The second largest Soviet republic, the size of France in population (51.7 million) and territory (231,990 sq. mi.), a contributor of nearly a quarter of the Soviet Union's GNP, a third of its fuels and industrial metals, and almost half of its agricultural output - Ukraine - is quickly on the move... out of the USSR.

While the policies of perestroika initiated by Gorbachev provided the window through which Ukraine hoped to rejoin the European community of nations, the nuclear accident at Chernobyl was the galvanizing force which set it on its path. The disaster - the national dimensions of which were largely unrecognized in the world - was the pivot which unified various segments of this fiercely individualistic nation. Critics and activists in the country linked the environmental damage and exposure to radiation to a cynical and unresponsive system that had despoiled, not only the environment, but the spiritual ecology of this nation - its ethnos, language, culture, history, and economic potential. Indeed, it was Chernobyl that brought down "the Wall" in this country. An ancient culture spanning back to the 9th century Kievan state whose princely families had intermarried with the royal crowns of Europe, Ukraine had developed an advanced culture by the end of the 18th century which supplied the Russian Empire with some of its leading intellectuals. In better days, its famous chernozem (humus-rich black earth) earned it the reputation of being the "breadbasket of Europe." The most important of the Soviet republics, in recent decades, Ukraine has been a country hardly mentioned on the international scene because the conventions of the international community's alliance with Russia proper apparently required that it be forgotten.

Such obscurity has allowed the world community - including some of its leading statesmen - to treat Ukraine as "a province,'" or "a state"2 of the USSR. It has also allowed its quest for freedom from living under the dictates of "a totalitarian party responsible for unspeakable crimes against humanity"3 open to accusations of "suicidal nationalism."4 This was an unfortunate legacy of World War II in the West, which saw nationalism as Nazism.5 It was a misconception actively promoted by the Soviet propaganda machine, which branded as "nationalist" any dissenter who manifested pride in his country's non-Soviet history and culture.

Cognizant of the international political landscape, Ukraine's reform-minded statesmen, though looking to the West for guidance and support, have not been overly dependent on its aid. Aware of the pitfalls of the country's situation nationally, the democratic leadership has pursued a moderate but steady course away from dominance by Moscow. (Ukraine, after all, is not the Baltics, where the leaders enjoy unconditional support of their peoples and elected representatives. Heirs to a divisive and unfortunate history, Ukraine's leaders have had to allow time for the official Soviet version of Ukrainian history to be debunked).6 Ukraine's political landscape included a well-entrenched Communist bureaucracy on the one hand, and a fledgling democratic movement, Rukh, on the other, which grew into the Narodna Rada (People's Council), the opposition in Parliament.

Rukh, or The Popular Movement of Ukraine for Restructuring, created in the fall of 1988, held its founding congress in Kiev on September 10, 1989 and was formally "registered" in February 1990. The program of the organization which outlined its principles, goals, guidelines, and methods of activity as the "mass socio-political movement of the Republic," paid particular attention to minority rights in Ukraine in recognition of the fact that about a quarter of Ukraine's population is non-Ukrainian. It also codified in the program the Ukrainian people's desire for their country to be a nuclear-free zone.

By its second congress, Rukh declared that it was no longer concerned merely with "restructuring" (perestroika) the existing society (which, after all, was a process promoted by Communists from above), but were concentrating their efforts on "renewing independent statehood for Ukraine."

By March of 1990, Ukraine held its first popular elections to the Supreme Soviet of Ukraine. For the first time in their careers, Communist Party functionaries, accustomed to gaining 99.9 percent of the vote in "elections" in the past, had to face the humiliation of actual defeat at the hands of opposition candidates. Politicians had become unaccustomed to paying attention to their constituems or to the platforms they were espousing. Least of all did they pay attention to the language in which they were speaking, which tended to be Russian rather than Ukrainian. This was all suddenly changing.

Despite election irregularities, once Rukh representatives were elected to Parliament and began acting as the opposition, they were instrumental in making their political opponents support the cause of Ukraine's sovereignty. The first session of the Ukrainian Parliament (May-August 1990) parsed the landmark Declaration of Sovereignty on 16 July 1990, and set the stage for continued movement toward the creation of a civil society. The Law on Ukraine's Economic Independence, passed on August 3, 1990, moved to make Ukraine an economically sovereign state. Moreover, the Ukrainian government decided to adopt a new constitution to legitimize its position as an independent state.

In the interim, an intense tug of war between the center and the republics developed. On October 24, 1990, the USSR Supreme Soviet rushed through legislation which reaffirmed the supremacy of all-Union laws over republican laws. This was a direct assault on the republic's declaration of sovereignty.7 Shortly thereafter, Gorbachev declared that the signing of a new Union Treaty was one of his highest priorities. In November 1990, he unveiled the first draft of this Treaty. Though paying some "lip service" to the republics as sovereign states, this treaty left most of the power with the center8 Furthermore, this new version of the treaty completely avoided any mention of the rights of the republics to secede freely from the Union. The draft was rejected. The use of force in Lithuania's capital followed on January 11, 1991, clearly showed the center's intentions vis-a-vis the republics' sovereignty. The all-Union referendum on March 17, 1991 proposed by Gorbachev in an attempt to strengthen the center, also missed the mark. Ukraine added an opinion survey to the all-Union question on preserving the "renewed federation." Though the results are open to varying interpretations, it was clear that in Ukraine people were in favor of some kind of union, but one that would be consistent with Ukraine's declaration of state sovereignty.

