Esteemed Mr. Yevhen!
It is significant that in today’s Ukraine, there are people who wish to spread information about the Ukrainian liberation process among school and university students, bringing to light materials about the movement and the dramatic fates of its participants from the KGB archives and academic offices. It is a thankless task, but a desperately needed one. And in this very format.
After all, there are now several good and quite comprehensive monographic studies on the liberation struggle of the second half of the 20th century, including one by B. Zakharov. However, the history of this period is not included in the curricula of schools, specialized secondary, or higher educational institutions, although this material is briefly presented, for example, in the textbooks by A. Zhukovsky and O. Subtelny.
Your humble servant teaches a special course on the history of this period to graduate students and is preparing a textbook for students and, ultimately, for anyone interested in the struggle of recent decades. And I would like it to become a source of knowledge for young people. However, I doubt that this chapter of history will be universally included in Ukraine’s educational programs in the coming years. At the same time, if we do not work on this, then not only will Yanukovych, Kushnaryov, and Tabachnyk fail to include the history of the liberation movement in the curriculum, but they will also gut everything Ukrainian from it. What’s more, they will force the study of the history of the USSR. And later, they will want to return us to this imperial formation, perhaps under a different brand. But let us be optimists…
Now, to the question: what would you like young people to know about the UHG and/or the dissident movement in general?
First and foremost, that young people should know that throughout the entire second half of the 20th century, what was active in Ukraine was not a dissident movement, but a national liberation movement for the restoration of the Ukrainian Independent Unified State. It was the hereditary continuation of the struggle of previous generations for this Great Goal of the Ukrainian people. It was maliciously labeled “dissident” to conceal the aforementioned Goal and to show that Ukrainians, supposedly, did not strive for an independent state but only advocated for the democratization of the regime and the defense of human rights within the USSR. The term “dissidence” was used to conflate the entire process of social ferment and expressions of struggle against the regime—through words and legal methods—in the USSR. And the liberation movement, it was implied, could only be armed, although its toolkit was always rich and varied. Thus, those for whom it was convenient deliberately mixed all the social movements in the USSR into a single dissident cauldron: the national liberation movements of the enslaved peoples, the national movement of Jews for the right to emigrate and for cultural and national rights within the USSR, religious movements, and the general democratic movement, whose organizers and driving force were also Jews. This mixture was presented as the all-encompassing dissident movement. And other historians, publicists, and journalists naively picked up this deliberately planted term and use it in their writings like a child with a ‘pacifier’: sucking and sucking, but getting no nourishment. But as I see from the list of questions, there is a separate question below about dissidence, so I will return to it if I have time.
Now, regarding the UHG. As I have already said, from the early fifties until the referendum of December 1, 1991, a continuous, hereditary national liberation movement was active in Ukraine, with the goal of restoring Ukrainian statehood. It had various forms and means of struggle—legal and illegal, organized and group-based (for example, high-ranking KGB officials called the activities of the Lviv Sixtiers “an organization without an organization,” which is why Mykhailo and Bohdan Horyn and I were tried under Article 64 of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR, which pertained to “organizational” activity), some that did not rule out armed struggle at the appropriate moment, and others that used only peaceful instruments—the word of truth about the occupiers and the totalitarian regime, assemblies, rallies, youth gatherings and, of course, Samizdat. I will just list the names of the groups: “Nasha Zmina” (Our Change), 1950–1951; “Proboyem” (Breakthrough), 1948–1952; “United Party for the Liberation of Ukraine,” 1953–1958; “Obyednannia” (Unification), 1956–1959; “Ukrainian National Front,” 1964–1966; “Ukrainian Workers’ and Peasants’ Union,” 1959–1961; the activities of the Sixtiers; “Ukrainian National Liberation Front,” 1972–1973; “Ukrainian General Democratic Organization” (UNF-2) and, of course, the UHG, whose members included people from the aforementioned organizations as well as young fighters for Ukraine’s freedom.
Thus, the UHG cannot be separated from the context of the entire liberation process of that era. Because if we answer the question as formulated—“what young people should know about the UHG and/or…”—then by speaking only of the UHG, we would place the entire movement in the context of the UHG’s activities and compare incommensurable quantities: no matter how significant the contribution of the UHG members and the UHG itself to the defense of human rights and the restoration of Ukraine’s statehood, the UHG alone and the entire movement are not of a comparable scale. The UHG was a component of the Ukrainian liberation movement. It is in this context that people—Ukrainians and the whole world—should be informed, highlighting first the movement whose strategic goal was to achieve independence, and only then its components, which were listed above.
