Helsinki Accords: The Beginning of the End of the Evil Empire

What started as a controversial means to bring about peace and harmony between the West and the East turned out to be the death knell for the Soviet Union or Evil Empire. Fifty years ago, more than thirty national leaders signed what was to be called the historic Helsinki Accords.

When Leonid Brezhnev, the leader of the USSR, agreed to Western countries’ requests for the inclusion of human rights provisions into the Helsinki Accords, little did he realize how much trouble that would cause him later. That fateful decision could very well have contributed to the collapse of the USSR in 1991.

Soon after its adoption in August 1975, dissidents in the Evil Empire’s captive nations and Russia began forming public groups to monitor Moscow’s compliance with the Helsinki Accords human rights principles. The Ukrainian Public Group to Monitor Compliance with the Helsinki Accords was organized in Kyiv on November 9, 1976. 

The Helsinki Accords included a range of human, religious and national rights principles. As controversial as that document was to some in 1975, activists behind the iron curtain regarded the agreement differently. They used it to their advantage by implementing the tenets in their countries as a fight for freedom. 

This is the story of the members, their struggle and ordeal written by me and published in four editions of The Ukrainian Weekly: August 27, 1978; September 3, 1978: September 10, 1978; and September 17, 1978.

This is also the story of the massive global mobilization in defense of the Helsinki monitors. American Presidents and legislators, Canadian officials, and people everywhere joined this ad hoc campaign. Committees in defense of the monitors were established in the United States and Canada. Ukrainian American civic organizations such as the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, the Ukrainian National Association and student groups defended the undaunted Ukrainian monitors. They fought by raising awareness in legislatures, academia and the streets about them and Ukraine’s captive plight.

What was also noteworthy was the recognition that Ukrainian’s battle was different. It focused on national self-determination rather than just human rights. And the battle in Ukraine was more repressive than in Russia. Russian Helsinki monitors not only admitted this but also their Ukrainian colleagues’ quest to free Ukraine from Moscow’s subjugation.

However, from the perspective of five decades, it is safe to state categorically that the Ukrainian group based in Kyiv was the only successful one. Fifteen years later Ukraine declared its independence and guaranteed all rights for all of its citizens. On the other hand, the Russian one based in Moscow was an utter failure. Russia still has a dictator to rule over its herd of docile, ambivalent people.

HELSINKI GROUP IN KYIV: THE STRUGGLE AND THE ORDEAL

By Ihor Dlaboha

(Compiled on the basis of material in the Ukrainian press during the time of the formation of the Kyiv Public Group to Promote the Implementation of the Helsinki Accords.)

HELSINKI, Finland (August I, 1975). - The United States, Canada, the Soviet Union and 32 other countries signed here today the historic final act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, which includes among its provisions agreements on the proper implementation of human rights.

When Leonid Brezhnev agreed to Western countries’ requests for the inclusion of human rights pro- visions into what has become known as the Helsinki Accords, little did he realize how much trouble that would later cause for him.

Up until then, human, religious and national rights advocates in the Soviet Union based their demands on the United Nations Charter, the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights or the Soviet Constitution. The signing of the Helsinki Accords on August 1, 1975, produced a modern document, in which 35 countries, including the Soviet Union, reaffirmed their commitments to human rights. Incorporated into this new treaty were principles of freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press and national self-determination, among others. This latest recommitment to human rights then became a bible for dissidents in the Soviet Union and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. While not altogether abandoning references to U.N. treaties or the Soviet Constitution, in which human rights activists in the USSR have lost faith, dissidents behind the Iron Curtain began to use the Helsinki Accords as the basis of their conduct.

The first meeting to review compliance with the Helsinki Accords was set for late 1977 and early 1978. That preceding spring and summer, delegates from the 35 countries had already begun to assemble to discuss the ground rules for reports and discussions later that year.

Signatory governments were preparing lists of their countries’ implementations of the Helsinki Accords and complaints against other states, which, they claimed, did not live up to the accords. Besides governments, individual citizens and organizations also were busy collecting documented material on their governments’ violations of the human rights provisions of the Accords.

With the possibility of publicly airing violations of basic rights at the CSCE talks, human rights advocates in the Soviet Union took advantage of this and formed what has become known as Helsinki monitoring groups. They hoped that the material they collected would be presented at the CSCE, or would at least be made public around the world.

The First Helsinki Monitoring Groups

In late 1976 and early 1977, five public groups to promote the implementation of the Helsinki Accords were formed in five republics of the Soviet Union – Moscow, Russia; Kyiv, Ukraine; Tbilisi, Georgia; Vilnius, Lithuania; and in Armenia. Each public group earnestly began collecting documentation on the Kremlin’s violations of the Helsinki Accords and established contacts with the West in order to relay its information to the free world. This, they hoped, would bring public pressure to bear down on the Soviet government, which would force it to cease denying its citizens their rights.

Each group was and continues to be interested in human rights generally, but individually their objectives differed. The Moscow group, for instance, focused on civil and religious rights. The Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Georgian and Armenian groups also sought civil and religious rights, but they also advocated the implementation of the principle of national self-determination.

