(On the 20th Anniversary of the Founding of the Ukrainian Helsinki Union)
In Search of Like-Minded People
The emergence of a human rights organization in the Ternopil region, one whose goal was the restoration of Ukrainian statehood, had its own history and local character. And although the Ternopil Oblast, like all of Western Ukraine, was not as heavily affected by Russification as the eastern and southern regions, and although the progress of national democratic processes in Ukraine was not uniform, the development of events taking place in the USSR at that time stirred the entire country.
The empire was collapsing.
Therefore, freedom of speech and belief, and their public expression, began to be influenced, on the one hand, by the political situation in Ukraine and, on the other, by a gradual and very slow liberation from the constant subjugation of fear, in which everyone lived under the repressive communist regime. Fear in Western Ukraine had its roots—the memory of the NKVD terror and KGB repressions, starting from 1939, was still alive and unbroken. Furthermore, a system of informants and KGB agents was widely implemented and active. Even the church, then under Moscow Orthodoxy, was drawn into this.
When, in 1988, the question arose of creating a socio-political and human rights organization of the UHU type in the Ternopil region—one that was to effectively stand in opposition to the Communist Party and initiate the process of fighting for the national rights of the Ukrainian people—fate chose me. Mykhailo Horyn approached me in writing with a proposal to lead the creation of a UHU initiative group, and on July 20, 1988, Viacheslav Chornovil offered me the same, through the mediation of Lidia Ivanivna Ivaniuk. But, to be frank, the thought that flashed through my mind at the time was: “Why me?” Surely, Chornovil had approached others as well... Or perhaps it was because I, a former political prisoner accused under Article 62 of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR of anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda, had managed to stand firm and remain true to myself.
Without much thought, on August 7, 1988, I filled out an application and joined the UHU. At the same time, I was given the “UHU Declaration of Principles,” application forms, and an appeal to the public (for collecting signatures) concerning the arrest of the Lviv human rights activist Ivan Makar. Later, issues of the journal “Ukrainskyi Visnyk” (Ukrainian Herald), brochures, and other documents were delivered. And I set to work.
Lidia Ivanivna became an active liaison between Lviv and Ternopil. She and her future husband, Oles Anheliuk, often met in Ternopil, although they were already over 60 years old. They were my first listeners and advisors when the urgent question arose: where to begin? After all, in truth, I was alone, and the task was one of great responsibility.
Viacheslav Chornovil gave me a list of political prisoners from the Ternopil region (Ihor Hereta, Volodymyr Rokytskyi, Petro Kukurudza, Metodiy Chubatyi, Mykola Neveselyi, Vasyl Khaliava, Yaroslav Omelian, Ivan Mykolaichuk) and asked me to try to recruit them into the UHU. But nothing came of it. Their wives met me with hostility, and I took it very personally, but I was not offended, because I understood the system we were living in. Another UHU member, 26-year-old Leonid Drapak from the village of Konstantsiia in the Borshchiv district of Ternopil Oblast, had joined the UHU a month earlier, on July 9, 1988. He had actually come to Lviv to resolve an issue about traveling abroad, but Chornovil convinced him to join the Helsinki Union. Soon, however, Leonid Drapak managed to secure permission to go abroad for medical treatment. But during his short time in the UHU, he was selfless in his mission, despite incredible pressure from the KGB.
An interesting and responsible period of work began, and the number of contacts with new people and organizations increased significantly. On September 10, I wrote to the Ternopil regional organization of the Writers’ Union of Ukraine, through Roman Hromiak, and proposed creating a “Society of Admirers of the Ukrainian Language” to give writers a public platform.
After a long search, on October 30, 1988, people finally began to join the initiative group. Yaroslav Hevko, a man close to the Ternopil writers and well-versed in clerical work, joined. Then, on November 14, Yaroslav Chyrskyi, a design engineer and a man of like mind, also joined the UHU.
Starting on November 26, the members of the UHU initiative group began to meet every Wednesday at my apartment. Long before the Constituent Assembly of the UHU’s Ternopil branch, we started collecting signatures against the construction of nuclear power plants in Ukraine—the wound of the Chornobyl disaster was still fresh. All these signatures on the appeals were gradually passed on to the UHU’s Lviv Executive Committee or sent to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.
The UHU’s activities were coordinated by its structural bodies. Thus, at the invitation of the All-Ukrainian Coordinating Council, I attended the Constituent Assembly of the Lviv branch of the UHU, which took place on October 29, 1988, and on November 20, I participated in the first meeting of the UHU Executive Committee in Kyiv (which was held monthly) and in the Constituent Assembly of the Kyiv branch of the UHU. Such cooperation became an impetus for further activity at the local level.
In Defense of Language and Culture
Before the Constituent Assembly of the “Society of the Native Language” in Ternopil, which was held on November 23, 1988, in the assembly hall of the pedagogical institute, I had the opportunity to promote the principles and distribute documents of the UHU. But a sign of those times was persecution for any manifestation of national consciousness. Thus, after the assembly, all its chairpersons (Roman Hromiak, a doctor of philological sciences and member of the Writers’ Union; Oleh Herman, a design lecturer at the polytechnic institute; Yevhen Udin, an artist, and others) began to be summoned to the KGB. The members of the Society’s Council were accused of disobeying directives from above and daring to rename the “Society of the Native Language” to the “Society of the Ukrainian Language.” But this was the unanimous demand of the entire community, for whom, in contrast to all sorts of twisted narratives, the constituent assembly was a great celebration (by the way, the name “Society of the Ukrainian Language” was proposed by Doctor of Medical Sciences O. M. Holyachenko). The KGB also demanded that a third of the Society’s Council be periodically replaced without a general assembly—in time, this would have allowed them to replace the entire Council with an amorphous and obedient one.
It was a time when changes were brewing, and the people, though slowly, were awakening. But the police surveillance remained unchanged. And, as it turned out, it was not only members of the UHU who were watched—all of Ukrainian culture was under surveillance!
A deep stagnation in all spheres of life was evidence of this. Professor Cherniavskyi, who taught the history of the CPSU at the medical institute, reprimanded students for attending all sorts of “gatherings” where nationalist songs were sung. Someone disliked the fact that the entire hall of the Kopychyntsi drama theater, which seated 850 people, rose to its feet, and people, with a lump in their throats and tears in their eyes, stood and sang along with the children the immortal “The Mighty Dnieper Roars and Bellows.”
And at the 28th city party conference, the first secretary of the city party committee, V. P. Rybin, publicly called the constituent assembly of the “Society of the Ukrainian Language” a nationalist rabble. The newspaper “Vilne Zhyttia” (Free Life) repeated these chauvinistic statements in its own way, writing: “...the artificial separation of the Ukrainian language from other Slavic languages contradicts the elementary culture of interethnic communication.” And this was at a time when well-thought-out mechanisms (political, educational, informational, and personnel) had been created for total Russification. Unfortunately, those mechanisms remain even today—in independent Ukraine.
It is also worth mentioning the Constituent Assembly of the “Society of the Ukrainian Language” on February 24, 1989, at the medical institute, where Bohdan Lekhniak and I were invited as UHU members. There, an instructor at the institute, Yuriy Fedorovych Vikaliuk, proposed addressing each other not as “comrade” but as “pane” (sir), arguing, “We are all masters, not slaves.” In addition, he urged the instructors to prepare textbooks in the Ukrainian language. A student, Ihor Rud, read an appeal from the local chapter, which noted, in particular, that out of 40 departments at the Ternopil Medical Institute, only five used Ukrainian. After this, the assembly unanimously voted for the institute to fully transition to teaching all subjects in Ukrainian.
As for the colonial status of the Ukrainian language, this was vividly expressed in the statements of Volodymyr Kolinets, an instructor at the pedagogical institute, during questions to a candidate for deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Svitlana Hurarieva. Kolinets asked why she conducted business at the cotton mill in Russian, why she had not learned Ukrainian in her 14 years in Ternopil, and why all the clubs in the “Tekstylnyk” Palace of Culture were conducted in Russian, with Russian-speaking instructors selected for the job. The newspaper “Pravda” reacted to this, accusing Roman Hromiak’s confidants of denigrating Svitlana Hurarieva’s dignity as a woman.
But despite the oppression by the authorities, civil society was slowly taking shape. A constituent assembly of the cultural and educational society “Vertep” was held, at which Bohdan Hordasevych was elected chairman. Yuriy Tyma, who soon joined the UHU, also became a member of “Vertep.” And at a meeting of the local administration at the pedagogical institute on April 18, 1989, the second secretary of the city party committee, Ostapchuk, criticizing the “Vertep” society, which had by then grown to 29 members, warned them against reciting Taras Shevchenko’s “The Ransacked Grave” and performing certain Ukrainian songs. When asked from the hall if there was a document specifying what was permitted to be sung, Ostapchuk could not provide an answer.
In addition, on May 2, the “Vertep” society held a “Haivky” (spring folk songs and games) festival in Ternopil, as the authorities had not allowed them to do so on Easter, April 30. They decided to perform the haivky near the then-inactive Church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (built in the 18th century), but the head of the regional cultural department at the time, O. Bachynskyi, forbade this ancient Ukrainian ritual there. They had to perform the haivky in the Hydropark, along with invited representatives of the “Tovarystvo Leva” (Lion Society) from Lviv. The local authorities were very displeased that the Lviv residents wore yellow and blue badges. But they could do nothing. Besides that, the “Vertep” society prepared for publication a collection of haivky recordings from across the region, but the region’s chief censor, Stepan Lysyi, did not allow the society to publish these masterpieces with musical notation, arguing that the notes were an element of secret codes that could be used by the CIA and NATO.
Despite Obstacles: Creating the UHU Initiative Group
As difficult as it was to spread the “UHU Declaration of Principles” in the Ternopil region, information still seeped into concerned circles. For example, four students from the Ternopil Pedagogical Institute (I. Lysak, S. Hevko, Shvydetskyi, and Barabash) came to my home after work to familiarize themselves with the “UHU Declaration of Principles,” in order to then decide on joining the Union. We talked for about four hours. The very next day, a KGB officer who came to the institute summoned them and warned that if they joined the UHU, they would all be expelled.
My efforts to attract the broader intellectual potential of the Ternopil region seemed unattainable—the KGB was closely monitoring my activities and knew how to interfere. Despite everything, on December 8, Oleh Herman, then an instructor at the polytechnic institute, confessed to me that he and Professor Roman Hromiak had been summoned to the KGB and given certain warnings. Other UHU sympathizers also told me about the immense pressure from the KGB.
This was psychological pressure.
And when, on December 10, 1988, at the invitation of the Lviv branch of the UHU, I went to Lviv for a rally dedicated to the 40th anniversary of the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” KGB agents simply pulled me out of a café, took me to the train station, and sent me back to Ternopil. Such “efforts” could mean only one thing—to prevent freethinking outside of Lviv...
Despite various obstacles, the Ternopil initiative group grew. On December 7, Ostap Zhmud, whose father was a UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army) company commander, filled out an application to join. And on December 24, 1988, in Kyiv, where I had come at the invitation of Yevhen Proniuk regarding the creation of the “Society for Civic Rehabilitation,” Volodymyr Marmus, a former political prisoner sentenced in 1973 to 11 years of captivity for flying national flags in Chortkiv, joined the UHU.
The authorities also began to feign interest. On December 14, a correspondent from the regional newspaper “Vilne Zhyttia,” Mykhailo Ivashchuk, interviewed me. He asked about the Helsinki Union. He kept looking for some compromising moments, and, finding none, he pointedly asked if I was in favor of erecting a monument to Stepan Bandera. Or if I had, by any chance, been forcibly drawn into the UHU. At his request, I gave him the “UHU Declaration of Principles” the next day. He was simply baffled by two points in the “Declaration”—about military service on one’s own territory and about elections with a single candidate being considered invalid. I also explained to him that the “Declaration...” itself was not some dogma; it was under discussion. He called us “zeks” (prisoners). But what we were striving for was the constitutional right of all citizens. However, the promised article about the UHU in “Vilne Zhyttia” never appeared.
On December 18, I was invited to Kyiv for a meeting of the All-Ukrainian Council of the UHU, which was held at the apartment of Dmytro Fedoriv. The Council discussed the UHU’s stance on the elections to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. It was decided to boycott these elections. Only as an exception would we support candidates who would promote our ideas.
Mass intimidation continued. Even before the Constituent Assembly, the city prosecutor, Vasyl Bavopiak, summoned me and accused me of nationalism. It turned out that the KGB had forced a student, Yu. Klymchuk, to write a denunciation to the prosecutor’s office against me, alleging that I had “indoctrinated” students from the Ternopil Pedagogical Institute—I. Lysak, Barabash, and Shvydetskyi—in a nationalist spirit. And during another gathering at my apartment, Yaroslav Hevko told me how his son, Serhii, was being persecuted at the institute. The dean summoned him and then took him to a separate office with two KGB agents. They also summoned his wife, Halia, at work and demanded that her husband leave the UHU.
I immediately informed Chornovil, who headed the UHU’s information service, by phone about the persecution of the students. He suggested I come to Lviv to clarify everything on the spot, and on December 31, 1988, I made a special trip to him to deliver this material.
At the combine harvester plant where I worked, the KGB’s blackmail had the opposite effect—people began to respect me more. On January 3, 1989, I was summoned to the secretary of the plant’s party organization, Viacheslav Pereiaslavets. The deputies who were present asked if I listened to the “Voice of America.” I replied that no, I passed information to Radio “Svoboda” (Radio Liberty). They also asked about nationalism, then admitted they were unprepared and apologized. Before that, there had been a meeting of the plant’s party committee, where Secretary Pereiaslavets had called me the head of the Ternopil UHU and had somehow found out that our Constituent Assembly was scheduled for January 14, 1989. They took the “UHU Declaration of Principles” from me and began to insist that I go on a business trip on January 14.
The Constituent Assembly of the UHU Ternopil Branch
Just before the Constituent Assembly, the KGB “gifted” me another spectacle. On January 12, the head of the department of music and fine arts at the pedagogical institute, Borys Ivasiv, and the director of a haberdashery warehouse, Oleh Ostrovskyi (the husband of Yosyp Tytor’s daughter), came to the combine harvester plant, which could only be entered with a pass, accompanied by their wives. They demanded, then pleaded, that I return Chyrskyi’s and Tytor’s applications to them. I said I would not give the applications back unless Chyrskyi or Tytor themselves came to me... That same day, I met with Leonid Drapak. He told me that the head of the Borshchiv KGB, Captain Volodymyr Ilchuk, had come to him and promised to help him get into medical school and also help him go abroad for treatment, as long as he didn't listen to the troublemakers from the UHU in Lviv and Ternopil.
The Constituent Assembly, planned for January 14, 1989, was disrupted by planned provocations. We decided to change the location of the assembly because, according to our information, my apartment was being bugged. Yaroslav Perchyshyn, also a former political prisoner, came to the assembly with me—he wanted to join the UHU. But strange metamorphoses happened with the others: Yosyp Tytor, at whose apartment the Constituent Assembly was to take place, was urgently called to work, even though it was a Saturday, a non-working day. At the “Vatra” plant where he worked, the head of the department, Petro Slavinskyi, warned Tytor that he had to work all day. If he disobeyed, he would have to submit his resignation, because, supposedly, the KGB had ordered it. Even Yosyp Tytor’s father, who was already 80 years old and had spent 10 years in Stalin’s concentration camps, was intimidated with threats that his son would be sent to the same place if he did not leave the UHU. Yaroslav Chykurliy was also called to work on his day off, and an inventory was conducted at Yaroslav Chornomaz’s apiary. Leonid Drapak was summoned to the police and the village council, but he did not go.
And as for Ostap Zhmud, a total psychological "prophylaxis" was conducted. On January 13, the day before the Constituent Assembly, the secretary of the workshop party organization, Stepan Tsiukalo, and the head of the electrical workshop at the same cotton mill, Zinoviy Tkach, drove to his apartment and took Zhmud to the mill director, Svitlana Hurarieva. They were joined by the secretary of the mill’s party committee, Hanna Yatsiuk. As soon as they entered, Hurarieva started yelling at Zhmud: “Don’t you dare start any of your non-formals here!” and added that the oblast committee and the KGB were personally dealing with him. At the end, she added: “Listen to your wife and son and leave the Union.” It turns out they had already been intimidated... This was the same Hurarieva who, during her campaign for election to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, had said: “The people here are easy to lead—they are afraid of everything.” When the conversation with Hurarieva failed, the party committee secretary, Hanna Yatsiuk, invited Zhmud to her office and suggested he apply to join the “Society of the Ukrainian Language,” which, by the way, had not yet been registered. And at the end of the application, she told him to add that he was leaving the UHU. When she failed to persuade him, she asked him not to disclose this conversation, as she could lose her job. To which Zhmud replied: “I won’t sign, so don’t waste your time! And I make no promise not to speak of this.” But after the night shift, on January 14, a policeman entered the workshop and announced that a warehouse had been robbed. When Zhmud was already at home, an investigator from the OBKhSS (Department for Combating Theft of Socialist Property), Volodymyr Obaranchuk, came to him with a policeman. They demanded that he come to an address they specified. When Ostap Zhmud arrived at the agreed meeting place at 12 o’clock near the Palace of Marriages, to go from there to the Constituent Assembly, the same investigator drove up, took Zhmud into his car, and held him in his office until 3 p.m. to prevent him from attending the meeting. When Zhmud asked what had been stolen, the investigator replied: “Nothing...”
The Chortkiv prosecutor, Vasyl Hryniv, summoned Volodymyr Marmus to the prosecutor’s office specially on January 14, and at 12 o’clock at that. And although Marmus had tried to leave at night, he was detained at the train station by Sergeant of the traffic police Petro Bednarskyi and Senior Sergeant Yevhen Buiuk, who justified the detention by citing some theft and the fact that Marmus looked very much like a thief. After this clown show, he had to go to the prosecutor, who was not there. While waiting for him, Marmus heard words behind the door: “detain him longer”... And earlier, the head of the Chortkiv KGB, Stepan Chernysh, had advised Marmus not to get involved with the UHU. His wife, Iryna, was told the same thing.
But what omniscience in names, addresses, dates, and times! One can immediately sense the work of the special services and the shameful means of implementing their ideology with the punishing hand of the party.
Therefore, the building where the Constituent Assembly was supposed to take place was surrounded like a fortress by police and KGB cars. And three policemen, led by police captain Oleh Danyliuk, were sent to Yosyp Tytor’s apartment, where they asked everyone present to show their passports or state their names. When everyone refused, as they were not obliged to, the uninvited guests cited a KGB representative, started inventing all sorts of laughable motives for their task, but seeing that it was all in vain, they apologized and left. Mykhailo Horyn and Zinoviy Krasivskyi, who were supposed to be at the meeting, were delayed on their way from Lviv, but they still arrived and brought some literature. Some of those who wanted to join the UHU lost their desire to do so after this. However, news of the events of January 14 was transmitted to the Lviv “Informator” and then to Radio “Svoboda.”
After this incident, I decided not to tell anyone anything and to hold the Constituent Assembly on a Wednesday, when we were already gathering anyway. I chose January 26 and informed only Mykhailo Horyn, the secretary of the All-Ukrainian Coordinating Council of the UHU, who held the Constituent Assembly of the Ternopil branch of the UHU in my apartment without any hindrance. Those present—Leonid Drapak (joined July 9, 1988), Levko Horokhivskyy (August 7, 1988), Yaroslav Hevko (October 30, 1988), Yosyp Tytor (December 5, 1988), Ostap Zhmud (December 7, 1988), Volodymyr Skakun (December 16, 1988), Volodymyr Marmus (December 21, 1988), Roman Shkrobut (January 2, 1989), Yaroslav Chykurliy (January 9, 1989), Yaroslav Vovk (January 18, 1989)—became the first full-fledged members and founders of the UHU’s Ternopil branch. I, Levko Horokhivskyy, was elected chairman of the branch. A Coordinating Council was immediately formed from the members of the Ternopil branch of the UHU who were present.
