Valentyn MOROZ
The Sixties in Ukraine*
To an observer visiting Ukraine on a short trip, it might seem that there are no signs of a national movement or any national demands from the Ukrainian people. In fact, for 60 years now, an almost imperceptible, yet stubborn and bloody struggle has been waged between the Soviet regime and the national consciousness of Ukrainians.
The forced retreat of the Ukrainian language does not signify a retreat of Ukrainian national consciousness. Despite all the persecution, mass displays of national consciousness and a certain renaissance of national culture occur immediately and every time a slight reduction in the regime’s terroristic pressure results from one political change or another” 1.
This is how a researcher characterizes the contemporary Ukrainian situation, a subject that is key to understanding this situation: the Ukrainian problem and Russia. The Ukrainian situation is a component of the imperial situation. All processes in Ukraine—social, economic, cultural, spiritual—unfold in forms generated either by the pressure of imperial tendencies or by resistance to these tendencies. In essence, Ukraine is artificially cut off from all global influences, both positive and negative. This yields a tangible result in several aspects. On the one hand, a Ukrainian is shaped in a Russian manner, and even anti-Russian (in fact, anti-imperial) protests are mostly framed by, so to speak, a Russian, “Chekhovian-Dostoevskian” logic. It is enough to study the substantial samvydav of Oles Berdnyk2. Secondly, due to this artificial separation from global influences, a Ukrainian simply cannot form a position regarding certain world phenomena. For example, one cannot feel and comprehend the phenomenon of American cultural imperialism, which has already generated considerable resistance throughout the world. Thirdly, there is a positive result. The artificial compression of the Ukrainian intellect within the borders of the empire has developed in it a powerful elasticity and resistance to everything Russian, as well as a sharp sense and understanding of the essence of the Russian-imperial system. This has produced a number of masterpieces that have not yet been duly appreciated but will certainly serve future generations as an indispensable resource for understanding Russia, and primarily the mechanism of Russification. We have in mind, first of all, *Internationalism or Russification?* by Ivan Dziuba, *A Cathedral in Scaffolding* by Yevhen Sverstiuk, and *Woe from Wit* by Viacheslav Chornovil; the list could be extended. (...)
A historical study of the 1960s in Ukraine has not yet been conducted and could not have been. This only became possible in the late eighties. And it is not just a matter of the almost twenty-year distance, which already allows one to look at those events as history. The main reason is that the sixties, as a stage, ended with the major “Christmas” arrests of 1972. The seventies, which were a period of historical decline in Ukrainian activity, have their own face, and including them in the present topic would be a mistake. In Ukraine, they gave rise to such an interesting form of activity as the Ukrainian Helsinki Group and the Helsinki movement as a whole. (...) Materials from the Helsinki movement will feature constantly in this study. The fact is that some tendencies of the sixties finally took shape precisely in the documents of the Helsinki movement, although by the seventies they had already exhausted themselves and essentially belonged to a past era.
Ukraine’s “historical pendulum,” having passed through a deep “low” in the fifties after the end of the turbulent UPA epic, once again carried the wave of our revival high up in the sixties. As in every period of ascent, the “wellspring” of Ukrainian spirituality was remarkably fruitful during these years and made a significant contribution not only to literature and art, but also to the treasury of Ukrainian heritage in all its aspects. In the 1970s, under conditions of decline, this productivity drops sharply. We are referring to original, purely Ukrainian phenomena and concepts born of their own soil. The Helsinki movement in Ukraine was a reflection of a worldwide trend, born of the era of “détente.” A Moscow child, bathed in Moscow waters and swaddled in Moscow diapers, suddenly made an unexpected kick: it began to strike its own parents. What was conceived as a diversion for export, against the West, unexpectedly brought problems into domestic-imperial life. Characteristic in this respect is the very rich samvydav of Mykola Rudenko. When one carefully compares it with the brilliant names of the Sixtiers, a cardinal difference in one (fundamental) aspect becomes noticeable. In the 60s, even the least professional authors (Porfirun, for example) developed a Ukrainian style, sharply distinct from the Muscovite, “generally democratic” way of polemicizing. In Rudenko, however, a brilliant style, depth, and a distinct national consciousness are expressed within the framework of imported trends. For example, his *Economic Monologues* is a reinterpretation of the well-known theory of François Quesnay3. This is always the case: in an era of decline, the productivity of one’s own wellsprings shuts down in order to gather new resources for a future explosion.
