of all, life was always hard; we never had any peace, it was always—arrests, living under a false document, then the partisan life. There wasn't even time to figure it all out. Then materially—the children, three children, they needed to be educated when we returned. It was hard, terribly hard. We arrived with nothing, with empty hands, nowhere to live, nothing, and the children. And Mykola Oleksandrovych wrote very little. The only thing was that he earned a living with his painting; we scraped by. But the poems—he's been paralyzed for six years, and he has written ten times more in this time than in his entire life. First, he wrote—but they didn't publish him; you know, one's mood can suffer when they don't publish you, and then there was the constant struggle for that piece of bread. But now Mykola Oleksandrovych has written a great deal, we have such a huge archive—we have prose, and so much poetry, he doesn't even know... But he remembers them all, he remembers all his poems. Of course, it's hard for me, I've never typed, I didn't learn, I'm 80, can you imagine? It's also very hard to learn at such an age. I type with one finger, but I'm typing all the time.
Host: "Вони називають мої вірші 'пристойними,' тільки їм не подобається, що в нервових рядках живе сум і рясно гніздяться круки. Зауваження слушне, але що маю робити? Я в житті мало сміявся, і коли задубілими пальцями багато років грав на колючих струнах Півночі, моєю тінню весь час були круки."
Host: Varvara Stepanivna, you know, when Mykola Oleksandrovych read his poems and raised his voice, the strings of this bandura resonated.
V. S. Sokolovska: Apparently, there is some connection, because my voice doesn't resonate, and no one else's, only Mykola Oleksandrovych's. It's just strange—it's not only you who noticed, but many people here notice that when Mykola Oleksandrovych speaks, it's as if there's some kind of soul there, in that instrument. He made a great many musical instruments, all the time in prison; he brought back a bandura from Karelia and from the North. Always, even when he was in prison, he was always… And it wasn't just him, he would ignite—he is a very fiery person—he would ignite others there, gather the young lads, he was still young then, and they would make them, and they all carved a falcon on top. And so the bandura accompanied him his whole life. He made many banduras, and this is his last one, he is making it, there's nothing on it yet, no strings, nothing. He was carving this one here; it was a log, a huge log like this, and it all had to be planed by hand, well, he didn't have time to finish.
Host: "Уже рокований роками, а ще віршую, далебі. Мого народу бачив я трагедії і драми й себе із ним в ганьбі. Крізь все життя тягну струну поезії моєї, і вже немов до краю дотягнув, однак, я вірний пісні та ідеї, що дарував мені Тарас – окраса із окрас мого великого народу."
This story has no end, because the deeper the "roots of memory"—which is the name of Mykola Sarma-Sokolovsky’s new book of poems—the higher the crown of his life reaches into the celestial spheres.
A ninety-year-old poet, prose writer, kobzar and maker of banduras, priest and hero of the liberation struggle, painter, and carver. God granted him a long-lasting gift because for as long as he has lived, he has never separated the concepts of beauty and truth—they have entirely real outlines in the background of his portrait.
This was the program "In the Background of My Portrait," Part Two, about Mykola Oleksandrovych Sarma-Sokolovsky, who this year became a laureate of the International Taras Shevchenko Foundation Prize "In one’s own house, there is one’s own truth, and strength, and will." The program was prepared by director Tetyana Datseva and journalist Nataliya Staryuk. Stay well. [Musical pause].
Host: Dnipropetrovsk is on the air, this is the regional state radio. Esteemed listeners, with you are director Tetyana Datseva and journalist Nataliya Staryuk. It is time for a program from the series "Berehy" [Shores].
"Варвара ночі урвала, а дня доточила на макове зерня" ["Varvara shortened the night, and added to the day a poppy seed's worth"]—isn't that a feat worthy of the glorious holy great-martyr? Indeed, it is a feat, a quiet and touching one, when a woman adds, even by a poppy seed’s worth, a ray of light, a path to a hard-won truth.
