Turning the pages back...

February 5, 1977

February 5, 1977, marked a major crackdown by the KGB against the members of the three-month-old Ukrainian Public Group to Promote the Implementation of the Helsinki Accords. That day in Kyiv, according to wire service reports, Mykola Rudenko, the group's leader, and Oleksa Tykhy, a member, were arrested.

Other group members also were harassed by the secret police. Mr. Rudenko's wife, Raisa, was stripped as an act of humiliation while the KGB searched their home. Also during the search of the Rudenkos' apartment, Oleksander Berdnyk, a member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, walked into the premises and was bodily searched by the KGB. Especially brutal searches were conducted in the apartments of Oksana Meshko and Nina Strokata-Karavansky.

Immediately upon receiving news of the arrests, the Washington Helsinki Guarantees for Ukraine Committee, headed by Dr. Andrew Zwarun, sent letters and telegrams to heads of governments that signed the 1975 Helsinki Accords, and congressmen and parliamentarians, asking them "to intercede now in behalf of Ukrainian human rights activists by protesting arrests and repressions which violate the spirit and letter of Helsinki."

Source: "Major Arrests Conducted in Kiev; Rudenko, Tykhy Incarcerated; Other Kiev Group Members Harassed," The Ukrainian Weekly, February 13, 1977, No. 35.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, February 4, 2001, No. 5, Vol. LXIX

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