Viacheslav Chornovil
Template:Short description Template:Family name hatnote Template:Use British English Template:Use dmy dates Script error: No such module "infobox".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". Viacheslav Maksymovych Chornovil (Template:Langx; 24 December 1937 – 25 March 1999) was a Ukrainian Soviet dissident, independence activist and politician who was the leader of the People's Movement of Ukraine from 1989 until his death in 1999. He spent fifteen years imprisoned by the Soviet government for his human rights activism, and was later a People's Deputy of Ukraine from 1990 to 1999, being among the first and most prominent anti-communists to hold public office in Ukraine. He twice ran for the presidency of Ukraine; the first time, in 1991, he was defeated by Leonid Kravchuk, while in 1999 he died in a car crash under disputed circumstances.
Chornovil was born in the village of Yerky, in central Ukraine, then under the Soviet Union. A member of the Komsomol from his time in university, he was affiliated with the counter-cultural Sixtier movement, and was removed from the Komsomol after speaking out against communism. His samvydav, which investigated violations of intellectuals arrested during a 1965–1966 Soviet crackdown, earned him Western acclaim, as well as a three-year prison sentence in Yakutia. Upon his release he returned to samvydav and began publishing The Ukrainian Herald, a predecessor to the modern Ukrainian independent press. He was again arrested in another purge of intellectuals in January 1972 and sentenced to between six and twelve years in prison.
Chornovil was described by fellow dissident Mikhail Kheifets as "general of the zeks" for his leadership of Ukrainian political prisoners, and recognised as a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International. He was allowed to return to Ukraine in 1985 as part of perestroika. Throughout the late 1980s he was active in organising a movement in opposition to Soviet rule over Ukraine. The movement later resulted in a popular revolution that toppled communism and led to Chornovil taking office as a member of Ukraine's parliament. He was one of the two main candidates in the 1991 Ukrainian presidential election, though he was defeated by former communist leader Leonid Kravchuk, and he actively promoted Ukrainian membership in the European Union and opposition to the emergence of the Ukrainian oligarchs.
Chornovil was a controversial figure in his lifetime, and the last months of his life were dominated by a split in his party, the People's Movement of Ukraine. His death in a car crash during the 1999 Ukrainian presidential election, during which he was a candidate in opposition to incumbent president Leonid Kuchma, has led to conspiracy theories and several years of investigations and trials, which have neither confirmed nor eliminated assassination as a possibility. He is a popular figure in present-day Ukraine, where he has twice been placed among the top ten most popular Ukrainians and is a symbol of the country's democracy and human rights activism as well as Pro-Europeanism.
Early life and education
Viacheslav Maksymovych Chornovil was born on 24 December 1937 in the village of Yerky, in what was then the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, to a family of teachers.Template:Sfn His father, Maksym Iosypovych Chornovil, was descended from Cossack nobility, while his mother was part of the aristocratic Tereshchenko family. In spite of the Soviet policy of state atheism and the Russification of Ukraine, the young Chornovil was raised in Ukrainian Christian traditions, with his family celebrating Ukrainian festivals in their home.Template:Sfn
Born and raised during the Great Purge, Viacheslav's childhood was dominated by Soviet repressions; his paternal uncle, Petro Iosypovych, was executed, while his father lived as a fugitive. The family regularly moved from village to village in an effort by Maksym to evade arrest.Template:Sfn During World War II and the German occupation of Ukraine the Chornovil family lived in the village of Husakove, where Viacheslav attended school. He later claimed in his autobiography that following the recapture of Husakove by the Soviet Union, his family was expelled from the village. They later lived in Vilkhovets, where they had lived prior to Husakove, and where Viacheslav later graduated from middle school with a gold medal in 1955.Template:Sfn
Chornovil enrolled at the Taras Shevchenko University of Kyiv the same year, studying to become a journalist. At this time he also joined the Komsomol, the youth division of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. During his time in Kyiv Chornovil first acquired an interest in politics, becoming a strong believer in friendship of peoples and internationalism. The negative response by Kyiv's Russophone population to those who spoke the Ukrainian language disgruntled him and left him with an increased consciousness of his status as a Ukrainian.Template:Sfn Like other young Soviet activists of the time, Chornovil was also influenced by the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956, in which Nikita Khrushchev denounced the rule of Joseph Stalin.Template:Sfn
Chornovil's noncomformist views brought him into conflict with the faculty's newspaper, which condemned him for "nonstandard thinking" in 1957.Template:Sfn As a result, he was forced to pause his studies and sent to work as an udarnikTemplate:Sfn constructing a blast furnace in the Donbas city of Zhdanov (today known as Mariupol). He also worked as an itinerant editor for the Kyiv Komsomolets newspaper. After a year, he returned to his studies, graduating in 1960 with distinction.Template:Sfn His diploma dissertation was on the publicist works of Borys Hrinchenko.Template:Sfn The same year, he married his first wife, Iryna Brunevets. The two had one son, Andriy, before divorcing in 1962.Template:Sfn
Journalistic and party career
Following his graduation Chornovil became an editor at Lviv Television (now Suspilne Lviv) in July 1960, where he had previously worked as an assistant from January of the same year. During this time, he possibly met and interacted with Zenovii Krasivskyi, who was studying television journalism at the University of Lviv. Much like Chornovil, Krasivskyi would later become a leader of the dissident movement. Chornovil wrote scripts for the channel's broadcasts, primarily concerning the history of Ukrainian literature.Template:Sfn At least three (on Mykhailo Stelmakh, Vasyl Chumak, and the Young Muse group) were broadcast in 1962.Template:Sfn During this time, Chornovil also took up literary criticism, focusing particularly on the works of Hrinchenko, Taras Shevchenko, and Volodymyr Samiilenko.Template:Sfn
Chornovil left his job at Lviv Television in May 1963 to return to Kyiv. There, he was the Kyiv Komsomol secretary for the construction of Kyiv Hydroelectric Power Plant.Template:Sfn He simultaneously worked as an editor for the Kyiv-based newspapers Young Guard and Second Reading,Template:Sfn and was part of the Artistic Youths' Club, an informal group of intellectuals affiliated with the counter-cultural Sixtier movement.Template:Sfn In June 1963, Chornovil married his second wife, Olena Antoniv, and by 1964, Chornovil's second son, Taras, was born.Template:Sfn Chornovil also passed exams for post-graduate courses at the Kyiv Paedagogical Institute in 1964, but he was denied the right to take courses on the basis of his political beliefs.Template:Sfn In particular was his involvement in the Artistic Youths' Club.Template:Sfn
The Shevchenko Days on 9 March 1964 was marked by celebrations throughout the Soviet Union marking the 150th anniversary of Taras Shevchenko's birth. As part of the Shevchenko Days celebrations Chornovil gave a speech to the workers of the Kyiv Hydroelectric Power Plant. During his speech, he described Shevchenko as a uniquely Ukrainian hero, rejecting official interpretations, which emphasised Shevchenko's role in anti-serfdom activities. Tying Shevchenko's life to Ukrainians' history, Chornovil said, "Let's read Kobzar together, and we shall see that in all the poet's work, from the first to the last line, a red thread passes through with trembling love for the disgraced and despised native land," and that Shevchenko's works themselves argued, "every system built on the oppression of man by man, on contempt for human dignity and inalienable human rights, on the suppression of free, human thoughts, on the oppression of one nation by another nation, and in whatever new form it may hide – it is against human nature, and must be destroyed."Template:Sfn
Historian Yaroslav Seko notes that Chornovil's speech placed him as a member of the Sixtiers. However, he also advises that the speech was far from the most important work of the Sixtier movement and that Chornovil's role was minimal in comparison to individuals such as Ivan Dziuba, writer of Internationalism or Russification?, and Yevhen Sverstiuk.Template:Sfn On 8 August 1965, during the opening of a monument to Shevchenko in the village of Sheshory, Chornovil gave a speech with strongly anti-communist overtones. As a result, he was fired from his Komsomol job. Following his firing, Chornovil wrote several letters to the leadership of the Komsomol in an effort to demonstrate his innocence.Template:Sfn
Dissident and human rights activist
1965–1966 purge
Template:Multiple image The next year marked the beginning of a series of mass arrests of Sixtier intellectuals following Khrushchev's removal and replacement by Leonid Brezhnev. In protest of the arrests, Chornovil, as well as Dziuba and student Vasyl Stus, held a protest inside the Template:Ill Kyiv film theatre during the 4 September premiere of Sergei Parajanov's Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. Dziuba said that the film's greatness was overshadowed by the ongoing purge, and, as he was being escorted off-stage, Stus called on those "against the revival of Stalinism" in the audience to stand up. The protest was one of the first open protests by Ukrainians against their status in the Soviet Union.Template:Sfn On 31 September his Lviv flat was searched by the KGB, and 190 books were confiscated. Included in the confiscated literature was the Galician–Volhynian Chronicle, the Books of the Genesis of the Ukrainian People, and monographs and articles by authors Panteleimon Kulish, Volodymyr Antonovych, Volodymyr Hnatiuk, Dmytro Doroshenko, Ivan Krypiakevych, and Volodymyr Vynnychenko, as well as history books about the First World War and interwar period.Template:Sfn
Later that year, with the purges continuing, Chornovil was called upon to give evidence at the trials of Mykhaylo Osadchy, Bohdan and Mykhailo Horyn, and Template:Ill. Chornovil refused, and as a result was fired from his editor position at Second Reading. He turned to samvydav, publishing Court of Law or a Return of the Terror? in May 1966. On 8 July he was charged under Article 179 of the criminal code of the Ukrainian SSR, and sentenced to three months of hard labour with 20% of salary withheld. In this period, he worked various jobs, including as a technician in expeditions of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine to the Carpathian Mountains, as an advertiser for KyivKnyhTorh, and as a teacher at the Lviv Regional Centre for Protection of Nature.Template:Sfn
In 1967 Chornovil published his second work of samvydav. Known as Woe from Wit: Portraits of Twenty "Criminals", it included information on those arrested during the 1965–1966 crackdown. Chornovil sent the work to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, the Committee for State Security of Ukraine, the Writers' Union of Ukraine, and the Union of Artists of Ukraine. On 21 October 1967 it was read during a broadcast of Radio Liberty, and it was professionally printed by the end of the year.Template:Sfn Chornovil's samvydav was published in the West in 1969 under the title of The Chornovil Papers, drawing attention to the purge at a time when public consciousness was focused largely on the Sinyavsky–Daniel trial.Template:Sfn Chornovil's work established him as one of the leading figures among Ukrainian activists at the time, and, along with Dziuba's Internationalism or Russification?, demonstrated to those in the rest of Europe that Ukrainians were not fully accepting of Soviet rule.Template:Sfn
In addition to Woe from Wit Chornovil also wrote letters to the head of the Ukrainian KGB and the Prosecutor General of Ukraine complaining that investigators had violated the laws during the arrests of Sixtiers. On 5 May 1967 he was summoned to the office of the deputy Prosecutor General of Lviv Oblast, E. Starykov, who informed him of the existence of article 187-1 of the criminal code of the Ukrainian SSR, which forbade defaming the Soviet system or government, including by writing letters complaining about actions committed by members of the government, under the threat of as much as three years' imprisonment. Although not a secret, the law had gone unpublished at the time, and it was only due to Starykov's informing him after the fact that Chornovil learned that his acts may have been illegal.Template:Sfn
First arrest
Chornovil was arrested in August 1967 in response to Woe from Wit and charged under article 187-1.Template:Sfn Another search of his flat resulted in the seizure of a copy of Woe from Wit, as well as Valentyn Moroz's Report from the Beria Reserve samvydav, which served as the basis for the charges against him. Chornovil chose to forgo a lawyer, as the latter option at the time carried the risks of having one's arguments distorted and manipulated during interrogations. Chornovil argued his innocence, as well as that of those who had been arrested during the purge, saying,Template:Sfn
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Representatives of the Ukrainian intelligentsia were arrested in August and September 1965 in Kyiv, Lviv, and other cities of Ukraine. They were charged with anti-Soviet propaganda, and the majority of them were convicted in 1965 in closed court processes. I personally knew several of those arrested and convicted; I never noticed anything anti-Soviet in their actions and words, but, on the contrary, I saw sincere concern for the state of Ukrainian culture, the Ukrainian language, for the restoration of normal socialist law and socialist democracy, which were trampled during the years of the tyranny of Stalin and Beria. None of this differs from the 20th Congress of the CPSU. Later, M. Osadchy, interrogated and searched as a witness in the case of a teacher and a former instructor of the Lviv Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, came to the conclusion that the KGB bodies, which conducted the investigation, allowed violations of procedural norms, fitting the investigation to preconceived qualifications.
