Dovhan, Margarita

Interview with Margarita Kostiantynivna DOVHAN, journalist, a Sixtier

V. Ovsiienko: February 12, 2015, in the Dovhans' home, we are speaking with Mrs. Rita.

M. Dovhan: Margarita Dovhán.

V. O.: Margarita Kostiantynivna Dovhan.

M. D.: I often feel the voices of my ancestors within me. I treat the roots of my family tree with reverence, so I will begin my story with a mention of my great-grandparents... My Ukrainian origins are from Volhynia, near Lutsk. There was once a landowner there named Olga Karpenko. She owned the village of Bilostok near Lutsk. It still exists. And somewhere nearby—I couldn't find this village now—was the village of Zhabókrychi, and there was a landowner named Zhabokrytskyi. They married and gave me my great-grandfather, Volodymyr. And right there, near Lutsk, was a large settlement of German farmers. I know now from the historian Ahasiev's book “The History of German Colonization in Volhynia” (2014) that they began to arrive in Volhynia (via Poland) as early as the 15th century! They were poor craftsmen and peasants. And that’s how the German farming colony near Lutsk was formed.

They were great laborers. They kept cows. They made cheese from the milk, collected cream, and churned butter. Their goods were in high demand.

The family branched out; the children later became lawyers, musicians, and businessmen, as we'd say, or merchants of some sort, but my grandfather Jakob had a farm. He had many children. One of the Shrag sisters... I think it’s not Shrag, but Shryog, because we don’t write the umlaut over the “a.” And “Shryog” translates to our language as “crooked” or “bent,” or something to that effect. And there were three sisters there—Matilda, Margarita, and a third, but I’ve forgotten her name. So, when the tsar started the war with Japan and began drafting everyone for the front, it reached these German boys too. And they, this German community that lived in Volhynia, were Mennonites. It's a very fringe religious movement. Pacifists. Under no circumstances would they fight. They didn’t recognize civilization—no technology, no electricity. Such originals, they were. They worked with their hands and with horses. They didn't even recognize machines. When they began to be drafted into the army, they all took off and fled… They committed a great sin, as my grandmother Anna told me—they fled to the state of North Dakota in America. And my grandmother Anna, the daughter of Jakob Shryog, married a Ukrainian, Zhabokrytskyi. That's a small branch on my mother's side... They had a son, Borys, and a daughter, Olga, and Olga gave me my mother, Tetiana.

And then there was a branch on the male side. Once, also long ago, a Russian dancer from Saint Petersburg was sent to dance at the opera theater in Warsaw. His surname was Peshkov, and I wondered if he was Russian. Because Maxim Gorky was also a Peshkov, but he was no Russian at all; he was from the Finno-Ugric peoples. So maybe this Peshkov was also Finno-Ugric but was registered as Russian. He married a Polish girl, Lizhbetka (Lizaveta), who sold cigarettes near the opera. And so they too entered my family stream. And they gave me my grandfather Mykola, my mother's father.

V. O.: And what is your mother's name?

M. D.: Tetiana Mykolaivna Zaitsevska. Zaitsevska by marriage. She died at the age of 89. In 1998, of the last century. My mommy was a beauty and a very smart woman. She lived and breathed Ukraine, she suffered for it like no other of the old folk. There wasn't a rally, not a meeting, that she didn't attend. I would sometimes scold her. I remember the funeral of our First Hierarch Volodymyr near Saint Sophia's Cathedral. And Mama came there, already very old. Sometimes she had troubles with her mind, so I was always by her side. But when a fight broke out there, nearly gunfire, Mama rushed to flee and tripped over some stone... In short, I went through a lot then. But my mother was a strange person. Of course, she spoke Russian, but in her last years, in a Ukrainian environment, she switched to Ukrainian. At a respectable age. The Ukrainian spirit lived deep within her.

And my father's line is this. Somewhere on the border of Voronezh, or Kursk, or Ryazan—I don’t know exactly which province—there is a small town called Dankov. This town has been known since ancient times; blacksmiths there forged the tribute for the Tatars. After all, Muscovy paid tribute to the Tatars. And in this Dankov, after the defeat of the Polish uprising in the 1830s, a certain artist named Zaitsevskyi found himself—my mother didn't remember his first name, only the surname. And this Zaitsevskyi laid a living thread to our time. And my grandfather, Oleksiy Zaitsevskyi, my father's father, took part in the 1905 revolution. But when the revolution was defeated, something terrible happened in the family. He committed suicide. Nobody spoke about it because he left his mother with two small children. One of them was my father, Kostiantyn. And my grandmother, Lizaveta, was from the Vdovyn family. Everyone was registered as Russian. But Vdovyn—it has such a Ukrainian flavor... Plus, it was in the Voronezh region. And the Voronezh region—I know this even from modern examples—is full of Ukrainians.

V. O.: Yes, that's our Sloboda Ukraine.

M. D.: I'll tell you how our fate unfolded. In 1928, my grandfather, a customs officer in Volhynia, my mother's father, was arrested (the Stalinist terror was beginning) and sent to the southernmost point of Central Asia, to the “Kushka” concentration camp. My grandmother, Olga, heroically rushed after him. Of course, they wouldn't let her near, so she got a job in Tashkent as some kind of accountant. [Shows photographs]. Grandmother Olga and Grandfather Mykola.

V. O.: Aha, aha. What a lady in such a beautiful hat.

M. D.: This was before the revolution.

So, my grandmother gets a job as an accountant...

And my mother finished pharmaceutical college and already had a good friend, Kostiantyn Oleksiiovych Zaitsevskyi, who, while a student at the Moscow Geodetic Institute, came to Ukraine for his internship. They met, fell in love, and got married. After finishing institute and college, they went to the same place, to Central Asia. That’s what Mama wanted: to be closer to her grandfather and grandmother. And so it happened that there, in the capital of Uzbekistan, as funny and original as it sounds, I, Rita Kostivna Dovhán, was born.

V. O.: You weren't Dovhan then, were you?

M. D.: No, I was Zaitsevska then. And it was my grandmother, Anna, who also came there, who went to register my birth. Everyone came to be closer to Grandfather. He was there for about three to five years, I don't remember exactly, but we were all there for about four years. My father worked as a geodesist, and with him, the geodesist, my mother and I traveled almost all over Central Asia. And meanwhile, my grandmother found a better place to live: the magnificent city of Samarkand. By the way, as I've now learned, our wonderful artist, Halia Sévruk—also a dissident and a great patriot, who created the entire history of Ukraine in ceramics—also ended up in Samarkand by the whimsical fate of all post-revolutionary children. She is a descendant of Vasyl Hryhorovych-Barskyi. There were also exiles in Samarkand. They somehow miraculously gathered there.

Then they released my grandfather, but they didn't allow him to return to his homeland. So they live in Samarkand. And from Samarkand, they sent my father to the Urals. And they constantly tormented him to join the Communist Party. And why? He was a unique person, talented in many ways. A brilliant organizer, he knew his work well, and he drew beautifully, and music... Well, both my mother and father—everyone was drawn to music, classical, I mean, to serious music. But because he was an organizer, they wanted to promote him, and he always pretended he wasn't capable, that he hadn't matured yet, that his family had grown. This was in Sverdlovsk. In short, he wriggled out of it as best he could. And for that, they sent him to such remote corners and tormented him, forcing him to wander all over the place.

The Urals, Sverdlovsk, some kind of grayness, gaunt pines. But the spiritual life was wonderful. It was there that I first went to the opera with my mother and father. And we were amazed. Well, I know this from my parents. Because at that time, I couldn't appreciate the singers, the theater artists, and the productions. But it turns out that mostly “seditious” artists, exiles, worked in this theater in the Urals...

My brother Serhiy was born in Sverdlovsk. A talented artist. He lives in the village of Andriivka in the Kyiv region.

When the Russian aggression against Western Belarus and Western Ukraine began, my father was transferred from Sverdlovsk to Belarus. From that hungry Ural region, from gray and tedious Sverdlovsk (apart from these glimmers of art), we ended up in Belarus. They settled us in a beautiful house where a landowner had once lived. I remembered this because I was already nine years old and was already thinking about things, pondering. A landowner lived here, and now we live here. Many of us were crammed into that little house. And from that little house, you could see wagons passing by on the road every day, horses carrying goods to the market. Milk, butter, cream… Belarusian women, dressed all in white—it was like some incredible artistic picture for me. And there we finally ate our fill... Mama bought herself some shoes there. She was a beauty but had never had such shoes. She placed them on a stool in the middle of the kitchen, went about her chores, and glanced at them from time to time. And I would circle around her.

This paradise lasted for two months. Then everything vanished as if licked up by a cow's tongue. There was nothing left. I didn't think much about it then, but I heard my parents whispering among themselves. The chief of that unit also lived there, and Dad was the chief engineer. As I later understood, terrible repressions began. And meanwhile—the empire had already seized the Baltics—they sent us with my father to Vilnius. We arrived in Vilnius—an even greater paradise! I remember how I would stop dead before a shop window that displayed chocolates in the shape of the Egyptian pyramids. I remember how they finally bought my father, who used to walk around in some old, shabby overcoat, a nice new coat. Life there was beautiful, romantic, and somehow unexpected for me. But it was also short.

I remember we went to school. In the city center, a former Lithuanian gymnasium had now become a “Russian school with non-compulsory study of the Lithuanian language.” I'm standing next to my dad and the teacher. A small, fair-haired woman, and Dad is so tall. And she's looking up at him like that, it's clear the main things have been agreed upon, and she says to him, “I suppose your girl won't be studying Lithuanian?” And Dad says, “But we've come to live with you. She will study it.” That Lithuanian woman just fell onto my father’s chest and started sobbing... And I'm tugging at Dad’s jacket, saying, “Dad, why is she crying? I will study it.” And to this day, a tear burns me when I remember that very significant episode from my life. Of all the newcomers, there were only two of us in the class who undertook to study Lithuanian. And the teacher was so kind to us! She grew to love us.

It was the end of the quarter. They hadn't managed to replace the Lithuanian primers with Soviet ones yet. And she tells me, “Learn this text by heart, and I will ask you to recite it.” Vasyl, I learned that text…

V. O.: And you still remember it?

M. D.: It’s a sin to say, but I know it better than the Lord's Prayer.

V. O.: Well, recite it, let it be heard.

M. D.: [In Lithuanian, unintelligible].

V. O.: Some words are understandable.

M. D.: Of course, the text is simple but very good. “Vitia and Tsylia were sitting at the table drinking tea. Vitia had been to the store and bought sugar and a lemon. On his way home, he met a beggar and gave him ten cents. The onion is bitter, the lemon is sour, the sugar is sweet.” A very good text.

A few weeks passed, and all the luxury, all the chocolates, everything—just like in Belarus—vanished!

V. O.: Is this 1940?

M. D.: It's 1940. Literally right after the army comes the geodesy, to make maps, to multiply the empire's territory.

V. O.: “Territorial acquisitions?”

M. D.: Yes. I'm walking up the stairs at school, and the stairs are by a window. The window is huge, and beyond it, you can see a small lawn, and then a grand gray building, similar to our Government Building here in Kyiv, only smaller. You can see it’s solidly built. It used to be the Lithuanian conservatory. They made the walls thick enough so you couldn’t hear from one classroom to another—a tenor singing there, and someone playing the organ here, for example. But the Soviet authorities found a more practical use for this building—they turned it into the KGB, or the NKVD as it was called then. I knew nothing of this, not a clue, as a small child. I'm going up the stairs, skipping up the steps—and suddenly I hear such a wild, deafening, terrible, insane scream. I raise my eyes at the scream: from an upper floor (I don’t remember, the building must have had five floors, large, massive floors) a person flies out of the window, I can see his boots. A person is flying with a wild scream! I scream in horror, “The man is falling, the man is falling!” Someone rushes over to me... In short, something terrible was happening to me. For a long time, they drilled into me that I had imagined it, that it hadn't happened. My father took me out of school. I remember that evening my dad's boss came to our house. The head of the geodesic unit... Apparently, for them, it was an emergency incident. They were afraid I might blab somewhere, or something like that. And they kept insisting that nothing like that had happened: “You imagined it, it happens.” I don’t remember the details, only the commotion surrounding me, trying to make me forget this episode, entertaining me this way and that. Well, and then very quickly—the war.

V. O.: And where were you when the war broke out?

M. D.: In the same Vilnius, in Lithuania. There were already three of us kids with Mama, another brother, Vadym, was born in the Urals, and Mama was expecting her fourth child. She was due any day, only weeks left, not even a month. In the summer, they took us out of Vilnius. There was some little dacha there, an old dacha. We were stuffed into that dacha like geese, and we grazed there. It was a beautiful summer, and suddenly… On the morning of June 22, my father and older brother went fishing. I tagged along too. The Viliya River flows there. We're going fishing before dawn, it’s still almost dark. But there’s a kind of humming, some strange anxiety in the air. We see Poles standing right in the middle of the road, by a house... And there were a lot of Poles there, they hadn't managed to shoot or deport them all yet. They were on their knees. I hear, “Matka Boska.” My father approaches, they whisper something to him. Then suddenly, a sharp, terrible roar descends from the sky. You can’t see the sky: a cloud of German planes. They're flying towards Vilnius. There’s a rumbling somewhere, and then they're over us. The Poles, in horror, had poured out along the path we're taking to the river. Panic: “This is war, it's the Germans.” But my father, filled with Soviet propaganda, though he wasn't very Soviet, says, “It can't be, because there’s a pact with the Germans, they can't attack us, it must be military exercises.” Well, the Poles laugh ironically, of course, and say again that it's war. In short, it was terrifying—that first air raid, the rumbling. They destroyed the bridge over the Vileika and were already bombing Vilnius. They were probably flying towards Kyiv, which I had always imagined as some miracle on the hills above the Dnipro. I’ll talk about that later...

A new wave attacks. The Poles pushed us into a house because the planes started shooting. Wherever they saw a road with people, the shooting would start. They drove us into a Polish house because they saw a man with children. And there, whether a family or neighbors—everyone is standing and praying to the Mother of God. And my Soviet father reassures everyone that this will pass, that this can’t be... We somehow made it home. We're walking through our yard, and here's the scene: little houses along a path, and at the end of the path, a large water barrel. Leaning against that barrel, our mother is frozen, holding her belly. And the people watching from their windows are petrified, speechless. We walk past this row, and my mother says in a faint voice, “War with the Germans.” That night, endless streams of those planes flew towards Kyiv. Everything was clear by then.

In the middle of the night, we got out of the house, sat down, and hid in the bushes in the forest. A truck comes for us at dawn. A tiny truck. They shove us in, barefoot and practically naked in our sundresses. We have nothing; all our belongings were left in Vilnius. The only thing my mother grabs, since she’s about to give birth, is a teapot. She gives me some bundle with documents and papers—all she could gather. I'm holding my brothers' hands. We squeezed into that truck.

When the truck was driving through Belarus—it was horrific. I saw Orsha burning—a large city where they had tanks of fuel, some supplies or something, stored at the station. It was a nightmare. Suddenly, planes fly in—the road is already full of refugees—and these planes descend low and deliberately shoot, “from a strafing flight,” as we were told... We grabbed whatever we could. I grabbed the teapot, Mama grabbed my brothers, and we hid in the bushes. Many refugees who didn't know where to get off the road were shot. God spared us somehow.

We traveled like this for a total of a month. The journey was also full of detective-like adventures. They put us on a train somewhere and brought us to Cheboksary... In Cheboksary, we languished at the station for a long time. The station was teeming with evacuees. From everywhere—from Petersburg, from Moscow, from the western regions of the country, and here we were from Lithuania, and there were probably Ukrainians too—all together at the station. And my father was still with us because he was very nearsighted and wasn't drafted into the army. They later sent him to work in the North during the war.

This Cheboksary—it’s a very interesting place. It was packed with people; they fed us once a day. They didn't cook oatmeal, but oat grains. Slightly boiled—they'd add some oil. Though it wasn’t really oil... That was all the food for the day. And there was another huge problem—the women got scabies on their heads, because you're constantly scratching. Lice and everything else you can imagine appeared there. We were stuck there for a week because they weren't providing a freight train, as all the freight trains were going to the front.

By the way, about the front. People talk about how we prepared for the war—well, I know how we prepared. My Uncle Seva, my mother’s second cousin, an officer in the tsarist army, had sincerely switched to the side of the revolution and worked in a military headquarters in the Urals. In 1938, not long before the war, a purge of the Red Army began there, as it evidently did all across the “vast land, from one end to the other.” They shot 80% of the officers. My Uncle Seva perished there as well. He didn't even know he was going to be a father—eight months after his death, his Aunt Iya gave birth to a boy. He was a fine man, and that fine man, Serhiy, was bumped off by the Soviet regime in Afghanistan.

So, about the front. The border was exposed—hordes of Germans were advancing: we already saw tanks and motorcyclists, and planes were flying in clouds, and here are two soldiers lying with a single rifle of some sort. In other words, we didn't see the authorities protecting their border from the Germans from the very beginning—that came later. As I was saying, we traveled for two or three weeks, then languished at the station in Cheboksary, and trains had already started heading west. And after Cheboksary, they put us in a freight car. By the way, my father procured some brilliant green dye, shaved my head completely, and painted it with the green dye. That's how beautiful I was when I got into that freight car. After a while, my mother grabs her belly. Dad stops the train, having pulled something somewhere. The train stopped, I don’t know how. We tumble out, not knowing where we are. A dry steppe, some kind of path. Father told me to sit with my two brothers while he went to that path. Mama squatted down, and he ran. A cart is coming down the path—a horse and an old man sitting on it. I don’t see him, but I see someone moving there. They helped Mama onto that cart, and I was ordered to sit dead still and hold onto my brothers. I was going on eleven, Serhiy was seven, and Vadym was three. My youngest brother, Volodymyr, was born right on that cart. And the cart was like this. The old man had been shearing sheep somewhere, had a pile of wool, and was heading somewhere. And so he and my father delivered my mother’s baby. He had scissors and some kind of alcohol or vodka, I don't know the details—that was all the hygiene there was. There was a brief ordeal in a hospital. This was in the Gorky region, in some Dalnekonstantinovsky district. And that's how my brother was registered. And then came the village of Bohoyavlieniie. Mama needed to recover. And here, figuratively speaking, religion intervened. Well, there was no God under Soviet rule, so the monastery in this Bohoyavlieniie was destroyed. There was some kind of warehouse there. But two elderly nuns, as they seemed to me then, were living there secretly. They saved my mother. They helped her get back on her feet and take care of the baby. They found milk somewhere because Mama’s milk had dried up. In short, by some miracle, my brother slowly started to look like a human being. He was a month or two old. He is still the dearest to me—kind and hardworking.