The date of the formation of the Kyiv group is November 9, 1976. Mykola Rudenko, a Ukrainian writer and poet, became head of the group and his suburban Kyiv apartment at Koncha Zaspa became its unofficial headquarters. Five other Ukrainian human rights advocates joined him in forming the early nucleus of the group – Lev Lukianenko, Oles Berdnyk, Nina Strokata, Oksana Meshko and Petro Grigorenko. Lukianenko, a lawyer, was released the previous January from imprisonment for calling for Ukraine’s secession from the USSR 15 years earlier. Berdnyk is a writer and philosopher. Strokata, the wife of Ukrainian political prisoner Sviatoslav Karavansky, is herself a former political prisoner. Meshko is the mother of Ukrainian political prisoner 0leksander Serhiyenko. Grigorenko, a Soviet army major-general, who was stripped of his rank, is a former inmate of psychiatric asylums, who defended the rights of the Tatars. He maintained liaison with the Moscow group until his departure for the U.S. in November of 1977. He was subsequently stripped of Soviet citizenship and received political asylum in the U.S.

Four more Ukrainians joined the group by the time it released its first statement in December — Oleksa Tykhy, a teacher and former political prisoner, Ivan Kandyba, Lukianenko’s associate and former defendant in the famed “jurist” case of the early 1960s, Myroslav Marynovych and Mykola Matusevych, an engineer and a historian, respectively, from Kyiv who had no prior convictions for human rights activity.

These 10 persons are known as the founding members of the Ukrainian Public Group to Promote the Implementation of the Helsinki Accords. In subsequent months, the membership of the group was to rise, but arrests, imprisonments, one exile and two alleged defections were to curtail the number of active members.

Reports from the Soviet Union in 1976 quoted Yuri Orlov, head of a similar group in Moscow, as saying that, among other things, the Ukrainian group was to demand separate participation in the 1977 CSCE talks.

It did not take long for official reaction to the formation of the group. A counterpart of the Kyiv group in the United States, called the Helsinki Guarantees for Ukraine Committee, based in Washington, D.C., reported on November 21, 1976, that the home of Rudenko was damaged by bricks hurled by hooligans on the day the group was formed. Meshko, who was staying at Rudenko’s home at the time, was reportedly injured in the attack.

Rudenko told a member of the American body that police response to the crime was slow and that it did not want to press charges against anyone. Only after a week did the police agree to search for the perpetrators.

Also in the telephone call, Rudenko said that Berdnyk did receive a letter from the United Nations, saying that it had “read and noted” his correspondence with that organization. Rudenko also said that conditions in the prison camps are “extremely severe.”

The Kyiv group issued its platform on December 5 and 6, 1976. Called “Declaration” and “Memorandum no. 1,” the documents stressed heavily Ukraine’s right to participate in all international forums on an independent basis.

Ukrainian Monitors’ Four Objectives

The Ukrainian Helsinki monitors set down for themselves four objectives: to strive to have the Declaration of Human Rights become the basis of relations between the individual and the state; to actively promote the implementation of the Final Act of the CSCE; to strive to have Ukraine, a sovereign European nation and member of the United Nations, represented by its own delegation at all international conferences dealing with the implementation of the Helsinki Accords; and to strive for the accreditation in Ukraine of foreign press correspondents for the formation of independent news agencies, and the like.

The group said that it will compile documents of official violations of human rights in Ukraine and transmit them to the West. While arguing that Ukraine is a sovereign European state, though not in the form it exists now, several times in this and subsequent memoranda they emphatically stated that Ukraine and other Soviet republics are mere colonies of Moscow. As soon as the two documents became available in the West, the Washington group turned them over to Rep. Millicent Fenwick (R-N. J.). She asked the State Department to investigate the charges contained in the documents.

Official harassment of the Kyiv group did not ease. On December 23, 1976, Rudenko, his wife Raisa, Berdnyk and Tykhy held a hunger strike at Rudenko’s home.

During a KGB search of the premises on December 25, 1976, the secret police found “evidence” against the group which the Kyiv members said was planted: pornographic cards, a rifle, and $36 in American currency, possession of which is illegal for Soviet citizens. Rudenko later found a death threat in his mailbox.

In the early weeks of January 1977, Ukrainian human rights advocates hoped for an ebb in repression. In a telephone call to the Washington committee, Gen. Grigorenko said: “Yes, we had hoped for a let up, they released Plyushch, Bukovsky was exchanged, but right now they are increasing the pressure.”

“It seems that just when the government showed signs of weakening, they turned around and increased repressions,” Gen. Grigorenko said.

Gen. Grigorenko’s fears were justified. Within three weeks, the Soviet government would stop employing mild scare tactics and harassment, and arrest the first two Helsinki monitors.

The Helsinki Accords alone served as a major boost to the morale and activity of dissidents in the Soviet Union, but the historic pronouncements by the newly inaugurated President Jimmy Carter and his exchange of letters with Soviet academician-human rights leader Dr. Andrei Sakharov was an unexpected victory for human rights around the world.

