Ukrainian movement faces historic tasks IN THE largest non-Russian republic of the USSR, the second most populous in the country, the People's Front of Ukraine (RUKH) for restructuring was constituted on September 8-10, along lines similar to those of the people's fronts in the Baltic republics. ZBIGNIEW KOWALEWSKI T HE Stalinist counter-revolution of the 1930s had a particularly terrible impact on the Ukrainian people. Millions of peasants died in the famine created by Stalin's policy. The national intelligentsia was totally exterminated, and the republic's Communist Party and state apparatus were destroyed by police terror on a vast scale. Stalin subjected the Ukrainian people to forced rusofficial goal was to give all the different protest movements and opposition tendencies an electoral expression. Its program was very unclear and not to the left of the SV (it was not even explicitly socialist!). In reality the goal of the AKP (M-L), the strongest party in the alliance was to get one of their members into Parliament in order to strengthen their national presence.
This project was a failure. The results were only slightly better than the results of the two parties combined in 1985 -and less than their results in the local elections of 1987.
This is bound to lead to discussion inside the AKP (M-L), which is going through a very interesting development, from a revolutionary Marxist point of view, at the moment (see IV 166).
The polarization in the electoral arena has led to problems in creating an effective government. The bourgeois parties have a slight majority in the new Storting (84 seats to 81), but the three-party coalition will be caught between Hagen's 22 representatives on the right and the "socialists" on the left. Whichever way the eventual government is going to lean, the biggest partner, Høyre, will risk losing even more votes.
A DNA government would also be in a difficult position if the bourgeois project breaks down. A confident SV putting pressure from the left, and on the other side the need to secure support from at least one of the bourgeois parties to secure a majority in the Storting.
The halting of the FrP's growth at 1213% seems to suggest that the Hagen machine is running out of steam. If this is the case, the leftward swing represented by the SV's results is all the more positive. A trial election among school children between 16 and 18 years old gave a clear sign of an even bigger leftward swing among young people.
It seems likely that whatever government is eventually formed, it will confront broad mobilizations from the working class and popular movements in the four years ahead. * sification.
In 1939, on the basis of the Stalin-Hitler Pact, the USSR annexed western Ukraine, which had previously belonged to the Polish state. This annexation was confirmed at the end of the Second World War. But it was very difficult to consummate, because the installation of the Stalinist system in this area encountered powerful popular resistance. The very widespread rural guerrilla movement led by the radical nationalists of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army was finally crushed only in the early 1950s. After the death of Stalin in 1953, the survivors of the Ukrainian national struggle led strikes in the concentration camps from Vorkuta and Norilsk north of the Arctic Circle to Kinguir in Kazakhstan.
On this basis, in the following decades a continuity of historical memory was forged between successive generations of Ukrainian dissidents, who made up a very high percentage of the political prisoners in the "Gulag Archipelago." But in the Gorbachev period, the transition from historic and battle-hardened dissidence to a
USSR mass movement has proved very difficult. Two factors explain the relative delay in the formation of the Popular Movement in Ukraine.
This republic continued to be governed by one of the toughest nuclei of the conservative bureaucracy, that is, those most loyal to the Brezhnevite ancien régime. Here, political liberalization encountered ferocious resistance from the bureaucratic apparatus ruled with a firm hand by the Communist Party boss in Ukraine, Volodymyr Shcherbytsky.
Ideological, political and police counter-offensive
In Ukraine, freedoms already taken for granted in Moscow or Leningrad - to say nothing of the Baltic capitals of Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius — are requiring a hard and as yet unfinished struggle, in which there have been many confrontations with an unreconstructed police force.
When the idea of forming a people's front emerged in early 1989 in the Union of Ukrainian Writers, and Lituraturna Ukraina published a draft program, Shcherbytsky launched an aggressive ideological, political and police counter-offensive. But the force of a rising independent mass movement led to the founding congress of RUKH being held in Kiev.
The importance of this success becomes clear in particular if you consider that in Byelorussia, another bastion of the conservative bureaucracy, the founding congress of the people's front had to meet recently "in exile," in Vilnius, under the protection of the Lithuanian movement Sajudis. Moreover, a few days after the Kiev congress, Gorbachev eliminated Shcherbytsky from the central leadership of the CPSU, and the formerly all-powerful boss had also to give up his post as first secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine. It seems, though, that his protegés remain in power.
The second problem has been the very uneven level of national awakening and rate of development of the mass movement in Ukraine. Since the summer of 1988, the city of Lviv, the traditional center of western Ukraine, has become the scene of almost constant mass mobilizations raising more and more radical national-democratic slogans and breaking more and more openly with the bureaucratic regime. It was here that the militant Ukrainian Helsinki Union (UHS) has been rebuilt and has rapidly won a mass influence.
