KISHKIN, GENNADIY GEORGIYEVICH

Interview with Gennadiy Georgiyevich Kishkin

V.V. Ovsiienko: October 11, 2005, the city of Kyiv. Gennadiy Georgiyevich Kishkin is speaking, Vasyl Ovsiienko is recording. Please begin.

G.G. Kishkin: I, Gennadiy Kishkin, Gennadiy Georgiyevich, born in 1945, on April 8. My father is from near Kursk, the village of Khmelevoye, Fatezhsky Raion, a Russian. My mother is Ukrainian, an orphan. She was orphaned at the age of twelve in the village of Baryshivka. She worked for others in the 1920s. She was born in 1917. My father was from a repressed family, dispossessed as kulaks he was a cousin of the former Minister of Welfare in Kerensky’s Provisional Government—Nikolai Mikhailovich Kishkin. My grandfather, Ivan Semyonovich Kishkin, was dispossessed and died during interrogation. There you had to answer how many cows you had before the revolution, how many you had after. He couldn’t withstand the torture—he died either of starvation or from beatings. He left behind 12 children. Aunt Nina was exiled to Vorkuta—she spoke out against her father’s dispossession. They exiled her to Vorkuta and only released her along with the politically rehabilitated in 1956. Uncle Kolya was exiled to Siberia, to Kolyma he was rehabilitated in 1956 and sent to forced labor at the Yenisei Hydroelectric Power Station, where he died. He wrote to my father in 1959: “Yura, send at least some kind of parcel. I wrote to my sisters—no reply. At least you send a parcel. In three years here, I’ve eaten just one apple at this Yenisei Hydroelectric Power Station on forced labor after the 1956 rehabilitation. Overall, I’m not really to blame, I’m only partially to blame, but I can’t explain everything in a letter, you understand.” My father didn’t answer him. I was a child then, and I said, “Why don’t you write to your brother?” My father said nothing he was clearly afraid, because we ourselves had five children, and he worked as a painter, half-destroyed himself after the war in ’45. In ’41, in the Holosiivskyi Forest during the defense of Kyiv in the war against the Germans, a German shell fragment blew out his eye. He was captured and sent to the Darnitskyi prisoner-of-war camp, and from there he was released, not shot. He told them that he himself had been repressed under the communist regime, and they released him—without an eye, with a bandage, it’s true. He said they fed them more or less normally there, for wartime—in that German concentration camp. During the occupation, he worked painting German vehicles. He wanted to leave for Germany with the retreating German units, but he and my mother hesitated. They already had a child in their arms, Edik. And then they finally decided to go. My father said, “I was a prisoner of war, the NKVD will persecute me for that.” They decided to go. They got as far as some stop near Lutsk, and some woman said, “Don’t go any further, because the Banderites are there, they shoot everyone.” Well, my father and mother thought about it, got scared, naturally, and returned to Kyiv. I don’t know who that woman was, but she certainly influenced their fate, because in Germany he would have worked, received benefits, and everything else. But this woman happened to come along at that moment, basically, scared them, and they returned to Kyiv. Either she was envious or something, but she scared them with the Banderites, and they returned to Kyiv. And as soon as the Reds returned to Kyiv, they started questioning him: “Why didn’t they shoot you? You must have informed on someone, on the political commissars we need to lock you up.” “Well,” he said, “they didn’t shoot me because there was no reason to, I was wounded, so they just let me go.” They started in: “What, you think the Germans are good people, or what?” Obviously, since they had let the man go. It’s clear he wasn’t going to say the Germans were good. They were bad. Because the NKVD would have imprisoned him. To some they were good, to others they were bad, in different situations.

After 1945, my mother gave birth to four more. They wouldn’t give my father a job, wouldn’t give him an apartment, despite already having four children. They gave us a thirteen-square-meter room with an earthen floor on Bohunska Street. Maksym Rylsky lived there in house No. 14 in the 1930s. He had also been imprisoned, was repressed in the thirties. It’s a shame he didn’t leave any memoirs about the repressions. He was in prison, too. In that house No. 30, apartment 18 on Bohunska. It’s all been demolished now along the Lybid River. The left bank of the Lybid—that’s where my childhood was spent. I went to school in felt boots—all the schoolchildren laughed. The school helped—they collected 10 kopeks from each student. My brother and I would turn red with horror—collecting 10 kopeks to buy us a shirt. Well, I remember they collected enough for a shirt once.

Our school was mostly Jewish the class was 90 percent Jewish children. I was a good student, and my mother would say, “You’re a good student, they copy from you, you should take…” I told her that they copied my homework, as I prepared well. We did our homework by the light of a smoking lamp, in a small room, 13 square meters, five children, mom and dad… It was dark a porch from another little house stood in front and shaded our window. Commissions came, but they wouldn’t give us an apartment. Some Red Army soldier came, lived there for a year—and they immediately gave him an apartment. My mother was in tears: he lived there for a year and got an apartment. He said, “I fought in the war, and you were here, you didn’t fight, you worked for the Germans here, so live as you please.”

At school, the Jewish children would copy my homework and in return they would give me—some bread here, some rolls there. I once said to a girl, “Give me some sausage.” And she said, “You’re too fat for sausage.” I was indeed born quite plump—it was all from my mother’s milk, despite the poor nutrition. We ate cabbage stumps, collected them in the yards. But the fat stayed, apparently from birth, regardless of diet I didn’t get thin. I’d take a crust of bread, climb up on the firewood pile, and read—they had given me a book for good academic performance, *The Vietnamese Fighter*. I’d read that book, the poems, with that crust of bread. I finished school and…

V.V. Ovsiienko: And when did you finish school? Please state the year.

G.G. Kishkin: I finished school in 1962. I finished through correspondence. In the summer of 1961, when I heard about the Berlin Wall being erected between the western and eastern sectors, I thought to myself like a child—I didn’t consult with anyone, not my dad, not my mom… Naturally, they always shooed me away from politics I sometimes heard through the door one comrade shouting, “I’ve returned from Magadan, I survived Kolyma, I built Magadan, and here the communists won’t let me live!” I heard these exclamations at parties, but they would chase me away from the table: “Go on, go on, the adults are talking here.” And in 1961, I wrote a letter to “Deutsche Welle” I was in the tenth grade. I expressed the meaning in verse: *“A wall in Berlin, we cannot hold hands, I am cut in half by you. How are we to unite now, dear proletarians of all countries?”* And I asked there: on “Mayak,” the Soviet radio, they say that the public in the GDR welcomes this wall, but you say on “Deutsche Welle,” on your radio station, that people in the GDR are outraged. Who should I believe? I sent such a letter and the poem. I dropped this letter into a mailbox on the street.

They erected that wall in 1961, on August 13. It was 45 years ago recently. They built it overnight, in a single night. I dropped that letter in the mailbox. I got a job at the “Lenkuznia” factory as a locksmith’s apprentice and continued my studies. I went to the tenth grade by correspondence because under Khrushchev, a policy was introduced to consider work experience for admission to higher education institutions. They introduced 11 years in day schools then, but it was still ten in correspondence schools. So I went to a correspondence school, thinking I’d finish sooner to avoid the eleventh grade. I went to a correspondence school and combined my studies with work at “Lenkuznia” as a locksmith’s apprentice.

They had just moved us out of our apartment into the basement—they were doing a major renovation of our apartment. The building was already a wreck we got another apartment. The old Bolsheviks were given a new apartment in a new building, and we, a large family, were moved from Bohunska into their apartment on Saksahanskoho Street. A three-room apartment in a two-story building, with slanted floors, but it was okay, better than before. But then they moved us into the basement at that moment. And into that basement, three days after I sent my letter, someone peers through the small window—it was at the level of a person’s stomach, you had to bend down to look into it… I was frying potatoes, I remember, I heard some noise, I look at the window—the face of a grown man is looking at me, and I’m looking at him. He wasn’t drunk or anything. He looked at me like that for about 20 seconds and then disappeared. We were poor there, especially in that basement. He either looked surprised or smirked, and that was it, I never saw him again. This was about three days after the letter. I paid absolutely no attention to it. It’s only now that I’m replaying it in my mind, this “black box,” this film, and putting it all together, that it was all connected.

I graduated from school in 1962 with a good record and wanted to go into journalism. But a new department opened in the Romano-Germanic faculty—an interpreters’ department for Spanish, English, and German. No, there was no German. I had studied German in school, but I had to go to the Spanish department because there was no German at that time—just English, French, and Spanish. I studied in the same group as Zlenko, the future Minister of Foreign Affairs. He was the party organizer of the faculty, having already come from the army, a bit overbearing, and he always reproached me: “You believe in God, how did they even accept you into the university?” I used to say that I believe in God, and he started to reproach me: “You believe in God, how did they accept you, and into such a department, almost an international one, for interpreters?”

I enrolled in 1962, graduated in 1967, and was assigned to “Intourist” as a Spanish-language guide-interpreter. I go to “Intourist,” which was on Lenin Street then, formerly Fundukleyevska, now Bohdana Khmelnytskoho. I used to call it Fundulinovska, half-Fundukleyevska-half-Leninist. The HR manager there says, “How, repeat that, what’s your last name?” I say, “Kishkin, Gennadiy Georgiyevich.” “I can’t seem to find your assignment. Are you sure you signed the distribution to us?” I say, “Of course, with my own hand, a month ago after the state exams in the dean’s office, they called me in, it was a state distribution. They didn’t give me the assignment letter, they said to go to ‘Intourist,’ that my assignment is there, they sent the documents there.” “Your assignment isn’t here. Go to the rector’s office, maybe there’s some mistake.” I go from that “Intourist,” from the HR department, to the rector’s office. There they tell me, “Wait in the corridor.” They called someone, whispered on the phone. “Come in. You see, politics are changing now, Israel has attacked Egypt and the need for interpreters for ‘Intourist’ has lapsed.” I say, “But Israel, Egypt—what does that have to do with me? I speak Spanish, I’m not going to Egypt or Israel. The tourists speak Spanish and come from Latin America, from Spain.” “Well, no, it’s all connected, you see. In short, find a job yourself, or maybe we’ll find one for you and rewrite the assignment. You’ll find some work, there’s plenty of work in the Soviet , we have no unemployment. When you find a job, come to us, and we’ll write an assignment there.”

I looked for that job for four months. I found nothing. My poor mother, who worked as a cleaner at the “Transsignal” factory, cleaning the workshop toilets, said, “Well, how can it be, five years of study and ending up without a job?” I didn’t understand what to do myself, and I thought, I’ll go and try to clarify what’s really going on with me at the KGB. I go to the KGB, the city department was on Rozy Luxemburg Street then, I go to their HR department, to a man named Kaloshin. I say to this Kaloshin, “I’d like to work for you.” “And what do you do, who are you?” I tell him who I am, an interpreter, showed him my diploma. He immediately latched on, saying, “Such a handsome man, have you been involved in sports?” I say, “Yes, boxing, I was on the country’s junior boxing team.” He says, “Let’s get you signed up. The hospital is right across the street, go and have a medical examination.” I go there to have this medical exam. I get halfway through when they call me: “Come to the Vatutin monument, we’ll be sitting on a bench there, two state security officers. You’re having your exam, right?” I say, “Yes.” “Well, we need to clarify a few things. Come, we’ll be on a bench, there will be two of us, I’ll have an umbrella in my hand, and on my right will be a man with a newspaper”—you know, the usual nonsense they spout. “At the Vatutin monument, facing Vatutin, on your left from the Mariinskyi Palace, there will be a bench, you know?” I say, “I know.” “Well, come.” They set a time. I arrive, they are sitting there, both get up, in civilian clothes, both get up and smile, grins from ear to ear, they wave at me like this, a handshake with a wide swing—boom! Like brothers, you wouldn’t believe it. “Sit down, we need to talk, let’s have a chat. Well, Gena, everything’s fine, everything’s great, how’s your mood?” I say, “Everything’s normal, I’m having the medical exam.” “Can you answer a question?” I say, “About what?” And they keep trying to coax it out of me, trying to wheedle it out: “Have you ever written any letters to a capitalist country, corresponded with capitalist countries?” I say, “Never. I corresponded with a Chinese girl when I was in school.” I had already forgotten about that letter. “Then I corresponded with a Czech girl, from Czechoslovakia, that was in about the fifth grade.” “And that’s it, no one else?” I say, “No one else.” “And do you remember writing to ‘Deutsche Welle’ in 1961 about the Berlin Wall?” My eyes widened. “Well,” I said, “that was when, ten years ago, I’ve already forgotten.” “But the Germans have long memories, they remember everything.” He pulls my letter out of his pocket. “They send us your letter and say, ‘Look what kind of scum you have, your people write to us, and you say what a great country you have, with loyal people, but you have scoundrels like this, writing us provocative letters.’” I was speechless, I said, “Well, I forgot.” “Well, you see, you forgot. Let’s go.” He takes me to his office on Rozy Luxemburg Street, we walked, to their investigation building, we go up to the second floor, he takes me into his office, there’s a map of the world, a safe, and a desk, and nothing else. Another man is sitting there: “I am Ivanov, so-and-so, a state security officer. Write an explanation of what came into your head, how, from what motives, what considerations, all of this is incomprehensible to us, write an explanation.” Well, I wrote an explanation to the state security: at such-and-such a time I wrote a letter, I don’t remember about what, but I wrote the truth, because, I remember, Lenin taught us to tell the truth. I wrote something jumbled like that. Lenin taught the truth, so I wrote the truth there, but I don’t remember what it was about, because it was a long time ago. I wrote it that way for them on purpose if they found it after ten years, I thought, they must be idiots to bother a person after ten years about something he once wrote. It would be one thing if you did it last Saturday… I thought, let them be the fools. I said, I don’t remember what I wrote, it was a long time ago, but I remember that I wrote the truth, because Lenin taught the truth. Well, he took the explanation and said, “Well, that’s it, go, the ground will burn under your feet.”

