When Ukraine declared independence on
August 24, 1991, it not only meant the revival of the Ukrainian state—it was
the decisive event in the collapse of the totalitarian soviet empire
Predecessor of the president. Once the process of legitimizing Ukrainian SSR's sovereignty
was launched, Volodymyr Ivashko, the 11th First Secretary of the Central
Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine (1989-1990), was promoted in Moscow
and transfered his duties to Leonid Kravchuk
Ukraine did not gain independence like a bolt from
heaven because of Moscow’s failed putsch in August 1991, a hypothesis that is
not only based on a narrow-minded ignorance of history, but one that is also
the ideological meme used to impose Russian imperial stereotypes on Ukrainians.
In 1991, the USSR gave the appearance of a mighty monolith. The myth of its
monolithic might was supported by deliberate propaganda and cultivated in the
soviet educational system from kindergarten to graduate school.
In reality, the system built by the bolsheviks in the early
20th century had
already exhausted its resources. The way the totalitarian communist empire had
been built, with a monopoly of power resting in the Communist Party, flew in
the face of the laws of the universe and of social organization, whose
underlying principle is diversity. The strategic goals of the communist
government were utopian and unnatural, while the ways in which it tried to
reach them, illegitimate and inhumane. By 1985, soviet leadership headed by
Mikhail Gorbachev began an attempt to overcome their systemic crisis through perestroika or rebuilding, but these efforts were
doomed because they were based on the idea of preserving a system that was
neither viable nor sustainable.
A parade of sovereignties
From November 1988 through December 1990, most of the
soviet republics passed declarations of sovereignty, which included making
republican laws supersede soviet ones. The first to do so was the Estonian SSR,
whose legislature passed a Declaration of Sovereignty on November 16, 1988. It
was soon followed by the Lithuanian SSR on April 18, 1989 and the Latvian SSR
on July 28, 1989. These documents stated, among others, that the future status
of the republic within the USSR would be established on a contractual basis. On
September 23, 1989, the legislature of the Azerbaijani SSR passed a
Constitutional Bill “On the sovereignty of the Azerbaijani SSR,” which declared
the republic a “sovereign socialist state within the USSR” whose territory was
governed by its own and soviet laws, provided that the latter did not violate
the sovereign rights of the Azerbaijani SSR.
At the beginning of 1990, all three Baltic countries
announced that they were leaving the USSR altogether. On February 2, the
Estonian legislature passed the Declaration of State Independence of Estonia,
while on February 23, the Estonian SSR issued a Resolution “On preparing for
the independence of Estonia,” which proposed “starting official negotiations
between the USSR and the Estonian SSR regarding the renewal of the independence
of the Estonian Republic based on acknowledging the validity of the Treaty of
Tartu signed between Estonia and the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet
Republic on February 2, 1920.
Meanwhile, on February 15, 1990, the legislature of
the Latvian SSR issued its Declaration of State Independence of Latvia, which
included “the need to take steps to transform the Latvian SSR into a free and
independent Latvian state.” On May 4, it issued the Declaration of the renewal
of the independence of the Latvian Republic. The country’s highest lawmaking
body declared the July 21, 1940 Declaration “On the entry of Latvia into the
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics” invalid and restored the Constitution of
the Latvian Republic, which had been set by a Constituent Assembly on February
15, 1922, across the entire territory of Latvia.
On March 11, the Lithuanian legislature followed suit
and issued an Act on the renewal of the independence of the Lithuanian state
and declared the Constitution of the USSR null and void across the entire territory
of Lithuania.
The Baltic republics also supported Georgia, which
issued a Resolution “On the guarantee of Georgia’s state sovereignty” on March
9, 1990. This stated its intentions of eliminating violations of the May 7,
1920 treaty between Georgia and Soviet Russia and restoring Georgia’s rights as
a nation. It also proposed starting negotiations to restore Georgia as an
independent state.
On Moscow Time. Ukraine was the Great White Hope of the new
Commonwealth Agreement
(Leonid Kravchuk, the first President of the
independent Ukraine, and Mikhail Gorbachev)
The situation in the Ukrainian SSR evolved somewhat
more slowly. Because of its significance within the soviet empire, the
nationally self-aware elite was systematically destroyed over the course of
decades while the local segment of the communist system was built up especially
strongly. The Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU) leadership led by Volodymyr
Shcherbytskiy tried to counter any political initiatives among the citizenry
and prevented the formation of any civic organizations that were not under the
control of the CPU. Moreover, it resisted democratization and continued
to promote the preservation of the USSR.
