VASYL SEMENOVYCH STUS

THE LIGHT OF PEOPLE

Memoirs of Vasyl Stus

Poltava, 2007

Compiled by Oksana Dvorko

Edited by Natalka Lysenko

Computer layout by Yaroslav Stus

Proofread by Hanna Antypovych, Alla Annenkova

Original layout

The foundation of this book consists of the memoirs of Vasyl Ovsiienko—a long-term political prisoner and member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group—expanded by interweaving fragments from the recollections of other people who were in the same space and recall the situations described in the main text of the book. The book includes a commentary that explains the meanings of camp slang (terminology) and some biographical information. For schoolchildren, the works of V. Stus included in the school curriculum have been placed in a separate section.

MORDOVIA

February 6, 1976. Mordovia, Ozernoye settlement, strict-regime colony ZhKh-385/17-A. After noon, the frost is 46 degrees [Celsius, likely -46°C]. Line-up for work detail. We are standing in fives before the gates of the work zone. Lieutenant Ulevaty approaches, smiling faintly:

“Citizen convict, your hat should be tied under your chin or on top, not in the back. Come with me.”

But he leads me not to the headquarters, but to the “kaptiorka.”

“Gather your things.”

“All of them? Where are they taking me?” The anxiety that always slumbers in a prisoner’s subconscious shoots sharply into my consciousness.

Ulevaty, contrary to his usual manner, replies that I am being taken to the hospital. I had been demanding this for a long time but had already lost hope. They lead me with my things to the guardhouse. But there, it turns out that the Black Maria and the convoy are not there yet; I have to wait in some nook. Behind a door in the same corridor is the visiting room. They lead an older woman of Caucasian appearance and a thin, almost translucent girl into it. About a minute later, Paruyr Hayrikyan’s voice comes from behind the door. He says that he, too, was pulled from the line and just brought for a visit with his mother and his sister Lusine. He slips me some small treats through the crack (it was chewing gum, which I had never seen before) and whispers:

“They are hiding you from Vasyl Stus; he was brought to our zone today.”

From Vasyl Stus? So, after his surgery, they returned him not to “the Third” in Barashevo, where they had taken him from last autumn, but to our 17-A. We knew that on the night of August 1-2, 1975, he had suffered a perforated stomach ulcer, meaning internal bleeding. They said Stus had tried to leave the barracks at night but fell unconscious. Chornovil and someone else put him on a bedsheet and carried him to the guardhouse, demanding a doctor, while the guard in the tower shouted: “Stop, or I’ll shoot!” The administration’s first move was to call not a doctor but a convoy to escort Stus to the hospital, which was within the same zone just a few dozen meters away, but behind a fence. Prisoner-orderlies carried Stus on a stretcher, accompanied by soldiers with automatic rifles and dogs. But no one attended to him in the hospital until morning. Soon Stus was returned to the zone, and then taken away on prisoner transport.

Дякую, Господи, – чверть перейшла,

що чатувала за мною, за мною,

блискала цівкою, оком, пітьмою,

напризволяще до брами вела.

Вечір урочить і паморочить.

Зірвався – і впав, увігнався в провалля

пам’яті. І забриніло над сталлю

тиші. Так, певне, потойбік мовчить.

Ось вона, легкість, і те забуття,

що самостратою серце чарує

Вкраїна далеко – ніхто не почує,

ти довершилося, досить, життя.

Млість і запечена кров, печія

водить-виводить. Із кола до кола

перенесе – це ж бо ти поборола,

ти подолала, тривого моя!

Ноші, і білий, мов лезо, язик

пса, і плащі, що під місяцем світять.

Кілька цівок, що, примружені, мітять

в тебе. Невже, навіжений, вже звик?

Плавно земля попливла, попливла,

небо пустилося вплав за зірками.

О, розпрощатись так рано з роками –

обрій недобрий стає дубала.

Обрій стає дубала. До зорі

вже не дійти. Скінчився, талане?

Доле, ще й досі стаєш на порі?

Промельки кроків, волань і зірок,

промельки років, віків провидіння.

О порятуй же, немає терпіння!

Чийсь торопкий і розважений крок.

Зразу праворуч – нічна вертикаль.

Горличка горлиць, округлі од туги.

Спіть – і прощайте! Не стрітись удруге.

Ти всеспадна, о дорого проваль.

Перепочиньте, харони мої!

Станьте – під небом – наспівним – харони,

тулиться лоно до білого лона,

в сотні громів гримкотять солов’ї.

Перелетіть мене, перелетіть

через дроти, паркани і горожі

на Україну! До смертного дрожу –

дальня тополя як чайка ячить.

Видиш – ріка попливла світова.

Зорі, і думи, і кроки – а видиш?

Образ Коханої чи Зненавиди?

Дякую, Боже, за мить торжества!

Так – попід зорі, отак – попід сни,

так – попід дріт, попід грім навіжений

розпроклятущий свій, благословенний

шлях – на останнім узвозі – збагни.

Бо за песиголовцями – твоя

барка – червона, червона, червона,

вже запливла до сумного затона.

Здрастуй же, здрастуй же, смерте моя!

It was recounted that they used a new search method on him: you hand over all your things and clothes for inspection in the evening before your departure, you get a change of clothes, and tomorrow you will dress in your own. After changing, Stus went out into the yard to talk with Viacheslav Chornovil.

“Wait, did you check what they gave you?”

They felt the pea coat and found a “bug” the size of a five-kopek coin with two small wires. They smashed it so it couldn’t be found by the signals it was emitting and hid it. The next day Stus was taken away on transport, and Chornovil began to bargain with the administration:

“If you grant me the visit you unlawfully deprived me of, I will return your toy.”

“Fine, I’ll report it,” said the lieutenant.

He returned shortly after:

“You can keep it. If we need to, we’ll plant ten on you, too.”

And they did later. For example, in Yakutia, in exile, where they scared people away from Chornovil so much that there was no one to even talk to.

Mykhailo Heifets also recalled these events, albeit in a slightly different interpretation:

This is what Stus himself recounted on the first evening over tea:

In the evening they announce: “Stus, tomorrow morning transport to the hospital. Hand over your clothes; you’ll get a change of clothes for the transport.” They gave me a warm, thick pea coat, brand new. I was even surprised, for what merits was I being dressed so well. In the evening, I went to chat with Slavko Chornovil about how to maintain contact, with whom to speak “at the hospital,” what to find out and from whom, what to pass on to whom—the “hospital,” as everyone knows, is a communication hub. Suddenly Slavko froze, looked at me strangely, and said, “Why did they give you the pea coat in the evening? It’s a whole night until the transport... And it’s a thick pea coat, not regulation. And new—why not used?”

He silently began to pat my back. “There it is!” he whispered. He tore open the seam on my back and pulled out a metal disc. I hadn’t even figured out what it was, and he had already gone to hide it. And at that moment, “the cop” caught me and started dragging me to the guardhouse,”—from this moment Vasyl spoke with an incomparable intonation, unique to him, of an intellectual’s utmost sincere astonishment at the impudence of “the cops.”—”They take off my pea coat, stick their fingers into the hole, and pull out some little wires, springs, antennas—how should I know what they have in there? ‘Where did you get this, Stus?’ they ask! ‘What do you mean—where! You yourselves gave me this pea coat half an hour ago! You should know what’s sewn into it, not me…’—‘Go!’ They returned my old pea coat and released me back into the zone.”

Incidentally, I want to share another episode with a “bug.” Azat Arshakyan, a friend of Chornovil and Stus, recounted:

“I caught Boroda, the KGB man, in the zone: ‘I can sell you the bug that Stus hid.’ He put a paw in his pocket, pulled out a chocolate bar: ‘This is your advance. What do you want for helping?’—‘I’ll find out from the Ukrainians and tell you.’ I went to Chornovil, gave him the chocolate. Then, through the administration, I sent a message: ‘Give Chornovil a private visit with his wife—we’ll return the bug.’ They immediately gave me a second chocolate bar and said—‘Wait for an answer, we’ll let you know.’ The next day, ‘a cop’ approaches me: ‘The authorities,’ he says, ‘don’t agree. We have a whole safe full of these bugs without this one, why should we grant a visit?’ I gave the second bar to Slavko as well, but we couldn’t get anything more for the ‘bedbug.’ It’s still hidden somewhere.”

…Stus himself attached a serious and, in my opinion, disproportionately large significance to the story of the “bug in the pea coat”: it seemed to him that the continuous stream of tortures, torments, and punishments that befell him in the zone and after was due to the KGB’s revenge for the lost listening device.

Mykhailo Heifets. “There Is No One Greater in Ukrainian Poetry Now...” // *Ne vidliubyv svoiu tryvohu ranniu...* — Kyiv: Ukr. pysmennyk, 1993.

So, at that time, Stus was transported to the Central Hospital of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs named after Ivan Haaz in Leningrad (the prisoners simply called it “Haazy”), and after the operation, for “higher operational considerations,” the leadership decided not to keep him with Chornovil and Vasyl Lisovy in zone 3/5 near the hospital in Barashevo, but to take him to this backwater, to Ozernoye (in Mordovian, Umor), where at that time there were only about 70 prisoners, among whom I was the only Ukrainian dissident. A pity that I am being taken from here...

Stus and I had not met at liberty, but we had seen each other from a distance in the 19th zone, where I was until October 30, 1975. However, Stus hardly remembered me. Several times he was brought to our punishment cell (there was one for three zones). On Thursdays, the prisoners from the punishment cell were led through the entire zone to the bathhouse. Those who could would go out to watch, hoping to exchange a word or even pass on something to eat. Once, the youngest of the political prisoners, 19-year-old Lyubomyr Starosolsky, lit a cigarette and walked towards Vasyl, offering it to him. The guard snatched the cigarette and stomped it out. To be sure, with my disposition, I was not suited for such acts. I stood among the people and admired his tall, almost majestic figure. I already knew several of his poems from Zorian Popadiuk, who had carried them out from that punishment cell in his memory. At liberty, I had also read several of his poems, knew he had a long essay on Pavlo Tychyna, “The Phenomenon of the Epoch,” read his open letter in defense of the young creative artists of Dnipropetrovsk, and heard about his speech on September 4, 1965, at the “Ukraina” cinema in defense of the “shestydesiatnyky” (Sixtiers) arrested on August 25... In short, for me, a recent student and novice teacher, Vasyl Stus was one of the almost celestial beings, on the level of Ivan Svitlychny, Ivan Dziuba, Yevhen Sverstiuk, Viacheslav Chornovil, Valentyn Moroz, Levko Lukianenko, Mykhailo Horyn, Ivan Kandyba... I was involved in Ukrainian Samvydav and was content with that, not seeking personal acquaintances with its authors, because that would inevitably lead to expulsion from the university, as had happened to my colleagues Mykola Rachuk, Nadiyka Kyrian, Mykola Vorobiov, Slavko Chernylevsky... Halia Palamarchuk barely held on.

The crackdown on the Sixtiers on January 12, 1972, I, then a fifth-year student of Ukrainian philology at Kyiv University, experienced as a personal tragedy. This crackdown put everyone in their place: some behind barbed wire, some into oblivion, while some, with the cry “Glory to the CPSU!” heroically ran for the bushes, and still others—through the breaking of their spines—to deceitful repentance, and then to Shevchenko Prizes for “sell-out” poems, to use the camp jargon... Vasyl Stus received a non-standard sentence of 5 years in a strict-regime camp and 3 years of exile—the norm at the time was 7 plus 5.

Here are some of the “seditious” poems and fragments of articles that were “incriminated” against Vasyl Stus at his sentencing:

* * *

Не можу я без посмішки Івана

оцю сльотаву зиму пережить.

