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NADIYA OLEKSIVNA SVITLYCHNA (1939 - 2006)
August 13, 2006 11:03 AM
Kudos to Morgan Williams and his indispensible Action Ukraine Report (to sign up, email Morgan at morganw@patriot.net) for calling attention to the death this week of Nadiya Svitlychna, a dissident who made freedom possible for millions by making tyrrany impossible for the Soviet authorities.
In December 1970 in the city of Vasylkovi, Kyiv region, she and Y. SVERSTYUK found the body of their murdered friend, the artist A. HORSKA, organized the funeral and arranged for a monument to be placed on her grave.After the "January cull" of 1972 (the second wave of arrests), Svitlychna was summoned to the KGB for questioning virtually on a daily basis in connection with the case against her brother. Each time she parted with her two-year old son Yarema as though for good. Her son was also used by the KGB as an "argument" in the investigation.
A month before her actual arrest, during one of the questions, they
announced her arrest and demanded that she sign a form stating whom she authorized to bring up her child."There were tears. Fear, doubts, bargaining with my soul: should I agree to compromise for the sake of my child", - these were the thoughts that ran through her head when the head of the investigation unit, the notorious Parkhomenko said: "We are giving you 24 hours - think long and hard". She did not believe a single word.
It then transpired that on that day I. DZIUBA had been arrested, and a large number of searches carried out, including of Svitlychna's home. They removed the books of V. STUS "Fenomen doby" ["A Penomenon of our time"], A. Avtorkhanov "Technology of power", Mykhailo OSADCHY "Bilmo" ["Cataract"], a manuscript by Danylo SHUMUK, poems, articles, extracts, letters - 1800 items in all.
Svitlychna was arrested on 18 May 1972. Her son was taken from the crèche by KGB agents and put in a children's home in the city of Vorzel near Kyiv. It was only through the efforts of Nadiya's sister-in-law, L. SVITLYCHNA, that the family was able to collect him from there and take him to his grandmother in the Luhansk region.Svitlychna spent almost a year in the isolation cell of the KGB on
Volodymyrska St. She was accused of having held and distributed samizdat.
Her response to the provocative questions of the investigator was as
follows: "I am simply a person whom life gave the good fortune of meeting with a wide range of creative people. Persecution against them I perceive as persecution against me".The investigation protocols also read: "I admit guilt in that, having a higher education and a certain amount of life experience, I still believed laws which contradict each other, I considered that the Constitution of the USSR is the highest Law and this is not the case since it is constantly violated. I promise that when I am released with my small child, I will not read anti-Soviet literature.
However I cannot swear that I will not read anything at all, since I am a literate person, while the criteria are not clear, what one can read and what is not allowed".
On 23-24 May 1973 Nadiya Svitlychna was sentenced by the Kyiv Regional Court under Article 62 Part 1 of the Criminal Code of the UkrSSR ("Anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda") to 4 years labour camp.
She served her sentence in the Mordovian political labour camp, No.
ZhKh-385/3 in the settlement of Barashevo, the Tengushevsk district.Together with other prisoners she actively participated in protests, hunger strikes. A month before the end of her sentence, Svitlychna was taken to Luhansk to choose a place to live, effectively in "exile", although she had firmly decided to return to Kyiv.
She returned in May 1976. She was refused registration, not able to get a job, and threatened with arrest for "parasitism". She and her son lived with her sister-in-law, L. SVITLYCHNA, who was regularly fined for "infringements of passport regulations".
In autumn 1976 she had the courage to send a declaration to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine and the government rejecting her citizenship, basing this move on the savage punishment meted out to Levko LUKYANENKO, Petro GRIGORENKO, Viacheslav CHORNOVIL,Vasyl STUS, Stefaniya SHABATURA and other decent people.She explained her decision with the following words: "It would be below my dignity to remain the citizen of the world's biggest, most powerful and most developed concentration camp". She sent copies of this declaration to the Ukrainian Helsinki Group (UHG) and the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.
Remember her the next time you hear from American "dissidents" like Tim Robbins.
