Chornovil Dies in Car Crash

Vyacheslav Chornovil, the man who led the Ukrainian independence movement and dominated the right wing of Ukrainian politics for a decade, died in an auto accident on March 25. He was 61. 

A leading figure of the 1960s generation of Ukrainian political dissidents, Chornovil spent most of 1967 to 1985 in Soviet prison camps or Siberian exile. But he continued his activism and went on to play a key role in realizing his lifelong dream of an independent Ukraine.

He died instantly at about 11:30 p.m. on March 25 when a Toyota sedan he was being driven in collided with a KamAZ truck just outside Kyiv. Chornovil’s aide, Yevhen Pavliv, who was driving, also died at the scene, and his spokesman, Dmytro Ponamarchuk, was hospitalized with serious injuries.  

According to eyewitnesses, Pavliv was preparing to pass the truck on a dark, two-lane country road when the truck unexpectedly began making a U-turn. The Toyota hit the joint between the truck and its trailer at a speed of over 100 kilometers per hour.

Chornovil’s death came at a time when his role in contemporary Ukrainian politics had come under sharp criticism and the party he helped create, Rukh (“the Movement” or, more formally, “the People’s Movement of Ukraine”) was in the throes of a bitter split that was largely aimed at sidelining him from mainstream politics. 

Chornovil’s death brings calls for unified Rukh 

It also came at a dark time for Ukrainian right-wing politics in general, with leftists dominating popularity polls, reforms largely stalled or on the retreat, and the economy in a shambles. According to media reports, energy-grid operators had shut off streetlights in the region where the accident occurred due to the energy sector’s chronic fuel shortages. 

Chornovil’s death at least temporarily galvanized Ukraine’s right wing.

“Everyone took it as a great tragedy,” said Yury Kostenko, the leader of the Rukh faction that voted to remove Chornovil as Rukh leader in February. Chornovil insisted that vote was illegal, and the dispute had effectively split Rukh in two, with Chornovil calling his parliament faction “Rukh the First.”

Parliament held a moment of silence on March 26 and his colleagues laid flowers in front of a painted portrait placed on his usual seat. 

“We’ve lost one of our most talented politicians,” said a saddened Serhy Sobolev, one of the leaders of the liberal Reforms and Order party, a close ally of Rukh. 

The two Rukh factions cooperated in organizing and financing Chronovil’s funeral, and thousands of Rukh members came from across Ukraine to see their leader for the last time. 

According to media reports, some 20,000 people turned up at the funeral at the Teachers House on Kyiv’s Volodymyrska Street, the seat of the short-lived independent Ukrainian government of 1917-1918.

The crowd formed a line a mile long, but only a tiny fraction of those who hoped to be able to pass by the coffin and lay flowers made it through the line of guards. 

The few privileged included President Leonid Kuchma, parliament Speaker Oleksandr Tkachenko and Prime Minister Valery Pustovoitenko, at whom many in the crowd whistled and shouted “Shame!”

The crowd followed Chornovil’s coffin to Volodymyrsky Cathedral, where a requiem mass was held, and then to the Baikove cemetery, where many prominent Ukrainians are buried.

Chornovil’s tragic death may have robbed Ukraine of one of its most prominent and charismatic leaders, but observers said it also presents his successors with a chance to reunite the party he once led, and perhaps to unite the entire right wing of Ukrainian politics. 

Many right-wing politicians refused to talk to the media until after Chornovil’s body was buried, but Ponamarchuk commented that the best honor to give to Chornovil would be to reunite Rukh.

“He dreamed about a unified party. If his dream comes true, it will be the best monument for him,” Ponamarchuk said. 

Both Rukh factions began talking about unification only hours after Chornovil’s death, but events in the following days suggested that compromise could be a long time in coming. 

Over the weekend of March 27-28, Chronovil’s group sent an open letter to all Rukh members accusing Kostenko and his group of “playing a dirty game” and called for a unification of all Rukh members under the umbrella of the group that stuck with Chornovil. 

“They built their career on [Chornovil’s] authority and his influence, and then decided to take over the party and turn you, friends from Rukh, into a background for their dirty game,” the letter read. 

Even more hostility was shown toward Kostenko and his allies at the funeral. The crowd of Chornovil supporters whistled at Kostenko and shouted “Shame!” and “Traitor!” as he passed by – a welcome even colder than the ones they gave to Kuchma, Pustovoitenko and Tkachenko.

The speeches of Chornovil’s followers were full of acrimony toward Kostenko’s group, and many even accused the group of plotting Chornovil’s death. 

But Kostenko’s group seemed to take the accusations in stride, saying they were to be expected. The Kostenko faction sent letters to the president, general prosecutor, State Security Service and police asking for a full investigation of the accident, although Interior Minister Yury Kravchenko pronounced Chornovil’s death an accident on March 27. 

“Regardless of the accusations, I will be doing my best to avoid political speculations that would break up Rukh forever,” Kostenko said. 

Rukh parliament deputy Roman Zwarych said the split of the party was an indirect cause of Chornovil’s death because Chornovil was returning from Kirovohrad from a meeting with loyal party members. Since February, Chornovil had kept an intense schedule of travel to the provinces to encourage his supporters and hold as much of the old Rukh as possible together behind him. 

Zwarych said that should not stand in the way of party reunion. 

“I’m 90 percent sure that there will be one party and one faction [in parliament],” he said. 

On March 20, the Justice Ministry issued a ruling that confirmed that Chornovil’s group was the legitimate Rukh leadership. On March 31, the leadership committee of Chornovil’s group, called the Provid, elected former Foreign Minister Hennady Udovenko as acting party leader. 

Udovenko, who was in a car driving immediately behind Chornovil and was one of the eyewitnesses to the accident, was elected as Rukh’s presidential candidate at a Rukh party congress in December, narrowly defeating a rival bid by Kostenko.

Kostenko said he hoped all right-wing forces would hold a joint congress in May to decide on a joint right-wing candidate, but in the meantime his group supports Udovenko.

“He will continue to be the candidate from Rukh unless he himself decides not to run,” Kostenko said. 

Vyacheslav Pikhovshek, director of the Ukrainian Center for Independent Political Research, predicted that Rukh would unite behind Kostenko because Chornovil’s Rukh now has no charismatic leader.

“They don’t have another choice but to unite, and the person who should to unite, and the person who should unite them is Kostenko. If he doesn’t manage to do it, nobody else will,” Pikhovshek said.

However, Mykola Tomenko, director of the Institute of Politics, said the rival Rukh factions would probably only unite within a broader right-wing coalition that would include other parties.

Among the possible members of that coalition, he named Reforms and Order, the Republican Christian Party, the Ukrainian Republican Party, the Democratic Party the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists, and possibly a part of the pro-government People’s Democratic Party.

Udovenko, Kuchma, Kostenko, former Prime Minister Yevhen Marchuk and National Bank Governor Viktor Yushchenko are said to be the men in the running for the right wing’s support, although Yushchenko has said he won’t run.

Marchuk also attended Chornovil’s ceremony at the Teachers House and appeared to win a few votes by sticking around afterward and talking to the crowd. 

“You can tell he is a good man just because he stayed to talk to people, not like other deputies,” one pensioner concluded after listening to Marchuk.

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