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. As we mark 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

CONCLUSION

Stanislav Hurenko's words still echo in my ears. I've read several interpretations and translations of the statement he made in the auditorium, and the phrase about voting for independence is usually similar. However his final phrase, "nam bude bida" has been variously translated as "there will be trouble," "there will be problems for us" and "it will be a disaster." The Economist once even rendered his words as "we'll be in deep s___!" The impact of his words, nonetheless, is the same each time: to leave me stunned. During the silence that followed his words, I remember sitting perfectly still in the back of the auditorium, barely breathing, hesitant to look up.

When I did look up, I saw a blur of bodies moving and caught a glimpse out of the corner of my eye of my colleagues Christine Demkovych and Natalia Fedushchak, sitting almost directly behind Mr. Hurenko, furiously taking notes. I turned around and looked at Mr. Lavrynovych of Rukh, a slight, pale man, who sat with lips pursed. He saw me and rose, shaking his head, slowly whispered, "I've never seen anything like this ... I never could have imagined."

As the auditorium emptied, a deputy in a Soviet military uniform remained seated in front of Ms. Lapychak and me. As he, one of the few remaining, got up to leave, he spotted us and stopped: "I'm sure that this meeting was interesting for you, young ladies," he said, "this was a unique event. ... However, - it [independence] will last only five years."

Rukh's Serhii Odarych later told me that several Communists, instead of returning to the main chamber, had tried to break away after leaving the auditorium by exiting the building through an underground passage that links the Parliament building with the parliamentary committee building across the street. They had hoped to either break the quorum, and therefore invalidate the vote, or simply did not want to cast a vote to end the Soviet Union. The possibility of such a breakaway attempt had been foreseen, and a group of young men from Rukh had gone ahead and shut the doors, and then stood to block the underground passage.

The "khloptsi z Rukhu" (guys from Rukh) were called upon whenever a minor Herculean effort was required at a moment's notice. Need to have several thousand leaflets distributed? O.K., ask the "khloptsi z Rukhu." Does a demonstration need to be organized? Get the guys. Need to block fleeing Communists? No problem, ask "nashi khloptsi."

When I had left the Rukh office the night before, my last memory was walking out of the large room off the entrance to the building that housed the printing and copying operation. During the final night, in several locations throughout Kyiv, parliamentarians, staffers and friends wrote, typed, corrected, revised, printed and collated several hundred copies, one for each deputy plus some extras, of the acts and resolutions that were to be on the agenda the next day. This was a huge undertaking beyond the capabilities of the administrative staff of the Verkhovna Rada, which normally prepared documents for parliamentarians.

Resolutions were being written and revised late into the night. Besides the Act of the Declaration of Independence, they included such resolutions as removing the KGB from the control of the Communist Party, declaring the military to be under the control of the Parliament, creation of a national guard - 16 in all.

John Hewko, a Ukrainian American lawyer who was then with the Soros-funded Advisory Council to Parliament, and his wife, Marga, rented a tiny hotel apartment in the Hotel Kyiv - the building that also housed many of the national deputies, including several active members of the National Council such as Vyacheslav Chornovil, Les Taniuk and Mr. Filenko. The Hewkos, into the final hours, continued to make copies of revised resolutions on their small desktop Canon copier, one slow sheet at a time.

At the Rukh office, resolutions were being printed, collated and stacked. Whenever there was a minor revision, rather than remake entire sets of copies, staff were set to the task of manually revising the copies. Replacement parts for photocopiers, paper, toner, mimeograph stencils - these were in short supply - while labor, though exhausted, was plentiful.

As I said my late night good-byes, I remember Mr. Odarych standing alone in the center of the room, bending his head to light one of those god-awful Bulgarian cigarettes he smoked, flicking out the match, and slowly surveying what "khloptsi" he had left to work with - guys who had been up all night, every night, for almost a week. One tired soul had pulled three chairs together and made a makeshift bed, another was slumped over a stack of papers, a third was organizing packets to be loaded into a car.

For the week preceding the vote, the Rukh headquarters on Prospekt Peremohy, the Ukrainian Writers' Union building on Ordzhonikidze and the Hotel Kyiv at the intersection of Kirov and Karl Libknekht streets was the triangle of activity for those working with Rukh and the National Council. Ivan Drach's office at the Writers' Union was the scene of many meetings and much resolution drafting, and the building's auditorium was used for caucuses and press conferences. Even the building manager's room on the first floor was occupied for action. With an accessible TV, people were always crowding around, tracking events.

The Rukh building was a grassroots organizing and information-production machine - with phones, faxes, computers, copiers, people going almost around the clock - while the Hotel Kyiv was the place to meet, eat, sleep. The hotel wasn't built to handle the volume of activity that it was forced to handle during the week of the coup. The all-too-small elevators were overworked, overcrowded and always getting stuck; to avoid the long wait, people would often walk up and down five, seven, nine flights.

Because of the number of national deputies who lived in the building, the Hotel Kyiv dining room was always a good place for journalists and staff to catch a parliamentarian, and, in general, the hotel was also a good place to observe who was talking with whom, who was coming and going, who was meeting with whom.

