vasylovich pavlychko, who was actually one of the authors of this final draft of the act, was afraid that if the independence of the republic of ukraine and the communist majority of the verkhovna rada of ukraine were written in the act, he would notice that there was no ukrainian ssr, that was the situation, that is, the independence of the republic of ukraine , and what about the ukrainian ssr? yes, well, he decided that they just wouldn't notice, they didn't. and it was wise on his part, or on the contrary, it was such an overinsurance? yes, because very often we are with. use that that we inherited, i am not saying that all the experience and all that is there, starting from the state border and certain things, that everything is bad, yes, that is, certain things went to the plus side, that is , ukraine moved due to inertia, but very often we this is why they lost, probably, well, i think that on that day it all hung in the balance, it seems to us that it was an absolutely predictable thing, something the supreme council met and proclaimed independence, but it could not have been otherwise, it could have happened 100 thousand times , it was zushi. really quite serious, and groups

people, who had opposition to her decision even in the people's council itself, among ukrainian national democrats, because many believed, and among them were volodymyr hrynyov, the then deputy speaker of the parliament from the democratic opposition, and larisa skoryk, that without the ban of the communist party there could be no independence of ukraine, and the communists, for their part, believed that independence... should guarantee the survival of the communist party, because on this very day boris yeltsin in moscow banned the communist party of the soviet union on the territory of russia federation, and in fact between these two desires it is necessary to ban the cpsu, and this was the main idea, or on the contrary to do everything possible so that ukraine becomes independent, but with... communist rule between these two

desires had to be passed at this very moment and the fact that ukraine did not begin to be called a republic is the result of this fear that we will not be able to declare independence in any way, in any way to vote for it, and i remember that there were such fears until the last moment, so i think that in the action about independence... it will be reflected, in general, when levko lukenka wrote this first draft, which we saw this morning, there was a ukrainian people's republic in general, he wanted, and this, by the way, i think was right, to restore the ukrainian people's republic, so that we don't just say there , that ukraine is independent, we will inherit this ukrainian ssr, no, yes, uh, we are simply restoring the opr, yes, we say, the justice of a century ago, relatively speaking, as latvia, lithuania and estonia restored theirs. and

states under a constitution that has ceased to exist to act in 1940, but again, we did not have a majority, unlike the baltic countries, but now there is a majority, and it might be worth correcting certain things, that is , when we talk about the self-reliance of the ukrainian people's republic, then it is possible to develop it is much easier to deal with certain historical and legal dilemmas when we say, in particular, how should we be with... good ukrainian communists, and they were actually representatives of the soviet occupation regime, that is, if we believe that how the administration, yes, yes, well, like the posypaks, conditionally speaking, yes, that is, if the ukrainian people's republic was the foundation from which the current ukrainian independence grew, well, accordingly, this is the period of the 20s and 30s, so here we have to perceive the builders of the ukrainian state at that time, of course i say this in public. because latvia, lithuania and

estonia restored their independence in those state borders which they were internationally recognized before 1940. moreover, the russian federation has appropriated the region of latvia. of the russian federation, the former district of abrene and region of estonia. the current ivangorod is a part of the russian federation, together with the district is an internationally recognized territory of estonia. by the way, that is why, when on august 27, 1991 , the press secretary of the president of the russian federation made a statement about the possibility of territorial claims to the former soviet republics that have borders with the soviet union, he specifically emphasized. that this excludes any

problems with latvia, lithuania and estonia, why? because they knew for sure that it was latvia and estonia that could make claims against them, and not the other way around that they are. foreign territory in this situation, and that this can be proven internationally to any arbitration, and in this situation , latvia, lithuania and estonia could restore independence without fearing, say, the inviolability of their borders, moreover, they could indicate to the russian leadership, well, you recognized the restoration of our independence, but what about the pitalovsky district, well, here, but we have a completely different situation, because the borders of the ukrainian people's republic are as they were recognized during agreements between germany onr and by soviet russia in brest. these are not the borders of the ukrainian ssr, these are not the borders of a modern country. and a huge part of the internationally recognized territory of ukraine is not included in these

borders, so we have no other way out. at least in the current situation, as you can see, the tension from the ukrainian people 's republic to... the ukrainian ssr and from the ukrainian ssr to ukraine, simply because the ukrainian ssr, unlike the dpr, was a universally recognized subject of international law, simply by virtue of its membership organizations of the united nations. and in the organization of the united nations, of course, it was in those borders, ugh, which it exists, it declared its independence on august 24, 1991, that is, as far as i understand, part of the former chernihiv voivodeship, which the russians now call the kursk governorate, so... we cannot and we will not , because that would undermine the legal status of our recognized borders, as far as i understand, yes, well, we can talk about the fact that there are ethnic ukrainians there, but speaking of such an acute issue, yes, because people they discuss, ask questions,

