HALYNA ANATOLIYIVNA MOHYLNYTSKA

An Interview with Halyna Anatoliyivna MOHYLNYTSKA

(With corrections by H. Mohylnytska on January 4, 2008, entered on April 12, 2008).

V. Ovsienko: On February 13, 2001, in the city of Odesa, we are speaking with Mrs. Halyna Mohylnytska. Vasyl Ovsienko is recording. Please begin.

H. Mohylnytska: My name is Halyna Mohylnytska. I was born on May 8, 1937, in Odesa to a family of teachers. My parents were mathematicians, and my grandfather, my father’s father Oleksandr Pylypovych Mohylnytsky, was a philologist who knew many Slavic languages, as well as Lithuanian and French. He was an intelligent, erudite man. My grandfather’s brother, Bened, and the husband of my grandfather’s sister Aniuta, a man named Shkliarsky, was one of the organizers of the anti-Soviet uprising against the kolkhozes in the Kryve Ozero region—the famous uprising in Tryduby, which spread to Sekretarka, Velyka Mechetnya, and a whole number of other towns.

I always knew that my grandfather had a brother, Benedko—that’s how we knew and called him, but I never saw him. I saw him once in a photograph; I saw his children, Liudochka and Lorochka, in a photograph. I saw his wife. I knew that his wife lived in Odesa with the children, but we never knew anything about Uncle Bened. It was only in 1987, I think, or perhaps 1988, that my grandmother, who was 97 years old, let it slip before her death: “Where is that Benedko? I still don’t know where that Benedko is.” I asked, “But where is he, Grandma, why don’t you know?” “Oh, he was probably shot somewhere.” I said, “Why was he shot, Grandma?” “Because he started an uprising! Then he and Shkliarsky escaped.” That’s how I know about this uprising. Later, I read about it in the memoirs of some Bolshevik who suppressed it. But to this day, we still don’t know where Uncle Bened is or what his fate was. He was not mentioned in the family.

V. Ovsienko: What was his last name?

H. Mohylnytska: Mohylnytsky, Benedykt Pylypovych. And my grandfather was Oleksandr. My father’s father was Oleksandr Pylypovych Mohylnytsky.

V. Ovsienko: You know, Roman Koval is researching this very partisan movement, those atamans. Maybe he knows something. I’ll ask him.

H. Mohylnytska: But my grand-uncle Bened was never an ataman. It was a purely spontaneous uprising. My understanding is that the people’s patience simply ran out. And in general, such peasant uprisings are an incredibly interesting moment in Ukrainian history, including the one in the Kryve Ozero region. The fate of another family member, Korenievsky, Andriy Fedorovych, my grandmother's own brother, was never spoken of in the family. I overheard that he was one of the first people to introduce cooperatives in Ukraine. He lived in Kyiv, was then taken to Moscow, worked, I believe, at the Institute of International Relations and was perhaps a professor. This is what I’d heard, but again, no one ever said anything about Uncle Andriy. It was only around 1954 that we began receiving small packages from Uncle Andriy for New Year’s and for the Eighth of March, containing smoked dried herring and little cakes covered in chocolate that wouldn't spoil. I know that for a long time my grandmother was afraid to respond to these packages. It was from this that I learned that Uncle Andriy had been repressed and, during the “Khrushchev Thaw,” around 1954, he was released and reached out to us in this way. Afterward, he worked again at the same Institute of International Relations. I never saw him either. These were two legend-like grand-uncles.

In saying this, I don’t at all want to suggest that the presence of such figures in my family had some kind of ideological influence on me. Because—I stress this again—everyone was terribly afraid, and at least after the war, there wasn’t a single photograph of Uncle Bened in our house. Nobody spoke about it; there was no legendary, patriotic Ukrainian upbringing in the family. The family knew how to sing Ukrainian songs, and cultivated reason, intellect, and honesty. This is what I took from my family—that one must not lie, one must not steal, one must love people, one must be decent and kind to them. And also—I read a great many books, including pre-revolutionary ones and those published in the 1920s and ’30s. I still have some of them to this day.

My family, it seems to me, was atheistic. Perhaps because they were all teachers, and after the revolution, a teacher could in no way be a believer. That’s how we were raised. But again, I don't know for what reason, but for as long as I can remember, I have known God and been drawn to Him. It even went so far that when I was in the third grade, I quietly went to an evening church service (the church was still active then). I went quietly to the service. And I was standing by the little counter where icons were sold. And may God forgive me—there was this tiniest little icon, just on paper... I console myself that I didn't cause much harm—a tiny little icon, the Sorrowful Mother of God without the Child, with her hands folded in prayer, it was on paper. I wanted it so badly that I placed one hand on the counter like this, and with the other, I took it off the counter. That was the first icon I ever had in my life—stolen from a church. May God forgive me if it’s a great sin, because it is indeed a sin—to steal in a church. But I was a child who had never had an icon, and I so wanted to have one.

I finished school in Kryve Ozero, because my father returned from the war crippled; he had pulmonary tuberculosis and was a war invalid, so he needed to recuperate in a village somewhere, because it was a time of hunger in the city. So we lived in the Kryve Ozero region with my grandma and granddaddy.

V. Ovsienko: So what year did you finish school?

H. Mohylnytska: I finished school... Well, actually, I didn’t finish it. After the ninth grade, in 1954, I went to Odesa to a technical school. My mother was very honest; she couldn't give me good grades when I didn't know the material very well, and I didn’t get along well with mathematics. So in the ninth grade, my mother gave me two F's for the year—in algebra and geometry. I could have retaken them in the fall, but I couldn't bear the shame, so I went to the technical school. I enrolled in the Finance and Credit Technical School here in Odesa and studied there. But the finance school was on Chicherin Street, a block and a half from the Uspensky Cathedral. So, of course, I was always running to the church. Well, they expelled me from that school. First, they expelled me from the Komsomol, and then they expelled me from the school. That was, so to speak, my first clash with the regime, when I realized that you couldn’t prove anything to anyone. I told them all that the Constitution guaranteed freedom of conscience and stated that every person had the right to go to church and pray, but they said that because I was a Komsomol member, I had no right to do so. Apparently, the case was kicked back from the *raikom*, because how could it be that a Komsomol member couldn't be persuaded? Then they tried to convince me to write an explanatory note saying that I didn't go to church to pray to God, but just to look at the paintings and listen to the beautiful choir. But I couldn't do that. I was in my third year when they found out I had been attending church systematically. I was so consumed by that spirit... I kept thinking about whether I should do it or not. And I thought that it would be like the apostle Peter, renouncing Christ. I recalled the Garden of Gethsemane, where Christ asked the apostles not to sleep, to share His sorrow, His suffering with him. And they went and fell asleep. So I thought that I, too, would be betraying Him, just like them. And He, poor thing, would once again be left hurt, and it would be me who hurt Him. And I just couldn’t do that.

So I lost my place at the technical school. I had no money because I couldn't write to my mother about it. For a long time, I had to just wander, to tell the truth. No one would take me in as a lodger because I had no way to pay. And I couldn’t go home because I was ashamed to say I’d been expelled from school. It was a very hard time, but eventually, some old women from the church helped me find a job. Later, I got married and went to Siberia with my first husband.

V. Ovsienko: When did you go to Siberia?

H. Mohylnytska: In December of 1959. But by 1962, I was back home because my husband had gone to the Far East to work as a sailor, and I returned home with my child. There, working two jobs, I somehow managed to finish evening school.

In 1963, I entered Odesa University and studied in the philology department. I had, by the way, enrolled in the Russian department, because it seemed to me that I already had a good grounding in Ukrainian language and literature. After all, what did our Ukrainian literature amount to? Mykola Dzheria, Chipka... Shevchenko, but mostly about “sharpening the axe” and “lighting pipes from incense burners”... *The Forest Song*... And since, besides *The Forest Song* and Chipka, I also knew a few poems by Vorony or Fylypovych by heart, and *The Possessed One* or *The Orgy*—I was so “literate” that there was nothing left for me to do in Ukrainian literature... But Dostoevsky—he was a mystery!

When I was in school, he was almost banned, because when I dug up an ancient copy of *The Brothers Karamazov* from my grandfather's stashes, one printed with the old “yat” letter, and gave it to my friend who was a few years older, I got a severe scolding and was told that I wanted to get everyone sent to prison. So it turns out I was engaged in “distribution” as early as the 6th or 7th grade. But I was dying for someone else to read such an interesting book so I'd have someone to talk about it with. By the time I entered the university, Dostoevsky was being published again. So I thought to myself that I would spend my whole life figuring this writer out.

But my purely Ukrainian upbringing drew me to a circle of young people who were interested in Ukrainian culture and history—the things I had lived for all my life. And they were intelligent young men—the likes of Oleksa Riznykiv or Oleh Oliinykiv. Around that time, many publications about previously “banned” writers began to appear. In short, “quietly,” without telling anyone, I realized that Ukrainian literature was not just about works in which, as my students used to say, “they reap rye and fight the landlords.” The “most vile” Dostoevsky naturally faded into the background, although I haven't lost interest in his work to this day, but now I'm more interested in his Ukrainian “most vile followers”... Remember Lenin’s statement about Vynnychenko “and the like”: “The most vile followers of the most vile Dostoevsky”…

In this circle of Ukrainophiles, I was particularly intrigued by Sviatoslav Karavansky, a man who was already older than us.

I’ve already told you that in our family, there was a cult of reason and intellect. So I always idolized intelligent people—those who knew more than me. I would just cling to them with my ears and eyes, trying to remember everything, trying not to miss a single word. Well, Sviatoslav Karavansky was one of those people. The same goes for our professors, because no matter how much I knew, a professor knew significantly more about their subject. And I was very happy at the university because it was the only period in my life up to that point when I was doing exactly what I wanted, what I loved, and everyone around me was also interested in the same issues that interested me.

