Foreign language teacher, translator, member of the Kyiv Democratic Club and the Ukrainian Culturological Club.
From a teacher’s family.
In 1974, he graduated from the Spanish language department of the Kyiv Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Languages. From 1974-75, he worked as a Spanish teacher at Kyiv Secondary School No. 204. From 1975-76, he served in the Soviet Army in the Vinnytsia Oblast. From 1976-81, he was a translator from German at the Ukrainian Scientific Research Institute of Scientific and Technical Information (Kyiv).
In 1979, along with friends, he participated in the creation of the samizdat almanac “KHLAM” (“Khudo_zhno-Literaturnyi Almanakh Molodi,” or Artistic-Literary Almanac of Youth), which published uncensored literary works, essays, and so on.
In 1980, together with Larysa LOKHVYTSKA, Inna CHERNIAVSKA, and Serhiy NABOKA, he founded the independent Kyiv Democratic Club (KDC), within which philosophical-religious and literary seminars were held, discussions on political and ideological issues took place, and “samizdat” and “tamizdat” (foreign-published) materials were read and discussed, including the émigré journal “Kontinent” (Paris) and works by “anti-Soviet” authors banned in the USSR, such as A. Solzhenitsyn, A. SAKHAROV, M. Voslensky, M. RUDENKO, V. CHORNOVIL, V. MOROZ, and others.
In July 1980, along with like-minded individuals, he drafted a call to support the boycott of the “Olympiad-80” in the USSR due to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. In the same year, the KDC created a “Manifesto,” which, among other things, contained the programmatic point of “disintegration of the Soviet empire.”
Late in the evening on January 11, 1981, on the eve of the Day of the Ukrainian Political Prisoner, Milyavsky, along with L. LOKHVYTSKA, I. CHERNIAVSKA, S. NABOKA, and his wife Natalka Parkhomenko, was arrested near the “Bilshovyk” metro station while distributing leaflets expressing solidarity with Ukrainian political prisoners, with content approximately as follows: “Compatriots! January 12 is the Day of the Ukrainian Political Prisoner. Let us support those who are punished in Soviet prisons!”
All were charged under Art. 187-I of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR, “Dissemination of deliberately false fabrications that defame the Soviet state and social system.” N. Parkhomenko, who had a young child, was released.
The investigation was conducted by Senior Investigator of the Kyiv City Prosecutor’s Office V.B. Tantsiura.
On June 29, 1981, Milyavsky was sentenced by the Kyiv City Court (prosecutor – L.M. Abramenko, judge – V.N. Maibozhenko). (During Ukraine's independence, prosecutor Abramenko published several books about political repressions in Ukraine, yet remained silent about his own active participation in them).
From 1981 to 1984, he served a 3-year prison term in the general-regime camps YuZ-17/7 in the Kherson Oblast, as well as in correctional labor colonies in the Mykolaiv and Donetsk oblasts. In the autumn of 1981, he witnessed an uprising of prisoners at YuZ-17/7 against “mentovsky bespredel” (police lawlessness). After the suppression of the uprising, a dozen of its active participants received additional prison terms, but the “bespredel” subsided. He was sent to the SHIZO (punishment isolator) for 10 days for “failure to meet the production norm,” although the real reason was likely an order from the KGB (who had visited the camp at the time) to stop Milyavsky’s communication with another political prisoner, Eduard Krytsky. After this, both were transferred to other camps.
He was released in January 1984. He worked as a painter.
In 1987, he became a founding member of the Ukrainian Culturological Club, for a time heading its philosophy section. On October 4, 1987, he gave a report at a Club meeting on “White Spots in Ukrainian History,” in which special attention was paid to the Holodomor in Ukraine of 1932-1933. The report received wide public resonance and led to a frantic persecution of the UCC in the official Soviet press (initiated by an article by O. Shvets in the newspaper “Vechirniy Kyiv” on October 19, 1987, in which the Club was called “an obliging repeater of hostile radio voices”).
In December 1989, he received a 5-day arrest for participating in an “unauthorized demonstration” organized by the then-“informal organizations.”
In 1989, Milyavsky became a co-editor of the newspaper “Holos Vidrodzhennia” (Voice of Rebirth) – the first legal independent newspaper in Ukraine. At the same time, he began working as a political commentator for the Ukrainian service of Radio Liberty. At the end of 1989, along with S. NABOKA and S. Ryaboshapka, he founded the first independent information agency in Ukraine, “Respublika” (UNIAR). He was the editor of “UNIAR News” on the YUTAR television channel and the author of a series of informational-analytical programs called “Desiatka” (The Ten) that aired on this channel.
From 1989 to 1991, he collaborated with the Moscow-based human rights publication “Ekspress-Khronika.” He was published in the newspapers “Svoboda” (New York), “Ukrainske slovo” (Paris), and “Kultura” (Paris).
From 1996, he was the host of a series of political programs, “Politprohnoz” (Political Forecast), on “Radio ROKS-Ukraine.”
Since 2003, he has been the editor-in-chief of the national television political talk show “Ya tak dumayu” (I Think So) (on the “1+1” and “5th Channel” television channels).
He lives in Kyiv.
Bibliography:
I.
