Political views of the representatives of the Dissident Human Rights Movement (M. Rudenko, P. Hryhorenko and L. Pliushch)

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POLITICAL VIEWS OF THE REPRESENTATIVES OF THE DISSIDENT HUMAN RIGHTS MOVEMENT (M. RUDENKO, P. HRYHORENKO AND L. PLIUSHCH)

Tetiana Reva

National Academy of Government

Managerial Staff of Culture and Arts

The article is devoted to the development of the Dissident Movement in Ukraine. The political demands of the Ukrainian Dissident Human Rights Movement are considered. The political views of the representatives (P. Hryhorenko, M. Rudenko and L. Pliushch) of the Ukrainian Dissident Human Rights Movement are analysed.

During the 20th century, there were many human rights movements in the world. Anti-Colonial Movement (the Congo Reform Association), anti-war movements (e.g., the Civil Rights Movement against the Vietnam War) and Nonviolent Movement of Martin Luther King, Jr. were among them. The Dissident Human Rights Movement in the Soviet Union was one of the biggest.

Having minimal opportunity to openly criticize the official authorities and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the most active and progressive people united into civic associations and movements that called for reforms of the Soviet state. Those groups appeared in the period of stagnation of the Soviet society which covered all the fields of the national administration. At that time, the movements to protect human rights and freedoms acquired world-wide scale. Dissidents also listed their fundamental demands focused on extending and guaranteeing human rights, in particular, civil and religious freedoms. All those positions were opposite to the Marxism-Leninism ideology of the totalitarian Communist regimes.

There were many dissident movements in Ukraine in the 1970s, which can be divided into four groups: cultural and educational, national liberation, religious, and human rights ones. The cultural and educational dissidents group was represented by artists (A. Horska, H. Yakutovych), poets (V. Stus, I. Svitlychnyi, V. Symonenko, M. Vingranovskyi), and directors (L. Osyka, S. Paradzhanov, L. Taniuk). The nationalists (V. Chornovil, L. Lukianenko, the Horyn brothers) presented the national liberation one. Religious dissidents fought for freedom of conscience. V. Romaniuk, Y. Slipyi, G. Vins, etc. were among them. The human rights movement called for establishing democratic values though the reforms of the state regime. Its famous representatives were P. Hryhorenko, M. Rudenko, and L. Pliushch. In this article, we focus on them personally and on their political demands in particular.

The Ukrainian Dissident Human Rights Movement included five groups of political views that regarded the following: the criticism of Stalinism, the protection of human rights and freedoms, the rehabilitation of the nations, the political system of the Soviet Union, and the Ukrainian opposition. The Human Rights Movement united universal democratic values, such as pluralism, the principle of the division of power, the idea of people's sovereignty, the freedom of expression, and the defence of the rights of national minorities. The people wanted to build a democratic, legal and social state that would be based on different left-wing political doctrines such as Leninism, Marxism, and Socialism were considered the main representatives of this trend.

By researching the political views of the representatives of the Human Rights Movement, one can evaluate the importance of democratic values for the development of Ukraine. The progressive ideas of the dissidents concerning reforms of the Soviet society, openness, perspectives of the society of equal opportunities, etc. based on the social democracy.

Key words: the Ukrainian Dissident Movement, the Human Rights Movement, democracy, socialism, criticism of Stalinism, humanism, rehabilitation of nations dissident political ukrainian human right

In the beginning of the 21^st century, the political community started a new discourse on the democratic values and multiculturalism. It became a result of diverse migration and antidemocratic processes that had happened in the world. Among them are military conflicts, economic crises and terrorism. All these processes have actualized such problem as protection of fundamental human rights and freedoms that represent the basis of legal, social, democratic, and civil society. Current political and social situation in Ukraine makes us guarantee against any kind of discrimination.

During the 20^th century, there were many human rights movements in the world. AntiColonial Movement (the Congo Reform Association), anti-war movements (e.g., the Civil Rights Movement against the Vietnam War) and Nonviolent Movement of Martin Luther King, Jr. were among them. The Dissident Human Rights Movement in the Soviet Union was one of the biggest. In the Soviet period, the researchers did not have any opportunity to analyse either that phenomenon itself or the dissident progressive ideas as a whole. Today, the main task of the Ukrainian scientists is to restore our national memory and political traditions.

