By that time, the Supreme Council of the Crimean ASSR had already adopted a declaration on state sovereignty of the autonomous region. It ensured the right of the Crimeans to the land, subsoil, airspace, water, and other natural resources of the peninsula. According to the declaration, only the Crimean parliament could represent the interests of the Crimeans. In addition, local authorities established the right to pursue their own domestic and economic policies. According to the text of the declaration, Sevastopol, which had the status of a city of republican subordination, being under the direct supervision of central government, in the USSR, would maintain the status quo.
Yet despite such a serious claim to independence – the declaration was supposed to serve as a legal basis for drawing up the republic’s Constitution – the document stated that the autonomous region was declared a “legal democratic state within Ukraine”.
As a matter of fact, the peninsula was almost simultaneously claimed by three sides – in June 1991, a declaration of national sovereignty was also adopted by the protesting Crimean Tatars. But it was still part of the unified Soviet Union. Crimea’s fate was to be decided through negotiations.
The full stop Vladislav Zubok, history professor at the London School of Economics and Political Sciences, believes that even at the end of August 1991, the USSR still had a chance. In his book “Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union”, he writes that if Gorbachev and Yeltsin had made joint efforts, they might have managed to divert the Ukrainian SSR from secession. After all, the republic did not have a unifying idea at the time, and for industrial regions such as Donbass, Kiev was not the center of attraction. Those who lived in the southeast associated themselves mainly with Moscow, Russian history and culture. “For millions of people in these regions — people of mixed ethnic origin and a common identity — the idea of Ukrainian “sovereignty” was something vague. Something that could still imply a common statehood with the Russian Federation.”
Chairman of the Ukrainian Supreme Council Leonid Kravchuk (center). © Sputnik / MaievskiyThis thesis is confirmed, among other things, by the way Leonid Kravchuk’s team campaigned for the independence of the Ukrainian SSR. For example, one of the propaganda leaflets, which was actively distributed on December 1, 1991, the eve of the referendum on the independence of the country, stated: “Only an independent Ukraine will be able to join any interstate community with its neighbors as an equal partner, and first of all with Russia that is closest to us… We are obliged to make the republic a good mother for all its citizens. The Declaration of the Rights of Nationalities, adopted by the Supreme Council of Ukraine, unanimously opens wide opportunities for the development of languages and cultures of all nations in Ukraine. It does not matter what language Ukrainian citizens speak as long as they speak about an independent Ukraine and its legal rights.”
The plan of the republic’s authorities was successful. The overwhelming majority of Ukrainian SSR residents (90 percent) said “Yes” to an independent path, separate from the RSFSR. The results spoke for themselves: 83.9% voted positively in the Donetsk region; 83.9% in the Luhansk region; 86.3% in the Kharkov region; 85.4% in the Odessa region. Only Crimea stood out, although even there, 54.2% of voters supported independence.
There were many reasons for such a large-scale and uncontested vote. The population was guaranteed not just the preservation of unhindered ties with Russia, but also measures to protect and develop the Russian language and culture, as evidenced by campaign materials. Many sincerely hoped that nothing would drastically change, and that independence would lead to Ukraine’s prosperity. Economic development indicators comparable to Germany and France were cited. Indeed, before the collapse of the USSR, Ukraine occupied the first place in Europe in steelmaking, coal and iron ore mining, and sugar production. In addition, because of the parade of sovereignties and the August coup, people were completely disoriented. From the point of view of the Soviet layman, the vote that took place on the same day as the presidential election, which Leonid Kravchuk won, was a vote in favor of the authorities.
However the events are viewed, with the referendum Ukraine bid goodbye to the Soviet Union. Russian politicians decided not to raise the issue of Crimea and other southeastern regions of the Ukrainian SSR. On November 19, 1991, Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR Boris Yeltsin and his Ukrainian counterpart Leonid Kravchuk signed a document formalized as an agreement between two independent countries, although legally they remained republics within the USSR. At the same time, the sixth article stated:“The High Contracting Parties recognize and respect the territorial integrity of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic within the borders currently existing in the USSR.”
Russian President Boris Yeltsin (right) and Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk (left). © Sputnik / Dmitryi DonskoyAs a result, the party hierarchy, including Kravchuk, suddenly saw themselves as nationalists, and quickly pursued their own interests. Although after the announcement of the referendum results, Yeltsin privately met with Gorbachev to discuss the prospects of preserving the USSR. On the same day, during his inauguration, Kravchuk said that Ukraine would not join any political unions but would build relations with the former USSR republics only on a bilateral basis. He promised the country an independent foreign policy, its own army, and its own currency.
An unsolved problem Sergei Filatov, former chairman of the presidential administration of Russia, commenting on the visits of delegations from Donetsk, Lugansk, Simferopol and Sevastopol to the RSFSR Supreme Soviet in the fall of 1991 with the request not to leave them as part of Ukraine, said: “this was originally our land, they just gave it away” . The delegations asked “not to leave them under Kiev’s authority” on the eve of the signing of the Belovezhskaya Agreements. However, according to Filatov, the Russian leadership decided not to interfere in the fate of the regions. “We didn’t have the time. We were thinking how Russia could survive in general,” he said.
The final famous démarche was uttered by the press secretary of the President of the RSFSR, Pavel Voshchanov, at the end of August 1991: “I am authorized by the President of the RSFSR to make the following statement. The Russian Federation does not question the constitutional right of every state and people to self-determination. However, there is a problem of borders, the unsettled nature of which is permissible only in case of allied relations fixed by a relevant treaty. In the event of their termination, the RSFSR reserves the right to raise the issue of revising the borders.”
Voshchanov insisted that Yeltsin really “authorized” him to speak these words and he was not acting of his own accord. However, the Yeltsin team officially upheld the version that the president’s press secretary spoke in an unsanctioned manner. The cumulative effect of all the government’s actions and statements was unequivocally negative. As Georgy Shakhnazarov noted in his memorandum: “The situation is complicated by the fact that, having made reasonable statements on the territorial issue, the Russians, frightened by the sharp reaction of the nationalists, and to a considerable extent of some of the Democrats, immediately pulled the plug.”
Speaking on August 26, 1991, at one of the last sessions of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR with a call not to destroy the unified union state, then mayor of Leningrad (after 1991, St. Petersburg) Anatoly Sobchak, said: “Today the danger of hasty, emotional, ill-considered decisions is ten times higher than yesterday. Today we are deciding the future of the country and, to a certain extent, the future of humanity. Therefore, it is crucial not to allow any hasty, superficial decisions from the point of view of a national, independent position.” Unfortunately, no one heeded his words.
By Alexander Nepogodin, an Odessa-born political journalist, expert on Russia and the former Soviet Union.
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