IEU'S FEATURED TOPIC IN UKRAINIAN HISTORY

GORBACHEV, MIKHAIL, b 2 March 1931 in Privolnoe, Stavropol krai, RSFSR, d 30 August 2022 in Moscow. Soviet Communist Party official, last General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), and first, last, and only President of the USSR. Born into a Russian-Ukrainian peasant family, Gorbachev rose to top position in the Soviet power structure in 1985. From then until 1991, he launched a series of uncoordinated and unplanned political reforms of the Soviet system under the rubric of perestroika (rebuilding or remodeling; known in Ukrainian as perebudova). By his dynamism and political maneuvering he was able to introduce into the USSR semi-competitive elections for the Congress of People's Deputies in 1989, freedom of expression, association, and travel, and in 1990 free elections in the Union republics. Despite their improvised, halfhearted and erratic nature, these liberalization measures acquired a momentum of their own, leading to the delegitimization of the CPSU and its monopoly of power, the disintegration of the USSR, and the launching of transitions to democracy in RSFSR, the Baltic states, and Ukraine...

PERESTROIKA. According to its architect, Mikhail Gorbachev, perestroika was necessitated by the crisis situation in which the Soviet Union found itself in the 1980s when Gorbachev came to power. He identified a noticeable slowdown in economic growth as not only a principal problem in itself but also as being at the root of a whole series of manifestations of the country's sluggishness. The main instruments or guidelines in executing his program were prescribed as being glasnost (openness or transparency) and demokratizatsiia (democratization). Perestroika was thus supposed to improve the economic well-being of the people, raise their morale through greater involvement in and transparency of decision-making, optimize accountability of officials to their electorates, provide more autonomy to production enterprises with the elimination of central direction, and in general unleash creativity and initiative via massive public mobilization. The project succeeded partially in relaxing the myriad of controls, but faced many unanticipated obstacles, and led ultimately to the collapse of the USSR and the end of the Cold War...

CHORNOBYL NUCLEAR DISASTER. A devastating explosion that occurred on 26 April 1986 at the nuclear power station located in Chornobyl in Kyiv oblast, the worst disaster of its kind in the world. Its immediate cause was a test of the shutdown of reactor number four that went out of the operators' control. A steam explosion blew the concrete roof off the reactor which together with a fire released a radioactive cloud into the atmosphere spreading over parts of Ukraine, the Belorussian SSR, RSFSR, and northern Europe. The accident itself together with the Soviet government's response to it had grave consequences for the USSR. Attempting to prevent panic, authorities responded with silence and reassurances that all was under control, but doing so only discredited themselves and undermined their legitimacy. In 2006, Gorbachev wrote of the Chornobyl disaster that it, not perestroika, caused the collapse of the USSR. The Chornobyl catastrophe was seen as a national disaster by leading Ukrainian dissidents, writers, and intellectuals, and made a priority issue. In the end, it was a historical landmark for Ukraine launching its exit from the USSR...

UKRAINIAN HELSINKI ASSOCIATION (UHA). The association was founded in 1988 on the initiative of Viacheslav Chornovil and with the support of many other dissidents and former political prisoners, some of whom had been members of the former Ukrainian Helsinki Group (UHG). Like the UHG, the UHA stressed the importance of human rights. However, unlike the UHG and almost all informal public organizations created in Ukraine in the 1980s, the UHA placed a strong emphasis on achieving political goals. This included the promotion of democratic ideals, opposition to the Communist Party, and genuine sovereignty for Ukraine. The creation of UHA was formally announced in Lviv in July 1988, and branches of the organization were soon founded throughout Ukraine. Chornovil hoped that UHA would become the nucleus of a large-scale, decentralized, non-party 'national front' like Sajudis in Lithuania, but his expectations were undermined by the creation in 1989 of the Popular Movement of Ukraine (Rukh). Levko Lukianenko's competing plan, that UHA become a cenytralized political party, gained momentum and in 1990 the UHA was transformed into the Ukrainian Republican party, the very first new political party to be officially registered in Ukraine...

POPULAR MOVEMENT OF UKRAINE popularly known as Rukh (the Movement). The most important non-Communist, grass-roots organization created in Ukraine with the ostensible purpose of supporting the policy of perestroika launched in Moscow by Mikhail Gorbachev. Rukh's stated main objectives included the full attainment of political, religious, and human rights and freedoms; the moral rejuvenation of society; the democratization of Soviet society and the Soviet state; and the political and economic sovereignty of Ukraine. The Communist Party's media campaign against Rukh that lasted until September 1989 merely served to increase Rukh's popularity and membership. By 1990 Rukh had become the largest public organization in Ukraine, with an estimated 5 million supporters and over 50 different periodicals. In the 1990 elections to the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR, candidates supporting Rukh formed a Democratic Bloc to contest 30 percent of the seats. In June 1990 together with the 'democratic' wing of the CPU, they formed the opposition to the Communist Party, representing 35 percent of the parliamentary seats. They were instrumental in the adoption of the 16 July 1990 Declaration on the State Sovereignty of Ukraine...

DECLARATION ON THE STATE SOVEREIGNTY OF UKRAINE. An act of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR adopted on 16 July 1990 by a vote of 355 to 4. The declaration asserted the right of the Ukrainian SSR to self-determination, defined the Ukrainian people on a non-ethnic basis as being all its citizens, guaranteed every citizen equality before the law, and declared the republic's supreme authority over its own territory. It decreed that Ukrainian SSR laws took precedence over the laws of the USSR on the Ukrainian territory, and declared that the Ukrainian SSR would maintain its own army and its own national bank with the power to introduce its own currency. It also made clear Ukraine's determination to be independent insofar as economic, ecological, and cultural policies were concerned. The new republic would protect all forms of property and would institute a cultural revival. In foreign affairs the declaration proclaimed the Ukrainian SSR as having the right to maintain direct relations with other states and to conclude international agreements. The declaration was an important stage on Ukraine's road to independence...