It is in this context that the activities of the UHG members deserve very high praise. The Group appeared at a time when, as a result of the pogroms and widespread repressions of the early to mid-1970s, the sinusoid of the liberation process was at its lowest point. By its creation, the UHG demonstrated that no matter how brutal the purges carried out by the occupiers, powerful forces would re-emerge from the depths of the nation, paving the way to the people’s freedom at the cost of their own freedom and lives, and preparing a new national potential for the struggle. It is thanks to such ascetics that the historical memory of a people is formed and created, and national consciousness is strengthened.
Furthermore, the founders of the Group, having gained significant political experience in the concentration camps, insisted that the UHG not be a component of some other similar structure and that it act independently. Moreover, while declaring the defense of human rights as their main task, the founders, in all their initial program-setting memorandums, unlike the Moscow Group, still prioritized the national question. This demonstrates a high level of political maturity and, at the same time, a very high degree of self-sacrifice. After all, by defining their work solely as the defense of human rights, the UHG would have worked exclusively for the so-called general democratic process. And its members would have received only minimal sentences of imprisonment or exile. By formulating the demands for national rights in their memorandums, its creators received the maximum prison terms—O. Tykhy and V. Stus gave their lives for this.
And one more thing. The Group “did not lay down its arms”—it did not disband, although it was crushed, with almost no one left in the “large zone.” Thanks to this, the UHG once again powerfully revitalized its activities in the late 80s, when dozens of experienced political prisoners returned from prisons and concentration camps. But even then, the UHG was not led by “pure” UHG members, but by a triumvirate of M. Horyn, Z. Krasivsky, and V. Chornovil—political prisoners from different groups and different years of imprisonment, with different worldviews. Zinoviy Krasivsky was a participant in three stages of the struggle: the underground of the 40s, one of the founders of the UNF, and a member of the UHG. Mykhailo Horyn was also a proponent of organized political struggle. And Viacheslav Chornovil was a “pure” Sixtier. But all three were united by the dominant idea of Ukrainian statehood. The human rights issue was certainly relevant, but it was a derivative concern.
And finally. An equally valuable merit of the UHG members is that some of them have remained faithful to their organization and continue to work very fruitfully in this difficult and much-needed field. They did not scatter into party niches with claims to leadership, seats in parliament, etc. They collect materials, amass archival documents, and write and publish books. Gathering pebbles, they build a fortress—the history of the liberation struggle, because it is precisely in this context that the UHG’s place is found.
2. Was there a choice for you personally during those years?
Evidently, my life as an illustration for your question is somewhat unconventional. After all, if a person believes in God (truly, not just ritually), is raised on Christian principles, and sincerely adheres to such values as a practice in life; if they also possess, passed down from their parents and environment, a sense of their own national dignity and have an internal awareness of the meaning of the concept “I am a Ukrainian” (or Lithuanian, Georgian, Chechen), then under an occupation and a totalitarian regime, a normal person has no choice. More precisely, they are left with only one possible option—a conscious struggle against the occupiers and their totalitarian empire. Moreover, a normal person must prepare for such a choice in every way, primarily morally. Knowing, for example, the methods used by the NKVD and KGB during interrogations, the author of these lines, in preparing to withstand the torture of the jailers, at the age of 15–17, would light a cigarette and press its fire to his arm until it went out. Perhaps at a more mature age I would not have done this, but at the time it cultivated willpower and forged my youthful impulses. And I have no doubt that such tempering helped me to “be up to the mark” during my 18 years of imprisonment. In the winter of 2004, I did not miss the Maidan, but I did not “show off” on the stage; I was in the thick of the people, among the youth.
In the Stalinist era, the “normal person” (for example, the students who voluntarily went to defend Kyiv at Kruty) was physically exterminated. In the rising generations, the most precious human qualities—faith and the capacity for self-sacrifice—were purposefully gutted. In place of the normal person came the Soviet man—homo sovieticus—the “sovok.” The sovok always has a choice. And not just one. Take Oleksandr Moroz, for example. But new generations are growing up, gradually forming the human being within themselves. All our hopes are pinned on the youth.
3. On dissidence.
The term “dissident,” in translation, means a nonconformist, one who disagrees. A nonconformist, in my opinion, has existed in all eras of human existence. Historically, they have driven the evolution of humanity. From a philosophical point of view, a dissident is a subject of the law of the negation of the negation. That is, a creator of progress—an inventor, a discoverer, an artist. Thus, every creative person is, by their nature, a nonconformist. Copernicus and Newton, Leo Tolstoy and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. In the last decades of the USSR—Alexander Ginzburg and Gleb Pavlovsky.