Thus ended the first, most difficult stage of the formation and acquisition of legal status of the Ukrainian Helsinki Union in the Ternopil region—a socio-political organization that publicly came to the defense of the national and civil rights of Ukrainians. After a long campaign of intimidation against the members of the UHU initiative group and their families, the Ternopil branch of the UHU began to base its activities on the obvious: the local leadership did not want, and was even completely afraid of, perestroika; it was afraid of truth and glasnost, and therefore afraid of losing its undeservedly gained leadership positions and privileges. That is why they conducted their dialogue with the people using proven Stalinist methods: intimidation, persecution, and blackmail. For the communist party “elite,” the people remained a gray mass, which it was advantageous to keep in fear in order to instill a slavish obedience.
First Steps Amidst Persecution
A search began for ways to activate our efforts to solve the pressing problems of the struggle against the repressive and hypocritical policy of communist rule. At our weekly coordinating council meetings, we affirmed our commitment to a parliamentary method of struggle, and it became an axiom for us to achieve the goals proclaimed in the “UHU Declaration of Principles” through peaceful, non-violent means, in the following way:
1) by activating public opinion;
2) through various protests;
3) by participating in elections at all levels.
But the first attempts to take an active part in rallies were unsuccessful. For example, on March 9, 1989, a rally was supposed to take place at the Spivoche Pole (Singing Field) in the park under the slogan “All Power to the Soviets!” But the rally was banned. The organizers of the rally, Ihor Pushkar and former members of the sociological club “Noosphere,” were taken to the city prosecutor, Vasyl Bavoliak, for “prophylaxis.” Even before that, the secretary of the city party committee, O. M. Sokhatska, had demanded of Pushkar that the UHU not take advantage of the rally. And at Ternopil Secondary School No. 23, when asked “why the rally didn’t take place,” an instructor from the city party committee, N. B. Chaikivska, answered that it was disrupted by members of the Ternopil branch of the UHU, led by Horokhivskyy, a former convict... We were unceremoniously accused of two unauthorized rallies. As for the first rally, it was supposed to have taken place on December 18, 1988, as an environmental one, in the “Vatra” Palace of Culture. On that day, I was in Kyiv at the All-Ukrainian Council of the UHU, although the newspaper “Vilne Zhyttia” reported without mentioning this that there would be no rally at all.
Despite the authorities banning the first rallies, it was very convenient to blame the UHU (they told some people that it was we who had disrupted the rallies, while they lied to our faces about being responsible for holding rallies that never took place). Since there were not enough legal grounds to hold us accountable, they acted in a proven way—through disinformation, provocations, and blackmail.
The Ternopil UHU, as an exception, decided to support the candidacy of Professor Roman Hromiak in the elections to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on March 26, 1989.
He agreed to pursue three of our demands: to establish the state status of the Ukrainian language on the territory of what was then the Ukrainian SSR, to strive for broader sovereignty for Ukraine, and to phase out nuclear energy in Ukraine. It is true that at a meeting of the Council of the People’s Movement on March 29, the secretary of the oblast party committee for ideology, M. Yu. Babiy, who was speaking there, was asked why the local newspaper “Vilne Zhyttia” of March 15, 1989, had doctored Hromiak’s photograph, drawing a tie on his embroidered shirt. And from his article “Is a State Language Necessary?” they had removed the mention of Lenin’s work “On the Question of Nationalities or ‘Autonomization’.” No truthful answer was given, nor could there be one, even though the newspaper had denigrated the national dignity not only of Hromiak but of all Ukrainians. Was this not incitement of interethnic hatred, of which the city prosecutor, Vasyl Bavoliak, accused us at every turn?
As for the other candidates who did not support our demands, the UHU decided to boycott them. For example, during a meeting with voters, candidates for deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Hurarieva and Tyslytska, at the combine harvester plant, the director of the Ternopil cotton mill, Svitlana Hurarieva, declared that she no longer needed the Ukrainian language, as she was retiring soon. Both candidates advocated for bilingualism before the audience. And the Ternopil UHU, as best it could, appealed to the voters not to vote for such candidates.
To multiply the means of glasnost and to disseminate information about national democratic processes, the Ternopil Coordinating Council of the UHU decided to periodically issue an “Informator,” as a chronicle of public events in the Ternopil region. The first issue of the “Informator” came out on March 29, 1989, primarily for transmitting information to Radio “Svoboda.” And on January 1, 1990, the Ternopil branch of the UHU organized the publication of the first issue of the newspaper “Ternystyi Shliakh” (Thorny Path), which was printed in the city of Riga. The newspaper was prepared by an editorial board consisting of Yaroslav Stotskyi, Levko Horokhivskyy, Roman Sydiaha, Yuriy Tyma, and Volodymyr Khamchuk. Subsequently, “Ternystyi Shliakh” was included in the republican subscription list. In addition, the Ternopil UHU used written protests, appeals, statements, and letters to protect the civil and national rights of Ukrainians. For example, on May 9, 1989, the UHU Council instructed me to write an appeal to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR regarding the repeal of its decree “On Criminal Liability for State Crimes” of April 8, 1989, which provided a legal basis for new repressions against public formations. A collection of signatures was organized under this appeal. In addition, the UHU, including the Ternopil branch, collected signatures under a demand for the status of the Ukrainian language as the state language of the Republic (point 6 of the “UHU Declaration of Principles”), which were then sent to Moscow. The Ternopil UHU also sent a telegram of protest to the Congress of People’s Deputies of the USSR regarding the repressive act against Mykhailo Horyn, who was removed from a train in Zboriv to prevent him from attending a rally in Ternopil. He was even accused of theft. This insidious act was carried out by the prosecutor of the Zboriv district, Stepan Vaida, and police major Volodymyr Nyzhnykov. When it became known that there would be no rally in Ternopil, Horyn was sent back to Lviv.
Protests were also sent from the UHU to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in defense of the Greek-Catholic Church from persecution by local authorities. “Ukrainskyi Visnyk,” press releases, local “Informators,” statements, and appeals were printed and reprinted (initially on a single typewriter). Yaroslav Hevko, who was responsible for the information sector of the Ternopil UHU branch, handled this work.
And on July 3, 1989, at the invitation of the Lviv branch of the UHU, eight members of the Ternopil UHU traveled to a large rally in Lviv concerning the problems of interethnic relations. The main speaker at the rally was the chairman of the Lviv UHU branch, Bohdan Horyn. The participants of the rally adopted a resolution condemning targeted Russification, recognized the concept of a “single Soviet people” as unscientific, and resolved to achieve the implementation of the Ukrainian language in all spheres of life.
Both Rukh and “Memorial”
At that time, on March 24, 1989, the Ternopil regional organization of the People’s Movement of Ukraine was created—the first in Ukraine. The poet Mykhailo Levytskyi was elected chairman of the Ternopil regional organization of Rukh. I also, as the head of the Ternopil branch of the UHU, joined the Rukh Council. Fate gave us a chance to fight together for the revival of Ukrainian statehood. After all, the Ternopil UHU had consistently contributed to the creation of Rukh—we were united by a common concern for the fate of Ukraine. Therefore, after the formation of Rukh, the circle of people, especially the intelligentsia, with whom we could popularize and implement national democratic ideas, expanded.
But the impressions of what had been achieved had not yet faded when the city prosecutor began summoning the participants of the constituent assembly on April 13 to threaten them. He personally accused me of promoting interethnic discord (Article 66 of the Criminal Code) in my speeches and of participating in unauthorized rallies (he called a meeting of Rukh in the hall of the Writers’ Union a rally), at one of which someone had allegedly called for taking up arms. It was a provocation... Under the document he handed me to sign, I wrote: “Does not correspond to reality.” But despite this, the prosecutor screamed: “The next time I summon you, you will leave here under guard.” Mykhailo Levytskyi and Maria Kuzemko, who were also summoned to the prosecutor’s office, faced similar accusations.
And on May 10, during a meeting of the People’s Movement Council, Mykhailo Levytskyi reported that the oblast committee had issued instructions on how to combat the UHU and Rukh, as well as their members. At the same meeting, I shared my impressions of the May 7 rally in Bykivnia near Kyiv, in which I had participated. The speakers there emphasized that this rally was not to commemorate the innocent victims of shootings (according to Les Taniuk—120,000 executed), but to free ourselves from indifference and fear and to cleanse society of cynicism and informers. In conclusion, I proposed that those present at the Rukh Council vote on a resolution to repeal the anti-democratic decree of April 8, 1989, to be sent to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.
The number of regional public organizations grew: “Society of the Ukrainian Language,” “Vertep,” “People’s Movement of Ukraine,” “Memorial.” On April 28, 1989, in the assembly hall of the Writers’ Union of Ukraine, the Constituent Assembly of the historical and educational society “Memorial” was held, a meeting that had been banned on April 15. The 28th was not without incident either. Before the meeting began, local authorities cordoned off the entire building of the regional Writers’ Union with a rope with red ribbons and police posts, as a dangerous zone, staging the excavation of a projectile. But the spectacle was primitive and ridiculous. The assembly elected the writer Maria Kuzemko as the chairwoman of the regional “Memorial” society. The co-chairman of the republican “Memorial” society, Les Taniuk, gave a wonderful speech at the Constituent Assembly. I, as a representative of the UHU, was elected to the “Memorial” Council. And before that, on April 24, in order to disrupt the creation of the people’s “Memorial,” a constituent assembly of an alternative “Memorial” was held in the building of political education, whose founders were the ideological department of the oblast party committee, the regional museum of local lore, the Red Cross society, the “Mercy” society, and the “Veteran” club. The director of the regional museum of local lore, V. A. Lavreniuk, was elected chairman of this “Memorial.” A UHU member, Yaroslav Hevko, who was at this meeting without the right to vote, tried to read to those present the resolution of the republican conference of “Memorial,” but he was not allowed to do so.
Life went on. Public organizations were also being created in the district centers. For example, on August 19, 1989, a “Memorial” society was created in the city of Chortkiv. In addition to myself, a member of the regional “Memorial” Council, Bohdan Tkachyk, and a UHU member, Yaroslav Chykurliy, arrived for the constituent assembly of the chapter. All representatives of the Chortkiv UHU initiative group—Volodymyr Marmus, Roman Shkrobut, Yaroslav Vovk, Mykola Dziuba, and Ivan Ivaskiv—became members of the local chapter.
The Chortkiv Society immediately got to work—they found witnesses to the atrocities of the 1941 Chortkiv tragedy, decided to tidy up the neglected graves of the victims of communist terror and the graves of the Sich Riflemen, and to consecrate them.
The Persecutions Do Not Stop
On April 26, 1989, I was summoned to the regional prosecutor’s office. The director of the design bureau at the combine harvester plant, Yu. Z. Vuychyk, gave me a ride in his car, explaining that he wanted to see it all for himself. There, in his presence, the regional prosecutor V. S. Ivanov, the head of the regional KGB O. I. Shaparenko, and the deputy regional prosecutor M. I. Yatsenko accused me of convening the UHU constituent assembly, holding unauthorized rallies, publishing the “Informators” and passing information to Radio “Svoboda,” spreading anti-Soviet ideas, rehabilitating the UPA, promoting nationalism among students, and distributing harmful documents. When asked to explain the reason for the summons and the accusations, the prosecutor cited Article 23 of the Administrative Code of the Ukrainian SSR, letters from informants, and the fact that, supposedly, the UHU was not registered. When I said that I would not back down, no matter what they did to me, there was a pause. Then I asked if I could go. They did not detain me; only Ivanov turned red, and Shaparenko stopped me at the door and extended his hand, which surprised me greatly. He even said: “Let’s not be enemies…” It was then that I felt a real shift was occurring in the system. And it also seemed to me that, perhaps, not everyone was zealously following Moscow’s instructions.
All members of the UHU were persecuted. For example, on May 3, 1989, Volodymyr Marmus was summoned in Chortkiv to the senior assistant prosecutor, Petrushevskyi. Similar summonses had occurred before: to the district prosecutor, Hryniv; to the senior investigator of the prosecutor’s office, Kozak; to the assistant prosecutor, Chorniy. But this summons was different from the previous ones because in the prosecutor’s hands was the decree of April 8, “On Criminal Liability for State Crimes.” Marmus was accused of distributing a UHU appeal to collect signatures against the construction of nuclear power plants in Ukraine, of posting leaflets during the election campaign because they called for voting against the first secretary of the oblast party committee, Ostrozhynskyi, and of having a negative influence on the students of the local pedagogical college, about which the deputy director of the pedagogical college, Voitovych, had complained to the prosecutor.
And on May 11, at Ternopil Bakery No. 2, UHU member and electrician Bohdan Lekhniak was summoned for a “conversation” by KGB representatives who introduced themselves as Mykhailiuk and Sydorov. Behind the supposedly polite conversation, elements of blackmail and intimidation could be felt, hints of an allegedly illegal connection with foreign countries. They called the UHU organization a “swamp” and its leaders immoral people. They illegally interfered in family matters, turning from state security into gossipers and moralizers. But in reality, it was an insidious maneuver to push Bohdan Lekhniak away from the Ukrainian Helsinki Union. But he did not yield.
The warnings to UHU members turned into outright mockery. On May 25, Yaroslav Vovk, a UHU member from the village of Stara Yahilnytsia in the Chortkiv district, was forced to pack his belongings and look for another place to live—due to psychological pressure on his parents and wife from the head of the Chortkiv KGB, Stepan Chernysh, and the head of the ideological department of the district party committee, Yuriy Filyak. They had come to the village specifically to incite the local authorities, villagers, and certain members of the church council against Yaroslav Vovk, to make him leave the UHU.
The Return of National Symbols
Life flowed on. The Ternopil UHU grew and strengthened. On July 18, at a regular meeting of the local UHU Council, besides myself, Yaroslav Hevko, Ostap Zhmud, Volodymyr Marmus, Yaroslav Chykurliy, Roman Shkrobut, Bohdan Lekhniak, Yuriy Tyma, Mykola Savhira, Yevstakhiy Zhyznomirskyi, and Petro Busko were present. On that day, Vasyl Turetskyi and Yevhen Zhydonyk joined the UHU. The following Wednesday, at the Ternopil UHU Council meeting on July 25, a decision was made that the panakhyda (memorial service), which was to take place on July 30, 1989, at the graves of the Sich Riflemen and the victims of the 1941 Stalinist terror, would not be complete without national symbols. For the UHU, language, the trident, and the blue-and-yellow flag were defining attributes and symbols of Ukraine, for which it was necessary to fight.
It should be added that on July 29, without any search warrant, two policemen, Lieutenant Shalapa and Senior Lieutenant Siianchuk, broke into the apartment of UHU member Bohdan Lekhniak and searched for flags—information had somehow leaked that Bohdan Lekhniak had volunteered to organize the sewing of national banners. But despite this, for the first time in Ternopil on the day of the Panakhyda, besides myself, UHU members Mykola Savhira, Yevstakhiy Zhyznomirskyi, and Bohdan Lekhniak carried blue-and-yellow banners. Before that, on my initiative to carry the national flags, the Rukh Council had abstained by a majority vote. After the memorial service, a rally was held in which all public organizations took part. Delegations from Lviv, Rivne, and even Lithuania were present. And on August 4, the city court of Ternopil fined me 250 rubles (judge Mahdych), Mykola Savhira 200 rubles, Yevstakhiy Zhyznomirskyi 90 rubles (judge for both—Kozak), and Bohdan Lekhniak 50 rubles (judge Shulhach). The head of the city police, Stanislav Holovko, sanctioned these repressive actions, ordering Police Major Nozdrin, Captain Stula, Captain Kovpak, Senior Lieutenant Karyi, and Lieutenant Shalapa to draw up protocols for traffic violations. In addition, on August 7, the court fined UHU member Yuriy Tyma 100 rubles and People’s Movement of Ukraine members Vasyl Kvasnovskyi, Myroslav Mokriy, Oleksandr Levchenko from “Orion,” and Iryna Breshkovska 50 rubles each just for participating in the street procession.
The Ternopil branch of the UHU protested against the arbitrariness of the local authorities and the gross violation of human rights and entrusted me to draw up and send a protest to the regional prosecutor, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, and the international community. In the text of the protest, I included the event that occurred on August 6 at the Ternopil cemetery. In the presence of Greek-Catholic believers Roman Khomyn, Mykola Slobodiuk, and Pavlo Karatov, the police barbarically smashed an altar that was being prepared for a divine service, beat and threw into a car Stepan Kozub, a resident of the village of Bila in the Ternopil district, simply because he dared to remind them of the freedom of conscience.
It is also worth mentioning that before that, on May 21, in accordance with the decision of the regional organization of the People’s Movement, a memorial sign was installed in the center of Ternopil at the desired site for a monument to Taras Shevchenko. Hundreds of people who gathered laid flowers, sang folk songs, and recited poems. The writers Mykhailo Levytskyi and Heorhiy Petruk-Popyk spoke before the public. On behalf of the local UHU, Bohdan Lekhniak and I placed a bouquet of flowers with yellow and blue ribbons and four yellow and blue flags near the sign. These were the first steps in returning national symbols to Ukrainian reality. After three o’clock in the morning, there was no trace left of the sign or the flags. The next day, artists brought black banners to the site with the inscriptions: “Shame on the criminals who desecrated the name of Taras Shevchenko.” And on May 23, Colonel Vitaliy Reima of the police summoned H. Petruk-Popyk, M. Levytskyi, M. Kuzemko, and me, accusing us of holding an unauthorized rally.
After July 30, national flags were flown at every protest action. And on January 20, 1990, UHU activists solemnly raised a blue-and-yellow flag on a metal flagpole in a small park in front of the musical and drama theater in the presence of many Ternopil residents, while singing the anthem “Shche ne vmerla Ukraina” (Ukraine Has Not Yet Perished).
But the most magnificent event took place in Monastyrysk during my election campaign. For the first time in Ukraine, under the enormous influence of the UHU and the election campaign, during which we presented and solemnly raised a national flag in every village, the Monastyrysk district executive committee, on February 20, 1990, passed a decision to legalize the blue-and-yellow flag as the national flag of Ukraine.
Intensification of Activities
Aware of our common goal and responsibility, the Ternopil organizations of the UHU, Rukh, and “Memorial” coordinated their work for participation in joint actions. My presence on the councils of both Rukh and Memorial also contributed to this position to some extent.
Perhaps our coordinated actions led to the largest explosion of protest and revolutionary shift that shook Ternopil on August 23, 1989, the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Rukh had submitted an application to hold a rally. However, the rally was not permitted. Members of the Rukh Council protested the city executive committee’s decision at the oblast executive committee. But I received a written response from the head of the oblast executive committee, O. Tovstanovskyi, banning the rally, as I had previously appealed to him and insisted on holding it. This appeal to Tovstanovskyi was also signed by Petro Kasinchuk, Andriy Zarudnyi, and Vasyl Kvasnovskyi. Nevertheless, at 7 p.m., people gathered at the Spivoche Pole, even though police posts were set up all around. The authorities did not know what to do. So, just before the rally, the head of police, Kolesnyk, summoned the head of the city executive committee, Anatoliy Kucherenko, and the first secretary of the city party committee, Viktor Rybin. After negotiations with the Rukh Council, Anatoliy Kucherenko announced over a microphone that the rally would not take place and took the microphone away. The members of the People’s Movement Council, of which I was also a part as the head of the UHU, in protest against the suppression of freedom of speech and the ban on the rally, put red bands on their mouths with the word “Glasnost” written on them. The crowd began to chant: “Shame!” And then the incredible happened—all those present and those who were not allowed into the rally marched in a column through the streets of Ternopil to the oblast party committee building. Along the way, countless people joined them. Before the central street (then Lenin Street), a cordon of special forces stood in helmets, with shields, rubber batons, and brass knuckles. But so many people were marching that this cordon was scattered, although many were beaten and injured. All international agreements on human rights were grossly violated when an armed police force was sent against a peaceful procession. Thus, Ihor Havlich, a worker at the “Orion” factory, had his face bloodied and his collarbone broken; Volodymyra Pidhirskaya’s finger was broken, and her daughter Oksana was hit on the back with a baton; Mykola Zelensky’s legs were bruised in his old age; Maria Babiak, who was carrying a blue-and-yellow flag, was beaten; a 15-year-old schoolgirl (who lived at 4 Kombinatna Street) got a lump on her forehead, and her parents were even afraid to give their name lest they be persecuted later. I also got a blow to the head. However, Bohdan Lypovetskyi suffered the most; he was sentenced by a Ternopil court to 2.5 years in prison for allegedly beating a policeman, although witnesses testified that it was quite the opposite. Among the thuggish policemen, Volodymyr Vodianyk and Bohdan Danylchuk were identified.
