Interview with Oles and Tamara ZAVHORODNII
Vasyl Ovsiienko: On April 3, 2001, in the glorious city of Sicheslav, still Dnipropetrovsk at the time, we are speaking with two Zavhorodniis—Tamara and Oles. We are sitting in the building of the Union of Ukrainian Women, and Ms. Orysia Sokulska is also present. The recording is being made by Vasyl Ovsiienko.
Oles Zavhorodnii: Oleksandr Zavhorodnii, born January 25, 1940, in Kam’ianske—unfortunately, still Dniprodzerzhynsk to this day. My father was from the village of Semenivka, Krynychky Raion, from, one could say, a deep peasant lineage. My father, Serhiy Oleksiiovych, would later become a writer and for over twenty years headed the Dnipropetrovsk writers’ organization. Before the war—it’s an interesting thing, he told me about it, especially in the last years of his life—he was once forced to flee to Kyiv. He told me he was saved only by a manuscript he had with him. He went to Irpin, and there the repressive machine missed him. Yuriy Yanovsky spoke favorably of his novella “Anton Nehnybida.” After that, he returned here, and by then the writers had been “swept up,” “cleansed,” so to speak, and only a few of them were left. I think this circumstance alone saved my father’s life because they had to maintain some semblance of still having writers. By 1939, almost the entire writers’ organization that was here had been annihilated.
My father also told me why he escaped this fate, why he wasn’t imprisoned. My father was very strong physically, and he repeatedly told his friends: “If they come to take me, I will kill the first person who tells me I’m an enemy of the people with a single blow.” He was a very strong man. As I said, he was from a peasant family.
The year 1941 began, the war—he was immediately sent to the army. Like everyone else, he went through the war. He fought here, near Zaporizhzhia, and in the Caucasus. He returned and worked for some time in the Krynychky Raion, in the district party committee—I don’t know what that department was called. Then he transitioned to “creative pursuits,” began writing another book, and in 1948 he became the head of the regional writers’ organization.
I lived in Kam’ianske until I was five, then there was Liubomyrivka in Verkhniodniprovsk Raion. After that, Krynychky, where I started school. An interesting memory from childhood has stayed with me. My father never told me who I was—Ukrainian or otherwise—but his invisible aura hovered over me: I never spoke any other language with my father—only my native one.
And there are interesting stories about my father. A comical incident once occurred. I think it was still before Stalin’s death, at a regional committee meeting where my father was giving a report. He often wore an embroidered shirt (vyshyvanka), and he spoke at this meeting. Suddenly, a woman fainted. They sprinkled her with water, leaned over her, and asked, “What happened to you?” The woman blinked and said, “This is the first time I’ve seen a living nationalist.”
My father always respected the language, had a beautiful voice, and dearly loved Ukrainian songs. He enrolled us children—me, my sister, and my brother, after we moved; I’ve lived here in Sicheslav since 1949—in a Ukrainian school. I finished my seven-year school elsewhere, and then I had to travel for about 25 minutes to get to the eighth, ninth, and tenth grades, where there was a Ukrainian school.
Another interesting detail. Sometimes he was “pushed to the edge,” so to speak, because various “agencies” harassed him because of us. One time my father even blurted out: “If you had studied in a school with Russian as the language of instruction, maybe you wouldn’t have developed these ideas about independence.”
My brother Hennadii was dragged in for questioning from his first year of university; they nearly accused him of creating an organization. One young man from their circle was even found in Kazakhstan and brought here. This was around 1961-62. But they considered that Khrushchev had loosened the reins and decided to limit it to a prophylactic measure.
I finished school and worked as a general laborer in a plant nursery, then as a lathe operator at a pipe-rolling plant.
V.O.: What year did you graduate from school?
O.Z.: In 1957. Then, before entering the philology department, I worked as a laborer and a lathe operator.
Another detail. My family on my father’s side is from Semenivka, and my mother’s family is from Donbas. My mother knew the language wonderfully; she was a journalist.
V.O.: Please tell us your mother’s name and, if possible, her maiden name.