The tendencies of the 1980s, which began with the shots fired by Borys Terelia on June 10, 1982 4, developed in two directions. First, the underground Ukrainian National Front, founded back in the 60s5, revived its activities. Second, a specific movement appeared in Ukraine (in the Carpathian region) that shows a clear tendency to become a mass movement. This is a completely new form of national resistance based on the demand for the legalization of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. In any case, there are already no fewer than a thousand instances of people renouncing their Soviet passports as a sign of protest against the government’s church policy 6—clear evidence that the tendency is leaning toward becoming massive. Closely related to this is the issue of the *pokutnyky*—a special religious group that has based its doctrine on the concept of Ukrainian messianism 7.
A new “return to the sources” is striking. Both of the aforementioned tendencies have a distinct national character and are not copies of foreign models. The attraction to underground partisan activity (UNF) has always been inherent to Ukrainians of the Carpathian region; the Greek Catholic Church is also a unique, purely Ukrainian phenomenon in ecclesiastical life. It is characteristic that the Catholic idea of Yosyp Terelia and his comrades from the “Initiative Group for the Defense of the Rights of Believers and the Church in Ukraine” is thoroughly imbued with Ukrainianism. It is enough to cite one excerpt from the *Chronicle of the Catholic Church in Ukraine*:
“Ukrainians! Remember that there are faithful men and women who are loyal to the end to our Catholic Church, to Ukraine—pray, pray every day, always—God will come to the aid of a crucified Ukraine; the tears and blood of the innocently slain, tortured to death in prisons and camps for their faith and for Ukraine, are not in vain!” 8.
For now, it is impossible to look at this new stage of Ukrainian activity “from the outside”: it has not yet ended. In essence, one can only speak of the beginning of a new ascent after the decline of the 70s. This ascent is not yet distinct; in fact, we have the right to speak of a “sickly dawn,” rather than a new wave as material for a researcher.
Thus, the first difficulty for a researcher of topics like the 60s, which are not yet chronologically distant enough from the present day, is the unformed body of sources. Historical research on any topic begins, in fact, from the moment a certain number (a certain type) of sources is “canonized” as a generally accepted basis for study. It is clear that new titles are constantly added to this circle. But that is already based on a certain criterion. In the beginning, however, the difficulty is that no criterion exists, and therefore the significant and the insignificant often appear to be “of the same stature.” (...)
The second difficulty in researching this topic is specific and concerns only it. To the wider world, the topic of the “Khrushchev Thaw” and the processes associated with it has been presented by certain actors as a theme of struggle for human rights. (Even now, in the 80s, phrases like “a fighter for the national rights of Ukraine” or “a Ukrainian political prisoner” are automatically translated by the Western intellectual as “Human Rights Activist,” and one must fight against this at every step 9.) “Human Rights”—this formula is more acceptable to those colonial-imperial forces of the world that consider national movements their number one enemy. And yet, the reality is that the 60s in the Soviet Union were, first and foremost, an explosion of national liberation activity. Starting with the poems that announced the arrival of samvydav (“Ukraine! You are my prayer!”), and ending with theoretical and overview works, the national question was always at the center of attention.
The most important, summarizing work of the 60s (not only in Ukraine) has a telling title: *Internationalism or Russification?*. The only exceptions were the properly Russian tendencies. Here, interest in general humanitarian (“generally democratic”) themes prevailed. But even the Russian Sixtier movement produced a notable nationalist literature that places the national question at the center of attention. As an example, it is enough to cite the “Manifesto of Russian Patriots,” published by the “Fetisov group.” It states:
“For us, the nation is primary, and everything else is derivative of it. The nation is not only a biological variety but also a special spiritual community, the uniqueness of which has a deep mystical meaning.
(...)
The national question is the main question of our time, but for the adherents of egalitarian doctrines, it will never be the main one and will never be correctly understood by them (...)
What are the main characteristics of a nation? First—the racial type. A person can change language, religion, but cannot shed their own skin. People often point to the mixture of modern races, some with approval, others with horror. In doing so, they forget that mixing in itself does not necessarily lead to the appearance of hybrid types: the traits of one of the lines can completely prevail among the descendants.
