Turning the pages back... September 3, 1991 (09/01/96)

Turning the pages back...

September 3, 1991

As Ukraine's Supreme Council reconvened in plenary session on September 3 - its first session since the declaration of independence - it was a different body in a different Parliament chamber. Following are excerpts from the news story filed in the wake of independence by Chrystyna Lapychak.

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Conspicuously absent from the hall on the first day of the plenary session on September 3 was the Lenin statue above the chairman's podium, removed the evening before by a decision of the Parliament's Presidium.

The gesture followed the Presidium's historic decision on August 29 to dissolve the Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU) for its support of what it called the "unconstitutional" failed coup in Moscow on August 19-21.

The landmark decision banned the CPU, an organ of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which ruled the entire Soviet Union and Ukraine with an iron fist for over 70 years.

Although hardliners in the Supreme Soviet during last week's two-day plenary session attempted to have the decision overturned with a statement signed by 90 deputies (out of the original Communist bloc of 239), calling it illegal, they were soundly outvoted.

After suffering one defeat after another, a visibly upset Oleksander Moroz, leader of the Communist majority in the Supreme Soviet, announced on September 4 that the majority was officially dissolved within Parliament because the CPU leadership had "betrayed" them.

On September 4, the Parliament voted after three tries to raise what it called the "national flag," the blue-and-yellow flag, next to what remains the red-and-blue "state flag" of the Ukrainian SSR above the Ukrainian Supreme Soviet building. Both flags were to fly until a referendum on national symbolism is held and proper changes to the Constitution are made.

Thousands of people who had gathered outside the Parliament building during the two-day session watched as the red-and-blue flag was taken down just after 6 p.m., when the plenary session adjourned until September 10.

The crowd, however, was angered when the blue-and-yellow flag was raised along with the red-and-blue on the single flagpole atop the Supreme Soviet building, and stormed up to the front steps, which were barricaded off.

The angry crowed broke down the barricades and shoved its way through the Interior Ministry forces to the front door, demanding the red-and-blue flag be taken down.

On September 3, the Supreme Soviet approved a new minister of defense of Ukraine, Maj. Gen. Kostyantyn Morozov, an air force commander, by a constitutional majority, 323 to 3, with 11 abstentions.

Speaking in Russian, Maj. Gen. Morozov told the legislators that he would be willing to become a civilian and leave his military ranking if the Ukrainian Supreme Soviet required the new minister of defense to do so. The 47-year-old military man hails from Luhanske in eastern Ukraine.

After a last ditch effort by General Procurator Mykhailo Potebenko to overturn the Presidium's decrees banning the CPU and establishing a temporary commission of inquiry into the behavior of officials during the failed coup, his proposal to introduce debate on the issue was voted down.

Because there was no Ukrainian state procuracy, and since Mr. Potebenko was appointed by Moscow to his position, the Ukrainian Supreme Soviet voted to end Mr. Potebenko's authority and that of his fellow chief procurators on the collegium, and approved the establishment of a new post, general procurator of Ukraine.

Victor Shyshkin, an attorney and deputy from the Kirovohrad region, was elected, 280 to 19 out of 337, as the new general procurator. Chairman Kravchuk and most deputies in the session hall, particularly the democratic minority, were visibly delighted by Mr. Shyshkin's selection.

At the same time, it should be noted, throughout the land monuments to Lenin came tumbling down. On September 5, the acting mayor of Kyiv, Oleksander Mosiyuk, announced that the city's main monument to Vladimir Illich - all 1,000 tons of it - would begin to be dismantled on September 9. Among the first cities to remove the ubiquitous Lenin were Pidvolochyske and Monastyrske; meanwhile, in Kremenets and Khmelnytsky, residents assembled at public meetings demanded that their Lenin monuments be dismantled.

And so, in the first few days of independence, the icon of communism was the first to feel the effects of newfound freedom.

Source: The Ukrainian Weekly, September 8, 1991; Vol. LIX, No. 36.