In memoriam: Vyacheslav Chornovil, champion of independent Ukraine (04/11/99)

In memoriam: Vyacheslav Chornovil, champion of independent Ukraine

by Marta Kolomayets

I am one of those people who was lucky enough to know Vyacheslav Chornovil and to call him my friend. Actually, he was more than a friend; he was an inspiration and one of the key reasons I wanted to be in Ukraine.

It was in September 1987 that I met "Pan Slavko," as we called him. It was a serendipitous meeting, one that changed my life.

I had travelled to the Soviet Union as a tour guide for a travel agency. Our first stop was Lviv, where dissident Zinovii Krasivsky greeted me as if I were an old friend. He quickly linked arms with me and we started walking toward St. George Cathedral. On the way we met recently released political prisoner Mykhailo Horyn, who had been a free man for only two months and his wife, Olya. Before I knew it, we crowded into an old Lada and were thumping along the cobblestones of Lviv. I had no idea where I was being taken, but I knew an adventure had begun.

"Let's go to Slavko's," came the enthusiastic suggestion from Mr. Krasivsky. Being in this auspicious company, I knew that I would be taken to some dissident's house; I was only left to wonder which. I went through my list of dissidents, wondering which Slavko he was referring to: Lukianenko, Levko; Hel, Ivan; Marynovych, Myroslav; Sverstiuk, Yevhen; Chornovil, Vyacheslav - Slavko. Yes, we were going to Mr. Chornovil's apartment.

My beginnings at The Ukrainian Weekly (1982-1984) had given me the opportunity to learn about scores of Ukrainian political prisoners, to track their underground journals, including The Ukrainian Herald, and the activities of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group.

We got to the door of a bleak apartment building and climbed up several flights of stairs. We knocked on the door, but no one was home. My heart sank as I thought this was my last chance to see this former political prisoner, this fiery journalist who had spent more than a dozen years in prison. Reluctantly, our foursome turned to leave the building, but it began raining outside and I asked them to wait a few minutes. Then we heard voices in the hallway. Slavko and his wife Atena were returning from a wedding in a village outside of Lviv.

The rest, as they say, is history. I met with Messrs. Chornovil and Horyn three times during my brief stay in Lviv. They were hungry for information from the West. They were well-informed about the diaspora, and asked many questions about the World Congress of Free Ukrainians, Churches, youth organizations, war veterans. I had a video camera with me and asked if they wanted to go on tape with their views about the Soviet Union, glasnost and Ukraine's future - will it ever be independent?

We decided that I would come back the next day to do an hourlong interview with them. I was so nervous because I knew it was a great honor to talk to these two Ukrainian patriots: Mykhailo Horyn, the romantic visionary, Vyacheslav Chornovil, the pragmatic idealist. Mr. Chornovil asked why I was stuttering and sweating when I came to record them. I answered that I had never interviewed such "velyki liudy." He joked, saying that he really wasn't very tall.

I knew that Messrs. Chornovil and Horyn had prepared all day for the interview, which I proposed to take back to the U.S. They outlined the topics they wanted to discuss. They got all dressed up in their best Soviet-made suits, crisp white shirts and dark, solid-colored ties. Mr. Chornovil asked me if I was nervous about taping them and then took me to the balcony to point out the cars surveilling the apartment.

Being naive - and believing in glasnost - I told him I had a top-of-the-line videocamera and cassettes that the Soviets could never decode with their outdated equipment. He laughed; we did the interview.

That interview never did make it out of the Soviet Union. I was strip-searched and the video material was confiscated at Boryspil Airport four days later. Stories were written about us the Soviet press. I was branded a CIA agent, the two dissidents were slandered and libeled. Various Soviet Ukrainian newspapers called them "fame-seekers with an insatiable desire for glory and a lust for power" who could be bought for U.S. dollars and Panasonic tapere corders. The video was played on Lviv, republican and Moscow TV.

The KGB wanted the people to see for themselves that Messrs. Chornovil and Horyn were "enemies of the state."

Instead the people saw who they really were: Ukrainian patriots working to make Ukrainian independence a reality.

Mr. Chornovil had spent many years in Soviet labor camps and now, a free man at the time of perestroika (perebudova), he was testing this new environment, writing open letters to General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, writing articles and essays about Ukraine's future, meeting with former political prisoners, assidiously planning for the future.

