Ladies and gentlemen, I address you as a member of the Ukrainian Public Group to Promote the Implementation of the Helsinki Accords since November 18, 1978, to remind you that the human rights movement in Ukraine has deep roots and fine traditions.
The idea of human rights was expressed by Ukrainian thinkers as early as the 19th century in an implicit form, it became an important component of the 1918 Constitution of the Ukrainian People’s Republic. However, the movement that consciously set the goal of demanding state recognition of human rights—that is, the legalization of human rights—is a phenomenon that only emerged in the 1960s, during the Khrushchev “Thaw.” Since the “Stalinist,” and later the “Brezhnevist,” Constitution of the USSR contained a number of articles proclaiming freedom of speech, assembly, religion, and so on, human rights defenders tried to use this fact by demanding that the Constitution be observed. Subsequently, human rights defenders increasingly invoked international human rights documents.
There is a book: Yuriy Danylyuk, Oleh Bazhan. Opposition in Ukraine (second half of the 1950s–1980s). – Kyiv: Ridnyi Krai, 2000. – 616 p. Its cover depicts a book with the inscription “Constitution.” It is split by a lightning strike. This is a completely erroneous idea. Just as Jesus Christ came not to destroy the Law but to fulfill it (Matthew 5:17), so human rights defenders did not destroy but defended the Law from the state. In essence, we still have to do the same thing today: defend the Law from the state’s encroachments.
Admittedly, the list of rights that are most often violated now has changed somewhat. For instance, we now have freedom of movement (free exit from and entry into Ukraine), freedom of association is observed (the creation of public and political organizations), and freedom of speech: stand like a windmill on a high place and prattle on about whatever you want, “and no one will lead you away in chains” (T. Shevchenko).
The circle of human rights defenders of the 1960s was composed of young intellectuals who, after the mass Stalinist repressions and famine, “grew up from small, frail mothers in a felled orchard” (M. Vinhranovskyi). These were people of different worldview, philosophical, and political orientations, but they were united by the desire to freely express their views. A highly cultural and moral atmosphere of goodwill and compassion, sincerity, friendly love, and mutual respect—in particular, respect for talent—prevailed in the human rights movement. Therefore, the human rights movement in Ukraine united a number of currents (the national liberation movement, the general democratic movement, the religious movement, the socio-economic or workers’ movement, the struggle for the right to emigrate) as well as a brilliant constellation of outstanding Personalities (Levko Lukianenko, Ivan Svitlychnyi, Mykhailo Horyn, Ivan Dziuba, Yevhen Sverstiuk, Viacheslav Chornovil, Oksana Meshko, Nina Strokata-Karavanska, Vasyl Stus, Mykola Rudenko, Petro Grigorenko, Mustafa Dzhemilev, Yosyf Zissels, Zinoviy Krasivskyi, Vasyl Romaniuk—the future Patriarch Volodymyr, and others). It was a place for Ukrainians and Jews, believers of different faiths and atheists, nationalists and national-communists, social democrats and anarchists. They never declared each other enemies, because at that time everyone equally needed freedom, and the state independence of Ukraine was seen as a probable guarantor of such freedom. This circle was small. “For we are few. A tiny flock. Only for prayers and for endless waiting” (V. Stus). But it testified to the continuity of the Ukrainian people’s aspirations for freedom.
To avoid accusations of underground activity, the human rights defenders of the 1960s did not formally documented organizations. Their circles operated based on interpersonal contacts (friendships, family, and professional ties). This, however, did not save them from repression. Because, as Yevhen Sverstiuk once put it, when so many intelligent, talented, and glorious people come together, something is bound to come of it. The authorities understood this as well: a political opposition was forming in this environment. The state itself pushed these nonconformists away from communism (one might call them dissidents or revisionists) into the position of its irreconcilable enemies by arresting over two dozen people in August–September 1965. Twenty-one individuals were sentenced to short—compared to the usual Stalinist ones—prison terms (the longest being 6 years).