Our heroine, Mrs. Varvara Sokolovska, lives in Novoselytsia-Novomoskovsk with her husband Mykola Oleksandrovych—a renowned Ukrainian poet, kobzar, artist, priest, hero of the liberation struggle, and laureate of the International Prize of the Taras Shevchenko Foundation. And right now, perhaps for the first time, between the two names of our couple, the woman's comes before the man's, because today is Mrs. Varvara’s name day. So the time has come to honor her deeds, to tell how even today she adds to the day for her ninety-year-old husband, who is now too unwell to see the lines of his new poems and prose memoirs.
V. S. Sokolovska: The poems—he's been paralyzed for six years—he has written ten times more in this time than in his entire life. First, he wrote—but they didn't publish him; you know, one's mood can suffer when they don't publish you, and then there was the constant struggle for that piece of bread… But now Mykola Oleksandrovych writes a great deal, we have such a huge archive—we have prose, and so much poetry, he doesn't even know, but he remembers them all, he remembers all his poems. Of course, it's hard for me, I've never typed, I didn't learn, I'm eighty, can you imagine? It's also very hard to learn at such an age. I type with one finger, but I'm typing all the time.
Host: They married during the war. The love of Varvara and Mykola does not lend itself to sweet nightingale comparisons; here the images are different—of fire, risk, pain, and, despite everything, a sharp sense of happiness. Mykola Sokolovsky, a young man from the village of Khoroshe, the son of a priest of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church who was destroyed by the authorities, came to know Stalin's tortures early on. An eternal fugitive from behind bars, returning home, to the struggle for a Ukraine free from both the Bolshevik and the German-fascist regimes at the same time. God sent the hazel-eyed Varvara to Mykola Oleksandrovych when he, the leader of the OUN underground, found himself on the edge of an abyss. The fascists had destroyed his best men, and with them his first wife, the mother of little Oksana. Varvara became his second wife, his forever. There were times when her husband, a secret soldier, threatened and hunted by Chekists across the entire Union, would rush to her on foot and by freight train for hundreds of kilometers, just to spend a single night with his beloved. And it was precisely these deep, nocturnal colors of passion, wonderfully combined with the color of Varvara's eyes, that gave birth in the poet’s imagination to a unique image of their love, theirs alone—hazel. This word—karyi [hazel/dark brown]—in the works of the poet and prose writer Mykola Sarma-Sokolovsky, defines the color and quality of significant, cherished concepts: hazel love, hazel roots, the hazel steppe. And all of this came from Varvara, from her eyes and the passionate nights that were constantly interrupted by alarms. [Musical pause].
V. S. Sokolovska: You know, when you have something, you don't really value it, but when you lose it, that's when you start to feel it. First of all, life was always hard; we never had any peace. It was always either arrests, or living under a false document, or that "partisan life"—there wasn't even time to figure it all out. Then, materially—children, three children, they had to be educated. When we returned, it was hard, terribly hard. We arrived with nothing, with empty hands, nowhere to live, nothing, and the children. And Mykola Oleksandrovych wrote very little; the only thing was that he earned a living with his painting; we scraped by.
And our separation lasted eight years. I was in prison, and my husband was in prison—he was in the North, and I was in Mordovia. And we also met by pure chance, even in the camp. He was constantly—because he was a fugitive, that followed him everywhere—so they kept moving him to different camps, and by chance they brought him to Mordovia. And so we even had the chance to meet in Mordovia. They allowed us—this was after Stalin's death, in 1954—they arranged a visit for us. And then, when I was released, we were not yet together, because Mykola Oleksandrovych was not released for another three years. So he was still imprisoned there, and I had already arrived, brought the children from Ukraine, and so we were there for three years. And then we returned; they wouldn't register us anywhere, this was 1961. We looked and looked for a place, and went to the Donbas again—they took everyone in the Donbas; we lived there for thirteen years, and then we came here.
