Štefan Kruško (1941 - 2021)

Biography:

“You are wrong if you think you are citizens of Czechoslovakia. You are citizens of the Soviet Union!"

Štefan Kruško was born in 1941 in the village of Chmeľová in Bardejov district. He comes from the peasant family of the Rusyn origin that among many other families believed the alluring words about a better life in the Soviet Union. They left for Ukraine when Štefan was only six years old. They found their replacement home in the village of Hrušvica, where also other resettled Slovak and Czech families lived. Štefan attended an elementary school there and later also studied the secondary school of nursing. After finishing his studies he started to work as an orderly and as a chief of the medical centre in the village. He got married there and with his wife, resettled Slovak from the village of Lenartov, they had two children. In the year 1965 they went to visit their relatives in Slovakia for the first time; however, they had no idea about what this decision would mean for them. They really liked being back to Slovakia, so at the consulate they gradually prolonged their stay there up to six months. They lived and worked in Svidník but as they didn't get permission to move to Slovakia, they had to return. After their return to Ukraine an unpleasant surprise was awaiting them. Štefan was accused of treason for leaving the republic and prohibited from working in the Rivne region and thus the family had to move to the neighbouring area. They did their best to get a permission to move to Slovakia and after many formal obstacles they eventually managed to get it in the year 1967. They settled in Prešov and along with his wife they found job in a health service. Later, the third child was born into their family. Štefan went through several positions and jobs, but after having certain health problems, he had to accept the disability pension even though he was quite young. He has always felt a desire to know the truth about the fate of people displaced in a post-war period, so after his return to homeland, he engaged in research of these issues in Slovak, Czech, Ukrainian, and Russian archives. He devoted himself to the research activities for more than 40 years. He even founded the Repatriates Coordination Committee in the Slovak Republic with the only aim to help Slovak natives, who had been displaced. He is the author of many books of non-fiction literature, compiler and editor of various cultural-artistic collections of works and booklets and holder of an honour for voluntary community service called “Srdce na dlani – 2000 (Heart on the sleeve - 2000)". Štefan Kruško died in 2021.

A Strenuous Process of Obtaining the Citizenship

“The bad luck of those people was that the process of obtaining the citizenship was very lengthy, costly, and difficult as for the paperwork. They had to wait for being granted the state citizenship just like some refugees, Vietnamese or the like, and gaining the provisional approval for naturalisation took about a year. Then they waited for another half a year until they were naturalised. Moreover, until recently people had to pay 20,000 crowns for gaining the citizenship, which they actually never gave up, never lost, and they had no papers of losing it. A man, who had 1,200-crown pension and was born here, that man had to buy his citizenship back for 20,000 crowns. The same man had to take out a loan, but not as a foreigner, he had to change the name and the like. Two years ago, I think it also was our merit, the ministry submitted it to the Legislative Council, and it was even passed by the Parliament, that it was not embedded in the law on administration fees, but in the registry law, where there was a clause saying that a citizen born in Slovakia had a discount and citizen, who had resettled under the resolution no. 664 of 1991, meaning the man from Chernobyl, got the citizenship for free. However, the descendant born in 1947 there or in a car in the territory of Ukraine in Lvov had to pay 20,000 crowns. It was another injustice influencing the fate of those people."

Work of Optants in the Field of Agriculture

“And our people, mainly those who were considered to be the proletariat, the working class, who were seasonally working for example in Bohemia or those who participated in certain activities of the resistance movement, members of the communist party or of some youth organisations, these people were celebrated and made functionaries. It had been calculated, we knew that it was done with the only aim. They knew that if they chose the functionaries from the ranks of ordinary people, other people would follow them as they had a kind of respect and could fascinate other people. It was clear that people were used to working with soil, in agriculture, but definitely weren't able to work such a big area of Czech land just with a cow. They had no machinery. The Czech people either took their machinery with themselves or sold it to the local Ukrainians. We had to borrow a reaper, a seed drill, a hay rake and the like. Our people didn't have this machinery. Though, it was in the years 1947 – 1948. Autumn of 1949 was the birth of kolkhozes. Then, people were deprived even of their cow and horse they had brought from Slovakia and another wave of affliction came. I know there were some forced and really violent registrations for the members of kolkhozes."

