In brief: On the 90th anniversary of Nadia Svitlychna’s birth, I remember my friend and colleague’s quiet courage, warmth and unwavering solidarity with those persecuted for their beliefs. From Soviet imprisonment to human rights advocacy and Radio Liberty broadcasts, she defended Ukrainian identity and preserved the voices of her fellow dissidents. I feel privileged to have known her and her brother Ivan. Their example remains vital as Ukrainians once again fight for their freedom and dignity.
On Nov. 8, 2026, Nadia Svitlychna would have turned 90. Her life deserves to be remembered not only as part of the history of Ukraine’s dissident movement, but also for what it tells us about the struggle for freedom, national identity and human dignity that continues today.
Svitlychna belonged to the generation of Ukrainian intellectuals known as the Sixtiers, or “shistdesiatnyky.” Emerging during the limited cultural liberalization following Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s death, they sought to revive Ukrainian literature, language, and historical consciousness after decades of Soviet repression with its barely disguised continuation of Russian imperial rule.
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Their challenge to the authorities was cultural and intellectual, but it was also unmistakably political. To assert the right to be Ukrainian, to write in Ukrainian and to reclaim Ukraine’s history, was to challenge the ideological foundations of Soviet Russian rule and its regimentation.
Formative years
Born in Polovynkyne, in the Luhansk region, Svitlychna studied philology at Kharkiv University. She became a teacher, editor, and journalist, but her growing involvement in the dissident movement would define her life.
Her brother, the literary critic and prominent dissident Ivan Svitlychny, was a central figure in the Ukrainian national revival in the first half of the 1960s and onwards. Through him, Nadia became increasingly involved in the circle of Ukrainian intellectuals who refused to accept censorship, political persecution, and the suppression of national culture.
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Ivan was among the 20 or so Ukrainian dissidents imprisoned after a wave of arrests in 1965. Nadia helped defend arrested colleagues, circulated uncensored writings, and documented the authorities’ abuses. Her close friend, the artist Ala Horska, was murdered in suspicious circumstances in 1970.
In April 1972, Nadia herself was arrested during the major crackdown on Ukrainian intellectuals. In March 1973, she was sentenced to four years in a labor camp in Mordovia for so-called anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda. Her brother received a sentence of imprisonment and internal exile totaling 12 years.
Nadia’s release in May 1976 did not end her opposition to the Soviet regime. She remained unwilling to accommodate herself to a system that denied basic freedoms and persecuted people for their beliefs. Fortunately, in 1978, she was allowed to leave the Soviet Union with her two children and eventually settled in the US.
A personal connection
My own involvement with the Svitlychnys began while both Ivan and Nadia were political prisoners. In the spring of 1978, I published a profile of Ivan in the London-based journal “Index on Censorship.”
From the second half of 1978 to 1982, I headed Amnesty International’s Soviet unit in London, responsible for the organization’s defense of political prisoners throughout the Soviet Union, the majority of whom at that time were Ukrainians.
One of my first assignments was to meet Nadia on her arrival in Rome by air in October 1978 with her two sons after being allowed to leave the USSR. That meeting, at a Ukrainian Catholic convent in the center of the Italian capital, began a friendship that remained important to me.
Nadia was soft-spoken, warm and open, with a delightful sense of humor. But beneath her gentle manner was a woman of considerable strength and determination. She was deeply concerned about her fellow dissidents and Ukrainian patriots, many of whom, like her brother, remained in the Soviet Union as political prisoners. Their fate was never far from her thoughts, and she was always ready to do whatever she could to help them.
I conducted the first interview with her on her arrival in the West, and it was clear that her commitment to others was not a matter of public posture. It was simply part of who she was. She had not arrived to escape and relax but to act as the emissary for her like-minded, courageous colleagues.
Soon afterward, in the final part of the decade, I began corresponding with Ivan under a pseudonym while he was in internal exile, following his release from the labor camps. He suffered two strokes during exile and, upon his release in 1984, returned to Kyiv permanently crippled.
Giving a voice to the persecuted
After settling in the US, Nadia continued her human rights work. She became active in the External Representation of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, helping bring the plight of Ukrainian political prisoners to the attention of international organizations and Western governments.
She also edited and published the Bulletin of Repressions in Ukraine (Visnyk represii v Ukraini), documenting arrests, trials, sentences and abuses.