В проваллях ночі, коли Київ спить,

а друга десь оббріхують старанно,

склепить очей не можу ні на мить,

він, як зоря, проміниться з туману,

але мовчить, мовчить, мовчить, мовчить.

Ні словом не озветься. Ані пари

із уст. Вусате сонечко моє!

Несуть тобі три царіє со дари

скапарене озлоблення своє.

Іваночку! Ти чуєш, доброокий?

Їй-бо не знаю, що я зле зробив.

Чого ж бо й досі твій поріг високий

ані відчув, ані переступив.

Прости мені, недільний мій Хрещатик,

що, сівши сидьма, ці котли топлю

в оглухлій кочегарці. Що терплю,

коли вже ні терпіти, ні мовчати

не можу, що, читаючи, люблю

твоїх Орхана, Незвала і Данте,

в дев’яте коло прагнучи стремлю.

Моє ж досьє, велике, як майбутнє,

напевне, пропустив котрийсь із трутнів.

Із тих, що білий світ мені окрали,

окравши край, окрали спокій мій,

лишивши гнів ропавий і кривавий

і право – надриватися в ярмі.

Сидять по шпарах всі мужі хоробрі,

всі правдолюби, чорт би вас побрав.

Чи людська добрість – тільки доти добрість,

поки без сил, без мужності, без прав

запомогти, зарадити, вступитись,

стражденного в нещасті прихистить

і зважитись боротися, щоб жити,

і зважитись померти, аби жить?

Коли тебе, коханий, покарають –

куди втечу від сорому й ганьби?

Тоді прости, прощай, проклятий краю,

вітчизно боягузів і убивць.

6.12.1965

* * *

Отак живу: як мавпа серед мавп

чолом прогрішним із тавром зажури

все б’юся об тверді камінні мури,

як їхній раб, як раб, як ниций раб.

Повз мене ходять мавпи чередою,

у них хода поважна, нешвидка.

Сказитись легше, аніж буть собою,

бо ж ні зубила, ані молотка.

О Боже праведний, важка докука –

сліпорожденним розумом збагнуть:

ти в цьому світі – лиш кавалок муки,

отерплий і розріджений, мов ртуть.

X. 1968

Regarding the literary studies article “Fading Flourishing” (on the works of V. Svidzinsky), Vasyl Stus was accused of “slanderous fabrications against the achievements of the Soviet people.” This is how the article concludes:

Nature worthily resists the onslaught of monstrosity. It is too mighty to take seriously the revolutionary transformations of a little gnome who, hiding behind the hummocks of his own horror, imagined himself—a grimace of an inferiority complex—to be the crown of nature. It is no less trusting: it cannot comprehend how its son, even a very wayward one, could threaten the mother who sustains him in this world. It has no idea that it can be deceived. Perhaps it is mistaken. Just as—perhaps—Volodymyr Svidzinsky is mistaken. But there are mistakes better than any infallibility—the eternal mistakes of goodness and beauty.

To always love, in order to always be mistaken. But—to always love. And thus to exist, and to exist is to be mistaken.

In the article “Phenomenon of the Epoch,” under the guise of further researching the work of the poet P. Tychyna, he attempted to impose anti-Soviet, nationalistic views and ideas on the reader regarding the assessment of the Ukrainian poet’s work, and tried to prove the “harmfulness” of the principle of party-mindedness in literature. (From Vasyl Stus’s verdict, 1972).

The phenomenon of Tychyna is the phenomenon of an epoch. His fate will testify to our time no less than the terrifying accounts of historians: the poet lived in a time that cast a genius in the role of a jester. And the poet agreed to this role.

In the conditions of Stalinism’s offensive on all fronts, the poet hid from the world, from the people, in the rubber prison of official glory, paying for it with a living death. He cut off all living contacts, replacing them with entirely official information. In these conditions, the poet could only be dying, not growing. Less and less fresh air reached him, until the poet in Tychyna suffocated from a lack of oxygen.

The poet died, but Tychyna remained alive and had to, now as an official, perform poetic functions. The world was already understandable and uninteresting to him. But even this artificial world had to be admired, even if by force. Talent became his greatest enemy, with which he had to constantly struggle so as not to sin.

In the terrible era of Stalinist repressions, some writers were shot, others were exiled to concentration camps, and a third group was corrupted. Tychyna was repressed by recognition. Punishment by fame is one of the newest and most effective forms of combating art.

Who are you, then, Tychyna?

Without a doubt, a brilliant poet. And—a brilliant jester. More alive than the living and deader than the dead.

His tragedy reflected the tragedy of his own people. And for that reason, he is a part of his people’s history (for what the entire nation has experienced is sacred, and you must respect it).

Back in the 19th zone, I noticed that the Lithuanians spoke of our Stus with particular respect. They explained this phenomenon to me. It turns out that when a Lithuanian partisan, Klemanskis, a “twenty-fiver,” died in the camp in Barashevo, Vasyl proposed honoring his memory with a moment of silence at the evening roll call. The administration, of course, regarded this as a “violation of the detention regime,” almost as the organization of a rally—and Vasyl went to the PKT for half a year.

I thought about all this while waiting for the Black Maria. So, they were hiding me from the “corrupting influence” of Stus... I wait for about four hours, listening in that nook to all the sounds—when you are locked up, you see almost nothing, so hearing becomes the main source of information about the surrounding world. I hear the voice of the department head, Captain Oleksandr Zinenko. The door opens:

“There is no transport and no convoy. Go to the zone.”

I joyfully grab my backpack, but a phone call—and Zinenko stops me. Half an hour later, they take me in a Black Maria to the Shale station, where they put me, like a great lord, on a draisine, and around midnight, I am delivered to the hospital in the settlement of Barashevo, which is a division of colony ZhKh-385/3. Some escort, probably a KGB officer, kept asking me on the way if I was cold, how I was feeling. Strange. But the wonder didn't last long: at the guardhouse, I peeked at the accompanying document: “Convict Ovsiienko V. V. is being sent to the surgical department...” and it was corrected: “Psych.” A chill ran down my spine.

At the guardhouse they ask:

“So, where are you being sent, with what illness?”

“Probably to the surgical department, because the illness is, as the gypsy said, the worst kind: you can’t see it yourself, and you can’t show it to another—hemorrhoids.”

“Well, alright, there are no beds in surgery. It’s Saturday, no doctors are here, so go to the therapeutic department, and they’ll figure it out on Monday.”

…Everything was figured out on Tuesday, and until then, and even after, I had thought through all sorts of things. For that was the heyday of Soviet punitive psychiatry. For about a month and a half after my arrest (March 5, 1973), I tried not to give any testimony to the investigators, only explaining a few things. Then the investigator of the Kyiv Oblast KGB, Mykola Pavlovych Tsimokh, told me the sacramental words: “Some people here doubt your mental competence. We will have to conduct a psychiatric evaluation.” A few days later, he quoted some things from my notebooks. They were mostly drafts for various literary ideas—who didn't want to play with words in their youth? But the most dangerous were the entries from the autumn of 1972. After the January events, after the arrest of the people dearest to me, in particular, Vasyl Lisovy, after losing hope of entering graduate school, after personal troubles, my spirits fell and I wrote that it was not worth living in this world. And I began to imagine how it might be. The feeling and thought grew into words—and I saw that a literary work was budding from it. After all, that’s probably how things are written. But for the investigators, these records became grounds for blackmail: this, they said, is the raving of a madman. And I already knew that Borys Kovhar, Leonid Plyushch, and Mykola Plakhotniuk had been thrown into a “psychushka” for refusing to testify; I knew why Mykola Kholodnyi had written a shameful “repentance”… A white wall of fear rose before me: to end up in a “psychushka” at 24, where they would turn you into a human-like animal, seemed more terrifying than death. And I began to yield. I said from whom I had received and to whom I had given Samvydav to read. No one was imprisoned because of me, but some of my friends suffered. When I later thought about why so much misfortune had befallen me, I became convinced: it was for this sin. People seemed to have forgiven me, but only God Himself can determine the measure of sin and penance: perhaps I still owe a million years of purgatory for that sin?

Back then, at the cost of sin—confession and deceitful admission of guilt—I got out of trouble and was revived in spirit, having fallen into the favorable environment of political prisoners, where I was not the only one like that. But now, in February 1976, I was again seized by fear at the prospect of ending up in that 12th building, the one behind the fence. True horrors were told about it…

It was only a month later that the surgeon Skrynnyk somewhat dispelled my fear, when I cautiously asked for an explanation.

“Oh, I paid no attention to that referral. Your Antipov wrote it that way so they wouldn’t send you back to Ozernoye, because the surgery department really had no beds then. But they always accept people in the psychiatric one!”

Antipov was the head of the medical unit of the 17th colony. Stus later called him Antipko—there is such a little devil in Ukrainian mythology. That's how easily one could end up in a madhouse back then, where it was futile to prove you weren't a “schizo.” And at that time, everyone accused of “conducting anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda” underwent a psychiatric evaluation. I also spent 18 days in Kyiv’s “Pavlivka.”

І стіл, і череп, і свіча,

що тіні колихає,

і те дрібненьке потерча,

що ручками махає.

Невже подосі не дано

вартнішого зазнати

за цього, що спішить вікно,

як світ, заколисати?

Сховайся в череп, потерча,

очниць великі вікна

потвердять – сіється свіча

розважно, ані бликне.

Тамте видіння у мені

світає, і світання

просториться в самотині,

як світу заступання.

Skrynnyk and I started talking about Stus. Skrynnyk has a reputation here as a sensitive person and a good surgeon, thanks to unlimited practice and no accountability for failures. He is displeased that Stus supposedly refused to go under his knife. The memory of the Russian dissident Yury Galanskov, who died in 1972 as a result of a carelessly performed operation and lack of care, was still fresh here.

However, it later turned out that no one had even asked Stus what he wanted, and his journey to “Haazy” was not a direct one...

They returned me from the hospital to the 17th zone on May 8, 1976. I entered my section, just as I had left it, in felt boots—Stus wasn't there. In the second section, a tall man in a white shirt was lying on the bunks with a book in his hands. He peered at me with penetrating dark-brown eyes and said:

“Thank God... I’ve missed you,” were the words with which Vasyl Stus greeted me.

“How so, you don’t even know me?”

“I figured it out. It’s hard for me here with this international crowd without a single kindred spirit.”

He put down his book, got dressed, and we went “into orbit”—along the double path at the edge of our small zone, along the “zapretka” (it was harder for the snitches to eavesdrop on conversations while walking).

Vasyl told me they had taken him to “Haazy” via the Kyiv KGB, thinking that in his condition he would be more compliant and might write a “repentance.” The impression of that trip to Ukraine was reflected in this poem, which was probably composed then, because, I swear to God, Vasyl told it to me in almost these very words:

What an unbearable native foreign land...

This wreckage of paradise, this temple, having known defilement.

You have returned. But the land does not return,

Its coffin is a stone darkness...

This is about Kyiv, devastated by the 1972 arrests. He recounted that his wife Valentyna was detained at work on the day of his arrival, and their 9-year-old son Dmytro was summoned to the children’s room at the police station, though they didn’t even know about his arrival. Then his almost 80-year-old mother came from Donetsk for a visit. But they did not grant a visit to anyone:

How hard it is to arrive and not

to see. How hard, not to meet...

Diligently, Kyiv, you hid me

in these black nooks, shelters, secret places...

Having later read this poem, I vividly felt all those circumstances, because I myself had spent over 13 months in those nooks at 33 Volodymyrska Street. A deathly silence: the guards walk down the corridor in slippers (the floor is covered with a carpet), constantly peeking through the peephole. You are allowed to lie down only with your face visible. You can only cover your eyes from the light with a handkerchief, folded into a quadruple-layered strip. If you need to be taken to the investigator, the “food hatch” (the small opening through which food is passed) opens in the door and the guard whispers:

“On ‘O.’”