Nevertheless, national democratic forces began to
emerge in Ukraine, the most active of whom concentrated themselves around
various cultural associations. The earliest of these were societies established
in the capital: the Ukrainian Culture Club (1987), the Heritage Ukrainian
Discovery Club (1987), the Shevchenko Ukrainian Language Society (1988), and
the National Union to Foster Perestroika (1988). The Lion’s Society was
established in Lviv. Similar societies, communities and associations began to
emerge widely and encompassed all of the country’s major cities. Their
activities were largely aimed against the russification policies of the
communist regime, which had reached dangerous proportions in the 1970s and
1980s, threatening the very existence of the Ukrainian nation.
As the number and activity of these civil
organizations grew in Ukraine, the question arose of how to coordinate their
activities and establish a single mass-scale civil organization at the national
level. This became Narodniy Rukh Ukrainy, the National Movement of Ukraine for
perestroika, which was organized formally in September 1989 at a constituent
convention in Kyiv. Initially, the Rukh platform did not directly and
unequivocally include demands that Ukraine leave the USSR, but stressed that
“national state development in the republic needs to be carried out with the purpose
of confirming the state sovereignty of the Ukrainian SSR,” and that
constitutional reform “should lead to the USSR becoming a Federated Union of
truly sovereign states based on the full and equal status of each of its
members.”
Broad public support for Rukh was the decisive factor
in the success of national democratic forces during the election to the
Verkhovna Rada on March 4, 1990. In the run-up to the election, Rukh and those
organizations whose spirit matched it formed a Democratic Bloc. It saw 111 of
the candidates on its electoral lists seated in the 442-seat 12th convocation of the Verkhovna Rada of
the Ukrainian SSR. This was a remarkable success in what was effectively a
one-party system—the provision in the USSR Constitution that confirmed the
leading role of the Communist Party was only dropped after this election—and
the CPU’s monopoly on the news and information industry. On July 16, 1990, the
newly-elected Rada issued a Declaration of the State Sovereignty of Ukraine.
Needless to say, Moscow did not just stand idly as the
center of the USSR while this parade of sovereignties marched by.
The CIS Agreement: new marriage or overdue divorce?
Over the course of April and May 1990, USSR President
Mikhail Gorbachev signed a slew of laws passed by the Supreme Council of the
USSR that were intended to preserve the Union: “On the procedure for deciding
matters related to the departure of republics from the USSR” of April 3; “On
the basis of economic relations between the Soviet Union, and union and
autonomous republics” of April 10; “On establishing powers between the Soviet
Union and federated subjects” of April 26; “On the free national development of
citizens of the USSR who reside outside their national states or do not have
such states on the territory of the USSR” of April 26; and “On USSR
citizenship” of May 23. In addition, the Kremlin was busy promoting a draft of
a new Union Agreement as an instrument for preserving the USSR and preventing
its disintegration by reforming the soviet system. When Ukraine adopted its
Declaration of Sovereignty, work on this Agreement went into high gear. On July
20, it became the main item on the agenda at a joint session of the
Presidential Council and the Council of the Federated USSR chaired by
Gorbachev.
The idea of a Union Treaty as an instrument for
regulating the status of the republics was first raised in the declarations and
resolutions issued by the legislatures of Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and
Georgia, whose March 9 declaration was expanded on June 20, 1990. It was clear
that all these documents saw a contractual definition of the status of the
republics within the USSR as a temporary measure in order to leave the Union in
a civilized, peaceful manner, not as a model for rejuvenating it.
A conceptually different model was applied in the
Russian SFSR’s Declaration of State Sovereignty, which announced the “decisive
establishment of a lawful state as part of the renewed USSR” and the
association of Russia with the other republics “based on an agreement.”
It was this Russian model that the soviet leadership
also adopted as an instrument for resolving the problems of the USSR’s national
polity. On June 12, 1990, the Kremlin held a meeting of the Council of the USSR
Federation chaired by Gorbachev and joined by the heads of parliament of all of
the soviet republics.[1] The decision was made to set up a working group
consisting of representatives of each of the republics to draft and sign a new
Union treaty. Ukraine’s representative was Volodymyr Ivashko, the then-head of
the republic’s legislature.