Following a week of statements in defense of human rights in the Soviet Union, President Carter told Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin that the United States is morally committed to the cause of human rights around the world. In addition, Dr. Sakharov, in a letter to the President on January 21, 1977, asked the U.S. Chief Executive to “continue efforts for the release” of 15 Soviet dissident, nine of whom were Ukrainians.

Secretary of State Cyrus Vance later said that the United States would continue to oppose human rights violations everywhere, including the Soviet Union. The State Department also issued a strong warning to the Soviet government not to intimidate Dr. Sakharov.

Seeing that the President of the United States was on their side, dissidents in the Soviet Union now felt confident that their goals could be achieved and that the question of human rights violations would be raised at the CSCE in Belgrade, Yugoslavia.

Formation of Kyiv Group was Act of Great Courage

Several days after the formation of the Kyiv group, the Moscow body released a letter in which it complimented the courage of Ukrainian human rights activists for forming the group.

“The establishment of a Ukrainian committee under the conditions which exist in Ukraine is an act of great courage,” said the Moscow dissidents. They wrote that the Ukrainian Helsinki monitors are “confronted with unusually difficult obstacles.”

“The Public Group to Promote the Implementation of the Helsinki Accords in the USSR will aid the Ukrainian committee in forwarding information to correspondents and representatives of heads of states, which signed the Final Act,” they wrote. “We hope that governments will openly and officially accept the information about violations of the articles of the Final Act, which deal with human rights, from the Ukrainian Public Group to Promote the Implementation of the Helsinki Accords.”

Some three weeks after the fifth anniversary of the infamous 1972 arrests in Ukraine, the Kremlin unleashed a police action against Ukrainian Helsinki monitors with the intent of quashing it and its sister groups across the Soviet Union. On Saturday, February 5, 1977, the KGB arrested Rudenko and Tykhy, the first two Helsinki watchers to be picked up by the police in the Soviet Union. Western wire services detailed the arrests of Rudenko and Tykhy, and the subsequent searches and questioning of other Kyiv group members.

It was reported that Rudenko’s wife was stripped naked as an act of humiliation while the secret police searched their home. The woman was released after questioning. Police searches were also conducted in the homes of Berdnyk, Meshko and Strokata.

In the United States, the Washington group, the UCCA (Ukrainian Congress Committee of America) and other groups fired off letters to U.S. government officials and legislators apprising them of the arrests and asking them for American intercession. The Canadian Parliament, responding to a request by the Toronto Committee for the Defense of Valentyn Moroz, expressed its “disappointment and concern” over the arrests of Rudenko and Tykhy, and Moscow group members Yuri Orlov and Aleksandr Ginzburg. Such a resolution was adopted unanimously.

In Washington, the Ukrainian Student Hromada of Baltimore held a demonstration outside the Soviet Embassy four days after the arrests. Following the protest, the students met with U.S. legislators, who promised congressional action in defense of those arrested. In New York City, the local TUSM (Ukrainian Student Society of Mikhnovsky) branch also protested the arrests at the site of the Soviet airlines office.

Gen. Grigorenko called on Western European Communists to help Rudenko and Tykhy. Gen. Grigorenko said it was the “duty” of European Communists to stop the wave of repressions in the Soviet Union. Many legislators, both on the federal and state levels, quickly came to the aid of Rudenko and Tykhy. Several resolutions in their defense were introduced in both Houses of Congress, calling on the United States to request the Soviet government to release them as soon as possible.

Moscow Warns West about Meddling

Meanwhile, the Kremlin, in response to the growing concern in the West about the treatment of human rights advocates in the USSR, warned the West not to meddle in what it considers to be its own internal affair.

In a telephone call to the Washington committee on February 16, 1977, Strokata and Stefania Shabatura revealed the high degree of faith Ukrainian dissidents have in their compatriots in the free world. The two female Ukrainian human rights activists said that the freedom of Rudenko and Tykhy rests with Ukrainian Americans.

“A wave of arrests has enveloped Ukraine,” they said. “Rudenko and Tykhy will remain behind bars unless Ukrainians do not find in themselves the strength and courage to stand up in their defense. All of us, who were and remain political prisoners in the Soviet Union, hope that our countrymen will energetically defend all Ukrainian patriots.”

A day later, the human rights movement received another shot in the arm from the United States, in a letter to Dr. Sakharov, President Carter wrote: “We shall use our good offices to seek the release of prisoners of conscience and will continue our efforts to shape a world responsive to human aspirations in which nations of differing cultures and histories can live side by side in peace and justice.”

In early March 1977, a new Russian emigre told Ukrainian correspondents in Europe that repressions are most severe in Ukraine because the Kremlin fears a “national renaissance in Ukraine and Ukraine's secession from the Soviet Union.” Ludmyla Alekseyeva, a member of Amnesty international in Moscow, said: “In no other republic is the oppression by authorities and the KGB felt so greatly as in Ukraine.” She added that “Idi Amin-type oppression” exists in Ukraine.

Alekseyeva’s description of the critical situation in Ukraine was documented by the Kyiv group in its first and later memoranda.

