Interview with Mykhailo Vasyliovych OLENCHAK
V. V. Ovsienko: On February 8, 2000, in the city of Kolomyia, Mr. Mykhailo Olenchak is telling his story. Recorded by Vasyl Ovsienko.
M. V. Olenchak: I was born in 1930, in the village of Pochapy, Zolochiv Raion, Lviv Oblast.
V. O.: But please state your date of birth.
M. O.: November 21, 1930, to a peasant family. My father was Vasyl, and my mother was Anna. There were three of us brothers. I wasn’t even seven years old when they sent me to school. I studied and wanted to study; my father always used to say, “Children, you must study, because we need educated, conscious people, for Ukraine is always under a yoke.” My father himself was a former Sich Rifleman; two of his brothers died near Uman—they also served under General Myron Tarnavsky. And another of his brothers—the youngest, Fedir Olenchak—was killed in 1940. My father was killed in the Zolochiv prison—tortured to death, like eight other men from our village.
We were farmers. In 1941, after we buried my father, I joined the youth organization “Yunak” in September; it was later renamed “Yunak UPA.” There were about thirty of us young people; we went through training, especially military training: tactics, reconnaissance, and so on. I went to school, I studied... In late autumn of forty-three, the local commander summoned me and said: here’s the situation. He explained the nature of our work, which was already, so to speak, underground. And he sent me on a reconnaissance mission. I don’t know if I should say this here, but I will. Anyway, I took a pigeon with me for camouflage. But I was supposed to bring the pigeon to a specific place, to certain people. The shoelace on my boot came untied. When I bent down to tie it, the pigeon escaped from me. I didn’t go any further, I turned back, and the pigeon was already home. The commander hugged me: “I knew that would happen. But these are the first trials, a young man’s trials.”
Later, when the “liberators,” the Bolsheviks, arrived, a completely different picture emerged. To be sure, I was still going to school, but we were carrying out tasks assigned to us by the underground. Leaflets, literature, I went on reconnaissance missions, and so on.
In 1948, I received a notice ordering me to go to the Donbas. I refused and didn’t go.
V. O.: And why to the Donbas?
M. O.: To the mines, the mines. They were specifically rounding up young lads like me to go to the Donbas. I refused. To make a long story short—I went into hiding, and one fine day, they caught me anyway. The Bolsheviks caught me, and a major there said, “If you go to the Donbas, we won’t prosecute you. If not—we know who you are, we know everything about you.” They definitely knew, there’s no hiding it, because they had their network of agents. I said, “Fine, I’ll go.” But I ran away. And so I hid until they arrested me. They arrested me, tried me, and gave me 25 years. My mother and younger brother were deported to Siberia... I served seven years.
V. O.: Can you give the date of your arrest and where it happened?
M. O.: They arrested me in 1950. It was April 6 or 8.
V. O.: And where did it happen?
M. O.: Right in the village, in Pochapy. The Bolsheviks surrounded the village in three rings. They knew the village would be deported. There was even a deaf-mute family—they deported them too. So, I doubt even a mouse could have slipped through—that’s how tightly they sealed off the village. (Earlier, when I was younger, I had been sent on reconnaissance missions to those very villages—and I got through, bringing back what was needed). Anyway, they arrested 15 of us young people. They herded us into the school, and later held us in the church too (our church had been burned down during the war). A tractor rumbled day and night, and the interrogations were conducted under the cover of its noise. We were beaten so badly, I don’t even know how we survived it all. The girls were raped. Nadia Pavlyshyna was raped, Mariika Pyndyk was raped, and the third one—Stefa, Stefa Antonyk—so, three girls were raped. There were nine of us boys and six girls. After all that, they put us on trucks and took us to Lviv, to the Lonskyho Street prison. They held us there for the investigation—more torture, more torment, then the trial, where a tribunal sentenced us all to 25 years.
V. O.: Do you remember the date of that trial?
M. O.: August 19, 1950. Everyone got 25 years.
V. O.: What was the article?
M. O.: Article 54-1a, 54-11. We all had those articles. At first, they charged me with Article 227, Section 8, for aggravated murder, but the court dropped it.
(When I was arrested the second time, there was also talk of weapons. They charged me again with an article that carried up to 15 years, or even the death penalty. He told me, “If we find a single bullet, we’ll shoot you. Thousands of people have been imprisoned,” he told me, “millions have been imprisoned, but you—you’re not one of them.” You see? They were looking for any pretext to destroy me. But somehow, as they say, God had mercy, and I remained alive and am still hobbling along today. That’s how it was.)
My father, my mother they recognized... I’ll say a few more words about my father. When they arrested my father just before the war—eight men. My father was a long-time member of the OUN. When there was the famine in eastern Ukraine, my father collected money and whatever else people could give and sent it to the starving. Apparently, they had some kind of “window” to the east. Two of my uncles were killed. Apparently, the Cheka knew this, it’s not like they didn’t know. The youngest, Fedir—he was also a long-time OUN member, an underground fighter. He was killed in February 1940—he was killed earlier, while my father was still alive. They took my father for interrogations, questioning him. What could he say? He answered that he didn’t know. He had his secrets. And he was killed, Zena was killed, Vedmid—three of them. Later, as soon as the Germans entered Zolochiv, my mother immediately ran to the prison. There were already people there... People already knew, someone had told them. One grave in the village was so well camouflaged that it was hard to find, but someone knew. They dug it up—there were 727 murdered people. My mother searched for a whole week and recognized her husband, my father. She said, “That’s my Vasyl.” His head was smashed, split into four pieces, his tongue was gone, his eyes were gone, and nails had been driven into his right leg…
There was a young man named Pavlus who was arrested—he was only 18—they recognized him by his embroidered shirt. His—that thing—had been cut off—I saw all of this myself—I went to that prison with my younger brother, we went and looked… I can’t speak… To this day, when I lie down to sleep, I replay it all like a film, what those barbarians did. And today we have that Verkhovna Rada, all those Symonenkos, all that scum—they still want to put that yoke on us…
And when they arrested me the second time—the house is not far from here...
