Turning the pages back... August 24, 2004 (08/21/05)

Turning the pages back...

August 24, 2004

Tens of thousands of Ukrainians lined the Khreschatyk on August 24, 2004, to celebrate Ukraine's 13th anniversary of independence by watching some 5,000 soldiers from all the various military branches dressed in crisp parade dress display their brilliant marching technique. No less impressive: a battle of the bands among the leading orchestras of the country's armed forces, which ended with bursts of daylight fireworks that set a half dozen blue and yellow banners afloat. That was the description offered by our Kyiv correspondent at that time, Roman Woronowycz.

State dignitaries filled a special dais on Independence Square to view the hour-and-a-half-long celebration, among them President Leonid Kuchma, who was flanked by Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych and presidential chief of Staff Viktor Medvedchuk. Minister of Defense Yevhen Marchuk presented the main address, calling on the country to keep moving in the direction it has for the last 13 years. "The last 13 years are witness to the fact that the Ukrainian nation made the right choice," exclaimed Mr. Marchuk.

The previous evening the defense minister and the entire Ukrainian state leadership took part in an evening filled with music and song at the Palats Ukraina concert hall. President Kuchma gave the main presentation; he underscored that Ukraine's political agenda for the next decade should continue along the path that he had set during his 10 years in office. "The point is that the lengthy process of Ukraine's change objectively requires us to ensure the inheritance of the political course," said Mr. Kuchma. "The next decade must be - and I am convinced that it will be - a continuation, and not a change and not a contradiction of the decade that is ending. I repeat: not a contradiction and not a change, but a continuation."

Overseeing his last Independence Day celebration as state leader, Mr. Kuchma noted that in the last decade he had changed a "province of a lost empire" into a sovereign state and a militarized command control economy into a market type system; he had restructured a totalitarian single-party system into a multi-party, civil society; and transformed a "Sovietized" society into a political nation. He underscored, however, that only the first stage of this transformation had taken place. He also emphasized that Ukraine and Ukrainians had begun to develop a European national identity. However, the country still did not have the required democratic institutions and levels of freedoms to become part of the European Union and NATO.

Looking ahead to the presidential election on October 31, 2004, President Kuchma told Ukrainians that they had two choices: either to continue along the path laid out by the policies of the last decade, or face a new radical change in direction that could lead to chaos and the "fall of the economic renaissance."

Source: "Tens of thousands in Kyiv celebrate anniversary of Ukraine's independence," by Roman Woronowycz, Kyiv Press Bureau, The Ukrainian Weekly, August 29, 2004, Vol. LXXII, No. 35.

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