Stepan Khmara | |
Birth Name: | Stepan Ilkovych Khmara |
Birth Date: | 1937 10, df=y |
Birth Place: | Bobiatyn, Lwów Voivodeship, Poland |
Death Place: | Kyiv, Ukraine |
Nationality: | Ukrainian |
Occupation: | Doctor |
Education: | Danylo Halytsky Lviv National Medical University |
Party: | NRU UKRP Batkivshchyna |
Office: | People's Deputy of Ukraine |
Term Start: | 14 May 2002 |
Term End: | 25 May 2006 |
Term Start1: | 15 May 1990 |
Term End1: | 12 May 1998 |
Native Name Lang: | uk |
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.
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]