Bili pliamy novitnoi istorii Ukrainy [White Spots in the Modern History of Ukraine] // Ukrainsky Visnyk. Hromadsky literaturno-khudozhniy ta suspilno-politychnyi zhurnal. Issue 9-10. October-November 1987. Kyiv-Lviv. Reprint by the Foreign Representation of the Ukrainian Helsinki Union – pp. 170-179; Ibid: Ukrainsky Visnyk. Hromadsky literaturno-khudozhniy ta suspilno-politychnyi zhurnal. Issues 7, 8, 9-10. August, September, October-November 1987. Kyiv-Lviv. Reprint of a samizdat journal from Ukraine. – Toronto-Baltimore: Ukrainian Publishing House “Smoloskyp” im. V. Symonenka, 1988. – pp. 479-489; Ibid: // Kyivska vesna / Comp. and ed. O. Shevchenko. – Kyiv: Vydavnytstvo imeni Oleny Telihy, 2005. – pp. 100-110
[Response to the article “Teatr tinei” (Theater of Shadows)] // Ukrainsky Visnyk… – p. 521.
II.
Herald of Repression in Ukraine. Foreign Representation of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group. Editor-compiler Nadiya Svitlychna. New York. 1981, issues 5, 7, 8, 9; 1984: 1–20.
U Kyievi zasudyly L. Lokhvytsku, L. Miliavskoho, S. Naboku y I. Cherniavsku za rozpovsiudzhennia letiuchok [L. Lokhvytska, L. Milyavsky, S. Naboka, and I. Cherniavska Sentenced in Kyiv for Distributing Leaflets] // Smoloskyp. – 1982. – No. 3. – pp. 1–2.
Four Kiev Aktivists sentenced for Leaflets // Smoloskyp. – 1982. – No. 3. – pp. 1, 10.
Ukrainsky Visnyk. Hromadsky literaturno-khudozhniy ta suspilno-politychnyi zhurnal. Issues 7, 8, 9–10. August, September, October–November 1987. Kyiv–Lviv. Reprint of a samizdat journal from Ukraine. – Toronto-Baltimore: Ukrainian Publishing House “Smoloskyp” im. V. Symonenka, 1988. – pp. 479-489, 509, 513, 523, 524.
Alekseyeva, L. Istoriya inakomysliya v SSSR [The History of Dissent in the USSR].— Vilnius-Moscow: Vest, 1992.— p. 33.
Kasianov, G. Nezhodni: ukrainska intelihentsiia v rusi oporu 1960-80-kh rokiv [The Dissenters: The Ukrainian Intelligentsia in the Resistance Movement of the 1960s-80s]. – Kyiv: Lybid, 1995. – p. 173.
Naboka, Serhiy. Ukrainskyi kulturolohichnyi klub – Kyiv, 1987 [The Ukrainian Culturological Club – Kyiv, 1987] // Ukrainskyi almanakh. 1997. – Warsaw: Association of Ukrainians in Poland, 1997. – pp. 154–156. (Also: Kyivska vesna / Comp. and ed. O. Shevchenko. – Kyiv: Vydavnytstvo imeni Oleny Telihy, 2005. – pp. 67-69).
Rusnachenko, A. Natsionalno-vyzvolnyi rukh v Ukraini [The National Liberation Movement in Ukraine].— Kyiv: Vydavnytstvo im. O. Telihy.— 1998.— p. 217.
Serhiy Naboka. “Ya ‘po zhyzni’ zhurnalist, redaktor i vydavets…” [“In life, I’m a journalist, editor, and publisher…”] The Last Interview of Serhiy Naboka with Vakhtang Kipiani, November 21, 2002 // Ukrainska Pravda, January 21, 2003. http://www.pravda.com.ua/cgi-bin/print.cgi
“30 khvylyn u riznykh vymirakh” [“30 Minutes in Different Dimensions”]. – Radio “Svoboda,” August 16, 2004, http://www.radiosvoboda.org/content/article/921170.html
Kyivska vesna [Kyiv Spring] / Comp. and ed. O. Shevchenko. – Kyiv: Vydavnytstvo imeni Oleny Telihy, 2005. –– pp. 11, 13, 14, 40, 52, 63-66, 100-110, 122-129, 143, 146, 194, 264, 318, 369, 404, 444, 502, 503, 511, 528, 543, 554.
Marusenko, I. Ukrainskyi kulturolohichnyi klub yak visnyk peremin [The Ukrainian Culturological Club as a Harbinger of Change] // Dzerkalo tyzhnia, No. 27 (606), 2006. – July 15–21.
Zakharov, Ye. Zhaha svobody [The Thirst for Freedom] // Dzerkalo tyzhnia, No. 1 (630). – 2007. – January 13–19.
Serhiy Hrabovsky. Vony pryishly, shchob zvilnyty nas: do dvadtsiatyrichchia UKK [They Came to Free Us: For the Twentieth Anniversary of the UCC]. August 7, 2007, http://www.pravda.com.ua/rus/articles/2007/08/7/4422278/
Shevchenko, O. Pershyi postril Ukrainskoi Revoliutsii [The First Shot of the Ukrainian Revolution]. – Prava liudyny v Ukraini, http://www.khpg.org/1215442908
Ovsiienko, V. Spravliaiemo “Rizdvianykh Vasyliv” – zghaduiemo tykh, khto ne koryvsia [We Celebrate “Christmas Vasyls” – Remembering Those Who Did Not Surrender] // Ukraina Moloda, No. 9. – 2007 – January 18.
Obertas, O. Den ukrainskoho politv’iaznia [Day of the Ukrainian Political Prisoner] // Smoloskyp Ukrainy, No. 1 (138). – 2007. – January.
Rukh oporu v Ukraini: 1960 – 1990. Entsyklopedychnyi dovidnyk [Resistance Movement in Ukraine: 1960 – 1990. An Encyclopedic Guide] / Foreword by Osyp Zinkevych, Oles Obertas. – Kyiv: Smoloskyp, 2010. – p. 438.
Profile compiled on October 12, 2010, by L. Milyavsky, supplemented on October 13, 2010, by V. Ovsiienko (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group).
MILIAVSKYJ LEONID IZRAYILIOVYCH