Zenovii Mykhailovych Krasivskyi was born on 12 November 1929, in the village of Witwica, in the Stanisławów Voivodeship of the Second Polish Republic (now Vytvytsia in Ukraine's Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast).
[1] During his time as a miner, he sustained several injuries, including being buried under rubble and injured in an explosion, and as a result suffered damage to his spine and paralysis in his legs.
He began studying journalism at the University of Lviv in 1956, but was arrested in 1959 and accused of having pursued nationalist activities while in Karaganda.
According to a letter he wrote upon his entry to the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, he managed to avoid a trial and was allowed to return to Ukraine, as his invalid status meant he was no longer required to be a special settler.
He wrote for the UNF's journal, Freedom and Fatherland (Ukrainian: Воля і батківщина, romanized: Volia i batkivshchyna), and took up samvydav writing, creating the novel Baida and three poem collections between 1965 and 1966.
In the latter year, he also wrote "The Memorandum of the UNF to the 23rd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union", an open letter which condemned the 1965–1966 Ukrainian purge and the Russification of Ukraine, and called for the release of special settlers.
[6] Other open letters were written to various government organs, including one to high-ranking leaders of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (First Secretary Petro Shelest, Chairman of the Council of Ministers Volodymyr Shcherbytsky, and Chairman of the Supreme Soviet Demyan Korotchenko) urging them to declare Ukraine as a sovereign entity.
[4] Krasivskyi initially spent his sentence at Vladimir Central Prison, and continued to write poems in this time period.
Iris Akahoshi, an American member of Amnesty International, took particular interest in Krasivskyi's case, and began exchanging letters with him.