V.V. Ovsiienko: Wow!

G.G. Kishkin: That’s what he said. I left, and since then… They’d let me work as a loader for two months, then the HR manager would call me in and say, “You know, you were late yesterday,” or “You were drunk yesterday,” or “You stole bread”—for example, when I worked at the bakery—“you stole bread under your jacket, they noticed you, but they just didn’t catch you, they felt sorry for you, but everyone saw it. In short, write a letter of resignation ‘of your own accord,’ otherwise we’ll fire you through the trade , and it will be worse—you won’t get a job anywhere else.” I wrote “of my own accord” like this, and in this way I changed about 80 jobs.

V.V. Ovsiienko: Eighty?!

G.G. Kishkin: About eighty jobs.

V.V. Ovsiienko: Over how much time?

G.G. Kishkin: From 1967, when I graduated from the university, until the first search with confiscation of my poems in 1978—over ten years. I worked everywhere: as a stoker in a restaurant car, as a waiter in restaurants—I completed a waiters’ course, worked as a waiter. But the same thing—two months, and the HR manager calls me in… I don’t know why it was always two months. Later, an HR manager told me that two months was the time they took to evaluate a person, who he is, what he’s like, and then they either confirm him for a permanent position or they could fire him as a temporary worker—Soviet HR departments had such regulations.

Well, it’s obviously not important that there was a regulation. Just after perestroika, I met my district police officer, and he said, “Gena, it was the KGB guys who forced me.” He himself had been fired from the police, and he confided in me, saying, “The KGB guys forced me, they’d come, well, what could I do, try to curry favor, where would that get me? They would have fired me. They’d say, ‘Go to the HR department, there’s a renegade working there, a scoundrel like that, an anti-Soviet’—that’s exactly what they said. Naturally, they made me sign a non-disclosure agreement, so I wouldn’t talk about it anywhere, and your only option was to quit, otherwise, if you didn’t quit, they’d fire you for cause, and they would have locked you up even earlier than you were eventually imprisoned.”

I was writing an anti-Soviet poem the whole time. Since 1966, I had been writing an anti-Soviet poem: *“Hello, Khreshchatyk, hello my two kilometers, how are you, ‘Chai-Kofe’ cafe, how are things? I heard the vodka wind has shaken your glass walls. Well, here I am in new sandals, with a new cigarette in my teeth, I’ve come, as always, to you for the summer to grieve and remember my friends.”* And it all grew into an openly anti-Soviet poem with couplets like, *“Unknown to children are the intrigues that are in Lenin, what a bloody book is ‘The History of the CPSU.’”* Or: *“When the last metro train has gone and the stars hang above the chestnut trees, I feel so deliriously light, as if there are no communists in the world, as if there is no corruption and no lies, neither in the Constitution nor in the people’s courts, and only my enemies are angry that I didn’t die in the Soviet camps.”* Or: *“The Constitution is like a toy, like a mother calming a child, it seduced and distracted with rights, only to swaddle you tighter.”* Well, the other 650 couplets were in that style.

V.V. Ovsiienko: Wow!

G.G. Kishkin: True, by 1978 I only had 14 couplets. There was one particular couplet that they could latch onto, and that’s what they took the typescript for. It was a typescript a girl who worked as a secretary in the MVD had retyped those 14 couplets for me on a typewriter. There was one like this: *“People have been fighting since 1917. Someday I’ll look in the mailbox and find a leaflet from the people. In that leaflet, the power of reason will invite us to work with our minds, not according to party underdevelopment, not according to the Soviet court.”* Of course, they latched onto that it was clearly anti-Soviet, because they imprisoned so-called parasites for a parasitic lifestyle. They call them parasites—someone collecting bottles, for example—and they grab him by the scruff and throw him in there.

V.V. Ovsiienko: But that’s not against the Soviet government, but against the communists. There’s no anti-Sovietism there.

G.G. Kishkin: Absolutely right. In 1978, they confiscate it, the district police officer comes… First, an old university acquaintance of mine comes, she worked at “Kashtan,” Zhanna Ohnivchuk, a good, nice, pleasant woman, but politically, of course, we were different, and I always told her that I was fed up with them, that they had worn me out. “Who are ‘they’?” “The communists,” I say. She left without saying goodbye. A day later, she comes with two men in plain clothes.

V.V. Ovsiienko: Wow!

G.G. Kishkin: Yes, she worked at the hard-currency store “Kashtan.” She comes with these young plainclothesmen, around forty, they put a couple of bottles of dry wine on the table: “Gena, these are my friends, they’re interested in your poems, read something.” Well, I read some lyrical stuff, this and that, about love. And one says, “Well, how about something sharper? We can read that stuff in any library, we’re tired of all that, what kind of poems are those? How about something a bit sharper, something about politics.” Well, I read them excerpts from “Khreshchatyk.” They finished the wine, and she comes the next day. I ask her, “Who were those friends with you?” “Oh, nobody.” I say, “Did they like the poems?” I was trying to get my work out to people back then. “Yeah, they said you’re just a little crazy, detached from society, and that’s it, what kind of poems are those.” But they had asked me, during that little drinking session, “Do you visit Viktor Nekrasov?” “No,” I say, “I don’t like him.” “Why not?” I say, “He received a Stalin Prize. Why would I need him, a Stalin Prize laureate?” And then this Zhanna says to me, “So you don’t like him because he received a Stalin Prize? For the novel *In the Trenches of Stalingrad*?” I say, “Yes, I don’t like him because he…” “And the fact that he’s an anti-Soviet?” I say, “I don’t know that he’s an anti-Soviet, I don’t really communicate with him and I’m not drawn to him. He lives in the Passage, I know, he goes out, and he drinks quite a bit,” I say, “he socialized with young people, he’s a friend of Solzhenitsyn.” Well, I was a fool, of course, I should have used all that diplomacy to get to him, not to show off my ambitions. To hell with Stalin, so what if it was Stalin, he could have connected me with people, I could have passed my poems “across the border,” I could have become known among normal people, not among these scumbags of our own, the communists.

After that—this was 1978—my district police officer comes to me: “Come on, get your things.” I say, “Where to?” Yes, before that, I forgot to say, I had a streak. I had collected about two thousand letters from all the editorial offices in the Soviet —“low artistic level.” For my stories, for my poems, the same answer—“low artistic level, stop writing, don’t torment us and yourself, low artistic level.” About two thousand letters, I still have them, they’re in an archive in Germany. The KGB took half of them, but about five hundred letters survived, a huge folder, from all the editorial offices of the Soviet —from Kyiv, from oblast newspapers, even from a raion newspaper—not a single publication. I wondered, what’s the deal? I wrote to the Central Committee of the CPSU in 1972, to Brezhnev, saying, so and so, dear Leonid Ilyich, I’ve been writing poetry since I was 15, not a single publication, please help me get published, I’m sending you my poems. Well, of course, I didn’t send him the anti-Soviet stuff, I’m not a complete idiot. I didnt send the anti-Soviet stuff, I sent him lyrical poetry. I get a letter back: “Your letter has been sent to P.I. Osadchuk.” Petro Illich was the head of the culture department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine. I go there, to Ordzhonikidze Street, as it was called then, now Bankova, I enter the lobby, a man comes down, says, “Osadchuk has gone somewhere”—the conversation was in Russian, by the way—“Osadchuk has gone somewhere on business, he entrusted me to talk with you, let’s go, just give me your passport for a pass.” “I forgot my passport at home.” “Well, we’ll talk here. In short, Osadchuk read your poems and he asked me to tell you that the party organs do not deal with author publications, especially not with poets. Go to the Writers’ , there’s an office for young authors, you should apply there.” I say, “Okay, thank you.”

I go to the office for young authors, leave them my stack of poems, also not anti-Soviet, other lyrical ones, but with my own worldview. The response: “You know, everything you write is so gloomy, you should try to perceive things more joyfully, why are you so pessimistic? You should write like Ivan Franko wrote: ‘O Earth, my all-bearing mother.’ But you have ‘insane, insane’ so often, why do you like that so much?” I say, “Well, excuse me.” I left with my poems.

After that, I personally approached the Russian poet Nikolai Ushakov he lived in the building on Kotsiubynskoho Street, along with Sosiura, in the writers’ building. He says, “Good poems, I’m surprised they don’t publish them.” He gives me a handwritten recommendation to the magazine *Raduga*, on Pushkinska Street: “Gennadiy Kishkin’s poems are very interesting, I recommend them for publication.” I take this note to the magazine *Raduga*. It was still in my pocket, actually. I give my manuscripts to Izolda Antropova, the head of the poetry department at *Raduga* then, in 1972, and put them on the table: “Please, take a look.” She says, “Ah, Kishkin, we already wrote to you that your artistic level is low, we won’t be able to publish you.” And I take the note from my pocket and—wham—give it to her. I already understood that there were some KGB intrigues going on. I give her the note from Ushakov. She says, “Ah, of course, how is Nikolai Nikolaevich, how is he doing, how is his health? Of course, we’ll publish everything, Gennadiy Georgiyevich, we’ll publish it, excuse me, have a seat. We’ll publish it now, you can go, don’t worry.”

My father was ill, I had shown him the note from Ushakov before, saying, “Look, Dad, they’ll publish me soon.” Two months later, I get a reply from this Antropova: “Dear Gennadiy Georgiyevich, we will not be able to publish your poems. Antropova, Head of Department,”—period, that’s it. I go to Ushakov with this letter. He clutched his head, says, “I don’t know what’s going on, I’ll contact her, of course, come see me tomorrow.”

I go to see him tomorrow, he says, “Gennadiy, you have some problem with the KGB.” I say, “What could it be?” He says, “I don’t know.” And that was it, our last conversation a couple of years later he died, he slipped somewhere or was pushed, a mysterious story too, some kind of strange death. (N. Ushakov died on 11/17/1973. – V.O.).

And the KGB guys were interested in who was patronizing me in Kyiv, a Jewish friend told me this. He wanted to leave for Israel, but they wouldn’t let him. We had completed a waiters’ course together, and I used to visit him often he made good moonshine and would invite me for a drink. And one time he asks me, “Gena, who helps you in Kyiv among the poets? You often read poems to me, and both I and my wife like them, and the girls, you remember, the guests… But who helps you, who is your patron?” I say, “Actually, no one is my patron, Ushakov wrote me a recommendation once, but they didn’t publish me.” He says, “Who, who?” I say, “Ushakov.” “Ah, Ushakov, wait a minute, Ushakov, Ushakov…” And he started to commit it to memory. I ask, “Why do you need to know?” Well, he was a rather simple Jewish man, he says, “You know, the KGB guys approached me, they ask, ‘Do you know a Gena Kishkin, he writes some poems?’ I immediately,” he says, “realized something was fishy, and I say, ‘I know him, so what if he writes, who hasn’t dabbled in poetry.’ ‘And what did he read to you? Did he read poems?’ ‘He did.’ ‘And what exactly?’ He says, I again immediately realized something was fishy, and I say, ‘He read about love. Who doesn’t write about that? About love. I said the right thing, didn’t I?’ ‘Of course, you said everything right,’ I say. He says, ‘I’m not going to say you read anti-Soviet stuff.’ ‘Well, you said the right thing.’ And that was the end of that conversation. He later left for Israel, I never saw him again, only found out once that he had already left for Israel.”

