The so-called Khodoriv Group emerged in 1958 in the village of Verbytsia, Khodoriv district (hence the group’s name). Its members included Fedir Dron, Fedir Protsiv, Mykhailo Protsiv, Mykhailo Khanas, Yosyp Nahrebny, Ivan Shcherbytsky, and Volodymyr Kapitonenko. The group’s members considered propaganda to be their main task.
At night, the group’s members would hang national flags in villages and distribute leaflets, for which they had obtained a printing block but had not had time to use it. The case against them included charges of subversive activities against the local Soviet and collective farm authorities and even preparations for terrorist acts, specifically an assassination attempt on a Soviet activist and a plan to blow up a railway line near the Khodoriv station. But Fedir Dron told Mikhail Kheifets in the camp that they never had any thoughts, let alone discussions, of terrorist acts. The trial took place on May 7, 1962.
Fedir Protsiv was executed by firing squad. Mykhailo Protsiv and Fedir Dron each received 15 years, including 5 in prison; Y. Nahrebny and M. Khanas received 12 years in the camps; I. Shcherbytsky, 10 years; and V. Kapitonenko, 8 years. In his “Ukrainian Silhouettes,” M. Kheifets recalls that in the camp, Fedir Dron was considered a dissident: a fighter not of the military, “old-timer” generation, but of the dissident generation—one of “the young ones.”