On February 5, 2025, at 14:00, a public lecture, "Rebellion Against the Empire. Luhansk Sixtiers," will be held in the Main Building of the War Museum—to the 48th anniversary of the beginning of the KGB’s political repressions against the Ukrainian Helsinki Group. On February 5, 1977, Soviet punitive authorities arrested Mykola Rudenko and Oleksa Tykhy as the group’s leaders.
The event will demonstrate the history of nonviolent resistance to the Soviet regime in the Luhansk region from 1945 to the restoration of Ukraine’s independence in 1991. The speakers will analyze the criteria by which the authorities decided who would become the next victim of persecution. The discussion will be supplemented with short stories about resistance figures. We will try to show previously little-known pages from the activities of the sixtiers, dissidents, cosmopolitans, and clergy members, and what punishment awaited representatives of the intelligentsia for supporting and defending the Ukrainian language and truthfully covering history in the Luhansk region.
Additional material will include photographs of artifacts from the War Museum, the book "The Chekist Dossier of Occupied Ukraine," and footage from the documentary films "Ukrainian Dissidents. Mykola Rudenko, " "Our Language. Vasyl Holoborodko," "The Creator of Independence. Ivan Svitlychnyi", and "Ukrainian Dissidents. Nadiia Svitlychna".
Speakers:
- Volodymyr Zhemchuhov, Museum Specialist, commander of the partisan movement in the Luhansk region in 2014–2016, Hero of Ukraine
- Nataliia Novosel, representative of the Faculty of History of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, researcher of the history of the Luhansk region in the second half of the 20th century.
The event will occur in the exhibition space "War: Inverse Perspective."
