The group’s frontrunners was hounded because of the KGB, particularly Valerii Fefelov and his awesome partner Ol’ga Zaitseva
One such opportunity was handicap recreations
Accompanying towards Step Group’s leaders exposed anybody else to help you similar security. Certainly one of my personal interviewees into the Kyiv, Ukraine, Valentina (an effective pseudonym), recalled fulfilling Fefelov about 1970s as he traveled on Ukrainian Soviet Republic. Government read of their conference, Valentina’s flat is appeared, and you can she are informed of the KGB agents to slice of all of the ties which have Fefelov with his associates. She performed so, and you can cautiously hid evidence of its meeting, together with numerous photographs Fefelov got considering their off other impairment legal rights activists. Immediately following being harassed consistently due to their issues and you may endangered which have arrest and you will trial, Fefelev and you will Zaitseva escaped this new Soviet Union to own Western Germany inside 1982.