“There are people who have served terrible terms of imprisonment during our lifetime because they championed some freedom. What makes it all so tragic is that when we suddenly had that freedom it turned out entirely different from that for the sake of which all those people suffered so much. We don’t know these people or don’t understand why they did it. It was so impractical.” This was how 1+1 hostess Olha Herasymiuk began one of her programs “Without Taboo” dedicated to dissidents — or otsidents, as they call themselves [from the Russ. v. otsidet’, meaning having served a prison term], people who were harbingers of freedom in Ukraine under the Soviet regime and then, having survived the totalitarian machine, found themselves in the trash can of history rather than historical figures. Among the guests of the program was to be Vasyl Pidhorodetsky, former prisoner of conscience who had spent thirty seven years in prison camps for his involvement in the national liberation movement in Western Ukraine. He could not be present for reasons of health, so a taped interview was played. Among other things he said bitterly, “We fought for Ukraine and look what we got instead,” addressing no one in particular but probably us all.
Did the first decade of Ukrainian independence meet the dissidents’ expectations? What did they actually expect? Were the dissidents heroes? Should this society regard them as such? What did they have to go through under the Soviets and what are they faced with today? Below Semen HLUZMAN, Executive Secretary of the Ukrainian Association of Psychiatrists, Director of the International Medical Rehabilitation Center for Victims of Wars and Totalitarian Regimes who spent ten years in prison camps for his “anti-Soviet views” on psychiatry, shares his perhaps subjective views.
CAMP DUST
In her program Olha Herasymiuk recalled mentioning dissidents in company with young people and they didn’t know what she meant. They asked her and we are asking you, what kind of people were all those dissidents, activists of the 1960s. Did they form a community of sorts?
S. H.: They didn’t form a community but became members of such a community once they were in political zone of prison camps as “especially dangerous state prisoners.” There we became anti-Soviet elements and dissidents. We often hear historians and former dissidents recall that period, making it look heroic. I think it’s very dangerous because it makes young people loath all those Solzhenitsyn described as “camp dust.” Yes, there weren’t thousands but hundreds of them and it was a phenomenon of resistance against evil, ending with people losing their health and even life. Dissidents were people who thought in a manner other than that approved by the regime. In this sense, there were as many dissidents in the Soviet Union as there were residents, well perhaps somewhat less than the residents. Vladimir Bukovsky, a noted Soviet dissident, was asked at an early press conference how many dissidents there were in the USSR. He said 230 million. He was right in that he referred not to those actively or otherwise resisting the evil but those refusing to believe what they read in Pravda. Neither the readers, nor the authors believed it. Society lived by a double moral standard and was well prepared to do just that.
How did people become dissidents — rather vaguely labeled individuals? You see, everyone, our parents and grandparents could think as they wished, but voicing their thoughts was a very different thing, for the KGB would almost always be informed and such people would have to pay a very dear, terrible price. Stalin’s death and Khrushchev’s coming to power marked a real thaw. I was a boy at the time, but I remember how happy that generation was — I remember how my parents and their friends felt, being free to discuss things openly. GULAG survivors appeared, those physically and mentally fit were given jobs. People spoke about them, even if in whispers. Yes, it was a real thaw for everybody living in this country. Finally there were magazines that published some literature. In Ukraine, it was the journal Vsesvit. At the all-Union level, it was the Inostrannaya Literatura. There was also the magazine Novy Mir with Tvardovsky as the editor-in-chief, and its every issue was eagerly anticipated by the Soviet intelligentsia, for it contained words of truth.
