Thirty years ago, on September 9, 1989, during a three-day congress (September 8-10) at the Polytechnical Institute in Kyiv, the establishment of the Popular Movement of Ukraine for Perebudova was formally declared, stirring a packed hall to joyful tears and fraternal embraces as all present sang the words of Taras Shevchenko’s “Testament.”
The formation of Rukh, as the movement was known, was seen as a threat to the political establishment in the Soviet Union’s Communist dystopia that was struggling to avoid internal collapse from the forces of economic and political stagnation and repression. At that time, propaganda was used to discredit the Rukh campaign.
The congress body included 1,200 delegates, including Soviet and foreign media, guests from all over Ukraine and other Soviet republics, Poland, Western Europe and North America.
People in the congress hall waved blue-and-yellow flags and decorated the hall with historic Ukrainian state emblems, including the trident, which was notable since these symbols were banned by the Soviet regime. Some speakers called for the resignation of Communist Party of Ukraine head Volodymyr Shcherbytsky, and the restoration of the full sovereignty of Ukraine, some advocated for a confederation of free republics, while others argued for outright independence.
Rukh’s ideological platform was similar to that of popular movements in the Baltic states, guided by principles of “humanism, democracy, glasnost, pluralism, social justice and internationalism,” as well as political and economic sovereignty, the reversal of decades of Russification in Ukraine, protection of the environment, and protection of the rights of national minorities and ethnic groups living in Ukraine.
Ivan Drach, the Kyiv poet, was elected to lead Rukh, Serhiy Koniev of Dniproderzhinsk was elected as vice-chairman, and Mykola Horyn of Lviv (of the Ukrainian Helsinki Union) was elected to head Rukh’s secretariat.
Crimean Tatars delivered greetings and speeches at the congress, and Prof. Taras Hunczak of the U.S.A. and Chrystia Freeland of Canada addressed the congress on behalf of the North American diaspora.
Kyiv writer Oles Honchar remarked: “Gathered here are not those who are driven by ambition, as the bureaucrats attempt to assert. From this congress’s rostrum the truth of life will speak, as well as concern for the fate of a perebudova, the fate of Ukraine. Only a tradition of labeling could treat the totally natural activity of the Popular Movement in the rebirth of the Ukrainian language and culture as aimed against someone. These are old tunes – sowing suspicion, cultivating hatred, inciting one nation against another – a method well-known since the ancient Romans (‘Divide and conquer’). And the bureaucracy continues to seek a picture of an enemy anywhere the universal stands before the face of the future.”
Mr. Horyn in his address stated: “It was necessary for the nations of the world to experience the artificial famine in Ukraine, a most brutal second world war, the concentration camps of the White Sea canal, Vorkuta, Kolyma, Buchenwald, Maidanek, in order to understand that the long-propagated by totalitarian regimes philosophy of hatred, the devaluation of the individual, the nation, their transformation into their instruments for achieving criminal goals, could lead humanity to catastrophe. In the search for a way out of this crisis post-war democratic thought turned to a rebirth of the humanistic theory of the value of the individual as the crown of creation, and his blossoming as its main goal…”
The undercurrent of the statements was on maintaining unity in the face of so many sources of division. Lev Lukianenko, head of the Ukrainian Helsinki Union, called for the exclusion of Article 6 of the USSR Constitution that affirmed the dictatorship of the Communist Party, and he urged a push for full independence for Ukraine as a legal right under the Soviet Constitution.
Source: “Popular Movement for Perebudova founded in Ukraine,” The Ukrainian Weekly, September 17, 1989.