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researcher V. Kolosova. In the mid-1970s on the first floor of the building of the Academy of Social Sciences, the library of the Institute of Language Studies was destroyed by water. A large amount of literature perished. Because the roof leaks, Ucrainica in the library of Kharkiv University is perishing. In July 1977 the Ivan Franko Ukrainian School in Kiev burned down. Two children died-the caretaker's and the chambermaid's. This accident was preceded by a lengthy struggle on the part of the Ukrainian public to keep the school open against the intentions of the city authorities to close it down. In the eyes of Kiev's Ukrainophobic philistines the school was known for being a "nationalist nest": in it a Ukrainian-speaking atmosphere prevailed, the children of Ukrainian writers were pupils there, and nationally conscious Ukrainians tended to want to send their children there. At the beginning of March of last year, in the village of Prokhorivtsi near Kaniv, the Memorial Museum, dedicated to the famous 19th century scholar, M. Maksymovych, burned to the ground. In January 1978 an attempt was made to rob the division of rare books in the Historical Library. Ucrainica from the library of the Museum of Ukrainian Art has disappeared somewhere. Valuable works of art worth a fortune were stolen from the Kievan Cave Monastery. The necessary sanitary conditions are lacking for preserving ancient artifacts in the Republican Museum of Folk Architecture and Culture. The Museum director is indifferent to his job; people without any qualifications predominate on the staff; qualified workers who are honest and enthusiastic about their work are consciously harassed by the administration.

A junior scientific coworker of the Institute of History of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, Vadim Kryukov, for the longest time succeeded in combining his participation in the "development" of Ukrainian culture with robbing the institute's library. Because of the conducive atmosphere created, in particular, by A. T. Shevelev, the director of the Institute at the time, Kryukov was able to sell almost the entire Ukrainian library (even from the special collection) on the black market. The Kiev oblast court put an end to Kryukov's "cultural" activity by sentencing the "scholar" to ten years; but it unfortunately did not (nor did it try to!) expose or condemn those general political and local social conditions that created the possibility for such a crime to be committed. It did not condemn the unbelievable and abominable statement made by the director of the Institute of History, Arnold Shevelev, that the stolen literature was "nationalist trash," and "waste paper.' Since the end of 1977 the works of [Ukrainian historian] M. Hrushevsky have been removed from libraries and even bibliographic catalogues to give the impression that this scholar never existed! In the scholarly libraries the catalogues of Ukrainian books are thoroughly weeded out. Measures have been taken to altogether restrict readers' access to Ukrainian publications of the past, to block their availability to those who do not work in the approved institutions.

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This situation is crowned by endless repressions of those Ukrainians who oppose Russification and refuse to peacefully follow the "natural" road to national extinction. Even passive opposition does not escape punishment. For an uninvolved person who has learned about contemporary Ukraine only from the picture painted by official_propaganda, it is difficult, perhaps, to believe that in the capital of the UkrSSR a person who simply speaks Ukrainian outside a few specific spheres automatically becomes politically suspect in the eyes of the authorities, and that this person, of course, has fewer chances to achieve a professional career or hold a more prestigeous position, etc. In addition, the way out of this situation takes completely unexpected forms. For example, I myself more than once was the victim of national discrimination in the sphere of trade and the provision of life's necessities: say a sentence in Ukrainian, and you'll receive the inferior product or your order will not be filled as well as it could be.

The prewar and postwar Stalinist repressions dealt the Ukrainian people a physical and psychological blow, from which the nation has not yet recovered to this day. This blow signified a cardinal transformation in the political and cultural status of the republic. The revelation of the Stalin cult did not result in a radical improvement in the situation. But, owing to the temporary political thaw in Ukrainian society, the elemental process of national revival began. People appeared in the cultural sphere who boldly spoke in a fresh and talented voice about the real needs of social life. The professional and cultural level of activity in Kiev society grew perceptibly; there appeared a prestigious Ukrainian-speaking milieu, to which both the non-Ukrainian and Russified public began to listen. The Club of Creative Youth was created. It attracted large audiences at its evenings. On New Year's Eve Ukrainian carols echoed in the streets of Kiev: literary Ukrainian rang out not from the stage but from the lips of the living element in the streets. People were surprised; there was no lack of openly hostile reactions; but a friendly attitude prevailed. In a word, against the background of official paper Ukrainian decorations there came into being a thriving Ukrainian life; Ukrainians revealed their Ukrain

