UKRAINIAN DISSIDENTS IN CANADA
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The restoration/digitization project of the many former Soviet Ukrainian dissidents that spoke in Montreal and other diaspora cities in the 1970’s-80’s, provides first hand testimonies of their arrest, persecution, and eventual exile to the West.
Throughout the 20th century, Ukrainians waged a bitter struggle for Ukraine’s independence and opposition to Soviet rule, costing millions of lives.
Moscow’s policies of genocide against the Ukrainian nation included the man-made famine of 1932-33, decimation of the national elite and destruction of Ukraine’s historical past. The role of Soviet Ukrainian dissidents provides crucial links in furthering awareness of Ukraine’s past and present.
Former Soviet Ukrainian dissidents played an essential role in the collapse of the Soviet Union and the renewal of an independent, sovereign Ukraine. Putting themselves in danger of Soviet authorities, dissidents began to openly expose continued policies of Russification, national oppression, violation of human rights, suppression of the Ukrainian language and falsification of Ukraine’s history. Works by dissidents in the 1960’s, such as Ivan Dziuba’s “Internationalism or Russification” and Viacheslav Chornovil’s “The Chornovil Papers” brought attention to the West of these policies by exposing the realities of the USSR.
In the late 1960’s -1970’s a Ukrainian dissent movement emerged in Soviet Ukraine. “The human rights violations that occurred in the Soviet Union are amongst the most barbarous and cruel of all persecutions in the 20th century. Horrific forms of physical and mental torture were utilized on a mass scale by Soviet authorities to suppress political dissenters”, (Mark Hurst, historian, Lancaster University, UK).
The Ukrainian dissidents constituted a most visible opposition to the Soviet regime.
The largest and most dynamic dissident movement was in Ukraine. According to the Ukrainian Helsinki Group Memorandum, approximately 60-70 percent of the political prisoners in the USSR were Ukrainians. Political prisoners in the USSR formed close relations with each other.
Dissidents’ activities in Soviet Ukraine were met with repressive measures from the Soviet regime. The dissident movement stood for human rights, individual and national freedom and an independent Ukraine. Dissidents were arrested and sent to mental institutions and prisons, forcibly exiled and stripped of their Soviet citizenship. Political prisoners were sent to forced labor camps within the vast network of the Gulags or arrested and placed in psychiatric prisons for “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda”.
From 1968 to early 1980’s the “samvydav” journal, “The Chronicle of Current Events”, printed and distributed information about human rights violations in the Soviet Union. Ukrainian “samvydav” documents were widely dispersed clandestinely to the West. Other materials were also passed from Ukraine to the West.
In the 1960’s the emergence of “the Sixtiers” (the ‘Shestedesiatnyky’) included Lina Kostenko, Vasyl Symonenko, Ivan Drach. At the 1963 Conference on Culture
and Language at Kyiv University, it was demanded that Ukrainian be instituted as an official language of the Ukrainian SSR and the rights of national minorities be restored in the RSFSR.
Soon after, the first extensive wave of arrests and trials ordered by Moscow, took place in 1965-1966, and included Mykailo Horyn, Stanislav Karavansky, Valentyn Moroz and others. The Soviet crackdown on the dissent movement intensified from 1971. The mass arrests, brutal sentencing and imprisonments by the KGB did not stop the movement. The second wave of arrests took place between January and April 1972 and included Viacheslav Chornovil, Ivan Svitlychnyj, Nadia Svitlychna, Nina Strokata and others.
In 1970, the first issue of “Ukrainskyj Visnyk” a chronicle of Ukrainian dissent appeared. On November 9, 1976 the Ukrainian Helsinki Group was formed in Kyiv. During 1977 and 1978, members were arrested and sentenced from 12 to 15 years in the gulags. For those sent to psychiatric prisons, “the political use of psychiatric treatment was arguably one of the most barbaric tools utilized by the KGB. It was an extreme form of mental and physical torture for the imprisoned dissidents, who were forcibly treated with anti-psychotic drugs with horrific effects…” (Mark Hurst, Lancaster University, U.K.)
From the mid 1960’s, until the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Ukrainian diaspora actively worked in the defence of dissidents. It formed various committees, which provided a voice for their defence and alerted Western governments and the international community to the gross and widespread violations of human rights by Soviet authorities. In the late 1960’s, the World Congress of Free Ukrainians (UWCFU) created a Human Rights Committee (later Commission) to coordinate the defence activities.
