… One late evening in late summer or in September 1988, Ivan Drach invited me for a walk near the monument to Taras Shevchenko. It was raining warmly, but we didn’t pay attention to it. Ivan Drach spoke about his recent trip together with the Latvian poet Janis Peters and the Lithuanian poet Algimantas Baltakis, about the foundation of people’s fronts in their republics, about plans to unite all creative unions in order to organize an intellectually powerful socio-political force in Ukraine.
– I think it’s time for us to think about holding a plenum of creative unions or a general meeting of Kyiv intellectuals. As the Chairman of the Kyiv organization of the Writers Guild, I think I will be able to raise our writing community, but what about the Institute of Literature? – Ivan Drach asked.
I assured him that the Institute would support this initiative.
… There were meetings and talks at Viktor Teren’s apartment, there was almost the first organizational meeting in the Irpin Guest House for Writers, in the room of Anatoliy Shevchenko, which was attended by Vyacheslav Bryukhovetsky, Viktor Teren, Vitaliy Donchyk, Oleksandr Bozhko, Anatoliy Shevchenko, Serhiy Hrechanyuk, Stanislav Telnyuk, Hryhoriy Klochek, Yuriy Tsekov, Mykhailo Slaboshpytsky, Ihor Malyshevsky, Oleksandr Lukyanenko…
At first, everyone agreed on the name “People’s Front”. But after the speech of the war veteran Oleksandr Lukyanenko, they decided that the Movement was better.… They said, “this is what unites”.
Viktor Teren was among the first who spoke aloud about the idea of founding the People’s Movement (Narodny Rukh) and at a meeting in the Guest House for Writers he as a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, was instructed to raise the issue at the Writers Guild party meeting. The meeting supported the foundation of the Rukh initiative group and elected future activists and developers of the NRU Program, Statute, they were Ivan Drach, Dmytro Pavlychko, Serhiy Hrechanyuk, Serhiy Plachynda, Stanislav Telnyuk, Volodymyr Manyak, to the party committee…
This first initiative group gathered on November 23, 1988 in the premises of the Writers Guild of Ukraine. The meeting was chaired by Pavlo Movchan and Viktor Teren. We, members of the initiative group from the T.G. Shevchenko Institute of Literature of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (fifteen people), also came to this meeting. As Vitaliy Donchyk stated in his speech, the research staff of the Institute supported the idea, because the need for the People’s Movement resulted “from the very essence of revolutionary perestroika”.
I also spoke at this meeting, because I represented the management of the Institute as its deputy director: “Indeed, it is time for us to become a nation… We must create a very authoritative and comprehensively competent initiative group to draft the program…”
The resolution was adopted unanimously:
«1. To form the Rukh initiative group consisting of: I. Drach (chairman), D. Pavlychko (head of the coordination center), S. Telnyuk (chairman of the editorial commission), M. Slaboshpytsky (responsible for the issue of the bulletin), V. Teren (responsible for communications with youth and enterprises), P. Movchan (links with the newspaper “Literaturna Ukraina” and other media), V. Yaremenko (links with the University), V. Bryukhovetsky (Institute of Literature), and A. Pohribny , I. Yushchuk, V. Donchyk, I. Dziuba, V. Hmyr, O. Bozhko, G. Syvokin.
2. To authorize the initiative group to draft the Program of the People’s Movement for Perestroika.”
It should be noted that the first illegal organizational meeting dedicated to the foundation of a socio-political organization according to the model of the Polish Solidarity and the Lithuanian Saudis was initiated by the head of the Kyiv Writers Guild, Ivan Drach, to which the scientists of the Academy of Sciences Vyacheslav Bryukhovetsky, Vitaliy Donchyk, Mykola Zhulynsky, Yuriy Tsekov and writers Serhiy Grechanyuk, Stanislav Telnyuk and Volodymyr Manyak were invited. Later, in March 1989, literary scholars were elected to the Coordinative Council of the People’s Movement of Ukraine in Kyiv, whose chairman was elected Doctor of Philosophy, a representative of the Institute of Philosophy of the Academy of Sciences Myroslav Popovych.
The Academic Initiative Group, led by the Head of the Department of History of Ukrainian Literature, Doctor of Philology Vitaliy Donchyk, in cooperation with writers, began to draft the Program and the Charter of the future Rukh. The first draft of the Program and the Charter was prepared by Vyacheslav Bryukhovetsky, Vitaliy Donchyk, Petro Osadchuk and Viktor Teren. The employees of the Institute of Literature and writers Yuriy Tsekov, Nataliia Mazepa, Volodymyr Melnyk, Yuriy Kovaliv, Volodymyr Morenets, Ivan Drach, Dmytro Pavlychko, Ivan Dziuba, Vasyl Yaremenko, Yuriy Mushketyk, Pavlo Movchan, Volodymyr Yavorivsky, Anatoliy Shevchenko, Oleksandr Lukyanenko, Mykhailo Slaboshpytsky, Serhiy Hrechanyuk, Hryhoriy Klochek, Stanislav Telnyuk, Ihor Malyshevsky, Volodymyr Manyak… joined them.
… I will never forget that evening General meeting of the research staff of the T.G. Shevchenko Institute of Literature (on Monday, January 30, 1989, at 6 pm, because it was important that the meeting did not take place during working hours), when the “Draft Program of the People’s Movement of Ukraine to promote perestroika” and the Charter were proposed for consideration. All party bodies up to the Central Committee became aware of this meeting and its agenda. Their representatives were already crowded in the small meeting room of the Institute of Literature.
This hall has never seen such a heated discussion, such heated debates, emotional upheavals and passions. The representative of the Central Committee of the Communist Party insisted on cancellation of the meeting, because the Rukh Program ignored the leading role of the Communist Party.
