Talk:Viacheslav Chornovil/GA1: Difference between revisions

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Nominator: Mupper-san (talk · contribs) 09:36, 6 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Reviewer: Szmenderowiecki (talk · contribs) 13:27, 26 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hello there, I’m going to review the article about Viacheslav Chornovil. I hope to wrap this up by tomorrow evening. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 13:27, 26 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Rate	Attribute	Review Comment
1. Well-written:
	1a. the prose is clear, concise, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience; spelling and grammar are correct.	Some minor issues, but I can understand most of what it says
	1b. it complies with the Manual of Style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation.	Lead needs some fixing wrt “controversial” label and the fact that it mentions some policy positions that are not substantiated in the body. One issue I saw with out-of-date info and vague text.
2. Verifiable with no original research, as shown by a source spot-check:
	2a. it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline.	References section is a bit messy, but this is being fixed.
	2b. reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose).	There are some sources whose quality is not good enough for the claims they substantiate, although it’s not objectively bad. Failed verification issues were fixed. There is a fragment about Zdorovylo who appears to be involved in the events but almost presented as fact. One source is misinterpreted, and one claim as sourced to a scholarly journal appears dubious when dug deeper into. The scale of the issues is tolerable though, and it is being fixed.
	2c. it contains no original research.	No original research as far as I can see
	2d. it contains no copyright violations or plagiarism.	No copyright issues as far as I can see.
3. Broad in its coverage:
	3a. it addresses the main aspects of the topic.	It does for most things, but after reading the article I feel that I don’t really know about many of his policies so this needs to be remedied. There are also some issues where the article just plows on but does not close the opened threads, such as the one with the Lviv Oblast council. It’s close to a fail but other topics are broadly covered so that is a question mark for now.
	3b. it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).	The second half of the article, starting from about the period when Nina Strokata is mentioned and particularly after his return to Ukraine, needs to have summary style applied more aggressively. The article is at almost 200KB. There is a lot of background info, but I’d say there’s too much of it. Some of the issues at the beginning of the article were fixed, but there’s a lot of work to do here.
	4. Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each.	The “controversial” label is not substantiated and is the only major concern I have. No other issues I detected
	5. Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute.	Stable.
6. Illustrated, if possible, by media such as images, video, or audio:
	6a. media are tagged with their copyright statuses, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content.	Everything is fine.
	6b. media are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions.	Is there a better image of Chornovil than just the size you’d use for passport applications? File:Black_Sea_with_the_Crimea_highlighted.svg has weird white borders that do not match the words. A minor thing but maybe you can edit the svg. Other than that, the images are appropriate and have good captions. I’d want it a bit more illustrated and I’ve left invisible comments throughout the article to that effect but that’s not a criterion at GA so up to you if you want to change it.
	7. Overall assessment.	When I started reviewing this article, I saw that it was pretty broad in scope, which meant for me that the rest can be fixed with enough effort and in a reasonable time (as opposed to an article lacking research into it, which would be a much bigger problem). The text doesn’t have glaring issues that would immediately disqualify the nomination but there are a lot of small-to-medium sized problems that are being addressed. The editor is cooperative, which I appreciate. For now, the nomination is on hold pending changes to the article.

• IPA pronunciation of his name and surname would be very helpful. That seems to be the standard for FAs; not necessarily for GAs but that’s the little things that help readers and which aren’t that hard IMHO. If I were an alien I’d definitely want to know how to properly pronounce names. 😉
• Last sentence of the third paragraph should be split. It communicates two distinct ideas: his loss to Kravchuk and what policy positions he took as a parliamentarian
• he actively promoted Ukrainian membership in the European Union and opposition to the emergence of the Ukrainian oligarchs. – you mention neither in the body of the text.
• The “controversial” label, apart from striking patterns of political support (Galicia vs basically everyone else), can’t be deduced from the body of the article. I imagine he was during his lifetime – but there’s got to be some sort of text, for example in the legacy section, that describe how contemporaries perceived him (that btw is also lacking). I’m going to be again boasting about myself but I think Maurice_Duplessis#Historical_debate section is really badass (he’s still very controversial in Quebec), but it’s OK if you don’t find as much sourcing. For other articles see for example John_Diefenbaker#Legacy, Gough_Whitlam#Legacy_and_historical_evaluation; or for controversies mentioned in-text, as opposed to the legacy section, see Józef Piłsudski. Just stating he was “controversial” isn’t good enough. Why was he controversial?