what should we do with kurshchyna, well, well , well, kurshchyna is the territory where ukrainian troops are stationed, which are repelling russian attacks, yes. ukrainian lands, but this is an internationally recognized territory of the russian federation, we cannot do anything there, we can hold this territory until the situation stabilizes, or until the moment if the russians succeed in knocking out the ukrainian troops there, everything in general in 1991 was absolutely obvious to everyone , that the borders between allied republics, by the way, the borders between the autonomous republics that were part of the union republics are conditional borders, uh, the only possibility to survive without war, to recognize these borders as established, and by the way, practically all former soviet republics were ready to go for it , perhaps due to the difference in the conflict between armenia and azerbaijan regarding nagorno-karabakh. this was such a specific episode that began

in soviet times, when the leadership of the nagorno-karabakh autonomous region appealed to the supreme soviet of the ussr with a demand to transfer ngos from azerbaijan to armenia, and it was so... an episode, which means that there was a real conflict between armenia and azerbaijan. everything else, in principle, was based on the fact that we recognize established borders. but there was only one union republic that would not agree with this version of the development of events. it was russia, not ukraine. transnistria, huh. abkhazia, south ossetia, it was still 1990-1991. then. an attempt to separate crimea in 1990-93 after the election of yury myshko as the president of crimea, when in fact the head the crimean government with ministers, and the head of the administration of the president of the arc, all of them were russian citizens, specially

dispatched from moscow, exclusively with one goal, with the goal, as we understand, to do everything possible so that... crimea became russian, well, it came before 2014 and before the war in the east of ukraine, that is, the whole problem is not in us, it is in russia. from the point of view of russia, it would be very beneficial to recognize the inviolability of all these borders, because russia itself has internal problems. the question arises as to how logical are the borders of, say, the republic tatarstan. 2/3 of the tatar population of the russian federation live outside the kordo. republic of tatarstan, therefore the national contests of the tatar people, if they were to begin, would, of course, call into question the stability of the borders of many subjects of the russian federation. buryats, who live in three subjects of the federation at the same time disconnected from each other. kabardino-balkars and

karachay-circassians, each of these peoples is a relative of the other in another republic, but for some unknown reason they live in the united republics, where they are not. related peoples, i can cite a huge number of such examples in russia, but russians, instead of somehow deciding what the status quo is, it must be nurtured, federalism, democracy, and relations must be developed there. with the former soviet republics followed the path of expansion, what we see is a confirmation of this course? no, they probably couldn't have worked differently, because that's how it is embedded in them, yes, that is, the essence of their existence is the deployment of expansion, so in order to try to such a way to withstand or observe the so-called imperial internal stability, but if we have already talked about the year 1991, well, paradoxically , i have this impression of time. that this is an incomplete gkchp, which tried to seize

and hold power, denounced gorbachev in the crimea, in foros, at the dacha under arrest and so on and so on, that they just helped everyone, that is , this weak attempt, it led to the fact that that we did not get a renewed soviet union, yes, that is, the communists got a certain, how to say, wolfish the ticket in the eyes of society ceased to perceive them, and a certain initiative of a political plan appeared among the local communists, who were no longer ready to submit themselves, the same kravchuk, yes, that is, he did not go with the cowherd as a communist, he already went with the cowherd, as a ukrainian patriot, yes, a representative of the titular nation, which is engaged in state-building, that is, the communists, well , de facto they have become morally untouchable, well, the question is... that we do not even fully understand what actually happened 24 august 19-23, 1991

in moscow. officially, it seems that on august 24 or 25 , the new union treaty was to be signed, but the question arises, who would sign it? not all the union republics were going to sign it, at least in ukraine no one was ready to sign some kind of union treaty there, that is, there was a large number of soviet... which was not going to join it, these were latvia, lithuania, estonia, their independence at this moment was not recognized by the soviet union, it happened only after: georgia, yes, armenia, azerbaijan, because there were no the specified parameters are related to the karabakh conflict, and both republics were not satisfied with the actions of the union center, the republic of moldova, ukraine, that's how many, eight, yes, and who left? all then russia, the countries of central asia, ugh, and plus armenia, no,

