MYKHAILO MOLNAR AND THE DNIPROPETROVS'K DISSIDENTS OR HOW A SLOVAK SCIENTIST GOT INVOLVED IN A COURT CASE

Abstract

The article is devoted to one of the episodes of the dissident movement in Ukraine at the turn of the 1960s and 1970s – the trial of the authors and distributors of the «Letter of Creative Youth of Dnipropetrovsk», in which the name of Slovak / Czechoslovakian Ukrainist Mykhailo Molnar (1930–2006) was exposed during the investigation. The purpose of the study is to reveal new circumstances in the trial of dissidents from Dnipropetrovsk, which allow us to figure out the place of Mykhailo Molnar and his work in this case, as well as the importance of the ties between the Ukrainian and Czechoslovak dissident movements. The research is based on published and unpublished sources, including a document from the fonds of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine of the State Archives of the Dnipropetrovsk Region, materials from periodicals, and sources of personal origin (memoirs, diaries, correspondence). The research methodology is based on multidisciplinary and comparative approaches. As a result of the study, the circumstances of the investigation into the case of one of the defendants, Viktor Savchenko (1938–2016), who was accused of distributing anti-Soviet literature, including M. Molnár's work «Slovaks and Ukrainians: Causes for Slovak-Ukrainian Literary Relations with Documents’ Appendix» (1965). The discovered archival document gives grounds to assert that the KGB was interested not only in the work and the content of Taras Volya's «nationalist» «Message», but also in the figure of the Slovak scholar, who allowed himself to make openly anti-Soviet statements during the Prague Spring. The analyzed sources, together with the assessments of contemporaries and researchers of M. Molnár's biography and work, show that the scholar was aware of the essence of the totalitarian communist government and system, and emphasise the importance of his works in shaping the views of Ukrainian dissidents. The court case and the fate of all direct and indirect participants, such as M. Molnár, leads to the broader issue of Ukrainian-Czechoslovak, Ukrainian-Czech and Ukrainian-Slovak relations, in particular beyond the official “front” side, at the level of personal contacts that overcame prohibitions and borders. Along with the fact the study enriches the understanding of the local dimension of the story with Molnár's work: in various ways, the trial involved quite well-known people in the Dnipropetrovsk / Dnipro area who played a role in the course of events.