DISSIDENT ACTIVITY OF OPANAS ZALYVAKHA (1960-1970s)

Abstract

The subject of the article is the main milestones, directions and stages of artist Opanas Ivanovych Zalyvakha’s participation in the Ukrainian national movement of 1960–1970s. The source base of the research is based on the documents of the Sectoral State Archive of the Security Service of Ukraine (SSA SSU) in Kyiv, samizdat materials, memoirs of O. Zalyvakha and his contemporaries. The methodological basis of the study is J. Seko’s concept of the coexistence of two paradigms in the Ukrainian resistance movement of the 1950s and 1980s – national liberation (underground organizations) and nationalization (legal activity of the intelligentsia among the Sixties). The author concludes that the artist O. Zalyvakha from the early 1960s to the first half of the 1970s was an active participant in the environment of the Sixties human rights within the nationalization paradigm of the Ukrainian national movement. In the first half of the 1960’s, the main forms of his dissident activity were the spread of samizdat, criticism of the Soviet government’s policy in the national question, the production of Ukrainian national symbols. Living in Ivano-Frankivsk, the artist managed to establish contacts with Kyiv and Lviv dissidents. The arrest and trial of O. Zalyvakha could not stop his dissident activities and did not change his opposition views on the official policy of the Soviet regime. In the Mordovian colonies he took part in Ukrainian cultural events, created ex-librises with national symbols, set up channels for the transfer of documents and materials from the colony to freedom, wrote a statement of protest to the Chairman of the Supreme Court of the USSR. Acquaintance and close relations with V. Moroz, M. Soroka, I. Gel, S. Karavansky, J. Lesiv significantly strengthened O. Zalyvakha’s views on the need for further struggle for the revival of Ukrainian national consciousness and culture. After his release, the most notable dissident action of the artist was his participation in the campaign to protect the convicted historian V. Moroz. Later, O. Zalyvakha, despite the fact that the KGB was taken into account as an object of the "Bloc" case, under the pressure of the regime almost completely stopped its activity in the direction of the resistance movement against the Soviet regime.

Keywords: Opanas Zalyvakha, Ukrainian dissident movement, Sixties human rights, samizdat, Soviet regime, Mordovian colonies.