Interview with Havrylo Nykyforovych PROKOPENKO
V.V.Ovsiienko: April 4, 2001, in Sicheslav, that is, in Dnipropetrovsk, we are having a conversation with Mr. Havrylo Nykyforovych Prokopenko, with his wife Iryna Mykolayivna, and also present is Mr. Oles Zavhorodniy. This conversation is being recorded by Vasyl Ovsiienko.
I will write down your address right away. So: 45 Heroyiv Stalinhrada Street, apartment 52. And the postal code?
I.M.Prokopenko: 49055.
V.V.Ovsiienko: And you have a phone here—92-98-53.
H.N.Prokopenko: I was born on June 6, 1922, in the village of Zhdanivka, Mahdalynivka district, to a peasant family. My father was Prokopenko Nykyfor Havrylovych, my mother was Prokopenko Mariya Serhiivna. My father was born in 1898 and died in 1970, he lived 81 years. My mother was born in 1890 and died in 1974—she lived 84 years. Their graves are there, in Zhdanivka.
I went to school in 1930 and graduated with honors in 1941. They didn't give medals then—it was a golden certificate, bordered with a decorative frame. It’s good that I kept it: after I was discharged into the reserves, I enrolled here in the correspondence department of the philology faculty without exams and also graduated with honors.
I wanted to say that I became a Ukrainian patriot around the age of 15-16. It was my mother's credit, because she told me a lot and sang me this song: "Ukraine has not yet died, neither its glory nor its will...". Mykhailo Chkhan and I—I know the words—were once traveling from Pavlohrad, there was a spring poetry gathering, and we had a good drink, we were on a bus, and I said: "Mykhailo, maybe we should sing ‘Ukraine Has Not Yet Died...’?" This was in 1968. And Mykhailo said: “Do you know the words?” I said: “I do.” And recited a few lines. And we started singing together with Mykhailo Chkhan on the bus. Popov was there, Patryk, and some others... This is a version of the anthem: “*Ще не вмерла України ні слава, ні воля, ще нам, братці-запорожці, усміхнеться доля. Душу й тіло ми положим за свою свободу і докажем, що ми справді козацького роду.*” And then: “*Гей, Богдане, гей, Богдане, славний наш гетьмане, нащо віддав Україну тим царям поганим? Щоб вернути честь і славу, ляжем головами і назвемось України вільними синами. Наливайко і Павлюк і Тарас Трясило із могили кличуть нас на свя-теє діло. Згинуть наші воріженьки, як роса на сонці, будем, браття, панувати у своїй сторонці.*”
So, the day after this trip to Pavlohrad for the “Poetic May”—that was the name of the festival—Mykhailo Romanushko, also a participant in the festival, came running to me. He was a patriot, and “under the hat” of the KGB agents. I think he's somewhere in Kazakhstan. And so he ran up to me and said: "Havrylo Nykyforovych, do you know anything?" I said: "I don't know, everything is fine." "How can it be fine? I've already been summoned to the KGB,"—we had a man named Anatoliy Tutyk there, a KGB major—“he asked who initiated the singing. I said it was Prokopenko and Chkhan, and then all of us sang it several times." So he said: "Go and tell Chkhan and Prokopenko that prison has been crying out for them for a long time,"—those were his exact words.
I went to Chkhan. “Well, Havrylo,” he said, “if they had wanted to, they would have arrested us already. They're just scaring us, don't pay any attention. And the fact that we were singing a little tipsy—that's nothing.” They didn't summon us—neither Mykhailo Chkhan nor me.
At school, of course, I always spoke as a patriot, as a Ukrainian. People who were sent would come up to me and advise me not to do that. Well, and then “The Cathedral” appeared. It was a great joy for us, there were no books like that: the truth, the whole truth! But after a while, critical articles about Oles Honchar started appearing in the newspaper “Zorya” and others. I wrote a ten-page article titled "The Air, Water, and Bread of the People" and took it directly to the editor of “Zorya,” Orlyk, and said straight out that all of this was a lie, a blackening of the writer's name, he had written the truth about our lives.