You have to answer: “Ovsiienko.” This is to prevent a cellmate from going instead of you. The guard orders you to keep your hands behind your back, and while leading you through the corridor and yard to the investigation building, he loudly snaps his fingers. And some snap with their mouths—that’s professional skill! Because someone who isn’t a professional claps their hands or jingles their keys: hide, everyone, a particularly dangerous criminal is being led! In all of 13 months, I only once saw a tall man in the corridor—could it have been Stus? They shoved me into some empty cell, a quarrel broke out among the guards who had misunderstood each other. An extraordinary event…

In the aforementioned poem, there was a somewhat desperate note, which Vasyl later rejected:

How hard to arrive and to leave,

Suppressing the scant tear of insult!

Rejoice, you hypocrites and icon-smearers,

That I have neither hope nor goal.

But then came the angry lines:

But I myself exist, and my chest’s pain exists,

And there is a tear that burns through

The stone wall where a flower blooms

In three screams of color, in three screams of madness.

Vasyl was very pleased with this “flower” as a successful find, reading me this poem later in the Urals. He would thunder in his powerful voice until you were filled with his pain, for it was your pain too:

Your soul collapsed right here,

Half of your chest is gone,

For the charm of your Ukraine is vanishing

And a black octopus sucks your sick heart.

After this poem, Vasyl always read another one, about his departure from Ukraine. There, in the KGB building, he categorically refused to speak with the KGB officers, and he spoke harshly with the prosecutor, for which he was sent on transport. Imagine, reader (I don't have to imagine, for I was transported the same way twice), in the prison yard they put handcuffs on you, lock you in the “glass” of a Black Maria, where you sit, squeezed on all sides by metal, they bring you to Boryspil airport, where the roar of one plane rolls onto the roar of another, they station soldiers with automatic rifles and dogs, and lead you to the plane’s stairs. You have but a step to take, and you look around for someone to say goodbye to, because maybe you will never see Ukraine again, and all you see is this convoy and somewhere there, poplars on the horizon:

“Halt!” a cry from the left—

“Stop him! Stop him!”

...Ukraine! Be happy!

Dream-poplar! Farewell!

…Masses of thunder crash

down upon your head…

Perish, you aerodromes!

Turn to ash in your hundred sorrows!

…The blood surged… To stay behind!…

To remain!… At the edge!…

…We shall dance yet, my brother,

On the blade of an open knife.

You can feel the blood in you surge towards your native land, but they grab you by the arms, lead you to the tail of the plane, soldiers sit on both sides, an officer in front. Only then are the passengers allowed to board. They glance at you: what a cutthroat they’re transporting! But they are transporting a poet, tortured for the word of truth. The soldier shyly covers your handcuffs with your hat. If you move your hands a little, they go—click!—and tighten on your hands. Your hands turn blue, and you don’t want to move. They lead you off the plane last and remove the handcuffs only inside the Black Maria.

Stus’s poem “Today, today the plane departs…” is probably about these same travels.

This is how Vasyl was brought from Moscow to Kyiv (from Mordovia to Moscow by Stolypin car), and this is how he was taken back to Moscow. On transport, he said, he spent about two weeks:

“By God’s grace I didn't perish on the way on that bread and herring. And they chose a fine day for the operation—December 10th...”

“And someone marked some fateful dates for me…”

Indeed, Vasyl came into this world on Christmas Day, in the year of our Lord 1938. His mother was afraid to register his birth on the seventh of January, so she registered it as the sixth. Once, in the last year of his life, already in the Urals, in Kuchino, in my presence Vasyl asked the deeply believing self-taught theologian, Grandpa Semyon Pokutnyk (Skalych):

“What does it mean for a man to be born on such a great holiday?”

“It is an additional grace of God, a blessing,” said the old man. “But to whom much is given, much will be required.”

Indeed, for he was arrested on the eve of the Orthodox New Year, January 12, 1972. The perforated ulcer occurred just as the signing of the Final Act of the Helsinki Conference was being triumphantly announced on the radio—August 2, 1975. He was operated on on Human Rights Day—December 10, 1975. And he died on a memorable date: on September 5, 1918, the Sovnarkom decree on the Red Terror was signed—this terror lasted 73 years. At that time, Vasyl did not yet know that the 20th anniversary of his speech at the “Ukraina” cinema (September 4, 1965) in defense of the arrested Sixtiers would be the day of his death. And it happened exactly one year after the death of Yuriy Lytvyn (September 4, 1984). Such are the “fateful dates.”

Те, що було за смертю, я спізнав,

всю силу таємничого діяння,

весь морок неб і твань землі движку.

І тяжко жити, цим знанням підперши

свою оселю, витрухлу на пустку...

Vasyl’s operation was severe: only one-quarter of his stomach was left. To write such otherworldly poems, one had to have been THERE. Now the poem “How good it is that I do not fear death…” is often quoted. They say that everyone is afraid, and those who aren't are liars. Fear is a natural reaction of a living organism to danger. But courage lies in overcoming one’s fear. Vasyl, it seems, overcame it. And so, it was decided to tighten his regime.

This 17-A zone is also a strict-regime one, but the regime in it is much stricter than in zones 3/5 and 19. And it’s quite famous, God bless. Valentyn Moroz wrote his “Report from the Beria Reserve” here. The Russians Yuli Daniel and Andrei Sinyavsky served time here. Viacheslav Chornovil began his term here. Not long ago, they dispatched the Latvian Gunārs Rode, the Russian Yevgeniy Pashnin, the Moscow democrat Kronid Lyubarsky, and the Ukrainian Dmytro Kvetsko from here to Vladimir Prison, and the day before my arrival, a fine lad from Sambir, Zorian Popadiuk. On October 30, 1975, I was settled in his well-lived-in place, now surrounded by snitches. For a sharp conversation with the KGB and with “representatives of the Ukrainian public”—such visitors occasionally came to see us.

Now Vasyl and I will be here together… Of course, in our future interactions, we were not equal partners, but Vasyl, it seems to me, always treated me with particular kindness. Now I understand why: it was a credit granted to my youth. Older people simply love the young and therefore forgive them much, even praise them, recalling themselves at that age.

On one of the very first days of our acquaintance, Vasyl and I went behind an abandoned barrack to a rosehip bush and a flowerbed that had been dug up. I knew that on this spot Mykhailo Mykhailovych Soroka had died, a participant in the Ukrainian underground, a prisoner of Polish, Stalinist, Khrushchevite, and Brezhnevite concentration camps. It was he who, upon being released from captivity somewhere around the end of the 1940s, received an assignment from the Main Command of the UPA to gather information on the location of concentration camps and the conditions of political prisoners. Soroka fulfilled the task, but for this he was imprisoned for another 25 years. However, the U.S. government used his information to expose the former Prosecutor General of the USSR, Vyshinsky, who had arrived in America to represent the USSR at the UN. It was said that Vyshinsky, upon hearing this, gave up the ghost.

Mykhailo Soroka was one of the organizers of the political prisoners’ uprising in the camps of the North (Kengir, 1954). A legendary figure, the greatest authority among Ukrainian prisoners for a quarter of a century. No less legendary was the figure of his wife, Kateryna Zarytska (she headed the UPA’s medical service). After being tortured, she received a 25-year prison sentence, which she served together with Dariya Husyak and Halyna Didyk. Only in the last years of their imprisonment did these women serve their time in Mordovian concentration camps, with Kateryna in particular spending some time in this very 17th zone, but in the women’s section. The zones were separated only by a few wire and wooden fences. Soroka would secretly climb onto some high point and sometimes see his wife. Many people told me about these individuals with admiration, as some of the best ever born of a Cossack mother. But let those who knew them personally write about them.

So, it was along this path that on June 16, 1971, Mykhailo Soroka was walking with Mykhailo Horyn. Horyn went ahead, as Soroka usually descended the hill second, so as not to let it be noticed that his heart was giving him trouble… He sat down, suddenly feeling a sharp pain, while Horyn continued on, talking about something. He looked back, rushed to help him lie down on the grass, ran for a doctor, but there was only a prisoner-orderly who knew nothing of medicine. Instead of giving the man with a heart condition medicine, propping him up against a wall, and leaving him in peace, he began to perform artificial respiration. Only a painful tear rolled from Mykhailo Soroka’s eye… This flowerbed is like his grave. He was buried in Barashevo. From there, his ashes were moved to Lviv, and on September 28, 1992, he was reburied in the Lychakiv Cemetery, along with the ashes of his wife, Kateryna Zarytska, which were also brought there.

As soon as it got warm, Vasyl Stus dug up the flowerbed. We found seeds for marigolds and matthiolas. We started tending the flowers, and by God's will and our efforts, they bloomed profusely, delighting our eyes and souls. But Zinenko was informed that the Ukrainians had created a sanctuary for themselves here (we were joined by the twenty-fivers and insurgents Ivan Chapurda and Roman Semenyuk, who had been transferred here from the 19th zone). So Zinenko, while we were at work, ordered two *suki*, Kononenko and Islamov, to uproot the rosehip, tear the bush to pieces, and plant it opposite the headquarters, and to trample the flowers. It was painful to watch such desecration.

However, even after this, shoots sprouted in the flowerbed, and the bush revived. And some flowers turned green again. But I had to tend to them without Vasyl, as he was periodically in the punishment cell, and it was impossible to protect him from abuse. Everyone here who could pass information about our life to the outside world is deprived of visits.

…Two barracks, one of which is already abandoned. The headquarters and the canteen. Beyond the gates is the work zone, where we sew work gloves. In the middle of the zone is a hollow with rainwater. They say executed prisoners are buried here, which is why it has sunk. In the zones, when they started any construction, they often came across human bones. Ivan Palamarchuk, convicted on charges of collaborating with the Germans, showed me a small wood behind the zone:

“My father lies there. And in Barashevo, where the hospital is, there are eight thousand nuns. The burial sites were planted with pine trees.”

This poem must be about the 17th zone:

Зима. Паркан і чорний кіт

на білому снігу.

І ворон між вербових віт

гнеться в дугу.

Дві похнюплені сосни

смертну чують корч.

Кругом мерці, і їхні сни

стоять, мов сосни, сторч.

Дві брами, вгрузлі в землю, тьма.

Колошкає Танар.

І духу-продиху нема

од жалібниць, од мар.

Зима. Паркан. І чорний стовп.

Мережка шпичаків.

І коней золотий галоп.

Вогненний грім підків.

There were only about 70 prisoners left in this zone, so the kitchen was “downsized.” Slop from another section is brought in thermoses by Masha the mare. Though, it seems, it was now a horse that had inherited the name of its deceased predecessor. “Masha the mare” knew her route from zone to zone by heart. They open the gates for her without asking for a name, an article, or a sentence. Casting a sidelong glance as the cart moves, she turns around in the yard and stops right by the kitchen. A handful of grass or some leftovers awaits her there. The news flies around the zone: “Masha’s here!” You grab a spoon, a ration of bread, and go to slurp the watery soup. The zeks say: “Masha is our joy.” And the Romanian, Valeriu Graur, who liked to speak in aphorisms, once proclaimed: “Masha is the best person in the administration.”

The administration of the section consists of Captain Oleksandr Zinenko, who looks ready to burst out of his uniform, and his assistant, Lieutenant Ulevaty, who loves to stop a zek and, while talking, rummage through his pockets. We rarely see the colony chief and his deputies: they don't get involved in “politics”; they have enough to deal with their three thousand “criminals.”

Most of the prisoners were older men who were serving time for wartime cases. For collaboration with the Germans, for partisan struggle against the Soviet occupation—Lithuanians, Estonians, Latvians. And, of course, Belarusians and Ukrainians. There were about 15 dissidents.

