1988: A LOOK BACK

Human rights and national movements in USSR

It was during 1988 that the world witnessed the dramatic emergence of the question of national rights in the USSR into the forefront of human rights issues: a problem that has quickly developed into a major challenge to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's experiment in democratization and restructuring.

Indeed the world had not seen such a surge of independent political activity amid what was always believed to be a passive, repressed society in the Soviet Union. In sheer numbers, even the independent activity of the Khrushchev years paled in comparison to the masses of people in various republics that expressed their long-suppressed hopes for much-needed change in regard to policies affecting nationalities.

A general atmosphere of change in the Soviet Union as well as the achievements (however limited) of the bold national movements in Armenia and in the Baltic republics set the stage for the eruption of national rights activity by various unofficial groups into a mass movement, mostly in western Ukraine - though there were rumblings in the more Russified eastern Ukraine.

National rights activity during 1988 took its most radical form in the Baltic states, in Armenia and later in Georgia, where popular fronts and alternative political parties were formed and quickly moved their goals from the issue of national autonomy and sovereignty to national democratic self-determination and independence. What was particularly unusual about these movements was that at their forefront were Communist Party leaders in their respective republics, who shared many of their goals and challenged the central government in Moscow on a number of occasions - most recently before the November 29 meeting of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on amending the Soviet Constitution.

In the boldest measure by a Soviet republic challenging the changes to the Soviet Constitution that would limit the political autonomy of all the republics, the Estonian Supreme Soviet declared sovereignty on November 16 and approved an amendment to the republic's constitution that would give Estonian authorities the right to veto Soviet legislation within the republic. The Soviet government, however, declared the Estonian move unconstitutional, but did provide some minor concessions to Baltic demands by modifying two clauses limiting its own power to adopt new laws determining the composition of the Soviet Union and to repeal laws passed by individual republics.

The nature of the republican leadership in the Baltic states has allowed for far greater tolerance of national rights activity in the form of mass meetings and demonstrations than in any other republic.

Even the persistent demands of the Armenian population for the secession of Nagorno-Karabakh, a predominantly Armenian-populated region of Azerbaidzhan, from that republic to be joined with the Armenian SSR were tolerated for several months early in the year until they resulted in the violent anti-Armenian riots in the city of Sumgait, Azerbaidzhan. Since then Armenia has reportedly been a heavily militarized zone with extra Soviet troops and strict curfews, and the crackdown on national rights activity has intensified. On March 25 perhaps the best known Armenian dissident, Paruir Airikian, a leader of the Union for Self-Determination, was arrested on charges of "anti-Soviet slander" for compiling and publicizing a list of victims of the riots of Sumgait in February. He was held for four months without trial and then stripped of his Soviet citizenship and forcibly expelled from the Soviet Union on July 21.

In an August 15 interview with The Weekly in New York, the 39-year-old former political prisoner who had cooperated with several Ukrainian dissidents on an All-Union Committee in Defense of Political Prisoners in late 1987 and early 1988, described how he was forced onto a flight to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where he was held hostage in a hotel room for four days and finally released in order to request political asylum at the U.S. Embassy.

Undoubtedly the authorities in the Ukrainian republic, whose ranks include many leftovers from the Brezhnev years of stagnation, have shown the least tolerance for independent political activity, particularly in the form of mass public meetings, which dominated our front pages during the summer of 1988.

While 1987 brought the renewal of any active dissent from a period of stagnation on a small scale among the already well-known generation of activists of the 1960s and 1970s, in 1988 we saw this activity multiply and spread and diversify among a younger generation of activists in a variety of forms.

We reported in January the reactivation of the Ukrainian Helsinki Monitoring Group by the editors of the independent journal the Ukrainian Herald, on December 30, 1987. In a statement dated March 11, a new UHG executive committee, including well-known Ukrainian dissidents Vyacheslav Chornovil, Zinoviy Krasivsky and Mykhailo Horyn, wrote:

"The new social conditions in the USSR, the release of a significant portion of political prisoners, and a termination of criminal proceedings against human rights activists have made it possible to activate the Ukrainian Helsinki Group in Ukraine."

The first step of this reactivization was the December 1987 announcement that the Ukrainian Herald would be the UHG's official press organ and that the journal's editorial board had been co-opted in to the group.

Due to the emigration of Mykola Rudenko, the UHG's first chairman, to the United States with his wife Raisa, on January 27, Lev Lukianenko, a founding member, assumed its chairmanship from his place of exile in the Tomsk region.

From 13 members in March, to the UHG's transformation into the Ukrainian Helsinki Union on July 7, the organization now claims nearly 600 members in Ukraine and outside its borders, organized in branches by oblasts, raions and cities.