We travel on, because they've already told my father to go to the Mari ASSR, to the city of Kozmodemyansk. There they settle us in the house of a certain Maria Oleksiivna, who looks at us very fiercely because why does she need this trouble. But we were moved in regardless of whether she wanted it or not. Into a semi-basement. Father scrounged some stumps somewhere, made stools, and built a wooden trestle bed. He was a master of all trades. And we live there.

After a while, we are moved to another corner of the same city. I have many memories. Childish, romantic ones. The Volga is there. We would sled down the street to the Volga. Joy. But that was very rare. Mostly, it was hunger and hard work. I sawed wood there with my mother; my mother had Botkin's disease (hepatitis), and they were trying to save her with some methods I didn't understand, because there were no medicines, it was all some kind of homespun remedy. Then malaria struck us. One day Mama is shivering, the next day I'm shivering. And we had to keep these three boys together somehow. Father, of course, was immediately sent to the North.

And so we are moved to another apartment, because this landlady is starting repairs or something. In short, they smoked us out. I only remember one detail, how people whispered about her son being sent to a “spy school.” It was time for him to be in the army, and they sent him to a spy school, this Gena.

And I have another bright memory, a moment of truth for me. Children are active, and I was active. In the attic of this house where we lived, at Maria Oleksiivna's (a rather dull woman), I found a pile of books under the roof, in a corner. What kind of books were they? I don't know, but I assume that some distinguished, intelligent man once lived in this house. The works of Byron and Shakespeare, editions by Brockhaus and Efron, in massive covers. This was paradise for me. I even read by moonlight because there was nothing to make a light with, a candle... At that time, they would pour kerosene and make some kind of wick, but that wasn't always available. But what an education I received there, what a university! I became one with that Shakespeare and Byron, all those stunning English literary heroes—it was as if they all settled inside me, and Byron has been with me for life. It was then that I seriously and fully felt poetry as such, in general. It was sacred and majestic, and for me, this memory—you know, how in all the darkness there is always a small flame, so this was that flame for me.

…We move to a new house. And Father, on his way to the North, made me a little notebook with a thick cover with his own hands, from what he could find at work or somewhere. He was a master of all trades. He says, “Keep a diary.” So I did. And so, in my diary, it’s written: on such-and-such a date, we were moved in with the Tkachenkos. “These are Ukrainians. Their place is clean and they have a vegetable garden.” This was my first, so to speak, material acquaintance with Ukraine. And such a precise emphasis! I surprise myself. I remember an episode. Our hunger was terrible. We considered ourselves lucky when Mama could beg for a handful of potato peels at the market and bake them on coals in a small bowl of water. I remember the expression on my older brother Serhiy's face as he sat with a dreamy, greedy gaze fixed on the stove. And when we tasted it, it was bitter. In the spring, mushrooms saved us, which is why I still have great respect for mushrooms. All sorts of mushrooms grew there; some said certain ones were poisonous. Others said you had to boil them three times and then you could eat them. Well, we ate them, and we didn't die. So, for me, the image of hunger is this landlord, Tkachenko (there were two of them, the children had already flown the nest)—he was a stocky, strong, older man. I had run out to the end of the garden for my business at the crack of dawn, when I see: from the house, which was on a little hill, Tkachenko comes out. They had planted something there. Tiny little dill had sprouted. This hungry man came out, looked around, bent down to the ground, and started pulling this little dill from the earth, cleaning it, and putting it in his mouth.

Some time passed... At the beginning of 1944, Dad returned to us in Kozmodemyansk from the North, from some comical-sounding places to me like Syktyvkar, Kudymkar. He arrived and said, “Well, here's an offer: to Ust-Kamenogorsk in Kazakhstan or to Kyiv.” I started jumping around him, “To Kyiv, to Kyiv, to Kyiv!” You see, my grandmother Anna, the German one, had lived in Kyiv for a long time with her second husband. This second husband remained in our family like one of our own. Leontiy Levytskyi was a well-known lawyer back in tsarist times, perhaps later involved in the struggle for the Ukrainian People's Republic. He was a respected person in Kyiv as a specialist. When the Moscow Bolsheviks last invaded Kyiv, Lenin was some kind of figure in Kyiv. In 1918 or 1919, I'm not sure exactly when the Bolsheviks came to Kyiv, Lenin issued an order to release the rabble and bandits from the prisons, dress them in Red Army overcoats, put a star on their foreheads, and thus replenish the Red Army. They were given weapons and told: you walk down the street, you see a bourgeois—shoot. And that's how my so-called great-grandfather, Anna Shrag-Zhabokrytska's husband, Leontiy Levytskyi, was shot.

I'll go back a bit to the beginning of the war, when we were fleeing from the Nazi fascists and Mama was packing a small bundle. In it ended up (they must have been lying nearby on the table) a small volume of Pushkin, a little book about Leonardo da Vinci, and an old, 19th-century edition of Shevchenko's “Haidamaky.” And among these little books was an old photograph: the Dnipro, the hills above the Dnipro, the monument to Prince Volodymyr over those hills, and the domes of a church barely visible. You know, I sometimes looked at that photograph as if it were some divine miracle. I saw and felt that Kyiv; it was a dream and a fairy tale inside me. And when Dad said that, my reaction was understandable—let's go to Kyiv.

In Kyiv, Dad is appointed chief engineer of the Geodesy and Cartography Administration—that's on Chervonoarmiiska Street. The Administration is still located there now. And they no longer asked Dad to join the Party, because there were no specialists, and the work had to be done. The main thing is that we ended up in Kyiv, and my first address was Volodymyrska Street, near the Golden Gate, where the “Dnipro” publishing house was later located, in the corridor.

V. O.: What year was this?

M. D.: This was 1944, August. It was marked by the fact that we were hungry, ragged, and in bad shape. Father disappeared somewhere, then came back with a string bag of tomatoes. I've never had a better delicacy since! Then we move—this is very interesting—to an apartment on Millyonnyi Lane, in Pechersk. Now it's Panas Myrny Street, where the deputies live. But back then, there was a small, beautiful wooden house there that evidently belonged to some intellectual before the revolution—maybe a merchant, maybe a professor. And then a whole bunch of us were crammed in there! And that was my first acquaintance with the Ukrainian language in reality, in its sound. Every morning I'd hear one lady in paper curlers yelling at her husband across the whole corridor, where the primus stoves were burning and kids were running around: “Коля, где моя фаянсовая мысочка!?” (“Kolya, where is my faience bowl!?”) And I’m thinking, why “mysochka”? Is she illiterate? It should be “misochka”! That’s just a memory to smile about.

But this was a difficult historical moment. A military hospital was located near us in a pre-war school building. An unusual one. Only for those without arms and legs. They all moved around on wooden boards with wheels. In the evenings and on days off from school, we helped the nurses wheel them around and feed them porridge and soups. They often died. Some of them had their arms amputated at the elbow, and they would insert stones into those bone stumps and tie them on, and they would push themselves along, leaning over, but many had to be simply wheeled. Every morning, we girls would meet and say, “Well, have they taken Vasya away yet?” And “taken away” meant “buried.” Or Kolya, or Oleh. That was the tragic part of life then. One can only imagine what it was like on the scale of the entire country.

V. O.: And do you know what happened to those invalids? They were taken away to Valaam Island in Lake Ladoga, and there they died out.

M. D.: I know. Maybe the ones from here were taken away later too. I wasn't there until the end because we were given an apartment on the corner of Saksahanskoho and Shota Rustaveli in an old nine-story building, from which almost everyone had been shot at Babyn Yar. That building, in 1944, was almost empty.

And then—the real moment of my resurrection as a person with a strong Ukrainian current in my soul. This resurrection happened at my school, which I started attending. It’s School No. 95 now, and it was School No. 95 then. It's on the corner of Zhylianska and Shota Rustaveli. There we had a teacher of Ukrainian language and literature—a sacred name for me—Oleksandra Ihorivna Bilotserkivska. I think that this teacher, or at least her parents, belonged to that Ukrainian intellectual milieu that included Lesia Ukrainka, and Starytskyi, and Hrushevsky—that whole sacred circle that created the streams of Ukrainian culture and Ukrainian spirit in a generally Russified Kyiv. Oleksandra Ihorivna was a model of intelligence, of nobility in her behavior and in everything. We had all sorts of people. By the way, I was in the same class as Khatayevich's daughter. You know what a scoundrel he was. I didn’t know much about it then, but this Rada Khatayevich made a pretty good impression. She lived her whole life quite modestly. I think she was involved in geology. There were many Jewish people. At that time, almost all our Jewish girls went to study to become dentists, I remember that well. Oleksandra Ihorivna’s first words about Shevchenko were such that even a stone boulder would have been inspired. She said many things about Shevchenko that she shouldn’t have had the right to say. But she knew how to tell us about the sharp moments in a way that we would understand, but the authorities would have nothing to hold against her. And my first poetic attempts—specifically poems dedicated to Shevchenko, to our trip with Oleksandra Ihorivna to Taras Hryhorovych’s grave. From that time on, I clearly understood who I was. We all used to visit her, and sometimes several people from the class would gather. We visited her until the last days of her life. She wasn't working anymore, she was an old woman, and we were already students. In 1954, the great teacher passed away.

By the way, I didn't tell you a funny episode. It’s not essential to record. In my passport, I was registered as “Russian.” I even used this when they started branding me for Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism; I would say that I am Russian and I don't know any bourgeoisie. And do you know who taught me that? Ivan Dziuba—he says that when they spew such nonsense, you have to fight back somehow. So I'd say, you're accusing me of Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism—well, first of all, I've never been abroad and don't know what the bourgeoisie is, and secondly, I'm “Russian,” my passport confirms it, and you're accusing me of Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism? I know it sounded naive, but “for the paperwork,” it made some impression on them. Ivan Dziuba suggested this formula to me. He was working at the “Molod” publishing house on Pushkinska Street at the time, and I was across the street at the “Druh Chytacha” newspaper on Shevchenko Boulevard. I came to him in a state of confusion, told him about that KGB nonsense, we had a laugh, and he advised me on how to fight back… But I'll tell you about Ivan later.

As for my name, here's the story. My German grandmother Anna named me Margarita. That was the name of one of her sisters who emigrated to the USA. But a different story happened here. In Tashkent, in 1930, there was Uzbekization (you remember we had Ukrainization). My grandmother went to register me for a birth certificate because my mother was sick. She came and asked to have me registered as “Margarita,” but the Uzbek official couldn't pronounce or write such a complicated word. My grandmother tried to explain—there's a name among Indians and Uzbeks, “Ritta,” “Zitta,” and in Europe, it’s Margarita. The Uzbek woman’s face lit up, she understood everything, and wrote me down in Uzbek—Ritta. And my grandmother, whether tired from the conversation or not paying close attention, didn't notice, and so later in my passport, I became Ritta. But in my heart and to my family—I'm Margarita. Speaking of which. My grandmother Anna introduced me… to Lermontov. I was two to five years old when she would rock me, sitting by my bedside in the evening and humming “Горные вершины спят во тьме ночной” (“Mountain peaks sleep in the darkness of night”). This was in Samarkand.

Years passed. Lermontov became the closest of the Russian poets to me. A genius. He wasn't disingenuous; he didn't accept the Empire of Evil. You know, you read someone many times, but these are the kind of people in whom you can always discover something new. He has a poem called “Novgorod,” I can't recite it by heart because my memory is getting weak, but the essence is this: Novgorod was part of Kyivan Rus. And Lermontov has a six-line poem. He reproaches the Novgorodians: how could you surrender to the empire, how could you become slaves? It's just astounding!

V. O.: Well, Ivan the Terrible simply massacred the Novgorodians, and that was that. Was there really a surrender?

M. D.: Well, maybe not the word “surrender” exactly, but from this poem, it's clear that Lermontov understood what Kyivan Rus was, what freedom was, and what the Empire of Evil was. This made an impression on me. And so at the evening in memory of Yevhen—not an evening of memory, but at the evening of the Christmas Vasyls, when we were reminiscing—I think it might be some kind of mysticism—but Yevhen had recently been studying Lermontov.

V. O.: He also wanted to organize an evening for Shevchenko and Lermontov, together.

M. D.: Yes, here it’s always Shevchenko, and that's it.

But let's take a little break and have some tea or coffee.

V. O.: February 12, 2015, in the Dovhans' home, we continue our conversation with Margarita Kostiantynivna Dovhan.

M. D.: I graduated from school in 1948 with a silver medal. Silver because I had a B in algebra. Before the algebra exam, at six in the morning, I went with a classmate to ride our bikes. For fortitude. But it had just rained, and there were large puddles at the Khrushchev Stadium, and some stones were lying around. I fell off my bike and smashed my face. I sat through the exam painted with brilliant green, holding my face with one hand because it hurt. On that occasion, I got a B instead of an A.

V. O.: Khrushchev Stadium—is that now Lobanovskyi Stadium?

M. D.: The current one—no. This was the main, central stadium, the Olympic Stadium. Back then, it was called the Khrushchev Stadium. We often walked there. So, I was admitted without any problems. This was the second intake for the journalism department at the philological faculty. There were twenty-eight of us, and I was a “naive Komsomol girl,” because no one had told me a single word about all the ordeals and terrible life twists of our intellectual family until 1953—until the tyrant died. But I did notice that when we came to classes, three boys disappeared from our midst after a few days. I can vaguely picture two of them, but I don't remember their last names. And already then, I learned through the grapevine, somehow, that they had been “taken.” It later became clear that out of the twenty-eight of us, three were “enemies of the people.” They were obviously boys who had come from the front, and the KGB gang invented some sin for them. Maybe they had escaped from captivity, returned to their native land, and wanted to study. They were gone.

Then, the studies. The studies were terrible. I realized this later. Half of the classes were subjects on Marxism-Leninism, the history of the Communist Party, communist journalism, the journalistic works of Grandpa Kalinin, who, as I later found out, even sent his own wife to her death to please Stalin. And yet, there were a few professors at the university who instilled in us a desire to learn and, most importantly, to think, to cast off the chaff and search for the grains amidst the rubbish. Such was our professor of foreign literature, a unique man. While calling writers bourgeois, enemies, he would name them, say, Sartre, Brecht, and many others, and in doing so, he encouraged us to seek information about them and to read something, he would give us hints.

I graduated from the university in 1953, but I started working in 1952 after an internship at “Vechirniy Kyiv.” That newspaper was also just starting out. We had a very timid but very tactful editor named Kosyak. I felt the first blow to my romantic and relatively communist, or at least Soviet, ideas at this moment. I had to write a scathing article—in some district of Kyiv, there were problems with some household services, with water, with the sewage system. Some topic like that. I found out who was to blame, where they had stolen the money, and I came back joyfully, brought the material (and you had to write two articles a day), and I say to my boss, Lebedev, “Look, I found out who’s guilty.” The culprit was an instructor of the Kaganovitsky district party committee; I don't remember his name anymore. And suddenly this Lebedev seemed to turn to stone next to me. His eyes became large, angry, and he said to me a phrase: “Rita, remember this: a communist, especially an employee of the party apparatus, can never be guilty of anything!” In turn, I was dumbfounded. But that was the reality.

But soon the newspaper “Druh Chytacha” (Reader's Friend) appeared, and here my heart warmed a little. I saw this newspaper as my dream because it would connect me with poetry, with Ukrainian literature. And by then, a deep, irresistible attraction to the Ukrainian poetic word had already awakened in me, actually starting in school. The first impulse towards this word was given to me by Taras Hryhorovych, as standard as it may sound. But this isn't a standard case; a great epiphany truly came upon me from Shevchenko, through my wonderful teacher Oleksandra Ihorivna Bilotserkivska.

So, I came to this editorial office. A few months, maybe a few weeks later, we had the wife of a political prisoner with us, and she too later became a political prisoner. They were from Odesa. Perhaps you know their famous names?

V. O.: Are you talking about Sviatoslav Karavanskyi and Nina Strokata?

M. D.: That's it, Nina Strokata. But she appeared somehow and soon disappeared. I didn't understand something then. It was a very short episode. But then Ivan Dziuba appeared, who worked in the poetry department at the “Mystetstvo” (Art) publishing house. I begged to be in the poetry department too, to promote new poetry books. All our current, as we now call them, classics, the first poetic voices of the sixties, would come to Ivan. They brought their manuscripts. There was Vasyl Symonenko, and Lina Kostenko, and Vasyl Stus with his “Winter Trees,” and Borya Mozolevskyi with his first attempts. On Dziuba's desk, I also saw Viktor Kordun and Mykola Vorobyov, and through him, I heard the voice of the sharp, nervous, emotional, harsh, but incredibly talented Mykola Kholodnyi, though he later disgraced himself. My job was to write only about the books that had already been published, or if there was a “proof copy.” But with an unstoppable urge to do something, I decided: I would write not only about what had already come out or was about to come out. I would somehow bypass this rule, saying that a book by such-and-such an author, with such-and-such content, is being published by “Molod.” And the editor, both the first and the second, by the way, were quite liberal men. Especially, as I’ve already noted, Volodymyr Hnatovskyi. They either turned a blind eye to it, or I wrote so diplomatically, but a book wouldn't be out yet, and there was already information about it. But someone who needed to was taking note of these facts. I very quickly sensed that we had stool pigeons in our editorial office. I had felt this at “Vechirniy Kyiv” too, but not as clearly, whereas here—it was on a global scale. But I did notice how one day, one of my very effusive admirers, who now lives comfortably or is living out his days, Yuriy Chykyrisov (in recent years, as I gathered from afar, he was writing some detective novels)—he was our main stool pigeon, as I felt, who watched everything. But to hell with him. I ran into him recently at a store. I wouldn't have even recognized him, but he pounced on me, “Oh, Rita, Ritochka, how many years, I remember you, I love you, you were so brave, you were so strong, this, that, and the other.” I recoiled from him as if from something vile. I felt disgusted; I didn't know why. I'd forgotten all the details, you see? I could barely get away from him. He was inviting me for coffee, as if I were the most important person in the country. Two days later, Valia Chornovil, who at that time was sorting through Slavko Chornovil’s archives, calls me. Valia says, “Rita, I found Slavko Chornovil’s notes…” We were working together then. Not long before my downfall, Viacheslav was hired here at the editorial office because he had been fired from somewhere else. He was a great support to me; we immediately hit it off. “Slavko wrote down word for word who said what about you after that first global crackdown, after the literary evening.” Valia brought me those texts. I read what Chykyrisov had spouted, spreading such filth about me that there are no words for it. And after several decades, this is what he's telling me, how he loved me! Get lost, disappear!

