Vyacheslav Chornovil
Encyclopedia
Viacheslav Chornovil (born December 24, 1937 in Yerky, Katerynopil Raion
, Kiev Oblast
- died March 25, 1999, near Boryspil
, Kiev Oblast
) was a Ukrainian
politician. A prominent Ukrainian dissident to the Soviet policies
, he was arrested multiple times in the 1960s and 1970s for his political views. A long-time advocate of Ukrainian independence, he was one of the most prominent political figures of the late 1980s and early 1990s who paved the path of the contemporary Ukraine to its independence.
. He graduated in 1960.
and Kiev
. He became known as a dissident after documenting the illegal imprisonment of some Ukrainian intellectuals. He himself was ordered to stand witness and testify at one of them, but he refused and was sentenced to three months of labor. Later, he covered a similar story about twenty Ukrainians. He was charged with slander and sentenced to three years of imprisonment, but was released in half the time under a general amnesty in 1967 to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the October Revolution
. The Times
awarded him the Tomalin Prize for the documentation of the trials.
He was imprisoned another time for being involved in Ukrainian separatist movements and affiliated publications. Chornovil renounced his Soviet citizenship and decided to move to Canada
in 1975 but was not permitted to do so. He joined the Ukrainian Helsinki Group
, which helped to monitor and enforce the 1975 Helsinki Accords
.
He was arrested yet again for "attempted rape" in a falsified case in 1980 and was sentenced to five years in prison, after which he carried out a 120-day-long hunger strike
. He was released in 1983 following the protest of the Prosecutor. He was arrested various other times during the next ten years. In the late 1980s actively participated in the Ukrainian national movement becoming of the first leaders of the People's Movement of Ukraine
(better known as Rukh). In 1988 there was a first attempt to create the "Democratic Front in support of Perestroika
" in Lviv
only to be dispersed by the Soviet OMON
canine unit. Later he promoted several nationally oriented actions one of them was the Zhyvy lantsiuh that took place on January 21, 1990 and commemorated the act of unification of the Ukrainian lands in 1919 (see Act Zluky
).
in 1991 but was defeated. He was one of the most important members of the People's Movement of Ukraine
, a right-wing party. He was elected to the Verkhovna Rada
for the People's Movement of Ukraine in 1994 and 1998 and was the head of that party. In 1999 his party was almost dissolved due to disagreements within. There are speculations that the failure to liquidate the party led to the road accident that took the Chornovil's life. That fact is mentioned in the documentary movie of Volodymyr Onyshchenko He who awoke the Stone state.
Chornovil was expected to become the main opposition candidate against the incumbent president Leonid Kuchma
for the 1999 presidential election
, but Chornovil's presidential campaign was interrupted in its early stages by his suspicious death in an automobile crash on March 25, 1999, his assistant Yevhen Pavlov was also killed in the crash . The official investigation carried by the Ministry of Internal Affairs
concluded that the crash was purely accidental and discovered no evidence of the foul play. However, some of Chornovil's supporters called his death a political murder and called on bringing those responsible for it to justice. The fact of murder is stated on the website dedicated to Vyacheslav Chornovil and created by his son Taras Chornovil
, a deputy of Verkhovna Rada
formerly from the Party of Regions
In 2003, the National Bank of Ukraine
issued a commemorative coin with the nominal of 2 Hryvnias dedicated to Chornovil.
On August 23, 2006, Viktor Yushchenko
, the previous President of Ukraine, unveiled a monument to Chornovil and ordered a new investigation into his death. On September 6, 2006, Yuri Lutsenko, the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, announced that based on the information he saw, he personally believes that Chornovil was a victim of the murder rather than a car accident. Lutsenko stated further that the investigation is now carried by the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine
and the Security Service of Ukraine, the law enforcement authorities not under Lutsenko's control. He went further, alluding that "certain circles" in the Prosecutor's Office and Security Service are stonewalling the investigation. However, on August 9, Oleksandr Medvedko
, the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, commented at the news conference that Lutsenko's statement is "unprofessional" as his conclusions are based on unreliable information.
On March 25, 2009 a funeral service was held in near the memorable sign in Boryspil and admirers (including the Mayor of Kiev
(then Leonid Chernovetskyi
)) lead flowers on his monument in Kiev
to mark the 10 year passing after Chornovil's death. The same day the People's Movement of Ukraine called on the law enforcement agencies of Ukraine to complete investigation into the case involving the killing of their former leader Viacheslav Chornovil and his assistant Yevhen Pavlov in a road incident until 2010.
In 2009, a Ukrainian stamp devoted to Chornovil was issued.
Katerynopil Raion
Katerynopil Raion is a raion of Cherkasy Oblast, central Ukraine. Its administrative centre is located at Katerynopil....
, Kiev Oblast
Kiev Oblast
Kyiv Oblast, sometimes written as Kiev Oblast is an oblast in central Ukraine.The administrative center of the oblast is the city of Kyiv , also being the capital of Ukraine...
