By the time the vote occurred in March, western Ukraine and the Chernobyl region had added a question on Ukrainian independence to the ballot. Both those regions voted in favour of independence. The result did not constitute an immediate challenge as the majority voted in favour of the union, but it was something to note.
Another foreign journalist arrived. She came from Oxford to do research for her PhD but set that aside to temporarily report for a British paper. This second Marta in our press corps was from Toronto. Now we had Bill, New York Marta, Toronto Marta and me. We nearly occupied a full row in the parliamentary press gallery.
I watched, fascinated by this game of cat and mouse, as the Ukrainian Parliament pushed for more control over areas previously under Moscow’s authority. Parliament in Kiev created a new position of president of the Republic and explored ways it might be able to control deployment of Ukrainian troops in the Soviet army. I wondered, along with so many others, how Moscow would respond.
Negotiations were under way for a new Union Treaty between Moscow and the republics. It seemed that some of Ukraine’s initiatives might be endorsed. Leonid Kravchuk spoke of sovereignty for Ukraine in nearly every speech but still embraced the Union. I could never tell where his emphasis lay. He was skilled in saying two different things at once, which sometimes left me understanding nothing at all. Then, in early August 1991, President Bush arrived in Kiev.
Summer holidays meant that few journalists remained in Kiev. New York Marta had gone home. Her replacement, Lesyia, had arrived.
“What a disappointment!” Toronto Marta said as we sat together in the press gallery after Bush spoke. Journalists quickly dubbed this Bush’s Chicken Kiev speech. Phrases that I jotted down included “suicidal nationalism” and “the suicidal course of isolation.” Bush wanted Ukraine to stop asserting sovereignty so that Washington could maintain the status quo in relations with Moscow.
I saw Lesyia enter the press gallery. She waved and joined us, discussed the speech, then got up to leave.
“Are you going to Chervona Ruta?” Marta asked Lesyia.
“When is it again?”
“In two weeks,” Marta said. “You guys should come. All the best bands are playing.” I had not heard of Chervona Ruta, so I asked for the details.
“It’s an alternative music festival that started two years ago in western Ukraine. This year the festival will be in Zaporozhye in southern Ukraine, a Russified region. The festival is partly cultural and partly political. The bands are great and very Ukrainian. The idea is to expose people in a Russified region to Ukrainian culture and music and to make them aware of Ukrainian identity. A lot of the musicians sing in Ukrainian, not Russian,” she explained.
“Is this Ukraine’s Woodstock?” I asked.
“Sort of,” said Marta. “Chervona Ruta is the name of a love song written by Volodymyr Ivasiuk in the late 1960s. His song became a hit, but he was hassled by the KGB because the song was very Ukrainian at a time when all things Ukrainian were repressed. In the early 1970s Ivasiuk died. The authorities said he committed suicide by hanging himself from a tree. Everyone thought the KGB killed him.”
“How awful,” I said, sickened by the image. “It’s nice that organizers named the festival in his honour. I’d love to go, if you don’t mind company.”
“Great,” Marta said.
“I might also bring a guest. I’m not sure when he’ll arrive, but it should be some time soon.”
“Do tell!” Marta said.
“There’s not much to say. I only know that he’s another British journalist named Stephen. A friend of mine is meant to host him. Since I have a spare room, he asked if Stephen could stay with me until Stephen finds his own place.”
“The more the merrier,” Marta said. Lesyia said she’d go as well.
Marta and I shared a room in the Zaporozhye hotel. We compared notes on bands we had heard. I loved the ones that wove folk into rock. They created such a unique sound.
“I met Andriy Sereda,” I told Marta. I said how surprised I was to bump into this famous musician, standing barefoot, in a stadium corridor. “He described this festival as the musical rebirth of Ukraine.”
“He’s right,” Marta said.
“He thinks that even if people don’t understand politics that they’ll intuitively realize the Union Treaty is harmful for Ukraine,” I told her.
The treaty was due to be signed soon, but we didn’t really feel like talking about politics. It was just fun to be here listening to music. I sat on my bed. Marta brushed her long, thick hair. A crystal pendant hung from her neck. Pretty and slender, Marta was on her way out.
“Don’t wait up for me!” she said. She laced up her Doc Martens.
“I know, I’m a bedtime wimp,” I told her. Marta, a night owl, would party for hours more. Our body clocks did not match.
A few minutes after she left, I went to join Stephen and Lesyia for a drink downstairs.
As I walked down the corridor, I saw the lady who monitored our hallway (many Soviet hotels had them) planted in a chair behind her desk. Her body spilled over the frame.
“Girl, leave your key with me,” she commanded. I pointed out that I would still be in the hotel, just downstairs, but handed the key over to appease her.
I took the elevator down to the bar. Lesyia and Stephen sat at a table. A tinny version of a popular song played on the sound system. I slid into a spare seat at the table.
Stephen, still reeling from culture shock, peered through his glasses across the bar, observant of details that I no longer noticed.
“Is that a lady of the night?” he asked. Lesyia and I shifted in our seats and saw a tall, slim young woman with the type of blonde hair that came from a bottle and a skirt so short that it might be confused with underwear.
“Could be,” Lesyia said.
“Bill knows someone who wanted to be a hard-currency prostitute,” I told them. “Apparently lots of her friends at university did too.”
“Oh come on,” Lesyia said.
“That’s what she said.”
“Do you want us to leave you alone so you can find out?” Lesyia asked Stephen. We heard a ripple of laughter from Stephen, “Not particularly,” he said. We chatted a while longer. Midnight struck. August 18th slipped into August 19th. I felt ready for bed.
I woke early in the morning. Marta was still asleep. I dressed quietly and left the room. I went down to the restaurant for breakfast. I saw no one that I knew, so I ate quickly, alone. Sombre classical music played on the sound system in the restaurant. It seemed an odd choice for a hotel filled with rock festival guests. I gobbled down two undercooked eggs on untoasted bread, sipped black tea and then returned to the room. I opened the door quietly as Marta usually did not rise until shortly before noon. I tiptoed in, rounded the corner and, to my surprise, found her wide awake and fully dressed.
“There’s been a coup in Moscow,” she said. She seemed to be in shock, as was I.
We rushed out of the room to find friends and more information. No one knew much. A brief recording periodically interrupted classical music. It still streamed dirge-like from all radios. The announcement said that a committee of hardline Communist leaders (the GKChP) now ruled in Moscow. I knew that these hard-liners had opposed the Union Treaty, afraid the general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, Mikhail Gorbachev, would give too much power away to the republics. Gorbachev, who was on holiday in his dacha in Crimea, a Black Sea peninsula just a little farther south than us, was under house arrest. I felt shocked to imagine him there, in a place that should be a relaxing sea-side retreat, but was now a jail.