Cooperation in the human rights movement among the different nationalities is commonplace, and it is disturbing to the government. Soviet officials frequently attempt to instigate animosity between Ukrainians and Russians or Ukrainians and Jews.

Despite these efforts, human rights activists continue to mutually defend each other. In mid-March, Strokata, a microbiologist, asked the American Association of Microbiologists to speak out in defense of Orlov. “Colleagues! Imagine an incarcerated scholar! Imagine that instead of Prof. Orlov, one of you was arrested for his beliefs. Could you remain silent? If you cannot, let us together begin to defend Prof. Orlov.”

Incarceration for political reasons in the Soviet Union is torture enough for a healthy person. But for an invalid it may be tantamount to murder. In March 1977, it was learned that Rudenko’s life was in danger. Rudenko, a veteran of World War Two who suffers from a spinal wound, was being denied by the KGB rest periods which are essential in relieving the pain in the spine. The Kyiv group members feared that the excruciating pain could kill him. They felt that the secret police was torturing him deliberately in order to recant his views.

Assured of President Carter’s commitment to human rights, dissidents in the USSR began to appeal directly to the American leader for help. In his second letter to an American president (his first was to President Gerald Ford), Berdnyk asked President Carter “to grant me refuge in your country, as well as American citizenship.” 

“I ask you, Mr. President, to heed my plea. І guarantee that I will not cause any burdens or troubles for the American people," he pleaded.

Support for the incarcerated Helsinki watchers did not let up in the U.S. Congress. On separate occasions, 52 congressmen and later 25 senators wrote to Brezhnev demanding the immediate release of the four human rights activists. Many U.S. legislators also wrote individual letters to the President, the secretary of state and Soviet leaders, expressing their concern for the state of human rights in the Soviet Union.

Despite worldwide attention on the Helsinki monitoring groups in the Soviet Union, the Kremlin did not budge. On April 11, 1977, Berdnyk was detained for three days by the KGB, apparently as a scare tactic. Berdnyk was picked up by three secret police officers in Kyiv and taken to Donetske for interrogation. He, however, refused to answer any questions until Rudenko was released. The KGB hoped that when confronted with Rudenko and Tykhy, who were also in Donetske awaiting their trial, the three might possibly testify against one another.

While Berdnyk’s detention was a futile attempt at intimidation, the arrests of Marynovych and Matusevych on April 23, 1977, were not. They became the third and fourth members of the Kyiv group to be placed under arrest and subsequently sentenced. As in the cases of the Rudenko-Tykhy arrest, the apartments of the other Kyiv group members were thoroughly searched.

With global attention on the arrests in the Soviet Union rising daily, Berdnyk told the KGB chief that the arrest of Rudenko was a “historic crime.” In a letter to Yuri Andropov, head of the KGB in Moscow, Berdnyk wrote: “One of those arrested, Mykola Rudenko, I have known for 20 years. He is a philosopher and poet. His ideas can create a new era of scholarship and knowledge. That is why the arrest of such individuals is a historic crime.”

KGB: Most Repressive Organization in Europe

Denouncing the KGB as the “most repressive organization in Europe,” Berdnyk continued: “On one side there is a strong armada, armed to the teeth with electronics, secret agents, tanks, concentration camps, dungeons, etc., and on the other side there are those courageous persons who stand up against the flow of injustice.”

Renouncement of Soviet citizenship, request for a Western country’s citizenship, and emigration have been some of the methods of self-preservation for human rights activists in the Soviet Union who have been under unbearable pressure. Many of the prominent Ukrainian dissidents have taken all three steps, though without success.

In the spring of 1977, Oksana Meshko accepted the Australian government’s proposal for settlement in that country. Meshko wrote to the Australian ambassador in Moscow that she did not receive his government’s initial offer, but that a Ukrainian Australian, Lida Denys, told her of it. She made the request on behalf of herself, her son and his family. A copy of the letter was forwarded to the Australian government.

In May 1977, actions in defense of Ukrainian Helsinki monitors intensified when the Ukrainian National Association sponsored a meeting with U.S. legislators on Capitol Hill for the purpose of seeking their assistance in the matter. Coordinated by Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.), Ukrainians from around the country visited the offices of over 200 lawmakers. On May 16, 31 senators and over 20 congressmen attended a reception in the Senate wing of the Capitol where they met individually with Ukrainian Americans. Many of them later wrote personal letters to Brezhnev requesting the release of Rudenko and Tykhy.

With some five months remaining before the start of the first CSCE talks, many U.S. legislators began urging the United States government to assume a stronger stand on the question of human rights violations around the world, specifically in the Soviet Union.

As actions in defense of the Ukrainian Helsinki monitors picked up momentum in the West, the Washington committee received memoranda no. 4-9 from the Kyiv group, in which the Ukrainian dissidents call for an intense campaign on their behalf. 

“It seems as if the KGB wanted to finish us before the Belgrade conference. Our group is experiencing hard times, but we believe in victory, it is of utmost importance to demonstrate our solidarity in conjunction with the arrests, involve all Ukrainians in the world in this action, so that a tornado of protests bursts forth in defense of Rudenko and Tykhy,” wrote the Kyiv group.