Sviatoslav Karavansky was much older than us, and it puzzled me—how could it be that he was a student and not a lecturer? Because, given his level, he should have been standing behind the lectern, not sitting on a student bench. It was only after we became closer that I learned he had been repressed and had served 18 years. When he told me this, it sort of broke down a wall of alienation. It was a step toward closeness. From Karavansky, I learned a great deal about things I had not known before. For example, about the Katyn tragedy. I must say that at first, I didn't even believe him. When he told me about it, I thought: see how a state should not be unjust to a person, because it embitters them, and they can come to believe in things that simply cannot be. I thought it was some rumor, and Sviatoslav, because the state had treated him so cruelly and unjustly, had come to believe in something impossible to believe. That’s what I thought then. But when Gorbachev and Yeltsin handed over the documents about Katyn to the Poles, can you imagine what I was feeling? I thought, how they brainwashed us, how they treated us like we were nothing!

Incidentally, when I went to visit the Karavanskys in America in 1991 (where, by the way, I taught a course on Ukrainian literature of the 1960s to teachers at Ukrainian studies schools—those teachers called me Marusia Churai... they liked my lectures...), well, in that America, I cried every day at first. I’d go into a store—I’d cry. I’d see a Black family in a limousine—I’d cry.

Nina Antonivna Strokata would ask: “Halynka, why are you crying?” Nina and I were on formal terms to her last day, though she probably had no closer friend. So she would press me, asking why I was crying, and at first I couldn’t explain, but then I understood: “Out of shame, out of insult, that they lied to us so shamelessly, so brazenly, held us in such contempt, convincing us of how the working people were suffering in that ‘vile capitalism,’ how poor and disenfranchised the Black people were there.” I had traveled through half of America, as I had many meetings, lectures, and creative evenings in different cities, and nowhere did I see a single woman crawling on her knees weeding millet, or, pardon me, bent over with a hoe over beets. And you walk into a store, and your eyes just pop at the abundance. But back home, we have soil you could spread on bread, and people work without straightening their backs, yet the stores have horribly expensive, moldy sausage, and canned seaweed. And sugar—on ration coupons. Well, we had never traveled to “foreign lands,” we had never seen anything... But they, our rulers, they traveled and saw it all! How did they dare to lie to us so consciously?! They must have considered us all, the entire nation, to be real cattle!… That was a terrible realization... The very fact that the entire nation—not me personally, not someone who displeased them in some way—but the entire nation, every single person, they regarded as cattle, in front of whom they didn't even need to feel ashamed.

This was despite the fact that I had long known everything myself and didn't believe in any of the propaganda fairy tales. But perhaps just knowing is one thing, and seeing with your own eyes is another. I don't know... I felt as if the whole world had spat in my face and I had nowhere to hide from the insult and shame.

But let’s return to my student years. As I was saying, that wall of alienation fell, and we simply became friends. Besides, we were in the literary studio together, in the Polish language study group together, in the student scientific society together—that is, everywhere there was a pulse of that intelligent, meaningful life. Everywhere there I met Riznykiv, and Sviatoslav, and Oliinyk—it was one circle.

So we came together and promoted the Ukrainian word, collected books for Ukrainian libraries in Kuban and the Far East. We considered it a point of pride to speak Ukrainian in Odesa. When you enter a shop, there's a queue, and you say, “Do you have any sugar?”—and everyone turns to look at you, but you clearly don’t look like some illiterate village granny... We felt very proud that we were promoting the Ukrainian language and proving to the people of Odesa that Ukrainian is not only spoken by old, uneducated grandmothers.

And when Sviatoslav disappeared in 1965 and we couldn’t find out where he was, Oleksa Riznykiv and I went to Nina Antonivna’s place. That’s when I met Nina Antonivna, because before that, I simply wasn't interested in which of them had a wife and which didn't. Our communication was not of the kind where you pry into someone's personal life. When Karavansky disappeared, for the first time I thought like a woman, that he must have a wife somewhere who needed to be somehow comforted, consoled, because she must be there crying, banging her head against the wall. But when I went in and saw her sitting on the sofa with her feet up, in those snow-white socks, sorting through some papers, I was a bit surprised—I thought: how can this be? But she was sorting those papers in a very business-like manner, talking to us, and casually mentioning that all this needed to be sorted, all of it put away somewhere, because they would come and, of course, they would confiscate it all and it would all be lost. And then I understood that she was a woman of great willpower, a woman who knew how to find the most important thing to do at any given moment.

After that, Nina and I became very close. Nina was cautious. She didn’t just let anyone into her home; she was always on guard. So she was very happy to have a friend or companion of sorts—age-wise I dare not say we were friends, because she was older, after all, and I treated her with great respect. But she loved me. You know, Nina never used words like “I love you” or anything of the sort, but in her later years she would always laugh: “Mohylnytska, I never confessed my love to my husband, only once and only to you.” She could start a letter with the words: “Oh, Mohylnytska! You are my forever love!” Nina wasn't sentimental. Nina didn't allow herself to be sentimental, but with me, she allowed herself sentiments. Nina would always leave me in her home when she went away, because she was afraid to leave the house empty, since someone could come in and plant anything they wanted.

My first interrogation, my first search also took place at Nina's apartment. Nina had gone to visit Sviatoslav. And when she went for a visit with Sviatoslav, she would make what we called a “round-the-world journey.” During this journey, she would visit many relatives of political prisoners, always making a stop in Moscow, where materials smuggled out of the camps were transcribed and sent abroad. Because at that time—I don't know about Kyiv, but we in Odesa didn’t have our own channel to get things abroad. If any documents needed to be sent, one had to go to Moscow, and there, by the way, the Muscovites would even sift through our documents. I myself, after Nina was imprisoned in the ’70s, had the task of taking some materials to Moscow several times, so I know it was not a simple matter. In short, Nina was involved in this; Nina worried not only about Sviatoslav's fate but also about the fate of many other prisoners.

By the way, she involved me in it too. She introduced me to many people, very intelligent, solid, and serious people. My acquaintance with Oksana Yakivna Meshko gave me a great deal in life. Oksana Yakivna also loved me very much. God granted me that good people loved me. She never called me anything other than the “southern beauty”—“The southern beauty has arrived!” Oksana Yakivna taught me... I wouldn’t say I was irresponsible; I was never irresponsible... But she taught me detailed, literal responsibility. If it was said that I had to be somewhere at 4 o'clock, then I had to die, I had to crawl on all fours, whatever it took, but I had to be there. Oksana Yakivna herself was like that, absolutely precise in her word. Since then, I dislike unreliable people. Incidentally, that expression comes from Oksana Yakivna—_“neslovny cholovik”_: “Haliu, he’s a good person, but he is _neslovny_.” _Neslovny_ means he doesn’t keep his word, and therefore you can't have serious dealings with him.

As I was saying, I encountered my first search right at Nina Antonivna's house, and it was after she had been away for two weeks. What happened? Well, she had to visit many people, and she was gone for two weeks. I was very worried, of course. And then she appeared at dawn, and the first thing she said was: “Haliu, that’s it—to bed!” And we went to bed. But suddenly, the doorbell rang. I jumped up, thinking: “Whoever it is, I'll send them away so they don’t wake Nina.” I had also just jumped out of sleep, and there stood the janitor, saying: “Open up, please, there’s something needed.” I opened it—and there stood three or maybe four big, very handsome guys. I guessed from the reinforced-concrete expression on their faces what kind of guys they were, but having already unhooked the chain, I couldn't shut the door. I just held the door a little, held it back, and shrieked in a wild voice: “Nina Antonivna, look!” I couldn’t just yell: “Nina Antonivna, it’s a search!” I just screamed: “Nina Antonivna, get up, so many handsome guys have come to see us!” Nina Antonivna guessed what was happening, but the door was open, and there was nothing to be done.

They sat us in different corners and began the search. Nina Antonivna sat and watched what they were taking. Occasionally she would exchange glances with me and subtly signal that what they had confiscated was nonsense. They piled everything they seized in a heap on the sofa. There was already a whole pile. And suddenly Nina Antonivna, looking at me, motions like this, with four fingers showing a cage, showing bars. Bars for whom, I don't know, but that thing could lead to bars. I looked to see where it was placed. And as soon as Nina Antonivna signals to me that it's something undesirable, I note where it is. Well, I also see some things myself, because I know some of the materials. Nina Antonivna took a very aggressive line of conduct. But I thought: “No, I won't do that, because it won't work for me.”

I sat quietly, not answering anyone, with my head bowed like a little sheep, so they mostly watched Nina Antonivna. And when they were moving into the other room, I somehow ended up behind, and from that pile, I snatched so many of those papers, it was terrifying! I had some kind of jacket thrown over my shoulders because I had just gotten out of bed and it was cold. Some old, shaggy jacket of Nina’s or Sviatoslav’s. Where was I to put it all? I stuck those articles, everything I pulled out, under my armpits, pressing my arms to my torso, and folded them on my stomach. I sat there, holding the jacket on my shoulders, unable to move a muscle.

