Chornovil killed in car accident (03/28/99)

Chornovil killed in car accident

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - Vyacheslav Chornovil, a Verkhovna Rada national deputy, long-time leader of the national-democratic Rukh Party and a former Soviet political prisoner persecuted for his human and national rights activity, died in a car accident in the early morning hours of March 26. (News of the death reached The Weekly as the paper was going to press early Friday morning.)

The catastrophe occurred just before midnight near the village of Horodysche, on the Boryspil-Zolotonoshna highway close to Boryspil International Airport (located outside of Kyiv), when the Toyota in which the Rukh leader was traveling collided with a Kamaz tractor-trailer truck.

Mr. Chornovil and his driver, who was not identified, were killed instantly. Mr. Chornovil's press secretary, Dmytro Ponomarchuk, was hospitalized with serious injuries.

Traveling in a separate vehicle that was following the Chornovil car was former Minister of Foreign Affairs Hennadii Udovenko, whom Mr. Chornovil's Rukh Party is supporting as a presidential candidate in the upcoming elections. The car in which Mr. Udovenko was traveling was not involved in the collision. Reuters reported that Mr. Udovenko ruled out foul play in Mr. Chornovil's death, calling it a tragic accident.

At press time no other information was available on the details of the accident.

Mr. Chornovil, who was born in Cherkasy Oblast in 1937, spent many years in the Soviet gulag for his outspoken views in support of Ukrainian national aspirations. The human and national rights advocate served three terms for "anti-Soviet activity."

His first came after he spoke out about the 1965-1966 secret trials of leading Ukrainian intellectuals and compiled eyewitness documentation of the proceedings. The result was a book, "Lykho z Rozumu," (The Misfortune of Intellect), published in English as "The Chornovil Papers."

In 1972, as the editor of the underground samvydav journal Ukrainian Herald (Ukrainskyi Visnyk), he was imprisoned once again during the wave of arrests that swept Ukraine.

He became a member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group in 1979. In 1980, while still serving his previous term, he was rearrested and sentenced yet again by Soviet authorities. In 1988 he became a founding member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Union.

With the beginning of glasnost, Mr. Chornovil became a key founder of Popular Movement of Ukraine (Rukh), an organization that called for Ukraine's independence, and is considered a primary catalyst in the social upheaval that consumed the Soviet Union in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He was elected to the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine in 1990 and re-elected in 1994 and 1998. In 1991 he was a candidate for president of Ukraine.

Mr. Chornovil, who was a journalist by training, continued to work in that capacity as editor-in-chief of the Rukh publication Chas-Time.

On February 12 of this year Mr. Chornovil was ousted by fellow national deputies as head of the Rukh faction in Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada and 16 days later was removed as Rukh Party chairman in what he described as an illegitimate Rukh Congress. A week later, however, a separate regularly scheduled congress of Rukh reasserted Mr. Chornovil's position at the top of the organization (now dubbed Rukh-I) he had led for nearly a decade.

Funeral arrangements were not complete at press time, but Ukrainian Television said Mr. Chornovil would be buried on Monday, March 29. Preliminary reports said a public memorial service is to be held at the historic Teachers' Building, once the headquarters of the Central Rada, on Sunday, March 28. The funeral liturgy is to be offered at St. Volodymyr Sobor, and burial will be at Baikove Cemetery.

News of Mr. Chornovil's death was announced in the Verkhovna Rada the next morning by Parliament Chairman Oleksander Tkachenko. A framed portrait of Mr. Chornovil and flowers were placed on the national deputy's seat in the chamber.

(Roma Hadzewycz contributed to this report.)

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