In 1961, a young Ukrainian lawyer stood in a Soviet courtroom and was sentenced to death. His crime? Believing that Ukraine should be free.  That man was Levko Lukianenko.  His life is not just a story of imprisonment and persecution. It is a story about how one man’s unwavering commitment to democracy helped shape the future  of an entire nation. Levko Lukianenko was a Ukrainian political dissident, human rights activist, and later, a statesman. He is best known as the  principal author of Ukraine’s 1991 Declaration of Independence - the document that marked the official end of Soviet rule in Ukraine.  But long before he wrote the words that made Ukraine independent, he nearly lost his life for imagining that independence in the first place. To understand why that vision mattered so deeply, it is important to understand Ukraine’s experience under Soviet rule.   In the early 1930s, under the regime of Joseph Stalin, Ukraine endured the Holodomor: the terror...