These not-so-severe repressions stirred public interest in those arrested and the issues they raised. A whole wave of protests arose. Hundreds of signatures were collected in support of the arrested (here, Lina Kostenko distinguished herself), giving rise to the term “signatories.” Today, collecting signatures is a common affair. But back then, one had to answer for their signature with the loss of their job and any future prospects. Outside the courthouses in Lviv, crowds chanted “Slava!” [Glory!] and threw flowers at the defendants. Such actions already had the character of an organized human rights movement. By the end of the 1960s, samvydav had effectively become the organizational infrastructure of the resistance movement, especially with the appearance of the journal The Ukrainian Herald (1970–72, editor V. Chornovil).
The first open protest against the arrests was Ivan Dziuba’s speech on September 4, 1965, at the premiere of Serhiy Paradzhanov’s film Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors at the Ukraina Cinema in Kyiv. He was supported by Viacheslav Chornovil, and Vasyl Stus unexpectedly called on those who were against the revival of Stalinism to stand up. The consequences of standing up are well known: expulsion from institutes and postgraduate studies, dismissal from jobs, a ban on any publication of their works, and, later, arrests.
Let us note: in Moscow, the first major demonstration for human rights took place on December 5, 1965, on Pushkin Square.
The prisoners of 1965 brought a new spirit to the political camps. They established channels for information about human rights violations to leave the zones. From then on, the entire history of the concentration camps is one of protests against inhumane conditions, the struggle for the elementary human rights of political prisoners, and the search for ways to transmit information about this struggle to the outside world—at great risk of additional punishment. For no protest action, including strikes and long hunger strikes, yielded positive results unless the protesters were supported by foreign human rights organizations or foreign politicians, unless foreign radio stations spoke of them. This is a truly dramatic and heroic story, linked with the suffering of both the prisoners themselves and their families, yet few of them fell to their knees. The term “prisoner of conscience” acquired a real meaning: anyone could be released early by trampling their own conscience—that is, by writing a “penitential” statement, revealing everything about themselves and others, and informing on their neighbors. But there were only a handful of such “penitents.” Credit must be given to the KGB: it selected high-quality cadres for the concentration camps. Not like in Stalin’s time, when entire categories of the population were exterminated: “Haul them in by the sackful, we’ll sort them out later.” The prisoners of conscience were strengthened by the moral support of the free world, the Ukrainian diaspora, and the presence in the camps of recognized moral authorities—the last of the UPA insurgents, the “25-yearers,” who had also been participants in the political prisoner uprisings of the early 1950s. The younger generation quickly found common ground with them. Representatives of other enslaved nations were imprisoned here, in whose eyes Ukrainians had a deserved reputation as the most steadfast fighters for freedom.
Beginning on January 12, 1972, about a hundred people were arrested in Ukraine, hundreds of searches were conducted, and thousands of people were terrorized with interrogations as witnesses, fired from their jobs, and expelled from universities. This time, almost all the leading figures received the maximum sentence—seven years of imprisonment in strict-regime camps and five years of exile. The most stubborn, who gave no testimony, were thrown into psychiatric hospitals. They found themselves in the most difficult—utterly lawless (worse than death!)—position.
The social atmosphere of 1972, unlike that of 1965, was oppressive. Legally criminal but convicted of “especially dangerous state crimes,” the human rights defenders launched a struggle for the *Status of a Political Prisoner*. Since the authorities responded to the 1974 draft of the *Status of a Political Prisoner* only with additional repressions, from 1977 prisoners began to adopt it by de facto assertion: they went on strike, declared hunger strikes over the denial of visits, tore off the patches with their surnames, and refused to wear camp clothing (the famous “kholodovka,” or cold strike: sitting in punishment cells in only their undergarments). Individual prisoners of conscience spent nearly half their terms in punishment cells, cell-type premises (PKT), or on a prison regime, while on hunger strike (for example, Viacheslav Chornovil, Vasyl Lisovyi, Vasyl Stus, Zoryan Popadiuk). Female political prisoners demonstrated examples of heroic fortitude—Stefaniya Shabatura, Nadiya Svitlychna, Iryna Kalynets, Olha Heiko—for they had before them the living examples of OUN underground members Iryna Senyk and Oksana Popovych, who were already imprisoned for the second time, and the “25-yearers” Kateryna Zarytska, Darka Husyak, and Halyna Palchak.
