It was during my mother's stay in Saralzhin in February 1987 that a whole delegation came to visit me: a Kazakh procurator from Aktiubinsk, another procurator from Lviv, and two KGB agents, also from Lviv. They told me that things were moving in the direction of democratization in Ukraine, and they needed to settle the issue of political dissidents. Additionally, they had gotten very positive evaluations about me from my workplace and from the local police, as well as from the Aktiubinsk, Kyiv, and Lviv KGB. “We are authorized to tell you that if you write a letter of repentance for everything that happened, you will be free within a month.” They were insistent that I do this, coming up with new arguments against each of my objections. My position was unchanging: “Listen here, good people, you are being totally irrational. I spent seven years in prison camps and three years in internal exile, and now, practically at the end of my term, you want me to repent, something that I refused to do from the very beginning. Since I did not do it then and have served practically my whole term, I certainly will not do it now.” At that time, I had not yet read Yevhen Sverstiuk's words, which would have been apropos, but their essence was certainly on my mind: “Political prisoners do not beg for forgiveness—that is the whole point of their resistance in the first place.”

Finally, after a long debate, they asked me if I would be willing to write a statement saying that I refused to ask for forgiveness. I agreed and wrote on a piece of paper that I do not consider myself guilty and will never repent because I acted appropriately. Eventually, I learned that this KGB meeting was not a new or unique tactic. This is how Patriarch Josyf Slipyj recounted it: “The Commander told me to write something asking for my release. They were convinced that because I was in such a hopeless and desperate situation, I might write God knows what. Instead, I wrote about all the abuse and violations that I had endured. Most likely, they were planning to stage my release, based on my appeals.”