There is Ivan Andriyovych Chapurda, a man of kind peasant nature from the Chortkiv district in Ternopil Oblast (I have now forgotten the name of the village, but after my release, I wrote a letter to his sons. I think it was Sosulivka). He feeds pigeons from his meager ration and mumbles something to them. Lieutenant Ulevaty, saving the people’s property, put the old man in the punishment cell for 15 days. He fell ill there and soon died in the hospital in his 23rd year of imprisonment. Vasyl Stus mentions him in his now-famous letter to his son Dmytro, dated April 25, 1979.

You see, son, I very much want you to grow up to be an honest, courageous, wise man. Because a person can only be so. Another will live, vegetate, guzzle from more than one Egyptian pitcher—until he kicks the bucket. But was he a person? Did he have a life? Did he leave a good trace behind him? I recall one old man. Hungry himself, when he caught a sick, still-yellow-beaked baby pigeon (it had a sick leg), he fed it bread from his own mouth, gave it water to drink. That little pigeon would hop after him as if he were its father. And what? The pigeon recovered, grew up, gained strength. I don’t know if it was grateful or not (that’s not the point!), and if it was grateful—how so. But in my memory—as long as I live—will be that destitute old man, upon whose shoulders, arms, palms, and head pigeons would land (the old man has since died). And because of this, because I saw it and other people saw it—the world became a better place. For I and others wanted to live so that pigeons would land on our shoulders too…

During the harsh winter at the beginning of 1976, pigeons and sparrows really would fly right into our hands, begging for food. They would fall in mid-flight. We would pick them up and warm them in the workshop. This enraged the authorities. A guard with the characteristic surname Kyshka recounts how zeks were brought in and were standing in an enclosure, stomping their feet in the frost. “And I say to them: ‘My geese walk around barefoot all winter, and it’s nothing. Ha-ha-ha!’” What does a man like that care about a pigeon? I am certain this poem is about Ivan Chapurda:

Коли б ви мали, голуби,

хоч трохи серця – ви б його на крила

взяли до себе і перенесли

на Україну, геть за ним стужілу.

До вас він добру руку піднесе

і озоветься – щедро і заклично:

– Ану до мене – ось вам їсти й пити:

крихти на стежці, в черепку – вода.

Ану, маленький, що на хору ніжку

так часто припадаєш, – дай-но я

із лапки вийму скалку, просто з губ

тебе, ще жовтодзьобе, нагодую

і дам злетіти в небо із руки.

…Той Бог птахів, і провесни, і хмар,

і молодої зелені шумкої,

помолоділої по ста струмках

небесної весни, – він все те бачить,

і квапить вік, і квапить пружно лет

до вічности, до вічної безодні.

Here is Pyatras Paulaitis, a man of tall stature and spirit. He washes dishes in the kitchen. He is a former Lithuanian ambassador to Italy, Spain, and Portugal. During the German occupation, he edited a Lithuanian newspaper. The Germans shut it down, and the editor had to go underground. However, the red “liberators” accused him of collaborating with the German occupiers and gave him 25 years. He was released in 1956, but, as it turned out, “by mistake”—a few months later, he was given another 25.

August Reingold. Doctor of Law from the University of Tartu. Lieutenant Ulevaty, I don’t remember for what reason, said to Reingold: “You and I will yet meet on a narrow path.” “If ve meet, I vill aim vell,” the Estonian replied slowly but clearly, articulating the Russian words. The ruling: “Threatened a superior.” 15 days in the punishment cell. Since Reingold was already an invalid and did not sew gloves, there was no point wasting the watery soup on him. This meant he was given the punishment cell without being let out for work, and for such prisoners hot food is given once every two days. Without fats or sugar. And 400 g of bread, boiling water, and salt daily. After New Year's, he and I were in the punishment cell together in the 19th zone. I was a “terrorist” of the same sort: I told Ulevaty that he would not escape judgment. Also “threatened a superior.” And also, “failed to appear for a political education session, and arrived 5 minutes before it ended.” I happened to have stayed too long at old Volodymyr Kaznovsky's place.

Old Volodymyr—towering, emaciated, with a huge bald head—leaning on a crutch and groaning with every breath, makes his expedition to the latrine. He covers the 50-meter journey there and back in half an hour. He is kept in the medical unit. Every evening, he crawls out onto the porch to listen to the news, which always began like this: “This is Moscow speaking. We bring you the latest news. Today, the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, comrade Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev…” The old man waits for someone to come and talk. He said little about himself, fearing he would worsen his situation. And he wanted to at least die at liberty. Under the Germans, he had served in the Ukrainian police, helping the insurgents. He was imprisoned somewhere in 1957. Vasyl and I spent no small effort to get him to agree to have his name included in our lists of political prisoners, which were distributed in the West. And—lo and behold—it turned out the old man had a son abroad! He began to press for his *aktirovka*. This is a form of release: a medical commission declares a prisoner chronically ill, and then a court can release him early. But few of those released through *aktirovka* ever made it home, and those who did, did not live long. The calculation was reliable. Some even began to fear *aktirovka*: here, in the zone, one could still languish, but after surviving the shock, one could no longer adapt to new conditions. This was precisely the fate that befell Kaznovsky: he made it to his sister’s in Yaremche and then died, already holding a ticket for a plane abroad (or perhaps he died on the plane).

Roman Semenyuk, born in 1928. A peasant boy from near Sokal, he was drafted into the Soviet Army in 1949, but it was discovered that he had collaborated with insurgents. 25 years of imprisonment. In the early 1960s, he escaped with Anton Oliinyk. Anton was shot, with “newly discovered crimes” pinned on him, and Roman was given an additional 3 years of prison on top of his 25. Mr. Roman is one of the few prisoners of the old cohort who openly joined the dissidents and participated in our protest actions.

Paruyr Hayrikyan. Almost my age-mate, he had already become a recognized leader of the National United Party of Armenia. Stus was the first to join in observing April 24 with a hunger strike in memory of the victims of the 1915 Armenian genocide—thus was born the idea of admitting non-Armenians as sympathizing members to the party. Vasyl sincerely loved Paruyr, as he did all the Armenians he knew in other camps, and received their love in return. Paruyr is exceptionally talented precisely as a politician, as a public figure. This was already evident in how he could organize actions, what complex combinations he would play out to catch or expose an informant or to transmit information to the outside world. In addition, he is a poet and a singer. How mournfully and penetratingly his voice echoed in the punishment cell corridor when we were there at the same time. Even the cops would listen, spellbound, and not shout at him.

Vitaliy Lysenko and Yuriy Butenko—these guys aroused some mistrust because they were accused of espionage, so it was difficult for them to defend themselves from the administration, and they had to be quieter. However, when it came to defending Vasyl, they participated in the protests.

Vasyl loved to chat with Ivan Musiyovych Palamarchuk. He knew music well. The accusation of collaborating with the German occupiers gave such people no opportunity for self-defense in the political camps. They worked in silence, awaiting the end of their 25- or 15-year terms. Knowing they were defenseless, the administration tried to use them against us as informers, and some did go along with such collaboration. But this snitching was repugnant to almost everyone, even to people like our brigadier, Prykmeta.

There, in the 17th zone, Stus would let me read some of his poems, among which the impression from this one has stuck in my memory:

Allow me today, around six o’clock,

When evening falls all around

and the traffic starts to rumble at rush hour—

I, suddenly from sorrow, from a choked-up sky,

from oblivion, from endless separation,

intoxicated from long vexation,

will fall upon Brest-Litovsk Prospekt,

onto that alienated Fourth Glade,

where only the mocking rumble of the highway

will tell me that the fearful thumping of my heart

beats in unison with my native land.

All these are Kyiv realities that surfaced in his memory: somewhere his wife Valentyna struggles with adversity, somewhere his son Dmytro, the house at 62 Lvivska Street with its “paradisiacal”—because it's home—gate. All that is now renamed, destroyed (where their house was, there is now a road opposite the “Dachna” bus station leading to the Ring Road), but it has remained a poetic image that wrings a tear from the heart, as if it were about one’s own pain:

From the human anthill, from separation,

I will wrench the memory of long-forgotten days,

that have become a dream and a sorrowful reality,

like wounds, completely covered by a scar.

You do not object, my love, you do not object?

Oh, do not be afraid: among the human crowd

I will vanish, dissolve, get lost,

so that your fearful glance does not accidentally

plunge like a knife into my heart.

So do not be afraid—I will pass like a shadow...

I will touch you with a singed wing, with parched

lips—just to taste, with the corner of my mouth,

your sorrow.

So do not be afraid: I will pass like a shadow.

And when, like a pensive girl,

who has wronged the whole world

with the childlike purity of her gaze

and the weakness of her own chastity,

you step unhurriedly from the tram

and cross the road to dive

into the jagged dusk of the watchful pines, —

then I will tear my heart out for you,

wounding myself on the thorny thickets,

watching your trace, which from the edge

of my soul has been laid across the whole world.

I will follow in your trace, like a feral dog,

hiding in the hollows of your footsteps

my shame, my dread, my offense,

and joy, and thirst, and fierce pain...

I will be but the shadow of a shadow of a shadow,

I will waste away from face, from experience, from years,

as a single sinewy leaf of the heart

I will roll under the wind of my own storms.

...Here is our porch. You are already at the door.

You pressed the bell and so lightly

opened the ponderous paradise gate.

Our son's voice called out. I wanted to cry out. But

there was no strength to make a sound.

And then—the painfully familiar entourage of our zone:

…The dream broke. On the wall swayed,

bisected by a noose, the road

to my courtyard. And the barbed wire,

swollen with night, ran like spiders

across the frozen wall. The dull ceiling light

stirred the night’s watery soup. Dawn

hung over the palisade. The shrill

bell, like a cork, popped from the bottle of slumber

the sludge of a new day…

…To die on the road of return

is too sweet for the Lord

not to have placed it as a headrest in our fate.

The sludge of a new day…” Reveille, roll call, watery soup, line-up for work, sewing gloves, watery soup, work, inspection, watery soup... You get a little relief in the evening. You can read for 2-3 hours, talk to people. But above all this, the loudspeaker blares. Both in the section and outside. Nowhere to concentrate. And to write—there is simply nowhere. A movie, something like “Lenin in October”—once a month. And rare letters. You have the right to write two letters a month, and receive them without limit, but they find “forbidden information” in them and confiscate them. Both your letters and the ones to you. For a person of intellectual labor, information starvation is no easier than a lack of food. And on the radio and in the press—an empty void.

And yet, in the zone, there were bright hours. There was the joy of conversing with people and, obviously, the mysterious solace of creativity, even though those poems were raw pain. I am particularly struck by the details of our zek life, filtered through the poet’s pained heart. Vasyl’s greatest concern was to save these poems. It was here that real dramas played out, here that the tragedy of his life lay.

Shortly after my return from the hospital, they trumped up some petty charge against Vasyl and put him in the punishment cell for 15 days. There was no way to pass information about this to the outside world, so it made no sense to show solidarity with Vasyl or start some protest action: if the world doesn't know about it, the demand will not be met. But it was impossible not to protest either. The first idea was a hunger strike. But that is too difficult and ineffective. Then Roman Semenyuk said he was starting a partial hunger strike: refusing either breakfast, lunch, or dinner. The idea was well-received: without suffering too much, we would still demonstrate our solidarity. Absolutely all the dissidents in the zone took part in the action: the Jew Mykhailo Heifets, the Romanian Valeriu Graur, the Russians Vladimir Kuzyukin and Pyotr Sartakov, the Ukrainians Viktor Lysenko and Yuriy Butenko, the Armenian Paruyr Hayrikyan, as well as Roman Semenyuk and I. Zinenko was furious:

“They eat like horses, and they say they are on a hunger strike.”