Beginning in the early 1970s, they marked the Day of the Soviet Political Prisoner on October 30, the Day of the Ukrainian Political Prisoner on January 12 (the 1972 arrests), the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Red Terror on September 5 (the 1918 Sovnarkom decree), and Human Rights Day on December 10 with protest hunger strikes and statements.
In the camp struggle against the common enemy, true international solidarity matured. Communities of Ukrainians, Jews, Armenians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Latvians, Moldovans, Georgians, and Russian democrats took part in joint protest actions. Mykhailo Kheyfets attested to this well in his book Ukrainian Silhouettes. This experience and these personal friendships proved very useful in the late 1980s for the destruction of the odious “Evil Empire.”
The authorities were confident that after the 1972–1973 “harvest” of the young Ukrainian intelligentsia, they would have no trouble with “Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism” for another 10–15 years. By signing the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) on August 1, 1975, the Brezhnev leadership had no intention of observing the “third basket” (Section III – human rights Section I – consolidation of the borders that emerged from World War II, where there was no place for Ukraine Section II – most-favored-nation status in trade). But since this Act was equated with national legislation, its signing meant that legal opportunities opened up to fight human rights violations legally and completely legitimately, based on domestic and international law. Professor Yuriy Orlov was the first to realize this. On May 12, 1976, on his initiative, Moscow human rights activists created the Moscow Public Group to Promote the Implementation of the Helsinki Accords. Thus, the Helsinki Final Act was conceived as an interstate document, but Yuriy Orlov proposed reading it in human terms, turning it to the defense of human rights. This was a brilliant insight that saved the Helsinki Final Act itself and led to the ideological defeat of the USSR, and thus to the collapse of the “Evil Empire”—in just a decade and a half.
Human rights defenders, in the words of Andrei Amalrik, carried out a revolutionary coup in the consciousness of a population terrorized for decades: in an unfree country, they began to behave as free people. They demanded that the state recognize human rights—that is, their legalization—and by de facto assertion began to exercise their constitutional rights (freedom of speech, press, demonstrations, associations, etc.), that is, to understand the laws as they were written.
An independent public opinion emerged in society. Henceforth, demagoguery about “interference in the internal affairs of the USSR” when it came to violations of elementary human rights became untenable.
The second group, created on the initiative of writer and philosopher Mykola Rudenko on November 9, 1976, was the Ukrainian Public Group to Promote the Implementation of the Helsinki Accords. The Helsinki movement quickly became international: on November 25, 1976, a Helsinki Group was created in Lithuania on January 14, 1977, in Georgia and on April 1, in Armenia. In Poland, the Workers’ Defence Committee had been active since September 1976, later transformed into the Committee for Social Self-Defense, and in January 1977, the Charter 77 group was formed in Czechoslovakia. In the US, a special Congressional commission was established.
What is especially important is that the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, in the era of the collapse of the world colonial system, reminded the world of the existence of an enslaved Ukraine fighting for independence. The Group raised the issue of Ukraine’s recognition by the world community, primarily so that Ukraine would be represented by a separate delegation at subsequent CSCE meetings. This was a brilliant insight: to place the Ukrainian national interest on an international legal foundation, in the context of the confrontation between the democratic West and the totalitarian USSR. And the myth of Ukraine, after only a decade and a half, was filled with real content: it became independent! In a certain sense, it can be said that freedom of speech and truthful information destroyed the “Evil Empire.” We fought on the ideological front—and we won. (Tomas Venclova: The Helsinki groups were the little mouse without which the grandfather, the grandmother, Marushka, Zhuchka, and the cat could not pull out the turnip.)
Thus, the Brezhnev leadership had brutally miscalculated: in a society that had endured decades of constant “purges,” people were still found who dared to openly expose the falsity and deceit of the regime by collecting and publicizing facts of human rights violations.
