From the airport, Bush’s motorcade proceeded to downtown Kyiv. “Large numbers of people were gathered in the square in front of the terminal with the yellow-and-blue flags of the Ukrainian independence movement,” wrote Jack Matlock in his memoirs. “The motorcade route was lined with thousands of Ukrainians,” read a media pool report. “Many waved, nearly all seemed friendly to Bush; several women held bouquets of home-grown flowers; some people held up babies; and one man carried a large loaf of bread and a bag of salt, in the traditional welcome.” This was nothing like the modest public reception that Bush had received in Moscow, where he was a guest of the increasingly unpopular Gorbachev. Kyiv differed not only in its level of enthusiasm but also in appearance. Gorbachev’s aide Anatolii Cherniaev, who had accompanied his boss to a meeting with Chancellor Helmut Kohl of Germany in Kyiv in early July, recorded his positive impressions of the visit in his diary: “It felt as if we were in some large West European city, more precisely, a German one: an air of the nineteenth century, avenues, greenery, neat, clean, well looked after . . . and generally sated. As compared with Moscow.”
The mood of the demonstrators in August was the same as in July, when Cherniaev had noticed slogans such as “Kohl yes! Gorbachev no!” The crowds were profoundly anti-Gorbachev. The signs held by the demonstrators made their feelings quite clear to anyone who cared to read them. Some of them were specifically addressed to the American guests: “Moscow has 15 colonies”; “The empire of evil is living”; “If being part of an empire is so great, why did America get out of one?”; “Columbus opened America, Bush opens Ukraine.” George Bush responded emotionally to his reception. In his address to the Ukrainian parliament a few hours later, he told his audience, “Every American in that long motorcade—and believe me, it was long—was moved and touched by the warmth of the welcome of Ukraine. We’ll never forget it.” Whether the president and his entourage grasped that the city was welcoming them as allies against Moscow and Gorbachev, not as supporters of Gorbachev’s reforms or his vision of a reformed union, is hard to tell.15
The people welcoming Bush were proponents of Ukrainian independence. They represented the sentiments of Kyiv residents and many millions of Ukrainians outside the city, and they had been organized by activists of a political organization called Rukh, the Ukrainian word for “movement.” Rukh was born in the fall of 1989 as the People’s Movement of Ukraine for Perestroika. It was modeled on the popular fronts created in the Baltic republics and originally enjoyed Gorbachev’s strong support. In this organization, created on the initiative of former dissidents released from imprisonment on his orders and by leaders of the Ukrainian intelligentsia, Gorbachev saw a counterbalance to the conservative party leadership headed by Volodymyr Shcherbytsky. As Kravchuk later recalled, Shcherbytsky hated the word “perestroika.” When, during one of his public meetings with Kyivans, Gorbachev told them that they should apply pressure on the apparatus from one side while he did so from the other, Shcherbytsky turned to his entourage, pointed his finger at his head, implying that all was not well with Gorbachev’s mental health, and asked his advisers, “On whom, then, does he plan to rely for support?”16
Shcherbytsky was right. Rukh’s support for Gorbachev did not last long. If originally the founders of Rukh professed loyalty to Gorbachev’s program of reforms, in October 1990, at the second congress of the organization, they dropped the word “perestroika” from the organization’s name and declared the achievement of Ukrainian independence as their primary goal. By that time Ukraine had already declared its sovereignty, allowing the Ukrainian parliament to override any all-Union law that conflicted with republican-level legislation. But the party apparatus, the security services, the military, and most of Ukraine’s industry were still taking orders from Moscow. Rukh sought to do away with that subordination. Its leaders also protested against the prospect of Ukraine’s participation in the reformed union advocated by Gorbachev. Bush’s visit to Kyiv could either lend support to Rukh or bolster its opponents, depending on the position he took. The word that the Rukh leaders were getting on the subject was anything but positive. Rumor had it that Bush was coming to Kyiv to do Gorbachev’s bidding.
