SIRENKO, VOLODYMYR IVANOVYCH

Listen to audio files

An interview with Volodymyr Ivanovych Sirenko

V. V. Ovsienko: On April 1, 2001, in the city of Kamianske, formerly Dniprodzerzhynsk, at 8 Loktyukhov Street, apartment 39, we are holding a conversation with Volodymyr Ivanovych Sirenko. His phone number is: area code 05692, number 359-14. Recorded by Vasyl Ovsienko.

V. I. Sirenko: Every spring, I’m overcome with nostalgia for my native land, and I feel such a pull, such a strong pull, that I have to break away, even if just for a few days, to my home village in the Azov Sea region. I was born right on the seashore in a village called Novopetrivka, a former Petrivska fortress. It’s almost entirely populated by the descendants of Trans-Danubian Zaporizhzhian Cossacks who returned from Turkish territory, from the Trans-Danubian Sich. But I hardly lived in that village. When I’m there, I think, “I was born here.” But I don’t even know in which house. Many houses from those times, post-war and pre-war, are still standing.

V. V. Ovsienko: And what raion is that now?

V. I. Sirenko: It’s the Berdiansk Raion of Zaporizhzhia Oblast. My father moved to different villages—they sent him for work because he was the head of a consumer cooperative, then he worked in the raion executive committee, so they moved him from village to village. But I lived permanently with my grandmother, Paraska Antonivna Mamchenko. That’s why my mother’s maiden name was also Mamchenko, Tetiana Antonivna. My childhood, in essence, was spent in that village almost until the start of the war. My grandmother was completely illiterate, and my mother had little education, but my mother possessed an extraordinary, natural peasant wisdom. She loved songs. She was a decent dressmaker, sewed very well, and that saved us during the famine years. She would sit at her sewing machine and sing. She had a beautiful voice. She would be singing, and I’d be in the room doing something or preparing my lessons. It was from her that I absorbed that folk art. She only sang folk songs, and that’s probably where my love for folk songs and folklore, in general, comes from.

That was likely the impetus for me to start writing poetry from a young age. On my mother’s side, I come from the Trans-Danubian Zaporizhzhian Cossacks. On my father’s side—he was from the village of Mykolaivka in the same Berdiansk Raion of Zaporizhzhia Oblast. Mykolaivka was settled by state peasants, resettled by a tsar or tsarina, and these peasants lived more poorly than the Cossacks. When the Cossacks returned from beyond the Danube, the government granted them significant rights. They were to guard the coast of the Azov Sea from Turkish attacks, so they always went to work in the steppes with weapons, with saddled horses ready behind them. If anything was spotted in the Novopetrivka area, they had to drop everything and ride there immediately. Because of this, they were given a great deal of land. Everyone had more than one pair of horses, lots of cattle, many sheep. Back then, there was a lot of unplowed land; now it's all been tilled. But in those Tavrian steppes, there was plenty of pasture for livestock. They lived very well, prosperously. When the dekulakization began there, they took the real magnates, because otherwise, you would have had to dekulakize literally every household by the standards of any other village.

But in Mykolaivka, I think, they had two dessiatinas per soul, per child born. And only for males; girls didn’t get any. So my grandfather, Andriy Fedotovych Sirenko, was not very wealthy, but what saved him was that he was a jack-of-all-trades—he was a blacksmith and a carpenter, he made wagons, forged and soldered everything himself—he could do it all. And so, when the kolkhoz was organized, he was an exceptionally respected person in the kolkhoz; they valued and honored him.

That’s where I grew up. Then I also studied and lived for a bit in the German colony of Dolynske in the same raion. And from that village, we evacuated when the Germans began to advance. We evacuated to the North Caucasus. At first, on a carriage. We drove the cattle. Since my father was a disabled person, he wasn’t drafted into the army. He was tasked with driving cattle from several collective farms to the east. We drove the cattle. German teenagers and women were the drovers. They were with us, but when they learned the Germans were hot on our heels, they refused to drive the cattle any further. So my father recruited drovers from the column of people who were retreating. For example, I, a boy who could barely stay in the saddle, drove a huge herd of horses with other boys. We literally never got off our horses. And the heat was intense! You’d be riding and riding, and you’d feel something warm trickling into your mouth. You’d wipe it with your fingers—and it was blood from the strain, from overheating. I even have a poem called “Horses,” which begins: “I was carrying out Stalin's order—driving horses to the Caucasus with the boys.”

V. V. Ovsienko: How old were you then? By the way, you haven't mentioned your date of birth.

V. I. Sirenko: I was born in 1931, on December 7. This year, I am due to receive seventy years from fate. I believe you can celebrate birthdays up to forty; after forty, it’s no longer a holiday. When I turned fifty, Vasyl Skrypka came here to congratulate me and brought a congratulatory letter—it was signed by Borys Antonenko-Davydovych, Olena Kompan, Ivan Brovko, Lina Kostenko—and I sent out postcards to everyone: “I ask you to come to Sirenko and grieve with him over a glass on the occasion of his fiftieth birthday.” It’s no longer a celebration.

I look at human life like this: if you were to draw a cradle at the bottom, then a line going up from it, and at the top, you write the number 40, and then from that number, a triangle pointing down, with a coffin at the bottom. Once you start going down from forty—and by the way, you slide down very quickly then—it’s no time for celebrating. When you’re climbing towards forty, you can still have fun.

My father and mother were born in the same year, 1906. They are gone now. My father died in 1985. That was right when they were about to try me and send me to Astrakhan. He died just like that; I never told him about the trouble I was in. My mother died seven years earlier, in 1978. They are buried there, in the village.

The village where my sister lives now is Bulgarian. It’s also in the Azov Sea region. As Samiylenko said: “Here lives a great mixture of all kinds of peoples, and for this, this land is called United Rus, United Rus.” In the Azov Sea region, there are Greeks, Bulgarians, Ukrainians, and Russian villages. So, my sister, mother, and father lived in a Bulgarian village in their final years. My father worked there as the chairman of the village council.

V. V. Ovsienko: And where were you in the Caucasus?

V. I. Sirenko: In the Caucasus? First in Arzgir. There’s a raion center in Stavropol Krai called Arzgir. We handed over the cattle there. What happened to them afterward is unknown, but my father reported it, handed them over, maybe to a kolkhoz—I don’t know where. Then the Germans started pressing there too, and we moved on toward Dagestan. There’s a village called Velychaivka in the Urozhaivka Raion of Stavropol Krai—it’s on the Kuma River. And when the Germans pinned us down there, my father found lodging for us with some people and went on himself. By the way, that village of Velychaivka was strange. It was entirely populated by resettled, dekulakized Ukrainians. So it's not surprising that they weren't very fond of the Soviet government or the Soviet Army. The village stood right next to a wall of reeds as tall as a house. These reeds stretched for about fifty kilometers into the lowlands. There were swamps there. For instance, to get to Urozhaivka, the raion center, you had to travel on roads paved with logs—that was the kind of road through the swamps.

We stayed there. The village was not occupied. There was no government of any kind. It was like this: the Germans would drive in in the morning and flee in the evening. In the evening, the partisans would drive in. There was a Russian-Ukrainian-Kalmyk partisan detachment in the reeds. And the Germans were scared to death of the partisans. As soon as dusk began to fall, they would pack up and clear out of the village. Because the houses were right on the edge of the reeds. And they never even looked into the reeds. They tried to burn them, but you can’t burn such a huge territory, 50 kilometers, ever. Some little river flows there—the fire would reach it and stop. There are lakes there...

When the Germans started to retreat, my father appeared, and we began to follow the front line back, literally. We reached the Donbas. We traveled by train, by changing trains—any way we could. Bundles on our shoulders... Both I and my younger sister—we all carried these huge bundles on our backs in the rain, in the snow, in the frost.

We made it to the Donbas. My father went to work in a mine there, and we lived there for a while. It’s a good thing that when we were returning through Arzgir, my father got a sack of salt. There are salt lakes there, so he collected a sack of salt, and we dragged it with us. And that salt saved us from starvation. We sold the salt, and a glass of salt was two hundred rubles back then. With that salt, we made our way home.

We got there in the winter by changing trains. The trains ran poorly, but we arrived. And my grandmother and aunt didn’t know what had happened to us. War... They knew we had left, evacuated. And then we arrived. A soldier picked us, the children, up in a truck in Berdiansk from the train, brought us, and dropped us off. My grandmother came out—such great joy: everyone was alive and well. She cooked varenyky, and I was so hungry I ate so many varenyky that I got sick. I just gorged myself... In the warmth, in a heated house...

Then my father went back to work again. He was the chairman of several collective farms. We moved from village to village, so I studied sometimes in Russian in a Russian school, sometimes in Ukrainian, sometimes in Bulgarian—such a mishmash. Then my father was sent to the Prymorsk Raion, to the village of Kamyshevatka, which is a neighboring raion. It’s called Prymorsk now, but it used to be Nogaisk. Some fool went and renamed the city. And so we went there.

There, I was already accepted into the Komsomol; I was the secretary of the kolkhoz Komsomol organization. In 1947, the chairman there was a very honest man, Baranov, I remember. From a dekulakized family. His father was dekulakized, but he joined the Party in the army at the front. They forgot that his father had been dekulakized and made him chairman of the kolkhoz.

The kolkhoz was poor, everything was in ruins, there was nothing, but he and my father made a decision for which they almost paid dearly. They had to pay people for their trudodni [labor-days] with something. They organized a fishing brigade from the soldiers who had returned to the village, and the sea was nearby, and it was teeming with fish back then. With their last money, they bought a longboat, bought nets, built a shack on the seashore, and every day they brought fish to the storeroom and gave it to people for their trudodni. In our Azov Sea region, in 1947, there were almost no deaths—fish saved the people. You’d gather some amaranth seeds, grind them with the fish... And the fish was so fatty that it would cook on its own, without water.

My father was a very honest man, though he wasn’t in the Party. He didn’t steal, didn’t take. My mother would sometimes say to him: “Look how other chairmen live: they have everything.” But we lived just like everyone else in the village.

In 1947, I had to sign up for the reconstruction of the national economy. That's how I ended up in Dniprodzerzhynsk.

V. V. Ovsienko: You were sixteen years old then.

V. I. Sirenko: Yes, sixteen. I first ended up in an FZN (Factory Training School), then in Trade School No. 1. It’s there, in the center, I think it’s No. 24 now. Nazarbayev studied there around the same time. They trained steelworkers, steelworkers' assistants, and rolling mill operators—for the metallurgical industry. I was enrolled in a group of steelworker’s assistants. There I learned the work of a steelworker; we went to the plant every day. It was hard. You go to the trough, take off your shirt, rinse it in the water, then wring it out and put it back on—and it steams on you because it’s about 45-50 degrees Celsius [113-122°F] of heat near the furnace. I graduated from that school in 1950. I had enrolled in 1948. At the same time, I attended night school. Now, trade schools give you a high school diploma, but they didn’t back then. I finished tenth grade while working full-time.

Even then, I was writing poetry and getting published in newspapers. One day, a correspondent for *Pravda* in Dniprodzerzhynsk and Dnipropetrovsk, Mykola Tytarenko—deceased, unfortunately, God rest his soul—met me. He was a good man, just drank a lot, but that was his business. And so he met me one day and said: “Volodia, you write good poems—why are you there at the open-hearth furnace? Wouldn’t you like to go work as a staff writer at the city’s radio broadcasting office?” I said: “I probably won’t be able to.” “What do you mean you won’t be able to? I’ll help you, I’ll come and consult with you.” And so I agreed. I worked at the plant for a little while, but back then, just like now, I suppose, you had to work for three years. So he went to the Oblast Committee, went to the Directorate of Labor Reserves, and that’s how I, like Taras Hryhorovych Shevchenko, received my release papers and went to the editorial office.

I really liked the editorial office right away, I immediately showed my talent and first became a staff writer, and about six months later, they made me a literary editor—literary editing, stylistics of materials. Then I worked for a while in Berdiansk at the newspaper *Bilshovytska Zirka* (Bolshevik Star). I worked there for a bit, and then I came back here and couldn’t find a job in journalism. So I went—still young myself, I was probably about 20—to be a counselor in a young workers’ dormitory. I still needed to be counseled myself, but they sent me to be a counselor... I felt out of place; I was just putting in my time there. Then, around 1952, I got married. And in 1953, they drafted me into the army.

My wife’s name is Tetiana Tymofiivna; she’s from Sumy Oblast. Her maiden name was Klyuchnykova. A very good woman, a good homemaker, but in our perception of the world, in our education, we are completely different. She’s a simple worker. And I would write a poem, and I’d want to read it to someone... She didn’t read much, even though my library is huge—over two thousand books. So I looked for other contacts; I’d write something and need to read it to someone. And she was jealous. Well, there’s probably no one who isn’t jealous now, especially women. So we had conflicts. But that’s not the main thing; the main thing is that she is an exceptionally decent person, a good homemaker, and I am still convinced that she loves and respects me to this day. And our children—two daughters—love and respect me, and I have four grandsons.

V. V. Ovsienko: Could you please name your daughters and the years they were born?

V. I. Sirenko: My daughters? I have a bad memory for numbers. The older one, Liuda, was born in 1953, and the younger one, Olia, is 37 now. They are both workers. One is already retired because she worked at a hazardous plant and retired at 45. The other still works at the DMK—the Dnipro Metallurgical Combine—as a rolling mill operator in the rolling shop. All of working-class stock, all working. One grandson also works at the DMK; he graduated from college. The second graduated from a vocational school and now works as a driver at a state farm; he just got the job recently. That’s my family now. My wife and I don’t live together; she lives with our daughter, but we are on very good terms, we are friends.

