OBITUARY

Ivan Kandyba, national rights activist, former Soviet political prisoner, 72

PARSIPPANY, N.J. - Ivan Kandyba, lawyer, civic and political activist, a dissident active in the national and human rights movements in Ukraine, and founding member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, died on November 8 in Lviv. He was 72.

Mr. Kandyba was born July 7, 1930, in Stoino, now in Poland. A graduate of Lviv's Ivan Franko State University, Mr. Kandyba practiced law until his arrest in 1961. He was accused of "treason" and "anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda" for the attempt to organize, along with like-minded colleagues, Lev Lukianenko and Josyf Borovnytsky, and a nucleus of four other young men, the Ukrainian Workers' and Peasants' Union. The activists drafted a program of principles that included the democratization of life in Ukraine, and the guarantee of basic civil and human rights, and raised the issue of Ukraine's right to secede from the USSR.

Mr. Kandyba served 15 years in strict-regime labor camps in Mordovia and Perm. His account of his trial and similar political trials in the 1950s, titled "Za Pravdu i Spravedlyvist" (For Truth and Justice), was smuggled out of prison and published in the West. After being released in 1976, Mr. Kandyba made every effort to emigrate.

In 1976 he became a founding member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group. This led to his arrest in 1977 and to the maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and five years of exile for "anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda."

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, December 22, 2002, No. 51, Vol. LXX

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