Nina Strokata

Nina Antonivna Karavanska (; 31 January 1926 – 2 August 1998) was a Ukrainian dissident, Soviet microbiologist and immunologist. She was a member of the dissident movement in the USSR, a co-founder of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group and one of the leading human rights activists in Odesa during the Soviet period. She is the author of about 23 scientific papers in the field of clinical microbiology and immunology. She spoke Russian, Ukrainian, English, German, Polish, and Romanian. She was the wife of Sviatoslav Karavanskyi.

Early life and career Nina Antonivna Strokata was born on 31 January 1926 (according to other sources in 1925) in the Ukrainian city of Odesa, which was then part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic within the Soviet Union. After graduating from high school, she entered the Odesa Medical Institute (now - Odesa National Medical University), which she graduated in 1947. In the following years, Strokata worked as a specialist in various Ukrainian cities (including from 1951 to 1952 at the Odesa Medical Institute).

After graduating from the institute, she worked as a junior researcher, an assistant at the Department of Epidemiology, and then an assistant at the Department of Microbiology of the institute. According to the distribution, Nina Strokata was sent to the local district hospital for two years in Tatarbunary Raion, and later as the head of the medical department.

In 1961, Strokata met one of the activists of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists, Sviatoslav Karavanskyi, who at that time had just returned to his homeland after 16 years in prison. He arrived in Odesa after the amnesty. They later married. A year later she returned to Odesa, continued to work at the medical institute. In 1963, she was accepted as a junior researcher at the Central Research Laboratory at the university, where she worked until 1971. At that time she had prepared her PhD thesis. Karavansky resumed his studies at the evening department of the philological faculty of Odesa State University (now the I. I. Mechnikov Odesa State University), and also joined the opposition struggle. He prepared and distributed samizdat in Odesa, and promoted the Ukrainian language. In November 1965, Sviatoslav Yosypovych was arrested for the second time and two days later he was sent without trial to serve a 25-year term. In December 1966, Nina Karavanska appealed to the head of the camp where her husband was staying, as well as to Leonid Brezhnev, General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, and to the French communist newspaper L'Humanité. The petition stated:

"For 18 years, the camp administration has been unable to influence prisoner S.I. Karavansky, and his family is not allowed to maintain contact with him. Therefore, I, the wife of S.I. Karavansky, ask for him to be shot in order to end my husband's many years of suffering and the endless conflicts between Karavansky and the administration."