I think that the so-called young Marxists were the first Soviet dissidents, apart from the national patriotic movements and if one focused on a more complicated path leading to the perception of the system as such. With the coming of Khrushchev a serious revision of Leninism began. Although no one mentioned it publicly and Lenin remained a saint. Stalin was the bad guy, his body was removed from the Mausoleum, and that was it. Young people in the universities had to undergo courses in Marxism- Leninism and they had to study all those “original sources” (i.e., selected works by Marx and Lenin]. Some didn’t take this seriously, copying others’ notes, others became really interested. Reading Lenin, young people discovered that things were a bit scary and more complicated. Reading Marx, especially his early works (such literature was readily available in the public libraries), they could not understand why one had to add anything to what Marx had to say, because the young Marx wrote things which the older Marx didn’t and Lenin never would. It was then that a movement appeared, known as young Marxists in a narrow circle. Those people, along with the national patriots, were the first dissidents. They were revising the system, but they were not anti- Soviet and they did not oppose the regime. They only formed “circles” (study groups) at the universities of Saratov, Kyiv, Moscow, Leningrad... In most cases they were young intellectual students. Meanwhile the system realized that such revisionism was dangerous, that something was happening which would explode under Gorbachev... So the system began to work in the opposite direction. The more so that Khrushchev had been quickly replaced by Brezhnev and another attempt was made to revive Stalinism. Although never made public, the issue was discussed by the Politburo, and it didn’t work simply because they were afraid of the public opinion in the West. The first “registered” dissidents were young people. Few if any remember their names, except historians, many of them are no longer alive and others are old people residing in various countries... And so the dissident movement started not with groups somehow registering their existence and spreading samizdat. 10-15 individuals would meet at someone’s apartment, including one or two KGB informers.
“YOUNG TWENTY-FIVE-YEARS”
You say there were nationalists and young Marxists — meaning that the dissidents could be categorized?
S. H.: Of course, there were categories of inmates in the Soviet prison camp. Some were referred to as nationalists, the most feared by everybody. I was a Russian-speaking Jew from Kyiv, serving my term for harboring universally democratic ideas, but I was also painfully aware of state-supported anti- Semitism in the USSR, so I thought I could understand those Ukrainian patriots. They spoke of the terrible total Russification when one was afraid to use Ukrainian even on public transport lest one be laughed at — at least that’s what was happening in Kyiv. I’d heard something about Banderists, but didn’t have a clear idea. When I was sent to a prison camp in 1973, I saw a great many old-timers (as we called them), making up 20-30% of the inmates, serving terms ranging from 15 to 25 years, among them Lithuanians, Estonians, but mostly Ukrainians, ordinary poorly educated people from the countryside. I felt as though I had become part of living history, as such different generations could not be in such close contact in normal life. But we all lived in an artificial country. For me, as for any other thinking individual, it was a very important experience; it helped me understand what I was up against, what I stood for and against... We were all poisoned by disinformation, so in that camp my fellow inmates became very close to me. Not in terms of with their past, because it wasn’t my past...
There were always people serving terms for involvement in a national liberation movement, although I would realize later that everything was actually much simpler. I asked one of them, Vasyl Malozhenksy who looked in his middle age even back in the 1970s, how he had got there. He told me in Ukrainian, “See, some of our guys came over, we sang Ukrainian songs, and then I went with them.” Those guys turned out men of the SS Halychyna Division and he was an ordinary village boy. Now we hear about Bandera this and Bandera that. What has Bandera got to do with this? Take us, here we are discussing things. Suppose some people we don’t know and don’t want to know come here tomorrow. We won’t be friendly with them, whatever language they’ll speak. You see, a man loves and protects his small homeland. I don’t trust patriots like Movchan. I don’t believe in patriotism starting with the Fatherland. I think it’s fanaticism. My homeland is right here, everything surrounding me and my near and dear ones, so I’ll protect them, but I’m not sure that I will feel like giving up my life for your next of kin, and vice versa. Such is the world, whether you like it or not. Let me tell you something interesting. I never met a single Russian inmate serving a term for some Russian (Vlasov’s or other) national idea. I understand that many of them died in prison, but not all of them. There wasn’t a single Vlasov man among the inmates. Because his men and the Soviets were socially alike. For me it was the most important lesson learned behind barbed wire.
