ALL-UKRAINIAN SOCIETY OF POLITICAL PRISONERS AND REPRESSED PERSONS (VUTPVIR). – A public organization under the name All-Ukrainian Society of the Repressed (VTR) was founded at a meeting of about 100 people held on June 3, 1989, in the open air on Lvivska Square in Kyiv (the Artists’ Union, under pressure from the KGB, had withdrawn its offer to provide the House of Artists for the meeting on the day it was scheduled). The purpose of the Society was to unite efforts, using the experience of former political prisoners, deportees, and prisoners of conscience, in the name of affirming and building a united, independent, democratic Ukrainian state, as well as providing material assistance to the Society's members. Yevhen PRONYUK was elected Chairman of the Society.
On November 21, 1992, at a joint meeting of the VTR Coordinating Council and the Grand Council of the Union of Political Prisoners of Ukraine (SPVU, created on August 30, 1992, in Lviv, chaired by Ivan HUBKA), a decision was made to merge the two organizations. On December 19, 1992, the All-Ukrainian Assembly of Political Prisoners and Repressed Persons adopted a single Charter and its new, current name, and a co-chairmanship was introduced.
In its early years, the VTR organized rallies, demonstrations, and other events in support of Ukraine’s independence. A memorable event was the march of political prisoners on Khreshchatyk on June 23, 1991, dressed in prison clothes. After the declaration of Ukraine's independence, the VTR’s goals became the restoration of the rights of the repressed, their material and moral support, the national and spiritual revival of the country, and the building of a democratic state and civil society. Since 1998, the Society’s assemblies have been held in regional centers, with the most recent one taking place in Odesa.
The Society organized the transport of the mortal remains of V. STUS, Yu. LYTVYN, and O. TYKHY from the Urals and their reburial in Kyiv on November 19, 1989; M. SOROKA from Mordovia to Lviv on September 28, 1991; Marta Bandera from Krasnoyarsk Krai to her native village of Staryi Uhryniv; Stepan Mamchur from the Urals to Boyarka (2002); and Kyrylo Osmak from Vladimir to Kyiv (December 11, 2004). It conducted an expedition to the North (Inta, Pechora, Vorkuta) and erected crosses there with cast-iron plaques. It also participated in an expedition to the city of Galați (Romania) in search of the burial site of Hetman Mazepa. On June 22-23, 1991, together with the World League of Ukrainian Political Prisoners (Winnipeg, Canada), the society held the World Congress of Ukrainian Political Prisoners, which was attended by former prisoners of communist and fascist concentration camps from 12 countries. On November 7-8, 1995, it held the International Congress of Political Prisoners.
VUTPVIR is demanding a “Nuremberg-2” trial of the CPSU/CPU, the recognition of the UPA as a belligerent party in World War II, and compensation from Russia for the forced labor of Ukrainian political prisoners on its territory. It is also creating an archive and museum of political prisoners and is pushing for an ideological reorientation of the multi-volume state publication “Rehabilitated by History” to an “Encyclopedia of Struggle and Repression.” The scientific and methodological council (long headed by Corresponding Member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine Mykola Shcherbak, and now by Academician Nina Virchenko) conducts research work. The Society has developed a new version of the Law “On the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression in Ukraine” and has successfully advocated for the establishment of the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Holodomors and Political Repressions, which is observed on the fourth Saturday of November. Since 1992, it has published 19 issues of the journal “Zona” (ed. Yuriy Khorunzhy). The Society has organizations in all oblasts, and its collective members include the Kyiv Society of Political Prisoners and Victims of Repression and the Ukrainian Committee “Helsinki-90.” Organizations for the children of political prisoners are being created within the Society. It has about 40,000 members. The Chairman is Ye. PRONYUK.
Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group. V. Ovsiyenko