It fell to me then to lead the 100,000-strong column of demonstrators that approached the oblast party committee building. I remember the Rukh activist and artist Bohdan Tkachyk by my side. Near the oblast committee itself, special forces lined up in several rows in body armor and helmets, with shields. The head of the oblast police, Kolesnyk, and others were at a loss—at first, they tried to intimidate us, saying there were tanks ahead, but seeing that this didn't work, they asked about our demands. I decided to call the head of Rukh and the head of “Memorial” over the megaphone for negotiations. But only Maria Kuzemko responded. Together with her, we hastily prepared the terms of negotiation. The head of police asked that negotiations with the authorities be conducted near the drama theater. When the tension subsided and everyone returned to the drama theater, we began to demand the arrival of the first secretary of the city party committee, Viktor Rybin, and the head of the city executive committee, Anatoliy Kucherenko. A deadline of 30 minutes was set; if they did not come within that time, the people would go to the oblast committee again. When the representatives of the authorities arrived, Maria Kuzemko, whom we had lifted onto our hands, read out our demands: to cancel the city committee’s decision to ban rallies, to provide a permanent place for holding meetings, and to prohibit repressive actions against the demonstrators. The representatives of the authorities agreed to fulfill all the demands. These were already significant shifts for the national democratic forces. After these events, the number of people wanting to join the UHU increased.
Nevertheless, at the city executive committee meeting on August 24, the UHU and Rukh forced the hosts to raise the issue of the crackdown on the demonstrators of August 23. The first to speak at the meeting was the head of the city police, Stanislav Holovko, who only stated the facts, avoiding the causes and consequences. So it turns out that instead of the police protecting their citizens, they were protecting communist bureaucrats. At this meeting of the city executive committee, the Ternopil organization of the People’s Movement was represented by: the head of Rukh, Mykhailo Levytskyi; Rukh member Andriy Zarudnyi; the head of “Memorial,” Maria Kuzemko; UHU member Petro Kasinchuk; and myself, as the head of the Ternopil branch of the UHU. An appeal from the People’s Movement was read, in which the first secretary of the city party committee, Viktor Rybin, and the head of the city executive committee, Anatoliy Kucherenko, were directly accused of the bloody events of August 23. They had provoked those bloody events by banning the rally and then giving the order to send armed police units against peaceful citizens. The city executive committee disagreed with this accusation and voted to split the blame equally. But that was a blatant mockery. Despite this, we still demanded that the city executive committee inform us who gave the order for the police to beat people with batons.
The atmosphere of uncertainty and confusion among the party apparatus and in the political life of the empire required us to intensify our activities. Agitation and protests against injustice became more frequent. On September 2, a rally was held dedicated to the draft Law on Elections, in which the UHU took an active part. On this day, we came out for the first time with “UHU” inscriptions on our armbands and with more than twenty blue-and-yellow flags. And on September 5, UHU and Rukh activists organized a picket opposite the Ternopil Pedagogical Institute demanding the reinstatement of UHU member Yuriy Tyma and the head of the “Vertep” society, Anatoliy Pasichnyk, who had been expelled from the institute. Several dozen picketers, standing with protest slogans, collected signatures in defense of Yu. Tyma and A. Pasichnyk. A commission was created, headed by Professor and Deputy Roman Hromiak, to investigate the case of the 86 students expelled from this institute.
The authorities made threats, but this did not frighten anyone. On September 14, another picket was held in front of the pedagogical institute, in which over 40 people took part.
An outrageous event occurred on September 15 in the village of Budaniv, Terebovlia district, when a disinfector at the local psychiatric hospital, Mykhailo Stepanovych Yurchyshyn, was summoned to the village council. There, the head of the village council, Volodymyr Khomiak, the district prosecutor, Ivan Kostiuk, and the head of the district police, Hryhoriy Skrypiuk, were already waiting for him. They threatened Yurchyshyn with eviction from the village and blackmailed him with some mythical past, simply because he, being a delegate to the Congress of the People’s Movement of Ukraine on September 8–10, had spoken at a political information session and talked about the congress, read an appeal from people’s deputies to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, and also called for the tidying up of the Sich Riflemen’s graves. The police chief, the prosecutor, and the village council head called the People’s Movement nationalist and Banderite, and the Rukh delegates Banderites. This illustration shows how zealously, before the higher communist party authorities, unprecedented threats were carried out at the slightest manifestation of civic activity.
However, despite the communist party's resistance, the UHU and Rukh continued their struggle. The date of September 17, 1989—the 50th anniversary of the accession of the Western Ukrainian lands to the USSR—we called a Day of Mourning in view of the beginning of mass repressions against nationally conscious Ukrainians. At 10 a.m. in Ternopil, Greek Catholics organized a procession with candles from the Dominican Cathedral, which the authorities had then transferred to the Moscow Orthodox Church, all the way to the grave of those murdered by the NKVD. The procession was organized and led over 3 kilometers by Mykhailo Brylyk. UHU members also took part in it. At the cemetery, near the grave of the repressed, about five thousand people gathered at 3 p.m., where they lit candles. UHU members came with blue-and-yellow banners to which black mourning ribbons were tied. After a joint prayer, the head of the People’s Movement, Mykhailo Levytskyi, and I, as the head of the Ternopil branch of the UHU, spoke out, condemning the events of 1939. UHU member Ivan Ivanyshchuk appealed to the youth, urging them to join the ranks of the Helsinki Union. Living witnesses of those bloody events spoke, sad church melodies were played, and at the end, the anthem “Shche ne vmerla Ukraina” was sung. Without waiting for the priest who was supposed to conduct the service, the people were about to disperse. But after the announcement of the detention by the police of some boys from Berezhany (Ivan Zdyrko, Zinoviy Popovych, Oleksiy Kuzma, Yosyp Lishko), I called on the community to go together to the city police department to demand the release of the detainees. On the way, the police chief, Stanislav Holovko, approached the column and asked me: “What does the community demand?” When the demands were put forward, the police chief replied that three of the boys had already been released, and he would personally bring the fourth, Yosyp Lishko, in 15 minutes. He kept his word, but the people still demanded an answer regarding the detention of the priest and the beating of a 15-year-old 9th-grade student from the village of Chervonozbarazke, Zbarazh district. As for the priest, he said that he had not been detained. He even tried to convince the demonstrators, saying that if it was not true, they could call him a liar and picket the police station. We had to believe him, although many present had their doubts. And regarding the beating of Serhiy Yasynskyi, the police chief promised to fire the policemen who were involved in the beating. And, as Yasynskyi noted in his statement, they were criminal investigation operative Kroiko and policemen Duzhok and Mostovyi.
This upsurge of civil disobedience brought new members to the UHU from Berezhany: Ivan Zdyrko and Yosyp Lishko.
After these events, on September 21, I was immediately summoned to the police, and then to the city prosecutor’s office, as the organizer of the September 17 rally and as a witness to the events of August 23. An investigator from the prosecutor’s office, Ivan Vasylyovych Horbuliak, questioned me about those events. Then, on September 26, a trial was held in my case, and on the morning of September 28, at 9 a.m., Police Major Volodymyr Leskiv, with two other policemen, took me to court, where Judge Vasyl Pshyk fined me 1000 rubles because it turned out that I had called on people not to be afraid and to unite! Mykhailo Levytskyi, as the head of the People’s Movement, was also fined 1000 rubles.
They also resorted to other methods of intimidation—on September 25, in the middle of the day, right on the street, an unknown person hit Petruk-Popyk’s daughter with a hard stick wrapped in a newspaper.
But despite this, on October 1, we, together with Rukh, held a rally at the Spivoche Pole dedicated to the Law on Languages and the national question. Volodymyr Kolinets, a member of the Rukh Council, in his speech, particularly emphasized that recently in the newspaper “Shliakhom Illicha” (On Ilich’s Path), the head of the Ternopil branch of the KGB, Stupak, had called the newly formed “Society of the Ukrainian Language” in the village of Hai neobanderite.
Not everyone could speak because the initiative was seized by the head of the city executive committee, Kucherenko—he, along with a member of the Rukh Council, Yaroslav Hevko, led the rally. However, at the end, when they were about to announce the conclusion of the rally, I managed to instantly get to the microphone and categorically refuse to pay the 1000-ruble fine. Mykhailo Levytskyi proclaimed the same. We held out both our hands and appealed to the police authorities to replace our fine with 15 days of arrest. In addition, I called for a march to the oblast party committee for a picket if the investigation into the August 23 demonstration was not stopped and the fine was not lifted from both of us.
The passions had not yet subsided when, on October 3, at 9 a.m., three policemen (the senior was Major Volodymyr Leskiv) took me to the regional prosecutor’s office, passing me on to Major Dvorskyi on the way. The deputy regional prosecutor, M. Yatsenko, and the head of the UVD, Nahaiev, blackmailed me, saying that in the event of a picket, I would be jailed for 15 days and fined 3000 rubles. The next day, I sent a written appeal against the illegal fine to the regional prosecutor, V. S. Ivanov, and sent a copy to the All-Union “Memorial” society. There, I emphasized that I categorically disassociated myself from this fine, as I considered it, given this bloody date, an outrage against our already spat-upon national dignity. But this was not enough, and on October 7, in the city center, at the initiative of the UHU, a picket was held as a protest against the imposition of fines of 1000 rubles each on me and Mykhailo Levytskyi for organizing the memorial procession on September 17. Over 200 people took part in the picket. Two hours before the picket began, the police took me from my home and drove me to the regional prosecutor’s office, where the regional prosecutor, Ivanov, with his deputy, Yatsenko, blackmailed me, persuading me to convince people not to start the picket. Of course, I categorically refused. Ivanov and Yatsenko were forced to go out to the people. Only after their promise to reconsider the case and resolve it fairly did the people disperse.
The UHU’s Struggle for the Revival of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church
The All-Ukrainian Coordinating Council of the UHU in Lviv decided to join the struggle for the rehabilitation of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, illegally suppressed in 1946. The Ternopil UHU Council discussed this pressing issue and, during May and June, coordinated trips for picketing on Arbat Street in Moscow to demand the restoration of the Greek-Catholic Church. The first to volunteer to protest against the injustice from the Ternopil branch of the UHU were Olha Lisko and Ivan Dmytryk.
The Greek-Catholic Church, which was effectively operating underground, began to gradually legalize itself, and the Ternopil UHU joined this process. At the proposal of the Ternopil “Memorial” Council, I was entrusted to appeal with a protest to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the All-Union “Memorial” society, and the international Christian community regarding the illegal actions of local authorities aimed against the just demands of the Greek-Catholic community of Ternopil. My appeal was unanimously supported at an open meeting of “Memorial.” The issue at hand was that on July 2, 1989, at 9 a.m., the Greek-Catholic community of Ternopil had organized a divine service to celebrate the Holy Eucharist near the non-functioning Church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. After the service, Father Mykhailo and the faithful had a conversation with the head of the city police department, Stanislav Holovko, who assured them that religious services in the church would be permitted if the community appealed to the higher authorities with a petition. The faithful, having collected 200 signatures under the demand to return the church to them, took the petition to the city executive committee. There were three such petitions. But despite the legitimate demands of the Greek Catholics, the priest of the Moscow Orthodox Church, Vodíanyi, on July 6, without any agreement with the Greek-Catholic community of the city, consecrated the aforementioned church as Moscow Orthodox, leaving thousands of believers on the street. Such a step not only violated the right to freedom of conscience but was even un-Christian and was aimed at inciting enmity, perhaps well-planned by someone.
But the march towards the revival of the national church could no longer be stopped. On September 3, in Terebovlia, the Greek-Catholic priest Father Vitaliy conducted a divine service on the occasion of the 1000th anniversary of the baptism of Ukraine-Rus. UHU members and representatives of the “Vertep” Society from Ternopil who were present marched through the city with blue-and-yellow banners, and at the end, they sang the church hymn and “Shche ne vmerla Ukraina.” They then proceeded to the monument to Shevchenko, where they sang the “Zapovit” (Testament).
And at the initiative of Father Vitaliy Dutkevych, we, on behalf of the UHU, submitted an application to hold a regional prayer service on the Teatralnyi Maidan (Theater Square) in Ternopil on October 15, 1989, for the rehabilitation of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church and for the revival of Ukraine. For some reason, the People’s Movement did not support us in this action. True, the chairman of the city executive committee, Kucherenko, tried to persuade me to agree to hold the prayer service at the cemetery. But I stood my ground and insisted. At that time, only Father Vitaliy supported me. Even the faithful who were present asked me to compromise, but I believed that this action should take place in the city center. I gave orders to our, at that time still few, UHU members regarding the organization of the prayer service. UHU members Roman Sydiaha and Petro Petrovskyi were most zealous in organizing this event.
In the morning, a car with two men, either policemen or KGB agents, drove up to my house and took me to my old acquaintance, the city prosecutor, Vasyl Bavoliak. He accused me of so many things that it was hard for me to remember them all. And the events in the center of Ternopil were unfolding in a very intriguing way. People gathered on Teatralnyi Maidan, although the Ternopil city authorities demanded that the prayer service be held at the cemetery. But Ivan Hel, who was responsible for religious affairs in the Lviv regional council and a former political prisoner whom I had invited to this prayer service, spoke to the community on Theater Square and called on them not to disperse until I was released from the prosecutor’s office. There was no other choice but to let me go. But I was in no great hurry. So they came to me again in a car, so that I would appear and speak before the community, thus confirming that I had been released and that the procession would finally move to the cemetery. But the greater part of the action still took place in the city center.
In addition, the Ternopil UHU took an active part in organizing memorial services with a national character throughout the Ternopil region. On October 22, 1989, in the village of Voloshchyna, Berezhany district, a panakhyda and a rally were held at the grave of victims murdered by the NKVD in the Berezhany prison in 1941. Many people gathered at the grave. Many came with blue-and-yellow flags. UHU members Ivan Ivanyshchuk, Yaroslav Khmarnyi, and Ivan Zdyrko spoke at the rally, as did a local schoolteacher, Nadiya Holovko. Those present sang patriotic songs. The policemen, of whom there were many, did not interfere with the memorial service.
On the same day, in the village of Ivankiv, Borshchiv district, a panakhyda was also held, but this time at the grave of the Sich Riflemen. The service was conducted by Greek-Catholic priests: Father Senkiv from the village of Rosokhach, Father Podushchak from the Buchach district, and Fathers Volodymyr and Kysil from the village of Lanivtsi, Borshchiv district, in the presence of more than 4,000 people. Blue-and-yellow flags fluttered, and children held small flags. After the service, Father Senkiv delivered a long sermon about the Sich Riflemen and the UGCC. On behalf of the UHU, Yaroslav Demydas, Roman Shkrobut, and Petro Kasinchuk delivered speeches. There were attempts to interrupt the speakers during their speeches, but the people did not allow it. At the end, they sang the anthem “Shche ne vmerla Ukraina.” The panakhyda was organized by UHU activist Volodymyr Sytnyk and fellow villagers—members of the UHU initiative group. A large number of police were sent to the village, and a fire engine with five firefighters was also on standby.
And on October 28, in the city of Borshchiv, a trial was held against Volodymyr Sytnyk in the office of Judge Orest Chepesiuk in the presence of prosecutor Volodymyr Vlasenko. The prosecutor read out denunciations written by the secretary of the party organization, the head of the trade union committee, and the assistant foreman of the local collective farm. Residents of the village of Ivankiv were also present at the trial, but no one else was given the floor—they were even kicked out of the office. The judge fined Sytnyk 300 rubles without right of appeal.
In Ternopil, at the graves of the Sich Riflemen, Greek-Catholic priests Father Vitaliy and Father Ivan conducted a panakhyda on November 1, 1989. The UHU, with blue-and-yellow flags, held an honor guard throughout the service. At the end, they sang the anthem “Shche ne vmerla Ukraina.”
Subsequently, on November 12, in the village of Saranchuky, Berezhany district, the Ternopil branch of the UHU organized a panakhyda at the grave of the victims of the Stalinist terror (tortured in the Berezhany prison before the arrival of the Germans in 1941), as well as at the grave of a UPA warrior. They were all buried near the Church of the Holy Cross. Thirty UHU members, together with local residents, marched 3 km in a column from the Potutory station to the village of Saranchuky with a wreath of thorns, blue-and-yellow flags adorned with mourning ribbons, and a banner reading “Eternal shame to the executioners of the Ukrainian people!” People wept openly when they saw their native colors. After the Divine Liturgy, a panakhyda was held, and the church choir sang “Vichnaya Pamyat” (Eternal Memory). Local residents, members of the Society of the Ukrainian Language, and the People’s Movement of Ukraine gave testimonies of the tortures in the Berezhany prison and condemned the policy of genocide. On behalf of the UHU, in addition to myself, members of the Berezhany chapter, Yaroslav Khmarnyi and Ivan Zdyrko, spoke, as did Ternopil residents Ivan Ivanyshchuk and Yaroslav Demydas. All emphasized that the current problems could only be resolved with the full freedom and independence of Ukraine. The UHU members, and then everyone else, sang the anthem “Shche ne vmerla Ukraina.” The local residents, singing Sich Riflemen songs, escorted the column of flag-bearers all the way to the train. There were no obstacles from the authorities—they all stood aside and watched. Only the next morning, three unknown young men beat UHU activist Myroslav Bilyk, a 60-year-old from the village of Kotova, Berezhany district, on the street simply because he had actively organized the panakhyda.
On the same day, November 12, in the city of Chortkiv, five Greek-Catholic priests, led by Bishop Pavlo Vasylyk, celebrated a liturgy in front of an ancient wooden church. After the liturgy, a procession in an organized column with banners and national flags passed through the entire city to the graves of the Sich Riflemen and victims of Stalinist repressions. Almost the entire population of the city and surrounding villages joined the procession. Soldiers from the barracks windows shouted “Slava Ukraini!” (Glory to Ukraine!). After the panakhyda, a rally was held at which UHU members Roman Shkrobut, Yevstakhiy Zhyznomirskyi, and Petro Kasinchuk spoke, as did Volodymyr Soviak, Andriy Bazelinskyi, and the first secretary of the district committee, A. Krytskyi. At the end, they sang our national anthem. It was the first and largest demonstration in Chortkiv, and it shook the entire district.
Regarding the attitude towards the Greek-Catholic Church and religious relations in Ukraine, the UHU adopted a separate appeal at its conference on March 17, 1990, in Kyiv. It stated that the renaming of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine to “Ukrainian” did not change its imperial orientation due to its administrative dependence on the Moscow Patriarchate. It was emphasized that pro-imperial forces in Western Ukraine are trying to divide Greek-Catholics and Orthodox to exacerbate relations between them in every way, in order to create a foothold for their Church. And with its help, to slow down the awakening of the national consciousness of Ukrainians. Evidence of such an orientation can be found in the information voiced on December 19, 1989, by the head of the Kremenets chapter of the UHU, Borys Skoroplias, that in the Pochayiv Lavra, church services are conducted exclusively in the Russian language.