But let's return to the early '60s, to my work at “Druh Chytacha.” Not only did I submit texts to the newspaper—I started organizing poetry evenings wherever I could. In an artist's studio—good; people invite us to their homes, unafraid—good. By the way, there is such an artist, Oleksiy Zakharchuk, may he rest in peace, but he lives on because his art lives. So he would invite me over, “Come on by.” We came. In all these decades, Lina Kostenko came to my evenings only twice. And so she came to the evening at Oleksiy Zakharchuk’s. For them, it was like a holiday for the rest of their lives, that “Lina Kostenko was in our home.” Because we greatly love her magnificent, sublime poetry.

There were also comically dramatic episodes. This was later. When I was left without a job, I drifted from place to place for a long time, until Oleh Mykytenko, the son of the murdered Ivan Mykytenko, offered me a job. I thought to myself, “He’s a kind man, knowing what sorrow is.” And we knew each other because while working at the editorial office, I wrote reviews of books published by “Mystetstvo” publishing house as well. And Oleh was the editor-in-chief. He hired me; my title was something like a courier, I forget now, just anything that wasn’t ideological, because I was forbidden to work in ideology. And under his wing, I managed to do something significant. At that time, our great composer Leonid Hrabovskyi was being persecuted. And we were friends. They often visited our home; both Lyonya and Volodymyr Huba would come, back when we lived in Voskresenka. And Volodymyr Huba was also such an unorthodox, non-Soviet composer. But incredibly talented Ukrainian artists. With Oleh, I used various means—diplomacy, tact, my womanly charms, or God knows what—but I persuaded him to publish Lyonya Hrabovskyi's thesis work. And his thesis was classical symphonic music on the themes of four Ukrainian songs. We listened to them at our house. It must be said that Lyonya's music was already being performed abroad at that time. And so, we did manage to publish Leonid's thesis music back then.

But let’s get back to the editorial office. There were different evenings. As soon as a book came out, I would try to gather people around that book, to invite poets. One such evening was at the home of a certain lawyer. This lawyer worked at a publishing house. I trusted her. She told me so fawningly and nicely, “You know, my son loves modern poetry so much, but there's nowhere to read it. Let's have it at our place.” I organized it; about five of us came. Vorobyov was there, Kholodnyi, Borya Mozolevskyi. These were always game. Vasyl would come... But I don't remember if he was there this time. Her son was finishing law school and was already working for the KGB. And there we were, going at it full throttle. All of that was later brought up against me. There were many such different evenings.

V. O.: And what about the evening at the Institute of Communications in the fall of 1965? That famous one with 13 poets...

M. D.: Yes, yes. My middle brother, Vadym, is a communications engineer. He's a physicist-dynamicist and worked at the Institute of Communications. His wife, Natalia, also worked there. I thought to myself: what if we brought this to the technical intelligentsia, who are very far removed from Ukrainian culture, who don't know it at all…

You know, Vasyl, I have this feeling now that Ukrainian poetry is the highest expression of the human spirit in the world. Nowhere else is there such a powerful cluster of poets. The only thing that pains me is that they are not translated much. That is our tragedy. And this allows our enemies to say that Ukrainians have only just appeared. To create a word like that used by Lina Kostenko, Vasyl Stus, Ivan Svitlychnyi, and Mykola Vinhranovskyi, and their number is legion, one must have a powerful national foundation. And nobody knows anything about it because of that gang that sits in the East. Only now are intellectual forays into our past beginning to appear.

So, about that evening. Natalka and I are walking... She is one of the Sixtiers who is not very well known. We rarely mention them, but without them, this powerful Sixtiers movement could not have existed.

V. O.: Right. There has to be an environment.

M. D.: Yes. An environment. This Natalka, her maiden name was Kotsiuruba... Her grandfathers were from the Vinnytsia region. It so happened that they ended up in Odesa. She was born there. So she approached the Komsomol leader of her institute. And she was an interesting young woman. She says, “Well, why not? Poetry for the techies. They just sit there and know nothing but their nuts and bolts—let’s do it!” Inna Kuznetsova. Natalka brought her over. I was delighted; we secured the venue. It was where the gymnasium used to be. Where Pavlo Chubynsky, the author of the Ukrainian national anthem, studied. On Shevchenko Boulevard. A huge hall. I went around to everyone I could, all the spots where I had my so-to-speak agents. Friends at the university, at the Art Institute, at the conservatory, and this whole institute. And the Institute of Communications is huge. It worked for the military-defense complex of Moscow at the time. They made some kind of little devices. They themselves didn’t know where those devices went. For the submarines of the Northern Fleet of the Soviet Union. Naturally, there was a powerful first department there. The KGB was present en masse. I wasn’t particularly worried about that for some reason. I was just happy that the hall was so huge and there would be many people. Not only did all the institute people come—people came from the Conservatory, from the University, from the Art Institute. They were standing along the walls—that’s an understatement! And the hall was huge. At the time, I had the impression it could hold almost eight hundred people. Well, maybe that's a slight exaggeration, but it was a very large hall.

V. O.: And where is this building?

M. D.: On Shevchenko Boulevard, as you walk from Volodymyrska Street towards St. Volodymyr's Cathedral, there’s a longish building. And you know what the story is? The memory of Chubynsky and this seditious anti-Soviet evening… Decades later, on a commission from the government, my husband, Borys Stepanovych Dovhan, created the memorial plaque for Chubynsky there!

So, a huge crowd of people gathered. Ivan Dziuba and Ivan Svitlychnyi were the first to speak. And then the poets began to read: Vasyl Stus, Mykola Kholodnyi, Borys Mozolevskyi, Volodymyr Pidpalyi, Viktor Kordun. Mykola Vorobyov, who at that time was our neighbor and friend because we lived near him in Voskresenka, also spoke. He often dropped by our place. By the way, we had parties almost every other day at our house in Voskresenka. People would gather, read poems, listen to “seditious” music that Lyonya brought. Volodya Huba would play his new works. We had a good instrument; we bought it when our daughter was born. Old, but very nice.

V. O.: Borys Mozolevskyi was still writing in Russian back then. He has a line: “Я эту компанию Хрущёвых и Брежневых своею назвать не могу” (“I cannot call this company of Khrushchevs and Brezhnevs my own”). That was great sedition.

M. D.: And it was recited at that evening! And Mykola Kholodnyi was saying things like… For example, “My uncle has factories and mills and a permanent residence permit in the village...” He read the poem “To Ukraine”:

Таку добру, таку не горду,

Тебе люблять і гублять всі,

Тобі дай кулака у морду,

А ти скажеш: «Спасибі, спаси…»

Не посивіють в наймах коси,

Бо немає ні найму, ні кіс,

Є некошене сіно в покосі,

Та у стрісі прихований кріс.

Тобі кинули власні кості,

І гризеш, підібгавши хвіст,

А на тобі, немов на помості,

Божевільні танцюють твіст.

The proud and beautiful Lina read her lyrical poetry. I remember poems associated with Kyiv, with Trukhaniv Island. So warm, romantic, absolutely no party-mindedness, and most importantly—astonishingly lofty artistic thinking. That evening later often reminded me of her lines “There comes a moment of some revelation: you see the world as if for the first time in your life...”

Vasyl Stus read the poem “So I live, like a monkey among monkeys…” Vasyl was applauded enthusiastically. Especially after the poem dedicated to Zerov, “Moscow—Chibyu, Moscow—Chibyu.” The Moscow concentrate. And in general, the people were enthralled. The whole evening was in such a state of positive stress. Can you imagine what Ivan Svitlychnyi could say, what Ivan Dziuba could say—the two Ivans—such power.

V. O.: And Sverstiuk was there, wasn't he?

M. D.: Yevhen Sverstiuk was there. And Yevhen spoke. They gave such a powerful preamble. It turned into a popular lecture about our Word in the sixties, about this explosion of the Word, about its diversity and variety. A single spirit, but absolutely different forms. Everyone spoke. The evening was very long. But when it ended, people didn't leave. You know, I never in my life expected such a thing from these people, the techies… We had, in fact, just met. Everyone was on a high. Afterward, people approached me, asking me to give them poetry to read. I became friends with Inna Kuznetsova. By the way, the authorities punished Inna Kuznetsova. She was preparing to defend her doctoral dissertation, and they didn't let her defend it. And then they hounded her and hounded her and hounded her until they smoked her out of the institute. Then she became passionate about cosmogony, cosmography, something like that.

V. O.: Did she not expect it would be such an evening? She just needed a cultural event, right?

M. D.: No, no, she understood what she was getting into. She knew; I had warned her. I said, “Well, I myself didn’t expect there would be such an explosion.” They fired her. We kept in touch for a long time. I once even dedicated a poem to her, to this heroic woman. Because we made a breakthrough in the system of KGB-Bolshevik power in such a colossal institute. I was truly amazed at how intellectual our people are, and how much they lack fresh air. And this was fresh air. One could reminisce a lot about that evening. Kholodnyi, after all, read not only anti-Soviet (in their understanding) poems, but also lyrical ones. He was always so sharp, but at the same time, he was in love with Maria. He would come to our house in Voskresenka, sometimes spend the night. He'd say, “Maria and I will be getting married soon, you'll lay a blanket for us right here on the floor and we'll all sleep here. Maria and I and our five sons.” He had such fantasies. That's the kind of man he was. I remember these rare lines: “You are my church, Maria, I am your bell.” Well, you can't say it better on that subject. And there were poems like that. I don't remember if Vinhranovskyi was there… Something is nagging at me that he was there too. Because I remember now, he read not only his sharply political lyrical poetry, but also poems for children. One such occasion.

V. O.: Yes, wonderful poems for children.

M. D.: Yes. But they are for adults too. I've forgotten a lot, but an image has stuck in my mind, of how a fly agaric was crowned in the middle of the forest. A fantastic image!

Yes, it was such a wave of elation.

And in the morning, I had to go to the printing house for my shift. The moment I stepped over the threshold of the printing house, a worker says to me, “Rita, your boss called, call him back.” I call. The boss—that's Volodymyr Hnatovskyi. By the way, he is also one of the Sixtiers who is not voiced as a Sixtier. He was a mediocre writer. He once pushed some little book on me, a novel about Uzbeks growing cotton, a progressive Uzbek woman, with love and all that. He was translating it into Ukrainian. Maybe he did something useful too. I dial: “Volodymyr Antonovych…” And I hear him in an almost sepulchral voice, “Rita, come over. They’ve come for you.” So drawn out somehow, frightened. Well, I understood everything. A whole herd of them in the small editorial office. Three or four of them came, led by some secretary of the district party committee or an instructor for our area, I don't remember anymore. Maybe he was in charge of the press. And the head of the newspaper department of the Central Committee of the Party.

V. O.: Wow, such big shots.

M. D.: And this guy from the Central Committee was my former university classmate, Zhenia Kravchenko. But he had immediately “made it,” became puffed up, sitting there seriously at the Central Committee of the Party. By the way, there's an interesting story about him later on… The pogrom began. First, they set up a commission at the city party committee. I think to myself, “What an honor, my God, what for?” And then they told me that in the front row of that evening sat exclusively KGB agents, employees of the institute. To expose such a terrible nest of vipers. They were the ones who raised all this fuss, so the others had to act. They created some commission at the city party committee for my personal case.

V. O.: Oh my. A personal case—yours?

M. D.: Yes. The Central Committee of the Party was supervising this case. They fired people from their jobs along the “Ukrknyha” line. And right there, they voted to fire me from my job with a ban on working in ideology. And you know, Hnatovskyi did not raise his hand for my expulsion.

V. O.: The only one, right?

M. D.: The only one. Well, and Slavko Chornovil. You know, I was amazed. I was simply amazed. The next day, Volodymyr Antonovych was also removed from his job. This dragged on for a very long time, for about half a year, I think. They summoned me to some commissions, who's your grandpa, who's your grandma…

V. O.: They were looking for your genealogical roots.

M. D.: Yes. “How could you, and how do you interpret this line?” They wrote down all the seditious lines, including something “improper” that was said about the collective farmers.

V. O.: Who said that?

M. D.: I think it was Mykola Kholodnyi as well.

V. O.: Ah, he has one.

M. D.: Oh!

Дядько має заводи й фабрики

І постійну в селі прописку,

Лиш не має чим дядько взимку

Годувати нещасну Лиску.

I had to defend myself, pretend to be a bit of a holy fool. We held councils at home, my head ached because you don't know what will happen next. And no job. And they cut off Borys’s air supply, no work, nothing.

V. O.: And was it then that Borys was summoned and told, “Do you know that your wife is a nationalist?” “Really?” said Borys, “I'll divorce her tomorrow!” Was that then?

M. D.: I don't even remember when that was…

V. O.: “No,” they say, “don't divorce her, you need to influence her…”

M. D.: Influence her, yes, there was that too. As for the poems, I kept saying, “This isn't politics, you don't understand anything about it. How can you even judge poetry? If something is painful for a poet, you should listen to him.” In short, there was verbal terror. It lasted for a very long time. This Yevhen Kravchenko was the main figure above everyone. He worked in the Central Committee of the Communist Party. He was two or three years behind me at the university, but we had a good relationship. By the way, at the university, I was the deputy secretary of the Komsomol organization. And then I joined the Party. If I hadn't been in the Party, they might have dealt with me more quickly. But they expelled me from the Party too.

V. O.: And when did you join that party?

M. D.: I'll tell you. As soon as we came to the university, there were about six of us in the first year who came from high school, because the rest were guys from the army. They gathered us—no one even asked—“a Soviet journalist must be a party member.” They marched us all to the district party committee, signed us up, and handed us our little books. That’s it, no questions asked.

Regarding the Party and the Komsomol. In 1944, at my school on the corner of Zhylianska and Shota Rustaveli, where the late, blessed Oleksandra Ihorivna worked, they also gathered us and took us to the Lenin Museum to be inducted into the Komsomol. Well, we went, we were inducted. I was proud, they gave me a pin. I come home. I’m walking down the corridor. My father comes out (I must have come home in the evening). I still spoke Russian then. By the way, I’ll tell you when I firmly switched to Ukrainian: after this terror they unleashed on me. That's when I firmly switched to the Ukrainian language. That's when I understood that I must use it everywhere, always, with everyone.

V. O.: To be consistent.

M. D.: Yes. I enter the house, my father is walking towards me. “Papa, menya v komsomol prinyali.” (“Dad, they accepted me into the Komsomol.”) And my father walks by and sort of says to the side: “Kostomoltsy.” (Bone-grinders.) And he walked past me. As a child, I didn't understand anything, what that was about, but that very word somehow struck me, harshly.

V. O.: Kosto-moltsy.

M. D.: It swirled around in my head for a long time. Years passed, it was forgotten, and then more years passed, and my granddaughter, Stefanoshka, and I went to visit the Shevchenko sites. We were in Irzhavets. You know Shevchenko has a poem “Irzhavets”? It's the only poem where Mazepa is mentioned. By the way, the poem is astounding.

V. O.: “The Swedes once wrought great glory…”

M. D.: Yes. Stefania knew this poem. I tried to instill it in all the children who came to our “Parnassus.” In Irzhavets, we meet a very old grandmother named Nastya. We ask her about that icon that the Cossacks brought from the Sich, which stood in Irzhavets and supported the Cossack spirit. And she says, “Well, when the Bolsheviks were destroying that church, people tried to pull something out of the fire, to save something. There was a Komsomol girl named Nastya (the old granny had a different name). This Komsomol girl always wore a red headscarf. So she saw some old man take that icon and run with it. She caught up with the old man, snatched the icon, and threw it into the fire.” And then the word my father said exploded in my mind.

V. O.: Kostomoltsy.

M. D.: Kostomoltsy. My God, I thought, how everything is intertwined in life. By the way, my parents told me the history of all my ancestors only after 1953, little by little. Mostly my mother. That’s how it happened.

Unemployment begins. But conditional unemployment, because a friend got me a job in a library, either cleaning or sorting some papers for a while... Then Vasyl, our friend, after his difficult ordeals, which have been told many times... He was a proud man, he never bowed to anyone. And he went where no one wanted to go, to the number one shoe factory, to the workshop where they make kirza boots for soldiers. And it stinks of chemicals there; they smear that leather with something. He felt sick there.

V. O.: That profession was called a “lasting edge gluer on the conveyor belt.” (But that was in early 1980, before his second imprisonment. — V.O.).

M. D.: He also tried to work in the metro, but his health was already so undermined, his stomach was sick, he had hemorrhages, it was terrible…

And in the fall of 1966… The world is not without good people. I later wondered why it happened. I think those KGB agents figured that it would be good if two people under surveillance were sitting in the same place, it would require fewer watchers, and it would be immediately clear what was what. And this good person turned out to be a man named Anatoliy (I don’t remember anything else about him). He had three young sons and was an employee of the information department of the Ministry of Building Materials Industry. They hired Vasyl there. From Vasyl, I learned that there were plenty of openings there. Vasyl and I found ourselves in the basement of the Ministry of Building Materials Industry. That’s a whole story in itself. One has to live somehow, and there’s no work. Vasyl and I were already well acquainted. And he says that there are openings there, you just need to find a loophole, a way to get in. That would be great. We started looking for a loophole. It turned out that the daughter of one of the ministry's high-ranking officials (he was in charge of the technical department) was an artist. And a good artist, well, she's known as a good person. We started looking for a way to approach that artist, and we found one. We met Valiechka, told her honestly what was what, that here’s this seditious, unemployed woman, who’s done nothing wrong, loves poetry and art, but isn't allowed to work in her field. So, your father has an opportunity to fix this. She went to persuade her father. The father was terrified for his whole life. As we later found out, in the late thirties, just after Valia was born, his wife was taken away and shot. And after that, he became a “zealous communist.” He constantly beat his chest, saying he was a communist, and he rose to high positions. That’s the story. He gives the order to hire me. And so began a bright, happy, long period of my life. Our desks stood next to each other. And around us was a commotion: this whole department was mostly made up of the nieces and relatives, grandchildren, and granddaughters of ministers and deputy ministers. Well, and we were among them—the newly minted “engineers”!

