Kuchmagate: And Collapse of the Orange Idea

By Volodymyr Tsvil

28 November 2000 was the day when the foundations of a young and fragile Ukrainian democracy were fundamentally shaken. The national deputies and the entirety of the Ukrainian population became aware of the records made by the former officer of the State Security Service, Mykola Melnichenko, which implicated the then President of Ukraine, Leonid Kuchma, in being involved in the murder of an independent journalist Georgiy Gongadze.

The tape affair, or as it became known in the West, the Kuchmagate, was an unprecedented event in the history of modern Ukraine. Kuchmagate and the collapse of the Orange idea is a story told by Volodymyr Tsvil, a close associate of the main characters involved in the scandal, who himself was directly involved in the affair. Tsvil provides a unique insight into the events that followed immediately after the outbreak of the Kuchmagate and reveals a web of complex relationships between major Melnychenko and a plethora of politicians, journalists, governments and NGOs who were keen to obtain the contents of these records and use them for their own purposes.

The story of Kuchmagate and the collapse of the Orange idea, however, is not merely a description of events which inspired the Orange revolution in 2004. Many Ukrainians entertained the hope that new people in the government could deliver their promises for a just and free society. These hopes were shattered by the same politicians insincerity and personal interest in political expediency demonstrated during the Kuchmagate. The hopes of ordinary Ukrainians that justice would prevail were sidelined and largely forgotten.

Today, the Orange coalition and its leaders are forgotten, marginalised or even imprisoned. In contrast, the Kuchmagate affair is alive and to the present day is far from being solved. The main question of who ordered the murder of Georgiy Gongadze remains unanswered. In order to find an answer to this and many other questions, more details about the Kuchmagate should be revealed to the public. Tsvils book makes one the first contributions to this cause, providing first-hand information about the development of the scandal in a clear and objective manner.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Jul 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781481768672

Volodymyr Tsvil

Born in Ukraine in 1962. A renown public figure, businessman and diplomat. Since 2000, permanently resides in Germany. In 2002-2004 was Ukrainian consul in Munich. In 2009, Tsvil becomes a foreign policy advisor to the Secretariat of the President of Ukraine.

Book preview

KUCHMA

GATE

and collapse of the Orange idea

Story Told by an Eyewitness

Third edition, as amended

Volodymyr Tsvil

Munich – Ostrava – Kiev - London

2003–2013

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AuthorHouse™ UK Ltd.

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Bloomington, IN 47403 USA

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© 2013 Volodymyr Tsvil. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 6/28/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4817-6868-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4817-6869-6 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4817-6867-2 (e)

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The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface to the English Edition

From the Author

Preface

Prologue

Part One «Tape» Bomb

Part Two On the Way \to America

Part Three In the Middle of the Affair

Part Four Yulia

Part Five Kolchuga for Ukraine

Part Six The Fall of Digital Star

Part Seven Confession

Afterword

Postscript

About the Author

Preface to the English Edition

Despite the fact that the book In the Whirlpool of the Tape Affair, Narrated by the Witness was published nine years ago, the events described in it are not completed yet.

Today, people in Ukraine keep on debating the background, course, and consequences of the tape affair that in Americanized style is increasingly called the Kuchmagate.

In March 2011, the prosecutor general of Ukraine charged the former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma of abuse of power that led to the death of the journalist Georgy Gongadze. The punishment under this charge is an imprisonment from five to twelve years, with deprivation of the right to hold certain positions in public office.

The charges against a person who recently had been the president of the country for ten years were pressed for the first time in the modern history of Ukraine.

Ukraine has been aspiring to become independent for centuries.

The path of Ukrainians as a nation to self-determination was difficult, tragic, and controversial.

United in the twentieth century into one country, the Ukrainian people did their best to ensure peaceful coexistence of different cultures and to reconcile their history.

Some Ukrainians perceive Russia, the successor to the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, as the main guarantor of their future. The other part (mainly born in western Ukraine and whose ancestors were citizens of Austria-Hungary, Poland, and Romania) are focused on integration with the European Union.

After having gained independence in 1991 following the collapse of the USSR, Ukraine, for the second time in its history after the breakdown of the Ukrainian People’s Republic (in 1920), set out to create its own state.

