Myroslav Medvid sees his 1985 ordeal as a positive life-changing experience
by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau
KYIV - The name Myroslav Medvid provokes thoughts of geopolitical intrigue, U.S bureaucratic bungling and a young sailor, doped and forced to return to a land he had attempted to flee.
In 1985 the Medvid affair transfixed the Ukrainian American community and much of America. His plight caused anger, demonstrations and, finally, tears. Like a geopolitical volleyball, his case was bumped around at the highest echelons of the U.S. government until the captains of the game decided that he should go away, for his appearance was a prickly thorn for superpower politics and summitry. And thus he was sent back to the Soviet grain ship from which he had escaped near New Orleans to an uncertain and perhaps dark future in the Soviet Union, the land that Ronald Reagan, the U.S. president at the time, had dubbed the "evil empire."
Today Myroslav Medvid is alive and well and living in Ukraine, a man changed by the years - but most dramatically by his tribulations in the United States. He is a parish priest of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church with a wife and children living in the city of Chervonohrad, about an hour's drive north of Lviv.
With the 15th anniversary of his ordeal nearing and, not coincidentally, while another asylum debacle, the Elian Gonzalez case, lingers in U.S. courts, the Rev. Medvid agreed to The Weekly's requests for his first exclusive interview with a Western publication.
The mild-mannered 40-year-old priest with sparkling blue eyes and an easy laugh said he felt no bitterness, neither toward the U.S. officials who sent him packing in 1985, nor towards the Soviet henchmen who intimidated and roughed him up during and after his return. In retrospect, he was thankful, he explained, because what he suffered had turned him to God and religion.
During a one-hour interview in and around the office of The Weekly's Kyiv Press Bureau, he said: "I am thankful to everybody, from both sides. I pray for them daily. What I lived through was my first step to the Lord." He then added, "I would like to meet the person who decided that I must be returned to tell him that I forgive him."
The young priest regards what happened to him in New Orleans as the moment that changed his life. He said he likens his travails to the biblical parable of the wayward son, who returns to his father's home after a long and difficult time seeking his own fortune.
Before New Orleans he was hardly a spiritual person, even though his grandmother tried to instill in him a Catholic base. He was a member of the Communist Youth League, but a disaffected one, who belonged because that was the only path to opportunity for a person with any ambition whatsoever. As he explained during the interview, even then he held strong Ukrainian nationalist beliefs, at heart a dissident, but had learned to conceal them.
After he was returned to the Soviet grain ship by local border authorities of the Immigration and Naturalization Service - who either did not understand that he was seeking political asylum or simply wanted to be rid of a difficult situation - and during a long, probably drug-induced slumber he began having unusual dreams and at least one apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary. He would not give details of his dreams or of the vision, but said only that they made him reconsider the life he wanted to lead.
Still haunted by ordeal
Although the ex-merchant marine maintained that his life today is normal, his actions and statements at times made it clear that what he endured haunts him still. At moments during the interview, the bitterness he maintained he does not bear would ooze from a wound that seems not fully healed. In reply to a question on whether he met with U.S. officials aboard the Soviet grain ship, the Marshal Koniev, after he was returned there, the Rev. Medvid explained that the interview took place off ship and then abruptly and acerbically added: "Just tell Mr. Sell that I did see my father and mother."
He then explained that Mr. Sell was the name, as he understood it, of the U.S. State Department representative who escorted him back to the Soviet ship after the interview. During their walk the official told him in Russian that he should be thankful he was being returned because at least now he would see his parents again.
Today in a Ukraine free of Soviet domination, a country ostensibly free and democratic, the Rev. Medvid is still leery of eavesdroppers and hidden microphones. He requested that the interview take place outdoors, was selective about where he wanted to talk and requested that a tape recorder not be used. About halfway through the discussion he pointed out a young man sitting with a girl and wondered aloud whether he might be a secret service agent.
He was reluctant to give details of what he experienced on those days and nights on the Marshal Koniev as it waited in the Gulf of Mexico for permission to leave port while the INS, the U.S. Congress and President Reagan decided what to do with the Soviet seaman who jumped ship in U.S. waters.
"It still is difficult to talk about this," said the Rev. Medvid.
Fifteen years ago he was a young, and perhaps naive, Soviet sailor, who thought that if he could get to U.S. shores he could attain political asylum in the land of refuge and freedom.
He had believed the biggest obstacles to escape from an oppressive Soviet system were the KGB handlers who watched every step he and his fellow sailors took when they were in a foreign port - not U.S. bureaucratic bungling and geopolitical intrigues between the two superpowers.
He said he often thought about how he might escape to another country and had planned his flight to U.S. shores. He could not have known that he would be returned because of a glaring mistake by a lower-level government representative and a superpower summit in Helsinki.
Jumping ship in the gulf
Myroslav Medvid's ordeal began on the night of October 24 when he jumped into the dark waters of the Gulf of Mexico and swam to the U.S. shore near the city of New Orleans. There he walked a distance before coming upon a Louisiana couple. He wrote the word "Policia" on a piece of paper and then drew an arrow to the words "Novi Orlean." The couple escorted the sailor to the New Orleans police, who turned him over to the harbor police, who in turn gave him to the border patrol of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.
INS officials contacted an official Justice Department interpreter, Irene Padoch, who spoke with Mr. Medvid and informed the authorities that the sailor twice requested political asylum during their conversation. They, in turn, told Mrs. Padoch to relay to the sailor that no harm would come to him. Within an hour Mr. Medvid was escorted back to the Marshal Koniev, kicking and screaming all the while. At the ship, Mr. Medvid again dived into the water and swam to shore, where Soviet and U.S. officials grabbed him as he bit and kicked them. After being handcuffed, he began to pound his head against the rocks.
