Mykola Danylovych Rudenko (; 19 December 1920, Yurivka, Donets Governorate, Ukrainian SSR – 1 April 2004, Kyiv) was a Ukrainian poet, writer, philosopher, Soviet dissident, human rights activist and World War II veteran. He was the founder of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, and was twice arrested for his dissident activities. Biography Rudenko was seven years old when his father died in a mining accident. With his mother and two siblings, he worked on the family farm until they were forced to give their land during the process of collectivization. He was traumatized by the Holodomor, and remarked that it remained with him his entire life. He began to write as a child, and had some of his poems published by the local newspapers. His writing earned him a scholarship to Kyiv State University in 1939. He only studied for two months until he was called into the Red Army. During the war Rudenko sustained serious injuries. On 4 October 1941 near Leningrad he was wounded by an exploding bullet, which shattered bones of the pelvis and entered his spine. He spent over a year in the hospital. However, he was able to walk again. He was awarded the Order of the Red Star, of the Great Patriotic War 1st class, and six other medals. In 1946 Rudenko left the army, but did not return to university. He continued to write, and his first collection of poems was published in 1947 Works Upon publishing his first collection From the march in 1947, he was accepted into the Union of Writers of Ukraine. Rudenko was a member of the Communist party, and he worked a variety of jobs for various publishing companies. He wrote a wide variety of poetry and novels, some of his most famous being: The Last Sabre (1959), The Magic boomerang (1966), The Eagle's Ravine (1970), and the collection of poems about Holodomor The Cross in 1976. He also wrote works of philosophy. In The Energy of Progress (1974) he argued against the works of Karl Marx. In 1972 his works stopped being published in the Soviet Union. Dissident activity Rudenko stopped his cooperation with the Party in the late 1940s. He was convinced that De-Stalinization was not the answer, and that real problem was the Soviet ideology, not Joseph Stalin. Rudenko began to petition all levels of the Party about the need for reform, even sending a letter