Gudziak said other university staffers had received calls from the state security services asking about his activities.

“These are the occurrences I know about — I’m also certain some UCU colleagues are under pressure to collaborate with the security services out of fear,” said Gudziak, whose university has around 1,400 full- and part-time students.

In a May 2010 memorandum, Gudziak said he had identified “planned actions to circumscribe civic freedom, democracy and the basic dignity of human beings” in Ukraine, adding that he had “reliable testimony and audible evidence” of efforts to intimidate staff and students at the Catholic university, using “methods well-known in Soviet times.”

The claim was rejected by the security services director, Valeriy Khoroshkovsky, and criticized by Bishop Marian Buczek, secretary-general of Ukraine’s Catholic bishops’ conference, who said two months later that there was no evidence of an anti-Catholic campaign.

Gudziak said current government reforms were undermining university autonomy in Ukraine, adding that he believed other rectors had received “visits” from the security services and were afraid to speak out. “In view of these developments, one has to ask whether the Orange Revolution has been ineffective,” the priest said, in a reference to December 2004 mass protests that helped bring a pro-Western president, Viktor Yushchenko, to power.