1991: A LOOK BACK: Ukraine: the road to independence (12/29/91)

1991: A LOOK BACK

Ukraine: the road to independence

After more than 70 years of Soviet rule, in 1991 Ukraine became an independent state and, in so doing, put an end to another state - the Soviet Union.

The immediate cause of what appears to be the irretrievable collapse of the Soviet Union was the December 1 referendum in Ukraine, which, according to the final official tally, yielded an astounding 90.32 percent vote in favor of Ukraine's August 24 Act of Declaration of Independence. The margin by which voters in Ukraine, including the more than 11 million ethnic Russians, supported independence went beyond the expectations of Ukrainians themselves to say nothing of their northern neighbor, Russia, and Western observers.

And although the full impact of Ukraine's emergence on the world scene has yet to be fully appreciated - in Ukraine itself, in the former Soviet Union, and in the West - it is already clear that it will be such as to fundamentally alter not only political relations between Kiev and Moscow, but international relations in general.

The latter point was brought home by the virtual aboutface in the position adopted by the United States towards Ukraine immediately after the referendum vote became evident and which is expected to result in the establishment of formal diplomatic relations between Washington and Kiev. Only several months earlier, on August 1, President George Bush had warned against "suicidal nationalism" in a speech before the Ukrainian Supreme Soviet, thereby making clear his reservations about Ukrainian statehood.

Poland, Hungary, Canada, and the Russian SFSR were the first to extend recognition to Ukraine, and a host of other European states have indicated that they will follow suit.

Independence came relatively quickly, particularly after the failed coup in August, but not without difficulties. The strongest opposition was from the center in Moscow and its allies in Ukraine - i.e., the Communist Party, which controlled the majority, the so-called "Group of 239," in the Ukrainian Supreme Soviet (Council) before the abortive coup. An argument that was repeatedly used by Soviet President MikhaiI Gorbachev was: that the results of the Soviet referendum on March 17 concerning the preservation of the "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as a renewed federation of equal sovereign republics" conclusively showed that Ukraine wanted to remain part of a political union with the center.

Indeed, in March 70.2 percent of voters in Ukraine had responded to the center's referendum question in the affirmative. At the same time, however, 80.2 percent also said yes to the question posed in a republican survey held on the same day. That question asked: "Do you agree that Ukraine should be part of a union of Soviet sovereign states on the principles of the declaration on the state sovereignty of Ukraine?" The republican survey very clearly qualified precisely what kind of an arrangement the people of Ukraine preferred.

The proposal to hold a republican survey simultaneously with the Soviet referendum had been put forth by Leonid Kravchuk, then chairman of the Ukrainian Supreme Soviet, as a compromise between the parliamentary majority, which fully supported the Soviet referendum, and the democratic opposition, which argued that it was "illegal" inasmuch as the center had not consulted with the republics beforehand.

It proved to be a clever maneuver, providing Mr. Kravchuk with a counterargument to the center's insistence that a significant majority in Ukraine supported a "renewed union." His success in having it adopted by the Ukrainian Supreme Soviet also revealed that the parliamentary majority was no longer the monolithic Communist-controlled voting bloc that it had previously been.

Stated differently, already in early 1991 it was becoming apparent that the sovereignty of Ukraine, which had been proclaimed the previous July, was being taken seriously in quarters where one would have least suspected.

Perhaps the most important convert to sovereignty was Mr. Kravchuk himself. Although difficult to pinpoint, certainly by the beginning of the year it was becoming increasingly evident that the Ukrainian leader was distancing himself from the traditionally orthodox republican Communist Party leadership and assuming the position of an independent player in the conflict between the parliamentary majority and the democratic opposition.

The clearest indication of Chairman Kravchuk's middle-of-the road position was at the February plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, where his disagreements with First Secretary Stanislav Hurenko burst into the open. At the time, Izvestia wrote that it was the first time in years that participants in a plenum were witnesses to differences in the party's top leadership.

At the same time, Mr. Kravchuk began to assume the role of chief spokesman for Ukrainian sovereignty, both vis-a-vis Moscow and in the international arena.

Already at the December 1990 plenum of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), Mr. Kravchuk had expressed his reservations about the draft of the new union treaty published in November of that year. The main problem, he argued, is that the center insisted on perpetuating a union state instead of creating a union of states - i.e., that the center was determined to perpetuate itself as a superstructure above the republics.