V. O.: So, most of them were loafers.

M. D.: Loafers. By the way, Vasyl once made a remark... (We were writing those papers about the leading bricklayer, the leading cement worker). “You know, if they left the two of us and gave us a normal salary, we could do all this work, which the whole gang does in a week, in two days.” There was such a remark. And at that time, Vasyl was writing his work on Tychyna.

V. O.: “Phenomenon of the Epoch.”

M. D.: He was the first to reveal the real Tychyna to me. And later, Mykhailyna Kotsiubynska helped me see the very early Tychyna, his masterpieces. She gave me all the little books she published as gifts. I later studied these masterpieces with children, with the youth in our house: “Funeral Chants,” “Somewhere at the Bottom of My Heart.” I don’t remember how, but a small collection by Pavlo Hryhorovych from those distant times—Vasyl gave it to me to read, and then came '72—stayed with me: “Instead of Sonnets and Octaves,” published in 1920. So in those almost fifty years, my Parnassians and I practically memorized it all. This is from that little book by Tychyna, given to me by Vasyl as a memento: “Everything can be justified by a high goal—but not the emptiness of the soul,” “Should I too kiss the Pope’s slipper?”, “They shoot the heart, they shoot the soul—they spare nothing.”

There was also a great revelation from Vasyl—the works of Volodymyr Svidzinskyi. He himself was in awe, having read him for the first time. He had some little book, maybe pre-revolutionary, or maybe from the twenties, I don't remember exactly. I remember how he rejoiced in Svidzinskyi, like a small child, revealing his philosophical imagery to me. The lines read by Vasyl have been etched in my memory forever:

О час небесного спокою!

Твоєю легкою красою

Як жадно упиваюсь я.

Як у тонке твоє палання,

В твоє зникоме розцвітання

Ввіллялася б душа моя.

He then drew my special attention to this philosophical image of evanescent blooming. In essence, it encompasses the entire philosophy of life, in all its manifestations! And this is in a divinely lyrical poem about nature, “And the Evening Breathes Aromatically.” That's how he taught me to understand, to feel the poetic Word. He was a true friend to me. If only I had prepared and had it at hand… An astounding thing. So we reveled in Svidzinskyi. Vasyl was strict in certain aspects, but deep down, he was an easily wounded, gentle, lyrical soul. I was going through some personal troubles, I was in a difficult state, and he found amazing words and actions. He sensed that I was not well, so he would wait for me as I approached our office. And taking an apple from his pocket or bag, he'd say, “Rita, I brought you an apple from my garden!” And somehow it would immediately let go, I would feel so good. Or he would say, “Let’s go to Saint Sophia's, walk around the church, take a stroll.”

I first got acquainted with him at the Institute of Literature. He wrote a review for me on a book by Bazhan, and then there were other business and friendly meetings. For me, he was, you know, a bit on a pedestal. And then I suddenly felt: “My God, how much simplicity, warmth, and ability to save a person in a difficult moment he has, how much spiritual warmth.”

A certain woman, Luiza Mynkivska, took a liking to us then. She was from the Vinnytsia region, definitely a Ukrainian, although her father was Polish. By the way, I also had plenty of Poles in my family on my mother’s side. But about Luiza. Besides the two of us, no one in the Ministry spoke Ukrainian. And suddenly she started speaking Ukrainian with us. In those times, in that atmosphere, that was already a feat. Some people looked at her a bit ironically, but they didn’t dare say anything in our presence. And Luiza was a proud, strong person, so she held her ground.

I feel it necessary to add this. Many of our human rights defenders, our truly great people, were somehow detached from such a cultural phenomenon as high classical music. Vasyl was the only one who, naturally, with all his heart and soul, loved and understood this art. He, Valia, and I would often go to the philharmonic hall back then. In the rare moments when he visited us, he would ask to put on classical music. In connection with Vasyl, the theme of Schubert-Hmyria comes to mind. From prison or exile, I don't recall exactly, he wrote with delight that he had a moment to listen to Vivaldi…

Although he is now old, Valia and I still (in the 21st century!) attend classical music concerts together.

I return to the difficult moment when they took Vasyl away. At work, everyone started to sidle away from me. But Luiza, on the contrary, drew even closer, demonstratively always by my side, because at that time they started dragging me to the KGB: “Tell us what you think about Stus, who calls himself a poet.” I say, “You don’t know him as a poet because you don’t know poetry at all.” Then about Ivan Svitlychnyi. They took many people away then. They began to pester me: “And did you read this?” – “I did.” – “And how do you, as a Soviet person, assess this?” They spewed all sorts of nonsense. It was such an exhausting process. They would summon me either to Volodymyrska Street or to Pechersk.

V. O.: Rosa Luxemburg Street.

M. D.: Rosa Luxemburg, now it’s Lypska, I think. One time I go to Rosa Luxemburg, and a whole herd of them is sitting there. They probably had a practice, they took turns…

V. O.: They were practicing on you.

M. D.: Yes. One sits there, and another asks all sorts of stupid questions, tears out a phrase and goes: “So, how do you interpret it?” It was such a wringing out of one’s nerves. But to write something… I thought, “Well, I'll write.” Maybe it's naive, but I wrote to them. They demanded that I cease all communication with all these “enemies of the people.” I say, “Well, you didn't shoot them.” And I wrote that. “You gave them a sentence, which means you hope they will pass the test, that they will reform. But how will they reform if their former friends betray them? That's not right.” Something in that vein, I said something naive like that. On the contrary, I will write them letters, I will support them so that a person can think about what to do next. I wrote something like that. I was also distributing manuscripts of our Sixtiers' poetry. And they found out about it. The world is not without “good people.”

It was 1975 when they brought Vasyl to Kyiv. Mykhailyna Kotsiubynska and I worked near each other. They kept dragging me in again, forbidding me to correspond, telling me to stop corresponding with Stus.

V. O.: But wait, you said they had already been summoning you when Vasyl was still in Kyiv. After his arrest. How was the arrest received?

M. D.: Ah, when Vasyl was arrested, they summoned me right away. When he was arrested. They threatened that for distributing Ivan Dziuba's work “Internationalism or Russification?”—and some former “friends” had snitched on me—I would face a serious punishment. And after that, they started on Stus, hoping that out of fear I would say nasty things, but that only fired me up, and I said that as a Russian, I only felt respect from him, that he was a great poet and person, and he treated me with respect. They ruined my health, but these lackeys of the secret police only strengthened my convictions. And then they started summoning me in 1975, when, as it turns out, they brought a seriously ill Vasyl here after a hospital stay, somewhere from St. Petersburg, I think, I don't remember exactly.

V. O.: On the contrary, in the fall of 1975, they first brought him to Kyiv, tried to talk to him here, but he refused. Then they took him to Leningrad, and he had surgery there on December 10, 1975.

M. D.: You know better. I’ve forgotten the order of events. Later they said that they deliberately drove Vasyl around Kyiv: “We'll show you.” And so on. But for some reason, at that time, they started dragging me to the KGB and demanding that I stop corresponding with him. And one fine day, I meet with Mykhasia. She can barely walk, and I'm dragging myself along just the same. They were shaking up our souls at the same time. At work, there was such terror. They would call my boss, and he already knew it was me being summoned. And then they would ask sarcastically, “Well, and how does your boss react to you not working but spending time with us?” I’d say, “Appropriately. And someone else is doing my work for me.” One fine day, they drove me around Kyiv for some reason, took me to Podil, put me in a room at the police station, and left me alone for several hours. And then, without saying anything, they let me go. I went to work. It was late; I only found one cleaning lady. Why they drove me around and kept me in solitary for a day—I still don't understand.

V. O.: Something must have been happening somewhere, and the point was for you not to be there. Or they were installing a listening device.

M. D.: Well, what could it have been? Vasyl was in the KGB in Kyiv at that time. Mykhasia and I are walking from those interrogations... The main thing is, it's all empty, but it grinds on your nerves, on your psyche. It would be better if something were out in the open. They nitpicked at the letters: “And Svitlana Kyrychenko, Yurko Badzio's wife, wrote to you... Look at this line.” And they read me some line from a letter in which, with a great stretch of the imagination, one could see something supposedly seditious. And over that one line, excuse me, a whole dispute! The petty terror was in this spirit. Trifling harassment. But it didn't stop me from asserting myself as a person. As grandiose as that may sound, it really was an assertion of self. Precisely thanks to the great and bright people with whom fate brought me together. A happy fate, I believe. I gradually felt that my passport contained a terrible mistake regarding my “Russianness,” that despite all the vicissitudes of life and wandering across half the planet, you can still remain yourself. Ultimately, I psychologically came to the conclusion that I am Ukrainian. Of all the rivers that gradually flowed into my being, the Dnipro River won. It simply won. I already had a stubbornness and firmness to raise my family to be Ukrainian. And I am happy that my children are Ukrainians, and reliable, firm Ukrainians at that.

V. O.: And when did you meet Mr. Borys?

M. D.: Borys and I met in 1952.

V. O.: Wow, so long ago!

M. D.: I came to the Art Institute for skis, because my young group of friends and I were planning to go skiing in Holosiieve. And you could rent skis at the institute. And there was an evening event there. I didn't know there would be dancing. I was in rags then, in cotton-flannel trousers—they wore such simple things back then. Something very simple. And with skis. But being a girl, I wanted to peek in and see what was going on. And there was a dance party. Some artist swept me up, and we're dancing. And another artist—tall, handsome, young, in a black work coat, all smeared with plaster…

V. O.: Plaster?

M. D.: Plaster, yes. He also poked his nose into this hall and saw such a phenomenon as me, and he asks me to dance.

V. O.: In that same coat?

M. D.: In that same coat, and me in those trousers. And we're dancing. And then it went on… In those days, classical, ballroom dances were fashionable. In short, a polonaise started playing. And we began to dance the polonaise as best we could. Neither I nor he could do it well (though I had learned a little). He was better at the tango and foxtrots. But we dance. And he says proudly, such a know-it-all, “And this is Arensky’s polonaise.” And I say, “No, it’s Ogiński's polonaise.” – “No, Arensky's.” And Arensky is a Russian composer, he has one opera, I've forgotten it. He’s known for something, but not very. And Ogiński is a Polish composer, this is his polonaise. And I say, “Well then, let’s bet a box of chocolates.” — “Alright, and where can I find you if I come with the chocolates?” I gave him the address. So he came, brought the chocolates, because he lost. And you know, right from the start, we had a common interest in music. His parents were shoemakers, but excellent shoemakers, professionals, artisans of the pre-revolutionary mettle. And they loved music. We still have a magnificent old guitar hanging here, on which Borys's father, Stepan, played. When he was just a little boy, Borys dreamed of having a violin, of playing the violin. But his parents had no time for violins because the Soviet government turned life upside down in his family as well. That’s how it was. And Borys couldn’t find himself. He tried being a driver, tried making shoes, and took a course at some technical school, sailed on a barge on the Dnipro—I don't know what that profession is called. And it was always “I don't want to, I don't want to, I won't.” And finally, his father says, “I read an announcement, they're recruiting young people for a stucco molding technical school. Maybe you'll go there?” — “I’ll go,” said Borys. And he went. Borys, by the way, restored the stucco molding on the Taras Shevchenko University building after the war. And once he got into this molding, this clay, this marble, this plaster, he stuck with it for the rest of his life. His soul became attached to it. Before my very eyes... There were some nascent talents. The institute, undoubtedly, gave him a lot, but he engaged in a lot of self-education. In our home, as soon as we got married, our library swelled and swelled, it grew and grew. Both poetry and art literature. Borys grew—I am not afraid to say it—into a classic, great artist, one the country would not be ashamed to present to the world. Unfortunately, he is also little known. He himself is very modest. He doesn't know how to promote himself, to advertise himself. And this pains me very much… They have now offered to make a television recording about him, but he says, “I don’t want to. I can't speak.” This “I don't want to”... I wrote a few articles about him for his eighty-fifth birthday; they were published. There are two or three articles in serious journals. But his body of work is immense. It's something incredible. And especially in the sixties. That too was the influence of the atmosphere in which we lived then. These people were constantly at our home, in the workshop. He sculpted Ivan Svitlychnyi. By the way, he also approached Yevhen Sverstiuk, but Yevhen said, “What for? No, no need.” And Borys would never impose himself. Only later did we realize that it was probably some religious motives that forbade Yevhen from saying, “Well, go ahead, sculpt me.”

V. O.: But Stus agreed at the time.

M. D.: And Vasyl agreed. He only said, “Is it okay if I read?”

V. O.: And smoke.

M. D.: And smoke, yes. Please, read and smoke. And he sat, read, and smoked. That's how it was. Borys told the story of his collaboration with Vasyl well in his memoir “The Portrait.”

After they took Vasyl, my whole life was tied to promoting Vasyl's word and that of all the great Ukrainian wordsmiths, the men of poetry. When my evenings with adults ended, with the birth of my granddaughter, I went to her school and told the teacher, after first checking out who she was… She was a decent person, but timid. I said to her, “Let me lead a folklore club at your school.” She agreed. I took the class to Taras Hryhorovych Shevchenko's grave. We studied songs with the children and went all over our district, to factories, design institutes, hospitals, performing with poetry and music. Our anthem was a spring song from Vasyl Stus's homeland, “The Swans Flew Over the Pond”:

Летіли лебéді понад став,

Летіли лебеді понад став,

Просили водиці, я не дав,

Просили водиці, я не дав.

Вдарили крильцями по льоду…

And so on.

V. O.: But that's the melody of the marching song “Hey, on the Hill, the Sich is Marching”!

M. D.: But in the Vinnytsia region, they sang such a spring song. Maybe the marching song came from the spring song. That could be. We would begin our performances with this song, and this went on for several years. And then I started involving children from our courtyard, the children of our friends, unexpected good acquaintances. The circle grew quickly. We found wonderful people in organizations, various institutions, who would happily say, “Come to us during lunchtime.” We also, by the way, organized Christmas celebrations and caroling, making the costumes ourselves. This was an activity from which Stefania developed her passion for musical art. And then, when I could no longer devote so much time to it, we started holding gatherings a few times a year at our home. We called our assembly “Parnassus on Vydubychi.” Why Parnassus is clear, and on Vydubychi—that’s clear too.

We raised up so much Ukrainian literature... The people who have been here! We had a choir from the school founded by Kozlovskyi in the village of Marianivka, whole groups of young kobzars from the Stritivka school came, and for many years, descendants of Taras from his brother Yosyp's line—the Shevchenkos, Kostenkos, Babychis—would come to us. Regular guests were the singer and bandurist Svitlana Myrvoda, known in Ukraine and around the world, with her sons, the Zabashta family of artists, Vasyl Stus’s wife Valia… The list is endless…

V. O.: Where did they all fit here?

M. D.: Well, in this large room and in the corridor. I'll show you a photo, I have it somewhere, up to fifty souls! The little ones sit on the floor like this, the older ones stand along the walls, and here, by the door, is the stage. The door is open. We had Valeriy Shevchuk visit; we invited him when he published his wonderful book about Hryhoriy Savych Skovoroda. We learned fragments from this book. He performed for us. Borya Mozolevskyi, while he was still in shape and able to come, was a regular guest of ours. We studied his book “About the Scythian Steppe” inside and out. All the Parnassians read his poetry. So many kobzars came to us! Taras Kompanichenko visited us as a very young boy. Then his friend, who lives in our building, Danylo Pertsov, appeared here. Maybe you know him, from his ensemble. He plays all instruments, has a higher conservatory education. By the way, Danylo Pertsov is the son of that artist Valia, who convinced her father to hire me for that job in the basement, as I told you. And this went on continuously until I turned eighty-three. I'm already feeling that it’s hard for me to prepare. The kids come from school, they need to be fed, then I have to sit and study with them. I attached a great deal of importance to teaching children how to read poetry. Because when they rattle off Shevchenko the way they do in school, it’s simply a mockery of poetry. So you sit for two, three, four hours. At times, you are a nanny, and a director, and a conductor, and a meticulous teacher, and a friend… We learned works that spoke to the heart and fit the theme of the evenings. And the themes, for example, were these, year after year: “Taras Shevchenko,” “Hryhoriy Skovoroda,” “Ivan Franko,” “Lesia,” “Autumn Carnivals” (on the work of Lina Kostenko), “The Neoclassicists,” “Vasyl Stus,” “Tychyna,” “The Poetry of Rylsky and Sosiura,” “The Contemporary Poetic Word,” etc. It’s hard to believe we even put on plays: for example, “Prometheus” based on Tychyna, “The Servant Girl” based on Shevchenko, there was a play dedicated to Skovoroda. I can’t even remember everything.

V. O.: Today is February 14, 2015, we are again with Mrs. Rita Dovhan. We continue to record her autobiographical narrative. Yesterday we recorded two parts, and this will be the third.

M. D.: These parts, if you connect them, are like small streams flowing into the great river of life. I try, perhaps not systematically, but a river also has all sorts of arms, branches, suddenly a small lake forms, and then the stream continues on.

So, a memory from our evenings came to me. Those from the old days, the 1960s. We gathered at the Telniuks’ house, Nadiyka’s and Volodia’s. Courteously, intellectually. We aren't big drinkers anyway, but here the thought of any kind of drinking didn't even cross our minds. Cups of tea, reading poetry. I don't remember exactly which of our poets were there then, but Vasyl Stus was definitely there. Volodia Pidpalyi was there, I remember now. And suddenly, a knock on the door. We open it. A policeman is standing there, with two other men. The policeman says, “We’ve received a complaint from the neighbors about your indecent behavior, you are creating unbearable conditions, you have noise, a drunken party, and so on.” Helya (Enhelsyna), Henrich Dvorko's wife, said, “Please, come in.” And these characters start snooping around the house with their eyes: “And where are your bottles?” We say, “We don't have any bottles, we don't drink. We drink tea.” – “So why did you gather?” It was March seventh, and we had gathered to commemorate the day of Shevchenko’s memory, because the two dates are close. We gathered to mark two dates in this way: with poetry and music. And we say, “Well, tomorrow is March eighth, Women’s Day, so we gathered.” In short, they hassled us, wrote some paper, we refuted it all, signed that nothing of the sort had happened, and they left. Such petty, annoying terror, and terror at every step.