That same day, 35 minutes before the working group was
scheduled to meet, Russia passed its Declaration of State Sovereignty. Most
likely this step was agreed with Mikhail Gorbachev in order to influence the
stances of those republics that had not yet passed their declarations,
especially Ukraine. In any case, it was no mere coincidence that the basic
approach to the Union Treaty of Russia’s leadership and that of the Soviet
Union were the same—rather, it reflected their imperial mentality.
According to Ivashko, Borys Yeltsin declared
immediately that they had to start with an inter-republic agreement involving
“no preliminary economic or political conditions whatsoever,” not with the new
Union Treaty. However, official reports from TASS stated that at the Federation
Council meeting, the discussion was about “the need to immediately draft and
sign a Union Treaty.” This reflected less a difference of principles between
Gorbachev and Yeltsin in their views of the function of the Union Treaty, than
a difference in their views of how and by what means to preserve the USSR.
When he reported back to the Verkhovna Rada about the
working group’s meeting, Ivashko recommended passing the Declaration of State
Sovereignty of the Ukrainian SSR as quickly as possible, as it would give
Ukraine’s representatives at the negotiations a mandate to draft a new Union
Treaty and establish a new federation.
To prepare proposals regarding the Union Treaty,
working groups were drawn up in each of the individual republics and in the
Supreme Council of the USSR. The working group of the Ukrainian SSR included
Volodymyr Hryniov, the deputy head of the Rada, Vitold Fokin, deputy chair of
the Council of Ministers, and several experts: Volodymyr Vasylenko, the main
academic consultant of the advisory group of the legal department of the VR
secretariat; Serhiy Dorohuntsov, chair of the Ukrainian SSR Industrial Forces
Study Council under the Academy of Sciences; and MP Mykola Shulha, chair of the
VR State Commission for State Sovereignty and Interrepublic and International
Relations.
The first version of the Union treaty was sent out to
the union republics by President Gorbachev in November 1990. Published November
24, however, it had been drafted by the Union’s central bodies without
involving the republics. Moreover, the model of Union that it proposed
cardinally conflicted with the Declaration of Ukraine’s state sovereignty: the
Union was unambiguously defined as a “sovereign federated state” and was
bestowed with very broad powers, making the sovereignty of the republics a
legal fiction.
In order to get this draft approved and effectively
preserve the USSR, the Union’s leadership decided to hold a nationwide
referendum to approve the new Union Treaty. Scheduled for March 17, 1991, the
question regarding the future of the USSR was formulated thus: “Do you think
its necessary to preserve the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as a renewed
federation of equal, sovereign republics in which human rights and freedoms are
fully guaranteed to any nationality?” The question was clearly improperly
formulated from a sociological point of view, including its PR-ish wording and
the fact that it actually addressed at least three different issues, as well as
from a legal one, as its subject did not correspond to what was permissible for
referenda in the legislation of the time, including Art. 4 of the USSR Law “On
nationwide voting” dated December 27, 1990. This testified to the Kremlin’s
determination to get its way politically and preserve the USSR, even if it used
questionable methods.
But a few days prior to the referendum, on March 12
and 13, all the union and republic papers published, not the first version of
the Union Treaty issued back on November 24, 1990, but a second version.
Although it was differently named—Treaty on the Union of Sovereign Republics—,
it was essentially the same conceptual modal as the first, in which the Soviet
Union was defined as a “sovereign, federal democratic state” and its member
republics were deprived of the most essential sovereign powers. The text of
this second treaty had also been drafted by the Kremlin without the
participation of the republics. The soviet leadership was counting on an
affirmative response to the referendum question to legitimize it as the voice
of the people in support of the published draft Union Treaty.
Over January, February and March 1991, all the
Communist Party’s affiliates and its entire propaganda machine worked overtime
to promote Gorbachev’s version of the Union Treaty, slandering nationalist
separatists and scaremongering among ordinary citizens about the catastrophic
consequences of a possible collapse of the USSR. In January, there was even a
show of police force being used against civilians when special forces units of
the soviet Interior Ministry were thrown at participants in the national
liberation movement in Lithuania.
