The camp notebook disappeared, and the poetry collection “Bird of the Soul” never left the Soviet GULAG system.
Source: Bukvy
Ukrainian human rights activist Oleksandra Matviychuk, laureate of the Vasyl Stus and “Defender of Democracy” awards, head of the NGO “Center for Civil Liberties,” together with dissident and philosopher Yevhen Sverstiuk, held a series of literary evenings in memory of the poet and dissident Vasyl Stus.
At the events, historian Vasyl Ovsiienko spoke about the last days of Stus’s life. The poet fought to the end: before another placement in the punishment cell on a fabricated pretext, he went on a hunger strike. Matviychuk recited his works, including “According to the Chronicle of the Eyewitness” and letters to his son from the camps.
In these letters, Stus instilled honesty, courage, and wisdom: “See, my son, I really want you to grow up an honest, courageous, wise man… I remember an old grandfather… And because I saw this and others saw it too — the world became a better place.”
A particularly symbolic moment of the evenings was the display of the keys to the prison where Stus, Valeriy Marchenko, Yuriy Lytvyn, Levko Lukianenko, Mykhailo Horyn, and other dissidents were held. Vasyl Ovsiienko found them in a partially ruined prison building after liberation. Matviychuk emphasized that even in the camps, dissidents were freer than many were in freedom.
“Today, many Ukrainians live, love, work, fight, and die in a way that leaves a good mark, as Stus recalled. And I am confident that such keys will also come from the dismantled neo-totalitarian Russian empire,” said Oleksandra Matviychuk.
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