Two weeks pass and nothing. I think, they printed the lies quickly, so why don't you print my article that debunks these lies? The editor told me that the article would not be published. I said: "Return it." "No, we can't return it, it's under Vatchenko's control." I called the regional committee—no, nothing. And I was the deputy secretary of the school's party organization, they called a meeting about my personal file, raising the question: what to do with him? Many were in favor of expelling me from the party. I asked: "Is this pressure and retaliation because I spoke truthfully about ‘The Cathedral’?” And then members of the party commission started shouting: “He's a nationalist in general, he looks like a nationalist, his speech isn't even right, not from Dnipropetrovsk.” I was already prepared for expulsion. But apparently, there was no such directive. Because when the KGB chief Shchekoturov said: “He even has the appearance of a nationalist” (I wore long mustaches), that secretary slammed his fist: "Don't talk nonsense, what does appearance have to do with it! We will not expel Prokopenko from the party—he has a military path…" And later that secretary told me: “We were accused of liberalism”—in relation to me.
This issue was raised in 1969. A year passed, the party penalty needed to be lifted. They had given me a "severe reprimand with a warning." The secretary told me: "They're summoning you to the party commission." "And what's needed for that?" "Write a statement that you've changed your view on ‘The Cathedral.’" I said: "I will never write that for you. What I wrote—they didn't print it and didn't return it to me, by the way. That will not happen."
A month or two passes—again to me: "The party commission will be on such-and-such a date." I said: "But I will not renounce my opinion on ‘The Cathedral.’” "You come to the commission, we'll talk there." And there they ground me and kneaded me terribly—this way and that. I said that I would not change my mind, I don't even want to talk about it, and left. The secretary of this commission caught up with me on the street: "Go back and don't listen to the fools." And they lifted the penalty from me without any repentance. I never did repent.
Well, after that, there were various things. Publishing houses returned ten of my collections. The first book was published around 1970. Again, the KGB agents were at work here. There was a directive: to publish a book. The manuscript was horribly mutilated. I don't consider that "Sunny Wind" to be mine, maybe a few pieces there, up to ten, but the rest is mangled: the head of the poem cut off, the legs cut off—that's how they published it. And why? They tried with all their might to get me to cooperate with them. They had a talk with me about Volodymyr Sirenko. They summoned me, and I only said positive things about him.
That's how it was until the August Coup [GKChP]. Well, I left the party myself in 1988, two years before the August Coup. They didn't want to let me go under any circumstances, they put pressure on Iryna Mykolayivna, saying, think about yourself, about your children.
I.M.Prokopenko: “Think about your children, about your grandchildren…” That’s how it was. Yaremenko from the KGB came, Sorokin—I forgot his first name, he's deceased—this one constantly threatened me: if you don't think about yourself, then think about your children and grandchildren. And when our seven-year-old grandson suddenly died, I remembered his words and I will never forget them. I don't know where a kidney tumor came from in a seven-year-old child. That’s how it was.
V.V.Ovsiienko: We talked about “The Cathedral,” but if we go a bit deeper—20-30 years back—you have something to tell, don't you?
I.M.Prokopenko: Of course, you haven't told about the Holodomor yet.
H.N.Prokopenko: About the Holodomor. I was a witness myself, I was eleven years old. My father was terribly swollen before the spring of 1933, my brother Yakov and I were emaciated—he was three years younger, eight years old. I wrote about this in that book, maybe you saw it—“’33: The Famine.”
V.V.Ovsiienko: Alright, I'll find it.
H.N.Prokopenko: My father was forced to save the family, otherwise we would have all died. He went to Khashchove, to his brother, and my mother stayed with us. In Mahdalynivka, my aunt worked at a creamery, so she helped us, and we had a cow. And it was the cow that was stolen. How? The doors were strong, good, there was a crossbar, but the shed itself was made of adobe, so they broke down the wall and stole the cow, slaughtered it. It was a whole story, because the cow was half-half—half belonged to the neighbors, half to us, but it was kept at our place. And my mother had just gone to Mahdalynivka to her sister, and we were at home. Yakov and I barricaded ourselves, because people were already eating people then, there were cases, we were afraid they would eat us. Well, in the morning I woke up, I had to take the cow to the herd early. It was sometime in May, the mornings were still cold. I unlocked the door—the cow was gone, I looked—a hole in the shed. Well, I was still small, 11 years old, it was cold, the dew was like ice, I was even glad the cow was gone, I went and lay down to sleep. Then there was a knock, they came in—the head of the village council, the secretary of the village council, and the enforcer. The enforcer: “Where's your mother?” I said: “Mother is in Mahdalynivka.” “Who did you sell the cow to?” I said: “I don't know anything.” Then this village council secretary threw me under the icons, aimed a rifle at me and said: “Confess.” I said: “Uncle, truly, I don't know.” “Don't lie, talk. I'm counting: one, two…” My hair stood on end and a chill went down my spine, I already knew that “three” would be the end. Then the head of the village council: “Get out of here, don't scare the boy, let's go.” My mother returned from Mahdalynivka, they interrogated her, then my father returned. They found the head and two buckets of lard on a farmstead. That’s the story. In Zhdanivka, during that famine, approximately a third of the people died.
