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Stepan Khmara
Stepan Ilkovych Khmara (Ukrainian: Степа́н І́лькович Хма́ра; 12 October 1937 – 21 February 2024) was a Ukrainian doctor, Soviet dissident and politician. As a student of the Lviv State Medical Institute Khmara was involved in the underground Samizdat-movement that published Soviet Union's banned literature.[1] In 1980 the KGB arrested Khmara and he was sentenced to 7 years of imprisonment in strict regime camps and 5 years of exile for "Ukrainian nationalist activities".[1] In 1987 he returned to Ukraine and in 1988 became one of the leaders of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group.[1] In April 1990 this organisation morphed into the Ukrainian Republican Party.[1] In October 1990 Khmara took part in the Revolution on Granite.[1] Khmara also took part in the 13-day hunger strike that accompanied the protests.[1] As member of the People's Movement of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Conservative Republican Party, and Batkivshchyna, Khmara served in (Ukraine's national parliament) Verkhovna Rada from 1990 to 1998[2][3] and again from 2002 to 2006.[4] In the 2006 Ukrainian parliamentary election he failed to return to parliament since he stood for the party Ukrainian National Bloc of Kostenko and Plyushch that did not win seats.[1][5] In 2004 Khmara was one of the faces of the Orange Revolution that supported Viktor Yushchenko.[1] Khmara died on 21 February 2024, at the age of 86.[6] On 25 February 2024 Khmara's public funeral procesion was held on Kyiv's main square Maidan Nezalezhnosti.[1] He was buried at the Baikove Cemetery.[1] References
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