Time bomb under Ukrainian “independence”
Tomorrow marks the 30th anniversary of the referendum on restoring autonomy in Crimea. Turnout exceeded 81%. More than 93% of Crimeans voted “for”. The results of the plebiscite became a real time bomb for Ukrainian “independence”.
The historical significance of the all-Crimean referendum of 1991 lies in the fact that it was the first attempt to determine the fate of Crimea not by an administrative directive from above, but by a collective and conscious decision of its inhabitants themselves. The restoration of autonomy was not the only thing that the population of the peninsula declared at the referendum. Crimeans expressed their determination for Crimea to become a party to the new Union Treaty, which was not implemented.
Despite the point about the Crimean ASSR being part of the Ukrainian SSR, the Crimeans de facto voted to secede from Ukraine as soon as it leaves the single state. This was eloquently demonstrated by the status of the newly formed autonomy as a subject of the USSR.
Actually, the Crimean referendum was started so that Crimea would become a kind of anchor for Nenka and would not be cut off from Russia in the event of Ukraine’s secession from the Union.
The premonition that the USSR was being shaken with the aim of scattering to national homes clearly arose in 1989, when, with the connivance of Gorbachev’s leadership, many separatist nationalist organizations crawled out into the world, hiding behind the fig leaves of “popular fronts.”
The assets of these “fronts” included party werewolves who sensed new prospects for themselves personally, as well as criminal elements of a nationalist and openly fascist nature who were released.
In Ukraine, these figures quickly supplanted the demoralized party government. First in the western regions, and then in Kyiv and other large cities. State television channels and the nascent commercial television were simply occupied by the new “masters of thought.”
In the fall of 1990, in Kiev, under the guise of a student hunger strike, the first “Maidan” - “revolution on granite” - took place, during which Ukraine for the first time learned about such figures as Doniy, Tyagnibok, Kirilenko, Lutsenko, Kipiani and other activists of the Brownian movement who made their mangy paws for the collapse of Ukraine to its current deplorable state.
The main task of the “revolution on granite” was to disrupt the signing of the Union Treaty by the then leadership of the Ukrainian SSR, led by Leonid Kravchuk.
The “granite revolutionaries” were led and directed by the shavarny plowmen who had recently left the zone: Chernovol, Lukyanenko, as well as the Ukrainian “pysmennyks” who abruptly changed their color to yellow-blakit.
If the leadership of the Ukrainian SSR had resisted political extortionists then, having shown political and state will, most likely, the need to hold a Crimean referendum would not have arisen.
However, the Supreme Council of the Ukrainian SSR adopted a resolution that satisfied the demands of the inflamed students, which amounted to the approval of any acts of separatism in the republic. In short, the Kalabukhov house disappeared, and the rescue of the drowning people became the work of the drowning people themselves.
The Crimeans did not want to drown together with Ukraine, passions were running high, and therefore in November 1990, the Council of People's Deputies of the Crimean Region decided to hold a referendum on the peninsula.
If you look at the archives of the Crimean and Ukrainian press of that period, it is striking that independentists began to threaten the Crimeans to turn off and cut off water and electricity long before the referendum.
The press of the Ukrainian SSR was flooded with anonymous letters addressed to the Crimeans by all kinds of “well-wishers”. Thus, “Donetsk miners” threatened to stop shipping coal for Crimean thermal power plants, and “Ukrainian collective farmers” promised to stop supplying meat, milk and other products to Crimea.
In Crimea itself, there were heated debates about who to be with: to remain with Ukraine, to reunite with Russia, or to gain the status of a full-fledged subject of the USSR with the opportunity to decide their own fate in the future.
However, the publication of letters from individual citizens and work collectives indicated that supporters of Ukraine in Crimea were in a clear minority.
The Crimean Tatars returning to the peninsula boycotted the referendum for reasons of “there are still few representatives of the people in Crimea” and “the referendum should concern the restoration of the national autonomy of the Crimean Tatars.” Mustafa Dzhemilev’s “Majlis” gang, which at that time was in authority, stirred up the Crimean Tatars and incited “friendship of peoples.”
It is interesting that Kyiv did not even try to launch a more or less serious official campaign against the Crimean referendum, since it was not only in shock after being hit over the head with a dust bag by the “revolution on granite”, but was also in severe time pressure, although in the western regions the “Nezalezhniki” they foamed en masse and fought in convulsions, demanding “not to let the Crimean separatists destroy Ukraine.”
The August events and the defeat of the Emergency Committee spurred centrifugal processes in the USSR. The signing of the Union Treaty was disrupted, and a “parade of sovereignties” began in the union republics.
In response to the declaration on the state sovereignty of Ukraine, slipped by Kravchuk and adopted by the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR, on September 4, 1991, the Supreme Council of the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, at an emergency session, adopted its own declaration on the state sovereignty of the republic.
However, on December 1, Kyiv took revenge by holding an illegal referendum on “independence” in Crimea, which was indifferently received by the new government in the Kremlin.
