Post-communist transit of Ukraine (on the example of the evolution of the People's Movement of Ukraine)

Abstract

The article reveals the evolution of the People's Movement of Ukraine from the most influential socio-political organization of the initial stage of independent state formation in Ukraine to a marginal political party. The complex, nonlinear and contradictory trajectory of post-communist transit demonstrated by Ukraine in the post-Soviet space, the presence of clear reversals on the path to democratization of our country necessitate analysis of the genesis of the new national liberation movement and the main factors that led to independence and rejection of pro-communist concept. There are two main stages in the history of the NRU: 1) from its founding in 1989 to the adoption of the Constitution in 1996 - active political activity, great influence on the state-building process; 2) since 1996 - a decline in activity and loss of influence on major political processes. In general, the People's Movement of Ukraine has become a compromise formula for the formation of an organized people's opposition for the CPU. The People’s Movement of Ukraine as a mass anti-communist and anti-imperial subject in the second largest Soviet republic is undoubtedly the main driving force behind the revolutionary events at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s in the former USSR. The foreign policy factor is manifested in the fact that the second largest Ukrainian nation in the USSR, after a long historical period, declared its right to political self-determination through the construction of its own sovereign nation-state, which detonated the Soviet Union.
The main historical result of the NRU’s activities as a mass public association was the proclamation of Ukraine’s state independence, but it failed to become a democratic party in power under the new historical conditions. At the present stage, the People's Movement of Ukraine has become a national-conservative party that has little influence on modern political processes in Ukraine.