V. O.: Wait. The second time—but you haven't told us about the first time, about your first imprisonment.
M. O.: When I was still there, we heard there was a commission...
V. O.: Hold on. But you were given 25 years, weren't you? Tell us about that, how it happened.
M. O.: They gave me 25 years. From Lviv, they took us back to the prison in Zolochiv. We were walking skeletons. That’s how they fed us. There were 26 men in our cell. Two and a half by three meters wide, 26 men… For example, try to fit 26 men in here... I have it, it's all written down here. (Shows a typescript).
After the sentencing, they kept us in Lviv for a while, then took us back to Zolochiv. People started bringing us food parcels there, and the food got a little better, because they knew they had to transport us to Vorkuta. Some to Vorkuta, some to Karaganda, some elsewhere. There in Zolochiv, I even pointed it out, saying, “Look, that’s where my murdered father lay, in that pit.” Later the Germans shot Jews there—Jews are buried there now.
We were there for a while, let me see—I was there through August, September, November. In December, we planned an escape in Zolochiv, but a provocateur, a man named Moroz, found out and informed the Chekists. What did the Chekists do? Just before we were to be transported, they shuffled us around between cells, you see? And you no longer knew who was who. That’s how they herded us into Lviv, and on January 29—we were just commemorating the Battle of Kruty—they loaded us onto wagons in Lviv. It was called the fifth station...
V. O.: January 29 of what year?
M. O.: That was already 1951. They loaded a whole train echelon, 700 men were on it. There were 74 in our wagon—a lot. I remember there was even an old man, 75 years old—Fedir Bandurka from Skole—that was in the former Drohobych Oblast, now Lviv Oblast. But it was mostly young people.
They transported us to Vorkuta for a month. They brought us to Vorkuta and gave us a month—they called it the “tekhminimum”—to prepare us for work in the mines. And then they assigned us to brigades. I was there until August 1956. They reduced my twenty-five years to fifteen. The political climate was already changing, but I still had to serve out my time. There were some work credits, and they released me, but not completely; they sent me to Tomsk Oblast to my mother and brother—they were in exile there. I said, “My family is already at home.” There was a guy named Baiburin, the head of the economic section, and he told me, “I’m not going to search for you all over Ukraine—you’ll go there.” Well, so I went...
V. O.: Wait a minute. You were imprisoned. What were the conditions of confinement like?
M. O.: The conditions? Well, how can I put it? When we arrived, I would have never imagined—everything was buried in snow—you could only see the chimneys of the barracks, and people walked through tunnels. The first thing they did was herd us into the bathhouse. When they herded us in, they stripped us, shaved our heads according to regulations, then—a spoonful of soap and a basin of water. That’s it. There was very little water. To get water, you had to melt snow. I washed my eyes a bit... We walked around—black as soot either way. What conditions? They fed us twice a day—in the morning and in the evening. The regime was unbearable... Watery soup, stinking cabbage, rotten, frozen, sickly sweet potatoes—that was it. And 550 grams of bread. Nothing more. That was our ration. Once a month they gave us 450 grams of sugar. That’s all. Live and be merry.
When Stalin croaked—because I can’t say it any other way—there were, there were—I'll say it again—there were Vlasovites who cried for their “batyushka” Stalin. Those Vlasovites were foremen, workshop supervisors; they tormented us, and I had conflicts with them too, I wouldn’t let them spit in my porridge, so to speak. And when Stalin died, from the 29th mine… I can say a few words about the strike.
V. O.: Ah, yes, yes, that’s important.
M. O.: At the twenty-ninth mine, we were meticulously preparing for a strike in secret. In the underground organization, there used to be a system of *triikas* [three-person cells], you see. As a leader, I had three other men—that was a unit. Here, they created pairs. If I betrayed you, then you knew that I had betrayed you. And suddenly, a week later—it was the twenty-sixth, for sure, July 26, 1953—out of the blue, they took our brigade—I was already working at the woodworking plant (DOZ) by then—about a hundred men, mostly Latvians, Estonians, with about seven Ukrainians in that brigade—and transferred us to another camp. As we were being moved, I went to my, so to speak, subordinates and said, “Boys, we’re being transported!”
V. O.: Where were they transferring you?
M. O.: They were transferring us to the 30th mine—a new construction site.
V. O.: You said you were at the 29th...
M. O.: I was at the 29th for a year, listen carefully...
V. O.: Did you know Vasyl Kuryllo?
M. O.: Where is he?
V. O.: He was there, at the 29th mine, during the uprising. He lives in Lviv now. I was imprisoned with him during my second term.
M. O.: Well, that must not be the same Kuryllo.
V. O.: He’s a paramedic, a medic.
M. O.: He’s in Lviv?
V. O.: In Lviv.
M. O.: I was looking for him…
V. O.: I’ll give you his address and phone number. We were imprisoned together in Kuchino in the Urals, spent several years together in the 80s.
M. O.: Did he get a second sentence or something?
V. O.: A second time, for anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda.
M. O.: He was in Lopatyn, I met him there… Well, it’s good that he’s alive. They wanted to kill him there, we didn’t let them… It’s good that he’s alive! Thank God!
V. O.: He told me about that same uprising.
M. O.: I’ll get to Vasyl in a moment. When they moved us to the 30th mine... We walked for a long time... No one could remember a summer like that one—it was so hot the lakes were drying up. Well, Vasyl and the others told me, let’s do something, take action to support the strikers everywhere. If we go on strike, we all go on strike. They moved us there—I immediately went around the zone, there were only a few barracks. I looked around, saw some familiar guys I had been imprisoned with in Zolochiv. “Boys, what’s the news?” Of course, we spoke one-on-one, not gathering together—conspiracy. “We don’t know anything.” I felt down, as they say, because I looked around and saw that, you see, it wasn’t the right contingent. There were few people who... They were just starting to build the 30th mine.
