It is August 24 and I am in Kyiv to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Ukraine’s renewed independence and to show a film which I made 30 years ago when I came to Kyiv to help with the independence referendum of 1991. I remember those halcyon days when, together with Rukh activists, I traveled to villages, train stations, bus depots asking people to cast their vote for an independent Ukraine. I know that the face of Ukraine today would not have been possible without Rukh.
Rukh was the movement that changed Ukraine. It began in September 1989 when the First Congress of the Popular Movement of Ukraine, known as Rukh, met and elected Ivan Drach as its head and Mykhailo Horyn its secretary. Then this great popular movement, taking on the form of a tsunami, swept across Ukraine, capturing the hearts and minds of Ukrainians who looked to Rukh as the proverbial Moses who was going to lead them to the promised land. Rukh was not a political party; it was a uniting force. It united people from various backgrounds; it united eastern and western Ukraine; it united them all in a common goal: the formation of an independent Ukraine.
I remember being in Ukraine during the heady days prior to the referendum of 1991. The headquarters of Rukh, located across from the Lybid Hotel where I hosted and funded the victory party after the overwhelming independence win, was a beehive of activity. There were buses and vans filled with activists leaving for the hinterlands of Ukraine to convince the population to vote for a free Ukraine. Inside Rukh, a printing press was spewing 30 million flyers to be distributed and also to be mailed to households in eastern Ukraine explaining why it was important to vote in support of a free Ukraine.
As one of our many activities in support of Rukh, my Ukrainian Human Rights Committee in Philadelphia had campaign buttons made which said “I am for a free Ukraine – Referendum 1991.” I delivered thousands of these buttons and passed them out at train stations, in schools, in factories. Thousands of these buttons were given to activists who were going to Luhansk and other towns in eastern Ukraine to distribute there.
Now I find myself 30 years later standing in the beautiful hall of the Writers Union (Spilka Pysmenykiv) ready to show my film. It is a bittersweet moment. In attendance are some of the activists from the referendum. Mykola Zhulynsky, Bohdan Horyn, Ivan Zajac, as well as the intellectual elite of Kyiv, the renowned historian Volodymyr Serhichuk, writers, poets, the noted sculptor Mykola Znoba, and the film director Oles Yanchuk, as well as the former Ukrainian ambassador to the United States, Valeriy Chaly.
My good friend, the former first lady of Ukraine, Kateryna Yushchenko, opened the film presentation and delivered remarks about the referendum.
In closing the presentation, the assembled audience recognized those great men, the founders of Rukh who are no longer with us, among them Ivan Drach, Mykola Horyn, Vyacheslav Chornovil. I take a moment to underscore how important it is that the Ukrainian government recognize Rukh and the founding fathers of contemporary Ukraine, men like Ivan Zajac, Mykola Zhulynsky Stephan Khmara and Dmytro Pavlychko. They devoted their very being to propel Ukraine to independence and sovereignty.