Ukraine still has not become a state that political prisoner and dissident Levko Lukyanenko wanted to see. The head of UKROP, MP Taras Batenko wrote this on his Facebook page.
The MP has noted that Levko Lukyanenko was fighting against the system and the authorities during all his life, and this struggle was extremely uncompromising.
“He knew the methods of struggle, the effectiveness of the hunger strike in the Soviet labour camps, the power of the word, the power of open letters, and only the open letters to the Ukrainian presidents were not very noticeable. He trusted people, was quickly admired with them and was often disappointed. He wrote great volumes of books. And he deservedly received the Shevchenko Prize in last years,” recalled the member of UKROP.
According to Taras Batenko, remembrance of Levko Lukyanenko is especially autobiographical for him. In 1993 the member of UKROP published his first article about the Ukrainian Workers’ and Peasants’ Union, which was created by a dissident at that time. It was published in the newspaper “Ratusha”. Communication with Levko Lukyanenko and other political prisoners has lasted for many years.
“It’s hard to write in general when you knew a person well, and when this person was exceptionally accessible for communication to many people, but only a few from the current elite used it,” said the MP.
It seemed that, after replacing the death sentence, Levko Hryhorovych had to live for an exceptionally long time. However, he did not live a little more than a month before his ninetieth birthday. In fact, one of the last great fighters for the Ukrainian Independence has passed away.
“We are not just grateful to him for writing the Act of Independence, we should bring up a new generation of Ukrainians taking example of his life. Thank you for everything, Levko Hryhorovych,” summed up Taras Batenko.
It is to be recalled, Levko Hryhorovych Lukyanenko died on July 7 after a long illness. The Ukrainian dissident was one of the authors of the Declaration of Ukraine’s Independence, a member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group (UHG).
In May 1961, the Lviv Regional Court sentenced the politician to death for anti-Soviet activity. After 72 days the Supreme Court replaced the verdict for 15 years of imprisonment. The dissident was serving sentences in the camps of Mordovia, where, along with the other men of the sixties, he fought against the administration because of rude violation of the rights of prisoners.
The most active participants of the protests were relocated to Perm camps, and in 1974, the Chusovsky District Court sentenced Levko Lukyanenko and two other initiators of the strike to imprisonment in Vladimir prison. After another arrest, in 1977 the politician declared a hunger strike and refused to testify. The next year Chernihiv court sentenced Levko Lukyanenko to 10 years of imprisonment and five years of exile. The dissident was recognized as a particularly dangerous recidivist. He underwent sentences in the Mordovian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, in Perm, Chernihiv and Tomsk regions.
