Turning the pages back... September 1, 1991 (09/01/02)

Turning the pages back...

September 1, 1991

"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." These were the words written on September 1, 1991, by Dr. James E. Mace, a historian, former staff director of the U.S. Commission on the Ukraine Famine and expert on Soviet policy toward Ukraine in the 1920s and 1930s.

However, Dr. Mace cautioned 11 years ago, "this is 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."

Dr. Mace went on to comment:

"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 [George] Bush seems to have in mind, calling for Ukraine to one-sidedly assume obligations to other republics without reciprocal guarantees. ...

"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."

Source: "Ukraine in the news: Storm clouds on the horizon the demise of the Ukrainian SSR" by Dr. James E. Mace, The Ukrainian Weekly, September 1, 1991, Vol. LIX, No. 35.

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