Mykola Ivanovych Matusevych was born on 19 July 1947 in the village of Matiushi [uk], in Ukraine's central Kyiv Oblast, to an agronomist father and a biology teacher mother.
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.
The charges were based on a March 1977 event in which Marynovych and Matusevych had disrupted a ceremony at the Kyiv Philharmonic calling on those present to recite Shevchenko's Testament poem.
In response to the arrests and convictions, Matusevych and Marynovych, along with all other members of "Helsinki monitor" groups, were adopted as prisoners of conscience by human rights organisation Amnesty International.
[7] In 2023, he also was one of several signatories to an open letter urging for Jews and Ukrainians to unite against Russia after controversy erupted over a monument to soldiers of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS in Philadelphia.