But here is the result of the vote: only one dissentient vote (“I have to vote against,” – Director of the Institute Igor Dzeverin will later say), three persons abstained, all others, more than 100 employees of the Institute voted for.
Next morning (it was Tuesday, January 31), the representatives of the Institute of Literature arrived at the Cinema House, where Kyiv writers gathered, and Vyacheslav Bryukhovetsky, with the authorization of the Institute of Literature, promulgated the Resolution about the complete support of the draft Program and the Charter of the People’s Movement of Ukraine for perestroika, adopted at the meeting. Thus, the staff of the Institute of Literature on January 30, and the Kyiv Writers’ Organization of the WGU approved the draft Program and Charter of the People’s Movement on January 31, 1989.
But only on February 14, 1989, when Ivan Drach, Dmytro Pavlychko, Vyacheslav Bryukhovetsky and Borys Rohoza, the editor-in-chief of the Literary Ukraine newspaper, at Leonid Kravchuk’s invitation arrived at his office in the Central Committee, the party authorities, represented by Leonid Kravchuk, gave permission to publish the draft Program and the Charter in the press body of the WGU.
However, the work on “improving” the draft Program did not end there. It continued in the printing house “Kyivska Pravda” on February 15, 1989, on the eve of the publication of 100,000 copies of the “Literary Ukraine”. As a result, the line of loyalty to the then regime began to be seen in the Movement’s Program before its publication, although it was already its final version. After all, without these compromise provisions, it would hardly be possible to publish the founding Rukh program.
… The head of the Ideological Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine Leonid Kravchuk was in the session hall during all three days of the Constituent Assembly of the Rukh. He knew that his speech would be heard by thousands of people standing near the Palace of Culture of the Polytechnic Institute in Kyiv.
Representatives of legalized and newly established, but numerous public organizations – the T.G. Shevchenko Ukrainian Language Society, Memorial, Ukrainian Association for the Protection of the Historical Environment, Ukrainian Helsinki Union, Green World, Heritage, Ukrainian Association of Independent Creative Intellectuals, Ukrainian People’s Democratic League, members of national-cultural associations, representatives of all creative unions, religious confessions dominated in the hall. And as a true politician, Kravchuk skillfully “played for the crowd”. “We shall have sovereign Ukraine without any regulations and restrictions (applause), our state Ukrainian language will really be state language (applause), but this language, the great language of the great nation, and none of those present in the territory of other nations could say or think that this language was affirmed against the others.”
At that time, the goal of the PMU for perestroika “to promote the development of nation-building aimed at transforming the Ukrainian SSR into a democratic state governed by the rule of law” and to fight for Ukraine’s independence peacefully and democratically, albeit in equitable alliance with other USSR republics in order to avoid a revolutionary confrontation in the republic. The founders of the Rukh also tried to avoid violent confrontation with the communist totalitarian regime, forming their own program of restructuring Ukrainian society, which in its main provisions was an alternative to the policy of the CPSU.
… And when, at the end of the third day of the Constituent Assembly of the People’s Movement of Ukraine for Perestroika, Mykhailo Horyn, the chairman of the session, gave the floor to Leonid Kravchuk again, he said as expected: “Let’s cooperate. … do not go to confrontation. There are forces behind the confrontation. We need mutual understanding “…
However, understanding with the party will not happen. Despite the aggressive opposition of the communist-socialist forces, especially in the Verkhovna Rada, the program of the People’s Movement of Ukraine was slowly but gradually being implemented. The Constituent Assembly of the PMU adopted many extremely important Resolutions for the establishment of Ukraine’s independence. The Resolution on the economic independence of the UkrSSR was of particular importance. The tasks of creating Ukraine’s own financial and credit system, the Ukrainian National Bank, and its own currency were determined. In essence, the Rukh Assembly launched a comprehensive program of national revival of the Ukrainian nation, its statehood. This program included such sections as “State and Society”, “Human Rights. Nation’s Rights”, ” Economy”, ” Ecology”, ” National Question”, “Language. Science. Culture”, “Ethics”, “Religion”, “Healthcare. Sports”.
The Constituent Assembly of the PMU adopted an appeal to the workers and peasants of Ukraine, to Ukrainians living in the Union outside Ukraine, to Ukrainians living in the Ukrainian SSR and choosing Russian as their mother tongue, against anti-Semitism, to the Russian population of Ukraine, to all non-Ukrainians in Ukraine, supported the draft Law on Languages in the Ukrainian SSR, but stressed: “The law… will not be completely fair until it says that the Ukrainian language in the Ukrainian SSR is the language of interethnic communication.”
The delegates of the Assembly voted for the recognition of the blue-yellow flag and the trident as the national symbols of Ukraine.
In fact, the main problems facing Ukraine on the path to state independence were raised at the PMU Assembly and included in the documents approved by the Assembly. We should also mention the ideas and proposals discussed by the delegates: the need to adopt a new Constitution of the UkrSSR, the Constitutional Court, the privatization, the closure of Chernobyl Atomic Plant, the cancellation of Art. 6 of the Constitution on the leading role of the CPSU, on the state status of the Ukrainian language… These proposals and requirements will be resolved in the coming years and decades.
The main thing that the Rukh activists wanted was to achieve the political independence of Ukraine due to the unity of all ethnic groups and democratic forces in the struggle for political and economic independence of the republic. And this happened three years later, on December 1, 1991 at the Independence referendum, where almost 93 percent of the participants voted for the Independence.
Mykola ZHULYNSKY
“Svit” newspaper, № 31-32, August 2021.