On the other hand, in central and eastern Ukraine, the masses have mobilized more slowly around less nationalist demands for an "ecology of nature, language and culture" and under the leadership of intellectuals linked to the Gorbachev wing of 22 the bureaucracy.
Then, in July 1989, the workers movement irrupted on the scene. The miners in the Donbass, the big mining center in eastern Ukraine, followed the example of their comrades in the Kuzbass in Russia and went on strike. Their demands were exclusively social and economic. They seemed indifferent to the national demands although a large percentage of them are Ukrainian. But they have been subjected to strong russification, and traditionally excluded from any possibility of access to the Ukrainian language, culture and history. Unlike them, the striking miners in the Lviv mining region in western Europe not only began to combine social and national demands but also, under Polish influence, to demand the formation of "an independent, self-management union, Solidarity."
The second great success is the fact that in the founding congress of RUKH, there was a convergence of representatives of the three currents mentioned - the radical nationalists in Lviv, the moderate reformers in Kiev and the emerging workers' movement in the Donbass. Uniting these currents is difficult but essential for building a united democratic mass movement. The congress was an important step in that direction.
The third success is the fact that the congress was attended by representatives of all the national minorities living in Ukraine, including the Crimean Tatars. The latter are fighting to return to their native land, which is today a part of the republic of Ukraine. No less important was the presence of representatives of the People's Front of Moldavia. As in Estonia, in Moldavia the bureaucracy has managed to mobilize Ukrainian and Russian workers against the demands of the indigenous people of this republic, who are Romanians. Finally, the presence at this congress of a delegation of Solidarnosc trade-union and parliamentary leaders should be noted. They were received very warmly. The workers' delegates from Dniprodzerzhynsk greeted them by waving the banners of the Polish free union.
Tortuous history of
Polish-Ukrainian relations
The history of Polish-Ukrainian relations is tortuous, because in the past Poland has been one of the states oppressing the Ukrainians. The Stalinist bureaucracy in Poland still devotes considerable resources to fomenting anti-Ukrainian chauvinism, in close collaboration with the Soviet bureaucracy, which in turn is fomenting anti-Polish chauvinism in Ukraine.
In the recent vote in Poland, Solidarnosc's Civic Committee assured the election to parliament for the first time of an outstanding spokesperson of the interests of the Ukrainian minority, Volodymyr Mokry. In his speech to the congress in Kiev, Adam Michnik, a leading figure in
International Viewpoint #171 • October 16, 1989
Solidarnosc circles, stressed that only a consistent struggle against any sort of national chauvinism would make it possible to build ties of international solidarity: "If we are unable to build such ties, then we will condemn ourselves to balkanization, to inter-ethnic conflicts and a military dictatorship, either Communist or anti-Communist."
There is a lot of evidence that, as in several other republics, the more retrograde sections of the bureaucracy want to divert the development of the national movement in Ukraine toward inter-ethnic conflicts. They have so far failed to accomplish this, thanks to the energetic denunciations of such attempts by the Ukrainian Helsinki Union and other independent groups. But concern is beginning to be aroused by the recent mobilizations against the rise of RUKH by an "Internationalist Front" that is trying to build itself among the Russian population of the republic, on the model of similar organizations in the Baltic countries.
The case of the Czarist Black
Hundreds
From the platform of the congress, Ivan Dzyuba, author of the famous dissident book of the 1960s, Internationalism or Russification?, recalled the case of the Czarist Black Hundreds: "This was a powerful movement of the lower strata of society, which was strongly patriotic and skillfully led by specialists in social and national demagogy. Its task was to save the Czarist empire from revolution, by directing the people's anger away from the regime toward the 'false preachers of the truth,' that is, against the revolutionary intelligentsia, against 'JudeoFreemasonry,' against the slogans that oppress the Russian people.' Are we not facing a revival of the mass Black Hundreds today? In any case, the three fundamental ideas of the Black Hundreds are again in the air."
This is a threat that can be effectively removed only by an alliance of the national movements of the oppressed peoples of the USSR with the independent, multinational movement of the Soviet working class. *
; "I's Stalin's work on the national ques trai I know | bured i somersh ere round here!"
N THESE LAST decades of the twentieth century, our society is going into a deep political, economic, social, ideological and moral crisis. This is the result of the pseudo-socialist totalitarian model forcibly imposed by Stalinism; the usurpation of soviet power by the bureaucracy; the alienation of the people from the means and results of production; the brutal and absurd dictates of the central authorities; the voiding of the republic's sovereignty and the conversion of local self-government into a fiction; deceit under the cover of "internationalist" phrases; the policy of denationalizing peoples, fusion and mechanically mixing ethnic groups and ignoring their vital interests.