Then I was drafted into the army. Liuda had already been born; she was about six months old. I ended up in the parachute airborne troops in Pskov. I graduated from junior commanders’ school. I was a squad leader for a little while. I sing very well; I still have a voice now, and even more so back then. I had participated in amateur performances back in trade school, even performed solo numbers. And in the army, everyone is looking for a way to slack off... And they noticed me, pulled me into the song and dance ensemble. Even Rovensky, an artist from the Volgograd Operetta, once came here and found me (he’s probably retired by now, or maybe not even alive, so much time has passed)—we used to sing duets. But then I got tired of it, and since I was published in many newspapers, including Leningrad ones with articles and poems… Ah, I was still writing poems in Russian back then, and my first book was published in Russian. They took me to the editorial office of the divisional newspaper. So I was demobilized from there with the rank of sergeant. I served my three years in the army honestly, from start to finish, until 1956. I have 24 parachute jumps from an airplane—with full gear, at night, during group exercises. So I know parachuting well.

I returned to Dniprodzerzhynsk. Major Komlev, the editor of the divisional newspaper, wanted me to stay, saying: “Volodia, stay here. I’m retiring soon. I’ll make you the editor; you’ll be given an officer’s rank. First a lieutenant, and then it will go on and on, you’ll be in charge of the editorial office.” I told him: “No. I can’t live without Ukraine. I really like your nature here—the forests, the lakes—but,” I said, “I won’t be able to stay here.” And so I left for Ukraine.

As soon as I got on the train, about halfway to Dno station to change to the Leningrad–Dnipropetrovsk train, the regiment was put on alert, loaded onto planes, and sent to Hungary. If I had stayed there a little longer, my discharge would have been canceled, because in my last days, besides working in the editorial office, I was also responsible for coordinating staff matters for the battalion. That would have been it—it would have been canceled—and I would have gone to Hungary.

V. V. Ovsienko: You would have been an occupier too.

V. I. Sirenko: I would have been an occupier. And many died there; I could have been killed too. The guys I met later told me about it.

So I came here and went to work at the editorial office of *Znamya Dzerzhinki* (Dzerzhynka’s Banner)—that’s the newspaper of the Dnipropetrovsk Metallurgical Plant. First, I worked as a staff writer, then as the executive secretary, then as the deputy editor. Our editor was, God rest his soul, a man who had his own little boat; he would call it his little ‘boat-schmoat.’ And so, when spring came, I was essentially in charge of the newspaper and signed off on it. He would call: “Well, how are things, Volodia?” I’d say: “Everything’s fine.” “Well, then, sign off on the newspaper.” The team was good; talented guys had gathered there. They later graduated from VGIK—the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography—and worked elsewhere.

And then they talked me into becoming the editor of the high-circulation newspaper of the railcar plant, *Vahonobudivnyk* (Railcar Builder). And why? This *Znamya Dzerzhinki* was in Russian, and by then, the desire to break with the Russian language was already stirring in me. And that one was in Ukrainian, so I thought, I’ll go there. I went there as editor. It was just the editor and one other employee. This was around 1963-64. It was still Khrushchev’s “Thaw.”

V. V. Ovsienko: Perhaps it was even ending.

V. I. Sirenko: It was even ending. I was under the influence of the search for truth, the love of truth. That wave pulled me in. There, in Moscow, poets were performing; here, the Draches were performing, the Korotyches were performing. By the way, have you read that disgusting interview with Korotych in *Literaturna Gazeta*?

V. V. Ovsienko: Unfortunately, I didn’t read it, but I was told about it.

V. I. Sirenko: He is a completely immoral person. I read it—it leaves a disgusting impression.

It was then that I decided to break with the Russian language forever. And it was very difficult for me to break with the Russian language. I had already published my first book by then. It was called *Rozhdeniye pesni* (The Birth of a Song) and was published in 1964 by the “Promin” publishing house, which is now “Sich.” My poems were published in *Komsomolskaya Pravda*, in *Pravda* alongside names like Sholokhov, Aliger, Prokofiev. I have a literary page saved somewhere with the first publications of *Oni srazhalis za Rodinu* (They Fought for Their Country) and right there, a poem—“Vladimir Sirenko, Dneprodzerzhinsk.” I was published in *Novy Mir*—a major journal... It was very hard for me to say goodbye to such an achievement. But I decided to put an end to the Russian language.

V. V. Ovsienko: But still, what were the motives? How did this conviction come about?

V. I. Sirenko: The motives? That’s very interesting. I used to listen to Radio Liberty then—everything. In the evenings, my routine was to scan the airwaves. And so I listen. A broadcast from Bulgaria—I know a little Bulgarian, I understand it—children’s programs are in Bulgarian. Hungarian ones—in Hungarian. I was especially struck that even the children’s programs were. Polish—in Polish. And here, everything was in Russian. Then a thought suddenly came to me: who am I? Am I a Russian? I’m not a Russian, although I only use the Russian language. And I don’t use it any better than, say, a ‘kondovy,’ as they say, a true Russian. So, I’m not a Russian. My nationality is Ukrainian. But am I a Ukrainian? No, because I don’t use my native language; I’m only called a Ukrainian in my passport. I came to the conclusion that I was just a piece of shit. Like how the wind rolls a tumbleweed in the steppe—wherever it rolls, that’s where it goes.

V. V. Ovsienko: A tumbleweed.

V. I. Sirenko: And I thought about this very seriously. Then I met the poet Mykhailo Chkhan, God rest his soul, and shared these thoughts with him. I said, I think I’ll switch to Ukrainian, but I have so much published in Russian, they know me in Moscow... And he says to me: “Volodia, why don’t you take what you consider your best Russian-language poems and translate them.” What do you think? I felt such a desire, I came home and that very evening, I sat down and didn’t get up from the table until two in the morning. That evening, I translated five poems. In essence, I didn’t translate them, I re-sang them.

V. V. Ovsienko: You wrote them anew.

V. I. Sirenko: Essentially, yes. And as soon as I had typed them up, I rushed to find Chkhan, and he happened to be at the Writers’ Union, other writers were sitting there. I read them—maybe they played it up a bit to encourage me—they were ecstatic! And after that—that was it, I made the break.

V. V. Ovsienko: And when did this happen?

V. I. Sirenko: It happened somewhere around 1964-65, I think. Around that time, in literally a week, I wrote my last Russian-language book, *Ostayetsya narod* (The People Remain). That all leaders—it’s all fleeting. I criticized the government, the Communist Party there. For example, there was a poem like this:
Мы льем по-всюду дифирамбы,
мы восхваляем вся и всех,
а нам потише бы, а нам бы,
чтоб не слепил глаза успех,
чтоб видно было, как в колхозе
хлеба погибли на морозе
и их снегами замело,
как ря-дом на заводе план
и завершен успешно вроде,
на самом деле – лишь ноли.
Напрасно славим мы, трубя.
Когда трубим, себя мы гробим
и гробим, Родина, тебя.
That was the kind of poem it was.

V. V. Ovsienko: And what publishing house published that book?

V. I. Sirenko: No, no! It remained in manuscript, but I read these poems at appearances with other writers. I was foolish then, naive, I didn’t know that a KGB agent followed me to all the writers’ appearances. I read a poem about Brezhnev receiving another award. By then, from October 1964, Brezhnev was in power. He had made a speech and said: “I perceive this award as an advance.” The first line of that poem was: “They don’t give out medals as an advance, for them, men cover pillboxes with their bodies. Like the gray hair of the Motherland... the fir trees stand cold by the Kremlin...” something like that, I don’t remember now. I read all this, and they were taking it all in, taking it all in.

At that time, I wrote several poems in Ukrainian, extremely harsh, condemning Russification. One in Russian, and the other in Ukrainian. I, naive as I was, not yet knowing about dealings with the KGB, began to read these poems at appearances with other writers. I wasn’t a member of the Union yet. I started reading these poems. And to every writers' appearance, whether in a raion or somewhere else, a KGB agent would definitely come along. But what for? There were plenty of informers among the writers themselves. No need to send anyone. They took it all in, took it all in.

Then one day, when I was the editor at the railcar plant, I was summoned to the plant administration. I arrived and saw some athletic-looking fellow sitting with the HR manager. He introduced himself: “I’m a KGB officer.” Chystokalyany was his last name.

V. V. Ovsienko: Chysto..?

V. I. Sirenko: Chystokalyany—meaning a person who is “chysto obisranyy” [cleanly shat], Chystokalyany. He had a Master of Sports pin, probably for boxing or wrestling. “Could you come with us, Volodymyr Ivanovych, to the Directorate on Pelin Street?” I said: “Yes.” “A representative from the oblast directorate is waiting there and wants to talk to you.” I was still naive, I didn’t know what was what, so I thought, why on earth the KGB, all of a sudden?

We arrived there in his black Volga. A man introduces himself in the office as Major Tutyk. “Have a seat. Volodymyr Ivanovych. Why did you switch to the Ukrainian language?”—the first question. I said: “I can explain. I am a Ukrainian, my father and mother are Ukrainians, their parents were Ukrainians, I was born on Ukrainian soil, and it’s none of your business what language I write in. You didn’t ask me why I, a Ukrainian, was writing in Russian. So it’s none of your business. Even if I had started writing in Turkish—that would also be none of your business. I am free to choose the language for my work.” He saw my sharp response and said: “Well, that’s not the main thing, I was just asking. So you have poems like these?” I said: “I do.” “Did you read them in public?” I said: “I did.” “Listen, could you show us the manuscripts of these poems?” Well, I was naive, stupid; it was only a year later that I gained some experience. And I was a Party member, they had accepted me in the army.

V. V. Ovsienko: Still in the army? And when is this conversation taking place?

V. I. Sirenko: This was around sixty-six, something like that. I said: “Why not, I’ll go home right now and bring them.” I went home, the fool that I was, got the manuscript, and brought it back. “Can you leave it with us until tomorrow?” I said: “Sure, I can.”

I kept trying to prove to them that I wasn’t criticizing the government, not criticizing the Party. I was pointing out shortcomings, like a doctor-diagnostician making a diagnosis, and you, please, treat it, correct these shortcomings—that is the task of literature.

They kept the manuscripts. I came back the next day, and they returned them. If I had been experienced, I would have run home, taken that manuscript and told my wife: “Listen, take this somewhere.” I would have given her an address. Or: “Hide it there.” Then I would have come back and said: “You know, I couldn’t find it. I searched everywhere. Where did it go? I remember some of it by heart.” But I, an unfired fool, brought it... They graciously returned it to me: “Thank you.” But they had retyped it, showed it to the head of the KGB Directorate, General Mazhara, and showed it to Vatchenko.

V. V. Ovsienko: To Vatchenko himself?

V. I. Sirenko: To Vatchenko himself. My case went all the way up to Shcherbytsky. It was a very high-profile case. They showed it to Vatchenko, and he recognized himself in one of the poems. Just like what happened with *The Cathedral*...

V. V. Ovsienko: Do you remember how it goes?

V. I. Sirenko: I remember, I’ll recite it now. He started stamping his feet! And he was fat, you know. He was a pig.

V. V. Ovsienko: “Guboshlyop” (Lubber-lips). With lips like his, it’s good to kiss... and eat varenyky.

V. I. Sirenko: Yes, yes, yes. He was a pig. In his later years, doctors forbade him from driving to work, and he would walk from Voroshylov Street all the way down the avenue, accompanied by General Mazhara, to the Oblast Committee building.

V. V. Ovsienko: On foot?

V. I. Sirenko: On foot. And by the Oblast Committee building, Mazhara’s car would be waiting to take him to 33 Korolenko Street.

V. V. Ovsienko: Why 33 Korolenko Street here? The KGB in Kyiv was at 33 Korolenko Street.

V. I. Sirenko: No, in Kyiv it was 33 Volodymyrska Street.

V. V. Ovsienko: But it used to be called Korolenko.

V. I. Sirenko: And here it was 33 Korolenko Street. I even wrote when I was summoned there: “Korolenko, 33, don’t erase me, don’t erase me.”

V. V. Ovsienko: So, do you remember how that poem about Vatchenko went?

V. I. Sirenko: I remember. In Russian... Alright, I’ll defile my lips: “The Wall.” He lived on Voroshylov Street, in a mansion with his family—a 100 sq. meter mansion. A blank wall, in it a small metal gate, in the gate a peephole. I once peeked through that peephole: a policeman with a dog was walking in the yard. I wrote this poem:

Крепка стена, крепки ворот запоры,
Милиция, овчарка – подойди!
Отгородясь от города забором,
Живет подонок, вылезший в вожди.
Он днем, пыхтя не от стыда – от сала, –
С трибуны справедливости орет,
И слушает его тот, что в подвале,
В бараке, в уплотнении живет.
И думает с тоской, не между прочим:
Какой же ты подлец, ядрена мать!
Ну, а ему-то что – он непорочен,
Ему на всех сегодня наплевать.
Он вечером, собой доволен,
Доволен службой и женой,
В машине едет добрым моим городом
И прячется за каменной стеной.
Кого же он боится среди ночи?
И от кого отгрохал он забор?
Неужто я и мой сосед-рабочий
В моей стране убийца или вор?
Молчит стена, во мне клокочут вены,
Я весь, как динамит и как тротил:
О, если б встал сейчас товарищ Ленин,
Он под стеной его бы похвалил!

When he heard that, he recognized himself.

I had two versions. One was: “The veins in me are raging, I’m all like dynamite, like ammonal, And if comrade Lenin were to rise now, he would have him shot against this wall right now.” But then I thought: no, Lenin would have praised him—he himself occupied a large count’s mansion in Gorki. When he fell ill and needed to recuperate, he didn’t go to some peasant in Gorki and ask for a room or two to live in a peasant house for a while to improve his health—he took a whole huge palace in Gorki. So after these thoughts, I made another version of the ending. But I don’t remember which one I read—I think he read the one about “he would have him shot against this wall.”