Racial type determines the psychological structure, which we understand here very broadly, not only as temperament but also as the capacity for social connections of a certain type (...)
Today, the national question is not only a problem of developing countries. Even such highly developed countries as England, Canada, and Belgium face it, and even the lauded all-saving democracy does not know how to solve it.
The national question in our country is especially complicated” 10.
Thus, tendencies that assigned a secondary role to the national question constituted a small minority in the 60s. However, it was they who were advertised to the world first and became the most famous. (For example, Sakharov’s so-called legalist movement.) Works that treat the 60s as a “Spring of Nations,” i.e., an explosion of national activity, still constitute a minority in the literature on this topic, although there are already significant publications on the world market11. The most promising and most acceptable tendency for the West is the combination of the problem of human rights with the problem of the national liberation struggle. The first steps are being taken in this direction, as a rule not easy ones, because the centers of world historical science are located in the centers of old colonial empires, whose subconscious sympathy is always on the side of Moscow—even when Muscovite expansionism poses a direct threat to the decrepit centers of former power.
There is often talk of a misunderstanding of the specifics of the national question by certain world or dissident-Russian actors. Undoubtedly, for one whose nation is not in a colonial position (or was so back in the 10th century), it is difficult to grasp and feel what Levko Lukianenko is fighting for and what resources give him the strength to endure almost 30 years in prison. However, it would be a mistake to exaggerate the role of this misunderstanding. Here is how a contemporary Russian author assesses the national question in the modern Russian empire:
“In the means and methods for achieving unification, the Bolsheviks, under Lenin’s influence, showed much more flexibility than the tsarist government. While the latter maintained the view of denying any cultural-national identity and persecuted every manifestation of it by banning the public use of local languages and administratively hindering the development of local cultures, the Bolsheviks are moving towards the same goal by circuitous, much more effective paths.
They not only allowed and even made the use of national languages mandatory but also gave non-Russian provinces the names of union republics, etc. At the same time, they created such conditions that these ‘benefits’ turned out to be fictitious. The newly created states are uncontrollably governed from the center through a complicated party-administrative mechanism, and the rights of their governments in some matters are not much broader than the rights of the provincial and gubernia zemstvos under the tsars, and in some cases even narrower. On the whole, if one takes into account the socialization and centralization of economic activity, it can be said that the zemstvos of Alexander II gave the regions more freedom and administrative initiative than the regional administrations that are now called the governments of union republics in the USSR.
This is even more true of autonomous republics and oblasts. There, the matter often comes down to a simple renaming of the corresponding regions or a district into an autonomous republic or oblast, without any change in their administrative system and without any difference in administrative practice between them and neighboring non-national regions.
As for national languages, they are permitted and legalized, but at the same time, conditions have been created that make these languages completely superfluous, and their public use has become inconvenient, and in some circumstances even dangerous. Any cultured citizen of any union or autonomous republic does not rush to manifest their sympathy for the local language, because they know that this could affect their career, and they could even be accused of bourgeois nationalism and forced to confess to some other crime unrelated to the use of the national language; this ends in punishment. Most cultured citizens of all non-Russian regions, concerned about a calmer future for their children, prefer to send them to Russian schools.”
“After Stalin’s bloody orgies, the party moved to a new method: denationalization through mass relocations and resettlements. From the union republics, not excluding the Russian part of the RSFSR, the population is encouraged to move to the Asian regions of the state, and from there a similar stream of natives is directed to the industrial centers of European Russia. Undoubtedly, this method yields certain positive results, but all symptoms indicate that these results will be unreliable and the national question will not be solved by such methods. The settlers often become infected with local patriotism, and the weaker nationalities are thereby replenished on their territories with more active and valuable elements.
Undoubtedly, the national question will exist in Russia for as long as it is not resolved in the form of granting non-Russian peoples broad freedom of national development, the right to be masters of their own destiny while remaining within the state, as well as broad participation in the use of the wealth of their territories. As long as the government does not find a form to reconcile the just demands of the oppressed nations with the interests of the integrity and security of the state, Russia will always be under the threat of losing its non-Russian colonies, and possibly also Russian regions like Ukraine, Belarus, and the Cossack lands” 12.