This went on for 15 days. Of course, we didn't get Vasyl out of the punishment cell, but we still felt like human beings. When I later, somewhat sheepishly, told Vasyl about this action, he comforted me:

“Vasyl, even if you had eaten two rations plus a hospital ration 5-B, and the commissary on top of that—it still would have been a partial hunger strike.”

Vasyl returned from the punishment cell in a grave condition. I come back from work for lunch—he’s in the yard. Seeing me, he puts on an unexpectedly stern expression. I wonder what’s wrong with him.

“Vasyl, please accept my condolences on the death of your father.”

His heart responded to everyone's misfortune. My father had died back on May 8, but the news only reached me on the 21st, when Stus was in the punishment cell. Later we held a forty-day memorial for my father: we made a salad from weeds, dressed it with oil, brewed some tea... Incidentally, those weeds helped us a lot, as our food was just potatoes and groats, with no vitamins.

I need an angel of vengeance. My protector,

my shield that will not let me fall,

will not let me rot in the hell of worldly

reproach. Where are you, appear!

For all ends are converging. All rivers

are reaching their mouths. And the sleepless sea

is churning and murmuring, and soon—

in defiance of all troubles—it will boil.

So do not delay. Hurry, angel of vengeance,

while my black anger bristles,

while a red haze crawls

like madness before my eyes.

We began to think about how to alleviate Vasyl's situation. And someone with more experience recalled that it was possible to apply for temporary disability status. This allowed one to work not 8, but 6 hours, and to sew 3/4 of the glove quota, as well as to receive slightly better food. Swallowing his pride, Vasyl wrote such an application in order to snatch an extra two hours for himself. But to establish disability, one had to go to the hospital in Barashevo. As he was getting ready, Vasyl took with him a volume of some philosopher—dense, compact reading, so as not to overly irritate the authorities. And that’s when the incident occurred. Zinenko did not allow him to take the book: “You are going for treatment, not for study.” This is a form of mockery. The regime in the hospital is much milder, but there is absolutely nothing to do there: books are not allowed through, except for some, rarely. You just walk around there, bored, between the barracks and the morgue, looking at the stack of coffins kept at the ready, which is very conducive to a speedy recovery…

So, they didn't let Vasyl have his tome. Vasyl refused to go without the book. But the order had already been given, the convoy had arrived. They twisted Vasyl’s arms, put handcuffs on him, and shoved him into a “glass”—a cell in the Black Maria measuring approximately 120x60x60 cm. In the hospital, Vasyl filed a complaint in which he called Zinenko a fascist. I don't think this greatly offended an ox like Zinenko, but it was sufficient grounds for further retaliation. Vasyl was granted disability, but a few days after returning to the 17th zone, Zinenko found a reason to throw Stus into the punishment cell. So much for Vasyl's disability…

This time, it seems, we managed to get the word out. And I was hoping for a visit on July 11. To my surprise, I wasn’t deprived of it. My mother and sister were already on their way, they had gone to the bus, but they were overtaken by my telegram telling them not to come. On July 9, I myself was prepared for transport. On the way, I understood that it was to Kyiv, “to have my brain washed.” The “higher operational considerations” were probably something like this: Ovsiienko’s prison term is ending soon, he was not firm at the trial, he pleaded guilty, now his father has died, he recently had surgery—so might he not write a “repentance,” might he not slander the Mordovian company in the press? They could release him a few months early and thus finally break him and isolate him from his like-minded peers. True, he tries to resist, he has not spoken to the KGB for almost a year, but here we will bring his relatives, send his former teachers and university professors to him… The plan failed. In Kyiv, on August 20, I submitted a statement that my admission of guilt at the trial was the forced consequence of psychiatric terror. So, I was returned to my dear Mordovia without any special honors (not by plane, but by ordinary transport) and on September 11—the very day of Mao Zedong’s death—I arrived at the familiar 19th zone. It was much easier here than in the 17th.

Immediately, another piece of news: it turns out that 17-A no longer exists as a political zone. It was given to criminals, and our “contingent” was dispersed to other zones in Mordovia, and some to the Urals. Stus (though he is currently in the hospital), Heifets, Lysenko, Semenyuk, and Kuzyukin ended up in the 19th zone. Hayrikyan exposed the latter as an informant, so he wasn't even allowed back into the zone—he was pardoned.

Before continuing the story, I must talk about Mykhailo Heifets, a Russian-speaking Jewish writer from Leningrad. He is already over 40. A Russian language teacher for whom it was difficult to be disingenuous with his students, so he had to turn to literary work for a living—in particular, he ghostwrote a book for some general, who then removed the credit “Literary transcription by M. Heifets.” He knew the poet Joseph Brodsky well and wrote a long article about his work, defining him as a poet of genius. Brodsky served 5 years in exile and then emigrated. With 9 years of Soviet schooling, he became a university professor there... Heifets managed to see in Brodsky's poems what was only hinted at (for instance, the Czechoslovak events of 1968) and sharpened the perspective on them. A few conversations, a few notes—and there you have it, a sentence: 4 years of camps and 2 of exile. He considered this turn of fate a lucky one while under investigation: invaluable material was falling into his hands. Being a man of encyclopedic knowledge and phenomenal memory, he used them to the best effect: while he was still serving the last months of his imprisonment, his book “Place and Time” was published in Paris, which says many good things about us, Ukrainians: I heard an excerpt about myself on Radio Liberty sometime in 1978. In 1983, “Suchasnist” published his book “Ukrainian Silhouettes,” which begins with a long essay on Vasyl Stus and ends with a short one on me. We Ukrainians knew how to suffer much in concentration camps, but there was no one to write about it. Thanks to the Jew Mykhailo Heifets: nothing better has been written about Stus to this day than his essay.

There he would be, Mr. Mykhailo, walking along the fence, hands thrust into his sleeves, his pea coat hanging on him like on a scarecrow, his hat like it was on a post, shuffling his boots, even the gloves from under his sewing machine came out looking like squashed frogs... “You, Mr. Mykhailo,” I used to tell him, “must be that very legendary Wandering Jew.” There, by the fence, he would incubate whole chunks of books, and then, sitting down somewhere, quickly write them down.

Here, in the 19th zone, there were several Jewish “hijackers”: Mikhail Korenblit, Boris Penson; Mikhail Goldfeld, Lassal Kaminsky, and Anatoly Azernikov had already been released. We had very good relations with them: not for nothing did anti-Ukrainian periodicals at the time write about the “union of the trident and the Star of David.” That union was being forged both in the West and in the East—in the Mordovian and Perm concentration camps. But I have a special affection for Heifets. He was one of the first to greet me with a kind word in the 17th zone, where I had been brought into solitude, he took a lively interest in Ukrainian affairs, tried to read in our language, and asked me to speak Ukrainian with him. I think it wasn't just to learn the language, but also to give me a chance to speak my mind in my own tongue. The action in defense of Stus brought us very close. And then this incident happened.

Back in the 17th zone, in Ozernoye, Vasyl’s cell was searched and a notebook of poems was confiscated. In the hospital, he was informed that the notebook had been confiscated and destroyed as having no value. A rough draft remained with Heifets in the zone. What to do? We had to save what we had. “Let’s divide it up and memorize it,” Heifets suggests to me and Roman Semenyuk. He takes a portion for himself as well. But it’s not easy. Those poems are heavy as stones. I hadn't even finished transcribing a few of them when I was taken to Kyiv on July 9. And so, on one of my first days in the 19th zone, in September, Heifets brings me a notebook of poems, transcribed in his chicken scratch, and asks me to make a clean copy of the poems. And then he dictates a couple of dozen more poems to me from memory. And this from a man who had no command of our language at all.

Soon Vasyl returned from the hospital with his notebook. It turned out he had been “erroneously” informed of its destruction. Similar “errors” also occurred in the women’s zone regarding the drawings, embroideries, and poems of Stefania Shabatura, Nadiya Svitlychna, and Iryna Kalynets. Some were indeed destroyed. I remember how Stus, Heifets, and Sergey Soldatov went to the KGB officer Colonel Drotenko to argue about this, and all the dissidents in the zone declared protests.

On numerous occasions, the so-called Ukrainian public, led by KGB officers, came to Mordovia. Scholars with tractor drivers. They would summon us for “educational talks.” In one such talk in October 1975, I spoke very harshly with them, because at that very time the female political prisoners in the women’s zone in Barashevo were holding a prolonged hunger strike demanding medical treatment for Vasyl Stus. The poet Iryna Kalynets, the artist Stefania Shabatura, Nadiya Svitlychna, Iryna Senyk, Oksana Popovych were on hunger strike, along with the Lithuanian Nijolė Sadūnaitė… At one point, Iryna Kalynets held a forty-day hunger strike. So when these “representatives of the public” asked what wishes I had, I told them: “Return the things you took from the female political prisoners so they will stop their hunger strike.” And they had taken their poems, embroideries, drawings, ex-libris. – “Well, what if they like to go on hunger strikes?” At this, I exploded and called them fascists. For this, on October 30, 1975, I was transferred from the 19th zone to zone 17-A, in the settlement of Umor (in the Mordovian language), posyolok Ozyorny. This was now the Tengushevsky District. And October 30 is the Day of the Soviet Political Prisoner. There was supposed to be a hunger strike on this day. The day before, I had written a rather sharp protest statement, addressed it to “USA, New York, UN, Human Rights Committee,” and dropped it in the box marked “For Complaints and Statements.” That is, I effectively handed it to the administration. Later, this statement was added to my third indictment…

From the memoirs of Iryna Kalynets:

I cannot get used to this thought, and above all to the word “memoir,” against which I rebel internally and unconsciously. For how can one write a memoir about someone with whom you converse from time to time, who is simply nearby, though behind an invisible wall, as if behind a camp fence? Perhaps this is where this completely non-mystical unreality begins: a brother-in-arms from the camp years was daily very close—within arm’s reach, just beyond two rows of wooden pickets and barbed wire, separated by a wide strip of plowed earth, called the “zapretka” in camp parlance. And to “see” him, it was enough to climb onto the roof of the barrack at least once every six months. But “nearby” really was nearby: every day at the same hour we sat down at the table, ate the same food, sewed the same cursed gloves, greeted each other through the wires and pickets every morning, and on Christmas night... So I will tell you about a poem written by the poet on Christmas night and gifted to his sisters-in-struggle in the women’s zone.

We had just risen from the festive table, from the Holy Supper, where Orysia Senyk had concocted almost real kutia from the meager camp pearl barley, a handful of ground poppy seeds sent in a parcel last summer, and prudently saved sugar… We stood up laughing, cheered, because someone had said that on this magical night you should sit stock-still at the supper table on a knotted rope under your backside. And the more knots, the better, because then the affairs of our enemies would get all tangled up. We each managed to get a piece of rope and knotted up curls for all time…

So, after supping on not quite 12, but still festive dishes, because there was also uzvar with the kutia and yesterday’s fried fish, we ran out into the crisp frost, under the high-browed, star-filled Mordovian sky, and raising our voices above the gloomy pickets, we fluttered into the night: “Vasyl! Good evening, Holy evening!” And hearing the familiar “ahoy!” we launched our voices up to the stars to the accompaniment of the barbed wire—in a carol for Vasyl. We sang quite decently, although after the second or third carol the bitter frost scratched our throats like barbed wire…

The next day, there was an opportunity to write a letter to Vasyl: “We caroled for you—did you hear?”

The reply came in the evening—a strange, anxious, joyful, sad (all at once) anticipation of unfolding an uncensored letter, passed secretly, with a thousand precautions (and this is the very essence of camp life!), Vasyl's small, clear handwriting, between the lace of concise news—the answer to our question: “Yes, I heard something squeaking behind the wires.”