The Youth Surge and Structuring
The UHU Council decided to hold a general meeting of the Ternopil branch of the UHU to analyze its own activities and strengthen its position in the further implementation of the “UHU Declaration of Principles.” The meeting was held on October 8, 1989, near Ternopil in the village of Velyki Birky, at the apartment of UHU member Petro Petrovskyi. The number of UHU members present had already reached 49. The meeting, first and foremost, was about the internal organization of the union (the creation of a functional structure) and the expansion of the UHU throughout the entire oblast. A deputy chairman was elected (Ivan Ivanyshchuk), as were a coordinator and council members. All work was divided into sections. The heads of the sections automatically became council members. The meeting elected Yuriy Morhun as the head of the youth section.
And on October 27, in Ternopil, the constituent assembly of the Union of Independent Ukrainian Youth (SNUM) was held, at which the creation of a regional organization was announced, the program and charter of the Union were discussed and adopted, and the governing bodies were elected. Yuriy Morhun became the chairman of the Ternopil SNUM, and Yuriy Tyma—both UHU members—became his deputy. In addition to myself, as the chairman of the Ternopil branch of the UHU, a member of the Lviv branch UHU Council, Oleh Vitovych, was invited to the meeting. Among the 20 invited participants, the 14 newly elected members of SNUM predominated. They, along with other plans, set themselves the task of searching for and identifying the graves of the Sich Riflemen.
By a joint decision, it was decided to hold the second day of the constituent assembly on the historical sanctuary of the Ukrainian people, Mount Lysonia, near the grave of the Sich Riflemen, in the Berezhany region. When they were already on Lysonia, representatives of the authorities demanded their passports, but the SNUM members refused and raised blue-and-yellow flags on the mountain, prayed, and took a solemn oath. Finally, they sang the anthem “Shche ne vmerla Ukraina.” On their way back, in the village of Posukhiv, they were met by emotional people who wept and blessed the national flag—men took off their hats. In the center of the village, where many people had gathered, the SNUM members once again sang “Shche ne vmerla Ukraina,” and only in Berezhany were they met by a prosecutor who warned them against using the symbols in the city.
Subsequently, starting from December 5, members of the UHU and SNUM initiated a “one-hundred-meter strip of glasnost” in the center of Ternopil, in what was then Karl Marx Square. People would gather there, exchange information, and collect signatures demanding the release of Ukrainian political prisoners.
The stimulus for the creation of district organizations of the UHU and the internal structuring of the regional Union came from unforeseen events in the Council of the Ternopil organization of the People’s Movement. People in Berezhany had complained to the deputy chairman of the Ternopil UHU, Ivan Ivanyshchuk, that a member of the Krai (Regional) Council of Rukh, Dmytro Piasetskyi, had called the soldiers of the OUN-UPA (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists-Ukrainian Insurgent Army) bandits during his speech. In connection with Piasetskyi’s adventurous behavior and scandalous statements, the head of Rukh, Mykhailo Levytskyi, and a member of the Rukh Council, Heorhiy Petruk-Popyk, agreed with me that I would raise the question of removing Piasetskyi from the Council at a meeting of the Rukh Council. When, at the meeting of the Rukh Council, which was in the second half of October, I raised the issue of dismissing Piasetskyi, only Volodymyr Kolinets supported me, while the rest abstained. Then Piasetskyi simply flew into a rage at me and gestured to where I should be sent. Such phenomena among the champions of Ukraine’s revival were unacceptable. After this incident, I felt that some were already trying to remove me from the Rukh Council. And in general, it turned out that something was not right here. Therefore, I turned to the Chairman of the republican secretariat of the People’s Movement of Ukraine, Mykhailo Horyn, asking him to come to Ternopil and speak to the local Rukh members about the main tasks facing the People’s Movement of Ukraine. Mykhailo Horyn’s speech made a good impression, but not for long. The subsequent situation in the Rukh Council did not contribute to consolidation and understanding.
At that time, the Krai Council of Rukh was represented by two Ternopil enterprises: “Orion” and the textile mill. After speaking with members of the Rukh chapters at the leading enterprises of Ternopil, I learned that they also sought and demanded to have their own representatives on the Rukh Council. Moreover, there was not a single representative on the Council from the districts, as district organizations did not yet exist. Therefore, I again appealed to Kyiv to help reorganize the Krai Council of Rukh. Volodymyr Muliava, the deputy Chairman of the republican secretariat of the People’s Movement of Ukraine, arrived from Kyiv. Over a short period, three meetings were held regarding the reorganization of the Krai Council of Rukh. One of the meetings, at a private apartment on October 28, 1989, was attended by representatives of many Rukh chapters from large enterprises in the city of Ternopil. In addition to myself, the deputy Chairman of the republican secretariat of Rukh, Volodymyr Muliava, and the republican secretary of Rukh, Maria Kuzemko, took part in the meeting. A resolution was adopted on the need to convene an extraordinary conference of Rukh in Ternopil.
This turn of events irritated the leadership of the Ternopil Rukh, and they even called those meetings, with the participation of Volodymyr Muliava, a “Chorna rada” (Black Council). But at a meeting of the Rukh Council on November 6, responsibilities for preparing for the regional Rukh conference were distributed. I was “punished” by being tasked with creating Rukh chapters in all districts of the oblast within a month. Immediately, the next day, on November 7, at a meeting of the UHU branch Council, we created a task force for trips to the districts, which also included a representative of Rukh, Vasyl Kvasnovskyi. A Coordinating Council was created to establish the Rukh chapters. Subsequently, the Ternopil branch of the UHU, together with members of Rukh, began to establish Rukh chapters in the districts. This was a good opportunity for the UHU to establish its own chapters, which we took advantage of.
First, the Constituent Assembly to create a district UHU organization was held in the city of Monastyrysk on October 12, 1989. Andriy Paratsiy was elected chairman. The first members also included Yaroslav Chekaliuk and Ivan Pshenyshniak. Then, in chronological order, the following joined the UHU: Berezhany—October 21, 1989, chairman Yaroslav Khmarnyi (first members: Ivan Zdyrko and Yosyp Lishko); Buchach—November 2, 1989, chairman Volodymyr Buchkovskyi (one of the first—Volodymyr Storozhko); Lanivtsi—November 24, 1989, chairman Vasyl Romaniuk (first members: Oleksandr Drozd, Volodymyr Voloshyn, Yuriy Koval, and Anatoliy Shumylo); Zboriv—November 25, 1989, chairman Yaroslav Chornomaz (first members: Stepan Andrusyshyn, Yaroslav Laskevych, Avhustyn Romanyshyn, and Oleh Futorskyi); Terebovlia—November 28, 1989, chairman Vasyl Konon (also among the first—Oksana Mulyk); Kremenets—December 2, 1989, chairman Borys Skoroplias (first members: Anhelina Zelinska, Volodymyr Holota, and Serhiy Chaikivskyi); Borshchiv—January 1, 1990, chairman Yevhen Povazhnyi (first members: Volodymyr Sytnyk, Mykola Osadchuk, Vasyl Krysko); Chortkiv—January 28, 1990, chairman Volodymyr Marmus (first members: Roman Shkrobut, Yaroslav Vovk, Mykola Dziuba); Pidvolochysk—March 1, 1990, chairman Borys Didenko; Zalishchyky—March 31, 1990, chairman Petro Myroniuk (among the first were Ivan Mandziuk and Volodymyr Dovhaniuk); Zbarazh—April 24, 1990, chairman Volodymyr Vovkun. In other districts (Shumsk, Husiatyn, Kozova, and Ternopil), the Constituent Assemblies were held under the status of the Ukrainian Republican Party (URP).
At a meeting of the UHU Coordinating Council on December 12, 1989, curators were elected for all districts of the oblast to accelerate the structuring of the Ternopil branch of the UHU.
UHU’s Influence Grows
The Ternopil branch of the UHU actively participated in all-Ukrainian actions. For instance, on October 22, 1989, UHU members Yuriy Morhun, Petro Malenkyi, Oksana Nazarko, Mykola Zelenskyi, and others, led by Yuriy Morhun, traveled to Kyiv for an All-Ukrainian rally held near the Republican Stadium. On the same day, a rally was also held in Ternopil in support of the alternative draft on elections and the draft Law on Languages. I was entrusted to speak there on behalf of the regional branch of the UHU with an appeal to the citizens of Ukraine. The rally ended with the performance of the national anthem “Shche ne vmerla Ukraina.”
To revive historical memory and activate public opinion, the regional UHU branch continued to organize memorial services at the graves of the Sich Riflemen and the graves of Ukrainians innocently murdered by the NKVD in 1941. Thus, on October 29, 1989, in the village of Kamianky, Pidvolochysk district, a panakhyda was conducted by two Orthodox priests at the grave of the Sich Riflemen. A small rally was held, at which UHU members Ivan Ivanyshchuk and Yaroslav Demydas spoke, and other UHU members came with blue-and-yellow flags. The people were moved and sang Sich Riflemen songs, and also sang the anthem “Shche ne vmerla Ukraina.”
On the same day, in the village of Biloholovy, Zboriv district, a panakhyda was also held at the grave of Sich Rifleman Stepan Chorn_y_i. Before the service began, UHU members unfurled 12 blue-and-yellow flags. This circumstance was very warmly received by the local residents. After the panakhyda, UHU members Yuriy Morhun and Yaroslav Chornomaz spoke. The event concluded with an improvised concert, in which Sich Riflemen songs were performed by students of the local school. For this display of patriotism, the head of the village council of Biloholovy, Volodymyr Korin, was removed from his post.
And in the village of Horoshova, Borshchiv district, on November 8, a civil panakhyda was held at the symbolic grave of 31 innocent Ukrainians murdered by the NKVD in 1941. At the entrance to the village, police cars were on duty, and 12 policemen stood guard near the monument. All of them, with Captain Boiko and the head of the district executive committee Mykola Yablonka, desperately tried to persuade people not to unfurl the blue-and-yellow flags. But despite this, the UHU and SNUM demonstrated the awakening of patriotism by unfurling over 20 blue-and-yellow flags adorned with black ribbons. On behalf of the UHU, Ivan Ivanyshchuk, Petro Kasinchuk, and Yaroslav Demydas delivered speeches. At the end, they sang “Shche ne vmerla Ukraina.” The authorities did not interfere further, only took photographs.
Subsequently, on November 19, 1989, a Ternopil delegation of 45 UHU members, led by Ivan Ivanyshchuk, participated in the reburial of political prisoners Vasyl Stus, Yuriy Lytvyn, and Oleksa Tykhyi in Kyiv. The Divine Liturgy over their graves was celebrated, along with other priests, by Father Yaroslav Lesiv, a former political prisoner.
In addition, in accordance with agreements with the People’s Movement, the process of forming district Rukh organizations continued. Volodymyr Marmus, then still the head of the UHU initiative group for the Chortkiv district, was directly involved in the events unfolding in Chortkiv. And there, despite the fact that a Society of the Ukrainian Language had existed at the pedagogical college for some time, and the doctors of the district hospital had expressed their support for the People’s Movement at their meetings, the matter did not progress until the UHU intervened. Teacher Maria Kuzyk, doctor Daria Maksymiv, and Volodymyr Marmus—the three of them compiled a list of future Rukh members. And on November 24, 1989, at 9 p.m., in the hall of the Young Technicians’ Station, which was decorated with the slogan “To the People’s Movement—Movement!”, a trident, and a blue-and-yellow flag, the constituent assembly of the Chortkiv organization of Rukh was held. V. Marmus, O. Stepanenko, M. Kit, R. Basaraba, R. Horiachyi, Ya. Soviak, and a representative of the district party committee, A. Shuliak, spoke. I was also given the floor. Subsequently, on November 28, at a council meeting, O. Stepanenko was elected chairman of the district organization of the People’s Movement, and V. Marmus and R. Basaraba were elected deputies.
The UHU, along with other public organizations, promoted throughout the entire oblast the national-cultural and spiritual heritage of Ukrainians, which had been silenced by the Soviet regime. Thus, on November 26, panakhydas were held in three villages at once. The Ternopil branch of the UHU chartered a bus to the village of Zavaliv, then in the Berezhany district, and actively participated in the panakhyda at the grave of 28 Sich Riflemen. There were about 5,000 people and 30 blue-and-yellow flags with black ribbons were flying. On behalf of the UHU, in addition to myself, Roman Sydiacha, Petro Malenkyi, and Yaroslav Demydas spoke. A great many children also spoke. At the end, everyone sang the national anthem.
On the same day, a panakhyda was held at the grave of Ukrainians murdered by the NKVD in 1941 in the village of Lapshyn, Berezhany district. A column of 150 people, led by the Ternopil and Berezhany UHU, marched 5 km with blue-and-yellow flags from Berezhany to Lapshyn, bowing on the way to the future monument to Taras Shevchenko. UHU and SNUM members Ivan Zdyrko and Yuriy Morhun spoke at the panakhyda. They concluded the event with the national anthem.
At the same time, on the same day, in the village of Budaniv, Terebovlia district, a panakhyda was held at the graves of the Sich Riflemen and repressed Ukrainians who were shot in the Budaniv prison in 1939–41. The Ternopil organization of the People’s Movement chartered two buses, on which Rukh members, UHU and SNUM members, and members of “Vertep” arrived. On behalf of the UHU and SNUM, Ivan Dmytryk and Yuriy Tyma spoke before those present. There were about 7,000 participants with 50 blue-and-yellow flags. At the end, they sang the anthem “Shche ne vmerla Ukraina.” There were no obstacles from the authorities.
Also, in the village of Shumlyany, then in the Berezhany district, on December 3, 1989, a panakhyda was held at the grave of the Sich Riflemen. On behalf of the UHU, Petro Buriak and Vasyl Derevlianyi spoke. A group of UHU members arrived in a column with blue-and-yellow flags.
The intensification of activities and the spread of the influence of public organizations caused a certain confusion and concern among the regional authorities. For example, in Husiatyn, where there was not even a UHU initiative group, a meeting of the party activists was held on December 8, at which the first secretary of the district party committee, Anton Korinevych, spoke. He expressed his attitude towards informal democratic organizations in this way: “Crush everyone who is against the Communist Party, grab any demagogues by the scruff of the neck and drag them out of the room.”
However, the UHU was not concerned with the Communist Party’s intimidations and focused on concrete measures, particularly, on honoring the national liberation struggles of the OUN-UPA. At the initiative of UHU member Volodymyr Storozhko, on December 17, in the village of Barysh, Buchach district, the remains of ten UPA soldiers, murdered in 1946 in the dungeons of the NKVD in the city of Buchach, were reburied. For this display of patriotism, Volodymyr Storozhko was fined.
But the struggle unfolded in another direction as well. After a month of meetings, consultations, and the creation of district Rukh chapters, on December 2, 1989, an extraordinary conference of the Ternopil regional Rukh began. Heorhiy Petruk-Popyk was proposed to lead the conference. The first day was filled with speeches. But when the presidium was seated, people from the hall began to demand that I be included in it as well. On the second day, December 3, the matter turned to re-electing the leadership of the Ternopil regional organization of the People’s Movement of Ukraine. Taking advantage of the fact that I had been elected to the presidium, I proposed a procedure for electing the chairman on an alternative basis. That is, from the four candidates I recommended, to elect the one who would receive the most votes. And I proposed the candidacies of Mykhailo Levytskyi, Heorhiy Petruk-Popyk, Maria Kuzemko, and for the first time, Bohdan Boiko. At that time, Bohdan Ternopilskyi, who had come specially from Kyiv with the Chairman of the People’s Movement of Ukraine, Ivan Drach, recommended Boiko to me. Bohdan Ternopilskyi ran up to me and tried to convince me of Bohdan Boiko’s great abilities. It all happened in a flash; only later did I think: “How does he know Bohdan Boiko so well?” But Petruk-Popyk insisted on only one candidate, Mykhailo Levytskyi, without any alternative. Then I took a decisive step, stood up and said: “If you are not going to hold elections on an alternative basis, then I am resigning my authority and leaving Rukh!” An uproar ensued—the hall supported me, as the majority consisted of representatives from the district chapters that I had been creating. In my support, first Viacheslav Nehoda, then Yuriy Morhun also announced their resignations. However, Petruk-Popyk did not give in. And amidst the noise, Ivan Drach came out and proposed a compromise solution: to elect the four candidates I had proposed as co-chairs of the Ternopil Rukh—Mykhailo Levytskyi, Heorhiy Petruk-Popyk, Maria Kuzemko, and Bohdan Boiko. And the hall voted for them. But a strange surprise occurred: since the hall unanimously demanded that I be elected as the fifth co-chairman, a vote was taken for this, although I had never even imagined such a thing.
The first steps of the five Rukh co-chairs made themselves known in a joint appeal titled “A People’s House for the People!” to the first secretary of the Ternopil oblast party committee, V. Ye. Ostrozhynskyi, with copies sent to the regional prosecutor and to Radio “Svoboda.” The appeal stated that the Ternopil Krai Council of Rukh, the regional Council of the “Memorial” society, the regional branch of the UHU, the SNUM Council, and the “Vertep” society were petitioning for the return of the People’s House, which housed the regional philharmonic, to public organizations. This demand was motivated by the fact that the community of Ternopil had collected money at the beginning of the 20th century and built this house to unite the Ukrainian people and protect them from national oppression and assimilation. And the aforementioned public organizations are the successors of the people’s movements that began in 1890. Therefore, the appeal also demanded the return of the original name, “House of the Burghers’ Brotherhood.”
Despite this, a little later, a member of the Krai Council of Rukh, Oleksandr Levchenko, approached me and suggested that I withdraw my candidacy in favor of Bohdan Boiko. But I replied at the time that there was no need to rush with such matters—they should be resolved in consultation with the republican leadership of Rukh.
The Election Campaign and Elections to Councils at All Levels
Elections to the Verkhovna Rada (Supreme Council) of the Ukrainian SSR were approaching. The Ternopil branch of the UHU and the People’s Movement of Ukraine created an election headquarters, co-chaired by Roman Sydiaha from the UHU and Vasyl Turetskyi from Rukh. Finally, the election campaign began, which ushered in a new alignment of forces and unforeseen circumstances. For the national democratic forces, who had never been in power and had no experience in the struggle for it, a time of trial had come. Therefore, perhaps not everything was taken into account regarding the nomination of their candidates in all ten, then still majoritarian, electoral districts. From the national democratic forces, mainly from the People’s Movement of Ukraine, the following were registered as candidates for deputies to the Verkhovna Rada: Maria Kuzemko, Bohdan Boiko, Levko Krupa, Volodymyr Kolinets, Kateryna Zavadska, and Myroslav Motiuk.
Activists from the Berezhany chapter of the UHU proposed that I run in the Berezhany electoral district. UHU member Ivan Holovatskyi, who worked at the “Mikron” factory, took the initiative to nominate me as a candidate for people’s deputy at their factory. When I arrived in Berezhany for the meeting of the labor collective on December 21, 1989, I was at first not even allowed to meet with the factory workers. And yet, at the meeting for the nomination of candidates for deputies to the Verkhovna Rada, Stepan Tokarskyi, the third secretary of the district party committee, was proposed, as was my candidacy and that of the factory director, Stepan Korniev (he withdrew his candidacy in favor of Tokarskyi). After the speeches and presentation of our programs, 261 participants of the meeting voted for me, and 115 for the secretary of the district committee. My program was titled “For an Independent Ukraine,” where, in addition to many pressing problems of the time, there was a demand to remove Article Six, on the leading role of the Communist Party in all spheres of society, from the USSR Constitution. It also emphasized the priority of universal human values, since one of the reasons for the spiritual crisis at that time was the monopoly in all spheres of life of Marxism-Leninism, which for decades had educated citizens on the principles of a class-based, misanthropic morality, instead of love for people and one’s homeland.
