Lev Lukianenko, a Ukrainian dissident who spent 27 years in Soviet prisons, labor camps and exile, was a founding member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group and a co-author of Ukraine’s 1991 declaration of independence, died on July 7 in Kyiv. He was 89.
“Death has robbed us of Levko Lukianenko, a living symbol of the invincibility of the Ukrainian spirit and one of those who gained us independence in the 20th century,” President Petro Poroshenko wrote on Facebook on July 7.
Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman said of Mr. Lukianenko: “this man has spent his whole life serving Ukraine, fighting for freedom and independence.”
Mr. Lukianenko became one of the symbols of Ukraine’s independence, and he helped write the Act of Declaration of the Independence of Ukraine (dated August 24, 1991). He was also independent Ukraine’s first ambassador to Canada in 1992-1993.
Soviet authorities had sentenced the jurist and writer to death by firing squad “for anti-Soviet propaganda” in 1961 for his advocacy of Ukraine’s secession from the USSR, a right guaranteed by the Soviet Constitution. The sentence was later commuted to 15 years in prison.
Shortly afterwards Mr. Lukianenko became a co-founder of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, which announced its formation on November 9, 1976. In 1977 he was sentenced to 10 years in prison and five years in exile for “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda.” He was released only in 1988, one of the last Soviet political prisoners freed during Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s period of perestroika.
He was active in the Ukrainian Helsinki Union (which evolved from the Ukrainian Helsinki Group), became the head of the Ukrainian Republican Party and was elected to the Verkhovna Rada in 1990 and for three more terms thereafter. He received the country’s highest honor, the Hero of Ukraine award, in 2005 and the Taras Shevchenko National Prize in 2016.
The funeral liturgy was offered on July 10 at St. Volodymyr Cathedral by Patriarch Filaret of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church – Kyiv Patriarchate. Burial was at the Baikove Cemetery.
Based on reporting by RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, AFP and 112 International, as well as information from the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group.