From Devolution to Independence

When the Soviet president and CPSU general secretary Leonid Brezhnev died in 1982, few if anyone could have predicted that before another decade had passed the Soviet Union would no longer exist.

The last years of Brezhnev’s rule were characterized by stagnation in economic and social life. Little changed after his death, since the CPSU chose as his succes­sors first a man incapacitated by ill health (lurii Andropov) and then an octoge­narian (Konstantin Chernenko) who died after only thirteen months in power. The CPSU then did the unexpected. On 10 March 1985, the Politburo elected its youngest member, the 54-year-old Mikhail Gorbachev, to become the party’s new general secretary. As a result of that choice, the Soviet Union and political rela­tions throughout the world within a few years would change beyond recognition.

The Gorbachev revolution

Mikhail Gorbachev was a party functionary who in the 1950s began a typical pro­gression through the Communist ranks. He was, however, quite different from all his Soviet predecessors, perhaps with the exception of Lenin. Gorbachev was well educated, articulate, and personable. Moreover, he exuded a sense of self­confidence and optimism that inspired both faith on the part of his supporters and respect from his adversaries. In the first year of his rule, he began to replace older officials with younger, more reform-minded types. This was the first step toward his primary goal, the resuscitation of the Soviet economy.

During the last years of Brezhnev’s rule, it had been clear to many Soviet lead­ers that their country had entered an economic decline which, if unchecked, before long would undermine its status as a world power.

Restructuring belonged primarily to the socioeconomic sphere. Although Gor­bachev was never strong on specifics, he and his reform-minded advisers seemed intent on doing away with centralized control over the economy and even, if nec­essary, implementing some form of free-market system. Gorbachev realized that even though perestroika might be proclaimed, as other Communist slogans had so often been proclaimed in the past, in order for it to succeed the population as a whole - from the collective farmer, to the factory worker, to the plant manager, to the party functionary - had to be drawn into the process and made to feel that he or she had a stake in its success. To achieve such a radical transformation in peo­ple’s minds and hearts, Gorbachev argued, Soviet society must henceforth be guided by the principle of glasnost', or openness, and its corollary, democratiza­tion. In effect, Soviet citizens were being encouraged to criticize their society. Before long, when people realized that Gorbachev was indeed standing by his promise and promoting glasnost' without any resort to police repression, all seg­ments of the population, almost without restraint, began to criticize virtually every aspect of their country.

Gorbachev’s efforts at domestic reform were complemented by the complete restructuring of the Soviet Union’s relations with the outside world. Gorbachev the economic reformer now became Gorbachev the political visionary. Soviet troops were brought home from Afghanistan (where Brezhnev had sent them in 1979) J relations with the United States improved dramatically as a result of Soviet willingness to reduce its military forces and nuclear arsenal; and, most remarkable of all, the Kremlin effectively gave up its interest in dominating what since World War II had been the Soviet bloc in eastern Europe.

All these monumental events were owing in large part to the actions - whether their consequences had been intended or not - of Mikhail Gorbachev. Compara­bly profound changes would take place within the Soviet Union as well. With regard to the country’s internal political structure, Gorbachev consolidated his power in 1988 by being elected president and then ousting most of his opponents from the CPSU’s Politburo. Then, in 1989, elections were held to the People’s Congress, which for the first time in Soviet history began to act as an independent-minded legislative body, not surprisingly under the chairmanship of Gorbachev. But Gorbachev’s ultimate political masterstroke came in early 1990. Sensing that his efforts to push through perestroika would be blocked by conservative-minded Communists, he arranged for the party to give up its monopoly on power and to invest even greater authority in the office of the presi­dent, to which he was duly elected.

These remarkable changes in Soviet political life inevitably were to have a pro­found impact on the nationalities in the country. The self-imposed limiting of Moscow’s authority allowed interethnic squabbling to break out that for decades had been held in check by Stalin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev. Conflict initially erupted in the Caucasus and Central Asian regions, where Armenians and Azer­baijanis began to fight openly over disputed territory (Nagorno-Karabakh), where Georgians clashed with Abkhazians, and where Uzbeks attacked Meshketian Turks living in their midst. The eruption of interethnic passions such as these, which resulted in bloodshed and the reluctant intervention of the Soviet Army, were to be followed by an even more politically problematic development: the demand on the part of certain Soviet republics for the implementation of their constitutionally guaranteed right to secede from the union.

