Viacheslav Chernovol Ukrainian politician Date of Birth: 24.12.1937 Country: Ukraine

1. Biography of Vyacheslav Chernovol
2. Political Activism and Imprisonment
3. Founding the People's Movement of Ukraine
4. Political Career and Assassination
5. Family

Biography of Vyacheslav Chernovol

Vyacheslav Chernovol was a Ukrainian politician, Soviet dissident, journalist, and one of the founders of the People's Movement of Ukraine. He was born on December 24, 1937, in the village of Yerki in the Zvenigorodsky District of the Kiev region (now Katerinopolsky District of the Cherkassy region) in a family of rural teachers. In 1946, his family moved to the village of Olkhovets, where he started school in the second grade. He completed school in 1955 and enrolled in the Philology Faculty of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kiev. In his second year, he switched to the Faculty of Journalism. In 1958, he faced his first problems due to his political views and was forced to go to Zhdanov for a year to work on the construction of a smelter. Even then, he was already published in various newspapers. In 1960, Vyacheslav Chernovol graduated with honors from the university and defended his thesis "Journalism of Boris Grinchenko." From July 1960 to May 1963, he worked at the Lviv Television Studio, first as an editor and then as a senior editor for youth programs. From May 1963 to September 1964, he lived in Vyshhorod, working on the construction of the Kyiv Hydroelectric Power Station. In 1964, he defended his doctoral dissertation and got a job at the newspaper "Molodaya Gvardiya".

Political Activism and Imprisonment

On September 4, 1965, Vyacheslav Chernovol, Vasiliy Stus, and Ivan Dzyuba staged a protest in the "Ukraina" cinema against the arrest of Ukrainian anti-Soviet intellectuals known as the "sixties' generation". As a result, Chernovol was fired from "Molodaya Gvardiya". After that, he found work as a literary worker at the newspaper "Drug Chitatelya". In November 1967, Vyacheslav Chernovol was sentenced to six years in a strict regime colony for his book about the "sixties' generation" titled "Gore ot uma" ("Misfortune from Intelligence"). After being released early in 1969, Chernovol earned a living through odd jobs such as working as an observer at a meteorological station in Zakarpattia, a digger in an archaeological expedition in the Odessa region, and a loader at a railway station in Lviv.

In 1970, Vyacheslav Chernovol began publishing the underground journal "Ukrainsky vestnik" (Ukrainian Herald), for which he was sentenced for the second time in 1972 - six years of imprisonment in a strict regime colony and three years of exile. He served his sentence in Mordovia and Yakutia. After his release in 1978, Chernovol became a member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group on May 22, 1979. In May 1980, he was arrested for the third time and sent to Yakutia for five years. However, Chernovol was released in 1983, though he was not allowed to return to Ukraine until 1985.

Founding the People's Movement of Ukraine

In 1988, Chernovol faced an attempt to strip him of his Soviet citizenship, but he called on all countries not to accept him. That same year, Chernovol, along with other dissidents, founded the Ukrainian Helsinki Union, which was the first attempt at political opposition to the Soviet regime. On September 8-10, 1989, the "People's Movement of Ukraine for Perestroika" (later known as the "People's Movement of Ukraine") was created with Chernovol's participation.

Political Career and Assassination

On March 30, 1990, Vyacheslav Chernovol was elected as a member of the Ukrainian Parliament, receiving 68.60% of the votes in a single-mandate district with 7 candidates. In April 1990, he was also elected as the head of the Lviv Regional Council. In October 1991, Vyacheslav Chernovol was elected as the Hetman of Ukrainian Cossacks at the Great Cossack Council.

On December 1, 1991, Vyacheslav Chernovol took second place in the first presidential elections in Ukraine, receiving 7,420,727 votes (23.27%). In February-March 1992, the "Third All-Ukrainian Assembly of the People's Movement of Ukraine" took place, where a split within the party between Chernovol on one side and Ivan Drach and Mikhail Horyn on the other side was prevented. All three leaders were elected as co-chairpersons of the People's Movement of Ukraine.