O.Z.: My mother was Yevheniia Merkuriivna Zavhorodnia; unfortunately, she passed away on February 4, 1997. My father passed away on August 19, 1994.
V.O.: And what was your mother’s maiden name?
O.Z.: Petryshyna. Another interesting detail. When I was just a schoolboy about to go to the village, my father would always say, “Now watch yourself there, don’t put on airs, or people will say: look at him, came back all cultured from the big city.” That stuck with me—my father was a conscious person, but circumstances were such that he never spoke about the Holodomor or certain other things.
V.O.: Please tell me your parents’ birth years.
O.Z.: There’s some confusion with the dates—reference books say one thing: March 19, 1908, for him, and January 6, 1912, for my mother.
They created an atmosphere where people were always saying about my father, as long as I can remember: “He’s a cunning nationalist.”
Tamara Zavhorodnia: In 1968, when the campaign against “The Cathedral” began, he was quietly sent into retirement. He was very good friends with Oles Honchar. They organized meetings and sent him into retirement after there was total opposition to him. The fate of your mother’s brothers is interesting. One of the brothers was a German prisoner of war and then spent 10 years in the mines of Vorkuta. They were liberated from Germany—and sent to the North.
O.Z.: This is a very interesting detail. Her brother—Volodymyr Merkuriovych. I can say that he touched my soul quite deeply. When he came to visit us, it was around 1962. A tall, thin man, he came from the North. He was already free there. In a conversation with me, he said this phrase: “As long as I live, I will curse Stalin.” I was in my second year of university at the time. He had been captured unconscious by the Germans, then they were liberated by the Americans… He told me that you could escape from German captivity, but not from ours. At a height of almost 180 cm, he weighed about 47 kilograms. He told me another phrase: “I’ve read Solzhenitsyn, but,” he said, “I saw things more horrifying than what’s in Solzhenitsyn.” Already then, in 1962, he planted a certain doubt in me about this system. I was in my second year, I didn’t feel it yet, but the turning point came when the Khrushchev era ended. I remember I was in the village at the time and heard on the radio how Khrushchev had been removed. And the “tightening of the screws” began. It became immediately palpable, even in the lectures—the atmosphere started to change sharply.
In the summer of 1964, I went to Kazakhstan as part of a student construction brigade, saw how the Kazakhs lived, and began to think more deeply about the state of my native language. In the city, you could hardly hear it; at the university, apart from Ukrainian literature classes, almost nothing was taught in Ukrainian. The groups from the Russian department of philology were for some reason merged with the Ukrainian groups; we were told that almost 95 percent wanted to hear lectures in Russian, and so that’s how they were taught. Once, there was a general meeting, and I couldn’t stand it anymore. I said, “What kind of philology department is this? We are graduating from university, and our terminology in philosophy is Russian, in psychology too, we don’t organically absorb our native language, we have some kind of mush in our heads.”
At that time, the film “The Dream” (Son) was released—we were captivated by it. It ran for a short while and was then pulled. It’s a film about Shevchenko, starring Ivan Mykolaychuk. It was a wonderful piece of work. At that time, a group of students, myself included, went to the regional party committee and handed a letter to some official, asking them to restore the screenings of this film. I was in my fourth year then. The official listened to us and said this phrase: “You would be better off keeping quiet, otherwise you will have trouble.” So many years have passed, and I remember this well.
After graduating from the philology department, I worked as a journalist for a district newspaper in Vasylkivka—I believe Hryhoriy Prykhodko is from there.
V.O.: No, Vitaliy Kalynychenko is from there.
O.Z.: In September of that year, I spent a week at a creative seminar near Novomoskovsk. My friends and I had absolutely no idea that there could be informers there—we were actively distributing Vasyl Symonenko’s “Diary” and an article about the library fire.
V.O.: Was that “Regarding the Trial of Pohruzhalskyi”?
O.Z.: Yes, I was already reading up on that. And in October 1965, they took me from the newspaper office to the regional KGB Directorate. There were threats: “You are being investigated under an article.” I was summoned several times. Then I was summoned to Kyiv because they knew—I don’t know who informed on me—that I was familiar with Ivan Koshelivets’s book “Contemporary Literature in the Ukrainian SSR,” which was a terrible bombshell.