Despite the fact that right after December 5, 1991, the country already had its president elected through general direct elections, the democracy only loomed far away. With the Communist era being fresh and vivid in their memories, the Ukrainians elected Leonid Kravchuk as the first president of Ukraine, a man who in the recent past had been one of the top apparatchiks of the Ukrainian Communist Party, responsible mainly for working out the party’s ideological doctrines.

The second presidential elections in 1994 were more democratic by their nature and brought to power Leonid Kuchma, a former director of a missile factory that produced ballistic missiles called SS-18 or Satan.

Uncouth at first glance, Kuchma, with the vigor of the defense company director, took up the bridles of the country and quickly cemented his authority both in eastern and western Ukraine.

At the time, Leonid Kuchna resembled the early modern king James VI and I of Britain (1567-1625).

Following the rules, which James described in his book The True Law of Free Monarchies, the king always kept in contact with the Scottish nobility and acted as an arbitrator in the conflicts. This was how James VI repeatedly prevented the civil wars that had torn the country apart before.

And another point, James VI came into history as the Scottish king who had ruled the longest. Basically, this was the result of his pragmatic style of government, generous financial investments in the royal court, and pensions he lavished on the gentry.

Kuchma widely used these methods in Ukraine: under his rule a powerful clan of the richest businessmen (or so-called oligarchs) was created, large industrial plants and factories were privatized, and the country built a complex walking-the-tightrope policy with Europe, the United States, and Russia.

In many aspects, Kuchma has the right to be called the president of all Ukrainians, in contrast to the image of an exemplary Western political leader who had won the election as a leader of his party.

Kuchmagate not only foiled Kuchma’s prospects of an unconstitutional third term as the president but also set off the chain of events whose climax was the 2004 Orange Revolution.

After charges were filed against Kuchma for masterminding the political murder of independent journalist Georgy Gonganze in 2000, which had been made possible after unauthorized tapping of the president’s office by his bodyguard, Major of Security Service Mykola Melnychenko, the country was teetering on the brink of a national catastrophe.

As a direct participant of these events, I tried, with chronological accuracy, to describe the progress of Kuchmagate from its onset as well as the actions of its principal characters. In this book I mention names of many people whom I knew personally. I am sure many of them will remain in the modern history of Ukraine.

By now it has become clear that Kuchmagate paved the way to the victory of the Orange Revolution and then to the collapse of the orange idea.

From 2010 to 2012, the process of bringing to light numerous cases of power abuse and economic and criminal offenses committed by the leaders of the Orange Revolution only exacerbated an already dim view the Western democracies took of the Ukrainian political elite.

The book Kuchmagate and Collapse of the Orange Idea is the first book that examines the interrelations of these events.

This book is dedicated to the memory of my father; my beloved wife, Ivanka; my daughters, Hanna and Tatiana; my friend, Ivan Plyushch; and all who are patriots of Ukraine.

Volodymyr Tsvil

2013

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to the Ukrainian journalists who replied to the author’s request and offered their assistance in writing this book: Alexey Stepura, Oleg Eltsov, Volodymyr Ariev, Eugeniy Lower, Sergey Leshchenko, and others.

I would also like to thank my family and my close friends who had supported me in hard times of working over this book.

People who decide to commit a misdeed also include those who had frequently managed either to hide their crime or who remained unpunished and also those who have frequently suffered misfortune.

—Aristotle, Rhetoric, Book 1

From the Author

This book is about patriots of Ukraine who, on December 15, 2000, rushed to Kiev’s Independence Square, resentful with the content of Major Melnychenko records, who have not lost their hope to know the truth about assassination of Georgiy Gongadze and the so-called tape affair.

Our lives are by far more eventful and interesting than we used to believe. Life is more generous and imaginative than the most fastidious human fantasy can perceive, the famous French writer Jules Verne once wrote.

When I got to Manhattan, New York, for the first time, I was amazed to discover how much the human mind can influence the environment and nature. Just imagine how many concrete-and-steel structures a man can build and how much asphalt he can pour on the ground—to the extent that it seems like this is not mother Earth anymore but some other artificial world. But even in Manhattan, among skyscrapers, the spring does not hesitate to come back every year. And small blades of grass make their way through the chinks in the asphalt. This is life. Public behavior and declarations made by politicians are just another attempt to create artificial reality—to substitute the real life and justify one’s own drive to power. Political propaganda and promises are pouring on us in such dense flow that it seems you cannot make it to the surface. But with time, life gets an upper hand and puts everything back in its right place, because life is stronger.

