“If they asked me whether I regret how my life turned out, the fifteen years in prison, I would answer: not at all. If I had to start over and choose again, I would choose the same life.”
— Viacheslav Chornovil
Said by Chornovil in interviews and recorded in biographical accounts. He spent fifteen years total in Soviet prisons and exile for defending Ukrainian dissidents and publishing samvydav.
I was twenty-seven years old when I stood up in that cinema and shouted against tyranny. I knew what it would cost. Within days I lost my job, my graduate studies, my career. Then came the camps. Yakutia. Mordovia. The KGB file with the nickname 'The Irrepressible.' Every time they released me I went back to work. Not because I was brave. Because I could not do otherwise. There is only one question that matters: if not me, then who? You already know your answer. You are just waiting for permission to act on it. There is no permission coming. Stand up.