And now, for a bit of humor, I want to tell you another episode, going back to that evening where thirteen poets woke up the entire KGB and almost the whole empire. I'm talking about the evening at the Institute of Communications. Besides all sorts of other insinuations with which they wanted to undermine our activities, there was also this. They summoned Inna Kuznetsova one more time, probably having no other arguments… And they demanded that she condemn me, write or sign a paper about what a nationalist I was or whatever else they wanted. Their final argument was this: “And do you know that all those poets are her lovers?”

V. O.: A whole string of them.

M. D.: And Inna says, “Well, that's great, what a woman! To have charmed so many poets!” In short, after that she came running to me, and we laughed our heads off. And I told the guys about it when I saw them. We had this bench on Shevchenko Boulevard, between the “Molod” publishing house and my editorial office, where we would often meet up for a few minutes to inform each other about something or say something. And I was very proud of such a compliment from the KGB. Such satire, such humor, such irony.

But those times, in specific moments, revealed many people from a positive, a negative, and, I would say, from some kind of psychologically dramatic side. Vasyl had a friend, Lyonya Seleznenko. He never left his side. He was a bachelor himself, a smart, kind man of a humanistic disposition. Whenever he had anything, he would bring it to Vasyl, food and drink. Once, he and I organized an action to help Linochka Kostenko. Though she didn't know it, because in those years she was persecuted, her works weren't published, she was left alone with her little daughter. We knew she was struggling. But she was a proud woman, you couldn't approach her. I don't remember if it was some holiday or what we tied it to, but Lyonya and I scrounged up some money, Borys earned a little… Well, these are trifles, in principle, but we bought a huge diamond-shaped wicker basket at the market (craftsmen sold them at Besarabka) and stuffed it with everything we could. And we brought it to Lina, left it at her door. She was still living here then, on the avenue that was named after some Moscow official, now it’s Maria Pryimachenko Street, here in Pechersk. We left it at the door, rang the bell with all our might, and ran away. And we hid downstairs.

V. O.: And did you wait to see?

M. D.: We heard the door open, and she muttered something, as if to herself, but she took the basket. Well, we were pleased and went on our way. That’s what Lyonya was like. And suddenly, when they started dragging everyone in… Well, we had no idea about Lyonya; we didn’t communicate that often. And suddenly, one evening, a late-night ring at the door. In comes Lyonya. He looked terrible. He was disoriented, frightened, with these bulging eyes, a total wreck. “Rita, we have to turn ourselves in. They know everything.” That was his wild, blunt, insane phrase. And I know a completely different Lyonya. They had pushed his nervous system to the brink and let him go. I said, “Lyonya, dear, come in. Turn ourselves in to whom? With what?” To make a long story short, we managed to calm him down a bit. But, you know, he fell seriously ill soon after and died. That’s the story of Lyonya Seleznenko. There are harsh people who immediately start judging, saying maybe he did talk, but I’ll pass on judging him.

V. O.: In the book about Vasyl Stus, “The Uncensored Stus,” there’s an interview where he details how they broke him. He had one typewritten copy of Vasyl Stus’s poetry collection, *Winter Trees*. A completely different copy went abroad, not his. But they forced him to say that he was the one who had sent it abroad. He didn’t want to say that. And yet, the court interpreted it as if he were testifying against Vasyl. This episode was used against Vasyl, even though it was a stretch. And Leonid was terribly tormented by this, terribly tormented.

M. D.: In short, my memory of him is a warm one, despite that dramatic moment. There was another story. I was also distributing Ivan Dzyuba’s work, “Internationalism or Russification?” and poetry. For a while, we lived in the Voskresenka neighborhood. There was a new school there. I took a closer look at my Katrusia’s teacher and saw that she was someone you could deal with. I gave her Ivan Dzyuba’s work. I trusted that everything would be all right. I said, “Read it yourself, but don’t distribute it any further for now, just read it yourself.” After reading it, she was stunned, thrilled, like a person whose eyes were opened to many things. She was a simple teacher, but a very good Ukrainian soul. She said, “Could we give it to my daughter? My daughter is a university student.” “Of course, why not? Give it to your daughter.” Sometime later, a call at our door in the middle of the night. Well, we were prepared—it was an anxious time, who knew what could happen. We both went to the door. “Who’s there?” A trembling, timid female voice replied that it was the teacher’s daughter. I’ve forgotten her name; I remember her husband was Vasyl, but I don’t recall hers. They were standing there, and she was crying. And she was pregnant, about to give birth. She said, “Mrs. Rita, I was summoned to the KGB.” My heart sank. I thought, “Dear God, she’s expecting a child, and they’ve been putting her through the wringer.” “I told them you gave it to me.” I pulled her into the room, saying, “Don’t cry, it’s nothing terrible. They already know more about me than you do. You don’t need to worry.” I calmed her down, telling her it was nothing serious. But they kept repeating, “Please forgive us… Please forgive us…” Such nobility.

V. O.: And what form was that copy in—typewritten or a photocopy?

M. D.: Typewritten. Around here, I have a vague memory… I wanted to get more of these materials, and here, in a building above us on the hill, lived some typist. I don’t remember whose acquaintance she was, but she did underground typing… She had some troubles later, too, but Ivan Dzyuba probably knows that better than I do. But I also distributed materials in Odesa. I have relatives there, distant by blood but close in spirit. I actually stored a lot of things in Odesa when the massive searches began. Slavko Chornovil would give me materials, I’d take them to Odesa, and they were safely kept there. Later, I gave them to Valia and returned some to Slavko.

V. O.: Oh, in Odesa—was that Halyna Mohylnytska?

M. D.: No, in Odesa, it was a very bright family, Svitlana and Natalia Kotsiuruba. Natalia later became the mother of my nephew. She didn’t live with my brother for long, but she became like a sister to me for life. The Kotsiurubas, originally from the Vinnytsia region, were very patriotic, wonderful people, but the Odesa atmosphere, a technical profession, and Russian-language education had Russified them. Natalochka passed away. But to this day, we keep in touch with her sister, Svitlana, who is now raising her grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

And these people are from Lymanske. She tries to build up a book library for them and steer them toward the Ukrainian language. And I want to tell you about one more person. We were saying there are some people who seem invisible, but suddenly, under certain circumstances, they reveal themselves. At first, I wasn’t expelled from the Party. I was fired from my job with a ban on working in any ideological field, but from the Party, I only got a severe reprimand recorded in my personal file. I think what helped was the fact that I was “Russian.” Ivan told me then that I should write that I wasn't a Ukrainian bourgeois nationalist, because I was Russian.

V. O.: Ivan Svitlychny?

M. D.: No, Ivan Dzyuba. We wrote a document stating I had never seen the bourgeoisie, that I had been here and there, where there was no bourgeoisie, and was not born in a bourgeois state. In short, that’s what the paper said. But they expelled me when they apparently brought Vasyl to Kyiv and started dragging me in again about him. I told you how they held me for several hours somewhere in the Podil district, took me to what seemed like a room at a police station, I don’t know what they call it… There was nothing there—just a room, a table, a chair.

V. O.: They brought Vasyl from Mordovia to Kyiv in seventy-five. Sometime in August or September.

M. D.: Yes, and then it started. Another commission, they were running to the bosses, gathering dirt on me. They arranged a meeting of the Ministry’s party organization. A huge crowd of people, almost all employees were Party members since it was a Ministry. A couple of hundred people were gathered in the hall. The party organizer and a representative from the district party committee spoke, telling everyone what a terrible person I was. Then, the vote. Vasyl, I still can’t believe it to this day! No one voted to expel me from the Party. The KGB agents were stunned. They quickly left, consulted somewhere in their back rooms about what to do. That same day, an announcement appeared that a repeat party meeting of the ministry would be held the next day. Just like the Minsk agreements now: today, tomorrow, and the day after—the events take on a slightly different color. To the next meeting come two KGB agents, as I understood it, and one of them reads a paper stating that I am accused of supporting the fascist Solzhenitsyn. And then they pull out a little postcard I wrote to Solzhenitsyn when he published the novella *One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich*. For us, that was a huge event, the first sign of a thaw.

V. O.: Wasn’t that work published in the magazine *Novy Mir* in sixty-two?

M. D.: I don’t remember the details. Later, a small book came out, too. I found out where he was. He was living in Ryazan. And I wrote him an open postcard, thanking him for shedding light on events that had been hidden from us. A very short postcard. Of course, it never went to Ryazan; it lay in their files, “part of the case.”

V. O.: So Solzhenitsyn turned out to be a fascist, too. Fought against the Germans for the whole war—and he’s a fascist!

M. D.: Yes. And I was flabbergasted. And the people were crestfallen. You know, it was a shock. You know how the word “fascist” sounded back then. Everyone voted for expulsion. Everyone who hadn't voted the day before. And only one person in this entire giant madhouse voted to keep me in the Party, raising his hand. I look—and it’s a quiet, inconspicuous, intelligent engineer named Mykhailov, a former frontline soldier, with whom I wasn’t even closely acquainted. We’d greet each other politely, and that was it. I thought, “My God, what a man that Mykhailov is, the only one in the entire ministry…” To make a long story short, they expelled me from the Party. Of course, how could they not—I had associated with a fascist. And then all sorts of troubles followed.

V. O.: So what year were you expelled?

M. D.: It was in seventy-five, when they brought Vasyl to Kyiv… But that’s not the main thing. So they expelled me, to hell with them. But when they started talking about it, I was shaking all over. First of all, “fascist.” Back then, we didn’t know the later Solzhenitsyn. We knew him as an enlightened figure who had gone through the camps and written a book. I took my party membership card out of my purse, threw it on their table, and said, “Take your little book, I’ll manage without it.” I said something short and to the point. I don’t remember what it was, it’s been too long. You see where this KGB “fascist” label comes from. To say that about good people?! And now they shout it en masse at Ukrainians in Muscovy.

There was another interesting episode. About the people I met along the way. Since I had many friends in the biology department at the university, because my school friends went to study there, I also conducted, as the authorities called it, subversive activities there. I distributed poetry at the department of animal physiology, where I knew two people. We would hold meetings right during our lunch break. I’d say, “Some new poems have appeared, maybe by Vinhranovsky, or Lina Kostenko, or someone else.” We’d gather for a short while to read. And one professor… He was a talented researcher, a physiologist, and he was a wonderful alternative medicine practitioner, treating people with herbs. A whole river of people flowed to him; he cured many. By the way, I went to him back then, too. I had kidney stones. They told me I needed surgery, but he gave me some kind of drink and said, “A completely salt-free diet. Drink this.” And he cured me. He later married a woman who had tuberculosis. He cured her too. And this Seva Dudchak was the most active reader of everything I brought. Vsevolod Dudchak. Time passed, and he was summoned to the KGB. I didn’t know about it. What he said there, I don’t know, I can only guess, but some time later, I met Mrs. Oksana Meshko, and she told me, “Rita, you should know that Dudchak said too much about you there.” This was so that if I were called in, I would be aware of the situation. He soon left that job, and I didn’t have any contact with him after that. But from what they pestered me with, I realized that maybe it came from him—that I wanted to “corrupt” some part of the student body at the university.

Fate brought me together with Hryts Herchak. My God, what a bright person he was! Bright and noble!

V. O.: He served twenty-five years, from fifty-two to seventy-seven?

M. D.: Yes, yes. He was about eighteen years old when they caught him. He fought in the Carpathians. He was an *opryshok*-style independence fighter. But he helped the partisans, had connections with them. He learned many languages in prison because the flower of many nations was imprisoned there. He composed many songs. He would write those songs on thin scraps of paper, and people who served their sentences would smuggle those scraps out by various means. And what’s interesting is that when he was released, he managed to collect it all, because people had saved it. Here in Kyiv, we were thinking about where to find him a place. One of his sisters had supposedly gone to America, other relatives had either long ago disowned him or died. They had put him on death row, kept him there for about two months, and then transferred him to a regular cell because he was still a minor.

And here’s what happened: Lyudochka Lytovchenko decided she would marry him. And they got married. Well, their family life didn’t go very smoothly, but they were intelligent people, treated each other with respect, and everything went well. And then Lyudochka says to me, “You know, Hryts is just afraid to leave the house, so as not to cast a shadow on people with his presence.” And they gave him a job. Right here near us, in a small lane, there’s a vocational school, and in that school, they gave him the position of a poster artist. He sat in a narrow room with a table, and on that table, he had to write slogans, mostly “Glory to the CPSU” or something of that sort. Can you imagine what an ordeal that was for Hryts? But he didn’t give in. They watched him so closely, you wouldn’t believe it. And they set him up with a young lady, to tempt him. The table was narrow, the corridor wasn’t very wide either, he would sit just like we are. They thought the young lady would seduce him, “reel him in” for a crime, but that didn’t work either. Hryts was a tough nut to crack.

He first came to our place like this. Lyudochka said, “Let’s meet up…” I immediately said, “Come to our place with Hryts.” There was this architect, I won’t name him, God rest his soul. Like the artist Hlushchenko, he was a talented specialist, but also an informer. We knew this. He was very clingy with us, with Borys. Because architects are always tied up with sculptors. And so he came back from Paris, where he had made a lot of slides on artistic themes, and he said, “I’ll come over to your place. You always have people over. Let’s have a slide show of Paris.” I said, “Come on over.” I invited our crowd, a lot of people gathered. The show began. Lyuda and Hryts came in. We had Hryts sit here by the piano. He sat down. He had such a gentle, warm smile on his face. The place was full of people. And I was curious how he was feeling. Hryts sat there watching the film, and I kept glancing at him. I saw that a tiny little album and a pencil had appeared in his hand, out of nowhere. And he would look into the album, then at someone. And *chirk-chirk-chirk*—he was making little portraits. And not a word from his lips. Everyone was chattering, commenting, but he—not a word, not a sound. He sat like that the whole evening. When everyone had left, I said, “Hryts, stay a little longer.” I said, “Hryts, you work nearby. I have a granddaughter. She comes home from school right around your break time. Come to our place. First, we’ll have lunch together, and second, we can chat and learn something.” And Hryts came to our place for a long time. It was such happiness, such an illumination of the soul! We would sit with him in the kitchen and have lunch. And Stefanka was already drawn to art, to music. So we are indebted to Hryts for learning several wonderful Ukrainian folk songs from him.

V. O.: And he sang so beautifully.

M. D.: He sang so well and still does, I hope. He’s not feeling well now, and his eyesight is bad. After Lyudochka went to Prague, he went to Canada at his sister's invitation. We communicated with him for a long time through my Katia. She would call him. Until recently, he would come to visit Oleksandr Tkachuk, who has given so much of his heart and soul to having Ukrainian churches in Ukraine. And now he quietly keeps on doing good deeds for Ukraine.

V. O.: He lives nearby. He’s a friend of mine.

M. D.: Hryts would stay with Sasha when he came to Kyiv, and we would chat. Stefanka is very indebted to him. We learned “Nightingale, little nightingale, your voice is so slender” and “The Orphan Girl.” My God, how beautifully Stefania performed it, accompanied by the piano, people would cry. Then we learned a ballad from him. For me, it is a masterpiece of masterpieces:

Звідки, Йванку? – З-за Дунаю.

Що чувати в чужім краю?

Що чувати в чужім краю —

Ідуть турки на три шнурки,

А татари на чотири.

А татари на чотири…

And so on. Such a dramatic piece with such a finale—it's simply a Shakespearean historical drama, I would say. It touched the souls of all the children—and I’ve had a sea of them in my house, at least a hundred—and with each new generation, we learned this ballad. Hryts said this ballad was created sometime in the thirteen-hundreds. That’s the kind of relationship we developed with Hryts. Warm, homelike. For me, he is a saintly person.

V. O.: And on June 12 and 16, 2003, I recorded an interview with him. A very long and very detailed one. I sent it to him to correct, as there were some unclear words. But he said, “We need to redo it.” But how could he possibly redo it? I had to leave those unclear words, put question marks, and I posted the interview on the Internet, on the website of the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group: https://museum.khpg.org/1380298542. Because what’s the point of it just sitting there… Hryts can barely see anymore, and it’s certain he won’t be able to do it.

M. D.: Time flies, health declines, and you have to seize what little you can. Let it be as it is. But in our lives, this was such a bright period… The only thing I regret is that Borys didn’t sculpt him. The thought never even occurred to me back then.

V. O.: And he was such a handsome man—a true Ukrainian.

M. D.: A handsome man. Maybe not a movie-star handsome, but his soul, his life, and his nobility—his great nobility—made him beautiful. So you should know that he is always present here, in our home, and I always say, “Stefanochka, you studied in different conservatories, in America, in Germany, you sing all over the world, but always feel that even though Hryts doesn’t have a conservatory education, he invested a piece of his soul in you. Just like Leopold Yashchenko.” By the way, Leopold Yashchenko is also a saintly person to us. He created the “Homin” choir for Kyiv! So many people passed through it, so many songs were learned! I am a city-dweller, and a traveler from childhood to my youth, never staying in one place for long. And suddenly, from him, I heard such a monumental stream of the Ukrainian musical word, it was like going through an academy. That’s a whole other page of life.

V. O.: And did you sing in the “Homin” choir?

M. D.: I sang in the choir for seven years. And I wrote everything down; I have notebooks this thick with these songs, and I later taught them all to the children. And then we would go out among the people with our ensemble “Lebedyky” (The Little Swans). I was humming for you, “The swans were flying over the pond.” You mentioned a marching song, and I think it came from “Lebedyky.” “Lebedyky” came earlier, because it’s a folk piece.

