Pavlo Skochok

Pavlo Ivanovych Skochok (; 5 May 1935 – 12 January 2013) was a Ukrainian Soviet dissident and journalist.

Biography Pavlo Ivanovych Skochok was born on 5 May 1935 in the village of , in what was then the Soviet Union. He studied at Taras Shevchenko State University of Kyiv, although he was expelled due to alleged "nationalist views". He subsequently worked as an editor for the newspaper until April 1966, when he was fired for criticising the paper's ideology, as well as for publishing the transcripts of trials of the 1965–1966 Ukrainian purge as samvydav. Skochok was assisted in the creation of his samvydav by Viacheslav Chornovil and Liudmyla Sheremet, who would both later become dissidents in their own right. After being fired from Soviet Ukraine, Skochok worked as a proofreader.

On 12 January 1978 Skochok was arrested and charged with anti-Soviet agitation. Found to be insane by the court, he was sent to an asylum in Kyiv, later being moved to Dnipropetrovsk. There, he was subject to political abuse of psychiatry before being released in 1982. During his imprisonment, he was regarded as a prisoner of conscience by international human rights group Amnesty International. He briefly studied the Symyrenko family while working at the Levko Symyrenko Museum in before being fired. He protested his firing in 1985, demanding to be allowed abroad to collect documents about the family from France. Skochok's backing of the movement made little impact on its support in Ukraine, and he soon turned to writing condemnations of the Ukrainian government as illegal in Golden Gate.