USSR First congress of the Popular Movement for the Reconstruction of Ukraine THE AUTHOR of the following article was one of three Westerners of Ukrainian origin who attended the congress of the People's Movement of Ukraine for Restructuring. His article was written before the fall of the Brezhnevite first secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party, Volodymyr Shcherbytsky.
JAROSLAV KOSHIW JARUSLAV KOSHIW
N September 8, 9 and 10, 1989, in the city of Kiev, capital of the Soviet Republic of Ukraine, the impossible happened. Over 1,000 political activists opposed to the rule of Moscow held a congress to build the Popular Movement for the Reconstruction of Ukraine. The delegates represented regional (oblast) organizations of the Movement (in Ukrainian "Rukh"). The hall of the Kiev Polytechnic Institute was festooned with the hitherto forbidden blue and yellow national flags and tridents. Delegates covered their chests with badges of these symbols of Ukrainian independence. Outside the hall, stood large crowds of supporters with blue and yellow flags listening to the proceedings broadcast through loudspeakers. The Kiev militia, with special riot troops at the ready, stood by. For the first time in Kiev, no one was arrested for displaying a Ukrainian flag or badge.
For direct and democratic elections After three full days of explosive and chaotic debates, which at times threatened to destroy the Congress, the Movement adopted a statute, programme and resolutions, and elected leaders. When the idea of the movement was first mooted in January 1989, the founders proposed that it. recognize the leading role of the Communist Party. However, by the time of the Movement's Congress, this didn't even appear in the proposed programme and was not even debated. The most immediate demand of the Congress was for direct and democratic elections to the presidency and the Supreme Soviet of Ukraine. Late Sunday evening, after the Congress had ended, delegates and supporters marched with blue and yellow flags about a mile to the statue of the 19th century awakener of Ukraine, Taras Shevchenko. There they held an enthusiastic midnight rally addressed by Movement leaders and Adam Michnik and Volodymyr Mokry from Poland's Solidarnosc.
Call for the resignation of
Ukraine party boss
The Congress witnessed a number of dramatic moments. The two appearances at the podium of Leonid Kravchuk, the chief of the Ukrainian Communist Party's Department of Ideology, astonished the delegates. His call for the movement to co-operate with the reformist elements of the party added a new and unexpected dimension to the proceedings. He warned the Movement that it was not unequal to the forces opposing it and called on it to scale down its demands.
The appearance of the more acceptable face of the party, Ivan Salyi, one of the Kiev party leaders, cheered the delegates. His call for the resignation of Ukraine's party boss, Volodymyr Shcherbytsky, was met with thunderous applause.
The Congress was electrified by the appearance of a Soviet troop commander from Western Ukraine, Colonel Vilei Martirosian. He is also a USSR Supreme Soviet deputy representing the Ukrainian town of Rivno and a member of the Movement. He told the delegates that he and like-minded commanders had decided to take the side of the people if an attempt was made to impose a military solution on the political problems of Ukraine. If that wasn't enough, the head of the Kiev Mili- 25 tia, Shapochka, sent greetings to the Con-
USSR gress and wished it success.
No less dramatic were the presentations of former political prisoners, most notably Levko Lukyanenko, Vyacheslav Chorovil, Ivan Hel and many others. Bishop Pavlo Vasylyk of the banned Ukrainian Catholic Church called from the rostrum for the full legalization of the Church and the return of all its property. A representative of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church also asked the delegates' help in the legalization of his Church. Since the revolution of 191720, Ukraine had never witnessed such a spectrum of opinions at a political meeting. It became clear to everyone present that the Congress was the beginning of a new political order in Ukraine.
There were three main groupings at the Congress. The most prominent one consisted of delegations from the regions of Western Ukraine: Lviv, Rivno, Ternopil, and Ivano-Frankivsk, symbolically represented in the leadership of the Movement by the former political prisoner Mykhailo Horyn. These delegations were the most numerous and vocal at the Congress. Their air of confidence and their determination to achieve an independent Ukraine is backed by massive popular support. Two weeks before the Congress, on the anniversary of the Stalin-Hitler pact when Western Ukraine was "liberated" by the Red Army, they led large demonstrations all over Western Ukraine. The cities of Lviv, Ternopil and Ivano-Frankivsk witnessed demonstrations of over 100,000 people. Of the many young delegates from Western Ukraine who took part in the debates, Vasyl Chervony from Rivno stood out because of his gift of expressing himself, his political astuteness and combativeness.
