ISSUES OF UKRAINIAN NATIONHOOD IN THE CREATIVE HERITAGE OF VASYL SICHKO ACCORDING TO ARCHIVAL MATERIALS OF LVIV STATE SECURITY COMMITTEE (KGB) INVESTIGATION OF 1979

Abstract

The Soviet regime, through radio, television, newspapers, magazines and other mass media, wanted to form in society the ideological guidelines necessary for the regime.The totalitarian system sought to control the development of culture through the introduction of strict censorship. However, in contrast, there appeared intellectual resistance formed of so-called dissidents. Most of the creative and scientific works of dissidents that were rejected or banned by the totalitarian regime were self-published. The appearance and spread of samizdat (self-published literature) was a kind of response to the monopoly of the Soviet regime in information policy. Therefore, samizdat was a popular method of creative self-expression.

In the given article Sichko's self-published works have been analyzed. The basic sources of the research are documents from the archives of the Security System of Ukraine in Lviv region as well as the memoirs of some members of Sichko family.

1. Sichko, like many other creative people in opposition to the Soviet regime, was pushed out of the information field. In his self-published works the author raised important issues of Ukrainian society: historical, socio-political and the one concerning human rights.He advocated respect for human rights, the protection of Ukrainian language and culture, and condemned total Russification. V. Sichko sharply criticized the Soviet regime, its punitive bodies and censorship.

The author of the article comes to the conclusion that in his works Vasyl Sichko covered socio-political, national-patriotic, historical and religious aspects. The creation and distribution of self-published literature was one of the important forms of dissident activity of V. Sichko.Only the arrest and imprisonment forced V. Sichko to stop his creative self-publishing activity, but did not break V. Sichko’s oppositional beliefs about the totalitarian Soviet regime.

Keywords: Vasyl Sichko, Petro Sichko, Stefaniia Sichko,  self-published, The Ukrainian Helsinki Group, censure, KGB, Soviet regime.