To PEN International
I, a Ukrainian writer, was persecuted in January 1972 alongside other Ukrainian writers. The KGB, invoking the specter of Ukrainian “bourgeois nationalism” and the entirely fabricated “Dobosh case,” carried out another wave of repression against the Ukrainian intelligentsia—particularly the creative intelligentsia. Their ultimate aim was to destroy literature that did not conform to the rigid framework of socialist realism and to silence writers who steadfastly refused to become compliant functionaries in the service of the state. During my arrest, they confiscated books by Karl Jaspers, Carl Jung, Kostiantyn Yedymid, Vira Vovk, Lina Kostenko, Mykola Vinhranovskyi, Vasyl Symonenko, Ihor Kalynets, Hrytsko Chubai, and Mykhailo Kholodnyi. They also seized manuscripts of all my poems, including the handwritten poetry collections Winter Trees and Merry Cemetery, as well as my unfinished novels A Trip to Schastevsk and Diary of Petro Shkoda, along with drafts of several other stories and novels. Additionally, they confiscated approximately two dozen literary and critical articles on the works of Pavlo Tychyna, Volodymyr Svidzinskyi, Heinrich Böll, Brecht, Goethe, Rilke, Enzensberger, Paul Celan, Bazman, Bobrowski. In total, they took approximately 500 original poems, 10 printed pages of prose, numerous journalistic pieces, and about 30 printed pages of poetic translations. A separate large book could be compiled from my literary and critical articles alone.
In effect, everything I had written over 15 years of literary work was taken from me. Only a small portion of my writing had been published, as I was consistently denied the right to publish.
While in the labor camp, I wrote several hundred poems and translated approximately 200 poems by Goethe and about 100 poems by Rilke (elegies, sonnets to Orpheus and so on). Today everything I have written in the camp now faces the threat of destruction. For a long time, I was forbidden from including my poems in letters to my family. Though local KGB censors acknowledged that the poems were not political, they still confiscated them, claiming that the mere fact of the author’s imprisonment imbued the verses with political significance.
Driven to despair by the looming prospect of losing my entire body of work from 1973–1976, I began a political hunger strike on 4 August 1976. Yet, it achieved nothing. All letters containing my poems continue to be mercilessly confiscated. Recently, I included several sonnets by Charles Baudelaire in a letter, but they were also seized under the pretext that they were “difficult.”
I have repeatedly appealed to the authorities of the USSR, but to no avail. Therefore, I am turning to you, hoping that you will use your influence to protect my literary work from destruction. Please help me save my poems from the fire!
11 August 1976
Vasyl Stus
[1] The Dobosh case was an operation conducted by the state security services of the Ukrainian SSR, which triggered a wave of political arrests in Ukraine in 1972. Approximately 20 individuals were detained, including Viacheslav Chornovil, Yevhen Sverstiuk, Ivan Svitlychnyi, Leonid Pliushch, and Vasyl Stus. The operation was named after Yaroslav Dobosh, a Belgian citizen of Ukrainian descent who visited the Soviet Union in December 1971–January 1972. Dobosh was arrested, accused of espionage, and subsequently expelled. The KGB used his detention as a pretext to launch a broader operation designed to convince Soviet society that acts of opposition—allegedly carried out by the individuals mentioned above—were instigated by nationalist organizations abroad and Western intelligence services. After returning to Belgium, Yaroslav Dobosh held a press conference for Western media, during which he retracted his testimony, stating that it had been obtained under duress. (Based on materials from the Encyclopaedia of Modern Ukraine.)
This letter, written by Ukrainian poet, literary critic, human rights activist, and dissident Vasyl Stus, was addressed to PEN International, the global association of writers. Stus penned the letter while serving a sentence in a labor camp in the village of Matrosovo, Tenkivsk District, Magadan Oblast, USSR. He was convicted under Article 62 of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR (analogous to Article 70 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR), which charged him with “Anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda.” The letter later became evidence in a new criminal case initiated against Stus in 1980, following his return to Kyiv after completing his initial eight-year sentence. This appeal to the international literary community marked another effort by Stus—following the failure of his letters to the Soviet leadership, including the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and its chairman—to preserve the fruits of his 15 years of literary work, which had been confiscated by the State Security Committee (KGB).