Asphalt that was used to entomb the story about the tape affair is called political expediency. Bombastic official statements, obstreperous press conferences, pompous catchwords, and false preelection promises are nothing else but the asphalt of propaganda campaigns and technologies that the politicians craftily wielded while trying to tailor the tape affair to their own petty needs. They were hiding behind a high goal: punish those guilty in the assassination of journalist Georgiy Gongadze and, at the same time, conceal the truth to meet their political ends. They knowingly warped the true circumstances around events that, by a twist of fortune, were witnessed by me and my family.

But the truth, as life itself, finds its way even through asphalt this thick.

The truth is that people who volunteered for the crusade to seek the truth in the Gongadze affair have been guided in their actions by down-to-earth common instincts: curiosity, greed, envy, revenge, and hatred. And they are only rarely guided by higher motives: justice, responsibility, civic duty, and patriotism.

Over the last years, Major Melnychenko and his records gave growth to various, sometimes most unthinkable, legends.

This is the time to tell the truth.

Possessing a multitude of details that shed light on the genuine history behind the tape affair, I decided to write this book. I hope it will allow me to get rid of the paramount responsibility, primarily to myself and my conscience. While I was toiling over this manuscript, I was frequently called by family and friends. They would ask, Volodia, what are you up? Who are you working for? Who would need your book?

The number of telephone calls snowballed by the day. I was approached by people who knew about my role in the fate of Major Melnychenko. The content of the tape affair book attracted politicians and journalists alike. All of them were honestly trying to help me with advice.

Some of them pleaded with me not to criticize Melnychenko, saying what he did for Ukrainian was a tremendous feat. The others insisted that I should not touch Kuchma, because his time as Ukrainian President is about to expire and all he deserves now is sympathy.The third tried to make me repent.

At last, I had a call from my brother in Ivano-Frankovsk who said this: Volodia, I just want to ask you about one thing. Be honest. Forget all hurt feelings. Do not try to get back or settle old scores. Write in a way that your book remains readable in ten or twenty years. Then it will serve the cause of Ukraine.

My book is indeed written with all my heart. With leniency and sympathy to Mykola Melnychenko, as a big and untidy child against who you cannot hold a grudge but who you can and must chide.

I have written with understanding to Alexander Moroz. I still (notwithstanding all that has happened) consider him to be a man of strong personality—personality that was roughly tampered with by the harsh reality called Ukrainian politics. I understand in what a precarious position he has driven himself by accepting once to cooperate with Melnychenko.

I have written in an objective manner toward my new acquaintances whom I came to know over the time of the tape affair. However, I must admit that this book was written first of all with great love to my readers—all people in Ukraine who all these years would not lose hope to get to the bottom line of what has happened.

Writing this book was not difficult. Telling the truth is always an easy and pleasant thing, because nothing was to be invented.

Thanks!

Preface

People who believe that the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), CIA, or the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) are those who keep track of all information about the tape affair, are in for a big surprise. In fact, the close circle of persons who know most about Major Melnychenko and his records include me, Volodymyr Tsvil, and the godfather of my junior daughter, Volodymyr Boldaniuk. By a quirk of fate, the whirlpool of events around the former Kuchma’s guard also sucked in my wife, Ivanka, and my children, Hannusia and Tatianka.

In late fall of 2000, I brought Mykola Melnychenko from Ukraine and Boldaniuk hid him abroad for four and a half months.

A citizen of the Czech Republic, Volodymyr Boldaniuk still holds the entire archive of records that have been made in the office of the Ukrainian ex-president. He is a friend of mine who lives in the city of Ostrava, the administrative hub of the industrial Northern Moravia. This region is home to multiple metallurgic and electric power plants, as well as coal mines. Northern Moravia is for the Czechs, and the Donbas and Dnieper region is for the Ukrainians. Incidentally, Ostrava was once a sister city to Donetsk.

In the Ukrainian tongue, Boldaniuk was one of those Moravian folks—a reputable local businessman. By the time the events around Major Melnychenko started to become hectic, Volodymyr was working as a manager in Union Leasing, the branch of a powerful Northern Moravian Energy concern. His financial standing was solid as a rock, and his business, remarkably, had nothing to do with Ukraine. This put him in a position of independent observer during the tape affair. Volodia, being of Ukrainian ancestry, took all that happened here close to his heart. The portrait of Taras Shevchenko hung in his apartment since time immemorial. His father came from Transcarpathian Rahovsky Region, a part of prewar Czechoslovakia.

