People's Movement of Ukraine for Restructuring
National Writers' Union of Ukraine. Draft Program of the People's Movement of Ukraine for Restructuring (Rukh). February 1989
This draft program of the People’s Movement of Ukraine for Restructuring (Rukh), published in early 1989, shows how a national revival could speak in the authorized language of perestroika while pressing against Soviet limits. It affirms the Communist Party’s “leading role,” yet demands real democratization, legal protections for rights, and the transformation of the USSR into a genuine federation of sovereign republics. The text links sovereignty to control over resources, foregrounds ecology after Chernobyl, and insists on restoring Ukrainian language and culture while protecting minority rights.
Original Source: Національна спілка письменників України, «Проект програми Народного Руху України за перебудову», Літературна Україна, February 1989
General Principles
- The People's Movement of Ukraine for Restructuring [Rukh] is a mass voluntary organization that rests on the patriotic initiative of citizens of the Ukrainian SSR: Ukrainians, Russians, Jews, Bulgarians, Hungarians, Poles, Moldavians and all other nationalities living on Ukrainian soil. The movement is a nationwide manifestation of the approval of and support for the revolutionary restructuring initiated and implemented in our country by the Party. This is a new form of the block of Party members and nonparty people and of the struggle for a fundamental renewal in all spheres of state, public, and economic life of the Ukrainian SSR.
[ ... ] The movement recognizes the leading role of the Communist Party in a socialist society and is a uniting link between the Party's ideals of restructuring and the initiative of the widest strata of the popular masses. [ ... ] The movement cooperates with the CPSU through Communists who are its members and implements the decisions of the 27th Congress and the 19th All-Union Conference of the CPSU.
- The main aim of the movement is to assist the Communist Party in creating and working out a democratic mechanism that will serve the development of society based on genuine people's power and a balanced economy. The movement comes out against any breaches of social, political, national, and ecological rights of an individual. The movement will strive to raise the level of consciousness, political culture, and civic activities of the Ukrainian people and of all nationalities living within the Ukrainian SSR for the renewal and assertion of national consciousness and internationalist convictions of all citizens of the republic. The movement will resolutely counteract any attempts to assimilate the national minorities in Ukraine; and it will assist the development of culture and education of all of them, and in their places of residence assist their administrative and economic self-rule. The propaganda of national exclusiveness or of national nihilism is condemned by the movement as amoral and inhuman.
Proceeding from this, Rukh sets before itself the following aims:
a) To strive in our republic, just as in the whole country, to rescue the national economy from a difficult state and improve the national environment so that in the coming years a substantial growth in the people's well-being can be secured;
b) ... [T]o expose any attempts to slow down the process of democratization and glasnost in Ukraine and to be a social guarantor of the revolutionary restructuring of society,
c) To assist the transformation of the Ukrainian SSR into a law-governed state where the rights of the individual and the free development of the person become the main features of the development of society,
d) To create conditions for the transition of the idea of people's power into a genuine, full power of the people and to demand the genuine sovereignty of Ukraine and of other republics of the USSR. All land, water, air, minerals, energy resources, enterprises, transport routes, and communications of the republic are the property of the people and can be used by all-Union or republican ministries only with the permission of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR,
e) Rukh must become the real spokesman for the vital and social interests of the Ukrainian people and of people of other nationalities living in Ukraine; it will also maintain contacts with Ukrainians living in other fraternal republics and abroad.
- In its activities the movement will observe the following main principles: friendship and mutual assistance with the peoples of the USSR; respect for the individual and defense of human rights; democratization and social pluralism; law and order, social justice and glasnost; and the absence of moral and political pressure and of intimidation of dissidents or any persecution for convictions. [ ... ]
Democratization of Society, Human Rights, and Rights of the People
The struggle for the democratization and reform of the political system, commenced by the CPSU, will have an important place in the activities of Rukh.
[ ... ] Jointly with the CPSU and with public associations of the Ukrainian SSR, the movement will exert all efforts to dismantle the administrative-bureaucratic system formed in the periods of Stalinism and stagnation. The movement comes out for transforming the USSR into a genuine union of fraternal and sovereign peoples on the basis of the Leninist program of federalism.
The movement will demand the transformation of the Soviets of People's Deputies into competent and law-strengthened organs of people's representatives that will have full power on their territory. [...]
The movement will stand for creating a law-based state, proceeding from the premise that the state exists for the people and not otherwise; for creating a state in which the people are the source of rights and law is above the state. [ ... ]
In a law-governed state the interests of the majority are defended by the representative system. [ ... ] Together with this, in a law-governed state the interests of any minority or separate individual must be guaranteed and defended, primarily by juridical means. [ ... ]
The movement will uphold implementation of the declared rights of the Ukrainian SSR as a sovereign Union republic and the people's right to decide its destiny for itself.