V. O.: You knew so many glorious people.

M. D.: Look, I keep these photographs. We and Slavko Chornovil… That’s a whole epic of friendship… Slavko was very young and often visited our home with his little son Taras and his Olena Antoniv. We worked together, but most importantly, he revealed Ukraine to me. It was at their invitation that we first went to Lviv for a long time. We lived on that famous Spokiyna Street, 13, and explored Lviv. We visited all the workshops of Lviv artists, all the concerts, walked around all the architectural monuments, and most importantly—we got to know people. Olena’s home was always open. And what struck me was this: older people, returning from Siberia, from all sorts of prisons and exiles, who no longer had any connections or relatives, would come to Olena. They had her address. She would constantly put together and send packages of canned goods to all those people living in Siberia. She would pack whatever she could, even assembling them in front of me. As for the money—she had an aunt in America. This aunt would send her these Ukrainian shawls, probably made in Japan. Just like the Chinese now make Ukrainian cups and sell them at our markets. Olena would sell those shawls because they were in fashion, in favor, and use the money to prepare those packages. A sea of people came to her. The house was always open, there was always a pot on the stove, and in that pot, there was always something to eat. I observed their relationship, and I was very saddened later on. When marital problems began between them after Slavko’s return, they invited me to come. Maybe something could be done. Because Slavko and I were on good, friendly terms; back then, he wasn’t excessively proud and detached, as he became a little later. This trait appeared in him… And I remained just an ordinary person. We would talk in the evening, everything seemed fine, they would go to bed together, quiet and peaceful, and in the morning everything was nice, we’d have tea, Slavko would go off on his business, Olena to work, and I didn’t sit at home either. Some time would pass, and something would start up again. Something was happening to Slavko. I have some non-standard thoughts on this subject… I think one thing, that if Olena had been by his side his whole life (and he loved her madly, and she loved him), if she had been with him his whole life, maybe what happened wouldn’t have happened. That's a sinful but, it seems to me, a clear thought I have. By the way, after me, Ivan Svitlychny went there too, also to try to patch things up between them.

I told you that episode on the Prypiat River… It’s appropriate to recall it now, how they “infiltrated” and how they sowed discord…

V. O.: Yes, that was one of their methods: to create some strife within a family and then fish in troubled waters.

M. D.: Yes. And you know, I never saw Slavko happy after that. He was a public figure, he was a fighter, he was a patriot, he threw himself on the line, all of that was there, but a person also needs to be a little bit happy in their own circle, especially when that happiness is right here, in your hands. Well, you can keep this information for yourself.

The last time, a few days before Slavko’s death, Borys and I were discussing this situation, this tension that had been created around the Rukh movement. They were starting to blame Yurko Kostenko, saying he was almost some kind of villain, a super-villain, although I didn’t believe it, I don’t believe it, and I won’t believe it. And we decided to tell Slavko… By then, he no longer had time to talk with us. But I was working at Mykhailo Horyn’s invitation in the People’s Council and observed all the events and all the people from the sidelines. And I could see—something was wrong with Slavko. Borys and I wrote a letter, a personal, warm, friendly letter, and expressed our opinion that he needed to stop reacting so strongly to all those attacks, to rise above it. In short, we asked him to save himself for Ukraine. I’m saying this a bit inspirationally now, as if from a distance. We met him in the corridor, on the walkway between two buildings, and I said, “Slavko, take this letter.” I still called him Slavko, as we had started doing in his early years. And he said, “What, you wrote me a letter?” I said, “Borys and I wrote it.” And he ran off on his business, and I went my way. The next day, after the passions in the hall, we were sitting in the basement cafe with our wonderful Mrs. Slava Stetsko over a cup of coffee. By the way, we were having a very interesting conversation. And suddenly I see Slavko come in, alone. He came in and sat down on the edge, somewhere between the door and the serving tables, so as not to see or talk to anyone, I noticed. He took a salad, some tomatoes and cucumbers, and sat there eating, there wasn’t much else there. I got up and went over to him, ostensibly to greet him. And he said to me, “What’s this, you’re writing me little notes?” My heart just sank. I was in shock. I said, “We told you what we could,” and walked away. And a few days later, this disaster happened…

And I had a very pleasant conversation with Mrs. Slava. She said to me, tilting her head, in her deep voice, “Mrs. Rita, what do you think, why don’t all these small movements unite? Why doesn’t Kostenko do it, for example?” I said, “Mrs. Slava, that’s a good idea. I,” I said, “am a person from far away, until recently I wasn’t in the stream of Ukrainian politics. And I, and not only I, but also my husband and many other people, are surprised why the split, or even the trifurcation, of the nationalist parties continues? I mean, why don’t you, the Melnykivtsi and the Banderivtsi, unite? What is there to divide now? Surely conclusions can be drawn about what this split has led to?” Mrs. Slava raised her head a little and said, “That’s impossible.” That’s it, a dead end. But in general, Mrs. Slava was a wise woman, also very active. I remember to the last how she walked into parliament. She must have been seriously ill already, holding onto the walls, or someone had to lead her into the hall. I remember how the communists would get furious, even when they just glanced at her. Because she was the eldest member.

V. O.: She opened the session.

M. D.: And what have those scoundrels done now? Yuriy Shukhevych was supposed to open the session, and then they immediately put forward that old stump from Donbas, Zviahilsky, who is already crumbling to dust, may he forgive me, but why did he get into that.

V. O.: He is a month older than Shukhevych.

M. D.: Good Lord, what a disgrace, what a vile thing to do. God forbid. But despite all that, Mrs. Slava and I were friends, we had tea together, and sometimes we gathered. She came to my husband’s workshop. What was important to us was the very communion with a person who was connected to the nationalist movement. For us, that was something sacred. By the way, we went hiking in the mountains with Slavko Chornovil, with a whole group of people. There was Slavko, there was Kendzior, very young, he was about eighteen. I even asked Slavko, “Who is that boy, why is he so attached to you?”

V. O.: And was the younger one, Taras Marusyk, there too?

M. D.: Taras Marusyk?

V. O.: Yes, as a teenager.

M. D.: He might have been there as a teenager… I got to know the older one later, and Taras Marusyk’s children grew up in our house, at our get-togethers. But about Kendzior—for some reason, I have a question mark there. But Stefania Shabatura was there, Ihor Kalynets with his wife Iryna Stasiv. Who else? There were some other interesting people, I’ve forgotten. Some of the Lviv artists were there.

V. O.: Taras Marusyk recently sent me two photos for me to identify some people. But I don’t know them. You would be able to recognize them. I should print them out for you and bring them, maybe you’ll recognize someone.

M. D.: Maybe. It’s from the Carpathians, right?

V. O.: Yes, from the Carpathians.

M. D.: And in the Carpathians, you know, out of all the moments, there are two I want to emphasize. We knew there was an insurgent movement, that it was a powerful army, a real army that had discipline and solid training, and that it fought for Ukraine. For us, who came out of the Soviet empire, it was also romantic. We met a boy on the bank of the Pisten River in the village of Sheshory, and that boy led us to a street where, in that very house, a UPA soldier had lived until recently. I remember how my heart nearly jumped out of my chest from the thrill as we climbed the hill and walked down that little street, and the boy showed us a small house behind a fence: “He lived here.” And we returned with the same reverence, because we had been near a holy place.

And later we went higher into the Brustury mountains. And there, in Brustury… We went up from the center, to the right, up the hill. They told us a musician (*muzyka*) lived there. This musician was Ivan Sokoliuk and his three sons: Ivan the younger, Vasyl the middle, and Mykola the eldest. And all of them were also musicians (*muzyky*), led by their father. They were all tall and handsome. And with them was a tiny, tiny mother, Maria, the *vuyna*. They called her “*vuyna* Maria” there, but we just called her Mrs. Maria. And we had one night, as they say, all night long, when Ivan and all his sons played Hutsul melodies for us the entire night. Two violins, a bubon, and a tsymbaly. And there was a union of souls, you know, a Renaissance. It was a miracle. Such a miracle that I then wrote (for myself, of course) a short poem, which was called “Brustury Night.” Many years passed. When Ihor Kalynets was in prison, I wrote to him, rarely, but I did. And he sent me a postcard, and on that postcard were two poems. One—a short piece about Kyiv, with a hint about our acquaintance, and a poem about that Brustury night, about the music in which we were baptized…

V. O.: Do you happen to remember that poem?

M. D.: I don’t remember it, but I have it somewhere. I wasn’t prepared for this conversation… There are so many papers… I have a postcard from Ihor that mentions that night. I’ll find it later, it’s lying around somewhere.

V. O.: Will you also tell us about the Prypiat Republic?

M. D.: The Prypiat Republic—that was a rest for the soul… We could speak more freely there, we read a lot. Unfortunately, everything was forgotten and drowned in that sun, in the river, on the kayaks, where we held races. The Dvorks were often there. By the way—Borys sculpted a portrait of Heinrich Dvork. There were interesting conversations by the water… It was fun. And there was Heinrich and Helya’s famous dog named Brutus—a friend and protector of children and adults. We had not only a stable group of people there but also those who joined us. Among them was the son of the 1920s poet Mykhailo Dolengo. Our great sculptor Viacheslav Klokov, little known due to his delicate nature. Because in Soviet times, you had to break through barriers with your bare chest to achieve anything. Viacheslav Klokov was with us with his charming wife Lilia Hordienko. They were exceptionally patriotic people, especially Lilia, who was born somewhere far away in Siberia, or God knows where, and who had a minimum of Ukrainian blood in her. There was Belarusian blood and Baltic blood mixed in. Though those are strong currents, too. This Lilia was the bravest and most energetic. Vyachyk would read something, smile, praise it, but Lilia would take those materials, when it was possible, when there were copies, to give to her friends. And they also have a daughter, Oksana. And so there we were, on kayaks. And little Oksana, athletic as she was, was the life of the party. But this didn't happen often. We celebrated all our family holidays there, on the Prypiat.

And I also remember that for a while, we used to go to Belarus, to the Slovechna River. The Slovechna flows into the Prypiat. Now it’s a restricted zone, but back then it was a paradise for the soul, for relaxation. This document here shows how we entertained ourselves. It was someone’s holiday, and for this holiday, the group wrote a brilliant poem: “Greetings, we wish you well, we hope, we desire, we embrace, we kiss, we hug, we crush the little buggers in your honor.” But I don’t know to whom it was dedicated. But for some reason, I have it, I don't know why.

V. O.: Maybe Ivan? Are there any signatures?

M. D.: Well, there’s Dovhan, but we had a lot of Dovhans back then. There was Katia with us…

V. O.: It says “L. Svetlicheskaya” here. And there are signatures of Valia and Vasyl Stus.

M. D.: “Svetlicheskaya,” yes. You know, we were not short on humor, nor on cheerfulness.

And this pertains to Yevhen Sverstiuk… When Yevhen passed away, somehow on the second or third day, Borys and I remembered… We were talking about him. Borys recalled an episode of how he and Yevhen were traveling from Prypiat to Kyiv. They both needed to go for something. The sun was shining, the Dnipro was magical, those enchanting banks… And Borys noticed that Yevhen, who was always tense, focused on some matters, his mind constantly working, thinking he needed to write something, to pass something on to someone, to talk to someone, business, business, business. And suddenly—he was so uninhibited, relaxed, happy. They looked at that Dnipro, at those cliffs, at the water that was running towards them. Borys said, “I didn’t recognize him. Suddenly, our friend Yevhen was so happy, so poetic.”

V. O.: There are more signatures here. This one is clearly visible— “V. Stus, D.” — that’s Dmytro Stus. “Valia S.”

M. D.: Yes, and Valia Stus. The entire Stus family was with us.

V. O.: Who else is here? This one?

M. D.: “Dvorky.”

V. O.: “Dvorky.” Here’s “Ponomar…”

M. D.: That, I think, is Ponomaryova. Enhelsyna Ponomaryova, Helya.

V. O.: And this is probably “Ivan.” Maybe Kalynychenko?

M. D.: Could be. Ivan was definitely there; he was our number one fisherman.

V. O.: There are other illegible signatures here. And on the back, there’s a drawing of a seal. A seal, what is that? Some kind of wheel and a fish skeleton.

M. D.: “Seal of the glorious people of Prypiat.”

V. O.: Oh, that’s what’s drawn around it. I photographed it. “True to the original.” Signed “Shmakodyavchenko.”

M. D.: Yes. I think Shmakodyavchenko is Ivan Kalynychenko. He was also there with his family at the time, with his wife, who is now a famous organizer of a children’s ethnographic choir. They had their son Yurko then, and a little daughter. They were always with us too. There was long-limbed Dmytryk, gentle Valia, and a stately but very gentle Vasyl in those days, on the banks of the Prypiat. We had a home-like, family-like relationship, we shared a common table, we had a duty roster. A wooden table stood there. So many of those little buggers and all sorts of fish were caught… There were competitions. But through it all, like some underground conspirators, everyone had something to give each other to read. Or we would just gather and read poetry. The evenings were especially romantic when the bonfire was burning. Everyone was uninhibited, reading.

V. O.: I don’t know when this poem by Vasyl Stus was written, maybe already in Mordovia:

Душа ласкава, наче озеро,

І трохи синім оддає,

Тут, поміж Туровим і Мозирем,

Тепер призволення твоє.

Лежить налитий сонцем оболок,

І день до берега припав,

А біля мене білим соболем

Тремтить коханої рукав.

Мені була ти голубинею,

Що розкрилила два крила,

І мужем, хлопчиком, дитиною,

Мене до неба вознесла.

M. D.: You know, their love was marvelous. I don't know of any works in world literature like the ones Vasyl wrote for Valia. Well, maybe there are some abstract ones, or maybe they seem abstract because we are so distant in time, like Petrarch. But Vasyl’s poetry for Valia is unique. I know another poem that often comes to me in the middle of the night. This was when he was already far away, he wrote:

На бережечку самоти,

На білому пісочку,

Кого лишив — не осягти:

Дружину, а чи дочку?

Так вимінилося життя!

Всесніння огортає,

І той, хто прагнув вороття,

Вже й стежки не вгадає.

It's fantastic. It’s hard, this is hard.

M. D.: Mykhailo Kheyfets, a Jew from Leningrad, memorized many of Stus’s poems in Ukrainian. And this without knowing the Ukrainian language, but he had a phenomenal memory.

M. D.: He wrote brilliant memoirs.

V. O.: He recited a few of Stus’s poems to his wife Raisa—she’s Russian—during a visit. She asked, “Is this dedicated to his wife?” “Yes.” “Then she’s a happy woman.” “How can she be a happy woman when her husband is in prison?” “He made her immortal.” There you have it.

M. D.: Yes, yes. I’m just sad that all of this gets silted up by daily life, poor health, misfortunes, and generally, a person changes with age. And this happiness of Valia’s in the present is her constant suffering, because she loved him madly, too. And the torment they put her through—no fascist could have come up with it. She goes for a personal visit, travels across the endless expanses of the empire, and they tell her: “Your husband has misbehaved, he’s in the punishment cell, go back.” It's horrific. And this went on for several years in a row. They destroyed her health, her endocrine system first and foremost, and from that, all the collapses, all the illnesses began. The only joy is that, thank God, the Stus family tree is growing.

V. O.: Oh, there are very many little Stuses now.

M. D.: You know, I was at Valia’s birthday in Dmytrivka, where everyone who could, all the families, had gathered. Such children there! But I’m always jealously looking to see if there is at least one child who looks like Vasyl. And, you know, I found one. In the currant bushes. We were playing hide-and-seek with the little children. I started it to give them some fun, as the adults were sitting there, talking about something… Valia had planted currant and raspberry bushes there. It's all slowly growing up, getting green. So, we were searching, playing with Yarema. And suddenly he peeked out from the bushes, turned his head, and I was stunned: my God, that’s Vasyl! You know, the way his head is set…

Borys’s portrait helped me here: the structure of the head is strong, massive, dark hair, and the profile is reminiscent of Vasyl's. So now I believe that it's Yarema Stus, the son of Yaroslav, the son of Dmytro, the son of Vasyl.

V. O.: Yaroslav was born to Dmytro when Vasyl was still alive, in June of eighty-five. Stefan was born later.

And could you please count Yaroslav’s children?

M. D.: Yaroslav and Malanka have three little children, three sons. Malanka is the wife, the mother of these three boys. The first is Yarema; he was six years old that summer. Only six. He has a sturdy build, a head like Vasyl's. Next is Severyn, and the third is Akym.

V. O.: Yakym?

M. D.: Yakym. But I don't remember how it's spelled. I think they call him Akym, but maybe it's Yakym.

V. O.: Yakym. There's the surname Yakymenko. In Lina Kostenko's novel *Marusya Churai*, at the trial, "Yakym spoke up in Marusya's defense, unbidden by anyone." That’s how you could just volunteer to be a witness back then.

M. D.: And here he was bidden to this world by his parents. So, three little children. I haven't seen the other two, only the eldest, Yarema, came. And then there's Stefan—there was a very interesting story there. Well, I have a special fondness for Stefan…

V. O.: And is it Stefán or Stepan? Stefan. With an “f.”

M. D.: Stefan. In the European style, Stéfan…

V. O.: European style, but in ours it's Stefán.

M. D.: And in the Soviet style, Stepan came to us from Russia.

V. O.: Dmytro said they had great difficulty; they didn't want to register him as Stefán, it had to be Stepan. Dmytro insisted that they register him as Stefan.

M. D.: Stefán. Well, I know it as Stéfan, but let it be Stefán if it's easier for you.

V. O.: And is Stefan already married, too?

M. D.: Married.

V. O.: What is his wife’s name?

M. D.: His wife’s name is Vika, Viktoria. She is the daughter of an interesting man. Her father was the head of the medicinal plants department at our Botanical Garden of the Academy of Sciences. When the party-political and state upheavals began and the first years were extremely difficult, they were cutting staff, there was no one to work, and he was fired. In fact, they liquidated the department as unnecessary. That’s what Vika told me.

V. O.: I see. So does Stefan have children already? What are their names?

M. D.: Ustynka. Justynka, Ustynka—“the just one.”

V. O.: Just one, right?

M. D.: One. A strong, big little girl. I’ve seen her.

V. O.: How old is she?

M. D.: She might be about a year and a half old. I even have my impressions of the children written down somewhere. And her mother is interesting, too. She works with computers, and Stefan works with computers. Stefan is several years younger than her. But she's so skinny, a very proud, independent, dynamic, and noble person. Her son came with Vika to ask for his mother Oksana's blessing for their marriage and wedding ceremony. Oksana didn't want it, probably remembering her personal drama. So they turned to Valia. I think the wiser Valia gave her blessing. In short, they went and got married in a church.

You know, sometimes you just get a feeling about a person right away. Vika has visited us once or twice. Her father lives somewhere in a village and has good honey. At some family festive gathering, she mentioned this, and I said, “Maybe we could buy some honey from your father?” She came to our place, and I talked with her. An original, interesting person. And now I’ve seen them with their child. First of all, Stefan is a wonderful father; he treats that child with such tenderness, constantly taking care of her, sitting at a distance but always keeping an eye on the little one, how she is behaving.