On July 31, as Bush was negotiating with Gorbachev in Moscow, the Rukh leadership organized a press conference in Kyiv dedicated to the forthcoming visit. Those present included Ivan Drach, a talented poet and head of Rukh, and Viacheslav Chornovil, a dissident and longtime prisoner of the Gulag who now chaired the Lviv regional administration—the stronghold of the pro-independence movement in formerly Austrian and Polish western Ukraine. Next to them was the legendary former political prisoner Levko Lukianenko, a Moscow-trained lawyer who was first arrested in 1961 for using Marxist-Leninist arguments to advocate Ukrainian independence and spent more than a quarter century in Soviet labor camps. The former inmates of the Gulag had joined forces with representatives of the national intelligentsia to lead Ukraine first to Soviet-style sovereignty and then to full independence. They wanted Bush to back their effort.
The bald and bespectacled Drach, fifty-five years old, was the first to speak at the Rukh press conference. He praised Bush for the support he had offered the Soviet nationalities while serving in Ronald Regan’s administration, but there the pleasantries ended. The rest of his statement was an attack on Bush’s policy toward the Soviet republics in general and Ukraine in particular. “President Bush seems to have been hypnotized by Gorbachev,” claimed Drach. “The Bush administration still talks of stability in a way that suggests our source of stability is Moscow. And we must remember that as president, Bush has consistently snubbed the democratic movements in the republics. . . . He has specifically refused meetings with Rukh leaders in Washington. He has specifically refused to meet with us here. I am afraid that Bush comes here as a messenger for the center.”
The American president’s refusal to hold a separate meeting with leaders of the opposition was the immediate reason for Rukh’s dissatisfaction. When the Rukh leadership had approached the White House to request such a meeting, it received a rebuke: the leaders of Rukh would be invited to a luncheon for Bush hosted by Leonid Kravchuk and other communist leaders of Ukraine, but there would be no separate meeting. The leaders of Rukh were also annoyed by American statements that did not recognize the distinctive character of Ukraine and its culture. Reacting to a White House statement to the effect that Bush was traveling to Kyiv to find out more about Soviet life and culture, Drach declared that “President Bush has missed the point.” He went on, “If he wants to see Soviet life and culture, he can see it in the Kremlin. In the Kremlin he can witness imperialistic culture and greed. This is Ukraine. We are not a sample of Soviet culture; we are examples of the legacy of Soviet greed, a nation raped by Gorbachev’s center.”17
Bush was under pressure from Gorbachev in Moscow and from the Rukh leaders in Kyiv. His assistants had removed the definite article before “Ukraine” in the speech he was about to deliver before the Ukrainian parliament, but the president was still worried about the reception of his address. On the way from the airport, he stunned Kravchuk by asking him to read his address and tell him whether anything had to be changed. The Ukrainian leader was more than impressed: he could not imagine any of the Soviet leaders from Moscow showing him such consideration. All of them, from Brezhnev to Gorbachev, came to tell Ukraine what to do, not to ask the people what they thought. Bush, the leader of the world’s richest and most powerful country, was actually interested in Kravchuk’s opinion. He also gave the former party apparatchik turned democrat a piece of advice that Kravchuk never forgot: look people right in the eye, and only then will you be able to tell whether they will vote for you or not. Kravchuk read the draft of Bush’s speech in translation and suggested a couple of changes. The parts that would not sit well with his parliamentarians were too essential to the speech to be deleted. One had to wait and see how many deputies would be dissatisfied and how unhappy they might become.18
Kravchuk’s short me
eting with Bush before they headed for parliament reassured him that the guest from Washington was indeed treating Ukraine and its leadership with respect. Bush’s talking points for the meeting with the Ukrainian leader included references to Ukraine’s “economic might and size—roughly equivalent to France and Britain in population.” The American president was supposed to tell his Ukrainian counterpart that “our sole diplomatic relations will continue to be with the center” and that he intended to maintain the closest possible relations with Gorbachev, for whom he had deep respect. That said, Bush was not going to influence the Ukrainian position on the union treaty one way or another. “I understand that you are delaying a final commitment to a Union treaty until you can finish writing your own constitution,” Bush was supposed to tell his host. The reference was to the delaying tactics adopted by the Ukrainian leadership with regard to the union treaty—the writing of a new constitution could take forever.19
Kravchuk and the Ukrainian leadership decided to use Bush’s stopover in Kyiv to push for two things: the opening of a Ukrainian consulate in the United States (a US consulate had just opened in Kyiv) and economic investment of up to $5 billion. The latter goal was supposed to be promoted by an American grant of most-favored-nation trade status to Ukraine. Cooperation in dealing with the effects of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster was another issue. The Ukrainians had little to offer in return, apart from their country’s cooperation in the United Nations—they were clearly ready to act as independent players in the international arena, which they were not. Unlike the opposition, the Ukrainian leaders were not asking for support for independence; nevertheless, they were moving essentially in the same direction.