In December 1992, Vyacheslav Chernovol was elected as the sole leader of the party at the "Fourth All-Ukrainian Assembly of the People's Movement of Ukraine". Dissatisfied with his policies, some members left the party and formed the "All-Ukrainian Movement of Ukraine". However, the political activity of this new party soon dwindled.

In March 1994, Vyacheslav Chernovol was elected as a member of the Ukrainian Parliament for the second time, receiving 62.52% of the votes out of 15 candidates. From 1995 until his death, Chernovol was a member of the Ukrainian delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).

In the parliamentary elections held on March 29, 1998, Vyacheslav Chernovol was elected as a member of the Ukrainian Parliament for the third time.

In December 1998, at the "Ninth All-Ukrainian Assembly of the People's Movement of Ukraine", Chernovol nominated himself for the presidency of Ukraine (the presidential elections were planned for 1999) along with Hennadiy Udovenko. However, in January 1999, Chernovol withdrew his candidacy.

On February 28, 1999, a split occurred within the People's Movement of Ukraine. Deputy Vyacheslav Chernovol, Yuriy Kostenko, and a group of supporters tried to seize power, but their actions were deemed illegal, and the leadership remained with Vyacheslav Chernovol. Shortly after, Vyacheslav Chernovol died in a car accident. On March 25, 1999, while returning from Kirovohrad, Vyacheslav Chernovol and his driver Yevgeny Pavlov collided with a KamAZ truck on the fifth kilometer of the Borispol-Zolotonosha highway. Vyacheslav Chernovol was buried on the central alley of the Novo-Darnytsky Cemetery in Kyiv. More than 200,000 people from all over Ukraine attended his funeral.

Following his death, then Minister of Internal Affairs Yuriy Kravchenko, without waiting for the preliminary results of the investigation, stated that the leader of the People's Movement of Ukraine and his driver died as a result of a car accident and that "the version of the assassination of Vyacheslav Chernovol was not even considered." Later (2000), one of the witnesses who was in the cab of the dump truck (Ivan Sholom) unexpectedly died of a heart attack.

Representatives of the People's Movement of Ukraine from the very beginning called the death of their leader a political murder. Nevertheless, the case of Vyacheslav Chernovol's death was closed in June 1999. The investigation was resumed on March 27, 2001, but it was soon halted again. In March 2005, members of the Ukrainian Parliament from the People's Movement of Ukraine appealed to the President of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, to reopen the investigation. On April 4, 2005, the investigation was reopened by the then Prosecutor General Svyatoslav Piskun, and additional materials were collected. However, after Piskun's resignation on October 14, 2005, the investigation was once again suspended.

On March 18, 2007, the Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine received the results of an independent examination from Poland, which confirmed the accidental death version.

Family

Vyacheslav Chernovol's father, Maxim Iosifovich Chernovol (1909-1987), was a Ukrainian language and literature teacher. His mother, Kilina Kharitonovna Tereshchenko (1909-1985), was a primary school teacher. He had a sister, Valentina Maksimovna Chernovol (born in 1948).

His first wife, Yelena Timofeevna Antoniv (November 17, 1937 - February 2, 1986), was a dissident who died in a car accident. He had a son, Andrey Chernovol (born June 21, 1962), who served as a deputy of the Lviv Regional Council from 2002 to 2006 and briefly led the party "Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists in Ukraine" in July 2004. He also ran as an independent candidate in the 2004 presidential elections.

Vyacheslav Chernovol's second wife is Athena Vasilyevna Pashko (born October 10, 1937), a poet and the chairwoman of the All-Ukrainian Union of Ukrainian Women. He also had a stepdaughter, Irina Vasilyevna Volitskaya-Zubko (Athena Pashko's daughter from her first marriage), who is a director at the Lviv theater "Teatr v korbine" (Theater in a Basket).