In New York City, noted attorney and former U.S. attorney general, Ramsey Clark, announced on June 8, 1977, that he had agreed to serve as legal counsel for Rudenko and Tykhy. Mr. Clark said that he was asked to represent them by their families. "It is important to freedom of dignity to represent them,” he said at a press conference. He did apply for permission to attend their trial, but he was denied a visa by the Soviet government.

Soviet Union Disregards Helsinki Principles

Preparations for the CSCE review conference were well underway in June when the congressional Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe released one of its reports which pointed to widespread human rights violations in the Soviet Union. In the foreword to the report, the lawmakers wrote that all facts show that the Soviet government disregards the principles of the Helsinki Accords. They also wrote that it is “remarkable” that even under such repression in the USSR, Helsinki monitoring groups exist.

The Kyiv group advised the 35 signatory governments of the Helsinki Accords that trust is the key to international peace.

“That is why it (peace) should not only be decided on governmental levels, not only through disarmament, but also by the elimination of distrust between citizens of different countries,” they wrote in their so-called letter no. 2. They also pledged to continue their activity in the face of death.

This letter revealed the names of two new members of the group. Petro Vins, the son of the incarcerated Baptist leader, Georgi Vins, and Оlhа Heyko, the wife of Mykola Matusevych.

At a conference of writers in Bulgaria, in June 1977, 38 Western writers demanded the release of Rudenko and Berdnyk. The writers stated that if the conference was to be “true to its avowed purpose,” then it must come to the support of two of its colleagues. They demanded that Rudenko be released from incarceration and that Berdnyk be given permission to emigrate.

Despite internal support for Rudenko and Tykhy, Western governments’ concern for their fates, public protests and the impending CSCE review conference, the Soviet government brought to trial and sentenced them to the maximum terms allowed by law on Thursday, June 30. The seven-day trial began in a factory in Druzhkivka, a town of under 10,000 residents, located some 36 miles (60 km) north of Donetske and 327 miles (545 km) east of Kyiv. Members of the Kyiv group argued that because the trial took place so far away from their residence, the proceedings were illegal.

Rudenko was sentenced to seven years imprisonment and five years exile, and Tykhy was given 10 years imprisonment and five years exile. Tykhy was given a longer term in view of his “recidivism.”

Relatives and friends of Rudenko and Tykhy were not told of the proceedings until the fifth day. Tykhy refused the court-appointed attorney and served as his own defense counsel. Rudenko did accept the court-appointed attorney, but only as an advisor. Some 60 to 70 KGB-approved spectators were in attendance. Members of the Kyiv and Moscow groups, who attempted to attend the trial, among them Lukianenko, were intercepted by the local militia and confined for the duration of the trial or sent home on the next available train.

In their final statements on Jury 1, Rudenko and Tykhy pleaded not guilty to the charges of anti-Soviet agitation. They said that it was not their intent to undermine the state. During his testimony, Rudenko fainted twice.

Nonetheless, Rudenko and Tykhy were called traitors and their activity was termed treasonous. The prosecutor called their activity “extremely dangerous state crimes.” They were both accused of slandering the Soviet system and fostering hatred between the Ukrainian and Russian peoples. The telephone calls made by the two to the Washington committee, and the subsequent publication of the transcripts in Svoboda were also used against the two.

‘You have Brought to Trial the Written Word’

In an impassioned final testimony, Rudenko charged: “You are not judging me, you have brought to trial the written word. You are judging the universe for not being what the KGB would want it to be.” Rudenko continued to say that one of the important elements in life is the right to freely exchange ideas.

“The universe has no boundaries. The word must be free to cross the boundaries of hearts and states. Information, which is not allowed to emanate from the brain, self-destructs,” said Rudenko.

News of the first sentencing of Helsinki watchers in the Soviet Union quickly spread around the world and along with it protests, denouncements and demands for their release.

The U.S. State Department said that the government is “extremely distressed” with the trial of Rudenko and Tykhy. In Washington, Matthew Nimetz, a department counselor, said that “an appropriate response has been made to the Soviet government and that individual cases will be raised at the Belgrade review conference.”

In New York City and in other major cities, Ukrainian students took to the streets in protest against the sentencing of Rudenko and Tykhy.

On July 2, through spokesmen in England, the Kyiv group scored the “gangster-like methods” of the trial.

“Only universal indignation can be the answer to such inhumanity,” said the Kyiv group members.

During those days when it seemed that the Helsinki monitoring movement in the Soviet Union might be crushed, Gen. Grigorenko transmitted a statement to England, in which he said that the arrests and sentencing did not destroy the groups. He assured that they will continue their work.

Mr. Clark wrote a letter to Soviet Prosecutor General Roman Rudenko soon after the conviction of the two Ukrainian monitors. He argued in the letter that Rudenko and Tykhy had the right to an appeal.

Toward the end of the summer it looked as if the Soviet high courts could overrule the lower court’s decision. However, on September 15, the Soviet Ukrainian Supreme Court sustained the 27-year sentences handed down to Rudenko and Tykhy.

