During the Soviet era, Movchan supported Ukrainian
Soviet dissidents. Following the
1972–1973 Ukrainian purge, he lived under constant surveillance from the
KGB and was forced to live in internal exile. Movchan was first elected to the
Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian parliament) in the
1990 Ukrainian Supreme Soviet election, representing
Berezniaky in the city of
Kyiv as part of the
Democratic Bloc alliance. At the time of his election, he was a member of the
People's Movement of Ukraine (, abbreviated
Rukh); he later joined the . He was chief of the subcommittee on the
Chernobyl disaster. Movchan was re-elected in the
1994 and
1998 elections, being elected from
Kolomyia in
Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast and
Ukraine's 152nd electoral district in
Rivne Oblast respectively. He was a member of the Foreign Affairs and CIS Relations Committee, being the committee's chairman from February 2000 to 2002 and serving as head of the inter-parliamentary relations subcommittee from 1994 to 1998. During the split in
Rukh, he joined
Yuriy Kostenko's supporters, becoming a member of the
Ukrainian People's Party in April 2000. Movchan was elected on the proportional representation list of the
Our Ukraine Bloc in the
2002 Ukrainian parliamentary election; he left the bloc for the Ukrainian People's Party Bloc in March 2005. From 2002 to 2006 he was first deputy chair of the Culture and Spirituality Committee. He was placed as the 131st candidate on the bloc's proportional representation list, and at the time of his election, he was an
independent. Movchan was a member of the Culture and Spirituality Committee, and head of the subcommittee on Creative Activities, Art, Cultural Education and Language Policies from February 2008. He left the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc in February 2010, ==References==