I was forced to look for work in local factory newsletters because I was jobless for a month, two, and then three. I would arrange to be hired, I’d show up, and they’d tell me they had already hired someone else. I felt that it was that “tail.” And, of course, they constantly harassed my father over his sons, especially me. Tamara can tell you how many times there were talks about “he’d better start drying bread rusks” and so on. Well, I “dried rusks” to the point that in 1968, I was unemployed.
Fortunately, a small collection of my poems was published by the “Molod” publishing house. At that time, there was talk—I was at a seminar—that we had no translators from Estonian. It was exactly at this time that the persecution of Oles Honchar’s novel “The Cathedral” began here, that whole bacchanal. And even before 1968, I had been studying Estonian on my own. My father said, “You know what? To avoid getting imprisoned here, go to Estonia.” I went to Estonia. And here, a general meeting of the regional branch of the Writers’ Union was held, and my father was unceremoniously dismissed from his position as chairman ahead of schedule. The day after his dismissal—this is also humorous—my father goes to the Caucasus, traveling somewhere there for two months. And I managed to get a foothold in Tallinn. And at that time, they say, Vatchenko was shouting at a regional committee bureau meeting: “The elder one has slipped off to the Caucasus, and the younger one is in Estonia engaged in Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism.” In 1968, my father had just turned sixty.
I had to hit the books in Estonia. In essence, it was an escape to avoid prison—that’s how I see it now. And I wanted to work creatively somehow. I lived there in dormitories, then in 1969 the Estonian Writers’ Union “wrangled” a room for me. I worked there for some time at the main post office as a dispatcher, then went to a kolkhoz with students, because I had to make a living somehow. I received an Estonian passport—I essentially became a citizen of Estonia.
V.O.: And you translated, of course?
O.Z.: I started translating, and by the end of 1968, some modest publications had appeared. I constantly contributed notes to “Literaturna Ukraina,” and to the radio. That was journalism. A radio journalist, Anatoliy Hatnenko, helped me a lot to survive; he was the first to give me some work. Essentially, from 1969, I began to live exclusively from literature, I became a freelance writer. And I would come here to visit—stay for a while, live, help out here—and then back to Tallinn, where my residence permit was.
I met Ivan Sokulskyi in 1963, when he transferred here from Lviv University and became an active member of our literary studio at the university. It was named after Volodymyr Bulaienko. But after some malicious person wrote that Bulaienko had supposedly been under German occupation and behaved badly, they decided to remove his name.
In Estonia, I learned in more detail—Tamara sent me the newspapers—about the trial of Ivan Sokulskyi. Now, a great many people are trying to squeeze themselves into history in any way they can and claim co-authorship of the “Letter from the Creative Youth.” I, to my great regret, had nothing to do with the “Letter” because I was already living in another country. And I want to say to those who are trying to attach themselves to it that all of us who did not spend a single blessed day in the camps feel a moral guilt before people like Ivan. Because only Ivan was imprisoned, and it is laughable to hear how some people now try to present themselves as such patriots that one marvels at how they have the gall to say such nonsense.
My attempts to get published in this city remained fruitless. I can’t even remember how many scathing reviews there were of my collection before 1968. Nothing came of it. They always said: “He can’t be published—he has subtexts.” For some reason, the Kyiv publishing house “Molod” was not afraid of these subtexts and published the collection in 1968.
Also, Mr. Vasyl, here’s another interesting detail in my formation as a creative individual. I witnessed the Holodomor of 1946-47 in Krynychky. How people fell, how swollen people passed by our house—this cannot be forgotten. Only many years later did people start to speak openly about the Holodomors. And I have the impression that all our land, wherever you step, someone is buried there. Our nation in the 20th century was deliberately exterminated, scattered across the wide world. People were so intimidated—I get the impression that now tens of millions, especially those living in the Russian Federation, are still afraid to admit they are Ukrainian. Such terror lives in their souls. And in this glorious Cossack city. They say our region was the most zealous center of Ukrainization. I heard this when I worked for the district newspaper. I came across a man who had seen Mykola Skrypnyk with his own eyes. He told me an interesting thing. When Skrypnyk came on an inspection tour, the chauvinists were very afraid of him. There was such an incident. He enters a state institution, and an official said “Здравствуйте” to him. He says: “Your identification?” The man presented it, and Skrypnyk says to him: “You don’t have to come to work tomorrow. You had time to learn the state language at an elementary level.” That’s what I heard from a respectable, elderly man.
