Stepan Khmara has died: eternal oppositionist and "fierce hawk"

Ukrainian politician and political prisoner of Soviet times Stepan Khmara is 87 years old, his wife Roksolana announced on Facebook. Recently, he was treated for cancer.

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 dissident and anti-communist, he was in the opposition all his political life. It was like that in Soviet times, it was like that after the declaration of Ukraine's .

But? despite this, he called himself an optimist.

"A person should never stop thinking 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 October 2017, when he, 80 years old, was asked if he felt his years.

He always said that he does not feel his age, because he is constantly in motion and fighting. He had a son when he was 65.

Camps and Homecoming

Stepan Khmara was born in 1937 in Lviv region, worked as a doctor.

His political activity began in the 70s of the last century - he self-published and in particular "Reflections on Peace, Intellectual Freedom and Progress" by Andrii Sakharov, which he translated into Ukrainian.

After Vyacheslav Chornovol was arrested and exiled by the Soviet authorities in 1972-1973, Khmara together with Oles Shevchenko edited "Ukrainian Herald" - a self-published magazine that published the works of Vasyl Simonenko, Vasyl Stus, Ivan Svitlychny, Ivan Dzyuba .

In particular, articles about repression in the USSR were published there. Stepan Khmara himself was published in the magazine under the pseudonym "Maxim Sagaidak". His article "Ethnocide of Ukrainians in the USSR" was highly praised by the American historian, researcher of repressions and the Holodomor, Robert Conquest.

In 1975, the KGB filed charges against Khmara for the alleged illegal private practice of a dentist, but the case was later closed due to lack of evidence.

In 1980, Stepan Khmara was arrested for "private entrepreneurship" and "anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda" and sentenced to seven years of strict regime and five years of exile.

He spent almost seven years in the strict regime concentration camps in the Urals and returned home in 1987, that is, three and a half years before independence.

In 1990, he became a member of the parliament and, together with other national patriots who were part of the "People's Council" and among whom there were many former political prisoners like him, was one of the authors of the Declaration on the State Sovereignty of Ukraine. He was also a co-author of other laws - on the confiscation of Communist Party property, the partitioning of state institutions and law enforcement agencies.

He was the first of the deputies to support the "revolution on granite" in October 1990 - a strike and hunger strike by students on October Revolution Square (now Maidan Nezalezhnosti), and he himself went on hunger strike for two weeks.

And for good reason: at that time, the students managed to fulfill most of their demands, in particular, they prevented the signing of the alliance agreement, they achieved the military service of youth on the territory of Ukraine and, most importantly, the resignation of the government of Vitaliy Masol.

Revolutions and protests

In November 1990, Stepan Khmara was arrested on charges of assaulting a police officer. In response, he again announced a hunger strike. He was released in April 1991. The case was later closed - after the failure of "GKChP" and the collapse of the Union. The politician himself insisted that it was a staged provocation by the communists.

Stepan Khmara was elected to the parliament several times - both as a self-nominated candidate and as part of the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc. But he did not stay in this faction for a long time - after the then head of government signed gas agreements with Russian President Vladimir Putin, he left this political force and accused Yulia Tymoshenko of "selling Ukraine".

Stepan Khmara actively participated in all the most massive protest actions in Ukraine. At the beginning of 2000 - "Ukraine without Kuchma", he was a member of the "Forum of National Salvation". Later - in the Orange Revolution in support of Viktor Yushchenko.

It was Viktor Yushchenko during his presidency who awarded Stepan Khmara with the highest state awards: the title Hero of Ukraine, the Order of Yaroslav the Wise and the Order of Freedom.

Despite his advanced age, Stepan Khmara was also an active participant in the Revolution of Dignity during Viktor Yanukovych's time.

"Fierce Hawk"

He called himself a "fierce hawk". Stepan Khmara's radicalism frightened and annoyed many. Perhaps that is why he did not have significant support as a politician in society.

"Stepan Khmara operates like a razor with his words and criticism. Sometimes it even seems that he can touch the innocent. But his principledness gives carte blanche to his radicalism," the newspaper "Den" wrote in 2017.

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.

Stepan Khmara was one of the initiators of the article of the Constitution of Ukraine stating that the location of foreign military bases on the territory of Ukraine is not allowed.

He called for the withdrawal of the Russian troops of the Black Sea Fleet from Ukraine as soon as possible.

In March 2014, when the "little green men" captured the building of the Verkhovna Rada of Crimea, Stepan Khmara proposed to "raze the Crimean parliament to the ground" along with everyone who was there.

After the events in Crimea and the beginning of the conflict in Donbas, he called for breaking off all relations with Russia, conducting special operations to destroy the leaders of the self-proclaimed republics, capturing high-ranking Russian officials, and not holding negotiations in Minsk.

And also - to dissolve the Shakhtar Donetsk football team.

He called the Ukrainian Parliament of 2014-2019 a "disgusting laughingstock" that he "disgusted to enter."

He participated in protests together with Mikheil Saakashvili, accusing President Petro Poroshenko of pandering to oligarchs and corrupt officials and illegal enrichment.

It came from Khmara and Zelensky's government.

"This scumbag who came to power, they are all waiting for a tribunal! This is a cattery that is only interested in money," he said in December 2019, when the parliament voted for the sale of land.

Together with his former colleague Viktor Shishkin, Stepan Khmara came to the parliament for a solemn meeting on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Constitution with the inscription "Ze is the killer of the Constitution!" on T-shirts.

With the beginning of the war, Stepan Khmara's radicalism was no longer at odds with the mood of society, as it was before when it came to Russia.

"I have always said that the end of the Russian empire, the keys to its end, are in Ukraine," he said in the spring of 2022.

"This is a special war. This is a war of the worlds. The empire of evil and justice is against it," Stepan Khmara believed.