The revised draft of the new union treaty that was published in March also met with a negative response from the Ukrainian leader. Within several days of its publication, Mr. Kravchuk told Ukrainian television viewers that it did not correspond to the interests of Ukraine. Later, he said that he had objections to practically every paragraph in the text, and these were published in the Ukrainian press.

Mr. Kravchuk also defended his stand on Ukrainian sovereignty during visits to Switzerland, Germany and Hungary in the earlier part of the year.

Indeed, it is interesting to note that when the highly publicized nine-plus-one meeting in April was being held in Novo Ogarevo, Mr. Kravchuk was in Germany on a state visit. The meeting, which was attended by President Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, and eight republican leaders, was hailed as a major breakthrough in the standoff between the center and the republic leaders, particularly Russian President Yeltsin and a victory for the "sovereign states" - a delineation that was interpreted as a significant concession from the center. After returning to Kiev from Bonn and Munich, Mr. Kravchuk, in an almost cavalier fashion, told a press conference that the agreement had no juridical force.

But probably the clearest indication of Mr. Kravchuk's and Ukraine's, hard-line position towards the center came at the end of June. Mr. Gorbachev, it will be recalled, wanted the new union treaty signed by mid-July in order to present the leaders of the G-7 industrial nations in London with at least a semblance of "Soviet unity." In the course of one day, June 27, the Ukrainian Parliament dashed these hopes by voting overwhelmingly to postpone all discussion of the draft treaty until after September 15. When asked by a journalist what kind of reaction could be expected from the center, Mr. Kravchuk responded laconically: "As a rule, a girl marries the one she loves; otherwise she looks for another fiance."

The failed coup in mid-August resulted in a sudden and dramatic transformation of the political situation in Ukraine as elsewhere in the former Soviet Union.

On August 24, the Ukrainian Supreme Soviet proclaimed Ukraine an independent state subject to a referendum on December 1. The Communist Party was first suspended and then banned altogether on the basis of evidence that its leadership supported the putschists in Moscow. The Communist-dominated majority in the Supreme Soviet announced its self-dissolution, thereby shifting the balance of power to the democratic forces.

Mr. Kravchuk himself appeared to hesitate initially with regard to the developments in Moscow. His first public statement, broadcast on August 19 on republican television and radio, neither explicitly supported nor condemned the attempted takeover, although he later said that he left the Communist Party on the same day. Although there are lingering doubts as to Mr. Kravchuk's behavior during those fateful days in August, apparently they have had little effect on his standing. On December 1, Mr. Kravchuk was popularly elected president of Ukraine by almost 62 percent of the voters.

In the aftermath of the abortive coup and the declaration of independence, Ukraine's official position was that it would participate in all-inter-republican structures as long as they were of a temporary nature and created by the former republics themselves. Economic and military strategic ties should be maintained, it was argued, but the reanimation of any union structures, Mr. Kravchuk said, was out of the question.

Addressing the extraordinary session of the Congress of People's Deputies in Moscow in September, Mr. Kravchuk maintained that Ukraine would not participate in any discussions about a new union treaty prior to the December 1 referendum and that, in any case, the discussion could now only be in terms of a confederation. Ukraine then boycotted and later only initialed the economic cooperation agreement worked out by Grigori Yavlinsky, making its final adherence subject to ratification by the Supreme Council in Kiev.

Further, Ukrainian deputies skipped the opening session of the revamped USSR Supreme Soviet that opened at the end of October. Later it was decided to send representatives after all, but only as observers and limiting their participation to the upper chamber, the Council of the Republics.

At the same time, the Ukrainian Supreme Council began discussing and adopting a legislative package designed to form an independent army of almost half a million, a republican national guard, and its own border guards, thereby demonstrating that Ukraine was serious about consolidating its newly declared statehood. Immediately, the question of who would control the substantial nuclear arsenal located on Ukraine's territory assumed major proportions not only in Moscow but in Washington, London and other Western capitals.

Ukraine's position has been and remains that it wishes to be a non-nuclear state; that the nuclear arms on its territory should be destroyed and not transferred to some other state, for example, the RSFSR; that, in the meantime, control over these weapons should be exercised jointly through a central command; and that Ukraine intends to adhere to the international agreements concerning nuclear weapons and wishes to participate in negotiations on this issue with all interested parties.

The emergence of Ukraine as a formidable nuclear power on the European continent is now one of the major items on the agenda of international politics.

