1965
April
The head of the KGB of the Ukrainian SSR V. Nikitchenko informs the CC CPU about unpublished works of the poet Vasyl Symonenko, which are being circulated among young people.
30 July
The Russian writer Mikhail Sholokhov sends Brezhnev a letter about his impending Nobel Prize for literature. He writes: “Just in case, I would like to know what position the Presidium of the CC will take if this prize is awarded to me (notwithstanding the class convictions of the Swedish committee), and what the CC advises me to do?” The Politburo advises him to accept the prize.
8 August
An unauthorized meeting to unveil a monument to the national poet of Ukraine Taras Shevchenko is held in the village of Sheshory in Ivano-Frankivsk oblast. Among the participants are Taras, the son of the great Ukrainian writer Ivan Franko, the writer Yu. Nazarenko, the journalist V'iacheslav Chornovil, and the folkloric ensemble “Homin.”
27 August
Permission is granted for the publication of the book 1941. 22 June by Alexander Nekrich, who is the first Soviet historian to make a partial analysis of the reasons for the Soviet Union's failures in the early stages of the war against the Germans. Nekrich's book is soon removed from libraries, and the author is expelled from the party and subsequently forced to emigrate.
4 September
The premiere of Sergei Paradzhanov's film “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors” is screened at the Kyiv cinema “Ukraina.” During the premiere a meeting takes place to protest the new wave of political repressions aimed at the Ukrainian intelligentsia. Among those present are Ivan Dziuba, V'iacheslav Chornovil, Yurii Badzio, Vasyl Stus, Mykhailyna Kotsiubynska, and others.
8 September
The Russian literary scholar and writer Andrei Siniavsky (pseudonym: Abram Tertz) is arrested for publishing his works in the West.
16 September
Amendments easing the persecution of dissidents are made to the Criminal Code of the USSR.
5 December
A small, unofficial demonstration, the first in twenty years, is held on Pushkin Square in Moscow on Soviet Constitution Day. The demonstrators, including Alexander Yesenin-Volpin, Yurii Titov, Yurii Galanskov, and others, carry placards proclaiming: “We demand an open trial for Siniavsky and Daniel!” “Respect the Soviet Constitution!” Their placards are confiscated, and more than twenty demonstrators are briefly detained and then released.
11 December
The head of the KGB of the USSR Vladimir Semichas-tny sends the CC CPSU a secret note “on the anti-Soviet ac-tivity of the creative intelligentsia.” Among the films that are labeled anti-Soviet are “33” (an attempt to “discredit everything, including the cosmonaut's flight”), “Idu na gro-zu” [I'm Heading into the Storm] (the heroes are “depra-ved”), and “Na odnoi planete” [On One Planet] (the film depicts Lenin as a “tired intellectual” rather than a hero). Attention is focused on the fact that the actors playing the role of Lenin also act in other roles (“Today they play Lenin, tomorrow a merchant, after tomorrow a little drunkard…”).
16 December
Without prior agreement with the CPU leadership, Pravda, the organ of the CC CPSU, publishes an article by V. Malanchuk, the secretary of the Lviv oblast committee of the CPU, entitled “The Might of a Great Friendship.” His arti-cle brands “recidivists of Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism.”
December
Ivan Dziuba's work “Internationalism or Russificati-on?” is published in the underground samvydav [“self-publishing,” samizdat] press. The book analyzes the na-tional-cultural policies in Ukraine under Communist rule.
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Brezhnev's rule is associated with the neo-Stalinist line, the intensification of Russification among the non-Russian nations of the imperialistic USSR, an aggressive foreign policy (particularly the crushing of protests in the countries of the “socialist camp,” including the “Prague Spring” of 1968, the risky war in Afghanistan in 1979), which was based on a frenzied escalation of the arms race that was ruinous to the economy, as well support for “revolutionary” regimes in Third World countries. Under Brezhnev's rule there was a marked increase in crackdowns on intellectual freedom and human rights (including the use of psychiatric terror, arrests, and deportations of dissidents). During this period the KGB organs established total control over society, and the moral degradation of the party-state nomenklatura became entrenched. An attempt was also made to create a cult of personality centered on Brezhnev.
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1966
10 February
The trial of Siniavsky and Daniel, whose works were illegally published in the West, opens in a Moscow oblast court. After being convicted on charges of “anti-Soviet activity,” Siniavsky is sentenced to seven years' imprison-ment and Daniel to five.
14 February
Distinguished scientific and cultural figures, including Petro Kapytsia, Andrei Sakharov, Igor Tamm, Valentin Kataiev, Viktor Nekrasov, Vladimir Tendriakov, Kornei Chukovsky, Oleg Yefremov, Maia Plisetskaia, and many others sign a letter to Brezhnev, emphasizing the inadmissi-bility of Stalin's rehabilitation.
24-25 March
A closed trial takes place in Lviv in the case of Ivan Hel, accused of anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda. He is sentenced to three years' imprisonment in a strict-regime corrective-labor camp.
30 April
From the roof of the dormitory at the Kyiv Institute of National Economy a student named H. Moskalenko and the worker V. Kuksa hang the yellow-and-blue Ukrainian flag embroidered with the slogan: “Ukraine has not yet perished, she has not been killed yet.”
25 May
The writer, literary scholar, and human rights defender Lidia Chukovskaia writes an open letter to Mikhail Sholokhov, protesting his call to punish the dissident writers Siniavsky and Daniel not on the basis of current legislation but the “revolutionary consciousness of the law.” This call forms part of Sholokhov's speech at the XXIII Party Congress.
29 September
Ivan Dziuba speaks at a meeting in Babyn Yar on the 25th anniversary of the destruction of Jews in this Kyiv ravine.
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