MINERS IRI NORWAY • USSR Ukrainian movement faces historic tasks IN THE largest non-Russian republic of the USSR, the
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International Viewpoint #171 • October 16, 1989
USSR mass movement has proved very difficult. Two factors explain the relative delay in the formation of the Popular Movement in Ukraine.
This republic continued to be governed by one of the toughest nuclei of the conservative bureaucracy, that is, those most loyal to the Brezhnevite ancien régime. Here, political liberalization encountered ferocious resistance from the bureaucratic apparatus ruled with a firm hand by the Communist Party boss in Ukraine, Volodymyr Shcherbytsky.
Ideological, political and police counter-offensive
In Ukraine, freedoms already taken for granted in Moscow or Leningrad say nothing of the Baltic capitals of Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius — are requiring a hard and as yet unfinished struggle, in which there have been many confrontations with an unreconstructed police
When the idea of forming a people's front emerged in early 1989 in the Union of Ukrainian Writers, and Lituraturna kraina published a draft program, Shcherbytsky launched an aggressive ideological, political and police counter-offensive. But the force of a rising independent mass movement led to the founding congress of RUKH being held in Kiev.
The importance of this success becomes clear in particular if you consider that in Byelorussia, another bastion of the conservative bureaucracy, the founding congress of the people's front had to meet recently "in exile," in Vilnius, under the protection of the Lithuanian movement Sajudis. Moreover, a few days after the Kiev congress, Gorbachev eliminated Shcherbytsky from the central leadership of the CPSU, and the formerly all-powerful boss had also to give up his post as first secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine. It seems, though, that his protegés remain in power.
The second problem has been the very uneven level of national awakening and rate of development of the mass movement in Ukraine. Since the summer of 1988, the city of Lviv, the traditional center of western Ukraine, has become the scene of almost constant mass mobilizations raising more national-democratic slogans and breaking more and more openly with the bureaucratic regime. It was here that the militant been rebuilt and has rapidly won a mass
On the other hand, in central and eastern Ukraine, the masses have mobilized more slowly around less nationalist demands for an "ecology of nature, language and culture" and under the leadership of intellectuals linked to the Gorbachev wing of 22 the bureaucracy.
Then, in July 1989, the workers movement irrupted on the scene. The miners in the Donbass, the big mining center in easter Ukraine, followed the example of their comrades in the Kuzbass in Russia and went on strike. Their demands were exclusively social and economic. They indifferent to the national demands although a large percentage of them are Ukrainian. But they have been subjected to strong russification, and traditionally excluded from any possibility of access to the Ukrainian language, culture and history. Unlike them, the striking miners in the Lviv mining region in western Europe not only began to combine social and national demands but also, under Polish influence, to demand the
"an independent, self-management union, Solidarity."
The second great success is the fact that in the founding congress of RUKH, there was a convergence of representatives of the three currents mentioned - the radical nationalists in Lviv, the moderate reformers in Kiev and the emerging workmovement in the Donbass. Uniting these currents is difficult but essential for building a united democratic mass movement. The congress was an important step in that direction.
The third success is the fact that the congress was attended by representatives of national minorities living Ukraine, including the Crimean Tatars. The latter are fighting to return to their native land, which is today a part of the republic of Ukraine. No less important was the presence of representatives of the People's Front of Moldavia. As in Estonia, in Moldavia the bureaucracy has managed to mobilize Ukrainian and Russian workers against the demands of the indigenous people of this republic, who are Romanians. Finally, the presence at this congress of a delegation of Solidarnosc trade-union and parliamentary leaders should be noted. They were received very warmly. The workers' delegates from Dniprodzerzhynsk greeted them by waving the banners of the Polish free
Tortuous history of
Polish-Ukrainian relations
The history of Polish-Ukrainian relations is tortuous, because in the past Poland has been one of the states oppressing the Ukrainians. The Stalinist bureaucracy in Poland still devotes considerable resources to fomenting anti-Ukrainian chauvinism, in close collaboration with the Soviet bureaucracy, which in turn is fomenting anti-Polish
In the recent vote in Poland, nosc's Civic Committee assured the election to parliament for the first time of an outstanding spokesperson of the interests of the Ukrainian minority, Volodymyr Mokry. In his speech to the congress in Kiev, Adam Michnik, a leading figure in
Solidarnosc circles, stressed that only a consistent struggle against any sort of national chauvinism would make it possible to build ties of international solidarity: "If we are unable to build such ties, then we will condemn ourselves to balkanization, to inter-ethnic conflicts and a military dictatorship, either Communist or anti-Communist."
There is a lot of evidence that, as in several other republics, the more retrograde sections of the bureaucracy want to divert the development of the national movement in Ukraine toward inter-ethnic conflicts. They have so far failed to accomplish this, thanks to the energetic denunciations of such attempts by the Ukrainian Helsinki Union and other independent groups. But concern is beginning to be aroused by the recent mobilizations against the rise of RUKH by an "Internationalist Front" that is trying to build itself among the Russian population of the republic, on the model of similar organizations in the Baltic countries. The case of the Czarist Black
Hundreds
From the platform of the congress, Ivan Dzyuba, author of the famous dissident book of the 1960s, Internationalism or Russification?, recalled the case of the Czarist Black Hundreds: "This was a powerful movement of the lower strata of society, which was strongly patriotic and skillfully led by specialists in social and national demagogy. Its task was to save the Czarist empire from revolution, by directing the people's anger away from the regime toward the 'false preachers of the truth,' that is, against the revolutionary intelligentsia, against Freemasonry,: against the "slogans that oppress the Russian people.' Are we not facing a revival of the mass Black Hundreds today? In any case, the three fundamental ideas of the Black Hundreds are again in the air."
This is a threat that can be effectively removed only by an alliance of the national movements of the oppressed peoples of the USSR with the independent, multinational movement of the Soviet working "H's Stalin's work on the national ques trai -somethere rand here!" I know | bured i