So, we were squeaking? We pretend to be indignant (what a reward for caroling!) and laugh sincerely, happy for our brother’s humor. If a person is joking, it’s for the good… All is well… But, to think, “squeaking behind the wires,” and “something” at that!

And suddenly, right there, on the second page—a poem… A faceted goblet of flowers and girls? A post-carol… This poem—a faceted diamond goblet in sharp barbed wire…

Немов крізь шиби, кроплені дощами,

крізь скрик розлуки, ліхтарів і ґрат

затрембітав тонкими голосами

гранчастий келих квітів і дівчат.

Там мармуровий вруниться акант,

різьбленими лопоче язиками

поколяду – немов за образами –

доносить співу тужний аромат.

Там буриться похмурий амарант

і айстри у покірній непокорі

останні долітовують прозорі

дні вересня – ясноджерельний кант.

І папороті цвітом процвітає

оцей дивочний опівнічний спів.

О, як би я туди до вас хотів –

хоч краєм ока або серця краєм!

Ридають ув аортах солов’ї

і пролітають в вирій, пролітають.

А ті, що йдуть крізь смерті, поринають

в галай-світи, світища-галаї!

Покірні тузі, образи пливуть,

тремтять, мов струни, кроплені сльозою.

Промов же, Україно, за котрою

із загород відкриється нам путь?

Такі-бо забродили алкоголі,

такі надсади і такі хмелі!

Сурмлять у ріг чотири вітри в полі,

і, ніби криця, сталяться жалі.

The secret of the poem—and the secret of Vasyl’s character: outwardly severe, sparing with smiles and jokes, he absorbed impressions of the external world like a sponge, carried his cherished emotions into the depths of his heart like a bee carries honey to the comb, so that later, words honed to a blinding brilliance would form the cup of the poem—for communion with beauty and the genius of creativity.

Iryna Kalynets. “…A Wondrous Midnight Song” // *Ne vidliubyv svoiu tryvohu ranniu...* — Kyiv: Ukr. pysmennyk, 1993.

In the 19th zone, there was a rather rich library collected by the prisoners. After all, you could order literature through the “Book—by Mail” store and subscribe to Soviet press. Foreign press was forbidden. Receiving literature by parcel or package had long been prohibited. The library has a small hall with several tables and bound volumes of newspapers. I would sit there in the evenings and on weekends and plow through a huge pile of books. In particular, half a meter of Sergei Solovyov’s “History of Russia from Ancient Times” in 29 volumes and the slightly smaller “Course of Russian History” by Vasily Klyuchevsky. Then—M. N. Pokrovsky’s “Russian History from Ancient Times” and “Russian History in its Most Condensed Outline” in 4 volumes. For our “bourgeois-nationalist” Mykhailo Hrushevsky was not there. I came to understand the essence of the Russian Empire through these historians. Later, Vasyl Stus also plowed through them, after which he wrote “Oh, enemy, when will you be forgiven…”. That's exactly how it was, “oh, enemy,” not “oh, my people,” as it is mostly published, that he wrote down for me, and I memorized it later in the Urals. It continued: “State of half-sun, half-darkness.” No! “State of darkness and darkness, and darkness, and darkness!” I, having read that Moscow stands on the Kuchkovo swamp, then formulated the shortest program for a future Green Party: “Restore the Kuchkovo swamp.” Only then will there be peace in the world. Moscow has swallowed too large pieces and cannot digest them. Its unsettled blood will roil the world for several more centuries.

Once Vasyl Dolishniy came in: “That’s right, Mr. Vasyl, study. You were sent here for training.” Roman Semenyuk: “What, Mr. Vasyl, are you studying?” – “I’m studying, Mr. Roman. And you?” – “Everything I need to know, I already know.” Indeed, Mr. Roman had 28 years of imprisonment under his belt.

Vasyl managed to send almost all his poems from Mordovia, writing them in a continuous line and replacing certain words with similar-sounding ones: *tiurma* (prison) – *iurma* (crowd), *Ukraina* – *Batkivshchyna* (Fatherland), *koliuchyi drit* (barbed wire) – *boliuchyi svit* (painful world). So as not to offend the censor’s eyes with “cacophonous,” undesirable words in letters. That same autumn, I transcribed his entire white squared notebook, about 60 pages, and kept those poems until my release, bringing them home safely on March 5, 1977. In that white notebook, there were many different readings. As a philologist-pedant, I diligently reproduced everything, though I did not always agree with Vasyl’s punctuation. At home, I typed them up. One copy was saved and brought to me only after my last release in 1988 by my fellow villager, Ivan Rozputenko. Even earlier, I had copied them by hand for Kyivans and gave the notebooks to Olga Heiko-Matusevych. Sometime in September 1977, they were confiscated by the KGB during a search of her father's apartment. My own manuscript was lost irrevocably—among others that I entrusted to Mother Earth. These texts, I believe, are of particular value to textologists, because the poems were repeatedly corrected and completely rewritten when the author thought they were lost.

Верни до мене, пам’яте моя!

Нехай на серце ляже ваготою

моя земля з рахманною журбою,

хай сходить співом серце солов’я

в гаю нічному. Пам’яте, верни

із чебреця, із липня жаротою,

хай яблука осіннього достою

в мої червонобокі виснуть сни.

Нехай Дніпра уроча течія

бодай у сні, у маячні струмує.

І я гукну. І край мене почує.

Верни до мене, пам’яте моя!

When did Vasyl Stus write poems? Although I lived in the same barrack with him for some time and worked almost next to him, I rarely got to see it. Because writing in the zone is not an entirely safe thing to do: any guard can take an interest in what you are writing, and might even take it away “for inspection.” So Stus only wrote down the poems; they came to him always and everywhere. This was a man whose mind worked without rest. And this work of the brain was noticeable in how individual words from his internal speech would break through to the outside. This was especially noticeable after his stints in the punishment cell, where a man is free to mumble to himself, where self-control weakens. His tense, pained, focused face rarely brightened, except in good company, or when he was asleep. Then you could see a completely different Vasyl, almost childlike. It seemed to me that this man kept himself in iron blinders his whole life, encasing his refined poet’s soul in the armor of a warrior.

Once he sang me a song that had come to him in the summer of 1971 on St. Volodymyr’s Hill in Kyiv, in anticipation of his fate, which had become intertwined with the fate of the Sixtiers and all of Ukraine. I remembered the melody—impetuous, courageous—and sang it to Vasyl many years later in the Urals, when we were out for a walk in adjacent “courtyards.” “A little off,” said Vasyl, but he didn’t correct me on how it should be. It seems to me that “a little off”—but very beautifully—it is now sung by Olga Bohomolets. And by the Telniuk sisters—Halia and Lesia.

Ще вруняться горді Славутові кручі,

ще синіє річки збурунена гладь,

та вже проминув тебе птахом летючим

твій час, твій останній, попереду – падь.

Ще небо глибоке, ще сонце високе,

та серце замало грудей не пірве:

урвались, подались прекрасні мороки,

і щось тебе кличе, і щось тебе зве!

Розкрилені висі твої пронеслися,

попереду – прірва! І ока не мруж.

Ти бачиш розхрестя дороги? Молися.

Бо ти ще не воїн, і ще ти не муж.

Ще горбляться горді Славутові кручі,

та сторч головою зривається світ.

Чіпляйся за кручі, як терен колючий,

хапайся за небо, як яблуні цвіт.

За обрієм обрій, за далями далі,

допоки напруглий не вигасне день.

Пограбли тополі в високій печалі

твоїх калинових пратужних пісень.

Бо вже ослонився безокрай чужинний

і в жалощах никне зелений розмай.

Прощай, Україно, моя Україно,

чужа Україно, навіки прощай!

In the 19th camp, Vasyl served out his “five-year plan” to the very last day, until January 11, 1977. He was assigned to sand wooden cases for clock mechanisms on a grinding wheel. The new “profession” did not come easy to him. He was angry that he had to expend effort on it, to concentrate, instead of working mechanically while thinking his own thoughts. Our colleague, also a philologist, but an Armenian, Razmik Markosyan, and I tried to help Vasyl after finishing our own work, but it was not easy for Vasyl to accept help. However, the conditions here were easier, the work more varied, the zone large, and the barbed wire was not always in your face. And most importantly—there was a much wider circle of people for communication. In total, there were about 300 men here, about half of them Ukrainians. Approximately a third were convicted on charges of collaborating with the Germans during the war. Far from all of them were guilty of that: those whose guilt the authorities had no doubt about had long since been shot. And here there were many who had become victims of militaristic policy: since there is international tension, society must be “heated up” from within. So they would catch “enemies”—“traitors” from the past and current potential “traitors to the motherland”—dissidents.

The second part of the “contingent” consisted of people who had fought with weapons in hand in the 40s and 50s against the Soviet occupiers: Ukrainian insurgents, Lithuanian “forest brothers,” Estonians, and Latvians. Among them were several Ukrainian twenty-fivers: Mykhailo Zhurakivsky from Yasinia, Ivan Myron from the village of Bychkiv at the very foot of Hoverla, Mykola Konchakivsky from the village of Rudnyky in the Mykolaiv district of Lviv Oblast, and Roman Semenyuk from Sokal.

The last third was made up of dissidents of various shades: young Lithuanians Vidmantas Povilionis and Romas Smailys, the young Latvian Maigonis Rāviņš, the Armenians Razmik Markosyan and Azat Arshakyan, the Moldovan Dzhiku Gimpu, the Jews Mykhailo Heifets, Boris Penson, and Mikhail Korenblit, the Uzbek Babur Shakirov, the Russian from the Estonian Democratic Movement Sergey Soldatov, and a Ukrainian who had lived in Great Britain for 29 years, Mykola Budulak-Sharygin. Toward the end of the year, they transferred Vladimir Osipov, the editor of the Russian Christian journal “Veche,” to us from Barashevo.

Among the Ukrainian dissidents at that time were Ihor Kravtsiv, an engineer from Kharkiv, who became a Ukrainophile in his thirties, which aroused the authorities' suspicion. For reprinting several pages of Ivan Dziuba’s work “Internationalism or Russification?” and for a few telephone conversations, he received a 5-year sentence. Ihor was one of Vasyl's most interesting conversationalists, though they had different views on some things. I remember being present at one of their principled conversations: Ihor tried to convince Vasyl that he needed to spare himself, not to be in a state of constant confrontation with the administration, that ultimately he should realize he did not belong only to himself: our people may have struggled for who knows how long to give birth to Vasyl Stus, and he would just go and perish in another hunger strike that he could have refrained from. Mr. Ihor himself had to take care of his health, as he had constant headaches. Vasyl, however, was uncompromising.

Mykola Budulak had just returned from Vladimir Prison. He was from Vinnytsia Oblast. At 15, he was taken to Germany for labor. He ended up in the British occupation zone and left for Britain, where he graduated from the University of Cambridge. He lived without citizenship, as it was difficult to acquire there, but this did not prevent him from traveling around Europe on business for his firm. But in 1969, he came to Moscow—and here they suddenly discovered that he was a Soviet citizen who had evaded military service (at the age of 15, during the German occupation!) and was also spying for Scotland Yard. By accusing Budulak, the authorities sought to respond to London, from which a large group of Soviet officials had recently been expelled for gathering unauthorized information. The court went to deliberate—and did not return. Three years later, Budulak was informed that he would serve 10 years: “It's nothing, the Queen of England won't declare war on the USSR over you.” Mr. Mykola was fluent in English, French, German, Polish, and Russian, so Vasyl had someone to consult on linguistic nuances while translating Kipling and Rilke.

