These days, when people mention the GKChP coup, it’s mostly with irony—you know, “Swan Lake” on TV, the trembling hands of the elderly coup plotters reading from a piece of paper, and all that sort of thing. However, during those three days in August thirty-five years ago, there was nothing to laugh about in Ukraine. It seemed that a shadow of the restoration of totalitarianism—and with it, imperial rule that precludes any autonomy—was once again falling over a republic that had already held more or less democratic parliamentary elections, adopted the Declaration on State Sovereignty, and grown accustomed to street protests involving tens of thousands of people and an independent press.

Over the course of those three days, many had to decide whose side they were on and what they stood for. The revanchists openly rejoiced that “order would finally be restored.” The republic’s leadership, headed by Leonid Kravchuk, bided its time, hesitating to declare loyalty to the coup plotters but also refraining from calling on citizens to resist. But there were also those who, in the very first hours of the coup, spoke out in defense of democracy and sovereignty—fully understanding what the consequences might be for them if the conspirators succeeded. Among the organizers and participants of the Ukrainian Resistance to the GKChP were by no means only national democrats and nationalists.

“To Defiance at the First Call”

One of the forces that led Ukraine to independence was the labor movement, primarily in the eastern industrial regions. The mass strikes of 1989 and 1991, initiated by the miners of the Donbas, proved to be an even greater challenge to the Soviet leadership than the protests of the national-democratic opposition. And not only because they called into question the economic dominance of the Soviet nomenklatura. The “Rukh” intelligentsia could always be branded as “out of touch with the people,” but what was to be done with the thousands of representatives of the very working class in whose name the regime supposedly exercised its power? Meanwhile, the strikers were demanding not only higher wages and better working conditions, but also, for example, the abolition of the leading role of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the granting of constitutional status to the Declaration on State Sovereignty. The leaders of the strike committees and independent trade unions did not always see eye to eye with the national democrats on every issue, but they shared the same aspirations for democracy and autonomy. It is therefore not surprising that they viewed the GKChP coup as a threat to everything they were fighting for.

On the very first day of the uprising, August 19, the Republican Strike Committee issued a statement demanding that the Verkhovna Rada immediately suspend all GKChP decrees on Ukrainian territory and declaring “pre-strike readiness” throughout the republic. That same day, the All-Ukrainian Workers’ Solidarity Association (VOST), formed two months earlier as a coalition of strike committees and workers’ organizations, addressed the Ukrainian people. It called the coup “the first step toward a military dictatorship on Ukrainian territory” and urged citizens “to be ready, at the first call, for an All-Ukrainian campaign of civil disobedience.”

“Only the united efforts of the Ukrainian people can prevent the outbreak of a civil war and the establishment of a military dictatorship, and protect the legitimate human rights, freedom, and independence of Ukraine,” the association’s statement read.

In response to VOST’s call to prepare for action, workers’ strike committees began organizing, primarily in cities in western Ukraine. Meanwhile, the Donetsk Strike Committee also announced preparations for a general miners’ strike. “On August 19, representatives from the regional offices of the KGB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs came to the strike committee with threats: ‘We won’t arrest you; we’ll give you a cup of tea—and you’ll be giving the birds the finger for the rest of your lives,’” recalls Mykola Volynko, one of the leaders of the miners’ movement at the time. “It was scary, yes, because perestroika had brought back memories of the Soviet repressions of 1937; but on the other hand, we felt strong and were ready to fight.” On August 20, the Donbas miners sent a delegation to the Verkhovna Rada.

“We wrote an appeal to Verkhovna Rada Chairman Leonid Kravchuk regarding our defiance of the State Committee for Emergency State of Affairs, and this was a show of support from Kyiv. At that time, 80 out of 200 mines in Donbas were already on strike, and that number could have risen sharply. Let me put it this way: during that period, the strike committees were the real authority in the mines,” Volynko explains.

Of course, the figure he cited may be an exaggeration. But it is known for certain that the leaders of the miners in Donetsk, Krasnoarmiysk (now Pokrovsk), and Pavlohrad, in accordance with a decision by the interregional association of what was then the All-Union Independent Miners’ Union, declared a pre-strike state. An indefinite nationwide miners’ strike was set to begin on August 21. However, the rebellious old-timers in Moscow still managed to avert it—though only because there was no longer any need to strike, since the coup had collapsed and the State Committee for the State of Emergency had ceased to exist.

On the Left Side of the Square

In Soviet political slang, everything progressive, revolutionary, and good was described as “leftist,” while anything reactionary and stagnant was considered “rightist.” Thousands of people swept up in the revolutionary wave of 1989–1991 had been raised in precisely this political tradition and knew no other political language. Therefore, the party nomenclature and its supporters were mostly referred to as “right-wing,” while opposition movements were called “left-wing.” Terminologically, this was not entirely accurate, since the opposition encompassed literally the entire political spectrum—from anarchists to monarchists. At the same time, the mass movement included not only right-wing liberal national-democrats but also supporters of genuinely left-wing, democratic-socialist, or even more radical views.