ianness in themselves. But precisely this did not correspond to the calculations of the Russian great-power chauvinists. In 1965 the Ukrainian rebirth of the postStalin period received its first blow and, of course, the blow was to its head: in a number of Ukrainian cities, including Kiev, many representatives of the Ukrainian creative intelligentsia were arrested and charged formally with reading samizdat [uncensored] literature and with anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda. Nevertheless the 1965 arrests still fitted within the framework of the all-Union policies directed towards silencing the critics of Stalinism. They reduced the circle of permissible national-cultural activity but did not stop the process of Ukraine's national rebirth. Moreover, at precisely this time, in the second half of the 1960s, the republic's top party leadership, due to a significant extent to the influence of Ivan Dzyuba's book "Internationalism or Russification?," found within itself the courage to turn its attention to the real state of affairs and tried to do something to correct the situation. In particular, a conference of directors of higher learning institutions was organized; the publishing house "Vyshcha shkola” (Higher School) was created: it was to guarantee VUZy with the availability of educational literature in Ukrainian; the study of Ukrainian history was activated in the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences; a government resolution was passed about building the "Zaporizhian Sich" reserve on Khortytsya Island. As we can see, the national-political and cultural situation in Ukraine was established officially and on paper. This is very significant from the viewpoint of the later course of events.

The next great-power blow against Ukraine already had a different character: the mass arrests of the Ukrainian intelligentsia in January 1972 signified a radical change in the national policies of the consequences, that in the world view and sentiments of the Ukrainian intelligentsia that was socially active in the 1960s there were neither anti-Soviet not antisocialist motives; meaning that, on their part there could not be any antisocialist propaganda and agitation. There existed only a civic consciousness of their social rights and obligations to the homeland, the need to lead a free, independent spiritual life and, of course, there existed a disatisfaction with the national state of the people, a critical attitude to the ideological and political bureaucratization of society. The civic behavior of the arrested was an expression of and a factor in the national self-awareness of Ukraine, and this undeniably became the main reason for the arrests and the brutal punishment meted out to the most active participants in the Ukrainian national social process. As for the... [body of the crime in the days of imprisonment and] objectivity of the court, it is sufficient to state this fact: the lawyer demanded the release of the accused, O. Serhiyenko, because of the absence of corpus delicti. The court sentenced Serhiyenko to seven years of strict-regime camps and five years exile. Vasyl Lisovy, a communist, a candidate of philosophical sciences, and coworker in the Institute of Philosophy of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, expressed his citizen's alarm in connecting with these events in a letter to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine. The letter was dated 5 July 1972; the next day he "received his reply": Lisoby was arrested and subsequently sentenced to seven years of strict-regime camps and three years' exile. Those sentences are usually given maximum terms; this is additional proof that the point was not to punish them for concrete criminal acts but to remove people from Ükrainian social life for a long as possible, if not permanently.

That the 1972 trials in Ukraine had the character of a political action against all of society and were directed against the national rebirth of Ukraine is demonstrated by the further development of events. First of all, earlier, in preparation for the plan, the chief of the KGB in the Council of Ministers of the UkrSSR was removed; later, after the arrests, which, according to rumors, were opposed by the then Ukrainian party leadership, P. Yu. Shelest was removed from the post of First Secretary of the CCCPU and sent to Moscow in order to afterwards be accused without foundation of Ukrainian nationalism and to put an end to his political career. All of this signified in fact a coup d'etat in Ukraine, which in miniature recalled the political changes in Ukrainian society after Mykola Skrypnyk's suicide in 1933. Moscow's designation, then, of V. Malanchuk to the post of Secretary of the CCCPU has a particularly interesting history: this was completely unexpected, even for the anti-Ukrainian groups in the higher party circles of the republic.

