Turning the pages back...
August 9, 1998
Seven years ago in August the world learned about the death of Nina Strokata, well-known activist of the Ukrainian human rights movement, a founding member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group and a former Soviet political prisoner. Dr. Strokata died at the age of 72 on August 2, 1998, several days after she suffered a heart attack; news of her passing was reported in The Ukrainian Weekly's August 9 issue.
Dr. Strokata was born January 31, 1926, in Odesa, Ukraine. After completing studies in microbiology she worked at the Odesa Medical Institute and then as a physician.
In 1961 Dr. Strokata married Sviatoslav Karavansky, a political prisoner who had been freed in 1960 under Khrushchev's general amnesty. He had been arrested in 1945 for membership in the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and sentenced to 25 years of hard labor. In November 1965 Mr. Karavansky was arrested once again, this time for statements condemning discrimination against Ukrainians and the 1965 wave of arrests of Ukrainian intellectuals. He was sentenced as a recidivist without trial to eight and one-half years in a strict-regime labor camp.
From that time on, his wife became known as a human rights defender. She spoke out in behalf of her husband and other national and human rights advocates as well, among them Valentyn Moroz.
Mr. Karavansky continued to write even while he was imprisoned and, as a result, found himself re-arrested in prison in 1970. He was sentenced to another 10 years' imprisonment because of his writings on topics such as the Soviets' 1941 mass execution of Polish officers in the Katyn Forest.
In retribution for her activity in defense of her husband, Dr. Strokata was subjected to various forms of repression, such as searches, anonymous phone calls, interrogations and harassment on the job. Ultimately she was forced to leave Ukraine in the summer of 1971 and move to Nalchyk in the Russian SFSR.
Dr. Strokata herself was arrested in December 1971 as she was returning to Odesa; she was sentenced to four years of imprisonment in a severe-regime camp for "anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda."
The case of Dr. Strokata became a cause célèbre among the worldwide community of microbiologists; American and Canadian colleagues appealed on her behalf to the United Nations and sent letters to the Mordovian camp where she was imprisoned.
A committee in defense of Dr. Strokata was organized in the Soviet Union by rights activists in Moscow, Kyiv, Lviv and Odesa, including Vyacheslav Chornovil, Vasyl Stus and Mykola Plakhotniuk. Soon thereafter members of that committee were themselves arrested.
In 1974 the First International Congress of the International Association of Microbiological Sciences held in Tokyo circulated a petition in Dr. Strokata's defense that was signed by 500 microbiologists from 30 countries. That petition was forwarded to Leonid Brezhnev, then first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
Dr. Strokata was released from labor camp in December 1975, but was forbidden to return to Ukraine. She settled in the town of Tarussa, Russia.
On November 9, 1976, she became a founding member of the Ukrainian Public Group to Promote Implementation of the Helsinki Accords, formed in Kyiv in 1976 after the 1975 signing of the Helsinki pact, which incorporated the so-called "Third Basket" of agreements on human rights.
On February 6, 1977, Dr. Strokata's apartment was searched in connection with the arrests of members of the Ukrainian and Moscow Helsinki monitoring groups.
Dr. Strokata and Mr. Karavansky were forced to emigrate on November 30, 1979. Once in the United States both continued their human rights activism by joining the External Representation of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group.
Dr. Strokata was particularly active, writing numerous articles about Ukrainian and other rights activists to various publications - among them The Ukrainian Weekly. She collaborated with The Weekly on special issues dedicated to the Ukrainian Helsinki Group.
Dr. Strokata also lectured widely about the Ukrainian human rights movement. One of her last public appearances was in December 1996 at the New York commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group's founding.
Source: "Nina Strokata, noted defender of human rights, dead at 72," The Ukrainian Weekly, August 9, 1998, Vol. LXV, No. 32.
Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, August 7, 2005, No. 32, Vol. LXXIII
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