UKRAINE IN THE NEWS: Storm clouds on the horizon the demise of the Ukrainian SSR (09/01/91)

UKRAINE IN THE NEWS

Storm clouds on the horizon the demise of the Ukrainian SSR

by Dr. James E. Mace

The Ukrainian SSR no longer exists. Its legal government has abolished Soviet power, seized the property of the Communist Party and declared that now there is an independent Ukraine. And just to make certain that this is what Ukraine's inhabitants really want, a plebiscite on the question has been scheduled for December 1.

This might seem the realization of the hopes and dreams of all whom the bonds of ancestry and affection hold to this land, so generously endowed by God and benighted by history. It is, however, only a beginning, and the storm clouds are already peeking over the horizon. Let us hope they will pass, but let us be prepared that they do not.

As of this writing, President George Bush - who earlier this month made clear his lack of affection for the idea of Ukrainian self-determination from the dias of Ukraine's Supreme Soviet - has held up recognizing the independence of the Baltic states with various excuses, and his advisers have let it be known that not least among his reasons for hesitation is the fear that Baltic recognition would create a precedent for Ukraine.

Apparently Ukraine, which has seen so much of its crop bought up by other republics with soon-to-be worthless rubles that Prime Minister Vitold Fokin has warned of impending famine if grain exports are not curtailed, should feed others in preference, to its own citizens. Even should it do so, will Russia accept those same rubles back in payment for the oil that Ukraine needs? Does Mr. Bush see hungry Ukrainians as somehow preferable to hungry Russians? Perhaps he would explain the distinction.

Back when Russian Federation President Boris Yeltsin was a democrat, he signed a Russo-Ukrainian treaty guaranteeing the inviolability of current republic borders. Now, however, he states that he will not "let go" largely Russian areas in other republics (never mind that he never had them), and his spokesmen state that he means Ukraine's Donbas and the Crimea, as well as northern Kazakhstan.

Of Ukraine's 25 oblasts, only in the Crimea do Russians outnumber Ukrainians, and the Crimea now enjoys full autonomy within Ukraine. There is also the question of the Crimean Tatars, whose right of return to the land from which Stalin expelled them must be addressed.

When Ukraine was independent earlier this century, it guaranteed full national cultural autonomy to all non-Ukrainian national communities within its borders, something utterly unknown both in Russia's history and current political dialogue. In the rhetoric of the supposedly nationalist Rukh, one far more commonly encounters the phrase "multi-national Ukrainian people" than the phrase "Ukrainian nation." Ukraine is committed to multiculturalism; Russia, quite simply, is not.

Those who know something about Soviet and Ukrainian history will no doubt recall Lenin's Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia, promising free right to secession to the oppressed nations of the former Russian Empire. Lenin then prompted the establishment of rump Soviet governments in each of those nations and re-conquered as many of them as he could, including Ukraine. Will Russia be similarly "democratic"? In the television news footage of Moscow demonstrations we see tsarist military uniforms, originally worn by representatives of a state, the official policy of which was that there never did, does not now, and never can exist a "Little Russian dialect," as the 1863 Valuyev circular and 1876 Ems Ukaz: called the Ukrainian language which they banned. This is not a hopeful sign.

Ukraine's government has appropriately declared that it has the sole right to command the million and a half troops stationed on Ukrainian soil. But who are these troops and who shall they obey? Where are the conscripted sons of Ukraine stationed? Leading Ukrainian Rukh adherent Dmytro Pavlychko has with great foresight long called for the creation of a Ukrainian army, and the storm clouds already on the horizon have more than vindicated this once-considered extremist position. Starved for news as we are, we cannot urge upon Ukraine a given course, but we must prepare ourselves for any appropriate steps which may be taken in this realm.

The vestiges of a union government still exist, with Mikhail Gorbachev still clinging to his position with bloodied fingernails. It can by no means be ruled out that either he or Yeltsin will demand some sort of compensation for the various economic boons allegedly showered on Ukraine during seven decades of Soviet rule.

Given that Ukraine stands little chance in claiming compensation for its share of the union treasury, for the resources and capital drained from it, as well as for the cultural destruction and millions of lives claimed by Stalinism, we must support the position that all state goods and resources located on the territory of Ukraine belong to Ukraine, unless Ukraine's authorities themselves decide otherwise.

We must defend not only Ukraine's right to self-determination, which it has decided to exercise in the context of strict observance of the rights of all nations inhabiting its territory, but also its right to dispose of its resources, including foodstuffs, on the basis of its national interests and economic fairness. We must oppose all double standards, like those President Bush seems to have in mind, calling for Ukraine to one-sidedly assume obligations to other republics without reciprocal guarantees.

We must defend Ukraine's right, should it seek to exercise it, to issue a call to all troops from Ukraine now stationed outside the republic to return to their native land, and its right to safeguard itself from the inherent danger posed by non-Ukrainian troops in the republic. We may hope that the new alliance will provide for the withdrawal of non-Ukrainian troops and their replacement by locally recruited forces. We now know that there are nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Let us hope that there will be shared control of the Soviet nuclear arsenal, such that no one republic can use those weapons unilaterally either against another republic or the outside world. And we must uphold Ukraine's right to safeguard the inviolability of its borders, especially should Mr. Yeltsin continue his evolution from democrat to autocrat.

And most of all, we must do everything in our power to encourage the continued democratic evolution of Ukraine's politics, a process still only half-realized. When Ukraine declared its independence in its Fourth Universal on January 22, 1918, it did so as a democracy, committed to social justice and the strict protection of the rights of all its inhabitants, Ukrainians, Russians, Poles and Jews alike. Let us hope that the declaration of August 24, 1991, will lead to the fulfillment of the aspirations of the Fourth Universal.

Dr. James E. Mace, a historian, is former staff director of the U.S. Commission on the Ukraine Famine. He is author of "Communism and the Dilemmas of National Liberation" and has published extensively on Soviet policy toward Ukraine in the 1920s and 1930s.