* * *

Years later, when I arrived to work as The Weekly's correspondent in Ukraine, Mr. Chornovil quipped that I gave him and Mr. Horyn the start of their careers in the public domain.

My colleagues and I at The Weekly felt a special connection to our fellow journalist Mr. Chornovil visited The Weekly offices in Jersey City in the early 1990s; he observed his pictures on our "wall of fame," and he noticed the picture I always kept on my desk of him and Atena that I took back in 1987. I saw him smile as he realized what a significant role he played in the lives of the women of The Weekly. He called us "divchata," the girls, at The Weekly.

* * *

He noticed everything around him, and he was curious about everything. He enjoyed talking to his grandson Vasylko, as much as he loved talking to the old grandmother in the village who reminded him of his mother, or the coal miner, the farmer, the banker or the academic. He liked genuine people - people who believed in an idea and worked to make it a reality. To be sure, he was opinionated, categorical and never, ever, wishy-washy. He liked engaging in dialogue and he always took time out to talk to journalists, his colleagues. There were so many times that I called him to get a comment or a quote, and he would always indulge me.

I remember the day after Ukraine declared sovereignty on July 16, 1990. I was tasked to find him in Kyiv and get some quotes about the day's events. Calling from New York, I found him in his Hotel Kyiv room. It was very early in the morning, but he was up, full of zest and joy. He even mentioned, jokingly that he was wearing his lucky tie. That tie had been a gift from The Weekly staff (Roma Hadzewycz, Chrystyna Lapychak and me), presented to him in May of the year after he was first elected to the Verkhovna Rada.

Mr. Chornovil remembered such warm moments. He did not hold personal grudges. He was often criticized brutally in the press; but his anger did not last long. I always thought it was so because he had lived through Soviet labor camps, and the smear campaign aimed at destroying those accused of "anti-Soviet agit-prop." He was never too concerned about what was said about him; there were always other matters to attend to - and he was certain of his cause.

I often met with him in his office early Sunday mornings in Lviv when he was chairman of the Lviv Oblast Council. I would join him and his wife for coffee or tea. When he moved to the capital, I knew that even after 10 p.m. on a weeknight he could be found in the Kyiv offices of Rukh preparing his next campaign, strategizing about a new idea or plan. In the Parliament, he was always hurrying off to some meeting, but the journalists who hung out in the corridors of power always knew he was good for a "quotable quote."

But, as time went on, he got busier and busier, and there was less time to just sit and talk. He did take out an entire afternoon in 1995, when we began doing an oral history project on "Ukraine during the putsch." He reflected on Ukraine's road to independence; being a pragmatic leader, he realized that it all had happened too quickly and that Ukraine needed more time for its transformation into a truly democratic independent state.

Nonetheless, he relished in the fact that Ukraine was independent. He had one ideal, one principle, and he lived for it. Even in these last few months, when Rukh was splintered, he believed that in the end all would unite for a principle that was greater than that of clashing personalities: a united, democratic Ukraine.

Few people see their dreams come true. Vyacheslav Chornovil, the political prisoner, the human rights activist, the journalist, the politician, the statesman, the presidential candidate, the beacon of the democratic movement, the spirit of Ukrainian nationalism, the Ukrainian patriot saw his dream become reality. He acknowledged that it was not yet the perfect Ukraine not the kind of Ukraine he wanted to see, but it was a start ...

And, he was willing to fight. When Chornovil was in battle, he was exhilarated, energized, a charismatic leader. He could never sit still; as a matter of fact, when asked a few years back how he would like to die he said, without skipping a beat: "unexpectedly, quickly and while in motion" (nespodivano, shvydko i na khody).

* * *

In an interview taped two months ago, Vyacheslav Chornovil was asked if he had any regrets in his life and what he would change if he could live it over again. He told his interviewer that he would live his life the same way all over again, except for a few little corrections, minor ones at that.

He had no regrets.

Marta Kolomayets worked at The Weekly in 1982-1984 and again in 1988-1996. In 1991-1996, she served several stints in the Kyiv Press Bureau. She is currently the team leader for the Ukraine Market Reform Education Program, a project financed by the U.S. Agency for International Development.

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