Well, they finished the search, turned the books upside down; it was already three in the morning or something. They said we needed to go somewhere to sign some documents. Nina protested violently: “I’m not going anywhere! What, me, a woman, at three in the morning!” In short, an uproar. They turned to me: “We’ll go.” Where was I supposed to go? I stood by the door, my head down, my arms twisted like that, and just mumbled: “I’m not going. Not going...” “Why? We'll bring you back soon.” “I’m not going.” “Well, why won't you go?” And I told them: “Because I’m scared.” I saw my Nina just about die! Where on earth did that come from: “Because I’m scared of you, I won’t go.” My Nina just died, saying: “Mohylnytska, what do you have to be afraid of them for?” Nina didn’t understand then that I was stuffed with materials. I had to show that I understood nothing about the whole affair. And the shirt under that jacket was silk, and most of those materials under the jacket were printed on thin “cigarette” paper—everything was slippery: a slight movement, and everything would slide to the floor! I was about to fall apart. I winked at Nina Antonivna, trying to tell her not to worry, and then burst into tears: “I’m not going! I’m scared of you...” Not only Nina but even the “searchers” started calming me down: “Well, nobody is going to take you anywhere by force, why are you crying?” But I could feel those papers about to spill out of me, and I started wailing: “Because my stomach hurts, I need to go to the toilet!” They had already searched the toilet, so I thought maybe I could hide something there, or somehow secure everything on myself. They escorted me to that toilet so cheerfully; I tucked something not too important behind the tank, because I was afraid they might check again after me. I secured the rest on my person somehow. They didn't, in fact, look into the toilet again or search there. Then they left someone to guard us, and someone else went and brought some woman to conduct a personal search. Nina yelled at the woman whatever she pleased, while I just asked with a frightened voice: “Aunty, do I have to get completely undressed too?” But she barely even examined me.

And when they all finally left, and I started pulling out all those papers, Nina nearly died a second time. “My God,” she said, “and I was thinking—the woman is gone! Just standing there and muttering, ‘I’m scared of you...’ My Mohylnytska!” I said: “Well, yes, I’m scared! If you were stuffed with all this, you’d be scared too—it almost all fell out of me. I was winking at you,” I said, “so you wouldn't worry.” And she just burst out laughing! “Well,” she said, “Mohylnytska, if you wink at the boys like that, I don't envy them, because I was sure you'd developed a nervous tic from fright.”

V. Ovsienko: Do you remember when this search took place?

H. Mohylnytska: No, I don't remember.

V. Ovsienko: Well, could you give us the year, at least?

H. Mohylnytska: I think it was 1965.

V. Ovsienko: Soon after Karavansky was arrested?

H. Mohylnytska: It must have been the spring of 1965.

V. Ovsienko: But he was arrested in the fall of 1965, on November 13.

H. Mohylnytska: In the fall, yes. Spring, no, it was still winter, because there was snow on the ground. They dug through that snow meticulously, because when they moved us to the second room and started tossing books, Nina Antonivna suddenly jumped from her chair and shot like a bullet into the room where all the seized items were piled on the sofa. Well, not everything, because I had already taken a lot. They all rushed after her in a crowd, and I followed them. When we burst into the room, Nina was already standing by the window next to an open transom. She was pale as death. They asked her: “What did you throw out?” And she said so calmly: “Whatever needed to be thrown out, I threw it out.” So two of them went outside to dig in the snow, looking for what she had thrown out.

But she hadn’t thrown anything out; she had turned pale because the piece of paper she had run for was no longer where it was supposed to be. It was already with me. But she didn't know that... It was something she had smuggled out of the camp. What it was exactly—I don’t remember. Or maybe I never knew. Something for which someone could have gotten a new sentence.

Well, from then on they started dragging us to the KGB, to those interrogations, to those “soul-saving” talks, as we called them. I don't know how to put it because, on the one hand, it was, of course, very unpleasant and indeed scary, because they could kick you out of the university—and you’d be totally screwed, pardon my expression. And I had a little boy on my hands, I had a son from my first marriage, and I needed to somehow cling to life.

But there were also many funny moments. For instance, I'm sitting with an investigator. I've been sitting for a long time. We were summoned for nine in the morning, and it’s already past one, and there's no end in sight to this “soul-saving” conversation.

Suddenly the door opens, and Karavanska's head appears. Businesslike, stern...

“That's it, Mohylnytska!” she says briskly. “Finish your talking. It's time for lunch.”

The investigator looks at his watch: “Yes, yes. Let's go to the cafeteria.” They led us away. Down, down... Nina Antonivna is loudly and indignantly “declaiming” about how she was supposed to have eaten half an hour ago, that the disruption of her routine could affect her precious health... And then, just moving her lips so no one can hear, she asks anxiously: “Mohylnytska, are you sure they're taking us to the cafeteria and not somewhere else?” This contrasts so much with the indignant speeches she was just delivering that I burst out laughing and call out joyfully and optimistically through my laughter: “No-o-o! Not sure at all!” Then Karavanska starts laughing too.

Do you understand? We weren't doing anything that special! We weren't blowing up administrative buildings, not shooting at members of the Bolshevik government, we weren't even trying to overthrow the Soviet system. We just wanted people to know how beautiful the Ukrainian language is and to love it; we wanted the destruction of Ukrainian culture to stop and for the word “Ukrainian” not to be a synonym for “hick,” “dolt,” or “uneducated.” For instance, the caroling. Legends are already told about those Odesa caroling sessions. I'm sure you’ve heard about them many times. That too was a marvel for Odesa in 1965. And we organized them not to undermine the Soviet system at all, but to revive for the people such a beautiful, such a benevolent folk custom. We simply found it interesting to go caroling, to bring joy into people's homes, to see people delighted and happy. And it turns out that this was some kind of feat. And many from our group were summoned for “soul-saving” talks, intimidated, told what dangerous enemies those Riznykivs or Mohylnytskas were, leading them “astray.”

You see, we just lived and wanted truth, wanted to be ourselves. People ask: “What, you knew Stus?!” Yes, I knew him, but when I knew him, did I have any idea that he would become such a celebrated person? We were just friends, we went places together, laughed together. I don't have anything heroic or legendary to tell. It was just the real life of people who lived for Ukraine, who carried Ukraine in their souls, and who wanted Ukraine to be as dear to everyone as it was to us.

So, it was very interesting with Nina Antonivna too, because, firstly, she had a huge library where you could bury yourself and sit, read so many interesting things, and secondly, because she herself was interesting to me, and thirdly, because we met so many interesting people with her.

I can’t say which year it was, but it was either 1965 or 1966. I had just come back from the kolkhoz—we students had spent a whole month picking some tomatoes or grapes, and of course, I came to Nina Antonivna's, not to the dormitory. When I walked into the apartment, a tall, handsome young man came out to meet me. I have an impression that he had a mustache, but it seems to me that Vasyl Stus sometimes didn’t wear a mustache. But for some reason, he is fixed in my memory with a mustache, because I said: “Oh, another Honta!” At that time, there was a craze for erecting monuments to literary heroes, and a bust of Honta for the Uman monument was being sculpted from my brother, Sashko Mohylnytsky. Sashko was supposed to be cast in the image of Honta. And here was this young man, I looked at him, and he looked exactly like Honta to me. And I said: “Oh, he’s the one Honta should have been sculpted from!” Nina introduces me—Vasyl Stus. The name meant nothing to me at the time, but I just knew that Nina Antonivna didn't associate with mediocre people; she didn't know them.

Then Oleksa Riznykiv came, we talked about poetry, about literature, about mutual acquaintances, because we had many mutual acquaintances, about the evening dedicated to the screening of *Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors*. When Oleksa arrived, they vied with each other in reciting poems. I was a bit shy, didn’t really put myself forward to read my own poems, although I had read one poem to Vasyl just before, a very recent one. It was very feminine, as if from the perspective of a pregnant woman, and ended with the line “and a little sunny secret is quietly, quietly ripening within me.” Vasyl liked it very much; he said that a man could never write like that, that only a woman could speak so delicately, so tenderly about such things that are, so to speak, not spoken of. And they and Oleksa sat and read poems to each other. I was struck by Vasyl's poem dedicated to Ivan Svitlychny, where there was the phrase “mustached little sun.” And then I looked at Vasyl with completely different eyes. I realized how, beneath this masculine, even stern exterior, his heart was a place with “doors wide open,” how tender he was inside. Chaste in his tenderness! Because I knew Ivan Oleksiyovych very well—I knew all three of them, those “pillars of the Sixtiers”: Sversitiuk, Dziuba, and Ivan Svitlychny. I was acquainted with all of them, but I kept my distance from Dziuba; I was afraid of him, it seemed to me he was very stern, very critical.

I later corresponded with Yevhen Oleksandrovych and then understood a bit of what he was like. Before that, Sversitiuk seemed too ironic to me, and I was afraid of getting hit by the arrows of his irony. He never said much, but sometimes he would say one word, and that word would be enough to completely destroy a person.

But Ivanko was very kind, and when I heard those words... I used to bring my poems to Ivanko; he would analyze them. When he took my collection, he greeted me like this: “My God, Halynka, you know, you’ve brought me such happiness—these poems are so wonderful! You know, I’m just happy to have read your poems!” Later I understood that this was so I wouldn't be scared off by his critiques, of which he had a whole sackful. And then, when we climbed up to his “pigeon coop”—he had a small room there, up a few steps—and sat down close together to go over the poems, the comments began. But he did it somehow gently, kindly, sort of like this: “Look here—this is wonderful! This is great, that is great—but this... what is this you've written? This jumble of ‘ya-ka-ka-la-mut’—what is this you've written? How can you write something like that? You should not only write but also sometimes read what you've written, listen to how it sounds...” That is, he could make a critique in such a way that it wasn't embarrassing at all. I remember we laughed a lot because I had spelled the word “illustration” with two “l’s,” and he said to me: “Haliu, you're a philologist, come and look what you have here.” I said: “What, should it be with one?” And he says: “Well, what did you think?” “Tsk! Go figure!” As if it's something one could easily not know. It wasn’t shameful—you could laugh at it and know that he wouldn’t judge you, that he accepted you as you were. And the fact that not everything you did was smooth was something that could be corrected, learned. So, not like “you're stupid” or “talentless,” but “you're smart, capable, you just don’t know this and that, this you need to learn, and that you need to be taught.” He gave me a lot, specifically as a critic. I loved him very much.

