1989: A LOOK BACK: Ukraine: human rights, vox populi (12/31/89)

1989: A LOOK BACK

Ukraine: human rights, vox populi

The human rights movement in Ukraine transformed into a truly popular movement in 1989, reaching across the spectrum of Soviet Ukrainian society, and striving for democracy and national rights.

While semi-formal groups, the greatest of which became the Popular Movement of Ukraine for Perebudova, or Rukh, achieved the incredible task of consolidating a range of official and unofficial reformist elements and attracted wide popular support, informal associations also played a key role in mobilizing mass public pressure for change.

Throughout the year these informal associations, often in cooperation with the semi-official groups, such as Rukh, Memorial and the Taras Shevchenko Ukrainian Language Society, focused public attention toward important political, social, ecological and cultural problems and mobilized public response to government actions.

This activity most often took the form of public meetings, organized by such leading informal groups as the Ukrainian Helsinki Union, the Ukrainian National Democratic League, the Ukrainian Association of Independent Creative Intelligentsia, the Hromada Society, the Ukrainian Youth Association SUM, Plast, the Association of Independent Ukrainian Youth, the Lev Society, and others throughout cities in Ukraine. As the year progressed such public activity spread from Lviv and Kiev to other localities and gained support of local semi-official organizations in rallying around specific issues.

By far the main issue that dominated public life in Ukraine last winter and spring was the elections to the new 2,250-member USSR Congress of People's Deputies, slated for March 26. The "informals" strongly criticized the federal law on elections, which gave one-third of the new Soviet parliament's seats to the Communist Party and all-union organizations and institutions, and established restrictive nomination procedures for candidates for the other two-thirds of the seats, creating many single-candidate races.

The Coordinating Council of the Ukrainian Helsinki Union began the year by calling for an all-out boycott to protest against "undemocratic" electoral laws, a call it later reversed and actively sought the defeat of unpopular candidates, i.e. party functionaries, and supported the reformers and progressives.

Stepan Khmara, a UHU activist, was even nominated on January 20 in the western Ukrainian city of Chervonohrad, but was arrested on the spot by militia and given a 15-day administrative sentence.

Large public rallies protesting the electoral laws which coincided with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev's visit to Ukraine took place in Kiev on February 19-21, many of which also called for the resignation of then Ukrainian Communist Party chief Volodymyr Shcherbytsky, called the "mastodon of stagnation" by one Ukrainian activist.

It took special riot police and militia three attempts before they finally and violently dispersed a pre-elections meeting in Lviv on March 12, organized by the local Rukh organization, the UHU and the Marian society Myloserdia (Compassion). Up to 300 individuals were reportedly detained, receiving either fines or 15-day sentences, while many people were injured.

For his participation in this meeting, Bohdan Horyn, head of the Lviv UHU branch, was sentenced on March 15 to 15 days' administrative arrest.

This brutal disruption and the arrests by local security forces angered the population and the leaders of the local informal groups, particularly since unsanctioned pre-elections meetings were permitted under a decree of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet issued in February.

In the March 26 elections, a number of seats were left vacant because no candidate won a majority, even in single-candidate races where several party officials suffered humiliating defeats. These included Yakiv Pohrebniak, first secretary of the Lviv Oblast Party Committee, then Kiev party chief Konstantyn Masyk and Valentyn Zgursky, head of the Kiev party executive committee.

Bye-elections were held on April 9, May 14 and May 21 to till these vacant seats to the Congress of People's Deputies, but were preceded by a number of public rallies decrying apparent maneuvers by local party officials against independent nominees for candidacy at district caucuses.

Such pre-elections meetings took place in Lviv, first during four consecutive days on April 20-23, which drew crowds of up to 25,000 and also included an hourlong warning strike at eight local factories and institutions, the first labor strike in Lviv since 1944.

Another pre-elections meeting drew 30,000 in Lviv on May 3.

Out of a total of 225 deputies representing the Ukrainian republic in the new Congress of People's Deputies, 175 were directly elected after four elections. Among these were such popular progressives as Lviv writer Rostyslav Bratun, Kiev economist Volodymyr Cherniak, Kiev writer Volodymyr Yavorivsky and Zhytomyr journalist Alla Yaroshynska. Out of these 175 deputies, 63 were chosen on May 26 to the more powerful USSR Supreme Soviet to represent Ukraine, and most of these were conservatives.

