THE SOVIET REGIME’S MASSACRE OF THE UKRAINIAN YOUTH UNION OF GALICIA (1972–1973)

Abstract

The purpose of the article is a comprehensive study of the process of the Soviet regime’s massacre of active members of the Union of Ukrainian Youth of Galicia (SUMG) in 1972–1973. The basis of the source base was the materials of the Sectoral State Archive of the Security Service of Ukraine in Kyiv, documents of the Central State Archive of Public Associations and Ukrainians, as well as memories of active members of the SUMG. 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 scientific novelty of the research lies in the fact that this problem has not yet become the subject of a full-fledged study in modern Ukrainian historiography.

The authors conclude that the underground organization SUMG functioned on the territory of the Kolomyia district during January 1972 – March 1973, and young workers and students belonged to its core. The group’s activities consisted primarily in the organization of secret meetings by its participants, the search for literature and information about the previous stages of the national liberation movement. A key characteristic of the SUMG, which distinguished it from other underground organizations of the first half of the 1970s, was the purposeful search for firearms and the readiness to use them for self-defense.

The reaction of the Soviet regime to the creation and activity of the SUMG was quite sharp; the massacre of its participants was under the personal control of the first persons of the Ukrainian SSR. A secret case of the operative group development “Intruders” was opened against the leaders of the group. During the preliminary collection of information about the members of the group, the agent network of the State Security Committee (KGB), wiretapping equipment and secret searches were used. In March 1973, a rapid special operation was carried out to arrest the leaders of the SUMG – Dmytro Hrynkiv, Ivan Shovkovyi, Mykola Motriuk, Roman Chuprei; the following month, Dmytro Demydiv was also arrested.

During the investigation, the KGB employees used means of psychological and moral pressure on the arrested persons, including complete isolation from the outside world, open threats of possible execution, creating an unbearable atmosphere in the cells, using in-cell agents. The prisoners had the impression that the penal authorities knew absolutely everything about their activities. In the end, the SUMG members, unprepared for an open confrontation with the KGB, were forced to cooperate with the investigators. Because of a closed trial held in Ivano-Frankivsk in August 1973, five members of the SUMG were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment and exile – from four to ten years in total. At the same time, the structures of the Communist Party in Ivano-Frankivsk region and Lviv region intensified ideological processing of the population and strengthened propaganda against the so-called “Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism”.

Key words: Union of Ukrainian Youth of Galicia (SUMG), Dmytro Hrynkiv, Ukrainian dissident movement, Soviet regime, State Security Committee (KGB), “Intruders” case, judicial repression.