LETTER TO THE MADRID CONFERENCE IN DEFENCE OF V. STUS

This was a document from the Ukrainian Helsinki Group. On 25 January 1981, on the instructions of the UHG, it was passed by the External Representation of the UHG (Petro GRIGORENKO, Leonid PLYUSHCH and Nadiya SVITLYCHNA) to the delegations of the participants in the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (Madrid), with copies sent to Amnesty International and the PEN club

The UHG letter asked the US delegation to initiate a discussion of the case of the Ukrainian poet and political prisoner Vasyl STUS at the Madrid Conference since in their opinion the case involved both the objectives (“the destruction of Ukrainian culture”) and the inhuman methods of the repressive Soviet machine.