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He also stated that the process, and the lack of Soviet authorities' action on his complaints, had significantly reduced his faith in the Soviet system. He continued to insist, however, that he had no ill-will towards the Soviet government, alleging that he was being targeted by certain officials who wished to illegally prevent him from informing high-ranking officials about the state of the country.Template:Sfn Chornovil was convicted on 13 November 1967 and sentenced to three years' imprisonment.Template:Sfn During this period, he lived in the village of Chappanda in the Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.Template:Sfn
In 1969 Chornovil married fellow activist Atena Pashko, whom he had met at the home of Ivan Svitlychnyi. The two were formally wed in the town of Nyurba. As a result of Chornovil's exile, holding a traditional wedding ceremony was impossible. Pashko later recalled that, on the way back to Chappanda, Chornovil made an impromptu bouquet of St. John's wort, while Pashko herself made one from wild roses. The newlyweds chose to leave their wedding rings in a large tree rather than wear them, intending that they stay there forever.Template:Sfn
Life between arrests (1969–1972)
Chornovil was released as part of a general amnesty in 1969. Struggling to get a job, between October 1969 and 1970 he variously worked at a weather station in Zakarpattia Oblast, as an excavator during an archaeological expedition to Odesa Oblast, and as an employee at Template:Ill.Template:Sfn In September 1969 he also met Valentyn Moroz, another dissident who had been imprisoned as part of the 1965–1966 purge. The two quickly formed a friendship, as they both sought to strengthen the dissident movement and further confront government abuses. Moroz travelled to meet Chornovil no less than four times between his release on 31 September 1969 and his re-arrest on 1 June 1970, and Chornovil in turn visited Moroz's home in Ivano-Frankivsk multiple times. During this time period, Chornovil, alongside Svitlychnyi and Sverstiuk, also led a donations campaign to prevent Moroz (unable to find employment due to his criminal record) from falling into poverty. The campaign collected 3,500 rubles.Template:Sfn He organised further donation campaigns for other formerly-imprisoned dissidents, such as Sviatoslav Karavanskyi and Nina Strokata.Template:Sfn
In January 1970 Chornovil launched a new samvydav newspaper, known as The Ukrainian Herald. The newspaper contained other samvydav publications, as well as information on human rights abuses by the Soviet government and police which Chornovil believed to be contrary to the constitution of the Soviet Union, Great Russian chauvinism and anti-Ukrainian sentiment, and other information regarding the dissident movement in Ukraine.Template:Sfn Chornovil was the chief editor of The Ukrainian Herald, and one of its three editors (alongside Mykhailo Kosiv and Yaroslav Kendzior). The Ukrainian Herald maintained a large professional staff, with correspondents throughout Ukraine (ranging as far east as Dnipropetrovsk and Donetsk),Template:Sfn and has been described by biographer V. I. Matiash as the forerunner to independent press in Ukraine.Template:Sfn
Fearing arrest, in June 1971 wrote a declaration to the United Nations Human Rights Committee, which he intended to be released in the event he was to be taken into custody. In the letter, he outlined examples of violations of the law by Soviet legal bodies, and argued that Soviet political prisoners lacked the right to defend themselves and were subject to a campaign of eavesdropping, surveillance, blackmail, and threats. He rejected the possibility of cooperating with investigators, writing, "I would rather die behind bars than give in to the aforementioned principles."Template:Sfn
At this time, Chornovil also departed from principles of Marxism–Leninism, instead adopting a cautiously favourable view of libertarian socialism as exemplified by Mykhailo Drahomanov. In an October 1971 letter to Moroz Chornovil remarked that in his studies of anarchist revolutionaries Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Mikhail Bakunin he had come to reject unconditional support for Drahomanov's policies, but believed that the earlier intellectual's libertarian views on self-government were worth supporting. This attitude later informed his support for federalism.Template:Sfn
Chornovil established the Civic Committee for the Defence of Nina Strokata on 21 December 1971, following the eponymous activist's arrest. This marked a change in his attitude towards the formation of human rights organisations; he had previously rejected them in favour of petition campaigns, viewing the formation of an organisation as impossible due to the circumstances of Ukraine's status within the Soviet Union, but this position had come under increasing criticism from dissidents (notably Moroz) and the Ukrainian public, who viewed them as too slow and without significant results. The committee had its roots in public committees established for the legal defence of Angela Davis, an American civil rights activist whose case was popular in the Soviet Union. Chornovil believed that by delivering information on the case to the U.N. Human Rights Committee Strokata could be freed, and additionally requested the support of Ivan Dziuba, Strokata's close friend Leonid Tymchuk, Moscow-based activists Pyotr Yakir and Lyudmila Alexeyeva, and Zynoviia Franko, granddaughter of the writer Ivan Franko.Template:Sfn
Dziuba and Franko both refused to take part in the committee. Franko believed that it should be subordinated to Andrei Sakharov's Committee on Human Rights in the USSR and felt that it was pointless to form a group to defend a single individual. Dziuba, on the other hand, refused to join forces with Sakharov's committee, believing that they were insufficiently attentive to repressive activities occurring in Ukraine, and further stated that he would issue a statement about Strokata when he believed the time was right. Other dissidents, such as Svitlychnyi, Mykhailyna Kotsiubynska, and Hryhorii Kochur also refused to support the committee. These refusals impacted Chornovil, particularly that of Franko, whose familial ties he believed could help protect the committee from being attacked by the Soviet government.Template:Sfn
Tymchuk ultimately joined the committee, as did Vasyl Stus. The group based its reasoning on the Soviet constitution, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The committee's publications included, in a first for Soviet activists, the addresses of its members, where submissions for materials on Strokata's behalf were to be sent. It was the first human rights organisation in Ukraine's history, but it would be destroyed the next year after all but one of its members (Tymchuk) were arrested.Template:Sfn
Second arrest (1972–1978)
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Another wide-reaching crackdown on Ukrainian intelligentsia began in January 1972, sparked by the arrest of the Belgian-Ukrainian Yaroslav Dobosh, an Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists member tasked with smuggling samvydav out of the Soviet Union. Chornovil was arrested on 12 January following a Vertep celebration at the Lviv flat of Olena Antoniv. He was charged under articles 62 (anti-Soviet agitation) and 187-1 (slander against the Soviet Union) of the criminal code of the Ukrainian SSR.Template:Sfn The Vertep ceremony had been organised as a protest against Soviet cultural and religious policy, additionally serving as a fundraising effort for The Ukrainian Herald and for political prisoners and their families. It raised 250 rubles, which were used to assist those who had been arrested during the crackdown instead. Chornovil was imprisoned at the KGB pre-trial detention centre in Lviv, alongside Iryna Kalynets, Ivan Gel, Stefaniia Shabatura, Mykhaylo Osadchy and Yaroslav Dashkevych.Template:Sfn
Chornovil's trial took place behind closed doors.Template:Sfn Prosecutors cited as justification for the charges the belief that he was responsible for the contents of The Ukrainian Herald, which he denied.Template:Sfn During the investigation, other dissident activists refused to give evidence of Chornovil's role in the paper; it relied on guesses from other individuals, such as Zynoviia Franko, for its arguments.Template:Sfn Chornovil likewise refused to give evidence against fellow dissidents or cooperate with investigators, stating during a 2 February 1972 interrogation that he believed his trial to be illegal and unrelated to that of other dissidents. He was interrogated more than one hundred times during his trial, with 83 interrogations in 1972.Template:Sfn
Chornovil's employment of several different conflicting forms of writing and spelling formed a significant part of his defence, and he used it to argue that he had been blamed without linguistic analysis of the text. In the minutes of a 15 January 1973 court appearance Chornovil asserted, "Any investigation into my case does not exist, there is open preparation of a massacre against me, and no means are being spared. From this moment on, I refuse to participate in such an 'investigation'."Template:Sfn Wiretapping of Chornovil's cell led KGB investigators to discover that Chornovil intended to declare a hunger strike if sent into exile outside of Ukraine, and that he desired to be allowed to leave the Soviet Union for Yugoslavia.Template:Sfn
The sentence given at the conclusion of Chornovil's trial has been disputed; Amnesty International stated in 1977 that he had been sentenced to seven years' imprisonment and five years' exile;Template:Sfn The New York Times in March 1973 claimed that he had been subject to twelve years' imprisonment and exile, without differentiating between the two;Template:Sfn The Encyclopedia of Ukraine in 2015 asserted that he received a term of six years' imprisonment and three years' internal exile,Template:Sfn which historians Bohdan PaskaTemplate:Sfn and Oleh Bazhan similarly professed. According to Bazhan, Chornovil was sentenced on 8 April 1973 by the Lviv Oblast Court,Template:Sfn though Chornovil recollected in 1974 that he had been sentenced on 12 April.Template:Sfn Chornovil made three appeals to higher courts regarding his case; the first two were rejected, while the third was formally accepted in part – although no changes were made to Chornovil's sentence.Template:Sfn
Following his trial Chornovil was sent to a corrective labour colony in the Mordovian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. From 1973 to 1978 he was variously imprisoned at two camps; ZhKh-385/17-ATemplate:Efn and ZhKh-385/3.Template:EfnTemplate:Sfn
Despite his imprisonment, Chornovil continued to actively lead prisoners' protests, leading him to be nicknamed "General of the zeks" by author and dissident Mikhail Kheifets. He was placed in a Template:IllTemplate:Efn after refusing to obey any of the rules which prisoners were meant to follow.Template:Sfn B. Azernikov and L. Kaminskyi, two individuals who were imprisoned at the same camp as Chornovil, also described him as having "great authority among all political prisoners," and wrote an open letter to global society urging his release after they left the Soviet Union in 1975.Template:Sfn