O.S.Zavhorodniy: And the village was very large.
H.N.Prokopenko: When I was demobilized in 1960, I started asking people how this happened. Few people talked. My mother told me honestly, but people were afraid. And this became known to my “friends,” especially from the KGB, and also to the party members—all sorts of “reprimands” began, just to make me retract. No, I said, how can I retract when it happened. “And why were you silent until now?” “I was in the service—so who was I supposed to tell? But now I want to know the truth.”
V.V.Ovsiienko: Show me the book. “’33: The Famine. A People's Memorial Book,” prepared by Lidia Kovalenko, Volodymyr Manyak. Kyiv, “Radyanskyi Pysmennyk,” 1991. The memoir of Havrylo Nykyforovych Prokopenko is on pages 195–197, with two of his poems here as well.
H.N.Prokopenko: This is what I read at the symposium: "Back in 1937, when I was in the 7th grade, being a member of the school's literary circle and an artist for a handwritten journal, I illustrated the story ‘The Hunger Strike’ by Ivan Sova, my friend and classmate. Ivan's parents died in 1933. We showed the story to the circle's leader, teacher Andriy Savovych. ‘A good story and the drawings are not bad. But we can't leave it in the journal,’ said the teacher. ‘Why?’ Ivan inquired. ‘Because they'll shoot us all.’ ‘How so?’ we were stunned. ‘Just like that: they'll line us up against a wall and shoot us… with sour milk,’ the teacher joked away. The story was cut out of the journal and burned. Even then, as a 15-year-old boy, I was tormented by the suspicion that if the very memory of the famine was being so diligently eradicated, it meant that it was not spontaneous, not natural, but organized, artificial."
I offered the poem “The Specter of '33” to Dnipropetrovsk newspapers, and to this day none have printed it. This was written in 1990. True, in 1967 I managed to read the poem "Mother's Hands" on local television, and for the lines “They turned black from hunger, so that I would not die in thirty-three,” I was severely reprimanded by the “ideologue” from the local state security, Anatoliy Tutyk, now deceased: “Why do you need this? Why stir up the past, agitate the people?” Such conversations, such persistent silencing and attempts to erase the tragedy of 1933 from the book of life of the Ukrainian people finally convinced me that the famine was intentional.
They told me: “If you don't come—we will bring you.” And they desperately needed material to imprison Sirenko. They couldn't imprison me. True, Petro Hryhorenko was a general; I don't compare myself to him, but they had nothing to pin on me, only that I was digging for the truth, and they couldn't find anything else against me. It's a miracle: I almost wanted them to imprison me myself. So Zaremba said: “He didn't serve time, but he served his time” in wretched places, he was an officer for eight years—Chukotka, the Kuril Islands, Kamchatka.
V.V.Ovsiienko: In which years was that?
H.N.Prokopenko: That was five years immediately after the war, 1945–1950, and then from 1954 to 1957—eight years. I must say that here, at home, they really disliked me, but I was a good officer, they praised me. I spoke Ukrainian with Ukrainians there. I appointed good guys, my fellow Ukrainians, to positions. But here, in Ukraine, when I was back home—a terrible persecution began. True, Chkhan and I sang "Ukraine Has Not Yet Died" in the bus. The people traveling with us reported it.
V.V.Ovsiienko: You said you worked at a night school—when was that?
H.N.Prokopenko: From 1964 to 1977.
V.V.Ovsiienko: And what did you teach?