armenia was not going to sign, because i say again, it had a problem with karabakh, if it had signed an alliance treaty, this problem would have been recognized by it as non-existent, they did not sign, plus belarus, the countries of central asia, russia and belarus, and arises the question is what they wanted to break then, because this agreement was in any case... conditional, there was one more problem, which, well, i had such a problem, simply put, that is, if they had already bothered to arrest, put in custody gorbachev, why didn't they bother to put yeltsin himself in custody and not only yeltsin, that is, the putsch implies some kind of system, here it was, it was not done, so they sent general varennikov, it seems, to kyiv and... then sent other emissaries , cells of the state security committee tried to work on the ground, but

simultaneous arrests were not made, that is , why didn’t they go for it, why didn’t they keep it all, is it the declassification of the kgb at that time, or different ideas about what should happen next, well, here i think, in the committee itself of state security, but there were different factions, firstly, secondly, it is not very clear how they... were then obeyed by the vertical of power, to what extent they could count on such concentrated efforts of power structures and the power as such in the localities, they were afraid of an open confrontation with the leadership of the russian federation from one for a simple reason: boris yeltsin was the universally elected president of russia, and this was their big mistake in general, that they allowed the elections. gennady yanaev was not only not the universally elected president of the soviets. union, he was not the president of the soviet union at all. this was a person about whom the majority of the population of the soviet union

learned on august 19, 1991. i well remember the election of gennady yanaev as the vice president of the soviet union. i was then at the congress of people's deputies of the soviet union. and then i asked mykhailo gorbachev ugh. why did he even propose this candidacy? none of us from the people who covered this congress of deputies, who worked with politicians, could understand this. it. there was no one, this person was known exclusively for his tendency to alcoholism, but everyone says that boris yelson was prone to alcoholism, but boris yelson was really a person who could uh... quite a lot of alcohol, but at the same time, borys yeltsin's interest in life was not vodka and power, but the interest of gennady yanayev life was vodka, not power, it was, this, these are different things, agree, when vodka is a hobby for you, well, for many people in not only russia, vodka can be a hobby, but when vodka is a meaning for which you

achieve any success, you can hardly manage anything effectively, and everyone understood this very well, that it is nobody and nothing. and so this person might have feared that if he ordered the arrest of the president-elect of russia, it might lead to greater excesses than it would seem, and might cause quite a negative reaction. leaders of other republics, who were also presidents, who were ready to somehow cooperate with the gkchp, but in conditions where they were sure of their own inviolability, because where was there really an attempt to establish control over the situation. it was in the baltic countries that there were actually hostilities and in tallinn and in reza and in vilnius there were already special forces units there, they stormed the hotel where the latvian government was, they did it there because they believed that it was foreign, pskov itself division, so that these are foreign people, they were the leaders of popular fronts, but this one nomenclature, yeltsin was a representative of this

nomenclature, nazarbayev or karimov or niyazov could ask. well, today you arrested him, and tomorrow you will arrest us, well, listen, we have more control over kazakhstan or turkmenistan than you do, and it could be us at one point, another point - the role of mikhail gorbachev, here we are talking about the arrest mikhail gorbachev, in the summer of 1991 i met with the first president of the self-proclaimed transnistrian moldavian republic igor smirnov in one of hotels of the central committee of the cpsu in moscow. before and after the meeting held in the verkhovna rada of the ussr by its then head anatoly lukyanov. at this meeting were the leaders of transnistria, abkhazia, south ossetia, gagauzia, and i think there were certain territories there that were considered such territories, let's say, with the possibility

of using them as a union center, i remember that there were attempts at that time create an interfron. in the baltic countries, in estonia, in latvia, lithuania, that is, there was and was such a group of people, i will not be responsible for the full composition, because because i simply don't know him, but i know for sure that the leaders of transnistria, abkhazia, south ossetia, and gauzia were there, because i know it from igor smirnov and from the first president of the self-proclaimed republic of abkhazia vladislav ar, because they both told me about this meeting, but he told me about it in more detail. ardzimam simply informed me that he was at this meeting, not far after we met with them in moscow. smirnov told me that lukyanov demanded of them that they were unprepared at the end of the summer, because at the end of the summer a normal constitutional order will be established in the russian federation in the soviet union, in general, that there will be no such union treaty that strengthens the position of the nationalists, and that in

principle, at the end of the summer , stability will be restored, and they should be avant-garde stability. or the leadership of the so -called pmr, it supported the gkchchp, please, a few hours after the beginning of the meeting, but the president of the soviet union, mikhail gorbachev, came to this meeting for a few minutes, he was there, he did not say anything concrete in principle, as was typical for him, but he demonstrated by his presence that he knows what anatoly lukyanovich is doing, that the meeting with president rosyansky itself. with heads of entities whose very existence contradicted the constitution of the ussr, well, in the case of transnistria, for sure, it was just the teraspil district with several other districts of moldova, it says a lot, and that's why after that i always had questions that this in principle, there was to what extent the entire leadership of the soviet union