There was a meeting of ideological workers in Dnipropetrovsk, and when the representatives from Dniprodzerzhynsk arrived, he declared: “Here in Dniprodzerzhynsk, a poet is working as a newspaper editor at the railcar plant. He writes anti-Soviet poems, and lately, he has started writing with a nationalist slant.” And he stamped his foot so hard, it’s a wonder he didn’t fall through the floor! And below was the cafeteria, the dining hall. Maybe he would have fallen into a cauldron and been boiled? The stench would have been hellish—all over the oblast! And he shouted: “He has no place in the Party!!!” When I heard he had said that—and I had gained a little experience by then—I was already prepared to be expelled from the Party and fired from my job within 3-4 days. Because when you’re expelled from the Party, you’re automatically fired from your job.

Indeed, they called a meeting. At first, they wanted me to be registered with the party organization of the railcar plant administration, but the engineers there said: “What’s this all about? We need to look into it!” They felt uncertain, and so I was transferred to the workers’ party organization of the railcar assembly shop. Muzalyova—the third secretary of the city party committee for ideology—organized the meeting there. When they expelled me from the Party there and I was returning from work, a young worker who had condemned me at the meeting from a prepared script caught up with me. He said to me: “Forgive me, Volodymyr Ivanovych, for speaking like that—they gave me a piece of paper and forced me to read it.” I told him: “I hold no grudge against you, but the pity and tragedy of the Party is that people like me—I wouldn’t have taken the paper and read it—that people like me are leaving the Party, and people like you are staying. That is the tragedy of the Party, and it will lead to its death.”

After that, I was fired from my job, and I fell into the clutches of the KGB for 22 years.

V. V. Ovsienko: Do you remember the date of that meeting? It’s important.

V. I. Sirenko: I have the document somewhere. A friend of mine who was digging through the archives found the decision of the raion committee that approved my expulsion (or maybe it’s in this book?). I remember that the meeting in the shop was in the fall of 1967. Why do I remember? Because it was the anniversary year, the 50th anniversary of Soviet power. I celebrated it in a peculiar way.

A day or two later, the raion committee approved the decision of the party meeting, I turned in my party card—and I was immediately and automatically fired from my job. I started looking for work. I went to one place—no, another—no. I had three such instances where I would get a job, work for a week—and the KGB guys would find out where I was, make a call... Maybe they didn’t even say to fire him. But when the KGB talks to a director, tells him that so-and-so has started working for you, many directors would try to get rid of such a person.

I got a job editing manuscripts at an experimental laboratory of a ministry—the Ministry of Ferrous Metallurgy was here then. They fired me. I went to the city committee and said: “I have a higher education, I’m a decent journalist, a poet, I already have books published, I’m known in Russia—I’ll leave the country. Because I need to work.” And this Muzalyova said (how she dared—I don’t know): “Volodymyr Ivanovych, go to the workers’ dormitory as a counselor—you worked there once, you have experience now. But be careful there! We are reinstating you at work.”

V. V. Ovsienko: Did you say you would leave Ukraine or the country?

V. I. Sirenko: I said I would leave the country.

V. V. Ovsienko: Meaning, the Soviet Union?

V. I. Sirenko: Yes, yes. Back then, there was only one country—“one and indivisible Rus.”

So, I went to “Azot”—there’s a nitrogen fertilizer plant here—to the dormitory. The workers were all older; there was no point in feeding them bullshit. The mood back then was such that you could imprison every worker there! I would, for instance, enter a room in the evening: “Good evening, guys!” And they would immediately say: “Volodymyr Ivanovych, want to hear a new joke?” And they’d tell me such an anti-Soviet joke, and everyone would be roaring with laughter! Or when Brezhnev got a new medal—they’d show his portrait in the newspaper: “Volodymyr Ivanovych, the award has found its hero!” With such humor. I got along well with the working guys because I was just straightforward. If something needed to be organized, I would organize it.

Then, in the spring of 1968, the campaign against Oles Honchar for his novel *The Cathedral* began. I wrote a letter in support of Honchar. To Honchar himself. This letter is now published in the journal *Borysten*; I have it somewhere, but I’d have to dig for it. I supported Honchar, wrote that it was a necessary novel, like a sip of water, like a breath of fresh air. And all those Poltoratskys—they are people who serve the regime; they have no opinion of their own. What you described is exactly how it is. I live in such a city—it’s exactly the same as Zachiplianka. I recognized it all.

They intercepted this letter. Honchar, however, did send me a May 1st greeting: “Received your letter, I congratulate you on the holiday.” I have that letter somewhere too. But by then, all mail coming from me and to me was being perlusted. They had become so brazen that a package would arrive torn open; they wouldn’t even bother to seal it back up.

And so I was fired from this job too. I began a new search. I searched and searched... And, by the way, once a week—a summons for an interview at the KGB. The interview would last about eight hours, without a lunch break. There were two of them; they would take turns, go have lunch, while I sat there. Then I’d say my train was coming—let’s wrap it up. Hungry as a dog.

One time I came out, and it felt as if someone had taken a huge dump in my soul. In such cases, a person wants to share with someone. I went to the Writers’ Union. I didn’t shun people—people shunned me, but I went to be among people. Zaremba runs by. And I’ve just come from there. “Well, are you collaborating with the KGB there?” I stood next to him and thought: well now (I’m a former paratrooper, I know a few moves)—should I plaster you against the wall so the whole publishing house can see you? He worked at a publishing house that produced advertisements and slogans. I thought: should I just grab you and plaster you to the wall? But I won’t get involved. He has this obsession that everyone collaborates except him. But maybe he was the one collaborating?

I was banned from publishing, from appearing with writers, from working. I had a family, two daughters, I had to feed them somehow. And so, not to be a burden on my wife, I went to my father’s village. In the village, we started fishing. In Andrivka, where my father lived. The village of Novo-Spasivka is twelve kilometers from this Andrivka. I had a moped. We would fish all night, I’d come to my aunt’s, bring 10-15 kilograms of fish—carp and crucian carp—and say: “Auntie, I’m going to sleep, and you go to the market and sell the fish.” There was a big market in the village. That’s how I got by there.

But someone (to this day I don’t know who) sent me a money order there. I never found out who. When I went to look for the sender at the return address, no one by that name lived there. That happened to me.

I stayed there for a while, then came back here, wandering around without a job. I met a friend of mine. A good friend—oh, I forgot his last name—and he says: “Listen, go to the Institute of Mineral Resources—a friend of mine works there as the academic secretary. I’ll talk him into it; I think they’ll hire you.” No, first I worked at the NIIChormet institute—the Scientific Research Institute for Automation in Ferrous Metallurgy. I proofread their scientific papers. That was the last place they fired me from. The director calls me in and says: “Volodymyr Ivanovych, tell me, what happened to you?” I told him honestly, how it was. “We’ll probably have to part ways with you. We can’t...” Out of grief, I went to the Writers’ Union across the street and told this to, I think, Valentyn Chemerys. I was complaining. And he says: “Listen, I’ll give you a phone number now, call Paschenko, the secretary for propaganda, talk to him.” Paschenko was once the head of the State Committee for Publishing. I dial the number, tell the secretary that it’s the writer Sirenko, I need to speak with Paschenko urgently. She connects me, and I tell him that I’ve had enough, I can’t earn a piece of bread for myself here anymore. (And that was just when the campaign for Jewish emigration was happening). I will leave Ukraine, as painful as it is for me. I can’t live without Ukraine, but I will overcome it because I simply need to exist. I say, I’ll find a use for myself there. He starts shouting at me: “What nonsense are you talking! Where did you work?” “At the Institute for Automation in Ferrous Metallurgy.” “Go to work! And stop making things up! I’ll call them right now. What a stupid idea you’ve got in your head—I’m ashamed for you! Go to work!”

I sat there a bit longer, then went back. The secretary was running all over the corridor: “Where is Sirenko? To the director, urgently!” I go to the director. “Have a seat, Volodymyr Ivanovych.” I sat down. The director was Alekseyev. And his deputy, Savoysky, was there—he had a double-barreled name, I don’t remember the second part. He enters the office. “What are you still doing here? You were fired—why are you hanging around here?” And Alekseyev says: “Calm down. Volodymyr Ivanovych will be working with us.” He fidgeted and fidgeted...

And so I stayed there. I generally got along with everyone, but there was a boss there whom I didn’t like. I met a good friend of mine—his name has also slipped my mind, my memory is drying up... And he says: “Go, my friend Babenko is the academic secretary there (by the way, he died in a plane crash—he was a good man), I’ll talk to him. I think everything will be in order.”

I went to Babenko. He says: “Come back after March 9th and we’ll get the paperwork done.” I was there before March 9th, I don’t remember which year—most likely it was 1971. But I no longer believed, I had lost faith. I said: “Let’s do it now—I have all my documents!” He took my documents to the director, Veselov, and, the blockhead, told him who I was—and the director suddenly hires me! He says: “Write an application.” I wrote the application around March 7th, I think.

This director, Veselov, was a progressive man. A month later, he called me in and said: “Volodymyr Ivanovych, tell me your story.” I told him everything as it was and said: “So, should I write a letter of resignation again?” “Why? No, stay and work.” Perhaps it was influenced by the fact that Paschenko had reported to the KGB that he had found me a job, so they shouldn’t touch me. He said: “No, why—please, work. That’s their business.”

So I remained there. I edited their scientific reports, edited documentation, because the geologists there were sometimes smart, knew their stuff, but couldn’t always write properly.

Then I met Savchenko (he was also wandering around without a job) and said: “Vitia, come to our institute—I think they treat us more or less not with hostility there.” Veselov—that’s it, I remembered the director’s name! He was young and energetic at the time. “They treat me,” I said, “somewhat democratically. Go.” I also remembered that other friend of mine—Mykhailo Blazhenko, who had talked to that academic secretary. I said: “Go, Blazhenko and I will help you with Babenko, the academic secretary. I think he’ll persuade him. Don’t hide that you were convicted.” And Savchenko went to work as a chemist in the laboratory; we worked together for many years. We had a normal relationship. But when they conducted the first search of my home, I was in such a psychological state that I wanted to share it with someone. I came to work in the morning after the search and thought: well, should I tell Savchenko in the laboratory? The devil knows—maybe there’s a listening device there. I thought, I’ll catch him in the corridor, maybe we can talk there. And a first search—it’s a shock! I’ll get back to the search... I say to him in the corridor in a low voice: “Vitia, they searched my place yesterday.” He looked at me and said: “The salvation of the drowning is the work of the drowning themselves.” And he walked away. I stood in the corridor as if someone had hit me on the head with a huge hammer. I had come to him to share, because he had been convicted too... But this didn’t spoil our relationship—I’m the kind of person who forgives a lot.

And later, when the KGB was dragging him in for the case of Ivan Sokulsky (Ivan was in the KGB pre-trial detention center, Mykola Kulchynsky was also there), I met Savchenko on Karl Marx Avenue. We were walking down, and he said: “Volodia, I think they’re going to imprison me.” I said: “Vitia, if they were going to imprison you, you would already be in jail, like Kulchynsky and Sokulsky. Don’t worry.” We went into a bookstore. And I knew—they were following me relentlessly, I could feel it, and it was the same person, I had already acquired conspiratorial experience by then. I started to console him, saying: “Vitia, don’t worry, everything will be alright.” I took into account that they would hear and report: Sirenko was coaching Savchenko before the trial. For some reason, they thought I was leading some kind of underground organization here. Savchenko left, feeling a little relieved. I couldn’t just walk past his trouble. I sympathized with him because he was a sufferer just like me; in such a situation, you have to support him. I know that at a time like this, everyone will shy away from him. And the most terrible thing is when there’s a vacuum around you. I said: “Nothing will happen! You’ll get either a suspended sentence or a fine. Now that you’ve told them what your involvement in the case was, and the very fact that you haven’t been arrested—if they were going to imprison you, you’d already be in jail. But you’re walking free—just a few days before the trial.”

And so we parted ways. We maintained a good relationship, but, no matter how long we worked together, he was too cautious, way too cautious! Especially after the trial. He stopped communicating with everyone. He stopped showing up at Oleksandr Kuzmenko’s, where the Ukrainian community would gather, and generally kept his distance. But I don’t judge people—some have more courage and strength in their character, others have less. It depends on how a person is born.

I also want to say—and this is not about Savchenko—that to everyone who went into dissidence, I used to say: you must know that imprisonment, loss of your job, of everything, of many rights, may await you, and if you feel you can’t endure it—don’t go, because you will harm yourself and cause even greater harm to your comrades. When Yakir repented in the newspaper, I wrote (I was already writing in Ukrainian then, but for some reason I wrote this in Russian):
“Инакомыслящий Якир
задумал перднуть на весь мир –
надумал и наклал в штаны
на удивленье всей страны!
Мораль: коль тонкая кишка –
сиди и пшикай сподтишка!”
(Dissident Yakir / Decided to fart for the whole world to hear— / He decided and shit his pants / To the surprise of the whole country! / The moral: if your gut is weak— / Sit and hiss on the sly!) I often repeated this to them: remember this.

But still, Vitia and I had a very good relationship. After the trial, he distanced himself from everything. True, he didn’t avoid me when we met, and we worked together. He didn’t avoid other people when he met them, but he didn’t seek it out himself.

Then there were summonses, street provocations. Mykola Bereslavsky came to visit me. I came home from work in the evening—a knock at the door. I open it, and there stands Mykola. A small suitcase, a little valise. And what struck me was that he was wearing a padded jacket, some kind of forage cap on his head. But he was a neat dresser, he liked to dress well—here’s a photo, he was so handsome when he was young, such a refined intellectual, dressed well. And he never wore a padded jacket, only when he went to the garden to prune or weed. And when he went to the village center, he would dress up—you could immediately see he was an intellectual. It surprised me that he was in a padded jacket, but I didn’t ask, I said: “Come in. Where are you off to?” “To the doctors in Kyiv.” I said: “Why are you dressed like that?” “Well, for the train...” I said: “Let’s have supper now, we’ll talk.” “I’m going to Kyiv today, I just stopped by. I’ll run to the pharmacy, where is the pharmacy here?” I said: “Right here, over there”—I showed him. He ran off and came back with a handful of medicine. And when he was putting it in his suitcase, I saw a large, folded sheet of Whatman paper. I didn’t ask him what it was, but I saw that sheet of Whatman paper.