One of the funnier memories I have of that intense week came as Ms. Lapychak and I waited for an elevator. She and I were at the front of a group of about half a dozen people who had patiently watched the floor display above the elevator descend towards the lobby. The elevator landed, the door opened and revealed the back of Mr. Pavlychko, who was gesturing animatedly to three other men in the elevator. Realizing that the elevator had stopped, he turned around and looked out onto those waiting. Recognizing Ms. Lapychak and me, he calmly greeted us, "Good day, lovely ladies," and then pushed the button for the top floor. Obviously not yet finished with his discussion, and not yet willing to release his captive audience, Mr. Pavlychko turned back around and continued talking animatedly. The door shut with the men inside, and we watched the elevator ascend.

* * *

Not only do I hope that someday historians will gather all the facts of who was where, when and how, and what they said - but I hope that those who played pivotal roles will write about their thoughts and emotions during that week.

What was going through the mind of Mr. Hurenko, one of the youngest people to ever head the Communist Party of Ukraine, when he asked his fellow Communists to vote for independence? What was Mr. Pavlychko thinking as he became one of the few and major negotiators between the National Council and the Communists over the wording and strategy of the declaration and other resolutions?

Was it the case, as later claimed by Mykhailo Horyn, who was still hospitalized with a heart condition on August 24, that the text of the declaration was grabbed out of Levko Lukianenko's hands by Mr. Yavorivsky seconds before it was to be read on the floor of Parliament, so that Mr. Yavorivsky could be the one noted in history as having read the declaration? Or was it, as others claimed, that Mr. Yavorivsky's reading was part of the final compromise the Communists requested: that the act not be read on the floor of Parliament for the vote by someone as far right as Mr. Lukianenko - but by someone more moderate - and that Mr. Pavlychko had agreed without the consent of fellow members of the National Council?

How important was news about events in Moscow in convincing the deputies to vote for independence? Susan Viets, a correspondent for the British paper The Independent, never set foot outside her door without a short-wave radio after August 19. On August 24 she could often be seen in the hallway on the top floor of the Parliament building, near a window, trying to pick up bands to hear reports of the special session in Moscow and the struggle between Messrs. Yeltsin and Gorbachev. At one point, placing the radio to her ear, she grew still and announced aloud, "Oh, my God. In Moscow the Communist Party just disbanded."

Apparently the Parliament staff also had heard about the resignation of Mr. Gorbachev as the general secretary of the CPSU because about 15 minutes later, a staff member walked out to the chairman's podium, whispered into the ear of the deputy chairman, Ivan Pliusch, and suddenly another break was called. Ms. Viets and her short-wave were surrounded by people as news of Mr. Gorbachev's decision spread in the hallways.

It is difficult to reconcile the optimism and excitement of August 24, 1991, with today's often dismal reality. The vote for independence - 321 for, two opposed, six abstaining - followed by a vote to accept a December 1 referendum - was met with a relatively sedate standing ovation by the parliamentarians, most of whom still were, after all, Communists. However, there was obvious enthusiasm and joy on the part of members of the National Council. And roars of euphoria from the crowd outside permeated the thick walls of the building, and in the press and visitors' galleries, tears flowed with the applause.

As the session drew to a close, Mr. Chornovil, the National Council chairman and a human rights activist who had spent years in the Soviet gulag, asked Verkhovna Rada Chairman Leonid Kravchuk to allow a huge, blue-and-yellow flag into the chamber - a gift from supporters outside.

He led the procession that carried the massive flag into the room, and helped drape it over the podium. The session officially over, and most of the parliamentarians gone, members of the National Council remained, surrounding the flag-draped podium. Many of them cried as they sang "Hey u Luzi Chervona Kalyna." Ms. Lapychak and I remained in the press gallery, singing and crying along with them.

When the lights were finally dimmed, we left, walking in the warm evening to Mr. Chornovil's suite in the Hotel Kyiv. The street around the Verkhovna Rada was quiet, the world unaware of the day's drama.

Twenty or so people were crammed into Mr. Chornovil's small room for a toast. A mere six days earlier, in Zaporizhia, I had been in a similar hotel room with Mr. Chornovil, but under starkly different circumstances.

John Stepanchuk, then the U.S. deputy consul in Kyiv, and I had come to his room shortly before 7 a.m. on August 19. The weeklong Chervona Ruta music festival in Zaporizhia had ended the night before, and after-hours singing and music playing had gone on until dawn.

Cries of "coup in Moscow" were heard in the halls in the very early morning, as staffers ran down the halls, knocking on people's doors to alert them. Mr. Stepanchuk was Rukh's guest for the festival, and I dashed to his room to see if he had heard the news. "Let's go to Vyacheslav Maksymovych's," he said, "if anybody knows what's going on, he does."

As Mr. Stepanchuk and I were let into Mr. Chornovil's room, his dark silhouette stood against the backdrop of a lace-curtained, sunlit window. He fiddled with his short-wave antenna aimed out the window, and then turned to see who had come in.

"Ah, my friends," he greeted us and approached with open arms as though to hug, "how happy I am to see you - good morning, good morning. It seems as though we have some news today. Well, no need to worry. Pack your bags and your passports. Soon they will be sending you back to America, and me to Siberia."

Now, in just a blip of a week's time, he was offering a toast to a close circle of supporters and friends. "To an independent Ukraine," he began amid immediate cheers and first sips, "may God protect her." Then he paused and began again, "To an independent, but still socialist, Ukraine," and was greeted with cries of protest. He insisted firmly: we need to understand the nature of our victory. He continued, "To an independent, but socialist, Ukraine, and long, I fear, will she remain so."

PART I

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, August 30, 1998, No. 35, Vol. LXVI

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