Ukrainian independence: as much of a surprise as an inevitability, says policy analyst (11/02/97)

Ukrainian independence: as much of a surprise as an inevitability, says policy analyst

by Christopher Guly

OTTAWA - Six years ago on August 24, Bohdan Nahaylo was preparing for the 5 p.m. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty broadcast from Munich when he received a call from his correspondent in Kyiv.

Over the telephone, Mr. Nahaylo, who headed the radio network's Ukrainian section, heard Leonid Kravchuk announce legislation that would declare Ukraine's independence. Mr. Nahaylo interrupted the news to include the item which, even two years earlier, would have been met with skepticism.

Even today, the thought of Ukraine achieving political sovereignty has a near-mythical quality about it. But, under closer inspection, it shouldn't, says Mr. Nahaylo, who will release a book on the subject in March. Titled "The Ukrainian Resurgence: From Dependence to Independence" and published by the University of Toronto Press, the book will examine signs of sovereignty rumbling through Ukraine in the three years before independence was declared.

Mr. Nahaylo offered a preview of his 600-some page work in Ottawa during the 12th annual Ivan Franko Memorial Lecture held at the University of Ottawa on October 17.

He admitted few could have predicted an independent Ukrainian even a decade before it happened. "Even in October 1987, you couldn't really speak of a resurgence yet," said Mr. Nahaylo, who has written extensively on Ukrainian issues for such international publications as The Economist, The Wall Street Journal and this newspaper.

But there were signs, even in the late 1980s, that something was afoot. Following the 1986 Chornobyl disaster, the country's literati galvanized in publishing previously verboten thoughts on, say, environmental issues. Their thoughts on things cultural, particularly those associated with Ukrainian nationalism, crept in.

Around 1988 the Ukrainian Catholic Church, which had been relegated for decades to underground status, also emerged as a force, with some of the first nationalistic rallies held under the auspices of the Church. However, it was an uphill battle for Ukraine's sovereignty movement said Mr. Nahaylo, who now serves as a senior policy research officer with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in Geneva.

Beyond the country's flirtation with independence from 1917 to 1920, Ukraine had been subject to tsarist and then Soviet rule for centuries. The vestiges of these empires, through Russian influence, continued. "In 1989 11 million Russians were living in Ukraine [about one in five citizens]," explained Mr. Nahaylo. "They're still the majority." Beyond the close cultural connection Ukrainians still have with Russians, the Ukrainian Communist Party was perhaps the most loyal to Soviet rule, he said.

While Mikhail Gorbachev's policies of perestroika and glasnost were dismantling the Soviet Union, Communist stalwarts in Kyiv were headstrong in trying to preserve their own rule.

"They felt abandoned by Gorbachev, who they thought was preparing to risk everything for his quest for personal aggrandizement," said Mr. Nahaylo. Meanwhile, on the streets of Ukraine - particularly in the western regions of the country - Ukrainians were not about to "passively accept a return to neo-totalitarian rule."

Mr. Nahaylo said that if Mr. Gorbachev's Moscow wasn't concerned about the groundswell of nationalistic movements occurring in other Soviet republics, Ukrainians would not look kindly upon their political masters in Kyiv towing the old party line.

Signs throughout Ukraine suggested glasnost had arrived there by the late 1980s. "You had rock groups, the peace movement, astrology and new sexual politics with an interest in soft porn, which happened in Spain after [Francisco] Franco's death [in 1975]," said Mr. Nahaylo.

Even at the political level, there were hints the Soviet era in Ukraine was ending. In the fall of 1988, the Supreme Soviet officially declared Ukrainian the Ukrainian SSR's official language. The chairman of Ukraine's Parliament was handed powers akin to a head of state. In early 1989 Ukrainian people's deputies even acknowledged Stalin's role in creating the artificial famine decades earlier.

Still, there were holdouts. Among them Leonid Kravchuk, who became Ukraine's first president following the 1991 declaration of independence. But even in the days leading up to August 24, 1991, Mr. Kravchuk was hardly what one would consider to be an eager ally of sovereignty. "Two days before he was not talking about a national army," said Mr. Nahaylo. "He was willing to only discuss the formation of a national guard." But President Kravchuk, like Mr. Gorbachev in some people's minds, was a political opportunist.

"He was fighting for his political life, and he, like others, began to borrow from some of Rukh's democratic slogans," said Mr. Nahaylo. Although Mr. Kravchuk, when he visited Ottawa shortly after assuming the presidency, vehemently denied that he was ever an unwilling participant in Ukrainian democracy and in the country's struggle for independence.

Mr. Nahaylo said his forthcoming book, which looks at the five years leading up to independence and the five years following its declaration, is meant to be a "map or guide for other scholars" interested in the "dynamic reaffirmation, reappearance and re-ascension" of Ukrainian sovereignty.

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