Chornovil's activities continued to draw international attention during his imprisonment. He was recognised as a prisoner of conscience by human rights group Amnesty International,Template:Sfn and awarded the Nicholas Tomalin Prize for Journalism, recognising writers whose freedom of expression is threatened, in 1975.Template:Sfn Around this time Chornovil also began to smuggle his writings out of prison, and used the opportunity as a means to continue to demonstrate Soviet human rights abuses.Template:Sfn He wrote a letter to U.S. President Gerald Ford urging him to match the policy of détente with increased attention towards human rights in the Soviet Union, alleging that the Soviet authorities had used détente as a means by which to suppress dissident voices.Template:Sfn He further urged him to support the Jackson–Vanik amendment, which sanctioned the Soviet Union in an effort to allow for freedom of migration from the country.Template:Sfn Alongside Boris Penson, he wrote the samvydav booklet "Daily Life in the Mordovian Camps", which was smuggled to Jerusalem and published in Russian before being translated into Ukrainian in the Munich-based Suchasnist journal the next year.Template:Sfn
The Helsinki Accords were signed between 30 July and 1 August 1975. The signatory nations comprised all of Europe (aside from Albania), the Soviet Union, the United States, and Canada. In the Soviet Union, the Helsinki Accords were seen as marking a new beginning for dissidents, who found that they had a means to reveal Soviet human rights abuses. Referring to themselves as "Helsinki monitors", they found support from the United States Congress, which established the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe in July 1976 to organise responses to human rights violations.Template:Sfn Mykola Rudenko, a dissident living in the Kyiv neighbourhood of Koncha-Zaspa, declared the formation of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group on 9 November 1975 in an effort to highlight abuses.Template:Sfn Chornovil was imprisoned at the time of the group's founding, and would not be able to become a member until he was released from prison in 1979.Template:Sfn
Along with Moroz and other political prisoners, Chornovil's resistance activities continued after the establishment of the UHG. The duo took part in a 12 January 1977 hunger strike in which they called for an end to persecution on the basis of national beliefs. At this time, however, a split was forming among Ukrainian political prisoners over whether it was better to actively resist the Soviet prison system (as represented by Moroz, Karavanskyi, and Ivan Gel) and those who favoured self-preservation above all else (as represented by refusenik Eduard Kuznetsov, Oleksii Murzhenko, and Danylo Shumuk). With influence from the KGB, the two factions began to clash openly. Chornovil, imprisoned in a different camp from Moroz and Shumuk, refused to take a side in the conflict and served as a mediator. In early 1977, during a meeting with Shumuk at a hospital, Chornovil accused the former of artificially intensifying his conflict with Moroz, and compared letters by Shumuk to Canadian family members (in which he disparaged Moroz) as being equivalent to police complaints. Following his release from prison, Chornovil accused Shumuk and Moroz of being equally responsible for the feud as a result of their egocentric attitudes.Template:Sfn
Second exile (1978–1980)
Chornovil was released from prison and again sent to Chappanda in early 1978. There, he continued to write about the status of political prisoners and human rights within the Soviet Union.Template:Sfn He also continued to get involved in the conflict between Moroz and Shumuk; in a letter to Moroz's wife Raisa, he called for a public "boycott" of Shumuk, while arguing that Moroz was being inflexible. Moroz's nine-year imprisonment had seriously impacted his mental and emotional state; Chornovil characterised him as self-aggrandising and narcissistic. During his exile, Chornovil's friendship with Moroz came to an end as the former sought to distance himself from the latter, owing to the conflict with Shumuk.Template:Sfn
During his exile, Chornovil continued to send letters to the Soviet authorities. In a 10 April 1978 letter to the Procurator General of the Soviet Union, he criticised the fact that the theoretically wide-reaching rights granted by the Soviet constitution were absent in reality, asking "Why do Soviet laws exist?".Template:Sfn He also wrote a samvydav pamphlet, entitled "Only One Year",Template:Sfn and was admitted to PEN International that year.Template:Sfn At the time, he was working as a labourer on a sovkhoz farm in Nyurba,Template:Sfn where he had been sent in October 1979. As previously, much of Chornovil's samvydav works served to illustrate human rights abuses and the conditions faced by prisoners of conscience.Template:Sfn
Chornovil joined the Ukrainian Helsinki Group from exile on 22 May 1979.Template:Sfn From November 1979 to March 1980 he was placed under constant surveillance by the KGB, which recorded that he established contacts with dissidents Mykhailo Horyn, Oksana Meshko, and Ivan Sokulskyi. He also made contact with several other individuals who wished to establish chapters of the UHG in the oblasts of Ukraine. Unbeknownest to Chornovil, Meshko, at the time leader of the UHG, had also fallen under heavy KGB surveillance, and had ceased to admit individuals in order to prevent their arrests. Zenovii Krasivskyi, a leading UHG member, dispatched Petro Rozumnyi to visit imprisoned and exiled dissidents. Among them was Chornovil, who was asked to replace Meshko as head of the UHG.Template:Sfn
Third arrest (1980–1983)
Chornovil was arrested yet again on 8,Template:Sfn 9,Template:Sfn or 15Template:Sfn April 1980 on charges of attempted rape. The charges are frequently described in Ukrainian historiography as a total fabrication,Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn and were likewise referred to as such by the American Time magazine.Template:Sfn The charges of attempted rape reflected similar such accusations against several other leading dissidents at the time, such as Mykola Horbal, Yaroslav Lesiv, and Yosyf Zisels. Myroslav Marynovych, a member of the UHG, later accused the KGB of outright falsifying information which led to Chornovil's arrest, quoting a KGB officer as stating that "we will not make any more martyrs" by arresting individuals exclusively on political charges.Template:Sfn Chornovil's arrest, as well as those of several other dissidents from Ukraine and throughout the Soviet Union, took place amidst a meeting of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe in Madrid, and Time stated that some observers believed the arrests were done to demonstrate Soviet umbrage towards the Helsinki Accords.Template:Sfn
Following his arrest, Chornovil declared a hunger strike,Template:Sfn characterising his arrest and those of others as contrary to Leninist ideals and an effort to stifle dissent in the leadup to the 1980 Summer Olympics.Template:Sfn He was moved to a prison camp in Tabaga, Yakutia, where he was placed into a cell smeared with vomit and feces. At one point, he was transferred to a "recreation room", where he had no access to water. Lacking strength as a result of his hunger strike, Chornovil crawled on all fours to reach the prison's toilet, which was one storey below his cell and across the prison yard. Several times, he passed out from exhaustion, and was awoken by being doused in water by guards. During an epidemic of dysentery at the camp, Chornovil was infected, and he promptly ended his hunger strike after doctors stated that they would refuse to treat him if he did not end his hunger strike. Chornovil was later held in solitary confinement from 5 to 21 November 1980 as a response to the hunger strike.Template:Sfn He was found guilty by a closed court in the city of Mirny and sentenced to five years imprisonment.Template:Sfn
Chornovil continued to write in prison, including a February 1981 open letter to the 26th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in which he accused General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev and KGB chairman Yuri Andropov of orchestrating massive purges against the UHG. He also wrote to his wife, urging "no compromises" in dissidents' reactions to the congress. He wrote another letter on 9 April 1981, this time to the United Nations Human Rights Committee, Amnesty International, the Committee for the Free World, and the Helsinki Committees for Human Rights urging increased attention towards Soviet persecution of the UHG in formulating their diplomatic policies towards the Soviet Union.Template:Sfn Chornovil was released in 1983, but was barred from returning to Ukraine. He remained in the town of Pokrovsk,Template:Sfn working as a fire stoker.Template:Sfn On 15 April 1985Template:Sfn he was given permission to return to Ukraine by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev as part of his perestroika.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Chornovil spent a total of 15 years imprisoned by the Soviet government.Template:Sfn
Return to Ukraine
By the time Chornovil returned to Ukraine, the country had changed dramatically since his 1972 arrest. First Secretary Petro Shelest had himself been removed and replaced by Volodymyr Shcherbytsky, a hardliner and a member of Brezhnev's Dnipropetrovsk Mafia. Shcherbytsky had dramatically escalated Russification policies and a crackdown on Ukrainian culture during his rule. Partially as a result of Shcherbytsky's policies, by the time of Brezhnev's death in 1982, less books had been published in Ukrainian than during the rule of Joseph Stalin.Template:Sfn
On 26 April 1986 an explosion occurred at the No. 4 reactor of Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. The explosion resulted in the discharge of radiation across northern Ukraine, as well as western Russia and most of Belarus. The disaster's consequences (including the evacuation of thousands of individuals), as well as the early inaction of the Ukrainian communist government, significantly worsened public attitudes towards Shcherbytsky's government. In the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster, the Communist Party of Ukraine experienced a crisis of public confidence, which led Chornovil and other Ukrainian dissidents to begin the process of building a unified group in opposition to communist rule.Template:Sfn
Chornovil formally re-launched The Ukrainian Herald on 21 August 1987. The first issue of the renewed newspaper was dedicated to Vasyl Stus, who had died in prison in 1985. The new editorial board comprised Chornovil, Ivan Gel, Mykhailo Horyn, and Pavlo Skochok, and several leading Ukrainian intellectuals contributed essays.Template:Sfn The editorial board was based in Chornovil's home,Template:Sfn and the Herald became part of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group.Template:Sfn
