In January 1970, the first periodical in Ukraine to be published via samizdat, the “Ukrainian Herald” (UH), began publication, modeled after the CCE (A Chronicle of Current Events). However, unlike the CCE, the UH contained not only information about repressions and the situation of political prisoners but also presented works circulating in samizdat—historical research, data on the genocide of Ukrainians, literary studies, poetry, and prose. The publication was characterized by a high professional standard.
The UH was created on the initiative of Viacheslav Chornovil, who also became the journal's editor-in-chief. Mykhailo Kosiv and Yaroslav Kendzior were also on the editorial board. A large number of dissidents took an active part in distributing the UH. The UH was also smuggled abroad.
Attitudes toward the publication of the UH were mixed. According to Leonida Svitlychna, when the UH began to appear, Ivan Svitlychny actively distributed it, but he was against the idea of publishing it, believing it would hasten arrests. Subsequent events proved him right.
Vasyl Ovsienko recounts: “The ‘Ukrainian Herald’ was cut short at its fifth issue—it was stopped in mid-1971 because rumors began to spread that arrests were imminent, and Nikitchenko himself spoke with Ivan Svitlychny and said, ‘As long as you were not organized, we tolerated you. Now that you have a journal, we will not tolerate you.’ The decision was made to stop publishing the ‘Ukrainian Herald,’ but it was already too late.”
On January 12, 1972, all well-known dissidents were arrested: in Kyiv—Ivan Svitlychny, Yevhen Sverstiuk, Vasyl Stus, Leonid Plyushch, Zinoviy Antonyuk, and a little later, Ivan Dziuba and others; in Lviv—Viacheslav Chornovil, Mykhailo Osadchy, Ivan Hel, Stefania Shabatura, Iryna Stasiv-Kalynets, and a little later, Ihor Kalynets and others. The next wave of arrests took place in April–May 1972.
The repressions of 1972 were an empire-wide campaign. In Moscow and Novosibirsk, arrests were made in connection with the ‘CCE’ case. H. Kasyanov writes that according to unofficial sources, on December 30, 1971, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU ‘passed a resolution to launch an all-union campaign against samizdat.’ The party leadership of the Ukrainian SSR, headed by P. Shelest, supported Moscow’s initiative because it had effectively already lost its authority in the republic.
After the arrests of January 1972, there were attempts by those still at liberty to continue publishing the UH. In Lviv, issue 6 of the UH appeared, prepared by Mykhailo Kosiv, Yaroslav Kendzior, and Athena Pashko. This issue of the UH became known as the “Lviv issue” because almost simultaneously, in March 1972, Vasyl Lisovyi, Yevhen Proniuk, and Vasyl Ovsienko published a special issue of the UH in Kyiv—also numbered 6—with information about the arrests. Vasyl Lisovyi, Yevhen Proniuk, and Vasyl Ovsienko were arrested.