In memory of Naboka, our colleague, 1955-2003 (01/26/03)

In memory of Naboka, our colleague, 1955-2003

by Marta Kolomayets

We at The Ukrainian Weekly introduced Serhii Naboka to our readers in our "Dissident Sketch" column back in 1983; we discovered him through samvydav channels. He and three of his closest friends had been arrested in Kyiv on January 11, 1981, for distributing leaflets about "Day of Solidarity with Ukrainian Political Prisoners" (January 12) and for writing anti-Soviet articles and poetry. They were sentenced for their political activities, which included the founding of the Kyiv Democratic Club. Mr. Naboka was sentenced to a three year term, serving time in a prison located in the village of Raikivtsi, Khmelnytskyi Oblast.

Mr. Naboka caught our attention at once. He was of our generation; he was a journalist and a human rights activist. And we were lucky enough to get his photo from underground channels. He looked cool. He was a character, with shoulder-length hair, a Kozak-type mustache, round, wire-rimmed spectacles, à la John Lennon, and a pipe hanging out of his mouth. And he was smart.

He was anti-Soviet, anti-Communist, anti-establishment. He was a hippie, born and raised in the USSR, who listened to the Beatles over a short-wave radio; a dissident, who spoke out for truth and justice, who loved freedom and democracy. And he was a Ukrainian patriot, with a great deal of integrity and an ironic wit. Naboka, as he was called by all his friends, spoke Ukrainian exclusively, but when he wanted to make a point about the absurdity of a situation, or the "soviet" approach to something, he emphasized this with his own brand of "surzhyk," or twisted the vocabulary of the Soviet bureaucracy of the 1970s and 1980s.

In the late 1980s he became a friend of The Weekly. Having formed the Ukrainian Culturological Club, and later Soviet Ukraine's first independent news agency, UNIAR-Respublika, Naboka was a source of information about political, religious and cultural events in the emerging environment of glasnost. We would often call him at the UNIAR offices to get first-hand news on demonstrations, new groups proclamations, congregations. (And I do believe that it is from these phone conversations that he picked up one of his favorite English-language words: "okay.")

Then in the early 1990s, when The Weekly opened the first Western news bureau in then-Soviet Ukraine, Naboka and his colleagues were our office's frequent visitors. Many evenings were spent discussing the future of an independent Ukraine, sharing hopes and dreams over cheap wine, crackers and chunks of cheese. Sometimes we would sit in the dilapidated Podil courtyard offices of UNIAR, located on the second floor of a small wooden building, complete with squeaky stairs and shaky door handles - resembling a spy scene from a John LeCarré novel - until all hours of the night. This was Naboka's kingdom, where he reigned, teaching young journalists the tools of the trade and drawing from his vast life experience. (Although he never much talked about his three years' imprisonment, in an interview with Den in 1999, he said that "this was a very interesting life experience, which I do not regret.")

As Naboka's biography notes, he worked as a literary editor for the publishing house Mystetsvo, and as a librarian; served as a groundskeeper at Kyiv-Pecherska Lavra, where he was fired for being too religious; and then took a job as a laborer on a loading dock. Later he became the editor of what he described as the first independent Ukrainian newspaper, Voice of Rebirth, which was transformed into the newspaper of the Ukrainian Helsinki Union, where he worked side by side with Vyacheslav Chornovil, whom Naboka warmly referred to as his Ukrainian language teacher. Naboka was also a member of the All-Ukrainian Coordinating Council of the Ukrainian Helsinki Union and an activist of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church.

As early as 1989, he began working for Radio Liberty, becoming the first commentator from Ukraine to be hired by the then Munich-based radio station. In recent times he had a twice weekly show on Radio Liberty, called "Human Rights: Ukrainian Realities." Several years ago, Naboka was the host of a late-night TV program on ERA (UT-1) where, with his signature pipe and ascot, he would comfortably recline in an easy chair and discuss the day's events with various guests.

Naboka was also a staple during elections, running press centers in 1994, 1998 and 1999, and hosting TV exit polls during both presidential and parliamentary elections. Most recently, as he shied away from politics, Naboka hosted cultural evenings at Babuyin, a local bookstore, and taught at Kyiv's theatrical institute.

Naboka considered himself "by nature, a journalist, an editor and a publisher," as he told a friend during an interview in November 2002. He said that by the late 1980s, during the formation of the Ukrainian Republican Party, he came to the realization that he was a journalist and not a politician. He found journalism to be more interesting, and for Naboka it was vital that he be involved in something interesting.

Naboka always told it like it was. He was not one for formalities, did not take to false compliments and did not yearn for presidential honors or government awards. He was particularly proud to be the president of the Ukrainian Media Club, an alternative organization to the official Union of Journalists. He was a nonconformist, who found comfort in being "anti anything that wreaked of Lenin, Stalin and the Soviet Union. He continued to be very critical of today's Ukraine, as it was not the democracy he had envisioned, sorely lacking in such values as freedom of speech and protection for human rights.

So, it was quite the paradox that he spent most of his adult life in an apartment on Kyiv's Enthusiasts' Street, a roadway named for a Stalinist march that sang the praises of Lenin and the glory of the communist philosophy. [The newly formed Trade Union of Journalists on January 20 appealed to Mayor Oleksander Omelchenko to change the name of the street to Naboka]. But that was Naboka, whose ironic wit found humor in the fact that he wore a "kuchma" on his head in the winter months - a kuchma being a tall, white hat made of sheep's fleece.)

And this short remembrance of a good friend would not be complete if it did not tell of Naboka's charm, his flirtatious style with the girls, his kind words to his colleagues. In a profession where relations are often strained, tensions run high and emotions take over what can be classified as civilized behavior, Naboka never fought with his colleagues, but held them in high esteem. He was a decent man, who became as distraught as a little boy losing his favorite toy when he lost the gold trident that he wore around his neck. He made arrangements to get a new one right away from the United States - they were not available in Ukraine in the early 1990s.

Instead of selling out to a political party, Naboka left the arena of political journalism to concentrate on reporting on human rights and social conditions. But he always said that he was an optimist and things could not get much worse. He thought that one day he would return to political reporting, but that at this point in life, it was better to wait it out.

Naboka died of a heart attack, while on assignment for Radio Liberty, doing a series of reports on the living conditions of prisoners in the Vinnytsia Oblast. His next stop was scheduled to be the prison in Raikivtsi, Khmelnytskyi Oblast, to which he had often referred affectionately as his "native" prison, the place he spent three years of his life in 1981-1984.

Fittingly, Naboka was laid to rest at Baikove Cemetery, across the aisle from the graves of Vasyl Stus, Yurii Lytvyn and Oleksa Tykhy, and not far from Ivan Svitlychny - the men whom he defended that cold winter day in 1981 as he distrubuted leaflets to tell of their plight and human rights abuses in Ukraine.

* * *

The Ukrainian Weekly expresses its condolences to Kateryna Zelenska, Serhii Naboka's mother, who inspired her son's journalism career and worked with him on many projects in the 1990s, his wife Inna, who also was a human rights advocate, was arrested with him in 1981 and worked tirelessly with him on his first publications, and his two daughters.

Vichna Yomu Pamiat!

Marta Kolomayets, a former member of The Ukrainian Weekly's editorial staff (1982-1984, 1988-1996) was assigned to the Kyiv Press Bureau in its first years. Today she directs a Kyiv-based anti-corruption program funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development and administered by Development Alternatives Inc.

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