Mykhailo Horyn's book *To Light a Candle* has been published (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group; compiled by V. Ovsienko. Artistic design by B. E. Zakharov. – Kharkiv, 2009. – 328 pp., photo ill.). The book includes his autobiographical story, essays and memoirs about political prisoners, interviews, documents, photographs, and speeches covering an entire era of the struggle for human rights and Ukrainian independence—from the 1930s to the present day. “It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness all your life”—this motto has guided the organizer of samvydav, human rights activist, and distinguished public and political figure Mykhailo Horyn throughout his life.
On April 8, 2009, the book was presented to readers at the Museum-Archive of Ukrainian Samvydav at the "Smoloskyp" publishing house in Kyiv. The author's closest friends and like-minded colleagues Dmytro Pavlychko, Yevhen Sverstiuk, Levko Lukianenko, Yosyf Zisels, and Vakhtang Kipiani spoke at the event.
Historian Oleksandr Tkachuk offers his assessment of Mykhailo Horyn's role in achieving independence at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s.
The people responded to the merry-go-round of arrivals and departures of communist leaders in the 1980s only with a wave of biting anecdotes that undermined the Soviet consciousness from within but posed no direct threat to the totalitarian system. The Soviet government mercilessly eradicated anything that could create something new, unusual, vibrant, and alive; like the fairytale Koschei, it seemed stillborn and eternal. But all this demonic illusoriness melted away in an instant when the Communist Party was headed by Mikhail Gorbachev—a firm supporter of the country's modernization. Changes began, and with them came systemic threats. During his policy, which came to be known as “perestroika,” an “unbalanced situation” arose within the single-ruling party, to use the language of synergetics, as “conservatives” launched a radical critique against the “reformers” who wanted to improve the slowly degrading empire and maintain its competitiveness on the world stage. The latter instinctively realized that the consistent implementation of reformist plans would inevitably call into question not only outdated economic systems but the empire itself. It is worth remembering that this was an extremely powerful group of influence in the country's party-state mechanism, capable of carrying out a coup d'état at any moment. The “reformers’” real sense of danger was fueled by the still-fresh memory of Khrushchev, who was removed from power for less ambitious reformist intentions.
Gorbachev's inner circle quickly realized that they could hold onto power only by enlisting the support of the broader population. Party conservatism had to be countered with public initiative. This task was taken up by the Moscow cosmopolitan intelligentsia, whose leaders would later be called the “foremen of perestroika” (mostly from the circle of the Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, Aleksandr Nikolayevich Yakovlev). It is quite likely that this group had its own (hidden) interests from the very beginning, skillfully playing on the contradictions between the two party clans. On the instruction of the “reformers,” they held a round table of leading “intellectuals” who declared that perestroika was under threat and that it was necessary to create initiative groups in support of perestroika, in support of the party's “Leninist policy,” and its reformist leadership—in short: to create a broad public organization around the CPSU. (At a time when communist power was absolute, this meant creating an alternative to it). Later, this manifesto was reprinted by the popular party magazine *Ogoniok*, headed by a protégé of the “reformers,” Vitaliy Korotych. This was effectively an informal sanction from the CPSU Central Committee for the deployment of a corresponding public movement. At the same time, the punitive organs were instructed to control the process, try to influence it by weeding out radical anti-communist and nationalist elements, but were forbidden to use repressive measures.
A little later, another participant joined the intra-party struggle for the “Russian throne”—Boris Yeltsin, driving the central government to complete paralysis.
To summarize the above, one can conclude that it was the power struggle in the highest echelons of the Communist Party that actually became the primary cause of the Soviet empire’s descent into a revolutionary situation.
The second cause was the unresolved national question, whose destructive force for the USSR seemed easily controllable and safe from the high Kremlin towers.
Ukraine, as was fashionable to say then, was a territory of “stagnation,” where the colonial administration (the Soviet-party apparatus) was particularly reactionary towards the national needs of the Ukrainian people, at whose expense it, in fact, parasitized. Total and prolonged terror had turned the people into a silent, intimidated, and largely nationally disoriented mass. Mykhailo Horyn recalls that in July 1987 in Lviv, apart from himself, Vyacheslav Chornovil, and Ivan Hel, there was not a single person willing to publish the *Ukrainskyi Visnyk*. Fear and a sense of hopelessness prevailed everywhere. The situation began to gradually change when political prisoners were released from concentration camps by order of M. Gorbachev. This relatively small but solidary and passionate group of people immediately got involved in public life. In the summer of that same 1987, the Ukrainian Culturological Club was established in Kyiv, the activities of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group and the illegal journal *Ukrainskyi Visnyk* were renewed, and other, as they were called then, “informal organizations” were launched. The temperature of political life in the republic began to rise gradually but steadily.
