Forty years ago, on April 30, 1979, Soviet political prisoner Valentyn Moroz spoke at a press conference at the Ukrainian National Association in Jersey City, N.J. He was one of five prisoners – Alexander Ginzburg, Georgi Vins (a Baptist Ukrainian minister) and two Jewish dissidents (Eduard Kuzentsov and Mark Dymshits) who had sought refuge in Israel – who were exchanged with the West for two Soviet employees (Valadik A. Enger and Rudolf Chernyayev) who were found guilty of espionage in the U.S. Moroz arrived in the U.S. on Friday, April 27.
Having survived 14 years of Soviet imprisonment for advocating Ukrainian independence, he described his time of forced feedings, beatings, solitary confinement for months in freezing cells and finally, an attempt by the authorities to have him declared insane.
Moroz said his survival was owed to his belief in Ukrainian independence and in God. “To be able to endure life in the Soviet Union you must be a strong personality and know what you want – I want an independent Ukraine,” the 43-year-old history teacher explained. The prisoner exchange, he said, would be a boon to thousands of dissidents imprisoned in the Soviet Union and would encourage others to speak out “because it decreases their chances of being thrown behind bars.”
Human rights campaigns in the U.S. and other Western countries were “obviously having tremendous success in pressuring Moscow” to release political prisoners, Moroz said at the press conference. Two weeks prior to his release, Moroz recounted that an official of the KGB said that many more dissidents would be released soon “in light of the Olympic Games” that were held in 1980 in Moscow.
Western nations, he said, had underestimated the strength of movements in Ukraine and the Baltic states for separation from the Soviet Union. He estimated that at the time 50 percent of Soviet political prisoners were Ukrainian.
A self-described “Ukrainian nationalist and a traditionalist conservative,” he said that as a youth he was a member of the Young Communist League and then graduated from Lviv University. He was arrested in 1965 at the age of 29 and was sentenced to four years for anti-Soviet agitation. Nine months after his release he was arrested again on the same charge and sentenced to 14 years in what he termed concentration camps.
He described the conditions of his imprisonment: “Imagine a small room with the temperature 33 degrees below zero Centigrade outside. There’s always frost on the walls inside, and you have nothing but a thin prison uniform. You can’t sleep because of the cold. After days of no sleep, hallucinations set in. The KGB doesn’t have to resort to physical torture to make a person do what he wants.”
Moroz recalled frequent beatings by guards and was set upon and stabbed severely by a non-political prisoner. In 1974, while at KGB Camp No.1 in the Mordovia Autonomous Republic southeast of Moscow, the authorities refused to transfer him to a facility in Ukraine. He then went on a hunger strike for nearly five months. Three years later, his notebooks were confiscated at the same prison camp, and he was denied family visitations. In response, he went on another hunger strike – this time for 68 days. During both hunger strikes, he said he was force-fed intravenously.
Following the second hunger strike, the authorities attempted to have Moroz declared insane. Moroz credited the protests by Ukrainian groups in the U.S. and Canada with saving him from being transferred to a prison for the insane.
The U.S. State Department was working to reunite Moroz with his family members in Ukraine – his wife, Raissa, 43; their son, Valentyn, 17; and his father Yakiv, 75. When he was released in 1979, Moroz was not able to communicate with his family.
Moroz lectured at Harvard University (1979-1980) before moving to Canada (1986-1991), and he returned to Ukraine in 1991. He died this year on April 16 at the age of 83. He was the author of approximately 30 books and before his death he continued to work in academia. He was interred on April 20 at the famous Lychakiv Cemetery in Lviv.
Source: “Moroz’s remarks get wide coverage in U.S. newspapers,” The Ukrainian Weekly, May 13, 1979.