Of course, such people cannot be described as dissidents, because being a dissident basically means speaking and writing things damaging to the regime, rather than waging an armed struggle, entering conspiracies, and so on. Although, there were different kinds of dissidents. Some joined them because they were sick and tired of the injustice then rampant in the USSR. Others did because they had personal grudges to bear (as when treated in an unfair way by the factory management). One fellow received five years because he’d refused to attend a subbotnik. In fact, one could become a dissident by sheer chance. Say, you go to your doctor and see that he isn’t treating you properly, you start complaining and end up either at a mental hospital or the KGB. There were a great many such cases. And so when I hear some self-styled historians say that dissidents were people born to make Ukraine free, I feel sick. I recently spoke with Ivan Dziuba. I said remember what happened at the turn of the 1970s. Did anyone ever mention independent Ukraine? He laughed and said of course not. Ivan Dziuba was at the time an expert on Marxism, a first-generation intellectual raised on the Marxian idea, an extremely sincere and decent person. He was outraged by what was happening to Ukrainian culture, so he wrote on the subject, referring to Lenin and Marx, and ended up a dissident. I joined the movement because of psychiatry, I was just starting in it and was head over ears in love with my future occupation. When I learned about abuses for political reasons I committed my crime.
Soviet authorities were then practicing a broad range of purges, and I’m still not sure that my term in a prison camp was the cruelest punishment, for it was an opportunity to communicate with others like me. We had a degree of freedom. We told the KGB men dealing with us precisely what we thought of them and their system, and there was nothing they could do about it. We were already behind barbed wire, and capital punishment had been abolished after Stalin’s death. Yet it was a great tragedy for all the inmates’ relatives left behind — something quite a few historians and journalists are reluctant to recall. Everybody believed that nothing would ever change, that the Soviet system would last thousands of years. Lukyanenko says now that he knew for sure that the regime would collapse. At the time no one would even dream of that. Can you picture Kuchma dreaming of becoming president of an independent Ukraine at that period? What we have today is a totally unexpected, fantastic opportunity for the people. But the people turned out unprepared for it and this is our greatest misfortune.
Even then it was clear that the Soviet system could exist only with the aid of force, there were grave economic hardships and the situation was going from bad to worse. This, of course, made every citizen concerned, asking himself why is it that I go to work, do my job well, and yet I don’t earn enough. All talk about corruption being born today is untrue. Corruption existed even then, but it was concealed. There were special stores and fashion ateliers for the nomenklatura, where everything was of better quality, less expensive, and readily available, as they were closed for the general public. Therefore, I think that only fools can long for communism. However difficult living may appear these days, life at that time was simply horrible.
WHY IS PRISON BETTER THAN FREEDOM?
One of the “old-timers,” Vasyl Pidhorodetsky, said on “Without Taboo” that he had felt better in the prison camps. Could living behind bars, in jail, being subjected to torture and unsanitary conditions, having to eat rotten food swarming with maggots, seem preferable to living in a country, however poverty-stricken, where one is free to read everything, criticize the regime, and so on? Why is today’s Ukraine worse than prison to these people?
S. H.: Yes, being in prison is hard, especially for one serving a term of 37 years. But, while in prison, one was free, there were other inmates like him, while totally alien people ruled their homeland. Let’s face it, he was an ordinary fellow from a Galician village and may have seen Russians through a crack in a high fence. He had to be a peasant in his land, like his parents. It wasn’t his fault and Stalin and Hitler solved some historic tasks the common folk didn’t care about. He was born to grow up, get married, raise children, work his land, and finally return to that land, leaving behind his children who would then follow in his footsteps. Instead, strange people came, speaking a strange language and telling him he had to serve in their army. Who wants that? It was his land, his country, but now under a totally alien regime. He and people like him didn’t know that the new regime was bringing civilization to Halychyna, with aircraft, express trains, telephones, and television. While in prison camps, time stopped for them. Was there a way out for those “old-timers?” Yes. They could have an interview and declare that they were real scum, that now they saw the light and condemned all those others like them; that they were eager to make up for their wrongs — in other words, that they were prepared and willing to cooperate with the KGB and become informers... I think it takes an extremely strong personality to bend oneself like that and then live with it. So every time they wanted to recruit me I had no choice. No, I wasn’t a zealot. I just told myself, you bastards, first you throw me behind barbed wire, torture me, make me eat soup with maggots, and then you want me to say that everything’s fine, the way it ought to be.