And suddenly I realized that there was no other phrase that could characterize Ivan Oleksiyovych but that “mustached little sun.” I fell terribly in love with Vasyl then for feeling Ivan Oleksiyovych exactly as he could be felt and as the most subtle, most benevolent person ought to feel him.

Vasyl, as he was leaving for home, was scribbling some poems and read in a clipped manner: «Але хто поверррне ррруки, рррухи рррадощі нам? Але хто уперррто вік рррубатиме хащі?» I was intrigued by this rhythm and said that it was existentialism on the level of Lesia Ukrainka’s “I shall carry a heavy stone up a steep, flinty mountain”—a kind of complete hopelessness in that poem, and yet at the same time, that mobilizing motif that doesn't let a person fall, lose themselves—that's how I would put it. When Vasyl was leaving, I asked him to copy that poem for me. But he said, “What do you need it for?”—that's how he always was. Then he said: “Here, take it, but... No, I'd better send it to you, because it’s not proper to give a girl such a smudged, scribbled-on scrap of paper.” But I said: “No, you can give it to me—I’ll save it, and when you become a famous poet, I will research your work. Just like in the classic articles about Pushkin there are autographs, I too will publish this autograph of yours. I'll show it and study what you changed and why.” We had a laugh, and that was the end of it.

The second time we saw Vasyl Stus was a year later. It was either very late autumn or very early spring, but it was after the snow had melted because I remember there were very large puddles. It was announced at our department that Vitaliy Korotych was going to speak. Just then Vasyl arrived, and I went straight to our literary studio director, Professor Nedzvidsky. Professor Nedzvidsky was very fond of me because I had been in his dissertation seminar since my third year; he was preparing me for my dissertation defense and liked me because I could write something interesting. I went up to him and said: “Andriy Volodymyrovych, could another poet from Kyiv also speak at the evening with Korotych? Vasyl Stus has come to visit us, oh, you know, such an interesting poet!” Andriy Volodymyrovych said: “Well, why not? Has he been published anywhere?” “Yes,” I said, “he’s been published in *Dnipro*, but he mostly publishes translations.” “Oh, so he translates?” “Yes,” I said, “he does. He translates Rilke, he also translates English and German-language poets.” Andriy Volodymyrovych became interested, because everyone knows how to rhyme, but to translate you also have to know the language, and our Soviet students were not very prepared... So he got interested and said: “Well, bring him.” Fine. I come and say: “Alright, Vasyl, get ready, you're going to be performing with your poems at our event tonight.” He said: “Me?” This was at a time when he had already been effectively banned from all journals. I think he was working at the biological institute then, or perhaps he had already been fired from there.

V. Ovsienko: At the biological institute? Sversitiuk worked at the biological institute, but Stus worked first as a stoker and then at the Central State Historical Archive.

H. Mohylnytska: I must have mixed something up, but I know that he wasn’t performing anywhere anymore, he wasn’t being published anywhere anymore. And he got a little scared: “What, me?” I said: “Yes, Korotych will be there, and you will be performing.” He laughed and then said: “Aren't you afraid that this stunt won't end well for you?” I say, “Nothing will happen to me.” “And what will you do if you get kicked out of the university?” I say, “I’ll get married.” He laughed and said, “And what if no one marries you?” Nina Antonivna says, “Don’t you worry, we’ll definitely ‘set her up with a good man’...” So, all jokes aside, Nina Antonivna said that anything could happen, let's arrange how we should position ourselves because everyone needs to be able to see everyone else, because, God forbid, what if they grab him and take him away, just like they took Sviatoslav. I said: “Right, I’ll stick close to Vasyl, and you, Nina Antonivna, wear something bright, something red, so I can always see that red spot.” I repeat again that we were just living, we were laughing and being silly. That is, we didn't think we were doing something that would later be interesting for someone to know. Nina Antonivna pulls out a terrible, worn-out beret from some hiding place, but it's of the brightest, most vivid red color; the beret doesn't even fit on her head. She looks like she’s in a clown's cap, but she bravely puts on that beret because something red is needed, and there's nothing else red, and we go to that evening.

V. Ovsienko: And where was this evening held?

H. Mohylnytska: This evening was at our philology department at the university, in Malyi Lane where the department was located; the big new building didn’t exist yet. The auditorium was on the third floor, noise everywhere... Andriy Volodymyrovych opened the evening, and Vasyl and I were sitting in the front row, but Vasyl was in the very corner. On the opposite side of the stage was a low table, with Korotych sitting behind it. Andriy Volodymyrovych announced him, and Korotych read poems. He read for quite a long time, and meanwhile, notes were being placed on the table. Korotych grew tired of reading and said: “I'll look at the notes and answer a few of your questions.” He sat down at the table and was about to answer the questions while seated. Andriy Volodymyrovych asked me: “Where is that Stus of yours?” I remember it as if it were yesterday, he called him ‘Stus’: “Where is that Stus of yours? Is your Stus here?” I said: “He is.” He said: “Maybe while Korotych sorts through the notes, I’ll give him the floor?” I said: “Good.” “Well, then let's do it.” He went out and announced that a young poet from Kyiv, Vasyl Stus, would be speaking. Vasyl came out, said the first word, Korotych looked at him—and his jaw dropped, he turned as red as a lobster. He looked at Stus, at the audience, crumpled the papers he was holding, crumpled them up and threw them on the table, silently stood up, almost knocking over the chair, and walked right off the stage.

V. Ovsienko: Did he go backstage or through the hall?

H. Mohylnytska: No, there was no exit there. Our stage was small, so you could just step off it, even without steps. He went from the stage—and right out of the hall. I remember that one of our guys, a student-poet from the university, a writer, ran after him. I didn't see who, because I had another concern—I had to keep one eye on whether Nina was in her place in her red beret, and with the other, I had to watch that everything was okay with Vasyl.

He read poems for a long time, because Nedzvidsky obviously expected Korotych to return. And the stage was low, I was in the front row, so he approached me from behind the scenes: “Where's Korotych?” I said calmly: “He fled.” “What do you mean fled? Where did he flee?” “He’s gone, completely!” “Why?” “Because he got scared of Vasyl. Apparently, he was scared to be on the same stage with Vasyl.” And the old man, our professor, he didn't know anything, he wasn't in the loop, he was as pure as an angel. And he said, looking at Vasyl: “Is he perhaps...?” He wanted to ask if he was one of the disgraced ones. But I interrupted and said: “Exactly!” So he called me something or other: “You want to give an old man a heart attack.” I said: “Nothing will happen, Andriy Volodymyrovych.”

Meanwhile, Vasyl is reading poems, reading, and then he looked at me, shrugged his shoulders, and said: “So what—should I read more?” He's asking me because I had told him to read a few poems. “So what—should I read more?” And he spread his hands. But the audience can't see that he's addressing someone personally—the audience thought he was asking them if he should read more, and they roared: “Read more! Read more!” And they applauded. So, with such a triumph, Vasyl read a bit more. It was a complete triumph. The audience really liked Vasyl’s poems, his manner—well, you know how he read.

Then we went home safely. And since, as I said, there were very large puddles, and one of my boots was completely missing its sole, it was worn right through, I had to wear pumps, and these pumps weren't sturdy shoes but some stylish, flimsy summer ones. And in these flimsy pumps, I was jumping over those puddles. We came out onto Chyzhykov Street—we needed to take the number 29 tram from the train station. We came out from Pushkinska Street to Chyzhykov, and there was—well, a whole sea. I somehow clung to Vasyl, he took me under his arm and carried me across this puddle. Meanwhile, my tongue doesn't stop, my mouth doesn't shut, and I’m saying: “Oh, I really stuck it to them! Oh, I really stuck it to them!” Meaning that I had given Vasyl the opportunity to perform, and now they would have to clean up this mess. “Oh, I really stuck it to them!” And Vasyl, in his confusion—oops!—drops me into the puddle. And he says: “That is to say, wait, wait, who did you stick them with?” “You, of course!” “Well,” he says, “thank you...” And then he looks at me, almost up to my ankles in water, and remembers that I’m in pumps, and says: “Oh, sorry, I forgot—cling to me.” I say: “Thanks, now I can do it myself!”—and I waded through that puddle.

Nina had already crossed over—there was a small round park there. Nina stood there, slapping her beret against her knee, roaring with laughter, because she had suddenly seen me in my pumps land in that puddle. We are standing in the middle of a puddle having a conversation. She doesn't know what it's about, but from the side, it looked very funny.

So we organized Vasyl's evening. After that, our Nedzvidsky, Andriy Volodymyrovych (now deceased, God rest his soul!), was summoned; he came running to me and said: “They’re calling me in to give an explanation about Stus.” I told him: “And what does it have to do with you, Andriy Volodymyrovych? What do you have to do with this?” “Because I allowed it.” “Andriy Volodymyrovych, you just tell them: did you ever give me a list of all the disgraced poets in Ukraine? Did you give me a list of who was not allowed to perform? If they gave you one, then of course you're guilty, but if they didn't, then how could you know—there are so many of these poets, and you can't know every single one, who's good and who's bad. Blame it on me—say that your student approached you and said a poet had arrived. Maybe she didn't know he was disgraced, how would you know? And I'll find a way to talk my way out of it.”

