The story dealt with in Iryna Ratushynska's article (page 4) is so unusual that you can hardly believe this could happen under the Soviet regime. A KGB general helped a prisoner to get out of a horrible Mordovian camp without setting any conditions, or demanding in return becoming an informant or any humble appeal of pardon, which was usually demanded from inmates by the then rules of the game. That was in 1986, long before democratization and the independence of Ukraine, when everybody became bold for awhile.
Iryna Ratushynska, a young Kyiv poetess, was arrested on September 17, 1982. What for? She wrote verses, more avant-garde than anti-Soviet. She addressed human rights letters to the government. She did have some anti-Soviet literature at home, which was supposed to include poems by Voloshyn and Brodsky. Let us recall the clear-cut message the Communist Party sent at the time to all its dependents — the Communist Youth League, police, the KGB, etc.: root out any kind of dissent, which was more and more gnawing at the clay feet of the seemingly unshakable empire. The most zealous thought it would be easy to deal with this naughty girl: just blow and she will tumble down, burst into tears, and ask them to let her go home. But it just did not work. Iryna begged for no mercy and got the maximum: seven years of imprisonment and five years of internal exile.
The Mordovian ZhKh-385/4 “little camp,” ZhKh-385/2 special penalty prison, prison hospitals... Refusal to work and wear her inmate number, hunger strikers... And poems that Iryna kept writing in absolutely unspeakable conditions and that later mounted up to a weighty tome. They became documentary evidence of the courage of Iryna herself and her inflexible comrades.
Before the Gorbachev-Reagan summit in Reykjavik, the Soviet government was set a demand: to release political prisoners Anatoly Marchenko, Iryna Ratushynska, and others. The watchdogs faced the task of forcing, at any price, the political prisoners to sign pardon requests. Neither Anatoly nor Iryna opted for pardon. Anatoly Marchenko was hounded to death in prison. Ratushynska was lucky: the KGB general, instructed to “make the stubborn prisoner sing,” instead, did his best to release her. Moreover, he drove her home in his Volga staff car and helped carry the small backpack with the prisoner's scant property. The next day he came calling with flowers. When Iryna and Ihor Herashchenko had twins in London in 1992, Mr. Marchuk phoned and congratulated her. Such things never happen, you might say. But it did.
Mr. Marchuk himself is not inclined to spread word about his actions of this kind, but he also helped other political prisoners. Even during the election campaign, when Iryna Ratushynska wanted to tell the world about this non-standard person, he was quite reluctant to give his consent, interpreting his actions as natural and making them public as immodest.
Iryna Ratushynska has published several books of poetry and prose translated into 17 languages. Her book Gray is the Color of Hope (about imprisonment in a Mordovian women's camp), the novel Odesa Dwellers , and poems written in prison camps have received the greatest acclaim and been awarded numerous international prizes. Her story about release from the prison camp and Mr. Marchuk's involvement in this is the best answer to those unscrupulous critics who try to revile him only for having been a secret service general. According to Iryna, an unusual General .
(See page CLOSEUP)






