We have an Armenian poet who was anxious about the fate of Armenia, who was ready to sacrifice his life to Armenia, who used to say about those always awake the following “Offspring sleeping in coats”. Exactly like this was Vasyli Stus for his Ukraine.

My friendship with Stus has a history of 35 years.

I had friends, who sacrificed their lives in the battlefield for the sake of immortality of their country. Up to now I love them and keenly appreciate their deeds. But what Stus did for his country was much more than just to sacrifice his life. Stus was not simply a soldier. He was a whole ideology, type of prototype. I also had friends, who used to be my ideological comrades-in-arms-wise and reasonable, self-sacrificing and self-denying friends. But Stus is quite another world for me. He is beyond comparison, beyond all criteria; my dear, incomparable, perfect Vasyli Stus.

Politics is the very sphere where, if you are the carrier of moral values, face difficulties in achieving success remaining loyal to your type. May be it’s difficult in other spheres as well, but it’s definitely more vivid in politics.

I disperse sorrow and suffering by thought,
So that I could stay who I am now

V. Stus (translated by R. Papayan)

Stus was one of those exceptional political figures in the every step of which lay morality-Christian morality. The latter always exalts and ennobles a man. It is a state when your virtue is nourished on itself. Such people are usually very modest and humble. Life-style and behavior of pokers are alien to them and beyond human understanding. Their self-display works spontaneously, naturally and demands no victims or sacrifice.  Morality was Stus’ credo, his creed, the source of his power.

I got acquainted with Stus in the place, where people display themselves vividly. In such conditions it was impossible to play a hypocrite, to simulate continually; it was a place where a human being could be entirely revealed. In such severe conditions of prison and detention Stus was really a discovery for me, in the finest sense of the word. He never made mistakes; he never lost the game in the battlefield of soul and thought. Stus was never led by the slogan “Aim justifies the means”. He was beyond all this. Stus faced his destiny knightly, chivalrously and, as he used to say in one poem, “Whether my cross is heavy or light, I am not asking”.

The cemetery of Stus in Kochino

In conditions of absolute supremacy of wolf laws of GULAG Stus remained an ordinary man till the end.

People, sentenced to death,
Were given guns; those, who gave them guns were just implementing their last will,
And they started shooting to death other prisoners sentenced to death,
So that they could get reconciled with the thought of their downfall

V.  Stus (translated by R. Papayan)

This is how Stus formulates the world the casual inhabitants of which we used to be; a world where you have to be a superman to endure a world of punishment, suffer a world of privation, hardship, at the same time being able to read a poem instead of sharing emotional state of prisoners described by Stus… and not only to read, but also to write-as Genius.

Once in the punishment cell of the 19^th camp of Mordovia Stus read out to me his poem called “You are here, here”. He read it out in the original-in Ukrainian. I didn’t understand it but it made me feel creepy all over. His poem sounded like a prayer. Stus introduced to me the gist of the poem. I understood it and again it gave me goose pimples just to hear it. I was shocked. At the moment I have its Armenian translation right in my eyes. I am reading it, I am deeply touched, and I am admiring it. I wish I could hear Stus’ Ukrainian prayer “You are here, here”. Instead I would like to read out to him my delayed prayer by the greatest Armenian poet Sevak. 

Help me, Mariam,
To remain pure, unblemished
In this marsh-like dirt-filth,
That is called by one word-murmur

In the 35^th camp ofPerm to God’s will I met Stus’ close friend-Evgen Sverstyuk. Stus, certainly, told me about Sverstyuk.  On seeing him, I immediately understood that he also belonged to the indomitable Stus-dynasty of statesmen. When you meet people, who are the carriers of these values, a simple contact with them becomes a real festival. Both of us then were in need of talks and recollections about Stus and we did it quite frequently. Stus was always present in our talks. Later, we regained the joy of the “festival” by means of letters.

“I clearly remember our first meeting in the 35^th camp ofPerm region”, - Sverstyuk wrote to me. “I remember how you introduced yourself to me; I and Stus were always together. I felt that Stus is still my friend, but he is already an apostle”.

The civilized world nowadays judges the formerSovietRepublicstaking into account the political struggle carried on in these republics during the evil empire years. Let us say, the civilized world adopted the same judgment in the distant past as well.  So now the very countries and their people have nothing to do but to cherish the destructors of ideological chains.

This year is the 25th year of the atrocity committed against Vasyli Stus-atrocity that put an end to the life of a man who sacrificed his life to pay for the real price of the real freedom of his people.

I am optimistic and I think thatUkraineand the Ukrainians give their due to my dear Stus.

He was “Mother Ukraine’s offspring sleeping in coats”, wasn’t he?

With awe: Razmik Markosyan