A qualitatively new phenomenon in the life of the republic was the creation by political prisoners of the first opposition organization—the Ukrainian Helsinki Union. Formally, it was a human rights organization, but by its real objectives, it was a political organization fighting for the reform of the totalitarian regime and the declaration of Ukraine's independence. The appearance of an organized political force in the republic seriously worried the local leadership. The entire repressive and propaganda apparatus was thrown against it. But the communist government, unaccustomed to competitive struggle and limited by circulars from Moscow, only popularized the Ukrainian independence movement with its exposés. Here is what Mykhailo Horyn recalls about this:
We demanded a change in the status of the Ukrainian SSR within the USSR system. This started a series of rallies. The authorities were unable to act decisively against them. The government always loses when it hesitates or wants to strike only lightly. An analogy can be drawn with the criminal world: when you slap a criminal, he is ready to kill you, but if you knock him off his feet, he runs away. The Soviet authorities gently intimidated and gently beat us—with a 200 or 2,000 ruble fine, or 15 days (of arrest. – Ed.)… These were half-measures: to intimidate a person who was ready to sit in prison until death with 15 days—that is ridiculous. The indecisive attempts to stop the resistance movement did not suppress it but caused a new outbreak. (HORYN, Mykhailo Mykolayovych. TO LIGHT A CANDLE; Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group; Compiled by V. V. Ovsienko. Artistic design by B. E. Zakharov. – Kharkiv, 2009. – P. 96).
At this time, in the Baltics and some other republics, People's Fronts—mass political organizations—had already begun to emerge. Eventually, it was Ukraine’s turn. But for us, implementing such a task was much more difficult—people were intimidated, the colonial administration was more openly anti-Ukrainian, and the large share of Russians and other national minorities in the republic's population seriously complicated the creation of a mass patriotic organization. At the same time, the special services did not cease their attempts to play the “card of interethnic confrontation”—they had enough cadres among the national minorities to solve this special task. And the creation of Interfronts, modeled on the Baltic republics—as an alternative to the National Fronts—threatened Ukraine with complete destabilization under the conditions of the time.
It is understandable that in such a situation, the emergence of the People's Movement of Ukraine for Perestroika (Rukh) was a tacit compromise between Moscow, the local communist authorities, and part of the pro-government Ukrainian intelligentsia that politics in Ukraine would develop in an evolutionary way, without any revolutionary upheavals. It must be admitted that at the time of Rukh’s founding, this compromise was beneficial to everyone: the communists, who, through their agents in Rukh, could organizationally block the uncontrolled development of political life in the republic, and the Ukrainian patriots, who, in turn, received a unique opportunity to take the national liberation movement beyond Kyiv and Western Ukraine and make it a pan-Ukrainian phenomenon. The political legalization of part of the national-democratic movement made it possible to work with large masses of the people relatively safely and purposefully, to eliminate anti-state stereotypes from their consciousness. Of course, from a strategic point of view, the communists and patriots had alternative goals: the former wanted to block and control the liberation movement, while the latter—through legalization—sought to make it a dominant force in society, to later use it as a political tool for achieving full political independence. And, in principle, the question of how this invisible internal struggle between two antagonistic forces would end remained open until the very proclamation of independence.
In this situation, the question of Rukh's leadership became extremely important—who would lead it and where. From the perspective of national interests, the key to achieving the main goal (gaining independence) was not so much the strategy of behavior (which was in principle typical for all national liberation movements of the enslaved peoples of the USSR) as the tactics, by which a skillful and far-sighted leader, taking into account the interests of all actors in the political game, combines them so that they direct their energy in the direction he needs. Their various efforts only reinforce the trend he desires. Conceding in small matters, he strives to win in the large ones. This is a leader of a special kind and special abilities—and at this pivotal, historical time for Ukrainians, that politician was Mykhailo Horyn. On the instruction of the Ukrainian Helsinki Union, he, one of its senior leaders, took on the creation of the People's Movement of Ukraine for Perestroika. It is worth mentioning that his arrival at Rukh was welcomed by Ivan Drach and Dmytro Pavlychko; in fact, they invited him there.
On September 8-10, 1989, at the Constituent Congress of Rukh, Mykhailo Horyn was unanimously elected chairman of the Secretariat—the head of the organization's executive body. Ivan Drach became the chairman of Rukh. Here, it is necessary to mention Drach’s readiness to hand over the actual leadership of the organization to Horyn. A talented Ukrainian poet, a successful polemicist, and, sad as it is to say, a communist conformist, he was ready to remain the “flag” of Rukh, its cover, so that the nationalist Horyn could do his work in sufficiently comfortable conditions: turn Rukh into a relatively independent mass political organization.
Let's name a few of Horyn's main achievements in this field. First, it was under his leadership that Rukh transformed from a chaotic collection of various amateur organizations into a well-structured, numerous nationwide organization. A force capable of bringing millions of people to the streets at a critical moment in history. A force that was overwhelmingly patriotic and democratic. Under Mykhailo Horyn’s leadership, Rukh, through hundreds of various regional and national events, turned into a great political power. Two of these events are still striking in their scale and dynamism, and at the time, they literally shook Soviet society to its foundations. I am referring, first of all, to the “Chain of Unity” (or “Ukrainian Wave”)—when millions of people, holding hands, formed an unbroken line from Lviv to Kyiv, in one moment destroying the myth, cultivated by the KGB, of the special nationalism of Galicians. From hand to hand, from heart to heart, on January 21, 1990, Ukrainians of Western and Dnipro-basin Ukraine proved that they are one united, indivisible nation.
