We spoke briefly with the head of Rukh, Viacheslav Chornovil. This brave man had been imprisoned in labour camps until the mid-1980s for speaking out against Communism. He joked now that coup leaders might send him back to the Gulag. I worried that joke might come true.
Marta and I found Lesyia and Stephen. We looked for fast Kiev-bound transport. We found a taxi driver who would make the day-long trip. We started out calmly enough. I held my shortwave radio out the window to capture the best possible reception for BBC news bulletins. The taxi driver wanted updates, so we translated the news for him, which was probably not a good idea. One journalist reported that tanks and troops were headed toward Kiev. The taxi driver seemed to channel all his anxiety through the accelerator pedal. We careened for several hours along a violently potholed “highway” from Zaporozhye back toward Kiev. No one wanted to sit in the front seat with its frighteningly panoramic view of all the things we might hit.
We saw one tank camouflaged on the outskirts of Kiev as we drove in. However, by the time we reached the centre, the city looked completely normal. The scent of freshly baked bread wafted through our taxi as we passed a local bakery. Customers lined up at a busy café nearby.
We had been in touch with Mary, who had stayed in Kiev. We found her and asked how Kravchuk had responded to events in Moscow. She gave us a concise lawyerly update: “Kravchuk hasn’t come out for or against the coup. He’s sitting on the fence. I’ve seen the coup leaders on TV. They look drunk. I think they’re scared.”
All the drama occurred in Moscow. Boris Yeltsin, president of the Russian Federation, denounced the coup. Tanks appeared in the streets. One battalion switched sides and backed Yeltsin. He climbed on a tank to rally his supporters, who braced for an attack from the hard-liners. Nothing like this happened in Kiev. I drifted through the halls of the Writer’s Union, around the corner from Parliament, where Rukh held some of its press conferences. I searched for news but found none. Everyone here waited, just like me.
I left the building and walked down the hill to my apartment on Karl Marx Street. I opened the door to stillness and accumulated dust. A light on the answering machine by the phone flashed. When I played the messages, I heard one from the Canadian embassy that recommended evacuation from Kiev. I erased it.
We still waited for someone to take a decision, for Kravchuk to rebel or for coup leaders to introduce marshal law in Ukraine, but nothing happened. When it was clear that the coup had failed, Kravchuk called a press conference for foreign journalists. He described a visit from the commander of Soviet Ground Forces, General Valentin Varennikov and a group of other Soviet generals who had marched into his office. The general told him to remove a portrait of Gorbachev from the wall, and ordered Kravchuk to support the coup.
“I did everything that I could to prevent tanks from crushing people,” Kravchuk said. He smouldered. I sensed a change in Kravchuk, a new anger at this personal violation by Moscow military men who threatened him. But Rukh leaders appeared furious with Kravchuk because he took so long to denounce the coup. Some reform-minded Communists and military leaders in Ukraine had spoken out against it before Kravchuk. I talked with friends. We heard rumours of a new push for independence, dissected tensions between Rukh and the Communists and wondered what would happen at an emergency session of Parliament that would be held soon.
On August 24th, I awoke to sun that streamed in my front windows and a burble of noise from nearby. I lived alone in an apartment on the top of an elegant six-floor turn-of-the-century building, just around the corner from Khreshchatyk. My balcony backed onto October Revolution Square.
My landlord’s father had planted the palm tree that now soared nearly twelve feet over the bed. He carved extra rooms from space deemed unlivable by Stalin-era inspectors, who enforced strict space allocations; he covertly turned a nook above the staircase landing into a study. He also wrapped a garbage chute pipe that jutted from the wall in plastic, covered it with a polished five-sided mahogany wood box and placed a plant holder on top. A service corridor became his dining room.
The noise surprised me. I never heard street sounds way up here in my private retreat. I lay still and stared up at the palm leaves, wanting to investigate but still comfortable in bed. A few minutes later, I wiped the sleep from my eyes and got up. A moth fluttered past. I had previously located the cupboard where some nested in a pile of my landlord’s old clothes. I cleaned the clothes and thought I had dealt with the moths. The odd one that I continued to see soon exploded into a cloud of sweater-eating menaces. I stuffed every cupboard full of moth balls and invested in expensive pheromone traps. However, they still multiplied and my wardrobe began to disintegrate.
Wide awake now, I chased the moth and caught it, no easy task in a place covered in patterned wallpaper that offered good camouflage. I continued down the corridor past the galley kitchen, through the dining room and out French doors onto the balcony. I peered through leaves on branches that swayed right next to my balcony and caught glimpses of a crowd gathered in October Revolution Square. Usually piano melodies floated skywards as students at the conservatory across the courtyard practised. That morning I heard the sound of megaphones and chants.
I made coffee and toast, washed, changed and went out to investigate. On Khreshchatyk, a car passenger shouted through a megaphone, “Don’t be a sheep, march with us to Parliament.” A sea of blue and yellow Ukrainian flags fluttered over the square. It was happening. Rukh had drafted a declaration of independence for Ukraine. Today it would be put to a vote in Parliament. I felt excited but guarded. I could not believe that Rukh would win.
A group of us monitored the debate from the press gallery in Parliament. During a break, I left Parliament with another journalist to gather comments from people on the streets. The journalist wore a tie; I put on my suit jacket. When we stepped out the door, we saw that the crowd gathered in October Revolution Square had now massed outside Parliament.
“Han’ba! [Shame].” I heard someone shout. More jeers and chants followed. I looked behind; no one stood there. I soon realized these jeers were hurled at us, which came as a shock. People mistook us for Communists who were trying to leave. I knew the crowd would prevent this in order to preserve Parliament’s required quorum for an independence vote. So this is how a Communist in Rukh territory would be — exposed, outnumbered, fearful of what could happen next. Mostly, though, I felt indignant to be mistaken for one.
I saw Sashko, The megaphone man. He shouted, “nashyi [ours].” Those words meant rescue. The jeers died down. People swarmed us for a different reason now. Although they could hear the official proceedings broadcast over speakers outside Parliament, they wanted news of behind-the-scenes manoeuvrings inside. We told them what we knew and learned that they would block all the doors to Parliament until the vote passed. The journalist and I separated. I returned to the press gallery. Parliament soon recessed.
“The Commies are going downstairs to figure out how they should vote,” Lesyia said.
“I can’t imagine them opting for independence, though Kravchuk seems a changed man since the coup,” I remarked. We discussed how hardline Communists in Ukraine might respond.
We parted ways, doubting whether Rukh would win enough support for independence.