Dissent
A remarkable phenomenon surfaced in the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s, when a small but growing number of individuals, commonly called dissidents, began to criticize government policies openly and to demand greater civil, religious, and national rights.
After decades of terror and in view of the tight controls and relentless indoctrination the regime has had at its disposal, how could this surprising challenge to it emerge? To a great extent, dissent was an outgrowth of de-Stalinization, of the loosening of the “paralysis of fear” that Khrushchev had initiated. The limited revelations of the horrendous crimes of the Stalin era aroused widespread disenchantment and skepticism about other aspects of the regime. Consequently, when Brezhnev attempted to impose limits on liberalization, he evoked protest and dissent, especially among the intelligentsia.Dissent in the USSR flowed into three frequently overlapping currents. Because of its access to the Western media, the best known was the Moscow-based civil rights or democratic movement, which consisted mostly of Russian intelligentsia and counted among its leaders such luminaries as the novelist Aleksander Solzhenitsyn and the nuclear physicist Andrei Sakharov. Religious militancy was another form of “deviant” behavior. In Ukraine and other non-Russian regions, dissent crystallized around nationality-oriented as well as civil rights and religious issues.
Initially, the core of the Ukrainian dissidents consisted largely of the “six-tiers,” the new and creative literary generation that was just coming into prominence. It included Lina Kostenko, Vasyl Symonenko, Ivan Drach, Ivan Svitlychny, Ievhen Sverstiuk, Mykola Vinhranovsky, Alla Horska, and Ivan Dziuba. Later they were joined by Vasyl Stus, Mykhailo Osadchy, Ihor and Iryna Kalynets, Mykola Horbal, Ivan Gel, and the Horyn brothers.
A striking characteristic of this group was that its members were generally model products of the Soviet educational system and well on the way to promising careers. Some were committed communists. Although concentrated mostly in Kiev and Lviv, they stemmed from various parts of Ukraine. While the majority were East Ukrainians, many of them had a West Ukrainian connection, having either studied or worked in the region. Another noteworthy feature was that a large proportion of the dissidents were the first generation in their families to leave the village and to enter the ranks of the urban intelligentsia. Hence the naive idealism and sophisticated argumentation that often characterized their statements. By and large, they were a very loose, unorganized conglomeration of people. There were not more than 1000 active dissidents in Ukraine.1 However, supporters and sympathizers probably numbered in the many thousands.What grievences did the Ukrainian dissidents have? And what goals did they want to achieve? As with any group of intellectuals, there was great variety and fluidity in their views. Ivan Dziuba, a literary critic and one of the most prominent of the dissidents, apparently desired civil liberties as much as national rights. His goal was clearly stated: “I propose… one thing only: freedom – freedom for the honest, public discussion of national affairs, freedom of national choice, freedom for national self-knowledge, self-awareness, and self-development. But first and foremost, comes freedom for discussions and disagreement.”2 A national communist, Dziuba was disturbed by the great gap between Soviet theory and reality, especially in the area of nationality rights, and urged the authorities to repair it for the good of the Soviet system as well as the Ukrainian nation. The historian Valentyn Moroz, in contrast, reflected the intellectual traditions of Ukrainian integral nationalism and made no secret of his disgust with the Soviet system and hope for its demise.