From a socio-political point of view, a dissident is a person or group of people who do not share the officially established ideology but are carriers and creators of another (worldview, set of views) in the sphere of ideology, culture and art, politics, or economics, which they publicly declare. Dissidents were writers and artists who refused to create according to the method of socialist realism, jazz and pop-art musicians, even fans of the then-forbidden long hairstyles and narrow trousers. All of this taken together is nonconformity, dissidence.
The fundamental difference between a dissident and a participant in a national liberation movement is in their self-defined goal. A dissident merely thinks differently and tries, say, to defend (or achieve) human rights. For a participant in the national liberation movement—a fighter for the statehood of Ukraine (or Lithuania, Latvia, Georgia, etc.), a Ukrainian nationalist—human rights are merely a minimal, derivative goal. The defining goal is the state independence of Ukraine with all its national and international rights, and, of course, with a democratic system and proper legal protection for national minorities and the individual.
Dissidence was not homogeneous in its activities. I will show this with a specific example. In the Komi Republic, Gleb Pavlovsky and I were in exile in the same area. He would visit me from time to time. We had various conversations, political discussions, sometimes heated. In our last one, he warned me: “My term is ending. I want to tell you one last thing: I respect you very much and highly value your human qualities. Especially how you throw yourself on a pillbox or under a tank in the name of Ukraine. But you must remember that Russia is a constant. It is that very pillbox that Ukrainians, Estonians, Lithuanians, Armenians, Georgians, etc., throw themselves on. A pillbox of such power will always stand, and if you Ukrainians try to create a State, we will destroy you. And I will be very sorry if you are among them.” So where is the dissident G. Pavlovsky today? He is on the team of the most rabid imperial chauvinists. A similar transformation happened to A. Solzhenitsyn, an opponent of the Stalinist model of the Russian Empire. A dissident? Yes! Until the publication of his treatise “How We Should Rebuild Russia.” It turned out that between Pavlovsky, Putin, and Solzhenitsyn, there are essentially no differences regarding Russia’s borders and its historical mission—everything comes “full circle”: to the “Third Rome,” the “Russian idea,” the “messianism of the Orthodox Russian people,” but always with the Little Russians and Belarusians.
The Jewish national movement for the right of free emigration to the promised land—Israel—and for the right to cultural and national autonomy in their territory of residence—the functioning of Jewish schools, synagogues, theaters, newspapers, etc.—should be considered a dissident movement.
This term is also scientifically adequate for the so-called general democratic movement in the USSR (in the Russian sense) with its center in Moscow. But was it an “all-Union,” all-Russian association that absorbed all other groups and served as the coordinating center of the dissident movement? No. And again, no. This is evidenced by the independent UHG, which had its own program of action, as well as corresponding groups in Lithuania, Georgia, and Armenia. For all of them, the Moscow Group served as, let’s say, a transfer point for their documents to the West. This was an important and noble service, but Moscow was not a coordinating center. That is, there were parallel national movements whose calling was the struggle for the liberation of their own peoples from the colonial yoke (the ultimate goal). The defense of human rights was merely a tactical task, a form of cover and self-preservation from firing squads, as it did not save them from concentration camps. An open declaration of Ukraine’s self-determination and an organized struggle for it would have “earned” a firing squad or a minimum of 15 years of imprisonment. Hence the “organization without an organization” and the declaration of tactical goals.
And one more thing. Did a Russian (national) dissident movement exist? In my deep conviction, no. With the exception of literally a few individuals (Kovalyov, Marchenko—both of Ukrainian origin), we—hundreds of Ukrainian political prisoners—never met any pure-blooded Russians. This, ultimately, is a natural and logical phenomenon of the prison’s international micro-model of the USSR: representatives of many peoples found themselves there on shared bunks, but there were none from the dominant nation. Muscovites lack an inner calling and need for freedom as a God-given right. Muscovites have for centuries been an imperial, dominant people, but from time immemorial, they have been slaves in their state of soul. They do not need freedom, but hegemonism and self-assertion in the status of a master, a slave owner. That is why they so fiercely hate freedom and, with even greater ferocity, destroy its bearers. Take today’s Chechnya, where they are being “wasted in the outhouse.” That phrase alone is something else! And its author and his people are simply delighted with it. And it was not only Chechens who were drowned in blood. Let us recall the massacre of Ivan IV the Terrible in Novgorod and Pskov, of Peter I and Menshikov in Baturyn, and the three Ukrainian Holodomors just recently. Has the evolution of humanity changed the nature of the Muscovite? Analyze the racism of the skinheads, of Rogozin, Dugin, etc., and everything becomes clear—whether Muscovy and the nature of the Muscovite have changed according to the demands of the 21st century and, consequently, whether they were participants in the dissident movement at the end of the 20th century.