H.N.Prokopenko: Ukrainian language and literature. As soon as I was discharged into the reserves, I immediately went to Dnipropetrovsk University. I had a high school certificate that gave me the right to enroll without exams, and when I submitted my documents in 1960, the pro-rector said: “Prokopenko, why are you going to the philology department for Ukrainian studies? There's the physics and technology faculty…” Kuchma was studying there at the time. “The country needs physicists.” I said: “I'm going because I love the Ukrainian language. Fifteen years of my life have been crossed out. After the war, I'm doing what is not needed.” That's what I told the pro-rector. And this same pro-rector a year later met me in the hallway and said: “Prokopenko, you are a true philologist.”
At the university, I met Ivan Sokulsky. When he transferred here from Lviv, he joined our literary association, and at the literary association—Chkhan, Sokulsky, and I—we conducted our “nationalist propaganda.” I am proud of this. Although I am formally a member of the URP [Ukrainian Republican Party], I am essentially a nationalist.
V.V.Ovsiienko: And you were a participant in the war? Could you briefly tell us about that.
H.N.Prokopenko: Of course, a participant in the war. In 1941, 1942—Sevastopol, I withstood two assaults. And they made me a sergeant there. And then the entire war was in the Far East.
O.S.Zavhorodniy: You finished your service as a major, right?
H.N.Prokopenko: Yes. I could have become a lieutenant colonel, they asked me to stay for another six months, but I didn't need it—I already had my pension, and I was trying with all my might to get out… I really wanted to get a philological education. I wrote poetry there too.
O.S.Zavhorodniy: You studied by correspondence—where did you work after the army?
H.N.Prokopenko: The Southern Machine-Building Plant. Because I was already almost a rocket specialist. I was an artilleryman, then took courses. At the plant, I also did not hide my national views, so for the last year and a half, they transferred me to tractor production, there was no more trust. I studied at the university from 1960 to 1966, so from 1964, they gave me the opportunity to work in a school.
O. S. Zavhorodniy: Tell us how you once saw embroideries in the workshop.
H. N. Prokopnenko: It was so-called “wiping material,” used to clean machines and parts. I looked—and they were beautiful embroideries. I took them and cut them out, Iryna washed them well, and I showed them to the women at work: “What do you think of this?” Everyone condemned it. This was from when people were being driven out of Western Ukraine, and everything was confiscated—such beautiful artistic embroidery.
V. V. Ovsiienko: And what year was that?
H. N. Prokopnenko: That was, if I remember correctly, in 1963. They were rags for wiping—beautiful women’s blouses, all intact.
Ira, go bring that tattered “Russian-Ukrainian” one. There’s a whole story about how I made Iryna Mykolaivna a Ukrainian.
V. V. Ovsiienko: And where did you find her, and when?
H. N. Prokopnenko: Well, during the war, in Vladivostok.
I. M. Prokoopenko: In Vladivostok. I was on my way to a polar station, and he was heading to Kamchatka. And that’s where we met. On the road, you could say.
H. N. Prokopnenko: In 1945, I was going to Chukotka, and Iryna Mykolaivna to a polar station. And during the war with Japan—I did a bit of fighting there—I had a dictionary. I had it with me in Sevastopol, too; I’ll show you in a moment. And so I taught her—showed her the letters, everything.
V. V. Ovsiienko: When did you get married?
I. M. Prokoopenko: In 1945.
H. N. Prokopnenko: I brought this little dictionary from Sevastopol. Our school and its library were bombed out there, and that’s where I found it.
V. V. Ovsiienko: And what year was it published?
H. N. Prokopnenko: 1925, Russian-Ukrainian. That’s what I used to teach Iryna Mykolaivna.
V. V. Ovsiienko: A pocket-sized format…
I. M. Prokoopenko: I was born in the Yesenin region; my parents are from there. My mother was a teacher in Yesenin’s native village of Konstantinovo. And I was born in the town of Spas-Klepiki, where he studied at a pedagogical college. My father was a forester, a forest pathologist—my childhood is tied to the forest, which is why I now write books about the forest for children. After finishing high school in Vladimir Oblast, I studied in Moscow at the High School for Polar Workers. At first, I wanted to get into medical school, but the competition after the war was so fierce it was impossible: they were admitting nurses from the front without entrance exams. So I went to that Polar High School and graduated from it. It was a two-year program, but they graduated us in eight months because, after the war, people had been stuck at the “polars” [polar stations] for many years without relief, so they pushed us through in eight months. And so I was heading to Providence Bay, or rather, to Cape Wellen, the most remote Cape Wellen—I was on my way to a “polar.” But then I met Havrylo Prokopnenko (and he was supposed to disembark from the ship earlier, in Providence Bay), and he says: “Either you stay with me, or I’ll jump in there right now, where the sharks are following the ship in a school.” I say that they’re waiting for me, and he goes: “I’ll arrange everything.” He went to his commander, who was also on the ship. Well, it was all so romantic...