In the morning, we go to the roll call, to work. The workshop supervisor was a man named Kalmykov—I’ll never forget that Vlasovite dog. They herded us into a barrack where the woodworking machines were, and he said, “Alright, fellas, we’re in a new place, get to work. We need to work with dedication.” And I told him, “For one, I’m not going to work, I refuse. And whoever supports me—stand next to me,” I just declared it. He screamed, “He’s a Banderite! He should be tried for sabotage! He’s a scoundrel! He’s a nationalist!” And I said, “You Vlasovite scum, you’ve been a traitor everywhere and you still are!”—I laid it all out for him. I said, “It’s your Motherland—you work! But you don’t want to, you see.” He walked out of the workshop. And I went among the men, getting to know them, saying, “Boys, stop working, are we going to work for that scoundrel? We still need to get back home, if God helps us.” When the roll call to go back to the zone began, the guards were already looking for me. But they didn’t know me, because I was a new arrival. A young lad came up and said, “Listen, Mykhailo, they’re looking for you.”
In the zone, they were already checking the files, counting us, and the guards immediately pulled me aside. The people stood there, while the convoy led me into the tundra. Well, to be honest, I prayed in my soul, “God, forgive me, a sinner!”—I thought they were going to shoot me right there, to make an example of me, to frighten the others. They led me on, the guards were angry: “You scoundrel, we’re suffering because of you.” I said, “And who am I suffering because of? What’s the difference between you and me? You wear a green uniform, and I wear a black one, but we eat bread from the same bakery, you and I.” In short, I calmed them down. Whether they wanted to shoot me or not, I don’t know, but the fact is this: I saw a little lieutenant running and shouting, “Stand down! Stand down!”—but what was I to stand down from, I didn’t know. And the whole column, however many there were, up to five hundred men, stood there watching. He approached, “What are you talking to him about?” And they started on me again. I began to speak with them, as they say, in my own way.
The column moved on. They brought me to the camp commander—a Captain Dmytryshkin. He wasn’t actually the commander, but the deputy camp commander, Dmytryshkin, a Jew, sitting there alone, without his epaulets, his shoes off. I entered the office, didn’t greet him. He immediately said, “Last name?” I said, “Olenchak, and so on.” “Why didn’t you work?” I said, “And I won’t work.” “Why didn’t you take off your number?”—they had already told me to take off the number, they had already torn the bars off the barracks, brought sugar, and even allowed workers three rubles for the camp store. See the politics? And I said, “I didn’t put the number on, and I won’t take it off.” I didn’t know that it was the deputy chief of Vorkutlag, Kruglov—a colonel, or maybe a lieutenant colonel, God knows. The chief was Derevyanko, and this was his deputy. He stood up, ripped the numbers off me and immediately said, “That’s a Banderite face. Six months!” And that was it. He wrote it down, they took me to a dark cell—no window, nothing, just a door—they shoved me in there, and I sat. And having only eaten that gruel in the morning—I was hungry, I could feel my stomach burning, I wanted to eat, my head was spinning. Anyway, they held me there, held me, I don’t know for how long, I couldn’t tell the time—whether it was before dawn, because the sun doesn’t set—they led me out into the tundra. Well, I thought, they’re probably not going to play games with me here. They set up red flags and said, “Not a step, don’t move!” I was thirsty, so I collected dew from the moss and drank it—I was terribly thirsty. But then I saw—they were herding men from the same camp. There were 12 of us now—I counted—12 men. They marched us on foot to the Vorkuta River—that was about 12, or maybe 18, kilometers—along the railway. Because there were no roads there, only a single railway track. They brought us—we were thirsty, I said to the guards, “Give us some water.” “Not allowed.” But then I saw—a “voronok” [prisoner transport vehicle] was coming. The head of the convoy went off, and those dogs said, “Alright, drink some water, one at a time.” We drank that water. The “voronok” arrived, they loaded us up and took us to a camp near Vorkuta, Number 62, a penal camp. It was an abandoned camp, inhabited only by rats, bedbugs, and all sorts of filth. The sewage from Vorkuta flowed through the camp into the river. I said, “It would have been better if you’d shot me there in that tundra.” I wasn’t the only one who said that. The conditions were that unbearable.
They kept us there for six months. If you needed to take a step, you had to lift your leg with your hands. What did they do in the morning? Two barrels of cabbage, reeking of that urine, the codfish stank of ammonia, the kind the Dutch burn in their stoves, and bread—I don’t know how much bread there was, maybe 400 grams, or... That was it. Then he would open the gates—eat if you want, don’t eat if you don’t, cook whatever you want. But there was a man named Stepan Baran, an old underground fighter—by the way, I knew him from the time of the German occupation. He said, “Boys, we’ll all die if we don’t get our act together.” We rigged up something for cauldrons, cooked that cabbage, that fish... And that’s what we lived on, we lived like that for six months. True, Derevyanko, the head of the Vorkuta Basin, came every other, every third day, because we were mostly young men. “Will you go to work?” “No.” “Then you’ll die.” Later he saw that this was no joke—they transferred us to another camp, number eleven—a very thin coal seam. They transferred us on foot. It was close—I don’t know how far? Four kilometers, no more. It took all day. Because we were so weak. We held onto each other to keep from falling.
They brought us there, and the food was a little better. I think they were preparing us for something… Or maybe they heard that the situation was changing. Especially since the Satrap had croaked. Later—I found out—they even shot that General Dmytryshkin. The “Abakumov Case”—they shot a lot of them then.
They held me there for another month and a half and then took me back to the mine where I had been, the 30th, because they needed their little bit of coal. But I worked in construction there. Later they started releasing the men to settlements, but me and a group of about fifteen hundred people—this was the 19th camp—they didn’t release us… And when I was at the sixty-second, on August 1, the shooting at the 29th mine took place. A man named Yaroslav Boichuk came (he has passed away, God rest his soul, it will soon be a year since he died. And I knew this Slavko from back home). I was in contact with Vasyl Kuryllo. I looked—it was Vasyl. They would tell their stories and cry, and we would listen and cry, because I knew some of the boys who were killed.
