This October we mark 31 years since the dramatic protest action in Ukraine dubbed the Revolution on Granite, a historic event little known to the international community. It took place on the cold granite slabs of the famous Maidan in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv from October 2-18 in 1990. Arguably it triggered the chain of events that eventually led to Ukraine’s independence from the USSR the next year. This dramatic episode embodied the culminating point of the democratisation processes during the Soviet Perestroika (restructuring), which Soviet leader Michail Gorbachev had initiated a few years earlier. Gorbachev attempted to modernise the Soviet Communist system to overcome persistent economic stagnation and accelerate its economic development to successfully compete with the capitalist West. As a result, the grip of Soviet totalitarianism eased, which allowed the emergence of numerous grassroot ‘initiatives from below.’ Despite its limitations, Gorbachov’s politics of Glasnost (openness, relative freedom of press) played a significant role in awakening the masses’ consciousness and further democratising Soviet society. Through press, literature, TV, radio and cinema, Glasnost gave people the opportunity to figure out the truth about the systemic ills and enormous crimes of the Communist system in the past. The Soviet people suddenly learned about the mass repressions and large-scale killings of political opposition, Holodomor (killing by hunger) of millions of innocent citizens in Ukraine, the very high costs of industrialisation, inefficiencies of the planned economy and so forth. Quite swiftly, the ideological myths of the Soviet regime were destroyed, the theoretical dogmas of Marxism-Leninism were debunked, and the futility of the communist experiment in the USSR was revealed. That resulted in the unintended consequences of the reforms. The events quickly began to develop according to their own logic, ignoring the directives of the Soviet leadership. Within just a few years, Perestroika, which was intended to refurbish the Communist system, transformed into an anti-communist, anti-imperialist and democratic revolution, similar to the ‘velvet’ revolutions that simultaneously took place in other Communist countries in Eastern and Southern Europe. In the context of Perestroika, the Revolution on Granite was arguably the climax point of the political development in Ukraine. Since 1988, the sociopolitical activity of people in Ukraine significantly intensified as more and more people lost the fear of repressions and demanded radical changes in the country. Numerous rallies, pickets, strikes, and other acts of civil disobedience took place in all regions of Ukraine. During this time, an essential part of the bottom-up activism in Ukraine was formed by the wave of a cultural and national-democratic revival when numerous civic associations emerged. It mainly was initiated and led by Ukraine’s cultural intelligentsia and former dissidents recently released from prison and exile. A substantial part of Ukraine’s democratic revival was formed by the student movement.
Soviet history
Ukraine's 30th Year of Independence
OP-ED
Oleg Chupryna: Ukraine’s Revolution on Granite
The drone picture shows an aerial view of the Independence Monument in Kyiv on Aug. 18, 2021. The 61-meter monument, featuring a woman dressed in traditional Ukrainian clothes, was installed in 2001 to mark the country’s 10th Independence Day anniversary. It is located in the middle of Independence Square, or Maidan Nezalezhnosti, which was the scene of Ukraine’s three revolutions that safeguarded the country’s freedom and brought Ukraine to the upcoming celebration of the 30th Independence Day on Aug. 24.
