c. 2000 Religion News Service

STENYATIN, Ukraine _ Fifteen years ago, Myroslav Medvid jumped off a Soviet grain ship near Belle Chasse, La., capturing headlines and provoking an anxious standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union during the tense days of the Cold War.

Medvid was returned to his ship and enjoyed about two weeks of fame as the Elian Gonzalez of the 1980s, with Ukrainian human rights groups claiming he was trying to defect and the U.S. government, concerned about relations with the Soviets, insisting that he fell off the ship and wanted to return to the U.S.S.R.

Today, wearing a white priest’s collar, Medvid picks apples in a village churchyard and presides over a parish of 200. With the Soviet Union dissolved, Medvid is free to answer the question that was the central mystery of his case when he was at his apex of fame: Was he coerced when he told U.S. officials that he wanted to return to the U.S.S.R. after the Reagan administration insisted on removing him from the ship and conducting a private interview?

He now says he was drugged and forced to say he wanted to go back.

“I was used as a political prop just like little Elian,” said Medvid.

But Medvid was not punished when he returned home and found in his ordeal a renewal of faith that led him to the priesthood.

Today, Medvid, 40, is a parish priest at a Greek Catholic church in Stenyatin, a Western Ukrainian village near the Polish border.

“Thanks to what happened to me in America, I went to serve the Lord, and I am content,” said Medvid, a large, balding man with crow’s feet around constantly smiling eyes.

Medvid said he made up his mind to seek asylum in the United States when he was still a child. His entire life was spent positioning himself for an escape.

“It was a grand scheme, and I worked on it for years and years,” he said.

He refused, however, to say what he did to end up on board the Marshal Konyev, a Soviet freighter sent to New Orleans for a cargo of American grain.

On the evening of Oct. 24, 1985, Medvid jumped off the vessel near Belle Chasse, hoping, he said, to “take revenge on the (Soviet) regime.”

Medvid’s sentiments about the Soviet Union are common in Western Ukraine, his home region, which was dominated for centuries by Poland and the Austro-Hungarian empire until annexed by the Soviets in 1939. The Soviet regime was marked by repression, murder and famine. The Nazis occupied Ukraine in 1941 and after the Russians recaptured it, thousands of fighters from the Ukrainian liberation movement were exiled to labor camps.

Though he missed the most brutal chapters of the Soviet occupation, Medvid came to despise the U.S.S.R.

“I conscientiously hated the Soviet rule,” he said.

But his plan to escape fell apart soon after it began.

After he jumped from Marshal Konyev and swam ashore, New Orleans police took him to the Border Patrol of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. The INS immediately put him on a boat back to the Marshal Konyev. Medvid jumped off the boat again, and this time beat his head on shoreline rocks until he lost consciousness. He was nevertheless picked up by INS officers, handcuffed and returned to the Soviet freighter a second time.

Once on board the Marshal Konyev, Medvid says, he was doped with Thorazine, a strong, mind-altering drug, beaten, and forced to sign a paper saying that he wanted to go back to the Soviet Union.

The U.S. government examined the case and ruled that Medvid would not be granted asylum.

On Nov. 9, the Marshal Konyev set sail with the would-be defector on board.

The government’s decision stirred up the wrath of many Americans, including Ukrainian immigrants, human rights groups and lawmakers. Ukrainian-American groups told the U.S. Court of Appeals that the Reagan administration bungled the affair. The Ukranian-American Bar Association even charged that there was a secret agreement between the United States and Soviet officials that allowed a quick return of any Soviet sailor who jumps ship in a U.S. port _ an allegation the INS denied at the time.

But the State Department admitted that the INS mishandled the case by returning Medvid to the ship so quickly without taking time to understand his intentions.

The incident came at a sensitive time in U.S.-Soviet relations. Half a year earlier, Mikhail Gorbachev had come to power and announced plans to liberalize the Soviet economic and political system. The ascent of this new breed of Soviet leader presented new diplomatic opportunities to the Reagan administration.

Medvid said he still holds a grudge against the U.S. officials who gave him no chance.

“I would never do to them what they did to me,” he said. “I remember everything. I am trying, but I cannot easily forgive what they did.”

Medvid said that on his return he had anticipated an exile to Siberia, a prison term and possibly death. But, he said, through “an act of God” nothing happened.

Medvid said that when he was handcuffed and dragged aboard the Marshal Konyev the second time he saw a vision of the Virgin Mary _ an experience that changed his life. Shortly after returning to the Soviet Union, he joined a seminary in Odessa and became a priest.

On a recent afternoon, Medvid walked across the churchyard in Stenyatin, a Ukrainian village of a few thousand people about 12 miles west of the Polish border, carelessly stepping in goat excrement as he picked apples.

He had just returned from a trip to the Vatican and plans to go to the United States _ for the first time since 1985 _ later this year. He has no intention of staying there this time around, he says.

“I want to see that place again, under less stressful circumstances. I want to remember it differently. Then I want to carry these memories home,” he said.

AMB END BADKHEN