30 years ago the heart of the legendary political prisoner and nationalist Mykhaylo Soroka stopped beating. His friend Mykhaylo Goryn recollects about him.

20 years ago, on 2 October 1980 a great Ukrainian poet Vasyl Stus was condemned to 10 years of concentration camps and 5 years of exile. 15 years ago, 5 September 1985 Stus tragically died in Perm special political colony No. 36. We publish today some materials from our archives: a fragment from Mikhail Heyfetz’ book ‘Mesto i vremia’ (‘Place and time’)about Stus’ first term, the information about the trial of 1980, fragments from Andrey Sakharov’s appeal in protection of Stus. All these materials are published in Ukraine for the first time.

On 26 July 1931 Ivan Dziuba, one of the greatest modern figures of Ukrainian culture, critic, specialist in literary studies, the most well-known author of the Ukrainian samizdat was born. We offer the reader his short biography.

In May 1998 a conference was held in Moscow dedicated to the 30-year anniversary of writing by Sakharov his fundamental work ‘Reflections on progress, peaceful coexistence and intellectual freedom’. We publish one of the reports at this conference.