All aspects of this crisis, which has an all-Union character, assume additional special features in each of the Union republics.
Proclamation of the Ukrainian People's Republic
The twentieth century brought the Ukrainian people both a great hope for a revival of their statehood and national-cultural life, as well as terrible national tragedies. After the breakup of the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires, Ukrainian statehood was revived by the proclama-
USSR
Mass national movement launched in
Ukraine
THE FOUNDING CONGRESS of the People's
Movement of Ukraine for Restructuring the,
Narodnyi Rukh Ukrainy za Vidbudovu, was finally held in Kiev September 8-10. Formal constitution of the movement had been long delayed by a more repressive atmosphere in Ukraine than in other
Soviet republics. There, the Brezhnev era had lived on under the rule of Volodymyr Shcherbytsky, who was appointed first secretary in 1972 in the context of a purge of "nationalist deviationists" and the destruction of the Ukrainian cultural renaissance of the 1960s.
The holding of the congress thus clearly
L represented a defeat for the local party leadership. In fact, on its second day an open letter to Gorbachev signed by 18 Ukrainian members of the Congress of People's
Deputies was read out calling for Shcherbytsky's removal. At the special plenum of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in late
September, the Ukrainian first secretary was removed from the all-union party Politburo. Shortly thereafter, he was also removed from leadership of the Ukrainian party.
The general explanation of why Shcherbytsky survived the removal of other conservative party bosses was that Ukraine was too important to the Soviet rulers to risk the sort of experiments that have been seen above all in the Baltic republics. Now it seems that it is no longer possible to prevent liberalization there also. Although national consciousness is much more uneven in Ukraine than it is in the more compact nations of the USSR, the growth of a national mass movement in the second largest republic of the Union can bring a qualitative advance in the struggle for national democratic rights. The following is the program adopted by the People's
Movement of Ukraine for Restructuring at its founding conference.
We have translated it from No. 2489, September 21, of Ukrainske
Slovo, a Ukrainian weekly published in Paris.
DOCUMENT tion of the Ukrainian People's Republic and subsequently of the West Ukrainian People's Republic. In complex historical circumstances, the process of the formation of Ukrainian statehood led to the creation of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic, which in 1922 united with the Soviet Republics of Russia, Byelorussia and the
Caucasus into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics through the Trea ty of Union.
In the initial phase of the life of the Soviet Ukraine normal conditions were created for the national-cultural development of the Ukrainian people hood. However, uran the is see23 and genuine assurance of its state-
USSR of the Stalinist-administrativecommand system, the principles of building the soviet federation began to be brutally violated. The sovereignty of the Ukraine was trampled on. It, like other republics, was in fact transformed into a featureless administrative-territorial unit of an ultracentralized state.
Those who implemented the Leninist national policy were removed from the leadership of the Ukrainian Communist Party and government. Terror and forced collectivization were unleashed against the peasantry under the false slogan "dekulakization." A famine was artificially created in 1933 in which millions of people lost their lives.
Moreover, in the period of Stalinist repression the entire national intelligentsia was liquidated. Every manifestation of national consciousness was stamped out under the pretext of "fighting Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism." Human and national rights were grossly violated. The history of the nation and its culture were plundered, distorted and reviled. The historic monuments of the Ukrainian and other peoples were plundered. Migration policy was used consistently to reduce the absolute and relative numbers of Ukrainians in the population of Ukraine.
Hostile attitude to cultural development
The Ukrainian language was driven from all areas of social life in the republic. There was a hostile attitude to the cultural development of Ukrainians within the boundaries of their own homeland. Nature was irreparably destroyed in a series of regions of Ukraine. There was the Chernobyl tragedy.
But these are just a part of the crimes of the Stalinist and neoStalinist-Brezhnevite bosses against the Ukrainian people.
If we add to this the losses of the civil war, the 1921-22 famine, the savagery of the German fascist occupiers and the 1946-1947 famine, we get an idea of the losses of the Ukrainian people in the twentieth century.
It is impossible to avoid a general national catastrophe without uniting all forces with a sense of patriotism and of historic responsibility in Ukraine regardless of their place of residence, nationality or religion, party affiliation, social status, educational level, sex or age. The form of this unity can and must be the People's Movement of Ukraine for Restructuring.