I grew up on the other side of the Carpathian Mountains in the well-to-do Ivano-Frankovsk village. Since early childhood, my ambition was to become a doctor. After my daft stint in the army, I entered the Lvov Medical Institute, and as a student, I met my future wife, Ivanka. In 1990, our first daughter, Hannusia, was born. Being the bread for the family was tough; I had to constantly make ends meet. Traditionally for the residents of the Western Ukraine, my business was tied with regular trips into the neighboring countries of Poland and Czechoslovakia.

During one of these trips, Ivanka and I met Boldaniuk. His sister Nina, who lived in Lvov, asked us to bring to Ostrava a television. I handed over this precious gift to Volodia in 1990. This was how we met. Over time, we became business partners and close friends. After graduation from the institute, I went into politics. This was primarily connected with what the Ukrainian community in Lvov was doing at that time. I had the chance to become a coordinator with the World Congress of Free Ukrainians (WCFU) and deal with its activities in Ukraine.

In the summer of 1992, I was working on the committee that took care of burying the remains of Josyf Slipyj, the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church cardinal. About that time, I was invited to visit Toronto, Canada, as a guest at the WCFU congress. That was when I came across our top-notch politicians and government officials for the first time. In 1993, I visited the Presidential Administration (Leonid Kravchuk) to negotiate the Ukrainian Minister of Defense First Deputy Konstantin Morozov’s visit to the Toronto Congress.

My first impression from meeting the top governmental official in Kiev face-to-face can be described as a deep disappointment. It seemed to me these people were totally indifferent to what the so-called people in the street had to fight with: earning paltry salaries that could not catch up with galloping inflation rates, having to eke out a living working in improvised street markets, and having to deal with bandits and racketeers who had replaced taxation, law-enforcement, and legal functions of the state. It was evident that the old-time government folks could not restore law and order and were unable—or unwilling—to reform Ukraine; the new, younger generation had to emerge. Having drawn this conclusion, I decided to test my forces in politics.

In the 1994 parliamentary elections, I volunteered to run for an Member of Parliament office as an independent candidate. Luckily, I had enough funds to do that, because my business was doing quite well.My principal foreign business partner was Boldaniuk. In 1996, we founded the wine distillery enterprise in Southern Moravia, keeping on some side jobs. I should admit that Volodia and I were something more than mere business partners. We were friends between families and would go on vacations jointly in the mountains and to the sea. In 1998, Boldaniuk became the godfather to my junior daughter, Tatianka.

Until mid-2000, my family resided in Lvov. Hannusia attended the school with profound emphasis on German linguistics and for her high merits was invited to Germany. With the assistance of the public organization, the Bavarian-Ukrainian Forum, she was sent to study at the Starnberg Gymnasium. Hannusia went to Bavaria along with Ivanka and Tatianka. My wife became a student of the Free Ukrainian University in Munich. By that time, I successfully graduated from the Diplomatic Academy of the Ukrainian MFA and was on tenterhooks waiting for my first assignment abroad. This was how my family ended up in Starnberg, a small resort town not far from Munich at the shore of a picturesque lake next to the Alps. It was here my family first heard about the tape affair.

The former head of the SBU, Volodymyr Radchenko, once acknowledged that 90 percent of all tape affair participants had been taken advantage of by its masterminds behind the scenes. What he meant was that we were just pawns in the game where all the stings were pulled by the powerful and mighty of this world. However, even the pawns can sometimes make it to become the queen.

In this case, the game starts to become interesting, especially for those who have been biding their time and sparing no efforts to get to the ultimate goal. Over the time of the tape affair, most of its active protagonists came to feel themselves deceived and disappointed. Although many of them were honest people who sincerely wanted to turn everything that was happening to the benefit for Ukraine, it would have been a nice idea for them to join their efforts and tell the truth. This would have possibly allowed the public to know all details of the journalist’s murder and the secret records of the president’s confidentialities to become published.

Prologue

1.

The Day Ukrainska Pravda Was Born

I met Georgiy Gongadze rather unofficially in Verhovna Rada.

