IEU'S FEATURED TOPIC IN UKRAINIAN HISTORY

REVOLUTION ON GRANITE. A student demonstration and hunger strike in central Kyiv in October 1990, which resulted in the resignation of the Communist prime minister of the Ukrainian SSR, Vitalii Masol, and set a pattern for future peaceful yet highly effective political protests in Ukraine. On 2 October 1990, a contingent of some 100 students from Kyiv, Lviv, and Kharkiv set up a tent city in October Revolution Square (later Independence Square) and began a hunger strike. The strikers demanded: the chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR, Vitalii Masol, to resign; multi-party elections to be held; the Union Treaty proposed by Moscow to be rejected; Ukrainian armed forces personnel to serve only in Ukraine, not elsewhere in the USSR; and the property of the Communist Party of Ukraine to be nationalized. The chairman of the Supreme Soviet, Leonid Kravchuk, met the demonstrators and helped to have their demands heard by the assembly. Most of these demands were eventually realized, as the Supreme Soviet was moved to act under the threat of a general strike in support of the students' position...

1991 UKRAINE'S DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. An act of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR passed on 24 August 1991, declaring Ukraine an independent state whose territory is indivisible and inviolable and whose fundamental law is the Constitution of Ukraine. This declaration was prompted by the failed coup attempt in Moscow by the hardliners of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union against the USSR president Mikhail Gorbachev. It was preceded by the Supreme Soviet's 1990 landmark Declaration on the State Sovereignty of Ukraine and was followed by the referendum on independence held on 1 December 1991, which received overwhelming approval by the Ukrainian electorate. An important ally and eventual leader along Ukraine's route from sovereignty to independence was the chair of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR, Leonid Kravchuk, formerly the Communist Party chief of ideology. At first ambivalent about the meaning of the August coup, he soon became a lightning rod for Ukrainian independence by refusing to join any of the subsequent efforts by Moscow to resuscitate the USSR...

REFERENDUM. A means of direct democracy in which citizens are asked to decide or to provide an opinion on a matter of public policy. In the case of Ukraine, referenda began to be used only towards the end of the Soviet era. The first-ever referendum in Ukraine, promted by Mikhail Gorbachev's attempt to save the USSR, took place on 17 March 1991. In spite of high voter turnout of 83.7 percent, the responses to two questions on the ballots produced an ambiguous result. However, public sentiment in the Ukrainian SSR was clarified by the referendum held on 1 December 1991 in conjunction with the presidential election. The question asked was: 'Do you endorse the Act Proclaiming the Independence of Ukraine?' Any potential ambiguity was eliminated by including in the ballot the text of the Act itself. On a turnout of 84.2 percent, 90.3 percent responded 'yes,' 7.6 percent 'no,' and 2.1 percent spoiled their ballots. This result clearly indicated the direction the republic's political leadership ought to take, leading to the Belavezha Agreement and the dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics....

PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS. Following the precedent set by Mikhail Gorbachev in the USSR and Boris Yeltsin in Russian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR likewise introduced a law on the office of President in July 1991. The President of Ukraine is directly elected by a majority of voters for a term of five years. In case of no clear winner, a second round is held with the top two contenders competing. Ukraine's first presidential election was held on 1 December 1991, simultaneously with the referendum on independence. The winner, with 61.6 percent of the vote, was the former chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR and previously the chief ideological official of the Communist Party, Leonid Kravchuk. His closest competitor, at 23.3 percent, was the former dissident Viacheslav Chornovil whose support was concentrated in the far west of the country while Kravchuk's spanned the rest. Another human rights advocate, Levko Lukianenko, came third with 4.5 percent of the vote. Electors appeared to have been swayed by Kravchuk's stand on independence as distinct from the national democrats' narrower appeal to ethnic identity...

KRAVCHUK, LEONID, b 10 January 1934 in Velykyi Zhytyn, Volhynia, d 10 May 2022 in Kyiv. First president of independent Ukraine (December 1991-July 1994) and former CPU official. An economist by education, Kravchuk joined the staff of the CC CPU in Kyiv in 1970 and worked his way up to head of the ideology department in 1988. In June 1990 he advanced to full Politburo membership. At that time Kravchuk represented the more moderate wing of the CPU leadership that was attuned to Gorbachev's perestroika reforms. From March 1990 to December 1991 he was chairman in the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR. As such, he allowed for the passing of the Declaration on the State Sovereignty of Ukraine in July 1990. From mid-1991 he increasingly became the spokesman for Ukrainian 'national communism.' Following the abortive Moscow coup of 19 August 1991, Kravchuk resigned from the CPU and supported the approval of the 1991 Ukraine's Declaration of Independence on 24 August 1991. Identified with the cause of independence, he easily won the presidential election of 1 December 1991, receiving 61.6 percent of the vote...

BELAVEZHA AGREEMENT. An agreement signed by the leaders of Belarusian SSR, the Russian SFSR, and independent Ukraine on 8 December 1991, which terminated the existence of the USSR, created the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), and ended the career of USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev. Meeting in Belavezhaia Pushcha in Belarus to resolve a stalemate on the reconfiguration of the USSR, the Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Belorussian SSR, Stanislau Shushkevich, the President of the Russian SFSR, Boris Yeltsin, and the newly-elected President of Ukraine, Leonid Kravchuk, signed three historic documents. One declared the formation of the CIS stating that its membership was open to all Soviet republics; the second was an agreement on the new CIS structure's principles and spheres of common activity; and the third was a statement on the coordination of their economic policy. This was a compromise between full union and complete independence for the former Soviet republics; as such, it could not satisfy all the parties involved, and soon the concept of CIS came under strain as a practical replacement for the USSR...