In general, however, the Ukrainian dissidents called for reforms in the USSR, not revolution or separation. They were against national repression in Ukraine and for civil rights in the USSR.Among Western analysts of Ukrainian dissent there are divided opinions about the conditions that led people to protest openly. Alexander Motyl has argued that in Ukraine, as in the USSR in general, it was primarily the political policies of the Soviet leadership – specifically Khrushchev’s “thaw” and Brezhnev’s attempts to reverse it – that led to dissent.3 Certainly Shelest’s openly pro-Ukrainian line provided Ukrainian intellectuals with an added incentive to express their dissatisfaction. Wsevolod Isajiw and Bohdan Krawchenko have stressed that dissent in Ukraine was closely and primarily related to socioeconomic tensions.4 Given the huge, Moscow-supported influx of Russians into Ukraine, they believe that competition for good jobs grew between privileged Russian newcomers and upwardly mobile Ukrainians, leading many of the latter to join or to support the dissidents’ call for greater Ukrainian self-determination. In any case, in its Ukrainian context, dissent was clearly the latest manifestation of the generation-old confrontation between the Ukrainian intelligentsia and the bureaucracy of a Russian-dominated empire. Manifestations of dissent
The earliest manifestations of Ukrainian dissent appeared in the late 1950s and early 1960s when several small, secret groups in Western Ukraine were organized. The most noteworthy of these was the so-called “Jurists’ Group,” led by the jurist Levko Lukianenko. It called for Ukraine to use its legal right to secede from the Soviet Union. After discovering these groups, the authorities imposed harsh sentences on their members in a series of closed trials.
But the momentum of de-Stalinization continued to produce unrest among the intelligentsia. In 1963, an official Conference on Culture and Language, held at Kiev University and attended by over 1000 people, turned into an open demonstration against Russification.
At about this time, students and intelligentsia began to gather regularly at the statue of Shevchenko in Kiev, ostensibly to hold public readings of the poet’s works, but also to criticize the regime’s cultural policies. The suspicious fire in 1964 that destroyed the Ukrainian manuscript collection at the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences library elicited a storm of protest by leading literary figures. Fearful that matters were getting out of hand, the Kremlin decided to crack down on dissent throughout the USSR. In Ukraine this policy resulted in the arrest in late 1965 of about two dozen of the most vocal protesters. Hoping to intimidate the dissidents’ colleagues, the authorities put the latter on open trial. However, the tactic backfired and led to even greater protest and dissent.After observing the trials in Lviv, Viacheslav Chornovil, a young journalist and committed Communist, produced his revelatory “Chornovil Papers,” a collection of documents that exposed the arbitrary, illegal, and cynical manipulation of the judicial system by the authorities. Dziuba denounced the arrests in a fiery speech before a large audience in Kiev. He also submitted to Shelest and Shcherbytsky his “Internationalism or Russification?” a perceptive, erudite, and damning analysis of the theory and mechanics of Russification in Ukraine. In 1970, after his arrest for anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda, Moroz wrote his “Report from the Beria Reserve,” an emotional and powerful denunciation of the cruelty of Soviet officialdom and its degradation of individuals as well as nations. To prevent the authorities from isolating the dissidents from each other and society and to inform the world about the details of Soviet repression, in 1970 the Ukrainian dissidents began the surreptitious distribution of the Ukrainian Herald. Although the KGB was able to restrict the circulation of these materials in Ukraine, it could not prevent them from being smuggled to the West. There, with the aid of Ukrainian emigres, these works were published and publicized, to the consternation and embarrassment of Soviet authorities.
After the fall of Shelest in 1972, Shcherbytsky, in cooperation with the Ukrainian KGB chief Fedorchuk and ideologist Malanchuk, launched a massive “pogrom” of the dissenting intelligentsia that led to hundreds of arrests and far harsher sentences than in 1965–66. Outspoken dissidents and those members of research institutes, editorial staffs, and university faculties who were suspected of “unreliable” views were removed from their positions. This wave of persecution recalled the days of Stalin, traumatized a whole generation of Ukrainian intelligentsia, and led many, including Dziuba, to recant or to give up their dissident activities. The Ukrainian Helsinki Group
Reduced in number but still determined, dissidents received fresh impetus in 1975 when the USSR signed the Helsinki Accords and formally agreed to respect the civil rights of its people. Taking the Kremlin at its word, dissidents organized open and, in their view, legally sanctioned groups whose task was to monitor the Kremlin’s observance of civil rights. The first Helsinki Committee was established in Moscow in May 1976. Soon afterward, in November 1976, a Ukrainian Helsinki Group emerged in Kiev. Similar groups also sprang up in Lithuania, Georgia, and Armenia.