Even in those republics where political demands were limited to calls for decentralization and greater autonomy, local leaders, especially from among the Communist- and non-Communist-affiliated intelligentsia, were inspired by Gor­bachev’s call for glasnost!. Their criticisms were largely demands for the confer­ring of official status on local languages within the republics, for the full use of those languages at all levels of education and cultural life, and for the rewriting of history so as to fill in the so-called blank spots, or deliberate omissions, in the offi­cial Soviet version of the countries’ pasts. More often than not, these ‘blank spots’ left out events, or personages who had struggled for independence from tsarist Russian or from Soviet rule. Filling in the blank spots, that is, rehabilitating national histories, helped to justify new demands on the part of the republics and nationalities for autonomy or even independence from Moscow.

The Soviet heritage in Ukraine

Unlike in other Soviet republics, it took a few years before perestroika and glasnost' (in Ukrainian: perebudova and hlasnist') reached Soviet Ukraine. This was largely because the CPU · was still led by Volodymyr Shcherbyts'kyi, the Brezhnev appointee and an opponent of Gorbachev, who denied there was any need for fundamental changes in his republic. There were, however, numerous reasons for discontent in Ukrainian society related to the economy, the environment, and culture.

It was the need to revive a stagnating Soviet economy that initially motivated the Gorbachev revolution. And in an officially sanctioned environment that encouraged debate and criticism there seemed to be no shortage of proposals for reform. There was, however, litde that actually changed in the Moscow-directed command economy, which as late as 1990 still controlled over 95 percent of indus­try and agriculture in Soviet Ukraine.

Environmental issues were another source of discontent. In fact, it was the explosion on 26 April 1986 at the nuclear power facility at Chornobyl', just north­west of Kiev, that made the world aware of Ukraine, and Ukrainians aware of the profound degree to which they lacked control over their lives. The initial reluc­tance of the Gorbachev government to provide information about life-threaten­ing radioactive fallout perhaps more than anything else alienated the ordinary citizen from the Soviet system. ‘Chornobyl',’ in the words of one Ukrainian politi­cal activist, ‘helped us understand that we are a colony.’¹ In addition to its politi­cal and cultural imperialism with respect to Soviet Ukraine, Moscow was now accused of environmental imperialism. Nor was the Chornobyl' disaster an iso­lated incident. Decades of uncontrolled industrial growth with little or no thought given to pollution control had resulted in the widespread contamination of rivers, water supplies, and agricultural lands. Such irresponsible practices had by the 1980s resulted in shockingly poor health in Soviet Ukraine: chronic illness among 46 percent of secondary-school children; miscarriages among 40 percent of pregnant women; and the lowest birthrate (13.3 per 1,000 of the population) among all the Soviet republics.

Finally, there was deep concern about the future of the Ukrainian nationality. Despite the fact that in the 1980s a sense of Ukrainian national identity in broad segments of the population may have been as strong as it ever had been, the Soviet Ukrainian status quo still discriminated against Ukrainians in numerous ways. Visitors to Kiev or other cities were immediately struck by something ordi­nary Ukrainians experienced on a daily basis: scorn and derision if Ukrainian was used on the streets or in public offices. The low prestige of the Ukrainian lan­guage and therefore of Ukrainian culture was a consequence of governmental policies that had changed little since the end of Ukrainianization in the 1930s.

For instance, ever since World War II there had been a steady decline in the publication of Ukrainian books. Whereas in 1958 Ukrainian-language titles had made up 60 percent of book production in Soviet Ukraine, by 1978 that figure had dropped to only 27 percent - the lowest since 1923. Soviet Ukraine’s educa­tional system, in particular, seemed not to be responding to the needs of the republic’s largest nationality. Whereas during the 1950-1951 school year 81 per­cent of elementary school students had been enrolled in Ukrainian-language schools, by 1988-1989 the figure was only 47.5 percent. At the higher levels, access was a problem. Whereas in 1939 Ukraine had ranked fourth among the sixteen Soviet republics with respect to the percentage of the population that had com­pleted secondary or higher education, by 1970 it ranked eleventh.

The proportion of Ukrainians with higher education had suffered a relative decline for several reasons: (1) admissions policies favored children of parents with white-collar occupations; (2) Russian-language entrance requirements favored native Russian speakers; and (3) budgetary and admissions control rested in the hands of central ministries in Moscow (in 1965, only 50 of Soviet Ukraine’s 132 vuzy were under the jurisdiction of Kiev). Since during these same years Soviet Ukrain­ian society was becoming increasingly urbanized and better educated, there was a concomitant rise in social expectations, and for many Ukrainians their republic’s educational system was simply unable to fulfill these expectations.