From the memoirs of Mykhailo Heifets:

Sometime in the summer of 1976, they found a poem in Ukrainian on me, signed with a strange, clearly conspiratorial surname—Kipling. My attempts to prove that the aforementioned Kipling was an English poet and that the poem, deemed subversive, had been published in the USSR in even two Russian translations—by M. Lozinsky and S. Marshak (I showed both to Zinenko, Stus had them)—made no impression. The captain was astute and farsighted; all the Jewish tricks of Khuyfets (as he called me behind my back) did not fool him.

“So you’re saying, Mikhail Ruvimovich, that this Kipling wrote in Ukrainian? In my opinion, it is Stus who writes in Ukrainian,” and he would smile with a look of complete understanding.

Mykhailo Heifets. “There Is No One Greater in Ukrainian Poetry Now...” // *Ne vidliubyv svoiu tryvohu ranniu...* — Kyiv: Ukr. pysmennyk, 1993.

Joseph Rudyard Kipling

To His Son

Translated by Vasyl Stus

Коли ти бережеш залізний спокій

всупір загальній паніці й клятьбі,

коли наперекір хулі жорстокій

між невірів ти віриш сам собі.

Коли ти вмієш ждати без утоми,

обмовлений, не станеш брехуном

ошуканий, не потураєш злому

і власним не хизуєшся добром.

Коли тебе не порабують мрії,

в кормигу дум твій дух себе не дасть,

коли ти знаєш, що за лицедії –

облуда щастя й машкара нещасть.

Коли ти годен правди пильнувати,

з якої вже зискують махлярі,

розбитий витвір знову доробляти,

хоча начиння геть уже старі.

Коли зотлілі нерви, думи, тіло

ти можеш знову кидати у бій,

коли триматися немає сили

і тільки воля владно каже: стій.

Коли в юрбі шляхетності не губиш,

а бувши з королями – простоти,

коли ні враг, ні друг, котрого любиш,

нічим тобі не можуть дорікти.

Коли ти знаєш ціну щохвилини,

коли від неї геть усе береш,

тоді я певен: ти єси людина

і землю всю своєю назовеш.

There were older Ukrainian dissidents here as well, such as Kuzma Dasiv from Boryslav. In his youth, he too had been subjected to forced labor in Germany, about which he told many stories; Mykola Hamula and Mykola Hutsul from Horodenka in Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast—typical distributors of Ukrainian samvydav. In general, by that time the Ukrainian ranks in the 19th zone had thinned: Mykola Slobodyan, Petro Vynnychuk, and Yaromyr Mykytko had been transferred to the Urals; Kuzma Matviyuk, Lyubomyr Starosolsky, and Hryhoriy Makoviichuk had been released.

Vasyl treated the participants of the national liberation war in Western Ukraine with particular respect, sparing no time to ask them questions. And when the old Hutsul, Mykhailo Zhurakivsky from Yasinia, near Hoverla, would take out his Jew’s harp from his bag on Sundays and in turn play and sing melodies that smelled of such dense antiquity that the heart swooned: “But wander, little wanderer, but wander, wander...” Vasyl would be completely moved and would ask the old man to play more.

Стань і вдивляйся: скільки тих облич

довкола виду твого, ніби німби,

так сумовито виграють на дримбі,

хоч Господа на допомогу клич.

Вдивляється у проруб крайсвітів

душа твоя, зайшовшись начуванням.

Тонкоголосе щемне віршування

в подобі лиць – без уст, очей і брів.

І безберега тиша довсібіч!

Усесвіт твій німує і німіє.

І сонце, в душу світячи, не гріє,

в змертвілих лицях – відумерла ніч.

А з безгоміння, з тлуму світового

напружена підноситься рука

і пісня витинається тонка,

як віть оливи у долоні бога,

і фіолетом закипить дорога,

і в серці зірка заболить жалка.

Zhurakivsky's younger countryman, Ivan, with the surname Myron (there is such a type of Ukrainian surname), was also serving a 25-year sentence. He was caught at the age of 22. And so he lived with his preserved youthful, respectful attitude towards his elders, almost deifying his recently deceased mother and avoiding talk about women. Still young in appearance, he had already endured such hardships that it made your hair stand on end. Without a shadow of pride, he spoke of the camp uprisings in the early 50s:

“We went to our deaths, women lay down under tanks, their tracks mangled them, but we broke the Stalinist concentration camp regime. That is why we cannot allow them now to take away from us, one by one, the rights we won at such great cost.”

For him, a man of deep faith and broad education who spoke several languages, politeness and intelligence were natural, so do not doubt that this story, which happened to him, is entirely true, though it may seem incredible to some.

He was sitting one day on his bunk in the section, surrounded by dictionaries. The deputy head of the colony for regime matters, Lieutenant Colonel Velmakin, enters (with a whistling “s” sound):

“Citizen convict, why are you not standing and greeting the superior?”

“With us, the one who enters greets first.”

Velmakin sentenced Myron to 5 days in the punishment cell. The prisoner served them without taking a single crumb of food or a drop of water.

Some time later, the situation repeated—10 days. Myron spent them in the same way, surviving only on prayers. He barely made it out of the punishment cell and collapsed. Mykhailo Zhurakivsky picked him up and nursed him back to health. He revived him with tea, pressing down his tongue with a spoon, because his tongue had filled his whole mouth. After that, Myron seemed to age somehow and stopped playing volleyball with the boys.

We asked him how he dared to go on a “dry” hunger strike. It is known that one can die this way even on the third day from dehydration, a blood clot can form from the thickening of the blood, one can be poisoned by one’s own stomach acids. As for a regular hunger strike, irreversible processes—“self-consumption” of less important organs by the body—begin around the fortieth day. Even after ending the hunger strike, you are still a dead man walking. It is not without reason that Jesus Christ fasted in the desert for 40 days. There is nothing accidental in the Holy Scripture. Later, in 1980, the IRA (Irish Republican Army) boys, led by Robert Sands, went on a hunger strike. They demanded political prisoner status. But the “Iron Lady” Margaret Thatcher was adamant. During the hunger strike, Robert Sands was elected a Member of Parliament. Ten of them died, the rest ended the strike. The shortest one survived was 39 days, the longest—69. Certainly, the conditions in British prisons were somewhat better than in Russian punishment cells.

Here’s Mykola Konchakivskyi, a hefty fellow from Rudnyky near Mykolaiv in the Lviv region. He “rolls logs” at the sawmill. I remember when they first brought me here on April 12, 1974; he was one of the first to approach me. He greeted me, asked how many years I had brought with me (it wasn’t customary to ask about the case), put his hand on my shoulder in a fatherly way, and said:

“Don’t you worry, Pan Vasyl, you’ll do your time just like everyone else. Me, I’ve been at war for thirty-five years now. Since I joined the Polish army as a soldier in ’39, it hasn’t stopped. My twenty-nine years will be up soon.”

When I heard that, my own four years, which had seemed like a very long sentence, suddenly shrank and became so pathetic… Later, Pan Mykola would tell me he had three graves: one in Poland on an obelisk to the defenders of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and two other times his relatives received news that he had fallen and held memorial services for him. Pan Mykola served out his 29 years in the autumn of 1977, returned home, and died a month later…

I must also mention the Lithuanian partisan Ljudas Simutis, who also communicated with the younger generation.

This, I suppose, was our closest circle, which gathered on Sundays and holidays for “tea,” though the tea was just a pretext to fool the guards, who sometimes broke up such gatherings, especially before protests and Soviet holidays. It was here that all the news was discussed, where fascinating conversations took place, which today I could probably only reconstruct, as I am unable to repeat them verbatim.

I arrived from the transit prison very weakened, but luckily, the autumn of 1976 was wonderfully mushroom-rich. Honey mushrooms grew everywhere in the work zone, and button mushrooms under logs and planks. I became the best at gathering them. Ihor Kravtsiv would clean them, and Roman Semeniuk would cook them, hiding in some nook or cranny, of which there were many in this zone. We often got caught doing this, but we still managed to get some extra grub for free. The food in the cafeteria was so bad it’s not even worth remembering. And the bread was good only when the zone’s bakery burned down, and for about two months they brought us real bread, not the special prison-issue kind. Usually, we invited Stus, Budulak, and Konchakivskyi to share these mushrooms.

“Khaima,” Vasyl said. “Somewhere in those ‘Gazs,’ they sewed a prisoner’s stomach into me. It only accepts thin soup, but not human food.”

“Khaima” was Vasyl’s little word, which, as he jokingly explained to me, was supposed to be a contraction for “let the devils torture his mother” (khai katuiut' chorty yoho mamu).

There, over tea, our assessment of the events and the reasons that brought us—the next generation, dubbed the “Sixtiers”—to the Soviet concentration camps was forged. Since I was one of the youngest in our circle, I naturally always sat at the edge of the table, for which Vasyl nicknamed me the “edge-sitter.” That’s more or less how I felt in the Sixtiers’ movement as well: as if I had jumped up and grabbed a higher rung than I was entitled to, and there I hung, dangling my legs and wondering how to pull myself up when I didn’t have the strength. After all, the leading figures of the Sixtiers were 10–20 years older than me; there were only a few of my peers in the camps. It seemed to me that from the circle of philology students at Kyiv University who gathered in the SICH (the Vasyl Chumak Literary Studio, once founded by Vasyl Symonenko, Ivan Drach, and Tamara Kolomiiets), many had a good chance of being arrested in 1972-73, but for some reason, I was the one who “fell into the oprichnina’s count.” Maybe it was because I was fortunate to have older friends who, for all five of my student years, gave me Ukrainian samvydav literature to read, and I, being discreet and hiding behind a Komsomol pin (I was even a group Komsomol organizer), gave it to dozens of my friends to read. And no one informed on me, which later greatly surprised my investigator, Mykola Tsimokh:

“Why did no one ever give me anything, when I was studying at the law faculty of the university ten years earlier?”

“Because I chose decent people…”

So, without appearing in public, say, at the Shevchenko commemorations on May 22, without frequenting Ivan Honchar’s museum, without flaunting an embroidered shirt (I didn't even own one), without making personal acquaintances with the “leadership,” I still knew about almost all the activities of the resistance movement. I held in my hands almost the entire samvydav of that time: Vasyl Symonenko’s *Diary* and poems, Mykhailo Braichevskyi’s *Unification or Annexation*, Ivan Dzyuba’s *Internationalism or Russification?*, Yevhen Sverstiuk’s *A Cathedral in Scaffolding*, *Ivan Kotliarevskyi Is Laughing*, *The Last Tear*, *On Mother's Holiday*, Mykhailo Osadchyi’s *The Cataract*, Valentyn Moroz’s brilliant essays *A Report from the Beria Reserve* and *Amid the Snows*, Viacheslav Chornovil’s *How and What Is Bohdan Stenchuk Defending?* and *Woe from Wit*, all five issues of *The Ukrainian Herald*, and much more.

Ярій, душе! Ярій, а не ридай.

У білій стужі – серце України.

А ти шукай – червону тінь калини

на чорних водах тінь її шукай.

Бо мало нас. Дрібнесенька щопта.

Лише для молитов і сподівання.

Застерігає доля нас зарання,

що калинова кров – така крута,

така терпка, як кров у наших жилах.

У білій завірюсі голосінь

це ґроно болю, що паде в глибінь,

на нас своїм безсмертям окошилось.