All Ukrainian journalists of repute would usually convene at plenary sessions. Drinking tea in the coffee parlor and gorging the MP sausages was an inalienable ritual of the parliament’s daily routine. In the Rada corridors, the men of the pen could freely mix with the politicians, take interviews, and exchange notes and bits of gossip. At the start of 2000, the Ukrainian political and social life was at the brink of imminent stagnation. With the ticket for the second term in his pocket and ranks of faithful confidants behind his back, Kuchma kept a tight grip on the situation in the country. The only nuisance was the spiteful articles written by journalists who were disappointed in the president and his policy. At that time, the opposition press was backed up by the Socialist Party leader, Alexander Moroz. The authors publishing their articles in the newspaper Grani could give free reign to their criticism and get nicely paid, to boot.

Georgiy Gongadze was one of these few; I met him on several occasions in the company of the SPU leader associates. Georgiy’s voice and face were easy to recollect, mostly by his TV and radio presentations. We would usually say hello and exchange a couple of phrases. The reason we became closer was rather unique from the perspective of subsequent events.

Once, in the spring of 2000, I was driving my car across Kiev. Moving along the Lesia Ukrainka Boulevard, I noticed a guy with his girlfriend who apparently wanted to catch a ride. These were Georgiy Gongadze and Alena Pritula. They were flagging the cab and were quite surprised to see an SUV with foreign plates pull up to the curb. Having recognized me, Gongadze and his companion seemed to brighten up.

Volodymyr Ivanovich, what a surprise! Georgiy said. "We would like to invite you to a celebration. Today we are opening the Ukrainska Pravda Internet site. Why not stop by the office? We are setting up a presentation!"

That day I literally had my hands full. Canceling my plans for the occasional invitation was not a good idea. I limited myself by bringing the journalists to their office on Leo Tolstoy Street. There, next to Botanic Garden, the Ukrainska Pravda editorial staff rented an apartment for their headquarters. Georgiy and Alena were in high moods and seemed to be somehow spiritually exalted. On the way, they animatedly narrated their plans. Georgiy wanted to eventually spin out his own Internet project and make the Ukrainska Pravda an influential political edition. Before saying our good-byes, I promised to the journalists that I would certainly stop by at their office some other time. That was how I remember Georgiy Gongadze—a man full of optimism with great plans for future.

Life sometimes presents us with utterly miraculous coincidences that are hard to perceive other than as signs of fate.

Georgiy Gongadze, Alexander Moroz, and Mykola Melnychenko have been passengers in my vehicle on different occasions. It was a Mitsubishi Pajero SUV with registration plate OVT 82-09, registered in Ostrava to the name of Boldaniuk’s wife, Pavlina. In January 2000, it was Alexander Moroz who was returning to Ukraine in this vehicle after his Czech vacation. The same SUV (in reverse direction) carried the family of Major Melnychenko in late fall of the same year. Helping Mykola to hide abroad, I knew that he was an important witness in the Gongadze case. At least this was how Moroz presented him to me.

During the tape affair years, I would frequently recollect how I met Georgiy Gongadze on the day Ukrainska Pravda had its official inauguration. This fatal, unexplainable conjuncture of events saved me from sinning. At different points of time, I was offered big bucks just to talk with the major and buy out his records. I, however, never betrayed or sold Melnychenko. For me, Mykola was always an important witness in the Gongadze case, as important as his records. I believed that one day he would tell us all the truth, and I still hold on to this hope.

Since the beginning of the tape affair, I was constantly plagued by the question: why would nobody want to save Georgiy Gongadze? The fact is the politicians to whom Mykola brought these records certainly analyzed the president’s words and knew that the journalist was facing an imminent and mortal danger.

Why wouldn’t these good people save him? Did they simply wait for disaster to happen and were even interested in this course of events? And maybe, as some suspect, they stood behind the scenes and arranged for this murder only to set up Kuchma.

I know for sure that if Moroz had ever asked me to help Gongadze, I would not have hesitated for a second. One option was to bring him abroad and hide him there until everything settled down, the same as we later did with Mykola Melnychenko’s family. It would have been the best solution for all of us, and for Ukraine. However, the events developed otherwise.

On September 16, 2000, Ukraine lost Georgiy Gongadze for good. Two and a half months later, on November 28, 2000, it got Major Melnychenko in retribution.

