Zhanna KRYZHANOVSKA

(Dnipro, Ukraine)

ZHANNA KRYZHANІVSKA, daughter of the repressed Mykola Bereslavsky:
«THERE WERE RUMORS IN THE VILLAGE THAT A SECRET TUNNEL LED FROM OUR HOUSE TO AMERICA…»

I don’t know if it was the KGB spreading such nonsense or if the people themselves imagined it. In the village, incredible rumors were spreading: that we were spies, that there was an underground tunnel from our house leading to America… They also said there was a radio transmitter buried under our grapevine and that the children were learning German and preparing to become spies. I didn’t know German at all, maybe just a dozen words from my father, as I studied English in school. The wiser and kinder people avoided asking questions, didn’t offend us, but there were others who could look you in the eye and say, ‘Your father is a spy!’ It was both painful and unpleasant, especially because you didn’t know how to respond. Teachers treated us differently too. Some were tolerant and respectful. But there were others who tried to hurt us in any way they could. I was an excellent student, but there was a moment when I almost quit school. I was so deeply offended by two teachers that my mother had to go and figure things out. Despite everything, I was active, took part in different events, and had good relationships with my classmates and peers.
My father and I corresponded, but he was only allowed to send two letters a month, while we wrote to him more often to support him. My father’s mother, my grandmother, was deeply distressed by the situation. For her, it felt like a disgrace: ‘Mykola is in prison.’ No one really understood the situation. People would say, ‘So much for Mykola being so smart!’ My grandmother was angry at my father for leaving three children behind. But we, the children, never held any resentment toward him. We knew that he was fighting for a cause and were certain that he couldn’t think or do anything bad. Our mother never reproached him for this either.
Interestingly, while he was imprisoned, his circle of like-minded individuals expanded greatly. He connected with people whose conversations became a valuable learning experience for him. At that time, Levko Lukianenko and Daniel Synyavsky were also serving their sentences there. My father interacted with human rights activists from the Baltics and the Caucasus. He mentioned that sometimes disputes of religious or political nature would arise between them. He would say, ‘A good person, educated, intelligent, but a chauvinist — and there’s no escaping that.’ This was often said about Russians. It’s hard not to recall Volodymyr Vynnychenko’s apt phrase in this context: ‘The Russian democrat ends where the Ukrainian question begins.’
My father served time with men from Western Ukraine who had been imprisoned at the ages of 16 or 17 and sentenced to 25 years for their involvement in the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). These young boys ended up in prison at 17 and spent the best years of their lives there. One of them was Petro Samokhval, whom my father remembered very fondly. He would say that, despite not having had a chance to receive an education, Petro had an innate delicacy and politeness. Even in those harsh conditions, he maintained cleanliness as much as possible.
My father also told me that the prison authorities tried to use the criminal inmates to punish the political prisoners, but the political prisoners were able to organize themselves and several times fought back, so the criminals eventually stopped bothering them. My father was also thrown into a cell with criminal offenders for disobedience, likely to scare him, but it turned out fine, and they even treated him with respect. There is a prison report about my father, a negative one, stating that ‘he refuses to participate in cultural and mass events and has gone on hunger strike.’
When my father returned from imprisonment, he was wearing prison clothes and had a large beard. There are photos of him from that time—political prisoners grew beards to distinguish themselves from criminals. It was like a kind of calling card. My father’s beard was long, and he had aged significantly over those two and a half years. He carried a large, handmade wooden suitcase filled with manuscripts—some of which I still have, written in notebooks. It’s unclear how he managed to get access to that literature. He had beautiful handwriting, but when he wanted to encode something, he wrote it in a way only he could decipher—even we couldn’t read it.
He recalled walking through Kyiv with his beard and suitcase, and people who recognized him as a former political prisoner would bow their heads and nod in respect. In the village, it was a strange sight: Mykola Bereslavskyi had returned—with a beard and prison clothes! My father felt out of place because he lacked someone to talk to. Not that everyone pointed fingers at him—no, though that did happen on occasion. He wanted to find work, but like many former prisoners, it was difficult. He worked as a night watchman, and he took it seriously. Though he was unwell, he spent the entire night walking the grounds. He could never allow himself to sit down or hide somewhere—whatever job he took, even something as simple as sharpening a pencil, he did with precision and care.
