[1] On 1 September 1965, Moroz was arrested after giving a talk at the pedagogical institute in which he argued that Ukraine should be recognised as a nation state, with the same status as Poland or Czechoslovakia.
As a punishment for complaining about conditions in the labour camp, he was transferred to Vladimir Prison in December 1966 and held there in solitary confinement for six months.
A practising Christian, Moroz risked arrest in May 1970 by tape-recording a mass in a village church which was scheduled to be turned into a museum, but was protected from the police by local inhabitants.
[4] The severity of the sentence roused international protests, in a large part because of his wife Raisa, who passed information about his treatment to foreign correspondents, and wrote letters appealing for support from abroad, despite threats from the KGB that she, too, might be arrested.
[1] In April 1979, two months before his term in a labour camp was due to end, Moroz was removed and put on a plane to Kennedy airport, New York, with four other political prisoners who were being exchanged for two former United Nations employees convicted of spying.
When his plane arrived at Winnipeg airport 2,000 people were there to greet him, and the deputy mayor, William Norrie, declared that 11 June was ‘Valentyn Moroz Day’.