GENERAL POGROM OF THE LVIV DISSIDENT CELL (1972–1973)

The purpose of the article is a comprehensive analysis of the detentions and trials carried out by the bodies of the Committee for State Security (KGB) against the Lviv dissident cell in 1972-1973.The methodological basis of the article was the principles of objectivity, historicism, comprehensiveness, continuity, as well as a complex of general scientific and special historical methods.The work used methods of analysis and synthesis, problem-chronological, retrospective, and the method of comparison and comparison of information from various sources.The basis of the source database is the report notes of the State Security Committee (KGB) addressed to the top party leadership of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (Ukrainian SSR) from the Sectoral State Archive of the Security Service of Ukraine (SSA SSU).The authors conclude that the wave of arrests in 1972, particularly in Lviv, was one of the most brutal blows inflicted by the Soviet authorities on the Ukrainian national liberation movement of the second half of the 20th century.The KGB carried out a carefully planned operation, because of which the most active representatives of the dissident intelligentsia in Lviv were repressed -Vyacheslav Chornovil, Iryna and Ihor Kalynets, Ivan Hel, Mykhailo Osadchy, Stefania Shabatura.Because of the government-directed judicial massacres between July 1972 and April 1973, they received long terms of imprisonment and exile, which aimed not only at their physical isolation but also at intimidating society.Attempts by relatives and friends of prisoners to organize isolated protests during the trials yielded no results and were met with a harsh reaction from the KGB.Despite the significant scale of repression, national resistance did not disappear.Some activists who managed to avoid arrest or were released after serving their sentences continued the fight for human rights by going abroad, where they became the voice of Ukrainian resistance at the international level.Thanks to their activities, the world learned about political persecution in the USSR.Thus, the repressions could not destroy the struggle for national identity and human rights, but on the contrary, they strengthened the idea of Ukrainian independence, which was later reflected in the restoration of statehood in 1991.