Writers’ Union, the Ukrainian Language Society, the Helsinki Union, Green World and the historical campaign group Memorial – formed a loose coalition titled the ‘Ukrainian Popular Movement in Support of Perestroika’ or ‘Movement’ – Rukh in Ukrainian – for short. Predictably, most of the delegates at Rukh’s inaugural congress came from the intelligentsia and from central and western Ukraine: there were few representatives from the farms, the factories, or the Russian-speaking east and south. Though the camp veteran Levko Lukyanenko told the hall to ‘abolish this empire as the greatest evil of present-day life’ 19 (the only speech not reported by Literaturna Ukraina, the country’s most outspoken paper), the bulk of delegates were far more cautious, voting a programme that called for ‘a sovereign Ukrainian state’ within a ‘new Union treaty’. 20
While Rukh met in Kiev and students scuffled with riot police in Lviv, the Orthodox Church, hitherto the moribund province of KGB stooges and pious grannies, burst into uproar. Led by the SS Peter and Paul Church in Lviv, parishes all over the country started declaring themselves members of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, last heard of in 1930. At the same time, a campaign got under way for legalisation of the Uniates, liquidated after the war. Refused a meeting with Supreme Soviet officials in Moscow, six priests went on hunger strike, and on 17 September, the fiftieth anniversary of the Ribbentrop–Molotov pact, 150,000 Uniates held candlelight vigils in memory of the victims of the Soviet annexation of western Ukraine. By December around 600 parishes and 200 priests had applied for registration as Uniates, finally winning official recognition following Gorbachev’s meeting with Pope John Paul II. The following summer, the reborn Autocephalous Orthodox Church held its first Council for sixty years, with a service in Santa Sofia. Metropolitan Mstyslav, head of the diaspora church in America, had been refused a visa to attend, but was elected Patriarch in absentia. In October Gorbachev capitulated and the Autocephalous Orthodox were legalised too. In just over a year, Ukraine had progressed from one official church to three. Unchristian battles promptly broke out over ecclesiastical property. Rival congregations marched on the churchyards, and it was quite common for priests to be stoned.
Meanwhile, in March 1990, Gorbachev initiated the final, fatal phase of perestroika, allowing semi-democratic elections to the republican Supreme Soviets, among them Kiev’s Verhovna Rada. Fighting on a platform of ‘real political and economic sovereignty’ – though not outright independence – Rukh and its allies won 108 out of 450 seats. Predictably, they did much better in Galicia and central Ukraine than in the Donbass and the south: a human chain, high point of the campaign, had stretched from Lviv to Kiev, but no further east. Despite being in a minority, Rukh’s presence revolutionised Rada proceedings, hitherto a rubber-stamp for Party orders. ‘The democrats represent only a third,’ wrote an observer, ‘but they are always at the microphones and dominate the hall as if they constituted a majority.’ 21
The literary scholar Solomea Pavlychko recorded the events of 1990 in a series of letters to a friend in Canada. Over and over, she contrasted Kiev’s defeatism with the reigning sense of optimism and excitement in western Ukraine. In Kiev, she wrote in May, ‘morale is low. Everyone criticises everything, yet at the same time people are apathetic . . . Some people are in despair, others are demoralised . . . Servility is alive and well.’ 22 But on holiday in Galicia, she was amazed to find villagers avidly following Rada debates on television, and blue-and-yellow banners flying in the local town. The gossip was all of independence and even the local drunks sank their vodka with the toast ‘Glory to Ukraine!’ ‘They believe in
While Rukh met in Kiev and students scuffled with riot police in Lviv, the Orthodox Church, hitherto the moribund province of KGB stooges and pious grannies, burst into uproar. Led by the SS Peter and Paul Church in Lviv, parishes all over the country started declaring themselves members of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, last heard of in 1930. At the same time, a campaign got under way for legalisation of the Uniates, liquidated after the war. Refused a meeting with Supreme Soviet officials in Moscow, six priests went on hunger strike, and on 17 September, the fiftieth anniversary of the Ribbentrop–Molotov pact, 150,000 Uniates held candlelight vigils in memory of the victims of the Soviet annexation of western Ukraine. By December around 600 parishes and 200 priests had applied for registration as Uniates, finally winning official recognition following Gorbachev’s meeting with Pope John Paul II. The following summer, the reborn Autocephalous Orthodox Church held its first Council for sixty years, with a service in Santa Sofia. Metropolitan Mstyslav, head of the diaspora church in America, had been refused a visa to attend, but was elected Patriarch in absentia. In October Gorbachev capitulated and the Autocephalous Orthodox were legalised too. In just over a year, Ukraine had progressed from one official church to three. Unchristian battles promptly broke out over ecclesiastical property. Rival congregations marched on the churchyards, and it was quite common for priests to be stoned.
Meanwhile, in March 1990, Gorbachev initiated the final, fatal phase of perestroika, allowing semi-democratic elections to the republican Supreme Soviets, among them Kiev’s Verhovna Rada. Fighting on a platform of ‘real political and economic sovereignty’ – though not outright independence – Rukh and its allies won 108 out of 450 seats. Predictably, they did much better in Galicia and central Ukraine than in the Donbass and the south: a human chain, high point of the campaign, had stretched from Lviv to Kiev, but no further east. Despite being in a minority, Rukh’s presence revolutionised Rada proceedings, hitherto a rubber-stamp for Party orders. ‘The democrats represent only a third,’ wrote an observer, ‘but they are always at the microphones and dominate the hall as if they constituted a majority.’ 21
The literary scholar Solomea Pavlychko recorded the events of 1990 in a series of letters to a friend in Canada. Over and over, she contrasted Kiev’s defeatism with the reigning sense of optimism and excitement in western Ukraine. In Kiev, she wrote in May, ‘morale is low. Everyone criticises everything, yet at the same time people are apathetic . . . Some people are in despair, others are demoralised . . . Servility is alive and well.’ 22 But on holiday in Galicia, she was amazed to find villagers avidly following Rada debates on television, and blue-and-yellow banners flying in the local town. The gossip was all of independence and even the local drunks sank their vodka with the toast ‘Glory to Ukraine!’ ‘They believe in
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