True, time had come to a standstill for Vasyl Pidhorodetsky; it was as though he had entered a different world, found himself in another dimension where the years dragged by, yet he was with others like him. When the arrests began in 1972, the prison camps were injected with fresh blood, by liters rather than drops. It was a very bad mistake of the authorities — allowing our two generations to meet — but what was there to expect from a stupid leadership, people that couldn’t put two words together, who only knew about purges? Of course, we were quick to understand and made the most of the situation. After all, we were intellectuals, with a higher education; we could write, among us were journalists, physicians, engineers, so we started sending samizdat to the West. But then our 25-year-olds learned that they didn’t understand us. Pidhorodetsky said, “What d’you think you’re doing? There’s just one way to talk to the Reds, by pulling the trigger.” I would remember his words. Another year, perhaps a year and a half passed, and then he saw public response to our effort and began to understand us. Other old-timers did, too. Pidhoretsky had a change of mind and said once, “Yes, you people seem to be doing the right thing. You should write more.” This was evidence that the man, who seemed in a nonexistent state, was actually evolving. After that “Without Taboo” program, I had a very interesting conversation with an acquaintance. He is not a politician, his name is known in a narrow circle, and he was adamant about staying anonymous [if and when I quoted him]. Anyway, he’s very rich and he has been contributing to our Center’s funds. He’s no dissident and comes from a communist family; at one time he was a regional Komsomol functionary, meaning a totally Soviet past, and he’s of Russian parentage. We met a couple of days after the TV program. Over coffee he asked me, “Mr. Hluzman, is everything you said true? I mean you, a Russian-speaking Jew, communicating with all those nationalists. Did you speak Russian to them?” I said I did. “Did those Banderists respond?” I said they did. “Just like that? No problem?” I said no problem. “Mr. Hluzman, I don’t get it. Those illiterate fellows understood, and Movchan and Drach can’t understand.”
He also asked what makes me a second-rate man in their eyes just because I am “Russian,” considering that I bring good money to this country. His children speak Ukrainian at home, he tries to keep it that way. Yes, he comes from that [Soviet] past, yet he’s a perfectly normal Ukrainian citizen. After all, Lukyanenko used to hold a minor post at a district party committee. Of course, you can always explain that you had to join the Party in order to help destroy it... We shouldn’t be ashamed of our past. We have it the way it was. Yes, I was thrown behind bars at 25 because I championed a certain idea. But I could have been spared the lot and become a KGB man. Circumstances tend to be vary... What my acquaintances asked was a rhetorical question, yet I thought it was a revelation, in a way. At the time I didn’t know what to say... I served my term together with Vasyl Pidhorodetsky and the late Mr. Pryshliak. It was our “family,” we shared our rations. He [Pryshliak] had been chief of the OUN-UPA Security Service in the Lviv district. He’d been arrested by the Polish secret police, before that by the Gestapo, and now he was serving a term of 25 years (he’d been captured, wounded in action). Indeed, I could communicate at an intellectual level with Marchenko, Svitlychny... But I was keenly aware of Pryshliak and all those others; physically and mentally I sensed that those people were close to me. However, other people I have mentioned, ones with university degrees in philology, are unable to understand this. It is not a matter of the past, but of the present and future.
NATIONAL FLAG, ALIEN COUNTRY
Do all the dissidents feel that living in those camp barracks was better than what they have now?