Well, what can I say, Mr. Vasyl, our native word—if you treat this word with respect, this word simply shapes a person, and they become incapable of anything criminal. Undoubtedly, the foundation of every culture is, first and foremost, the native word. Without national consciousness, without an awareness of one’s belonging to a people—and this particularly applies to a creative individual—it is impossible to create anything worthwhile. Despite these very difficult current times, I would not want to return to those horrific times when literary “traffic controllers” constantly told us how we should live, what we should write, whom we should meet with. These endless instructions led to complete absurdity in this great empire, and it is entirely logical that it fell apart. It’s just that if our people had not been annihilated and if our people had been more unyielding, then, undoubtedly, that system would have crumbled much earlier.
My, so to speak, resistance… I modestly assess my role. I tried not to produce hackwork in literature, but to offer translated works of a high standard that would somehow awaken national consciousness and foster the cultivation of human dignity. Let the reader judge how well this succeeded.
I became a member of the Writers’ Union in 1979, when I had ten books. It got to the point of being comical: they endlessly proposed that I write an exposé against Ukrainian bourgeois nationalists. It always ended with me refusing, and, thank God, I never wrote a single word, no matter the circumstances. Perhaps the warning for me was that I had repeatedly seen what happens to those who did write. Strange changes occurred: people either disappeared as creative individuals or started drinking heavily. Apparently, those from the “agencies” knew this. There were several cases where they simply destroyed a person—either they turned into some kind of amoeba creatively, or they wrote things that brought shame to the literary word. This is a natural consequence.
There was a time when they held a general meeting for me too. Already after my admission to the Union, in 1984, after a man’s speech in the newspaper “Zorya,” where we were mentioned together: here are the bourgeois nationalists. They organized a general meeting and once again demanded that I write an exposé article. I thought they would expel me from the Union. But that article was never written, thank God, and I can look these gray-haired veterans, who, despite everything, fought for the idea of a state, in the face without lowering my eyes.
Perhaps this was also thanks to my father, who I also don’t recall ever writing anything similar. Obviously, they tried to “twist his arm” too. A funny thing happened with my father: in the last years of his life (he was a very candid person), he said that he had been in a criminal party. And he had been in it for over 50 years. He said that the very word “kolkhoz” could be used to frighten people—it was a word more terrifying than “serfdom.” He spoke of Lenin and Stalin as terrible criminals, large-scale criminals. They undoubtedly crippled my father’s life as well.
I don’t recall us having guests often. But there was an interesting incident. This was in 1977. Tamara worked as a literary editor at a newspaper. One day she went to work, my father was for some reason called to the hospital, my mother was for some reason called to the housing management office, and I was at that time for some reason called to the editor of “Prapor Yunosti”—there was such a newspaper. We were not home for about four hours. We return home. The doors are locked, no traces of entry. But in our rooms, where Tamara and I lived, holes were drilled—in one room, in the second, in the third. A man said that as he was going up the stairs towards evening, he saw several individuals in protective clothing with very gloomy faces coming down from the second floor. For some reason, I think it was blackmail. Or something was actually installed. That very evening, I took a hammer, a small shovel, and scraped off all the slag, hammered around, and plugged and plastered the holes.
V.O.: Was this a city apartment or a private house?
O.Z.: We lived on the fifth floor. They got in from the attic.
V.O.: So, the holes were clearly visible?
O.Z.: Clearly visible, even the plaster had crumbled. The next day—I think it was the next day—we called the police, and the policeman said that thieves sometimes cut a hole from the fifth floor, jump down, and rob the apartment. My thought: they had keys. This was either just blackmail, or they installed something. This was in 1977.