The movement will come out against the omnipotence of ministries and departments that inflict harm to the state, to people, and to the individual.
The movement deems it necessary for the democratization of society to have the right to nominate candidates freely as deputies of Soviets at all levels without imposing them or 'artificially selecting them." [ ... ] [T]he movement will actively participate in election campaigns and nominate candidates of its own; and the movement will organize campaigns to recall deputies who compromise themselves by idleness or by activities that harm the people. [ ... ]
The movement affirms that the state should juridically and practically guarantee the inviolability of the person and his residence, and the secrecy of correspondence and telegraphic, telephonic, and other types of communication. Persecution for political, social, racial, national, or religious motives and any limitations of civic and juridical rights of individuals are impermissible.
The movement upholds the right of every individual to preach any religion or not to preach any, to engage in religious rituals or conduct atheist propaganda.
The movement deems it every citizen's legitimate right to have free access to information and the right of defense against disinformation. The movement raises the question of abolishing censorship, except in cases involving state or military secrets. [...] The right of glasnost and freedom of thought and word should be defended by law. Any representative of the organs of power who attempts to disregard the right of glasnost is answerable in a court of law.
The movement emphasizes that the crimes of Stalinism were recognized as crimes against mankind and humanity, and as such will not be covered by the statutes of limitation. It is necessary to name the organizers and direct culprits of the crimes and also to publish the lists of victims of Stalinism, perpetuate their memory, and compensate for the moral, physical, and material losses of the victims. [...]
The movement does not envisage the restructuring of the legal system without a public review of the cases of citizens of the Ukrainian SSR who were unjustly imprisoned in the period of stagnation with the help of fabricated political or religious accusations, nor without calling to account the organizers of such cases.
Social Justice
The humanization of society is one of the most important tasks of Rukh.
The movement comes out for the rights of citizens of the Ukrainian SSR to a free choice of place of residence and of the place where they spend their energy and possibilities.
The movement demands an objective calculation, with the public's participation, of the minimal standard of living. [ ... ]
The movement comes out for abolishing the very category of nomenklatura workers and their privileges. Official posts should be filled by people with professional competence and only on a contested and democratic basis. [ ... ]
The movement expresses itself in favor of a genuine emancipation of women. [-]
The movement believes that one of the most topical tasks faced by society is the protection of the health of the individual and the health of the people. The primary task here is the protection of the daily environment.
Economy
1.Rukh considers it necessary to transform the economy of the Ukrainian SSR into a genuinely socialist one, free of deformations and distortions, into a humane and ecologically healthy resource-balanced economy. [ ... 1
- The movement supports the removal and dismantling of all consequences of bureaucraticdepartmental arbitrariness in the management of the economy of the Ukrainian SSR. [...]
The movement believes that republican economic accounting must be on the basis of the republic's economic sovereignty.
The republic's economic sovereignty creates and supports conditions for a free development of the Ukrainian ethnos, for the native population, for which the republic is the only territory for its national being and historical continuity. The economic sovereignty of the republic ensures the wellbeing and self-realization of all the nationalities living in Ukraine. For this, the Ukrainian SSR Government must be given the right to subordinate economic decisions to the social and nationalcultural tasks. The movement condemns the imposition upon the republic of growth rates, forms, and directions of economic development and uncontrolled redistribution of resources, practiced by the ministerial-bureaucratic apparatus that lead to parasitism and the squandering of indiscriminate equality. [ ... ]
The movement demands a rational restructuring of the structure of the national economy and a change of priorities in the distribution of capital investments. It is necessary to switch over from an economy in which the mining and high energy-consuming branches play an excessively large role, to an economy in which high-precision and complex machine building, ecologically safe and pure facilities, and the branches ensuring the growth of wellbeing will predominate. [ ... 1
The movement believes that the compulsory collectivization conducted by Stalin and his toadies led to brutal violence against the peasants and belittled their feelings of being master of the land and their love for the land. It is necessary for the renewal of effective agricultural economy to take into account the national farming traditions and the world's presentday experience. [ ... 1
...[T]he movement favors an equivalent exchange between republics, for the development between them of direct cooperative relations, for the realization of joint economic programs on a commodity and fiscal basis, and for an independent entrance into world markets. [...]
The movement opposes economic and other forms of decree by ministries and departments managing things on Ukrainian territory which are motivated by selfish, departmental aspirations that often lead to ecological catastrophes and economic difficulties. [ ... ] It transforms economic life into a "melting pot" of denationalization of the indigenous population and the national minorities in the Ukrainian SSR. [...]
The movement considers that there must be immediate implementation of the recommendation of the 19th All-Union Party Conference on informing the population about the contribution made by each republic or region to the overall Union economy. This would make sure specific notions about the connection between the labor return and level of well-being of every citizen and every group of the population.
