THE FIRST WAVE OF ARRESTS

A repressive campaign in Ukraine in August–September 1965. After the end of the “Thaw,” some young Ukrainian intellectuals (the Sixtiers) began to cooperate with the communist regime, while others chose the path of opposing the authorities. Political features became more prominent in the Ukrainian cultural and educational movement—Ukrainian samizdat took on an oppositional character, and émigré publications became widely distributed. To stop these trends and deliver a preemptive strike against dissent as a social phenomenon before it could gain dangerous momentum, the State Security organs of the Ukrainian SSR, on orders from Moscow, hastily carried out a series of arrests in late August and early September 1965.
In total, over 25 representatives of the Ukrainian intelligentsia were arrested: in Kyiv, literary critic Ivan SVITLYCHNY (released after 8 months), theater artist P. Morhun, engineers Oleksandr Martynenko and I. RUSYN, laboratory assistant Yivha Kuznetsova, student Yaroslav Hevrych, and scholar Mykola Hryn; in Lviv, correspondence student Ivan HEL, psychologist Mykhailo HORYN, art historian Bohdan HORYN, university lecturers Mykhailo OSADCHY and Mykhailo Kosiv, employees S. Baturyn and Hanna Sadovska, archivist Myroslava Zvarychevska, and fashion designer Yaroslava Menkush; in Crimea, writer and artist Mykhailo MASIUTKO; in Ternopil, museum worker Ihor Hereta and music teacher Mefodiy Chubaty; in Lutsk, pedagogical institute lecturers Valentyn MOROZ and Dmytro Ivashchenko; in Ivano-Frankivsk, teachers Mykhailo Ozerny and V. Ivanyshyn, and artist Panas ZALYVAKHA; in Zhytomyr, linotype operator Anatoliy SHEVCHUK. All were charged under Article 62, Part 1 of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR (“anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda”). In January 1966, the trials began. A total of 19 people were convicted, 15 of them in closed court sessions; in Odesa, Sviatoslav KARAVANSKY was imprisoned without a trial.
Since most of the movement's key figures remained free, the repressive campaign, contrary to the authorities' expectations, did not intimidate the intelligentsia. Instead, it became an impetus for the development of the national liberation and human rights movements in Ukraine, sparking a protest at the premiere of the film “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors” on September 4, 1965, collective letters in defense of the arrested, and the publication of Ivan DZIUBA’s book “Internationalism or Russification?” and Viacheslav CHORNOVIL’s “Woe from Wit.”

Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group.
Reviewed by V. Ovsiyenko