Shevchenko, Oles

Shevchenko, Oles [Шевченко, Олесь; Ševčenko], b 22 February 1940 in Skvyra, Kyiv oblast. Journalist, dissident, and political prisoner. He was arrested in March 1980 and sentenced, for editing the samvydav journal Ukraïns’kyi visnyk, to five years in labor camps in Perm oblast and three years’ exile in Kazakhstan. During his imprisonment he wrote numerous petitions and open letters of protest on behalf of political prisoners. After his release in the spring of 1987, he returned to Kyiv, where he was active in the national movement, the Ukrainian Helsinki Association, and the Ukrainian Culturological Club and worked as the scholarly editor of Ukrainskii biokhimicheskii zhurnal. In March 1990 he was elected to the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR as a deputy from a Kyiv district.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]