The leader of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group was the writer Mykola Rudenko, a political commissar during the Second World War and a former party official in the literary field. His close associate was Petro Hryhorenko (Grigorenko), a much-decorated and (forcibly) retired general of the Red Army. The group, which numbered thirty-seven people in all, was unusually varied in terms of background. It included dissidents such as Nina Strokata, Vasyl Stus, Levko Lukianenko, Ivan Kandyba, Nadia Svitlychna, and Viacheslav Chornovil, who had already served prison terms; former nationalists (who had survived decades in Stalin’s labor camps) such as Sviatoslav Karavansky, Oksana Popovych, Oksana Meshko, Iryna Senyk, Petro Sichko, Danylo Shumuk, and Iurii Shukhevych (the son of the commander of the UPA, Roman Shukhevych); and religious activists, such as the Orthodox priest Vasyl Romaniuk.
Two important features distinguished the Ukrainian Helsinki Group from previous dissidents in Ukraine. One was that the group was an open, civic organization, which, while not controlled by the regime, nonetheless claimed the legal right to exist. This view was unheard of in Eastern Ukraine since the imposition of Soviet rule. The other precedent-setting feature was that the Ukrainian group established contacts with similar groups throughout the USSR, attempting thereby to “internationalize” its concern for civil and national rights.
New thinking was also evident in the group’s programmatic statements. They emphasized legality, seeing the solution to society’s problems in the rule of law, in general, and in respect for the rights of the individual, in particular. For this reason, the group’s members often described their activities as the “movement for the defense of civil rights” (pravozakhysny rukh). As Ivan Lysiak-Rudnytsky noted, this emphasis on legality and genuine democracy rather than on ideologies, such as nationalism or Marxism, which had heretofore captivated the Ukrainian intelligentsia, was an important turning point in the history of Ukrainian political thought.5
Although some members of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group remained committed, to a greater or lesser degree, to Marxism or to nationalism, an excerpt from the memoirs of Danylo Shumuk, who was both a former communist and nationalist, and who spent close to forty years in Polish, Nazi, and Soviet prisons, probably captures the view of its majority:
Only democracy can save mankind from the dangers of the rightist as well as of the leftist brands of tyranny. Only the unrestricted right, guaranteed by law, for all citizens to express, advertise, and defend their ideas will enable the people to control and direct the policy of the government. Without such a right, there can be no talk of democracy and of democratic elections to a parliament. Where there is no legal opposition, endowed with equal rights in the parliament and among the people, there is no democracy… I have reached these conclusions after many years of thinking, stocktaking, and analysis, and they have led me… to adopt a critical attitude to both communists and Dontsovian nationalists.6
In sharp contrast to the xenophobia that characterized the OUN brand of nationalism, the ardent patriotism of the Ukrainian dissidents did not imply hostility to other peoples, even the Russians. In 1980 one of their declarations stated: “We understand what it means to live under colonial oppression and therefore proclaim [that] the people who live in our country will be assured the broadest political, economic and social rights. All the rights of national minorities and various religious associations will be guaranteed unconditionally.”7 Given their legalistic views, the members of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group argued that Ukraine’s independence could best be achieved by exercising the right, guaranteed by the Soviet constitution, to secede from the USSR. In their view, the most effective manner of “decolonizing” the Soviet Union was to allow its peoples to hold genuinely free elections.
But neither the Helsinki Group’s moderation nor the West’s insistence that the USSR honor its commitment to the Helsinki Accords prevented Soviet authorities from again decimating the dissidents. By 1980 about three-fourths of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group were imprisoned with sentences ranging from ten to fifteen years. The remainder were exiled from Ukraine or, to appease foreign opinion, allowed to emigrate. Religious dissent
A distinct type of dissent in Ukraine is based on religion. In theory, freedom of worship is guaranteed by the Soviet constitution. But the regime has used a variety of means to discourage religious beliefs and practices. Such measures include limiting religious publications, forbidding religious education of children and exposing them to atheistic indoctrination, placing its agents within the priesthood and religious hierarchy, closing down places of worship, and imposing social, economic, and educational penalties on those who stand up for their faith. However, the spiritual barrenness of Soviet ideology on the one hand, and resentment against the regime’s heavy-handed tactics on the other, have led to a renewed interest in religion, especially in the countryside. With it has come a greater militancy on the part of believers.