As we can see, the author perfectly understands the whole mechanism of Russification. He also understands that communist policy is a continuation of tsarist policy, only in a more refined and dangerous form for the oppressed nations. Although Ukraine and Belarus are “Russian lands” to him, he nevertheless perfectly understands the enormous centrifugal potential of these nations and the threat it poses to the empire. Especially valuable and interesting is the fact that a Russian understands the danger of the magnetism of local nationalisms even for individual Russians (“become infected with local patriotism”). An Englishman in America became an American and fought against England under the banners of George Washington. From our own Ukrainian history, we can cite more than one example of Poles (or those considered Poles), captured by the magnetism of Ukraine, becoming Ukrainian patriots. Russian authors also perfectly understand that cardinal changes in the Soviet Union can only be caused by the national factor. One of them, Igor Shafarevich, writes: “In a troubled era, class hatred will probably not be able to again become the match that sets our house on fire. But national hatred—certainly can. From the underground tremors that can be heard now, one can feel what a destructive force it can become if it breaks out”13.
Most interesting in this regard, perhaps, is the assertion of Solzhenitsyn, who says: “If the tension of national contradictions were marked on a 12-point earthquake scale, in old Russia it would be somewhere at a 2, while today in the USSR—it is at a 10”14.
The national question is the key to understanding the Russian Empire. “Having inherited from the Russian Empire a diverse national composition and complex national problems, the Soviet Union throughout its history has been trying to solve the national question as the most important task of its internal policy. If it is true that foreign policy is a continuation and function of domestic policy, then national problems significantly influence the foreign policy of the USSR as well. In general, the Soviet Union, its uniqueness, its prospects, and its policy can hardly be understood without studying the national problems of this state” 15, says Israel Kleiner.
This formula, unfortunately, has not yet become universally recognized in the West.
Ukraine, as the base of the empire, is, of course, at the center of all tendencies related to the national problems of this empire.
Therefore, the experience of the Ukrainian 60s should be a subject of primary interest for anyone studying the situation in Eastern Europe and the prospects for this piece of land.
II. "TRANSITIONAL" GROUPS
The formation of public opinion and forms of social activity in accordance with a new reality, after certain changes, is always delayed. This is a historical regularity. As a rule, these phenomena are formed according to the demands of yesterday’s situation.
This also applies to the opposition in all its manifestations.
The fact that Stalinism as a social condition had already passed into history, and that new chances for the self-assertion of Ukrainianism had appeared under the conditions of the “Khrushchev Thaw,” was not immediately realized by the Ukrainian elite. True, on the part of a certain segment of the Dnieper-region intelligentsia, the critique of the “cult of personality” in 1956 was perceived with excessive optimism. This optimism turned out to be an illusion. The Kremlin very quickly sobered up those who had hoped that criticism of Stalin offered certain opportunities for criticism of the system16. It is worth noting that the first (or one of the first) to dare to disturb the “sacred cows” was Oleksandr Dovzhenko—and this was even before the 20th Congress. We have in mind his statements about the actual non-recognition of the intelligentsia as a social group in official Soviet sociology17 (as is known, according to the theory of “historical materialism,” Soviet society consists of two “friendly classes”: workers and peasants. The intelligentsia is only recognized as having the status of a “social stratum”—something like an insole in the Party’s boot, between the Party’s foot and the mass-sole on which this foot stands).
But as for the conscious Ukrainian opposition, at the beginning of the “Khrushchev Thaw,” it still stood on the foundation of the underground of Stalin’s times, applying both the tactics and the language of the OUN underground publications that were so widely distributed among the population of Western Ukraine in the 40s and the first half of the 50s. After the mass network of the OUN-UPA was crushed by the NKVD organs, individual clandestine groups remained active for a long time. In any case, a researcher would make a mistake not to notice the fact that in the early 50s the OUN-UPA underground was still active, albeit in its final, terminal forms. Even certain Soviet publications of the 70s acknowledged this. For instance, in 1963, near Berezhany (Ternopil region), a battle took place between a group of Ukrainian underground fighters and a KGB detachment. (The author of these lines knows this personally, “first-hand,” from functionaries of the Ternopil region party institutions. Information about this event became widely known in Galicia). It is interesting that the leader of the group of six underground fighters had been living illegally since 1940. Two of the members joined the group during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, when hopes arose in Western Ukraine that “it will start here too.” Discovered and surrounded by a KGB detachment, all the underground fighters shot themselves. The fact that a well-conspired group, living by the laws of the UPA era (it was a mandatory order for a UPA member not to surrender), still existed in 1963 testifies to the deep roots of the post-war underground. Undoubtedly, the Kremlin’s machine for concealing undesirable information, the most perfect in the world, hid more than one episode of the type described above from the world’s eyes. Only a future researcher, having gained access to the KGB archives, will be able to paint a picture of the real activity of the OUN-UPA in the 50s and the real date of the cessation of this activity.