Everything that was still alive in Ukraine was drawn to the Helsinki Group. For the first time after decades of repression, such a small number of Ukrainian intelligentsia organized and spoke to the whole world about the captivity and lawlessness of their people. In this sense, the Helsinki movement was far more important for Ukraine than for peoples who had their own statehood, which is why in our country it proved to be the most resilient in the 1970s–80s.
The human rights defenders had no illusions that the authorities would allow them to openly defend people’s rights by invoking the Helsinki Final Act. They knew they were risking their freedom and even their lives. But they were guided by considerations of a higher order: it was necessary to protect the community by sacrificing themselves. Besides the fact that it was most often a matter of the elementary human dignity of specific individuals (the sum of which, in fact, constitutes the honor of a nation), it was also a farsighted political calculation: to draw the attention of the world community to the human rights situation in Ukraine and, with its help, to press the authorities to liberalize the government, which would expand the foothold for a further assault on the totalitarian colonial system with the goal of destroying it.
The milieu of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group proved to be quite broad and heroically steadfast. It included former political prisoners, their friends and relatives, and young people who no longer wanted to suffocate in the atmosphere of official, mendacious ideology. The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet and its “combat vanguard”—the KGB—were disconcerted. After all, they wanted to maintain a “human face” before the world. However, they could not withstand it and once again showed the world their true face: they resorted to tried-and-tested methods—arrests of the most active, intimidation, and expulsion from jobs and institutes of all sympathizers and suspects.
In 1978–1980, almost all the founding members of the Group were repressed. Typically, those arrested a second time were given 10 years in special-regime (cell-type) camps and 5 years of exile, designated as especially dangerous recidivists. But new people came to take their place with stubborn obsession. Joining the Group in each case was a conscious act of courage and sacrifice: an announced member would remain free for only a few weeks or months.
The authorial collective, as the Group considered itself, turned out to be extremely productive: in the first three years, working under conditions of constant risk, it created hundreds of highly professional, scrupulously verified, and well-edited human rights documents that would fill several volumes. These included dozens of Memorandums and Information Bulletins on violations of the rights of specific individuals.
Starting in 1979, the KGB launched a real war against the Group. According to Liudmyla Alexeyeva, the repressions against those associated with the Group took on a mafia-like character. A wave of criminal trials against human rights defenders swept through Ukraine based on cynically fabricated charges: “parasitism” (Petro Vins), “resisting the militsiya” (Vasyl Ovsienko, Yuriy Lytvyn), “hooliganism” (Vadym Smohytel, Vasyl Dolishniy), “attempted rape” (Mykola Horbal, Viacheslav Chornovil), “violation of passport regulations” (Vasyl Striltsiv), “illegal possession of a bladed weapon” (Petro Rozumnyi), and “production, possession, and sale of narcotics” (Vasyl Sichko, Yaroslav Lesiv). Ukraine became a kind of KGB testing ground where the most brutal methods were tried out. Those associated with the Group were beaten by unknown assailants or the militsiya (Petro Vins, Yuriy Lytvyn, Vasyl Dolishniy) women were threatened with rape (Olha Heiko) documents were planted on people (Mykhailo Horyn) wives were imprisoned for defending their relatives (the same Olha Heiko-Matusevych, Raisa Rudenko), as were mothers (76-year-old Oksana Meshko). None of the Group’s members were released: shortly before their release date, or even on the day itself, a new case would be fabricated against the victim (Vasyl Ovsienko, Yuriy Lytvyn, Mykola Horbal, Vasyl and Petro Sichko, Yaroslav Lesiv, Ivan Sokulskyi, Olha Heiko, Vasyl Barladianu). Only by such methods was it possible to effectively stop the Group’s activities in the early 1980s. The courage of Ukrainian women is captivating—Oksana Meshko, Olha Heiko, Oksana Popovych, Nadiya Svitlychna, Iryna Senyk, Nina Strokata, Stefania Shabatura, Raisa Rudenko, Hanna Mykhailenko—who endured captivity in inhuman conditions to the end and kept their souls untarnished. And those women who remained in the “big zone” were a source of support for the prisoners (Stefaniya Petrash-Sichko, Svitlana Kyrychenko, Vira Lisova, Mykhailna Kotsiubynska…).
