THE SECOND WAVE OF ARRESTS, 1972-73

The second operation, after that of 1965, by the State Security organs of the Ukrainian SSR against the Ukrainian intelligentsia. On June 28, 1971, the Central Committee of the CPSU adopted a secret resolution, “On measures to counter the illegal distribution of anti-Soviet and other politically harmful materials,” which was duplicated a month later by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, adding “local material.” On December 30, 1971, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU resolved to launch an all-Union campaign against samizdat with the aim of destroying the infrastructure for its production and distribution. A separate detective story with “spy passions” was staged for the Ukrainian movement (see the “Dobosh Affair”). Beginning on January 12, 1972, over a year and a half, about a hundred people were arrested in Ukraine, thousands of searches were conducted, and tens of thousands were terrorized by interrogations as witnesses, fired from their jobs, and expelled from universities. Almost all the leading figures of the Sixtiers movement received the maximum sentence (7 years of imprisonment in strict-regime camps and 5 years of exile) and were transported outside their homeland—to Mordovia and the Perm Oblast of Russia, and then to Siberia (Ivan and Nadiya SVITLYCHNY, Viacheslav CHORNOVIL, Yevhen SVERSTIUK, Ivan HEL, Iryna and Ihor KALYNETS, Stefania SHABATURA, Mykhailo OSADCHY, Vasyl STUS, Zinovy ANTONIUK, Yevhen PRONIUK, Vasyl LISOVY, Oles SERHIYENKO, and others). Those who refused to testify (Mykola PLAKHOTNIUK, Leonid PLIUSHCH, Borys Kovhar, Vasyl Ruban) were sent to psychiatric hospitals. Isolated attempts to protest the arrests were suppressed with extreme brutality (V. LISOVY, M. LUKASH).
The social atmosphere, in contrast to that after the first wave of arrests in 1965, became oppressive. Anyone who refused to testify against the arrested and showed the slightest sign of sympathy for them was fired from their jobs, expelled from institutes, and denied any opportunities for career advancement or creative expression (publishing, exhibitions, etc.). Just as the renaissance of the 1920s is rightly called the “Executed Renaissance,” the revival of the 1960s is called the “Stifled Renaissance.” Those who wanted to survive had to repent humiliatingly (Zinovia Franko, Mykola KHOLODNY, Leonid Seleznenko, Ivan DZIUBA); others disingenuously wrote lampoons about their recent friends or foreign “Ukrainian bourgeois nationalists—mercenaries of foreign intelligence services,” squeezed out false odes in honor of the stranglers of their homeland (Ivan DRACH, Dmytro Pavlychko); some could not withstand the suffocating atmosphere and drank themselves to death or committed suicide (Hryhir Tiutiunnyk); the most steadfast went into long-term “internal emigration” (Lina KOSTENKO, Mykhailyna KOTSIUBYNSKA, Valeriy Shevchuk), or even actually emigrated to Russia (Les TANIUK, Pavlo Movchan).
Under these conditions, public opposition activity dwindled. Those who survived returned to underground methods (see the “Ukrainian National Liberation Front,” the Rosokhatska Group, S. KHMARA).

V. Ovsiyenko, Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group