Turning the pages back...

April 20, 1989

For four consecutive days in April of 1989, between 20,000 and 25,000 people gathered in the central square of Lviv to protest what they saw as illegal elections practices.

The public meetings began on April 20 and continued through April 23 in the city's historic "rynok." They were organized to protest tactics used by the local Communist Party apparatus to exclude independents from the ballot in special elections to the new USSR Congress of People's Deputies scheduled for May 14 in districts where no candidate had won a majority in the March 26 general elections because voters had crossed out their names - even in the single-candidate races.

The public criticism was due to the political machinations of local party officials during caucuses in such districts called to confirm nominees, among whom were Ivan Drach, the Kyiv poet and leader of the still unofficial Popular Movement to Promote Restructuring, or Rukh. Mr. Drach was nominated by a majority of workers in a number of local factories and institutions in a Lviv district, but was eliminated in a caucus when local party committees reportedly illegally substituted chosen delegates with their own appointees.

On April 21 an hourlong warning strike took place at eight institutions, including the Lenin factory, in support of Mr. Drach's candidacy. These were apparently the first labor strikes in Lviv since it came under Soviet rule in 1944. The next day, at a public meeting that attracted some 25,000, the people demanded that all candidates nominated by labor collectives for the USSR Congress of People's Deputies be registered.

Source: "Lviv residents protest party maneuvers against independents," The Ukrainian Weekly, April 30, 1989, Vol. LVII, No. 18.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, April 14, 2002, No. 15, Vol. LXX

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