Women in Ukrainian Kolkhoz

“Our local functionaries created certain groups in kolkhoz, for example they chose a woman from Slovakia, who was in the lead of a group of women planting sugar beet, potatoes, maize and so on, or planting vegetables. They placed our women everywhere, I don't know maybe for their positive attitude to working the land, but they also chose literate women, who could write as it was necessary to note certain units and as there were huge working groups. We know about some cases of people from Šarišské Jastrabie, Vyšný Tvarožec, Becherov, Čirč, where compact Novosilky appeared. It was the village of Roztoky and the surrounds of Svidník, where kolkhozes were being built. They even called these kolkhozes in the name of Gottwald. They consisted of their own people; they didn't accept a non-Ukrainian person as a member of kolkhoz, and giving them a function was absolutely impossible. On the other hand, in Kupičivo neither milkmaid could be a Ukrainian woman, she had to be from our ranks."

Organised Escapes from Ukraine

“It was a sort of organised illegal network of people, who had an activist in each district, where our people lived. The man was going around the village, collecting signatures and surveying the direction we could go. He was saying we would go through the forests and not along the main roads and the like. The organiser in Kvasilov was the former chairman of the KSS (Communist Party of Slovakia) from the Snina district, an old resistance fighter, communist, who used to agitate for resettlement. He was of Russophil orientation and he really believed that communist ideology. However, as soon as he came there and saw that everything was totally different, he was the first who agitated for returning. He wasn't sentenced for his activities, but he had to report to the militia every week and prove that he hadn't been going from village to village. His granddaughter lives here in Prešov. The only family of natives form Ľutina managed to cross the borders with their horses and come back home to Ľutina. And there were hundreds of cases of such crossings the borders. I have written them down into the book called ,Areštanti'. I would say I know about 60% of people who at least tried to cross the borders, even though they only went to the border crossing and returned. Two people were probably shot dead when they wanted to cross the border, because they vanished into thin air. They came from the village of Koterbachy in Spišská Nová Ves district. Moreover, there were two brothers in law from Rudňany. Everyone who had been caught at the border got five years. Everyone who had been caught in a border area got two, three years and was sent to corrective labour camps somewhere in the far north, beyond the Urals, or to Vorkuta, where the mines were located."

Ignorance is No Excuse

“We know about a man coming from the village of Veľký Sulín. Bandera faction chose his Czech barn, which was quite big, huge, and planned to dig an underground shelter there and live in it. The question was whether that man knew what they were doing there at night, how deep they dug, what they drove there, or what kind of supplies were there, and so on. It was like that until the authorities of the Ministry of Interior KGB found certain contacts and one night surrounded the house and started shooting. They took that Mr. Kopáč and sentenced him to fifteen years. His colleague or friend as well as neighbour, who apparently knew about everything, was sentenced, too. He hadn't enough courage to say no. The Banderas did it very craftily when they called him to the house of a Ukrainian family, where they told him, 'Your house has a really good and strategic position in the periphery, near the forest, and so on, and thus we will do something there, definitely. However, it will have nothing in common with you, we won't need your help, we will only need your barn.' So then they carried the soil behind the barn and scattered it there."

Punishment for Being in Touch with Bandera Faction

“The second such incident, which also was confirmed in the archives of the KGB, was when the native from the village of Chmeľová, Andrej Čučvara, tried to make contact or get in touch with those Banderas, because he wanted them to help him or just give him some advice on how to get to Slovakia. Allegedly, and it also was written in the record from the investigation, they said, 'If we win, you all will return to Slovakia.' Of course, their victory was impossible, but someone mentioned in further interrogations the fact that there had been three men in his house drinking vodka, eating bacon and it was written in the verdict that, 'For eating, drinking, and entertaining with them...,' sentenced to fifteen years. Then, nobody gave him any other contacts anymore. And as he was quite sussed, he defended himself and said, 'You have no witness and you definitely didn't see it...,' therefore his sentence was reduced from fifteen to ten years."

Desire for Coming Home

“It was said the most frequently that no collective return to Slovakia would be possible. It could only be done on an individual base. So there was just a little chance to come back home this way. Then, I don't know how it began, but people could return home under an invitation written by their blood relatives from Slovakia. It was called a visa, though it actually wasn't a visa, but people called it this way. The signature had to be confirmed by a notary, later the signature of a mayor or of a secretary of the chairman of the MNV (Municipal National Committee) sufficed. It was necessary to be precise and write surnames of people as well as their date of birth, and address, and add mainly the affirmation that in case of coming back to the territory of Czechoslovakia, the family would provide for that person and take all the needed care of him/her. It had to be sent with loads of various confirmation letters and papers and taken to militia and then, people only could wait. People waited approximately for a year or more and only then they got a reply, 'Your application has been denied.' Then people usually sent a new one and all over again."

The story and videoclips of this witness were put together and published thanks to the financial support of EU within the programme Europe for Citizens – Active European Remembrance.