UKRAINE NEEDS NATIONAL ACCORD

There is something mystical about August, in that the month has repeatedly decided the lot of a number of peoples in this century. Anna Akhmatova said that «the real twentieth century» started in August 1914 when World War I broke out. August 1939 determined the outbreak of World War II. August 1945 saw US atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, triggering the Cold War and arms race. In August 1968 Soviet tanks in Czechoslovakia dashed all hopes for socialism with a human face. The abortive August 1991 putsch in Moscow heralded the end of the evil empire.

August 23, 1939, Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov and his German counterpart Joachim von Ribbentrop signed a nonaggression pact. The Molotov- Ribbentrop Pact and especially the appended secret protocol divided Eastern and Central Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence. Then a friendship and frontier treaty and a second secret protocol of September 28, 1939, were signed, providing for the partition of Poland between the two powers along with the Soviet occupation of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. Most remarkably, the document stipulated what was later referred to as the reunification of Western Ukraine and North Bukovyna with Soviet Ukraine, and Western Belarus with Soviet Belarus. Thus the act of Ukraine's reunification of Ukraine, adopted in January 1919, was confirmed. Of course, the totalitarian regimes of Third Reich and the Red totalitarian empire were guided exclusively by their own geopolitical interests and never even considered a free and united Ukraine.

The pact played a crucial role in Nazi Germany's unleashing its Blitzkrieg. It not only resulted in the political destruction of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia as independent states, but also triggered mass deportations and other acts of political repression in the territories joined to the USSR in 1939-40, armed resistance to the Soviet regime by national liberation forces in Ukraine and the Baltic states, Polish guerrilla movement in Western Belarus, and much else.

Until 1990, the Soviet government rejected the very existence of the said secret protocols, but then, pressed by public opinion, had to admit that Stalin and Hitler indeed had reached an understanding. Without doubt, this admission was one of the most important legal prerequisites of political changes in Eastern Europe; particularly, the restoration of national independence in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.

And how is the Kremlin conspiracy assessed today? The Baltic states, Poland, and Germany worked out their official stand with regard to its historical, legal, and political consequences. Their views can be accepted or disputed, but they are present even in school textbooks and duly allowed for in the laws of these countries; these views served as the basis of a number of acts of the state determining these polities' international legal status. Over the past few years Belarus has been on the way back to the Soviet official concept: the Soviet-German agreement was a move forced by circumstances, aimed solely at serving the good of the region. The government of Russia avoids taking any official stand. History textbooks contain evasive references to the pact and its consequences at best or offer the traditional Soviet version. Politicians prefer to sidestep the issue. What about Ukraine?

Alas, Ukraine's political community, like Russia's, seems not to understand the importance of this problem. Even worse, President Kuchma decreed festivities commemorating the sixtieth anniversary of «reunification» of Western and Soviet Ukraine. This author cannot but regard this as a step in the Belarusian direction, returning to the Soviet notion of the Molotov- Ribbentrop Pact. How can we celebrate an anniversary of an event resulting in mass purges? Even by leafing through documents belonging to various bodies of the state of that period presents a picture of continuous and synchronized punitive operations of the NKVD and militia under the Party's guidance, including officially sanctioned massacres and forced transfer of millions of innocent people to Siberia, the Far East, and Asian parts of the USSR.

In 1939-41, some 10%, about 1.25 million, of the population of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus were deported to the USSR's remote regions. Most of these people were of Polish origin. Refugees were deported in the first place, in conditions of mass terror and uncontrolled arbitrariness of the law enforcement authorities. Those attempting to escape were shot without further ado. In fact, the Internal Affairs authorities admitted that «refugees and unemployed were not provided with housing, they had to live on premises ill-fitted for this purpose and were assigned jobs having nothing to do with their qualifications.» The notorious executions of Polish army officers, government clerks, and intellectuals at Katyn, Ostahkiv, and Kharkiv were part and parcel of the purges. For a long time the Soviet leadership kept these massacres secret or blamed the Wehrmacht, thus leading the world public astray.

In 1939, all participants in the Ukrainian national liberation movement the authorities knew of were arrested, since the Communists regarded them as their inveterate enemies. The authors of the proclamation of the Ukrainian National Republic in June 1941 were arrested by the Gestapo and placed in a concentration camp. The Ukrainian Insurgent Army (known by its Ukrainian abbreviation, UPA) was formed in 1942 and launched an armed struggle against the Nazi aggressor.

From the outset of the Nazi occupation residents were being shipped off for forced labor in Germany. This campaign differed little from Soviet purges in terms of methods and cruelty. All told, 2.2 million persons were thus transported to the Third Reich, among them some 900,000 residents of Western Ukraine.

As Western Ukraine was cleared of German troops, Soviet purges against the populace were resumed with fresh vigor, acquiring a mind-boggling scope. Now UPA turned against the Soviet Army. The hostilities lasted six years, with the guerrillas receiving no assistance from the West whatever. Thousands of UPA insurgents were killed and hundreds of thousands of guerrillas and sympathizers wound up in Soviet prison camps with a standard term of 25 years. Whole villages were exiled on charges of «aiding and abetting» the UPA, totaling 2 million persons.

