Carols against the USSR: the tragic 1972 Vertep and KGB’s mass arrests of Ukrainian dissidents (photos)

12 January is marked in Ukraine as the day of the Ukrainian political prisoner. On this day in 1972, the KGB began massively arresting Ukrainian Shistdesyatnyky, (“Sixtiers”), a literary movement that arose in protest to the Soviet Union’s destruction of everything Ukrainian, as they were enacting a Vertep, or Ukrainian Christmas caroling performance.