The second action, which was like a continuation of the first, was the celebration of the 500th anniversary of the Cossacks (August 1990), when hundreds of thousands of people gathered in one day in Zaporizhzhia, marched in a giant column to Khortytsia, and set up camp around the grave of the Cossack chieftain Ivan Sirko in the village of Kapulivka. An unforgettable impression: I remember how hundreds of buses with national symbols sped along the roads of the Kyiv, Cherkasy, and Dnipropetrovsk regions, as well as from the South and East of Ukraine, and along the roads stood people overwhelmed with emotion, many with tears in their eyes. People who just yesterday had been told tales about the Banderite and Petliurite cutthroats who went into battle under these flags now saw them nearby and felt that something extremely important, their own, essential—stolen from them by someone vile—was returning to them. The spirit of their ancestors had risen among them. And their Cossack blood sensed and surged at the call of something sacred and prophetic.
These actions literally shocked the party and Soviet administration; they understood that from that time on, their monopoly on power in the republic had come to an end. A brave and strong opponent had appeared before them, ready to join the battle for the people's interests at any moment.
The second problem that Mykhailo Horyn managed to solve in Ukraine’s favor was interethnic relations. As already mentioned, the special services were actively playing the “card of interethnic confrontation,” so it was extremely important to pull the social base out from under their feet. At the initiative of the leadership of the People's Movement of Ukraine, on November 21, 1991, on the eve of the referendum on independence and the first presidential elections in Ukraine, a Congress of National Minorities of Ukraine was held in Odesa, where programmatic and organizational forms for combining the Ukrainian patriotic movement and the movements of small nations into a single all-democratic movement were developed. Rukh’s policy in this matter was a continuation and development of the efforts made in this direction by the Ukrainian Helsinki Union and the Ukrainian Culturological Club, and in a broader sense—a tradition stemming from the ideas of the UHVR and the UNR.
The third problem, the solution of which determined the ability of the Ukrainian SSR to move unhindered towards independence, was the historical necessity of winning over part of the Soviet and communist elite, or at least someone from the state leadership. The Rukh leadership partially succeeded in this plan.
Leonid Kravchuk gradually became a key player here. An opportunist and a conformist, he nevertheless emerged from a living Ukrainian environment and, although far from its vital interests, had no radical prejudices against it; one could work with him. Mykhailo Horyn publicly and demonstratively extended a hand to him. He recalls:
A very interesting situation developed at the Constituent Congress of the People's Movement of Ukraine, which to some extent reflected my position. On the second day, while chairing the congress, I received a note from Leonid Kravchuk, the second secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine: “I request the floor.” I announce: “I ask the second secretary of the Central Committee of the CPU, Leonid Kravchuk, to prepare to speak.” At this point, a representative of the Poltava organization, a lawyer (I have forgotten his name), jumps onto the rostrum and shouts: “What?! You are going to give the floor to that Commie?” I cut him off sharply, saying that I had not given him the floor and asked him to leave the rostrum. And I added something like this: “I would rather go back to prison to serve my remaining 9 years than I, a democrat, would deny the floor to the second secretary of the Central Committee of the CPU. Leonid Makarovych, please take the floor!” Leonid Makarovych comes to the rostrum and says his first words: “To think that I have lived to see the day when Horyn defends me!” Those were our first contacts. (M. Horyn. “To Light a Candle,” pp. 98-99).
By the way, it was Kravchuk, it seems, in 1990, who involuntarily, in just one phrase, outlined the significance of Mykhailo Horyn in Ukrainian history, remarking that with his arrival in Kyiv, “the situation turned out not in our favor,” that is, not in favor of the communists. This statement was later published by the newspaper *Vechirniy Kyiv*.
So, to summarize the above, one can make an unequivocal conclusion that in the period from 1989 to 1991, Mykhailo Horyn as a politician played one of the key roles in Ukraine’s achievement of political independence. And this needs to be said in a loud voice...
As for his further political career and the effectiveness of the principles he later espoused, that is a topic for a separate article or a round table.
In conclusion—about infantilism and politics. Today, many people like to talk about difficult times, saying that it's hard to change anything now, but back then everything could have been done easily—but we missed our chance. As a rule, these “talking heads” did nothing then and are loafing now. Today's situation—compared to previous times—is simply a resort. At the turn of the 1980s and '90s, Ukrainian patriots did what seemed impossible: they gained independence. And in this struggle, they did not spare themselves at all. For example, Mykhailo Horyn himself, immediately after his release from the camp in 1987, at the suggestion of Vyacheslav Chornovil, had to take on the restoration of the *Ukrainskyi Visnyk*, because in all of Lviv there was not a single person who would dare to take such a step. And this was despite the fact that he had just suffered a severe heart attack and, as he himself recalls, urgently needed medical treatment. By the way, this poor state of health, which periodically required him to be hospitalized, persisted for Horyn throughout his entire period in politics, but he adhered to his life maxim: who, if not I; when, if not today? “Patriotism is, first and foremost, sacrifice,” he repeatedly says, remaining true to his life's creed even now.