Glasnost' in Ukraine

Among the first group of Ukrainians to respond to Gorbachev’s call for openness and constructive criticism was the creative intelligentsia, represented in large part by the Ukrainian Writers’ Union. This organization had traditionally followed Communist party directives, but in 1986, at a conference of nearly 1,100 members, the policy of the union’s executive was changed radically. From that time, the Writers’ Union actively promoted the rebirth of Ukrainian culture and language, by encouraging the creation of native-language societies; by rehabilitating, with public fanfare, writers who had been suppressed during the Stalin and Brezhnev eras; and by publishing new works that spoke openly about historical events which for decades had been banned from public discussion. It was not long before writ­ers like Ivan Drach, Ivan Dziuba, Dmytro Pavlychko, and Mykola Zhulyns'kyi would be playing leading roles in Ukraine’s civic and political transformation.

Taking up the call sounded by the Ukrainian Writers’ Union, writers and other activists established several new organizations and publications to address politi­cal, economic, environmental, and cultural issues. Among the first of these was the Ukrainian ecological association, Green World (Zelenyi Svit), founded in late 1987 to lobby the government for stricter controls over the environment and, in particular, for a nuclear-free Ukraine that would be spared any future Chor- nobyl'-like disasters. Two years later, the Taras Shevchenko Ukrainian Language Society, headed by the writer Dmytro Pavlychko, was created to improve the status of Ukrainian and make it the official language of the country. This goal was partly achieved in October 1989, when Ukrainian was declared the state language.

The largest and most influential of the new organizations was the Popular Movement of Ukraine for Restructuring, better known by its Ukrainian acronym, Rukh (The Movement). Led by the writers Ivan Drach, Mykhailo Horyn', and Volodymyr lavorivs'kyi, Rukh published its program in February 1989, which called for the ‘rebirth and comprehensive development of the Ukrainian nation.’² The program stressed the need for political, economic, environmental, and cultural reforms as well as institutionalized guarantees for human rights. Despite its emphasis on the Ukrainian character of the country and particular concern for protection of the Ukrainian language, Rukh defended the rights of national and religious minorities. In this regard, Rukh made a special effort to counteract the negative stereotypes associated with traditional Ukrainian-Jewish relations by condemning all forms of anti-Semitism as inimical to the liberal- democratic society it wished to see created in Ukraine. While political concerns and the relationship to Moscow were high on Rukh’s agenda, the organization did not call for independence, but rather for the transformation of the Soviet Union into a union of truly sovereign states with assurances that Ukraine could determine its own political, economic, and cultural affairs without interference from Moscow.

Even before the establishment of Rukh and other organizations, there was movement on another very sensitive front, the church. For decades, the Greek, or Ukrainian, Catholic church, which had been outlawed in the late 1940s, had con­tinued to function in secret in western Ukraine, in Galicia and Transcarpathia. In addition to the underground Greek Catholic church, western Ukraine had the greatest number of parishes and monasteries belonging to the Russian Orthodox church of any area of Ukraine, and many of that church’s clergy and faithful remained clandestine Greek Catholics.

With the new atmosphere in the Soviet Union, in 1987 the clandestine Greek Catholic hierarchy decided to ‘come up from the underground.’ Their action prompted the Vatican and Ukrainians living in the diaspora to increase their lob­bying of the United States and western governments, who in turn exerted diplo­matic pressure on the Soviet Union. These efforts bore results when in December 1989 Gorbachev’s government granted permission to the Greek Catholic church to register its parishes. Similarly, in the summer of 1989 the Ukrainian Autocepha­lous Orthodox church, banned by the Soviets since the early 1930s, began its reconstitution, a process that culminated a year later in a church council (sobor) which formally restored the church’s hierarchy.

The events in Soviet Ukraine during the Gorbachev era had a profound impact on Ukrainians throughout the diaspora. After having been cut off for decades from their homeland by a hostile Soviet government, non-Communist Ukrainian organizations from the West (especially the United States and Canada) were for the first time allowed to provide the national rebirth in the homeland with advice and financial support. Renewed contacts with the diaspora were most evident in church affairs. Even though the hierarchs of both the Ukrainian (Greek) Catholic and Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox churches had resided ‘temporarily’ (since World War II) in the West, they were able to reestablish their authority in the Ukrainian homeland. Local bishops in each church recognized as their superior either the Ukrainian (Greek) Catholic metropolitan (some would say patriarch) Myroslav Cardinal Liubachivs'kyi, in Rome, or the Autocephalous patriarch Mstyslav Skrypnyk, in New Jersey, both of whom were expected to return home to lead their flocks.