The latest draft of a Union Treaty proposed by Gorbachev has also been placed on the back burner. Though the new version expanded the powers of the republics and recognized them as subjects of international law, with the right to establish direct diplomatic, consular, trade and other ties with foreign states, the central government still retained power over defense, state security, foreign policy, and foreign economic activities (and the hard currency purse strings).

Opposition in Ukraine to this document was widespread. In a recent article in Literaturna Ukraina, Dmytro Pavlychko, a People's Deputy to the Ukrainian Parliament and head of the Parliamentary Commission on Foreign Affairs, made the following comment:

The Draft of the "Treaty" begins with a preamble in which every word is a lie, every position adopted is hypocritical, and the phraseology - deceitful. Thus, for example, it reads: "The nations which have concluded this treaty..." This is the first sentence and the first lie. What nations are we talking about? Where are they? Does even one of them have its own currency, its own army, control over its own borders, its own embassies and consulates? Can you call these paper cubes, these obedient papier-mache constructs which the Kremlin plays with, alternately stacking them up and then tearing them down - nations?9

Even deputies who cannot conceive of Ukraine outside of some framework with the center had problems with this draft. For example, Stanislav Hurenko, Ukrainian Communist Party First Secretary, expressed confusion about how the energy system, the transport network, the gas and oil pipelines, etc.. would be divided between the competency of the republic and the Center.10

The population in Ukraine also voiced its dissatisfaction - the Ukrainian Students Union threatened to strike if a treaty were signed prior to the adoption of a new constitution by Ukraine, and demanded that the question should be postponed until a newly elected Ukrainian parliament was in place." Workers from 23 out of Ukraine's 25 states (oblasts) organized in a newly-created organization, "Solidarity," demanded that Ukraine not sign a Union Treaty and secede from the USSR.12

On June 27, the Ukrainian Parliament overwhelmingly voted to postpone the discussion of this draft of the new Union Treaty until September 15, thus dashing Gorbachev's hopes that he would have this evidence of political "stability" to present to the Group of Seven (G7) summit in London the following month. Kravchuk's comment was succinct - it would take time for the Ukrainian Parliament to determine if the new document was consistent with Ukraine's Declaration of State Sovereignty.

What was happening in Ukraine? By all indications, the "Group of 239," the Communist majority, was no longer a monolithic group. Over the course of the year, they had split into so-called "imperial," or hardline Communists, and "Communists for Sovereignty." The change was too pervasive to credit to the influence of the democratic opposition in Ukraine alone. If sincere, it signals a serious break with the system. Cynics comment that the Communists have recognized the opportunities afforded by a sovereign state, and are seizing the moment. Whatever the case, the transformation in Kravchuk himself has astounded political observers. Head of the Supreme Soviet and prime candidate for the first popularly elected presidency in Ukraine scheduled for December 1 of this year, he had risen through the ranks of the Communist Party to emerge as a shrewd chief of ideology in Ukraine. In that position, he had waged a skillful battle with dissidents and with Rukh when if first was created. Today he says that his earlier differences with Rukh were based on:

differing perceptions of perestroika. The democratic forces in our country at that time were still poorly organized, while Gorbachev's program of perestroika was in full swing. I sincerely believed in perestroika, believed that it would give the republics and its people the possibility to grow, to develop. However, one year later, I realized that apart from a lot of discussion, perestroika was not giving people anything concrete. Finally, about two years ago, I went through a decisive shift in my thinking when I realized that nothing was being done in the economy to replace the old structures that needed to be dismantled. So I began to look for ways of developing Ukraine as a sovereign state. We have to find a way to live in the Soviet Union on mutually advantageous terms. I firmly believe that Ukraine will determine the future of the Union.13

Many in the West would agree with Kravchuk's assessment of Ukraine's importance. Particularly people who have had the opportunity to experience Ukraine first-hand. After years of isolation, tourism and "business" was suddenly on the upswing. Ukraine's highly skilled and diligent labor force made it an attractive market for investors. Studies by Western institutions, such as the one done by Germany's Deutschesbank which rated Ukraine as having the most advance level of preparedness for economic sovereignty of all the republics in the USSR,14 spurred interest. Exchanges of students, diplomats and personnel also stimulated interest. Official visits - such as Prime Minister Fokin's visit to the United States15 - set the stage for future contacts. Diplomats doing a tour of duty in Kiev invariable give the Ukrainian leadership high grades and predict a rosier future for the country.16 By mid-July 1991, several big companies - including Monsanto,17 Minolta, Rank Xerox,18 Canon, among others, are making inroads into the Ukrainian market. Government officials, by and large, are encouraging this trend. Leonid Kravchuk, for example, notes that: "Ukraine is a great market of 52 million people. We have great agricultural lands and developed industries. We do not have the hard currency to pay for the goods and services we need today, but we can create conditions for Western businessmen to make a profit here. . . ."9 Though Ukraine lacks a convertible currency and the laws which safeguard investments, most foreign analysts would agree that the single biggest liability Ukraine has is the lack of assurance that its political and economic integrity will be honored by the center (i.e., that the move toward the market economy and democracy will not be turned back. This is what is ultimately preventing foreign capital from entering the country. The quiet political battle being waged in Ukraine is establishing this sovereignty. To do so, Ukraine's politicians appear to be treading a fine political line. While not definitively saying "no" to the Union Treaty, they appear to be stalling to enact as much legislation legitimizing the country's sovereignty as possible to solidify Ukraine's position as an independent player on the world scene.