In mid-summer, Canadian parliamentarians formed a Helsinki group to monitor violations in the Soviet Union. Some 50 MPs, among them Sen. Paul Yuzyk, joined the group.

Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., the congressional Helsinki commission, chaired by Rep. Dante Fascell (D-Fla.), released a 254-page report in which it scored the Soviet Union for “systematic disregard of civil and political rights” over the past 10 months.

Following in the steps of Mr. Clark, American lawyer Adam Kanarek announced that he has agreed to be the defense counsel for Marynovych and Matusevych.

Both Mr. Clark and Mr. Kanarek were contacted in the matter by the Committee for the Defense of Soviet Political Prisoners.

In early September 1977, a Ukrainian resident of Denmark appealed to the governments of the United States and Great Britain to release Rudenko, Tykhy, Valentyn Moroz and Yuriy Shukhevych. Stefan Skab, 82, who has lived in Denmark since 1913, wrote that just as he saved the lives of many Allied pilots during World War II, for which he was commended by Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, a high-ranking English officer and the Danish government, he requests that the United States and England save the lives of Rudenko, Tykhy, Moroz and Shukhevych.

Toward the end of summer 1977 it was reported that dissidents in Ukraine again made an appeal for the four incarcerated members of the Kyiv group.

Zinayida Grigorenko, Oleksander Lavut, Tatiana Velikanova, Yuriy Hrymm, Volodymyr Sirsky and Oleksander Ivanchenko wrote: “You can put an end to the arrests and trials against the fighters for human rights, you can say no to the renaissance of Stalinism. Demand freedom for the prisoners of conscience.”

Helsinki Review Conference Begins

On October 4, 1977, the long-awaited conference to review compliance with the Helsinki Accords got underway in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Armed with reams of documentation about the violation of human rights in the Soviet Union, the U.S. delegation, headed by Ambassador Arthur Goldberg, became the chief spokesman for human rights advocates in the Soviet Union. Much of the material in the possession of the American group was supplied by various Ukrainian American organizations. Ukrainians in the free world and those behind the Iron Curtain were expecting the United States to live up to its pledges to specifically raise the issues of incarcerations in Ukraine.

In Washington, D.C., Mr. Goldberg said that the U.S. delegation “is calling to the attention of all participating states any human rights violations, not only in the Soviet Union, but also in the Soviet captured provinces and Eastern Europe.” On December 12, 1977, R. Spencer Oliver of the U.S. delegation said that the treatment received by the Helsinki monitoring groups “should be of direct concern to this Belgrade meeting.”

“There are Mykola Rudenko and Oleksa Tykhy, founders of the Ukrainian group to promote observance of the Helsinki Accords in the USSR, who were given maximum sentences, 12 and 15 years loss of freedom, respectively, for merely expressing the right which Principle VII guarantees,” said Mr.

Oliver. “We will continue to insist that human rights be addressed by the signatories to the Helsinki Accords.” Mr. Oliver’s remarks on Rudenko and Tykhy were America’s strongest statements on human rights violations in the USSR at the Belgrade conference.

A week earlier, President Carter issued his semiannual report on compliance with the Helsinki Accords, in which he also cited the imprisonment of Rudenko and Tykhy.

Several U.S. legislators, such as Sen. Dole and Rep. Fenwick, also traveled to Belgrade to get a firsthand look at the conference and hopefully to raise questions of repression in the Soviet Union.

Speaking in Washington, D.C., in January 1978, Mr. Goldberg commented that in fact the Helsinki Accords did not bring any relief for Ukraine. He said that while there has been a decrease of repression in certain East European countries, in Ukraine there was no toning down of rights violations. Mr. Goldberg added that in Ukraine the situation had “worsened.”

“More people have been arrested in Ukraine than in other Soviet republics, and the sentences imposed on Ukrainians have been more severe than in the other republics,” said Mr. Goldberg.

Mr. Goldberg’s remarks were merely reiterations of ideas expressed earlier by the Kyiv group in its Memorandum no. 1 and by Meshko.

On December 6, 1976, the Kyiv group wrote: “More than a year has gone by since Helsinki and the accords have not brought the Ukrainian people any improvement.”

During the CSCE preparatory talks in the summer of 1977, Meshko wrote the signatories: “Currently there is a wave of inhuman persecutions, the eradication of all signs of politically differing views, numerous searches, arrests, expulsions from work; fear and blackmail are all proofs of the fact that the Soviet Union’s signing of the Helsinki Accords did not lead to democratization, but on the contrary, it resulted in even more governmental and social totalitarian institutions.”

Disappointing Conclusion

Despite U.S. statements in defense of Ukrainian and other Helsinki monitors in the Soviet Union, mild Canadian interpolations on their behalf, the Kremlin’s protests and Western Europe’s uneasiness about the whole matter, the CSCE came to a close when the 35 signatory countries signed a bland concluding document on March 3, 1978. No mention of human rights, or for that matter, anything else, was made in the communique. The signatories “stressed the importance they attach to detente.” They “held a thorough exchange of views” and they “stressed the political importance of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe and reaffirmed the resolve of their governments, to implement fully, unilaterally, bilaterally and multilaterally, all the provisions of the Final Act.” The participating states called the exchange of views “valuable contributions” and admitted that “consensus was not reached on a number of proposals submitted to the meeting.” After agreeing to call the next CSCE meeting in Madrid in 1980, the delegates departed.