However, for the majority of the population of Western Ukraine in the second half of the 50s, the UPA underground already belonged to the past. Psychologically, the underground was already assessed as non-existent, although episodes of its existence still manifested themselves. This is what led, at the end of the 50s and the beginning of the 60s, to the organization of peculiar “transitional” groups. Their creators were mainly Galician Ukrainians of the younger generation, entirely raised and formed in the tradition of the OUN-UPA. Realizing that the centrally-led underground had ceased to exist, they came to the conviction of the necessity of founding new underground groups. In 1958, in Ivano-Frankivsk, the KGB uncovered a group of Ukrainian youth (workers and students) who had created an organization called the “United Party for the Liberation of Ukraine”18. In 1961, in Lviv, the “Ukrainian National Committee” was tried, an organization consisting of workers from Lviv enterprises that engaged in distributing literature. Twenty members of the group were convicted: two to death, the rest received prison sentences of 10 to 15 years19. There were more such groups: the Khodoriv group, the Kolomyia group, the Stryi group. But little is known about their activities as of yet; as a rule, their existence became known only after their arrest. The author of these lines saw people from the above-described groups in the camps of Mordovia.
Thus, one can speak of a certain post-Stalinist movement in Western Ukraine that became a prelude to the dissident 60s—these are the “transitional” groups. They were transitional in the full sense of the word. On the one hand, these groups were organized according to the principle of the old underground and often distributed old literature from the OUN-UPA era. On the other hand, they already represented a new reality. It is characteristic that the vast majority of members of these groups were already an urban component: students and workers (unlike the old underground, which was principally based in the countryside). Among the distributed literature, works created in accordance with new, “Khrushchevite” ideas appeared more and more often. The practice of the Ukrainian National Front (UNF) was very symbolic in this respect. Its links with the old underground were literal: it had at its disposal an OUN printing press, concealed in a bunker and not discovered by the KGB. Alongside old materials (sometimes from the 40s), the UNF distributed the poems of Symonenko. We think this is the best symbol (and proof) of the transitional nature of these groups: literature of the 40s and Symonenko together. This organization, the best-conspired, lasted the longest: it was uncovered only in 196720, when Ukraine was already living through “dissident” events.
Unlike other groups of this type, the UNF was not a local organization; it spread its activities throughout Galicia. It should also be noted that the UNF began to publish an underground journal, *Volia i Batkivshchyna* (*Will and Fatherland*)21.
Although the UNF saw itself as a continuation of the OUN, its transitional character from the underground of the 40s to new forms and methods of opposition is obvious. After the arrests of 1967, it was generally considered that this organization had been crushed by the KGB and had ceased to exist, like other identical groups. However, the most recent underground journal (*Chronicle of the Catholic Church in Ukraine*) brought interesting information about the activities of the UNF in the 80s. Thus, this organization was not eradicated, as was generally believed. Simply, under the conditions of the 60s, when the Ukrainian opposition switched to “dissident” methods of work and achieved significant successes, attracting attention far beyond Ukraine’s borders, members of the UNF were drawn into this powerful current of Ukrainian activity and ceased to be noticeable as a separate structure. In addition, under the conditions of the “Khrushchev Thaw,” there were great illusions about legal (or at least semi-legal) forms of work; therefore, the idea of a “pure,” “Banderite” underground, which had just been crushed, was not popular. It was only after the major “Christmas” arrests of 1972 that everyone understood that the “thaw” was over; the idea of an organized underground became relevant again.
