B2-38 · Ukraine on the Front Page: 1990 and 1991

Ukraine on the Front Page: 1990 and 1991

For most of the 20th century, Ukraine rarely appeared on the front pages of the world's newspapers. Foreign readers knew it, if at all, as a part of the Soviet Union. Then, in just two years, the country made headlines again and again. Looking at how the world reported these moments tells us not only what happened, but also how it looked from the outside.

1990: A revolution on the granite

In the late 1980s, Mikhail Gorbachev relaxed censorship in the Soviet Union. Ukrainian newspapers began to publish open criticism, the truth about the Chernobyl disaster and the famine of 1932–33 came out, and people discussed politics as they had not dared to for decades. In 1989, coal miners in the Donbas went on a general strike. On January 21, 1990, hundreds of thousands of people held hands in a human chain from Kyiv to Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk, more than 400 kilometers long.

In October 1990, about 150 students from Kyiv, Lviv and other cities occupied the central square in Kyiv, the one we now call Maidan, and started a hunger strike. They put up tents on the cold granite, so the protest became known as the "Revolution on Granite".

Foreign reporters described something unusual: a protest of teenagers and young adults, without weapons, against a powerful system. Thousands of Kyiv residents brought them blankets and tea. Ukrainian television, which had always obeyed the party, broadcast some of the students live, and the whole republic watched them speak. After about two weeks, the prime minister of Soviet Ukraine, Vitaliy Masol, resigned. It was the first time a peaceful protest had forced such a change in the Soviet Union.

Not all reports from abroad were friendly. On August 1, 1991, the American president George H. W. Bush gave a speech in Kyiv. He warned Ukrainians against "suicidal nationalism" and asked them to stay in a reformed Soviet Union. An American journalist mocked it as the "Chicken Kiev speech", and the name stuck. Many Ukrainians felt that the West preferred stability in Moscow to their freedom.

1991: Three weeks in August

Less than three weeks later, on August 19, 1991, hard-line communists in Moscow tried to remove Gorbachev and crush the reforms. Tanks appeared in the streets of Moscow, and the world held its breath. But people resisted, and after three days the coup collapsed.

The Ukrainian parliament did not wait. On August 24, 1991, it voted for the Act of Declaration of Independence of Ukraine: 346 deputies voted for it and only one against. Outside the building, thousands of people were waiting with the blue and yellow flag, which had been banned for decades. Foreign correspondents noted that many of the deputies who voted for independence had been communist officials only a few months earlier.

The world still wasn't sure the decision would last, so on December 1 Ukrainians voted in a referendum. More than 90 percent said yes to independence, and Leonid Kravchuk was elected the first president. A week later, the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus signed an agreement that ended the Soviet Union. On December 25, Gorbachev resigned, and the red flag was lowered over the Kremlin.

Newspapers around the world wrote about the end of an empire. Unlike in some other parts of the Soviet Union, almost nobody was killed in Ukraine. Many Ukrainians still call it a "revolution of the ballot box".

Two stories, one lesson?

In 1990 and 1991, the world watched a large nation that many readers had never heard of walk out of an empire without a war. The most powerful images were not of politicians but of ordinary people: students on the cold granite, a human chain across the country, a crowd with a flag that had been banned. Perhaps that is why these stories still matter. They remind readers that even when the odds seem impossible, the courage of ordinary people can matter. Sadly, as later years showed, a peaceful start is no guarantee of a peaceful future.