In total, 41 people joined the Group during its existence. (In addition to them, the UHG was joined in 1982 by two foreign members—the Estonian Mart-Olav Niklus and the Lithuanian Viktoras Petkus—and at the end of 1987, another six were co-opted). Of the 41 members, 24 were convicted in connection with their membership in the Group. They served over 170 years in concentration camps, prisons, psychiatric hospitals, and exile. In total, the grim tally for 39 members of the Group is over 550 years of captivity. The Group paid with five lives: Mykhailo Melnyk committed suicide on March 9, 1979, on the eve of his inevitable arrest. Four prisoners of the special-regime camp VS-389/36 (village of Kuchino, Chusovskoy District, Perm Oblast) died in captivity: Oleksa Tykhyi on May 5, 1984 Yuriy Lytvyn on September 4, 1984 Valeriy Marchenko on October 7, 1984 and Vasyl Stus on September 3–4, 1985.
As early as September 23, 1981, in a report at the 13th National Convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies in Pacific Grove, the renowned researcher of political thought Ivan Lystak-Rudnytsky noted:
“...the fact-based significance of the Ukrainian dissidents is beyond doubt. The sacrifice of these brave men and women testifies to the indomitable spirit of the Ukrainian nation. Their struggle for human and national rights is consistent with the global trend of universal human progress in the spirit of freedom. The Ukrainian dissidents believe that the truth of freedom will prevail. It does not befit those of us who are fortunate enough to live in free countries to believe any less.”
The elevated style of most of the Group’s documents, as Nina Strokata noted in her 1981 afterword to the publication of the Information Bulletins, leads to such a conclusion.
The strength and immense moral advantage of the Ukrainian human rights defenders over the regime lay in the fact that they did not become an underground movement but signed documents with their own names, openly demonstrating legalism and appealing to Soviet law and international legal documents signed by the USSR.
The Ukrainian human rights defenders enjoyed deserved respect and moral support in the democratic world. The world respects people who have distinguished themselves through high moral acts, and usually helps them. In 1978, the leaders of the Moscow, Ukrainian, and Lithuanian Helsinki Groups were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
The Moscow Helsinki Group ceased its activities in September 1982, because some of its members were imprisoned and others were expelled abroad. For the Ukrainian human rights defenders, there was only one path: to the concentration camps. While in captivity, almost all of them firmly resolved not to give up. Of the forty-one, only one, Oles Berdnyk, recanted after 5 years of imprisonment and was released in April 1984. So, I repeat, the KGB selected high-quality cadres for captivity. “As long as Ukraine sends its best sons and daughters to the concentration camps, Ukraine has not yet perished,” said Mykhailo Horyn.
As soon as the first Helsinki Group members were released during the period of “glasnost” and “perestroika,” they resumed their human rights activities and became the salt, the leaven for many human rights and political organizations, which, along with other factors, led Ukraine to independence, where the opportunity arose to build a society based on the rule of law that would correspond to both the freedom-loving spirit of the Ukrainian people and the letter of international legal acts.
We live in a time when we should be reminded of the Holy Scripture: “You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood…” (Hebrews 12:4). We are already resisting to the point of shedding blood. We do not know what trials await us. But I am certain that the current generation of human rights defenders and warriors possesses the same high virtues as their predecessors. Therefore, we will be victorious.
Read more about the human rights movement in Ukraine here:
Ovsienko, V. V. The Human Rights Movement in Ukraine
The Ukrainian Public Group to Promote the Implementation of the Helsinki Accords
Bazhan, O. H. The Ukrainian Helsinki Group: A Legal Form of Opposition to the Totalitarian Regime in the UkrSSR
Mykola Rudenko. Interview on the Creation of the UHG