INDEPENDENT UKRAINE: THE 7th ANNIVERSARY
The vote for Ukraine's independence: a personal reflection
Irene Jarosewich was funded by grants from the Rochester N.Y. and Chicago chapters of the Coordinating Committee to Aid Ukraine to work in the public information section of Rukh, the Popular Movement of Ukraine between July 1991 and December 1992 at the organization's headquarters in Kyiv. On the eve of the seventh anniversary of Ukraine's independence, Ms. Jarosewich, now a staff editor at The Ukrainian Weekly, offers some personal reflections on the events surrounding August 24, 1991.
by Irene Jarosewich
PART I
The 7 a.m. phone call didn't actually wake me - the morning sun and adrenaline had already done that. I hadn't slept for more than two to three hours per night for almost a week, since even before the coup in Moscow, and again, the night before I had gotten home at 2 a.m. I had walked the several kilometers from the Rukh office in the warm night - and then sat on the small balcony outside my room overlooking Prospekt Peremohy until 4 in the morning, hoping that exhaustion would overtake excitement so that I could get some rest.
Now on the morning of August 24 I quietly slipped out of my room to grab the phone, before the rings could wake my hostess, who had been getting even less sleep than I.
I was a guest of Larysa Skoryk's, and we had become accustomed to phone calls that began at dawn. It was the summer of 1991 in Kyiv, she was an elected member of Ukraine's Parliament from the Democratic Bloc, while I worked with foreign visitors and correspondents out of Rukh's information office. In the intensity of the events of just the past several weeks - the disappointment of the August 1 speech by President George Bush, the protests against the union treaty, the preparation for Ukraine's first presidential elections, and then the August 19 coup in Moscow - the distinction between personal and public space and time had frequently blurred. We had an unspoken agreement that I got the 6-7 a.m. slot for phone calls, and she got the slot at 7-8 a.m. Then, after she left, I got the 8-9 a.m. slot until I left for the craziness that was my office at Rukh where a dozen people and a fax machine struggled for time on two phone lines.
As I whispered good mornings into the receiver, I heard the voice of my friend and colleague, Chrystyna Lapychak of the Kyiv Press Bureau of The Ukrainian Weekly: "Hi. I can't sleep. I figured you can't either. What do you think they're going to do today? Hmmm? Do you think they'll do it? Do you think they'll have the guts to do it? I think they'll do it, today. You know, I actually think they'll do it."
The "they" was Ukraine's Parliament and the "it" was a vote for Ukraine's independence. Once the initial shock of the news of the coup in Moscow in the early hours of Monday, August 19, had passed, Rukh had gone into full swing to use the opportunity of a weakened Moscow leadership to push for Ukraine's independence.
Dozens of viewers had crowded in front of Rukh's one television set on the evening of August 19 and in stunned silence watched coup organizer Gennadi Yanayev's pathetic, drunk-like appearance. A dozen other viewers were openly derisive, yelling at his image on the television screen. After Mr. Yanayev's press conference from Moscow, to which probably every working TV in the Soviet Union was tuned, it became apparent that the coup was less threatening than first feared. That assessment - combined with the fact that nobody had been detained or arrested, that Rukh hadn't been shut down (in fact, lights burned on all three floors of the headquarters building and all the windows and doors were wide open in hopes of catching an evening breeze to cool the August heat), and despite several false alarms of army tanks poised right outside the city - bolstered confidence in radical action. Furthermore, though the coup organizers initially had control of all regular radio and television broadcasts, news of Boris Yeltsin's standoff was being picked up on short-wave and via telephone from contacts in Moscow.
Rukh had condemned the coup by midday Monday, and by Tuesday, August 20, members of the National Council, the democratic faction in Ukraine's Parliament, were actively calling for a special session of Parliament by the end of the week. Though the call for a special session was officially coming from the National Council, practically speaking, Rukh, with its organizational structure and staff, did a lot of the leg work.
The complete details and inside story of how in a few short days between August 20 and 23, with many of Ukraine's political figures and government officials out of the city, Ukraine's Communists became convinced to accept a declaration of Ukraine's independence and that they considered such a declaration to be in their best interest, is still not completely known. However, it is certain that without the Communists, the democratic and centrist forces in the Parliament would not have been able to muster the necessary votes for independence.