S. H.: While at the prison camp, I acted as a young but professional psychiatrist, I was interested in problems faced by the human mentality. As I entered the camp, those having served 25 years were being released. Watching those people being scared to find themselves outside was a nightmarish experience. They were returning to a world they knew nothing about, a world that had moved far ahead of them, and not only technologically. And that wasn’t the main thing. At their age they didn’t want to become cosmonauts, they mostly wanted to return to their native villages, but they weren’t allowed. How could you let a Banderist live in his village with all those young people whose minds he could poison with his hostile ideas? People released from prison camps were physically wretched individuals, but with a 25-year experience of being free to speak their mind and act as they thought they should. Now they were entering a world in which everything was taboo or too risky.
That’s how things were under Soviet rule. Now we live in a totally different country... However, there is that same impulse of fear. As a researcher, I was interested in studying this phenomenon. One is released from jail, one is supposed to feel happy, one has some prospects; even if one cannot beget offspring, one can have normal food, not that camp soup with maggots, and live in more or less marginal conditions. But then a miracle occurs. Those surviving their terms, among them Vasyl [Pidhorodetsky], watch, stunned, as the [Russian] empire collapsed before their very eyes, all of a sudden, for no obvious reason. It happened instantly, historically, although without bloodshed, by and large. Could any political scientist imagine that the Soviet Union would fall to pieces just like that, without spilling human blood? Then there was freedom, perestroika, glasnost ... Of course, Vasyl Pidhorodetsky, an old, ailing, and poorly educated man, perceived the surrounding world not by what he read or heard, but by what he felt and saw. He reckoned with realities leaving no room for hope. Years passed, Ukraine was independent, there was a referendum, a new president, then they fought over the national flag and anthem... Vasyl saw all this in his own simple, more realistic way, without considering history using sophisticated criteria. They had accepted his flag, the one for which he was prepared to give up his life, and his ideas; now they were publishing things never allowed in print before, something that had made us young dissidents serve our terms, yet this country was once again Soviet. And no one needed Vasyl. Not that his pension was meager, but simply because no one cared about him or his life experience. He was seldom visited by journalists, save for those representing publications with limited patriotic readerships. No television interviews, although before suffering a stroke he could tell a lot of interesting and terrible stories, for he had served terms in practically all the Russian penitentiaries, plus Tobolsk Central Penitentiary... This is history that’s still alive.
When our center had sufficient funds we interviewed such people, using digital cameras. Now we have over two hundred video cassettes. No matter how biased, these are eyewitness accounts, people in their twilight years. This data is important not only for us, but also for those people (although they aren’t likely to ever watch it on television). Using this material, we made a film and offered it to all the Ukrainian channels. Done professionally, it inspires horror and admiration at the same time, as experienced by US and Dutch viewers, by whoever visits our center. Several countries have asked me to let them have this film, yet none of the Ukrainian channels has shown any interest.
A MONUMENT TO TOLERANCE
What do you think the state should do for former prisoners of conscience?
S. H.: I realize that we can’t [afford to] provide them the kind of status they deserve. It’s true that some of them may have made mistakes and taken the wrong stand... Although who knows what’s the right stand? Now we can pass judgment on who was right and wrong. At the time it was simply that some had sung Ukrainian songs and followed those singing them.
Therefore, we should start by doing what Generalisimo Franco, the Spanish fascist did. He had a monument erected in memory of all Spanish people killed in World War II. He made the right decision, for it is only the Lord God that can judge who is right or wrong. Too bad Ukraine doesn’t have a memorial like that, literally as well as figuratively, like memories living in people’s minds; we have children, they go to school and are told all kinds of lies... I don’t mean that my name and those of other camp inmates should be entered in history books. It’s not the point. We don’t need anyone like Pavlik Morozov or Pavka Korchagin [the former reported his parents as kulak agents to the Soviet authorities, embodying Soviet propaganda’s ideal and selfless patriot, and the latter is the hero of Nikolai Ostrovsky’s How Steel was Tempered]. The point is that our children must grow up to be tolerant. They must understand that they will have to build a country where no one will be jailed for championing ideas.
