Vasyl Stus

On 4 September 1965, during the premiere of Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors at the Ukraina Cinema in Kyiv, the audience was shaken by a public statement about the secret arrests of Ukrainian intellectuals. Amid the tense silence, 27-year-old poet Vasyl Stus rose from his seat and cried out: “Those who oppose tyranny—stand up!” His words shattered the illusion of Soviet tranquillity. The frightened audience was divided: some people rose from their seats, while KGB officers recorded the identities of everyone who dared to demonstrate their dignity.

The price of this cry was high. The Soviet system promptly expelled Stus from the postgraduate programme at the Institute of Literature, deprived him of employment and closed the doors of publishing houses to him. For decades, the totalitarian regime sought to destroy the Ukrainian language, forcing it out of cities, universities and government institutions. Ukrainians were made to feel inferior because of their roots, while their native language was disparaged as “peasant speech.” Russian, meanwhile, was artificially elevated as the sole marker of education and elite status.

Stus paid for his refusal to submit with years of imprisonment. In 1980, he was convicted for the second time and sentenced to ten years in a special-regime labour camp followed by five years of exile. During the night of 3–4 September 1985, Vasyl Stus died in a punishment cell at the Perm-36 camp in Russia while undertaking an indefinite dry hunger strike. Exactly twenty years after the protest at the cinema, 4 September became the fatal point at which uncompromising human dignity and the cruelty of the totalitarian regime intersected.

Decades have passed, yet Russia’s repressive system continues to employ the same methods. In Russia, Alexei Moskalyov was persecuted and imprisoned after his 12-year-old daughter drew an anti-war picture. In occupied Berdiansk, a 73-year-old pensioner was sentenced to 14 years in prison for transferring 1,500 hryvnias in support of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. In its penal colonies, Russia systematically tortures civilian hostages and executes Ukrainian prisoners of war.

The prison cells of 1985 and today’s Russian torture chambers are links in the same totalitarian chain. Russia has waged war against Ukraine since 2014 and launched its full-scale invasion in 2022. The resilience and daily struggle of the Ukrainian people are breaking this cycle of violence, preventing imperial Moscow from bringing back the shameful era of Soviet rule and dictatorship.