Yes, I also wrote a letter to Sholokhov, after this Nikolai Nikolaevich Ushakov. I wrote a letter to Sholokhov and sent him my poems about the Virgin Lands Campaign, that we cultivate a lot, but we ruin even more, and so on. It was against Karl Marx and so on. And he, strangely enough, replied: “Go to Moscow, to a poet who is to your liking.” I went to Moscow a couple of times, didn’t find anyone there, went to the Writers’ , didn’t find a common language with anyone. I came back to Kyiv, worked for two months—I had to live somehow, my poor mother in tears—sinking lower and lower, only the poems saved me, I lived only by my poems and continued that poem at full speed. At that time, I had 14 couplets, by 1978, when they arrested me and conducted the first search.

V.V. Ovsiienko: And the date of the search?

G.G. Kishkin: It was 1978, there was an exhibition of U.S. agriculture at the VDNKh then. It was May 5, 1978. I wanted to give my poems—the lyrical ones and all of it—to the Americans, because they don’t publish me here, and I already understood they were not going to. They weren’t particularly interested in me because I had been exposed somewhere as an anti-Soviet. I would go to apartment building entrances, read openly anti-Soviet stuff to various vagrants, alcoholics. They would chuckle, then the district police officer would summon them, and they would tell on me. “What did Gena read to you, you visit him?” “Well, yeah, we do. He’s a fool, writes some crap about the Soviet government.” “Aha, and what crap, what did he read?”

They had already compiled a dossier on me. I already felt it, because they had picked me up a couple of times, they’d come on a motorcycle when I was at a small party, three or four people sitting around, girls, guys, and I’m reading to them. A motorcycle sputters outside the window, they come in—“Let’s go.” They pick me up, put me in a “gazik.” The “gazik” and the motorcycle—all of it goes to the investigator at the Zaliznychnyi district police department. “Take this and write what you were reading today.” They take the manuscript. “Aha, all right, write an explanation that you won’t write against the Soviet government anymore.” Well, I write that I don’t write anything against the Soviet government, I write lyrical poetry. “Aha, well, good, now sign it.” “I won’t sign.” “Well then write: I refuse to sign.” They would release me in the middle of the night, and I’d walk home by myself.

Then this exhibition. I think: “This is my chance.” I go to this exhibition, a folder under my arm, I’m talking to an American in English, I say, “I have a very important topic for you.” He winks at me like this, it was the Cold War then, the “Iron Curtain,” they understood. I say, “I want to give you some poems.” And right then, the KGB guys grab me at the exit. I didn’t give it to him right away, he says, “Come to the next section in two hours, Volodya will be there”—he’s one of ours, a compatriot, he’s in the States, he was an employee at the exhibition, an American citizen, Ukrainian—“Volodya will be there,” he says, “come over there, to the next section, in two hours he’ll be there.” Well, I grab my folder, he says, “You go for a walk for now.” The KGB guys take me, put me in a car…

V.V. Ovsiienko: Right there, at the exhibition?

G.G. Kishkin: At the exhibition. In a car to the district police station, they take my folder, of course, thank God I didn’t have the anti-Soviet stuff with me, just lyrical poems. They search my place—the anti-Soviet poem was left at home—they confiscate that poem “Khreshchatyk.” I spend 15 days in the Darnitskyi jail. It had just been built then, a small jail for 15-day sentences, that’s what it was called then. And it still exists—for petty hooligans serving 15-day sentences, for the homeless. It’s next to the meat-packing plant, at the “DVRZ” electric train station. They hold me for 15 days, after fifteen days they release me: “Go, you are free.”

I walk out the gate, a police gazik is waiting for me, they take me to a narcologist, the narcologist says, “How can you drink like that, abuse alcohol, not work, and you’re also doing some anti-social activities, writing some nonsense. In short, you need to be treated for chronic alcoholism. Go to court and say a big thank you to the district officer for getting you treated.”

They don’t let me go home. They take me to court, they don’t tell my mom anything. I found out later, when my mom came to visit me at the LTP, the labor-and-treatment profilactorium in Bilychi, for a visit. Compulsory treatment for alcoholism. When my mom came, she said they had searched the place, taken everything I had, all that writing.

But they took me to court after those days. The judge was Yablonsky. Later, during perestroika, I met him he was an assistant to one of the first post-perestroika general prosecutors of Ukraine. I forgot his name…

V.V. Ovsiienko: Shyshkin?

G.G. Kishkin: No, he was after Shyshkin… Datsiuk. And this Yablonsky says, “You’ve drunk yourself into a stupor, you’ve completely lost your Soviet face. How can you do this?! You graduated from a university, the state gave you such an education, and you’ve drunk it all away, everything. You need to be saved. You write some nonsense, you’re descending into madness. You need to be saved, Gennadiy Georgiyevich. Two years in a labor-and-treatment profilactorium, get treated, rest, get a grip, and be well.” That’s it—two years, 1978, June 11. No, June 21. It was on June 11 that I was later tried a second time, on a criminal charge. This was supposedly for alcoholism, compulsory treatment, on June 21, 1978. That was the kind of trial it was, in his office: “Go, two years.”

Barbed wire, just no guards with machine guns, but otherwise the whole zone—the industrial zone, the recreation zone—was just like in a regular Soviet correctional colony.

They started giving me injections. The first ten days were quarantine—they gave me sulfur injections a couple of times, very painful shots, then they started pumping me with various other injections. Then they assigned me to a job—assembling fluorescent light fixtures for the ceilings of institutions. It was an assembly line, the assembly was very fast, I just couldn’t keep up, couldn’t get the hang of fitting the screw with the screwdriver. And the conveyor belt keeps moving, a pile would build up in front of me, and they would keep me after work. Everyone else somehow managed, but for some reason, I couldn’t keep up. They had been working there for a long time, for a year, while I had just arrived and couldn’t keep up at first. So a pile of fixtures would accumulate, and I would finish screwing them myself after work—the frames for the fluorescent lamps.

I lived in the detachment for a year. The beds there were in a single tier, with nightstands, and a guard post at the entrance to the industrial zone. They let us do sports I hung a punching bag there and would pound it the regime chief didn’t interfere, he allowed it.

A year later, the colony chief summons me and says, “Go change your clothes, you have visitors.” I say, “Why change?” “Your pants are dirty, your shirt, your suit is dirty.” Well, it was a regular cotton prison suit, only the cap was an LTP-style beret instead of the usual prison cap with a visor. “Go change, they’ll give you a new set at the warehouse, I told them.” I went to the warehouse, got new clothes, came back to him in this new outfit, he says, “Sit and wait.” He left, and two men came in—an older one and a younger one—with briefcases, they sit down at the chief’s desk: “Hello.” “Hello.” “Gennadiy Georgiyevich Kishkin?” I say, “Yes, Gennadiy Georgiyevich Kishkin.” “We’ve come about your poems.” They’re holding, I see, my anti-Soviet stuff, I recognized “Khreshchatyk.” “So you’re dissatisfied, you write, you have these anti-Soviet attacks. The conversation will be short. So that we don’t have to send you to a psychiatric hospital—there’s one not far from here, in Hlevakha. You’re in Bilychi, but in Hlevakha there’s a psychiatric hospital, and there’s Pavlov Hospital—we can send you there. So, write this.” They give me an official, typographically printed paper, an official warning, that I, so-and-so, sign that I will not in the future, in literary or other written form, defame the Soviet government with slanderous fabrications, otherwise I will be held criminally liable under Article 187-prime. “Sign it.” I remember that I signed it and then tore the paper, and he says to me, “Don’t worry, health is the most important thing, don’t be nervous, don’t get hysterical”—in a deliberately calm voice. I restrained myself, but I so wanted to grab him, to… Well, then they would have said: he’s insane—if I had grabbed him by the mane or the neck. Well, I thought, I have to restrain myself, maintain my dignity, to hell with him, I have to endure this. In short, I left, and I did another year in that LTP.

In three months, I wrote a novel, *The Ascension of Naturin*, about all these events. Naturin is the surname. From Onegin, from Pechorin—from Russian classics. The surname Naturin—from ‘nature.’ *The Ascension of Naturin*, a novel. It’s not very thick I wrote it in a ledger book. A civilian foreman brought it to me. I took exams for him—he was studying at the Institute of National Economy. I took exams for this civilian foreman (he was in our workshop) in English, in the history of the CPSU. He would bring them to me, I would write it all at work, give it to him, and he helped me: he gave me the ledger book. I wrote in it, hid it, because sometimes the guards would come right into the workshop—one-two, they’d pat down your back, pat down your whole backside, frisk everything, look in your shoes, to see if there was a little book anywhere. Well, thank God, I finished that novel in three months, continued and expanded the anti-Soviet poem with good couplets about what happened there. There was no slander, of course: that they didn’t let a person breathe, that there was no personal freedom—all of that was in those poems.

After the LTP, in the Olympic year of 1980, I was released and took those manuscripts from that foreman. He had, it’s true, buried them in the forest in Irpin. He lived in Irpin. We went with him to that forest, he dug it all up with a shovel from a cellophane bag, gave me the manuscripts. Some tractor appeared on the road—he almost fainted, says, “It’s the KGB.” I say, “How do you know?” He says, “You wrote such things there that they’re following you, that’s for sure. You wrote all that against the communists, that ‘Ascension of Naturin,’ that novel. They’re following you—that’s a hundred percent certain. I don’t want any part of it, I have children, take it and get out of here yourself.” And he himself ran off in the other direction. Good man, he gave me the manuscripts. I brought them home and could think of nothing better than to put them under my pillow.

V.V. Ovsiienko: What month was that?

G.G. Kishkin: It was 1980, it was June, the Olympics. I go out onto the street—a bunch of KGB guys are following me, about five of them. I remember, I wanted to approach a foreigner to talk—they immediately come up, with distorted faces. Well, I knew it was them, I wasn’t drunk, I could see they were KGB faces, and they were contorted at me like that. They look like thugs or racketeers now. They acted completely without words. I remember, I walked up to the Dnipro Hotel, they walk past me towards the hotel. One stood there, mouth open, and smirks at me, looking with that thuggish face. Well, I understand, I turn around and leave. We never spoke to them. True, one approached me once. I had a pin, I had somehow managed to get it from an American. It had a crossed-out bottle of vodka on it. He came up to me: “Excuse me, what kind of pin is that you have? I’d like to have one like that too.” “Well, here you go,” I showed him. “Ah, I see, okay, okay.” And they left. That was the only time we communicated.

I hear on the radio the address of Sakharov being broadcast—Gagarin Avenue, 214, apartment 3: “Help your prisoner, Soviet citizens, with letters and telegrams.” I wrote down this address, the next day I went to the post office on Shevchenko Boulevard, sent a telegram to Academician Sakharov, Gagarin Avenue, 214, apartment 3, city of Gorky: “Andrei Dmitrievich, we support you. Students of the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute.” Well, I understood that it would end up with the KGB, but, I thought, at least they would know that there is public awareness, that there is a Polytechnic Institute in Kyiv, students. I sent such a telegram, and then in November, I went to see him myself.

V.V. Ovsiienko: And the post office accepted such a telegram?

G.G. Kishkin: They accepted it. And they, apparently, didn’t even know it seems to me it must have gotten through. Firstly, very few people knew about it I might have been the only one in Kyiv who needed that address, while others—they wanted to listen to the Beatles, listen to other music, have a laugh, go out with girls.

I still wanted to go to Moscow, to meet with American and Western correspondents, with German ones. And one day I take a can of “Bilatserkivskyi Salad”—I don’t take the manuscripts—I’ll stop by, I think, maybe I’ll see someone there. I go to the station, buy a ticket, get on the Kyiv-Moscow train, go into my open-plan car, sit down on the seat—and two policemen and one plainclothesman barge in, the latter genuinely agitated, gray-haired—and he points his finger at me: “It’s him, it’s him!” And he’s genuinely like that, either an actor or God knows what, or they were paying him something. Anyway, behind him are the cops and a couple of plainclothesmen: “Let’s step outside, please, we need to talk about the ticket, you’ll be leaving soon, come with us, let’s go to the police station, we need to have a chat.” They escort me out to the station police department. The same disheveled man sits down there. “You stole money from this man when you were standing in line for the ticket.” I’m just speechless, blinking. He says, “I was standing behind you and I recognized you.” I say, “How could you be standing behind me and I could have robbed you? How is that possible?” “You know, I’ve seen pickpockets who are capable of more than that sometimes they’ll reach their hand past other people into someone else’s pocket. You know how to do everything, that’s what a pickpocket is for.” Well, I sit there, silent, already thinking, I just hope I don’t have some kind of mental episode. In the meantime, right in front of my nose, they open the can of “Bilatserkivskyi Salad,” one cop, the bastard, sticks his finger in it. I say, “For God’s sake, it’s like a movie about the Tsar’s secret police.” “Nothing there,” he says to the plainclothesmen. They searched me. “No manuscripts, you didn’t take any?” I say, “What manuscripts?” “Well, we know which ones. And why are you going to Moscow?” I say, “Just to visit friends, to see Moscow.” “Stay at home and don’t play the fool, no Moscow. The train has already left, go home.” Yes, and they cut my loaf of bread in half. I had taken a loaf of bread and a can of “Bilatserkivskyi Salad” for the road. And they cut the loaf in half. I thought, “Idiots, looking for poems even in a loaf of bread.”