In particular, the first unauthorized political demonstration in Ukraine—on September 20, 1987—was organized by Lviv hippies. Youth anarchist groups took part in the 1990 “Revolution on Granite” in Kyiv and in the high-profile protests against harmful emissions from the coke-chemical plant in Zaporizhzhia in 1991. Several newly formed political organizations positioned themselves as social democratic, and the ideological social democrat Myroslav Popovych even represented the People’s Movement of Ukraine in televised debates with Kravchuk, who was then the Communist Party of Ukraine’s (CPU) party ideologist.

At that time, two political groups directly invoked the legacy of Ukrainian social democracy and the principles of the Socialist International. One of them, the “United Social Democratic Party of Ukraine” (not to be confused with the later SDPU(o)—these are entirely different, even opposing, organizations), was considered more socialist. The other, the “Social Democratic Party of Ukraine,” leaned more toward moderate center-left approaches. However, both joined the resistance against the State Committee for the State of Emergency (GKChP). During the three days of the coup, the united Social Democrats, for example, distributed more than two dozen types of leaflets calling on Ukrainians to defend democratic freedoms. Moreover, such leaflets appeared on Khreshchatyk as early as August 19 at 11:00 a.m. One of them stated that “there can be only one response to the junta—an All-Ukrainian strike until democracy is fully victorious in Ukraine!” On August 20, both parties, together with other democratic organizations, sent a proclamation to the Presidium of the Verkhovna Rada, demanding that the GKChP be recognized as an unconstitutional body.

The Social Democrats were active not only in Kyiv but also in the regions. For example, the Vinnytsia branch of the OSDPU distributed leaflets against the coup plotters and appealed to the city council to immediately condemn the Moscow uprising. In Kharkiv, the United Social Democrats, together with other democratic forces, labeled the GKChP a “junta” and “state criminals” and called on the city’s residents to resist any attempt to extend its activities “into the territory of sovereign Ukraine,” going so far as to declare an indefinite general strike. Activists also warned city officials that “their support for the coup plotters is classified by law as high treason, with all the consequences that entails.” In Yalta, the local SDPU organization had already called on residents to resist as early as August 19, and the following day staged a protest picket in the city’s central square. In Zhytomyr, it was the Social Democrats who initiated a citywide rally against the attempted coup.

In nearly all Ukrainian cities where anarchist groups existed, they likewise joined the resistance. They distributed leaflets against the coup plotters and, in some places, even attempted to organize strikes—for example, in Zaporizhzhia. Oleg Dubrovsky, a well-known labor activist from Dnipropetrovsk, recounts how he spent three days printing leaflets at night and posting them during the day at the city’s factories, calling for resistance.

“The director of my factory was on vacation at the time (since it was August—the favorite vacation time for the bosses),” he recalls, “and in his place, the factory’s chief engineer was acting as director. In a rush, citing a ‘state of emergency,’ rushed to fire me and personally delivered a copy of the aforementioned leaflet to the district committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, where meetings of the ‘party-economic committee’ lasted three full days and ‘emergency trios’ were appointed to restore ‘production and labor discipline’ at enterprises in accordance with the requirements of the ‘state of emergency.’

The Donetsk anarchists were even more radical: “We’re writing on the city’s walls: ‘We are not slaves!’ Mine foreman Konstantin brought several packages of mining explosives and fuses for them,” according to the memoirs of anarcho-syndicalist Serhiy Shevchenko. And in Kharkiv—then the capital of Ukrainian anarchism—the “Combat Anarcho-Revolutionary Union,” whose activists included several veterans of the war in Afghanistan, was seriously preparing for guerrilla operations in the event of a victory by the coup plotters.

The history of the Ukrainian liberation movement—including the contemporary one—is far more interesting, vivid, and diverse than any of its official versions. And, of course, it would be incomplete without the history of the labor movement and the political currents that identified with it. Although this movement and its role (as, in fact, the workers themselves) have been largely ignored and overlooked for years, at key moments—both in 1917–1920 and in 1989–1991—it was this movement that largely determined the country’s future.

Sources:

Agapov, V. L. “The Interrelationship Between the Miners’ Strike Movement and the National-Democratic Movement in 1991.”

Vysotsky, O. “Social Democrats in Modern Ukraine: The Experience of the Political Opposition” / O. Vysotsky // Political Science Readings. – 1995. – No. 1

Proclamation of the People’s Council and Democratic Organizations dated August 20, 1991

Hai-Nizhnyk, P. The Formation of the Democratic Party of Ukraine and Its Position on the GKChP Coup (1990–1991)

Dubovyk, A. An Essay on the History of the Anarchist Movement in Ukraine: The 1980s–1990s

To the Citizens of Ukraine! [OSDPU leaflet dated August 19, 1991].

“There Are No Revolutionary Traditions, Nor Have There Ever Been.” An Interview with Oleg Dubrovsky.

Appeal to the Supreme Council of the Ukrainian SSR from the Donetsk Regional Organization of the SDPU, dated August 24, 1991.

Problems of Vinnytsia Social Democracy // Bulletin of Ukrainian Social Democracy. – 1992. – No. 1 (May).

The SDPU During the Putsch // Kyiv Social Democrat. – 1991. – No. 1 (October).

https://svoi.city/articles/160350/hto-19-serpnya-1991-roku-vijshov-za-ukrainu-na-donechchini

Shevchenko, S. My Independence Day