Reaction to the Belgrade conference was mixed. Some persons suggested that the conference should be scrubbed, others said that the CSCE idea should be continued because it is the only forum at which human rights could at least be discussed.

In the meantime, in Ukraine, the situation continued to deteriorate.

The Kyiv and Moscow groups, in their first joint statement, scored the Rudenko and Tykhy trial. They said that it was motivated by vengeance.

“But the most intense and illegal actions were undertaken against the Helsinki monitoring groups,” they said, singling out Rudenko and Tykhy as being victims of the most severe repression. “We have become used to many things, but even for our time, the place, character and circumstance of the proceedings against Rudenko and Tykhy exceeded all norms of illegality.” The two groups also said that the trials were a “sad demonstration before the whole world of the Soviet understanding of human rights.”

One modus operandi of the KGB toward political prisoners is to pressure them to recant their views.

Rudenko, as many before him, was a victim of this tactic. Taking advantage of his illness, Rudenko was told late in 1977 by the KGB that if he recants he will be able to lead a comfortable life. “If you do this, all your sufferings will cease. You will return home to the loving care of your wife,” Rudenko was told.

These pressures led Rudenko’s wife to fear that each day of incarceration brings him closer to death.

She feared that her husband is “frightfully and slowly being killed” by the secret police.

On December 12, 1977, arrests of Ukrainian Helsinki monitors resumed. The KGB picked up Berdnyk, Vins and Lukianenko. Fifteen days later, Berdnyk was released after intense interrogation. Vins was released a week later from a Darnytsia detention center. He had been on a hunger strike since his arrest.

For Berdnyk, the arrest was yet another KGB scare tactic, but for Vins and Lukianenko it was not. Vins, at 21 the youngest member of the Kyiv group after Heyko who is in her mid-20s, was rearrested on February 15, 1978, and on April 5 he was sentenced to one-year imprisonment on charges of “parasitism.”

Lukianenko was not that lucky. Reports from Ukraine began surfacing in May of 1977 that Lukianenko was experiencing KGB harassment. Being a former political prisoner, Lukianenko had to endure KGB surveillance and report periodically to the Soviet version of a parole officer. However, the KGB employed different types of harassment against Lukianenko which could have caused him to miss curfew or be late for the appointment with the parole officer. Both offenses are punishable with prison detentions.

Immediately after Lukianenko’s arrest, his colleagues in the group issued an appeal to the West to save him from a long-term imprisonment, which they feared he would receive.

Before his arrest, Lukianenko approached the Supreme Soviet with a request to allow him to emigrate to the country of his choice. He said that since he does not expect the KGB harassment to cease, nor does he expect to change his views, he wants to leave the USSR. “The perspective of working for the rest of my life as an electrician, of not being able to see my native country, except from the limits of Chernihiv, together with my latest imprisonment, does not please me, and therefore I request that you allow me to emigrate from the Soviet Union and to live beyond its boundaries,” he wrote on August 24, 1977. “The secret police is capable of doing anything it wants to, except one thing – to convince me of my wrongdoings. I feel that I was right, just as Taras Shevchenko was right, just as Ivan Franko was right, and as Valentyn Moroz was right.”

Ukrainian Monitors Note ‘Our National Question’

In February 1978, Ukrainians in the West read the Kyiv group’s Memorandum no. 18, which scored the Soviet government for discriminating against Ukrainians and other non-Russians. The document also showed the group’s deep concern for the national rights of Ukraine, it explained that Russian dissidents are struggling for civil rights, while Ukrainian dissidents are concern with that “as well as our national question.”

One of the greatest awards in the world is the Nobel Prize. On January 30, 1978, the U.S. Congressional Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe wrote to the Nobel institute in Oslo, Sweden, nominating the Helsinki groups for the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize. Listing Ukrainians ahead of the other Helsinki watchers, 11 congressmen said that Mykola Rudenko, Oleksa Tykhy, Myroslav Marynovych, Mykola Matusevych and Lev Lukianenko had “paid a terrible price” for their work.

This effort by the Commission was picked up by other congressmen and senators and Canadian parliamentarians.

In New York City on February 21, a Soviet diplomat scoffed at the idea of nominating the members of the Helsinki groups for the Nobel Prize. He said that the Soviet government is convinced that anyone who conducts anti-Soviet activity is automatically made a hero in the West. For that reason, he said, the USSR does not participate in the selection of candidates or any other phase of the Nobel ceremony.

One of the greatest surprises of the closing weeks of 1977 was the temporary (as originally announced) emigration to the United States of Gen. Grigorenko, his wife and son. Arriving at Kennedy Airport on November 30, Gen. Grigorenko refused to make any political comments, implying that he believed that the Soviet government would indeed allow him to return home after he underwent surgery for a prostate condition.

