THE REACTION OF THE STATE SECURITY COMMITTEE TO THE CREATION OF THE UKRAINIAN HELSINKI GROUP (1976–1977)

Abstract

The purpose of the article is an objective and comprehensive study of the repressive measures of the State Security Committee (KGB) against the members of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group (UHG) at the first stage of its activity (end of 1976 – beginning of 1977). The basis of the source base was the materials of the Sectoral State Archive of the Security Service of Ukraine (SSA SSU) in Kyiv, memories of active members of the UHG. The methodological basis of the article was the principles of objectivity, historicism, comprehensiveness, continuity, as well as a complex of general scientific and special-historical methods. A cross-analysis and comparison of information from historical sources of various origins was carried out to establish an objective picture of historical events. The author concludes that in the view of the KGB, the creation of the UHG was the result of influence on Ukrainian dissidents by representatives of Russian democratic human rights defenders. The special service was unable to prevent the establishment of ties between the Moscow and Ukrainian dissident circles during the summer-autumn of 1976. The agent network and informants of the KGB were actively used to monitor the members of the UHG, and the apartment of the leader of the group, M. Rudenko, was equipped with listening devices. Taking into account the possible international resonance, the leaders of the Soviet regime in November–December 1976 hesitated about the expediency of using open judicial repression against the members of the group. The leadership of the KGB proposed limiting itself to preventive measures and intimidation of UHG participants. Nevertheless, after the creation of the organization's first program documents, the rapprochement of its leaders with the environment of Ukrainian Sixties human rights protection, and attempts to combine the protection of universal democratic rights with the ideas of the national movement, the KGB employees moved to active repressive actions. At the end of December 1976, the first, and at the beginning of February 1977, the second series of searches of active members of the UHG was conducted. The arrests of M. Rudenko and O. Tykhy and their trial in June–July 1977 marked the beginning of judicial repression against the group. However, it was not possible to intimidate the Ukrainian dissident environment: primarily through the efforts of O. Berdnyk and O. Meshko, the UHG continued to oppose the regime.