The Ukrainian Weekly 1988, No.27

www.ukrweekly.com lished by the Ukrainian National Association Inc.. a fraternal non-profit association| MrainianWeekl v Vol. LVI No. 27 THE UKRAINIAN WEEKLY SUNDAY, JULY 3, 1988 50 cents Thousands in Lviv criticize National question gets scant mention selection of party delegates as Communist Party conference opens LONDON -- The Ukrainian Press to the party conference from the Lviv JERSEY CITY, NJ. - If the na party, union and other groups, as well Agency has received reliable informa region could not represent the local po tionalities question was to be a principal as by shifting power from the Commu tion that two mass meetings were held in pulation because they were involved topic at the 19th Communist Party nist Party to elected government bodies. Lviv, western Ukraine, on June 16 and during the Brezhnev period in repres conference that convened in Moscow'' He focused also on loosening the June 21, where the selection of dele sion and Russification policies in on Tuesday, June 28, it certainly did not control of central authorities and giving gates to the 19th Communist Party con western Ukraine. receive much attention in General more power to local authorities, espe ference in Moscow came in for heavy Mr. Horyn spoke to the crowd about Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev's three- cially as regards economic affairs. criticism. the fate of political prisoners, condi and-a-half-hour keynote speech to the Mr. Gorbachev also briefly touched The June 16 meeting was initiated by tions in the gulag today and the double nearly 5,000 delegates gathered for the upon the question of religious liberty, the Ridna Mova (Native Language) standards on freedom of speech applied opening session. noting that this issue "is very much in society which had been denied access to to party leaders on the one hand, and There was but a scant reference to the the public eye just now in connection the local House of Culture for their ordinary citizens on the other. nations of the USSR, contained in a list with the Millennium of the introduc regular meeting three days earlier. The Bohdan Horyn declared that the of what Mr. Gorbachev said are "basic tion of Christianity in Russia." June 16 meeting was attended by be entire period from 1929 to the 27th tasks" that must be accomphshed. He went on: "We do not conceal our tween 6,000 and 8,000 people and turned party congress in 1985 should be des "The conditions must be created for attitude to the religious outlook as into a broad debate about the selection cribed as "counterrevolutionary" and the further free development of every being non-materialistic and unscienti of delegates to the Communist Party "anti-Soviet," because this same period nation and nationality, for the fic. But there is no reason for a dis conference. witnessed the demise of the local coun strengthening of their friendship and respectful attitude to the spiritual- The first speakers were prominent na cils (soviet s). He also demanded that equitable cooperation on the principles mindedness ofthe believer, still less for tional rights campaigners Vyacheslav each union republic be accorded ge of internationalism," the Soviet leader applying any administrative pressure to Chornovil, Mykhailo Horyn (members nuine power as state bodies, that the stated. assert materialistic views... of the editorial board of the indepen USSR become a true union of autono The keynote address stressed reform "All believers, irrespective ofthe dent journal and organ ofthe Ukrainian mous states, that the privileged status of of the Soviet political system through religion they profess, are full-fledged Herald) and Bohdan Horyn. They were Communist Party members be abo the creation of a new Congress of the citizens of the USSR. The overwhlem- introduced to warm applause by the lished and that KGB properties be USSR Peoples Deputies, that would ing majority of them take an active crowd. handed over to civic needs. Those include representatives of territorial part in our industrial and civic life, in Mr. Chornovil argued that delegates (Continued on page 10) and national districts and delegates of (Continued on page 10) 'National deviationist" Petro Shelest reappears after 15 years as non-person by Bohdan Nahaylo zhnev's colleague, Mikhail Suslov, "Shelest did identify himself with a Reasons for Shelest's fall whom he portrayed as a figure that was particular 'national'tendency, although After more than 15 years since he was bent on "preserving by any means the not necessarily a 'nationalist' tendency While Mr. Shelest was never publicly ignominously removed from the Soviet tStalinistJ bureaucratic command sy in the chauvinist sense. (One could criticized for his stance on foreign political scene, the former leader of the stem of administration." argue that Shelest may have been less a policy, he was denounced in the spring Communist Party of Ukraine, Petro 'nationalist' than Brezhnev in articu of 1973 in