, headed by mikhail gorbachev, was ready to sign any union treaty. with the leaders of the allied republics, that is, how isolated or self-removed gorbachev was at this point, to see how far his associates could restore this pseudo-stability for the last time, just so that we could close this extremely fundamentally fundamental moment, yes, but one of many, so when we we talk about the role of ukrainian elites, so we understand that apart from the street, apart from ukrainians on the streets, apart from of our population and in general well... the desire to get one or another sovereign status, there were also ukrainian communists, there was, for example, the ukrainian and soviet kgbist, general marchuk. the deceased, yes , he did not head the kgb, the kgb was headed by general galushka, no, he headed then, it seems, the fifth department, no longer, he was the deputy head of the kgb in the ssr, it seems that he no longer headed

the fifth, if i don't i am mistaken, there was kravchuk and so on, that is, there was not and it was difficult in the end, that is, there were a number of figures of the communist system, yes, but who in principle, as far as we understand, they wanted to create a certain model, which model they wanted to create, now named a few names. each of these people had different ideas about what could happen next, i can say this absolutely clearly, because i discussed this model with each of them, that is, the concept of kravchuk, marchuk or ivashko, that is, they did not coincide, the concept of i marchuk in general brought out here in parentheses, because he began to actively participate in these events already after the declaration of independence, at the time of the declaration of independence, without a doubt the head of the committee was generalushko, and only with his departure did real possibilities begin. for real participation in the political life of such people, general marchuk, and i would like to remind you that even after the declaration of independence , there was an attempt by leonid kravchuk to send

a civilian politician to the new security service of ukraine, he proposed a senior holder for this position, not morchuk at the beginning , simply the verkhovna rada of ukraine did not agree with this candidacy, so there were also disturbances there, but if we talk about these main people in... ukraine, the head of the verkhovna rada of the council of ukraine, leonid kravchuk, the second secretary of the cskom of the party of ukraine after the resignation of ivazhko, and the chairman of the verkhovna rada of ukraine and stanislav gurenko, the first skakom of the party of ukraine after the resignation of ivazhko. so, these were three different approaches, absolutely polar. so, ivazhko's approach was gorbachev's approach. and vashko owed everything to gorbachev. he is the stake of the party of ukraine after the resignation of volodymyr shcherbytsky, it is simply impossible to imagine the weight of these people... shcherbytsky was a person who applied for the position of general secretary of the central committee of the cpsu, one of the main associates of leonid brezhnyi, and he was hardly a person who was not known even in

the ukrainian party operation, his main position in the ukrainian party operation was the secretary of the kharkiv regional committee of the party, one of the secretaries, then he was sent to work in afghanistan, a few months before his appointment as a leader of the soviet country, gorbachev also sent the first secretaries for several months. but this, too, was absolutely a position not out of proportion to his weight, and it was difficult to simply be an obedient executor of gorbachev's will, gorbachev needed him for one reason, reasons, gorbachev understood that when creating this model of the alliance agreement, he cannot rely on russia, it is generally, imagine, uh, actually the head of russia, but you cannot rely on russia, because in russia there is another leader, this is a typical dual power, the tsar and... putin and beslan, well, the ukrainians are going to kursk and putin is going to beslan and the caucasus, well, roughly so, and

he decided that the main support of moscow would be soviet ukraine, and this soviet ukraine should be led by a loyal obedient man, and it was difficult to fail this mission completely, because he could not work with the ukrainian party apparatus, the ukrainian party officials, who made up the majority in the parliament, they considered him... an absolute upstart, ugh, that is why he happily agreed to be elected deputy general secretary of the central committee of the cpsu a few months after his elected chairman of the verkhovna rada of ukraine. for the ukrainian communists, it was a fiasco, they were in awe, but also difficult, i talked with him, after his election with the deputy general secretary of the central committee of the cpsu, i talked publicly, it was interview, which was printed, and he spoke frankly about the leadership of the communist party of ukraine. as for people who did not live up to his expectations at all, he did not hide at all that his main desire was to leave ukraine, that is, this mutual antipathy

