Turning the pages back... September 17, 1989 (09/11/05)

Turning the pages back...

September 17, 1989

Our issue of September 17, 1989, carried news about the historic founding congress of the Popular Movement for Perebudova in Ukraine, or Rukh, whose formation had been stymied for a year and half under the regime of Volodymyr Shcherbytsky, leader of the Communist Party of the Ukrainian SSR. Our editorial in that issue, excerpts of which follow, reflected on the importance of Rukh's formal establishment.

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... The mood was euphoric as, on the second day of the three-day founding conference [held September 8-10, 1989], Rukh was officially proclaimed a fait accompli. ...

Outlining its principles and goals, the Rukh noted that it is "founded on the principles of humanism, democracy, glasnost, pluralism, social justice, internationalism" and that it "emanates from the interests of all citizens of the republic regardless of their nationality."

... During the landmark conference, delegates and observers discussed myriad topics: national minorities, human rights, repressed history, the fate of the Ukrainian village, spiritual sources of rebirth, social justice, the role of youth, Ukrainians in the gulag, and consolidation of Ukrainians worldwide. The result of these discussions is a far-reaching and broad program ... that, in a nutshell, seeks to promote true perestroika, or perebudova in Ukrainian, in the Ukrainian SSR.

As well, the Rukh conference issued an appeal to all non-Ukrainians living in Ukraine to squelch officially disseminated propaganda that seeks to discredit Rukh as an organization that aims to promote "narrow nationalist interests" and "strictly Ukrainian" issues. The appeal pointed to the common concerns of all residents of Ukraine, which today finds itself "on the borderline between life and death," in conditions described as "atomic Chornobyl, economic Chornobyl, spiritual Chornobyl."

... [Rukh] was meant to stand for sovereignty - political, economic, cultural - of the Ukrainian SSR. Sovereignty such that, for example, the people of Ukraine - not the central authorities in Moscow - would be the ones who determine what to do with the Chornobyl nuclear power plant; such that Ukraine itself would control its natural resources; such that the Ukrainian language and culture, alongside the languages and cultures of national minorities resident within Ukraine's borders, could be freely developed and not dependent upon a diktat from Moscow. ...

Speaking at the Kyiv regional conference of Rukh, Ivan Drach explained why the term "rukh" (movement) rather than "front" (as in the Baltic states, for example) had been chosen in naming the fledgling group: "Rukh has an internal energy different from that of a front. It has a different philosophical and moral sense. Within it one can sooner find a place for a Skovoroda, a Gandhi, a Martin Luther King ... The word 'rukh' is also closer to reality and to eternity. A movement can exist with opponents. A front immediately denotes opposition. Rukh elicits hope. ..."

Source: "Rukh represents hope," editorial, The Ukrainian Weekly, September 17, 1989, Vol. LVII, No. 36.

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