They did not want to register me. The district election commission reported (not without outside interference) that there was allegedly no quorum at the meeting during the voting because people had started to leave. In response, a rally was held in Berezhany on December 24, at which UHU member Ivan Holovatskyi spoke out, condemning the election campaign in the Berezhany district. He specifically stressed that the fewer communists there were in the Councils, the sooner one could hope for real power. In addition, he noted that at the request of the voters of the Berezhany district, due to gross violations of the Law “On Elections,” the candidate’s support group expressed no confidence in the district election commission (chairman V. D. Korniychuk, secretary S. V. Tokarskyi) and was sending a complaint to the Central Election Commission. The rally participants unanimously supported Holovatskyi’s proposal. From Ternopil, in addition to myself, Maria Kuzemko, Yuriy Khmelivskyi, and Ivan Dmytryk took part in the rally. The rally participants, numbering about ten thousand, unanimously supported my candidacy for people’s deputy.
However, the district election commission ignored public opinion. Therefore, on January 24, 1990, a large column of people marched to the Berezhany district party committee and held a picket there, demanding the registration of my candidacy. But even this was not enough for the “servants of the people.” Therefore, on January 25 and 26, the UHU organized a picket near the oblast party committee with posters reading “Shame on the Ternopil Partocracy!”, “Ostrozhynskyi, resign!”, “We demand the registration of Levko Horokhivskyy!” It was only on the third day, when a large number of picketers had gathered, that the first secretary of the Ternopil oblast committee, Valentyn Ostrozhynskyi, came out, approached me, and addressed me in a chummy way (and I had never even met him): “Levko, tell those people to disperse—we’ve already registered you.” To which I replied: “These people came not to me, but to you, so you answer them.” He had nowhere to turn and said over the megaphone: “We ask everyone to disperse—Horokhivskyy has been registered.” At that time, they also did not want to register Volodymyr Kolinets, so he was registered as well—he just happened to benefit from the UHU’s active protests.
Regarding this, the chairman of the district election commission, V. Korniychuk, in the Berezhany newspaper “Nove Zhyttia” (New Life) of January 30, 1990, reported the following: “...during the repeated discussion of the issue of nominating candidates for people’s deputies, the commission members took into account the appeal of the workers of the ‘Mikron’ factory to the members of the election commission (signed by 282 people) and the fact that violations in the conduct of the meeting were committed due to the lack of appropriate skills of the members of the meeting’s presidium, which consisted of workers. Based on this, the district election commission at its regular meeting on January 26, 1990, by a majority vote, recognized the meeting as legitimate. The election commission has registered Levko Horokhivskyy as a candidate for people’s deputy and his trusted representatives Ivan Ivanyshchuk, Ivan Zdyrko, Yuriy Morhun, Yaroslav Demydas, Ivan Holovatskyi.”
Scenarios of similar opposition were implemented not only against me—the election campaign for the nomination of candidates for people’s deputies and to local Councils turned into an attempt to preserve the so-called Soviet power at any cost. The party apparatus, using all anti-democratic means and willfully appropriating all mass media, tried to push communists into the Ukrainian parliament and local self-government, through whom they could continue their domination. But they could do nothing against the growing political and national consciousness of the population. For the first time in 72 years of Soviet power in Ukraine, the people had the right to choose, not just to vote.
In the Monastyrysk district, where I had never been before, people greeted me very warmly. It was a nationally conscious district—there, for the first time, after each of my speeches in a village, I presented a blue-and-yellow flag, which was immediately hung on the village council building. But there were also denunciations. For example, the newspaper “Leninskyi Promin” (Lenin’s Ray) of the Monastyrysk district on February 20, 1990, wrote: “The commission considered a number of complaints, in particular, a protocol (signed by S.O. Lesiv, Ya.M. Kuryliuk, and others) regarding the speeches of L.T. Horokhivskyy’s confidants—Ya.R. Demydas, I.M. Ivanyshchuk on February 7 in Koropets and a protest to the prosecutor’s office against this protocol by the aforementioned candidate’s confidants I.M. Ivanyshchuk and I.M. Honchar, as well as a statement by the head of the Trudoliubivka village executive committee about violations during the pre-election meeting in Trudoliubivka. No decisions were made on these issues due to the absence of both parties for final clarification.”
My election campaign consisted of a series of adventures. When we submitted an application on February 20 to hold a rally on the 26th in the town of Koropets, the head of the village council, Lesiv, did not permit the rally. In protest, UHU activists from the Monastyrysk district set up a picket opposite the district party committee, as the ban was issued on the instructions of the first secretary of the district committee, Malysheva, who was running in the Koropets district for the Ternopil Regional Council. In addition, on February 24, I, along with my confidants, appealed with a protest to the prosecutors of the oblast and the district regarding the ban on the rally and warned that in the event of another ban on March 2, the date to which we had postponed the rally to meet the ten-day deadline from the date of application, we would continue to picket the district committee.
Ultimately, on March 4, 1990, elections to Councils at all levels were held. I was elected a deputy of the Verkhovna Rada of the Ukrainian SSR from the Ternopil branch of the UHU. And UHU members Volodymyr Marmus (simultaneously to the Chortkiv District Council) and Oleh Futorskyi (simultaneously to the Zboriv District Council) were elected to the Ternopil Regional Council (in the first and second rounds). As for the Ternopil City Council, for the first time in half a century, truly people’s representatives were elected, including, from the UHU, Yuriy Morhun, Bohdan Lekhniak, and Mykola Novosilskyi. And although the elections were far from democratic, 90 percent of the deputies from the democratic bloc entered the city Council. First and foremost, the People’s Council decided that the blue-and-yellow national flag should be flown on the building of the Ternopil City Council. A demand was also put forward to the Verkhovna Rada to recognize the blue-and-yellow flag as the state flag of Ukraine, and the trident as the state coat of arms. At the same time, party bodies were forbidden to interfere in the work of the city Council, and a Rukh member and city council deputy, Ditchuk, proposed dismissing the city prosecutor, Vasyl Bavoliak.
UHU members were also supported in many districts of the oblast. For example, in Berezhany, UHU member Ivan Holovatskyi was elected to the district Council, and UHU member Ivan Prokopiv was elected to the village Council of Lapshyn, Berezhany district. In Borshchiv, the head of the district UHU chapter, Yevhen Povazhnyi, was elected to the city Council, and Taras Yurechko was elected to the village Council in Khudykivtsi, Borshchiv district. In Chortkiv, in addition to Volodymyr Marmus, the following were elected from the UHU: Roman Shkrobut to the district Council, Pavlo Bandura to the city Council, and Vasyl Pastukh to the village Council of Ulashkivtsi, Chortkiv district. In Monastyrysk, the head of the local UHU chapter, Andriy Paratsiy, was elected to the city Council, and in Terebovlia, the head of the local UHU chapter, Vasyl Konon, was also elected to the city Council. In Kozova, UHU member Yaroslav Oliinyk was elected to the district and city Councils. In Zboriv, in addition to Oleh Futorskyi, Stepan Andrusyshyn and Yaroslav Laskevych were elected to the city Council from the UHU. And finally, there were elected representatives from the UHU in the Ternopil district as well, in particular, Mykola Nesterov to the district Council, and Ivan Suta and Ihor-Yuriy Onuferko to the village Council of Velyki Hai.
The Struggle Continues
Despite the election campaign, the UHU continued the struggle for the formation of civil society and the revival of national culture. For example, on December 24, 1989, a rally was held near the oblast party committee, organized by the organizing committee of the Ternopil branch of the UHU, at which pressing demands were put forward: 1) to provide premises for UHU and Rukh meetings; 2) to return churches to the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church; 3) to stop the repressions and interference of communists in the election campaign.
Regarding the painful problems of the national-democratic forces, I, as the head of the Ternopil branch of the UHU and co-chair of the Krai organization of Rukh, was also entrusted with drafting an “Appeal” to the leadership of the oblast and the city. In the appeal, which I wrote on January 9, 1990, the following demands were emphasized: 1) To begin a dialogue with representatives of Rukh and the UHU; 2) To stop the abuse of repressive sanctions (in the form of fines) aimed against freedom of speech; 3) To immediately release from prison Bohdan Lypovetskyi, a milk factory dispatcher unjustly convicted for participating in the demonstration of August 23, 1989, since during that demonstration, the head of the oblast police, Colonel Kolesnyk, had assured the community that no repressive measures would be applied to the participants of the demonstration; 4) To grant full use of the former People’s House to Rukh and the UHU; 5) To legalize a discussion forum and information stands on what was then Karl Marx Boulevard—opposite the drama theater; 6) Not to interfere in the course of the election campaign.
Meanwhile, in Borshchiv on December 30, at the cemetery, near the graves of the Sich Riflemen, the community of the city and surrounding villages gathered for a panakhyda, which was celebrated by Bishop Pavlo Vasylyk. He delivered a moving speech about the heroism of the Sich Riflemen as defenders of our people. The memory of the USS heroes was honored with patriotic speeches by UHU members as well. And on January 2 and 3, 1990, for the speeches delivered at the panakhyda in Borshchiv, Yevhen Povazhnyi, Ivan Skorokhod, and Yaroslav Demydas were punished. Then, together with Vasyl Turetskyi, we appealed to the regional prosecutor, V. Ivanov, demanding the immediate release of Yevhen Povazhnyi and Yaroslav Demydas. And after my conversation on January 6 with the regional prosecutor and the head of the KGB, the Borshchiv court reviewed its decision, replacing the imprisonment with a fine of 1000 rubles each. And finally, after a picket under the balcony of the district prosecutor, Volodymyr Vlasenko, in which residents of surrounding villages, the city of Chortkiv, and Ternopil also took part, the prosecutor was forced to promise that the fine would be canceled. However, on January 4, Police Captain M. I. Sokol and the head of the public order department, T. V. Holovatyi, in the presence of witnesses Oksana Nazarko, Ivan Vilkha, and Ivan Skorokhod, attempted to arrest UHU member Petro Kasinchuk for participating in the panakhyda on December 30 in Borshchiv, although they did not have a prosecutor’s sanction for the arrest.
On the same day, I, along with the head of the Ternopil SNUM, Yuriy Morhun, visited the medical institute and had a conversation with the pro-rector of this institute, V. V. Faifura, and the secretary of the party committee, Palamarchuk, regarding the illegal dismissal of SNUM member Yan Vikaliuk from the medical institute, supposedly for missing classes, although certificates explaining the reason for his absences had been presented to the administration the day before. The institute leaders, who were directly responsible for his dismissal, stated that they were unable to reinstate Yan Vikaliuk. On this matter, a written protest was sent to the rector of the institute from the UHU and SNUM. It is worth adding that this is the same Yan Vikaliuk whose father, Doctor of Medical Sciences Yuriy Vikaliuk, had at that time dared to raise the question at the medical institute of abolishing the subject of Marxism-Leninism. All the instructors of the institute zealously voted “against,” especially the secretary of the institute’s party organization, Palamarchuk.
Then, on January 4, as if in reward for our protest actions, UHU member Bohdan Vavriv was elected chairman of the strike committee of the city of Ternopil. The national-democratic forces could now fight fully armed.
The first warning strike at a number of Ternopil enterprises took place on March 2, 1990. It was the workers’ response to the events that had taken place in the district center of Lanivtsi on February 25 of the same year. On this day, the singing groups of the “Orion” factory and the “Vatra” scientific and production association came to Lanivtsi with national symbols and a creative program dedicated to the closing day of the Galician “Festyny” (Festivities). Instead of a friendly welcome, the local authorities staged a blatant provocation against the creative groups, the majority of whom were women. Hooligans, prepared in advance, attacked the people with the symbols. The guests were beaten, the symbols desecrated, with fists and feet put to use. And the police calmly watched what was happening. The influential observers present did not want to protect the people: the first secretary of the district committee, Hladun; the deputy chief of police, I. H. Adamchuk; the chairman of the Matrosov collective farm, Stukhliak; and the chairman of the Lanivtsi settlement council, Ya. I. Oper.
In response to this provocation, the human rights defense committees, which had been formed at the protesting enterprises, demanded that the leaders of the oblast and the regional prosecutor’s office give a political assessment of these events.
In the warning strike, besides NVO “Vatra” and the “Orion” factory, the “Saturn” factory, the sugar and asphalt plants, and the meat-packing plant also took part—and a protest rally was also held at the combine harvester plant. It was on the basis of these enterprises that the city committee for the defense of human rights was formed.
In turn, the influence of youth was also becoming more palpable in the public life of the Ternopil region. Youth associations needed to improve themselves in order to act more effectively later. Therefore, at a meeting of the Ternopil Krai organization of SNUM, which took place on January 12, 1990, a new charter for the Union was adopted, and the coordinating Council was renamed the Krai Provid (Leadership). The main directions of activity were also outlined, in particular, it was decided to apply to the oblast executive committee for the registration of the Union.
And on February 14, the Krai Provid of SNUM and the Committee of Mothers organized a 50,000-strong rally in Ternopil at the Spivoche Pole regarding the events in Armenia and Azerbaijan. The rally’s resolution stated that the introduction of troops into Baku was a shameful act of occupation, and therefore a demand was made for the withdrawal of troops from Armenia and Azerbaijan. In addition, the resolution demanded the abolition of compulsory conscription into the army and the creation of republican military formations.
At the initiative of local UHU and Rukh members, a rally dedicated to the Act of Unification was held in the city of Chortkiv on January 20. At the rally, UHU members Petro Malenkyi, the poet Pavlo Mamalyha, and Olha Lisko spoke before a crowd of 10,000.
However, the most magnificent event took place on January 21, 1990—a human chain stretched from Kyiv to Lviv, dedicated to the 1919 Act of Unification between the Ukrainian People’s Republic (UNR) and the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic (ZUNR). All members of the Ternopil branch of the UHU took an active part in the chain of unity. The people of Ternopil occupied the highway from the center of their city all the way to Rivne. Thousands of residents of the cities and villages of the oblast, from twelve to one o’clock Moscow time, lined up along the road with national symbols and slogans, testifying to their desire for the unity of the nation. On this day, in all the cities and towns of the oblast, as well as in Ternopil, rallies were held to commemorate the significant date.
At that time, in the town of Khorostkiv, Husiatyn district, a national flag was fluttering in the central square on the occasion of the 71st anniversary of the signing of the Act of Unification. But the head of the city council, Kobylianskyi, hastily took it down, which caused widespread condemnation from the city’s residents.
In addition, time passed, and on January 26, 1990, in the premises of the Krai Council of Rukh, a commemoration of the first anniversary of the formation of the UHU in the Ternopil region was held. At the celebration, in addition to myself, UHU members Ivan Ivanyshchuk, Roman Sydiaha, Yuriy Morhun, Petro Malenkyi, Vasyl Turetskyi, Volodymyr Sytnyk, Petro Kasinchuk, Yaroslav Demydas, Yaroslav Khmarnyi, Borys Skoroplias, Yaroslav Chornomaz, Mykhailo Shnurovskyi, the head of the Ternopil “Memorial” society, Maria Kuzemko, and others spoke. Vasyl Turetskyi was the master of ceremonies.
The Ternopil branch of the UHU grew and was active. At a meeting of the UHU Coordinating Council on January 30, it was decided to start reporting on the UHU’s activities in the districts. But even at that Council meeting, Volodymyr Marmus reported that there were 19 UHU members in Chortkiv, Yaroslav Chornomaz reported five UHU members in Zboriv, Terebovlia had 2 UHU members (Oksana Mulyk), and Lanivtsi had 5 UHU members (Yuriy Morhun).
And before that, to participate in the local symbolic “chain of unity” on January 28, 1990, 300 residents of Ternopil, led by UHU member Petro Malenkyi, traveled to the city of Khmelnytskyi. After the unity action, a 10,000-strong rally was held in the city’s central square near the oblast committee of the CPU. On behalf of the Ternopil delegation, UHU member Petro Malenkyi and the head of the committee of soldiers’ mothers, Liudmyla Duda, spoke.
Post-Election, Pre-Party Horizons
After the elections, for the first time in the USSR, circumstances threatening to the empire arose. Nationally conscious forces of the enslaved peoples began to enter the political arena. Ukraine also delegated to the representative bodies, albeit not a critical percentage, but a considerable number of patriotically inclined representatives. The events that were taking place in the Caucasus and the Baltics foretold the approach of fundamental changes in the political life of the empire.
Against the backdrop of those events, a scholarly and theoretical conference of the UHU was held in Kyiv on March 17 in the premises of the Polytechnic Institute. The theme of the conference was: “An Assessment of the Political Situation in Ukraine and the Prospects for the UHU. An Assessment of the Religious Situation in Ukraine.” The conference sent a telegram to M. Gorbachev, urging him not to interfere in the internal affairs of Lithuania, and also adopted an “Appeal to the People of Lithuania,” a “UHU Address on the Matter of Religious Relations in Ukraine,” and a “Resolution of the UHU Theoretical Conference.” The conference resolution stated: “The conference, having discussed the political situation in the USSR and in Ukraine, the state of the UHU and its tasks, considers it necessary to intensify the struggle for democracy and the withdrawal of Ukraine from the USSR, for which it obliges the leadership of the UHU to hold a congress in April 1990 and to begin active work to attract new people for the transformation of the UHU into a mass party that will be able to mobilize broad strata of the Ukrainian population for the struggle for an independent Ukrainian democratic republic.”
In turn, in Ternopil on March 31, at the Spivoche Pole, a 50,000-strong rally was held in support of Lithuania’s independence. The speakers sharply condemned the policy of the Kremlin’s neocolonizers and called on the newly elected deputies of the Ukrainian parliament to recognize Lithuania’s independence with their first decree. And among the people’s deputies, in addition to myself, as the head of the regional UHU branch, the chairman of the Krai Council of Rukh, Bohdan Boiko, also spoke. The rally, despite the ban by the reactionary government of the republic, was sanctioned by the Ternopil City Council of the new convocation, since on March 29, 1990, the first session of the city Council of People’s Deputies had taken place. On the same day, a blue-and-yellow flag was flown on the city council building. In all populated areas where rallies were held, blue-and-yellow flags were also flown on the executive committee buildings.
Kremenets also came out in support of Lithuania. On April 1, 1990, an extraordinary open meeting of the Kremenets chapter of the UHU, Rukh, and the Society of the Ukrainian Language was held there under the program “Our Solidarity with Lithuania.” The head of the UHU chapter, Borys Skoroplias, spoke about the historical and cultural ties between Ukraine and Lithuania. Against the backdrop of slogans such as “Hands off Lithuania!” and “Enslaved Ukraine greets free Lithuania!”, relevant telegrams were read and sent to the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, Gorbachev, and the President of Lithuania, Landsbergis.
And before that, on March 24–25, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the proclamation of Carpathian Ukraine, a large group of UHU members from Ternopil traveled by chartered bus to the city of Khust for the Great Viche (Assembly) of the People’s Movement of Ukraine. Such visits enriched one spiritually, added necessary knowledge, and inspired new achievements.
The Ternopil Coordinating Council of the UHU at its meetings constantly addressed the problem of deepening the state-building processes in the public life of the oblast and took responsibility for organizing and holding many rallies and memorial services. In the town of Skalat, Pidvolochysk district, on April 1, 1990, Greek-Catholic priests, accompanied by a church choir, conducted a panakhyda at the restored graves of the Sich Riflemen and victims of Stalinism. Dozens of blue-and-yellow flags bowed over their graves. Against this sorrowful backdrop, Greek-Catholic priest Zenoviy Honchar and UHU member Roman Sydiacha spoke. And on April 8 in the villages of Pishchane and Vovchkivtsi, Zboriv district, and on April 15 in the village of Horodyshche, Kozova district, panakhydas were also held at the graves of the Sich Riflemen. UHU member Petro Malenkyi spoke at all these rallies. In the village of Vovchkivtsi, at the grave of the Sich Riflemen, an eyewitness to those events, 85-year-old Mykhailo Korvatskyi, spoke.
In addition, on April 17, in the village of Volytsia, Berezhany district, a panakhyda was held at the grave of UPA soldiers. UHU members, as well as local residents numbering up to 3,000, took part in the service.
