EDITORIAL

A repulsive celebration

February 17 marked the 85th anniversary of the birth of Volodymyr Scherbytsky (1918-1990), former chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR and former first secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine. His name is synonymous with repressions and Russification in Ukraine as those were the hallmarks of his repugnant and retrograde regime. Between 1972 and 1989, when Scherbytsky was the first secretary of the CPU, Ukraine was subjected to the most severe repressions since the Stalin regime. It was during this period also that Soviet authorities attempted to cover up the truth about the Chornobyl nuclear disaster. During Scherbytsky's tenure, Ukraine was often referred to as the Soviet Communists' last preserve, and he was described as a "mastodon" - so profoundly entrenched was the stagnation in Ukraine.

In accordance with a document signed and graced with an official seal by Ukraine's Vice Prime Minister Dmytro Tabachnyk, the anniversary date was to be marked in Kyiv by a press conference, special features in the state's mass media outlets, placement of flowers and wreaths at Scherbytsky's gravesite, a documentary exhibit, and a lecture and concert dedicated to "Scherbytsky and his epoch." Similar activities and events were to be held in other cities. In addition, steps were to be taken to prepare materials for a book of memoirs about Scherbytsky and a documentary film about his life. Still to come: erection of memorials and the renaming of streets in his honor.

In one of the memoirs written on the occasion of the anniversary, Scherbytsky was lauded this past week by his colleague Valentyna Shevchenko, a former member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of Ukraine and a former chair of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR, as a leader who cared for children and established summer camps, recreational facilities, medical complexes, schools and libraries for them. But it was this very same Scherbytsky who let Ukraine's children march down the streets of Kyiv in the annual May Day parade in 1986 - just days after the explosion at Chornobyl - exposing them to dangerous radiation while continuing the horrifying cover-up of the accident's deadly ramifications.

An unauthorized memoir published in Ukrainska Pravda and written by former human rights activist Volodymyr Malynkovych (see Svoboda, February 21, for a reprint of the article) provides recollections of Scherbytsky that are, shall we say, somewhat different. According to Mr. Malynkovych, Scherbytsky came to power because he pledged to deal with the dissidents in Ukraine and to always follow instructions from the Kremlin. And he kept his word. During Scherbytsky's tenure in Ukraine, leading national and human rights activists such as Vasyl Stus, Vyacheslav Chornovil, Ivan Svitlychny, Nadia Svitlychna, Ivan Dzyuba, Yevhen Sverstiuk, Semen Gluzman - and many, many others - were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment in the Soviet gulag, followed by terms of "internal exile" - that is, terms beyond the borders of Ukraine, in the far reaches of the USSR. Their arrests were followed by those of Ukraine's courageous Helsinki monitors.

An unreconstructed Communist and Soviet, and a Brezhnevite holdover, Scherbytsky fought to the end against glasnost and perebudova. His repressions continued into 1988 and 1989 as his regime attempted to halt mass demonstrations by the populace of Ukraine. He railed against Rukh, the Popular Movement of Ukraine for Perebudova, making it clear that the Communist Party in Ukraine regarded it, along with the Ukrainian Helsinki Union, as it main opponents. Ultimately, the movement for national renewal in Ukraine proved stronger than Scherbytsky's regime. Several months later he was "retired," and Rukh held its founding congress in Kyiv.

The Ukrainian Republican Party, among whose members are former Soviet political prisoners and Helsinki monitors, reacted most strongly to the announced 85th anniversary commemorations, holding a press conference and issuing a statement that emphasized: "We cannot see these efforts to honor the memory of V. Scherbytsky, approved by the Vice Prime Minister Dmytro Tabachnyk, as nothing other than another attempt to inculcate Ukrainians with the ideology of inferiority and dependence on imperial Moscow which V. Scherbytsky faithfully served all his life."

Reading with disbelief and dismay about this repulsive anniversary officially being marked in Ukraine, we can only wonder what the "celebration" of Scherbytsky's legacy means for the future of Ukraine.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, February 23, 2003, No. 8, Vol. LXXI

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