With the surge of independent political activity in Ukraine due to the process of democratization, the Ukrainian Helsinki Union has emerged as a leading force in testing the limits of glasnost and perestroika. In its declaration of 20 founding principles, dated July 7, the first paragraph of the preamble states:

"The Ukrainian Helsinki Union, as a federative association of self-ruling rights defense groups and organizations in the oblasts, raions and cities of Ukraine and beyond its borders, is being formed on the basis of the Ukrainian Public Group to Promote the Implementation of the Helsinki Accords and confirms its allegiance to the rights defense principles of the group's declaration of November 9, 1976."

"Although the Ukrainian Helsinki union supports all the constructive ideas of the government that pertain to the restructuring and democratization of Soviet society, the union reserves for itself the right of democratic opposition as an effective form of activating democratic processes in society."

In addition to The Ukrainian Herald, the UHU's official press organ, three new major independent journals appeared this year in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv. The three new publications attempt to cover the socio-political, cultural and religious aspects of movements seeking to speed up the process of democratization.

The journal Yevshan-Zillia actually commenced publication in the fall of 1987 and is edited by Iryna Stasiv Kalynnets, a poet, ethnographer and cultural rights advocate. It focuses primarily on current Ukrainian cultural, literary and artistic life in Lviv.

In January, the first issue of Kafedra was published under the aegis of the Ukrainian Association of Independent Creative Intelligentsia (UANTI), Mykhailo Osadchy, a 51-year-old poet, literary critic and former political prisoner serves as chief editor of the new literary and cultural journal, created to publicize the works and activities of members of UANTI who hail from all over the Ukrainian SSR, and focus on the arts in general, past and present, all over the republic.

The fourth unofficial journal in Lviv, The Christian Voice, appeared in January. Edited by Ivan Hel, of the Committee for the Defense of the Rights of Believers and the Church in Ukraine, the journal focuses on the movement for religious rights, especially the Ukrainian Catholic Church, in Ukraine.

The Ukrainian Culturological Club in Kiev also began publishing a journal, Kolo, this year and organized a number of public gatherings in the Ukrainian capital city on ecological and cultural issues as well.

Some 500 people marched on Kiev's Khreshchatyk Boulevard on April 26 to mark the second anniversary of the Chornobyl nuclear disaster, carrying placards that read: "Nuclear Power Plants Out of Ukraine" and "Openness and Democracy to the End," in a protest organized by the UCC. Some 20 were detained during the demonstration, while one of its organizers, Oles Shevchenko, who also heads the Kiev branch of the Ukrainian Helsinki Union, was arrested and held for 15 days on administrative charges.

The most extraordinary mass meetings occurred, however, in Lviv over the summer. On June 16, between 6,000 and 8,000 gathered in Lviv, where they heard speakers declare "no confidence" in the local list of delegates to the unusual 19th Communist Party Conference, which began on June 29. The rally was called by a new Action Group to Establish the T.H. Shevchenko Native Language Society, which reconstituted itself as the Action Group to Conduct Meetings. The Native Language Society was denied access to the local Palace of Culture for a regularly scheduled meeting three days earlier and decided to hold a rally at the foot of the Ivan Franko statue across from Ivan Franko State University. Among the speakers were activists Vyacheslav Chornovil, Mykhailo Horyn and Bohdan Horyn.

The next rally, which attracted up to 50,000 people, was to discuss a revised list of officially approved conference delegates. Instead, authorities attempted to disperse the crowds gathered in front of Druzhba Stadium on June 21. When the crowds were denied entry into the stadium, many of them moved on to the Lenin monument in front of the Opera Theater. Among those that spoke were Iryna Kalynets and a new young activist, Ivan Makar.

On July 7, between 10,000 and 20,000 people witnessed the launching of the Democratic Front to Promote Perestroika, which represented a federation of various local informal groups, headed by the 30-year-old Mr. Makar and another young activist, Ihor Derkach.

However, after tolerating these three mass public meetings in June and July, the largest of which, on June 21, attracted up to 50,000 people, the local authorities in Lviv used force and administrative methods to break up another such gathering on August 4. On what was referred to by several groups as "Bloody Thursday," a total of 41 people were reportedly detained that evening and most were fined or sentenced to 15 days of administrative arrest.

In order to prevent such gatherings throughout the Soviet Union, the Soviet government passed a law in July placing severe limits on the organization of such gatherings.

Even before "Bloody Thursday" there were signs that the Lviv authorities were taking a tough line against revival of open dissent in the city and revitalization of its public life as seen in actions against leading activists, including attacks in the press. In one such attack in Lvovskaya Pravda on July 24, the Lviv city procurator's office announced that it had begun criminal proceedings against a group of leading activists, among them Mr. Chornovil, the Horyn brothers, Mr. Makar and Yaroslav Putko.