Western Ukraine's losses were staggering. In 1930-31, the Ukrainian populace of the regions that would be joined to the USSR in 1939 numbered 7,950,000; in 1970, it was 7,821,000. In other words, no increment over 40 years.

And so, instead of finally acknowledging the UPA officers and men as World War II combatants and make their rights equal to those of Soviet Army veterans, instead of honoring the memory of all those innocent victims, the Ukrainian government proposes to celebrate nationwide the 60th reunification anniversary!

There are cases when choosing the lesser of two evils is impossible, for both are just too vile. Choosing between Nazi and Soviet totalitarianism had its tragic outcome. Thank God, we no longer have to make this choice. However, more than a decade will pass before people in Ukraine will remember September 17 as the date on which the Ukrainian nation exercised its natural right to live in a free, independent, and united Ukraine, as yet another proof of historical justice, and will calmly recall St. Augustine who wrote that, if there is evil, then there must be something inherently expedient to it. This is now impossible.

August 24, 1991, on the contrary, is declared a holiday (even though it would seem more logical to celebrate Independence Day on December 1), perhaps because on that particular occasion no blood was shed, but nor is there any special joy. Instead there is only bitterness as we watch all hopes for a better life gradually being supplanted by depression and apathy, and a young originally quite viable state gradually stagnating with administrative pressure on the people inexorably mounting and the state machine drifting farther away, turning into an Interessengemeinschaft , emigration increasing (with basically young people leaving Ukraine, refusing to adapt to the old Soviet system of supervision and surveillance which is still there, practically unchanged), and the entire society becoming ever more cruel.

Could all this have been different? Hardly. The Ukrainian people, exhausted by the struggle against the totalitarian regimes of Germany and USSR in the two World Wars (sustaining manpower losses unmatched in the history of our outgoing century), could not have produced a mass anti-Communist movement (like in Poland) or prepared a new domestic elite essentially different from the old one and capable of replacing it (again, as was the case with Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary). Vladimir Bukovsky correctly noted that Communism in the USSR was not defeated; it collapsed under its own weight (one is also reminded of Konrad Adenauer's assumption that Communism cannot be defeated using military, economic or cultural means; it can only be defeated by devout Christianity). Suffice it to recall that the Verkhovna Rada's Communist majority took a middle course and proclaimed independence, merely to keep the Soviet nomenklatura in power. Ukraine was doomed to independence by the very fact of the USSR's collapse, yet it turned out unprepared for independence. It seemed to have emerged prematurely, so it is difficult to talk about the victory of the Ukrainian national democratic movement. Once again his majesty history had the final say, regardless of our notions of the rules by which one ought to play this game. Suddenly, we found ourselves in a new historical situation. (Who would have dreamed of it, living as we did? Few if any.) A country without a nation in the political sense of the word, the Eastern and Western mentalities being fed by different myths, with most people being totally confused or with a very vague idea about what has actually happened, believing that three politicians met at Belovezhskaya Pushcha to destroy a great power, and that it can be brought back to life. In a word, something is amiss in people's heads.

Have we come any closer to real independence over the past eight years? I think we have, despite everything stated above. A new generation, formed in the 1990s, has embarked on a new path with no experience of Soviet life; they are more open, relaxed, and frank in their words and deeds. They are all Ukrainian patriots (even though many continue to use Russian). To them, the USSR is only history. And the older generation, all age groups, are getting used to the new realities; having experienced a very strong frustration in 1992-94, due to a sharp drop in living standards, many who voted for independence December 1, 1991, have become ready to change their mind. But then the Chechnya War broke out, dampening their resolution, as evidenced by last year's parliamentary elections. Politicians banking on the creation of a new Union for the most part lost. In addition, there is a slow but sure rapprochement between the west and east of Ukraine, as people on both sides are beginning to understand each other's problems. Attitude toward the state are also changing as an increasing number of people are ridding themselves of paternalism, becoming aware of the need to count primarily on their own resources.

Nonetheless, I think that there is a greater threat to Ukrainian independence than eight years ago. Mainly, this threat is in ourselves, our passivity, waiting for someone else to do our job. Most of us want just to stay out of trouble. As a result, we no longer live but simply struggle to survive. We allowed the bureaucratic machine to remain unaccountable, and it has become uncontrollable. Who can guarantee that the Ukrainian political leadership, resolved to stay in power come what may, will not quietly surrender enterprises, on account of the public debt, that are still capable of bringing in revenues? If so, what will our independence actually amount to? We have to sit and watch our senior citizens and the handicapped be humiliated by arrears on the atrociously meager payments due them. How much longer are we going to allow the bureaucrats to make fools of us, washing their dirty business out of the public eye, using top secret and strictly confidential barriers? We know from bitter past experience that documents bearing these clichОs have always concealed record morbid statistics and the staggering gap between the personal incomes of the nomenklatura and the man in the street. We must finally realize: either we gradually place the government machine under our control or our internal divergence will continue to grow, reaching the point at which this country will literally burst at the seams, the way it happened to the USSR. It is either or: Ukraine becoming truly democratic or losing its independence altogether.

It seems like God really is watching over Ukraine. At every crucial moment in its latter-day history something would happen to help Ukraine: the August putsch, events of October 1993, Chechnya conflict. Yet we must always remember that the Lord helps those who help themselves. Is it not time for us to start helping ourselves?