'I don't approve of public sex, and public penitence is the same thing.'
s arrested in 1972 for anti-Soviet activity and sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment and exile. At the time, psychiatry was an important weapon against dissidence. Gluzman had circulated a critical appraisal of the case against General Pyotr Grigorenko, a leading figure in the Soviet human-rights movement who was confined to a psychiatric hospital in the early 1970s. During his imprisonment, Gluzman co-wrote A Manual on Psychiatry for Dissenters, a handbook for dissidents on how to avoid being diagnosed as mentally ill.
Gluzman now presides over what he describes with an unassuming smile as his 'own small archipelago': a loose network of human-rights workers, practicing psychiatrists, present and former patients, and victims of repression. Gluzman is one of the founders of the Association of Psychiatrists of Ukraine (APU), an independent professional organization dedicated to reforming the practices of Soviet psychiatry.
Gluzman is unconventional about enlarging his 'archipelago'; among his network of friends and collaborators are members of the State Security Service (SBU), the successor in Ukraine to the KGB. He has struck up a close association with SBU Major General Volodymyr Prystaiko, who with Gluzman's help has published findings from the KGB archives on Soviet repression and now edits a quarterly historical journal.
In a recent conversation at the APU office, Gluzman spoke about his unusual friendship.
Q: How did you come to work with General Prystaiko?
A: It's an interesting story. A Dutch television production company had heard about this friendship between onetime victim and executioner. The producer wanted to film a documentary – he called me, and I got in touch with the general. He, of course, had to get permission from his superiors.
Q: He still works actively in the service?
A: Oh yes, he's still on active duty. He said, no problem. The crew arrived, they were able to film inside the halls of the SBU headquarters. And they shot inside the archives, they filmed footage of several case documents, including mine.
Q: Was Prystaiko assigned to your case?
A: No, not to mine, but probably to other similar affairs; he worked in the investigative division.
Q: How could you reconcile his past to yours?
A: It would be too easy to say simply that the situation in the country has changed and that overnight people have become suddenly aware. Most people had at some level a cynical understanding of the system.
I sat in prison with a number of KGB officers, several of whom I became friends with. In particular I remember Valery Rumyantsov. He entered the KGB because he genuinely believed in the romantic struggle with spies and infiltrators – particularly, of course, American ones.
But, when he started to work, he found out that it was simply the dirty, dreary business of recruiting informers. All countries have security services and that's the way they work, except that in the Soviet Union surveillance was the nature of the whole system, and there were no civic institutions to provide a counterweight.
Leaving the Soviet service is not so simple – you can't just offer a letter of resignation. For those who are materially inclined, it also means immediate loss of your paychecks, the considerable perks that come with the job. More importantly, it means the possible repression of your family and many other consequences.
Take, for instance, my KGB case officer in Kyiv, Captain Chunikhin, who, to my surprise, did everything in his power to keep me from bringing anything else into the case. He followed his order precisely, and once, I remember, when I was emotionally worked up and started to say more than I should, he stopped typing, looked me in the eye, and calmly said, 'Semyon, I wasn't asking you about that.'
At that moment, I understood that the world is not all black and white. Everything is shades of gray.
Q: How did you first become acquainted with Prystaiko?
A: My relationship with the KGB – that is, with the new one – started during the Kuchma administration, with the appointment of Volodymyr Radchenko [head of the SBU from 1995 to 1998]. There was an unpleasant row about it in the press, and when I was asked for comment, I explained my position as you hear it from me now. I considered it immoral, especially when such questions were never raised against [former Ukrainian President Leonid] Kravchuk, the former chief of ideology [of Soviet Ukraine's Communist Party].
I had never met Radchenko personally and I was not interested in his case per se, but the newspapers began to publish accounts that Gluzman was siding with the KGB. Radchenko was grateful, I suppose, I spoke to him a few times after his confirmation. At the same time, Prystaiko was chairing the committee on rehabilitation of former political prisoners.
Unfortunately, the Dutch film was never shown in Ukraine. I proposed it to several different television channels, and there was no interest.
Q: Do you believe in lustration, the practice of 'outing' members of the security organs as was practiced, for example, in the Czech Republic?
A: Repentance is an intimate thing. I don't approve of public sex, and public penitence is the same thing.
The problem of lustration, in my view, should not begin in our country with the executioner, but with the judge who convicted unjustly. It would be wrong to start the process of lustration with someone like [former Prime Minister Yevhen] Marchuk, who was the head of the fifth section of the [Ukrainian] KGB, the department responsible for the fight against dissidents – it should start with Kravchuk. In the Brezhnev era, the leader of our country was not in the KGB but the head of the ideological department of the Communist Party, which used the KGB's hands to punish dissidence.
It would be very primitive to say that someone who worked his way through the ranks from a lieutenant to a general is not guilty – he also bears some guilt, but that's where his fate led him.
Under that regime, there were people not working in the KGB who managed to do more evil to those around them. In that country, everyone was guilty, everyone was a victim. It's entirely incomprehensible to a Westerner, except those who spend enough time here
Take Prystaiko – he got into the law faculty, where they offered him work in the security apparatus. I ended up in the medical institute. You see, the problem isn't just one of right and wrong, black and white. It's the concrete matter of the history of this country.
I was lucky. I was born into an intelligent family, both my parents were well-educated. My father inculcated a skepticism about the entire system despite the fact that he was a party member. General Prystaiko had no father; his mother was a peasant. His family went hungry, they had several children. It was one of those classic melodramas, with him walking shoeless through the snow just to go to school. He didn't know the things I knew as the son of a Communist functionary. A young boy or girl like Prystaiko first had to get an education, then they began to understand things more clearly.
As far as I am concerned, lustration would be a terrible thing. If they started it here, I would leave this country. I will not be part of the meat grinder, an unjust one.
First, where is the border between truth and lie, how can you determine who knew and who didn't know, who served sincerely and who did not? Second, can you convict someone who was a dedicated Communist? How do you determine who served the system cynically or self-servingly, and who was a convinced believer?
If our country continues to seek blood, to judge, and then allow more bloodletting, it becomes an unending process. No more blood should flow. The concept of 'justice' is not a concrete one, one that demands blood. Justice ultimately equals revolution.
Q: You never considered yourself revolutionary?
A: No, never, thank God.
Q: What does your collaboration with Prystaiko involve?
A: Prystaiko and I simply have a sincere human relationship. I can't say that he's my closest friend, or I his, but we meet fairly often, sometimes exchange phone calls. I don't talk to him in particular about his investigative work, and I don't ask him questions about it – he doesn't have the right to tell me.
When he showed me the books that he is publishing, everything became perfectly clear. I don't care who he is or was – if he, an SBU general and a former KGB officer, manages to publish a book that is truthful and just, then I as a citizen of Ukraine and a former dissident am obliged to help him.
So I help fund his publications – the government and the SBU don't provide much backing for these books. So far they have managed to publish four.
Q: How do other former dissidents react to this kind of cooperation?
A: Some say, 'Look at Gluzman, helping out the KGB.' Many of my comrades are categorically opposed, but that doesn't bother me in the least.
I'll have nothing to do with that category of person who is always at war. I remember quite well from childhood the novel by [Erich Maria] Remarque, The Road Home, about soldiers returning from World War I who can't find their place in peacetime. I don't want to be one of those people who creates a romantic aura around the dissident life.