• Source 5 should be cited to Derevinskyi directly instead of through just another news outlet. You can leave the link to the quote as a courtesy if his book is not readily available online. Basically a lot of the article should probably rely on his book (it is available on Chtyvo; the very first page has some good info about childhood).

• You need to provide the original romanised titles of publications and English translation if you so choose unless one is clearly established. E.g. Ukrainska Pravda is obligatory, Ukrainian Truth isn’t really; same for Dzerkalo Tyzhnia not Mirror of the Week. Yes, it hurts, but that’s how Wikipedia is written apparently.

• Drahomanov and libertarian socialism – that’s not what the source says. A very interesting article, but a wrong conclusion. Here’s my view on his position
  • The cited pages do describe Dragomanov’s views: “a mix of liberal-democratic, socialist and Ukrainian patriotic elements with a positivist philosophical underpinning”. So already hardly libertarian
  • The article starts with Chornovil accusing Drahomanov of not treating Ukrainian as a fully-fledged language and of creating an idiosyncratic hierarchy where Ukrainian was subordinate to Russian, which was supposed to serve as a gateway to the rest of the world; similarly he rejected assessment of Shevchenko as a crude genius; that Ruthenia was Russia, that Catherine the Great was progressive etc. and chastised Drahomanov’s fear of Ukrainian nationalism and “extreme autonomists”
  • Then the article goes on to say that Chornovil was indifferent to Drahomanov’s socialism, suggesting he was abandoning it altogether
  • The analysis of anarchist authors is fine, as is the emphasis on self-governance, but I don’t see the “libertarian” aspect of it.
  • Finally the article concludes with the statement that “despite all his liberalism and the fear of ‘extremes'”, he would probably be among the most important people advancing the Ukrainian national idea.
  • Far later in the article, the author writes that Чорновіл – націонал-демократ і державник, тож пошук шляху на зміцнення державності привів його до ідеї федералізму. У Драгоманова все навпаки. Якщо йти за логікою І. Лисяка-Рудницького, при всьому синкретизмі поглядів Драгоманова, центром тяжіння була ліберальна ідея – доктрина про те, що свобода і гідність людини є найвищими вартостями. Логічним наслідком цього для Драгоманова став ідеал анархії: вільні люди об’єднані у вільні товариства є ціллю, і «ціль та зветься безначальство: своя воля кожному і вільне громадство й товариство людей і товариств»31. Тож анархічні ідеали привели Драгоманова до федералізму – so Drahomanov did draw inspiration from anarchist ideas but the author does not seem to suggest that Drahomanov was anarchist. In fact, he routinely relies on the description of Drahomanov as a [classical] liberal.
    • The rewrite is still bad as the author argues that Chornovil was rejecting socialism or at least was indifferent to it.
• Generally the section about Nina Strokata is too long. Not much of Chornovil but a ton of different other opinions. Like half to 2/3 of the current size would be good.
• The Istorychna Pravda article from that lawyer has a court ruling that you can upload to Commons and then Wikipedia. Good illustrative material, public domain.

• Among them was Chornovil, who was asked to replace Meshko as head of the UHG – did he accept the proposal?
• I see in Derevinskyi that he was placed in a high-security prison (табір суворого режиму). You could, and probably should, also specify that the reason he stayed in Yakutia while not being in prison was that the court that sentenced him decided to send him on probation and as a condition of probation he was ordered to work for the brick factory in Pokrovsk. Ув’язнення В’ячеслав Чорновіл відбував у таборі суворого режиму в Табазі Якутської АРСР. У вересні 1983 року його звільнили з табору, направивши відбувати призначений судом термін покарання в рамках випробувального строку на цегельному заводі у с. Покровське Орджонікідзевського району Якутської АРСР.