The issue on the Dissident Movement is analysed by many foreign researchers, e.g. L. Alekseeva, A. Bezborodov, K. C. Farmer, V. Kravchenko, A. Podrabynek, A. Shubin, S. Vesse, R. van Voren, etc. The variety of works authored by the Ukrainian historians, political scientists, philosophers are devoted to this topic. The Ukrainian Dissident Human Rights Movement is researched by О. Bazhan, V. Derevynskyi, І. Dobranska, H. Kasianov, R. Korohorodskyi, V. Lytvyn, V. Morozov, A. Rusnachenko, L. Vedmid, and others. Inasmuch as, the most important scientific resource of information is memoirs of famous participants of the Ukrainian Dissident Movement. We can list such names as V. Chornovil, S. Hluzman, P. Hryhorenko, L. Pliushch, M. Rudenko, D. Shumuk, Y. Sverstiuk, etc. However, the political views of human rights dissidents are still poorly researched comparing to other dissidents ' attitudes.

The purpose of this article is to analyse the political views of the representatives of the Dissident Human Rights Movement Mykola Rudenko, Petro Hryhorenko, and Leonid Pliushch.

In accordance with the scientific approach, a dissident is a person who openly tells about their political and religious views to be opposite to the official ideology or understanding [1, p. 676].

Having minimal opportunity to openly criticize the official authorities and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the most active and progressive people united into civic associations and movements that called for reforms of the Soviet state. Those groups appeared in the period of stagnation of the Soviet society which covered all the fields of the national administration. At that time, the movements to protect human rights and freedoms acquired world-wide scale. Dissidents also listed their fundamental demands focused on extending and guaranteeing human rights, in particular, civil and religious freedoms. All those positions were opposite to the Marxism-Leninism ideology of the totalitarian Communist regimes.

T. Lugashina distinguishes three stages of the development of the Ukrainian Dissident Movement:

1) the end of the 1950-s - the beginning of the 1960-s: the protests were anonymous; dissidents used national symbols and postcards;

2) the second half of the 1960-s - 1970-s: dissidents created the forms of legal nonviolent political struggle;

3) 1976-1978: the period is associated with the signature of the Helsinki Final Act (1975) by the Soviet Union [2, p. 104].

The Ukrainian dissident movements can be divided into four groups: cultural and educational, national liberation, religious, and human rights ones. The cultural and educational dissidents group was represented by artists (A. Horska, H. Yakutovych), poets (V. Stus, I. Svitlychnyi, V. Symonenko, M. Vingranovskyi), and directors (L. Osyka, S. Paradzhanov, L. Taniuk). The nationalists (V. Chornovil, L. Lukianenko, the Horyn brothers) presented the national liberation one. Religious dissidents fought for freedom of conscience. V. Romaniuk, Y. Slipyi, G. Vins, etc. were among them. The human rights movement called for establishing democratic values though the reforms of the state regime. Its famous representatives were P. Hryhorenko, M. Rudenko, and L. Pliushch. In this article, we focus on them personally and on their political demands in particular.

Mykola Rudenko was the first person who openly stated the crimes and tragic mistakes of Stalinism. He was the Soviet writer, poet and journalist whereas we know him as one of the leaders of the Ukrainian Dissident Movement and the head of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group.

After the 20^th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the dissident wrote the letter to N. Khrushchev, the First Secretary of the CPSU. In his letter, he declared his support to Khrushchev's policy destroying the Stalin Cult. M. Rudenko determined the main reason of Stalin success as the slave psychology of the Soviet people. Their achievements were proclaimed as the results of tsars' and generals' work. The dissident analysed the main reasons of Stalinism, among which he named the absence of the electoral process, the absence of regulation of the relationships between the state institutions, the political party caucuses, the lack of deputies' responsibility before people, and super-bureaucracy. The absence of the electoral process meant the discrimination of elections at all the levels. During the Stalin period, the elections were completely formal because people did not have any choice: the authorities proposed only one candidate. The researcher stated that a bureaucrat had become the machine to strengthen Stalin's absolutism. The absence of the properly fixed relations between the state authorities and the apparatus of the Communist Party led to their merging. The same situation was observed while using the imperative mandate in the USSR. People became the servants of the state's bureaucrats [3, p. 277].

In his work `Economic Monologues: Sketches on the Disastrous Mistake', M. Rudenko attempted to synthesize provisions of Marxism, statements of the Physiocratic School of Francis Quesnay, and Volodymyr Vernadsky noosphere concept. The writer underlined that the fundamental basis of any development was energy of the nature. So, people should accept it as the most important value. In his opinion, this approach to economic system and social development can influence the national future.