I go home. I sat at home, got all worked up, and I think: “Okay. They were perfectly calmed by my composure, I didn’t object to anything, I didn’t act rowdy with them—I think…”

V.V. Ovsiienko: And did they draw up a report?

G.G. Kishkin: Absolutely nothing, no papers. They left that to their conscience… In Moscow, some Kalugin, a KGB agent, spoke out, and a couple of other KGB agents repented. Here, Petro Osadchuk could have told a lot—he worked as the head of the culture department, he knows a lot. And the KGB agents are the same, they could have told so much, but to this day not a single bastard, not a single noble face, not a single noble gesture has been made to reveal all this to people, to tell it firsthand, how it was, how much they spied, how they spied on people, on dissidents, how they imprisoned them, how they peered into windows and all the rest, how many provocations they staged—not a single one has come forward. One, I know, became a train conductor, he works as a conductor now. Many took simple jobs, they trade at the markets, they were all laid off, but not a single one will come forward, they’re cowards. They know their own cruelty: if one starts telling the truth, they’ll shoot him in a dark entryway somewhere.

V.V. Ovsiienko: Yes, yes.

G.G. Kishkin: In short, I decided to go to Sakharov. I think, now that I’ve calmed them down, I’ll take advantage of the moment and go to Sakharov directly in Gorky.

V.V. Ovsiienko: To Gorky?

G.G. Kishkin: Yes, I’ll fly. I walk from Saksahanskoho Street to Victory Square. I lived nearby there. At 121 Saksahanskoho Street, they built a monument to our house—a large skyscraper was built right on the site of our long-suffering little house. I go to Victory Square, to the Aeroflot agency, and buy a ticket to Gorky. I remember it was a late flight, around three in the morning, I think. Then at night I go to the Aeroflot bus, ride to Boryspil, and at three or four in the morning I fly to Gorky. It was a three-hour flight, I remember, a Tu-104—and I’m in Gorky around eight in the morning. I hail a taxi and say, “Gagarin Avenue.” I didn’t give the house number, thinking that taxi drivers and KGB agents were all one gang back then. Especially since, I thought, not only is Gorky a closed city, but Sakharov is also there.

We drove past the confluence of the Oka and Volga rivers. I thought, symbolically—the confluence of the Oka and Volga, and for me, I thought, it would be the confluence of Kishkin and Sakharov. He takes me to Gagarin Avenue, I say, “Stop here.” He stopped. I look, and it’s somewhere around number twenty. Well, I think, there’s time, I’ll figure out how to get further. I got out, took a bus and went further. I thought, I’ll walk a bit, see if there’s a tail, because anything can happen. Everything was so clean, covered in snow, it was terribly cold, no one around, no people, no one. I approached building 214 on Gagarin Avenue. Apartment three, I figured—the third apartment on the ground floor. The building was about nine stories high, a kind of pillar. I go into the entryway. On the left side, in the left section, I see a small table under one door and a cop sitting there hunched over, so inconspicuous, so small. I immediately realized what was happening and walked past this cop upstairs. Past the elevator, up the stairs. I think, I need to think this through, what to do: I didn’t expect him to be sitting there by the door. If I had been with a group, if someone had briefed me, I would have prepared and acted more decisively. I went up between the floors, thinking, what should I do? And I was carrying a folder like this under my arm, like a KGB agent. I had a heavy woolen coat on, a simple hat. I come out, walk past this section again, and look to the right—two plumbers in overalls with wrenches come out from behind the cop, from Sakharov’s apartment, two guys come out. I walk past this section to the porch, a couple of steps up, and stop, thinking, let me ask them if Sakharov is home, so as not to bother him for nothing… I ask them, “Is that cop not letting people see Sakharov?” They looked at me like this, up and down from my feet to my head, half-scared, to put it mildly, anxiously, and then they took off. Most likely, they were simulating plumbers, that he had a burst pipe or something.

I’m thinking, what should I do, I’ve been driving and driving… I turn around and, just taking a chance, I go past this cop, though fully aware of what I’m doing, and I walk past him. I passed him, he didn’t move a muscle. He must have taken me for some KGB agent, an inspector, maybe, on the Sakharov case, maybe an inspector who’d come from Moscow—various KGB inspectors often came to check on things. I reached for the doorbell, apartment three, and as I was about to press it—someone grabs me forcefully. I say into this cop’s ear, right by his cap, his service hat: “Excuse me, may I see Andrei Dmitrievich?” He came to his senses: “Ah, of course, of course, you can. Have a seat, let me see your documents.” And that’s how I got caught. I give him my passport, and he immediately shoves it into his pants under his greatcoat—the scoundrel didn’t even put it in his greatcoat pocket, but hid it deep in his pants under the coat. He read it and said: “Ah, from Kyiv. A-ah. We’ve had people from Leningrad, from Moscow, but no one from Kyiv yet. Well, let’s go see the chief. You’ll write a statement, otherwise I’ll let you through and get chewed out by my superiors. Let’s go, it’s not far.”

He leads me to the next building, and I manage to read the sign on the end of it: “Public Support Point of the Prioksky Microdistrict.” We go into this building, number 216—Sakharov was at 214, this was the next one, 216—and he leads me into a small room, sends in two guys, and locks the door. I looked around: a barred window, a T-shaped table. About three hours later, I just sort of grunted and stretched my shoulders, and these guys yell at me: “Don’t move!” And they look at me the way Lenin looked at the bourgeoisie. Well, I just sat there quietly, without a word. I thought: who is there to talk to here?

About three hours later, a young, slender man appears in the doorway, also in a Dralon coat, though with a better hat, a muskrat hat, and a mohair scarf—but all that is nonsense. He gives them a signal, and they leave. He sits down at the table next to me: “Here’s some paper. Write down for what purpose you came to see Sakharov.” I, accordingly, asked to whose name I should address it. And he says: “No name needed, just write an explanation.” I write that I, so-and-so, Gennadiy Georgievich Kishkin, came from Kyiv to see Academician Sakharov, Andrei Dmitrievich, to gather material for a screenplay for a feature film. He took it, read it: “He’s no academician. What kind of academician is he?” I say: “Well, what is he then?” “He’s an anti-Soviet.” He tore up the explanation and started laughing: “Are you going to tell the truth?” I say: “What truth? I’m a writer myself, I wanted to write something, to find out.” “And why didn’t you go to another physicist? Why didn’t you go to Ginzburg?” I say: “I don’t know this Ginzburg.” “He’s a physicist too, Ginzburg.” He named someone else. Alexandrov, he says, is also a physicist, there’s another one—he named a few. “Why didn’t you go to them, but came to Sakharov instead?” I say: “Well, a lot is written about Sakharov, I thought I’d find out for myself, with my own hands, so to speak, what’s true and what isn’t.” “See to it that you’re not in Gorky by tonight, and don’t even think of coming back. We’re taking you to the airport now.”

They lead me out of the building and put me in their black “Volga.” A driver, another plainclothesman next to the driver, and this guy next to me in the back seat. On the way, he praises Gorky to me: “This is where they make ‘GAZ’ cars—look what a wonderful, huge factory we have. And don’t worry about Sakharov we sent him here specifically so that various guests wouldn’t disturb his work. A theoretical physicist needs peace and quiet. He has four rooms here. Don’t worry, everything is fine.”

We arrive at the airport, and four or five men run up, hatless, with ties, in suits, clearly KGB agents: “Get him to Voronezh, the plane is waiting.” So this guy says to me: “You’ll fly to Voronezh, and from there you’ll get to Kyiv.” I say: “Okay, fine.” “Do you have any money?” I say: “No.” “What, were you hoping to get money from Sakharov for the trip back?” I say: “No.” “Well, come through,” they led me past the ticket inspectors, put me on the plane, and told the flight attendant: “Make sure he doesn’t think about flying back to Gorky.” Then, they suddenly announced non-flying weather, and these KGB agents stood under the airplane windows for about two hours. It was freezing, and they were huddled up, standing there without hats like idiots under those windows. (Laughs). I thought, how intense this ideological struggle with the “renegades” is in the Soviet ! Five blockheads stood there at least I was sitting in the warmth, but they stood in that frost under the windows for two hours until they finally announced that the weather was clear for flying. I took off, flew to Voronezh, and from there I bought a ticket to Kyiv.

V. V. Ovsienko: A plane ticket?

G. G. Kishkin: No, for the train to Kyiv. I told them I had no money, but I did have enough for the trip back. I arrive by train, and my mother is in tears: “The investigators just came by, they came to my work yesterday—it’s horrible. Why did you go to Sakharov?” I say: “How did they know all this yesterday? I was only there today.” She says: “What do you mean today,”—my mom had already mixed up the days—“I just got to work, and they took me right from my job, they nearly broke my mop,”—she worked as a cleaner at the “Transsignal” factory in Kyiv, where they made subway cars and all that. “Why, who is this Sakharov, what is he? I said I don’t know who this Sakharov is.” She really wasn’t enlightened about anything, my father had already passed away by then. “They took,” she says, “all your manuscripts again.” I say: “Damn it all!” I had put them under my pillow when I got back from the LTP, so I could read them. If someone simple came over, they wouldn’t be suspicious. If some academic had visited me, of course, then they would have started taking me seriously, but as it was, I was just reading my manuscripts to some drunks, which wasn’t so dangerous.

Anyway, after this Sakharov voyage, I did manage to find a job.

V. V. Ovsienko: That was in 1980, right?

G. G. Kishkin: That was 1980, November. Around November 22nd.

Well, then came the New Year, and I got a job at a technical college as a supply agent, on Belorusskaya Street.

One day the local policeman comes by and says: “How’s your health after the labor-therapy profilactorium?” I say: “Everything’s fine.” “Well, you’re messing with that crap again, still writing.” I say: “I’m writing a little something.” “So, you don’t want to see Solzhenitsyn?” I say: “I’d like to see him.” Nothing about Sakharov. Then, at night, this Nikolai Nikolaevich Greyman shows up: “Let’s go.” My mom wakes up, comes in: “Where? Where are you taking him?” “He’ll be right back.” He’s drunk. He takes me in his UAZ to his office at the Zaliznychne District Department of Internal Affairs. The KGB, I realized, had given him free rein to do whatever he wanted. He takes me into his office, pulls out a pistol, and puts it on the table. “Why did you go to Sakharov?” I say: “How do you know?” “That’s my business, we know everything, but why did you need him? Don’t you know such-and-such a poet?” What was his name, damn it? He named some guy who was a Ukrainian dissident at the time, later emigrated to the States, hasn’t been prominent for a long time. He asked his name. I say: “No, I don’t know him.” Not Svitlychny…

V. V. Ovsienko: It could have been Leonid Plyushch. But he wasn’t a poet, and he left for France in 1976.

G. G. Kishkin: Oh! Plyushch, yes. I say: “No, I haven’t had the chance. I’ve heard of him, but not personally…” And Solzhenitsyn had left by then. He asked me: “Don’t you want to see Solzhenitsyn?” A stupid conversation. Then: “Let’s get some sleep, you on that table, and I on this one.” He put the pistol under his butt and started snoring—this drunk criminal investigation inspector, Greyman. In the morning, he put me in the UAZ and drove me, not all the way home, but a couple of tram stops. “Go on,” he says, “you can walk the rest of the way home. Stop messing with this crap, don’t go looking for trouble.”

