JUDICIAL REPRESSIONS OF THE STATE SECURITY COMMITTEE AGAINST THE UKRAINIAN HELSINKI GROUP (FEBRUARY 1977 – FEBRUARY 1979)

Abstract

The article examines the Soviet regime‟s judicial repressions against the Ukrainian Helsinki Group (UHG) during the period of its highest activity – from February 1977 to February 1979. This period became crucial in shaping the state strategy of the Soviet authorities to suppress the organized human rights movement in the Ukrainian SSR. Based on a broad source base, which includes previously classified documents from the Sectoral State Archive of the Security Service of Ukraine, UHG program documents, and testimonies of participants in the events, the author analyzes the forms, methods, and scope of the KGB‟s repressive policy towards group members. The methodological basis of the article were 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 events. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the fact that this problem has not yet become the subject of full-fledged study in modern Ukrainian historiography. The article focuses on the specifics of the implementation of legal prosecutions, which served not only as an instrument of punishment, but also as a means of preventive pressure, isolation of UHG leaders and demonstrative intimidation of wider dissident circles. The article covers in detail the course of the trials of Mykola Rudenko, Oleksiy Tykhy, Mykola Matusevych, Myroslav Marynovych and Levko Lukyanenko, as well as the organizational, operational and ideological mechanisms of their implementation. The author proves that despite the demonstrative nature of the repressions and attempts to discredit the UGG as an “anti-Soviet” and “extremist” organization, its participants demonstrated a high level of moral stability, refusal to cooperate with the authorities and an attempt to use the courts as a platform for public exposure of human rights violations in the USSR. Special attention is paid to the international context of the UHG‟s activities, in particular the KGB‟s attempts to minimize its contacts with the outside world, ignoring the very fact of the group‟s existence in the public sphere.

The article also examines the consequences of judicial repression for the future fate of the UHG. Although the arrests and long prison terms of key activists dealt a significant blow to the structure, they did not lead to its liquidation. The Group‟s activities continued through the efforts of the remaining participants, among whom Oksana Meshko and Oles Berdnyk were particularly active. The UHG continued to publish memoranda, newsletters, and appeals to the international community, and recruited new members, including political prisoners. The article allows for a comprehensive assessment of judicial repression as one of the central instruments of the Soviet penal system in countering the human rights movement in Ukraine, as well as to trace the mechanisms of pressure, disinformation, and manipulation of public opinion that were characteristic of the KGB‟s activities in the specified period. The study deepens the understanding of the dynamics of the confrontation between the state and civil society under the conditions of an authoritarian regime and outlines

important aspects of national resistance, relevant in the modern context of the struggle for human rights.