V. V. Ovsiienko: How decisive he is!
I. M. Prokoopenko: So he stood there with one foot over the side—and sharks really were swimming in a school there—and he says: “Yes or no?” I say: “I agree, I agree, just don’t jump...” After that, I burst into tears and scolded him, but I did disembark with him in Providence Bay and stayed. I remember it now, telling the children—he paid a bride price for me. I was receiving a scholarship in Moscow for my polar studies… I’m kind of rambling...
V. V. Ovsiienko: You’re telling it wonderfully, very well.
I. M. Prokoopenko: And he had to pay back my scholarship. We left Chukotka with two children already.
V. V. Ovsiienko: Please tell us their names and years of birth.
I. M. Prokoopenko: Our son Pavlo was born there in 1946 and Natalka in 1948. The children grew up well; Mr. Oles here knows them very well. Our son lives in Berdiansk; he graduated with a degree in construction. He has a rather large family, three children. He works as a crane operator to earn a good salary. He has a four-room apartment and a dacha on the sea—they live well. And our daughter is in Kamchatka with her family. She is also a philologist—her father graduated from this university, and so did she. They are philologists; and I have many artists in my family, too. So that’s our family.
V. V. Ovsiienko: And did the authorities bother you? Were you involved in dissident activities?
I. M. Prokoopenko: You know, I grew up in such a way… my mother was very religious, and she was always afraid for us, because her whole family suffered, my whole mother’s family. My grandfather was taken and he perished. That was in 1931; I was four years old, I don’t remember him. He had a wonderful voice, a bass-octave, and wherever he served in the cathedrals, parishioners from all over the city would come just to hear Father Fedir. And my mother lived in fear her whole life. When they took him, his eldest son—who was studying at GITIS, also having a wonderful voice—was expelled. He was kicked out in his final year because his father had been arrested. All my aunts and my mother were so afraid for us our whole lives, always looking out for us. And my father was taken, too; they found some reason to nitpick, but he came out of there safely.
My whole life is connected to my husband, so I got my share of trouble, too. I didn’t talk much about it back then... I was working at the Writers’ Union, I was the director of the club, and they threatened to fire me. I said: “Well, go ahead and fire me.” I wanted to organize an exhibition at the club for the famous artist Humenyuk—Oles here knows him—and this Sorokin flew in to see me and started in: “What, you don’t want to work here?” I said: “Well, why wouldn’t I want to? But if you don’t like it, I can leave.” “Well, you should think about your children, think about your grandchildren, what awaits them, you must think!” So, we went through it all. The phone calls—that Yaremenko would call endlessly: “Where is Havrylo Nykyforovych?” I’d tell him: “Tell me, why are you so interested in him? What has he done? Why are you persecuting him?” One time I had this conversation with him over the phone: “Maybe I’m living with some criminal, maybe my children’s father is a criminal?” He says: “No, no, he’s a decent man, but we want him to…” This and that, and he doesn’t want to. I say: “And why should you force him?” That was the kind of conversation we had. And they wouldn’t accept me into the Writers’ Union because of him. Everyone was being accepted with just two little books, while I already had ten. At a meeting, our chairman—it was Serhiy Romanovych Burlakov at the time—spoke up… Everyone at the meeting was asking—remember, Oles? Here is a fellow sufferer—all the writers are asking: “Why isn’t Iryna Prokoopenko being accepted into the Union?” They even returned my application. I say: “I don’t know why.” And this Burlakov stood up at the meeting and said: “Why should we accept you when your husband is doing such things?” I then slammed the door and left the meeting. There was an uproar…
V. V. Ovsiienko: And when were you finally accepted into the Union?
I. M. Prokoopenko: I was accepted then, when Chemerys became the chairman. That was… I don’t remember anymore, I’d have to check my membership card.