In the summer of the same year, Chornovil was visited by Martha Kolomiyets, an American journalist for Ukrainianian diaspora newspaper The Ukrainian Weekly. Kolomiyets interviewed Chornovil in a video that was subsequently broadcast on television in Lviv, Kyiv, and Moscow as part of an effort by the Soviet government to create a poor impression of Chornovil. On the contrary, the interview, during which he was allowed to freely articulate the dissident movement's attitude towards religion and Ukrainian culture, only boosted Chornovil's image and that of the dissident movement. Kolomiyets was later arrested as an "American saboteur", but by then the interview had already been widely-publicised and shared.Template:Sfn
Human rights activities continued to be a significant focus for Chornovil's efforts following his release. On 24 February 1987 he travelled to the Lubyanka Building, the KGB's headquarters in Moscow, where he spoke to employees and demanded the release of all political prisoners, the clearing of their sentences, and the return of objects seized from them during searches. While at Lubyanka, he announced that, in response to official celebrations of the 1000th anniversary of the Christianization of Rus', the dissident movement would launch a campaign to reverse the decision of the 1946 Synod of Lviv that merged the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church into the Russian Orthodox Church.Template:Sfn
Chornovil was one of the founding members of the Ukrainian Initiative Group for the Liberation of Prisoners of Conscience, led by Mykhailo Horyn. The two joined Vasyl Barladianu, Gel, Zorian Popadiuk, and Stepan Khmara in advocating for the removal of anti-Soviet agitation from the criminal code and the release and rehabilitation of all political prisoners.Template:Sfn Despite Gorbachev's reforms, the Soviet government continued to intervene against Chornovil and other dissidents. In one instance, Chornovil was blocked from attending a planned December 1987 seminar on the rights of non-Russian nations within the Soviet Union by being called to a "preventive" interview in Lviv, where he was warned against involvement in "anti-social" activities.Template:Sfn
Meanwhile, Shcherbytsky was facing internal revolt over his policies of Russification. The Writers' Union of Ukraine, the state organ of writers, held a plenum titled "Ukrainian Soviet literature in the patriotic and international education of working people" in June 1987. The meeting was dedicated to the preservation and strengthening of the Ukrainian language.Template:Sfn In Moscow, Gorbachev was putting increasing pressure on Shcherbytsky, by then the leading conservative member of the Central Committee, to resign from his positions. In response, the Soviet Ukrainian leader launched a public relations campaign against Chornovil and other dissidents, accusing the HeraldTemplate:'s editorial board of being supported by "foreign subversive services". A press release was issued by Shcherbytsky's office on 22 December 1987 pledging to increase KGB surveillance of dissidents, particularly Chornovil. Newspapers throughout the country, including Template:Ill, Evening Kyiv, and Lviv Pravda were mobilised to attack the dissident movement, as were radio and television stations.Template:Sfn Chornovil responded with a letter upbraiding the writers of one such article in the Lviv newspaper Template:Ill, saying that the treatment of himself and Horyn was comparable to that of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 15 years prior.Template:Sfn
On 11 March 1988 Chornovil formally re-established the Ukrainian Helsinki Group in a letter co-signed by Mykhailo Horyn and Krasivskyi, although the group had already resumed activity in the summer of the previous year. By this time, several independent organisations existed, such as the Lion's Society, Spadshchyna, and the Ukrainian Culturological Club. The fragmented nature of the dissident movement (now united under the label of National Democracy) led Chornovil to begin the process of bringing the organisations together into one unified structure in April 1988.Template:Sfn Further attention was brought to the idea of unifying independent groups in June, after thousands of people attended protests commemorating the Chernobyl disaster in Lviv. Those present called for a popular front of independent organisations, in line with similar proposals in the Baltic states at the time.Template:Sfn
Chornovil created the Ukrainian Helsinki Union (Template:Langx, abbreviated UHS) on 7 June 1988. Contrary to its name, the new structure was a political party, though it was not referred to as such in order to avoid giving the Soviet government justification to crack down on activists. It was the first independent political party in Soviet Ukraine.Template:Sfn During the founding meeting of the UHS on 7 July 1988, Chornovil presented the party's programme, co-written by him and Bohdan and Mykhailo Horyn.Template:Sfn It called for Ukrainian independence, which was described as being beneficial to both Ukrainians and Ukrainian minorities, as well as a confederation between the countries of the Soviet Union. The latter position was one of pragmatism, taken in order to prevent the UHS from being banned.Template:Sfn
Chornovil's activities during this time period were not limited to Ukraine; he maintained extensive contacts with other dissidents, particularly those from the Baltic states, Armenia, and Georgia. A 8 September 1988 internal notice of the Ukrainian KGB informed employees that an organisation known as the International Committee for the Protection of Political Prisoners, established by Chornovil and Armenian dissident Paruyr Hayrikyan in January 1988, was actively involved in efforts to repeal articles on anti-Soviet agitation, to close prison camps and psikhushkas, and to solidify cooperation between the nationalist movements of Ukraine and other countries within the Soviet Union.Template:Sfn At a 24–25 September conference of dissident groups in Riga, Chornovil (along with Oles Shevchenko and Khmara) represented the UHS. Chornovil wrote the conference's concluding statement, which read, "Hearing the report about the situation in Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Moldavia, Estonia, that the Crimean Tatar movement has, in Georgia [...] We call on the participants of the National-Democratic movements of the peoples of the USSR to join us, rallying under the slogan that has always united the peoples of the world who suffered internal or external violence: For our freedom and yours!"Template:Sfn
Revolution
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The Revolutions of 1989 sweeping Central and Eastern Europe throughout 1988 and 1989 greatly interested Chornovil, particularly in their adherence to non-violence. Their success later in the latter year would lead Chornovil to abandon his public support for Marxism–Leninism in favour of anti-communism, which he had supported in private since the mid-1960s but avoided publicly stating in an effort to appear as moderate.Template:Sfn Other Ukrainian intellectuals, too, began to back anti-communism, and the Writers' Union of Ukraine began to develop a popular front in late 1988, justifying it as encouraging the populace to become more active in local government and take a greater interest in economic concerns. The Writers' Union published a draft programme for its proposed group in Literary Ukraine on 16 February 1989, in which it called for the establishment of Ukrainian as the state language of the Ukrainian SSR, a national and cultural revival, and Ukrainian self-government, as well as the strengthening of linguistic rights for minorities within Ukraine.Template:Sfn Chornovil additionally supported the spread of Memorial, a human rights movement in the Soviet Union, to Ukraine, writing a positive letter to the presidium of the group's Ukrainian chapter upon its founding in March 1989.Template:Sfn
On 18 July 1989, coal miners in the city of Makiivka, in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, began striking. The strikes, part of a broader, union-wide wave of mining strikes, was primarily motivated by declining social conditions in the region and both Ukraine and the Soviet Union as a whole. Promises made by the Twelfth Five-Year Plan had gone unfulfilled,Template:Sfn and severe shortages in basic goods, such as soap, infuriated miners.Template:Sfn Soviet leaders, Gorbachev among them, sought to implement Stakhanovite policies, and worker safety was sacrificed as a result.Template:Sfn The striking miners of the Donbas first demanded increased social protections and wages. From the outset, however, several miners had also viewed the Ukrainian independence movement with sympathy as a potential path to self-governance.Template:Sfn
Chornovil supported the strikes from their early days, issuing a statement on 21 July 1989 in part saying,
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Mass strikes of miners in Russia and Ukraine are tearing down the veil of party demagoguery regarding the unity of the party and the people, which, they claimed, is being attacked by various "extremists" there. A new stage of Perestroika is beginning, one may say its workers' stage, being characterised by mass people's movements, not only national, but also social.Template:Sfn
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On the contrary, Shcherbytsky reacted harshly to the strikes. He again mobilised the government against the perceived threat, disparaging the miners in state media and preventing communications between strike committees in various cities.Template:Sfn This radicalised the miners, who soon began to call for the resignations of Shcherbytsky and Valentyna Shevchenko, Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of Ukraine.Template:Sfn
While the strikes were unfolding, Chornovil continued to be active in other political sectors. He published a pre-election programme for himself in August 1989, ahead of the March 1990 Supreme Soviet election, in which he called for "statehood, democracy, and self-government", cooperation with non-ethnic Ukrainians, and federalism. Chornovil's concept of a federal Ukraine was based on twelve "lands" (Template:Langx), with internal borders being roughly defined by the governorates of the Ukrainian People's Republic plus a separate land for the Donbas. Crimea was to exist as either an independent state or an autonomous republic of Ukraine, and the Central Rada was to be reestablished as a bicameral body including deputies elected in equal numbers by proportional representation and from the lands.Template:Sfn According to Vasyl Derevinskyi, a biographer of Chornovil, at this time he was also one of the primary individuals pushing for the adoption of pro-independence positions within the UHS at this time, proposing that the question of independence be proposed in the party's programme.Template:Sfn