• This section is way too long and would benefit from more aggressive summarising. So for example Soviet black PR campaigns probably should be concentrated in one place. The text is also arranged thematically but the chronology is sometimes broken. Too much background details and too little of Chornovil. I’d suggest copying the text here in a separate section so that we could workshop it, or, if you are a Visual Editor junkie, we can do that in a sandbox. This can be in the table format. This generally does not concern Chornovil’s political program, which is definitely something a reader would be looking for.
• On 11 March 1988 Chornovil formally re-established the Ukrainian Helsinki Group oh, so they shut down? The article doesn’t make this clear
• What was he doing for a living at the time? Verkhovna Rada says he continued to be a stoker

• Electoral results seem to be rather incomplete. There are maps for 1991 presidential and 1998 parliamentary elections; but not 1990 or 1994 elections to the Verkhovna Rada. I think it’s important because he led Rukh during all these elections.

I also think that it would be a great idea to show electoral performance in the districts elected (cf. Kathy Dunderdale). It’s not obligatory (cf. Monique Ryan, or even my Maurice Duplessis) but that’s also something I love to see – what parties they were competing against, what level of support they had in the district. That is, if that information is easily available and if you want to spend time on this. I won’t complain if you don’t do that – that would in fact be hypocritical of me to do that.

• Ref 101 in fact appears in Chornovil reading series, so I think you should modify the citation.
• Why did he stop being Lviv Oblast council head?
  • Also, according to Derevinskyi, Chornovil was one of several candidates for Lviv Oblast council, along with Gel, but they averted a split in Rukh after the latter was nominated deputy chairman. He actually describes his positions as head of Lviv Oblast Council, and also other proposals he had while in parliament, so I’d like you to look into that book in detail. Chornovil reading series may include a lot of other stuff Derevinskyi didn’t mention.
• He later chose to instead contest the 357th electoral district (located in Ternopil Oblast) – any idea why he chose not to run in the capital, or was told not to?
• Maybe Chornovil had an overarching vision of the new constitution? Do you have any more info about how he wanted the constitution to look like?
• 1998 election – more info on what promises he was campaigning, other than no federalism and campaigning against the left but with some pro-Kuchma parties?
• 1994 election – as above, but I don’t see much analysis of the election? How many seats? Was it a good election or a bad election? If a bad one, did Chornovil face challengers?
• I’m really lacking info on some of his policies:
  • Foreign relations:
    • the lead claims he wanted to be in the European Union, but we don’t talk about it.
    • other than in the context of Crimea, which we know he wanted demilitarised and that he didn’t care about separatism as believed it would fizzle out eventually, we don’t see how he wanted to deal with the big eastern neighbour. I mean, it was easier because Yeltsin was a buffoon and Chornovil was daring enough to go on a sort of state visit to separatist Chechnya (didn’t he see parallels with Crimea?), but still.
  • Internal relations:
    • What was his grand plan for dealing with Crimea in the long run, apart from demilitarisation?
    • How did he want to deal with the majority-Russian speaking areas in the east and south? The 1999 election manifesto gives some clues but that’s it.
  • Economy: I am too young to have witnessed it but I imagine that’s what most people were worried about, not the constitution or parliamentary debates that they would probably describe by variations of the word “bullshitting”.
    • The lead says he was opposed to the emergence of the Ukrainian oligarchy. What steps did he take to prevent it or at least stall the process?
    • I understand that his vision was to sell at least some state property, if we extrapolate from his policies as Lviv Oblast council head, but not have the degree of concentration seen in Russia or Ukraine but what was his plan in this respect?
    • According to the article he pledged vague “economic reforms” and supported an economic reformer as president, but what exactly were his ideas to prevent the country from going to shit? Was he economically liberal or preferred strong regulation? How much of state property he wanted to retain, if any? (At the very end of the 1998 election section, you do say that Lviv oblast was a “holdout against privatisation” but I prefer it to be in one place) Did he have any sort of industrial policy? Big government or small government? Welfare?
  • Political opinion: I see that the lead names him as “controversial” but so far I don’t see much in the way of controversy. What was it that people outside Galicia and maybe Volhynia hated? The nationalism? Federalism? Emphasis on speaking Ukrainian? What was it?

Is there any info on the level of support Rukh had around these elections? Maybe there were polls where voters were asked whom they preferred more?