Host: You have already heard the voice of Mrs. Varvara Sokolovska in programs about the work of Mykola Oleksandrovych Sarma-Sokolovsky, and you surely noticed how simply and calmly Varvara Stepanivna speaks of the terrible, the dangerous, the tragic. And it brings to mind a distinctive, purely Ukrainian iconography of the image of Saint Barbara, as our heroine was born on St. Barbara's Day. The saint appears on icons not as an ascetic great-martyr, but as a beautiful, life-filled Cossack woman. "Варвара, одяг шовком шитий і груди перлами повито. Вчорашній день її, як сон, і час не може пригасити її очей глухий вогонь. Вся в колі радісних бажань, вона несе їм повну дань, угомонитися не хоче і уриває й досі ночі." So wrote Mykola Filyansky, a poet from the era of the Ukrainian revival at the beginning of our century. Mykola Sarma-Sokolovsky, as an artist, was nourished by the same element. Mykola Oleksandrovych quotes the young Tychyna, Mykhailo Semenko, Geo Shkurupiy from memory, not from publications of the nineties, when they were revealed to us after long prohibitions, but from lifetime editions of the twenties and thirties. The aura of creativity in the Sokolovsky home is an acquisition of a life of suffering, yet one inspired by ideas, above all—the national idea. Mrs. Varvara is truly a great-martyr, and yet she is smiling, illuminated by that hazel fire that warmed the being of her distinguished husband even from a distance.
A double photographic portrait from the late 1950s has been preserved, from when Mrs. Varvara, already free, settled with her girls Oksana, Lesia, and Zhenia where Mykola Oleksandrovych still had to remain in exile. They were finally photographed together. At that time, Varvara wanted, in defiance of everything, to appear elegant, stylish, European. She bought a fashionable hat, a thin scarf, and let poverty live for just three days. Here they are as a couple: two handsome, noble, unvanquished Ukrainians, whom no one could force to look like great-martyrs.
But generally, Mrs. Varvara Sokolovska is not used to talking about herself. About him, her beloved kobzar—gladly. And also about those unforgettable, glorious people with whom she shared her fate, the political prisoners.
Our generation learned about the powerful figure of Hnat Khotkevych too late—only when it became possible to speak of him. Meanwhile, about the multifaceted talent of Khotkevych—writer, musicologist, actor and director, bandurist, creator of his own performance school, composer and conductor, translator of Shakespeare, Molière, Schiller, and Hugo into Ukrainian—about this unique talent in the world, Ivan Franko, Mykola Lysenko, and Lesia Ukrainka once wrote with admiration. It seems as if we are not talking about Hnat Khotkevych today, but this name appears time and again in the memories of Mrs. Varvara Sokolovska. The surnames of distinguished men in their female hypostases is a special topic, so painful for a mutilated Ukraine.
V. S. Sokolovska: There is a monument in Lviv to the first printer, and opposite it is a basement, a large space, and they made a museum of the repressed there. I am walking with an acquaintance and I see my photograph there, but not me alone. I think: “My God...” I recognized myself first, of course, and then the others. There was some woman there, and I ask: “Who gave the photograph?” She says: “I don’t know.” And then I found out who was in the photograph; the appearance, of course, was something… Later, the same woman introduced me; they were already gathering, this was sometime in the eighties. I went in there, and women who had been imprisoned had gathered, and they ask me: “Where are you from? From which camp?” I say: “From Mordovia.” — “And which one?” They went by numbers there. I say: “From the first.” She says: “I was in the first one too.” I say: “And who do you remember there?” She says: “You know, I remember Mrs. Khotkevych very well—that’s Khotkevych’s wife—and there was also a Mrs. Sokolovska, she was friends with her.” And she looks at me like that. I say: “That is Sokolovska.” She goes: “Ohhh, I didn’t recognize you!” And I didn't recognize her either. You know, she was such an active Galician woman, such a Hutsul, she was so active, she was everywhere… We formed a group there; there were two thousand of us women, two thousand Ukrainian women. There were three thousand in the camp—two thousand Ukrainians, and a thousand of the rest; the largest group after us was the Baltics, especially Lithuania. And she was so active, I remember her voice, her voice immediately, you know, it’s like a photograph developing. That was our acquaintance.
