Commemoration of Taras Shevchenko on May 22, 1972, at the Height of General Pogrom of Ukrainian Dissidents
Abstract
The purpose of the research paper is to provide a comprehensive and in-depth analysis of the dissident action to commemorate Taras Shevchenko on May 22, 1972, in the context of the general intensification of government pressure on the Ukrainian national movement.
The scientific novelty. Based on previously classified documentation of the Committee for State Security and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, the analysis of the phenomenon of Shevchenko commemoration actions of Ukrainian dissidents as a method of struggle against the Soviet regime’s policies is improved. The preparation of the dissident environment for the action in 1972 and preventive measures taken by the authorities are studied for the first time; the course of the commemoration of Kobzar and the reaction of the regime’s security forces are clarified; the repressions against the participants of Shevchenko commemoration action and their subsequent impact on the situation of the Ukrainian dissident movement are analyzed.
Conclusions. In the 1960s and early 1970s, the annual commemoration of T. Shevchenko on May 22 by the representatives of the dissident community and nationally conscious citizens played the role of an important symbol of the movement of resistance to the national policy of the Soviet regime, aimed at the Russification of Ukrainians. After the arrests of January 1972, some of the participants in the Ukrainian dissident movement decided not to abandon the tradition of commemoration. In May 1972, the security forces of the Soviet regime performed thorough preventive work to disallow Shevchenko commemoration action. Despite the actions of the authorities, on May 22, 1972, a reasonably crowded rally with the participation of at least 150 people was held near the monument to Kobzar in Kyiv; it was accompanied by laying flowers, singing Ukrainian songs, and demonstrative disobedience to the militia. Representatives of the security forces harshly broke up the dissident rally, detaining over 70 people.
In the following weeks and months, the authorities intensified their ideological campaign against ‘Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism,’ and KGB officers conducted secret work to identify the participants of the action and ‘operatively check’ them. The regime sought to intimidate representatives of the dissident environment and prevent their influence from spreading to the younger generation of Ukrainians. The actions of the KGB and the militia were part of the general increase in pressure on the Ukrainian dissident movement during the ‘general pogrom’ and they were aimed at completely suppressing the public activity of nationally conscious citizens. Indifferent Ukrainians still managed to hold Shevchenko commemoration action in 1972, even in the face of increased repressive pressure. However, the brutal crackdown of the rally resulted in the actual cessation of the dissident tradition of honoring the memory of Kobzar in the following years and decades.
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