I’m thinking, what should I do, how can I fight them? I’m already thinking: where can I go? No job, nothing. Still, the poems somehow saved me. I’d read them to some homeless people, though they weren’t called homeless then, they were called vagrants, they collected bottles, simple people, I’d read to them over a beer. Once, in a beer bar on Vozdukhoflotsky Highway, I read a poem over a beer, a simple poem, “At Yesenin’s Grave.” It had a line like this: “Маркс ничто, а Есенин больше значит.” They must have already had a plan—to get me for the poems or something…

Someone taps me on the shoulder from behind, I turn around—it’s the police. I think: “Son of a bitch, here we go again.” They take me to a back room, and some woman in a black work coat says: “That’s him, that’s him.” They lead me out to a “Volga” car and take me to the Zaliznychne district police station, in my residential area. “Get the witnesses,” one of them says. Two guys come in. They put cans on the table, and I read: “Goby in Tomato Sauce.” To one of them: “Open it.” The guy takes it, opens it with a can opener—gas hissed out, some kind of spoiled canned food. The other one says to me: “Gennadiy Georgievich, what have you been up to?” I say: “What do you mean?” “Well, what is this, in your opinion?” I say: “What do you mean? It says ‘Goby in Tomato Sauce’ right there,”—I don’t know what he’s getting at. “Well, why are you deceiving the people? You were selling them as gobies, but look what’s inside.” I say: “Well, what? They’re spoiled gobies.” “These,” he says, “are not spoiled gobies, this is spoiled sprat. You were selling spoiled sprat disguised as goby, you opened an underground workshop, undermining the economic power of the state.”

V. V. Ovsienko: Would you look at that…

G. G. Kishkin: Yes. “I’m Captain Tsenov of the Department for Combating the Theft of Socialist Property,” one says. “My surname is Tsenov.” And he works at the customs office in Zhuliany now, this Tsenov, I found that out later, during perestroika. The other one was Nikitin, also from the same department, a lieutenant. They draw up a report: a bag was found on so-and-so. I say: “But I didn’t have a bag.” “The bag was left there. Should we show you the bag? Bring in the bag.” The witnesses bring in a bag. “Is this yours?” I say: “But I didn’t have a bag at all.” “When they were arresting you, you left it there, you dropped it.” “Canned goods were discovered, which he was selling from November to March. He sold ten cans, bought for 35 kopecks each, for a ruble a piece to such-and-such a hairdresser, to a vendor at such-and-such a market.” “You’ll be shown,” he says, “these vendors, you’ll recognize them in court. You can go.” I walk out, they put me in a car and take me to the Radyanskyi temporary detention facility, at the Radyanskyi district police station. “You’re being sent there because that’s where you were detained, it belongs to the Radyanskyi district—by jurisdiction.”

They take me to the Radyanskyi district station, and the next morning a plainclothesman comes in: “Friend, what are these manuscripts you had lying around in your apartment?” I say: “What? They’ve already taken everything.” “Well, there’s still more there.” I had a small cabinet from my childhood. I say: “Since I was a kid, I’ve been writing, a bunch of manuscripts have piled up there.” “Well, my friend, you’re really something.” And he patted me on the shoulder like that. I don’t know, maybe he was actually a sympathizer—there were some among them too. He says: “Well, my friend, you’re really something,” and left. Two days later, an investigator comes and says, “Here are the charges against you. You were engaged in fraud, Article 143, part two. We found some manuscripts of yours there, what you were writing, you understand. Here, sign the search protocols.” I look, and my mother’s signature is there. “Do you agree?” I say: “Yes, the manuscripts, I agree.” “Well, and,” he says, “we found these ‘Goby in Tomato Sauce’ labels on you. You were sticking them on cans of sprat, selling them to people, deceiving people, and you will be prosecuted for fraud under Article 143/2. The article,” he says, “is a good one, from zero to five years, meaning they could give you nothing at all, or they could give you five, of course. But you’ll probably get a year.” They sent me to Lukyanovka.

V. V. Ovsienko: And you didn’t say the date.

G. G. Kishkin: It was sometime in March, around March 20, 1981. This was after the Olympics, after Sakharov. They held me in the temporary detention facility on Korolenko Street for a couple of days, and after Korolenko, after the detention facility—they took my photo, fingerprints, everything as it should be—and then off to Lukyanovka, to the “khata,” as it was called then, to cell 28-A. Twenty-eight was for police officers, the cop cell, and 28-A—there were educated people there too, but not a single anti-Soviet. I talked to them—one was in for embezzlement, one for this, another for that.

The investigator comes there and closes the case. I closed it in two weeks. “So, you will be convicted of fraud.” A lawyer came. I was refusing one, but he said: “She’s a good lawyer, let her be.” “Oh, fine, let her be.” She leafed through my file: “And what are these manuscripts here in the search protocol?” I say: “Well, manuscripts are manuscripts, you can read it: a folder was found with such-and-such manuscripts, signed ‘Gennadiy Kishkin, literary works.’” “And why did you write them?” I say: “Well, what do you mean why? That’s my personal business.” “Alright. Well, you were engaged in foolishness.” She closed the file: “Well, that’s all, see you in court,” the lawyer says. She also left for Israel later. I forgot her name, she was a lawyer at the legal office in the Zaliznychne district. They closed the case, the investigator left, and at the trial, the judge… What was her name? It’s written in the verdict. I never saw any of them again, they changed often.

They bring me into the courtroom, show me the stand-in victims, and they say: “Yes, he really did sell them to us.” One gave a can to her husband in the hospital, and he almost got poisoned another wanted to treat her guests at a birthday party and they almost got poisoned too, and she was embarrassed and felt awkward. They started scolding and shaming me. The lawyer came up and said: “You should still admit your guilt, I mean, come on. They found manuscripts on you, that’s not good either.” I gave my final statement, saying: “From now on, I won’t sell you gobies, but high-quality sturgeon.” A KGB agent was sitting in the front row, and he devoured me with his eyes throughout the whole hearing, so much so that I nearly jumped back from him, his gaze was so ready to pounce and sink into me, even though he was watching with a smirk. My mother was there, crying, the neighbors came.

They sentenced me, gave me three years of general regime, locked me in a closed minibus made in Yerevan, with no windows, nothing, a small black Maria, put me in a so-called “can,” didn’t turn on the light, though I could feel it with the back of my head, constantly hitting the lamp cover, a small lampshade. I’m quite tall, so I was hunched over in this metal “can,” and the van was racing over such bumps that I bashed my head and my elbows, I thought, I just hope we get there soon so I don’t die in this “can” with no air, no light. It was a real ordeal, you couldn’t move a muscle, they really locked you in, I thought, just like in medieval prisons—they’d just put you in and wall you up.

In Lukyanovka, it got easier, compared to that “can,” I could finally stretch my shoulders. In a small cell, 28-A, for 16 people… Ah, after the trial—that was the convicts’ block, they sent me to the convicts’ block, in the Catherine wing… I’ve mixed up the events a bit. I was in the convicts’ block for about a month and a half, I think, and then by prisoner transport—to the Kherson region, to Zburyevka. From Kherson, by “voron” to the pier, at the pier onto a barge—a former Black Sea seiner. On this seiner, they took us to colony number seven, general regime, Golopristansky district, the village of Zburyevka, Kherson region.

The colony was like all colonies, you can’t tell where it’s harder, where it’s easier. “We’ve set traps,” as the warden explained, “for bears, and for goats, and for wolves, and for elephants, but the main thing,” he says, “is that we’ll catch the anti-Soviets too, if we have to.” He let that slip during a meeting with the zeks when they were being admitted to the “envelope.” I worked. After five months, a small amnesty came, and I was surprised that they released me to “khimiya,” to the construction sites of the national economy. The warden came out, talked to the political officer, and said: “We’ve looked at your case, well, what do you really have, just get your act together,” he says, “you did graduate from a university, you can still fix your life, we feel sorry for you. Go to ‘khimiya,’ prove yourself there, there will be checks there too, of course, they’ll be watching you, but still, don’t fall flat on your face, don’t disgrace us, and most importantly, yourself. The government is working well with people now, our country is humane, the Soviet government is wonderful. We are sending you to the construction sites of the national economy.” A court came, and the court approved it. They also told me not to engage in illegal activities at the construction sites of the national economy. “Work, live, start a family—that’s it, a happy future to you.” Well, so I’m on the train…

V. V. Ovsienko: On the train under guard?

G. G. Kishkin: On the train without a guard anymore. They sent me to khimiya from the pier… No, it was actually in a “Stolypin,” that’s right, they sent me in a “Stolypin” car. They gave me the same zek ration for the road—a small brick of bread and a little sugar, a can of sprat in tomato sauce. They sent me to Kharkiv in a “Stolypin,” and in Kharkiv, a magnificent “Ikarus” bus pulled up to the “Stolypin”…

V. V. Ovsienko: Cassette two, Gennadiy Kishkin, October 11, 2005, we continue. So, an “Ikarus,” you were saying…

G. G. Kishkin: Yes, a completely elegant “Ikarus” arrived, almost brand new, comfortable, we transferred there from the “Stolypin” in the presence of a policeman. No longer soldiers, of course—in the “Stolypin” there were still convoy soldiers, but here it was a policeman. And the station Ligachevo, the urban-type settlement Pervomaisky—16 barracks behind a fence, with a chemical plant being built nearby. That’s why it was called “khimiya,” because under Khrushchev, the construction of facilities for the Ministry of Chemical Industry began. The chemical plants were built by conditionally released zeks or convicted zeks who were sent there, and that’s where the term “khimiya,” construction sites of the national economy, came from. I worked there as a carpenter-concreter. I quietly continued to write my anti-Soviet poem “Khreshchatyk,” hiding it all, I found a place there, thank God, there was a place to hide it. I actually wrote it in that Zburyevka, in that “number seven,” wrote it in an English textbook between the lines as a translation of an English text. I’d write a line, like: “Ленин был неправ во многом, кстати, но с кем поспорить, за каким столом, если я единственный читатель запыленных ленинских томов,” and cross it all out. And if a guard read what was crossed out, there was nothing to imprison me for: it’s crossed out, which means don’t believe it. It didn’t say “believe what is corrected” and there was no stamp. And I took all of this to Kyiv, got released…

V. V. Ovsienko: And did you serve the full three years? They didn’t shorten your term?

G. G. Kishkin: They shortened it in connection with, I think, Brezhnev’s death or Andropov’s rise to power. They shortened it by about four months for me I was supposed to be released in March, but I got out in November.

V. V. Ovsienko: What year was that?

G. G. Kishkin: That was 1983, it was an amnesty, I think, after Brezhnev’s death or Andropov’s rise to power. Or after Chernenko’s death.

V. V. Ovsienko: The General Secretaries were dying so often then that it’s hard to remember.

G. G. Kishkin: Yes, they were then. I was released in eighty-three. A “tail” followed me to the platform of Ligachevo station, I saw it all. They got on the electric train with me. One sat across from me without a word, another sat across and opened a small book with the cover facing me: “Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR.” I didn’t speak to them, and they didn’t speak to me, just sat there silently the whole time, looking at me meaningfully and saying nothing. I don’t ask them anything, I think, I’ll endure all this with my own eyes. I arrived in Kharkiv, and from there to Kyiv. In the Kharkiv train compartment, different people got on, also KGB agents, but different ones, also sat across from me and just looked at me meaningfully—that’s all. They sat in my platzkart compartment, looked, licked their lips at me with their eyes and quietly left—that was it, not a single word from them to me, and even less from me to them.

I arrive in Kyiv, thinking, what to do next? My mother got another apartment, we weren’t registered, the communists hurried to tear down the building on Saksahanskoho Street because it was already slated for demolition. They gave my mother a smaller apartment in Vynohradar so my brother and I wouldn’t get it. My brother was also tried eight times for so-called parasitism, he served 16 years. Whenever I was convicted or my poems were confiscated, even if I got 15 days, he would get out and say that I had been reading poems. Gennadiy got 15 days, and now they’ve searched the place, taken the manuscripts. He, of course, was also sentenced for politics, but under a backdoor article—“parasitic lifestyle.” A person wasn’t working—aha, let’s send him away, two years in a penal colony. If a person wasn’t working, there was something to latch onto.

I came to my mother’s place. I decided to go to Moscow after all. I happened to hear on the radio Vera Serebrova on “Voice of America” saying that her husband, a dissident, Feliks Arkadievich Serebrov, was being tortured in prison, and she was asking for help.

V. V. Ovsienko: Perhaps Feliks Serebrov?

G. G. Kishkin: Serebrov, that’s right, Serebrov. And this Serebrova gave her details in Moscow. In Moscow, using the city information service… Elena Bonner wasn’t in the city directory—I wanted to find out where she was, that would have been more important for me, of course. But Bonner wasn’t listed in the directory, but Serebrov was, Feliks Arkadievich. I went to his place on Ozerny Lane in Southwest Moscow, to his address. His wife Vera opens the door. I say that I heard you on “Voice of America,” Ira Serebrova, you said… She says: “My name is Vera, actually, I don’t know why they said ‘Ira.’” I say: “Maybe I misheard. Are you Serebrov’s wife?” “Yes, yes.” Well, I got to talking with her. She says: “You could secretly, one verse at a time, send your ‘Khreshchatyk’ even by mail.” I say: “What, send it by mail? Where by mail?” “To ‘Voice of America.’” “Oh, come on,” I say, “how is that possible? They intercepted a completely harmless letter of mine back in sixty-one, during warmer times, in the ‘Khrushchev Thaw,’ and now—it’s even more likely.” We talked, trusted each other, and she gave me the phone numbers of American correspondents from the *Washington Post* and the *New York Times*. I called the *New York Times* right from Moscow, heard a voice in English, well, I thought, thank you. “Are you the *New York Times*?” They confirmed it all. Well, thank God, I thought. I went to Kyiv, gathered my manuscripts. Well, I thought, my luck has turned, now the KGB agents will be on my tail for a long time with their loss, not their victory. I packed my things, told my mom I’d be back in three days, I’m leaving for Moscow, I gathered a whole bag of poems.