We sat down. It was almost time to go to the train, and he tells me: “I’m going to Kyiv to demonstrate, I have posters there: ‘Freedom for the Ukrainian language and culture!’” I started to talk him out of it. I said: “Kolia, you’ll be demonstrating for exactly five minutes—the police, the KGB will come immediately, they’ll throw you into a car and give you five years. Well, a few people will see you. You’re a good publicist, you have a skillful pen—write a work like Ivan Dziuba’s, and leave about three copies on windowsills in universities. It will reach people. Some student will find it, they’ll retype it, and it will spread. You can just leave it at Kyiv University, in the history department or something. They’ll come out and see a manuscript lying there. Then if they catch you, you’ll know what it’s for. But this way—you’re just...” “Ivan Dziuba chose his path, and I have chosen mine.” I tried to persuade him on the way to the station, too—no use. Well, go then—we bought a ticket, get on the train. I put him on the train. Before he got on the carriage, I said: “When you get to Kyiv, the first thing you do is throw away the Dniprodzerzhynsk–Kyiv ticket. You don’t have to report to anyone. Throw it away, because they’ll immediately find out who you were visiting, and they might even say I sent you there.”

And that’s what happened, because he didn’t throw away the ticket. They caught him there and found the ticket: “Aha! He was at Sirenko’s.” And they came to search my place.

V. V. Ovsienko: Let’s establish the date. Bereslavsky’s self-immolation attempt was on February 10, 1969. He entered the lobby of the university’s red building, right?

V. I. Sirenko: I should clarify. He intended to self-immolate, but I only learned that he intended to burn himself at the trial. The judge said that when they detained him, they found two half-liters of gasoline on him.

V. V. Ovsienko: Ah, so he didn’t tell you he was going to self-immolate? Only to demonstrate?

V. I. Sirenko: No, no. To demonstrate. And when they asked him at the trial: “Why did you change the location and go to demonstrate with a placard at the university?” He explained that it was very cold. There were very few people on Khreshchatyk, so he made a different decision. He went to the university to demonstrate just as the students would be coming out. And that’s where they got him. He changed his plans. I learned about this only at the trial, because I was a witness in his case.

And so they come to me, show me a search warrant in the Bereslavsky case. And he had said to me: “Can I leave my passport with you?” I asked: “What for?” He said: “I’ll be coming back and I’ll pick it up.” I said: “Well, let it stay here.” And how did they know his passport was here? They come in and ask: “What of Bereslavsky’s do you have? You have his passport here.” I say: “Yes, he forgot it.” I pretend I don’t know anything. “It was only when,” I say, “I saw him off at the train and came back home, I saw something lying in a piece of paper. I unfolded it, and it was his passport. Well, I thought, he’ll get his treatment and come back.” They turned everything upside down here. They turned everything upside down… There was this Captain Shkonda, he conducted the search all by himself. He went through everything and found three liters of samohon (moonshine). He says: “Well, this is also our business, but I didn’t see this.” I said: “If you didn’t see it, then when we finish the search, we’ll have a glass of samohon.” I could see that this Shkonda didn’t really want to find anything... He had probably found out who I was, and he didn’t want to... If he had been thorough, he would have latched onto the samohon too. But he said: “I didn’t see this.” He went through everything and found Bereslavsky’s letters to me, where he writes that I did the right thing by leaving the Party, that the Party is a criminal organization. That kind of thing, in plain text. They take the letters. I say: “You have no right to take them. This is personal correspondence.” But they took those letters, where it said: “Don’t try to get reinstated, why do you need that criminal organization?” That was my first search.

I was summoned to his trial as a witness. I arrived there, met Nadia; we are from the same village, fellow villagers, we know each other very well.

V. V. Ovsienko: And the trial was on May 30, 1969. The Kyiv Oblast Court.

V. I. Sirenko: Nadia, Bereslavsky’s wife, arrived with bundles. I saw that other villagers were also summoned as witnesses. They didn’t let us in; the trial was closed. But once you had babbled your testimony, you could stay. Some of the villagers didn’t hold up—they spoke against him, that he had studied in Germany, subscribed to German newspapers. After they babbled their piece, those comrades from the village immediately scrammed, but I stayed until the end.

There was another interesting thing there. A man was milling about among the witnesses. In a suit jacket, well-dressed. I said: “You must be from the university, summoned as a witness?” “Yes,” he said, “I’m from the university, I’ll be testifying.” We exchanged a few words like that.

They called me in, I began to testify. And right at the beginning, I said: “Everything for which Mykola Bereslavsky is being tried, I share. I share his views.” The judge and the prosecutor exchanged glances. “Because Russification is happening. Here in Kyiv, it’s only when I go into a magazine’s editorial office or meet some writer that I get to speak Ukrainian. Everywhere else, everyone speaks Russian. Many signs, advertisements, posters—all in Russian. Dear judges, why look far? Just turn around and see what’s written on the door of your deliberation room.” And it was written in Russian. “Why look far—look what’s happening right here in your court.” They looked. “How can you comment on what Bereslavsky wrote to you?” I said: “Let the author of the letters answer that. I will not comment on it and will not comment on it.”

And the very first question, as soon as I walked in, was: “What is your relationship with Bereslavsky?” I said: “We were friends, we are friends, and I will remain friends with him.” I said right away that I shared all his views. This terribly infuriated the judge. When they were processing the paperwork for my travel reimbursement, he shouted: “I will report to the KGB how you behaved here!” I said: “Oh, you’ll surprise them! Go ahead and report.” That’s how the judge and I parted ways. He was shouting terribly there in the chancellery at me.

And an interesting thing: there were soldiers with automatic rifles standing in the corners—a performance. The head of the guard was a young lieutenant. At first, these guards looked at Bereslavsky with such malice: an enemy is sitting there. But when I spoke, when Bereslavsky spoke, I noticed, sitting in the hall, that the guards, these boys, relaxed, their whole demeanor changed. The lieutenant also relaxed. And when the trial ended, I approached this lieutenant and said: “Dear comrade, you must be a Ukrainian too?” He said: “I am Ukrainian.” I said: “Did you hear what’s going on here? This,” I said, “is a Ukrainian patriot. You’re guarding him, so take this package for him. When you’re putting him in the car...” He said: “Alright, I’ll do it.” And he did, that lieutenant. His wife passed him some food. Those villagers had all fled; I was the only one who stayed until the very end. Nadia and I then got on a train and went back.

But before that, I was summoned to the Oblast KGB Directorate in Kyiv. I remember Berestovsky.

V. V. Ovsienko: Oh, I know Berestovsky!

V. I. Sirenko: Was he a captain or something?

V. V. Ovsienko: Yes, a captain.

V. I. Sirenko: They put me up in a hotel at the beginning of Vasylkivska Street. What was it called?

V. V. Ovsienko: On Vasylkivska—it must be the “Myr” hotel.

V. I. Sirenko: Oh, yes. I come back after the first interrogation, and there’s some fellow already lying on the cot. He tells me he’s a machine operator from Kherson. But I noticed that he was lying there, holding a book, but his hands—even I have calluses—I saw his hands were so pampered. He didn’t look like a machine operator—I’m from a village, after all. He says to me: “Let me go get a bottle of good wine and we’ll talk, have a drink.” I said: “I’ve just been talking with Satan, I feel so shitty. I just bought a piece of sausage, I’ll eat it and go to sleep.” I put my briefcase under my head and went to sleep. In the morning, the “machine operator” was gone.

The next day, the same questions again. Berestovsky got furious and said on the third day: “We’ve already torn up two protocols. You’re not testifying to what we need!” And I said: “What did you think—that I came 500 kilometers to slander my fellow villager, my friend? I won’t do that—you should know.” The last time he asked: “And what do you think about him, and how do you this and that?” I said: “You talk to him about that. Ask him what you’re interested in.” I gave him the best character reference, which didn’t suit them. They kept me for three days, and it was from morning till evening—they’re writing. And on the third day, around noon, they say that we’re going to the Republican KGB Directorate now.

V. V. Ovsienko: And this interrogation took place on Rozy Lyuksemburh Street, at the oblast directorate?

V. I. Sirenko: Yes.

V. V. Ovsienko: Leonid Ivanovych Berestovsky started my case in 1973, he handled it for about a month and a half...

V. I. Sirenko: A well-dressed, lean man.

V. V. Ovsienko: Yes, with pretensions of being an intellectual.

V. I. Sirenko: The name stuck with me because they were so similar—Bereslavsky and Berestovsky. We get in a car, they take me to 33 Volodymyrska Street, lead me into the basement, and say: “There will now be a confrontation with Bereslavsky.” “Alright,” I say.

They bring Mykola in, sit him at a table bolted to the floor, on a similar chair. I stood up and asked: “May I greet him?” I stood up, went over to him, shook his hand, and put my arm around his shoulder a bit. He doesn’t know what state I’m in here—maybe I’m arrested too?

He asks the first question: “During the search of Mykola Bereslavsky’s home, we found poems by Mykola Kholodny written in Bereslavsky’s hand. He said that you rewrote them for him. Did you give them to him?” They want to pin me with distribution, and Mykola doesn’t know. I say: “Mykola Bereslavsky is confusing something—I didn’t rewrite anything for him. I might have recited them to him from memory. And Bereslavsky has a phenomenal memory; he could have written them down. I didn’t rewrite anything for him.” This major starts pressing me—was it Volovyk, short and fat...

V. V. Ovsienko: There was such a name in the KGB.

V. I. Sirenko: And I, not so much to get him in trouble as to give information to Mykola, say: “Why are you raising your voice at me? I’m not a suspect, you summoned me as a witness—why are you raising your voice at me?” “Alright, let’s not talk about that!” But I said it so that Mykola would get his bearings, understand who I was, what my status was here.

Mykola corrected himself and began to deny everything—everything they accused him of, he began to refute. The confrontation was a failure. “Alright, Volodymyr Ivanovych, you can go.” I say: “May I say goodbye?” I went up, took his hands, and said: “Mykola, hold on—I was and remain your friend. Hold on!” And this inspired him; he left. And Volovyk says to me: “Well, you’re a tough nut to crack!” I say: “What does being a tough nut have to do with it? You asked me to tell the truth—I told you the truth. To lie, and to slander my friend, my fellow villager—never! I can’t do that. You want to cook up a case, and I’m supposed to help you? You won’t live to see the day—I’m telling you what is. And that’s how I spoke with him just now. He’s under pressure, maybe you even gave him some drugs, maybe he said something wrong—I corrected him.”

The second search was in the case of Mykola Kholodny. I corresponded with him. And when Kholodny was arrested...

V. V. Ovsienko: Kholodny was arrested in 1972, but not on January 12, on February 20.

V. I. Sirenko: Yes, yes, yes. They come here—a search in the Kholodny case. Lieutenant Husak and either a major or lieutenant colonel, Solomin, arrived—two of them. They take my poems—they only found one letter from Kholodny. I gave it to them; it was innocuous. I see them putting my poems aside. I say: “And where are you putting those?” “We’ll enter them into the protocol.”

V. V. Ovsienko: Volodymyr Sirenko, second cassette, April 1, 2001, we continue.

V. I. Sirenko: I say: “No, you will only take what pertains to Kholodny—that’s what your search warrant says. You have no right to take my poems.” “And what about your diary, do we have the right to take it?” “The diary—even less so! You don’t even have the right to read it.” I didn’t know the Code of Criminal Procedure yet, that you couldn’t take it out—I intuitively sensed the law and said you couldn’t. He picks up the phone and calls: “It’s like this, there’s a diary, there are poems.” “Is he protesting?” “Yes, he’s protesting.” The person on the other end said something to him, and he gives everything back to me. So they left with just one letter.

But what’s interesting? We had lost the keys to the apartment. My daughter and I turned everything upside down—couldn’t find them. And as they were rummaging somewhere, they ask: “And what are these keys?” I say: “Now I see the benefit of searches. The whole family was looking for them and couldn't find them!” They found a portrait of Stalin at my place, a magazine from the time he died. They say: “Oh, Volodymyr Ivanovych, you’re keeping a portrait of Stalin!” “Why are you surprised? What’s happening today is right in the spirit of Stalinism. You’ve come to a place where Stalin is revered.”

And here’s the most interesting part. Husak is standing here by the table and reading my poem “The Antisemite.” He reads it and says: “Volodymyr Ivanovych, do you know that in Israel, they would give you a state prize for this poem?” And I say to him: “Comrade Husak, you’re not giving me any work—so would you be so kind as to petition the government of Israel to award me this prize? Then I would have money and no complaints against you.” He smiled, but did nothing.

This KGB agent, Husak, later went to the university, became a dean, and educated the new generation of independent Ukraine. I had an encounter with him. I’m getting into an elevator at the university, some women are standing there, and Husak runs in with some book. The women ask him: “Did you buy a new book?” “Yes, I bought this political economy textbook, a new edition. You know, how they used to feed us bullshit, how they lied to us about the economy back then. I just looked through this—completely different views! How they brainwashed us, how they deceived us!” He doesn’t see me, and I speak up from behind him: “Comrade Husak, if I had said something like that ten years ago when you were in the KGB, you would have let me rot in Mordovia!” He turned around—and there I am, standing behind him! And just then the elevator stops on some floor—maybe he didn’t even need to get out, but he shot out of the elevator like a bullet! And the women ask: “What was that?” “He’s from the KGB—don’t you know? He conducted searches at my place.” “No way! Seriously?” “Seriously. And now, you see, he’s educating people, our next generation, and speaking heresy—what a democrat, what a brave man!”