Officially Ukraine's Communists declared their support for independence by claiming that the events and leadership in Moscow had betrayed communism and the wrong would be righted in Ukraine. Unofficially, speculation had it that Ukraine's Communists hoped to protect themselves against a Yeltsin/Gorbachev retaliation. The return of Mikhail Gorbachev to Moscow on August 22 marked the end of the coup, and manifested failure for those who supported the putsch, including many of Ukraine's Communists.
However, on Saturday morning, August 24, independence was not yet a certainty. Though the atmosphere at Rukh and the Ukrainian Writers' Union building, where Rukh and the National Council had held press conferences twice a day beginning on August 19, was optimistic, even buoyant by the end of the week, the simple reality of the situation was it was not even certain that there would be a quorum present in Parliament. Many of the 450 people's deputies were spending their August recess outside Kyiv, at their dachas, or at resorts with their families, some outside of the republic. I was told by one of my colleagues at Rukh that Communist deputies had received a "vkazivka" (directive) by phone to show up on Saturday morning, but who would actually make it was not known.
In order to even hold a valid extraordinary session (there was agreement that everything had to be done by the book so that later there would be no accusations that this had been an invalid process), 150 signatures - one-third of the Parliament - had to be obtained on a petition. The signature-gathering campaign was spearheaded by Oleksander Yemets of the Party for the Democratic Rebirth of Ukraine (PDVU), who along with a fellow "young Turk" of PDVU, People's Deputy Volodymyr Filenko, hustled around Kyiv and drove out to dacha areas around the capital city to obtain signatures. It wasn't until Wednesday, August 21, that the leaders of the National Council could declare with certainty at their press conference that the requisite number of signatures had been obtained to convene a special parliamentary session on Saturday.
And, even if there was a quorum at the special session, who knew how the votes would go? Just the evening before, August 23, the National Council held a last-minute caucus about 6 p.m. in the Writer's Union building to count votes, bolster confidence, iron out differences and discuss tactics and strategy. A senior member of the State Department staff from the U.S. Consulate in Leningrad was in Kyiv, and she and I sat in the back of the small auditorium, along with some other non-caucus members, as the meeting got under way.
Early on, Henrikh Altunian, a former prisoner of conscience, spotted the group of us and said, "I know that we plan to build a democracy, but I must insist that only members of this caucus and 'dovireni osoby' (trusted persons) be present right now." Oles Lavrynovych, one of my closest colleagues at Rukh, rose up in our defense, noting the need to change the Soviet style of closed-door sessions. I whispered to him that, even in a democracy, political strategy is discussed behind closed doors. He winked and whispered back: "But don't tell them." In the front of the room, a deputy from Lviv got up in support of our presence, claiming the need for outside observers to this historic process, while Mr. Filenko, who was chairing the caucus, saw me and announced, "Irene, don't worry, by tomorrow your journalists will know everything. Either we will have made history, or history will be dealing with us (bude z namu spravliatys)."
As the debate (and genuine concern) continued about whether it was "undemocratic" to ask as to leave and whether it was important to start changing Soviet-style habits immediately, it became obvious to us that we had become the focus of the debate. My visitor whispered to me, "we should leave," and I nudged Mr. Lavrynovych that we were going. He then rose again to announce a compromise: we would not be asked to leave, but we would not be invited to stay; if we chose to leave it would be of our own volition. We said our thanks, and about a half dozen of us left.
As we exited the Writers' Union for a hotel dining room to try and get some dinner (not always a sure thing at hotel dining rooms in those days), I suddenly stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and turned to my visitor and asked: "Please tell me if I have this straight. We're in Kyiv. It's August 23. Four days ago there was a coup attempt in Moscow. We just got kicked out of a caucus where Ukrainian parliamentarians are soberly discussing Ukrainian independence, which, by the way, is scheduled for tomorrow. Am I sane?"
Yes, she replied and sighed: "It's definitely, definitely a big deal." Then we looked at each other and grinned.