As a result of these personal changes, the general national-political and cultural atmosphere greatly deteriorated. The concept of the "Ukrainian people" disappeared from the official pronouncements of the representatives of the ruling authorities for a long time, and now it is used only very rarely and cautiously; later even their public appearances were in Russian. The propaganda war increased against "Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism," which long ago became a synonym for the concepts "nationally conscious Ukrainians," and "Ukrainian patriots." Even the leadership under Shelest had been unable to transform the VŮZy and technical

schools into institutions that teach in Ukrainian. After 1972, this situation deteriorated further. Work on the creation of the "Zaporizhian Sich" reserve was halted. The Ukrainian language's social sphere of functioning was reduced. The press began to hound writers for ideological transgressions, particularly for the so-called idealization of the past, that is, for attempting to say something more concrete and objective about Ukrainian history. The vulgarization of the Ukrainian historical process reached the level that existed in Stalin's epoch. The Ukrainian Historical Journal did not appear for sale on the stands for over a year. As a matter of fact, from precisely this time Kiev's kiosks have been loaded with the journal Otechestvo, which is aimed at the Russian emigration and which also wages a struggle with— you guessed it—“Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism."

The publication of Ukrainian-language journals in the natural sciences has been halted. The number of classes in Ukrainian language and literature in the high schools has been reduced; lessons in Ukrainian language and literature have been removed from the curricula of the technical schools. Things reached such a state, that in 1973 and 1974 editors in the publishing houses deleted the word “Ukrainian" from books. For example, the phrase "Ukrainian activists" was changed to "activists of the fatherland," "the Ukrainian people" to "the toiling masses," and so on. The words "Cossack," "Zaporizhian Sich” and similar concepts underwent the same censorship.

School programs in Ukrainian language and literature have been shifted towards even greater "internationalization," that is, to an even greater evisceration of their Ukrainian content. I have heard of cases where Shevchenko's portrait was taken down from the walls of libraries and classrooms, of cases where taperecordings of readings of Shevchenko's works have been removed from the cabinet of Ukrainian literature, and so on.

In the 1960s, the beautiful old march "Bohdan Khmelnytsky" began to be performed. Now it is officially called "The March Dedicated to the Union of Ukraine with Russia."

A detailed analysis of the national-political and cultural situation in Ukraine of the 1970s would reveal a picture of the real defeat of the contemporary Ukrainian national renaissance which began in the atmosphere of the exposing of Stalinism. In one or another form, everyone experienced repression if he or she in the 1960s had revealed his or her national patriotism and had participated in unofficial social life. Many people became the victims of "the prohibition to work in one's profession." For over ten years Lina Kostenko, one of the finest poets in Ukraine today, was unable to publish her works. Mykola Lukash, whose translations comprised an entire phenomenon in Ukrainian culture, is still not allowed to publish. M. Braychevsky lost his position as a historian for his scholarly article "Unification or Annexation?". His well-known name could not be mentioned for a couple of years. Only recently, because of the precautions surrounding the questions raised by the Helsinki Accords, Braychevsky was again given a position on the staff of the scholarly workers of the Institute of Archaeology. Ya. Dzyra, a candidate of philosophical sciences who undertook essential work in the preparation of a scholarly edition of the Cossack chronicles at the Institute of History, cannot to this day find work in his field. It was a great loss for Ukrainian literary scholarship when Mykhaylyna Kotsyubynska, a candidate of philological sciences, was forbidden to work in her profession. V. Skrypka, a folklorist and candidate of philological_sciences, has been forced to work for "Statystyka" publishers. L. Yashchenko was fired from his job in the Institute of Art History, Ethnography and Folklore and expelled from the Union of Composers for forming an independent folk choir: the choir was forced to disband, and its members were administratively persecuted.

