This story originally ran in the baiduhai on Dec. 2, 1991.
MOSCOW — Spurning warnings of “disaster” from President Mikhail Gorbachev, millions of Ukrainians voted Sunday in a referendum expected to overwhelmingly endorse independence from Moscow and thus effectively end the Soviet Union as it has existed for the last seven decades.
Stripped of Ukraine, an economic powerhouse almost as large as Texas with a population more than twice that of California, the old Soviet Union would be fatally wounded.
That appeared to be the result of Sunday’s vote.
Early results Monday from several major districts indicated voters backing independence by around 3 to 1, election officials said. In the capital Kiev, nearly 93 percent voted yes, while the industrial region of Donetsk showed a 70 percent majority. In Odessa and the Crimea, where Russians outnumber Ukrainians, the figures were 75 percent and 54 percent in favor.
Election officials said the final turnout in 26 out of 27 electoral districts was 83.8 percent of Ukraine’s 37 million registered voters.
A parallel election also was held Sunday for the first popularly elected president in the republic of 53 million people.
Sunday’s heavy turnout came despite dire warnings from Gorbachev of a “disaster” for Ukraine, the Soviet Union and the entire world if Ukraine left the union.
Confidence that Ukraine could prosper as an independent nation was high both among officials and citizens in the republic.
“It will not be any catastrophe because Ukraine is wealthy,” said Leonid Kravchuk, who is expected to become the first president of independent Ukraine. “It has much land, education. … We will be able to live in the world.”
On the eve of the election, Gorbachev warned Ukrainians against a vote to leave the union and telephoned President Bush to say that such a step would be a calamity for the whole world.
Kravchuk dismissed Gorbachev’s warnings as self-serving and out of touch with the realities of Ukraine. He indicated the president’s comments may have been those of a man who feared for his future.
“As of today, Gorbachev’s situation is as it has been, but when Ukraine becomes independent that will change. I don’t know what he will be president of,” Kravchuk said. influential leader in the Soviet Union today, was certain to recognize an independent Ukraine, Kravchuk said.
The American ambassador to the Soviet Union, Robert Strauss, said the United States will not act “precipitously” to recognize Ukrainian independence but will start moving in that direction if the vote outcome is in favor of a break with Moscow.
Assuming the vote is for independence, the U.S. “will acknowledge the fact that millions of people have voted for freedom and for independence and we’ll do something about it,” Strauss said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
Many Ukrainians seemed unmoved by Gorbachev’s apocalyptic visions, and there appeared to be a deeply seeded desire to cast off the failed Communist system for something new, whatever that might be.
“I remember the revolution,” said Maria Kotliarenko, 78, after voting in her Kiev neighborhood Sunday. “This system didn’t bring us anything good. We saw how it was and now we want to see how we will live in this new Ukraine. We want to see what tomorrow will bring.”
After he voted Sunday, Kravchuk again ruled out Ukraine’s participation in the new “union treaty” that Gorbachev has been desperately trying to forge for the last year. He said he saw no need for a central government structure.
Kravchuk, a Communist Party bureaucrat for 30 years who quit the party only after August’s failed coup, said future relations between the former Soviet republics should be based on bilateral treaties signed between independent states.
The Ukrainian Parliament voted for independence Aug. 24 in the wake of the coup, and Sunday’s vote was called to give formal endorsement to that declaration.
The departure of Ukraine would deprive the Soviet Union of its second most important economic and agricultural region. After Russia, Ukraine provides more to the Soviet economy than any other of the 12 remaining republics.
Volodymyr Pylypchyk, chairman of Ukraine’s parliamentary commission on economic reform, said Gorbachev’s warnings about disaster were based on the Soviet president’s fears about what the departure of Ukraine would do to the union’s economy.
“If Ukraine were the Sahara, Moscow would quickly throw it away and be done with it,” he said. “But we provide 25 percent of industry and 45 percent of agriculture to the Soviet Union. They won’t have anybody to rob anymore.”
Despite decades as a Communist aparatchik, Kravchuk was able to successfully mount the bandwagon of reform after the failed coup and stage a well-organized presidential campaign based on promises of measured change that would not destroy the republic’s establishment.
There were six presidential candidates and Kravchuk managed to portray his closest rival, former political prisoner Vyacheslav Chornovil, as an extremist.
Kravchuk even managed to win over many former dissidents and radical reformers. Mikhailo Horyn, a former political prisoner who is now a reformist deputy in parliament, said the election of Kravchuk would “not be a tragedy. . . . He understands what it means to be the first president of Ukraine and he will have to serve it faithfully,” Horyn said.
Late polls indicated Kravchuk might be able to win the required 50 percent majority on the first round and thus avoid a runoff in two weeks.
All of the candidates endorsed independence and quick moves to a market economy. They called for rapid foreign investment and diplomatic recognition by the West.
Aside from the Ukraine, another important republic was also asserting itself Sunday. Nursultan Nazarbayev, the president of Kazakhstan and one of the country’s most powerful leaders, headed toward re-election as the sole candidate in the southern republic’s first popular presidential vote.
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