As December 1 drew closer, Ukraine's position with regard to the remnants of the center hardened. Less than a month before the referendum, Mr. Kravchuk told a press conference in Kiev that Ukraine would never sign a treaty that had even the slightest hint of some kind of "administrative central organ." The center, he asserted, had completely played itself out. And in remarks in Komsomolskaya Pravda in mid-November, he said that the center had been compromised and that everything would have to begin anew on a fundamentally different basis.

When Mr. Gorbachev summoned the State Council to Novo Ogarevo in mid-November to resume work on the draft union treaty, Ukraine was conspicuously absent. Mr. Kravchuk later casually told Soviet television viewers that the treaty had no future. Ukraine was absent again at the November 25 meeting of the State Council in Novo Ogarevo, where Mr. Gorbachev assumed that the union treaty would be initialed. Instead, the republican leaders took the text with them for further discussion in their respective parliaments.

In the meantime, the Ukrainian leader accused the RSFSR of breaching the economic agreement by its economic reform program and declared that the agreement was a dead letter. At the same time, he announced that Ukraine wanted no part of a confederation, thereby taking his hard-line position vis-a-vis the withering center one step further. Then, on the eve of the referendum, Mr. Kravchuk asserted that he would take no part in the Novo Ogarevo process.

Even before what most observers now believe to be the final collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine's relations with Mr. Yeltsin's Russia were assuming increasing importance. At the end of 1990, when Ukraine and the RSFSR signed a formal treaty which, inter alia, guaranteed the inviolability of each other's borders, the Ukrainian-Russian relationship appeared to be moving in the direction of normal ties between two sovereign states.

By mid-1991, however, that course began to be reversed. Several factors were at play. First, it became apparent to the Russian leadership that as the center began to fade, Russia's own role as a multinational state, a mini-Soviet Union as it were, needed to be defined. More specifically, it became clearer that the center was in fact the sole guarantor of the territorial integrity of the RSFSR, which may be characterized as an article of faith virtually throughout the Russian political spectrum. In this context, it comes as no surprise that as the center receded in significance Mr. Yeltsin and his team increasingly spoke out in favor of some form of union treaty.

Moreover, in the aftermath of the failed coup, which dealt a serious blow to the center, and Ukraine's declaration of independence, Russia went a step further and in practice began to assume the role of the center itself. This could not but lead to a deterioration in relations between Ukraine and Russia.

Shortly after Ukraine declared its independence, Russian President Yeltsin's press secretary issued a statement saying that the RSFSR reserved the right to raise border questions with those republics, apart from the three Baltic states, declaring themselves independent. The result was mass protest in Ukraine. The situation was aggravated further by remarks made by Moscow Mayor Gavriil Popov and others to the effect that Ukrainian independence was "illegal" and the apparent support that proponents of regional autonomy and, in some cases, secession of Ukrainian territories enjoy in Russian political circles and in the Moscow mass media.

Relations were strained to the extent that an RSFSR delegation and a delegation from the USSR Supreme Soviet rushed to Kiev on August 28-29 to resolve what was described as an "emergency situation." The talks resulted in a joint communique pledging cooperation to prevent "the uncontrolled disintegration of the union state" through the creation of "interim inter-state structures" for an undefined transitional period. The document also confirmed the articles of the 1990 treaty between Ukraine and Russia as regards the territorial integrity of the two states and the rights of minorities. For the first time, the phrase "the former USSR" was introduced into the political lexicon.

Although the crisis appeared over, in fact relations deteriorated further, which could be seen from the initial claims and counterclaims as to who controls nuclear arms on Ukrainian territory. In the midst of these polemics, Moskovskie Novosti published the sensational report that the possibility of a nuclear conflict between Ukraine and Russia had been discussed in the back rooms of the Russian White House. The report was denied by all sides, including Mr. Yeltsin, who explained that his discussion with the military confirmed that a nuclear strike against Ukraine was not technically feasible. Clearly, such an explanation could hardly be expected to inspire Ukrainian confidence in the intentions of the Russian leadership.

By the end of the year, prominent Russian leaders like Gennadiy Burbulis, Ruslan Khasbulatov and others were arguing that the RSFSR was the only rightful heir to the former Soviet Union. This is a prospect that Ukraine is obviously not prepared to agree to. And now, after the overwhelming support for Ukraine's independence as evidenced by the referendum results, Ukraine's position vis-a-vis Russia has been significantly strengthened. Mr. Yeltsin seem to have realized this as well and quickly recognized Ukraine's independence.