The rebirth of the Ukrainian (Greek) Catholic and Autocephalous Orthodox churches in Soviet Ukraine posed a direct threat to the Russian Orthodox church under the patriarch of Moscow, which until the Gorbachev revolution had been the only Eastern Christian body permitted to function legally. Faced with the chal­lenge of two renewed Ukrainian churches, in 1989 the Russian Orthodox church renamed its Ukrainian exarchate the Ukrainian Orthodox church. At the parish level, the result was a three-way struggle among the various churches for the alle­giance of the faithful and - more problematic - for control of church property and the use of church buildings. In general, the Ukrainian (Greek) Catholic church was the most successful in attracting clergy and parishes in western Ukraine (especially in Galicia), and the Autocephalous Orthodox church was strongest in the Right Bank and central Ukraine.

Besides the activity of the non-state-run secular and religious organizations, there was a phenomenal rise in new publications. Gorbachev’s glasnost' effectively ended state censorship and thus allowed for the almost spontaneous appearance of a host of newspapers, journals, bulletins, and flyers ranging in subject matter from politics, religion, and scholarship to sex and how best to emigrate from the Soviet Union. Publicists and historians in particular took advantage of glasnost' in order to fill in the ‘blank spots’ in Ukrainian history. Past cultural figures were ‘rehabilitated,’ such as the nineteenth-century national activists Panteleimon Kulish and Mykola Kostomarov, and the early twentieth-century cultural and polit­ical leaders Mykhailo Hrushevs'kyi and Volodymyr Vynnychenko, who, if they had been mentioned previously, had been described as anti-progressivist and anti­Soviet. Researchers also worked diligently to make public documentary evidence concerning recent Ukrainian national tragedies, such as the Great Famine of 1933, which, until the late 1980s, according to Soviet sources had never occurred, and the numerous massacres of Ukrainians by Soviet security forces on the eve of and during World War II (at Vinnytsia and L'viv, among other places), which had been unjustly attributed to the German invaders.

The road to sovereignty and independence

In the midst of the intellectual and civic-minded ferment that reverberated through many segments of Soviet Ukrainian society, an important turning point came in September 1989, when one of the last of the Brezhnevite opponents of Gorbachev, Volodymyr Shcherbyts'kyi, was removed from the Central Committee of the CPSU and from his post as first secretary of the CPU. With the fall of Shcherbyts'kyi, the pace of political change quickened in Soviet Ukraine. That same month, Rukh held its first national congress in Kiev, and backed by its nearly 300,000 members it began preparing for elections to Soviet Ukraine’s Supreme Soviet (Verkhovna Rada) scheduled for March 1990. In these elections, pro-Rukh candidates were part of the Democratic Bloc, which won just over 100 of the 450 seats contested. In the new parliament - as the Supreme Soviet was popularly called - the Democratic Bloc joined forces with the ‘democratic’ wing of the Com­munists. Together, they were instrumental in having the parliament declare Ukraine a sovereign state, on 16 July 199°·

By 1991, the formerly Communist-dominated and Moscow-loyalist Ukrainian parliament was in the forefront of the process of creating a legal and administra­tive infrastructure for the sovereign state. The parliament’s work was made easier after the Communists ceased to function as a unified voting bloc and some joined the opposition in support of specific issues. The change in direction of the parlia­ment was also due in large measure to its new chairman, Leonid Kravchuk, a Communist who quickly adapted to the more nationalist-minded mood of the people. Soviet Ukraine established diplomatic relations with several neighboring

Declaration of Independence

Resolution of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR on the Declaration of Independence of Ukraine

The Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic rules:

To declare Ukraine an independent democratic state on September 24, 1991.

From the moment of declaration of independence only the Constitution of Ukraine, its laws, resolutions of the government, and other legislative acts of the republic are active on its territory.

To hold on December 1, 1991 a republican referendum on the confirmation of the declaration of independence.