And on April 22, 1990, in the village of Naraiv and in the village of Holhoche, then in the Berezhany district, panakhydas were also held. In the village of Naraiv—at the grave of 12 boys and girls murdered by the NKVD in the Berezhany prison, and in the village of Holhoche—at the grave of UPA soldiers, where, among others, is buried a UPA company commander, the father of UHU member Ostap Zhmud, who shot himself so as not to fall into the hands of the Chekists. Relatives of the victims and UHU members spoke. I also had the opportunity to speak there with a speech in defense of the OUN-UPA. Other speakers from the UHU included Petro Buriak, Ostap Zhmud, Mykola Nesterov, and Ihor Lektei. All the speeches were accompanied by national-patriotic songs performed by a choir.
And finally, on the same day, April 22, in Ternopil, at the initiative of all democratic organizations, a five-thousand-strong march and rally was held, dedicated to Earth Day and the Chornobyl tragedy. The rally condemned the republican party-state leadership, which bears a significant part of the blame for the Chornobyl disaster. The hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church, in particular, Archbishop Lazar, were also condemned for inciting inter-religious conflicts in the Ternopil region, and solidarity with Lithuania was expressed.
A great popular upsurge and dissatisfaction with the communist regime was growing. People believed in changes for the better. And whether the national-democratic forces would be able to take advantage of this situation would determine the future of Ukraine. Although getting out of this rotten “communist paradise” was not so simple, as pro-Moscow forces were consciously fighting against the entire Ukrainian world. Therefore, the Ternopil branch of the UHU, with its 270 members, in its vast majority, responded favorably to the idea of creating the first party of a national-democratic orientation on the basis of the UHU.
Russification Continues, in Defiance of UHU Principles
Introduction
To what extent are the principles of the Ukrainian Helsinki Union being implemented today? After all, Article Six of the “UHU Declaration of Principles” proclaims: “We demand the immediate constitutional recognition of the status of the Ukrainian language as the state language of the Republic, with its implementation in all spheres of life of the Republic—in the state and economic apparatus, in preschool education, schooling, higher and vocational-technical education, military affairs, and so on...” Thus, the UHU sought to achieve the implementation of the Ukrainian language in all spheres of life even during the Soviet era. Seventeen years have passed since the proclamation of Ukraine’s Independence, but the mechanisms of Russification that existed under Soviet power remain to this day.
Russification continues.
It continues unceremoniously, yet more subtly and at the expense of a government elected by Ukrainians—a government that does almost nothing to stop this destructive and destabilizing process. Ivan Dziuba spoke about this process—a remnant of the Soviet period—in his report at the 13th scientific conference “Language and Culture” on June 29, 2004: “...Particularly oppressive is the dominance in the mass consciousness of modern societies, primarily Soviet and supposedly post-Soviet Ukrainian—but in fact, mentally eternally Soviet—of the firm in its primitiveness notion that language is merely a pragmatic means of communication, and not an equivalent of the human spirit, not a carrier of beingness, of the deep experience of generations and the ethical torment of the individual, not the national being itself in its past, present, and future. For Ukraine, for the Ukrainian language, such a repressive conviction is a kind of death sentence, which in the head of the Russo-Ukrainian philistine is expressed by the famous maxim: ‘A kakaya raznitsa?’ (‘What’s the difference?’). I leave aside the obvious falsity of this supposed indifference. In reality, for this indifferent person, there are ‘dve bolshie raznitsy’ (two big differences), because he demands a concession from the other, but will never give up his own, he would sooner start a civil war, at least on a district scale. But he would never recognize another’s right to their own ‘raznitsa’ (difference).”
The Russification of Ukrainians was carried out purposefully even under Tsarist Russia, but especially insidiously and cruelly, in various ways—under Soviet power: through prohibitions on the Ukrainian language, repressions, and famines. By the way, Ivan Dziuba in his book “Internationalism or Russification?” notes that “the psychological and ideological force of Russification is Russian great-power chauvinism.” But why does the Ukrainian state not try to resist this process by adopting a program to overcome forced Russification? After all, besides the victims of Russification (the duped and the indifferent), Ukrainophobes, and conformist puppets, we also have, and in the greatest numbers, ordinary, unerring Ukrainians who are waiting for a resolute step from the state towards truth and justice. Otherwise, it turns out that the aggressive colonizing policy of Russia over the centuries is being forcedly continued by the independent Ukrainian state, which leaves the colonial baggage untouched. And all because anti-Ukrainian forces, at the command of the “elder brother,” are pushing for the legalization of bilingualism, hypocritically concealing that this is not being done to “protect the rights” of the victims of Russification.
Russia is trying to maintain the dominant position of the Russian language and culture in Ukraine, which in the hands of the Kremlin is the most effective tool for influencing Ukraine and the behavior of the Ukrainian elites.
It is true that the processes of Russification and renunciation of the language of one’s parents and grandparents can also be explained by the psychology of servility before a master’s language and a mass peculiarity like mimicry—in reality, this speaks to a philosophy of adaptation to the stronger. Therefore, it is no coincidence that articles appear with titles like “The Problem of Language in Ukraine or the Problem of the Mentality of Ukrainians?” Unfortunately, for such painful manifestations for Ukraine, their carriers can only be held responsible before God, since it is futile to speak of conscience and consciousness here. A hundred years ago, Oleksandr Potebnia wrote that denationalization “comes down to poor upbringing, to a moral ailment: to the incomplete use of available means of perception and assimilation, or a weakening of the energy of thought, to the abomination of desolation in the place of displaced but unreplaced forms of consciousness, to a weakening of the connection of the rising generations with the adults, which is replaced only by a weak connection with strangers; to the disorganization of society, immorality, and degradation.”
Summing up the obvious, one can say: if a state does not raise patriots, it has no future. Because, as emphasized in the book “Language and Nation” by V. Ivanyshyn and Ya. Radevych-Vynnytskyi: “Language is the genetic code of a nation, which connects the past with the present, programs the future, and ensures the nation’s being in eternity.”
All sorts of apostates from the language of their ancestors constantly try to justify their position by referring to the bilingualism of Canada or Ireland, but they never mention the great feat of the Czechs, Israelis, and Latvians, whose language situation was much worse than in modern Ukraine. As for the Czech Republic, it managed to revive itself after long linguistic and cultural oppression from more aggressive neighbors, thanks to the rise to power of a strong elite, conscious of its responsibility for the fate of the entire community.
Thus, the first president of Czechoslovakia, Tomáš G. Masaryk, from the first days of his presidency in 1918, unequivocally declared the colonizing nature of the settlement of the peripheral Czech territories by Germans. Under his government, the national language of the republic was not only declared the state language but was also actively introduced into public life through a series of laws. All civil servants and military officers had to pass an exam in the Czech language. Thanks to their perseverance and uncompromising stance on issues concerning the protection of their language’s rights to full-fledged existence in the state, the Czech elite was able to return their people’s language to Prague and other Czech cities that had been Germanized under Austria-Hungary.
The revival of Hebrew as the state language of Israel, which is called a Jewish miracle, since Hebrew had never before been a language of everyday communication, the Jewish people owe primarily to the fanatical devotion to the national idea of such figures as Eliezer Ben-Yehuda and Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky. Hebrew is a link to the past and a bridge to the future, a unifying principle in the history of the Jewish people. A fighter at heart, Jabotinsky knew that the priority of Hebrew could only be achieved through extreme fanaticism. For example, the Irish people, who did not possess fanatical stubbornness, failed to bring their ancient language back to life, so to this day the majority of Irish people speak the language of their former enemies—English (from M. Feller’s book “The Experience of Reviving the State Language of Israel—Hebrew”).
A similar principled position in the matter of protecting their language and culture is characteristic of the current elite of the Baltic countries, especially Estonia and Latvia, where, unlike in Lithuania, the number of the indigenous ethnic population significantly decreased during the period of Soviet occupation. In 1989, Estonians in Estonia made up 61.5% of the population, and Latvians in Latvia—only 52.5% (compared to 87.7% of Estonians and 75.5% of Latvians in their own countries in 1935). The language law, adopted in 1989 by the Supreme Soviet of the Latvian SSR, provides for the mandatory use of the Latvian language in public places, establishes a three-level system of language proficiency, and restricts the use of the Russian language in the public and private sectors. The law also banned the use of bilingual (Russian-Latvian) signs, with the exception of the tourism and cultural spheres. A special State Language Center, which performs inspection and supervisory functions, oversees the implementation of the law. The center controls the entire sphere related to the use of the state language—from the printing of Latvian language textbooks to language inspections on the city streets.
In 1998, a new, much stricter Language Law was adopted in Latvia. It proclaimed Latvian as the sole language of instruction in state schools. An amendment to the law gave the right to dismiss employees for insufficient proficiency in the Latvian language. The Latvian National Council for Radio and Television has the right to shut down private television companies that broadcast their programs predominantly in Russian. At the end of 1998, in connection with this, the private television company “Riga” was closed (from the work of D. Hubenko “The Modern Language Policy of the Baltic States”).
But how are we worse than the Czechs, Jews, and Latvians? Is it not time for all Ukrainians to finally realize that the Ukrainian language is the legalization of our independence?!
Otherwise, we will endlessly watch as the most dangerous and, at the same time, most effective mechanisms of Russification continue to function in independent Ukraine, undefended against and unrestricted. Because of this, the question inevitably arises: how independent are we, when our northern neighbor continuously interferes in our existence and even dictates what language we should communicate in? Based on this, the existing mechanisms of Russification must be considered: 1) information policy; 2) educational policy; 3) personnel policy; 4) ideological threats; 5) the activity of the Moscow Patriarchate; 6) economic policy.
Information Policy
First of all, it is not superfluous to ask ourselves: what kind of state are we building? If it is a Ukrainian and national one, then the current information policy does not contribute to the building of such a state. It is a threat not only to information security but to the national security of Ukraine in general. Look at the Ukrainian television channels (and television enjoys the greatest information demand)—they are almost 80% Russian-speaking. It is not just a race for super-profits—it is the degradation of the population of Ukraine. But the greatest tragedy is that the vast majority of radio and television broadcasts are essentially anti-Ukrainian, or at best, cosmopolitan.
The Ukrainian writer Oksana Zabuzhko very aptly characterized the current state of information policy at the presidential hearings “Challenges Born of Freedom” in 2005. She said then: “The nation’s information space—the one without which its political unity and the very formation of national identity are impossible—was fragmented, parceled out, and largely given over to the former metropole, so that it could exert its ideological influences on our territory as it pleased—which it uses with great success, including through our national television channels... In general, the nation has been lowered to the level of a native tribe, which is generously provided only with advertising for ‘firewater,’ and also with ritual songs and dances a la Kirkorov-Baskov and ‘folklore’ in the form of Russian criminal series.”
And in one of the issues of “Literaturna Ukraina,” it was stated with a pang in the heart that the current information space cripples children and raises modern-day janissaries. And if once the Turks, who turned Ukrainian boys into soulless janissaries, were considered enemies, then who today should be held responsible for crimes against an entire nation?
It is natural that the information space, as the property of the Ukrainian people, should serve the revival of Ukrainian culture and spirituality, contribute to the consolidation of Ukrainian society, and instill a love for Ukraine. Therefore, it is necessary to conduct an inventory of all Ukrainian television channels and re-register the issued licenses. After which, we should create Ukrainian television: introduce a special section, “The Language of Our Land—Ukrainian”; introduce a nationwide section, say, “The Time of Revival”; create a competition for animated films on the themes of the works of Taras Shevchenko and other classics of Ukrainian literature; present heroic Ukrainian folk songs performed by a wealth of ensembles, which are almost never broadcast, in contrast to the pop hits that are “promoted” on all channels, in a separate section; introduce separate reviews: on the work of Ukrainian writers; on the art of Ukraine; on the achievements of Ukrainian science and philosophy—yesterday and today; on the heroic pages of Ukrainian history from ancient times to the present day; on foreign travelers and figures who left memoirs about Ukraine; on the contribution of the Ukrainian diaspora to state-building; on folk art and ethnography.
This, of course, is not the final word. A special meeting of the nationally conscious elite of Ukraine should supplement and clarify them. And as for the owner-managers of many radio and television channels, is Ukraine really so powerless that it cannot replace them?
The problem of information policy is also hidden in many Ukrainian libraries and educational institutions, where the reactionary Pogodin concept of the origin of Ukraine, built not so much on hypotheses as simply on a commissioned basis, from which even some Russian historians have since distanced themselves, still exists. Such a thoroughly false concept, currently supported by some historians, in particular Petro Tolochko, causes irreparable harm to the development of national consciousness and is criminal in relation to Ukrainian statehood. It claims that Ukrainians emerged in the 14th century from a fictional Old Rus’ nationality, and the Ukrainian language is a dialect of Russian. But how then should we treat the thousands of archaeological excavations from the 12th century by the Russian Count A. S. Uvarov, who, in the European part of modern Russia, did not find a single Slavic burial, while the entire scientific heritage of A. S. Uvarov is hushed up?
Today’s and yesterday’s scientific research indicates that only later did an irregular migration of Slavs to the territory of modern Russia occur. In addition, one must take into account that in 1478, Muscovy occupied and annexed the Novgorod Republic, to which Pskov also belonged. All these processes led to the partial assimilation of the indigenous Finno-Ugric population and the displacement of local dialects by Church Slavonic. But almost all Finno-Ugric hydronyms and toponyms have been preserved to this day. No one wants to mock the Finns or Ugrians—we still have much to learn from their current high cultural level. But will the Russians ever have the courage to write their true and truthful history, or do they want to do it at the expense of annexing Ukraine?! Russia has no relation to Kyivan Rus, as evidenced by the fact that during the time of Peter I, in 1721, Muscovy was renamed “Russia” (the Russian Empire), taking from Ukraine its ancient name “Rus,” and the entire heritage of Kyivan Rus was officially appropriated.
And as for linguistic communication, the vernacular language of Kyivan Rus has always been Ukrainian (Ruthenian)—countless primary sources indicate this. Old Bulgarian, or as it was also called, Church Slavonic, served for church services and was the written or bookish language—Latin performed the same function in Western Europe until the Renaissance. After all, take the word “krasnyi—prekrasnyi” (beautiful—most beautiful), which are mentioned in the Ruthenian chronicles: “tam hulialy krasnii divytsi” (beautiful maidens strolled there). So, obviously, not red maidens, as the Russians twisted it, appropriating our history. Or take the ancient word “shliub” (marriage), which transformed to mean “z liubovi” (from love)—for some reason, among Russians, it sounds like “brak” (defect). And a word like “nedilia” (Sunday), which in Ruthenian chronicles is interpreted as “nema dila” (no work), in Russian, it turns out there is no work for the whole week, and then “voskresenie” (resurrection) comes. Even these few ancient Ukrainian words clearly affirm that it is not the Ukrainian language that is a derivative of Russian, but quite the opposite.
The Russian historian Vasily Klyuchevsky also spoke interestingly about this period: “Imagine that Kyiv had not been taken and destroyed by the Tatars… Kyiv would have remained the capital of the first great Rus’ state. The official language would not have been a mixture of Old Slavonic and Finnish, but Slavic-Ukrainian. The Ukrainian writer Gogol would not have had to write in Russian, and Pushkin would have written in Ukrainian.”
And finally, Vadim Rostov paints a fairly well-argued picture of the origin of the Russians and their language in his study “The Non-Russian Russian Language” (“Personal plus,” 2007, No. 41). He writes: “...Russia was first officially called ‘Russia’ only under Peter I, who considered the former name—Muscovy—to be dark and obscurantist. Peter not only forcibly shaved beards, banned all women in Muscovy from wearing Asian-style chadors, and banned harems (terems where women were kept in seclusion), but also, in his travels through Europe, insisted that cartographers henceforth call his country Russia on maps, not Muscovy or Moscovitia, as before. And that the Muscovites themselves should for the first time in history be considered Slavs...”
Regarding the Russian language, Vadim Rostov continues: “In the ‘Parisian Dictionary of Muscovites’ (1586), among the entire vocabulary of the Muscovite people, we find, as I. S. Ulukhanov writes, only the words ‘vladyka’ (ruler) and ‘zlat’ (gold). In the diary-dictionary of the Englishman Richard James (1618–1619), there are more—a whole 16 words (‘blaho’ (good), ‘blazhyt’’ (to act foolishly), ‘branit’’ (to scold), ‘voskresen'ie’ (Sunday), ‘voskresnut'’ (to be resurrected), ‘vrah’ (enemy), ‘vremia’ (time), ‘lad'ia’ (boat), ‘nemoshch'’ (infirmity), ‘peshchera’ (cave), ‘pomoshch'’ (help), ‘prazdnik'’ (holiday), ‘prapor'’ (banner), ‘razroblenie’ (plunder), ‘sladkiy’ (sweet), ‘khram'’ (temple)). In the book ‘Grammar of the Muscovite Language’ by the German scholar and traveler W. Ludolf (1696)—there are already 41 (and some with a strong Finnish ‘okanie’...). The rest of the spoken vocabulary of the Muscovites in these phrasebooks is Finnish and Turkic. Linguists of that era had no grounds to classify the Muscovite language as a ‘Slavic language,’ as there were no Slavisms in spoken speech (and it is the spoken speech of the people that is the criterion here). And therefore, the spoken language of Muscovy was considered neither Slavic nor even proto-Russian: the peasants of Muscovy spoke their Finnish dialects. A characteristic example: the Mordvin Ivan Susanin did not know the Russian language either...”
And regarding the origin of the Ukrainian language, Bohdan Chepurko in the newspaper “Ternopil Vechirnii” ventured to look very deep—he writes that the author of the “Universal History of Writing,” Harald Haarmann, claims that the most ancient writing arose two to three thousand years before Sumerian in the heart of Europe. The same is confirmed by the archaeologist Marija Gimbutas (a Lithuanian woman, a resident of the USA). She proves that the most ancient culture of the world was formed on the territory of Central and Western Ukraine, the Middle Danube, the Southern Adriatic, and the eastern part of the Balkans. The Trypillian culture also testifies to almost the same thing. And Bohdan Chepurko continues: “One of the proofs of the primacy of the proto-language is the prefix ‘nai-’, which denotes a degree of quality, i.e., antiquity: Noah—the oldest. Whether the prefix preserved the name of Noah, or the name Noah came from the Ukrainian prefix ‘nai-’—it is a proven fact: Noah and ‘nai’ are related.”
Not only Russian-language television broadcasts dominate the information space of Ukraine—the mass media are overflowing with Russian and Russian-language books and newspapers. The vast majority of these books are smuggled, and neither the Verkhovna Rada, nor the President, nor the Security Service of Ukraine does anything against it. Visit the largest book market in Ukraine, at “Petrivka”—and you will see that out of several hundred kiosks, only three are Ukrainian.
Oksana Zabuzhko, at the same presidential hearings, called the problem with the Ukrainian book “cultural colonialism.” She emphasized: “The national book and film market was almost completely surrendered to the neighboring state—Ukraine dropped out of the number of both cinematographic and book nations of Europe—and it is better not to even mention the audio and video market... and at the main event of the written world—the Frankfurt Book Fair—Ukraine looked like a colonial Ukrainian SSR of the cave-like Shcherbytskyi model—with embroidered towels, the book ‘Sovetskiy soldat’ (Soviet Soldier) from the Moscow publishing house ‘Russkiy pisatel’ (Russian Writer)...”
The same can be said about the Internet. Until the problem of computerized information services in the Ukrainian language is solved at the state level, we will continue to lose out on the upbringing of the younger generation. And although the world’s first encyclopedia of cybernetics was published in Kyiv in the Ukrainian language, it is bitter to realize today that the ruling “elite” is not concerned with these problems—it itself creates uncertainty about the future of the Ukrainian national state.