M. Rudenko analysed Marxism-Leninism, too. He strongly criticized the ideas of Marx and Engels stating that they went wrong with their analysis of a human being. The political scientists thought that the main criteria of a value had to be human work. The dissident stated that the criteria of a value were connected with the nature because everything depended on it. He explained the destructive policy of the Soviet Union by its choice of Marx's criteria. The theory of A. Smith, a Scottish economist, sacrificed millions lives of the Soviet people because of the wrong criteria, too.

M. Rudenko underlined that Stalinists had given an inaccurate definition of the Communism. In their conception, the adjective `common' was replaced by the noun `state'. The scientist thought that the best way for Communism and the Soviet well-developed economics was Communist Capitalism. The cooperative capital represented by Lenin's New Economic Policy should have become its main basis [5, p. 109].

In addition, M. Rudenko stated that the USSR had many problems in the economic and social spheres. The reason was the rapid development of the heavy and mineral industries. Those industries hardly damaged nature and people, as they did not produce or create anything but used the natural resources only. M. Rudenko proposed some reforms to save the Soviet economy. In his opinion, they should have started in the agricultural sphere in order to avoid huge reduction in productivity at plants and factories. Finally, his reforms included the following steps:

1) to create free market for the agricultural production;

2) to grant people the right to leave collective farms without any permission;

3) to provide people with the land parcels through fair casting of lots;

4) to give people the right to hand over land to private ownership in case they leave the collective farm;

5) to define land as the main criteria;

6) to declare all the objects (shops, restaurants, cafes, etc.) related to agriculture to be privately operated [5, p. 140].

M. Rudenko also presented his own vision of the future reformation of the Soviet political system and called for the following changes:

1) to introduce secret voting in order to avoid any manipulations of people's minds;

2) to increase a number of candidates in the voting bulletins;

3) to increase a number of political parties putting them under competition that might allow developing the society and the state;

4) to transfer the education system from repetition of `learning axioms' to their explanation and understanding. Such changes could help developing critical thinking of the members of political parties and of all the society in general [3, p. 276].

Petro Hryhorenko, the Soviet general, also criticized Stalinism because of its recline to the basics of Marxism-Leninism. In his `To the Participants of the Budapest Meeting of 13 February 1968', he noted that Stalinism was the wrong interpretation of the classical Communism. He explained why the Soviet reality was far away from the communist ideals. First of all, Stalin created the regime that was not more efficient than Capitalism. That's why there was no use in it. Secondly, the Soviet regime did not destroy the institution of the state. It improved the mechanism to oppress people, instead. Thirdly, democracy was ruined. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union transformed into the political satellite of Stalin. P. Hryhorenko wrote that the idea of building the ideal society, dreamt by the famous world philosophers, was handed to the `pontiffs of Communism' who acted behind the closed doors [4, p. 180]. They presented all the obtained results as the best achievements of the human genius. To save the Communism, the dissident proposed the following measures:

1) the revision of the main political mistakes of the past;

2) the critical analysis of the Communist Party and its members' activities;

3) the reformation of the policy of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union as the antisocialist one to be opposite to ideals of Marxism and Leninism;

4) the international nature of the Party discussions. All the discussions had to be highlighted. People should have had free access to the materials, Communist international press and critical remarks;

5) the implementation of the provisions of the Constitution of the USSR within the Soviet society and state institutions. The main problem was a fictive nature of the Soviet human rights;

6) the idea of internationalism should have been the most important principle of the development of the civil democratic socialist society [4, p. 190].

P. Hryhorenko also analysed the Soviet state system. His work `Revisited the State Independence and Relations between the Peoples of the USSR' is devoted to this problem. The dissident thought that the Soviet Union was the successor of the Russian colonial empire. Therefore, the USSR had replaced the colonies by the Soviet republics and had been ruled by the `nobles' from the Communist Party. So, he stated that the Soviet Union was the partocratical colonial empire of the 20^th century [7, p. 92] where the republics had no rights. To save the future of the USSR, he proposed to transform the state organization into the confederation. Each country should have had the right to form its domestic and foreign policy and the possibility to secede from the Soviet Union at any time. He underlined that the European Economic Community should become an example of such state organization [7, p. 96].