By Saturday morning, however, I had stopped grinning and was simply nervous. Right before I walked into the Parliament building - it was a beautiful August morning - I paused to watch the hundreds of people (later in the day the number grew to thousands), who had gathered on the plaza outside, cheering certain parliamentarians as they entered and urging them to vote for independence. These supporters were the informed few, since the vast majority of Ukraine's population had no idea what was about to happen. I said a little prayer as I entered.
* * *
After the break-up of the Soviet Union, I was often involved in discussions about when the Soviet Union fell apart. Was it the first time that Gorbachev gave his glasnost and perestroika speeches? Was it Chornobyl's explosion? Was it when Mr. Yeltsin was elected president of the Russian Republic or maybe the coup of August 19? Was it December 1, 1991, after Ukraine ratified its independence by popular vote, or December 8, when the CIS was formed, or not until Mr. Gorbachev resigned on December 25?
For me, the end of the Soviet Union came on August 24 - not with the actual vote for independence on the floor of the Parliament, which was not taken until early evening, but a little bit before that in the building's auditorium.
The day had been filled with reports and debates about actions taken and not taken throughout the week of the coup; several breaks were called so that the numerous resolutions being put forth could be discussed in caucuses. Behind the scenes, final touches were being put on the wording of the Act of Declaration of the Independence of Ukraine, and a new element, a public referendum to validate the declaration was being discussed.
Late in the afternoon a recess was called for one hour, with the announcement that democrats would meet on the top floor, Communists in the auditorium. As the people's deputies rushed out of the chamber, some upstairs, others down, Ms. Lapychak and I walked out of the press gallery, which was on the top floor, to listen to the National Council's final caucus. Suddenly she turned to me and said, "We know what they're going to do, we know what they're going to say - let's go see if we can get into the auditorium."
We almost flew down several long flights of wide carpeted stairs to get to the auditorium before the doors shut. I had no expectation of getting in. Whereas the National Council caucus was in the open, for all to hear and see, I fully expected the Communists to hold their caucus behind closed doors. We were surprised; we were let in and sat down near the second entrance to the auditorium.
This was to be the final and largest legal gathering of the Communist Party of the Ukrainian SSR. By the next day they would be declared disbanded and their property transferred to the guardianship of Ukraine's Parliament. Oleksander Moroz conducted the caucus, explaining quietly that the next vote on the agenda was for the declaration of Ukraine's independence. One by one the parliamentarians got up and gave their arguments for the act - the coup in Moscow had showed the ineptness of the leaders, and therefore they were dangerous; and arguments against - comrades, my entire life I have been an internationalist, I cannot bring myself to vote for Ukraine's independence, it is the wrong historic course.
The atmosphere in the room was restive and there was a stir as National Council members Dmytro Pavlychko and Volodomyr Yavorivskiy walked in the second entrance, from the back of the auditorium to the front. I had spent many hours translating for Mr. Pavlychko and had observed that, when he was in the mood, he had an almost elfin sense of humor. The front of my seat abutted the entrance; as he walked by, I will swear, his step was elated, his mood was giddy. He was loving this.
It became obvious that this arrival was what we all had been waiting for. Mr. Moroz took the piece of paper that Mr. Pavlychko handed him, read it, looked up at Stanislav Hurenko, chairman of the Communist Party of Ukraine, seated halfway up the auditorium, and a gave a slight nod to Mr. Hurenko. Mr. Moroz then asked Mr. Pavlychko to read aloud the act. Mr. Pavlychko read the short declaration of independence and the compromise resolution providing for a public referendum to confirm the declaration.
Stanislav Ivanovych is a tall man; at this moment, he was a physically impressive man, who rose slowly and fully to his height. He offered the auditorium a few introductory words, then fell quiet. "Comrades," he continued, "today we will vote for Ukraine's independence, for if we do not vote for her independence, there will be trouble for us."
There was absolute, total silence in the auditorium.
This was it: the final directive from the head of the Communist Party to vote for the independence of Ukraine.
And for me, Stanislav Hurenko's statement will always be the moment when the Soviet Union came to its end.
Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, August 23, 1998, No. 34, Vol. LXVI
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