So I had two searches. There were many summonses. For example, when they needed to conduct a search. I’m leaving the train station, and two men in civilian clothes approach me by the tram... No, first, two policemen: “May we have a word with you? Let’s go to the city police department.” “On what occasion?” “A girl was killed with a briefcase exactly like yours, and we need to inspect your briefcase.” “Let’s go.” We get in the car, I say: “Just don’t take long, I have to get to work.” We get there: “Empty everything out of your briefcase.” I take out a stack of papers. A major, the head of the investigative department, reaches for one notebook. I slap his hand: “Don’t touch that,” I say, “inspect the briefcase.” They say: “Ah, well, alright, this isn’t the one.”

The next day, I go out into the street again—and now two men in civilian clothes approach: “With a briefcase like that...” I say: “Yesterday, accompanied by two policemen, I was at...” and I name the head of the investigative department, “...with this briefcase. This briefcase has already been inspected.” They laughed, threw up their hands: “Alright, on your way.” They had a mix-up: they hadn’t been told it had already been inspected.

There was a lot of that: being accosted on the street, being provoked into a fight. I always endured it patiently, I knew that, God forbid, I even pushed that provocateur in the shoulder, policemen would sprout from the ground, and that would be it—they would write that this truth-lover is a hooligan. Or they would write that I was drunk. I always endured it. There were many such provocations. But the main thing was the summonses, summonses, summonses.

In the seventies, my book *Father’s Field* was published. How? Voice of America very often broadcast about me, that they weren’t giving me work, that they were persecuting me, not publishing me as a poet. Radio Liberty broadcast in Ukrainian, Voice of America, even Deutsche Welle broadcast once. And as soon as there was a broadcast—the next morning I’d be summoned to the Oblast Committee secretary. That meant he already had what they called an “intercept” on his desk. I once asked: “Are these some kind of secret documents that you have to intercept them? Everyone listens to this ‘intercept.’” “That’s just our terminology.”

We had Vasilyev—the Oblast Committee secretary for ideology—a Russian. But what I liked about him was this. By then, the head of the KGB was no longer Mazhara, but Shchekoturov. He (Vasilyev or Shchekoturov?) was a Party official. He ended up “going crazy”—he had schizophrenia, they removed him, this general. But you could talk to those two. Take Vasilyev: if he promised something—a purely Russian trait—he would definitely do it. He wasn't afraid of anything: he wasn't Ukrainian—you couldn't pin nationalism on him, no matter what he said. Sometimes he would say things that I thought were a provocation. He wasn't afraid, he said things straight out. And Shchekoturov was a bit democratic for his time, and most importantly, he was a smart man, not a drill sergeant. He came from the ranks of Party workers, and Party workers like to tell a joke... When I was still an editor, I was at a party with them across the Dnipro, and I heard plenty of political jokes. I saw them bring girls and stomp all over them to the music, like roosters... I knew the life of the nomenklatura well. I’d listen to their jokes and think: you could take any one of them and build a case.

He (Vasilyev or Shchekoturov?) says: “Volodymyr Ivanovych, we need to give a rebuttal to our ideological enemies.” This was for “counter-propaganda.” “What’s the matter?” “Well, there’s an intercept...” I say: “Go on, read it.” He reads. He reads one paragraph, I ask: “Is it true?” “It’s true.” He reads the second. “Is it true?” “It’s true,”—this is Vasilyev. He reads the third, the last one. “Is it true?” “It’s true.” I say: “Look, General Shchekoturov always calls on me to be an honest citizen of the Soviet Union, and now you want to rape me, to make me refute the truth. If there were at least something to latch onto, I would write.” “Volodymyr Ivanovych, we will publish your response, you will immediately have a job wherever you want, in a newspaper... What kind of apartment do you have?” “A two-room.” “You,” he says, “will immediately have a three-room apartment, and not in Dniprodzerzhynsk, but we will give you an apartment in Dnipropetrovsk, so you don’t have to commute here. But you have to renounce your convictions and, to some extent, condemn your like-minded associates.” I say: “Ivan Vasilyevich, do you know what you are calling on me to do? I would have to go out to Lenin Square in front of the department store, strip naked, take a broom, dip it in shit, and publicly—gathering as many people as possible—beat myself on the ass with this broom, on the ass!” I say: “No, I don’t want an apartment, or money, or anything by such methods. This is an extremely indecent, exceptionally indecent method of obtaining any benefits. Now,” I say, “if there were something to latch onto here, I would write that they are liars. I am an honest man. But everything there is true.”

I think it was Shchekoturov who asked: “And how do they get this material about you?” I say: “I will gladly tell you about that path.” He perked up: “How?” I say: “I have a hundred friends in Kyiv, about fifty in Leningrad, about fifty in Moscow. As soon as I am summoned to the KGB or anything happens, I immediately call them from a long-distance phone, or if I can, from my home phone, and tell them everything. So look among those two hundred people for who is passing it on. I don’t pass it on myself; I don’t have a radio station.” And then I say: “You say they don’t publish me. Well, then publish me. Those who broadcast will see that they are lying, and those who listen to them will see that they are lying. That’s how you should refute them.”

They exchanged glances and Vasilyev asked: “Do you have manuscripts lying around in any newspaper offices?” I said: “I do.” But I didn’t. “Is there a manuscript at the publishing house?” “There is.” “One moment, I’ll be right back.” Apparently, he ran to the secretary to consult, or maybe even higher up on the direct line. Shchekoturov and I are sitting, talking about this and that. He runs back in: “Volodymyr Ivanovych, we are going to publish you.” He shakes my hand. I say: “Good. That’s how you should refute things, not by me beating my own ass with a broom. And now,” I say, “I have one more request. General Shchekoturov’s snitch is constantly breathing down my neck. I ask you to stop this. If after all these years you haven’t figured out who I am, then your service and you yourself aren’t worth a damn.” Shchekoturov thought for a moment, then said: “I’ll give the order.” No, first he said: “Volodymyr Ivanovych, you’re having some kind of delusion.” I said: “Maybe you’ll also try to frame me as needing to go to Iren (that’s the psychiatric hospital), that I’m not of sound mind? You won’t succeed. Let’s do it this way,” I say, “comrade general, you’re not a young man anymore, we are men, let’s be frank. You always call on me to be frank—so let’s be frank.” He was silent for a moment and then: “Alright, I’ll give the order.”

I rush home—I don’t have any manuscripts in any editorial offices—and I sit up until morning, banging out poems in three copies, and pulled out one retyped short story. By nine o’clock, I was already at the editorial offices. Well, the guys there treated me well. I told them about the meeting yesterday, that I had blatantly lied. “Leave it.” And then, a week later, I see a short story in the newspaper *Prapor Yunosti* (Banner of Youth), then I see *Zoria* (The Star) published a selection of poems. And then Knyshov, the director of the “Sich” publishing house—it was “Promin” back then—calls me and says: “Volodia, get over here quickly, there’s an order to publish your book.” They edited it; my editor was Volodia Mishchenko, maybe you know him? A good man, I was lucky, he edited three of my books. A very good person. When I was in exile, he even sent me money for my birthday. There was another Lithuanian with me there: “You and your Aidis can have a drink for your birthday.”

I submitted the book and was about to go on vacation when Mishchenko calls me: “The Oblast Committee has taken your book. Go to the Oblast Committee.” I go. And there was this Petrenko—he later headed the national commission for radio and television. Back then he was an instructor or department head. He started crossing things out: wherever the word “Ukraine” appeared, he changed it all to “Motherland,” wherever there was the word “Ukrainian,” “Cossack”—he crossed all of it out, wherever there was a Ukrainian spirit in a poem. At least “Motherland” fit the rhyme and rhythm. I managed to defend two poems. The next day I went to the publishing house. Viktor Korzh and Mishchenko are sitting there. Petrenko comes in: “Volodymyr Ivanovych, you’ll have to remove the ‘Mother’ cycle.” At this point, I went on the attack. I said: “To you, *Parteigenosse* Petrenko, nothing is dear—not your mother, not your Motherland, only that chair you were recently placed in, where your ass is getting warm, and your salary, your briefcase—nothing else interests you, I’m convinced.” And this was their boss—Korzh grabbed his head, sat puffing in the corner, and Mishchenko was bursting with laughter, he bit down on his jacket like this, choking with laughter, but holding it back. He left. Then Mishchenko just roared with laughter! And he says to me: “Come back tomorrow, I think we can sort it out.” I did manage to save that “Mother” cycle.

I asked this Petrenko: “Viktor Mykhailovych, why are you trying so hard, why such meticulousness?” “Volodymyr Ivanovych, your book is being awaited not only here.” I understood. And then there was this phrase: “Volodymyr Ivanovych, why are you being so stubborn? Look, I’ve only been working here a short time, they gave me a task, I have to complete it—why are you being so stubborn?” And I’m sitting across from him and I say: “Viktor Mykhailovych, you want to build your career on my back? Not a chance, not a damn chance you’ll build that career! I’m,” I say, “withdrawing the book, taking back the manuscript!” And I’m about to leave when he says: “Volodymyr Ivanovych, don’t be so hot-headed, we’ll sort everything out, we’ll sort it out.” Then I thought, if there hadn’t been an order from above to publish my book, he would have said: “Fine, take it.” But instead, he latched on: “No, no, don’t, don’t.” So I started to act more brazenly—and I saved many poems. The radio stations over there talked about this book then. That’s how my book was published.

V. V. Ovsienko: And what year was it published?

V. I. Sirenko: It was published in 1981. “Promin” publishing house, *Father’s Field*, Dnipropetrovsk. Some people were surprised then, maybe some became suspicious that they were harassing me—and suddenly a book comes out. But it came out in such a way, as counter-propaganda. When a book by a local author is released, the bookstore gets 120 copies, but of mine, only 60 arrived. I went to the oblast book trade office, and they said: “Part of the print run went,” he gestures, “over there...” He didn’t say where—just over there... Then I understood that it had gone, apparently, abroad, as counter-propaganda.

Despite the book being published, the surveillance on me continued. In 1984, they opened a case against me. I later found out why they hadn’t opened it earlier. I think I’ve already told the story of how a KGB officer protected me?

V. V. Ovsienko: You told that story off the recorder, please tell it again here.

V. I. Sirenko: Ah, yes. I was always surprised that they would say: “Well, Volodymyr Ivanovych, we are protecting you, we want to make sure you don’t step out of line, don’t get involved in some organization, that you don’t pass on any poems, we wish you well,”—they often told me things like that. But in Kyiv, the head of counterintelligence at the Republican KGB was a childhood friend of mine. We grew up on the same street, played in the same dust—Mykhailo Ivanovych Haviaz, a colonel. And what is the head of counterintelligence? He’s the right-hand man of the KGB chief. Their primary job is control. In fact, everything essentially boiled down to that. He told me about this later. He came to the village, we sat down in the evening, had a drink, and I said: “Mykhailo, I have a suspicion that you influenced my fate somehow. They would have dragged me off to Mordovia for that first book without any discussion.” He tells me: “When your case started, they called me from the oblast directorate: ‘We’re not even asking if you know Sirenko. We know you’re from the same village, grew up on the same street from the time you were little until you went off to study. He visited you,’—they know everything—‘stayed overnight with you in Kyiv, already a persecuted man. Now he’s written such and such poems, we’ve opened a case on him. What can you say?’ And he says: ‘Sirenko is our man. His father worked in Soviet positions—chairman of the raion executive committee, in the village council, chairman of a kolkhoz, head of a consumer cooperative. He is our man. His only flaw is that he loves the truth too much. Many people love the truth, but he,’ he says, ‘also talks about it, because he’s very talkative. Whatever he thinks, he says. He’s at an age where you won’t change him. And I would ask you not to resort to harsh measures, but to conduct prophylactic work with him.’ There’s this concept of ‘prophylactic work.’ ‘It’s your duty, and I reported it to Fedorchuk just like that, that we will be ‘prophylacting’ him.’ And that’s what saved me from Mordovia. They were afraid, they thought: the devil knows, he’s Fedorchuk’s right-hand man, maybe they have a very good relationship, and if we mess up here, don’t fulfill his request, someone’s stars will fall, we’ll fall out of favor. So in this respect, Mykhailo did a good deed—he cunningly saved me from Mordovia.”

But in 1983, Mykhailo retired. In 1984, they began to fabricate a case against me. It’s a short story. I was working at the Institute of Mineral Resources and was in charge of the document processing department. That means I had typists, an “Era” typewriter, a blueprint machine, a photo lab—all women. And then they hung another thing on me—maybe on instructions from the KGB, to have a hook on me—providing the institute with accounting forms. That means payment checks, payroll sheets. I got in touch with a printing house in the town of Kobeliaky, where the director was a Volodymyr Ivanovych—I don’t know if he’s still alive, but if he is, may God grant him a long life, a decent man. I started bringing him orders.

By then, there were already problems with paper. He says there’s no paper—and we haven’t received any either. I say: “Volodymyr Ivanovych, please, do it on scrap paper, on anything you have, and when we bring a roll, you can count it off from that.” He did that more than once. One day I went into their accounting office and saw them clicking away on abacuses. I went to our head of procurement and said: “In the printing house’s accounting department, they’re still using abacuses. We have some written-off calculators, taken off the books. Let’s give them to our lab, the guys in automation will fix them up, clean the contacts with alcohol, get them into working condition, they’ll pick two out of fifty, and I’ll take them and give them to their accounting department. They do us favors—why not do them one?” He said: “Go ahead.” There was this Jew named Patlakh. He’s the one who wrote the denunciation against me. I called him Padlakh [scum]. Whether he was forced to, or did it himself—I don’t know.

I took them. And they latched onto that and started to dig up a case that I had written off the calculators, processed them, and handed them over to this director for money. The director of the printing house said during the investigation: “There was no money. True, because he did us a favor, we filled his order first. And I just liked him as a person. We got along.” But they cooked up a case and sent it to court. The judge was Lysenko.

