Lodzynska, Olena O.
Olena Oleksandrivna Lodzynska is the main curator of the Sixtiers Museum in Kyiv. She is a historian, born in 1962, thus she remembers the general political and social climate in which the sixtiers were operating. She was herself involved in oppositionist activity, partly due to a run in with the Soviet authorities in 1982. Both she and her husband were dismissed from university; he for conduct unbecoming a Soviet student (code then for “nationalism”) and she for being married to him. He was implicated in the involvement in an underground organization, uncovered by the state security services. Lodzynska noted that this, in principle, amounted to a group of students getting together informally to discuss interesting topics, nothing more than that. Nonetheless, he was only able to complete his degree after independence. Lodzynska was able to return to her studies after one year, as an official reprimand for political infractions was never written about her. They became members of RUKH—organized first as a civic-political organization called the People's Movement of Ukraine for Reconstruction during Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika—and then registered as a political party in 1990, to participate in the first semi-competitive elections held in the Soviet Union. When asked about her relationship to the Soviet regime, Lodzynska responded that it was negative, and that to expound beyond that would take us on a very long detour.
Last edited on: 2017-05-18 18:42:00