Mykola Matusevych
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Mykola Matusevych | |
|---|---|
Микола Матусевич | |
| Born | 19 July 1947 Matiushi, Kyiv Oblast, USSR (now Ukraine) |
| Alma mater | Kyiv State University (expelled) |
| Organization | Ukrainian Helsinki Group |
| Movement | Soviet dissidents |
| Criminal status | Pardoned 1988 |
| Criminal charge | Anti-Soviet agitation, hooliganism |
| Penalty | 7 years' special regime, 5 years' internal exile |
Mykola Ivanovych Matusevych (Ukrainian: Микола Іванович Матусевич; born 19 July 1947) is a Ukrainian human rights activist and former Soviet dissident who was a founding member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group. For his human rights activities, he was sentenced to seven years of corrective labour and five years of internal exile in 1978, and listed as a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International.
Mykola Ivanovych Matusevych was born on 19 July 1947 in the village of Matiushi, in Ukraine's central Kyiv Oblast, to an agronomist father and a biology teacher mother. From an early age, he expressed interest in dissident activities; he was expelled from Kyiv State University in his fourth year of study for laying flowers at the monument to Taras Shevchenko in Kyiv and supporting arrested dissidents, though the official reason for his expulsion was due to a "lack of progress".[1] Following his expulsion, Matusevych worked as a historian[2] and editor of medical literature journals.[1]
Following the signing of the Helsinki Accords, human rights activists in the Soviet Union sought to capitalise on the (non-binding) agreement's provisions guaranteeing upholding human rights. After the formation of the Moscow Helsinki Group on 12 May 1976, Matusevych, along with nine others, co-founded the Ukrainian Helsinki Group on 9 November 1976, and Matusevych wrote most of the group's early documents and appeals. The group's founding was followed by a series of attacks and persecutions by the Soviet authorities, beginning with the arrests and trial of Mykola Rudenko and Oleksa Tykhy in February 1977. This was followed by the detention of Oles Berdnyk in mid-April 1977, but he was released after questioning.[3]