Elections were also a central issue this fall, this time, however, to the Ukrainian SSR People's Deputies, slated for March 4, 1990. Angered once again by a draft elections law labelled "anti-democratic and intended to preserve the political power of the bureaucracy," people in cities throughout Ukraine took to the streets in unprecedented numbers in rallies organized by local unofficial organizations.

In an open letter in the August 15 issue of Leninska Molod, 38 progressive people's deputies from Ukraine called for democratization of the republic's proposed elections law, which reserved special seats for the Communist Party and other official organizations. They offered an "alternative" law guaranteeing direct proportional elections to the 450-member Ukrainian SSR People's Deputies "one man - one vote."

On September 2, tens of thousands in cities around Ukraine gathered to protest against the draft electoral law: 50,000 in Lviv, 40,000 in Kiev, 10,000 in Zhytomyr, 5,000 each in Dniprodzerzhynske and Chervonohrad, and 2,000 in Kharkiv.

Once again record numbers turned out for public meetings to support the "Alternative" elections law proposed by the group of people's deputies on October 15: 30,000 in Lviv, several thousands in Chervonohrad, Chernivtsi, Rivne and Zhytomyr, 500 in Dnipropetrovske. In Ivano-Frankivske 30,000 people demonstrated on October 10, while in Kiev an association called Vyborets (Voter) was formed on October 11 in support of the alternative electoral law.

Following an October 24 vote by the all-union Supreme Soviet, eliminating special seats for Communist Party and other official organizations in national and local elections, the Ukrainian SSR Supreme Soviet passed a concurrent law "On Elections of People's Deputies of the Ukrainian SSR" on October 27.

Several representatives of informal groups have already declared that they are seeking nominations for candidacy in the March 4 elections, including UHU president Lev Lukianenko for a seat in Ivano-Frankivske, and another UHU leader and journalist Vyacheslav Chornovil, who has already been nominated in the Shevchenkivsky electoral district in Lviv.

Public meetings were held throughout the year and focused on other contemporary issues, as well as commemorating historical and cultural events, many "blank spots" in Ukrainian history. Here is a list of these often cathartic gatherings in 1989.

Lviv and Kiev marked Ukrainian Independence Day on January 22 each for the first time in decades. Thousands gathered for an unauthorized moleben, celebrated by priests of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, in front of St. George's Cathedral in Lviv. Some 60 activists, who could not obtain permission for a public meeting, gathered in a Kiev apartment to commemorate the historic event.
Crowds estimated at between 20,000 and 30,000 people participated in an unsanctioned ecumenical requiem service on February 26 in Lviv marking the 128th anniversary of Taras Shevchenko's death. Ukrainian Catholic and Ukrainian Orthodox clergy concelebrated the service.
Some 20,000 people prayed for the victims of the Chornobyl nuclear disaster at a memorial moleben concelebrated by Ukrainian Catholic clergy on April 16 in front of the Cathedral of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Lviv. Another 15,000 in Lviv held a mass public rally to commemorate Chornobyl on its anniversary, April 26.
For the second year in a row, the informal associations in Kiev, such as the Ukrainian Culturological Club, the Hromada Society, the Kiev UHU branch, and the Ukrainian National Democratic League, held a commemoration in honor of Taras Shevchenko alongside the official May 22 ceremonies at the Kiev Shevchenko monument. These activists raised a great number of Ukrainian blue-and-yellow flags, tridents and banners, including one that said: "Long live a Ukrainian independent and sovereign state!"
Representatives of several semi-formal and informal groups, including Rukh and the UNDL, took part in a roundtable discussion on the issue of national symbols with representatives of the Ukrainian SSR Supreme Soviet on July 28 at the Soviet Peace Committee in Kiev. Although the officials made concessions to some of the informals' demands regarding Ukrainian national symbols, members of the UNDL declared a hunger strike to pressure them into fulfillment of the rest of their demands. The UNDL activists held their hunger strike on July 29 on the steps of the Ukrainian SSR Supreme Soviet, attracting hundreds of supporters, including the Kiev UHU branch. Although riot police moved in on the crowd, beating and detaining some, local Rukh activists negotiated their release for their moving to another location to continue the strike.
On July 29, members of SUM, the Kharkiv UHU branch and Rukh held a protest against Russification in the eastern Ukrainian city.
A large rally was organized in Lviv by Rukh and the UHU on August 3 to counter charges in local media and newspapers that their associations incited hostility between national groups in Lviv.
Nearly 30,000 Lviv residents took part in a mass rally and two-hour work strike on October 3 to protest against the violent dispersal by militia of several peaceful demonstrations held in that city on October 1. On that day, a column of between 10,000 and 15,000 people bearing Ukrainian flags were dispersed violently as they staged a protest in front of Druzhba stadium, where a concert was officially celebrating the reunification of Ukrainian lands. Several protesters were detained and the bewildered crowd reportedly made its way to a militia station to inquire about the detainees. There they were attacked by a cordon of militia with rubber truncheons, who reportedly beat women, children and elderly, hospitalizing five victims. Officials at the October 3 meeting promised to investigate and set up a procurator's commission.
Twenty factories and institutions in Lviv held strikes and meetings on October 26 again to protest the local authorities' unwillingness to prosecute those responsible for police brutality against demonstrators on October 1.
The first ever officially sanctioned meeting organized by the UHU drew nearly 10,000 people to a commemoration of International Human Rights Day on December 10 in Lviv.
A very special public gathering took place on November 19 in Kiev this year when thousands of mourners joined family, friends and colleagues in the funerals of death camp victims Vasyl Stus, Oleksiy Tykhy and Yuriy Lytvyn, whose bodies were returned for Christian burial to Ukraine from unmarked graves near Perm Camp 36 in the Urals. They were buried in Kiev's Baikiv Cemetery, among some of Ukraine's finest poets, intellectuals and historic figures.

