Intermezzo 2 - Transfer to Internal Exile

Summary

On December 10, 1982, while I was either in the ShIZO or the PKT, we suddenly heard some excerpts from Swan Lake and other somber classical music over the guard's radio. It was obvious that important news would follow. When the announcer declared in a tragic voice that Leonid Brezhnev had died, most of the inmates in the ShIZO building burst out in unbridled joy: the hateful epoch had ended. Logically, I understood why people rejoice when tyrants die; honestly speaking, however, at that time I was simply not in the mood to cheer the death of anyone. To be sure, I shared the sentiments of others that the old era had ended and a new one was about to begin, but I wondered what it would bring us.

Obviously, this issue became the main topic of our discussions. Later, I was amazed how accurately I predicted what was to come. I remember that my fellow inmate Grigory Isaev and I strolled around the camp, and I shared the formula of my political vision with him: “I have no idea how many more Secretary Generals will follow Brezhnev, but eventually there will be one who, in his attempt to salvage the Communist system, will bring it down.” This was still a number of years before Gorbachev appeared on the scene.

In earlier years, the KGB warned me and all the other unruly Ukrainian prisoners, “You think that you will return to Ukraine someday? Not with that sort of behavior!” This threat was not an empty one because many a Ukrainian prisoner had received additional time and was forced to languish in camps for more years. At the same time, the KGB continued to offer a way out: repent and “choose the correct path.” Their efforts to turn us grew even more fervent around 1983–1984, when it became known that Oles Berdnyk, one of the ten founding members of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, had “repented.” The KGB approached Ukrainian prisoners throughout the camps, showing them a copy of Berdnyk's declaration of repentance, urging them to do the same and citing this as a good example for them to follow.