P. Hryhorenko thought that the fight for fundamental human rights and freedoms laid the foundation of the Dissident Movement in the USSR. The movement against the illegal state repressions of religious organizations and the movement of the peoples deported by Stalin were its predecessors [8, p. 62]. Later, those two movements united into the Universal Dissident

Movement. It became the response to the Helsinki Final Act of 1975 that led to the establishment of many human rights national groups in the republics of the Soviet Union.

P. Hryhorenko also paid great attention to the problem of `small peoples' and took part in their movements. He remarked that the Western countries cherished illusions about the equality and liquidation of any kind of national discrimination. The main reason for that was the Soviet policy towards the national movements. The authorities eliminated every attempt to build national identity. Instead, the issue on `small peoples' was still unsolved. They were represented by the Germans, Koreans, Chechens, etc. The problem of the Crimean Tatars was one of the most difficult. After the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the USSR No. 493 `On the Citizens of Tatar Descent who Live in Crimea' of 5 September 1967 was adopted, the Crimean Tatars Movement began rapidly developing. In 1968, they made an attempt to organize the meeting in the town of Chirchik (Uzbekistan) that resulted in the mass arrests.

In his article `Who Are the Criminals?', P. Hryhorenko criticized the policy of the USSR regarding the `small peoples'. He underlined that it was a kind of genocide started by the two dictators of the 20^th century, namely Hitler and Stalin. The main difference between their rules was the scale of tragedy. Hitler set up his terrible experiment on a huge Jewish nation, whereas Stalin started his policy from the `small peoples'. The nations had to live in the special places called reservations. The USSR policy towards national movements had negative and positive tendencies. The positive one was connected with the justice rendered while considering the Crimean Tatars issue, and the negative tendency concerned repressions of the Crimean Tatars national activists. In the beginning of the 1960-s, the first tendency was mostly obvious, however it was changed by the second one in 1967 [8, p. 240].

As well as the other representatives of the Ukrainian Dissident Movement (V. Chornovil, P. Hryhorenko, M. Rudenko, Y. Sverstiuk), a mathematician and writer Leonid Pliushch paid attention to a great state bureaucracy that obstructed the Soviet democratic development. He underlined that the bureaucrats were the servants of the abstract `capital'. It meant that the state shared all its profit with those people.

In general, Pliushch's political conception was the synthesis of socialist ideas, humanism and social psychoanalysis. He supported the idea of building the `highly rationalized socialist society' that was possible under the democratic regime and adherence to ethics. The scientist criticized the political system of the USSR. He had negative attitude to the cult of personality and its identification with the state. In his opinion, the Soviet state was an `abstract capitalist', a monopolist created by the implementation of the policies of nationalization and collectivization. He underlined that the communists did not stop exploiting people. Moreover, the state had long since become the main exploiter of the citizens. He made the conclusion that the Soviet Union was the state with the capitalist society [6, p. 79].

L. Pliushch stated that the USSR state regime could have been determined as the ideocracy that turned into the idolism. The first point meant the idealization of the communist ideas. The second one was the form of the cult of personality appeared within the society during the Stalin and Brezhnev periods.

L. Pliushch thought that the inequality of people was the most important feature of the Soviet domestic policy. Moreover, the authorities divided people into groups formed according to the national and social indicators. One could observe different means of discrimination incorporated into the policies of `small peoples' and `social classes'. In the social sphere, the dissident saw inequality in the authorities' attitude to villagers. People had not had passports up until the 1950-s, so they could not have travelled or gone anywhere abroad. They had to stay in their villages. The other marker was the privileged status of the members of the Central Apparatus of the Communist Party of the USSR. He underlined high standards of their lifestyles and identified that phenomenon as `micro-communism'. L. Pliushch declared it to be destructive, as most people could not afford even simple candies.