V. V. Ovsienko: And what level of court was it?

V. I. Sirenko: Raion court, the Amur-Nyzhnyodniprovsky Raion. The trial proceeds like this. The building is surrounded by police, by druzhinniki. The session is practically closed; they don’t let people in. But the guys broke through, and Borys Dovhaliuk was at the trial. The questioning goes on—and nothing is against me, the whole investigation is falling apart against the witnesses. They sent Lebedev, the chief engineer of the institute, to the trial. The court wrote to the institute to send either a public defender or a prosecutor. The director wrote: “Chief Engineer so-and-so is being sent to the court.” So the judge asks: “Is Lebedev here?” “Yes.” “And in what capacity were you sent here?” “How the hell should I know! They told me to go—so I went.” He played the fool, Zhora Lebedev. The geologists there—it was a democratic institute. Everyone came to my defense.

And most importantly, the thing without which you couldn't make the soup—there was no lawsuit. To hold a trial, you need a lawsuit—either from a private individual claiming I stole something from them, or from an organization. They call our accountant as a witness. A good woman. “What claim are you filing against comrade Sirenko?” She says: “No claim at all—the calculator was written off, taken off the books. Well, let him pay three or five rubles for the scrap metal—and we’re even.” Laughter in the courtroom. Then the judge turned to one of the nodders, then to the other nodder—I really like that term, “nodders.” I didn’t know it at first, but then the prisoners told me what “nodders” are.

V. V. Ovsienko: Those are the “people’s assessors” who just nod their heads?

V. I. Sirenko: Yes, I was very pleased. The judge says: “The court is adjourned until tomorrow.” It fell apart—there wasn’t even a state prosecutor.

We arrive the next day. The session is scheduled for ten o’clock—no session. Eleven o’clock—nothing. Twelve o’clock—nothing. And only at one o’clock does the judge come out and say: “The continuation of the trial will be announced later.”

As my defender later whispered to me—and my defender was such a fish nor fowl that I dismissed him and defended myself: “For those four hours, they were persuading Judge Lysenko to continue the case. But he flatly refused. He said he would not conduct such a case—there is no case, he will not falsify it.” And they didn’t touch him; he remained in his position.

Then they transfer the case to the head of the court, Prytulyak. He had already organized a state defender and everything. Although everything was going in my favor, he dictated the protocol to the secretary and still managed to slap me with two and a half years of forced labor. I didn’t travel under guard, no—while they took Taras Shevchenko to those parts with some feldjager...

V. V. Ovsienko: They took him from St. Petersburg to the Orsk fortress in eight days!

V. I. Sirenko: But they gave me a document telling me where I had to report. I got on the Barnaul train and went to Astrakhan.

V. V. Ovsienko: It says here that the trial was in May 1985—do you remember the date? Do you have the verdict, perhaps?

V. I. Sirenko: The twenty-third. They didn’t give me the verdict. And in June, I was already on my way. When the investigator first summoned me: “Volodymyr Ivanovych, you are being charged…”

V. V. Ovsienko: And under what article? What number? Was it “theft of state property”?

V. I. Sirenko: Yes, “Theft of State Property” and “Forgery of Documents.” The investigator, Goryachev, summoned me for the first time—a young, agile guy. They told him to get on with it. He said he was charging me. I asked, in what case—in this one. I prove to him: this exists, but that doesn’t, this exists, that doesn’t. “Is there a fact of theft?” He says there isn’t. “Do you have proven fact that I committed forgery?” “No.” “Is there abuse of office?” “No.” “So what do you want? Well, go on then.” And he ran happily to his boss—he wanted to get rid of this case. But they told him: watch out, this is a KGB operation—get on with it, Goryachev. He summons me the next day—and what does he do? He picks up the phone, dials one, and says: “Volodymyr Ivanovych, your case isn’t worth a damn. We have so many unsolved cases in the raion—murders, real thefts worth millions. And I have to spend time on this? I’ve already summoned witnesses, they are testifying in your favor—and I’m supposed to stretch this out? But, Volodymyr Ivanovych, they are standing behind me.” I say: “Are you playing the role of a lackey?” He smiled and said: “Yes.” I say: “Well, what can you do—that’s how the organization is.” When he summoned me with my defender and let me familiarize myself with the case—everything was on my side. He wrote it down exactly as it was, this investigator.

V. V. Ovsienko: So the whole truth was recorded in the case file?

V. I. Sirenko: The whole truth was recorded. He said so himself: “Volodymyr Ivanovych, read it. Everything here is in your favor.” I had no objections. But they were still pulling his strings.

When I arrived in Astrakhan, I was supposed to register at a dormitory for “chemists.” I arrived exhausted. They were supposed to send me to a chemical plant that was under construction. Mosquitos there, swamps... I arrived at the oblast directorate in the evening. A captain was on duty there. The Fifth Department, responsible for the “execution of sentences.” I told him my story, showed him my little book, said I was a poet, that the KGB guys had done this to me, that it was no case at all. “I ask only one thing of you—you are an enforcer, don’t send me to the construction site. Send me to some raion, anywhere—maybe leave me here in Astrakhan, but don’t send me to the construction site. I have chronic bronchitis, I can’t be in those swamps.” He says: “Spend the night in one of the dormitories, I’ll write you a note now, and come back tomorrow morning.”

I come back. I see he’s already treating me warmly—maybe he already made a call. And the militsiya pathologically hates the KGB—it’s a pathological hatred! Because they do all their dirty work for them. And they also control them. I come in the morning, he says to me: “Volodymyr Ivanovych, go to the brick factory outside Astrakhan.” I trudge through those sand dunes—I got there by noon. And the boss there looked at my medical records: “Who did he send me? I need someone to haul bricks in the gas here—who did he send me? He sent an intellectual, a poet! Go back.” He wrote him a note saying I wasn’t suitable for him.

I return to this captain. He says: “Volodymyr Ivanovych, go to the raion center of Kamyzyak. The construction boss there is a good man—he’ll find some work for you somewhere.” I arrive tired in the evening, go to this major—a stout man is sitting there, he has a kind face, you can see he has a nose for things—who’s an intellectual, and who’s who. I entered the office: “Hello, I’ve arrived to report to you.” He understood from two phrases: “Have a seat.” He doesn’t invite the criminals like that. “Well, tell me what’s going on.” I hand him the referral. “Doesn’t look right, tell me the story.” I tell him the whole story. He says: “Stitched-up condoms, bastards! They don’t prosecute for something like that, either you’re confused, or they’re up to something.” I say to him: “Comrade Major,”—his last name was Bulych—“I’m terribly tired, let me stay the night and you think about it. While I have money, I’ll walk around, get acquainted with the raion, and when my case file arrives—it will follow me—you’ll read it and understand everything.”

Indeed, for about five days I just walk around, only sleeping at the dormitory. And suddenly he summons me: “Have a seat, Volodymyr Ivanovych. Yes, you were right, those bastards did this. Volodymyr Ivanovych, my dormitory commandant is leaving—will 80 rubles be enough for you to eat?” I say: “Completely.” “You won’t be here long anyway. Do you have clothes?” “That,” I say, “suits me completely.” “Your duties will be: to register when someone returns from work, whether they were at work according to the assignments. Everyone is checked off. And,” he says, “to oversee some household matters. I’ll give you some helpers, I’ll put you in a good room.” I say: “It’s a deal.” And so I performed the duties of a dormitory commandant.

V. V. Ovsienko: And who lived there? These “chemists,” right?

V. I. Sirenko: “Chemists,” yes. They worked with concrete there. Later, I helped out a Lithuanian there—got him off the concrete work. I was free. I’d send the men off to work in the morning and walk around all day. At five o’clock they would return, I’d be sitting at the window, the man on duty would be here, I’d check off, look at what the foreman had marked—he was at work. There were Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Turkmens—when they found out that I knew the Code, was legally savvy, that I had a higher education, a university degree, they started coming to me to write complaints. They wore me out. I was already living in the same room with this Lithuanian, Gaidis. I’m lying down, a knock: “Volodia, the petitioners have arrived.” I say: “Let them in.” I take their verdicts, read them. The flow became especially large after I wrote a complaint for one guy and he was pardoned. This spread throughout the whole collective—they started flocking to me. And when packages would arrive, they would bring me dried apricots, sausage.

And so one time, the major asks me, “Volodymyr Ivanovych, are you their mullah or something?” I say, “What do you mean?” “Well, you’ll be walking with Haidis,” he says, “I’ve been watching. You’re walking with Haidis, and three Uzbeks in striped robes are coming the other way. They step off to the side of the road, fold their hands like this, and greet you. What are you, their mullah?” I burst out laughing and said, “What are you talking about, Comrade Major? I just,” I say, “write various petitions for them.” That’s how I spent my time there, writing and writing and writing to everyone. The replies that came back were standard.

And when the 27th Party Congress was taking place, I wrote to the Presidium. I had written to the republican court, and someone sent me this “ruling” which, in essence, acknowledged that I was innocent. I had a friend from Dnipropetrovsk there, Vasya Zemlyany. Apparently, the case landed on his desk, and he and his colleagues cobbled together this “ruling.” They took a year off my sentence. I showed it to the major, and he says, “Listen, retype it in several copies and send it everywhere—everyone here is for you!” I wrote a long letter to the Presidium of the 27th Party Congress and attached this “ruling.” A letter arrives: Prosecutor General Rekunkov has filed a protest to annul all judicial decisions in my case, and the case has been sent to the Supreme Court of Ukraine. Sometime in May, I get a letter that the Supreme Court has annulled all judicial decisions. I’m overjoyed. I show it to the major, and he says, “Vladimir Ivanovich”—I was the only one there he addressed formally—“I would let you go right now, but until I get a paper like that… Go catch fish in the Volga”—the spawning season had just begun—“go and catch fish.”

I’ve remembered this for the rest of my life… I went to a Kazakh aul nearby. Just before I had left Kaminske, my father had died. And this was the anniversary of his death. I bought a bag full of candy. Kazakh women with their children were waiting for bread, chattering in their own language. I don’t understand what they’re saying. I took a handful of candy and said, “We Orthodox Slavs have a custom: to commemorate the dead.” So I give a handful to each of the children. They’re saying something like, “Allah, Allah.” I handed it all out. One woman comes up to me and says, “We’ve heard here in the aul that there’s a Ukrainian writer living at the special commandant’s office, sent here by the KGB for telling the truth.” I say, “Well, that’s me. But,” I say, pulling out the certificate, “I’ll be going home soon.” She snatched that certificate out of my hand and started running in circles, shouting something to them in Kazakh. They all went, “Allah, Allah.” She was apparently telling them that I would be going home soon. Later, I visited another Kazakh woman, and she poured me some milk and refused to take any money for it.

I’m walking back to the dormitory across the dunes, carrying this milk and candy, and I’m choked with tears. And I wrote a poem that, wherever I recite it, never leaves people indifferent.

Чорна, згорблена казашка

У землянці край села

Молока мені у пляшку

За "спасибі" налила.

Степом вицвілим, гарячим,

По барханах дві версти

Молоко несу і плачу

Від людської доброти.

That’s the kind of stories life gives you. I got back to the dormitory and gave the guys the candy. But drinking wasn’t allowed there. I went and secretly got a bottle, and we sat down. I had a corner partitioned off, where I kept my books. I set up my father’s photograph, lit a small candle, and the guys and I secretly commemorated my father, had a hundred grams each, and sat for a while.

The entire militsiya, all the guards, treated me like one of their own. Until this happened. One lieutenant says to me, “Your file and that of one other worker have been taken to the special department of the district KGB.” I got indignant, thinking, “To hell with it, what is this!” I went to see the chief. I go in, and some guy, either a Ptitsyn or a Kuritsyn, is sitting there. “Tell him Sirenko is here.” I walk in, he greets me cordially, and we start talking. I ask, “Did you take my file?” “Who told you that? What for?” I say, “Comrade Lieutenant Colonel”—I think he was a lieutenant colonel—“look, we’re almost the same age, why the hell should we beat around the bush? You got a request from the Dnipropetrovsk KGB to write a report on my behavior here.” Then he says, “Vladimir Ivanovich, I have already spoken with people, with the convicts. I will only write good things about you. Besides, what do I need you for here? You’re a temporary person here, and look, I’ve got leaflets being distributed, deserters still hiding in the reeds. What do I need you for? I’ve got my own problems up to here. I’ll write a good report on you.” Then he pauses and says, “Volodymyr Ivanovych, would you consider cooperating with me? What the militsiya is saying, what the convicts are saying—you could inform me periodically. We already have information that the militsiya is up to this and that…” I realized immediately that they already had their own snitch in the militsiya. I burst out laughing and said, “Comrade Lieutenant Colonel, if that was my line of work, I wouldn’t have ended up here. I’d be back in Dnipropetrovsk, and in a good position, too.” “Well, then, Volodymyr Ivanovych, I’ll see you out. Do stop by anyway.”

We started reminiscing about our post-war childhoods, and the conversation became more human. Maybe he took a liking to me—we parted on very warm terms. He even walks me out to the street, and as we say goodbye, he puts his arm around my shoulder. Just then, the director of our enterprise drives by with our major, Bulychov, and they see this scene: a KGB agent with his arm around my shoulder. Before that, the director looked at me like I was the devil, but now when he sees me, he shakes my hand like a long-lost brother. The major wasn’t a surprise—he had always treated me well. But he, too, probably thought I had gone to work for the KGB.

So I’m walking away from the KGB headquarters and thinking. I hate them. The word “communist” today for me… It’s like what Goebbels said, that when he hears the word “culture,” he wants to reach for his gun. That’s how I feel when I hear “communist” or “KGB agent”—I want to grab a machine gun too. There has never been a viler organization in the entire history of the world! Hitler, for example, destroyed others, not his own, but these ones exterminated more of their own than of others. It was built on the most despicable foundations. Everything that is black and vile in this world—that is the policy of the Party.

V. V. Ovsiyenko: Well, “their own”—how were we their own? That was an occupying power.

V. I. Sirenko: No, I mean that they destroyed their own people in Russia. I’m walking and thinking, “Well, what’s the deal? Whatever it is, it’s a home, I live here. I still have to respect those who have created the conditions for me to live. They treat me well.”