The resolution of the Transcarpathian Regional Committee of the Communist Party is very interesting. Naming the facts of UNF activity, it recognizes that after the death of Borys Terelia and subsequent arrests, the underground is still not completely eliminated: “secret”
RESOLUTION
of the regional committee of the CP of Ukraine of the Transcarpathian region and the regional Council of People’s Deputies on improving the methods of struggle against manifestations of nationalism and Zionism
Lately, Western propaganda has intensified its anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda. First and foremost, the imperialism of the USA is banking on the Banderite dregs and the underground so-called UGCC. Unfortunately, the region’s party organization has waged an ineffective struggle against manifestations of bourgeois nationalism and Zionism on the territory of the region. This equally applies to anti-Catholic propaganda and the militant atheistic upbringing of youth in the spirit of Leninist internationalism and loyalty to the party. In the last six months alone, the Catholic underground has intensified its actions towards the so-called legalization of the church; under the cover of faith, UGCC activists have stepped up anti-Soviet agitation, and our enemies abroad have used this. The KGB has information that the Banderite underground, under the cover of the new banner of the Ukrainian National Front, has carried out a number of actions—the consequences were already discussed at the May bureau of the regional committee in 1981 and in October 1982. For example, in the village of Muzhiyeve, Berehiv district, on May 24, 1981, the terrorist gang of “Chornyi” derailed a military train carrying radar from the Vilok military base; this delayed the “Polish action” by nine months. In the city of Mukachevo, at the Jewish cemetery, a cache of anti-Soviet Zionist literature and TNT explosive charges was discovered during construction. These are only isolated facts of the activation of Banderite and Zionist groups. The Beskydy operation of 1982 to liquidate the terrorist-sabotage group in Lavochne and Volovets was not brought to a conclusion—the bandit group of “Chornyi” was not completely eliminated; to this day, comrades from the KGB have not identified the culprits in the robbery of two cash collectors on the territory of our region, and to this day the persons who took 10,000 cartridges and 99 grenades from the military unit in Mukachevo have not been identified—there are many shortcomings, one could list a number of other unpleasant incidents, but despite all the obvious shortcomings, the KGB has also achieved qualitative results in its work—for example, a member of the bandit group “Chornyi,” Borys Mykhailovych Terelia (should be Borys Mykhailo Terelia.— V. M.), was eliminated. Unfortunately, with the bandit’s death, the thread of his connections with the Banderite dregs in the territory of the neighboring region was broken. In the Irshava district, a successful operation was carried out to liquidate underground Catholic and Baptist printing presses; up to 1,000 copies of clerical literature were seized”22. (*Chronicle of the Catholic Church in Ukraine*, no. 6.)
There are also materials in the *Chronicle of the Catholic Church in Ukraine* about the UNF’s connections with an identical Romanian underground group (this will be discussed at the end of the text).
It is characteristic that the UNF has twice displayed the same trait. In the 60s, it managed to integrate into the broad samvydav-dissident movement, while remaining an underground structure. In the 80s, it similarly managed to integrate into the broad campaign for the restoration of the Greek Catholic Church in Galicia and Transcarpathia, which involved thousands of people. From the above-mentioned resolution, it is clear that the structures of the UNF and the groups of Greek Catholic activists are closely intertwined in their actions; it is not difficult to guess that sometimes they are the same people (as in the case of the Terelia brothers: one is the leader of the Greek Catholic initiative group, the other is the leader of the “Chornyi gang,” that is, the first armed group since the UPA to set itself the goal of military struggle).
In essence, there were two transitional groups that went beyond local boundaries and attracted the world’s attention. These were the UNF and the Lukianenko group. Actually, extensive information about the UNF did not spread to the world, beyond the Ukrainian diaspora in the West. The Lukianenko group was more fortunate. Literature about it already exists in English and other languages. It has, in fact, become a symbol of the “transitional era.”
It is characteristic that all members of the “Lukianenko group” were lawyers. In the Russian part of the Soviet Union in the 60s, a distinct tendency emerged: samvydav-opposition groups were, as a rule, formed on the initiative of “technocrats,” i.e., representatives of the exact sciences. It is enough to recall the example of Sakharov—the world’s most famous figure of this kind. This is natural: under a dictatorship, representatives of the humanities simply do not have a chance to engage in scholarship; it is replaced by propaganda. But physicists or chemists still have to produce scientific output even under a dictatorship: therefore, they are the only ones who, as a rule, retain the ability to think. It is not surprising that the “Leningrad group of Marxists” (60s) consisted entirely of graduates of a technological institute23.