And I already had so much experience dealing with the KGB, it was second nature. It was hard for them to talk to me because I told the honest-to-God truth, sincere, beautiful—I didn't deceive them in any way, I told the absolute truth. For example, when they summoned me to see Kuvarzin... The investigators talked and talked to me, “saving” me, but I wouldn't be “saved,” so they decided to scare me and took me to General Kuvarzin—the head of the Odesa region KGB Directorate. This was after Karavansky had already been taken, but we still continued to visit Nina and inquire about Karavansky’s fate. So he was telling me how bad Karavansky was—a spy, this and that, an enemy of the Soviet Union. And when I'm anxious, I stick a cigarette in my mouth. So I crossed my legs, had this long, long cigarette in my hand (there were some long, thin ladies' cigarettes back then), that meter-long cigarette in my hand, and I said to him calmly: “I beg your pardon, but what is it you do here?” He was dumbfounded and said: “What do you mean, what for?! We are the KGB! We are state security (_gosbezopasnost_)!” And I said to him: “What kind of state security are you? You are the most genuine state danger (_gospasnost_) there can possibly be in the world!” He was running around that green table, shouting and shouting, and I said: “Don't yell at me—why are you yelling at me? You really are the greatest state danger there is. You were on guard, you saw, you knew how bad Karavansky was—an enemy, a spy, you name it, and you saw that I, such a tender and fragile girl, was friends with him, went around with him, associated with him, and many young people from the university were friends with him—so what should you, as state security, have done? You should have come to our university, stood at the podium, pulled out documents, and said out loud: look, kids, you are associating with this man, and he is this, this, and this. And let us see those documents. That would have made you state security, that would have insured me against life’s mistakes. But what did you do? Like thieves, you stole a man and took him to Mordovia—and you want me to believe that this man is bad, and you are good?” So, I wasn’t rude, I wasn’t cursing, but I was simply speaking things as they were, and it was interesting and, by the way, funny.

So, I wasn't really that scared anymore. I’d had so many conversations and all sorts of things happen to me that I wasn’t very scared. For me to talk my way out of why Vasyl ended up on stage was no longer a problem. They summoned me, they asked. What did I say? I said that he was a friend of mine... No, it was like this: “We’re not interested in how he got on stage—we already know all that. That’s no secret to us, we know how you brought him, we know how Karavanska came in her red beret—we know all of it, it’s all no secret to us. We’re interested in only one thing: why did he come, why did he come to Karavanska’s? What were they doing with Karavanska?” And I said: “And who told you he came to see Karavanska? Maybe he came to see me? And maybe he was busy not with Karavanska, but with me?” I threw them off with arguments like that. “And why did he come to see you?” “He missed me, so he came. Missed me, wanted to see me. That's all—if I miss someone, I'll go and visit them, so what’s the big deal?”

In short, it was an interesting story with Vasyl. It seems to me that it was Vasyl's only performance in Odesa. They say Vasyl came again—either in 1964 or 1963, when he was still a soldier. Was he in the army or not?

V. Ovsienko: He served for three years, until 1962.

H. Mohylnytska: Someone told me about this, but I didn't see him then, and I didn't know him then.

V. Ovsienko: He was a postgraduate student starting in 1963.

H. Mohylnytska: Someone told me he had been in Odesa once before that, but I don't know about it.

What did I want to say? It was very painful for me to once read in the newspaper *Shliakh Peremohy*—it was obviously Mr. Duzhy who wrote it, his article or research about the Shukhevych family—and there was this sentence, that Yurko Shukhevych was imprisoned for the second time because of Nina Karavanska, because when Nina Karavanska found herself in a situation where she was about to be arrested, to save herself, she went to hide at Yurko’s place in Nalchik and thus exposed him, so to speak. And Yurko at that time was writing some book or memoirs, so they followed Nina, conducted a search and confiscated it, and Yurko was thus imprisoned for the second time. So the most important thing I've said, that I'd want people to know, is this: Nina Strokata never hid from anyone, ever; she didn't hide from arrest. She allowed herself to do things that, I can say with absolute conviction, no other woman did, not even, perhaps, Oksana Meshko. Or maybe only Oksana Meshko could have allowed herself what Karavanska did. She always went all in. She was very cautious, you couldn't take her with bare hands, but where courage was required, she had enough courage to go for broke.

Back when I was in Odesa—because after Odesa I was assigned to the Balta Pedagogical College, and after three years I was kicked out of that Balta college, accused of purging communist ideology from the teaching of Ukrainian language and literature, of promoting bourgeois nationalism and nationalist poets—who were Lina Kostenko, Vasyl Symonenko, Mykola Vinhranovsky, Ivan Drach, who were not yet in the curriculum then. But my curriculum included contemporary literature. So obviously, in the topic “Contemporary Literature,” I couldn't talk about someone other than the Sixtiers. So I can’t boast that I performed some feat and promoted something I shouldn't have, because I was teaching what was the best, the most modern in literature at that time. And, as you can see, all these poets are in the school readers today. The poet Natalka Poklad, who, it turns out, studied at the Balta Pedagogical College when I worked there, meeting me at some Rukh congress, confessed to me: “I lived in an apartment with a student of yours.” I didn't teach in Natalka's group, but I taught the girl she lived with. And she says: “If you only knew how we envied your students! Firstly, we envied that everyone loved Tychyna in your class, while we hated him, and secondly, we envied that you told them about Vasyl Symonenko and Lina Kostenko, but our teacher didn’t tell us.” But that’s not what I’m talking about...

When I was in Odesa, Nina always used to say—as a joke, it seemed: “When I feel the noose tightening around me, that they’re going to arrest me, I'll have to sign my apartment over to you.” I always took it as a joke. But when the clouds did indeed gather over her, it turned out that she really did have such an intention. But this decision had to be changed. She took it so seriously that she came all the way to Kryve Ozero specifically to explain to me: “Halochka, I know that this apartment should have been yours. But in Nalchik, Valia is living with two children and Yurko Shukhevych without a roof over their heads. I can't not give them a place to live when I have such an opportunity. Halynka, I am going to exchange it for a place in Nalchik. And let them take me from there, but this apartment will remain for Yurko. Yurko won't last long either, but his children... Halynka, I understand that I should have left this for you, but, Halynka, they are the grandchildren of General Shukhevych.” I felt a little awkward about it... God forbid I would want that apartment to go to anyone at all—I wanted Nina to live in it her whole life so that I could talk with her. But she was making plans for how to dispose of her property in case of arrest. She had firmly decided that I should stay and manage that household. And then, after weighing everything, she said: “He is the son of General Shukhevych, the grandchildren of General Shukhevych, and I must do everything for them.” She was agonizing over this problem. I—God forbid, I took it all as a joke, but in her mind, she was constructing a line of action and felt as if she had gone back on her first word. I repeat, she truly loved me, she truly wanted to give me the moon and the stars, but here she did what her conscience and her duty to the late Roman Shukhevych obliged her to do. And I supported her in this.

I know what difficulties she had with that exchange, how hard it was to transport the things. I know how Mariika Ovdiienko sat at her place while Lionia Tymchuk was practically squashing every piece of cloth under a press to fit the things into suitcases—it was a whole epic with the move to Nalchik. And suddenly I read that Shukhevych was imprisoned because of Nina, because she, trying to save herself, went to hide in Nalchik! All this was done exclusively so that Valia and her children would remain in their own home, and not out in the street. I then wrote a letter to *Shliakh Peremohy* with clarifications. I wrote a gentle, kind letter, saying that it wasn’t quite so, that it was a mistake, that it was written by people who simply didn't know the reason for this act. But I received no answer, and there was no retraction in the newspaper. This is what I would like people to know, that Nina could have disposed of that apartment completely differently, but her concern was to provide housing for Yurko’s children. Not everyone can do that: think about others when you need to save yourself.

When Oleksa Riznykiv and then Nina were arrested, I had already been thrown out of everywhere, I was already sitting at home, burdened with two children. Yasochka was then about a year and a half old.

V. Ovsienko: What’s the name?

H. Mohylnytska: Yasochka, Yaroslavka. She was a year and a half old. By then, I had been thrown out of the Balta Pedagogical College with a bang. And on the last day, I still thought that maybe I could hold on somehow, but right then my landlady—I didn't have an apartment, I’ve been homeless my whole life—told me to get out, because someone was supposedly coming to stay with her. No one was coming to stay with her, but I was having endless searches at the time, and she was fed up with it. I packed everything, found some Jewish family's storage room with a floor that bowed in a semicircle, because no one wanted to take me in—two children: one a nine-year-old boy, and although he was, you know, a very good boy, everyone assumes a teenager will be running wild, and the other was just a tiny squeaker. She wasn't even a year and a half old, because she was born in April, and this was the end of May, so she was just a year old. So I found some little nook where they said they would let me stay, and I started to pack—ordered a truck to move me from that street to another, pulled everything out, packed it in boxes and sacks.

And my house was always like living on a ticking time bomb—I always had plenty of all kinds of samvydav, you name it. And it was all stored in such a way that no matter how many times they came with searches, they never found anything. Not once did they ever find anything. But this time I had taken everything out and packed it into boxes and sacks—there was nothing in the hiding places.

I am standing at the gate waiting for the truck, it’s a quarter to three in the afternoon. The truck is supposed to arrive at 3. Then I see a few men walking, I think there were four of them. And one among them—such a handsome man! And whenever I saw a very handsome man approaching me or passing by, I knew for sure that he was a KGB agent and he was coming for me. They always sent me such handsome guys, I just marveled at where they found them, so tall, well-built, good-looking, and intelligent. I never had a KGB interlocutor who was either a blockhead or just “some guy”—they always chose carefully. When I saw them—I thought: well, that’s it, they’re coming for me. And all my stuff is out. But I think: no, it can't be. They approach. The blue-eyed, curly-haired one says: “We’re here to see you.” I smile broadly and say: “Welcome! What can I do for you?” “We're here with a search warrant.” The warrant says: “Regarding the seizure of currency and gold items belonging to Riznykov.” I say: “Oh, go right ahead! My house is full of currency and gold!” “No, belonging to Riznykov.” “Well, if Riznykov has currency and gold, he definitely didn’t leave them with me.” “All the more reason—we’ll conduct a search now.” I say: “Boys, only over my dead body! Think what you will of me, but I'm not letting you into the house right now.” “Why?” “I spent two days packing everything, putting it all in boxes, and now you’re going to dump it all out? I’ve hired a truck, it’s supposed to be here any minute—and you’re going to scatter all this? When am I supposed to move then? God forbid—only over my dead body! So here's the deal, boys: load me onto the truck, because I’m looking for a man to help me load this stuff. You load it on the truck, drive me to the new place, unload it—and then you can sit and sort through that business until night if you want.” “Alright.”