Ukraine’s leaders wanted the same things that Yeltsin wanted, perhaps even more ardently than he did, but they presented their wishes in a more tactful manner, and Bush, while taking the same line as in Moscow, was much more friendly in his remarks to the Ukrainian leaders. The welcoming Ukrainians on the streets of Kyiv and the Ukrainian voters back home clearly helped him find the right tone with his Ukrainian hosts. “As the Union treaty is worked out,” said Bush to Kravchuk, “I understand it will allow more direct dealings with the republics. In the meantime, we can go forward with economic issues, with nuclear safety.”20
It was close to four o’clock in the afternoon on August 1, following his meeting with the Ukrainian leadership and a luncheon attended by representatives of the opposition, when President Bush rose to address the Ukrainian lawmakers. The members of parliament, who interrupted their debate on the implementation of Ukrainian sovereignty to listen to Bush’s speech, represented a population of 52 million, of whom more than 70 percent were ethnic Ukrainians and roughly 20 percent ethnic Russians. There were also close to half a million Jews living in Ukraine. Roughly half the population spoke Russian, while the other half spoke Ukrainian.
The western territories incorporated into the USSR after World War II—a good part of them had belonged during the interwar period to Poland and, before that, to Austria-Hungary—were a stronghold of Ukrainian nationalism. Their population voted in concord with that of the Baltic republics, which also had been annexed to the Soviet Union in the course of the war. The east voted not unlike the neighboring oblasts of the Russian Federation—it all depended on whether people lived in cities or villages. Big cities such as Kharkiv became strongholds of the democratic opposition, comparable in that regard to Moscow and Leningrad. The countryside was still under the spell of communist propaganda. In the Ukrainian parliament, the communists maintained a solid majority, 239 seats out of 450. The “national democrats,” a category that included nationalists and liberals, elected by voters in the west and in the big cities of the east, including Kyiv, could count on 125 votes.21
The main theme of Bush’s speech, which he delivered with a huge statue of Lenin behind his back, was the idea of freedom and the responsibility that comes with it. Bush introduced his theme with an observation on the etymology of the name “Ukraine.” Carefully avoiding the use of the definite article, he said, “Centuries ago, your forebears named this country Ukraine, or ‘frontier,’ because your steppes link Europe and Asia. But Ukrainians have become frontiersmen of another sort. Today you explore the frontiers and contours of liberty.” Contrary to the worst expectations of the Rukh leaders, Bush spoke of Ukraine—its people, history, and geography—as separate from Russia. It was a far cry from Nixon’s speech in 1972, when at a dinner hosted for him by Ukrainian officials, Nixon had referred to “Soviet soil,” called Kyiv the “mother of all Russian cities,” and freely used the definite article before the country’s name.22
What Bush said next was less to the liking of the Ukrainian opposition. The president’s speech, while carefully crafted so as not to offend Ukrainian sensibilities, confirmed the worst predictions of Drach and his colleagues about the political import of Bush’s visit to Kyiv. “Some people have urged the United States to choose between supporting President Gorbachev and supporting independence-minded leaders throughout the U.S.S.R.,” stated the president. “I consider this a false choice. In fairness, President Gorbachev has achieved astonishing things, and his policies of glasnost, perestroika, and democratization point toward the goals of freedom, democracy, and economic liberty.” The president then explained his understanding of “freedom,” which was disheartening to Rukh: “Freedom is not the same as independence. Americans will not support those who seek independence in order to replace a far-off tyranny with a local despotism. They will not aid those who promote a suicidal nationalism based upon ethnic hatred.” There was no doubt remaining: the United States would not support Ukraine’s drive for independence—its proponents were on their own.23