And when I was awarded the Juhan Smuul Prize in 1976, I went to Tallinn to receive it. During that time, some fellow was questioning everyone about me, starting from the first floor: does he drink, where does he work—and he ran into a woman from the fourth floor, a very talkative one, who told him—and he was introducing himself as being from the police: “You’d be better off looking for criminals. We’ve never seen him drunk.” And Tamara said: “Don’t bother me, he went to receive a republic-level prize.” That’s what happened.
And after the meeting in 1984, after the article in the newspaper, they drove my father to such a state that again, as they told Tamara: “He should start drying his rusks now.”
V.O.: And what meeting was this?
O.Z.: A general writers’ meeting of the local Union. About 50 people came, someone from the “agencies” was there, a man from the regional committee sat in, the head of the culture department. Also a joke: the head of the culture department was an engineer by profession. The meeting ended with me admitting nothing, saying it was another provocation. And this regional committee official said: “After every meeting, he becomes more and more aggressive.” That’s how the meeting ended. But after this meeting, they threw out everything that could be thrown out—from “Veselka” publishing, and a few more manuscripts were tossed. I was left with nothing. It got to the point where I was borrowing money just to travel—I had absolutely nothing. This lasted for about two years. They watched me everywhere. As soon as they saw the name Zavhorodnii—they rejected it here, there, and everywhere. It was generally difficult for me to get published in this city; it’s a rather tough city.
But, maybe this will be interesting: I’ve been a member of Rukh from its first days. The demonstrations, the trips, the first flags—all this happened before my eyes. It would be interesting for you to meet with Ivan Shulyk. When we leave, I’ll show you, it’s a ten-minute walk from here, where our national flag was first raised, which was cut down at night. We stood guard all night. This was perhaps a milder time. I thought they would just kill us. But on the first night, they turned off the lights—this was near the Shevchenko Theater—and from both sides, dozens of policemen with flashlights came running. They scattered us, a vehicle drove up, they knocked down the flagpole, started cutting it up and throwing the pieces into the vehicle. Ivan Shulyk and I came to my place around four in the morning. They found nothing. I think we got off lightly. The order to cut down and destroy this flag was given by Pustovoitenko.
V.O.: What was his position then?
O.Z.: He was the mayor. And in September 1991, the flag was officially raised across from us.
T.Z.: In the morning, after they destroyed the flag, my husband began a two-week hunger strike right here, across from the city council. We all took turns here, distributing leaflets. This was a real Rukh headquarters.
O.Z.: And this city is quite difficult. If someone wants to see a communist-Bolshevik preserve, especially a toponymic one, let them come here: almost nothing changes, in several years only Chkalov Park became Hloba Park and Komsomolskyi Island became Monastyrskyi Island.
Now I am more engaged in creativity and survival, working as a literary editor at the newspaper “Dzherelo.” It’s a regional pedagogical newspaper. Here’s our daughter, in the center, here’s my poem…
I said this is a difficult city—I don’t know for what reason, but on January 21 of this year, on the outskirts of the city, my father’s dacha was burned to the ground. Only the walls remained, a pile of bricks. There was an investigator, but I stand by my opinion: it was definitely intentional arson. But so far, no reaction. They explained it as: “Careless handling of fire by an unknown person. No corpus delicti.” And that’s all.
As it happens, I am more or less known in Estonia, I lived for a while in Finland, but here, not a single book of mine has been published. Apparently, the reason is my uncompromising nature: I didn’t want to do hack work. They offered me to write those various “locomotives” (propaganda pieces)—I refused. And one man—and this was after excellent reviews, when even the artistic design for the book was ready—said that it couldn’t be published: “Every one of his poems has a subtext.”
V.O.: I want to clarify, because I had a doubt: do you translate from Ukrainian into Estonian or the other way around?
O.Z.: For over thirty years, I have been translating into Ukrainian from Estonian and Finnish. I have about twenty-five books.
V.O.: So those are books of translations, but none of your own?