The arrests of January 12, 1972, were a terrible drama for me: the people who had been my guiding stars suddenly found themselves beyond a black horizon. To remain silent was unbearable, but I couldn't act on their level either, especially since, having graduated from university that year, I had to go teach in a village. No one around. Well, I thought, I must slowly prepare a new generation, especially since before me were still clean, untouched souls capable of taking things on faith. But I only taught for half a year: on the 20th anniversary of the Great Despot's death, March 5, 1973, I was arrested in the village of Tashan in the Pereiaslav-Khmelnytskyi district of the Kyiv region and soon added to the case of Vasyl Lisovyi and Yevhen Proniuk. Not without reason, because in the spring of 1972, I had helped them publish the next, sixth, issue of *The Ukrainian Herald*, hoping to divert the accusations from those who had been arrested, and I also helped Lisovyi produce several dozen copies of his open letter to the deputies of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR in defense of the arrested.

So that the reader doesn’t think I’ve written memoirs about myself instead of Stus, I will skip over my own case here and only mention the most interesting, socially significant moments.

At our trial in November-December 1973, prosecutor Makarenko proclaimed, with what he thought was irony:

“These were the great leaders of a small movement.”

But he was right. A small circle of people possessed by the national idea, who had “grown from small, slender mothers” (M. Vinhranovskyi) after the Holodomor, the war, the repressions, awakened by the spring wind that blew after the 20th Congress of the CPSU in 1956, warmed by the fatherly hand of Maksym Rylsky—they had not yet unfurled a great national liberation movement. They were still stewing in their own juices, pulling threads from the 1920s across a thirty-year desert into their plundered present. They didn't go too far. Although they rallied around *The Ukrainian Herald*, they completely rejected the idea of creating an organization. Many underground groups sprouted in Ukraine, but none managed to grow beyond a dozen or two members before being arrested. The Sixtiers, it seems to me, held together through personal friendships. Yevhen Sverstiuk once remarked: “When so many glorious, talented, good people gather together, something will come of it.” But they thought it was not yet time to go public, although hiding from people was even worse. Where there is an underground, there is distrust. The core of this circle in Kyiv was Ivan Svitlychnyi, Ivan Dzyuba, Yevhen Sverstiuk, and Viacheslav Chornovil.

In 1970, *The Ukrainian Herald*, edited by V. Chornovil, began to be published. It was typewritten, with a very small circulation, and illustrated with photographs. But our enemies assessed it appropriately because they understood where it was leading. There were rumors that the head of the KGB of the Ukrainian SSR, V. Nikitchenko himself, had a conversation with Ivan Svitlychnyi, in which he said: “We tolerated you as long as you weren’t organized. Now that you have a journal, which is a sign of an organization, we must take measures against you.” It was said that Nikitchenko had once studied with Svitlychnyi’s wife, Leonida Pavlivna, and treated Ivan with respect. Rumors of possible arrests began to spread, of a list of 600 people. In the summer of 1970, Nikitchenko, deemed too loyal, was replaced by V. Fedorchuk, brought in from Moscow. It was said that P. Yu. Shelest was against him, but Shelest’s own days were numbered: it was nothing to gather compromising material against him, so he agreed to the arrests. They were looking for a pretext. Although the 5th issue of *The Ukrainian Herald* announced that publication was being discontinued, this did not save the Sixtiers. The pretext for the arrests was, as always, a political provocation.

Towards the end of 1971, Yaroslav Dobosh, a Belgian citizen and member of the Ukrainian Youth Association, arrived in Kyiv via Prague and Lviv. As I later learned from my classmates from Prešov, Mariia Hostova and Anna Kotsur, who were Lemkos, he had met with Anna in Prague, and she gave him the phone numbers of several people in Kyiv and Lviv. Later, in materials attached to our case from Svitlychnyi’s case, I read that Dobosh had phone conversations and meetings with Svitlychnyi and someone else right in his hotel and on the street. Nothing special was discussed, so no one attached great importance to Dobosh’s visit. In Kyiv, Anna gave Dobosh a microfilm of the *Dictionary of Ukrainian Rhymes*, compiled by Sviatoslav Karavanskyi during his long years of captivity. This dictionary was known to specialists; several university departments had recommended it for publication. But since the author was in captivity again, the dictionary automatically became “seditious.” Later in the press, it was referred to as “an anti-Soviet document.” Dobosh was returning home for New Year's when he was arrested and accused of espionage. He got scared and told them whom he had seen and what he had talked about in Kyiv and Lviv. A photocopy of his statement was in the case file of Lisovyi, Proniuk, and me. If it had been published in full (the Soviet press only provided snippets with corresponding interpretations), everyone would have seen what a clumsy case the KGB goons had cooked up under Fedorchuk’s command. But no matter: the pretext was there. A rumor swept through Kyiv: on January 12, Ivan Svitlychnyi, Yevhen Sverstiuk, Viacheslav Chornovil, Vasyl Stus, Zinovia Franko, Mykola Kholodnyi, Oles Serhiienko, Leonid Pliushch, Vasyl Zakharchenko, Leonid Seleznenko, and Mykola Plakhotniuk were arrested... In Lviv, Iryna Kalynets, Stefaniia Shabatura, Ivan Hel, and later Ihor Kalynets... Dozens of names were mentioned. The newspapers *Radians'ka Ukraina* and *Pravda Ukrainy* on January 15 published a few lines about Dobosh’s arrest, and on February 11, a few more, ending with something like this: “For conducting anti-Soviet propaganda and agitation on the territory of the Ukrainian SSR and in connection with the case of Ya. Dobosh, I. Svitlychnyi, Ye. Sverstiuk, V. Chernovol and others have been arrested.” Yes, exactly: “Chernovol.” And behind “and others” stood dozens of people, hundreds of searches, thousands of summonses for interrogation, firings from jobs, expulsions from universities, removal from housing queues, denial of higher education to the children of the arrested or anyone even remotely connected… Borys Kovhar was arrested. Anna Kotsur was detained for a while; then she stayed at the Czechoslovak consulate, as if it were some kind of shelter after the occupation of the entire country… Ivan Dzyuba was detained and released, and then arrested for good on April 18. Nadiia Svitlychna was arrested on May 18… No one was charged with “espionage,” only “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda,” but the aforementioned newspapers have yet to see fit to apologize for it.

Kyiv was paralyzed. I, then a fifth-year student of Ukrainian philology at Kyiv University, experienced those events as a personal tragedy. Vasyl Lisovyi, a philosopher with whom I had become close as a first-year student—he taught us logic and had been giving me Ukrainian samvydav to read all those years—walked around looking black as night. One day he asked me for help: there was an idea to publish another issue of *The Ukrainian Herald* to deflect the accusations from those arrested. I bought paper, transported things here and there. But when I got the entire “print run” (about a dozen typewritten copies on thin paper) in my hands and went to my sister's apartment to proofread and sort it, I felt that what I held in my hands was the most important thing in Ukraine at that moment. It contained a report on the arrests and brief information about the arrested. Then followed a letter from Borys Kovhar to KGB investigator Colonel Danylenko about how he, Kovhar, had been “sent” into the circle of the Sixtiers to be an informer. He did this for a while, but then, convinced he was dealing with the best people in Ukraine, he tried to renounce the shameful trade. But the KGB punish their “renegades” with particular cruelty: Borys Kovhar spent ten years in a maximum-security psychiatric hospital.

In the spring of 1972, Vasyl Lisovyi told me he was preparing an open letter to the deputies of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR to protest the arrests, as someone had to speak out in their defense. I read it and—without the author’s permission, together with Petro Romko—rewrote its unfinished version. The letter ended like this: “Dobosh has been released, but the ‘Dobosh affair’ is now simply a case directed against the living Ukrainian people and the living Ukrainian culture. Such a ‘case’ truly unites all the arrested. But I consider myself also involved in such a case—that is why I ask to be arrested and tried as well.” Which is what happened on July 6, 1972.

I again performed technical tasks, meeting with Yevhen Proniuk and a typist about this. But the letter did not become widely known then, because instead of me, Ye. Proniuk went to pick up the copies from the typist. He was detained on the way on that same July 6, and I, with a heavy heart, went to the Pereiaslav region to teach. I awaited my turn for eight long months.

Плач, небо, плач і плач. Пролий невтримне море

тонкоголосих вод і душу одволож.

Здається – от-от-от, здається – тільки вчора

раптово запопав тебе смертельний дрож.

Плач, небо, плач і плач. Минуле не вернути,

сьогодні згибіло, майбутнього нема.

Щось на душі лежить, чого повік не збути

ні з серця вирвати несила. Задарма.

Плач, небо, плач і плач. Пролляйся, неборкаю,

і зорі, опадіть з потьмарених небес.

Чи в світі є сурма, що по мені заграє

останньої уже, щоб більше не воскрес.

Струмуй, ясна водо! Періщать нас огроми

і кучугурами обрушились віки.

Тож земно впережи, вельможний горній громе!

А все ж твої, бідо, огроми затяжкі.

Струмуй, ясна водо! Ти смолокрила хмаро,

благослови мене. Ти, блискавко, віщуй.

Нехай святиться світ, котрому ніч до пари.

То ти, водо, струмуй, і ти, бідо, лютуй.

It cannot be said that I didn't understand I was a “criminal” against the existing system, for I always and everywhere spread the truth about its anti-Ukrainian essence, thereby genuinely undermining it. And yet, I couldn't shake my astonishment: could it be that Lisovyi, Svitlychnyi, Dzyuba, Sverstiuk, Moroz, Stus, about whom I had heard so much and whose good works I had read, and I along with them—that we were the “especially dangerous state criminals”? How could their tongues bring themselves to say such a thing? No, it seemed it wasn't about us; it was like a dream, like something behind glass…

Our sincerity and naivety worked against us during the investigation and trial: we didn’t know how to lie! Even not telling the truth was difficult for us. I was amazed by Yevhen Proniuk (I had only seen him twice before) when I was reviewing the materials of our case: lengthy questions, and all the answers the same: “The question is understood; I refuse to answer on ethical grounds.” Because it was about normal behavior, a normal act, and a good thought—and they were being classified as a crime! I grumbled a little at my elders: why hadn't they taught me how to behave in case of arrest. But it later turned out that they, for the most part, were just as inexperienced themselves. But that little gang had finished school in how to break us!

Така гулка, така гучна

уся моя кімната.

Так м’яко встелена вона.

Їй-бо, не твердо спати.

Шість з половиною – в один,

чотири кроки – в другий.

Блукаю нею, вражий син,

неначе кінь муругий.

Доскочив радості я враз,

коли на поверх третій

мене провели напоказ

за буки і мислєті.

Залишив я сумний підвал,

лишив майдан Богдана,

де гетьман огиря учвал

жене кудись щорана.

Давненько я уже не знав

про справжні емпіреї,

а тут Господь наобіцяв

гетьманські привілеї.

Така гулка, така гучна

уся моя кімната,

музика грає голосна

та ні з ким танцювати.

We went to our sentences with open souls, not feeling like criminals and not knowing how to lie. And the truth did not seem frightening to us. They deceived us and blackmailed us with the threat of the psychiatric hospital. I was terrified at the prospect of becoming a human-like beast at 24 years old and started to tell them some things. Some friends hold it against me. No one knows the measure of their own sin; perhaps a million years of purgatory await me—but let them mercifully consider that for more than thirteen years I atoned for these very sins, and in an hour of joy, may they forgive. It was a horrific violation of our untainted souls.

When in December 1973, prosecutor V. Makarenko proclaimed in a tinny voice: “The defendants Proniuk, Lisovyi, Ovsiienko, having entered into a criminal conspiracy…,” I involuntarily glanced at the courtroom to see if anyone was laughing. Was he talking about us? No, no one even smiled. In the courtroom, there were only the wooden faces of the “special public.” Only my poor father's head was being pelted with the stones of words he didn’t understand. He sat there, stunned.

Proniuk’s defender, Krzhepytskyi, began his speech thus:

“All of us, the attorneys, fully and completely share the anger and indignation with which Comrade Prosecutor…”