Representatives of the miners' strike committees
From the other end of Ukraine, the Donbass, came delegations which essentially consisted of representatives of the coal miners' strike committees. They were led by the strike leader Petro Poberzhny from Donetsk. He, like the other miners' representatives, has none of the Ukrainian nationalist fervour of Western Ukrainians. They support the demand for Ukrainian to be the state language, but demand the right to carry out their affairs locally in Russian, something which is not palatable to many Western Ukrainian activists. However, they exhibited even more confidence than the Western Ukrainians because of their successful strike during the summer. They are for all practical purpose in political control of Donbass mining towns.
Some of the strike committees have quartered themselves in local party buildings from where they rule their districts. They successfully intervened at the Con26 gress with a warning that it the rainin nationalist symbols of the blue and yellow flag were adopted, the Movement would be rejected by the Russian-speaking Donbass.
The Kiev delegates, headed by the flower of the Ukrainian literary and academic intelligentsia, and backed by numerous workplaces, had the largest impact at the conference. It was they who organized the conference, prepared the programme, led the disparate elements in a common direc tion, and were finally elected as its leaders. It became clear during the proceedings that the organizers, led by Volodymyr lavorisky, Dmytro Pavlychko, and Ivan Drach, all members of the Communist Party, had conspired with other reformist elements in the party to steer the Congress away from confrontation to cooperation with a yet-to-bereformed Communist Party of Ukraine.
Chernobyl resolutions not put to the vote
It fell upon Dmytro Pavlychko who chaired much of the proceedings to successfully manoeuvre the delegates to soften or reject confrontational resolutions. Resolutions which from the party point of view were extreme were either sidetracked or voting on them was delayed in order that an alternative resolution could be presented by prepared speakers. For example, the resolutions relating to the Chernobyl accident, including the holding of a public trial of Shcherbytsky and other Party leaders, were not put to the vote. The delegates were easily maneuvered to accept a poetic but empty resolution on ecology which didn't commit the Movement to any specific action.
Only on one issue did Pavlychko's ability to control the fate of resolutions fail him, the vote relating to the new election law for the Ukrainian republican resolutions. The Party's proposed election law is designed to give it the majority of delegates in the Ukrainian Supreme Soviet and with it the presidency. The Congress accepted an alternative election law in which all the delegates and the presidency would be voted in directly. The delegates' fervour reached a peak in the discussion over what to do if the Party enacts its proposed election law. Despite Pavlychko's efforts to delay the vote on this issue, the Congress voted to call a national strike in Ukraine, if the officially proposed election law is adopted.
Outside the three main regional groups, the delegates from the cities which separate the Kiev region from the Donbass, specifically the towns of Cherkassy, Dnipropetrovsk, Kremenchuk and Poltava, were a distinct group, though small. They draw their strength from their workplaces. While they have adopted the blue and yellow flag and the trident, they, like the Kiev delegates, are willing to scale down nationalist demands on the language question for the sake of close collaboration with the Donbass miners' strike com-
International Viewpoint #171 • October 16, 1989 mittees.
Finally there are 35 USSR Supreme Soviet deputies who support the Movement. These deputies represent all major groups at the Congress. They and the yetto-be elected deputies to the Ukrainian Supreme Soviet are destined to play a leading role in the near future in what will certainly be a tumultuous period in the political history of Ukraine.
Reform wing of Communist
Party
The reformist members of the Communist Party, led by Kravchuk and even more so by Salyi, will also play a pivotal role in the future development of the Movement and the political situation. It is certain that at least in the Kiev party apparatus there is open opposition to Shcherbytsky. But in the regions, especially in the cities of Kharkiv and Odessa, the resistance to change among the local party bosses is very strong. The Odessa Party sent a selected delegation to the Congress in opposition to one elected by the members of the Odessa Movement. When the mandates of the Party appointed delegates were rejected by the Movement's mandate committee, Ukrainian television used this to tell its audience that the Congress was undemocratic. For this and other disinformation, Ukrainian television was excluded by the delegates from the Congress. In Kharkiv, while the Congress was taking place, the Party bosses staged a demonstration against the "nationalist" gathering in Kiev. It is yet to be seen what kind of a popular opposition can be organized against the Movement by the retreating conservative Party leaders.