The regime’s fierce persecution of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic church (“the church in catacombs”) failed to obliterate it completely. In recent decades about 300–350 Greek Catholic priests, led by several bishops, have been secretly ministering to the faithful in Western Ukraine. Even hidden monasteries and secret printing presses continue to exist. In 1982, Iosyp Terelia organized the Committee for the Defense of the Ukrainian Catholic Church to demand its legalization. Although the regime has responded by arresting the activists, loyalty to their ancient church is still strong among the Ukrainians of Galicia and Transcarpathia.
The Orthodox church in Ukraine, which is officially called the Russian Orthodox church, is in a more advantageous position because it is tolerated by the Soviet government. But this comes at the price of cooperation with and subservience to the authorities. Consequently, corruption, hypocrisy, and the favoring of state interests over religious concerns are widespread in the Orthodox church, particularly in its hierarchy. This state of affairs has led a few members of the lower clergy, notably the much-persecuted Vasyl Romaniuk, to denounce both their superiors and the Soviet state for manipulating and undermining Orthodoxy.
Probably the most militant and dynamic religious denominations in Ukraine today are the Baptists and other Protestant sects, such as Pente-costals, Adventists, and Jehovah’s Witnesses. They practice their faith in autonomous congregations, insist on educating their children according to the dictates of their religions, and often refuse to register with the government, thereby making it difficult for the authorities to control them. Their fundamentalist views, grass-roots organization, and fierce commitment to their faith have attracted numerous converts, particularly in Eastern Ukraine. In recent years they have constituted a disproportionately large part of the “prisoners of conscience” in the USSR. Until his immigration to the United States, Pastor Georgii Vins was the foremost leader of the Baptists. Suppression of dissent
Although their bravery and idealism were inspiring and the behavior of their persecutors was odious, the dissidents in Ukraine and elsewhere in the USSR failed to attract widespread support. One reason was that, besides denouncing the regime and stressing the need for the rule of law, they did not formulate a coherent political program. Further, the matters they addressed were not bread-and-butter issues of concern to the majority of the population: the workers and collective farmers. Therefore, the social base of the dissidents was narrow, resting almost exculsively on the intelligentsia.
Even more decisive in explaining the failure of the dissident movement was the nature of its opposition. Mustered against the dissidents were all the vast powers of the Soviet system, particularly the all-powerful KGB. Possessing a monopoly on communication, the regime usually prevented information about the dissidents from reaching the public. When information did emerge, it was usually distorted to cast the dissidents in a negative light. With hundreds of thousands of officers, plainclothes agents, and informers at its disposal, the KGB seemed to be everywhere and to know everything, preventing any collective activity from occurring without government supervision. But unlike in the days of Stalin, the secret police was no longer fanatical about physically destroying all real or potential dissidents. In recent times it has sought to isolate the dissidents from society and, by means of escalating pressures, to intimidate them into recanting or remaining silent. Critics of the regime were denied jobs, educational opportunites for their children, and even shelter. Those who persisted were given long prison terms or incarcerated in psychiatric hospitals and given mind-altering drugs. By destroying the few, the KGB successfully intimidated the many.
In Ukraine, the secret police worked under fewer constraints than in Moscow. Isolated from the Moscow-based Western media, the Ukrainian dissidents did not have the relative protection of the “publicity umbrella” that their prominent Russian and Jewish colleagues enjoyed. Moreover, the issue of Ukrainian national rights aroused little interest in the West. Meanwhile, the regime’s fear of Ukrainian nationalism led to particularly harsh repression in Ukraine. Hence, the reputation of the Kiev KGB as being the most vicious in the USSR and the disproportionately large number of Ukrainian “prisoners of conscience.”