Still, one should not hastily conclude from this that the Ukrainian-Russian relationship has now been redirected along the path of normalcy. As a number of observers have been quick to point out, the Russian mentality is ill-prepared to come to terms with the notion that Ukraine and Russia can somehow exist as separate and different states.

This was demonstrated by Anatoliy Sobchak only several days after the Ukrainian referendum. In an interview in Le Figaro and in the central radio program "Mayak," the St. Petersburg mayor recounted all of the possible horrors that could result from Ukrainian independence, including the "forced Ukrainianization" of the Russian minority in Ukraine and a Ukrainian-Russian territorial conflict that might lead to a nuclear clash.

Moreover, Mr. Sobchak, like Mr. Gorbachev and other representatives of the crumbling center, has advanced the somewhat dubious argument that the Ukrainian referendum cannot be interpreted as a vote for secession from the Soviet Union.

Whether or not Russia can eventually come to terms with an independent Ukraine is very much an open question. Regardless of the answer, however, one thing may be stated with a fair amount of certainty - i.e. the referendum vote has shifted the focus of politics in what was formerly the Soviet Union from the Yeltsin-Gorbachev axis to the Yeltsin-Kravchuk axis.

The center has all but ceased to be a player, which means that Russia must now define its role for itself and its relations with other former republics, primarily with Ukraine. A major step in this direction was taken at the so-called Slavic summit held in Minsk on December 7 and 8, where the Ukrainian, Russian and Belarusian leaders met to work out an agreement among themselves.

The result was the formation of what has been termed a commonwealth of the three independent Slavic states that has been left open to the other former Soviet republics as well as outsiders. The meeting, which was held near Brest, also declared that the Soviet Union no longer existed as a legal and geopolitical reality. Some observers have commented that the Slavic summit embodies the ideas put forward last year by Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. This is a fundamentally mistaken view given the fact that Solzhenitsyn had proposed a new state - not a community of states - under the leadership of Russia, which he proposed to call the "Russian Union." If anything, the decisions reached in Belarus bring to fruition the idea put long ago forward by various Ukrainian leaders, among them Mr. Kravchuk, that a community of states be organized without a center - i.e., that the Soviet Union be dissolved.

Ukraine, like the RSFSR, must also adjust to its new role. The price for recognition from Washington and consequently from London, Bonn and Paris has already been spelled out: the question of nuclear arms, human rights issues and Soviet debt obligations. This, in turn, raises such questions as economic reforms, including a Ukrainian currency, plans for privatization, and the conversion of Ukraine's huge military-industrial complex, which is central to the question of whether a democratic Ukraine can eventually emerge from underneath the rubble of the former Soviet Union in a relatively painless fashion. The Ukrainian leadership might also consider a restructuring of the territorial-administrative set-up of the country in order to meet the needs of its national minorities, particularly the 11.3 million Russians.

Some of these problems were addressed by the Ukrainian Supreme Council even before the declaration of independence and the referendum. One of the first acts of the third session of the Parliament (February-July) was to declare the transfer of the metallurgical and coal industries located in Ukraine to republican ownership and an overall law on ownership, which went into effect in April. At the same time, the Parliament passed a law on foreign economic activity. In June, Ukrainian lawmakers adopted a resolution transferring all-Union state enterprises and organizations to Ukrainian jurisdiction. Plans are currently under way to introduce a Ukrainian currency by mid-1992.

Steps were also taken to reorganize the state administration and government. In January, a Crimean referendum opted for autonomous status within Ukraine, which was confirmed by the Supreme Soviet. It was also decided to introduce a presidency and a cabinet form of government. The Parliament's fourth session, which was convened in September, passed a law on citizenship that grants citizenship to everyone resident in Ukraine at the time. Although a concept of a new Ukrainian constitution was agreed upon in May, a new fundamental law has yet to be adopted.

Given the centrifugal tendencies in the eastern and southern oblasts of Ukraine, where there are large Russian minorities and Russian is the prevailing language, initiatives were taken to guarantee the rights of non-Ukrainians. A Committee on Nationalities Affairs was formed in July. Official statements have been issued by the Presidium of the Supreme Council and the Committee on Nationalities Affairs regarding the rights of national minorities, and in November a Declaration of the Rights of Nationalities of Ukraine was adopted by the Supreme Council. An important aspect of the declaration is that it effectively grants state language status to the language of any national group that is compactly settled in an administrative territorial unit in Ukraine.

Now that Ukraine is on the road to becoming a full-fledged state it will be faced with a host of new problems that will need to be resolved in an entirely different context.

- Dr. Roman Solchanyk