13 Facts About Zorian Popadiuk

Zorian Volodymyrovych Popadiuk is a Ukrainian human rights activist and former Soviet dissident.

Zorian Popadiuk was one of the leaders of the Ukrainian National Front, an underground group that protested the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, and was arrested in 1973 for his protest against the Soviet ban on celebrating the Shevchenko Days.

Zorian Volodymyrovych Popadiuk was born on 21 April 1953 in the city of Lviv, then part of the Soviet Union.

At the age of fifteen, Popadiuk witnessed a unit of the Soviet Army travelling through his town on the way to join the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia.

The event greatly impacted Zorian Popadiuk, and solidified his political antipathy to communism.

Zorian Popadiuk wrote leaflets in condemnation of the invasion and called on readers to protest.

Zorian Popadiuk was charged with anti-Soviet agitation and organisation of a criminal group.

Zorian Popadiuk was expelled from university, and, along with fellow organiser of the Ukrainian National Front Yaromyr Mykytko, was sentenced to five years of imprisonment and seven years of internal exile.

Zorian Popadiuk served his sentence in the Mordovian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic and at Corrective Colony No 2 in the city of Vladimir.

Zorian Popadiuk later noted that he was treated with care and respect by other prisoners in the camps, particularly veterans of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, with whom he often discussed poetry and literature.

Zorian Popadiuk's exile was spent first in Imeni Matrosova, Magadan Oblast, before he was later moved to Aktobe Region due to health issues.

Zorian Popadiuk was sentenced this time to ten years' imprisonment and five years' internal exile, and he spent his tenure at Perm-35 and Perm-36.

Zorian Popadiuk returned to Sambir, where he was a member of both the city's government and the government of Sambir Raion.