Twenty-five years ago, on October 21, 1992, the Verkhovna Rada, in a move to appease student protests in Kyiv, voted to create a parliamentary committee to examine the question of a referendum and an election of new municipal council heads.
The students, organized as the Union of Ukrainian Students (SUS), demanded Ukraine’s withdrawal from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), multi-party parliamentary elections and the formation of a reformist government of “national trust.” The tensions intensified on October 13 and 16 when SUS demonstrators violently clashed with OMON troops and police, with tens of students sustaining injuries.
The All-Ukrainian Organization for Workers Solidarity (VOST) announced its support for SUS’s demands. At a joint meeting on October 17 at Independence Square that was attended by 5,000 people, VOST issued a statement calling for the dissolution of Ukraine’s Parliament and the prosecution of officials responsible for militia brutality against the demonstrators.
The referendum committee was created during a closed session of Parliament as a compromise to SUS’s modified demand for municipal and parliamentary elections.
SUS had originally demanded that Parliament discuss a law on parliamentary elections by November 1, pass a law on elections by November 30 and conduct an election on March 30, 1993. This was revised at an October 15 meeting between SUS leaders and a delegation of people’s deputies headed by Ivan Pliushch, chairman of Ukraine’s Parliament.
The SUS delegation also met with Ukraine’s new prime minister, Leonid Kuchma, and informed him that they would not support him or his government if Lt. Gen. Andriy Vasylyshyn remained as minister of internal affairs. On October 12 the delegation had an unsatisfactory meeting with President Leonid Kravchuk.
In response to the Parliament’s announcement on the creation of a referendum committee, members of SUS, VOST and Kyiv’s transport workers’ strike committee issued a statement giving Ukraine’s Parliament “one more chance.”
On October 22 students in Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Chernivtsi, Ternopil and other cities announced a general strike. Some 30 students continued their hunger strikes while more tents began to appear on Independence Square. More than 300 protesters arrived in Kyiv from Luhansk, Dnipro, Uman, Lviv and other cities.
The students had gained support from the Ukrainian Republican Party, the Ukrainian Conservative Republican Party, the Congress of National Democratic Forces and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, as well as the Popular Movement of Ukraine (Rukh) and the All-Ukrainian Brotherhood of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA).
By October 23, SUS had called off its hunger strike and disbanded the tent city. “We stopped our protest because we realized that we had no one with whom to hold discussions,” said Mykhailo Kanafotsky, 24, vice-president of SUS. The present make-up of Parliament consisted of “post-Communist nomenklatura united by Socialist slogans,” and there was no sense in continuing discussions with them, he said.
In a move to appease protesters, the Cabinet was modified to include SUS-supported candidates Viktor Pynzenyk, Petro Talanchuk and Kostiantyn Morozov. Mr. Vasylyshyn remained as internal affairs minister, despite the students’ demands for his removal from office.
Source: “Parliament committee to review students’ demands,” by Khristina Lew, The Ukrainian Weekly, October 25, 1992.