L. Kravchuk, Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR

Kiev, August 24, 1991

Act of Ukraine’s Independence Declaration

Proceeding from the mortal danger that threatened Ukraine as a result of the coup d’etat in the USSR on August 19, 1991:

- developing the centuries-old tradition of the Ukrainian state formation;

- proceeding from the right to self-determination, envisioned by the United Nations Charter and other international legal documents;

- acting in compliance with the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine, the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic declares:

The independence of Ukraine and the formation of a sovereign Ukrainian state - Ukraine.

The territory of Ukraine is integral and inviolable.

From now on only the constitution and laws of Ukraine arc applicable on its territory. This act comes in force from the moment of its approval.

The Supreme Soviet of Ukraine August 24, 1991

source: News from Ukraine September 1991, p. 1.

countries before the end of the year, and Kravchuk embarked on several visits to western Europe and North America, acting as if he were the head of an independ­ent state.

The question of Ukraine’s relationship with the Soviet Union was finally decided in August 1991, when conservative political forces in Moscow staged an unsuccessful coup (putsch) to overthrow Gorbachev. After some initial hesitation in condemning the leaders of the failed putsch, Kravchuk acted decisively. On 24 August 1991, he spearheaded a resolution that declared Ukraine an independ­ent state. The declaration also called for a referendum on independence to be held throughout the republic on 1 December 1991. That same day, presidential elections were scheduled as well.

In the months leading up to the referendum and elections, Kravchuk enhanced his reputation as a defender of Ukrainian interests by opposing Gorbachev’s proposals for a new union treaty that would limit the political and economic sovereignty of its members. When the 1 December referendum was finally held, the results were a surprise to even the most ardent believers in independence. No less than 92 percent of the country’s inhabitants voted for independence. Over 80 percent of the voters in each of the supposedly russified eastern industrial oblasts (Donets'k, Dnipropetrovs'k, Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv) voted for independence, and even the Crimea (which as of September 1991 had had its own ‘state sovereignty within Ukraine’) returned a 54 percent majority in favor of independence. Kravchuk won the presidency with a comfortable majority of 62 percent of the vote.

24 August 1991 marked the sixth time in the course of the twentieth century that independence had been declared for all or part of Ukrainian territory. The conditions surrounding the declaration of independence in 1991 differed signifi­cantly, however, from those surrounding the earlier declarations, whether those of the immediate post-World War I period (Kiev, 1918; L'viv, 1918; Kiev, 1919) or those on the eve of and during the course of World War II (Khust, 1939; L'viv, 1941). All the previous attempts at independence, whether they had applied to Ukraine as a whole or to one of its parts (western Ukraine, Carpatho-Ukraine), had come at a time of civil war and/or invasion by foreign powers. Furthermore, on previous occasions Ukraine’s inhabitants had been consulted only in part or not at all as to their views on independence.

All was different in 1991. Ukraine may have been part of an empire in devolu­tion or dissolution, but that process was esssentially a peaceful one, in which, iron­ically, the old Communist elite participated along with significant segments of the population. And because of the power of the modern media, all this took place under the watchful and sometimes approving eye of the world. Moreover, the declaration of independence by parliamentary representatives was legitimized through a referendum in which 80 percent of eligible voters participated, and which outside and inside observers agreed was conducted in accord with generally accepted democratic practices. The results were almost immediately welcomed by the international community. Independent Ukraine retained its status as a full- fledged member of the United Nations, and within a few weeks it was recognized by most of the leading countries in the world community. Finally, the fact that nine out of every ten inhabitants approved independence confirmed that Ukrain­ian statehood was the wish not only of Ukrainian nationalists. In effect, an inde­pendent Ukraine seemed to promise the most attractive alternative for all those who wanted change, whether in politics, the economy, the environment, or cul­tural life.

Nevertheless, declarations of independence and the achievement of interna-

From Devolution to Independence 675 tionally recognized statehood do not in themselves resolve old problems and may even create new ones. For example, what will be Ukraine’s precise relationship to Russia and the other former Soviet republics that are part of the loose alliance known as the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)? Will Ukraine develop a unitary or a federal state structure? Will the economy develop along largely free- market principles, or will a variant of state socialism be adopted? Will new cultural and educational policies be implemented to reverse the decline in Ukrainian lan­guage use and to transform the individual’s identification with things Ukrainian into a source of pride and self-esteem? In other words, can the heritage of Little Russianism, which considers Ukrainianism as a lower stage in a hierarchy of multi­ple loyalties, finally be overcome? These are only some of the many problems which face the citizens of independent Ukraine. For the first time, however, Ukrainians have the opportunity to resolve their problems on their own.