On 8 September 1989, the People's Movement of Ukraine (Template:Langx, abbreviated as "Rukh") was established on the basis of the programme of the Writers' Union.Template:Sfn Fully named as the "People's Movement of Ukraine for Perestroika", its first leader was poet Ivan Drach. Despite this, however, Chornovil was the de facto leader of the party and organised its establishment, according to historian Template:Ill. Rukh's founding meeting was the largest gathering of Ukrainian anti-communists ever,Template:Sfn comprising around 1,100 delegates, 130 journalists, representatives of the Polish government and the Solidarity trade union, members of the Ukrainian diaspora in Latvia and Lithuania, and a select few members of the Communist Party (among them Leonid Kravchuk, Chornovil's future political rival).Template:Sfn Coincidentally, Shcherbytsky was forced to resign the same month, a combination of pressure from the miners' strikesTemplate:Sfn and from Gorbachev, whose reforms were at odds with Shcherbytsky's status as one of the few remaining conservatives to hold high office.Template:Sfn
Late 1989 and 1990 were marked by the consolidation of anti-communist groups as part of the electoral campaign, with the opposition disseminating information via leaflets and amateur newspapers. This was a reaction to the Communist Party's domination of most channels of information, and proved largely successful, forming the basis for Ukraine's later independent media.Template:Sfn Another noteworthy part of the anti-communist campaign in 1990 was a human chain from Lviv to Kyiv commemorating the anniversary of the Unification Act, signed on 22 January 1919. Around three million people participated in the chain in what was at that point the largest protest undertaken by Rukh.Template:Sfn Chornovil played a significant role in the event being realised, having pushed for the Unification Act's anniversary to be recognised as a holiday.Template:Sfn Chornovil, along with other dissidents and the Writer's Union, also pursued a strategy of strengthening Rukh's position in rural Ukraine.Template:Sfn
Chornovil in government
Template:Multiple image The Supreme Soviet election, the first multi-party vote in Soviet Ukraine's history, was held on 4 March 1990. It was marked by high turnout, with 85% of registered voters participating. In most of Ukraine, the result was beneficial for the communists, with 90% of previously-elected deputies being re-elected and 373 of 450 deputies belonging to the Communist Party. In all three Galician oblasts,Template:Efn however, the Democratic Bloc, a Rukh-led coalition,Template:Sfn won the majority of seats. Ivan Plyushch, who was elected as Deputy Chairman of the Supreme Soviet, wrote in 2010 that the communist majority was unable to command the same influence at a parliamentary level as the Democratic Bloc was.Template:Sfn Chornovil was elected as a Democratic Bloc deputy from the city of Lviv's Shevchenkivskyi District by an absolute majority, winning 68.60% of all votes against seven other candidates.Template:Sfn Within the Supreme Soviet Chornovil was among the leaders of the Democratic Bloc's radical wing.Template:Sfn
Chornovil was also elected Chairman of the Lviv Oblast Council in April 1990, making him the first non-communist head of government of Lviv Oblast.Template:Sfn He quickly adapted from life as a dissident to politics, moving to the right and becoming one of the first Ukrainian politicians to explicitly endorse an anti-communist revolution.Template:Sfn In the economic sector, he launched land reforms by abolishing collective farms and redistributing the lands to peasants, privatised the housing market and light industry.Template:Sfn Socially, he actively supported Ukraine's cultural and national revival; Ukrainian, rather than Soviet symbols were used by his government, soldiers of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army were recognised as veterans, the ban on the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church imposed by the Synod of Lviv was repealed and religious holidays were recognised as public holidays.Template:Sfn Statues of Vladimir Lenin were demolished for the first time under Chornovil's government,Template:Sfn with the statue in Chervonohrad (now Sheptytskyi) being toppled on 1 July 1990. This launched a wave of demolitions of Lenin monuments in Galicia throughout 1990 and 1991.Template:Sfn
Chornovil's policies were directly at odds with the laws of the Ukrainian SSR and the Soviet Union at the time, and his government was castigated in Ukrainian and Union-wide pro-government media. Despite this, the other Galician oblasts, which had come under the control of Rukh, soon followed Chornovil's example in pursuing reforms.Template:Sfn The Soviet government imposed a blockade of Galicia in response, leading to the formation of the Galician Assembly by the oblasts in an effort to strengthen economic ties amongst one another. Chornovil was appointed as head of the Galician Assembly upon its formation.Template:Sfn
As a deputy of the Supreme Soviet, Chornovil devoted himself to increasing Ukraine's sovereignty within the Soviet Union with the eventual aim of independence, as well as land reform, environmental conservation, minority and religious rights, federalism and the enshrining of Ukrainian as the sole language of government.Template:Sfn He was nominated as the Democratic Bloc's candidate for Chairman of the Supreme Soviet, though he refused the nomination and endorsed the coalition's leader, Ihor Yukhnovskyi. Ultimately, neither were elected, as the communists pushed through Vladimir Ivashko.Template:Sfn During voting, Chornovil openly called for Ukraine's independence from the Soviet Union, arguing it was the only possible way to end what he referred to as the "economic, environmental and spiritual catastrophe" facing Ukraine at the time.Template:Sfn
Chornovil continued to advocate for federalism, saying in a May 1990 press conference that "Kyivan centralism" would lead to the emergence of Russian nationalism in the Donbas and a Rusyn identity in Zakarpattia Oblast.Template:Sfn Historian Stepan Kobuta has argued that the rejection of Soviet laws by Galicia was an expression of Chornovil's federalist beliefs.Template:Sfn The same month, as conflicts between rural Greek Catholics and Orthodox Christians broke out, the government of Lviv Oblast experimented with holding referendums in villages to determine which church would be given control of churches. As part of the system, which was conceived by Chornovil, after a decision was reached the majority sect would carry responsibility for building a church belonging to the minority's faith. This system successfully prevented a sectarian conflict from emerging in the region.Template:Sfn
On 12 June 1990, Russia declared sovereignty within the Soviet Union. This gave a boost to efforts by the Democratic Bloc to push for voting on the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine, which had been blocked by communist deputies. During a 5 July debate on the declaration, Chornovil and fellow coalition member Mykhailo Batih accused the communists of being told how to vote by the Party. Chornovil subsequently revealed that several deputies had received instructions to amend the draft law on sovereignty in order to strip it of measures such as the establishment of an independent military or legal system. This revelation led acting Supreme Soviet chairman Ivan Plyushch to launch an investigation, which intensified after it was discovered that several deputies had quoted the instructions word-for-word.Template:Sfn
Chornovil and an unknown communist deputy then attempted to begin a vote on the declaration. Plyushch refused, noting that members of the Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union had not yet returned and that quorum was therefore impossible. In response, Chornovil moved to demand the immediate return of Soviet People's Deputies, which was then endorsed by pro-sovereignty communists and passed by a wide margin. Four days later, the deputies returned and debate on the Declaration of State Sovereignty resumed. The anti-declaration group was led by Stanislav Hurenko and Leonid Kravchuk, who claimed that the matter of sovereignty would be resolved in Moscow rather than Kyiv.Template:Sfn
Ivashko formally resigned from his Ukrainian government positions on 11 July to become deputy General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. This move came as a shock to the Ukrainian public, as the CPSU was perceived as collapsing, and Ivashko's resignation from Ukrainian positions to serve the party demonstrated apathy towards the Ukrainian population. Following Ivashko's resignation, the communists were left demoralised, allowing Chornovil to push the declaration through office. It was eventually passed on 16 July 1990, giving precedence to Ukrainian laws over the laws of the Soviet government.Template:Sfn This was a major victory for Chornovil, who had privately sought a declaration of state sovereignty since July 1989.Template:Sfn
Ukrainian public sentiment continued to turn against the government through the remainder of 1990. A series of student protests, known as the Revolution on Granite, began in October after groups of students claimed that the government had manipulated the results in order to prevent the Democratic Bloc from achieving a majority. The students launched a hunger strike on October Revolution Square in Kyiv (now Maidan Nezalezhnosti), and were subsequently mocked by communist deputies. This insensitive attitude led almost all moderates and national communists to abandon the Communist Party, following the lead of writer Oles Honchar. These individuals defected to the National-Democrats, further weakening the remaining communists.Template:Sfn
The January Events, in which the Soviet government deployed the military on 16 January 1991 in an attempt to prevent Lithuania from becoming independent, led Chornovil to temporarily reorient his policies towards the establishment of a Ukrainian military separate from the Soviet Army. In order to achieve this, he co-founded the Military Collegium of Rukh alongside Ihor Derkach, Mykola Porovskyi, Vitalii Lazorkin and Vilen Martyrosian, which was tasked with creating the Armed Forces of Ukraine and preventing the usage of Ukrainian troops in Soviet government crackdowns.Template:Sfn Chornovil continued to advocate for integration of the Galician oblasts, particularly in expanding access to education and inter-oblast trade, at the second meeting of the Galician Assembly on 16 February 1991.Template:Sfn Chornovil also oversaw a Template:Ill, in which the majority of the Galician oblasts voted for Ukraine to separate from the Soviet Union.Template:Sfn
Declaration of independence and presidential election
The Supreme Soviet passed a law on 5 July 1991 establishing the office of President, with its holder to be determined by election.Template:Sfn