Later they took some of them away, even Vasyl Kuryllo was taken somewhere—I don’t know, maybe they took him to Vladimir Prison then... Well, later they took me and this Slavko to the 30th camp. Then they took me to the 19th. At the 19th, I looked—and they had brought Vasyl Kuryllo. Later, Vasyl finished his term—he had ten years—he finished it, but he stayed outside the zone. And I was still imprisoned. A commission—a so-called “troika”—summoned me. There were a lot of guys there. They, so to speak, released me, but they released me in such a way that I couldn’t go home: they sent me to Tomsk Oblast.
V. O.: When exactly were you released?
M. O.: To be precise—it was August or September, in 1956. I arrived in Tomsk—no one knew anything, not my mother, not my brother. I just wanted to surprise them. I was still thinking that maybe I could manage to go to Ukraine, because I knew some guys had gone. Well, I didn't succeed, so that was my fate. In short, I spent another two years in exile in Tomsk Oblast. My mother fell ill, seriously ill. I saw that they wouldn’t release me, and I was having major arguments with the Chekists there. So what did I do? I went to work in a school. And there was a rule: anyone who worked in a school was released. The school director gave me a certificate stating that I, so-and-so, worked at the school. It was two hundred kilometers away, in Novomakarivsky (?) Raion. When they released me, I came back, got my sick mother, and went to the Zolochiv region, to the village of Bilyi Kamin.
V. O.: When did you arrive here?
M. O.: That was in 1958, on the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, which is September 27. There was no one left from my family. We settled in the house where my mother had once been born. My father’s sister also came, also from Siberia. Her husband was also tortured to death, buried together with my father in the same grave in the Zolochiv cemetery. Two of her sons were killed...
We lived. I saw that my mother was doing poorly. I went to the doctors, they said, “Bring your mother.” I brought her—the doctor took a look and said, “We are powerless—stomach cancer.” They cut open her stomach, sewed it up, and that was it... My mother died, and as they say, I hadn't even had time to bury her when the KGB summoned me: “Well, what now, buddy? Get out of here.” And I hadn’t officially deregistered from Tomsk yet, I was still listed as working there, and my brother, now deceased, wrote me a letter: “Don’t come back here. They already have a file on you.” Aha, so that's how it is—so I made a bold move: I went to Lviv, then to Yavoriv, and then into the Carpathians. I somehow landed in the Carpathians, met someone, and in 1960 I got married. When I got married, I went to register my residence—and how did it work? They would never have registered me. It was lunchtime, my wife and I were standing there, the head of the passport office came out, and I was standing there holding the documents. He came out, and I said, “I’d like to register.” He glanced at me, at my wife: “Ah! I’m not going to...” But he hadn’t looked at my passport, it was underneath. He looked at the application and wrote on it in Russian: “Register with wife.”
V. O.: And where did this happen?
M. O.: Right here, in Kolomyia—already in Kolomyia. They had already chased me everywhere—the Chekists had found me. They even handed me a piece of gray paper, a form: “Sign here, that you will leave within twenty-four hours.” I said, “That will never happen.” So I went to the passport clerk, the clerks looked at the passport, turned it over, and another one said, “What’s it to you? What do you care? Just register him and be done with it.”
Once I was registered, I got a job, I was working, and they were watching me. To make a long story short, on October 1, 1963, they arrested me.
V. O.: In connection with what?
M. O.: Why they arrested me? I was a nationalist, you see? From such a family—that’s one thing; secondly, they still had the files on me from Vorkuta, and undoubtedly from my exile in Tomsk where I spoke with young people, and it turned out that those young people were no longer our own. They had already been recruited. And they put it all together. They told me, “You’re not one of them. You shouldn’t have been released at all,” he said. “You should have been strangled long ago.” That’s how they talked to me. I was also working in military units. When I started working in military units, at the time of the Cuba crisis—you may not remember what happened in Cuba, when Khrushchev was sending missiles there. I was gathering people, saying, “Look...”—that’s a fact. They found out about all of it...
V. O.: What was the article in your case?
M. O.: Here they gave me Article 62, Part 2. Because it was my second time. I have it somewhere... No, the boys smoked it, or I’ve forgotten where that article is. They also gave me an article that threatened me with 15 years or the death penalty—for weapons—228/17. They also charged me under Article 228/17, for the disappearance of weapons from military units. But they didn’t prove it during the investigation, and at the trial, they dropped that charge. Only Article 62, Part 2, remained, with 6 years of imprisonment and 3 of exile.
V. O.: And what regime did they give you? Special or strict?
M. O.: No, I think it was strict regime. Because everyone had a strict regime then.
V. O.: And where was the investigation conducted?
M. O.: The investigation was conducted in Ivano-Frankivsk.
V. O.: Can you tell us anything about the circumstances of that investigation? Who conducted it—do you remember any names? Those heroes should be named.
M. O.: Absolutely! I can go back a few words to how they arrested me. I was working in military units.
V. O.: What was your job there?
M. O.: A barber. Later I found someone who helped me get a job at the railway station, also as a barber. I met people there—everything was fine. I’m working, and one fine day, they summon me. The KGB summons me, starts asking me all sorts of, you know, questions. I understood what it was leading to. I knew other comrades who had been summoned and questioned about me, about what I was doing, and so on. What they said, I don’t know. And one fine day, on October 1, 1963, I came to work, was cleaning up, and they told me, “Go, the station master is calling for you.” My boss was a man named Oleksiuk. I went to him. When I reached his office: “Good day!” “Good day!”—a woman was sitting there, and a man was sitting there, but there were also people standing by the door—but it’s a train station. How would you know? You think one is looking at the schedule, another is looking at something else. I come in—he starts playing some kind of, you know, games with me. But I see how this Oleksiuk—he’s sitting opposite the woman—gives her a wink... And she says, “I’m leaving now.” She gets up, I look, and KGB agents jump on me, instantly grab my arms, twist them, and the one who was sitting next to the woman, on the right side, puts handcuffs on me.