The ultimate crackdown came on August 4 when local riot police violently broke up a gathering organized by the Initiative Group of the Democratic Front to Promote Perestroika. The Lviv authorities did their utmost to prevent the meeting scheduled to take place on the evening of August 4 - warnings were published in the local press pointing out that the gathering was prohibited, and the head of the initiative group, Mr. Makar, was arrested at 9 a.m. on the day of the planned meeting.

Several thousand people nevertheless gathered in the streets surrounding the cordoned-off statue of Ivan Franko, and started to sing patriotic songs. At this point, special riot police with dogs were let loose on the crowds. They are reported to have beaten and injured people, dragging some of them by their hair or feet to waiting vehicles, and seizing cameras from anyone taking photos.

The local authorities reacted once again with force against participants of a public meeting held on September 1 without official permission. Some 5,000 residents gathered in front of Ivan Franko State University for a silent demonstration. The riot police began pushing the crowds in all directions in an effort to disperse them and began photographing them. The participants began shouting, "Free Makar" and "Fascists," as they marched away from the university toward the Lviv Opera House, and Lenin monument. That area, however, was completely surrounded by militia, who reportedly began grabbing individuals and shoving them into vehicles.

Some 15 persons were known to have been detained or fined, including Mr. Derkach of the initiative group, who organized the meeting. The young activist was reportedly freed after threatening to inform the Western media and governments.

Despite continued attempts by local authorities to intimidate the activists in Lviv, the dissidents rallied to the defense of Mr. Makar, the young construction engineer and Communist Party member arrested on the morning of August 4. A Citizens' Committee in Defense of Ivan Makar, headed by Bohdan Horyn, was formed and launched an effort to find a Western co-counsel to represent Mr. Makar in what could have been the first political trial of the glasnost era.

The UHU also issued an information bulletin titled "Ivan Makar - The First Political Prisoner in Ukraine of the Period of Restructuring."

Western pressure, both governmental and non-governmental, as well as local pressure played a role in the release of Mr. Makar on November 9. The charges of "anti-Soviet slander" and "disrupting the public order" were dropped and Mr. Makar was reportedly compensated for three months' salary.

Unfortunately, it appears that the harassment of Ukrainian national rights activists in Lviv, Odessa and Kiev, as well as other cities, has not ceased. Vasyl Barladianu, a leading UHU activist in Odessa, was beaten by thugs on November 17 as he was about to enter a train station and catch a train bound for Kiev to attend a meeting of the UHU Coordinating Council.

Stepan Khmara was arrested on December 3 in Chervonohrad for 15 days under administrative charges, apparently to prevent the dissident from participating in a scheduled meeting in Lviv on December 10 to mark Human Rights Day. The topic of the unauthorized rally held on that day at the foot of the Lenin monument was changed in solidarity with the victims of the earthquake in Armenia to a day of mourning. Some 5,000 to 7,000 residents reportedly participated in the UHU-organized meeting.

Hundreds of Ukrainians in Kiev observed Human Rights Day on December 10 with a rally on October Revolution Square, organized by the local Democratic Union. This unauthorized meeting resulted in some detainments of local activists.

Some 10,000 people attended an officially sanctioned public meeting on November 13 in Kiev that focused on ecological issues, as well as political concerns. It was organized by the Ukrainian cultural heritage group Spadshchyna, a Kiev University student group called Hromada, the ecological group Zeleny Svit and the informal ecological group known as Noosfera. The rally was addressed by well-known literary figures, Yuriy Shcherbak and Dmytro Pavlychko, and rights activist Oles Shevchenko and the newly released Mr. Makar.

At the conclusion of 1988 we are happy to report that no Ukrainian Helsinki monitors remain either in prison, labor camp, psychiatric hospital or exile, though an uncertain number of Ukrainian political and religious dissidents remain incarcerated.

Among the former inmates of Perm Camp 35 is Petro Ruban, who was released on May 25 as a result of President Reagan's visit to Moscow. The 48-year-old sculptor emigrated to the United States in July to join family members. His arrival was preceded by that of his wife, Lydia, and paraplegic teenage son, Marko, who arrived in January for medical treatment.

Also arriving in the United States for medical treatment this year was two-year-old Hanna Sverstiuk, Yevhen Sverstiuk's granddaughter, along with her mother, Maria. She has undergone surgery and radiation therapy for a brain tumor at Philadelphia's Children's Hospital since her July 17 arrival. The girl's paraplegic father, Andriy, arrived in the U.S. on August 14.

Oksana Meshko, 83, founding member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group came to Australia and then the U.S. to visit relatives, but is planning to return to Kiev in January.

The Rev. Vasyl Romaniuk, the dissident Ukrainian Orthodox cleric, and his son, Taras, migrated to Canada on July 27.

The future of the movements for national rights in the USSR is difficult to predict but it appears that the independent activists are determined to continue despite attempts to intimidate them.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, December 25, 1988, No. 52, Vol. LVI

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