2.

Dawn at Manhattan

During the time the tape affair raged, I visited America twice. Both of these visits concerned negotiations with Melnychenko.

The first time I arrived in New York on December 15, 2001, and stayed at the major’s place for a week. Since the time he had left the Czech Republic, we did not see each other for about half a year. Mykola was suffering from being apart. I felt that he had hard time living without me.

I flew to the United States by Italian airlines with a stopover in Milan. After the wearisome ten-hour flight, our plane landed at the John F. Kennedy International Airport. My idea was to have a nice rest. I thought that Mykola would bring me to his place where we would have a nice, calm dinner.

Melnychenko met me in the airport along with Alena Pritula. As it turned out, she flew in New York a few days before where she met the major for the first time. Mykola and Alena sincerely enjoyed my visit. After presenting me to the journalist, Melnychenko explained that Volodia Tsvil was a man who had once saved his life. These words made me feel somewhat uncomfortable. Alena, in response, said that we had already met.

It’s going to be a long trip, Mykola warned me right away, so we take a cab. We drop Alena on the way and then go straight to my place.

The file of people waiting for cabs at JFK was about a mile long. To stand and wait was almost hopeless. Mykola, as I came to find out, had not a clue. He tried to shuffle and get in without waiting in line but was stopped. Then the major made a suggestion: why not take a bus, go for a couple of stops, and then try to flag the cab elsewhere? With these words, he resolutely made his way to a city bus. After about an hour-long ride, we returned to the scratch. It turned out that we were on a shuttle circling between different terminals, whereas the major believed we were heading to New York.

Frankly speaking, I was pissed off. Totally worn out after the flight, I wanted to get indoors as soon as possible. Mentally, I scolded Mykola but did not voice my spite, so he could save face in front of the journalist.

Alena was, to her credit, quite tactful. She pretended that everything was just okay, although it was evident that Mykola was a hopeless guide. Later I found out that during his six months of life in the United States, he hardly managed to learn even a couple of English words.

Pritula saved us. The journalist took the initiative, and pretty soon we found another bus that was heading toward the Big Apple. After a good hour-long ride, we exited at the terminal metro station somewhere in the outskirt of the city.

I had heard that the metro in New York was terrible, but the reality exceeded all my apprehensions. The place where Mykola and Alena brought me teemed with rats and was covered in darkness.

We were late for the last train. After we descended the stairs into the underground, we found out that the last train had gone. We had to climb back up. After that, we resumed our attempts to flag down a cab. Melnychenko was doing his best standing at the curb, but to no avail. We moved along the street changing sides, but nobody would stop. This lasted for an hour and a half.

Sometime during this meandering, Pritula’s cell phone ringed. It was one of Ukraine’s leading journalists, Yulia Mostovaya. Holding the phone tight to her ear, Alena started to whisper, Yulia, I am in New York right now. This is all true, believe me. I told you—Moroz cannot lie. I saw Melnychenko alive and listened to his tapes. This is all true.

A pause followed. Pritula listened to the question and added, This was Marchuk. He cut Marchuk out.

What she apparently meant was that it was Marchuk who pushed Kuchma to deal with Gongadze and then, editing the records, Melnychenko erased Eugeniy Kirillovich’s words.

Finally, we lucked out. Some hopheads, in dire need of a couple of extra bucks, picked us up. All three of us—me with Alena and Mykola crammed in the backseat of their car. I held my carry-on bags on my hands. The driver charged twenty dollars and brought us to the place we told him. Then we had to walk again, with Mykola in the lead. It was a nice experience—right after leaving the airport, with a ten-hour flight behind me, I strode three miles across New York. Eventually, we approached the old shabby-looking house. There Alena bid us farewell and headed for the cellar.

Once alone with Melnychenko, I asked, Mykola, what is this all about?

It was me who has arranged this for her, Major said. She has no place to live.

So what now?

Let’s take a walk. I live far from here, and the subway does not work at night.

Walk where?

To Manhattan, Melnychenko suggested. Volodia, you certainly have never seen anything like this before!

I was ready to take everything with equanimity, and we set off on our journey to Manhattan. At five in the morning, I was about to break down and instead of sightseeing talked Mykola into paying a visit to a striptease bar. By that time, all decent institutions had been closed. I hoped, even for a brief spell of time, to get away from this nightmare. My head ached terribly, and my legs were about to buckle. Just to relax, I ordered a beer with a price tag of fifteen dollars.