Ukraine and the preservation of the USSR
In this situation, the Verkhovna Rada of the Ukrainian
SSR, having overcome resistance from imperialist communist elements, passed a
Resolution “On confirming a referendum in the Ukrainian SSR for March 17, 1991”
on February 27. Along with the all-union referendum, the document called for
surveying the population of the Ukrainian SSR as to their thoughts about the
nature of a future Union. For this purpose, a second question was added to the
ballot: “Do you agree that Ukraine should be part of a Union of Soviet
Sovereign States based on the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine?”
A total of 37,732,178 citizens of the Ukrainian SSR
were on the voting lists in Ukraine. Of these 31,514,244 voted on the first
question, 83.52%, with 22,110,889 or 70.16% approving and 8,810,089 or 27.99%
disapproving. On the second, republic-related question, 31,465,091 or 83.48%
voted, with 24,224,687 or 80.17% voting yes and 5,656,701 or 17.97% voting no.
With this kind of result in hand, the Ukrainian
leadership agreed to participate in drafting a new Union Treaty. The formal
drafting process began on April 23, 1991, at Novo-Ogarovo, the suburban Moscow
residence of the soviet President, Mikhail Gorbachev. The Verkhovna Rada of the
Ukrainian SSR never approved the members of the Ukrainian delegation nor established
the formal authority of the Ukrainian representatives who participated in the
Novo-Ogarovo process. Responsibility for negotiations in the Preparatory
Committee was taken on by Leonid Kravchuk, who was the then-head of the
Verkhovna Rada. He also designated Mykola Shulha to represent Ukraine in the
working group.
On June 18, Leonid Kravchuk addressed the morning
session of the Verkhovna Rada of the Ukrainian SSR with an announcement that he
did not have the final document in hand and that agreement had not been reached
on a large number of key positions and the formulation of the draft. That same
day, in an interview with the All-Union Broadcasting Company, he announced
that, of the 23 articles in the treaty, the representatives of the republics
had agreed about 19, but that the four remaining points were the most
fundamental. Despite this, the text of the Novo-Ogarovo draft Union Treaty was
distributed to the Ukrainian MPs under the name “Treaty on a Union of Sovereign
States” with a covering letter from Gorbachev and published in the Union press on
June 28 and in the republican press on June 29. There was no mention of the
provisions that had not been agreed yet. Moreover, the published draft
contained, not 23 provisions, as Kravchuk had stated, but 26.
The more the Kremlin tried to force events its way,
the greater the tension during the negotiations, which finally went into a dead
end.
The State
Committee for Emergencies
With negotiations
going nowhere, a group of the most conservative officials from soviet special
forces, the Communist Party, and soviet and military bureaucracies, hoped to
save the USSR from collapse by staging a putsch on August 19, 1991, declaring a
state of emergency and bringing the army into Moscow.
When the State
Committee for Emergencies, as it called itself, declared a state of emergency,
different political forces in Ukraine reacted variously. The CPU leadership,
headed by Stanislav Hurenko, demanded that Party organizations support the SCE,
follow its orders and ensure that they were followed locally. On August 19,
First Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPU Hurenko called a meeting
with Kravchuk and Army General Valentin Varennikov, who arrived in Kyiv on
orders from the putschists to ensure the loyalty of the Verkhovna Rada and the
Cabinet of Ministers.
At this point, the
CPU leadership completely discredited itself as an anti-democratic and
anti-Ukrainian force. By contrast, popular support for national democratic
forces grew enormously. At an extraordinary session on August 24, 1991, the
Verkhovna Rada passed an Act declaring the independence of Ukraine, with 346
votes in favor among the 442 deputies.
Nevertheless, the
declaration of independence was anything but an accidental event driven by the
putsch in Moscow. In fact, the putsch did not lead to independence; rather it
was a response to Ukraine’s refusal to participate in the renewal of the USSR
or to reject its path to rebuilding a Ukrainian state. The defeat of the
putschists only speeded up the formal announcement—in fact, the renewal of, in
strictly historical terms—of Ukraine as an independent state.
In 1991, the
renewal of an independent Ukrainian state took place in a completely peaceful
manner. Still, this in no way diminishes the legality and legitimacy of this
historic event. As it moved towards independence, Ukraine played a decisive
role in the disintegration of the USSR and the ultimate dismantling of the
totalitarian communist system.
The
Russo-Ukrainian War
However we might
feel about the elements of Ukraine’s soviet period—especially formal attributes
such as its government structure and administration, its right to directly
participate in international relations, especially in the UN, its right to
freely leave the USSR—, it is important to keep in mind that this was not the
result of mutual good will but of concessions forced by the totalitarian
communist system on the Ukrainian liberation movement, whose most prominent
proponents in recent history were the Armed Forces of the Ukrainian National
Republic (UNR) and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalist’s military arm,
the UPA.
