On January 12, 1972, the KGB launched the “General Pogrom” – a wave of arrests of the Ukrainian intelligentsia. Vasyl Stus, Viacheslav Chornovil, Ivan Svitlychnyi... Back then, the Soviet system attempted to destroy those who had the courage to be Ukrainian. Three years later, in 1975, Viacheslav Chornovil established the Ukrainian Political Prisoner Day, which was marked by hunger strikes and protests in captivity.
More than half a century has passed. The empire has changed its name, but not its methods. Today, russia is once again throwing Ukrainians behind bars on fabricated charges, torturing them, and attempting to break them.
We invite you to the event dedicated to the Ukrainian Political Prisoner Day to hear the voices of representatives from two eras of struggle.
The Museum will welcome Oles Shevchenko – a participant in the national liberation movement, a People’s Deputy of Ukraine of the 1st convocation, a member of the Commission on State Sovereignty, Inter-republican, and Inter-ethnic Relations, co-author of the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine, and Chairman of the Kyiv Society of Political Prisoners and Repressed. He belonged to the circle of Ukrainian oppositionists of the 1960s–1970s who spoke out against the Soviet policy of Russification, the persecution of Ukrainian culture, and human rights violations. In 1973, he became one of the organizers of the illegal “United Revolutionary Front.” Shevchenko also established a public fund to assist the children of Ukrainian political prisoners. In 1976, he agreed to serve as an undeclared member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group (UHG). In 1980, he was sentenced to five years in strict-regime labor camps and three years of exile under Part I of Article 62 of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR (“anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda”).
The Museum will also host Petro Vyhivskyi the father of current kremlin captive Valentyn Vyhivskyi and the son of Stepan Vyhivskyi, who was repressed during the stalinist era. This is a unique and tragic story of one family where the grandfather was sentenced by the Soviet authorities, and the grandson has been in russian captivity for 11 years on absurd charges of “espionage.” During the investigation, Vyhivskyi provided testimony confessing guilt, but at trial, he stated that he had incriminated himself under torture. On December 15, 2015, Valentyn was sentenced at a closed hearing of the moscow regional court in krasnogorsk to 11 years in a strict-regime colony.
The event will take place on January 11 at 3:00 PM in the Main Building of the War Museum (within the exhibition space “The War: Inverse Perspective”). Curator: Liubov Krupnyk, Museum Researcher.