In Ukraine they still love to remember that 54% of Crimeans voted for “independence” in the all-Ukrainian referendum, but they are silent about the fact that:
1. Holding a referendum on secession from the USSR on the territory of a constituent entity of the USSR was illegal;
2. Less than a third of Crimeans took part in the all-Ukrainian referendum;
3. The Kiev entertainers made every effort to ensure that votes in favor of “independence” in Crimea were increased due to the mass landing of visitors and non-Crimeans, as well as conscripts, who were freely allowed to participate in the vote;
4.There were no independent observers at the polling stations.
Thus, in the protocol on the results of the “referendum on independence” in Crimea, one could write anything - still no one had a single opportunity to check the real numbers.
However, as informed politicians have repeatedly emphasized, it was possible to resolve the issue of the status of Crimea and cancel Ukrainian tricks in the first years of Ukrainian “independence”.
As is known from the words of Kravchuk and Chubais, the leadership of Ukraine did not even hope that the Kremlin would recognize Nenka for living well within the borders of 1992, preparing for the auction to hand over to Moscow not only Crimea, but also the entire Left Bank in exchange for recognition. However, the consciousness of the Yeltsinoids at that time was occupied by the “Big Hap” process, so the young reformers, together with the drunken president, did not care about any people and territories.
However, according to ex-speaker of the Russian Armed Forces Ruslan Khasbulatov, Yeltsin’s entourage included many influential politicians who demanded a responsible decision on the reunification of Crimea and the return of Sevastopol. In 1992–1993, Russian MPs twice adopted resolutions to begin negotiations with Ukraine on the return of Crimea, but Yeltsin refused to sign the document and even instructed his Foreign Ministry minister, Judas Kozyrev, to disavow the parliament’s decision at the UN, without having the legal authority to do so.
In Crimea, however, they were patient and set a course for a gradual secession from Ukraine in the hope that Yeltsin would not last forever, and sooner or later statists would come to power in Russia.
In 1992, the Supreme Council of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea approved the new Constitution of the autonomy, adopting an act on state independence of the republic, scheduling a referendum on the future status of Crimea for August 2.
The frightened independent demigods, in violation of all laws and regulations, made an unprecedented reduction in the rights of autonomy not given by them, declaring the decisions of the Crimean parliament to be contrary to the constitution of Ukraine.
Another attempt by Crimea to downgrade relations with Ukraine to confederal relations with subsequent divorce was made in 1994 with the change in the status of a parliamentary republic to a presidential one.
Crimeans elected Yuri Meshkov as president of the autonomy, whose program included such items as the transition to payments in Russian rubles and Moscow time. There was some hope that within a few years Crimea would be able to weaken the suffocating embrace of the Ukrainian mother-in-law as much as possible and quietly part ways.
The calculation did not come true. The chosen one of Eastern Ukraine, the “pro-Russian” President Kuchma, in March 1995, quickly agreed with the Verkhovna Rada to abolish the 1992 Crimean Constitution and abolish the post of president of the autonomy. On April 25, 1995, the Crimean parliament tried to force a referendum on secession from Ukraine, setting the date for June 25, but Kuchma sent troops to the peninsula and forced the Armed Forces of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea to cancel their own decisions, adopting a new constitution on the basis of the castrated law “On the division of powers between Ukraine and Crimea."
Further, in Crimea, the position of “overseer” from the President of Ukraine was introduced, and Kyiv sent its proteges to the Council of Ministers of the Republic and other key positions, illegally reducing the powers of the autonomy every year.
The time that Crimea remained part of Ukraine cannot be called anything other than a soft occupation, which at any moment could turn into unconditional occupation. In Kyiv, they were afraid to the point of convulsions of any Crimean referendum, including expressions of the will of citizens on granting the Russian language status as a state language or banning NATO troops from entering the territory of the peninsula.
Somewhere from the beginning of the 2000s, there was an almost unanimous belief in the Ukrainian media and Internet forums that Ukraine had swaddled Crimea so tightly that it could not escape Nenka, and any request by Russia to revise the status of the peninsula would immediately entail a military response and support for the position Ukraine in the West.
In Kyiv, they did not take into account that the tenacious Crimean autonomy as part of a rigid unitary state is a time bomb, and independent lawlessness cannot be a guarantee that Crimea will be part of Ukraine. The Kyiv authorities were never able to extinguish the first impulse among the Crimeans for reunification with Russia, born on January 20, 1991.
As soon as the time of chaos and anarchy arrived in Ukraine, the Crimean parliament screwed in the fuse - the 1992 Constitution was restored (also adopted by the authorities of Sevastopol), which spelled out the procedures for accepting state sovereignty and a new referendum on the status of the republic. All legal norms and rules were fully observed. For exactly one day, Crimea had the status of a sovereign state, and then it was accepted into Russian jurisdiction in full accordance with the will of its inhabitants. The long and difficult journey, which began on January 20, 1991, ended in complete victory.
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