The next day a U.S. State Department delegation held an on-shore interview with him. The sailor was hesitant to talk with them, as well as with Mrs. Padoch when she contacted him later. It was the last time that Mr. Medvid was seen.
The affair quickly rose to the top of the bureaucratic ladder and became a White House issue within days, not less so because President Reagan was scheduled to meet with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Helsinki after the New Year. While U.S. officials pondered how to diplomatically resolve the imbroglio, Seaman Medvid was going through his own hell on board the ship.
Sixteen days after his flight to freedom the Marshal Koniev raised anchor and left United States waters, disregarding a subpoena issued to the ship's captain and an order barring the ship's departure, both issued by the U.S. House of Representatives Agriculture Committee.
Because Soviet authorities refused to discuss the matter further, and because Mr. Medvid was hounded by KGB agents for years after his return, what happened to the young sailor remained a mystery.
Did Mr. Medvid voluntarily sign papers that stated he wanted to return to the Soviet Union, or did KGB officials on board the ship have an impostor do it? Did he try to jump overboard a second time? Was he drugged by KGB officers upon his return? How did the wounds on his left arm appear?
The Rev. Medvid maintains that he remembers very little of what happened to him once he returned to the ship, and that even details of how he got there are sketchy.
To this day he does not know whether he was drugged, even though U.S. psychiatrists concluded after meeting with him a day after his return that he was probably under the influence of halidol and thorazine, two strong mind-altering drugs.
He stated unequivocally that there was no second Medvid, an alleged impostor who was brought out to talk to U.S. authorities and who signed papers stating that he willingly wanted to return to the Soviet Union.
"I was the so-called impostor, there was no one else. It was me that the people were referring to. This I know without a doubt," said the Rev. Medvid.
As for signing a statement that he wanted to return to the USSR, he did so willingly. He explained that his mental state after his ordeal was such that he saw no other recourse. "I understood what was going on and why," said the Rev. Medvid. "There were no physical threats."
A severe depression overcame Mr. Medvid as he awaited his fate aboard ship. The cut and bandaged left arm that U.S. officials described after meeting with him was the result of a self-inflicted wound from a shard of glass he obtained by breaking the lamp in his cabin. He admitted the goal was to end his life.
"You understand what kind of state I was in at that moment," said the Rev. Medvid.
It was during the journey home, which took the ship to Cuba, Scandinavia and Estonia before arriving in Soviet Union, that Mr. Medvid had time to ponder his future and make a decision on the course of the rest of his life - although he was not sure that he had any reason to make any plans.
After returning to Ukraine and his home village of Silets, located in the Sokal raion of the Lviv Oblast, his problems did not go away. Mr. Medvid was not arrested, probably only because of the high profile his case had taken, which made Soviet officials leery of drawing even more attention to him.
However, local KGB agents kept in contact with him for years, even as he began his seminary studies first in Odesa and later in Kyiv. He was summoned by the KGB more than 50 times, he said. Their objective was straightforward and simple: they wanted him to work as an informant.
Turning to the Church
The Rev. Medvid explained that their hounding only gave him more impetus to join the Church. "I wanted show them that I was not one of them, but a person of nature, a man of God, of the Church, of Slipyj and Sheptytsky," said the Rev. Medvid.
He contacted people in his home village and in Lviv, who advised him on how to proceed in his decision to become a priest, including suggestions that he should study at a seminary of the Russian Orthodox Church, the only confession recognized by the Moscow-based Soviet government.
"There were many who belonged to the ROC in Halychyna but were strong believers and supporters of the underground Greek-Catholic Church," explained the Rev. Medvid. "These were people like Stepan Khmara and the late Vyacheslav Chornovil, who had a great deal of influence on me.
With the help of his parish priest, the Rev. Mykhailo Nyzhkohuz, he began theological studies at an Odesa seminary of the ROC. There he encountered more problems when he continued to refuse overtures by the KGB to work with them. He was transferred to the Kyiv Theological Seminary, and the KGB followed.
"I had conversations with the so-called spiritual advisor of the seminary, who told me that I would not last long if I didn't cooperate," recalled the Rev. Medvid.
In 1988 he decided to study in the underground seminary of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, after conferring with leaders of the budding democratic movement in western Ukraine, including Mr. Khmara, who had become a close confidant, Mr. Chornovil and the Horyn brothers.
They turned to Bishop Filemon Kurchaba, who cleared the way for the former sailor's enrollment. He entered the underground seminary to complete his studies in February 1990 and was ordained a priest of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church on December 30, 1990.
* * *
Nearly 10 years into his priesthood and 15 years after his ordeal, the Rev. Medvid reflected on how his life had changed and how the wayward son had returned home. "I know how to console people, how to administer a parish. Then I didn't even know how to sing a liturgy," he explained.
He said that in retrospect he could be proud of what he had done, even though it had caused him great grief. "I made my own protest. I made my statement on what I thought of that regime," he underscored.
And, finally, he said he has no great desire to see the United States again, but that he dearly wants to celebrate liturgy with those who gave him so much psychological support and comfort during his travails in New Orleans.
"They probably saved my life," he explained, referring to the Ukrainian Americans who protested and demonstrated against his return to the USSR in the face of an intransigent U.S. government. Then a tear welled up in his eye.
Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, June 4, 2000, No. 23, Vol. LXVIII
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