O.Z.: No, I have had three poetry collections published in Kyiv, but not a single book has yet been published in Dnipropetrovsk. I am a laureate of two prizes—the Juhan Smuul Prize and the Maksym Rylsky Prize.
There used to be a publishing house here called “Promin.” After excellent reviews, I hoped the book would come out, but this man gives me the publishing house’s opinion—I think they were coached either by the “agencies” or the regional committee: “Here, take this, this is our response to your collection.” I read it and slammed the door. And that man says: “This is an impossible person, he doesn’t agree.” And then they wanted to cut it in half. I said: “Either the whole thing, or I don’t want a ‘butterfly’ (a heavily edited, flimsy version).” And on that, my relationship with that publishing house ended.
T.Z.: That publishing house used to publish something, but now that everything has to be paid for, there’s simply no opportunity to publish.
V.O.: If you had your own money, you could publish it, right?
T.Z.: Of course.
O.Z.: Well, Tamara has had so much fall on her… She was a witness to these events. There were cases when so-called acquaintances would walk my father all the way home, constantly nagging: “He’s friends with the wrong people, he writes the wrong things, he’ll be imprisoned soon.”
T.Z.: We waited 14 years for an apartment, and when the official order was already at the Writers’ Union, but they wouldn’t give it to us, my father-in-law locked the door, propped it shut with one chair, took another in his hand, and said to the then-head of the Union: “I’m going to smash this chair on you right now.”
Life was not easy for us at any time. Oleksandr was constantly engaged in creative work, so I had to pull the family plow almost by myself.
V.O.: And when did you get married?
T.Z.: We got married on July 4, 1970, right after I graduated from university.
V.O.: And what is your profession?
T.Z.: I am a philologist, from the Ukrainian department. I am originally from the Poltava region, but fate brought me here. I was born on the same day as Oles’s mother—January 6, on Christmas Eve, in 1947. My parents were collective farmers. The village of Popivka, Karlivka Raion. Our family is also in Myrhorod. My father is from the Reshetylivka area, and my mother’s family is in the Karlivka area. I came here for university and just stayed. I lived with the Zavhorodniis as a daughter-in-law for almost 15 years. It was not easy, of course, at any time, but perhaps it was for the best. He guided me toward a Ukrainian consciousness. I—a village girl arrived, I was far from all these problems, but later I got into a lot of trouble for it at the university—we sometimes had gatherings there with Ivan Sokulskyi, and then they would take us to the KGB for questioning, saying we were not serious people. But it passed without expulsion, thank God. Somehow we defended ourselves, fended them off, as they say. The KGB men said: “We’re having serious conversations with them, and they say they were catching fish and kissing.” In a word, we managed somehow.
And when the struggle for independence began, we, of course, were among the first in the Ukrainian Language Society, in “Prosvita,” and in Rukh. I’m not boasting, of course, but the first flags in Dnipropetrovsk were ours—I sewed them. I sewed flags around the clock—large ones, small ones, tiny ones, all kinds.
Now we have stepped back a bit from politics—the split in Rukh finished us. It is very difficult and terribly painful that it happened this way. And how it will be—that probably shouldn’t be written.
V.O.: And what do you do for work now?
T.Z.: I worked right here, at the “Promin” publishing house, which later became “Sich,” for 22 years, and when we were left without a salary and our staff was reduced from 56 people to seven, it was such a hopeless situation that I have now found a job in a small private publishing house called “Navchalna Knyha,” and I now work there as a senior editor, just on the eve of retirement.
V.O.: I wanted to ask something else. Oles mentioned that he lived in Estonia for a long time. It would be good to specify when he lived there permanently—from when to when. It seems it was between Dnipropetrovsk and Tallinn?
T.Z.: Oleksandr and I met in 1966.
O.Z.: In May 1968, I went to Estonia when this whole mess started here in Dnipropetrovsk. I officially had an Estonian residence permit until 1974.
V.O.: You were shuttling back and forth?
O.Z.: Yes.
V.O.: I also didn’t ask about your family status. I don’t think I caught it: do you have children?