I arrive. Bulychov’s deputy was Major Trus—a tall man with a phallus-shaped nose. He knew Russian, English—and he knew English well, at that—but what he knew best were swear words.

V. V. Ovsiyenko: “Oh, the great, mighty, beautiful Russian language!”

V. I. Sirenko: He knew cant well, but his cursing was sublime. In the morning, he’d line up 200 men before sending them to work: “Men!—*Curse word.*—You think you can fool me, pull the wool over my eyes?—*Curse word.*—It won’t work!—*Curse word.*—The only way is to confess honestly. I like directness.”—And more curses. That’s how he was in front of the formation. I went to him and said, “Comrade Major, I need to talk to you. I was at the KGB yesterday, and the chief spoke with me. From our conversation, I understood that you have a snitch among your militsiya officers. He fed me information that only an officer could have known.” He says, “I have a guess who it is”—there was a certain captain. I say, “He tried to recruit me as a snitch—I refused flatly. I told him straight out that if I were involved in that kind of thing, and they tried to recruit me often in Dnipropetrovsk, I wouldn’t have come here.” He says, “Thank you, Vladimir Ivanovich, for telling me. Listen, you meet with him, don’t you? When you meet with him, will you report to us what he says about us?” I burst out laughing. “Comrade Major, that’s re-recruitment,” I say. “And I won’t work for you either. I respect you, you’ve treated me like a human being—this is my home, such as it is, but I have no moral right to foul this house. It’s about where I live and who I associate with. I don’t need him for a hundred years. But I won’t serve you either, because it goes against my morals.” I refused.

After that, I saw that the militsiya loved me even more! When they went fishing, they’d take me fishing. When they went for a picnic, they’d take me. On Saturdays and Sundays, some officer would take me to his home to spend the night, to play with his children there. They changed completely. Well, Bulychov—he let out a string of curses about five stories high aimed at the KGB. That’s how I served out my time there.

I returned here on the ninth of May, on Victory Day, 1986.

V. V. Ovsiyenko: The record says the third of May.

V. I. Sirenko: No, I arrived on the ninth of May. Music was blaring by the monument. I arrived quietly. I had the keys—I opened the door and went in, and my wife was sleeping there with my grandson, who used to sit at that window all the time. Trains were supposed to pass by there, and he wouldn’t take his eyes off the tracks, thinking maybe grandpa would arrive. And so I quietly came in: “Andryusha, Andryusha.” But he was asleep. I woke him up, and his eyes flew open—I’d never seen such strength in a four-year-old child! He jumped up and shouted, “Grandpa’s home!” And he grabbed me around the neck—he nearly strangled me! Such strength in a small child. Then we woke up my wife and sat down for breakfast. After we ate, I took the keys with me and said, “Well, Andryusha, let’s go for a walk.” We went for a walk along the railway tracks.

Later, the investigators summon me. Some snot-nosed kid starts yelling at me. I say, “Are you going to start this again?” “You, such an anti-Soviet…” I say, “Listen, you punk, I’ve seen your type before! Generals didn’t talk to me like that. I never dealt with anyone below the rank of colonel in the KGB.” (It just so happened that only colonels or lieutenant colonels ever spoke with me.) “I will speak with General Shchekaturov. And how are you behaving here? I’ll go and snitch on you. Where is the criminal? I’ve been exonerated—see this?” I went to the head of the investigative department and said, “Get this guy off my case.” And they transfer me to a major with a name ending in “-sky.” He’s an older man. This major summons me. (What was his name? It slipped my mind.) I liked him a lot. By the way, I think he was a westerner. I see he’s summoning witnesses. I say to him, “Are you cooking up another case?” And he says, “No, Volodymyr Ivanovych, don’t get worked up. You went after that Roshchin. If you ask me, he does speak rudely. To close the case, we have to formally speak with you and those witnesses again. They’ll ask me: you, the investigator, closed the case—on what grounds? Right? I’ll submit it to the court, and the court will make a decision on rehabilitation.” I calmed down. They summon me to court, reinstate me at my job at the institute, and the state pays me back for all my expenses. That’s how I started over.

Then I was accepted into the Writers’ Union. As soon as I returned, my book *The Root of My Kin* was published in Kyiv. And so it went, on and on and on.

But recently, I was walking down the street, and an intellectual I know stops me and asks, “Volodymyr Ivanovych, do you see what’s happening in Ukraine? What did you achieve, what did you win? You have,” he says, “a small salary, not much of a pension, you’re not rolling in wealth—what did you and the people win?” I answered him like this: “I won something that not everyone will understand. Ninety percent won’t understand what I won. And what I won is so priceless that it can’t be measured by any money, by any riches! Today, I walk through Dnipropetrovsk and Dniprodzerzhynsk with my head held high. I didn’t sell anyone out, I didn’t snitch on anyone, I didn’t trample on my own self. Today, old KGB agents meet me and shake my hand respectfully. If I had behaved differently, they would have thrown me out like a used condom and paid me no mind. Because a person is psychologically built to think: what if it were me? Even now, I am subconsciously a respected person in their eyes. I walk with my head held high. And most importantly, when I am dying, I will not be ashamed to look my grandchildren in the eye for the last time. This cannot be measured by any money, by any riches. And if I must say more, then for me, independence is everything. Our grandfathers and great-grandfathers dreamed of it, and I contributed my own small drop.”

I also want to tell you how, like a fool, I rushed to get reinstated and went to Moscow and Kyiv. I arrive in Kyiv…

V. V. Ovsiyenko: Reinstated where?

V. I. Sirenko: In the Party. I was a fool, in a fever… I arrived in Kyiv. At that time, the Party Commission was headed by Grushetsky, the chairman of the commission. They sent me to an instructor. He speaks Ukrainian, even with a sort of western accent. He talks to me pleasantly, says, “Volodymyr Ivanovych, you know, these poems will be published one day.” I say, “So why am I here? Don’t you understand?” He says, “Volodymyr Ivanovych, I would ask you: at the meeting, admit your guilt to some extent. That you exaggerated things, got carried away. It seems to me that’s what you should do. I’ll submit a report, and you might be reinstated. You’re not in a hurry, are you?” I say, “No.” “What if I lock you in my office? I need to be away for about 40-45 minutes.” I say, “Please do.” “There,” he says, “is water, there’s coffee, a water boiler, you can have some coffee. Well, don’t be sad.” And he lays his hand on my file like this and slides it across the table, right under my nose. It was, in essence, the Party-KGB file. The snitches were listed in there. I hear a click. To hell with the coffee! I grabbed that file, started writing things down—a character reference here, some facts there, thinking it might come in handy someday. I copied everything I needed, took notes. An hour or more later, I hear a key in the lock. “Well, you weren’t bored, were you?” I put my hand on the file and, just like him, slide it back to his side: “I wasn’t bored.” I’ve forgotten his name! This was at the Central Committee, an instructor of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine.

V. V. Ovsiyenko: My God! Was he also afraid of being bugged?

V. I. Sirenko: Yes, yes. They called me to the meeting. Grushetsky is sitting there, old farts are sitting there, hung with those bits of tin like bulldogs at a dog show. I started defending the poems, saying they weren’t anti-Soviet, that they weren’t against the government or the Party—they were against shortcomings. Grushetsky says, in Russian, of course, the meeting is conducted in Russian, “In my opinion, Comrade Sirenko has some sort of garbage in his head. Let’s return to this question in a year—maybe he’ll understand a few things by then.” And that got to me. I say, “Comrade Grushetsky, I’ve been walking your corridors for two days and I’ve noticed something: the pyzhik hats are in fashion. People are walking around in such,” I say, “luxurious hats, such luxurious hats! Wouldn’t you write me a note so I could get a hat like that too? Maybe then, under that hat, I’ll start thinking the way you do.” The old men chuckled, but he screams, “Get out! To such-and-such a mother!”—cursing at me. I flew out, and that instructor flies out after me, nearly in tears, “Volodymyr Ivanovych, what have you done…” I say, “Why did he talk to me like that? What am I to him, a pawn?”

By the way, I had a very similar encounter with Vatchenko. As a party boss, he could use the informal “ty” with you, even when meeting someone for the first time. They saw this as a sign of democratism. So he’s sitting there, half-turned towards me: “Sit down.” I sat. “So, how are you doing?” The head of the KGB, Vasilyev, is sitting right there. I say, “And how are *you* doing?” He was stunned. I used “ty” right back at him. Because it got to me. I thought, “What, did I herd pigs with you, you piece of shit?” Well, really, why start with “ty” right away? The head of the KGB laughed. I have a decent memory of Vasilyev. Vatchenko immediately switched to the formal “vy.” I saw that he also smiled a little, he didn’t take it as an insult. He understood it was a hint: we don’t know each other.

Here’s what it was like when I went to Moscow to be reinstated. The meeting was chaired by Grishin. In the corridors there, I met Nazarenko—he was a literary critic who had also been expelled from the Party for nationalism. How did I meet him? He arrived in Moscow wearing a wide-brimmed hat and an embroidered shirt—a theatrical Ukrainian. He had a folder, a briefcase—scuffed and grimy. In his briefcase, he had a pair of scissors, and whenever he saw something about literature in a newspaper—snip-snip-snip—he’d cut it out and put it in his briefcase. They say he has archives like that at home… Nazarenko, Yuriy Nazarenko… He has passed away now, God rest his soul. I go up to the window and ask in Ukrainian, “I need a pass, I’ve been summoned.” I hear a voice behind me: “Oh, where did this dinosaur come from?” I turn around—an old man in a wide-brimmed hat is sitting there. I got my pass and went over to him. “And where are you from?” I told him. “You know,” he says, “I’ve heard your name on the radio from abroad.” That’s how we met. I defended my poems there, too.

V. V. Ovsiyenko: You said Grishin chaired the meeting. But here it’s written Solomentsev.

V. I. Sirenko: No, that was a different occasion. Nazarenko went in before me. I hear terrible shouting from inside. He’s quoting Lenin, and Grishin is yelling, “That wasn’t in Lenin! Don’t you know that Lenin has been reissued in a different edition?” And the other one yells back, “Well then, you should make it a pocket-sized format, shrink him down like this.” What a clash! Well, of course, he was thrown out, not reinstated. I went in after him—the second nationalist. I also defended my poems there. By the way, there was an old-school Leninist communist there—Stasova or Fotieva—who had lived to see that day. All old farts sitting there, with sand trickling from under each of them… I was fighting back, and Grishin says, “Let’s return to this question later. Maybe Vladimir Ivanovich will understand something by then.” This one put it in a more cultured way.

I came out, and I was overcome by this strange laughter, and people were already standing there: “Congratulations.” I ask, “For what?” “Well, you came out looking so happy, you must have been reinstated.” I stood there—and these mugs are walking past—and I say in the words of Mayakovsky: “If you put a weeping Bolshevik on display in a museum, the gapers would hang around the museum all day. You won’t see such a thing for ages!” I turned to Nazarenko and said, “Let’s go.” They also didn’t reinstate a schoolteacher—it was “for untruth.” He worked at an elite school. The bosses’ sons were sleeping with the female teachers, and he spoke out against it. So they devoured him, expelled him from the Party, and didn’t reinstate him here. He came out and cried—a “guy from Kaluga.” We nationalists took him and led him—as Yesenin wrote, “That {triumph??? Unclear} was a Russian kabak”—to a kabak, had a glass of wine there, comforted him, and went home.

I remembered the piece of advice that saved me, from Nazarenko. He says, “Volodya, you could crawl around in a circle on their carpet”—I might not have done that, but this is what he tells me. “You could have beaten yourself up, cursed your own poems—and they would have reinstated you. And so you take the party card, they give you money for the road, you buy a ticket with that money, and you’re lying on a bunk in the train car. Tell me, what would be traveling then—would it be Sirenko, or some piece of shit?” He said this right before he was supposed to go in, even before me. “That,” he says, “is the most important thing: you’ll be traveling without a party card, but you’ll be traveling as a human being.”

I’ll tell you about Solomentsev, and we’ll finish with this topic. This is an interesting story too. I had written in a letter to the Presidium of the Central Committee that I was first expelled from the Party, and then from my job. And suddenly the partorg is running around the institute—I was working at the institute then—looking for me: “Vladimir Ivanovich, here,” he shows me a piece of paper, “call this person at the Central Committee of the Party in Moscow from any telephone.” I call, and a man introduces himself, maybe as Kirilenko. In Ukrainian, he says, “Volodymyr Ivanovych, please come here to Moscow, it’s in your interest. I need to establish some facts.” I told him how it was. “I am asking you, please come here.” Why, I wonder?

Suddenly, the institute’s communists are urgently gathered, they drag me there and give me such a character reference that I should be recommended for a medal! What is this, I think? The secretary of the raikom summons me and says, “Volodymyr Ivanovych, we’ve received a request for documents for your reinstatement in the Party.” I ask, “And why wasn’t I asked if I want to be reinstated or not after all this?” Then Dubina, the chairman of the regional Party commission, calls me: “Volodymyr Ivanovych, I’m going to give you money for a ticket right now, here’s a reservation, go get your ticket and be in Moscow tomorrow.” I say, “I’m not going, I’m sick, they’ll start getting on my nerves there, I don’t want this.” “Well, think about it. If not tomorrow, then the day after, I’ll give you two days. You must…” He doesn’t tell me everything, but he sees what’s going on, and says, “You will be reinstated in the Party.”