was absolutely obvious, which means that he was hardly a representative of the moscow, if you will, party school, which saw ukraine simply as a support for moscow, for gorbachev's moscow, but not moscow, he was not the only one like that, another such person was the last leader of the administration of the president of the soviet union hryhoriy irivanko, former first secretary of the kyiv party. so, it was one such group of people, the gorbachevs, who wanted ukraine to occupy a prominent place in the renewed union. next was stanislav gurenko. stanislav gurenko was also not going to fight for the independence of ukraine. his idea was completely different. he was going to head the cpsu. he was not going to be the executor of mikhail gorbachev's will. he believed that he would be able to take revenge, which volodymyr shcherbytsky did not take, that he would be able to stop all these pseudo-reforms, and he believed in principle that

if it succeeds... gorbachev, the next candidate for the post of general secretary of the central committee of the cpsu. it's him. this was obvious at the last congress of the cpsu. gurenko was the favorite of this party. who was afraid of gorbachev, but hated him, and vazko was also despised as the deputy general secretary of the central committee of the cpsu. all the people who were in gorbachev's orbit, from yehor ligachev, who was the head of the conservatives, to oleksandr yakovlev, who was the head of the liberals, were already there for these people. not to perceive if imagined to myself that the putsch would have come out, huh, i am sure that at the next extraordinary congress of the cpsu, stanislav gurenko would have been elected general secretary of the central committee of the party, and ukraine would have become a real instrument of the collapse of reforms, because there was practically no rebuilding in ukraine , it began only after the election and was difficult and at a very slow pace, so it was a different concept, therefore gurenko with

incredible enthusiasm... accepted the putsch, supported it fully, together with varennikov came to kravchuk, and after the putsch he continued to fight, literally , i i was at his press conference, on the 25th, i think, or on the 24th of august, when they were already burning the documents, and he said that the communist party of ukraine will still remain the main, driving force in our country. and when i started laughing, everyone on the chair, he started shouting to me: "vitaly, stop this laughter, let's see which of us will laugh last." i tell him: "no, stanislav, i will have the last laugh." not you, just the age difference, what are you making up? ot. well, i mean i was sure he had crashed, but he was a step away authorities in the soviet union. just at one time , iryna kalynets, a well-known iconic ukrainian

dissident, yes, a wife. symbolically ukrainian, the ukrainian poet ihor kalynets, she once told me that, to our great regret, we , the communists, then gave away the tribune, not the power, that is, the communists went into the shadows and into the shadow power, when we talk about the apparatuses, into business, in banks and so on, well , like gorenka, he became a big businessman, by the way, what did he do then, he had some financial assets, then he became the chairman of the committee on the economy of the verkhovna rada, he didn't go anywhere, he was just... not in this weight anymore, but he had a business, he was quite a serious player at his level, not at this, i say again, this history cut him short because he wanted more, for him ukraine, like for ivazhko, was not something self-sufficient, those people did not lose power in ukraine, they lost the country in which they wanted to rule. well, now the third position is kravchuk. kravchuk led the sovereign communists, who were few, people,

which were ready for ukrainian independence under their own authority, for whom ukraine was an end in itself, and by the way, again, i learned about it in 1900 89 or 90, or when kravchuk was arguing with the movement, i went to see him at the central committee of the communist party of ukraine , secretary of the central committee of the communist party of ukraine for ideology, and already a member of the politburo of the central committee of the cpsu, i think, the central committee of the communist party of ukraine, and i asked him in this interview how he feels about the independent communist party of lithuania and the position of algert sabrazauskas, its leader, who withdrew the communist party of lithuania from the cpsu. and leonid makarovich u in his characteristic manner asked why, for whom i ask this question, what audience will read it. i told him that it was exclusively for audiences of foreign journalists. and they are simply interested in his position, i wouldn't be upset if he still reformulated there according to the old zeki rules of some kind, for what

purpose to be interested? that's exactly how the audience will see it, i told him to a foreigner, well, it was true, i was doing an interview for a foreign correspondent audience, it was like that in the first months of the interfax agency, which then worked exclusively for a foreign audience, well, how could they not see his materials in the soviet union itself, it seems to me that this interview was not even published in any other language than english, and here too leonid kravchuk tells me: i believe that the position of algert sabrazavsky is the only possible position in the situation in which the lithuanian communists found themselves and fully share this position. i look at him. yes. well, he knew that i, so i already worked in the youth of ukraine, i was a supporter of the movement and so on. and he, i tell him: i think we will work.