However, the main tragedy of the Soviet society was connected with the policy of `small peoples'. L. Pliushch said that the World War II had not eliminated such awful phenomenon as Antisemitism that could be defined in two ways. According to the classical definition, Antisemitism was the aggressive military policy of the state against the Jews. We could observe it during the rule of the Third Reich in Germany and in the 1950-s in the USSR. The dissident also proposed his own philosophical interpretation of Antisemitism. He considered it as the way of thinking about and the attitude to people. He tried to show that the Soviet Union policy towards different peoples was a form of antihumanism. The terror of the 1920-s - 1960-s, deportations of people (e.g., the Germans, Crimean Tatars, Koreans, Chechens, etc.), artificial hungers of 1932-1933 and 1947 were manifestations of the state Antisemitism. L. Pliushch stressed the personal responsibility for terrible crimes because to call the whole people criminals was ridiculous. For that reason, the USSR deportation policy was determined as the act of terrible state totalitarian regime. In his opinion, nobody could be accused and imprisoned only because of their nationality, ethnicity, social class or religion. So, he called such actions `genocide'. In his work `At the Carnival of History', he wrote that “Stalinism cannot be explained by any personal features of the leader, by any `objective reasons' as the isolation of the state and need to fight against any opposition. Stalinism is not a simple cult of the political leader. It is revival of the autocracy based on the class ideology and economics” [6, p. 182].

All in all, L. Pliushch paid attention to the tendency of the Russification of the non- Russian nations. It obstructed other republics from developing and made their people have a strong sense of being inferior.

In addition, L. Pliushch thought that the most dangerous leverage in the Soviet propaganda mechanism was the militarization of patriotism. It was represented by the intolerance to other nations and childish sports of the military nature such as `Zirnytsia'.

He also analysed the reasons, principles and results of the revolutions using the examples of the Christian Revolution, the Great French Revolution, and the October Revolution.

In spite of taking place during the different historical epochs, these revolutions had common features:

1. They erupted after the assumption of power by `technical' administration represented by different social classes - clericals (the Christian Revolution), the bourgeoisie (the Great French Revolution), and proletarians (the October Revolution).

2. Their leaders used terror against the opposition - inquisition, the Jacobins terror, and mass repressions of the 1920-s - 1940-s.

3. They had their own `quasi-morality' as a form of the pseudo-rational destruction (E. Fromm's `Escape from Freedom'): a state tortured people and represented its actions as justice, equality and freedom.

4. They created myths of the revolutions, legends about their events, and the simulacra of national heroes. In the USSR, for example, it was the myth of Pavlik Morozov [6, p. 208-209].

Based on A. de Tocqueville's idea of the society of aloof people (identified in his `L'Ancien Regime et la Revolution'), L. Pliushch emphasized that the Soviet Union was a sample of the greatest estrangement of the personality from the state, education, science, art, morality, ideology, church, and even from their nature.

Analysing the Ukrainian Human Rights Movement from the cultural point of view, L. Pliushch divided it into two trends. The first one was represented by the scientists exploring the culture. They usually were active people who researched the folklore and traditions. The second trend was entitled as the `khutoriany' or `halushnyky' because it was represented by the so- called `quasi-Ukrainians'. According to the political criteria, the researcher divided the Ukrainian Human Rights Movement into three groups: the patriots, the nationalists, and the chauvinists. The patriots loved their nation and respected others because they understood that the destiny of the nation depended on the destiny of the humanity as a whole. The nationalists focused on their national issues and ignored any social problems. The chauvinists supported the aggressive policy against the representatives of the other nations [6, p. 119-120].

Researching the prospects of the united democratic movement in the USSR, L. Pliushch defined three large obstacles being on the way to the liberal society, i.e. the Russian chauvinism, the Russian messianship, and the abstractive freedom. The Russian chauvinism was manifested within the discourse of internationalism. The Russian intellectuals understood it as the process of total Russification of other Soviet nations. The Russian messianship was meant as the unique mission of the Russians to unite all the nations of the USSR. The abstractive freedom was considered as the absence of connections between statements, practice and material needs of the society [6, p. 182].

Conclusions

Finally, the Ukrainian Dissident Human Rights Movement included five groups of political views that regarded the following: the criticism of Stalinism, the protection of human rights and freedoms, the rehabilitation of the nations, the political system of the Soviet Union, and the Ukrainian opposition. The Human Rights Movement united universal democratic values, such as pluralism, the principle of the division of power, the idea of people's sovereignty, the freedom of expression, and the defence of the rights of national minorities. The people wanted to build a democratic, legal and social state that would be based on different leftwing political doctrines such as Leninism, Marxism, and Socialism were considered the main representatives of this trend.

By researching the political views of the representatives of the Human Rights Movement, one can evaluate the importance of democratic values for the development of Ukraine. The progressive ideas of the dissidents concerning reforms of the Soviet society, openness, perspectives of the society of equal opportunities, etc. based on the social democracy. So, they help to understand the main aspects of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group activities and to fill up the gaps in the history of the Ukrainian political thought of the 20^th century.

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