- died March 25, 1999, near Boryspil
Boryspil
Boryspil is a city located in the Kiev Oblast in northern Ukraine. Serving as the administrative center of the Boryspil Raion , the city itself is also designated as a separate raion within the oblast....
, Kiev Oblast
Kiev Oblast
Kyiv Oblast, sometimes written as Kiev Oblast is an oblast in central Ukraine.The administrative center of the oblast is the city of Kyiv , also being the capital of Ukraine...
) was a Ukrainian
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
politician. A prominent Ukrainian dissident to the Soviet policies
Soviet dissidents
Soviet dissidents were citizens of the Soviet Union who disagreed with the policies and actions of their government and actively protested against these actions through either violent or non-violent means...
, he was arrested multiple times in the 1960s and 1970s for his political views. A long-time advocate of Ukrainian independence, he was one of the most prominent political figures of the late 1980s and early 1990s who paved the path of the contemporary Ukraine to its independence.
Education
Chornovil studied journalism at the University of Kiev and joined the KomsomolKomsomol
The Communist Union of Youth , usually known as Komsomol , was the youth division of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Komsomol in its earliest form was established in urban centers in 1918. During the early years, it was a Russian organization, known as the Russian Communist Union of...
. He graduated in 1960.
Soviet Union
Chornovil worked for various newspapers and in television in LvivLviv
Lviv is a city in western Ukraine. The city is regarded as one of the main cultural centres of today's Ukraine and historically has also been a major Polish and Jewish cultural center, as Poles and Jews were the two main ethnicities of the city until the outbreak of World War II and the following...
and Kiev
Kiev
Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....
. He became known as a dissident after documenting the illegal imprisonment of some Ukrainian intellectuals. He himself was ordered to stand witness and testify at one of them, but he refused and was sentenced to three months of labor. Later, he covered a similar story about twenty Ukrainians. He was charged with slander and sentenced to three years of imprisonment, but was released in half the time under a general amnesty in 1967 to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the October Revolution
October Revolution
The October Revolution , also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution , Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917...
. The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
awarded him the Tomalin Prize for the documentation of the trials.
He was imprisoned another time for being involved in Ukrainian separatist movements and affiliated publications. Chornovil renounced his Soviet citizenship and decided to move to Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
in 1975 but was not permitted to do so. He joined the Ukrainian Helsinki Group
Ukrainian Helsinki Group
The Ukrainian Helsinki Group was founded in November 1976 to monitor human rights in Ukraine. The group was active until 1981 when all members were jailed....
, which helped to monitor and enforce the 1975 Helsinki Accords
Helsinki Accords
thumb|300px|[[Erich Honecker]] and [[Helmut Schmidt]] in Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe held in Helsinki 1975....
.
He was arrested yet again for "attempted rape" in a falsified case in 1980 and was sentenced to five years in prison, after which he carried out a 120-day-long hunger strike
Hunger strike
A hunger strike is a method of non-violent resistance or pressure in which participants fast as an act of political protest, or to provoke feelings of guilt in others, usually with the objective to achieve a specific goal, such as a policy change. Most hunger strikers will take liquids but not...
. He was released in 1983 following the protest of the Prosecutor. He was arrested various other times during the next ten years. In the late 1980s actively participated in the Ukrainian national movement becoming of the first leaders of the People's Movement of Ukraine
People's Movement of Ukraine
The People's Movement of Ukraine is a Ukrainian center-right political party...
(better known as Rukh). In 1988 there was a first attempt to create the "Democratic Front in support of Perestroika
Perestroika
Perestroika was a political movement within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during 1980s, widely associated with the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev...
" in Lviv
Lviv
Lviv is a city in western Ukraine. The city is regarded as one of the main cultural centres of today's Ukraine and historically has also been a major Polish and Jewish cultural center, as Poles and Jews were the two main ethnicities of the city until the outbreak of World War II and the following...
only to be dispersed by the Soviet OMON
OMON
OMOH is a generic name for the system of special units of militsiya within the Russian and earlier the Soviet MVD...
canine unit. Later he promoted several nationally oriented actions one of them was the Zhyvy lantsiuh that took place on January 21, 1990 and commemorated the act of unification of the Ukrainian lands in 1919 (see Act Zluky
Act Zluky
The Unification Act was an agreement signed on January 22, 1919 by the Ukrainian People's Republic and the West Ukrainian People's Republic on the St. Sophia Square in Kiev...
).
After Ukrainian independence
Chornovil ran for President of UkrainePresident of Ukraine
Prior to the formation of the modern Ukrainian presidency, the previous Ukrainian head of state office was officially established in exile by Andriy Livytskyi. At first the de facto leader of nation was the president of the Central Rada at early years of the Ukrainian People's Republic, while the...
in 1991 but was defeated. He was one of the most important members of the People's Movement of Ukraine
People's Movement of Ukraine
The People's Movement of Ukraine is a Ukrainian center-right political party...