Hardliners opposed to Gorbachev's leadership of the Soviet Union launched a coup d'état on 19 August 1991. At the time of the coup, Chornovil was in the city of Zaporizhzhia on a business trip. Upon learning that a putsch had occurred, he immediately returned to Kyiv and began calling for an emergency session of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR; he also banned the Communist Party's activities in Lviv Oblast. In the Supreme Soviet, the deputies of the Democratic Bloc began to advocate for Ukrainian independence, arguing that Ukraine was a part of Europe and not the Soviet Union.Template:Sfn Following the failure of the coup, the Supreme Soviet adopted the Declaration of Independence of Ukraine on 24 August 1991.Template:Sfn
The campaign for the presidential election officially began on 1 September 1991.Template:Sfn The National-Democratic camp was fractious, with three major candidates (Chornovil, Yukhnovskyi and Levko Lukianenko), while Kravchuk was already a well-established figure as the incumbent, if de facto, head of state.Template:Sfn The race soon narrowed to an effective two-man campaign with Chornovil against Kravchuk, as they were the only candidates with the necessary organisation to compete at a national scale; in spite of Yukhnovskyi's leadership of the Democratic Bloc he was unpopular outside of intellectual urban centres and western Ukraine, while Lukianenko, despite being a popular pro-independence figure, lacked an organised campaign and was unknown in most of Ukraine.Template:Sfn
Chornovil travelled throughout Ukraine to spread the message of Ukrainian independence, including staunchly pro-Russian regions such as Crimea. Appealing to both Russophone and Ukrainian-language audiences by speaking in both languages, Chornovil argued for a programme in which he would transition from a planned economy to free-market capitalism within a year via a series of decrees and acquiring the attention of Western investors,Template:Sfn as well as membership in the European Economic Community and a hypothetical pan-European collective security organisation.Template:Sfn Chornovil condemned Kravchuk as "a sly politician" who was "trying to get [Ukraine] back into the union," warning that he would re-establish political and economic ties with Russia.Template:Sfn
Chornovil was initially unpopular due to decades of Soviet propaganda against his beliefs, which Kravchuk had previously directed.Template:Sfn The inability of the National-Democrats to nominate a single candidate also contributed to the belief that the dissidents were unfit to rule in the public consciousness.Template:Sfn Despite this, Chornovil's campaign gradually began to close the gap outside of Galicia in opinion polling; a poll from November 1991 showed Chornovil with 22% of the vote in Odesa compared to 28% for Kravchuk, with the number of undecided voters growing from a quarter to one-third of the local electorate.Template:Sfn Northwestern Ukraine (Khmelnytskyi, Rivne and Volyn oblasts) served as a significant battleground from October, as surveys initially forecasted a practical tie before later giving Chornovil a slight lead.Template:Sfn
Ukrainians voted in both the presidential election and a referendum confirming Ukraine's independence on 1 December 1991. 84.18% of the population participated in the referendum, with 90.32% voting in favour.Template:Sfn Kravchuk won the presidential election, with 61.59% of the election. Chornovil placed a distant second with 23.27% of the vote, avoiding a runoff. In contrast to the prior predictions of a Chornovil victory in northwestern oblasts, he ultimately only won in Galicia, though he performed well in Chernivtsi, Cherkasy, Kyiv, Rivne, Volyn and Zakarpattia oblasts, as well as the city of Kyiv. Chornovil accepted defeat on election day, saying "The pre-election campaign gave me the opportunity to travel all over Ukraine, to meet the people and to politicise the East."Template:Sfn He later stated that another six months of campaigning, rather than the truncated campaign that occurred in 1991, would have allowed for a victory.Template:Sfn
Independent Ukraine
Following the presidential election, fissures developed within Rukh over the future of the group. One faction, led by Drach and Mykhailo Horyn, sought to dissolve the organisation and support Kravchuk's nation-building efforts, while Chornovil and his supporters sought to reformulate the organisation into a party to support Chornovil's future presidential ambitions.Template:Sfn Tensions within Rukh had also been aggravated by the presidential election, in which several members threw their support behind Yukhnovskyi or Lukianenko, rejecting a Rukh resolution pledging support for Chornovil as purely recommendatory.Template:Sfn
At the Template:Ill on 28 February 1992, a split in the organisation was briefly averted. Drach, Horyn and Chornovil were elected as co-chairs of Rukh as a compromise between the two factions.Template:Sfn Nonetheless, the Ukrainian Republican Party and the Democratic Party of Ukraine, which had formed out of Rukh, decided to cooperate with Kravchuk.Template:Sfn This unity was brought to an end at the Template:Ill in December 1992, when Chornovil's supporters reorganised Rukh into a centre-right political party under his leadership.Template:Sfn
Meanwhile, a crisis was brewing over the future of Crimea. Crimea's ethnically-Russian population now sought to break away from Ukraine and unify with Russia. On 5 May 1992, tensions came to a head as the local government of Crimea voted to declare its independence from Ukraine. The flag of Ukraine was replaced with the flag of Russia, and a wave of repressions against the indigenous Crimean Tatar population began.Template:Sfn Chornovil, who had maintained an interest in Crimean Tatars since his imprisonment,Template:Sfn called for the Verkhovna Rada (Ukraine's newly-independent parliament, replacing the Supreme Soviet) to cancel Crimea's declaration of independence and demand new elections to the Verkhovna Rada of Crimea. Privately, Chornovil expressed a desire to deploy the Ukrainian military to Crimea, but he did not publicly state this as he felt that such a demand would go unfulfilled by Kravchuk or the rest of the government.Template:Sfn
As the crisis in Crimea continued, the Ukrainian economy collapsed, a result of the government's failure to adapt to changing economic realities within the former Soviet Union and its economy dominated by imports. Hyperinflation began and productivity rose. At one point, the Ukrainian government considered selling its nuclear arsenal in order to alleviate economic pressures. These political and economic crises led to fears among many deputies that Ukraine would soon lose its independence;Template:Sfn Chornovil, on the contrary, believed that by securing Ukraine's sovereignty, it would lead to an improvement in political and economic conditions, and he continued to oppose Kravchuk, with whom he continued to maintain an acrimonious rivalry.Template:Sfn
Independent trade unions, incensed by the refusal of Kravchuk's government to guarantee workers' benefits and compensation, launched wide-reaching strikes on 2 September 1992. Like the strikes of 1989–1991 the strikers were largely coal miners, but in contrast to the previous strikes they failed to gain wide-reaching support, a fact that Lafayette College professor Stephen Crowley attributes to it having been called by a nation-wide union instead of by local, Donbas-based strike committees. The coal miners were joined by Kyiv's public transportation workers in February 1993, a measure that made the strike deeply unpopular among the public. Rather than endorsing the strikes, as they previously had, Rukh condemned them (as did almost all other parties) and called upon the government to "punish the real organisers of the strike". Chornovil in particular argued for the curtailing of political activity, especially strikes, in order to ensure stability.Template:Sfn
Russia waded into the Crimean crisis later in 1993. Template:Ill, deputy chairman of the Supreme Soviet of Russia, pledged to recognise Crimea if their independence was confirmed by referendum. In June, the city of Sevastopol additionally applied to join the Russian Federation. Pro-Russian activist Yuriy Meshkov became the impromptu leader of the movement for Crimea's annexation into Russia, forming an army comprising soldiers of the Soviet Black Sea Fleet and seizing control of police and media buildings with supporters.Template:Sfn The increasing perceived threat from Moscow over Crimea led the Ukrainian population to favour maintaining the nuclear weapons that had come under its control following the Soviet Union's dissolution. Chornovil was among the politicians who supported an independent nuclear arsenal, or alternatively membership in the NATO military alliance, which he felt was the only possible deterrent to Russian expansionism in the case that they were required to relenquish their weapons.Template:Sfn Despite this, Chornovil insisted that war would not occur over Crimea in the immediate term; he believed that within half a year to a year Crimean separatism would lose popularity and that Russian actions would be limited to financing Crimean separatists and an information warfare campaign against Ukraine. Both of these predictions would eventually prove accurate.Template:Sfn
Kravchuk's government dissolved the Verkhovna Rada and called snap parliamentary and presidential elections on 17 June 1993 in a bid to stem the miners' anger.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Chornovil initially chose to contest a Kyiv seat in the parliamentary election, as he felt this would establish him as a national figure and give him the opportunity to tour all of Ukraine to spread his ideological vision. His close ally and friend Template:Ill was nominated by Rukh as the candidate for Lviv's Shevchenkivskyi District. At the time Boichyshyn was Chairman of the Secretariat of Rukh.Template:Sfn
On 14 January 1994 Boichyshyn was abducted by armed individuals shortly after leaving Rukh's campaign headquarters in Kyiv.Template:Sfn He has not been seen since, and he is believed to be dead. Boichyshyn's enforced disappearance was a watershed moment in Ukraine, being the first in a series of mysterious deaths of anti-communist politicians and journalists in Ukraine.Template:Sfn At the time of Boichyshyn's abduction, Chornovil was campaigning in the southern Mykolaiv Oblast, and the two had spoken by phone shortly before Boichyshyn was "disappeared". Boichyshyn's disappearance had a significant effect on Chornovil. He later chose to instead contest the 357th electoral district (located in Ternopil Oblast) rather than a seat in Kyiv, and he was successfully electedTemplate:Sfn with 62.5% of the vote against 14 opponents.Template:Sfn
The results of the parliamentary election boded poorly for Kravchuk's chances in the presidential election: 75% of the population turned out to vote, far exceeding expectations of low turnout and apathy. A split developed between eastern Ukraine, which elected candidates of the newly-reestablished Communist Party of Ukraine, and central and western Ukraine, where Rukh performed particularly well. The New York Times noted after the election that Chornovil was regarded as an expected competitor to Kravchuk, alongside former Prime Minister Leonid Kuchma and Ivan Plyushch, who both won by significant margins after being established as potential opponents of Kravchuk. In the aftermath of the election, Kravchuk argued in a 25 March 1994 address that the presidential election, scheduled for June 1994, would need to be cancelled and petitioned the Verkhovna Rada to grant him emergency powers to undertake economic reforms and fight organised crime.Template:Sfn
