This edition is compiled on the basis of Petro Hryhorenko’s personal archive preserved at the Museum of the Sixtiers Movement, as well as excerpts from his memoirs and public speeches published in Svoboda, a Ukrainian diaspora newspaper. The book presents the life and worldview of one of the most prominent figures of Ukraine’s human rights movement in the twentieth century.

At the heart of the narrative is the steady and irreversible evolution of Hryhorenko’s beliefs — from a Soviet citizen shaped by a totalitarian system and faith in revolutionary ideals, to an uncompromising defender of human rights and Ukrainian statehood. For his activism he was removed from teaching, stripped of his rank as a general and all state awards, subjected to arrests and imprisonment in psychiatric hospitals, and eventually deprived of Soviet citizenship.

In exile, as the foreign representative of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, Petro Hryhorenko demonstrated remarkable public activity, informing the world about Soviet repression, the persecution of political prisoners, and Ukraine’s enduring struggle for independence.

The book is intended for all readers interested in the history of the dissident movement and its outstanding personalities.

Second edition.

Length: 288 pages. Hardcover.