V. V. Ovsienko: Don’t forget to say the date, when was this?

G. G. Kishkin: It was December 24th, when Catholic Christians were celebrating Christmas.

V. V. Ovsienko: And the year?

G. G. Kishkin: The year was eighty-three. And so happy, with this bag I go to the long-distance call office, dial the number for the *New York Times*, and say: “I’ll come to you tomorrow, I’m getting on the train now. What time is best for you to meet me?” “What time will you be here?” I say: “The train arrives around nine, but I could probably find you around eleven.” I already had the address, it was Kutuzovsky Prospekt, 7/1, the *New York Times* bureau. “Well, come at 11. Come by at 11, I’ll come out,” the correspondent says. A couple of times their secretary had answered—they hired Soviet secretaries. Not often, but constantly—it was a common practice for correspondents: to leave a secretary, an informant, of course. When someone called her from Red Square or from Kyiv, or from wherever, she would make arrangements, then pass it on to the KGB. If the KGB agent hadn’t managed to record the wiretap himself, they usually wiretapped and recorded all the conversations of foreign correspondents. Well, I made the arrangements, and with this bag of my manuscripts, I head to the station. I get on the metro, and on the escalator, some civilian mugs are grinning at me, smirking, brazenly and insistently, with some kind of hooligan challenge. But I’m preoccupied, thinking: that’s it, I’m already in America. I wanted to get to freedom so badly. I had no freedom. They think: ah, you were eager to get to the West? Here’s this for you. In short, I didn’t even realize I was being followed. Back then, after the LTP, I understood, but now, when it had become much more dangerous, when I had already made contact with Western correspondents, it was obvious they were watching. You should have at least looked, canceled the trip…

V. V. Ovsienko: And you even called on the phone.

G. G. Kishkin: And I even called on the phone. And there were faces standing in front of the booth. I replayed it later—two guys were standing in front of the booth with their ears pressed right to the glass on what was then Lenin Street at the long-distance call office. I get on the bus—someone pulls my bag back. I look back—he forces a smile, a vile smile with his eyes. I pull the bag to my side, though. The Lord knocked my hand away from the doorbell at Sakharov’s door—and this was the same thing. If I had at least protested, or something—but I was all in the West, already giving an interview to American correspondents…

With this bag, I still made it to the station, went out to my platform, the ticket for the Moscow train already in my pocket, bought in advance. A light snow is falling, ticket for 6:30 p.m. I’m walking along the platform so nonchalantly, calmly. In the same Dralon coat. And suddenly, a searchlight from the head of the train, the locomotive, flashes in front of me. It’s already pulling the train to the platform. And at that moment, something flashed before my eyes, twirled in the snowflakes, and—boom! Such an explosion—I thought it was some kind of bomb. I immediately realized it was prison again, another search, more of my mother’s tears, another small death before the main physical one. I look: shards of a three-liter jar of pickled cucumbers—a sealed jar, it wouldn’t have just fallen out like that, it’s lying there, I’m just staring… They surround me, five or six people, young, Komsomol members, about 20-25 years old: “What, you drunk?! You knocked the jar out of people’s hands!” I keep watching, silent. Two policemen are walking calmly, at a slow pace, coming out of the underground tunnel and walking along the platform. Everything was already arranged, agreed upon. They come up: “What happened?” “Well, we were walking, and this hooligan knocked the jar out of our hands. How are we supposed to go visit people now? We wanted to come to Moscow, bring a souvenir—a jar of Ukrainian cucumbers, and this hooligan…” “Let’s go to the police station,” they say to me. For me, it was awful. I go obediently. If they had even touched me, I would have resisted or started to run. Well, what, they would have caught me, there were a bunch of them, these thugs.

V. V. Ovsienko: Well yes, they were all prepared.

G. G. Kishkin: Yes. About 40 people were involved, starting from my home in Vynohradar. They followed me in the metro, although there were different mugs already. They take me to the police station. My poems are in the bag, this time I had taken everything—the anti-Soviet ones, all of them. They shake them out onto the table: “Wow, you’ve written a lot, ye-e-es, you’ve really written a lot, you’re so prolific.” Another one comes in, apparently their senior, in a work jacket, a proletarian Soviet black quilted jacket, a hat with earflaps. A KGB agent, apparently their chief, gives me a sidelong glance with a smirk, looks at the table: “Go ahead and draw up the inventories and reports.” They write the reports. One policeman writes: “So-and-so, Kishkin, Gennadiy Yuryevich, was acting like a hooligan between tracks eight and nine, using obscene language, was in a state of intoxication, undermining the dignity of a Soviet citizen, and was detained. I was on duty on these tracks at the time this happened. Sergeant Beregovoy.” And two witnesses: one, Galdanov… He didn’t change his name. When I was released, I found this Galdanov through the Kyiv city directory and went to his place. His daughter said he was in the hospital with a serious kidney disease. After the hospital, he got out, I called his home—I found his number—Galdanov. He hadn’t changed his name, thought I was gone for good. He says: “I have no idea. I never worked for the KGB, what are you talking about?” I say: “And for the KGB?” “Never.” I say: “But do you remember, they detained me? Here’s your ID. After my release, I was reviewing my political case, and there are your witness statements: ‘I, so-and-so, a locksmith at such-and-such a factory—it says, a locksmith at the ‘Arsenal’ factory—saw so-and-so—I later found out his name was Gennadiy Kishkin—acting like a hooligan, causing a disturbance, using obscene language, undermining the dignity of a Soviet citizen.’ There are two little reports.” He says: “No, I never worked for them, or on my own,” and hung up. He even gave an address: Aldanov so-and-so, Stroiteli Street, house such-and-such. And the second one—I never found him—Goncharenko, Dzerzhinsky Street, now it’s Predslavynska, I didn’t bother looking. In short, the same thing: “I, so-and-so, saw so-and-so—I later found out at the police station that his name was such-and-such—was in a state of intoxication, using obscene language, undermining dignity, acting like a hooligan on such-and-such a platform.”

They search me, lay everything out—what a horror it was! I’m thinking, I hope my head holds out so I don’t lunge at them, don’t start screaming, especially when they started nudging the poems, the notebooks with their elbows: “Oh, something to read, we’ll have a read, ha-ha, we’ll have a read. And he writes, and when does he write? He just writes and writes. Well, 15 days, go on, go for 15 days for now, we’ll see what to do with you next.” Into the UAZ—and to a small temporary detention facility at the railway station’s linear police department, it was located behind the station on the Solomianka side, it’s been demolished now, they were expanding the station. A small shack, but it had six or eight cells. A latrine bucket in the cell, a real latrine bucket—a big pot. Wooden plank beds. And about 20 people in this cell. It was maybe five meters by three meters—about 15 square meters. And 20 people were piled in there on the floor. Icicles were dripping everywhere, dripping—it was a bit of a thaw. The water from these icicles dripped on them—mostly vagrants. They weren’t called homeless then—station vagrants. Lice, all that stuff, they’re scratching themselves. Well, I lay down with my nose to the door to breathe more freely through the crack.

A couple of days later, a man arrives: “Melnyk,” he introduces himself. “Senior Investigator of the Kyiv Prosecutor’s Office.” He dumps all my manuscripts out of his briefcase. Even the childhood ones—they took everything. He brought them. He stretches his legs out under the table, laughing in his chair: “Well, Gennadiy Georgievich,”—he’s in a proper prosecutor’s uniform with all the insignia—“well, Gennadiy Georgievich, have you written yourself into a corner? My son writes too, but not such filth.” He flips through my “Khreshchatyk”: “Yes, you’ve earned another sentence. We’re tired of playing games with you. Now, let’s have a sincere confession, where were you going, who were you heading to see in Moscow?” I say: “To the Writers’. ” “Impossible, how could you go to the Writers’ with poems like these?” He reads the anti-Soviet stuff: “Над полем желтым, да под небом синим я украинских наших предков не пойму, зачем соединялись вы с Россией – чтоб запорожцев отправлять на Колыму?” “What, you want to go to Kolyma? You think these are poems? The Writers’ … You’ll get your Writers’. ” And this Melnyk was later entrusted with finding the culprits behind the disappearance of Boychyshyn, the Lviv deputy!

V. V. Ovsienko: Mykhailo Boychyshyn… (Head of the Secretariat of the People’s Movement of Ukraine, who disappeared on January 15, 1994. – V.O.).

G. G. Kishkin: Yes, this Melnyk was looking for him, this scoundrel, he sat in the city executive committee, the prosecutor’s office was in the city executive committee then, during perestroika. A couple of days later, Abramenko, Leonid Mykhailovych, another city prosecutor, arrives with some kid, his apprentice. That one kept lunging at me, but this one held him back, the kid says to him: “I’ll get him now, the bastard! I’ll get this bastard now… I’ll tear this scum to pieces—to write such things…” But Abramenko held him back, saying: “Quiet, quiet.” He asks: “Who were you going to see? Will you finally confess or not?” They all wanted me to say I was going to see the Americans, then they would have—one hundred percent—given me an Article 62. That’s one hundred percent. It’s laid out in all their channels that contact with foreigners strengthens this article.

V. V. Ovsienko: Yes, yes, that you wrote anti-Soviet poems and intended to give them to foreigners “for the purpose of dissemination.”

G. G. Kishkin: I didn’t confess until the end of the trial. They told me: “We searched your apartment, we found everything, we know everything about you. If you don’t confess who you were going to see, it will be on your conscience. To Lukyanovka.”

I spent some time in the investigation “khata” at Lukyanovka, then the trial. For the city court, it wasn’t soldiers but sergeants who escorted me, and the van was cleaner. Judge Zubets. (Grigoriy Ivanovich Zubets, while chairman of the Kyiv Regional Court in the 80s, sentenced political prisoners Mykola Polishchuk, Valeriy Kravchenko, and Valeriy Marchenko. He later rehabilitated the latter. Posthumously. – V.O.).

There was an investigation, of course. At the investigation, Kostin was present, he introduced himself: “Kosten, intern-cadet from the Dzerzhinsky Higher School of the KGB in Moscow.” A young lad, he even had one torn shoe, I noticed, but such… (Laughs). They all started with torn shoes—these future Soviet scoundrels. In general, they didn’t use physical force, nothing. My investigator was Mazurkevych—he was a scoundrel, you didn’t need physical force with him. I ask: “How’s my mother?” “Your mother is sick, she hopes you’ll get out, that you’ll behave well at the trial. Your mother is very ill.” When I was released, I asked: “Mom, how are you feeling?” “Oh,” she says, “thank God, I’m fine.” They didn’t even notify my mother when my trial was, even though the verdict says: “Considered in an open court session.” Into the “open court session,” they practically drove with clubs only two witnesses, these unfortunate people, Fedorenko and Zaitsev, who later told me that they were almost forced in with clubs, told that “we will rot you in jail if you don’t testify against him.” They needed two witnesses, as if to clear their legal conscience, that I was distributing my poems. Mazurkevych would come into the investigation box at Lukyanovka prison, sit down quietly and calmly clean his nails, not looking at me. I’m just sitting on this chair, the table bolted to the floor so it doesn’t move. I couldn’t take it anymore. After about 10 minutes of him cleaning his chubby nails, I say: “Excuse me, are you going to interrogate me or should I leave?” He: “Let’s have no outbursts, sit down, you’re a strong personality, you must endure.” And so it went, time after time. “Behave yourself at the trial.” Then Abramenko came, the scoundrel: “He needs to be in a loony bin. Gennadiy, you’re going to the loony bin. Look at the photos we found at your home, what a handsome young man, graduated from Kyiv University—you could have had such a career! It’s just incomprehensible—that you wrote such things against the Soviet government, what were you thinking?!”