In the non-Russian regions of the empire, the tendency was diametrically opposite. Here, the issue was not daily bread, but the defense of national rights and national identity. Therefore, the Ukrainian, Georgian, and Lithuanian opposition was formed primarily by representatives of the humanities. The thesis that the concept of truth is central to the Ukrainian worldview has long existed. The fact that the new wave of revival in Ukraine was started by lawyers seems to confirm this thesis. Just as the UNF group was a symbol of transitionality in the sense of combining old, UPA materials and methods with new, samvydav ones, so the “Lukianenko group” was a similar symbol: here, the traditional division between eastern and western Ukrainians was erased. Although the group itself arose on the well-prepared (in terms of national consciousness) soil of the Lviv region, the organizer and soul of the group was a native of the Chernihiv region—Levko Lukianenko. Perhaps for the first time in groups of this type, the odious division into “easterners” and “westerners,” which was (and partly still is) one of the main obstacles on the path to Ukrainian successes, practically disappeared.
Lukianenko had a typical Soviet career: the military, then Moscow University. In 1958, he began practicing law in the Lviv region24. Together with his colleagues, he formed a group called the “Ukrainian Workers’ and Peasants’ Union” and prepared a program titled “Draft Program of the Ukrainian Workers’ and Peasants’ Union”25.
It is interesting that the group stood on Marxist positions and declared its goal to be the creation of an independent Ukrainian Marxist state. To achieve this, it was envisaged to use the right to secede for every republic (including Ukraine) from the USSR, as enshrined in the Soviet constitution. Of course, the members of the group understood that the “right to secede” was formal under Soviet conditions; but they planned to popularize this idea. The program officially proclaimed the use of constitutional methods in its activities:
“Therefore, the goal of this first stage of our struggle is to win democratic freedoms necessary for the organization of the entire Ukrainian people in the struggle for the creation of an independent national state. The methods for achieving this goal are peaceful and constitutional”26.
On January 20, 1961, most members of the group were arrested (one member turned out to be a KGB informant)27. Despite the Marxist and legalist character of the UWPU program, the members of this group were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. In particular, Levko Lukianenko was sentenced to death, which was later commuted to 15 years of captivity. This showed that the imperial apparatus for suppressing centrifugal national movements was tuned to a purely Russian-chauvinistic wave. The Marxism of the members of the “Lukianenko group” did not evoke any “social” sentiment in these imperial Marxists. The social colorations of national liberation movements are not taken into account at all; only their threat from the point of view of imperial interests is considered.
It is worth noting that the trial of the “Lukianenko group” did not become widely known to either the Ukrainian or the world public, as happened later with the trials of 1966–67 or subsequent ones. The KGB apparatus still managed to conceal this case—for the last time. True, a certain amount of information still leaked out. For example, the famous essay “Regarding the Trial of Pohruzhalsky” already mentioned the “trial of the lawyers”28.
Later, in the camps, all members of the “Lukianenko group” moved away from Marxist positions. This is a characteristic process: most Soviet dissidents who started from Marxist positions, as a rule, later outgrew them. This is not just statistics: it is a very telling process of parting with Marxism, through which the most thinking part of Soviet society has passed (and is now passing). It is necessary to emphasize this, because after the appearance in the West of Leonid Plyushch and several other dissidents of a Marxist persuasion, some people developed an illusion about some kind of “renaissance of neo-Marxism” in the Soviet empire. We must state that authors like Leonid Plyushch29 or Zhores Medvedev30 from Moscow were and are exceptions in the broad dissident current; although the possibility of certain innovations on a Marxist basis should not be discounted either.
It is also worth noting that the position of Lukianenko and his group was genuinely Marxist, not opportunistically Marxist. At the time of writing the program, Lukianenko was indeed a Marxist by conviction (the author of these lines knows this from personal conversations with Lukianenko). A researcher of this topic would make a great mistake if they did not take into account that for most Ukrainian Sixtiers, quoting Marx and Lenin was simply an official cover; while quoting Marx, these authors at the same time considered faith in Marxist theory a curious anachronism.