In the striptease bar, we were the only visitors and, as such, were immediately attacked by the girls. Mykola fled after saying that he would wait for me at the entrance. He had scruples about visiting such places and left me behind. The tramps lost their interest as soon as they understood that my English was nonexistent. After having finished off my beer, I exited into the street. It was dawn. Melnychenko was pulling me somewhere. He wanted to show me the place where the World Trade Center used to be, before being blown up by terrorists.

My stamina, however, was at its end. Mykola, let’s go home! I pleaded.

Just look around! the major interrupted me. This is America.

In this instant I recollected my first meeting with Mykola—in the early spring of 2000 in Kiev, at the park opposite to Verhovna Rada. Could I imagine then that this meeting would bring me to New York one and a half years later?

What is poor Mykola doing here? Why am I here? Who is standing behind all this? I wondered.

With the Manhattan dawn shining in my face, I clearly realized that I hated the guts of the man who had instigated the tape affair.

We boarded the suburban train and went to Mykola’s place. He did live far—about forty-five miles away from downtown. This, apparently, was not New York City but some other town. The name of the station where we exited was Green Neck. My plane had landed at the JFK airport at nine o’clock the previous night, and we finally made it home by eight in the morning. All this time, Lilia Melnychenko had not slept, as she was torn with thoughts about her husband. This was not a joke; Mykola would not stop telling about himself as a next target.However, during all our perambulations across the city, he did not call home, because he was certain that everybody was asleep.

The Melnychenkos lived frugally, as Ukrainians do. The apartment was given to him by the American government, as was stipulated by the status of refugee. It had three small rooms and a kitchenette. I found this apartment extremely uncomfortable to my taste. My impression was that Mykola and Lilia were living there just for the time being, in between places. The furniture was old, apparently going back a long time. The room I was given had one bed. The fridge in the corridor was almost empty and held nothing but frozen chicken legs.

Financially, Mykola was scraping the bottom of the barrel. He was spending every penny to have his records evaluated and cleaned. Lilia wanted to find a job and crammed to learn English. Her intention was to pass the test and have her Ukrainian medical diploma confirmed. It must be said that Mykola’s spouse took me to her heart. We had two whole-day trips to New York, when we visited museums and art exhibitions and attended a concert in Carnegie Hall. While Lilia was showing me all the local attractions, Mykola stayed at home with their daughter and cooked the dinner. As a matter of fact, it was chicken legs.

On several occasions, I took excursions to the city with Mykola. He would arrange business meetings and present me to his new buddies. The major would offer me lavish praises that made me crawl. He would call me his dearest friend and would not hesitate to underline that I had saved his life. In response, I would always joke, Mykola, if I had saved your life, I am responsible for it now. You must obey my orders!

But he would not obey. In fact, he never had.

Timeline:

Ukraine from the Revolution of 1917 to the Late 80s – mid-90s

Despite the national liberation tug-of-war to create an independent country that was lost by Ukrainians during the Ukrainian Revolution from 1917 to 1920, the nation-building processes on the territory of Ukraine continued. In the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic established by the Moscow Bolsheviks in 1920, in some manner distorted by the communist regime, the Ukrainian national communists were forced to follow the mood of the broad public that had manifested itself during its support of the Central Rada¹ and the Ukrainian People’s Republic. ²

On the other hand, some Ukrainian Bolsheviks associated themselves with the people and its traditions, language, and cultural heritage. These were the general trends in the 1920s, when the so-called Ukrainization-indigenization was implemented in the Ukrainian SSR,³ whose effects left a deep mark in the next decades of the socialist construction.

As a result of merciless Stalinist terror against the Ukrainian bourgeois nationalists and the peasantry in 1930, the Ukrainian people suffered irreparable demographic losses. Its elite and intellectual potential, which had been accumulated by previous generations, was annihilated.

Another test that the Ukrainian people had to pass was World War II when the territory of the country twice changed hands: it was swept by warfare, suffered the police mopping up by Nazi and Soviet repressive apparatus, and witnessed the destruction of its national industry, economic infrastructure, and residential housing. But the mass participation in the war and the postwar ordeal had given some Ukrainians the opportunity to get into