“I’M THEIR ENVOY, ASKING A FAVOR FOR THEM”
How did you conceive the center idea? What about it?
S. H.: Our center has been in existence for over five years. How it came to be is a different story. It took bribes, all kinds of funny experiences, the hallmarks of current realities — but this all details. The idea was conceived very simply. I didn’t leave this country when I actually could (I would have earlier, but they wouldn’t let me). At the time I wanted to leave not because of my Jewish parentage, but because I had a clean bill of health, from a psychiatrist’s point of view; I realized that I had to get out of this country, wherever this would lead me. It was the same with Valery Marchenko, Horbal, Svitlychny, all normal individuals aware that the Soviet regime would last a long time, that all those staying put, after serving their terms, would inevitably wind up inside again. I didn’t want to suffer that lot, but they wouldn’t let me out, perhaps because I had by then taken a conspicuous public stand, and because I was young.
When it was possible to leave I stayed. On principle. I could do something in my country, I had found my intellectual niche there, and for several other reasons. Yet deep inside I remained in my prison camp, staying close to all those old- timers. Regardless of what I hear from historians about Volyn and things like that... You see, I served my term with Vasyl Pidhorodetsky. I still don’t know what he did and where, but I know that he did fight on his home territory, in Ukraine. He wouldn’t fight for Germany or Moscow. He fought to protect his land, abiding by his own reasoning inherited from his forefathers. The more so that he hadn’t actually fired his gun to kill anybody. I know that for sure. I owe it to the Lord, my character, and Ivan Svitlychny (God rest his soul) that I didn’t leave my prison camp full of hate. This is very important, considering that hatred is destructive. If I had it I wouldn’t find a place in this country... I remember those old-timers. It’s more than part of my life experience, it’s something so very close, something you must hold with your hands, lest others touch it. I know there is nothing I can do to help all those no longer among the living. But there are all those others still alive, living around me. They need help.
The longer I lived in that new democratic Ukraine, the more I understood about all those patriots and what they did. Remember that Ukrainian Intelligentsia Forum at the Kyiv Opera, costing God knows how much? To me, it was more terrifying than any of the harsh Soviet realities. I saw hungry old people dressed in rags, unable to buy the simplest of medicines to sustain their failing health, people ready to die for our national flag, emblem, and idea. I was horrified to see it. I wanted to do something for the victims of the purges. It so happened that I met people from Denmark and Holland who understood me and what I was trying to achieve. A friend of mine from Denmark had campaigned for Soviet dissidents as a young man, focusing on mental hospitals. While on a visit to Denmark, I met people that had set up a rehabilitation center for victims of torture. They made me a member of the World Council for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Torture. As its member, I received access to vast databases and realized that I could now raise funds to set up a victim-relief center in Ukraine. I spoke to them and they said, “Of course.” They trusted me and gave me a grant just like that, saying go right ahead. After that I put together a team and leased some premises. At present, however, our center is on the verge of collapse. As I’ve said, there is one man donating money, but not enough to supply all our needs.
NO POLITICAL CLAIM TO UKRAINE, JUST A MORAL ONE
What happened to your original finance sources?