All commercial and non-commercial media outlets ignore the Ukrainian language, consciously emphasizing the superiority of Russian, and thus create an inferiority complex among all Ukrainians. So what then can be said about the equality of all peoples and nations, which the so-called “internationalists” love to harp on about! Blatant contempt for everything Ukrainian, as sad as it is to state, gives rise to disillusionment in their homeland among many Ukrainians—Ukrainians who have been illegally deprived of their memory, not without outside interference. Are such processes not a manifestation of hidden neo-Nazism, which is characterized, in addition to chauvinism, by anti-democratism, an expansionist foreign policy, and even the denial of the Ukrainian language? Such an assessment sounds well-reasoned, in contrast to the daily provocative demagoguery of Ukrainophobes, who have already begun to call Ukrainian patriots “fascists,” since the label “nationalist” turned out to be unconvincing, as all state nations, including the Russians, are such.
Educational Policy
Educational policy, like information policy, is a powerful engine for creating a national state and raising a patriotic generation. But since Ukraine lacks a strategy for the development of culture and spirituality, and humanitarian laws and the Constitution are not implemented, but for the most part ignored, all anti-Ukrainian forces are quite effectively using the current situation not only to continue but also to intensify Russification. After all, every year Ukrainian education produces thousands of Russified graduates of secondary schools and higher educational institutions. Therefore, a logical question arises: for whom are we preparing these personnel? Nowhere in the world is there such a thing, especially not in Russia itself, where teaching in educational institutions is conducted in the language of a neighboring country, and the state budget finances them. At the same time, a cynical outcry is raised about the threat of some kind of Ukrainization.
Petro Shcherban, an honored teacher of Ukraine and a veteran of war and labor, paints the same picture. He is concerned about the current political situation: “It was thought that with the coming to power of new statesmen, Ukraine would become Ukrainian, not Russian. Unfortunately, colonization is being carried out by the same methods, and the situation is only getting worse. New projects for the Russification of Ukraine are actively multiplying even in the Verkhovna Rada, and ideas of ‘bilingualism’ and ‘multilingualism’ are being pushed. In reality, it is about the official consolidation of monolingualism, about preserving the dominant position of the Russian language—this powerful means of spiritual destruction and enslavement of the Ukrainian nation. In schools and higher educational institutions, there is a complete absence of moral and patriotic education, no programs for the patriotic and cultural upbringing of student youth, and the Ukrainoznavstvo (Ukrainian Studies) program has been eliminated as a school subject. In preschools and out-of-school educational institutions, educators and methodologists are predominantly Russian-speaking, and therefore children and adolescents are forced to communicate in Russian. The sphere of sports has been completely Russified: coaches and athletes demonstrate a total alienation from the language of their native people.”
So whose interests will such athletes defend at the Olympic Games, when the most important feature of our state should be the Ukrainian language? Is this not a discrediting of our state before the world—surely someone is very interested in this? And therefore, those who constantly speculate on the sacred right of Ukrainians and the strategic provisions of the Constitution (language and territory) should be held more resolutely accountable.
“Today, education in Ukraine must be considered,” continues Petro Shcherban, “as an integrated factor of national security. A convincing proof of this is that the education system provides knowledge, develops creative thinking, and forms the spiritual and moral culture of a harmoniously developed, hardworking individual, a citizen-patriot of Ukraine.
The strength of many countries lies in education.”
But everyone knows that in Ukraine, Russian-language schools are only called Ukrainian, but in essence, they have remained Russian. Or, if there is at least one Ukrainian class in a school, it is called—to the amusement of the people—Ukrainian. However, it is unacceptable for children in kindergartens, as well as in educational institutions, to be raised by teachers who hate everything Ukrainian. Here is an example from Ivan Dziuba’s report: “June 2004. Three educators are conducting an interview with children from a Ukrainian kindergarten regarding their admission to school. The conversation was recorded verbatim. Educator: ‘Do you have friends in the kindergarten?’ Child: ‘I do.’ Educator: ‘Do you quarrel with them?’ Child: ‘I do.’ Educator: ‘Give an example.’ Child: ‘Yesterday I quarreled with Masha.’ Educator: ‘Why?’ Child: ‘I wanted to play in Ukrainian, but she didn’t want to.’ Educator (surprised): ‘So what? If my husband is Russian, should I kick him out of the house?’ Child (guiltily): ‘But I wanted to play in Ukrainian.’ A second woman-educator intervenes: ‘Вот так растут маленькие шовинисты’ (This is how little chauvinists grow). I think it’s clear who is wiser here: the child or the educators of a Ukrainian school in the capital of Ukraine. But the problem is not this, but the fact that the majority of our politicians, the majority of intellectuals, and almost the entire society in general are such educators...”
Here is an example of how Ukrainians are “respected” and educated in their own “independent” state—a vivid illustration of conscious Russification.
But let’s also listen to what Leonid Kutsenko, a candidate of philological sciences and an associate professor at the Kirovohrad Pedagogical Institute, has to say: “I am giving an exam to a second-year correspondence course, specialty—Russian language and literature. The group is well-prepared, but they barely know the Ukrainian language. I remind them of my remark and request to learn the language a year ago. And one of the students, a smart, literate girl, tells me about her teacher of Ukrainian language and literature, who for six months communicated with the students in Russian, and for the other six months, after almost every phrase, repeated: ‘My God, is this literature? Who needs this?’ I became interested in this case and found out that in the city schools, almost half of the teachers who teach Ukrainian language and literature are former Russists. This was soon confirmed by an incident at a professional development course at the regional institute for the improvement of teachers, where I was giving a lecture. I was quoting a professor from Kazan University, Arkhangelsky, who in his course of lectures on Russian literature said that in the 14th–15th centuries, there could be no talk of Russian literature, because Moscow at that time was completely supplied with personnel from Kyiv. One of the listeners jumps up right in the middle of the lecture, throws up her hands, and turns to her neighbors: ‘What is he saying? Is it even possible to think such a thing?’ My words simply enraged her. What will such a teacher teach children?”
It is alarming and outrageous, as if all this is happening not in Ukraine, but in some virtual world (in exile or captivity). Is the Russified philistine not reacting too insolently when the question of removing such “educators” from their posts is raised? They are ready to raise an outcry about the violation of human rights, but the fact that the rights of an entire people are being violated does not concern them.
In December 1997, when I was a people’s deputy and could not calmly observe the deliberate mockery of the Ukrainian language, which had been declared the state language in 1996, I submitted a Constitutional petition regarding the deliberate ignoring of the state language in most educational institutions in Ukraine. I demanded an official interpretation of the provision of Article 10 of the Constitution of Ukraine (I did the same with a petition regarding the neglect of the state language by state officials of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, and the Administration of the President of Ukraine in the performance of their official duties), collected 50 signatures of people’s deputies (the required number was 45), and submitted it to the Constitutional Court. I had to wait a very long time for the decision of the Constitutional Court. I had irrefutable information that the judges had met several times and always postponed the decision, as the votes were split 50/50. And only on December 14, 1999, did the Constitutional Court, consisting of 18 judges, consider at its plenary session the case regarding the official interpretation of certain (as they put it in their response) provisions of Article 10 of the Constitution of Ukraine.
I present the full text of this response: “The Constitutional Court of Ukraine has decided:
1. The provision of the first part of Article 10 of the Constitution of Ukraine, according to which ‘the state language in Ukraine is the Ukrainian language,’ should be understood to mean that the Ukrainian language as the state language is a mandatory means of communication throughout the territory of Ukraine in the exercise of powers by state authorities and local self-government bodies (the language of acts, work, office work, documentation, etc.), as well as in other public spheres of social life, which are determined by law (the fifth part of Article 10 of the Constitution of Ukraine). Alongside the state language, in the exercise of powers by local executive authorities, bodies of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, and local self-government bodies, Russian and other languages of national minorities may be used within the limits and in the manner prescribed by the laws of Ukraine (Here is a loophole for the continuation of Russification.—L.H.).
2. Based on the provisions of Article 10 of the Constitution of Ukraine and the laws of Ukraine regarding the guaranteeing of the use of languages in Ukraine, including in the educational process, the language of instruction in preschool, general secondary, vocational-technical, and higher state and municipal educational institutions of Ukraine is the Ukrainian language.
In state and municipal educational institutions, alongside the state language, in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution of Ukraine, in particular, the fifth part of Article 53, and the laws of Ukraine, the languages of national minorities may be used and studied in the educational process.
3. The decision of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine is binding for execution on the territory of Ukraine, is final, and cannot be appealed.
However, even such a subservient decision of the Constitutional Court is deliberately ignored by the authorities, and no one bears any responsibility. Confirmation of the irresponsibility of officials and the facts of their conscious Russification were not long in coming. On June 16, 2008, on the fifth television channel, information was broadcast that the Ukrainian language in the South and East of Ukraine has been put in chains—so public figures believe. Most requests from parents to open at least a few Ukrainian schools in Luhansk Oblast, Donetsk, and Crimea remain unheard by local authorities. The language rights of Ukrainians are being deliberately violated—lawyers are convinced.
So how long will this last? Can the considerable number of patriotic public organizations really not unite and fight together against rampant Russification—to initiate a just process in court? Because waiting for a language law to be adopted means condoning the Russification of Ukraine. After all, there is a Constitution, there is a decision of the Constitutional Court, and even some laws that protect the state Ukrainian language. There would only need to be the desire and political will... Even with a negative court decision, a patriotic stance would have a positive resonance and support—it would awaken the entire Ukrainian society from its slumber.
Personnel Policy
It must be admitted that during the 17 years of independence, there have been only minuscule sprinklings of nationally conscious statesmen among the ruling elite of our state. Was the bloody liberation struggle against our greedy neighbors waged for centuries just so that today, in an independent Ukraine, they would again rule us through their puppets? Perhaps, in the selection of personnel, we should be guided not by patriotic rhetoric, but by checking what language a particular candidate uses to raise their children. After all, it is unacceptable to tolerate a split personality, starting from childhood, and to hypocritically refer to the advantages of bilingualism, as it opens the door to the complete domination of the Russian language.
The vast majority of officials who publicly use the Ukrainian language automatically switch to Russian when they travel to the eastern and southern regions. As if they had arrived in Russia, as if the Ukrainian language were not the state language, as if state officials did not need to popularize the Ukrainian language...
However, it is pointless to refer to the yet-to-be-adopted Law “On Language” when the Constitution is in effect (in particular, Article 10) and there is a decision of the Constitutional Court confirming the statehood of the Ukrainian language. After all, there are situations that can only be resolved by the insistence of the President or the Prime Minister of Ukraine. We are talking about many heads of state administrations who, in Russified regional and district centers, instead of using the Ukrainian language, support the process of Russification on the spot by their own example, not to mention the fact that, as civil servants, they are violating Article 10 of the Constitution of Ukraine. It is hard to say whether they do not know the language or do not want to communicate in it—in either case, they should not have the right to hold such high state positions. Or is there some other reason? Ivan Dziuba aptly expressed the dangers of such a personnel policy in his book “Internationalism or Russification?”: “The state and economic apparatus is one of the main and most effective levers of Russification. Where the authorities speak Russian, soon everyone will be forced to speak Russian...” And, by the way, the more the number of Russified people grows, the fewer chances there are for the future election of a truly patriotic President of Ukraine.
What then can be said about people’s deputies, law enforcement agencies, athletes, officers... And as for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the most powerful weapon for Ukrainian soldiers should be the language of the land they have sworn to protect—the Ukrainian language. Are these just romantic aspirations? Because in reality, something disdainful towards Ukraine as a state is happening. Where are we heading when Article 11 of the Law “On the Armed Forces of Ukraine” is sabotaged in the Ukrainian army? And not only that...
The renowned linguist Anatoliy Pohribnyi shares his impressions on this matter: “...I had the opportunity to speak in several tank divisions stationed in the Dnipropetrovsk region. I recall the regimental commanders and other officers who met me. Their language to me was forcedly Ukrainian, more often a surzhyk (mixed language). But as soon as an officer looked away from me and turned to his colleague, it was the language he lived in—Russian. And in addresses to soldiers, with the exception of ‘Strunko!’ (Attention!), ‘Krokom rush!’ (March!) and some other commands—also. At the very least, it was not difficult to conclude that communication in Ukrainian in these divisions was by no means more frequent than my own personal communication in Croatian or Polish. The Ukrainian state language is still, therefore, in the status of a foreign guest, still in the form of mostly ritualistic inclusions. And all this is against the backdrop of visual agitation in Ukrainian, against the backdrop of portraits of Ukrainian hetmans and writers displayed in army clubs. And one note, passed to me during my speech by one of the officers (and not an anonymous one, but signed with his full name—platoon commander Lyantsev), struck me to the core: ‘Professor,’ I read in it, ‘You are speaking to us in Ukrainian, but among us, there is a part who do not understand this unknown language. Therefore, don’t you think that by speaking in Ukrainian, you are showing your disrespect for this part of the audience that came to meet you?’”
So there you have the Ukrainian army. So will such an army defend the inviolable borders of Ukraine? “We’ll surrender,” a Ukrainian (or is he Ukrainian?) soldier in the Kharkiv region inadvertently confessed when I asked him a few years ago if they would resist the Russians if they, God forbid, crossed the Ukrainian border.
And what is being done for the Ukrainian army today? I don’t think anything has changed significantly. However, with great desire and the political will of the Ukrainian authorities, it would be possible to conduct monitoring not only in the Armed Forces of Ukraine but in all state and responsible personnel appointments. Thus, since a personnel problem has arisen, based on the data obtained, it would be possible to reform the Russified branches and adopt strategic programs for their development.
Personnel is everything—words that will always be relevant. Therefore, personnel policy must be carried out in such a way that the elected and appointed personnel work for a Ukrainian Ukraine!
Ideological Threats
The influence of the Marxist understanding of ideology in Ukraine is very palpable. According to this understanding, the concept of ideology is defined, as a rule, through the needs and interests that unite people into groups (primarily economic interests are meant). Therefore, today in Ukraine, in the old sense, a consumerist and philistine ideology functions disproportionately, instead of a national-cultural one. And in general, the influence of the Marxist thesis about the future displacement of ideology, which is observed in Ukraine today, especially in the proliferation of political parties, inclines influential and wealthy strata of the population to ignore the role of patriotic ideology in public life. Even the Constitution of Ukraine, in Article 15, states that “no ideology may be recognized by the state as mandatory.” But could not state-building on the principles of patriotism become that binding ideology for all officials and citizens? It turns out that the absence of legislative consolidation of a state-patriotic ideology (love for one’s homeland) is very convenient for someone, as it is also a mechanism of Russification. After all, no truly strong state in the world has been built without state nationalism, which obliges all citizens of different nationalities to respect and be loyal to the state in which they live.
In order to somehow strategically guarantee our security, it is first and foremost necessary to bring order to the excess of faceless political parties, among which there are many anti-Ukrainian ones, and which not only cause chaos and anarchy in the country’s political life, squandering public funds, but are also being counted on by our northern neighbor. Therefore, it is futile to hope that non-parliamentary parties will ever begin to unite or voluntarily leave the political arena. In the process of such waiting, Ukraine is losing a great deal, and above all in its progressive development and in guaranteeing stability in the state.
Although in reality, according to Professor Oleh Hryniv, in the current conditions in Ukraine, there are effectively two parties—one is pro-Ukrainian, patriotic, for which the national interests of Ukraine are paramount, and the other is anti-Ukrainian.
However, the problem of the dangerous number of political parties and their hidden and in many cases anti-state ideology could be solved by a law “On the Political System of Ukraine,” which would provide for the functioning of political parties only of an ideological orientation. Such a concept of state-building violates neither the principles of democracy nor the Constitution of Ukraine. And since in the current vague political situation, when the threat to the integrity of Ukraine has not completely disappeared, it is worth adopting the option of the most reliable defense of our independence, and not blindly copying European models. Because what is happening in Ukraine, with the frantic pressure from Moscow, is not yet fully understood in Europe and the world.
The anti-Ukrainian environment obstructs the establishment of a genuine, not merely declarative, independence for Ukraine by all possible means. They are inspired by Moscow through its total control and interference in the internal affairs of Ukraine, along with humiliating lectures (and threats, in case of disobedience). Therefore, Ukraine will only be able to feel secure when it joins NATO. The frantic opposition to such a prospect speaks to the morbid influence of “fifth column” propaganda and the provocations of defenders of Moscow’s interests. Under the fig leaf of a struggle against NATO and everything American, they even resist humanitarian aid from America, forgetting or concealing that Russia did not oppose American aid during World War II. America supplied Russia with its aircraft (even Kozhedub flew an American P-39 Airacobra), tanks, cannons, Studebakers, canned meat, ammunition, and more. And one should not forget (or conceal) that America generously and free of charge, under the Lend-Lease plan, delivered necessary reinforcements to Russia by air and sea, with huge losses, to the total sum of over 11 billion dollars. And the value of the dollar then was tens of times higher than now.
It is not NATO that frightens Moscow, but the fact that Ukraine will finally break free from Moscow’s “embrace”—from total control and encroachment on its God-given freedom.
Levko Lukianenko offered a rather convincing assertion regarding the dangers that lie in wait for Ukraine. He expressed confidence that the presence of anti-Ukrainian organizations in Ukraine, the occupation of the information space, the ubiquitous Russification, and other anti-state manifestations that operate legally within the field of imperfect and insufficient Ukrainian legislation could be parts of a single whole—an insidious program to dismantle Ukraine.
Professor Ihor Losiev affirms the same in his article “They Know What to Do with Ukraine.” He writes: “However, the essence of Moscow’s current policy, primarily in the socio-political and cultural sphere in the Ukrainian state, lies in playing on the opposition between the real with its compulsory binding force and the symbolic with its optionality and exclusivity. According to this policy, which is not openly proclaimed but can be traced at almost every step, everything Ukrainian in Ukraine should be symbolic, and everything Russian—real. Hence the desire to grant the Russian language in Ukraine an ‘equal’ state status with Ukrainian, as a result of which the statehood of Ukrainian immediately acquires a symbolic and only a symbolic meaning, while the entire sphere of reality will be totally encompassed by the Russian language.
Thus, according to the modern Russian strategy, Ukraine is to be symbolically independent, but in fact completely controlled by Moscow—a pseudo-state. This strategy, among other things, is also conditioned by the fact that under the current circumstances, both international and internal Russian, it is difficult to occupy Ukraine through force, and possibly counterproductive, but it can be digested in the Russian ‘cauldron’ of comprehensive economic, political, cultural, informational, religious, and educational influences. And then Ukraine turns into a subsystem, a special case or manifestation of the Russian geopolitical and civilizational system.”
Unfortunately, today in Ukraine, even in a fantastical dream, it is impossible to imagine Russifiers and Ukrainophobes in the dock. On the contrary, they successfully continue their activities. Therefore, one inevitably comes to the conclusion of an extremely distorted understanding by the Ukrainian populace of the current situation, shaped by imperial power, and hence its inability to solve fateful problems at a modern civilizational level. The law of the strong, not the just, still holds sway over our people.
But, in contrast to the helplessness of the public, it is the duty of the SBU, even with a lack of necessary laws, to eliminate the centers of incitement aimed at splitting Ukraine—to find the provocateurs and bring them to justice. Because such aggressive opposition to everything Ukrainian cannot be spontaneous—it is well-managed and financed by someone.
Also relevant is the problem touched upon by the political scientist Mykola Bilyi. He writes: “Legal science lags behind in Ukraine and in the world, as the realities of life in the post-imperial Soviet space (in the former republics of the USSR), in the post-Yugoslav space in the Balkans, and elsewhere cry out for a legal (in definitions) distinction between the concepts of ‘national minority’ and ‘occupational remnants’ in a once-subjugated country, which, under the patronage of the imperial metropole and under the cover of a ‘minority,’ undermine the state of the liberated nation from within and push it back into the empire.
Ukraine has colossal experience in this matter—it has lost its own statehood at least twice in modern history precisely because of the decomposing, subversive work from within by the ‘fifth column’ of the Moscow empire. Therefore, it is Ukraine that must propose to the international community, at this historic time of the formation of the post-imperialist era of nation-states, a draft legal document (an international convention) ‘On the Delineation of the Concepts of “National Minorities” and “Occupational Remnants” in Countries Liberated from the Imperial Yoke and the Legal Consequences of Such a Delineation’.”
