On February 5, the Museum of War hosted a public lecture "Rebellion against the Empire. The Luhansk Sixtiers" dedicated to the figures of resistance to the totalitarian regime of the Soviet Union who came from the Luhansk region. On this day in 1977 the Soviet punitive authorities arrested Mykola Rudenko and Oleksa Tykhyi, the leaders of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group.
The curator of the event, the Museum worker Volodymyr Zhemchuhov, presented biographies of people who, from 1945 until the restoration of Ukraine’s independence in 1991, opposed the Soviet regime and fought for a better life. Volodymyr is a native of the Luhansk region, so the historical facts were enriched with personal memories and reflections.
During the lecture, the speakers presented various forms of individual resistance based on historical documents and memories. The Sixtiers, dissidents, cosmopolitans, clergymen... Each of them had their own reasons and motives for resisting the totalitarian system and had their own separate vision of an ideal society.
Ivan Svitlychnyi, Nadiia Svitlychna, Alla Horska, Mykola Rudenko, etc. – these names are an integral part of the Ukrainian dissident movement. They began their activities in the Luhansk region, the easternmost region of our country: they fought for freedom of speech, support for the Ukrainian language and culture. For this, they were subjected to repression.
The speakers paid special attention to the figure of the Baptist priest Ivan Skumatov, who was brutally murdered by the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs, throwing his body under a train. His fate became a symbol of the totalitarian system’s ruthlessness toward people who did not fit into its ideological boundaries.
The museum visitors also got acquainted with the activity of Ivan Feshchuk, a company commander who rebelled against the Soviet invasion of Budapest in 1956, demonstrating in such a way that resistance existed even within the ranks of the Soviet military. Later, he defended the right to education in the Ukrainian language. By the way, he was nominated for the Hungarian national award on the fortieth anniversary of the 1956 revolution.
Nataliia Novosel, a researcher of the history of the Luhansk region of the second half of the twentieth century and a representative of the Faculty of History at the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, complemented the lecture with the stories about Vasyl Holoborodko, a prominent Ukrainian poet who suffered for his support of the Ukrainian language; Ivan Zakharchenko, a Ukrainian language teacher who was forced to work under conditions of persecution during the Soviet period and became the head of the local Prosvita after independence; and journalist Hryhorii Haiovyi, who was sentenced to five years in prison for anti-Soviet agitation but continued to ask uncomfortable questions about the actions of the Soviet government.
The lecturers also mentioned about the last Ukrainian Insurgent Army partisan, Ivan Honcharuk, who was executed by the Soviet state security authorities in 1989 after a review of his case. This event was another reminder of the Soviet government’s long struggle against the Ukrainian liberation movement.
Now when Luhansk is once again occupied by Russia, it is worth remembering: Luhansk has always had a Ukrainian-centered population that was ready to fight for its national consciousness to the last.