S. H.: The thing is that all those foreign organizations were contributing other people’s money, not their own. At the time, they actively lobbied for the European Commission (Brussels’ Office) and it opened an active credit line. Now they refuse to finance us, and there’s nothing I can do about it. We have to take care of our ailing elderly, it’s our moral obligation. They kept us financially supplied and then someone must have asked himself why help all those poor folks? They don’t care for all those impoverished elderly people that had served as prototypes of their current freedom. Why should I invest any taxpayer money there? Why shouldn’t I invest it in different project? This year they gave Ukraine money for something different. Psychoanalysis. They would be better off paying to open a whorehouse, just so we’d learn to get professionals tax-exempt. This would be more on moral side. And this allows me to say out loud that they are, after all, immoral. Imagine a post-Soviet country being given money for psychoanalysis! At least if we actually had any such psychoanalysis....Well, I can’t denounce or fight everybody, can I? So I ask our prosperous Ukrainians for donations. No one has responded so far. Being a Russian-speaking Jew, I feel close to all those people serving long terms for the Ukrainian, not the Jewish national idea, while I distance myself socially from our National Democrats with their declared affinity. I understand that there are shadow economy specifics in terms of taxation — but! I live in a world which is not so illusory as to picture Yanukovych’s party as being made up of only millionaires and billionaires; or Our Ukraine and the affiliated political parties as consisting of marginals and beggars earning a living collecting and selling empty bottles. Actually, I am one to pass judgment, I’m not at the head of the tax service, but I do believe that the kind of money all those National Democratic parties have, as well as the number of propertied Ukrainian citizens, is enough to allow a “specialist” to buy enough medicine. I know for sure that the number of millionaires in Kyiv exceeds that of the old-timers. We have everything, premises and qualified personnel, and we don’t need that much to keep going, just $3,000 a month. Pidhorodetsky and others like him well into their twilight in Ukraine, will never ask for help. They are too proud. So I’m their envoy, asking for help on their behalf. This is my mission. I live in this country and I am asking you to give them some money. I have turned to the Ukrainian Diaspora, sending them a bitter and terrifying message. It was translated and carried by local periodicals. I addressed my message to those that had immigrated. It read something like you people are lucky, you have fled, but all those serving 25-year terms haven’t, the poor unlucky devils; I know you aren’t rich, but you have more opportunities; help those left behind, don’t let them die of poverty; I’m not talking organ transplants or other expensive operations but about people who can’t afford aspirin.
You don’t seem to favor our opposition...
S. H.: I don’t like them because they aren’t telling the truth. And I can’t say that I’m in love with our current political leadership. Yet I have to admit, even if to myself, that there are no political prisoners in this country. This country offers a freedom of choice. Also, one is free to leave this country. I used to live in a country no one could leave except by fleeing or hijacking. Among our inmates were several diplomats, decent, unlucky, and unhappy individuals. They’d tried to flee while serving in various countries and had then returned. One of them, God rest his soul, told me that he had been a member of the Soviet Komsomol Central Committee, in other words perched high on the Soviet nomenklatura ladder and climbing. He also said that actually he hadn’t needed that career. “I knew something else, I had to be cleared to leave that country,” he explained. Having that clearance was the greatest privilege. Now all of us are free to leave, but they don’t want us over there. This is our domestic problem, that triad of democracy — elections, the absence of political prisoners, the ability to emigrate. This triad is not present in all he post-Soviet countries. Therefore, I can’t bring any political claims against my country.
However, I can file a moral claim. The problem of all those old people will face our children, in that they could learn their national history from their textbooks written by all those turncoats, all those that had only recently fought all those dissidents, people struggling to speak their native Ukrainian, reading books in Ukrainian, enjoying their genuine Ukrainian culture. Now we have mentors telling us how to live. We could end up acting out the worst possible Latin American scenario.
The International Medical Rehabilitation Center for Victims of Wars and Totalitarian Regimes is a private non-profit entity meant to provide such people with medical, psychological, social and legal assistance, including victims of torture, flagrant breaches of fundamental human rights, and to aid the families of such victims. At present, the center assists about 4,000 individuals, among them prisoners of conscience dating from the Stalin and Brezhnev epochs, also former inmates of Nazi concentration camps, Ostarbeiters, Soviet refugees, and their next of kin.
Those willing to help raise
the center’s fund are welcome
to make transfers to:
Account #26003301355, MFO 320229, k Pk Code 20061297
20 Heroyiv Dnipra St.,
8142 SBU Obolon Office,
Kyiv, Ukraine