August 1991, Ukraine declares its independence. In December 1991, the USSR collapses. Russia continues to destabilize Ukraine.
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Sources:
Papers: by Bertelsen, Olga; Jaworsky, Ivan (John); Bellezza, Simone Attila.
Books: Dzyuba, I, Internationalism or Russification (London 1968, 2nd ed, NY 1974); Moroz. V., Report from the Beria Reserve: The Protest Writings of Valentyn Moroz (Toronto, 1974); Isajiw, Christine, Negotiating Human Rights: In Defence of Dissidents during the Soviet Era: A Memoir (Toronto-Edmonton 2019); Browne, M. (ed) Ferment in the Ukraine (London 1971); Encyclopedia of Ukraine (University of Toronto Press)
UKRAINIAN DISSIDENTS IN CANADA. Access codes on YouTube
Project: Restoration of recordings of Soviet Ukrainian Dissidents speaking in Montreal
Listed below: 19 individual programs of varying lengths
Project director/producer Yurij Luhovy /project research/producer Zorianna Hrycenko-L
- Valentyn Moroz Press Conference, Dorval airport Montreal (now P-E Trudeau airport).
Ukrainian Dissident Valentyn Moroz arrival at Dorval in Montreal, Quebec on June 12, 1979.
Moroz meets the Press in Part 1: 33min 22 sec
- V. Moroz meets the Ukrainian community in Montreal, on Part 2: 1 hour 18 mins 10sec
- Victor Borovsky, one of the youngest dissidents, talks about Psychiatric Repressions in USSR, April 5, 1979 in Montreal. Part 1 /3: 47min 56 sec
https://youtu.be/n5DIk7oUjf8
- Victor Borovsky gives details about writer, poet, dissident Mykola Rudenko. One of the founders of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group. Includes his arrest and life conditions in the gulag.
Part 2/3: 25min 41 sec
- Victor Borovsky, one of the youngest dissidents responds to questions from the Ukrainian community of Montreal. Part 3/3: 28min 52 sec
- General Petro Hryhorenko meets the Ukrainian community of Lachine, Quebec on Sept. 10, 1978. Part 1/2: 41min 53 sec
https://youtu.be/8Wykhq-4bro
- After 6 years in prison, in various psychiatric institutions in the Soviet Union, in 1978, the Defense committee for Valentyn Moroz invites him to Lachine, Quebec to speak .
Part 2/2 : 31min 21 sec
- General Petro Hryhorenko meets the Ukrainian community of Montreal, Quebec, on Sept 10, 1978.
Part 1/3 55 min 07 sec
- General Petro Hryhorenko meets the Ukrainian community of Montreal, Canada, on Sept 10, 1978. Part 2/3: 21 min 23 sec
https://youtu.be/2a_cULic98w
- General Petro Hryhorenko meets the Ukrainian community of Montreal, Canada, on Sept 10, 1978. Part 3/3: 27min 38sec
- Nadia Svitlychna Because of sound technical difficulty, thіs tape could not be saved.
Part 1 of 3
12R. Dissident Nadia Svitlychna in Montreal on Feb 28, 1979. Part 2/3: 31min 26 sec
Надія Світлична зустріч з Українською Громадою в м. Монтреаль, Канада,
28 лютий 1979 - Частина 2/3
13R. Dissident Nadia Svitlychna holds Press Conference in Montreal on March 1, 1979
Part 3/3: 46min 01sec
Надія Світлична, зустріч з пресою м. Монтреаль, Канада 3/3, 1 березня, 1979
14R. Ніна Строката- Караванська, зустріч з Українською Громадою в м. Монтреаль, Канада,
15R. Святослав Караванський, зустріч з українською громадою в м. Монтреаль, Канада. Частина 2/3
16R. Ніна Строката і Святослав Караванський - Запити і відповіді, Монтреаль, Канада
Частина 3 /3
- Масове Віче в Обороні Українських Політичних В'язнів в СРСР, 23 жовтня, 1979. Частина 1/3 Монтреаль, Канада
Віктор Боровський, Зiнаїда Григоренко, Гайше Сейт Моратова
- Раїса Мороз, Віктор Боровський, Ген. Петро Григоренко (виконаню Гелсінських угод)
Частина 2
- Question period, Part 3 of 3
Contact: mmlinc@hotmail.com