At that time, my older sister was studying in Dnipropetrovsk, and it was also time for me to continue my education—I graduated in 1973. Two years later, my brother was finishing school, so our parents decided: if we wanted to stay together as a family, we needed to move to the city. Of course, my father wanted to move there as well, not only to be closer to us but also because he hoped to find like-minded individuals among people in his circle.
And so, in 1974, we moved. At first, we had some issues with housing, but the most important thing was that my father indeed met many people with whom he later joined the People’s Movement (Rukh) and the «Prosvita» Society. Our entire family, from the very beginning, was actively involved in both the Rukh and «Prosvita.» Among the new acquaintances my father made were many people who had spent time in prisons. Our home was frequented by notable dissidents and human rights defenders, such as poet Ivan Sokulsky and his wife, Oryna Vasylivna, and artist Sarma-Sokolovsky, who had also been imprisoned. Sarma-Sokolovsky was a talented man—he painted, made banduras, and wrote poetry. I still have a copy of the famous painting «My Thoughts, My Thoughts…» by the national artist of Ukraine, Mykhailo Bozhiy, from him. My father and Mykola Sarma-Sokolovsky corresponded regularly, and he often visited us, and our parents visited him. Additionally, we were close to the poet Volodymyr Sirenko, who also experienced imprisonment, as well as Petro Rozumny, who was part of the same circle of people. The family of Oleksandr Kuzmenko—an ardent patriot, fiery and passionate about Shevchenko studies—was also a part of this community. Both he and his wife served time in camps. She would recount the tortures she endured: being hung by her hair, forced to stand in freezing water for long periods…
I remember Viktor Klymenko and Prykhodko (I can’t recall his first name anymore) visiting our home after they were released. Levko Lukyanenko’s wife, Nadiya, was a guest in our family, along with the poet and translator Havrylo Prokopenko, and Vasyl Siry, a geography teacher who fully experienced the horrors of punitive psychiatry and later became the head of our Society of Repressed and Political Prisoners until his death.
I especially want to warmly remember Oleksa Tykhy, who was imprisoned for collecting quotes about language and its significance in people’s lives—not just Ukrainian, but language in general. He would knock on doors, asking for this manuscript to be published, even quoting Marx and Engels in high offices, but was eventually accused of distorting Soviet reality. He was from Donetsk and died in prison, just like Vasyl Stus and Yuriy Lytvyn. In 1989, their remains were transferred from the Urals to Kyiv and reburied in the Baikove Cemetery.
Tell me, for what crime was Oles Tykhy punished? My father also told me that he sat with a geography teacher who also couldn’t understand why he was imprisoned. The man openly said that natural resources and minerals in our country were being used inefficiently. It turns out that this was enough to charge a person with some sort of sabotage…
When Gorbachev announced perestroika, the Ukrainian movement immediately became more active. Teachers, writers, journalists, and artists began to speak out loudly about Ukrainian statehood. Among them were the writer Volodymyr Zaremba and journalist Serhiy Dovhal, artist Ivan Shulyk, who were at the forefront of the Rukh and Prosvita movements. My university lecturer Polina Myshurenko, also joined, as well as lecturers Mykola Dniprenko, Volodymyr Rybalko, Anatoliy Popovskyi, and journalist Borys Kovtoniuk, who I know has been gathering information about the activities of the Prosvita Society and the People’s Movement (Rukh).
Ivan Sokulsky played a direct and active role in this process. Every Monday, we would gather near the monument to the young Shevchenko, by the theater, and we already knew by sight who from the authorities or security services was there—people who were monitoring these gatherings. There were even instances of violence—once, they sent veterans of the Afghan war against us, and provocateurs were planted to shout unacceptable slogans. My father attended such events, but he wasn’t much of an orator; he’d get lost in front of a large audience. Young people, students, would come up to him, asking for materials for their projects. That was the kind of communication he preferred. His health didn’t allow him to attend every event he was invited to, such as the World Congress of Ukrainian Political Prisoners. He wrote a lot. I’m amazed at how he managed to contain so much in his head. We subscribed to encyclopedias, dictionaries. «A Short History of Religion,» «The History of Mathematics»—he was interested in everything. But it wasn’t as if he just sat there reading all the time. He had a phenomenal memory, knew a lot, and was an interesting conversationalist. He studied not only Ukrainian history. Ask him about the history of France, Germany—he’d tell you without preparation… Maybe he was a bit categorical in his judgments; sometimes we even argued because we had different views on certain things. But later, when I had gained more experience, he would often listen to my opinion, and we would find common ground.