V. O.: Behind your back?
M. O.: Yes, and I’m already in handcuffs. The woman immediately disappears, Oleksiuk disappears, and 4 KGB agents are left. And right away, “Where are the weapons?”—in Russian, of course, they all speak like that. I say, “Ha! What are you talking about? Go look for them,” I say. They held me there, placed the indictment in front of me: “Sign it.”—I didn’t sign. I didn’t sign it, it’s still there, maybe they signed it themselves. Then they put me in a car, we drive here, to the house where my wife was born, where I lived. There are already soldiers there, conducting a search. During the search, they found Hrushevsky’s “History,” they found Moshchak’s “Prayer”: *“О, Україно, свята мати героїв, зійди до серця мого...”*—you know it. I thought maybe I’d forget it, so I wrote it down in such a handwriting that probably no one—maybe even I myself couldn’t have read that prayer. I thought, all these things are forgotten. Just like the “Decalogue” is forgotten—it’s the years...
You know, they searched four times. They searched the entire yard, dug it up, walked around with mine detectors, looking for weapons. They took many photos—I had a lot from the camps, and from exile in Tomsk. Then that little lieutenant, Oliinyk, bent down: “Ah, you don’t throw away papers like these,” he said. “Oh! This is ‘O Ukraine, holy mother of heroes...’” He managed to read it. They led me out and took me straight to Ivano-Frankivsk. The investigation was conducted by a man named Lomykin—I think his first name was Oleksandr. He wasn’t an investigator, but some kind of bore. But in the end, he told me, “Well, I’m fed up with you.” And I said, “And what did you think? I’ve already been through this. What do you think?”
They held me under investigation for three months, then the trial. They didn’t know what to do at the trial because, in fact, there was no case against me. They took my file, two volumes—and it said, “I do not confirm.” If they wrote something in there themselves—that’s their business, you see? But an expert analysis would have proven it. Because that’s how I was: I don’t confirm, no matter what any witness said, whoever they called. From Odesa to God’s Kyiv—because I had addresses, they took my notebook. I thought if they didn’t register me there, I would go there. How could I have known it would be like this? Although they warned me: “Watch out, they’re already following you.” They looked for my father like that, then arrested and tortured him to death.
I wanted to say something... Ah. I came into the office—an older man was sitting there: “This is your lawyer.” I said, “I didn’t ask you for a lawyer. I don’t need one.” The lawyer was furious: “Come on, Mykhailo!”—he was already calling me Mykhailo.—“I want to live too. Things were good for me before, in those years, forty-five, forty-six. I had fifty cases a day then—that’s where the money was! And now I’ve only got you, and I need to make a living.” See what a defender of October he was? “That’s enough,” I said, “I don’t need a lawyer.” The first day of the trial goes by—nothing, on the second day, what does this lawyer do? The lawyer grabs my arm and says, “Comrade judges, Olenchak pleads guilty.” I stood there like an idiot. And that’s what they wrote in the verdict, that only after everything, I pleaded guilty. I knew that no one ever got out of their hands, you see? But what was the point of that comedy? They should have just sentenced me right away and taken me wherever they wanted.
V. O.: Were you alone in the case?
M. O.: Alone, alone. If there had been more people in the case, they would have definitely given me a bullet.
V. O.: Do you remember the date of the trial?
M. O.: I’ll tell you now. January 9, 1964, right on Christmas. They held me here in Ivano-Frankivsk for a little longer, then took me to the transit prison in Lviv. I’ll say it again: I come from a devout family. Wherever I went, I always prayed. And what do they do, the Chekists? They throw me in with the criminals in the Lviv transit prison, with those tattoos—they were hardened recidivists—and you know what?—they gambled me away in a game of cards.
V. O.: How so?
M. O.: They confessed to me later. I will describe all of this. They threw me in—I looked around: “What are you in for?”—he asks in Russian. I say, “Why are you so interested? I’m here for,” I say, “Article 205.” Because there were common criminals there. “Aha! 205. What did you do—beat someone’s face in?” he asks. I say, “Yeah, some military guy.” “Alright, then!” They’re playing cards. I lay down on a separate bunk. I came down with the flu. This was when they were transporting me to Kharkiv, then to Ruzayevka, and all the way to Mordovia.
The convoy was checking. And they heard. You come out, so-and-so, Olenchak, Mykhailo Vasyliovych, born in thirty, article such-and-such. And that guy shouts, “Why did you lie? So you’re a Banderite? And do you know we gambled you away in cards? If you had opened your eyes at that moment, we would have sliced your eyes with a razor blade!” Do you understand what he’s telling me? By the way, he was from Kyiv himself, Taras, I remembered. “The Banderites,” he says, “saved my life,”—he’s speaking Russian. “Why,” he says, “didn’t you admit you were here on a political charge?” Well, I thought, what’s the point of talking to you? There’s no one to talk to here.
They brought me to Kharkiv. In Kharkiv, I met an acquaintance—he’s from Lviv, Vasyl Ambinsky. And there was also Yuriy, with whom I was in Vorkuta. Yuriy is an artist. What does he do? He keeps me there, says, “I’ll arrange for you to stay here. You’ll be in the maintenance crew.” I write a letter, he passes it to my brother in Lviv—my brother is in Lviv. My brother comes, but he doesn’t find me. Something got mixed up there and they sent me on to Ruzayevka, to Potma in Mordovia. In February, I arrived in Mordovia, at camp No. 7. This is the settlement of Yavas. It was February—well, I don’t remember the exact date—maybe the 5th, maybe the 10th of February. 1964. I remember there was a guy named Solodchenkov, they wore these armbands, “SVP” (“Soviet vnutrennego poryadka” [Council of Internal Order]—an armband worn by those who had “embarked on the path of correction.” —V.O.). They brought me in alone. “Where are you from?” And I say, “From where I need to be.” “O-o-oh, this one’s already been shot at.” You won’t get anything out of him. Well, they took me to one barrack, then assigned me to a brigade. There I already knew Levko Lukianenko, and Bohdan Rebryk, and many others. I have many comrades from there. In Lviv there’s Yaroslav Hasiuk, a very good fellow, Slavko Leoniuk, Bohdan Khrystynych—well, I can’t remember them all. I could recall them, but it’s not necessary. How long was I there? 1964, 1965—they transferred us to the first camp point...