Can the "sovereignty" Communists be trusted to pursue a truly independent Ukrainian line? If successful, will they share power democratically, in the end? Will they promote a fair policy of privatization of the country's vast state-controlled farms and industries? How will Kravchuk ultimately deal with the Union treaty in the future? One thing appears to be clear - with direct popular elections for the presidency scheduled in Ukraine for December 1, and with Kravchuk apparently the prime candidate, he is unlikely to sign a Union Treaty - if ever - prior to the end of the year.

NOTES

1. British Prime Minister Thatcher in her remarks in Kiev in the summer of 1990. News from Ukraine, No. 13, 1991.
2. President Bush in his remarks in Kiev. The New York Times, August 2, 1991.
3. Czeslaw Milosz, "Mr. Bush, 'Nationalism' is Not the Root of All Evil," The New York Times, August 8. 1991.
4. President Bush in his speech in Kiev. The New York Times, August 2, 1991.
5. For an interesting discussion of this issue see The Washington Post Group of Write", reprinted in the Ann Arbor News, August 11, 1991.
6. For a good idea of the discussions that were taking place in the society at the time, refer to the speeches at the founding congress of Rukh, translated in Soviet Ukrainian Affairs, Autumn-Winter 1989.
7. Ukraine's Parliament adopted the following rule: Ukraine's legislation takes precedence over all-Union laws. If no Ukrainian legislation exists on a particular issue, the all-Union legal code applies until such time as Ukraine adopts its own laws on the mailer See the interview with Vasyi Kysil, "Formation of Joint Ventures in Ukraine," special issue of Ukrainian Business Digest, June 24, 1991.
8. These included: 1) citizens' fundamental rights and freedoms under the Constitution; 2) defense; 3) foreign policy and regulation of foreign economic relations; 4) pursuit of a single financial credit and monetary policy based on a single currency, drafting and executing a national budget; S) management of a single fuel and energy complex, transport and national communications, pipelines, defense industry and environmental control; and 6) coordination of all activities to maintain public order and combat crime. Current Digest of the Soviet Press 42, No.47 (December 26, 1990).
9. Dmytro Pavlychko, "Not for a Free Peoples, Nor for A Free Nation," Literaturna Ukraina, July 4, 1991.
10. "Soiuznyi dohovir. lakym ioum buty?" ("The Union Treaty. What Kind Should It Be") Holos Ukrainy, July 2, 1991.
11. Roman Solchanyk, "Ukraine and the Union Treaty," Report on the i-.S.SK, July 26, 1991.
12. Financial Times, June 27, 1991.
13. Knvchuk's conversion to "Ukrainian patriotism" has opened the door i" such conversions by other career diplomats- Thus, the Ukrainian Mission to the United Nations - in existence since 194S. has started pursuing a more independent line of late. It is reported that, for the first lime, Russian and Ukrainian diplomats working at the mission apparently have had to begin briefing each other about what is happening in their respective countries. Gennajy Ldovenko, Ukraine's ambassador the United Nations, has even begun addressing the United Nations not in the traditional Russian, bul in English. Indeed, in a recent interview with The New York I imes, Mr. L'dovenko characterized himself as a "Ukrainian patriot." Moreover, he voted independently of the USSR bloc for the first lime on the issue of Iraq.
14. Ukraine's President Now Supporting Sovereignty," Ukrainian Business Digest, June 24, 1991.
15. "Economic Sovereignty: How Does Ukraine's Potential Stack Up?" Ukrainian Business Digest, March 28, 1991.
16. 'Prime Minister 'Sells' Ukraine in the West," Ukrainian Business Digest, January 22, 1991.
17. 'German Consulate in Kiev Aids Trade, Cultural Ties," Ukrainian Business Digest, February 22, 1991; "Hungarian Diplomatic Presence in Kiev Strengthens Relationship," Ukrainian Business Digest, May 13, 1991; "Canada Opens Consulate in Kiev," Ukrainian Business Digest, June 24, 1991.
18. 'Good Chemistry Between Monsanto and Ukraine," Ukrainian Business Digest. June 24, 1991.
19. 'Minolta Snaps Lion's Share of Ukraine's Market," Ukrainian Busmen Digest, March 28, 1991.

Vera Kaczmarskyj is editor-in-chief of the Ukrainian Business Digest.