At the trial, this same Abramenko, foaming at the mouth: only the psychiatric hospital, a permanent bed—that’s what will correct him. This is the third time we’re confiscating from him—he shows no remorse. Zubets banged his fist before the final statement: “Well, go on, Gennadiy, let this be the last of your writing. Give your word that you won’t write anymore, that’s it.” I say: “I believe in God, I will write.” The lawyer ran in, of course. I had refused a lawyer, but he ran in, just like the previous time: “Gennadiy, I’m your lawyer. You’ll be released to go home, just behave well,” he says to me, the defendant, behind the bars. “You’ll be released to go home, just repent somehow, shed a tear. I’m on your side, I feel sorry for you.”

Well, I behaved normally. Only one KGB agent was present, a very young one ran in. Abramenko and Zubets were sitting there—not a single other person was there, no curious onlookers, they didn’t let anyone in.

V. V. Ovsienko: I remember Zubets—Grigoriy Ivanovich?

G. G. Kishkin: Grigoriy Ivanovich, Zubets, Grigoriy Ivanovich. He says: “We feel sorry for you, really, with such an education—and look at this.” I think it was courtroom number two, I look, the chestnut trees are already blooming, it was June 11th. No, April 19th. The previous trial, for the gobies, was on the 11th. But when they threw me in for politics—that was April 19th, it was Maundy Thursday, right before Easter. They tried me for two days—the 18th and 19th. The verdict was on the 19th. On the 18th, they didn’t manage to finish something. Zubets says: “Consider yourself lucky you got off with a light scare—three years of strict regime.” I say: “Well, thank you.” We said our goodbyes. Abramenko even patted me on the shoulder: “Get your act together when you’re released, and if you don’t, if you misbehave there, in the colony—you’ll never get out.” “Well,” I say, “thank you.”

I ended up in Stari Babany, near Uman, the Ukrainian quarries, a tough zone, a really tough one. They gave me a pick and shovel to dig by hand—while the criminal zeks processed stone with machines—curbstones for roads. I looked: when I got out, they were crooked, lopsided, the dimensions weren’t respected everywhere, one corner was 15 centimeters, as it should be, another, I see, wasn’t even 13, just by eye. But from me, they demanded that everything be smooth, like a sample. Quality control wouldn’t accept my products. “Gennadiy, if you don’t meet the quota this month—it’s the SHIZO.” Before November 7th, that was the standard—the SHIZO. “You have no place among normal people.” Among normal people—that’s what they call the cattle, the scoundrels, but to me they say they are normal people: “And you, you scum, will be in the SHIZO.” The chief engineer comes—and the chief engineers, the production ones, were even worse than the political officers, such scoundrels: “You’ll be hewing stone in the SHIZO. We’ll bring this stone to you there, and you’ll process it there. If you don’t want to work—that’s it.” I say: “How can I work if you don’t accept my output? I don’t know how to polish it anymore.” The quota was to make one meter of this curbstone per day… No, it was supposed to be three meters, I was making one. That wasn’t good enough—to the SHIZO. Well, the SHIZO, of course, as they say, leaves much to be desired. A small, scorching hot pipe, about 50 degrees Celsius, so hot you couldn’t even touch it with your hand to get warm, you’d pull it away immediately. You just touch it with your finger, and your spit practically boils, 50-60 degrees, scalding hot. They work in the boiler room, and they run hot water through this pipe. Impossible to touch. You can stand near it, but you can’t get warm because the window is broken, a grate is under the ceiling, a draft comes from there, and from here—rats, from the metal toilet built flush with the floor. The rats crawl out from there. But they were cute, beautiful—I’d never seen any like them: colorful, multicolored—reddish, with yellowish bellies, and tails. One was reddish with a white tail, another black with white ears, but all so symmetrical. And they’d crawl out of the sewer clean, they didn’t stink. Well, I didn’t sniff too closely, of course, she’d run away immediately. But they didn’t bite, didn’t jump, weren’t aggressive—nothing, she’d find a breadcrumb somewhere.

The food there… One “flying” day—three tablespoons of simple porridge. Of course, no buckwheat, no pasta, no other fancy porridge—just simple porridges, three tablespoons, no more. A piece of black bread—half the usual zek norm. For lunch, a soupy broth with some kind of herb. Of course, not dill, not parsley, not these vitamin-rich herbs—some herbs, almost as if torn from under a fence in the zone. Boiling water with a couple of grains floating in it. The second course—the same porridge and a mug of boiling water. For dinner, just a mug of boiling water, half a piece of this black bread. The next day—completely boiling water. Boiling water in the morning, boiling water for lunch, and boiling water in the evening. Oh, and on a “non-flying” day, on Saturday and Sunday, they’d give a salted fish like sardinella. But otherwise—boiling water. And so it went, every other day. You sit there for fifteen days—great! You’ve come to your senses.

This was already 1986, when they would summon me to stand at attention before them—the colony warden, Dudka, and what was his name?... He had a first name and patronymic like Gogol’s…

V. V. Ovsienko: Nikolai Vasilievich.

G. G. Kishkin: Nikolai Vasilievich Demchenko, deputy warden for regime. They were downright thrilled to have one political prisoner—it was awful. For roll call, the KGB agents would assign two of them, so there would be no collusion. There was another man there for religion, Volodymyr Ivanovych Loboda, from the town of Kostyantynivka in the Donetsk region. He, poor soul, also got saddled with four years, plus he had three years of exile. It was because he didn’t want to register his Pentecostal community—in his town of Kostyantynivka. We found a common language. He asks me: “Do they ask you about me?” I say: “They ask, how is he, does he believe in religion? I say: ‘Well, he’s a man who believes in God. What about you?’” “Yes,” he says, “we talk with him and that’s all.” “And what do you talk about?” “That’s our business.” But we were talking about our own things. I say: “Volodymyr Ivanovych, communism will definitely collapse, for sure, but when?” I wasn’t sure it would happen so quickly. Even when Gorbachev came to power, I read his speech, and one zek there says: “You know, Gena, there are going to be big changes towards democratization now.” I didn’t believe it, I say: “You know, so many promises of democracy, they’ve been shouting about it since seventeen, but what’s the use? Even Lenin shouted about democracy.” But he says: “No, something substantial is going to happen now, I’m sure.” And about a couple of months later, I read: the first 120 political prisoners have been released. It was in the newspaper “Izvestia,” in the footer of that newspaper. Well, thank God, I thought. Sakharov is released from house arrest in the city of Gorky, and many others. The KGB agent says nothing to me, everything is quiet and smooth.

My release year approaches, eighty-seven. On January 8, 1987, I am released. The camp warden calls me over the loudspeaker: “Kishkin, Gennadiy Georgievich, who is being released, report to checkpoint No. 1 for release.” I go there, my pants full of joy. Although not so much, because I’m thinking, what to do next? I walk out of the colony, having received 300 rubles I earned there. 300 Soviet rubles.

V. V. Ovsienko: Did they announce the grounds for your early release?

G. G. Kishkin: No grounds whatsoever.

V. V. Ovsienko: Just that you are being released and that’s it?

G. G. Kishkin: Just that he is being released. “Kishkin, Gennadiy Georgievich, who is being released—report to the checkpoint.” January 8, 1987. I go to the checkpoint, get 300 rubles from the accounting office, they issue them to me. I’m in my zek clothes, no one met me. I walk out. No, I was mistaken, it turns out someone did meet me. A “Volga” is parked there, and out comes, I understood, a plainclothes KGB agent with a tie: “Hello, congratulations on your release, Gennadiy Georgievich. I’m Ivan Mikhailovich, from the state security service of the city of Uman. My congratulations.” “Thank you.” “Well, we need to have a talk with you, let’s go.” “Let’s go.” We drive to Uman, to their KGB office. They were located in the district police department, just on a higher floor. The regular policemen had ordinary doors, but theirs were upholstered in black leatherette, on the top floor. They take me to their office—there you have Karl Marx, there you have Lenin, there you have Dzerzhinsky above his desk, a beautiful antique clock—probably stolen from some kulaks back in the twenties… A magnificent, expensive grandfather clock stands there. And the building itself—a mansion, apparently of some former well-to-do capitalist. In short: “Gennadiy Georgievich, here is a paper, everything is written here.” I read: I, so-and-so, so-and-so, so-and-so, pledge not to disseminate information about state security and about today’s conversation, which took place in the office of Chief Valeriy…, oh, damn it, what was the name of that KGB agent? I have it written in my diaries—anyway, the chief of the KGB of the city of Uman. I will work under the surname Krylov, I pledge to uncover anti-Soviet organizations in the city of Uman, as well as in the city of Kyiv, if travel there is permitted with a travel permit.

V. V. Ovsienko: Wow!

G. G. Kishkin: “We have one old anti-Soviet woman here, Nadiya…” I forgot her name, she lived in Uman, she’s even in Solzhenitsyn’s “The Gulag Archipelago”…

V. V. Ovsienko: Nadiya Surovtsova.

G. G. Kishkin: Oh! Nadiya Surovtsova. “We have a Nadiya Surovtsova here. Well, true, she’s our person now. So, we hope you will be too. Young people gather at her place, she educates them. We have good relations with her. We hope to have good relations with you too. So, if there’s anything from you—we expect you to give signals. If there’s anti-Soviet activity, we often have strikes at the factory. You will catch the anti-Soviets—then we will let you go home. You’ll stay with us for a year—we’ll let you go home. Or you’ll end up back on the ‘rock pile’ if you don’t work well.” I say: “Understood.” And to myself, I’m thinking: “Damn it, so this is their perestroika…”

He continues: “Do you think that just because perestroika has started, the KGB is gone? The KGB exists, just like the Soviet government. As long as there is the KGB, there will be a Soviet government. And as long as there is a Soviet government, there will be a KGB.” We had a laugh, back and forth… “In short, we are giving you a spot in the dormitory. If you don’t agree, we will send you to Dniprodzerzhynsk to the foundry. There’s a metallurgical plant there, you’ll be in the foundry, it will be hard there, that will be your second prison. But here you will be under our supervision, the salary will be good, you can start as an apprentice or a loader. In short,” he says, “agree to it.” I say: “I agree.” I’m thinking, I’ll get under the skin of these scoundrels, find out what makes them tick, the bastards.

Well, one of them did something very good right away. They were pressuring a man, Volodya Guslya. I told this story over at Gumenyuk’s place. “He waved,” he says, “a little flag, that’s why they’re on my case… You ask them about it.” And I had said that I was on their list, they told me to look out for strike instigators. I had already gotten a job as a loader at the factory. So the KGB agent tells me: “There are two brothers, foremen, who work here, they’re behind all this,” he says, “they’re all united.” I say: “Well, they’re doing the right thing.” I told them about myself, they took me into their group. This Volodya asked me to find out… I tell the KGB agent: “There’s a man here who’s interested, he’s on your list…” Well, for him, it was no big deal. It was more dangerous for me, because I was sort of putting myself on the line: what if they say you’re working for us and for them—back to the zone, they’ll say. The KGB agent says: “Yes, there is such a person, Vladimir Guslya, he was waving a yellow-and-blue flag, a blue-and-yellow one, under the Shevchenko monument. Sometimes they’re blue-and-yellow, sometimes yellow-and-blue. Yes, he won’t be going to Bulgaria or anywhere else.” The KGB agents even started consulting with me: go find out what the workers’ mood is, we want to come. I say: “That would be interesting, let a KGB agent come and talk.” Major Lukashev comes and says that now it’s perestroika, you can see everyone, meet everyone, we have, he says, a human face. But there has never been and never will be an independent Ukraine, that, he says, is all anti-Soviet sentiment, these are anti-Soviet machinations. The Soviet must and will exist, neither Hitler nor the White Guards destroyed the Soviet government, and these scoundrel anti-Soviets won’t destroy it either. Many people who engaged in unlawful activities, many anti-Soviets, have already been released. They write explanations and repent, they are already living honest lives. Gorbachev’s policy is correct. And we—I won’t name him—have a man in the workshop. I’ll name him later. He is also a good person, working among you. I think to myself: a special plant by the KGB agent: “working among you.”

V. V. Ovsienko: And Bohdan Chornomaz—did they mention him to you?

G. G. Kishkin: No.

V. V. Ovsienko: No? He was imprisoned for anti-Soviet agitation. He lived in Uman after his release.

G. G. Kishkin: No, I haven’t heard of him. Oh, maybe he’s the one I met at a gathering. I was reading anti-Soviet poems. He was already getting on in years, somewhere around fifty or even approaching sixty.

V. V. Ovsienko: This one is younger.

G. G. Kishkin: Then it’s not him. I met this man from Uman, he even named the chief KGB agent.

They come to me at the beginning of eighty-eight. The local policeman contacts me: “Some people want to see you.” I’m working normally there. I worked my shift, of course, there was a dry law.