Bush’s speech reflected current thinking in the White House. Nicholas Burns later recalled:
I do not think anyone thought on the American side in summer 1991 of any realistic possibility that the Soviet Union would disintegrate. . . . There was relative trust between Gorbachev and Bush, we were working together on most issues fairly well, and we were very anxious to visit Kyiv to demonstrate our interest in the republics. . . . We wanted to a see a gradual weakening of the Soviet structure and gradual change and reform because we feared that if we put our direct support behind nationalist movements, it could turn to violence, which could compromise control over nuclear weapons in some republics, and we felt that stable decline was in our interest.24
The speech produced a mixed reaction in the Ukrainian parliament. The communist majority welcomed Bush’s cautious approach; the pro-democratic opposition rejected it, as did their backers in the United States. Bush tried to placate Ukrainian Americans when he stated in his speech to the Ukrainian parliament, “If you saw me waving like mad from my limousine, it was in the thought that maybe some of those people along the line were people from Philadelphia or Pittsburgh or Detroit, where so many Ukrainian-Americans live, where so many Ukrainian-Americans are with me in the remarks I’ve made here today.” He thought that the speech, which was about to be reprinted in Ukrainian newspapers in the United States, would make his voters happy. That was a miscalculation, to say the least.25
The Ukrainian American community had been mobilized by recent developments in Ukraine and did not support Gorbachev or the Ukrainian communist leadership. They supported Rukh, and if Rukh was unhappy, so were Ukrainian Americans. Few were aware of Gorbachev’s attempts to stop Bush from visiting Kyiv and the efforts that Bush and his team had applied to make the visit possible. On Sunday, August 4, three days after Bush’s visit to Kyiv, a group of Ukrainian protesters marched to the White House with such slogans as “I am a Ukrainian American. I do not support George Bush” and “Mr. Bush: Ukrainian independence equals freedom for all minorities.” Following an hour-long demonstration, the leaders submitted their grievances to the White House. Their letter ended with a direct threat to defeat Bush at the next election: “Mr. President, we have come to the sad conclusion that in this visit to Kiev, Ukraine, you have done Mr. Gorbach
ev’s bidding well. However, Ukraine will become independent, in spite of the Gorbachev-Bush coalition, as sure as the sun rises. And we, your fellow Americans who you claimed were with you on your performance in Kiev, were not and are not with you. We will take the lesson we have learned to the election polls in 1992.”26
Negative reaction to Bush’s speech would not be limited to the Ukrainian American community. The most damaging criticism came in an article by William Safire, a New York Times columnist and former speechwriter for Richard Nixon, who called Bush’s “dismaying ‘Chicken Kiev’ speech” one of the administration’s greatest blunders. According to Safire, Bush had “lectured the Ukrainians against self-determination, foolishly placing Washington on the side of Moscow centralism and against the tide of history.” Safire’s derisory phrase, “‘Chicken Kiev’ speech,” caught the imagination of the American public as a metaphor for indecisiveness in Bush’s foreign policy. In a book of memoirs written jointly with President Bush, Scowcroft claimed that the president’s reference to local despotism was directed not toward Ukraine but toward Moldova (Moldavia) and other Soviet republics. Jack Matlock, who had probably invested the greatest effort in the visit, discerned ill will on Safire’s part, but also possible atonement. It was Safire, noted Matlock, who had drafted President Nixon’s speech of 1972 that referred to Kyiv as the “mother of all Russian cities.”27
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