Between 1983 and 1994, she worked for the Ukrainian Service of Radio Liberty in its New York office. Her broadcasts continued the work she had undertaken as a dissident in Ukraine: informing people, challenging official falsehoods and keeping alive the memory of those whom the Soviet authorities sought to silence.
For her, journalism was never simply a profession. It was a means of defending truth and standing with those denied a voice.
In the second half of the 1980s, Nadia and I became professional colleagues. When, in 1989, I became director of the Ukrainian Service of the Munich-based and US-funded Radio Liberty, I invited Nadia to prepare a series of programs about her fellow Sixtiers. She approached the assignment with characteristic conscientiousness and produced a stream of invaluable material.
She was a hardworking, thoughtful journalist, bringing to our programs not only her professional skills but also her intimate knowledge of the people and events she documented. Her work helped preserve the memory of a generation whose contribution to Ukraine’s intellectual and national revival could easily have been obscured or forgotten.
Nadia Svitlych (left) and Alla Horska in the 1960s (Photo: public domain)
As I’ve mentioned, Nadia devoted considerable effort to preserving Ukraine’s cultural heritage and the legacy of the dissident movement. She promoted the establishment of the Museum of the Sixtiers in Kyiv. She contributed photographs, documents, and personal materials to its collection.
One of her important contributions was her work on the literary legacy of Vasyl Stus, the poet who died in a Soviet labor camp in 1985. She prepared his collection Palimpsests for publication in Munich in 1986, helping ensure that his poetry reached readers beyond the reach of Soviet censorship.
In 1994, she received the Taras Shevchenko National Prize for her contributions to Ukrainian journalism and publicist writing, which she shared with her brother Ivan, honored posthumously.
It is tempting to regard the Ukrainian dissident movement as a closed chapter of history, associated with a vanished Soviet system. But Russia’s war against Ukraine has demonstrated how little has changed in the imperial determination to deny Ukrainians their identity and political independence.
In the occupied territories, Ukrainian civilians, journalists and activists face persecution, imprisonment and torture. Ukrainian books, language, cultural institutions and historical memory are again targets of deliberate suppression. Political prisoners and prisoners of war remain exposed to brutal treatment.
The circumstances are different, but the underlying ambition is familiar: to break Ukrainian resistance by denying the legitimacy of Ukrainian identity and Ukrainians’ right to determine their own future.
Svitlychna’s generation understood what was at stake long before Ukraine regained independence in 1991. They recognized that national freedom could not be separated from individual rights, freedom of expression, and respect for human dignity.
Their struggle also offers a lesson to Ukraine’s international partners. Svitlychny spent years trying to make the outside world listen to the voices of Ukrainians persecuted by Moscow. Her experience showed how important it is to document abuses, defend political prisoners, and resist the temptation to subordinate human rights to diplomatic convenience.
Svitlychna died in the US on August 8, 2006. Following her wishes, she was buried in Kyiv.
On the 90th anniversary of her birth, I find myself thinking less about the honors she received than about the person I knew: her quiet manner, her warmth, her humor, and her unwavering concern for others. She had endured imprisonment and exile, yet neither experience embittered her nor diminished her generosity.
I remember her as a courageous, kind, and generous woman, with an unusual combination of personal modesty and inner strength. She never needed to raise her voice to make her convictions clear.
I feel privileged to have known her, to have worked with her, and, above all, to have counted her and her brother Ivan as friends
Her life reminds us that courage does not always announce itself loudly. Sometimes it takes the form of a letter sent to a political prisoner, a manuscript saved from destruction, a radio program about a persecuted colleague, or simply the refusal to abandon someone in need.
Svitlychna embodied dignity, solidarity, and the fundamental values that sustain a free society. These were not abstract principles for her. They were the principles by which she lived.
Ukraine, fighting once again for its freedom, has a particular reason to remember her and her brother as inspiring, tolerant, and brave Ukrainian patriots from the Luhansk region of Donbas, which has been occupied by Russia since 2014.
And so do those of us who had the privilege of knowing her.
The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.
Bohdan Nahaylo, Chief Editor of Kyiv Post since December 2021, is a British-Ukrainian journalist, author and veteran Ukraine watcher based between Kyiv and Barcelona. He was formerly head of Amnesty International's Soviet Union unit, a senior United Nations official and policy adviser, and Director of Radio Liberty’s Ukrainian Service.
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