Similar forms for rallying the forces 24 br are arising in many republics and in favor of restructuring have arisen regions of the USSR. This is only one sign of their vital needs, a manifestation both of the general dynamic of restructuring and specific national features. The People's Movement of Ukraine for Restructuring has arisen on the wave of social activity unleashed by the restructuring processes in the USSR that is seeking to overcome the crisis and assure a better future for the peoples of the USSR.
Building a democratic and humane society Principles, alms, orientations and means of action of the People's Movement of Ukraine of Restructuring.
1. In its activity, the People's Movement of Ukraine for Restructuring (henceforth designated as "RUKH") is governed by the principles of humanism, democracy, openness, pluralism, social justice and internationalism reflecting the interests of all citizens of the republic, regardless of their nationality. RUKH unites their patriotic energy and expresses their aspiration for the political, economic and cultural renaissance of Ukraine. RUKH supports the principles of a radical renewal of the society expressed at the Twenty-Seventh Congress of the CPSU, the nineteenth All-Union Party Conference and the First Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR.
2. The main aim of RUKH's activity is generally to create the conditions for a decent life for people through their creative participation in building a democratic and humane society in Ukraine, in which there will be genuine people's power, well-being for the people, a renaissance and rounded development of the Ukrainian nation, satisfaction of the national-cultural needs of all ethnic groups in the republic and the creation of a sovereign Ukrainian state, that builds its relations with the other republics of the USSR on the basis of a renewed Treaty of Union.
3. RUKH assumes the following aims:
a) In every way to promote the restoration of human beings as morally responsible individuals.
b) To promote the construction of a national state aimed at transforming the Ukrainian SSR into a democratic state of laws, devoted to assuring the free development of the individual, the defense of the rights of human beings and of the nation, as well as the unfettered exercise of basic democratic rights.
c) To achieve a radical restructuring of the economy of the Ukrainian SSR on the basis of republican self-
International Viewpoint #171 • October 16, 1989 financing and self-management, taking into consideration the regional and structural peculiarities of the economy of Ukraine and the real economic independence of all those exercising management, regardless of the property forms.
d) To wage an unflagging struggle against the policy of denationalization; to create the preconditions for the free development and selfpreservation of the Ukrainian people on their historic territory; to promote a spiritual renaissance of the Ukrainian nation on the basis of state support Tor the Ukrainian language, rounded development ot Ukrainian culture, promotion of its historic memory and the national consciousness of citizens and the preservation of a sense of national honor.
e) To promote the rounded development of the languages and cultures of the national minorities and ethnic groups that live on the republic's territory and to defend their vital rights and interests.
4. The basic principles guiding RUKH's activity are the following:
- To defend human rights and freedoms, the rights of the people and the moral renewal of individuals and the society.
- Democratization of the social and political life in the USSR.
- To give real content to the sovereignty of the Ukrainian SSR through radical changes in the Soviet federation. . - Putting the economy of the Ukrainian SSR decisively in order.
- Social justice.
- To defend the society's ecology.
- To build up the national culture.
- Ethics and religion.
- Safeguarding health, and sport.
- Active participation in the fight for peace.
Outline of the RUKH's activity
5. RUKH will carry out its activity in the following ways:
a) It will collaborate with state institutions, republic and party organs and other social institutions in tackling the problems laid out by the Program and Statutes of RUKH.
b) It will participate in election campaigns, running its own candidates and supporting other candidates and pre-electoral programs that do not conflict with RUKH's aims. It will push demands for the recall of deputies who fail to justify the trust of those who elected them. It will take part in the exercise of social supervision of elections. c) It will draw up and present proposals to state bodies arising from the tasks of RUKH's program. It will sub-
mit requests for resolution of various problems of local concern to the local soviets.
d) Through legislative initiatives, it will submit to the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR proposals for new laws or for repealing or amending laws and rules.
e) It will organize studies of public opinion and publish the results. It will present proposals for referendums and demand that they be held.
f) It will put pressure on the state authorities and administration through every legal channel.
g) It will oversee the Ukrainian SSR's fulfillment of the provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Helsinki Final Act on European Security and Collaboration and other international agreements on defense of human rights.
h) It will participate in the exercise of social inspection.
i) It will draw attention to memorable national dates and holidays. It will promote the revival of national traditions and customs. j) It will carry out its own economic work. It will organize various forms of social projects, and look after monuments of our historical-cultural and natural heritage.
Organizing discussions for an exchange of views k) It will organize an exchange of views, debates, colloquiums and conferences on pressing questions; it will form commissions of experts, organize lectures, carry out discussions.
l) It will publish its own journals, bulletins, news sheets; distribute information through leaflets, posters, appeals, open letters and also through the mass media.
m) It will organize and conduct mass meetings, assemblies, demonstrations, marches, processions, picketing.