Unity Day marked for first time as official holiday (01/30/00)

Unity Day marked for first time as official holiday

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - More than eight decades after modern Ukraine's initial, brief fling with independence, the country officially commemorated the events of 1918 and 1919 with Unity Day celebrations in Kyiv and throughout the country on January 22.

The celebrations were relatively quiet and modest, and some not too successful. But it was the first time the country officially remembered the declaration of independence by the Ukrainian National Republic in Kyiv on January 22, 1918, and the union of its government with the Lviv-based Western Ukrainian National Republic that followed exactly a year later.

President Leonid Kuchma declared January 22 a permanent national holiday last January, several days after the 80th anniversary commemorations of the 1919 Act of Union.

For Ukraine's 24 oblast centers and the capital of the Crimean autonomous region, as well as raion (county) and municipal administrations, this year was the first organized attempt ever to celebrate Unity Day. The turnouts were low and the ceremonies simple and short for the most part, especially in the southern and central oblasts, but that did not upset Yurii Bohutskyi, President Kuchma's advisor on internal politics.

Speaking to reporters on January 19, Mr. Bohutskyi said he did not expect widespread participation in the officially organized events, noting that it should be understood that it will take time for people to become familiar with the holiday and what it represents.

"No normative act automatically creates a tradition," said Mr. Bohutskyi. "This comes with time. But it is a beginning, and in time customs and traditions will develop."

The most extensive Unity Day observances took place in Kyiv. President Kuchma and a delegation of government officials, including Prime Minister Viktor Yuschenko, First Vice Prime Ministers Yurii Yekhanurov and Mykola Zhulynskyi, Minister of Foreign Affairs Borys Tarasyuk, Minister of Internal Affairs Yurii Kravchenko, as well as Second Vice-Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Viktor Medvedchuk, began the day with wreath-laying ceremonies, first at the Taras Shevchenko monument and then at the Mykhailo Hrushevsky monument.

Later an academic roundtable took place at the Teacher's Building, which in 1918-1920 housed the Central Rada of the Ukrainian National Republic. The official celebration culminated with a gala ceremony at the Kyiv National Opera House that evening.

There, First Vice Prime Minister Zhulynskyi expanded on the theme of the day and emphasized that for Ukrainians unity is the paramount objective. "We are obliged by the great and tragic lessons of our history to be in unity; in political, spiritual and social unity, in linguistic unity, and to make it the consolidating force of the entire Ukrainian nation," stated Mr. Zhulynsky in his keynote address to the audience, which included the new prime minister.

The largest public commemoration in Kyiv took place around St. Sophia Square and along Volodymyr Street, which might be called "monument alley" for the half dozen statutes representing notable figures from the past 1,000 years of Ukraine's history that dot the street. Nearly 2,000 people joined hands in a "human chain" that stretched some two kilometers from the Shevchenko monument and passed by memorials to Hrushevsky and Bohdan Khmelnytsky onto Mykhailivsky Square, where statues of St. Olha and Ss. Cyril and Methodius stand.

The chain commemorated not only the 81st anniversary of the union of Ukraine's lands in 1919, but the jubilee of an earlier, larger human link, constructed from Lviv to Kyiv 10 years ago in which 3 million people took part. The 1990 chain is considered one of the seminal events that consolidated the will of the Ukrainian people for a sovereign and independent state, which culminated in independence in August 1992

This year's human chain, as was the first one, was organized by Rukh, which in 1990 had yet to become a political party and had not yet split into two. The 1999 human chain and a public meeting that followed on St. Sophia Square were organized by the splinter Ukrainian National Rukh Party, led by Yurii Kostenko. However, Hennadii Udovenko's National Rukh of Ukraine Party also participated, a sign that the two sides are coming closer after their monumental split nearly a year ago.

The human link-up and the meeting on St. Sophia Square were preceded by another meeting organized by Mr. Udovenko's National Rukh of Ukraine, the Reform and Order Party and the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists, which are currently united in a coalition. Representatives of the splinter Rukh, including Mr. Kostenko, also were on hand.

That commemoration was held before the memorial to St. Volodymyr the Great, located on a hill overlooking the Dnipro River, where some 200 attendees took part in a symbolic union of the political force of the three political parties. Artesian water carried by couriers from the ancient Pochaiv Monastery in western Ukraine and from the historic Kozak fortress of Khortytsia in the south was combined in a antique silver chalice, from which the three party leaders then drank.

An evening concert of choral music at the Ukrainian Home rounded out the day's events.

In Lviv, considered by many the heart of Ukrainian democracy, 10,000 residents took part in extensive commemorations, including a huge public meeting in the city's Freedom Square and performances at the Lviv Opera House.

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