T.Z.: Yes, we have a daughter, Olenka, our only daughter. She was born on September 16, 1981. She is now finishing music college, studying the bandura, and we hope we can help her perfect her skill. The child is very promising, as the teachers say. We hope she will continue her studies.
O.Z.: Another interesting detail. Before Ivan Sokulskyi’s second arrest, I was unexpectedly summoned, to my surprise, to the prosecutor’s office. The summons came in advance, several days before. I think this was also a form of psychological pressure: let the person think about what it could be. And what’s interesting? I learned from the investigator that Ivan was already in an isolation cell, that he was somewhere for psychiatric evaluation. He began to question me—because I had known Ivan since 1963, I was in a senior year and he was in a junior one—he started asking if I had noticed any signs of mental deviation in him. I think this was investigator Zhyvoder, who later became Druzhynin. He was, I believe, convicted of rape—there were such rumors, that he was a completely amoral person. He became Druzhynin. So, he was talking and talking about Ivan, and I said, “God grant that all people were like Ivan.” And I asked what his crime was. And he says: “I don’t know—it seems he was collecting some photographs.” I don’t know for sure, because before his second arrest, Ivan cut off all contact with us—he didn’t want to drag anyone down with him, unlike some others. There were those who were planning to go abroad and would go around telling everyone, and then these people would be hauled in for questioning. Ivan was of a completely different character, very modest.
And another thing that made a huge impression on Ivan and me—in January 1965, we were in Kyiv and took part in a group of carolers. Ivan even has a poem about it. That Kyiv spirit could truly awaken anyone. We brought back some “under-the-counter” samvydav from there. I was still in my fifth year of study then.
Ivan stood out from the others (we attended the same literary group) for his consciousness. To live in Lviv and not become nationally conscious is impossible—only, perhaps, a telegraph pole doesn’t change. I say this as if before God, I absolutely do not regret it, no matter how much they made my life miserable. It’s just that one should have become fully conscious even earlier.
And one more thing. Of course, in my development as a creative individual, Tamara was very important; she constantly helped me—both proofreading and retyping. She knows the language wonderfully.
T.Z.: He was fussing about writing an article to justify himself, and I told him: “The moment you write it—that’s it, the end.”
O.Z.: She knows the language wonderfully, is very modest, she should have been admitted to the Writers’ Union long ago, but she says with a sense of humor: “To hell with you.”
T.Z.: Mr. Vasyl, I was fortunate to translate this book… They awarded me the Yavornytsky Diploma for it. People noticed, praised it, wrote about it.
V.O.: Ms. Tamara translated Skalkovsky’s book “History of the New Sich, or the Last Zaporozhian Host,” Dnipropetrovsk, “Sich,” 1994, a thick book of 608 pages. Thank you for such a book.
O.Z.: I have poems that convey that era, in which I couldn’t get published for a long time. I am very fond of short forms. I will read you one poem, called “Monologue of Borys Hrinchenko”: *“Може, народжений я і під чоботом, прожитий «Словник української мови»”* (?). Another poem: *“Уже не зліплять ластівки гніздо, замріла прохолода вереснева. Що на душі – не відає ніхто, і сам не знаю в цьому клятім реві. І нікуди, і нікуди втекти від себе не вдавалося нікому. Страшне буття продовжує текти, карбуючи тире, крапки і коми.”* This is a poem from those times. I am preparing a collection, maybe I will publish it here after all. It will be selected own poems and translations from Estonian, Finnish, Polish, Spanish, French, and one poem from Swedish—that’s from the original.
V.O.: You translate both poetry and prose, right?
O.Z.: And prose. Undoubtedly, we, as individuals, could not have fulfilled ourselves. Our circle included the Kuzmenkos, Viktor Savchenko, Mykola Bereslavskyi, Ivan Rybalka. We knew them, but I will say again that whoever did not spend a single day in prison—he has a moral guilt before the people who were imprisoned, who endured and did not bend, did not slander others, and remained human beings.
V.O.: I thank you, Oles and Tamara.
In the photo by V. Ovsiienko on April 3, 2001: Oles and Tamara Zavhorodnii.