V. Ovsienko: They agreed?

H. Mohylnytska: They had no other choice. My landlady Baba Darka raised such a ruckus, it was terrible! The truck arrives. My boys, these agents, start hauling all those boxes—and onto the truck. They loaded it up and got in. I never thought they would go for it, that they would actually load me onto a truck and drive off. They get in and drive there, unload everything, and I no longer know what to do. If only I could remember where I had put everything they weren't supposed to see, which sack it was in—but with 5 or 10 sacks of books, I have no idea where it is. I get there and say: “Boys, you do as you please, but I want to eat—I haven’t eaten since eight this morning, and it’s now four o’clock. So, either you can look through this now (and I know they're not officially allowed to conduct a search without me), or you can just watch this stuff yourselves, do what you want (because if I’m not here, I can later claim they planted something), but I'm going to buy something, because I'm dying, I want to eat.” I turned and left. When I came back—everything was normal, they hadn’t touched anything, hadn’t unpacked anything. I turned a box upside down, covered it with some newspaper, and I had brought back tomatoes, a bottle of vodka, a bottle of cognac, and a meter of sausage, and put it on that box. It was getting close to five o’clock. I said: “Boys, you all eat and drink this, and I'll be right back—I need to pick up my child from the daycare, it's five o'clock.”

I left all this and ran. I come back with little Yasochka—and they’re all gone, only the curly-haired, blue-eyed one is left, sitting by the box with the booze, sausage, and tomatoes. I felt a bit relieved—I realized he had sent his men away and there would be no search today. He probably sent them off, seeing that the woman had put out wine and vodka—he thought some romance might blossom. I brought Yasochka in, sat down with him, and we polished off that vodka and cognac quite nicely with those tomatoes. I don't know if I drank anything or not—I was still nursing Yasochka then, so I had a valid reason not to drink with him. He started to court me. But I see that if I push him away, he'll whistle for his guys and turn the house upside down. So I pretend that I'm not against his advances, but he should come back when it gets dark, after I've put the children to bed. He warned me that if I deceived him, he would “wipe me off the face of the earth along with this hovel,” but he left.

I locked the door with the big hook, locked all the doors. It’s night, no one's there. I put Yasochka to bed, and Tolichok was already at his grandmother’s, with my mom. I put Yasochka to sleep, but there were no curtains on the windows—all the windows were transparent, everything was visible, and the moon was so bright... And suddenly, a knock on the door. I know who’s knocking, and I don't answer. I hid in a corner so my silhouette wouldn't be visible in the windows, huddled up, and stood there, afraid to breathe. And he is banging on the door—it's terrible. Then he looks into all the windows, knocks on the windows. And I'm standing in the corner and not answering. And suddenly, at the most interesting moment, my Yasia starts to cry. Can you imagine? I'm pretending I'm not here, that the house is empty. The house is locked, everything is shut—knock all you want, we're not here. And then Yasia starts to cry. My God, I grabbed Yasia from her stroller, quickly put my breast in her mouth, she suckled the milk, quieted down, I'm standing in that corner with the baby in my arms and not answering, not making a sound. And suddenly I hear the neighbors on that little Jewish street, where the houses are close together: “What kind of prostitutes have moved in here, not letting people sleep? She’s barely arrived and already she has her johns coming over, not letting people sleep! Get the hell out of here, or I'll dump a chamber pot on you!” This was to him. And so they drove him away.

As soon as they chased him off, I quickly untied those sacks, grabbed the samvydav, Yasochka’s things—and headed for the steppe, because I was afraid to go to the bus station. I must have tramped some eight kilometers through cornfields and sunflowers in the steppe, waited until morning in some wheat field, and then went out to the road and flagged down a car heading towards Kryve Ozero. I had nowhere else to go but to my mother's.

And so I remained in Kryve Ozero. My stepfather told me: “I’ll help you with a job, but you won't live with us. I want us to live alone, I don't need your affairs, I don't need your searches.” So I had to rent—there was a stable that had been converted into a dwelling. It was long, they partitioned it in the middle, creating a sort of hallway, one family lived on one side, and I rented the other half because I had no money for a good apartment. And secondly, no one would take me with two children, and thirdly—my own mother lives here, and her daughter is renting a place—why? Everyone would think, you see, that my mother doesn't want to live with her, so why would we take her? Do you understand the situation? May God have mercy, may no one ever have to live the way I have lived.

That’s where I settled with my two kids. How I lived there, how I worked... I survived only because I worked two jobs for one lower-than-standard salary.

V. Ovsienko: And what did you do?

H. Mohylnytska: My stepfather got me a job in the department of public education—it was the cholera year, and they needed a methodologist.

V. Ovsienko: And which year was the cholera year?

H. Mohylnytska: I don't remember which one. It must be seventy... a seventies year—I remember for sure, it was August of a seventies year. I started working in Kryve Ozero on August 24, 1970.

A few months later, they figured out where I’d gone, that I was in Kryve Ozero and in the department of public education, so the secretary of the district party committee summoned our department head and demanded that I be removed. But our boss, though he wasn’t setting the world on fire, was very self-confident, very firm, an old fellow, highly respected, had been the director of a boarding school for many years. So he told them: “When you find me an equally competent employee—then I'll fire her. She works for me as both an inspector (we didn't have one) and a methodologist. We’ll find a smart person for her position and then let her go.”

What else do I remember? That we—I don't remember the year, Nina was still free, and I was already in Kryve Ozero. So it must have been around 1972 or 1971, something like that. Nina came. I had been informed that Mykhailo Soroka had died in the camp—we were very interested in him. Nina arrived one day and said: “Haliu, we're going to Lviv, we’ll hold a fortieth-day memorial for Mr. Mykhailo, we must be there with everyone.”

V. Ovsienko: We can calculate it exactly—Mykhailo Soroka died on June 16, 1971, in camp No. 17 in Mordovia.

H. Mohylnytska: Yes, so it was probably 1971. We got ready; I asked my mother to stay with Yasochka. That's when I weaned Yasochka. When I was leaving, I had to tell my mother that I needed to go, and she would have to look after her and, at the same time, we would wean her off the breast.

We went. I remember the panikhida (memorial service) was at Mrs. Olena Antoniv's home. And that was just when Viacheslav Chornovil had returned. That's when I first saw Atena, by the way, because I had never known her before, but Olenka and I were friends. We saw each other rarely, but we were such close acquaintances that we trusted each other. So we went there, and it was a very important event for me. I am of the Orthodox faith, baptized Orthodox, but I knew a lot about the Greek Catholic Church, yet I had never seen a living priest of that underground Church. And here was a Greek Catholic service. For those who were always in it, everything was familiar and perhaps not interesting to hear about and read, but for me, it was a major event. It was the first time I heard a panikhida in Ukrainian. I knew the liturgy in Old Church Slavonic, but this was the first time I heard a service in Ukrainian.

After that, by the way, I never saw Olena Antoniv again. From Olena, I learned a little about how to organize help for political prisoners and their families. It seems to me that Olenka earned her place in the Kingdom of Heaven precisely because she and her mother collected a lot of donations and helped people.

V. Ovsienko: She did that in Galicia, and Vira Lisova did it in Kyiv and its surroundings. You mentioned that there was even something for me?

H. Mohylnytska: Once, I believe, Ms. Nadiia Oranska gave me some money for the families of political prisoners. I remember I went to Kyiv then and part of the money—I don't remember now if it was a thousand hryvnias or how much...

V. Ovsienko: It would have been rubles then.

H. Mohylnytska: Yes, yes, rubles, I passed it on through Oksana Yakivna, as I believe I was told who to give it to. Only for some reason, I thought your name was not Vasyl, but Vitaliy. Don't we have a political prisoner named Vitaliy Ovsienko?

V. Ovsienko: There was Vitaliy Kalynychenko in Vasylkivka in the Dnipropetrovsk region.

H. Mohylnytska: No, Ovsienko. I know Kalynychenko from the States; I met him in the States. So I had this confusion: whether it was Vasyl or Vitaliy. It was supposed to go to you through Oksana Yakivna. And the other, I believe, thousand rubles were supposed to go to Vasyl Stus's family. I remember it was such a fierce winter, the month of February, and what year it was, I can't say, but it was a remarkable winter: there had never been colder frosts than that winter. And as usual, I didn't have proper footwear; I had these very stylish little boots with high heels, but without any lining, just the leather itself, and some thin socks. And I went to look for Valia. And I only knew Valia’s phone number; I was only given her work phone number. They told me to go to the Sviatoshyn station and call from there. We agreed that she would come to this station; I stood there and waited for her. I was frozen like a dog, met Valia, and gave her the money. I didn’t know her, that was the one and only time I ever saw her, she doesn't know me, and I don’t know her.