• Besides the substantiation of the “controversy” part, if you decide to do it here, it would be interesting to see a bit more of the comparison between nationalist Chornovil and nationalist Bandera, as both are popular in Galicia and, at least Bandera, reviled in the east.

• References are in seemingly random order; sort by at least some criterion. Preferably additionally sorted by books/academic journals/popular press/web articles. You’ve done a ton of work but when I try to understand which sources you used and which may be actually worthwhile/readily accessible to check/available I’m quickly getting lost.
• I also hate that some references are in the text not mentioned in the bibliography, while others do appear in the bibliography but aren’t mentioned in text and there is no distinction. There is no requirement for a particular reference style but if I use something once or twice, or if I use a short media article, I prefer not to have it in a further reading-like section because it gets too cluttered. I tend to reserve the further reading mention for works which I use multiple times at different fragments or which at least are book-length. (see e.g. Maurice Duplessis – the way I formatted it). I don’t say you have to do it exactly the way I did it but at the very list there has to be some semblance of structure.]

I’d still want the bibliography to be sorted by some sort of criterion – year or author’s surname is what is usually done, you can use some other criterion too if it makes sense.

IMHO it would make sense to separate the Chornovil reading series from the rest of the books as there is so much from it and it’s more like a conference than a typical book or academic journal.

@Szmenderowiecki Thank you very much for the comprehensive review thus far! It’s definitely helped to clean up a lot of things with the article, and I’m currently looking at cleaning up some of the references not mentioned in text from the bibliography. I’ll note two things regarding the 69–72 portion of the recommendations. The first is that I wasn’t able to figure out how to get the conversion templates to work without throwing a big red error, so I’ve currently left it commented out next to the old text.

I fixed it for you.

Secondly is the declaration. The intention of the passage was to state that Chornovil intended that the declaration he gave to the UNHCR be released in case of his imprisonment. If it causes confusion then I’m of course willing to change it to something that better communicates this, but I’m not quite sure of what would be a better addition.

Also fixed it for you based on the information you provided. The previous formulation was problematic.

In addition, two things I’m curious about/have issue with are the usage of the definite article before Rukh in the lead and the usage of oblasts in the infobox. On the first one, while it does make more sense grammatically from the direct translation, the definite article doesn’t seem to be applied to Rukh very often (see Encyclopedia of Ukraine and Kuzio’s Ukraine: Perestroika to Independence on Chtyvo).

English is not my native language but I’d personally use “the” throughout (e.g. “The Left“, at least when referring to the party).

Additionally, with regards to oblast, though there’s no formal policy either way, in my experience there seems to be an informal convention that only autonomous regions and federal administrative divisions are included between the settlement and country of birth in a biography (and, given Ukraine was neither a ‘federative’ SSR and certainly couldn’t be described as federal in 1999, it wouldn’t fit either categories). There’s also the fact that someone is unlikely to mistake the Yerky and Boryspil where Chornovil was born and died near with another settlement of the same name in another oblast (or at least one could presume this, given neither are listed with oblasts attached in their titles). I’m open to including Ukrainian oblasts, but this is the convention I’ve followed thus far.

I don’t think there’s a policy either, but it does aid reader comprehension a little. Ukraine isn’t a small country and when referring to less known settlements, it is common for Ukrainians to specify the oblast so people can roughly understand where this could be, similarly to how the French use departments (even though they are not federative units). They would use a construction like “на Черкащині”, which is more or less “in Cherkasyland”. Boryspil is relatively known because that’s where the main airport of Ukraine is but I’d be consistent. Ukrainians don’t use raions in the same way, partly because they’ve been overhauled recently and partly because a lot of the new ones are ridiculous; and they are IMHO oversized in most oblasts.

Once again, thank you for your review thus far, and I’m eager to implement any other recommendations as they come.

Mupper-san (talk) 19:25, 27 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If that’s not hard for you, I’d prefer you communicate your progress or any problems you may have with the review here instead of edit summaries because checking both is hard; or maybe in invisible comments in the article if there’s something really important. Is that OK with you?

@Szmenderowiecki Sure, that’s fine by me. I’ll knock out some more stuff like summary style and the rest of the pre-government sections tonight or tomorrow, and post here when done.

Mupper-san (talk) 15:15, 29 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]