V. V. Ovsienko: What were you doing there?

G. G. Kishkin: A loader. At “Umanselmash,” the Uman Combine Harvester Plant.

V. V. Ovsienko: And where did you live there?

G. G. Kishkin: In a dormitory next to the Shevchenko monument. A good monument to Shevchenko, right next to the KGB and the police. The dormitory was across the river, I forgot its name. A lovely little river there, a dam, a huge pond. Ostashivka, yes. And that’s where the “Umanselmash” dormitory was. I lived there under supervision. They made me sign a paper, gave me a passport and a card filled out by the passport officer in the presence of the KGB agent. Read it: you can only travel to Kyiv with a travel permit to visit your mother, for no more than three days. Travel to Moscow is strictly forbidden. “Sign here.” I signed. They gave me another separate sheet: you must be in the dormitory from eight in the evening until six in the morning.

V. V. Ovsienko: Administrative supervision, right?

G. G. Kishkin: Administrative supervision, yes, from both the KGB and the police. Only the KGB’s was unofficial. When I requested a certificate from them for my rehabilitation, stating that I was under supervision, they sent me a certificate saying: was under the administrative supervision of the police. The KGB always stays on the sidelines. They didn’t do anything, didn’t imprison, didn’t shoot, you can blame it all on others—on the police, on other agencies. I had to check in every Thursday. The most interesting thing: when I shared my thoughts and my past deeds with the deputy head of personnel at this factory, his last name was Suvorov, and then this Suvorov told someone else that we have such-and-such a person here—this Suvorov was no longer in the personnel department. I later asked at the trade committee what happened. “Oh, he blabbed something, said something about someone.” Apparently, he said something. But I never saw him again. Apparently, the same KGB agents fired him. He had asked me: “What were you imprisoned for—for politics, did you say something?” I say: “No, for poems.” He: “What, for poems?” I say: “Well, yes, for poems.” “For anti-Soviet ones?” I say: “Well, maybe for anti-communist ones.”

At the end of eighty-seven—beginning of eighty-eight, the local policeman comes and says: “Let’s go, some people want to meet with you. Hotel ‘Uman,’ room so-and-so, go there.” I go to the Hotel “Uman,” enter the room. The administrator lets me through, says: “Yes, yes, they’re waiting for you there,” a KGB agent, apparently—he named him—“go on.” The wife of this KGB agent worked as the hotel director, so she provided the room. I go in there, there are two KGB agents, one old, one young. They always have an old one—and he’s training a young one. Well, they started lecturing me again: “The Soviet government is strong, it can never be broken, it hasn’t been broken in seventy years, you, renegades like you, get your act together, get married, otherwise it’s the colony again and all that.” This was the beginning of eighty-eight. I didn’t sign anything there, they just gave me a verbal warning: “When you arrive, get your act together,”—this was the Kyiv KGB agent. “Now, please, you can go to Moscow, or wherever you want, your supervision has been lifted.” They gave me my passport, registered me out. My old passport, when they were searching my place—my brother told me—this Abramenko threw it away during the search and said: “He won’t need this anymore.” And he tossed it under the table. They left and didn’t take the passport. A whole safe—I had bought a safe once—a safe full of poems, my writings, since childhood, they took it all. And so, these scoundrels, this Melnyk, who later investigated Boychyshyn… I say, “You took it. So you are obligated to bring this safe back.” “Don’t teach us how to live, we know who to bring things to and who not to. Take it, and if you don’t need it—we’ll destroy it.” They send a notice to my mom: have her come and pick up the personal belongings, otherwise—we’ll destroy them. My old mother is supposed to go to the prosecutor’s office to this Mazurkevych or to Abramenko, to drag things from Pechersk to Vynohradar… My mother is sick, 80 years old. They are scoundrels.

Anyway, I came to Kyiv to my mother’s. The local policeman runs over on the second day: “Come on, get registered quickly, or we’ll lock you up again. You won’t be under supervision here, but I’ll be keeping an eye on you.” A month later, the public of the Vynohradar microdistrict, Shevchenkivskyi district, summons me to a council of veterans. Twenty veterans of the Great Patriotic War are sitting there, various pensioners, and they lay into me: “Well, how could you speak about the Soviet government like that? It’s the most humane government, how could you do that!” Another one snickers: “Last year, some guy was running around Vynohradar with a machine gun, saying he’d shoot the entire Soviet government. The idiot is still in a psychiatric hospital. And this one should be thanking the Soviet government that everything is fine: he’s released, has an apartment, get a job and live. What didn’t the Soviet government give you? It gave you everything, everything is fine, wonderful.” This was already 1988. I got in touch with the Culturological Club…

V. V. Ovsienko: Aha, that one, over on Olehivska, 10, with Dmytro Fedoriv.

G. G. Kishkin: I also went to Kurenivka, there were various spots—sometimes in Kurenivka, sometimes in Podil, sometimes in Syrets, we’d find a place somewhere.

The local policeman would come to me once a month: “How’s Gennadiy, how’s Gennadiy?” That was in 1988. In eighty-nine, he still came running to us, then he gradually backed off, backed off, backed off—and that was it. I ran into him on the street once, he said: “Hey, how’s life?”—that’s all, he didn’t say anything more, they must have been given instructions to lay off. Before, I know, for this article, the KGB agents would instruct them to keep an eye on such a person—and it was all on the local policemen, to watch this one and that one.

Well, those are the poems. I think I’ve told all the main things.

V. V. Ovsienko: Well, yes, but still, the story needs to be brought to a conclusion, to the present day. What about rehabilitation? You live abroad now. Why and when did you move?

G. G. Kishkin: They rehabilitated me in 1991 under the general Ukrainian rehabilitation, the USSR was still around.

V. V. Ovsienko: The law of April 17, 1991.

G. G. Kishkin: Yes, yes. About the rehabilitation of everyone, starting from 1917 up to the nineties.

V. V. Ovsienko: That included articles 187-prime and sixty-two.

G. G. Kishkin: Yes, yes, and the religious one, it seems, and forced treatment. So I started writing. I barely managed to find a job, I went to work at the “Metro” restaurant as a cloakroom attendant, there was an ad. I went there for the cloakroom job, the head of personnel looked at me… And the KGB agents had destroyed all my old work record books. In them, I had entries, even if only for two months, but there was a work history, a recorded length of service, even if only two months at a time, but it was there—they destroyed it all. They say: “What a parasite, look at his work record,”—showing it to each other. They tore them up in front of me during the investigation.

V. V. Ovsienko: Would you look at that!

G. G. Kishkin: Yes. They issued a new one in Uman and wrote that I was in Uman on forced labor, released under such-and-such an article, worked as a loader—all of that was in this work record, I have it there, in Germany. I came to the restaurant with this record, and she asks: “What’s this about forced labor? What is this Article 187-prime?” I say: “Well, political.” “Well, how can we hire you,” she says, “as a cloakroom attendant in a restaurant?” But they hired me anyway, not as a cloakroom attendant, they barely hired me as a watchman for the back gate. A friend of mine worked as a cashier there and barely managed to persuade the personnel manager. He says: “I’m scared myself, they’ll fire me, why would I hire him? At least bring a certificate that you were in prison.” Zubets wrote me a certificate: “So-and-so was imprisoned, served his sentence, under such-and-such an article for malicious fabrications against the Soviet state and political system.” And with that certificate, I went to this personnel manager. He got even more scared after seeing that certificate.

I went, wanted to be a loader in some cafeteria, the personnel manager there says the same thing. I say: “You’re worse than Beria here—come on, it’s perestroika already.” “Don’t teach us how to live, we know what to do, we have our own regulations, our own instructions,”—they were still holding on to the old ways.

An opportunity to go abroad came up. I married a Jewish woman, but I’m divorced from her now because there, I saw, they have completely different… It turns out, she has her own family there. They started lulling me with the idea that Jews are the smartest people on earth. I didn’t agree with that, I said that there are smart Russians, smart Ukrainians, and smart Georgians, there are smart people everywhere, and there are fools too. Why are Jews the smartest? Well, conversations like that. They immediately got offended that I didn’t support them, that I didn’t sing their praises. Well, I divorced this wife. But she got me out of there, I’ve been there for five years now.

V. V. Ovsienko: When did you leave?

G. G. Kishkin: In the year 2000.

V. V. Ovsienko: And where to?

G. G. Kishkin: The city of Osnabrück, Germany, near the Netherlands. It’s much easier to live there, I’ve managed to talk with many great and good people. I spoke with Günter Grass quite informally. I still haven’t seen Solzhenitsyn, although I wrote a couple of letters from Germany to Tverskaya. I don’t know where he lives, or where his Foundation is. I wrote to the Foundation, they gave me the Foundation’s address, but I don’t know his personal address. I haven’t communicated with him. But with Günter Grass, we talked, everything was normal, we patted each other on the back at a conference. Osnabrück is a small city, only one hundred thousand people—our people came there, all the famous German writers come to this city, they aren’t shy about it, with reports, with all sorts of things. It’s very simple to live—whether in a village or in Berlin—it’s the same there, if a person is a person. Here, if someone is a “villager,” then they are truly a “villager,” and often look like one. But there, a villager has a couple of cars and such an intellectual “edge,” if need be, he can host some Persian ambassador in his village.

V. V. Ovsienko: And are you working there?

G. G. Kishkin: I’m unemployed right now. I worked as a janitor in a Turkish mosque for one year through the social welfare office, through Germany’s social policy. They let me work for one year—not everyone gets that, I was still lucky. But I worked as a janitor with a wide range of duties—you had to be an electrician there, and sweep leaves, of course, and clean the toilet, and take out the trash, and, if necessary, hammer a nail, replace or fix a lamp, and, as they’ve learned to do here now, do a Euro-renovation and all those Euro-things, vacuum the carpets—this was in a Turkish mosque. The Germans paid the money, but I worked in a Turkish mosque. There are a lot of Turks and Turkish organizations there. They know German, and they don’t forget Turkish, among themselves they speak Turkish, but if necessary, they also speak excellent German. The Germans aren’t offended that they speak Turkish, and they shout in Turkish on the buses. And they have a high crime rate, the Turks. Of course, the far-right German parties are unhappy with this influx of Turks, there are really a lot of them—five million. But according to general German policy, everyone is equal, no discrimination in salary, or housing, or anything.

I finished my work there, and now they’ve given me benefits. I used to have a salary of 1000 euros, 300 went for rent, 700 was left. Well, a good kilogram-sized chicken in the store—if not in one, then in another—you can buy for 1 euro. And the most expensive pork is 3.50 euros. Maybe pork tenderloin would be more expensive, could go up to 5 euros. Beef is expensive. Beef is about three times more expensive than pork.

V. V. Ovsienko: Have you written anything about yourself, or has anything been written about you? I’m interested in a bibliography.

G. G. Kishkin: Once, in “Kievskie Vedomosti,” the editor was Toima… That was in ninety-five. And there was a correspondent named Kirindyasenko. I went to them once, asked how one could publish such material. He says: “Let me write it.” I gave him the papers—excerpts from my trilogy “My Trilogy, My Three Camps.” And he presented these papers as his interview with me.

V. V. Ovsienko: And do you still have this trilogy?

G. G. Kishkin: It’s in Germany, unfortunately.

V. V. Ovsienko: And how many pages is it?

G. G. Kishkin: They published, I think, two or three.

V. V. Ovsienko: If you have that publication, it would be good to get a photocopy of it. Because when we write a biographical sketch of a person, we also provide a bibliography.

G. G. Kishkin: He presented it as his own work.

V. V. Ovsienko: As an interview, right?

G. G. Kishkin: Well, yes. And he tells me: “Don’t you go saying that you wrote all this.” As if he did it all himself. At first, he told me: “Oh, you’ll get 20,000 hryvnias for this.” I joked: “Oh, then we can at least have a beer.” But he didn’t give me a single kopeck! But that’s not the point. My brother was sick then, he passed away, poor soul, I thought I could at least scrape together something for medicine—absolutely nothing!

V. V. Ovsienko: What you’ve told me here, I will send to Kharkiv, they will type it into a computer, and I will send it to you on paper so you can read it over and correct any mistakes.

G. G. Kishkin: And where will you send it, to Germany?

V. V. Ovsienko: Yes. That’s why I want you to write down your address for me—so it’s written correctly in German. Write the address for me here in this notebook.

G. G. Kishkin: I’ll write it down, but what if they kick me out of there? I divorced my wife…

V. V. Ovsienko: Then you should keep in touch with me.

G. G. Kishkin: I will keep in touch, but I’ll write down the address just in case. If I happen to change my place of residence, I’ll call.

V. V. Ovsienko: Let me know.

[End of recording]

Kishkin, Gennadiy Georgievich. Photo by V. Ovsienko, 11.10. 2005. Kyiv.