Responding to the Call of the Day

The year 1976 didn't seem any different than any other year, except for scattered whispers that confirmed that the cup of Ukrainian suffering runneth over. Oles Berdnyk, the science fiction writer who had been expelled from the Writers’ Union of Ukraine for his freethinking, had just declared a hunger strike. And on August 13, 1976, his books were removed from all libraries and bookstores and destroyed. Interestingly, the decision to excise this renowned science fiction writer was made by the main administration for the Protection of National Security in Print, at the Council of Ministers of the USSR, even though the relevance of Berdnyk's work to national security was not particularly obvious. Around this time, intellectual and artistic property was destroyed throughout the Mordovian prison camps, resulting in several protests and hunger strikes by those who were affected. For example, news came from the women's camp in the village of Barashevo, Mordovia, that 150 of Stefa Shabatura's paintings had been burned by the KGB. I no longer remember what exactly we did, but Mykola Matusevych and I protested against this vandalism, expressing our solidarity with the artist. Remarkably, she got word of our support, and soon thereafter we got a thank-you note from her.

Lo and behold, our colleague Nadiia Svitlychna finally returned from her four-year prison term, and the Kyiv air was infused with the spirit of the Mordovian “nature preserves,” where the seedlings of the Ukrainian opposition were being “safeguarded.” We all went to meet Nadiia at the train station, and as one of my friends later wrote, “I still recall the image of a tiny ant bent under a huge backpack, emerging from the train.”

Nadiia was a worthy sister to her brother Ivan, who at that time had also been imprisoned, and like him, she carried within her the magic of warm sincerity, which was totally incompatible with treachery. Later her spirit would manifest itself in her inimitable voice, known to those who listened to her Radio Liberty programs after she was fortunate enough to make it to the United States. But on that distant day in 1976, to Mykola and me, Nadiia was a living testament to the courage that the women's camp in Mordovia had become famous for.