The Congress elected Ivan Drach as its leader for a two year term. Drach, though certainly a person of integrity, is no match for politically hardened regional leaders. This is also true of his assistant, Serhei Koniev, an articulate and well-liked radical and USSR Supreme Soviet deputy from Dniprodzerzhynsk, in the industrial heartland of Ukraine. The two most forceful political personalities are to be found in the elected Secretariat of ten people who will be employed full-time to administer the Movement. Mykhailo Horyn, who will chair the Secretariat, represents the toughest strain of the movement for an independent Ukrainian Republic, and is as combative a political personality as they come in the Soviet Union. On the same level of resoluteness, but not political astuteness, is Dmytro Poyezd, a young police detective, who organized the dozens of stewards with blue and yellow armbands who forcefully guarded all the doors of the Congress hall from the mobs which besieged them. From the podium, sounding like a future Minister of Internal Affairs, Poyed called for the organizing of self-defence teams throughout Ukraine against repressions.
A survey of the delegates backgrounds
USSR
REPUBLICS OF THE SOVIET UNION
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2 • MOSCOW
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5 14 12 was carried out at the Congress by the organizers, and the results announced were:
1158 delegates were elected throughout the regions of Ukraine representing 280,000 active members. 1109 delegates attended the Congress. The largest delegations were from the cities of Kiev, Lviv, Rivno, Ternopil and Ivano-Frankivsk; three of the 25 regions of Ukraine, Crimea, Voroshylovhrad and Transcarpathia, didn't hold regional Movement congresses to elect delegates.
Statistics of the Congress
By nationality, 944 were Ukrainians, 77 Russians, nine Jews, six Poles, six Byelorussians, two Armenians, and one Korean, Greek, Hungarian, Czech, and Crimean Tatar. The appearance of a Ukrainian speaking North Korean living in Ukraine was one of the many exotic moments of the Congress.
By profession the delegates were: engineers (329); teachers (130); academics (121); workers (109); cultural workers (104); doctors (48); journalists (42); lawyers (25); farmers (16); Party employees (6); self-employed (6); and less than six were students, priests, architects, shop employees, actors etc. Two of the delegates were unemployed.
There were 228 members of the Comboar
Russian Soviet
Federal Soclalist Republic (R$FR)
1.
2. SSR of Ukraine
9. SSR of Moldavia
3. SSR of Belorussia
10. SSR of Latvia
4. 5SK of Uzbekistan 11. SSR 5. SSR of Kazakhstan 12. SSR 6. SSR of Georgla 13. SSR 7. SSR of Azerbaljan 14. SSR 8. SSR of Lithuania munist Party and 24 Komsomol members. The allegiance of the delegates to the various unofficial groupings was not available. There were at least a few dozen members of the Ukrainian Helsinki Union, which is by far the best politically organized unofficial grouping in Ukraine. All its major leaders, like Lev Lukianenko and Vyacheslav Chornovil, were delegates and gave well received speeches.
Among the guests from outside the Soviet Union, there were representatives from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Rumania. From Poland, Adam Michnik and Volodymyr Mokry, member of the Polish Parliament and a Ukrainian, spoke on behalf of Solidarity. Surprisingly there was only one guest each from the United States, Canada and Great Britain: Professor Taras Hunczak from the United States, Khrystyna Krylyn from Canada, and Jaroslav Koshiw from Great Britain.
"Enemies of the Soviet state"
It is not clear why visas were refused to many others from North America who wanted to come. The Shcherbytsky controlled newspaper, Pravda Ukrainy, published a slanderous article during the Congress accusing Hunczak and Krylyn ot being enemies of the Soviet state. This manoeuvre backfired as the Congress invited the accused to the podium and of Kirghizia 15. SSR of Estonia of Tadzhikistan of Armenia of Turkmenistan • enthusiastically greeted them.
Among the many slogans loudly chanted by the delegates, the one which in the end prevailed, almost to the exclusion of all others, was unity. The delegates sensed that the potential for fragmentation was very high on the language question, the independence symbols, and the relationship to the Communist Party.
Freedom of speech becoming the norm
Freedom of speech is becoming the norm in Ukraine, whether it be in the Congress, or on the streets. Yet to come is the freedom of the press, the broadcasting media, and the right to organize political parties. But the first steps in this direction are being taken. The Congress voted to publish its own newspaper, to be called
Narodna Hazeta, and elected its first editor Anatoly Shevchenko. The newspaper is to be published by the printing house in
Kiev which prints all the major newspapers available in Ukraine, and where the print workers are supporters of the Movement. This, and the possibility of the
Movement having its own building in
Kiev, was the carrot that caused even some of the toughest nationalists to agree to a softening of the Congress resolutions.
Political realism decided the final outment of the Con ass. The Poular Move 27 ment of Ukraine has been born. *
IRELAND