V. O.: Is that in Sosnovka?
M. O.: Yes. And they had herded the common criminals there. We were there for a while—then they transferred me to the eleventh, that’s in Yavas. Later, from the eleventh they sent me to the third...
V. O.: To Barashevo. You mentioned the priest Denys Lukashevych…
M. O.: Ah, I was imprisoned with Father Lukashevych at the first camp. There was Vasyl Levkovych. He was a UPA commander. I don’t know if he’s still alive or not. A guard comes: “Barrack so-and-so, is Olenchak here?” “Yes.” “With your things in the morning.” Well, I’m getting ready. I know they’re sending me to exile under guard. I went to the Special Section. I sat for an hour, a second hour—no one called. Later the head of the Special Section comes and says, “Stand down! Back to the zone!” And by tradition, when I went to the canteen for the last time, I broke my spoon, as they say: “You have to break your spoon, or you’ll come back to the camp again.” Well, that’s just a joke. He sends me back.
And before that, when I was at the 11th, there were men named Nesterets and Ptukhin. They put them both next to me—I was on the top bunk, one on one side, the other... What can I say—they were watching me.
I come back from the canteen, well, I had some gruel, took a piece of bread crust to spread a bit of that wretched margarine on it, because you could buy five rubles’ worth of food. I thought I’d drink a little of that tea, spread the margarine. This Nesterets is standing right there, rolling a cigarette, and he sneezes. He sneezes—and snot flies onto my hands, onto everything. I grab a stool... And there was a Latvian—I’ve forgotten his name—a former pilot himself: “Mykhailo, don’t do it—they’ll put you on trial!” And he took the stool from me. I calmed down then.
When they sent me back, I sat there for a day, a second day, thinking: now they’re going to open a case against me. The KGB men summoned me—there was a KGB man named Rusyn, a KGB man named Krut, and I’ve forgotten the third one, they didn’t let me breathe. “Well, write a repentance,” you see? “Criticize the nationalists.” I just laughed at that. I thought: now they’ll really get me for this Nesterets business. And they probably would have, but there were circumstances, the Lithuanian and that Latvian were on my side. And a Major Dydrov said, “Well, you really gave it to that Nesterets.” I said, “I didn’t hit him, are you kidding me?” That was our conversation. “I’ll tell you, I hate him myself.” Aha, I thought, he’s provoking me. And I thought they had turned me back to put me on trial. When they took me to the Special Section again two days later and gave me my documents, I asked, “Why did you hold me over?” “Well, there was no convoy.” That’s what they wanted to say.
The transports—my God! I would have preferred to serve another year than go through those transports. But, as they say, every cloud has a silver lining. In Potma, they put me in a “Stolypin” railcar, and I traveled for over a day to Chelyabinsk. The convoy guards happened to be from Lviv. I talked with them, they even brought me food. I was sitting in that three-person compartment. I had a couple of books, but Bohdan Rebryk took one, and it was lost to me—it was “The Unburnt Bush” by Serhiy Plachynda and...
V. O.: And Kolisnychenko.
M. O.: And Kolisnychenko. It was a very good thing. I wanted to bring it there, thinking maybe someone would read it. I had “The Chalice of Amrita” by Oles Berdnyk. I gave it to our convoy guards—well, Ukrainians, our own boys, dear Lord... When they brought me to that Chelyabinsk—I had grown my hair out a bit, trying to hide it so I wouldn’t arrive bald, as they say... And the convoy guards, apparently, knew that those Chekists give you hell, especially the politicals. And one of them shouts in Polish, “Pan Olenczak, khodz’ tu!”—and I know Polish. I go, and the others looked—they didn’t know what language it was. And I said, “Co sie stalo?” “Idz tu, przylandkuj! Dawaj rzeci tutaj!” And their mouths just hung open, they didn’t know what to do. They tricked me, otherwise they would have shaved my head, and would have given me a good beating, as they say.
From there they took me to Novosibirsk, from Novosibirsk to Krasnoyarsk, from Krasnoyarsk to Achinsk. When I got to Achinsk—I spent three days on the latrine. Only on the latrine. Three-tiered bunks, packed like bedbugs, all young people. He’d open the food slot, give out the ration—they’d jump for it, and I never even saw it. I only drank water for three days and sat on that latrine, because I thought they’d kill me. Because I knew who I was locked up with. But some officer came, and I asked him, “Why are you keeping me here?” In Russian, of course. “Wait. There’s no convoy.” I sat there for three days, and then they transported me 46 kilometers from Achinsk—to Bolshoy Uluy, a district right on the Chulym River.