O. S. Zavhorodniy: Sometime in 1986-87.
V. V. Ovsiienko: So you go by Prokoopenko, and you sign your literary works that way?
I. M. Prokoopenko: Yes, Prokoopenko.
V. V. Ovsiienko: And what is your maiden name?
I. M. Prokoopenko: Sheludiakova. My mother’s was Filatova, and my father’s was Sheludiakov.
V. V. Ovsiienko: And is Mr. Havrylo a member of the Writers’ Union or not?
I. M. Prokoopenko: Not too long ago, he was accepted about four years ago.
V. V. Ovsiienko: So he is a more recent member of the Union than you?
I. M. Prokoopenko: Yes, yes. They were saying that at a board meeting in Kyiv, Chemerys spoke up… Well, as I told you our romantic story. Someone there says: “She’s Russian.” They reply: “So what, how many years has she been in Ukraine? She’s lived here for 41 years already.” I know the language, at least somewhat, and I write my books in Ukrainian; only three of my books are in Russian, the rest are all in the Ukrainian language. I also translate from Russian; I translated a Slovak writer.
V. V. Ovsiienko: Thank you.
Here is the magazine “Ukraina,” number 25, June 1986, the publication “The Song-Laments of Mariia Prokoopenko,” by Havrylo Prokopnenko, from the city of Dnipropetrovsk. It’s about his mother.
O. S. Zavhorodniy: Havrylo Nykyforovych’s first collection, titled “Solar Wind,” from 1977, I believe, was extraordinarily mangled and distorted by censorship. And the second collection is the one he gave you. But I know that the esteemed Mr. Havrylo has a ready collection of prose, a collection of humor, and wonderful translations of Dmytro Kedrin.
V. V. Ovsiienko: I ask Mr. Havrylo Prokopnenko to tell us about Mykhailo Chkhan.
H. N. Prokopnenko: Mykhailo Chkhan is a victim of that cursed system that still doesn’t let us, genuine people, live. He fell victim to it. He was an undoubtedly talented person, there’s no question about it. Anyone who associated with him became a genuine person and a hater of this satanic system. People talk about who did a lot and taught many people—poets, writers, teachers, and youth—goodness, who contributed the most to this? Mykhailo Chkhan. A God-given talent. True, I disagreed with him on a few things. What was different between us was that he was not a man who believed in God. That was one thing. They mention Korzh, Burlakov... Well, they served the system faithfully, but Chkhan did not. And this tormented him, which is why he started to drink, became an alcoholic. His best books bear the stamp of Ukrainianness, true Ukrainianness—“Ozoniia,” “Yarylo,” “Hrani.” He didn’t have many books, but he managed to produce seven. Mykhailo, Mykhailo…
He would have been 75 this fall. For his 60th anniversary, I published an article, “The Unforgettable Mykhailo Chkhan.” He had real talent, a natural talent, a talent from God; he helped people. For example, he helped Iryna publish her first book. He loved people, but they didn’t help him much; on the contrary, they tried to catch him somewhere, to trip him up. But he was still, in essence, the spiritual father of the Dnipropetrovsk literary scene, despite the fact that the authorities wore him down.
I. M. Prokoopenko: He was very humane, a simple man, although he successfully graduated from a metallurgical institute and worked in that field. He loved simple people and found a common language with them.
There was this one incident. He often came to visit us. Sometimes, when things weren’t going well with his wife, he’d come to us, and we’d feed him and let him stay the night. And one time, my mother came from Russia, a Russian woman, and we weren’t home. And he came and said: “Where are Havriusha and Ira?” My mother: “I realized it was one of our own.” He says: “Maybe they’ll be back soon, I’ll wait.” My mother let him stay. They sat and talked for two hours. Later, he saw me and said: “Yarynka, your mother is something else, she told me about her life so interestingly.” But he didn’t wait for us then and left. We come home, and my mother says: “Some Misha Chkhan was here; he wanted to see you. Who is he? Such an interesting person, we had such an interesting talk.” We say: “Mama, that’s our poet.” We showed her his books, and she goes: “Good heavens, and I thought… He’s so simple, so nice, he kept asking me about everything—how I got married and how we had the wedding ceremony. We had such a good time with him.” I told this episode to show his humanity. He said: “Yarynka, you just have to write down what she says, it’s ready-made stories.” I really did use it; my mother left me her notebook, “My Memoirs for My Daughter”—about my grandfather who was repressed, and about her relatives. I always remember how he advised me to do that—to write down my mother’s stories.