At the same time, to counter the national threat, it is necessary to legitimize the rights of the indigenous Ukrainian people by adopting a Law “On the Titular Nation of Ukraine,” similar to how the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine treated other nationalities by adopting the law “On National Minorities in Ukraine.” This law is the most liberal in the entire world—even Russia to this day has not managed to adopt any law on its national minorities, although their nationalities, unlike the Ukrainian ones, have their own ethnic territories. And here it is worth refuting all sorts of Ukrainophobes, communists, and progressive socialists who have repeatedly asserted (of course, speculated) about the multi-ethnicity of Ukraine. The pseudo-elite to this day instill notions according to which Ukraine cannot be a nation-state, because it has “multi-ethnicity, multi-culturalism, multi-lingualism” (from the book “Concept of the Development of the Humanitarian Sphere of Ukraine,” Kyiv, 2001). But these speculations are completely refuted by the famous Russian philologist N. N. Durnovo, who also did not particularly like Ukraine (but was objective), in his book “Vvedeniye v istoriyu russkogo yazyka” (Introduction to the History of the Russian Language) (Moscow, “Nauka,” 1969). In this book, on a color map, he showed the boundaries of the spread of the Ukrainian language (as of 1920) and the ethnic territory of Ukrainians, which not only covers the current territory of Ukraine but also extends to the Rostov region, Kuban, Brest region, Prydnistrovya, Kholmshchyna, Pidliashshia, Lemkivshchyna, and Nadsiannia.
The ancientness and unity of the Ukrainian ethnic territory should not become a target for anti-Ukrainian forces who seek to introduce bilingualism in Ukraine, finally Russify the Ukrainians, and eventually annex them to Russia. Is this not part of the program for the destruction of Ukraine, mentioned above?
Legislative protection of the language, culture, and spirituality of the indigenous nation should become a priority in order to eliminate the current depressive processes in the cultural and spiritual life of Ukrainian society. Therefore, Ukraine awaits not only the adoption of a program of national development but also its implementation.
And as for the current Communist Party in Ukraine, it is also an influential mechanism of Russification—the communists are even ready to renounce their ideological demagoguery for the sake of Ukraine’s accession to Russia. But an international tribunal has long awaited the Communist Party. However, it is sad to witness that there are still forces in Ukraine today that support the communists. And it is even more painful that their bloody ideology is propagated by thousands of silent monuments and names that are freely scattered throughout Ukraine. However, let us read what Mykola Barbon writes about the “activities of the communists” in his article “This Should Not Be Forgotten”: “Having come to power, the Bolsheviks created from the gangs of the Red Army the organs of monstrous arbitrariness: the VChK, GPU, NKVD, KGB. On Lenin’s instructions, they robbed, raped, destroyed villages, and killed hundreds and thousands of people to establish their power. Their punitive detachments of the Cheka tortured and executed the innocent. Hitler’s fascists later learned from the Bolsheviks—they are blood brothers who destroyed millions of people. On the conscience of the Bolsheviks from 1917 to 1959, there are 110 million victims. During their bloody rule, the Bolsheviks constantly violated Human Rights! The fate of millions of people was decided by a gang of party terrorists. Lenin then wrote: ‘Let 90% of the people perish, so that 10% may live to see the bright revolution.’”
The sick sadist F. Dzerzhinsky, who called himself the “dog of the revolution,” was executioner No. 1. Lenin taught the Bolsheviks to shoot people on the spot without trial or investigation. And the future Leninist, the prosecutor of the RSFSR, N. V. Krylenko, in 1918, taught the Chekists: “We must execute not only the guilty but also the innocent, in order to influence the masses.”
How can Hitler or Himmler compare to them?
Already in 1917, a symbiosis of the party with the VChK occurred. Lenin wrote about this: “Every communist must also be a good Chekist.” That is, every communist must be an informer for the VChK. Lenin and the Bolsheviks held power through lies, cruelty, and denunciations. The most brutal sadists and career criminals from the dregs of society and foreign sadists were selected for the VChK. They were given unlimited power.
Arbitrariness took the form of bloody licentiousness. During arrests, they broke down doors, beat the owners, and tortured children. At the slightest resistance, they shot them or sent them to concentration camps on the Solovetsky Islands. When Dzerzhinsky presented a list of 1,500 prisoners, Lenin put a cross next to each one. All were executed.
The Petersburg Chekist Uritsky proposed to the Bolshevik government to feed the animals in the zoo with the corpses of political prisoners. And in Moscow, tsarist ministers were shot to the sounds of an orchestra. When Lenin’s commander, the gendarme officer Muravyov, occupied Kyiv in 1918, he shot 5,000 Ukrainians just because they spoke Ukrainian, wore mustaches, and wore embroidered shirts. Muravyov conducted the executions near the Mariinsky Palace... All this was witnessed by Aleksandr Chokovsky, who was arrested in those years...”
The “fiery revolutionaries” did not forget about themselves personally. In 1920 alone, colossal sums of plundered money were transferred to the foreign bank accounts (Swiss and American) of the “leaders of the proletariat”: from Trotsky—11 million dollars and 90 million Swiss francs; from Lenin—75 million francs; from Zinoviev—80 million francs; from Dzerzhinsky—80 million francs; from Uritsky—85 million francs (from Aleksandr Bykov’s book “Takoy neizvestnyy Lenin” (Such an Unknown Lenin)). It is hard to add anything here—for the champions of materialistic ideology, honest and noble people, and especially Ukrainian patriots, truly stood in the way.
Therefore, it is time for our authorities (I hope, Ukrainian ones) to ensure that Marxist, and especially Leninist, professors do not ideologically confuse student youth with audacious falsifications (from the book “Sila i protsv_e_tanie slavyanskikh narodov v ikh yedinstve i soglasii” (The Strength and Prosperity of the Slavic Peoples in Their Unity and Harmony), Sevastopol, 1998). This book is imbued with chauvinism and even more—it imposes the idea of the withering away of the Ukrainian language and its consignment to oblivion.
Imperial ideology, both communist and Nazi, has always been and remains hostile to the independence of Ukraine.
The Activity of the Moscow Patriarchate
The Moscow Patriarchate not only continues the Russification of Ukraine, especially in the villages of the eastern and southern regions where the Ukrainian language has still been preserved, but also illegally engages in election campaigns, supporting anti-Ukrainian, pro-Moscow party formations. At the same time, it falsifies the history of Ukraine and speaks with hatred of everything Ukrainian as Banderite or derived from Polish. All services of the UOC (MP) are conducted exclusively in Russian, which, first and foremost, undermines trust in one’s own native, Ukrainian identity.
Therefore, a united national Church with its center in Kyiv should become a powerful factor in the consolidation of the Ukrainian people, since only it, along with the cultural heritage of Ukraine, opens for Ukrainians their own unique path to God.
However, the Moscow factor once again stands as an obstacle on the path to God and Ukraine. Professor Vasyl Lyzanchuk has thoroughly studied this problem in his article “Declarations on the State Status of the Ukrainian Language and the Real State of Its Functioning in Ukraine.” He writes: “The so-called UOC of the Moscow Patriarchate works actively and insidiously against Ukraine, in every way implanting a Russian spiritual and cultural environment, destroying the Ukrainian one. It embodies the chauvinistic ideology of G. Fedotov regarding the assertion of the self-consciousness of Ukrainians as a special form of Russian consciousness. The defense of the interests of this patriarchate is tantamount to the defense of the imperial interests of Russia. The very name UOC (MP) is merely a cassock in which the head of the ROC is hiding.
The UOC (MP) carries out Moscow’s political order in Ukraine, as evidenced by numerous facts and documents. One of the leaflets of the UOC (MP), distributed in the Pechersk Lavra, calls on the Orthodox in the language of Moscow to ‘immediate general repentance.’ For what? It turns out, for betraying the tsar and autocracy, because this is the ‘main cause of all the troubles of the people of Russia in the past and present.’ Well, repent, Russia, for what you consider your sin, who in Ukraine is stopping you? It is time, indeed, to repent for the enslavement and Russification of Ukraine. However, the leaflet was made by invader-special propagandists, because it calls precisely for ‘repentance for the collapse of Russia and the separation of Ukraine—the body of Christ of the Russian Orthodox Church.’ And to pray ‘for the unification of Ukraine with Russia.’ This is an obvious fact of interference in our internal affairs, an encroachment on the sovereignty of the country and the statehood of the people. Does not such a shameless foreign snout in the political down fall under the action of the criminal code?”
Even one such document, among many others (as the professor testifies), should have been the reason for convening a special meeting of the National Security and Defense Council, if we want our state to be respected. And no one will understand the fact why an association that openly speaks out against our statehood is maintained on Ukrainian soil. Is it not worth checking the activities of this “church”? Perhaps its activity is one of the components of a program to dismantle the Ukrainian state? After all, the faith of every Christian church must be based on the principles of love, yet from the side of the UOC (MP), a savage hatred for everything Ukrainian is immeasurably spewed forth. Perhaps the name of this church is indeed just a cassock, as Vasyl Lyzanchuk writes, and some other association is hiding under it?
But let’s listen further to Professor Vasyl Lyzanchuk: “Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow on February 19, 1999, responding to congratulations on the occasion of his 70th birthday, emphasized that his Church has always ‘defended and will defend the interests of the Russian state.’ Undoubtedly, Ukraine is primarily included in this circle of interests. The ROC, through the UOC (MP), possesses considerable wealth in Ukraine, including 7,911 churches, 140 monasteries, a significant part of which was forcibly taken from the Greek Catholics and autocephalists with the help of official authorities at one time. Does the Moscow Patriarchate intend to return this wealth to its rightful owners, that is, to the Ukrainian people? It is doubtful, especially since the UOC (MP) has gained special favor with the President of Ukraine, Leonid Kuchma, and his wife. Who can deny today that the UOC (MP) is not playing the active role of a ‘fifth column’ in Ukraine, continuing the policy of Russification? Or, perhaps, in the existing 7 theological seminaries, theological academy, 29 church schools, 20 regent schools, and 5,000 church-parish schools, instruction is conducted in the Ukrainian language? Perhaps priests, regents, and young people in general are being brought up there in the spirit of Ukrainian patriotism, in the spirit of love for Ukraine, or perhaps they are told what a Golgotha the Ukrainian people endured from the ‘elder brother’ over the centuries? Perhaps the UOC (MP) has canceled the anathema against Hetman Ivan Mazepa or initiated such an action in the Moscow Patriarchate? No one has heard of such a thing.”
Therefore, it is worth knowing the true history in order to counter the Moscow falsifiers, even the religious ones. The current and historical essence of the Moscow Patriarchate is thoroughly revealed by political scientist Oleksandr Paliy in his article “The Closer to the Moscow Priests, the Farther from God.” He notes: “In contrast to the Ukrainian Hetman Ivan Mazepa, the Russian Tsar Peter I was not distinguished by his religiosity. Peter I abolished the Moscow Patriarchate and entrusted the leadership of the church to one of his ministers (who was called the Ober-Procurator of the Most Holy Synod). Peter I also founded the ‘Most Drunken, Most Jesting, and Most Mad Synod,’ with ‘cardinals,’ ‘bishops,’ and ‘priests’ with extremely obscene titles even by 21st-century standards, who regularly ‘received communion’ by getting drunk to the point of insensibility during orgies, including homosexual ones, together with the ‘most jesting mother-hegumenesses and archieresses.’ Peter I himself drew up the statute of the ‘Most Drunken, Most Jesting, and Most Mad Synod’—so far, only excerpts from this text have been published in Russia, but even this is enough. Thanks to these ancient documents, it becomes clear why today in Russia they do not swear with profanity, but speak it. It is also known that on several occasions Peter I personally participated in the torture and execution of the Streltsy, priests, and Old Believers. It is a well-known case that Peter I tortured his own son to death with his own hands.
The actions of Peter I’s army on the territory of Ukraine were even more cruel. Thus, in particular, by order of Peter I, the 20,000-strong population of Baturyn was massacred by Moscow’s troops. Having broken into the hetman’s capital thanks to the trickery of the traitor Nos, the Moscow troops carried out an unheard-of slaughter, killing not only the defenders but also the entire civilian population of the city, including infants. Recently, on the site where the citadel of the Baturyn fortress stands, a mound has been raised and a monument has been erected in the form of a cross with a crucifix. An icon was attached to this cross, which was found during excavations in Baturyn on the skeleton of a woman who was clutching a child to her breast.
No protests against the erection of monuments to Peter I in Russia or in Ukraine have ever been heard from the Moscow Church. Meanwhile, anyone can check—the Bible contains the commandment ‘thou shalt not kill,’ but there is no commandment ‘thou shalt not desire freedom for thy Fatherland.’ The main mistake of Hetman Mazepa was that his actions were not successful. Instead of anathematizing Peter I and other Russian tyrants, from Ivan the Terrible to Stalin, for all their homicides, filicides, and outrages, including those against the church and morality, the Moscow church to this day appeals to the proclamation of the anathema against the Ukrainian hetman Mazepa. Although the priests who declared it had a common human weakness—they simply did not risk opposing the tsar, who was known for his sadism, and at the point of rifle barrels, they had to declare an anathema against the hetman even in those churches that Mazepa himself had built. In addition, many of the priests who declared the anathema against Mazepa had relatives who were held hostage by the Muscovites. The anathema against Mazepa did not save the majority of the church hierarchs of Ukraine—many of them were imprisoned, and even more were sent into exile.
It is noteworthy that the monuments to the modern destroyers of the church—the figures of the communist era—Lenins, Dzerzhinskys, Postyshevs, etc., who, unlike Mazepa, did not build but destroyed thousands of churches, do not cause any protests from the Moscow Church. It is not difficult to understand such a policy of the Moscow Church in Ukraine. In a note about the report of the Poltava governor von Boggout to the Minister of Internal Affairs in 1914, it is said: ‘To pay special attention to the rural clergy and their political beliefs. To appoint deans with special discretion. To place exclusively Great Russians, and firm and energetic ones at that, at the head of the dioceses. To exert the most severe pressure on priests who are infected with Ukrainophilism.’”
After the last presidential elections (2004), the Moscow Patriarchate’s devotion exclusively to political goals has become so obvious that a logical question arises: should the Moscow Church be considered a church, or an ideological subdivision of a foreign state on a foreign, hostile territory?”
Still, the current statements of the President of Ukraine regarding the creation of a Ukrainian Local Orthodox Church remain for now a declaration and await their realization.
Economic Policy
The Ukrainian economy is in great need of modernization, but in no case at the expense of Russification. And although Russian investors do not possess the latest technologies, they are rushing into Ukraine and pursuing special interests here. Russian capital has a distinct political feature—unrestrained expansion.
Ukraine is not taken into account.
“Today, the economic basis of Moscow’s policy towards Ukraine is being laid with extreme activity. Gradually, Russian financial, legal, and managerial control is being established over all the most important sectors. Often, the best production facilities are bought up by someone in a legally and commercially strange way. Through the system of Russian-Ukrainian business associations, Ukrainian enterprises are deprived of direct access to the world market. The entire Ukrainian economy, in the nearest historical perspective, may become a subsystem of the Russian one...” says Professor Ihor Losiev.
The economic policy of Russifying Ukrainians has its roots in Tsarist Russia and was intensified during the Soviet era. “The collective farm system, about whose ‘special merits’ cries are still heard today, was not invented by the Bolsheviks. The collective farm system is a calque of the Russian patriarchal community. At the same time, the community, like the collective farm organization of production, never had anything in common with the mentality of the Ukrainian people. We are talking about economic relations imposed on us from the outside, about economic forms of Russification of the Ukrainian nation, the Ukrainian peasant, about instruments of Russian economic imperialism,” testified Doctor of Economic Sciences Anatoliy Halchynskyi.
In addition to a targeted economic policy of Russification, there are also economic factors that are derivatives of that same policy of Russification. Here is what Roman Lozynskyi writes in the newspaper “Postup”: “...Russians are the owners of many private firms, shops, and cafes in the center of Lviv. Where the owner of the establishment is Russian, the language of communication in the collective is very often also Russian. After all, under modern economic conditions, the employees of a private establishment are entirely dependent on the owner. In addition, they are usually hired from the owner’s close Russian-speaking circle, or the language attribute is taken into account during selection. Moreover, Russians in Lviv are a more affluent ethnic group, and therefore they consume more, buy more, and, as is known, in business, the seller speaks the client’s language. Thus, a closed environment is created in which the Russian language dominates, and having entered it, a Ukrainian becomes Russified. People’s value systems change. The national, in particular, the native language, in a poor society, drops several rungs down the hierarchy of life values, compared to the national in a rich and economically stable society.
So what is to be done?
The lack of a clear understanding of the mechanism of Russification of Ukrainians not only in Lviv but in Ukraine in general deprives us of the opportunity to carry out truly effective measures to improve the language situation. In addition, the language problem becomes a basis for various kinds of speculation. Thus, for example, for a long time now, the defense of the Ukrainian language has been one of the most frequently used slogans to obtain certain political dividends. A rally or a picket in support of the native language is a fairly cheap political technology. It does not commit you to anything and usually has no consequences. However, the rally will definitely be written about in the press, and maybe even shown on television...
...A typical mistake is to focus exclusively on external factors of the growing influence of the Russian language on the city’s residents. At the same time, the aforementioned internal historical and ethno-cultural features of the formation and development of the city’s population play no less an important role in this process. Therefore, this problem must be solved primarily by the efforts of Ukrainians—the city’s residents, the authorities, Ukrainian public organizations, associations, and political parties—by clearly defining the channels through which Russification occurs and filling them with their own Ukrainian product...
...Russification most affects the youth of Lviv. First of all, it is they who, striving to satisfy their own needs, specific only to youth, encounter Russian at every step. Thus, measures against Russification should be directed at the youth environment, and no one wants to understand this. Thousands of young Ukrainians from Galicia, educated, who speak foreign languages, are leaving Lviv not even for abroad, but for the capital, to Russified Kyiv. These people need to be kept in Lviv: identified and supported with scholarships, prizes, loans for starting their own businesses, and actively involved in government structures.”
And so even “nationalist” Lviv is being Russified.
It is only unclear why local authorities do not take into account the language issue when issuing licenses, especially in Lviv. After all, wealthy Russian entrepreneurs or investors should be attracted not only to develop infrastructure and create jobs—they should respond with gratitude for Ukrainian hospitality by respecting the Ukrainian state and promoting its language. Although it is unlikely that one can ever expect this from the Russians. Therefore, the function of public organizations is not only to engage in election campaigning but also, as noted above, to control, and strictly at that, manifestations of Russification and to react accordingly.
* * *
Admittedly, the greatest claims are against the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, and thus against ourselves, since we ourselves elect it. Although it should be noted that under the current election law, the influence of voters on the election of people’s deputies is minimal. The election lists of political parties are formed in a closed regime and in many cases not according to state-building criteria. It is difficult for people to understand the concepts of a myriad of faceless political parties—they are forced to orient themselves only by the brand and the leader of one party or another, which is essentially a morbid phenomenon. However, even the current number of nationally conscious Ukrainians could elect a parliament of Ukraine that would provide all the necessary laws for a more effective fight against Russification. For this, one should seek ways to unite among the patriotic forces, rather than confronting and fighting each other. Only thanks to the great mission of patriotic associations and every patriot of Ukraine in awakening national consciousness and raising political culture can the expected shifts be realized. But it will be possible to completely get rid of the listed mechanisms of Russification only when the political will of not only the Verkhovna Rada, but also the President and the Government of Ukraine appears.
The Russified East and South of Ukraine, as well as Russified Kyiv, are in great need of a de-Russification program. Nevertheless, first and foremost, this program should begin with oneself, since speaking Ukrainian in Kyiv, in a thoroughly Russified environment, is tantamount to a struggle against a great injustice. And whoever considers himself a fighter, not a conformist, not a janissary, and not some kind of mongrel, should show his God-given gift in practice. What could be nobler than defending the enslaved language of one’s people!
June 20, 2008