On March 10, a decree, signed by Brezhnev on February 13, barring Grigorenko’s return home was made public. The elder human rights advocate scored the Soviet government for not allowing him to return to die in the land of his ancestors and pledged to fight for his right to return home, in subsequent weeks, Gen. Grigorenko proved to be an eloquent speaker on the subject of Ukraine’s human and national rights, frequently making statements condemning Soviet actions against Ukrainians and other dissidents in the Soviet Union.

On Thursday, March 30, 1978, Matusevych and Marynovych became the fourth and fifth members of the Kyiv group to be sentenced. At a trial in Vasylkiv outside of Kyiv, Marynovych and Matusevych were each given sentences of seven years imprisonment and five years exile.

Many of the pair’s friends and relatives, as well as KGB informers, were called to testify against them.

However, the futility of the prosecutor’s and judges’ attempts to discredit the two was shown when Marynovych’s 10-year-old nephew said that he did not think of them as criminals, but heroes.

A week later, Gen. Grigorenko revealed to Svoboda a letter Matusevych’s wife wrote to the Supreme Soviet in October 1977, which detailed almost two years of KGB harassment and brutality against her, her husband and family.

“Lackeys of the KGB! You have boundless authority. The new constitution has completely untied your hands. You have taken away from me my husband, my parents, for all practical purposes, you have left me without living quarters; you can fire me from my job and not give me the opportunity to settle down elsewhere, thereby completely denying me the basis for an existence; you can even arrest me and incarcerate me in a ‘psych-hospital’ – I am not afraid of this. І will not renounce my husband, whom І dearly love, and I will not betray Myroslav, whom І love as my own brother. І will not cease standing up in their defense,” wrote Heyko.

Mysteriously, the Ukrainian information Service reported in June 1978 that Heyko and Vera Lisova, who apparently was also a member of the Kyiv group, quit the Ukrainian Helsinki committee soon after the trial of Matusevych and Marynovych. The UIS would not reveal any of the different versions until the true facts are known.

New Activists Join Group

With incarceration cutting down the group, new members saved it from liquidation.

In February it was revealed that Yasyl Striltsiv asked on October 21, 1977, for permission to emigrate to England. “Since the desire to leave a country is not considered a crime in just societies, I hope that you will not search for other ‘crimes’ in revenge for my ‘insolence,’” he wrote. Striltsiv joined the group together with another rights advocate, Vitaliy Kalynychenko.

In July it became known that Vasyl Sichko, 21, became a member of the Kyiv group on February 26, 1978, and his father, Petro, 51, on April 30, 1978. Both cited unbearable KGB harassment for joining the group. The elder Sichko is a former UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army) officer who was sentenced in 1947 to 25 years’ incarceration for forming an Organization of Fighters for a Free Ukraine at the University of Chernivtsi. The son became of victim of KGB intimidations because his father refused to become an informer.

Dissident trials in the Soviet Union significantly rose in the spring and summer of 1978. Yuri Orlov, head of the Moscow group, was sentenced, in subsequent weeks Zviad Gamsakhurdia, Merab Kostava, Aleksandr Ginzburg, Anatoly Shcharansky, the Slepaks, Viktoras Petkus and Aleksandr Podrabinek each received varying sentences for their alleged crimes.

Worldwide protest and indignation was expressed at the sentencings. In the United States, President Carter banned the sale of computers to the Soviet Union. Certain legislators called for a review of the Helsinki Accords, and newspapers and television stations carried detailed accounts of Soviet human rights violations.

Amid all this concern for human rights on the part of the West, the sixth Ukrainian Helsinki monitor was sentenced. On Friday, July 21, Lev Lukianenko was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment and five years exile. This was his second imprisonment and barely a ripple was made in the free world. When Lukianenko finishes his term, he will have spent 25 years in prison and five years in exile for wanting Ukraine to be Ukrainian.

As in the cases of the five other Helsinki watchers, Ukrainian organizations in the United States and Canada, U.S. and Canadian lawmakers and individual citizens loudly protested Lukianenko’s incarceration.

At his trial, Lukianenko delivered a four-hour-long final statement, which was interrupted 49 times by the judges.

EPILOGUE

In 22 months of its existence, six members of the Kyiv group were sentenced to a total of 55 years of imprisonment and exile. Five members of the group sought emigration to the West – none was given permission to leave. One person was barred from returning after being allowed to come to the United States for medical reasons. Two members quit the group under unknown circumstances. Eight persons still belong to the Kyiv group: Meshko, Berdnyk, Kandyba and Strokata of the original group; and Striltsiv, Kalynychenko and the two Sichkos – the newest members.

In the West, protests from the White House down through the average citizen brought to the attention of world public opinion the plight of Ukrainian human, national and religious rights advocates, but none of the efforts resulted in their freedom.

While a glimpse into the future does not show any silver linings, the lot of Ukrainian patriots can be improved with the help of Ukrainians in the West. As Strokata and Shabatura said: “Rudenko and Tykhy (and others — ed.) will remain behind bars unless Ukrainians find in themselves the strength and courage to stand up in their defense. All of us, who were and remain political prisoners in the Soviet Union, hope that our countrymen will energetically defend all Ukrainian patriots.”