Turning the pages back... February 7, 1993 (02/02/03)

Turning the pages back...

February 7, 1993

A decade ago, this newspaper reported that independent Ukraine's first minister of defense, Kostiantyn Morozov, was under fire from Communist holdovers in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. Members of Parliament who were once members of the Communist Party, which was then banned, had begun circulating a petition demanding the resignation of Gen. Morozov. The Respublika news service reported that the Communists were also calling for the removal of Maj. Gen. Volodymyr Muliava, director of the ministry's Social-Psychological Service. The Communists depicted both as ultra-nationalists.

The Ukrainian Republican Party reacted to the petition drive by cautioning the public to beware of Communist fabrications and disinformation. A URP statement called on the people of Ukraine to defend members of the armed forces who serve Ukraine and who will be able to defend Ukraine from imperialism. "Having emerged from their foxholes," the Communists have begun a new attack, using fabrications and twisting facts, as was done in the worst days of the Communist regime, said the URP.

At about the same time, the president of the Officers' Union of Ukraine, Hryhorii Omelchenko reported that in western Ukraine bogus leaflets were distributed. The leaflets, which appeared to be issued by the Officers' Union, touted Ukrainians' supremacy over Russians and Jews. Col. Omelchenko categorically denied that his union had issued any such materials; he called the leaflets a provocation meant to create inter-ethnic animosity.

Col. Omelchenko explained that the attempts to discredit and dismiss Gen. Morozov were a reaction to the defense minister's firm and principled stand on the formation of Ukrainian military forces and their non-participation in CIS military structures. It was Gen. Morozov who was charged with transforming the Soviet armed forces on Ukrainian territory into a Ukrainian military; and it was Gen. Morozov who in the spring of 1992 had directed that Ukraine's soldiers take an oath of loyalty to the newly independent state.

Source: "Communist bloc demands ouster of Morozov," The Ukrainian Weekly, February 7, 1993, Vol. LXI, No. 6.

| Home Page |