Viacheslav Chornovil

Viacheslav Maksymovych Chornovil (Ukrainian: В'ячеслав Максимович Чорновіл; 24 December 1937 – 25 March 1999) was a Ukrainian Soviet dissident, independence activist and politician who was the leader of the People's Movement of Ukraine from 1989 until his death in 1999. He spent a total of fifteen years imprisoned or exiled by the Soviet government for his human rights activism. A People's Deputy of Ukraine from 1990 to 1999, Chornovil was among the first and most prominent anti-communists to hold public office in Ukraine. He twice ran for the presidency of Ukraine; the first time, in 1991, he was defeated by Leonid Kravchuk, while in 1999 he died in a car crash under disputed circumstances.

Chornovil was born in the village of Yerky, in central Ukraine, then under the Soviet Union. A member of the Komsomol from his time in university, he was affiliated with the counter-cultural Sixtiers movement, and was removed from the Komsomol after speaking out against communism. His samvydav, which investigated abuses against intellectuals arrested during the 1965–1966 Soviet crackdown, earned him Western acclaim, as well as a three-year prison sentence in Yakutia. Upon his release, he returned to samvydav and began publishing The Ukrainian Herald, a predecessor to the modern Ukrainian independent press.

In 1972, Chornovil was caught in another purge of intellectuals, and would not be allowed to return to Ukraine until 1985. He spent most of this time incarcerated. While in prison, Chornovil was described by fellow dissident Mikhail Kheifets as "general of the zeks" for his leadership of Ukrainian political prisoners, and recognised as a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International. His release came as the Soviet government loosened restrictions on free speech as part of perestroika. Chornovil actively engaged in building political opposition to the Communist rule in Ukraine, eventually culminating in the establishment of the People's Movement of Ukraine (Rukh) party and a popular revolution that toppled Communism. Amidst the revolution, Chornovil took office as a member of Ukraine's parliament. He was one of the two main candidates in the 1991 Ukrainian presidential election, though he was defeated by former Communist leader Leonid Kravchuk. Chornovil actively promoted Ukrainian membership in the European Union and opposition to the emergence of the Ukrainian oligarchs.

Chornovil was a controversial figure in his lifetime, and the last months of his life were dominated by a split in the Rukh. His death in a car crash during the 1999 Ukrainian presidential election, during which he was a candidate in opposition to incumbent president Leonid Kuchma, has led to conspiracy theories and several years of investigations and trials, which have neither confirmed nor eliminated assassination as a possibility. He is a popular figure in present-day Ukraine, where he has twice been placed among the top ten most popular Ukrainians and is a symbol of the country's democracy and human rights activism as well as Pro-Europeanism.