Turning the pages back... February 26, 1989 (02/25/01)

Turning the pages back...

February 26, 1989

In early 1989 The Ukrainian Weekly published an article by Bohdan Nahaylo on the beginnings of a popular front in Ukraine - which later coalesced into Rukh - at a time when such citizens' movements were active in the Baltic states. Following are excerpts of Mr. Nahaylo's report. (Editor's note: at the time, the name of the capital of Ukraine was still being spelled "Kiev.")

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A serious dispute has broken out in Kiev that threatens to widen the already broad rift between the Communist Party authorities in Ukraine and the nationally minded Ukrainian intelligentsia led by the Writers' Union of Ukraine. Since November [1988], leading Ukrainian writers have been calling for, and attempting to form, a mass-based Ukainian organization on the model of the Baltic popular fronts.

The party authorities in Kiev, however, appear as determined as ever not to allow such a movement for national renewal and genuine restructuring to come into being regardless of whether its organizers are dissidents or representatives of the Ukrainian cultural establishment, including party members.

Last summer, attempts were made by "informal groups" in both the western Ukrainian city of Lviv and in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, to follow the example of the Balts and to launch popular movements in support of restructuring. The Ukrainian authorities, however, still headed by Volodymyr Shcherbytsky - the man appointed by Leonid Brezhnev in 1972 to suppress all forms of Ukrainian national assertiveness - made it clear that they were anxious not to allow Ukraine to go the way of the Baltic republics.

The new groups were not allowed to hold gatherings, unauthorized public meetings were broken up, and dissenters were harassed, detained and attacked in the press. Through the use of strong-arm tactics the fledgling popular fronts in Lviv and Kiev were effectively stifled, though not snuffed out completely.

During the next few months, the contrast between the remarkable successes of the Baltic popular fronts and the continuing "stagnation" in Ukraine under Mr. Shcherbytsky contributed to the growth of frustration and radicalization among nationally minded elements of the Ukrainian population. There were even signs of admiration for what the Balts were doing within the Ukrainian Komsomol.

Nevertheless, although as early July 1988, Ivan Drach, the Ukrainian poet and chairman of the Kiev Branch of the Writers' Union of Ukraine, had implicitly called on Mr. Shcherbytsky and his team to go, only dissident groups such as the Ukrainian Helsinki Union were prepared to attack the Ukrainian [Communist] Party leadership explicitly for obstructing restructuring in the republic and to denounce Mr. Shcherbytsky by name.

Toward the end of 1988, new calls for the creation of a Ukrainian Baltic-type popular front were issued, only this time not by dissidents or members of unofficial groups, but by leading Ukrainian writers. ...

Further impetus was provided by what occurred at the first mass meeting in Kiev since the inauguration of glasnost. On November 13 [1988], the Kiev city authorities permitted a meeting on ecological issues that had been organized by several informal groups. Some 10,000 people turned up, and the gathering turned into a political demonstration. The tone was set by the poet Dmytro Pavlychko, who stressed how urgent it had become to form a Ukrainian popular front in support of restructuring. ...

At the end of November, the question of forming a popular front was taken up at a plenum of the board of the Writers' Union of Ukraine. It was evident that behind the scenes the authorities had intervened to reduce the significance of what Mr. Drach and his colleagues had taken on. In his speech Mr. Drach himself stated that an "initiative writers' group in support of restructuring" had been formed, but made no reference to a "popular front." He did stress, though, that this body included both party and non-party members. ...

The writers' plenum adopted a resolution that entrusted the initiative group of the Writers' Union "to draw up a draft of a program of a Ukrainian Movement in Support of Restructuring" and instructed it to involve writers from all over the republic. In other words, the plenum not only recognized the need for such a movement but also endorsed the idea that Ukrainian writers should take the lead in organizing it.

The initiative group soon received support from outside the Writers' Union. A meeting of the members of the Institute of Literature of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR came out in favor of the creation of a popular front. When on December 4, 1988, a meeting was held in Kiev of organizations and associations that back the idea of a popular front, numerous informal groups sent representatives.

Two weeks later, a meeting of the All-Ukrainian Coordinating Council of the Ukainian Helsinki Union - the main "dissident" organization in the republic - met in Kiev and passed a resolution in support of efforts to create a popular front. It noted that in the last six months, apart from Lviv, "attempts to form similar organizations have been made in Odessa, Kharkiv, Vinnytsia, Ivano-Frankivske and other cities in Ukraine"...

Source: "Party, writers clash on creation of popular front in Ukraine" by Bohdan Nahaylo, The Ukrainian Weekly, February 26, 1989, Vol. LVII, No. 9.

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