I came home, lay down, and started to think, “No, I have to get reinstated. I’ll get reinstated, come back here as a Party member, register, and in six months or a year, I’ll put my party card on their table and write a letter of resignation. And the 28th Congress is coming up. I thought, I’ll give them a gift right before the congress. They gave me a gift…” It was the last congress, the 28th. I arrived—and such respect! This Kirilenko, or whoever he was, immediately kicked everyone out of his office: “Vladimir Ivanovich, I will read you the report prepared for the meeting. Please take a pencil, and wherever something is unclear or needs to be corrected, please correct it.” He read it, and I see—they’re rehabilitating me as a writer. Some writer had given a very good review of my poems. “As for the literary aspect,” he says, “I don’t know, but politically—it’s just what’s needed. Let’s go to Solomentsev.” We go “to Solomentsev.” We enter the office, he’s sitting there. “What are you working on now as a writer?” I say, “Well, I haven’t quite found my bearings yet. I’ll probably write about what I’ve been through. Right now I’m just writing poems now and then.” I say in Russian, “I write poems.” “Vladimir Ivanovich, why do you need a party card if you get reinstated?” I say, “For one reason only: so I can come back with this party card, with Lenin’s silhouette on it, and slap this party card across the fat faces in Dnipropetrovsk—slap, slap, slap!” He exchanged a glance with the instructor and smiled. “Well, Volodymyr Ivanovych, go and get acquainted with Moscow. You haven’t been here, have you? Go to the shops. A pass will be waiting for you, come back the day after tomorrow.” No, he said one more thing: “And do you know why we decided to petition for your reinstatement? And we will petition for it with the preservation of your twenty-year party standing.” And I say, “Tell me.” Solomentsev says, “You fought all the way up to perestroika—consequently, you are a true communist.” I say, “Thank you for the compliment.” “Go,” he says, “get acquainted with Moscow, come back the day after tomorrow.”

I come back, and the same old farts are sitting there, I think Stasova was there—an o-o-old ruin.

V. V. Ovsiyenko: Like an owl in the daytime.

V. I. Sirenko: Yes, yes, Stasova. One sits there: “Any questions?” Another: “What are you working on now, you’re a writer, after all?” I say, “I haven’t done much. I’ve just returned from exile, I haven’t found my bearings yet, I need to gather my thoughts.” “Any more questions?” “No.” They read out a pre-prepared statement—I can see it’s prepared, it’s typed: “To be reinstated with preservation of twenty-two years of Party standing.”

I went to the telephone exchange and called a colleague of mine.

Why did I agree to this reinstatement? Because it all began with my expulsion from the Party. I brought everything full circle. And then I would part with this party card very simply. I left the Party long before its collapse. The day after the 28th Congress, I submitted my resignation on television.

V. V. Ovsiyenko: Was that in 1989?

V. I. Sirenko: I don’t remember. So, I called my colleague to tell her I’d been reinstated and was on my way back. Until then, the institute’s partorg had looked at me like I was the devil, but when I returned—it was like I was a new person. I’m walking down the corridor, and the partorg comes toward me, stops, and bows: “Volodymyr Ivanovych, hello!” Everyone is greeting me, as if I’m a different person.

The regional Party committee sent me to work in television.

V. V. Ovsiyenko: It’s written here that you were at Solomentsev’s in 1987. What time of year was it?

V. I. Sirenko: I think it was sometime in the fall. I was in the hotel with an actor from the Abkhazian theater, and he was already telling me how the conflict with the Georgians was flaring up there. “It’s exactly,” he says, “like with you: the language, the culture—everything is being suppressed, everything is being Georgianized.”

I’ve had many strange incidents in my life, I’ll tell you one more. Shchekaturov summoned me. This was back in those days. And I was friends, and still am, with the artist Feodosiy Humenyuk. I repair clocks; I repair everything, actually. Humenyuk tells me, “Here’s a clock, repair it if you can.” It was a pre-war one, very large. I took it, repaired it, and thought I’d take it to Humenyuk’s studio. It’s not far from the KGB building, on Artema Street. And just then, Shchekaturov calls: “Volodymyr Ivanovych, stop by.” “Well,” I say, “all right, I’ll be on my way somewhere, I’ll stop by.”

I go into the waiting room, a captain, his adjutant, comes down, takes me up in the elevator, announces me, and says, “Leave your briefcase here in the waiting room, and go in by yourself.” I say, “I’m not going without my briefcase. I know your kind: while Shchekaturov keeps me as long as possible, you’ll be in here photocopying everything—the technology is good now—and that’s that. Or you’ll plant something on me. I’m not going. Report to Shchekaturov that I will not go in without my briefcase.” Then he calls him: “Let him come in with the briefcase.”

I walk in, he’s sitting like this, there’s a long table here, I sit down in the corner, with my briefcase by my feet. The conversation starts, but he seems distracted, flustered, not himself. And then a silence falls, and I hear from under the table: tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock. And he, apparently, thought I had come in with an explosive device—a kamikaze! I pick up the briefcase and say, “Volodymyr Opanasovych, I understand you. Your spies are doing a poor job, because they didn’t know I have another hobby—repairing televisions, washing machines, and clocks. Here,” I say, “I’ve repaired a clock for Humenyuk, and I’ll take it to him after I leave here.” At first, that foolish smile slid off his face, then he relaxed and said, “And I was just about to grab your briefcase and throw it out the window.” From the fifth floor, mind you. I say, “You really would have surprised me, Comrade General, if it had fallen and exploded.”

Oh, there was a time they took me to the chief prosecutor, Oberemok, to sign a statement. They really gave me a yelling-to there! I had sent poems to Ukrainian newspapers in Czechoslovakia and Poland. “You sent them abroad.” “Come on,” I say, “that’s the same as sending them to Zaporizhzhia Oblast. What abroad, get a grip!” “Sign the statement.” And what was the statement? You sign that as soon as you commit the slightest violation, it gives them the right to arrest you. I say, “I’m not signing anything.” The prosecutor was shouting so much! Solomin is sitting there: “Here, Solomin also fought for Ukraine, he loves the Ukrainian people.” And I say, “Look into his eyes, how he’s looking at me, and see how much love is there!” Solomin jumps up: “What?! What do you think you’re doing!” And then I say, “You know what, comrades, let’s end this comedy. I’m hungry and I need to get back to Dniprodzerzhynsk.” Then Oberemok—a good surname for a prosecutor, to grab people by the “armful”—gets up, comes over to me, and puts a hand on my shoulder: “Volodymyr Ivanovych, don’t be offended, we talked a little roughly. I think we will meet again.” I say, “Where? In the dock?” “Oh, come on, we’ll have a glass of wine.” I say, “Where? At that stall over there? Let’s go get some glasses and knock one back.” I walked out, and the secretary just stared at me, her eyes wide: she had never heard a visitor speak in such high tones—KGB agents are sitting there, the prosecutor is sitting there.

V. V. Ovsiyenko: And how did you also manage to get an apology?

V. I. Sirenko: Oh, I attacked them relentlessly. By the way, I had a run-in with Potebenko there, too. They had confiscated my poems during the searches and wouldn’t return them. I wrote a letter. They reply that it’s not possible to return the poems because they have been deemed anti-Soviet… no, “ideologically harmful.” I write to the Prosecutor’s Office of Ukraine. And Potebenko at that time was the deputy prosecutor. This was after my imprisonment, I was already working at the television station. I get a letter from Potebenko, I still have it: “Your complaint has been reviewed. It is not possible to return your poems, as they have been deemed ideologically harmful. Deputy Prosecutor of Ukraine, Potebenko.” I could hold a grudge against him, but what he’s doing now—I like it. I don’t care if he’s doing it on someone’s orders, but what he’s doing now—I like it. Whether he’ll succeed or not, but what’s happening now in the Prosecutor’s Office, I approve. They just should have started this earlier.

V. V. Ovsiyenko: But still, how did you get the apology?

V. I. Sirenko: Ah, I started attacking them: visiting, writing letters… Glasnost was already underway a bit. I said, “I will appeal to international organizations. I will raise such a stink, you have no idea! This is a violation of human rights. Or I’ll take you to court. You insulted me—I have been exonerated, I have been reinstated in the Party. You have insulted the honor of a communist since such-and-such a year, I was reinstated with my party standing preserved. How can this be? You must apologize.” And they came to the institute…

V. V. Ovsiyenko: Who were “they”?

V. I. Sirenko: A representative of the prosecutor’s office. They called a meeting. It was a very short meeting. “We apologize,” he says, “to Volodymyr Ivanovych on behalf of our colleagues, and we apologize to you, the collective, for casting a stain on you.” A representative of the KGB came with almost the exact same words. And then came the KGB-loyal newspaper *Zorya*—because its editor was definitely a KGB snitch, it had written an article against me. I went to the editor, he’s sitting there—I’ve forgotten his name. I walk in: “Good day!” He looks at me like this. I show him the certificate of rehabilitation, I show him my party card—this was that “slap, slap” action.

He read it. I ask, “Well? What are we going to do? You slandered me in that article, in that one…” “I don’t know what to do,” he says. I give him a hint: “I came to you so that you would publicly apologize to me in the newspaper. If you don’t do this, I will find a way to deal with you.” They refuse. So I went again. I say, “Are you serious? Tell me that you won’t issue an apology.” But I’m lying that I have a tape recorder in my pocket. “Say that you will not print an apology.” “All right, all right, Volodymyr Ivanovych, we’ll think about it, we’ll probably publish something.” And then I see it appear in the newspaper: “In such-and-such years, such-and-such was printed… Unlawfully convicted… We apologize…” My soul was at peace.

V. V. Ovsiyenko: It is recorded in your biography that in December 1992, you received a letter from the head of the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast SBU Administration, V. M. Slobodyenyuk, with an apology and a certificate of rehabilitation.

V. I. Sirenko: Yes, yes, they apologized.

V. V. Ovsiyenko: And you also mentioned that you are a member of the Writers’ Union, but you didn’t say since what year.

V. I. Sirenko: A member of the Union? I think since 1990, let me check now. Yes, here’s my membership card. 1990.

V. V. Ovsiyenko: One more thing. You mentioned that you graduated from Dnipropetrovsk University, the philological faculty, but you said it almost in passing. In what years did you study and what was the mode of study?

V. I. Sirenko: It was like this. I studied at the philology faculty, in the Russian department. When people ask me at my readings now, “How is it, Volodymyr Ivanovych, that you are a Ukrainian writer but graduated from the Russian department of the university?” I answer them, “Well, I had to learn some foreign language, didn’t I?”

V. V. Ovsiyenko: And when did you study?

V. I. Sirenko: My first book came out in 1964. I was still attending the university, but the book was already out. So, I enrolled in 1958 and graduated in 1964. It was a correspondence course. I was working at a publishing house here. I am also a member of the council of the Writers’ Union of Ukraine.

V. V. Ovsiyenko: And what were you doing in the 1990s, what books came out?

V. I. Sirenko: As soon as I returned from exile, the book *The Root of My Kin* was published in Kyiv. Volodya Kolomiyets and Mishchenko—he had already moved to Kyiv—took it on with joy. *The Root of My Kin*—1990, “Radyanskyi Pysmennyk” publishing house. Then here, at the “Polihrafist” publishing house, in 1992, the book *Golgotha* was published, which received very wide acclaim. Then came *Straight Across the Land* in 1994, “Dnipro” publishing house, Dnipropetrovsk. It’s called “Polihrafist” now. In 1999—*Everything Happened*, also poetry, “Polihrafist” publishing house. I’ve settled in there. Here I have the manuscript of a documentary novel, *Vatchyna*.

V. V. Ovsiyenko: *Vatchyna*? Oh, from Vatchenko?

V. I. Sirenko: Yes, *Vatchyna*. The epigraph is from a letter by Borys Antonenko-Davydovych. He writes to me in one of his letters: “Well, how are things in your Vatchyna?” So I took that as the title. And the subtitle is: “On the persecution of dissidents in the Dnipropetrovsk region and in Ukraine in the 70s-80s.”

V. V. Ovsiyenko: It’s very good that you’ve written this.

V. I. Sirenko: This book is with “Sich” publishers now; the State Committee for Information is considering printing it at state expense. Back when Ivan Kuras was Deputy Prime Minister for Humanitarian Affairs, there was a resolution from the Cabinet of Ministers and the State Publishing Committee about publishing literature necessary for people’s education at state expense. This book has chapters about Antonenko-Davydovych, about Oksana Meshko, about my friend Oleksa Tykhyi.

V. V. Ovsiyenko: You knew Oleksa as well?

V. I. Sirenko: Right here, on this sofa, how many times he slept! Often, when I go to bed, I remember: “Oleksa slept here.” About Bereslavsky, about Sokulsky, about Meshko. What makes this book valuable is that it contains essays about them. And all of it is seen through my own fate.

V. V. Ovsiyenko: Could this book be published soon?

V. I. Sirenko: It might. I have—over there, the green one, see it?—the third copy, and one is at the publishing house. It’s about four hundred typewritten pages. With photographs…

V. V. Ovsiyenko: Judging from your oral account, it must be a very substantial work.

V. I. Sirenko: Yes, yes, yes. The editor of “Sich,” Vasyl Vasylyovych Levchenko, read it and said, “I picked it up in the evening and didn’t go to bed until three in the morning, until I finished it. I cried while reading it,” he says, “and I laughed, it captivated me so much.” Professor Anatoliy Popovskyi gave it a review, a very good review. They forwarded it to the State Committee for Information.

V. V. Ovsiyenko: In 1999, the book *Revived Memory: A Book of Essays* was published in Dnipropetrovsk by the scientific and editorial center of the regional editorial board for the preparation and publication of the thematic book series “Rehabilitated by History.” This is the first volume. In this volume, there is an essay about Sirenko, Volodymyr Ivanovych, on pages 570–580. The essay is titled “He Betrayed No Friend and Lied in No Line.” An essay about Vitaliy Kalynychenko titled “The Rebel,” pages 553–560. An essay about Viktor Vasylyovych Savchenko titled “Despite the Weakness of the Arguments…,” pages 561–569. The author of all three essays is Rem Tereshchenko. I am attaching photocopies of them.

Photograph by V. Ovsiyenko. Volodymyr SIRENKO on a street in Dniprodzerzhynsk. Film 3482, frame 28. April 1, 2001.