The bearers of the so-called general democratic (in the sense of all-Union, all-Russian) movement centered in Moscow, which set itself the task of defending human rights and democratizing the regime, were, beyond any doubt, Jews. And it was not the Jewish National Movement that was a component of the general democratic one, but the opposite—the latter was an integral part of the Jewish movement. It is enough to analyze the national composition of both to see everything fall into place. For instance, the activities of N. Sharansky and Y. Zissels were focused on Jewish problems in the USSR, while the activities of A. Sakharov, Y. Bonner, L. Alekseeva, and A. Ginzburg also defended Jews and covered general democratic processes, in particular, the defense of human rights and freedom of conscience for religious minorities, but they abstained from participating in national liberation movements.
It was for their participation in the Jewish national movement that Jews held perhaps the second-largest number of places in the concentration camps after Ukrainians. They conducted themselves nobly and took part in almost all protest actions of the political prisoners. The concentration camp universities turned them into professional revolutionaries. Most of them were aware of the role of Jews in the Bolshevik coup of 1917, so they would sarcastically, caustically, and prophetically quip about the USSR: “we created it, and we will destroy it.” Whether they did so is another topic, but Jews certainly made their contribution to the collapse of the empire.
So, to conclude the topic of defining the movement with the term “dissidence.”
In my opinion, the name of any socio-political phenomenon is determined by the goal set by the bearers of that phenomenon, the participants of the movement. Not the means of struggle—weapon or word—not the degree of organization, but the ultimate goal. If a certain group of people sets itself the goal of softening the totalitarian regime of the USSR, then their efforts are dissident. But when these people see their calling in the struggle for the restoration of the statehood of an enslaved nation, then the former goal is only a derivative component of the Great Goal, which in turn demands the highest degree of dedication and asceticism from the bearers of this idea. Such a movement is a national liberation movement, and its participants are fighters for the state independence of Ukraine, or Ukrainian nationalists.
4. On the events that pushed you to oppose the Soviet regime? (not the “radyanskyi” regime—that term, from the Ukrainian “rada” or council, is a native one, like the Cossack Rada or Central Rada; we are speaking here of the foreign “sovietskyi” regime, imposed by occupiers to pass it off as national and thus conceal its true nature and our people’s colonial status).
I have already noted above that my participation in the national liberation movement was not accidental; no single event pushed me onto this path. My participation was determined from early childhood by my family upbringing, the way of life of my father, my mother, my family environment, and the lives of the peasants, who, in addition to their hard peasant labor, still lived with public interests at heart.
My parents were ordinary peasants, but deeply religious people with firm rules for life based on God’s commandments, Christian values, Ukrainian customs, and patriotism.
My father, Andriy Hel, was a rifleman in the Ukrainian Galician Army during the Polish-Ukrainian War, defending the West Ukrainian People’s Republic from Polish occupiers. During the Russian communist-fascist occupation, he was a local and liaison officer for the District Command of the Security Service (SB), for which he was convicted in 1950 and was held in concentration camps until 1956.
My mother, Fevronia, was from the Tershakovets family, known in Galicia because one of her uncles, at the age of 26, on the recommendation of I. Franko, became a full member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society, and was later recognized in the diaspora as a prominent literary scholar of the 20th century.
Her second uncle was a well-known public figure and an envoy (deputy) to the Galician, and later the Polish, Sejm. His son, Zinoviy, was the Regional Leader of the OUN. He was killed in battle at the age of 35.
My mother’s two sisters were nuns of the Basilian Order of the UGCC, participants in the national and religious underground movements.
My older sister, Olha, was a liaison for the underground of the 40s, and later my comrade in acquiring a typewriter, paper, carbon paper, and in distributing and storing Samizdat.
In my childhood, when the partisans came to our house, they would take me in their arms and ask if I wanted to be a partisan, if I would go with them. The answer was always affirmative, because my child’s soul adored them, and the words “God and Ukraine” were sacred to me even in my childhood years. And what is consecrated in childhood lasts a lifetime. That is why, even as a small child, I had no other choice but the path that was already determined. Especially after “Uncle Zenyo,” whom everyone who knew him loved and respected very much, was killed.
In November 1952, while Stalin was still alive, I was expelled from the 10th grade for publicly refusing to join the Komsomol: in the presence of 180–200 high school students, I declared: to join the Komsomol means to renounce God, my father, and Ukraine. This statement led to my being placed under KGB surveillance; I was unable to obtain a higher education for a very long time and wandered through various jobs. However, today I am certain that this tempered me and saved me from compromising with the occupation regime. I believe that the most important thing is to make the right choice in time, to determine one’s life mission and purpose. Perhaps this sounds a bit bombastic, but it is true.