V. O.: And Dmytro separated from Oksana Dvork and married whom?

M. D.: Tetiana Shcherbachenko.

V. O.: What is her profession, a philologist, right?

M. D.: She's a philologist. She’s also a journalist, and I think she writes as well. She ran a wonderful children’s magazine, *Soniakh* (Sunflower).

V. O.: That was her?

M. D.: She ran it. She often spoke about the magazine and related topics on the third channel of Radio Kultura. And she made a charming impression on me. She is an intelligent, dynamic, elegant, incredibly beautiful woman, incredibly beautiful. And most importantly—also self-sufficient.

V. O.: They already have two girls?

M. D.: Two girls.

V. O.: What are their names?

M. D.: One is named Yivha. I recently saw Yivha at a gathering in memory of Vasyl at Valia’s house, on the evening of January sixth to seventh, on Christmas Eve. Yivha is very thin, very serious, studies everything around her, and was very proud of her outfit. It was a simple, neatly sewn dress, all embroidered, on the sleeves, the bodice, and down here on the skirt. I asked, “And who made such an outfit for you?” “My grandmother made it for me. I’m very proud of it.”

V. O.: Grandmother Valentyna, right?

M. D.: No, Valia doesn’t embroider. It was her grandmother, my mommy’s mommy.

V. O.: And what’s the other girl’s name?

M. D.: The other girl… Orysia.

V. O.: Orysia? They have such beautiful names.

M. D.: Orysia. But that Orysia—she’s fire and flame. She doesn’t sit still for a minute; she’s about three and she’s like a spinning top all the time, her eyes darting, and she moves, and she's beautiful. The girls there are one prettier than the next.

V. O.: It’s interesting that Dmytro’s children and his sons’ children are the same age.

M. D.: Yes, yes. He’s a father and a grandfather at the same time. He is so stately among this family, with such a calm smile, and very happy. I’ve observed him outside of his usual context. At work, there’s all that hassle and tension…

V. O.: Yes, he’s frazzled there.

M. D.: …and suddenly here he’s like… just a god.

V. O.: Yes, a family god. The family patriarch.

M. D.: Yes, the family patriarch. I am very happy that such a tree has grown. I am simply humanly grateful to his sons for managing to have children, because now there are many who don't want that trouble. But there’s its own joy, its own happiness in it.

I would also like to add, by the way, if we are on this topic, that Valia is also fortunate to have her wonderful sister, Shurochka. This Shurochka is a miracle. She is a heroine herself. Her daughters had problems. But she didn't lose heart, always supported them. This Shura is raising such patriotic children, it's fantastic.

V. O.: Her name is Oleksandra, right?

M. D.: Yes, Oleksandra. By the way, her married surname, from her husband Valentyn, is romantic and beautiful—Loveyko. I don't even know what word it comes from. Maybe from *lovy, lovyty* (to catch). Loveyko. It sounds so melodious. And Shura's family always organizes a Christmas spectacle for all of Vasyl Stus’s memorial evenings, with carols, a whole theater. Can you imagine, we old folks are sitting at the table, all glum. There’s conversation, an exchange of information, and humor, of course, but everyone is very serious. And suddenly, a ring at the door. An armada of children bursts in, Shurochka's descendants, her daughters and grandchildren, all dressed in Ukrainian national costumes, there’s a king, a Jew, a Malanka, a Cossack—everything is there. Everything you need. And the performance begins. And they're not lazy; they put on this celebration for us every Christmas. And Shura is very good at maintaining spirits in the family. I think she is a great, reliable support for Valia.

V. O.: You traveled together to the Urals when Vasyl died, didn't you? Hoping to bring him back.

M. D.: Yes, and we ordered a coffin, Valia ordered it.

V. O.: You described this trip in great detail right after you returned. Perhaps you can tell it orally?

M. D.: I can, but you know, the details have faded from memory. Of course, I can tell it. It was a terrible phone call… The most terrible of my life… Valia immediately said, “Rita, will you go?” I replied, “I’ll go.” My family immediately said, “Go.” And the three of us went. Valia officially ordered a zinc coffin to bring him back, and we went to the station filled with romantic hopes. We arrive in Moscow, and from Moscow we have to travel on…

V. O.: You flew from Kyiv to Moscow, right?

M. D.: By plane, yes. And from Moscow by train to Solikamsk or somewhere there.

V. O.: Did you pick up Dmytro in Moscow?

M. D.: But in Moscow, we stopped. Valia went to get Dmytro, Shura and I stayed behind, but we were told there were no tickets to Solikamsk. They kept us at the station; we sat there for a very long time, maybe even spent the night. “No tickets.” They were already watching us.

V. O.: So you were supposed to go by train?

M. D.: Yes, by train. They categorically told us there were no tickets. Everywhere we turned—no tickets. “Why did you come so late…” Well, we sat it out, endured it. Meanwhile, Valia went to Khimki and picked up Dmytro. Somehow, they let him go after all.

V. O.: He was serving in the army there.

M. D.: Serving in the army, yes. We arrived in that Solikamsk, or I don't remember anymore… And from Solikamsk you have to travel further, and again, nothing is running. And to get to the village, to this Kuchyno…

V. O.: Chusovskaya station?

M. D.: Maybe at Chusovskaya, I don't know. In short, at all three stages of the journey, we were delayed each time and we sat and waited until they would issue us a ticket for the next leg. And in this way, we lost about two days; we were supposed to arrive earlier, but we arrived much later.

V. O.: Around September eighth?

M. D.: Even when we needed to get from this district center to the prison, to the concentration camp (and a bus usually runs there), on that day, they gravely informed us, “The bus is not running today.”

V. O.: It broke down.

M. D.: It broke down. And so we started to hail a private car. And we found one. We arrived. I noticed—I used to live in the Urals in my early childhood—that the earth was all some kind of red. The people walking around looked gray. And that terrifying concentration camp fence… But what I noticed right away was that the administration building was pink. Just like your shirt, maybe even brighter. A pink color. Good for you, I thought, you’ve made yourselves comfortable…

V. O.: A two-story building, right?

M. D.: Two-story.

V. O.: The checkpoint and administration were there.

M. D.: The checkpoint, and the bosses sat there too. And we came up against this pink color. I thought, “Well, well, you’ve painted yourselves so tenderly.” And we immediately rushed there. And here were some brutes, KGB agents, blocking the way: “Who are you, what do you want?” Such official-sounding words. Finally, after a tense exchange, they let Valia in. Oh, they said the bosses weren’t there.

V. O.: “Why did you come on a Saturday?” Or was it a Sunday?

M. D.: Yes, yes. We said we were held up. The transport wasn't running… Finally, they let Dmytro in with his mother, and Shura and I sat down on a pile of firewood, on some log that was lying near this pink building, and waited to see what would happen next. They asked us such ironic questions: “And who are you?” Shura said she was his sister, and I said, “A friend.” “Aha, a friend, a girlfriend then,” they said ironically. We sat and waited.

V. O.: So they let Dmytro and Valentyna in, but you and Shura…

M. D.: They didn't let us in; they said, “You are not part of the case…”

V. O.: “You are not involved in this case.”

M.D.: Something like that, yes. A short time later, Valia and Dmytro came out. It was, you know, a Sophoclean tragedy. They looked terrible, crushed, half-alive. But the only grace they decided to allow us was to take us to the grave.

V. O.: And it’s about three kilometers to that cemetery in the village of Borysovo.

M. D.: Yes. A vehicle pulled up, some gray truck, a booth. They put us in that booth. And they put a whole herd of them with us. Two or three KGB agents for each of us. Well, they brought us… Oh, Vasyl…

V. O.: In the end, it’s all been written down…

M. D.: We fell upon that grave, tied the embroidered towel we had brought.

V. O.: You tied it to that post No. 9?

M. D.: To that stake, yes. And we were sobbing uncontrollably. And then some shadow, or what was it. I raised my head—a brute was standing there, legs spread apart, watching the show. For him, this was a show. Valia—she’s generally tactful, restrained, but here she couldn’t take it anymore: “At least leave us alone here,” she threw out some harsh words like that. They stepped aside. It became deserted around us. But suddenly, an apparition. Some man came up and said he had come to the cemetery, his brother was buried here. That cemetery… You know the rest…

V. O.: He turned out to be the driver of the car that transported Vasyl's body…

M. D.: Yes, he transported Vasyl to the morgue… They told us they had buried him, first, because we were late, and second, because the morgue couldn’t preserve the body. So, on our way back, we did stop at the morgue and asked if it was true that they had no way to preserve a body. Some naive man there, who hadn’t been coached by the KGB, said, “No, we have everything, we could have preserved it.”

V. O.: And they didn't bury Vasyl on the seventh or eighth; they buried him back on the sixth.

M. D.: Yes, they quickly, one-two, buried him.

V. O.: And this driver told you it was on the sixth of September.

M. D.: Yes, yes. And the zinc coffin didn’t arrive. That is, they didn’t even send it from Kyiv. The coffin was registered as baggage, but it didn’t arrive. So we returned. Dmytro went back to serve in the Soviet army.

V. O.: He stayed in Moscow?

M. D.: Well, he was on duty. They could have pinned desertion on him, and they could have even tacked on a firing squad in such a situation. And we went home with nothing.

Thank God, Dmytro grew up, bright, active people appeared, and, thank God, the reburial took place, and now Vasyl is with us. And all that was left for me to do was to tell the new generation of children about Vasyl, to learn his poems with them. And when I’m alone, for some reason very often, even at night when I can’t sleep, his words emerge from my soul:

Церква святої Ірини

Криком кричить із імли…

And I see those basements, from which the tragic Way of the Cross of our best people began. I carry these lines with me all the time. Especially when I walk around Kyiv, on Volodymyrska Street, on some romantic stroll, to the opera house, or wherever, but if I walk along Volodymyrska Street, I hear Vasyl’s words:

Церква святої Ірини

Криком кричить із імли…

It's such a poem…

V. O.:

Мабуть тобі вже, мій сину,

Зашпори в душу зайшли.

Жінку лишив — на наругу,

Маму лишив — на біду…

M. D.: Vasylku, you read Vasyl brilliantly.

V. O.:

Рідна сестра, як зигзиця,

Б’ється об мури грудьми.

Господи, світ не святиться,

Побожеволіли ми…

M. D.: At night, Vasyl’s poems often come to me.

We are looking at photographs.

—Here’s Valia and me in a photograph. And this is a Russian woman, a “die-hard Russian,” as she used to say. We became friends after the death of Natalia Kotsiuruba, with whom she worked at the Communications Institute. I sinned, I didn’t mention her to you earlier. She grew so close to me that we became friends like sisters. She learned all of Ukrainian poetry, came to all our get-togethers, and brought her daughter Katia while she was little. And most importantly—she embraced Ukrainianness, became a Ukrainian patriot. And she spoke Ukrainian with me. She distributed “criminal” literature.

And this is us on the Prypiat River. The photos turned up. A small team on the Prypiat. And this is Stanislav Telniuk, and this is his Nadia, and this is Oksana Klokova, granddaughter of the poet Dolengo. And this is a breakthrough into our present day. These are my children, my pupils, with whom I still communicate. They are like my own grandchildren to me. This boy, Bohdan Drozd, comes regularly on Thursdays. He is now in the ninth grade, the school is not far from here. He comes, we sit for five, six hours, we read, we study Ukrainian poetry. And this is Yakiv Sazonov, he has a very interesting family.

V. O.: And who is Stefania Shabatura with?

M. D.: With my granddaughter Stefanka, whom we named after Shabatura herself. And this is Stefania Shabatura with our friend, whom we once invited from Estonia, the artist Made Evalo. And Shabatura happened to be here then. And this is Leopold Yashchenko. That’s me standing there, a soprano.

V. O.: In the glasses.

M. D.: Yes, I wore glasses my whole life. Thanks to a surgery in my old age, I regained my sight. And this is in New York after our Stefanka’s solo concert. Nadiyka Svitlychna and Katia, they actively socialized there as well. Stefania Dovhan, Kateryna Dovhan, and Nadiyka Svitlychna. Maybe it’s written here. Yes: “In New York after the concert. Stefanka, Nadiyka Svitlychna, Katrusia, 2002.” And this is that Luiza. A bad photo, old, but this person deserves to be remembered, because when I was “branded” at the ministry and expelled from the Party, when they made a big party-political show out of it, this Luiza became close to me. She wrote letters to Vasyl, and Vasyl to her.

V. O.: What is Luiza’s last name?

M. D.: She was Luiza Menkivska then. Later she married an old man who had gone through the camps, since thirty-seven. And this is Borys Stepanovych Dovhan, I can give this to you. In the church where Taras’s funeral service was held, when they brought him to this side of the Dnipro…

V. O.: Oh, the church in Podil, on Poshtova Square.

M. D.: Yes, in Podil. And this is so you can imagine how many people used to visit us?

V. O.: Oh my. A full house.

M. D.: I would need a day to recover afterwards. Because everyone performed, everyone prepared, these were literary evenings. I haven't written it here, but I will. I can give this to you, I have another photo. This is an evening party at our house in 2002. And this is a fragment of one of those evenings. This boy became a lawyer, this girl works in Turkish-Ukrainian relations, this girl is already finishing university, she will study consumer goods and products to ensure they aren't harmful. And this is Mykola Marusyk, Taras's son, and this girl now works for some company.

V. O.: Well, photos take a long time. Maybe photos that are relevant to our topic…

M. D.: You know what this is? This is a unique, historical photo. This is Borys next to the restored monument to Shevchenko.

V. O.: Is this in Romny?

M. D.: In Romny. This is Borys and Viacheslav Klokov, Dolengo's son. They were friends their whole lives. Vyachek died recently. They restored the monument to Taras Shevchenko in Romny together, a work by Ivan Kavaleridze.

And here we were traveling with the children. By the way, when I traveled with Stefanka, I always took children of our acquaintances along. This is Olena Antoniv—Taras Chornovil’s mother. You know how she died a terrible death?

V. O.: I know, I know.

M. D.: You know. So we came to Lviv immediately and found this scene. We arrived in the morning, by train, I don’t know. Taras was standing by the coffin in the house, a little boy. Well, not little anymore, a student then, I think. He was clinging to that coffin with a death grip and shaking all over.

V. O.: His cheek still twitches to this day…

M. D.: I have the impression that it started from that time, because I hadn’t noticed it in him before. He received treatment…

V. O.: Olena died on February 2, 1986.

M. D.: In eighty-six. She was a great person.

And this is just for interest, when we were traveling through Shevchenko’s places, this is in Súbotiv.

V. O.: Ah, Subotiv. Yes, I recognized it immediately.

M. D.: Oh, this was drawn by my Stefanka.

V. O.: How old was she then? She captured it so well.

M. D.: She was ten years old. And look, it’s even written in her own hand: “The house of Yakym Boiko, Taras Shevchenko’s grandfather, his mother’s father.”

V. O.: She drew the house too. Oh, look at that. I’ll take a picture of this signature too. “June 9, 1989.”

M. D.: I’ll tell you, Vasyl, this is all what your elder brethren gave me. All of this later passed on to the younger generations. I am happy to have such children. Here is the grave of Kateryna Boiko, Taras Shevchenko’s mother. Drawn by Stefanka.

V. O.: Oh, I was here recently with Sverstiuk. In May 2014, we went there.

M. D.: Oh, and this, you see, is written on the gravestone: “People die, ideas are eternal. Your heart, filled with truth for your own dark folk, fell among them, but your great spirit will hover over them forever.” This is Karpenko-Kary, Ivan Karpovych Tobilevych, 1845–1909. This is also Stefanka’s work.

V. O.: My, what a girl you have!

But I would like you to finally tell us about Sverstiuk.

M. D.: Let’s, let’s. We can try now. I always think, “And when will that be, tomorrow or…”

V. O.: Actually, the assignment I received from the “Klio” publishing house and the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group was to record your story about Sverstiuk, but we’ve only mentioned him occasionally.

M. D.: Yes, occasionally mentioned. I would like to conclude this conversation, so that future generations who might one day be interested in the fate of our family, its life and times, may know the lines from a work by Ivan Svitlychny, the “kind-eyed one,” as Vasyl called him. Kind-eyed towards good people. This poem was written in prison. “Parnassus.” It could be an epigraph to our life.

“PARNASSUS”

And in the heavens I see God.

Mikhail Lermontov

І враз ні стін, ні ґрат, ні стелі.

Хтось невидимий збудив

Світ Калинцевих візій-див,

Драчеві клекоти і хмелі,

Рій Вінграновських інвектив,

Чаклунство Ліни, невеселі

Голобородькові пастелі

І Стусів бас-речитатив.

Парнас! І що ті шмони й допит?

Не вірю в будень, побут, клопіт —

В мізерію, дрібнішу тлі.

Вщухає су́єтна тривога.

І в небесах я бачу Бога,

І Боже слово на землі.

V. O.: That’s in the book “Ivan Svitlychny. I Only Have the Word,” on page 34.

M. D.: Yes. I often recall this because I believe there is nothing more sacred in the world than art. And the word is one of the highest manifestations of art. The word, in essence, shapes a person, if it is with a capital letter. That is why I have dedicated my whole life to (I don’t want to use the word propaganda) the dissemination of the Ukrainian poetic word. And I will repeat myself. The Ukrainian poetic word is perhaps the highest manifestation of the human spirit. This may sound lofty, but it is true, I believe in it, because I know a sea of poems by our poets, whom, unfortunately, the world does not yet know, but I believe it will. It will know, because there will be a Ukraine. And I say this sincerely, with absolute faith, because I see around me many wonderful young people, many people who are devoted heart and soul to poetry, and poetry creates the world. The word creates the true world. I would read this to you in parentheses if you’d like. During a period of my sorrow (this was sometime in August 1992), I wrote a poem. I’m already of a respectable age, so it’s not necessary to be shy anymore. I have never read anything to anyone, because I know what great poetry is and I know that I am far from it. But still.

A PESSIMISTIC MOMENT OF OPTIMISTIC WEEKDAYS

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Пустеля, камера, чи божевілля?

Стискають душу підступ і омана,

Лихих стихій розгнуздане свавілля.

Куди йдемо, яка нас сила? —

Колись спитав поет пророчо.

Коса нас косить, як косила,

І ти все бачиш, Святий Отче.

І вкотре вже до Тебе руки

Д’горі здіймають діти кволі,

З розгуби, втоми і розпуки,

О, дай нам, Боже, сили волі.