I felt very sorry for her, but on the other hand, it pained me that Valia seemed to suggest that we were to blame for Vasyl being imprisoned for the second time. That it would have been possible not to involve him in the Helsinki Group. But did anyone involve him, could anyone have stopped him? He himself rushed everywhere he could to do something, his soul was on fire for it, and she said that it would have been possible to not allow him, to tell him that we don't accept you, that you are not needed here. I took it as a reproach to myself as well. It was, you know, very painful for me. Later, when I was rereading Lina Kostenko’s *Marusia Churai*, the part where Iskra comes to Marusia's trial and says: “People of such rare gifts, folks, we must cherish them, at least a little,” Valia’s words echoed in me, that maybe we were wrong not to have preserved such a person, because “people of such rare gifts, folks, we must cherish them, at least a little.” I never spoke with Lina Kostenko about this. I was with her at Viacheslav Chornovil's funeral, we walked side by side the whole way, I wanted to say something on this topic or just ask her: “What did you have in mind, Lina Vasylivna?” But she didn't want to talk about that novel—she said: “It's coming out of my ears already, I've had so much from it, both good and bad.” But I know for sure that when she wrote those words, she was thinking about Vasyl.

V. Ovsienko: That’s exactly how it is.

H. Mohylnytska: Apparently, Lina is also a person who must be cherished, for she too is a rare gift. And that Karavansky, who should today be an honorary citizen of Odesa, before whom people should take off their hats from three kilometers away—and we cannot achieve this. And Nina, who perished somewhere on foreign soil—so we are indeed to blame for not knowing how to love and protect one another. It seems to us that we are doing something, that we are flying forward, and that people around us are crumbling, falling apart—it is only when we stop that we look back on the path we have traveled and see: My God, how many we have lost! So we need to think about those who are still beside us, so that later we write not memoirs, but show them alive.

V. Ovsienko: And it is said: “Help one another, and especially your own in the faith.”

H. Mohylnytska: Yes, our own in the faith—not only in the religious sense but in spirit, in ideals, in worldview.

V. Ovsienko: When I was preparing the booklet of memoirs about Oksana Yakivna Meshko, *A Cossack Mother* (we had started to collect funds to put a cross on her grave, because there was only her mother’s cross, they were buried in the same grave)—I then remembered the words from the Holy Scripture, where it says that six days before the Jewish Passover, Jesus was staying at the house of Lazarus in Bethany. Mary Magdalene was there, and she brought expensive myrrh, washed Jesus’ feet, wiped them with her hair, and anointed his feet with the expensive myrrh. And Judas asks: “Why this waste? This myrrh could have been sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor.” I may not be quoting precisely here, but it seems to me that Jesus says: “Leave her alone—this is not for me, it is necessary for her soul. The poor you will always have with you, but I will not always be with you.” I put those words in the foreword to Oksana Meshko's memoirs *I Bear Witness*.

H. Mohylnytska: Yes, not always—that’s how it is. I think that was said precisely about us.

V. Ovsienko: One must honor a worthy person in due time. And I also recalled the words of Patriarch Volodymyr. On the last day of his earthly life, on the morning of July 14, 1995, he was consecrating an artist’s exhibition at the Shevchenko Museum and said there that a spiritual feat does not perish in vain—someone will always be found to bear witness to it. At the very least, we must bear witness to those spiritual devotees whom we knew. And I am very grateful to you for telling so many very interesting and important things about people who are no longer with us. But we need to bring this conversation to a conclusion because you lived on after that, so we should at least outline, with a dotted line, the main milestones—what you did and what you do. You are now a writer, you have books—at least name those books, when they were published.

H. Mohylnytska: You know, I somehow never have enough time to talk about myself. For instance, I lecture at the Institute for Teacher Professional Development; I lecture for teachers of Ukrainian language and literature. I have a series of topics. The first is *The Book of the Genesis of the Ukrainian People*, the second topic is *The Executed Renaissance*. I examine the literature of the first three decades of the 20th century in the context of general European literature and in connection with the development of philosophical trends of that time. Have you noticed that in our country, the appearance of new literary movements and trends was never previously linked to the development of philosophical thought? It's as if a new trend in literature appeared—just like that, as if someone had pulled it out of thin air! But everything depended on human quests for the meaning of existence, for ways to improve the world, on the understanding of the phenomenon of man and his needs. And each movement, in fact, reflects a certain philosophical concept. By the way (I discovered this for myself quite recently)—even elements of the philosophy of existentialism can be traced in Ukrainian literature as far back as the work of Skovoroda. And the idea of conscious choice, the rebellion of the individual against the absurd world of Camus, which, if you look “at the root,” became the basis for him being awarded the Nobel Prize, was expressed half a century before him by Lesia Ukrainka. I mean not only *Contra spem spero*, where this idea is expressed in a concentrated form, but also her less popular, or even completely unpopular works, like *Triptych*, *Always a Crown of Thorns*, *Iphigenia in Tauris*, and a number of others.

We simply haven't yet learned to read our literature properly and are completely unable to take pride in it. By the way, regarding “reading properly”... We still have many works interpreted in such a way that you might as well throw them out of the curriculum, because that interpretation—often just pulled out of thin air—doesn’t align with today’s realities and needs. I mean, how can you hammer into the heads of young people, whom we are preparing for life in a democratic society, that a nation can be taught by fear, that “a gentle age cannot be created without blood,” that for grace to grow in the “state’s field,” it must be “uprooted for years, like a wild forest,” that “to accustom people to good,” one must “chop off many heads.” True, the text says “many evil heads,” but according to the text, the heads being chopped off and fates being broken belong not to the evil, but to the good! And it's no big deal! “Yaroslav made mistakes, sometimes he executed the innocent, but he did all this for the good of the state and future generations.” But I don’t want my students to grow up with the conviction that someone has the right to chop off their heads and shed their blood in the name of even the best and brightest state. I don’t need a state built on innocent blood! We’ve already had one like that! So let's speak plainly: the work was written by Kocherha at a time of joyful uplift caused by the victory in the Battle of Stalingrad, that Stalin was the prototype for Yaroslav the Wise, whose crimes the writer well remembered and, by the way, was the first in censored literature to dare to speak of them, trying to justify them in the interests of the state. And let’s look closer at the relations between Yaroslav's Kyiv and Novgorod with its “thousands of distinguished men destroyed” and Yaroslav-Stalin’s doubts about Novgorod's participation in the war on his side... And let's draw parallels: Kyiv—Moscow, Novgorod—Kyiv. Let’s read how Kocherha, through the example of his hero, suggests to Stalin how he should repay Ukraine for its “service, loyalty, and good,”—and it will become perfectly clear to us why the Kharkiv Theater received the Stalin Prize for the performance of Kocherha's drama, while Kocherha himself got diddly-squat. And thank God it was only diddly-squat, because he could have gotten something much worse.

And the literature of the 19th century!… It needs hands and sticks, such things have been written about it, and precisely what isn’t there. And what is there—we don’t want to or can’t see. So that’s what I'm working on now, the problem of an adequate reading of Ukrainian classics—it's incredibly interesting!

V. Ovsienko: But still, in what years were your books published? Can you at least list them?

H. Mohylnytska: Vasyl, I can't! Because there is nothing to count. I essentially have no books.

V. Ovsienko: But there was one lying right here?

H. Mohylnytska: Vasyl, I was completely isolated from everything. My first book took 21 years to be published. Lina Kostenko’s book took 17 years to be published, and mine 21! I couldn’t publish anything. I had a tiny little children's book come out in 1978 or 1979. It was called *How Many Little Suns Are in the World*. A very bright, beautiful little book, and it lay at the publishing house for 8 years. It came out not because of me, but thanks to a wonderful woman, for those who don’t know her, they should—her name is Yevheniia Horieva, an editor. When I was working in Balta, I compiled and proposed to “Veselka” publishing house a little book of folk lullabies. Lullabies were published for adults, but not for children; there was no such festive, joyful, illustrated edition. I included some that I had never seen in print, just our own family ones, and sent it to “Veselka.” I said that such an edition should be made for children—it's such a gift, such a beauty! Let them point their little fingers where the dream and slumber are, where the old man walks on the hill in the green forest—it's so interesting! And that little book was published. It was the very first book of Ukrainian lullabies for children to read. And Yevheniia Horieva became interested in me; we kept in touch. She said: “Haliu, why don't you submit your children's poems?” And I said: “And how do you know that I write children's poems?” “I know, because it's impossible that you don't write children's poems.” And I gave her a small book of children's poems. It sat at the publishing house for 8 years—“unbreakable.”

One time I came to Kyiv and visited this Ms. Yevheniia. The chief editor came in, and Ms. Yevheniia says: “Well, tell her—Mohylnytska is sitting right here—tell her when her book will finally be published.” And he says: “I can’t, I can’t—nothing’s going to get published. Because we don't have any paper. We have a social order right now—for children's poems about labor. I only have paper for poems about labor! You don't write poems about labor, do you? So what can I do when I can only publish about labor?” And he left. And that Ms. Yevheniia practically squealed: “Oh, Halynka, write him something about labor! Come on Halynka, just do it! You can do it.” I say: “I don’t know how to write about labor.” “Oh, you can do anything, you can! Come on, Halynka, I beg you—let’s test him! Let’s catch him at his word!”

I gave my word that I would write poems about labor and left. I sent the collection with poems about labor. It was reviewed by Tamara Kolomiiets. So, Yevheniia Petrivna had the editor’s word that poems about labor would go through. But there were very few poems about labor. Under the editorship of Tamara Kolomiiets, they were compiling an anthology—of what poets since time immemorial had written for children about labor. It came out to be just a tiny little book. And they were publishing an anthology *My Native Land*—those were poems about nature, about the seasons. That was a big book. But there were few poems about labor. So my poems about labor went like this:
Там за яром, де тополя,
татко сонце стрів у полі.
Трактористе, — сонце мовить, —
дай мені свій трактор новий!
Я на ньому, любий друже,
покататись дуже хочу!
This was called “Why the Sun Rises Earlier in Spring.”
Усміхнувся сонцю татко:
«Припізнилось ти, малятко, —
трактор дав би я охоче,
тільки ж зараз день робочий.
Ти приходь сюди раніше,
коли в полі сон і тиша,
і катайся хоч годину,
поки вийду я на зміну.
З того часу кожен знає:
день від дня раніш світає —
це щоднини сонце ясне
просипається завчасно,
щоб до трактора поспіти,
поки сплять дорослі й діти.
Та ніяк раніше тата
не встигає сонце встати!»
Well, how could a foremost worker of the kolkhoz production wake up later than the sun?!

