Zhanna KRYZHANOVSKA

(Dnipro, Ukraine)

Zhanna KRYZHANOVSKA, daughter of the repressed Mykola Bereslavsky:
«HOW DID MY FATHER COME TO SUCH A DESPERATE DECISION AS SELF-

We had an old radio through which he constantly listened to Radio Liberty and Voice of America, even though they were frequently jammed. He had maybe two or three like-minded friends in the village. Most people were focused on their daily lives and didn’t care about his ideas. In fact, what irritated and unsettled them was that he wasn’t like everyone else: he didn’t play «kozel» (a popular card game), didn’t drink beer or vodka, loved books, and wasn’t interested in meaningless talk.
My parents never quarreled with their neighbors. I never heard any vulgar language from them. They always told us, «If people are bothering you, go play somewhere they don’t.» They didn’t go around figuring out who argued with whom, but instead, encouraged us to choose friends who made us feel comfortable.
And just at that time, information came through about the events in Czechoslovakia, about Jan Palach, the student who committed self-immolation in protest against the occupation of Czechoslovakia by Soviet troops. By the way, I have a magazine, Ukrainian Week, which mentions both my father and Vasyl Makukh, who also self-immolated in Kyiv and died. He is buried in our city, as his family lived here at that time.
My father was trying to find official ways to influence the situation with Ukrainian schools, but in the Soviet system, trying to reach anyone was a futile effort. He wrote letters to the Institute of Linguistics, to Rusanyvskyi, as well as to various authorities about the mass closure of Ukrainian schools, especially in Donetsk region. It was happening quickly: today they would bring a seal and documents saying that starting tomorrow, the Ukrainian school would become a Russian one, and indeed, by the next day, it would become a Russian school.
What troubled him was why children from Ukrainian schools couldn’t successfully continue their studies in universities, which were essentially Russian-speaking. A child studied mathematics, geography, or physics using Ukrainian terminology, but at the university, the lecturer didn’t know the terms and couldn’t understand what the student was saying. Movies were in Russian, schools were closing, universities were all Russian-speaking, and literature was mostly in Russian, although in the 1960s there was still a fair amount of Ukrainian literature. Before every movie in the cinema, they would show newsreels of ‘Soviet life,’ and everything there was perfect.
Returning to 1968: it is clear that the events in Czechoslovakia became, as they say, the last straw not only for my father. Vasyl Makukh also tried to achieve something by appealing to higher authorities. In a letter to the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, Petro Shelest, just before his self-immolation, he wrote about the erasure of Ukrainian identity, the repression and persecution of the intelligentsia, russification, and the blatant inequality of the peoples in the USSR. He referred to the CPU as a ‘puppet’ that followed every command from its Moscow master. He also believed that a time would come when severe retribution would fall upon the Russians. He knowingly sacrificed himself.
It is clear that my father, too, did not know how to influence the situation, how to draw attention to these problems in Ukraine, and at that time, he saw no other way out. He was the father of three children; my eldest sister was 16 at the time. He had a wonderful wife, a like-minded partner, our wise and beautiful mother—kind, decent, and noble. My father had suffered a stroke at 37 and had a second-degree disability. For some time, he could not work, but he managed the household very well—he was skilled at everything and was also an excellent artist. He made a poster—a copy has survived and is now in a museum—although it was the first draft, which he probably didn’t like, as some words were ‘cramped,’ and he rewrote it.
It is clear that he had been struggling with this thought for a long time and couldn’t tell my mother. When he started preparing for the journey, my mother, knowing about his fragile health, asked where he was going. He remained silent. She followed him, crying. He said goodbye, and my mother said he had tears in his eyes. We didn’t know anything for two days. My mother cried a lot. During the time that passed after it happened, and then the trial, she lost almost ten kilograms—she was very distressed. I was a bit older than my brother, and as much as I could, I tried to comfort her. I had read a lot of classical literature, and perhaps that helped form some inner strength in me, giving me the courage to support my mother.
KGB officers came and told us that my father had committed a dishonorable act and started searching the apartment. They didn’t find anything suspicious, as my father didn’t have any connections with dissidents at the time, nor did he have any forbidden literature. What he thought necessary to hide, he placed in a package, tied it with wire, and hung it on nails behind the wardrobe. The wardrobe was placed with its back in the corner of the room, so it was impossible to see the package.
We didn’t understand what was happening. We knew about the repressed, about Ukrainian values—our father told us, we learned Ukrainian poems, and we loved Shevchenko. All of that was there, but, of course, he never spoke to us about his political intentions—not only because we weren’t ready for it, but also because he didn’t want to expose us to danger.
On February 10, 1969, my father stood near Kyiv University and in an instant, put on signs that read: ‘Freedom for Ukrainian cultural figures!’, ‘Fight for the legal rights of the Ukrainian language!’, ‘Without language, there is no nation!’ Then he shouted, addressing the people who began to gather: ‘Long live independent Ukraine!’ And he didn’t manage to do anything else before he was grabbed and taken to the KGB detention center. The trial lasted several months, and my father refused a defense lawyer, defending himself. Compared to what dissidents usually received, the sentence was short—two and a half years. Maybe he defended himself well, or maybe it was because it was no longer the Stalinist era but the Brezhnev era. However, the regime was strict; he was sent to Mordovia, to the village of Barashevo, where political prisoners were held.