V. V. Ovsiienko: Mr. Oles, you were telling us how his life ended—can we record this, do you think?
O. S. Zavhorodniy: I’ve known Chkhan since 1963. He was a man of encyclopedic knowledge, a brilliant memory, and was educated in all fields. He could, without a doubt, lead people. Now, with the distance of years, I think there was something in his manner of reciting his poems that was similar to Dmytro Pavlychko.
My father told me where his penchant for alcohol came from. As a young man, he was drafted into the army and was in the Lithuanian forests... Of course, with all the propaganda, he also thought he was fighting against bandits. He was badly wounded in the leg and was evidently under anesthesia. And, probably, when they went on missions, they were given those one hundred grams [of vodka]. All this, apparently, led to his looking into the cup.
But the main reason, I think, was the constant hounding he endured. My father told me many times that they could hold Chkhan from morning till night, hammering into his head that he wasn’t writing correctly, wasn’t living correctly. He would come and tell my father that they had been “working on him” again. I saw him a few years before his death—he was already a very emaciated man. And when he was still healthy, his build—everyone says—was that of a real Cossack. He was in a hospital here. They say he was already a man half-broken—I think he’d had a stroke. He was able to stay in the hospital for a certain time, then they discharged him, and he lived out his days in a remote village, in Kamianka, I think, with his elderly mother.
And another important thing. They constantly badgered him with this “bourgeois nationalism” and pushed him to the point where he was forced to write denuciatory articles about so-called bourgeois nationalists. After that, he would often start drinking heavily, because he was a man of conscience. And, as a consequence, it got to the point where he would take things from his home, even sell books, to drown out this pain, to drink. Now they say there are “Chkhan Readings,” that there’s supposedly a monument already. But, it seems, for about 12 years before his death, he didn’t see a single one of his collections published. We said, publish a selection of his works, but our glorious “Promin” publishing house never got around to it. His more or less complete collection “Zoria v Pike” [A Star in a Dive] was only published after his death.
V. V. Ovsiienko: I will now read the titles of Mykhailo Chkhan’s books: “Yarylo,” poetry, “Soviet Writer” publishing house, Kyiv, 1970; “Ozoniia,” poetry, Kyiv, 1967, “Soviet Writer”; the little book “Hrani,” poetry, “Promin” publishing house, Dnipropetrovsk, 1966; and Mykhailo Chkhan’s very first little book was called “The Sun Does Not Set,” 1959, Dnipropetrovsk Book Publishing House.
O. S. Zavhorodniy: I heard that after the publication of his collection “Hrani” [Facets], they also gave him a hard time, claiming he had intentionally named it that because he knew there was a journal with the same name in West Germany. For this, he was “purged” both by the “organs” and in other bodies.
V. V. Ovsiienko: This is “Zoria v Pike” [A Star in a Dive], a posthumous book of poetry and long poems, Dnipropetrovsk, “Sich” publishing house, 1992. It has a rather lengthy foreword. There’s a good portrait here. He was born on September 14, 1926, in the village of Kamianka in the Dnipropetrovsk region. This has been corrected here. From 1959 to 1976, he published seven collections; he passed away in his 61st year.
In the collection “Zoria v Pike,” on page 19, there is a poem, “Pharaoh,” for which Vatchenko was furious with Chkhan. “Pharaoh.” “На циклопічних дверях дві таблиці: хто він такий і що прийом в четвер. У кабінет заходиш, як в гробницю, хоча хазяїн дихає, не вмер. Сам він сидить квадратний, мов одвірок, відвідувача бачить, ніби в сні, і пише резолюцію, як вирок, аж сироти рябіють на стіні. Свинцеві очі важко позвисали – ось капнуть на сухе душевне дно. Байдужістю, бюрокра-тичним салом його забальзамовано давно. І відчуваєш ти з глибоким сумом, як давить серце в тиші мертвизна, що він – одна із тих безглуздих мумій, яких археологія не зна.”
That was a poem by Mykhailo Chkhan. This concludes the recording at the home of Havrylo Nykyforovych Prokopnenko, on April 4, 2001.