Pranks in the Soviet gulag were a rarity. When they did occur, Myroslav Marynovych, who spent 1977–1984 confined among the snowy hills of eastern Siberia, was usually responsible.
“I am always joking,” he told me, leaning back in his chair. “It is important to transform some challenges into jokes, into something creative, something fun.” Marynovych’s smile faded. “Of course, it wasn’t all jokes. I did get arrested, you know?”
Yes, indeed, I knew that all too well. It is part of the reason I had sought him out during a recent visit to Lviv, in the parochial heartland of Western Ukraine. We met late on a Friday afternoon in a well-lit corner of Frayerka Bakery, a cobblestoned block away from his home. The row of chocolate cakes displayed by the entrance looked tempting, but Marynovych, a teetotaler following an encounter with Christ during his confinement, strolled right past them and ordered coffee. My drink of choice was tea.
The neighborhood first became his home half a century ago when he began engineering studies at the Polytechnic National University in Lviv—then a Soviet city. During his freshman year in 1969, Marynovych was approached by the KGB, the Soviet Union’s security agency. They wanted him to become an informant. He declined, and instead launched a career as a Soviet dissident: In 1976, he co-founded Ukraine’s first human rights organization. He then spent seven years in the gulag, followed by another four years in exile, before returning home to help usher his country out of communism.
