OBITUARY: Serhii Naboka, 47, independent journalist, former Soviet political prisoner (01/26/03)

OBITUARY: Serhii Naboka, 47, independent journalist, former Soviet political prisoner

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - Serhii Naboka, considered the last Soviet dissident in Ukraine as well as its first prominent post-Soviet journalist, died unexpectedly on January 18 in Vinnytsia alongside the prison where he spent three years of incarceration in the early 1980s as a political prisoner. The radio journalist and political activist had been putting together a report on the treatment of convicts in Ukraine and had spent the night at the hotel next to the prison. He was found dead in his room in the early morning hours. Initial reports indicated that a heart attack was the cause of death.

The 47-year-old Kyivan was buried on January 21 at Baikove Cemetery in the heart of the capital city. He will rest a stones throw from the grave of fellow dissident and acclaimed poet Vasyl Stus and across from Ivan Svitlychny and Ivan Honchar, two others who sacrificed years of their lives while fighting the Soviet system.

On January 21, Ukraine's President Leonid Kuchma sent a telegram to the journalist's family, offering condolences.

Erudite and scholarly in appearance, Mr. Naboka was known for his political insights and cynical wit, as well as for organizational abilities and level-headedness. The journalist enjoyed engaging in philosophical discussion on religion and culture. Politics, however, was his passion. Often the first sign of an interesting debate developing would be Mr. Naboka slowly packing and then firing up his oft-present pipe.

His political accomplishments went beyond talk, however. Mr. Naboka was an organizer and a builder. He was responsible for many firsts in an increasingly nationally conscious Ukraine. In 1980, after graduating from Kyiv State University, where he majored in journalism, and working for a short while for the Soviet publishing house Mystetstvo, he established the Kyiv Democratic Club. Later, after his release from political detention, he founded the Ukrainian Culturological Club in 1987. Both organizations aimed to broaden the debate on Ukrainian human rights, cultural development and national awareness. They were the first of many organizations and groups he helped establish over the next two decades.

Mr. Naboka was arrested in 1981 along with three cohorts from the Kyiv Democratic Club, Leonid Miliavskyi, Inna Cherniavska (later to become Mr. Naboka's wife) and Liudmila Lokhvytska, for distributing leaflets that called on Kyivans to commemorate January 12 as the Day of Solidarity with Ukrainian Political Prisoners. A Soviet Ukrainian court sentenced Mr. Naboka to three years incarceration for distributing materials that falsified information about the Soviet state. It was the last major trial of a Ukrainian dissident on "anti-Soviet propaganda" charges.

Upon his release, Mr. Naboka was banned from practicing his profession and so became a janitor, and later a librarian, at the Monastery of the Caves. There he had access to the historical archives and much information on religious thought and philosophy, which allowed him to engage these passions.

In 1987, with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's glasnost and perebudova programs in full bloom and the political pressure off, Mr. Naboka again began to build. He gathered several other politically minded Ukrainians to form the Ukrainian Culturological Club.

He guided the organization as it gathered the remnants of the nearly dormant Ukrainian Helsinki Monitoring Group and transformed itself into the Ukrainian Helsinki Union, a forerunner of the Ukrainian Republican Party, which became one of the first political parties in Ukraine.

Never satisfied unless he had a full plate of pet projects, Mr. Naboka returned to journalism in 1989. He developed one of the first independent newspapers in Ukraine, Voice of Rebirth.

Soon afterwards he joined Radio Liberty to become its first Kyiv correspondent. He maintained a working relationship with the U.S.-sponsored news agency until his death. In 1989 he also began the Ukrainian National Information Agency Respublika (UNIAR). Between 1993 and 1995 the agency produced a nightly television broadcast on the local UTAR channel.

In the second half of the 1980s, Mr. Naboka began a correspondent's relationship with The Ukrainian Weekly, increasingly providing information on developments across Ukraine's political spectrum as the Soviet Union continued its slow demise. Eventually he became one of The Weekly's Kyiv-based stringers.

In 1994, with parliamentary elections approaching, Mr. Naboka returned to human rights activism, establishing an election-monitoring organization called Vybory (Elections). The organization remained active in subsequent national ballots in 1998, 1999 and 2002 under the name Hariacha Linia (Hotline).

Also since 1994, Mr. Naboka chaired the independent Ukrainian Media Club. In addition he became an active member of the recently formed Fund for Freedom of Speech and Information.

More than 2,000 people paid their last respects to Ukraine's last dissident and top journalist at the Teachers Building on January 21. Among them were representatives of most of Kyiv's national press and a slew of Verkhovna Rada national deputies, including Yulia Tymoshenko of the eponymous Verkhovna Rada faction and Yurii Kostenko, leader of the Ukrainian National Rukh. Other national deputies on hand were Ivan Zaiets, Les Taniuk, Stepan Khmara and Oleksander Turchynov. Funeral services took place at the St. Volodymyr Sobor.

At Baikove Cemetery, friends and colleagues commented on the loss of such a remarkable talent at such an early age. They remembered a man of initiative and action, as well as one who always found understanding for other points of view.

One mourner quite pointedly remarked: "Why is it that the best Ukrainians go at 47? At 47 we lost [Taras] Shevchenko, Stus and now Naboka."

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