They brought me there—frost, cold—I don’t want to talk about it. About halfway there, the “voronok” stopped, they opened the doors, and some little lieutenant gets in—his name was Vavilov—I won’t forget him, he wasn’t a bad man, for some reason he left the police later. “Aren’t you frozen?” I said, “And if I am, can you do anything to help me?” “Well, hang in there, man,”—just like they know how to say, in Russian. They brought me to that Bolshoy Uluy, took me to the police station, he opens the file, puts it on the desk. The man looks at me—“Sit down.” I sat down. He opened it, looked: “Well, fellow countryman?” And I said, “Nothing, fellow countryman.” “Well, how did you manage this—served one term, and now a second one?” And I said, “They told me there would be a third,”—because that Lomykin, the investigator in Ivano-Frankivsk, always said, “Don’t worry, there’ll be a third time!” But he always hinted they would shoot me. He asks, “Do you know where they’re exiling you?” “How would I know?” It was somewhere way out there, near Tyumen, in those swamps. And he says, “You know what? Since you’re a countryman, I’ll leave you here. You’re not against it?” I said, “I can only be grateful.” He dials a number, calls: “Listen, do you need workers?” “I do,” the other man answers. He leaves me there. He looks at his watch, says, “It’s almost lunchtime,”—and I hadn’t eaten anything but water for three days, I was hungry as a dog, my head was spinning. And he asks, “Do you have any money?”—now he’s speaking Russian, but first he asked in Ukrainian. I said, “I do, but I need a knife.” I had a ten-ruble note sewn in here and another one. He gives me a knife, I go into the corridor. “Sit here,” he says. I say, “No, I’m going to the corridor,”—I didn’t want to show him where the boys had sewn that ten-ruble note for me. I take it out, and the note—it looks like mice had chewed on it. Because I had been sleeping on that clothing. He looked at it and right away said, “To the bank, run, the bank is over there, and they’ll exchange it for you.” I go, give them the money, she looked up the number, gave me the ten-ruble note, I thanked her and left. I went—“Where’s the canteen?” “Over there.” I ate a first course, a second, and took a compote—I was so hungry. I get in line and take more. And the woman who was giving out the meal tickets—a Latvian woman, also an exile—she looks at me like this: “You must be an exile, right?”—you can tell from a mile away. I say, “Yes, an exile.” “Wait.” She went to the kitchen and brought me another good portion—something else for a second course, and a compote. I ate until my stomach was bursting.
V. O.: You said it was winter—what year was that?
M. O.: That was—I’ll tell you now—that was, if they released me on October 2, November... Sometime in early December. In early December, it was already a hard winter. That was already 1970. Because they credited my transport time under guard as three days for one, so I was released earlier. I arrived here in January. I remember writing a letter, wishing my family, my wife, a Merry Christmas, sending such greetings.
There I got a job at a sawmill, I walked four kilometers, or maybe more, on foot, through the snow. I used to say, “God, for what sin am I suffering so much?” You push that wood, the saw gets stuck, it doesn’t cut—you toil by the sweat of your brow. You come home hungry, with nowhere to live, I was lodging with some old granny. I was amazed at how people lived there. No firewood, nothing—just misery.
I suffered like that for a month, and when I went to the commandant’s office to check in, that Shlyakhenko, my countryman, was sitting there. I said, “Listen, Ivan Vasylovych, as a countryman, help me get out of that sawmill, because I’ll die there.” Just then the director of municipal services walks by—a man named Surochinsky, himself a Jew from St. Petersburg, he had served time—he served 10 years in Vorkuta, his wife saved him, they say. Now he lived with her—she had been the wife of a camp commander, and she saved him. Also Jewish. He married her, and she moved here. Shlyakhenko calls out—this Surochinsky comes in: “Ivan Yevdokymovych,” he says, “we need to set this young man up as a barber, he’s a good master,”—well, how would he know if I’m good or not? And the other guy says, “And I need a barber,”—a traveling one, to go around the settlements, the logging camps.
So that’s how I got out of that sawmill. Later I got to know people. I was already sending parcels to the camp, but it turned out no one received them. See what they were doing? A man named Malyushkin summoned me, a real Muscovite pig, a scoundrel: “Why do you write so much? Why are you sending,” he says, “parcels?” I said, “What, is it not allowed?” “Well, what do you need them for?” he says—you see their mentality?
After serving my exile, I returned. Here they messed with me for a month...
V. O.: When? Please give the dates—when did you return from exile?
M. O.: I returned from exile at the end of June 1972.
Even when I was released to exile, in January, I said to this Shlyakhenko, “Let me go on vacation. Arrange a vacation for me.” He says, “Write to the krai”—that is, to the Krasnoyarsk Krai—“to the MVD.” I wrote that I had served six years, and so on—they wrote back: “Not permitted.” I said to Shlyakhenko, “What should I do?” But I was already working as a barber. And he says to me, “You know what, I’ll help you, but look: I’m giving you two weeks—be back here in two weeks. You will be escorted—by a woman or a man, let’s say, from Bolshoy Uluy to Achinsk—one person, from Achinsk to Novosibirsk—another, and so on. Don’t talk to anyone, don’t have any dealings with anyone. Understood?” That’s how he instructed me. I came here, stayed for a bit. They wanted me to check into a hospital here, to get some help in Lviv, but I thought: what if I let that man down? I went back. Even this Levkovych was surprised, how was it, when I came back again in the summer: “How is it that they gave him two vacations?” And Yaroslav Yaroshchuk, he says, “You need to have a friend everywhere. He knows how to manage.” In short, things weren’t so bad for me there anymore.
I returned here in 1972, around June 26-28, I don’t remember exactly. First thing, I went to register my residence. What they put me through here, only God knows. First, they wanted me to collaborate with them—I said, “What? Are you out of your minds? That will never happen. Never!” “Then you’ll go back there.” I said, “Under guard. You’ll have to take me under guard, otherwise—nowhere. I have a family here, I have a son here, a wife—I’m not going anywhere.” But that Shlyakhenko gave me a good character reference. What he wrote, I don’t know, but through acquaintances, I found out that I had such a reference that you could apply it to a wound. Eventually, they registered me, and then I got a job again in a barbershop. A Jewish man helped me with that too, and my friend, with whom I was in Vorkuta, told him about me—a man named Mykola Yatsyshyn—a very good fellow, they took him from the third year of Lviv Polytechnic. I met him by chance and said, “Mykoltsiu, help me find a job.” He said, “I’ll arrange everything for you. Our own for our own.” You see? Our own for our own. In short, I got a job and worked in the barbershop until I retired. And so... I built this little house, as you can see.
V. O.: Until what year did you work?
M. O.: I worked until 1991. I was already on pension but worked for another year. I traveled to all sorts of events in Kyiv. When there was the World Congress of Political Prisoners, I was there for several days. I was in Kyiv often.