no uncertain terms for having Shelest has made an unexpected re At this stage it is uncertain what this lating any exclusivist or hegemonistic set the wrong tone in his approach to appearance. The controversial official, reappearance of Mr. Shelest signifies. ethnic claims) ... Shelest did aggres nationalities policy. Specifically, he was also a former member of the Politburo Nonetheless, although he was not asked sively assert a claim of national equality attacked for his book "Ukraino Nasha of the Communist Party of the Soviet about nationalities policy, Ukraine, or and reciprocity within a communist Radianska" (O Ukraine, Our Soviet Union, who was branded a "national Mr. Shcherbytsky, it is with them that 'internationalist' framework, and this Land) that had been published in 1970 deviationist" and about whom nothing his name is most closely linked. There claim did increasingly diverge from the and which was retrospectively deemed had been heard since his dismissal, has fore, it is from this angle that his re- integrative-Russifying trend in official to have contained "ideological errors" now been "rediscovered" by a central emergence from obscurity will be exa policy. Yet, as Yaroslav Bilinsky has and "biased evaluations of important Soviet newspaper and utilized in the mined. cogently observed, it was not so much historical matters." current campaign to discredit Leonid Shelest who was diverging from what According to his detractors, Mr. Brezhnev and his rule. Shelest's record had been established as party policy in Shelest had idealized Ukraine's past, The irony is that the man still in the post-Stalin period, as Brezhnev and neglected "the fact that the develop charge of the Ukrainian party organiza Petro Shelest became first secretary those ideologues (probably led by ment of Ukraine cannot be examined tion is Volodymyr Shcherbytsky, Bre of the Communist Party of Ukraine Suslov), who were tilting toward a form apart from the history of Russia," zhnev's former lieutenant who was (CPU) in 1963 - a time when Ukrai of overt Russian hegemony." advocated economic autarchy, and laid installed in Kiev in 1972 and given the nian cultural and public life was under Although Mr. Shelest was relatively too great a stress on "the singularity and task of purging the republic of Ukrai going a revival. By fostering a sense of "liberal" in the sphere of nationalities uniqueness ofthe history and culture of nian nationalism, real or imagined, Soviet Ukrainian patriotism and de policy, he earned the reputation of the ykrainian people." including Mr. Shelest's supporters. fending Ukrainian cultural values, he being a hardliner on other issues. In As Lowell Tillett points out, "Not Mr. Shelest made his reappearance not only sought to establish and main particular, he is known to have express since Trotsky's day had a sitting mem on June 23, in the pages of Stroitelnaya tain a modus vivendi with the na ed alarm about the Prague Spring and ber of the Politburo suffered such Gazeta. Described as a private pen tionally minded Ukrainian intelligent its possible spillover effect on neigh humiliation by official party sources." sioner and former Politburo member, sia, but also became identified with boring Ukraine, and to have urged a In November 1974, in a major and the 80-year-old Ukrainian Communist resurgent Ukrainian national assertive- tough Soviet response. He is also much publicized article on the nationa- was one of four people interviewed by ness and the defense of the rights ofthe considered by some to have been a Uties question published in Kommunist the newspaper on the eve of the 19th union republics. "hawk" as regards Soviet foreign policy and elsewhere, Mr. Shcherbytsky again Conference of the CPSU about the toward the West^ indicated the real reason for Mr. She Brezhnev years. Within a few years, with Moscow lest's removal by lashing out against Mr. Shelest spoke quite positively committed to recentralization and, At any rate, the latter was the reason "national communism" in both its about Nikita Khrushchev, but was from the early 1970s, to the forging of a that was initially most commonly political and economic forms. outspoken m his condemnation of "Soviet people," Mr. Shelest's approach offered in the West to explain his abrupt But probably the most telling evi Leonid Brezhnev's vanity and "unde got him into trouble. Grey Hodnett, a removal from the helm of the CPU in dence about why Mr. Shelest fell was mocratic" way of ruling. leading authority on this subject, has May 1972 and subsequent expulsion the nature and scale of the political and He was especially critical of Bre summarized the problem as follows: from the Politburo in April 1973. (Continued on page 16) THE UKRAINIAN WEEKLY SUNDAY. JULY 3, 1988 No. 27 A GLIMPSE OF SOVIET REALITY 6^000 in Vilnius demonstrate to mark n^ass deportations Still more controversy brews NEW YORK - About 6,000 demon security agents.

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