, a right-wing party. He was elected to the Verkhovna Rada
Verkhovna Rada
The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine is Ukraine's parliament. The Verkhovna Rada is a unicameral parliament composed of 450 deputies, which is presided over by a chairman...
for the People's Movement of Ukraine in 1994 and 1998 and was the head of that party. In 1999 his party was almost dissolved due to disagreements within. There are speculations that the failure to liquidate the party led to the road accident that took the Chornovil's life. That fact is mentioned in the documentary movie of Volodymyr Onyshchenko He who awoke the Stone state.
Death and remembrance
Leonid Kuchma
Leonid Danylovych Kuchma was the second President of independent Ukraine from 19 July 1994, to 23 January 2005. Kuchma took office after winning the 1994 presidential election against his rival, incumbent Leonid Kravchuk...
for the 1999 presidential election
Ukrainian presidential election, 1999
The Ukrainian presidential election, 1999 was a presidential election held in 1999 in Ukraine.There were 15 candidates originally with two withdrawing prior to election ....
, but Chornovil's presidential campaign was interrupted in its early stages by his suspicious death in an automobile crash on March 25, 1999, his assistant Yevhen Pavlov was also killed in the crash . The official investigation carried by the Ministry of Internal Affairs
Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine
The Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine is the main body in the system of central bodies of exeecutive power that provides formation and realization of the state policy in the sphere of protection the rights and liberties of citizens, unlawful acts against the interest of society and state,...
concluded that the crash was purely accidental and discovered no evidence of the foul play. However, some of Chornovil's supporters called his death a political murder and called on bringing those responsible for it to justice. The fact of murder is stated on the website dedicated to Vyacheslav Chornovil and created by his son Taras Chornovil
Taras Chornovil
Taras Vyacheslavovych Chornovil is a Ukrainian politician and is an independent member of Reforms for the Future block in the Verkhovna Rada.-Early life:...
, a deputy of Verkhovna Rada
Verkhovna Rada
The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine is Ukraine's parliament. The Verkhovna Rada is a unicameral parliament composed of 450 deputies, which is presided over by a chairman...
formerly from the Party of Regions
Party of Regions
The Party of Regions is an Ukrainian political party created on October 26, 1997 just prior to the 1998 Ukrainian parliamentary elections under the name of Party of Regional Revival of Ukraine. It was reformed later in 2001 when the party united with several others...
In 2003, the National Bank of Ukraine
National Bank of Ukraine
National Bank of Ukraine is the central bank of Ukraine. Its headquarters building, constructed between 1902 and 1934, is located at no. 9 Institutska St., in Kiev-History:...
issued a commemorative coin with the nominal of 2 Hryvnias dedicated to Chornovil.
On August 23, 2006, Viktor Yushchenko
Viktor Yushchenko
Viktor Andriyovych Yushchenko is a former President of Ukraine. He took office on January 23, 2005, following a period of popular unrest known as the Orange Revolution...
, the previous President of Ukraine, unveiled a monument to Chornovil and ordered a new investigation into his death. On September 6, 2006, Yuri Lutsenko, the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, announced that based on the information he saw, he personally believes that Chornovil was a victim of the murder rather than a car accident. Lutsenko stated further that the investigation is now carried by the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine
Prosecutor General of Ukraine
The Prosecutor General of Ukraine heads the system of official prosecution in courts known as the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine...
and the Security Service of Ukraine, the law enforcement authorities not under Lutsenko's control. He went further, alluding that "certain circles" in the Prosecutor's Office and Security Service are stonewalling the investigation. However, on August 9, Oleksandr Medvedko
Oleksandr Medvedko
Oleksandr Medvedko is a former Prosecutor General of Ukraine Medvedko was installed in a political deal with the Party of Regions.In December 2009 during the 2010 Ukrainian presidential election campaign incumbent Prime Minister of Ukraine and presidential candidate Yulia Tymoshenko promised to...
, the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, commented at the news conference that Lutsenko's statement is "unprofessional" as his conclusions are based on unreliable information.
On March 25, 2009 a funeral service was held in near the memorable sign in Boryspil and admirers (including the Mayor of Kiev
Mayor of Kiev
Mayor of Kiev is the elected mayor of the municipality of Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, who is also normally automatically appointed as Head of the City's State Administration and Chair of the City Council....
(then Leonid Chernovetskyi
Leonid Chernovetskyi
Leonid Mykhaylovych Chernovetskyi is the incumbent Mayor of Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. Before his political career, he was a successful businessman, founder and controlling stakeholder of the Pravex Group and Pravex Bank, one of the largest banks in Ukraine.-Biography:Chernovetskyi quit school...
)) lead flowers on his monument in Kiev
Kiev
Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....
to mark the 10 year passing after Chornovil's death. The same day the People's Movement of Ukraine called on the law enforcement agencies of Ukraine to complete investigation into the case involving the killing of their former leader Viacheslav Chornovil and his assistant Yevhen Pavlov in a road incident until 2010.
In 2009, a Ukrainian stamp devoted to Chornovil was issued.