Host: Varvara Stepanivna, please tell us about Mrs. Khotkevych.
V. S. Sokolovska: Well, almost... Not eight years, but we were together for six years for sure. Her name was Platonida, and her patronymic was Volodymyrivna, and you know what Khotkevych called her? Polotnina Dekybytonovna—like that. A very fine woman. First of all, she was beautiful; she was from 1901, so she wasn't even sixty then. Completely gray, with such a beautiful braid, and a little curly. And so smart… She had a sharp tongue; when she told a story, it was interesting. She told me about her husband, that he was 23 years older than her; he was a widower, had four or three children, and he married Platonida. And she herself was a teacher, very young, they were in Kharkiv, built a house there.
And so she told me this. In 1938, her husband was arrested. They came to the house, took all the archives—he had a great many books. He was writing a trilogy about Shevchenko, it was called: "Tarasik," "Taras," and "Taras Hryhorovych." And the Chekists: “Why didn't you introduce him to Pushkin?” And that was the reason—they arrested him. And no matter where she went—nothing. And so from 1938 until the war itself, she knew nothing about her husband—not a single letter, nothing. And he was shot immediately.
The war was going on, and she had three children. One little daughter died very young, but two, Bohdan and Halyna, remained. This Halyna studied music all the time; she had good musical abilities. And just before the war, when she finished school, they decided to go to Kyiv—either to the conservatory or somewhere. And as soon as they went—it was June—the war caught them there.
They arrived in Kharkiv. The Germans soon occupied Kharkiv. Then they evacuated. And how it happened that they were in the West, somewhere in Czechoslovakia, they got separated—it was terribly chaotic with refugees and military personnel—and they lost each other. And she remained in Czechoslovakia, while her son ended up in Italy, and her daughter in France—can you imagine that? And she, Platonida, was in this… And the Chekists found her and arrested her. She told me this herself. She says: “They summoned me and asked, 'Who are you?' And she says, 'A Czech.' — 'Tell me your surname.' She made one up. And he says, 'Who told you that?' And she immediately said, 'I am Khotkevych.' And that was it, they arrested her. They found her son in Italy. And the son was even younger than Halyna. They found him, arrested him, but they didn't find Halyna.
Host: If only we learned as we should, if only we went to confession not to deceitful sectarians or yesterday’s KGB agents, but to people who suffered for their truth, we would not be cold and hungry today, and most importantly, ashamed before people.
Mrs. Varvara Sokolovska is the mistress and guardian of her family. And not only because she cooks amazingly delicious borsch and varenyky, but because the children and grandchildren of Varvara Stepanivna and Mykola Oleksandrovych are wise, faithful people and true patriots. There are so many of us, good people, in Ukraine, but does everyone strive, even by a poppy seed's worth, to shorten the night and add to the day? On your birthday, dear Mrs. Varvara, we wish you happiness, and only you, a wife and mother, know how to extract it from under the coarse crust of despair. May the duma "Storm on the Black Sea" be played for you today—a work that was, until recently, forbidden because it bore the author's signature of Hnat Khotkevych. The duma is performed by kobzars Mykhailo Orest and Taras Baranets—artists who deeply revere your family and bow low before your charisma. [Song plays].
Esteemed listeners, you have been listening to a program from the series "Shores." It was prepared by director Tetyana Datsova and journalist Nataliya Staryuk. Respond to a sincere word.
Prepared on 05.14.2008 by V. Ovsiyenko, Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group.