Several of the few remaining Ukrainian prisoners of conscience were freed during 1989, namely 49-year-old Serhiy Babych on June 7, 62-year-old Petro Saranchuk in February, and Pavlo Kampov, all three from special-regimen labor camps.

One known Ukrainian prisoner of conscience remains incarcerated, 50-year-old Bohdan Klymchak, in Perm Camp 35, Mr. Klymchak was placed in solitary confinement on October 30 for taking part in a hunger strike marking the Day of the Political Prisoner. He is serving a 15-year-term for "treason" since he attempted to escape to Iran in November 1978.

Anatoliy Ilchenko, a young UHU activist from Mykolayiv, southern Ukraine, was placed in the Dnipropetrovske Special Psychiatric Hospital in December 1988 for circulating a petition against nuclear power stations in the Ukrainian SSR. He was among 27 patients interviewed by a U.S. State Department-sponsored delegation of psychiatric experts during a two-week inspection of Soviet psychiatric facilities in March. Mr. Ilchenko was found to be quite sane by the experts and was later released.

UHU activist Stepan Hura of Kherson was placed in a psychiatric facility after he was grabbed on his way to a UHU Coordinating Council meeting in Kiev on May 6. He was reportedly freed in June or July.

Earlier this year, in March, Oleksander Bykov, the son of the well-known film director Leonid Bykov, held a hunger strike in Kiev demanding that a code on his military discharge card, designating him as "insane," are removed by authorities. This code reportedly prevented him for many years from obtaining employment or admission to schools and educational institutions.

During 1989 a number of activists became victims of so-called "administrative terror," that included fines, 10- to 15-day prison terms, and other harassment for their activities. These included:

Ivan Gel, Mykhailo Horyn, Bohdan Horyn, Pavlo Skochok, Hryhoriy Prykhodko, Ivan Kandyba and Iryna Kalynets, who were detained for several hours during President Gorbachev's visit to Lviv on February 21;
Mrs. Kalynets was tried on March 9-10 on charges of allegedly yelling obscenities against Russian Orthodox Metropolitan Nikodim during a January 22 moleben in front of St. George's Cathedral, and sentenced to 10 days in jail;
Mykhailo Horyn and Vaieriy Kuzmin, head of the Chernivtsi UHU branch, were arrested on April 6 in Chernivtsi and sentenced to 15 days and 10 days in jail, respectively, on administrative charges;
Mr. Gel head of the Citizens' Committee in Defense of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, served a 15-day jail sentence in late April, also on administrative charges;
Mr. Chornovil, editor of the Ukrainian Herald, spent 15 days in a Lviv prison in late May on charges of "petty hooliganism";
Dmytro Korchynsky, a UHU and SNUM activist in Kiev, served a 15-day term in late July for "organizing illegal demonstrations";
Stepan Sapeliak, head of SUM and the UHU branch in Kharkiv, was threatened in August with a three-month term of Chornobyl clean-up work for his activities, but was let off with a fine and a warning.

1989 was also the year a coordinating center, called Democracy and Independence, was formed by Western representatives of USSR national-democratic movements in Paris on May 6-11 at the written request of the Coordinating Council of the national-democratic movements, which met in Vilnius, Lithuania, on January 28-29 and in Estonian on April 30 to May 1.