REPORTER'S DIARY: Reflections on an independent Ukraine (12/08/91)

REPORTER'S DIARY

Reflections on an independent Ukraine

by Chrystyna Lalpychak
Kiev Press Bureau

Sunday, December 1, was the turning point. On an immediate level, for myself and I believe for dozens of other journalists covering the referendum on Ukrainian independence, the previous week was tense in anticipation. Following a marathon of press conferences in overly heated rooms packed with hundreds of journalists, problems with phone lines, and deadlines, the nervous tension peaked on Sunday morning.

Once the journalists' nightmare was at least temporarily over, having survived a stampede of aggressive Western photojournalists at the Kiev polling station where Leonid Kravchuk voted, suddenly we began to notice something. As my colleague Susan Viets of The Independent and I drove around Kiev, we noticed that an unusual number of people were out on the streets for a Sunday morning - and they were smiling.

Kievans were out with their entire families, all over the place, and they were voting, early; some were hanging around the polling stations politicking. The atmosphere was calm, peaceful, friendly - and sometimes very emotional.

A woman representing the local council's executive committee in a village just south of Kiev burst into tears as she told us that 70 to 80 percent of Khotiv's eligible voters had voted by 10 a.m. Others told us they saw elderly women cross themselves as they left their polling stations, thanking God that they had lived long enough to vote for an independent Ukraine.

The tranquil satisfaction I felt that afternoon will stay with me for a long time. After the hysteria, there was peace. After decades - no - centuries of bloodshed and sacrifice, there was peaceful, civilized change.

Although some may call it a hallucination, I felt that day that millions more were out on the streets of Ukraine and at the polling stations than were visible to the naked eye. As I told an Associated Press correspondent, I felt that ghosts were present that day in all of those places - ghosts of people who were not fortunate enough to have lived to vote. All of our ancestors were there, everyone who had ever suffered, who had ever dreamed that their grandchildren would see freedom. We are those grandchildren.

I must admit I felt haunted, as I can say my brother, Victor, felt as well. As we walked the streets of Kiev last week we thought: our grandfather had walked here when Ukraine declared its short-lived independence in 1918. He had died in 1969 in the U.S. a great Ukrainian patriot, and today his grandchildren were in Kiev at this historic moment.

Besides being a historic event of geopolitical significance and the catalyst for the final break-up of the Soviet Union, which has shifted the whole world's balance of power, Ukraine's independence holds a very personal, even intimate, meaning for myself and countless others.

Professionally, it has offered me the opportunity to write articles on events of profound significance: the culmination of years of what I now view as a preparation for this very period. I chose a road that was a risk professionally - to concentrate on Ukraine and Ukrainians worldwide instead of working for a general interest publication. The risk has brought me very fruitful results, for which I am humbly grateful. I feel a great responsibility to recreate what I observe for the readers who cannot be here.

Perhaps this is sappy romanticism, but I think that's part of being Ukrainian. Some critics may say that Ukrainian romanticism is part of the reason it has taken this long for a state to finally emerge. However, this is precisely what defines the unique and original, charming and tragic nature of this place. It is what motivated the so-called Ukrainian dissidents who laid the groundwork for this peaceful movement toward democracy. Let's hope the best parts of this poetic side to the movement remain in the face of the Western pragmatism that will inevitably come as Ukraine looks Westward politically and economically.

As the Ukrainian Parliament's new chairman Ivan Pliushch said during the special session on December 3, it is time now to get to work, to build a state from the ruins that remain after decades of communism. But last week was one for celebration, well-deserved, hard-earned through unspeakable past sacrifices by the people of Ukraine, by those visiting ghosts, for future generations.