120 deputies, largely belonging to the national-democratic opposition, lent their support to Kravchuk in his efforts to cancel the elections and obtain greater powers. Rukh gave a reluctant endorsement of Kravchuk's call to postpone the elections under the justification that not doing so without reform of electoral laws would lead to a political crisis, though Chornovil refused to back an expansion of his powers and argued that he would use it to empower former communist officials and agree to hand over both nuclear weapons and the Black Sea Fleet (the ownership of which was disputed) to Russia. Chornovil argued that to expand presidential powers would lead to the emergence of "a quiet dictatorship of the oligarchy". Ultimately, neither proposal was passed as communists took control of the Verkhovna Rada's leadership following the election and blocked any efforts to postpone or cancel the election.Template:Sfn
In spite of his electoral success in the parliamentary election, Chornovil decided not to run in the 1994 presidential election and instead endorsed economist Volodymyr Lanovyi,Template:Sfn who had been removed from the government by Kravchuk after proposing reforms to end the economic crisis.Template:Sfn Journalist Taras Zdorovylo has claimed that it is possible this decision was taken out of fear for his life and the future of Rukh; according to Zdorovylo, Chornovil used his connections from his time in prison to secretly meet with leading Ukrainian mafia figures, who denied responsibility and claimed that the government had ordered Boichyshyn's abduction. Zdorovylo also notes that Kravchuk's government launched a politically-motivated investigation into the finances of Rukh during the election and placed both Chornovil and high-ranking party member Oleksandr Lavrynovych under a security escort, which monitored their conversations.Template:Sfn
Kuchma defeated Kravchuk in the election, becoming the second President of Ukraine. Kuchma's subsequent crackdown on independent media caused Chornovil to become one of the foremost critics of his government.Template:Sfn Though power transitioned from one individual to another as a result of Kuchma's victory, the political situation did not significantly change; the country remained controlled by the post-communist nomenklatura, which Chornovil would refer to as a "party of power" in 1996, and an emerging class of industrial oligarchs associated with them.Template:Sfn
The process of drafting and ratifying a constitution for independent Ukraine began in 1995. Chornovil, like much of the rest of Ukraine's right-wing and centrist politicians, found himself aligned with Kuchma as the parliamentary left pushed for constitutional articles forbidding the sale and purchase of land and the preservation of Soviet-era local government bodies. Chornovil indicated on 25 March 1995 that he backed Kuchma's proposed constitution, though he expressed that Rukh had "eleven serious objections" to its adoption.Template:Sfn
Kuchma's proposed constitution was characterised by Oleksandr Moroz (leader of the Socialist Party and then-Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada) as creating an overly-centralised state with strong powers for the executive and lacking an independent judiciary. He rejected Kuchma's constitution, and in June of that year created a second constitutional draft along with Kuchma and 38 other individuals as part of a "Constitutional Commission". This draft was in turn rejected by the right and centre as placing too much power in the president's hands and giving insufficient authority to the judiciary. Chornovil wrote in his Template:Ill newspaper on 24 November that the draft was "anti-parliamentary" and accusing the drafters of seeking to obstruct the Verkhovna Rada.Template:Sfn A constitution was eventually adopted on 28 June 1996, though several provisions supported by Rukh, such as private property rights, the affirmation of Ukraine as a unitary state and the right of the Ukrainian people to self-determination, were not adopted.Template:Sfn
Aside from the constitution, Chornovil began working as president of the Vasyl Symonenko International Human Rights Foundation in 1994 and became chief editor of Chas-Time in January 1995. He was also appointed as among the first Ukrainian delegates to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe the same year,Template:Sfn and along with the Ukrainian Red Cross Society organised the donation of 50 tonnes of humanitarian aid to Chechen civilians during the First Chechen War.Template:Sfn Newspaper Gazeta.ua wrote in 2017 that Chornovil was one of the supporters of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church – Kyiv Patriarchate during the funeral of Patriarch Volodymyr, who he had been imprisoned alongside, as protesters attempted to bury him in Saint Sophia Cathedral,Template:Sfn though online news portal galinfo indicates that he instead sought to prevent violence and continue the burial.Template:Sfn Chornovil praised Kuchma on a number of occasions during the early years of his presidency for his appointment of National-Democrats to governmental positions.Template:Sfn Chornovil also paid a visit to Odesa from 14–16 September 1994, where he hosted a conference at the Odesa National Polytechnic University on the future of Rukh. Chornovil's speech at the Odesa Polytechnic advocated for the strengthening of democratic norms and the creation of a middle class via economic reforms. At the same time, he continued his critique of the emerging oligarchy.Template:Sfn
In 1997, Chornovil escalated his feud with Moroz, condemning his speeches as "primitive populism" and blaming him for the escalation of political polarisation in Ukraine.Template:Sfn Chornovil also increasingly advocated for Ukrainian integration with other Central and Eastern European states, calling for the establishment of a "Baltic-Black Sea Union", or Template:Translit (Template:Langx), the demilitarisation of the Black Sea (thus leading to the abolition of the Black Sea Fleet, which had by 1997 been transferred to Russia) and Ukrainian membership in NATO. Along with Belarusian dissident Zianon Pazniak Chornovil actively promoted the idea of the Baltic-Black Sea Union until his death. Western partners such as U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Czech President Václav Havel met with Chornovil on multiple occasions, and he increasingly was regarded by Western leaders as a more trustworthy interlocutor than the largely ex-communist leadership of Ukraine.Template:Sfn
Along with a handful of other politicians, Chornovil attended the inauguration of Aslan Maskhadov as President of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria in 1997.Template:Sfn Rukh formally declared itself to be in opposition to Kuchma's rule in October of the same year.Template:Sfn
1998 election
Chornovil again led Rukh in the 1998 Ukrainian parliamentary election, this time running as the first candidate on the party's proportional representation list.Template:Sfn During the election, Rukh reversed course on federalism, with Chornovil arguing that calls for Ukraine to become a federal republic were "clan federalism".Template:Sfn Chornovil was joined by Volodymyr Cherniak, Foreign Minister Hennadiy Udovenko, Drach and Environment Minister Yuriy Kostenko as the leading party-list candidates, along with Crimean Tatar activist Mustafa Dzhemilev. Rukh did not form a coalition with any other parties to contest the election, though its candidates included members of non-governmental organisations such as Prosvita and the Ukrainian Women's Union. The party generally campaigned against the left.Template:Sfn Chornovil called on all National-Democratic parties to form a coalition against the left and the right-wing Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists, additionally arguing for a grand coalition with the pro-Kuchma People's Democratic Party and the Social Democratic Party of Ukraine (united).Template:Sfn No party agreed to Chornovil's requests for a coalition.Template:Sfn
Though they were the second-largest party in the Verkhovna Rada, the result was positive for Rukh, which doubled its seats compared to 1994.Template:Sfn For the right in general, however, the election was a disappointment, as only Rukh passed the 4% threshold for party-list representation and the right in general underperformed its traditional result of 20–25% of seats.Template:Sfn Rukh announced its intention to challenge the election results as illegitimate following the election. The Communist Party of Ukraine again became the largest party in the Verkhovna Rada, with left-wing parties forming a majority. Though he noted that the results were not as bad for the right as the prior election,Template:Sfn Chornovil was left exhausted by the campaign and obtained a public image as being constantly fatigued.Template:Sfn At the time, he was sleeping no more than five hours per day due to his balancing of commitments between Chas-Time and politics In Lviv Oblast, his traditional support base and a holdout against the privatisation that had occurred throughout Ukraine, Rukh's government was replaced by that of the Agrarian Party, under which political scandals involving kickbacks, money laundering and violence resulting from business feuds became frequent.Template:Sfn
Ninth congress, 1999 presidential election, split in Rukh
At Rukh's Template:Ill, held from 12–13 December 1998, Chornovil announced the party's strategy for the 1999 presidential election. Titled "Forwards, to the east", it called for greater focus on the populations of eastern and southern Ukraine while maintaining its opposition to the establishment of Russian as a co-official language with Ukrainian.Template:Sfn
At the same congress, Chornovil announced his intention to contest the presidency for a second time in the 1999 election.Template:Efn Chornovil and Udovenko were the two primary candidates from Rukh to be nominated for the presidency; the final decision was intended to be made at a later date.Template:Sfn According to Viktor Pynzenyk, leader of the centre-right Reforms and Order Party, he and Chornovil also attempted to persuade Viktor Yushchenko, Governor of the National Bank of Ukraine, to run for the presidency in 1999.Template:Sfn
By this time, a split between members of Rukh who regarded Chornovil as an outdated figure and those who supported him was becoming increasingly apparent. Opponents of Chornovil within the party regarded him as overly-authoritarian, disrespectful of party rulesTemplate:Sfn and too close to Kuchma;Template:Sfn Chornovil's supporters likewise regarded his opponents as too close to KuchmaTemplate:Sfn and supported by monied interests.Template:Sfn Ukrainian historian Pavlo Hai-Nyzhnyk has said that Chornovil withdrew his name from the presidential nomination in January 1999Template:Sfn and according to the Jamestown Foundation he endorsed Udovenko,Template:Sfn though Chornovil's son Taras has disputed this, saying he was still campaigning for the presidency until his death.Template:SfnTemplate:Efn