In essence, the “Draft Program of the UWPU” was the beginning of modern samvydav, and not only Ukrainian. Israel Kleiner calls it “the first samvydav document, which appeared several years before the emergence of mass samvydav”31.
The transitional groups were a kind of probing of Soviet post-Stalinist reality and a search for the most rational forms of opposition in the new conditions. The change in the situation was determined mainly by three factors:
1. The gradual disappearance of the armed confrontation between the Ukrainian resistance and the regime.
2. The emergence of new chances for unofficial-opposition phenomena in connection with the “Khrushchev Thaw.”
3. The disappearance of the situation of “armed neutrality” between the West and the East, which gave hope for a military conflict and chances for national liberation movements associated with a future war. The end of the Korean War in 1953 (which symbolically coincided with the date of Stalin’s death) finally dispelled these hopes.
Ukraine reacted to the change in situation quite quickly, albeit subconsciously. Ukrainian émigré circles, however, remained captive to old doctrines for a long time, even when the Sixtiers had become a clearly defined movement in Ukraine.
NOTES
1 Ivan Lytvynenko, “The Ukrainian Problem and Russia,” *Suchasnist*, Munich, 1979, p. 15.
2 Open letter from O. Berdnyk to US President J. Carter, November 17, 1976. “The Ukrainian Human Rights Movement,” Smoloskyp, Toronto-Baltimore, 1978, p. 189.
3 Mykola Rudenko, *Economic Monologues*, “Suchasnist,” 1978.
4 “Shooting Begins Again in Ukraine,” *Anabasis*, Toronto, No. 13, 1983, p. 5.
5 *Chronicle of the Catholic Church in Ukraine*, No. 6, p. 27.
6 *Chronicle...*, No. 4, p. 7.
7 Vasyl Stus, “From a Camp Notebook,” *Suchasnist*, No. 211, 1983, p. 90.
8 *Chronicle...*, No. 6, p. 36.
9 *Anabasis*, No. 23, 1985, p. 14.
10 *Russkaya Mysl*, Paris, November 26, 1971.
11 *Nationalism and Human Rights*. Edited by Ihor Kamenetsky. Littleton, Colo. 1977. *The Decolonisation of the USSR*. Toronto-New-York, 1978.
12 A. Belopolsky, *SSSR na fone proshlogo Rossii* [The USSR against the backdrop of Russia’s past], Washington, 1973, pp. 422–426.
13 *Iz-pod glyb* [From Under the Rubble], YMCA-Press, Paris, 1975, p. 113.
14 *Dve press-konferentsii* [Two Press Conferences], YMCA-Press, Paris, 1975, p. 43.
15 Israel Kleiner, *Natsionalni problemy ostannioi imperii* [The National Problems of the Last Empire], First Ukrainian Press in France, Paris, 1978, p. 14.
16 “Why Shelest Was Removed,” *Suchasnist*, 1973, pp. 80–82.
17 Ivan Koshelivets, *Oleksandr Dovzhenko*, “Suchasnist,” 1980.
18 Israel Kleiner, op. cit., p. 166.
19 Ibid., p. 167.
20 *Ukrainian Political Prisoners in the Soviet Union*. Studium Research Institute, Toronto, 1979, p. 54.
21 Ibid.
22 “Chronicle of the Catholic Church in Ukraine,” no. 6. *Materialy Samizdata*, issue no. 10/85, pp. 27–28.
23 *Sovremennik*, no. 41, Toronto, 1979, p. 65.
24 *Ukrainian Political Prisoners in the Soviet Union*, p. 61.
25 *Ukrainski yurysty pid sudom KGB* [Ukrainian Jurists on Trial by the KGB], “Suchasnist,” 1968, p. 32.
26 Ibid., p. 33.
27 *Ukrainian Political Prisoners in the Soviet Union*, p. 61.
28 *Shyroke more Ukrainy* [The Broad Sea of Ukraine], “Smoloskyp,” Paris-Baltimore, 1972, p. 67.
29 Leonid Plyushch, *U karnavali istorii* [In the Carnival of History], “Suchasnist,” 1980.
30 *Fakty i mysli* [Facts and Thoughts], no. 17, January 1980, New York, p. 8.
31 Israel Kleiner, op. cit., p. 167.
“Vsesvit,” 1990.