О, дай нам, Боже, сили духу,

О, дай нам мудрості, терпіння

Здолати розпач і розруху,

Почуй, Господь, моє моління.

Пустеля викине стебло,

І благодатний дощ прилине.

Я вірю: верне на добро

Моя стражденна Україна.

V. O.: This was in ninety-two?

M. D.: Uh-huh. Yes, but what am I looking for now? I had a piece of paper on which I wrote myself some advice, where to begin…

You shaped our world of life.

Margarita Dovhan—for the book of memoirs about Yevhen Sverstiuk: On the Field of Honor: In 2 books. — Book II: Our Contemporary Yevhen Sverstiuk / Compiled by Vasyl Ovsiyenko. — K.: Klio Publishing House LLC, 2015. — 600 p. + 24 p. illus. (Pp. 120—126).

Vasyl Ovsiyenko: Mrs. Rita Dovhan speaks about Yevhen Sverstiuk at her home on February 14, 2015.

Margarita Dovhan: After Yevhen’s funeral on December 4 at the Baikove Cemetery, my husband Borys and I came home and sat in the corner of our kitchen, having supper and remembering him. And suddenly Borys somehow unexpectedly lit up, despite such a difficult day, and said, “You know, I remember a very different Yevhen, not the preoccupied one. We happened to travel together from Prypiat to Kyiv. We were vacationing there in wonderful company, with the Dvork family, the Klokovs—descendants of the biologist and poet Mykhailo Dolengo, there was Vasyl Stus with Valia and Dmytryk, and many other wonderful people.”

But it so happened that Yevhen and Borys both needed to go to Kyiv. They traveled by a “raketa”—a fast hydrofoil that used to run on the Prypiat and Dnipro rivers. When they got on board, settled on the upper deck and saw the magnificent nature, the hills, the green forests coming right up to the water, the fields, the green meadows, the Dnipro, Yevhen completely forgot about his problems, about political, even literary topics. On his face, Borys says, was the radiance of a liberated man who was admiring his land, the beauty of his country. And so they traveled in quiet, bright conversations about Ukraine—how magical it is. And you see how it is—on the very day of his funeral, this image of Yevhen, rejoicing in his joy, suddenly surfaced.

And then I remembered our other genius, Mykola Hohol, who, living in Russia, always seemed tense, a bit eccentric, detached from the hustle and bustle of St. Petersburg life to the general public. But when he was in Ukraine, when he was writing *Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka*, he became sunny, bright, and joyful.

Such was the thought that flashed through Borys’s and my minds. But let’s return to the beginning. It was Ivan Dzyuba who directed me to Yevhen. At that time, for the 200th anniversary of Ivan Kotliarevsky’s birth (September 9, 1769), the Molod publishing house released a small book of Ivan Kotliarevsky’s *Natalka Poltavka*. A small format. I was then working in the editorial office of the newspaper *Druh Chytacha* (Reader’s Friend) and was looking for an author who could write not only about *Natalka Poltavka*, but also about Kotliarevsky himself. So Ivan said, “Why don’t you go to Yevhen Sverstiuk.” So I went. He was then working at the *Ukrainian Botanical Journal* of the Institute of Botany of the Ukrainian SSR Academy of Sciences. I walked in. He was sitting at a desk. These questioning and very kind eyes looked up at me. When I introduced myself and said what I needed, he perked up: “I understand. I’ll write it.” And very soon he showed me his work, “Ivan Kotliarevsky Laughs.”

With this absolutely unique research work began our friendship for many years. I was also drawn to him by the fact that he was from Volyn. And I already knew that among my ancestors there were many people from Volyn. Therefore, I had a heightened interest in people from that region. And it was a great delight when I saw such an enlightened, patriotic, and incredibly talented person.

V. O.: By the way, Oksana Yakivna Meshko said that she also asked Sverstiuk to write a script for an evening dedicated to Kotliarevsky's anniversary. He promised and wrote it. When she received the text, she said, “Well, it’s not quite what I asked for, but it’s exactly what’s needed.”

M. D.: I visited him at the journal’s editorial office a few more times. Vasyl Stus was often there. Vasyl was ubiquitous. He was talking with Ivan Dzyuba about his collection *Zymovi dereva*.

V. O.: Vasyl used to stress it as *Zymóvi derevá*.

M. D.: *Zymóvi derevá*. That probably sounds better. You know, with people with whom you find such spiritual commonality from the first moment, it becomes very easy and simple to want to communicate on a human level. I remember how Yevhen often used to visit us in Voskresenka with his son Andriy, who was a boy back then. A heavy atmosphere was already gathering, a feeling that you didn't fit into the system. Some sleepless eye was bound to be watching you. We could most easily discuss topics of interest to us somewhere aside, somewhere in nature, as it was on the Desna River. We used to go to Kruhle Lake then. It's not far from Voskresenka, in the direction of the Desna, if you go left through the meadows. Nobody around. It’s a perfectly round lake, like the eye of the Earth. Blue skies, green grass… We often spent time there. Yevhen seemed happy there—that was the feeling.

Not often, but Ivan Svitlychny also visited our home. It was from these people, and from Dzyuba, that the conviction grew in us that it was necessary to serve Ukraine with all our life, with all our activities. Borys remembered Yevhen saying that culture is when there is nothing superfluous. Borys subconsciously adopted this motto. His works, one could say, are ascetically modest, ascetically restrained. But in that asceticism, there is a certain strength, conviction, its own character.

V. O.: It's been known since antiquity what sculpture is. It’s taking a block of stone and chipping away everything superfluous.

M. D.: Everything superfluous, yes. Next, I want to talk about Yevhen's book *Hohol and the Ukrainian Night*, which he gave us in 2013. By the way, on the cover of this book is a sculptural portrait of Hohol by Borys Dovhan. It is a detail of a monument to the young Hohol from the time of writing *Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka*. And why did Yevhen choose this particular fragment of the monument, this portrait? Obviously, because it corresponded to his vision of the Ukrainian Hohol. And again, subconsciously, on the level of spiritual unity, these two men came closer to each other in the theme of Hohol.

And one more strange moment. I consider Yevhen a stoic, because in all the terrible turmoils, sometimes simply humiliating to human dignity, even in the world without bars, Yevhen managed to endure everything with extraordinary courage.

I want to briefly mention his son, Andriy. The son had a lot from his father. He was a talented doctor. My husband’s mother had an illness that doctors couldn't diagnose. She was plagued by a fever. The district doctors could do nothing. And Yevhen said, “Well, my son deals with such a delicate matter as blood.” Andriy came to our place, examined my mother carefully, listened closely, and found the cause of her illness. It was a blood disease that destroyed the cells affecting the human body’s temperature. One had to be a very educated, talented doctor to help us at least prolong our mother's life. And then comes the horrific news—Andriy's crippling injury. It was worse than death. The young, happy couple had run off to the cinema. The child was sleeping at home. They decided to take a shortcut home through some courtyard. And you know how it is with us: they dug a pit to repair pipes and left it unfenced.

V. O.: That was in eighty-eight… There was hope to get Andriy back on his feet in America. The father was sending his son through Moscow…

M. D.: I know that Sverstiuk is a man of extraordinary spiritual strength; he bore this simply heroically. He is an example for us, because anything can happen to anyone in life. In such a situation, one must hold on with courage. That is how God has ordained it for man. Otherwise, there would be continuous disaster in this white world.

And one more brief encounter. I came to him on some business at the editorial office of the newspaper *Nasha Vira* (Our Faith). It’s on Triokhsviatytelska Street, 12, near the funicular at the top. He was publishing a wonderful newspaper. It attracted me because it was not purely religious and denominational. As a wise man, he knew how to connect religious-spiritual matters with the practical realities of our Ukrainian life and our history. He created it practically by himself. That, too, is a life-long feat of his. I give due credit to his wife Lilia, who was his first assistant. Because without such “rear support”—may Yevhen forgive me—it would have been difficult for him to work. She took all the household chores upon herself.

So, I met Yevhen near the editorial office of *Nasha Vira*. The patriarchate of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church was located there, and a small autocephalous church of St. Demetrius of Thessaloniki was active. There were some bundles lying right on the snow, papers scattered about, some commotion… I asked, “What happened, Yevhen?” And it turned out he had been kicked out of this building, with his newspaper, with all his editorial belongings…

V. O.: This happened on February 4, 2005, and precisely at the moment when President Viktor Yushchenko was presenting Yulia Tymoshenko to the Verkhovna Rada for the post of Prime Minister.

M. D.: How are these two things related, why do you emphasize this?

V. O.: Because Sverstiuk immediately appealed to both the President and the Minister of Internal Affairs, Lutsenko, but no one helped him in any way. Metropolitan Mefodiy himself, the head of the UAOC, commanded this raider-style attack. A member of the editorial staff, Vitaliy Shevchenko, was simply thrown out of the premises, Sverstiuk was led out by the arms, and the entire archive, all those papers, were thrown out onto the snow in the courtyard. And this was in winter. They were looking for a car to take it all away, but there was nowhere to take it. Thank God, Osyp Zinkevych saved the day: he provided a small room in the "Smoloskyp" publishing house, at Mezhyhirska, 21. Such a disaster. There was also an exhibition of icons there...

M. D.: I understand what a blow this was for Yevhen… Someone else might have, in panic and despair, stopped publishing the newspaper, but this man gathers it all up in his hands and works again from morning till night. I was struck by his response. I said, “What happened, Yevhen?” And he smiled so bitterly: “Well, they’re kicking us out. They kicked us out.” I could feel how hurt he was. But on the outside, it looked as if he was above it. He knew he would continue to make the newspaper regardless.

Such behavior of his warmed my soul. Because there were constant anxieties, some problems arose, some troubles that sometimes just made you want to give up. But when I saw such an active person, I would think to myself: no, I dare not retreat. This is the influence of his stoicism. Not only Yevhen's but of the entire generation of people who went through the concentration camps. To stand your ground, no matter what is boiling and brewing, no matter what scoundrels are circling around you, you do, do, do your work, as long as you have the strength. Just as Yevhen did.

What I liked about Yevhen was that he would be talking to you, talking, and then suddenly change the subject, look at you with kind yet demanding eyes, and make your brain figure out the issue. These question marks in his eyes were a stimulus for thought, for active engagement.

I did not correspond with Yevhen when he was in exile. Perhaps I didn't have the energy, or perhaps we weren't that close… But we were interested in how his life was going. My friends would bring me good tea from Odesa, and I would send it to Ivan Svitlychny, passing it on through Lilia for Yevhen.

We are very pleased that Yevhen left behind his reflections on Shevchenko. We grew up in Soviet times; we were taught that Shevchenko was a revolutionary democrat who fought against the tsar. But Dzyuba and Sverstiuk made us understand that Shevchenko is a giant of the human spirit, that such a person could only appear in a great nation.

For example, Shevchenko has a poem “Maria.” We learned it with the children in our “Lebedyky” ensemble. And I have a rule: children understand everything, and they understand it better than adults. We learned the poem with ten-year-old children, classmates of my Stefanka. We came to read it at the Taras Shevchenko Museum. We were invited to the museum because they knew about the “Lebedyky” ensemble. There were two or three tourists in the hall and one staff member. The director said, “Well, okay, what will you be reading?” I replied, “We are reading the poem ‘Maria.’” They looked at us so skeptically and said, “Listen, what are you doing? These are small children, and they are going to read the poem ‘Maria’?” I said, “Yes, they will read the poem ‘Maria.’” “It’s too early for them, well, ‘The Cherry Orchard by the House’—that’s wonderful…” I said, “‘The Cherry Orchard by the House’ is also a masterpiece, everyone knows it, but we are reading ‘Maria.’” And the children began to read “Maria.” There were two or three souls sitting in the hall. Then I saw one of the researchers jump up, run somewhere—and soon almost all the museum employees had gathered, all listening to our children. Because we had prepared for a long time, we had delved into the profound essence of this work. The children were so imbued with this story, which is written in such a human, accessible way—and at the same time, this work is on such a spiritual height that a small child can grasp it, if you put it into their soul… We had a great triumph that day. To this day, when I visit the museum, the old employees say, “Hello, how are your children?” And I say, “My children already have their own children.” And this all comes from Dzyuba and Sverstiuk with their Shevchenko.

We have another such high spiritual connection with Yevhen: it was he who felt and worthily appreciated the talent of his friend Borys Dovhan; in 1990, Yevhen awarded him the Vasyl Stus Prize for a series of sculptural portraits of the Sixtiers Ivan Svitlychny, Heinrich Dvork, composer Leonid Hrabovsky, scientist Yuriy Kocherzhynsky, architect Florian Yuriev, for the compositions “The Poet and the Executioner” and “The Gulag Archipelago,” which are effectively dedicated to all our martyrs of the Bolshevik concentration camps, and for the portrait of Vasyl Stus, created by Borys during the poet's lifetime.

And a little later, for another presentation of this high award, Yevhen Sverstiuk invited the “Lebedyky” ensemble, which I had organized at the school where my granddaughter Stefanka studied, to perform in the artistic part of the ceremony. The children worthily presented the solemn part, reading works by T. Shevchenko and V. Stus, and singing folk songs.

And another thing strangely connected me and Yevhen in his final months: Lermontov. It's some kind of mysticism. I am a realist, but here is a strange coincidence of circumstances. We hear at the farewell to Yevhen that he had recently been working on Lermontov. And I have had some connection with Lermontov since my distant childhood. It was interrupted for decades, but just in recent months, we were reading Lermontov, discovering new and new things in him. Although, it would seem, he has two volumes of works, you know it all already. And suddenly I read the poem “Novgorod,” in which Mikhail Yuryevich reproaches the former Kyivan Rusyns, the Novgorodians, for submitting to the Moscow horde. It was a shock. We were running around the house, marveling that we had somehow not fully read Lermontov at the time. And then I hear that Yevhen had recently been planning to hold an evening on “Shevchenko and Lermontov.” This touched and struck me on a human level. Apparently, there are some intellectual, intuitive connections between people who live in the same aura and think in the same direction.

Yevhenochku, please forgive me for not being able to remember much from our conversations, but I think I have said the main thing. You shaped our world of life. And you are with us. Thank you. And may you have the Kingdom of Heaven.

Appendix—a finale to my memoirs-confession to Vasyl Ovsiyenko.

September 29. I’ve spent two days reading and editing. Vasylku, everything you recorded from my conversation with you. And I thought that a final chord should be created.

There is political turmoil all around. The gangster-like shooting in the East has subsided a bit these days. Our young friend from the front (Vadym Shevchuk, “Mazepynets,” an artist and musician, with whom I spoke on the phone on the 26th) said that they don’t trust those scoundrels and are continuing to prepare for battle… Among the people, there is much criticism and malicious fault-finding with the authorities. This is our misfortune. But we, the Dovhans, hold to the proverb: “You don't change horses in midstream.” And many thoughtful people around us think the same.

Our children support us both morally and materially. Katrusia once restored the iconostases of St. Andrew's Church in Kyiv and the Gate Church at the Lavra, and the colossal iconostasis in the church in Kozelets—the burial vault of Nastia Rozumykha-Rozumovska. Her current descendants, the Counts Razumovsky from Vienna, commissioned icons from her for the church in Lemeshi (the homeland of the Rozum Cossacks) and thanked her greatly for the works she created.

Now Katia teaches art at Westminster University (near Baltimore) in the USA. She is with us during the holidays.

Stefanochka, our dearest granddaughter, has fulfilled her grandmother's dream—she has become an opera singer of world renown. Her repertoire already includes about 30 operatic roles and concert programs. Kyiv (the Philharmonic), opera houses in Germany, France, England, America—these are her stages. We have been to various world theaters for Stefania Dovhan's premieres, enjoying her triumphs.

Thank God the iron bars between Ukraine and the world have fallen. This is one of the invaluable achievements of the empire’s collapse. And I will never agree with those who moan, “Oh, they're leaving, they’re abandoning…” It depends on the people. Good people leave, but they do not abandon, while bad people live right next to you, but it would be better if they were far away… An open world is wonderful. Everything else depends on the individuals.

I also take joy in my Parnassians. They have grown up, but they have not forgotten. My jubilee evening, more like a get-together, was held at the Sixtiers Museum, as Mykola Plakhotniuk had wished. Ivan Drach, who once came to my evenings as a young man and read his formidable words, “Where are we going, what force drives us against the stone winds,” now read me a whole ode-impromptu at that museum get-together, for which I am very grateful to him.

Impromptu Instead of a Flower

Довгань викрав для нас Ріту

З закацапленого світу

Довганева вона пані

В українському жупані

Вміє знає ходить пише

Пише прозу Віршем дише

Натрудилась з Чорноволом

Попрощавшись з комсомолом

Не цурався її рук

Сам Микола Плахотнюк

Як АТО біжить нам кров’ю

Вона миром в узголов’ю

Гоїть рани душі долі

І здоров’я в душі кволі

Власну душу віддає

Отака вона в нас є

Шука Фауст Маргариту

Та вона не з того світу

Не віддасть її Довгань

Хоч хвали її хоч гань

Фаусту Стефанію

Нашу панну – панію!

18 09 2015 Іван Драч

I am immensely grateful to my Parnassians, who have already become businessmen, psychologists, artists, students, and yet for my 85th birthday, they read so much of Shevchenko, Stus, Sosiura, Nadiyka Kyrian with such inspiration… And to my joy, Valichka Stus came to the evening and was delighted to listen to how our grandchildren read and understand her Vasyl. They set such a major key for her that Valia even sang later with our unique, old friend, the creator of “Khoreia Kozatska,” Taras Kompanichenko, who also came to greet me. My main helper was Stefcha’s school friend, Marichka Shevelova.

How can one not act, having such people and inspired friends? And so I act. I go to the military hospital. I help the wounded with what I can. Since the very beginning of the war. The other day, I brought a bag of medicine. Good people brought it from America. Soon I will be receiving guests: a soldier from the ATO zone, 20-year-old Serhiyko Ilnytskyi, will come for a short study session (he’s a correspondence student). I directed him to Shevchenko University and… he has already successfully passed his first exams. It doesn’t matter that the boy is missing a leg. His head is bright and intelligent.

I am writing notes from the hospital. They are being published in the newspaper *Slovo Prosvity*. They are proposing to publish a book.

Life goes on. And our youth is wonderful, which is why I believe in Ukraine.