The soviet system
of government contained elements that were devised to neutralize any
liberationist potential in the Ukrainian nation. However, during this new phase
of the struggle and the decline of the totalitarian communist system, they
worked to establish an independent Ukrainian state and they were used as an
instrument for restoring the Ukrainian state and getting the country recognized
at the international level as a fully legitimate subject of international law.
However, Russian
policy towards Ukraine did not undergo any fundamental changes after Ukraine
restored independence. The ruling Russian elite has ignored international law,
a major Ukrainian-Russian political agreement, and any number of other treaties
and memoranda, and has continued to treat Ukraine as a part of Russia and to
dream of an imperial comeback and the restoration of “One Great Russia” through
the absorption of Ukraine.
The liberation
struggles of 1917–1920, the rural resistance of the 1920s and 1930s, the armed
struggle of OUN-UPA in the 1940s and 1950s, the restoration of independence in
1991, the European and Euro-Atlantic orientation of Ukraine, and—most
importantly—the explosion of Ukrainian national spirit have convinced Russia’s
political leadership, its pundits and analysts of the impossibility of dreams
of an imperial comeback—as long as there is a Ukrainian Ukraine, a Ukrainian
nation and a Ukrainian idea. For this reason, the Russian establishment has
formulated its current strategy towards Ukraine as: “What we need is not a
pro-Russian Ukraine but a Russian Ukraine.” Under the current circumstances,
the main instrument for creating a “Ukraine without Ukrainians” is not war or
genocide to destroy the nation as in the past, just in the past—but primarily
humanitarian aggression.
Unfortunately for
Ukraine, the restoration of an independent state may have been had the basic
ideological political and legal conditions for a Ukrainian national rebirth,
but it was not accompanied by a consistent Ukrainian-centric state social
policies in general, especially as relates to language and culture.
By contrast,
Russia has been paying great attention precisely to this dimension in both its
domestic and its foreign policies. And under cover of these policies, it has
been carrying out its aggression against Ukraine in three main areas: (1)
inspiring and supporting a mass scale information and propaganda war; (2)
engaging in a linguistic and cultural war; and (3) carrying out a
historiosophical war, that is, speculating on historical events. The Kremlin’s
strategic goal is to destroy the identity of the Ukrainian nation, which is the
backbone of the Ukrainian national state. This means destroying the independent
Ukrainian state once and for all, which is supposed to provide a “final
solution to the Ukrainian question” to satisfy Russian imperial ambitions.
However, Russia’s
humanitarian aggression poses a treat to all citizens of Ukraine, regardless of
their ethnicity, social rank or material status. The illegal annexation of
Crimea has proved that if a crime is carried out against the Ukrainian nation
and the independent Ukrainian state is eliminated, Ukrainians will be forced to
become citizens of another nation and forget about democracy, dignity, human
rights and basic freedoms.
Today, the world
is witness to a paradoxical and shameful situation, where under cover of a
covert military operation, Russia’s leadership is using officials in the
Ukrainian government to carry out its humanitarian invasion. Personal
responsibility for maintaining a Ukrainian-centric path in state policy lies
with the President of Ukraine as the guarantor of state sovereignty and
territorial integrity, the upholding of the Constitution of Ukraine, human
rights and freedoms. The Premier and Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada, as the heads
of the executive and legislative branches of power in the country also bear
personal responsibility.
Most of all,
ordinary Ukrainians need to become aware of the essence and the specific
consequences of Russia’s current humanitarian aggression in order to join
forces to counter the threats to Ukraine as a sovereign state. Their level of
awareness and initiative will determine what political course the country’s
government maintains, how well it defends the statehood Ukraine regained in
1991, and, most of all, the prospect that it offers to ordinary Ukrainians.
Volodymyr
Vasylenko is an expert in international law and academic. He was co-author of
the first draft Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine and consultant to
the Verkhovna Rada in the drafting of the final act. In 1992-1995, Mr.
Vasylenko served as Ukraine's Ambassador to Benelux and representative to the
EU and envoy to NATO
[1] The heads of the republican parliaments, today called speakers, were
effectively the highest office in their respective lands in soviet times.
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