I wrote this and read it to my 6- or 7-year-old Yasochka: *“Та ніяк раніше тата не встигає сонце встати!”* (But the sun can never manage to rise before daddy!) And suddenly my Yasochka collapses into my lap: “E-e-e.” I ask: “Sweetheart, why are you crying?” “Mommy, if you only knew how sorry I feel for that little sun!” And I think to myself: well, you old fool, how could it be that the little sun gets up earlier and earlier and can never make it in time? What kind of person am I to have written this? I quickly thought and said: “Sweetheart, mommy hasn't read the whole poem yet, I haven't finished. Wait, mommy will finish and read it to you, don’t cry!” And the poem ended like this: *“Вже як оранка скінчиться, татко трошки припізниться, і до нас у віршик цей сонце в’їде тракторцем.”* (Once the plowing is done, daddy will be a little late, and into this little poem of ours, the sun will ride in on a little tractor.) My Yasochka was terribly pleased that the sun would get to ride on a little tractor, she endlessly drew that little sun riding on a little tractor. That's how my daughter taught me to write children's poems about labor.

And that was it, nothing was published after that. Oh, this is such a difficult conversation. They would write reviews for me like this: here are these and these poems, Ivan-Stepan-Petro-Semen—these poems are simply genius, but these others, Valia-Katia-Kolia-Masha—these poems are no good at all, they’re just scribbling, the idea is undefined, you name it! These need to be replaced—and then it will be a collection. I replace the poems that were called bad with others. A new review comes. These and these poems—are simply genius, but these and these, meaning all the ones that were genius in the previous review, are no good, they need to be replaced. And so it went on for 21 years. I was on the verge of thinking I was genuinely stupid. But the writers in Mykolaiv supported me greatly. They constantly pestered our publishing house: “When is Mohylnytska's collection coming out?” They told me: a recommendation from the Mykolaiv Writers' Union is needed. They provided a recommendation—no, a review must be written. A discussion must be held. Fine, I went to the discussion in Mykolaiv, and the boys came, all eleven of them, with already prepared reviews, because I had sent them the manuscript earlier. So they came with prepared reviews. And instead of one joint recommendation, they attached the reviews as well. I fly back to Odesa, ask what's new, and the editor, Narushevych, tells me: “Yes, we've taken your manuscript to Kyiv.” “Then why did you demand that Mykolaiv deal with it?” “To Kyiv! They will review it there and let us know.” “And do you know,” I ask, “who took it for review?” “A very serious poetess took it, a very serious person—Tamara Opanasivna Kolomiiets.” And my heart sinks!—because I know she reviewed my children's collection, there were some comments, but very relevant and sensible. I think: well, this is the person who will tell the truth.

I was waiting so eagerly for that review, I was already wanting her to tear it all apart, leaving no stone unturned, then I would know that I'm not a poet, that I shouldn’t write. I come—nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, but then a little book comes out, one of those they called a “mass grave.” That is, under one cover, several authors are buried who either don’t quite measure up to their own book, or whose own book cannot be published. And my poems, snatched from that manuscript, are also placed in the “mass grave.” More than 700 lines. But it’s considered one publication item. But there's effectively no collection. The book says: reviewers so-and-so, so-and-so, and Tamara Kolomiiets.

I arrive at the publishing house, I say to the editor: “Can you show me the review by Tamara Kolomiiets? I want to see what comments she made.” “There is no review, she didn’t give one. She's ill, she said she wouldn’t deal with it.” As if almost scornfully, that she doesn't want to review such manuscripts, so to speak. I was already at the door, and then it hit me, I say: “Excuse me, but why then in this *Spring Morning* or *Autumn Evening*, or whatever it's called, is it written that the reviewer is Tamara Kolomiiets? She didn't review anyone else's manuscript, only mine. If there is no review, then why did you write that she is the reviewer?” He hummed and hawed, then said: “You know, Haliu, there is a review, I just can't let you read it.” I say: “Why?” “Well, I just can't.” I say: “Then you know what, give me the last two pages.” You know how a review is written, right? First, hurrah-hurrah-hurrah, and then on the last pages everything is torn apart and there are no problems. “Give me the last two pages, let me read what flaws are pointed out there.” But he looked at me: “And there, Haliu, the last pages are the same as the first.” He pulls out the review and shows it—he covers it and shows only a corner, where in big, bold, black felt-tip pen it is written: “Do not show the review to the author.” And then he gives me the review: “Here, read it, before anyone comes in and sees.”

I read that review and tears start to flood my eyes, because no one had ever written such a good review of my poems. When my book was pulled from the publishing plan in 1966, Kryvorotko, for example, wrote: “You shrug your shoulders—what is this, a collection of poems or a dream book?” He took all the lines from my poem “Evening Tale” that contained the word “dream,” and out came a “dream book.” And since then, no one had written me a good review. Well, they would write something nice on the first page… But I had never in my life seen a review like Tamara Kolomiiets’s. So, I’m reading and crying—whether from joy or simply from the feeling that all those incrustations had been washed away from me as if by rain. Narushevych rushes in: “What are you reading?”—and snatches the review from me. And took it away. But I had already started reading it for the second time. It stuck in my head so much that as I was riding the bus home, I reconstructed it from memory—I might have missed 2-3 lines, but I wrote it down from memory on the bus in the dark, and I still have it.

V. Ovsiienko: And you were showing me the book here…

H. Mogylnytska: Yes, in 1986, after this story with Tamara Kolomiiets’s review—it was 1986, after all, not 1976 or 1966. If there was a positive review, they were supposed to publish the book, not hide it in a “mass grave.” Besides, I had already seen that it was marked “Do not show the review.” So the book came out in 1986. Mutilated, tattered, with edits that were not approved by me… My book was called “Song of Joy,” but for some reason, they titled it “Shore of Joy.” They didn’t even ask me. This little book was published in 1986. And then everything hit a wall: I would have to publish at my own expense. And where was I to get the money, with two children, one of whom was already a student?

This year I published a long poem—also at my own expense; my editor and I found a way. We illustrated it together, so we listed her as the designer and saved money on an artist. It’s “Rohnida,” a lyrico-epic, historical poem. It is dedicated to the epochal years in our history of the adoption of Christianity and the centralization of the Kyivan state under Volodymyr. The main idea of the poem is that—no matter what we do, no matter how great our achievements—we must always be guided by love. That which is done without love is never lasting. That which is built on a foundation of evil never stands for long. The same thing happened with Volodymyr and the state that was built on violence. Yes, there was an empire, there were imperial crowns. It held together under Yaroslav, but then it all turned to dust, drowned in internecine strife, because “в світі білому ніколи добра не породило зло, бо проростає зі сваволі лиш розбрату чортополох. І вже гряде, гряде розплата, час колотнеч і ворожнеч, і стануть діти брат на брата, і внук на внука здійме меч.” Love must be the foundation of everything. This is what Rohnida thinks as she travels to Polotsk, where her son is already ruling. She says: “То ж нехай напутить сина на шляху його труднім не злоба, не мста, не гнів, а любов, що лиш єдина зло спроможна подолати, не примножуючи зла.” Any other fight against evil only multiplies evil. People used to ask, should good have fists? No! Good with fists only increases the sum of evil in the world. Evil is neutralized only by love. I am convinced that all wounds are healed only by goodness and love.

That’s why today my organization and I do not take part in those rallies where they shout, “Out! Out with Kuchma! Down with him!” I don’t know, Mr. Vasyl, how you look at this, as I am seeing you for the first time in my life, though I’ve known of you for a long time, but when those madmen carry someone’s portrait—be it Derkach, Kuchma, or Kravchenko, I don’t care whose—in a funeral wreath and with funeral ribbons, I get scared. My heart stops, because I’m not scared for Derkach, or for Kravchenko, or for Kuchma—I’m scared for these people. My goodness, are you really so ignorant that you don’t understand that life is sacred? Any life is given by God, even that of the worst person… But here you are, carrying someone’s portrait in a funeral frame, in a funeral wreath—you are effectively saying, “Die!” This means you are acting as a murderer. How can one carry the portrait of a living person in a funeral frame and a funeral wreath? It’s wrong! We will never achieve good if we fight for it with such methods. That’s how it is. That’s why I say that I am not over there where Moroz is shouting along with Kostenko—this one left, that one right, this one green, that one red, and another one blue, and another of some unknown orientation—and I’m supposed to lead my people, the members of my organization, there?..

V. Ovsiienko: What organization are you in now?

H. Mogylnytska: The People’s Movement of Ukraine. I have always been in the Rukh, since 1989. I now head the Odesa regional organization of the People’s Movement of Ukraine, the Chornovil Rukh. Sometimes people tell me that others have come out to protest, so what are we doing? I have great respect for my people and will not throw them into that swamp. If I saw that it was truly a fight for the truth—then I would be there.

V. Ovsiienko: By the way, I’m not there either, but, you see, I’m here. Not because I love Kuchma. I expressed my opinion of him, by the way, and I did so earlier.

H. Mogylnytska: Praise the Lord!

Halyna Mogylnytska. February 13, 2001. Photo by V. Ovsiienko.