I have named only a small part of the repressed representatives of the Ukrainian creative intelligentsia. But I hope, and there is enough evidence, that my qualification of the present national predicament of the Ukrainian people as a state of siege possesses not only a metaphorical and ideological, but also practical sense. The official ideology of the "internationalization," "rapproachement" and fusion of nations, and the historiographic conception of the history of Ukraine does not leave the Ukrainian people any room at all for free movement neither forward nor backward. They block our access to the future and to the past; and the practical creators of this predicament hit anyone who rises above the level of planned national extinction over the head, anyone who tries to speak the truth about the Ukrainian national reality or, God forbid, tries to evaluate the picture in its entirety, on an all-national, historical scale, on the basis of political criteria.

Chairman FASCELL. The Commission stands adjourned subject to the call of the Chair.

[Whereupon, at 1 p.m., the Commission's hearing, open session, was adjourned.]

[Statements and letters submitted for the record follow:]

STATUS REPORT
SUBMITTED BY THE

CONGRESS OF RUSSIAN AMERICANS, INC.

Board of Directors
Chairman

E. Pribitkin, Ph.D.

1st Vice Chairman

P. Budzilovich

2nd Vice Chairman

V. Tuman

Treasurer

G. Klimenko

Secretary

V. Dutikov

Members

E. Alexandrov, Ph.D

N. Dubovsky

R. Kalesnik

Rev. M. Kovach, Ph.D.

A. Nebolsine, Ph.D.

1. Redko

Y. Olkhovsky, Ph.D.

V. Schatoff

P.O. Box 5025, Long Island City, N.Y. 11105 - (212) 721-1323

Russian-American Hall of Fame

V. Zworykin, Ph.D.

A. Tolstoy, Ph.D.

Chaplains

Very Rev. A. Kiselev

Very Rev. M. Kovach, Ph.D.
Regional Representatives
New England

K. Kostukevich

South-East

A. Sokolsky, Ph.D.

Washington, DC.

C. Olkhovsky, Ph.D.

West Coast

1. Avtamonov

THE PRESENT STATE OF THE CAPTIVE RUSSIAN NATION

AN OVERVIEW

Introduction

As American citizens of Russian ancestry wo are gravely concerned about the progressive spread of communism and its real threat to freedom of all nations. We believe without reservation in the noral and practical necessity of restoring freedom and right to worship to all peoples presently under the domination of communist regimes. The Russian people have been deprived of freedom and human rights by a godless and brutal regime and have lost millions of loved ones as a direct consequence of the 1917 communist take over, known as the October revolution. The course of democracy in Russia has been rudely interrupted by the bolsheviks who overthrew the democratic Provisional Government of Russia and two months later dissolved the freely elected Constituent Assembly, in which they had polled only 25% of the vote. Thus the Russian nation has become the first victim of international communism led by V. Lenin, a paid agent who was sent to Russia by the German

A Non Profit Organization

government. As a follower of the ideology created by K. Marx, Lenin expressed his feelings toward Russia by saying: "... what concerns Russia, my dear comrades, I spit on it". This episode characterizes the communist attitude toward the Russian nation. The goal of international communism has always been and still remains today the subjugation of the entire world.

The fight against communist domination started in 1917, developed into Civil War, and lasted more than three years. It is important to note that among the many ethnic groups of the former Russian Empire the ethnic Russians offered the strongest opposition to communism. Military resistance by non-Russians was strategically insignificant and has never shaken the Soviet power. On the other hand, the elite units of the Red Army consisted of nonRussian minorities and foreign communists (Latvians, Hungarians, Chinese, etc.). The communists retaliated against the Russian White Army by leaning on minorities and thus insuring themselves against Russian uprisings.

The Russian ethnic group paid the highest tell in lives during the Civil War against the communists. The belshevik reprisals (the red terror) brought massacres of Russians in all walks of life: politicians, army officers, nobility, clergymen, peasants and werkers. The Soviets lost no time in creating extermination camps, which have been "perfected" by Stalin and are still in operation under Brezhnev.

Communism has proven during its 63 years of rule to be antiRussian by its very nature. Since the establishment of communism

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