V. O.: I was there too—did we not see each other there?
M. O.: It’s possible—there was a huge crowd of people.
V. O.: Were you at the Constituent Assembly of the Society of the Repressed on June 3, 1989? At the Lviv Maidan?
M. O.: Yes, yes, yes, I was, I was. I didn’t miss events like that, we used to go. It even happened that a whole train went from Ivano-Frankivsk—entirely ours, so to speak. There was talk then: they were supposed to take us through Lviv, but they were afraid it might be blown up—you understand?
V. O.: Yes, it was an uncertain time.
M. O.: Yes, yes, so they routed us through Chernivtsi, but we arrived safely and returned safely.
So that’s how it is. I’m left alone, I have no one else, no kith or kin. I still had my younger brother in Lviv, he was arrested with me, they beat and tortured him for ten days so much that I didn’t recognize him—he was black, blacker than the earth. He was only 16 years old. I’m writing about him. I have no one else from my family—all were destroyed, some died, others were killed—I’m still here, my son, my daughter-in-law...
V. O.: And you said you got married—what year was that?
M. O.: I got married in 1960, on August 8.
V. O.: And who is your wife? Please state her last name and first name.
M. O.: My wife is Oresta, daughter of [unintelligible], born in 1937, in the city of Kolomyia. I believe we registered our marriage on August 8, and had a secret church wedding, because it wasn’t possible otherwise. We didn’t have any kind of wedding celebration. We didn’t have the money for it, and we didn’t want it. We didn’t want that kind of attention.
V. O.: You said you have a son—just one?
M. O.: Yes, I have a son. And that son went through a lot as well.
V. O.: What year was he born? What’s his name? Let it be recorded.
M. O.: My son is Myroslav, born in 1961, he graduated from the Odesa Veterinary Faculty. It was also a question of whether they would let him study. They summoned me here—it got to the point where they were summoning me three times a week: “You’re a nationalist, and your son is in an institute.” I couldn’t take it anymore and one time I even cursed at them: “You didn’t go to an agricultural institute to get gored by a cow’s horn or slapped with its shit-covered tail, did you?” I said, when he finds out what kind of institute it is, he’ll drop out. Big deal, what a great institute! And you know, they left me alone for a bit after that. But what they did to him there… I told him, “Son, Myrosiu, just so you know—patience overcomes the strongest enemy. You know where you’re going? You’re going to Odesa. Everything will happen there.” And the boy endured it all. They stole his suit, then those little briefcases were in fashion, you know? Whatever I’d buy and send with acquaintances by train—it was already stolen. They did it on purpose, to get rid of him from that institute.
Then the question arose of whether to draft him into the army. He had already defended his diploma—and they took him into the army. And they sent him to Sevastopol. They said, “Look. Here’s a UAZ vehicle. You have three months to assemble it.” He assembled it, he drove. They cut his brake lines once, so he would have an accident. In short, they tormented him as much as they could. But he remembered my words, that patience overcomes all, and he kept silent, he didn’t get involved with anyone.
I’m not judging anyone. I know, even here in our Kolomyia, there were boys who were forced to write those articles of repentance so their children could study. Repent before whom? You are on your own land…
Such is my life. My health is gone. Here, my leg—you see this? They broke it during the investigation—they beat and tortured me so much. Only a bucket of water helped me regain consciousness, they beat me so badly—for ten days… And then they transferred us to Lviv, and from there to the trial, and then to Vorkuta…
V. O.: Do you still have your verdicts, release certificates, or rehabilitation papers?
M. O.: Yes, yes, I think they’re here.
V. O.: It says here: “Olenchak, Mykhailo Vasyliovych, born 1930, village of Pochapy, Zolochiv Raion, Lviv Oblast, January 9, 1964, Article 62, Part...” “Part One,” it says here.
M. O.: But they [unintelligible] reclassified it. I had Part Two.
V. O.: Ah. “...with 3 years of exile. Not previously convicted. October 1, 1963... to October 1, 1969. After serving the term of punishment, to be subsequently sent into exile for 3 years. Departed to the disposal of the UVD of the Krasnoyarsk Krai Executive Committee.”
M. O.: You have the second one. There were no photos, so they tore a photo from a document.
V. O.: And this is—Case No. 32: “On June 8, 1972, released on the basis of the verdict of the Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast Court in connection with the completion of the term of exile.” And you don’t have any of the verdicts, right?
M. O.: It was somewhere...
V. O.: And this is a certificate from “August 2, 1956, released in connection with the decision of the commission of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of 31/VII with the application of the Decree of 24.03.56 with expungement of criminal record and deprivation of rights. To proceed to place of residence in the city of Tomsk.”
M. O.: There you go, see, they released me. This is the certificate that I worked a little in the school—I have it somewhere.
V. O.: And this is— “Certificate issued to Olenchak, Mykhailo Vasyliovych, born 1930, born in the Zolochiv Raion of Lviv Oblast, Ukrainian, [unintelligible] to the effect that he has been removed from the special settlement registry. May 7, 1958.”
Are you writing anything about these imprisonments? Have any of your memoirs been published, or anything about you?
M. O.: It has been published. I even submitted something to the journal “Zona.” But they looked at it and said, “This is long-form prose, we can’t publish it.” But they took one manuscript. I used to subscribe to “Zona”—they didn’t publish it. I’m not praising myself... But there are things in “Zona” that I wouldn’t want to publish. And here you have it—what I’m writing. I have read it to people. I don’t have a special education, I didn't have time to study.
V. O.: But you have a talent and an artistic taste—I’ve looked at some passages.
M. O.: Some teachers—I don’t want to say that teachers today are bad and they were better back then—but they say, “Man, you write beautifully—why don’t you write?”
V. O.: This was Mykhailo Vasyliovych Olenchak, city of Kolomyia, February 8, 2000. 57 Soborna St., Kolomyia, 28200, Tel. (03433)-344-43. Recorded by Vasyl Ovsienko, Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group.
Mykhailo OLENCHAK, February 8, 2000, photo by V. Ovsienko, Kolomyia.