The split came to a head in February 1999. Kostenko led a contingent of Rukh in declaring Chornovil to be removed as leader in a 17Template:Sfn or 19 FebruaryTemplate:Sfn parliamentary meeting, and declared himself leader of the party in a 27 February meeting of his supporters.Template:Sfn Chornovil responded at a 22 February press conference where he compared them to the State Committee on the State of Emergency that led the 1991 Soviet coup attempt and accused them of taking $40,000 per month from the Ukrainian government, of taking 4,000 hryvnias from a Rukh office, and of taking a million-dollar bribe from Rukh People's Deputy Oleh Ishchenko. Kyiv Post deputy editor Jaroslaw Koshiw wrote in a 25 February opinion article that only 17 deputies remained loyal to Chornovil following Kostenko's defection.Template:Sfn
The multitude of newspapers belonging to Rukh were split by the feud; 11 supported Chornovil, while five backed Kostenko. Dzerkalo Tyzhnia took an independent stance, but generally blamed Chornovil for the split, along with Kuchma and presidential candidate Yevhen Marchuk.Template:Sfn Chornovil and his followers were scornful towards Kostenko's faction following the split; Les Tanyuk said that "These are people more concerned right now with getting their Mercedes and building their dachas", while Chornovil referred to Kostenko's attempted takeover as a "privatisation of the party" and blamed Kuchma and the government for orchestrating the split.Template:Sfn
In a 2012 court proceeding relating to Chornovil's death, Udovenko testified that in February 1999 he was contacted by Viacheslav Babenko, a Ukrainian citizen employed by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB). According to Udovenko, Babenko warned him that there would be an attempt on Chornovil's life involving Russian intelligence agencies. Chornovil dismissed Babenko's warning as an attempt at intimidation. Mykola Stepanenko, a Ministry of Internal Affairs employee tasked with investigating Chornovil's death, noted Babenko as an individual who had substantial knowledge of Chornovil's daily routine and travel plans.Template:Sfn
Chornovil renamed Rukh's parliamentary faction to "People's Movement of Ukraine – 1" on 24 February. On 28 February, Kostenko's supporters organised what they referred to as the tenth congress of Rukh, during which they declared that Chornovil had been officially removed as leader and that the party's period of opposition would be replaced by one of "equal partnership". A congress of Chornovil's followers, referred to as the "second stage" of the Ninth Congress by Chornovil, was held on 7 March and attended by 520 delegates of the Rukh assembly, more than the two-thirds requirement under the party's statutes.Template:Sfn
Death and funeral
On 24 March 1999, Chornovil was at a campaign event in the city of Kirovohrad (now Kropyvnytskyi), either for himself or Udovenko.Template:SfnTemplate:Efn While in Kirovohrad, he gave an interview where he expressed the belief that Ukraine's financial and organised crime clansTemplate:Efn were targeting Rukh in an attempt to destroy it and secure the further accumulation of financial capital. He further claimed that Kuchma could only win by assassinating his opponents or turning them against one another. Details of his last phone calls are disputed; his sister Template:Ill has said that he wished her a happy birthday and described Rukh's split as being "all behind us",Template:Sfn while Kostenko alleged that he indicated that he had changed his mind and wished to support him, rather than Udovenko, for the presidency.Template:Sfn
Shortly before midnight on 25 March 1999,Template:Sfn Chornovil was returning to Kyiv from Kirovohrad with aide Yevhen Pavlov and Rukh press secretary Dmytro Ponomarchuk.Template:Efn Five kilometres from Boryspil, while travelling at a speed of Template:Convert,Template:Sfn Chornovil's Toyota Corolla collided with a Kamaz lorry carrying grain that was stalling at a bend on the highway. Chornovil and Pavlov were both killed instantly, while Ponomarchuk was hospitalised with serious injuries.Template:Sfn
Chornovil's funeral was held at Kyiv's City Teacher's House (where the Ukrainian People's Republic had been proclaimed in 1917) on 29 March,Template:Sfn with a procession travelling to St Volodymyr's CathedralTemplate:Sfn before his burial at Baikove Cemetery.Template:Sfn The Guardian reported that "tens of thousands of Ukrainians" were present;Template:Sfn the Militsiya claimed a figure of 10,000; while The Ukrainian Weekly wrote that nearly 50,000 attended "what many consider the largest funeral this city [Kyiv] has ever seen". He was granted a state honour guard, as well as a military orchestra. Most of Ukraine's political elite was present at the funeral, including Kravchuk (who cried at Chornovil's funeral despite their long-running rivalry), Kuchma, Prime Minister Valeriy Pustovoitenko, and Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Oleksandr Tkachenko, as well as several former dissidents and the leaders of almost all political parties, with the notable exceptions of the Communist Party (led by Petro Symonenko) and the Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine (led by Nataliya Vitrenko).Template:Sfn
Conspiracy theories and investigations
Suspicions of Ukrainian government involvement in Chornovil's death emerged almost immediately,Template:Sfn inflamed by Chornovil's controversial nature and the impending presidential election. Minister of Internal Affairs Yuriy Kravchenko said in a televised speech on the evening of Chornovil's death that an assassination would not be considered in investigating Chornovil's death. Prior to his burial, Tanyuk and Christian Democratic Party deputy Vitaliy Zhuravskyi both alleged that Chornovil had been murdered, while journalist Serhii Naboka noted that the circumstances of his death were similar to other suspicious deaths of Soviet leaders' political opponents.Template:Sfn The lorry driver was initially charged with recklessness,Template:Sfn but amnestied within a month,Template:Sfn and one passenger died under unclear circumstances.Template:Sfn Karatnycky, citing an anonymous member of Kuchma's 1999 campaign, notes that Kuchma's other non-communist rivals failed to form a coalition against him, ultimately leading to his victory;Template:Sfn Ukrainian political scientist Taras Kuzio likewise describes Kuchma and Yevhen Marchuk as the only serious non-leftist contenders for the presidency following Chornovil's death.Template:Sfn
The first attempt to investigate Chornovil's death began with a Verkhovna Rada commission in April 1999.Template:Sfn Following the 2004–2005 Orange Revolution, Kuchma's successor Viktor Yushchenko announced that the investigation into the circumstances of the death of Chornovil would be renewed at a 23 August 2006 ceremony inaugurating a statue of Chornovil.Template:Sfn On 6 September 2006, Minister of Internal Affairs Yuriy Lutsenko declared that Chornovil had been murdered and that evidence proving it had been handed over to the Prosecutor General of Ukraine.Template:Sfn Prosecutor General Oleksandr Medvedko criticised Lutsenko's statements regarding the case as "to put it mildly, unprofessional," and alleged that the information came from an individual convicted of fraud and for whom an Interpol notice had been issued.Template:Sfn Since then, investigations into Chornovil's death have been repeatedly closed and reopened without concluding whether Chornovil was the victim of an assassination plot or a simple car crash. The Boryspil District Court declared that an assassination plot did not exist in January 2014 and closed the case, but as of March 2015 it was again the subject of an investigation by the Prosecutor General's office.Template:Sfn
Legacy
Peter Marusenko, a journalist for The Guardian, argued while reporting Chornovil's funeral that his contribution to Ukrainian history was not recognised by many Ukrainians until after his death.Template:Sfn In his 2017 book The Near Abroad, professor Zbigniew Wojnowski described Chornovil as "a more inclusive vision of Ukraine, unambiguously pro-European and united by commitment to the rule of law and parliamentary democracy," in contrast to early and mid-20th century nationalist leader Stepan Bandera, and noted that a large poster of Chornovil was present during the 2013–2014 Euromaidan protests.Template:Sfn Wojnowski defines Chornovil's ideology of "reformist patriotism", advocating for Ukraine to follow reforms of and maintain historical links with Central Europe, as spreading throughout Ukrainian society following Euromaidan and the Orange Revolution.Template:Sfn
More critically, Chornovil has been accused of ignoring political realities in lieu of "romanticism" and having a naïve attitude towards politics, as in a 2017 Radio Liberty article by philosopher and writer Template:Ill. In particular, Kraliuk notes Chornovil's belief in federalism and refusal to work with Kravchuk following his 1991 election defeat as unconstructive.Template:Sfn
Chornovil was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of Ukraine in 2000, in recognition of his significance in reestablishing a Ukrainian state.Template:Sfn He was also awarded the Shevchenko National Prize in 1996 for his investigative journalism, particularly his samvydav (among them Court of Law or a Return of the Terror? and Woe from Wit).Template:Sfn He has twice been placed among the ten most popular Ukrainians of all time. In the 2008 Velyki Ukraïntsi poll, he was placed as Ukraine's seventh most-popular figure, with 2.63% of individuals polled naming him as the greatest Ukrainian of all time.Template:Sfn In the 2022 "People's Top" poll, he was the ninth most-popular Ukrainian, with previous polling indicating that his support had increased from 3.5% in 2012 to 8.7% in 2022.Template:Sfn
In 2003, the National Bank of Ukraine issued a commemorative coin with the nominal of 2 hryvnias dedicated to Chornovil.Template:Sfn In 2009, a Ukrainian stamp devoted to Chornovil was issued.Template:Sfn
See also
Notes
References
Bibliography
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External links
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- Ukrainian Weekly newspaper biography
- Vyacheslav Chornovil's Death
- Pictures of the Monument
- Obituary, The Times
- "He who awake the Stone state" (DVD) in the library of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy Template:Webarchive
Template:1991 presidential election candidates, Ukraine Template:1991 Independence of Ukraine Template:1996 Shevchenko National Prize Template:Soviet dissidents Template:Ukrainian Helsinki Group Template:Fall of Communism
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