Ecology
The People's Movement of Ukraine for Restructuring considers its primary tasks in this sphere to be:
To strive for the resolution of the laws on sovereignty of the republic in carrying out all economic, legal, and administrative measures to protect the environment.
To support in every way possible the formation of a "green movement." [ ... ]
The movement insists on a radical re-examination of the policy on energy and above all of the program for developing the nuclear power industry in Ukraine, and demands an end to the construction of the Chihirin and Crimean AESs, and to the construction of new power units at existing nuclear power stations in the republic. [ ... ]
The movement will strive to prevent the construction of especially ecologically dangerous enterprises-above all chemical and metallurgical - in areas of high population density and industrial saturation. [ ... ]
The movement demands that the Ministry of Atomic Power assume full legal and moral responsibility before the population of the republic for losses due to radioactive contamination of lands.
The Nationality Question, Language, and Culture
The People's Movement of Ukraine for Restructuring considers one of its most important tasks to be drawing public attention to the democratic and just resolution of problems concerning the existence and development of the Ukrainian people, their equality with other nations of the USSR, state sovereignty, language, and culture on the basis of theoretical precepts and practical methods formulated by Lenin regarding nationality policy. There is no real internationalism where national interests and rights are ignored or pushed into the background. The national and international only exist in an inseparable unity. Natural and normal processes of internationalization and the drawing together and mutual enrichment of nations have nothing in common with their mechanical "merging," assimilation, and indiscriminate equality.
As a result of gross violations of the Leninist nationality policy during the Stalin and Brezhnev eras, and the extermination of a considerable part of the Soviet Ukrainian creative and scientific intelligentsia, some deformations in relations between nationalities occurred, the use of the Ukrainian language was substantially reduced, and the prestige of Ukrainian culture artificially lowered. Now we need radical state measures aimed at truly consolidating national justice, renewing the people's spiritual and moral riches, and ensuring the broad usage and comprehensive development of the Ukrainian language-the definitive factor in the existence of a people as a race (ethnos). [...]
Thus the movement considers that the first and most urgent step to be taken in resolving the pressing questions of national and cultural renewal should be granting the Ukrainian language the status of state language of the Ukrainian SSR. [ ... ]
A law on the official status of the Ukrainian language would in no way limit the functioning of the Russian language as a means of international communications in the USSR or the free development of languages of national minorities and groups living on the territory of Ukraine. Every citizen would enjoy freely the right to use his native language.
- The People's Movement of Ukraine for Restructuring considers:
That Ukrainian language and literature should be compulsory subjects at all schools, colleges, and technical colleges on the territory of the Ukrainian SSR;
That it is essential to introduce entrance exams in Ukrainian for all who leave school in the Ukrainian SSR wishing to enter the republic's higher education establishments, regardless of their subordination; that it is essential to bring about a gradual transfer to teaching in Ukrainian at all specialized secondary and higher education establishments of the Ukrainian SSR...and that the practice of parental free choice in the language of education, which in the conditions that have arisen in our republic leads to national nihilism, the growth of narrow-mindedness, and the raising of rootless people, should be reviewed from the viewpoint of legal and moral norms;
That Ukrainian cinema, theaters, radio and television, other forms of mass information, variety, and so on should develop in such a way that gives priority to the Ukrainian language on the territory of the republic,
That all republican forms, sessions, plenums, and ceremonial meetings should be held in the Ukrainian language;
That a wide network of courses, groups, and faculties should be created for the study of Ukrainian for all who wish to do so;
That the work of the "Taras Shevchenko" Ukrainian-Language Society and other national culture societies in the republic should be assisted in every way possible.
The movement considers the instilling of national dignity, historical memory, love for one's native language and a caring attitude to one's national cultural inheritance, the preservation of monuments, and the broad and objective explanation and teaching of all the pages of history of the Ukrainian people to be one of the main tasks facing the appropriate state institutions and cultural establishments and creative and youth organizations. [ ... ]
Caring about the wholeness of the Ukrainian people's national and cultural development, the movement at the same time comes out against ignoring the national interests of Russians or representatives of other nationalities, which either as compact communities ... live on the republic's territory. They must have the genuine right to open schools or classes, with instruction in their own languages; to create societies of compatriots; to form associations; to have their theaters and press; and to propagate the values of their peoples.
The movement believes that a similar right should also be applied to Ukrainians living beyond the borders of the Republic....
The movement is convinced that genuine friendship between peoples can only be achieved on the basis of mutual respect for the language, culture, history, and traditions of each people. [ ... ]
Coming out in support of respect for national dignity and against national nihilism, the movement considers that the propaganda of national exclusiveness and of chauvinist and nationalist views is incompatible with its principles.
The upholding of the Leninist principles of internationalism and friendship of peoples is the pivot of the movement's activities in the matter of improving and harmonizing inter-nationality relations. [ ... ]
Source: Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Daily Report, U.S. Dept. of Commerce; National Technical Information Service, 1990