Fierce hawk. In memory of the dissident and human rights defender Stepan Khmara – Publications

About the death of a human rights defender and dissident Stepan Khmara it became known on February 21, 2024. A deputy of three convocations, a co-author of the Constitution of Ukraine and a political prisoner of Soviet concentration camps, passed away at the age of 86.

He spent the last days of his life in the hospital and needed funds for expensive treatment.

Struggle from the very beginning

Stepan Khmara was born October 12, 1937 in the Lviv region, in the village of Bobyatyn. The famine of 1946–1947 and the struggle of the UPA fell on his childhood years. In the memoirs collected by Suspilne Kultura, the dissident said that partisans were hiding in his parents’ house, and during the Holodomor the family helped displaced people.

“Many such pictures from my childhood developed in me an eternal immunity against our enemies. I could not have any common language with the Soviet regime and Muscovites“, Stepan Khmara said.

Introduction to dissidence

In 1964, he graduated from the Lviv State Medical Institute, specializing in dentistry. He chose this profession because it was considered “ideologically neutral”.

“He realized early on that university science is as fake as school science: an honest person will inevitably come into conflict with the occupying power and this will lead him to prison“, says the website of the virtual museum “Dissident Movement in Ukraine”.

After several years of work in the city of Hirnyk, Lviv region, Stepan became interested in the dissident movement, so he began to distribute self-published books. In 1972, he participated in the publication of the underground magazine “Ukrainian Herald” in which works were published Vasyl Simonenko, Vasyl Stus, Ivan Svitlychny, Ivan Dzyuba.

He himself also published in the magazine under the pseudonym “Maxim Sagaidak”, one of his most famous articles became “Ethnocide of Ukrainians in the USSR”.

Several years later, in 1975, an attempt was made to arrest him for the first time, but then the case was closed due to lack of evidence.

He was arrested in 1980 and sentenced to 7 years of imprisonment and another 5 years of exile under the article “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda”. He spent 306 days in a prison cell in the Urals.

However, immediately after being released from prison in 1987, he joined the creation of the Ukrainian Helsinki group, advocated the legalization of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church and the national movement. He also became one of the authors Declarations on the state sovereignty of Ukraine.

“We all did our best and more. We so wanted him to be with us when they announced our Victory! I so wanted to see his happy face! His beautiful face! Because he was so handsome even at 86. His blue eyes were no longer so pure blue, but still bottomless. He loved Ukraine and Ukrainians so much. He tore his soul and heart for her. And Ukraine will rise from the ashes, it will resurrect! I know…“, his wife wrote in memory of him Roksolana Khmara.

After the declaration of independence

In the spring of 1990, Stepan Khmara was elected a deputy of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, joined the creation of the Ukrainian Republican Party together with Lev Lukyanenko and Mykhailo Horyn. Already in autumn, he stood on the Maidan in Kyiv and supported the Revolution on Granite with students.

“Of the entire opposition cohort, Ilkovich was the one we crossed paths with the most throughout our lives at all opposition actions. Because he was the nerve of the opposition, sensitive and painfully sharp. His word was a weapon. His stance was a weapon. His behavior was a weapon. Stepan Khmara is our weapon“, the former People’s Deputy and head of the Art Association “The Last Barricade” mentioned about him Oleksandr Donii.

He said that then Stepan Khmara supported the students’ demand – “Re-election of the Verkhovna Rada on a multi-party basis”. Then the deputy organized a group of 12 people, and they also went on hunger strike together with the protesters.

Stepan Khmara was elected as a People’s Deputy three times. In particular, he was in the “Batkivshchyna” faction, but left it due to conflicts with other deputies. He himself called himself a “fierce hawk” because of his radicalism and principles.

As noted by BBC News Ukraine, during his time as a deputy and after working in the parliament, he was against Ukraine’s renunciation of nuclear status and fiercely criticized Leonid Kravchuk. also called for the withdrawal of Black Sea Fleet troops from Ukraine.

In 2006, the president Viktor Yushchenko awarded Stepan Khmara the title of Hero of Ukraine with the award of the Order of the State “for remarkable personal merits in the struggle for the revival of the independence of Ukrainian statehood, devotion to the ideals of freedom and democracy.”

“We have known each other since 2007. Stepan Khmara was one of the first activists and patriots who joined the Public Council on Reforming the Security Service of Ukraine. He started such an institution, the first in the history of the state, as the head of the service, in order to turn the KGB into a truly Ukrainian Security Service“, the former head of the SBU wrote about him Valentin Nalyvaichenko.

Khmara called for the destruction of the building of the Verkhovna Rada in Crimea when it was captured by the “little green men” of the Russian army in 2014. With Mikheil Saakashvili participated in protests against Petro Poroshenkoaccusing him of pandering to oligarchs.

“This scumbag who came to power, they are all waiting for a tribunal! This is a cattery that only cares about money“, he declared in December 2019 after the election, which he won Zelensky.

In 2021, Stepan Khmara and his former colleague Viktor Shishkin, with whom they created the Constitution of Ukraine, specifically congratulated President Zelensky on Constitution Day. They came to the solemn meeting of the Verkhovna Rada wearing T-shirts with the inscription “Ze! Constitution Killer.”

As BBC News Ukraine noted, Stepan Khmara said that he had never seen the Ukraine he dreamed of. And this is exactly what he explained his many years of opposition to the authorities.

“A person should never think that “if I don’t have to see, I don’t care.” No, I don’t care, I will watch from the other world“, Stepan Khmara assured in one of the interviews in 2017, BBC writes.