Sometimes in a place like the Ukraine, you have to remind yourself
that this is the age of Gorbachev and not Brezhnev or even Stalin.
The other day, they buried the man who ran this Republic
for 17 years until last autumn.
Vladimir Shcherbytsky was ruthless, dogmatic.
He once said the only way to govern was with an iron fist.
But he was loved here
and not just by those close to him, but by hundreds of thousands of people
who believed and still do that the old ways work best.
That's changing, of course, even in the Ukraine.
But the mistake is to think that it's going to happen now
and that this weekend's elections will be a watershed for the Communist Party.
They won't.
What the Party has - power, the Party keeps.
That is Shcherbytsky's legacy.
What can I say?
Everything we have here is his achievement.
His and the whole Party's.
His legacy?
That the Ukrainian people live happily
and in freedom.
There is an opposition here.
It's called Rukh, the Nationalist Movement.
Their way of remembering Shcherbytsky was to demonstrate outside the old KGB
headquarters in Kiev and recall
the millions who died here under Stalin.
For these people, Gorbachev's been no saviour.
This man, for example, claimed two relatives had been murdered by the KGB
in the early days of Gorbachev's perestroika.
On the edge of the crowd, an election candidate running for the new parliament
as a nationalist and as a prisoner of conscience.
I think that the People's Movement
for restructuralisation wins
about 30% of places in seperate
Soviet and different
results
should be expected in different regions of Ukraine.
Thirty percent is a decent start for the nationalists, but it doesn't
reflect the dismay felt by many or the popular cry for change here.
The Ukraine is the breadbasket of the Soviet Union.
Today, though, bread is one of the few staples in abundant supply.
There isn't enough grain to feed cattle.
They often have to ration milk.
Meat is scarce.
Some have shown they will not put up with it.
The miners of the Ukraine, for example.
Since their strikes last year, they've removed their Communist Party bosses.
In the mining capital of Donetsk, a mass demonstration a few weeks ago
was enough to bring the Party leadership down.
But as the Ukrainian
parliament broke up for the last time before this weekend's election,
outgoing MPs, all of them Party members, sounded sublimely confident
about being returned to office.
- And can the Party win this election?
I believe that yes, it can.
Why? Because the platform, which the Communist Party
adopted at the plenum, reflects the interests of all people.
At these elections, communists will be the majority.
Just as we were last time.
The nationalists, they have no program,
no ideas or any constructive suggestions about life here.
At the moment,
the nationalists have nothing at all to offer people.
The Party then is not yet in retreat.
And one reason is that the nationalists at Rukh
have fought this campaign like the novices they are.
Just a few months old, Rukh a hotchpotch of different factions.
There are people who want an independent state now.
Those who make nuclear power stations like Chernobyl their priority.
There are dissidents who demand a Western-style
rule of law and the religious, mainly the Jews and Catholics,
Rukh a marriage of convenience.
And even at their own rallies, they argue among themselves.
The issue here then, unlike the Baltics, is not a nationalist victory,
but what the MPs will do once elected to parliament.
Certainly after these elections, much of the day to day responsibility
for running the country is going to rest with these new local parliaments.
And here, as in many other parts of the country,
the result is likely to be a fairly extraordinary cocktail.
The Communist Party, Nationalists, the Radicals, even the Greens.
That raises the inevitable question
of what sort of leadership they're going to give.
It was Lenin who said all power to the Soviets.
Now Mr Gorbachev's doing the same.
The danger is that these new Soviets will be talking shops and little more.
From the opposition benches, the nationalists will push
for radical reforms, but the Party will have a veto,
and this Party will stand its ground.
- Are you going to be fighting for independence?
I think so, because it is
the decision of the all the Ukrainian people,
not only Ukrainian nations, but every peoples who are living here.
- What about the economy? Are you now going to fight
- for the ownership of land and for private property?
I think the ownership of land is necessary
to make agriculture productive, productive and effective.
- Do you see a battle for power after this election between yourselves
- and the Communist Party?
It is inevitable.
The Party and its apparats,
certainly the KGB, is in no mood to take that kind of talk lying down.
And memories are long here.
In the woods outside Kiev, there's a simple monument
to the victims of Communist Party rule.
Today, people come here to lay flowers and buy custom fresh bread in memory
of those who died during Stalin's purges and the terrible famine of the 1930s.
When they vote this weekend, they will remember that past,
but that will not make them gamble on the future.
There is still fear in a society like this, and fear will probably
keep the party in power even in this age of glasnost and perestroika.