Party boss's victory in Ukraine cornerstone of Commonwealth

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The formation of the new "Commonwealth of Independent States" represents a relative victory for the bureaucracy. It was made possible by the victory of the Communist party boss in Ukraine, Leonid Makarovich Kravchuk, in the Dec. 1 presidential elections in the republic.

Like all the top bureaucrats in Ukraine, Kravchuk spent his entire career as a grand inquisitor and persecutor of "Ukrainian bourgeois nationalists." Right up to the August putsch, his regime subjected leading national democrats, such as Stepan Khmara, to political victimization. It was only after the failure of the old-line Stalinist coup that Khmara and other political prisoners were released, and Kravchuk suddenly put on the clothes of a Ukrainian patriot.

Despite Kravchuk's last-minute turning of his coat and his obvious maneuvering on the question of Gorbachev's project for a "renewed Union" (his position on signing the new Union treaty changed every couple of days, clearly depending on which way he thought the wind was blowing), he managed to get himself elected president by over 50 percent of the vote.

Vyacheslav Chornovil, the major candidate of the national democratic movement, Rukh, got only about a quarter of the vote. Another national democratic leader, Levko Lukyanenko, got about 5 percent.

In the referendum on independence that was held at the same time as the presidential vote, over 90 percent cast their ballots for independence. But the vote was very uneven.

In the western Ukraine, or Galicia-the bastion of the Ukrainian national opposition to the Stalinist state and lately of Rukh the vote for independence was virtually unanimous. Thus, in the Lviv district, 97.5 percent voted for indepenBureaucrats (continued from page Demonstration in Moscow. Sign depicts dence; in Ternopol, it was 98.9 percent; in Volynia, 96.3 percent.

In the capital, Kiev, in central Ukraine, 95.5 percent voted for independence. At the time of the referendum on preserving the Union in March, about 45 percent in Kiev voted for maintaining the USSR.

In the republic as a whole, about 70 percent voted for maintaining the union, with an overwhelming pro-Union vote in the eastern part of the republic, where Rukh was only beginning to make inroads.

On Dec. 1, there were majorities for democracy being made into a gallows independence in all regions of the republic, but large minorities opposed it in the russified industrial area of the Donbass (about 30 percent) and in the Crimea (about 45 percent). The latter area is not historically part of Ukraine, but was assigned to the republic only in the 1950s.

Crimea was conquered by the Russian empire from the Ottomans. And the older, historically Muslim, Tatar population was progressively driven out. The surviving Tatar community was expelled en masse by Stalin during the second world war. (Rukh's program, by the way, calls for restoring the Crimean Tatar Autonomous Republic, a position far from popular with the Russian settlers who came in to take their place.)

Kravchuk got his highest vote precisely in those areas where an appreciable minority opposed independence. This makes it clear that his support was essentially conservative, reflecting the fact that the radical antibureaucratic political movement has not yet made a breakthrough in the eastern part of the republic.

The Donbass has been one of the centers of the movement of the coal miners, the first section of the working class to rebel against the bureaucracy. The Stalinist press has complained bitterly and constantly about establishment of "dual power" in the area by the miners' strike committees. Rukh managed to bring the strike committees into its first congress, even though it had to moderate its national demands to accomplish this.

The population of the Donbass is largely of Russian origin, and those of Ukrainian origin have long been russified. Identification with Ukraine tends to be weak and ambiguous. For example, during the Russian civil war, the Bolshevik leadership in this region at one point tried to create a distinct workers' republic of the Donbass and Krivoi Rog. Nonetheless, Rukh has remained the only political alternative to the representatives of the bureaucracy. Growth of national consciousness National consciousness is determined by great social and political movements as much or more than by ethnic and cultural factors. The development of the Ukrainian nation in the first place is rooted in a peasant rebellion against the Polish feudalists in the 17th century.

The peasant and worker upsurge in the period of the Bolshevik revolution and the first years of Soviet power led to a rapid growth of Ukrainian national consciousness, including in the eastern part of the country and russified cities, which were overwhelmed by Stalin's terror in the 1930s.

It seems clear by now that the rebellion against the Stalinist bureaucracy will lead to the masses throughout the republic identifying with Ukrainian aspirations, regardless of the language they speak. But because of the ambiguities of national consciousness in the eastern part of Ukraine, this process may be prolonged and difficult. In any case, the delay has given precious time to the bureaucracy throughout the old