Abstract
Ukraine obtained its independence in December 1991 as a result of two main factors. First, the former Soviet centre imploded as the USSR, embodied by its president, Mikhail Gorbachev, fought for power with the Russian Federation, headed by its democratically elected president, Boris Yeltsin. This implosion of the centre after the failure of the communist hardliners’ coup d’état in August 1991 gave the non-Russian republics, including the Ukraine, an opportunity to secede peacefully from the Soviet empire.1
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Notes
See Taras Kuzio, ‘The Emergence of Ukraine’, Contemporary Review, vol. 268, nos. 1562 and 1563 (March and April 1996), pp. 119–25 and pp. 182–9; and Bohdan Nahaylo, ‘The Birth of an Independent Ukraine’, Report on the USSR, vol. 3, no. 50 (13 December 1991).
See chapter 8, ‘Stalemate and the Rise of National Communism (1990–1)’ and chapter 9, ‘From Soviet to Independent Ukraine: The Coup and Aftermath’, in T. Kuzio and Andrew Wilson, Ukraine. Perestroika to Independence (London: Macmillan, 1994), pp. 152–70 and pp. 171–202 respectively.
See Valerii Khmelko, ‘Referendum: Khto Buv Za i Khto Proty’, Ukrainskyi Ohliadach, no. 2 (February 1992); and Politolohichnyi Chyttania, no. 1 (1992), pp. 40–52; and Peter J. Potichnyi, ‘The Referendum and Presidential Elections in Ukraine’, Canadian Slavonic Papers, vol. XXX111, no. 2 (June 1991). pp. 123–38.
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© 1997 Taras Kuzio
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Kuzio, T. (1997). Introduction. In: Ukraine under Kuchma. Studies in Russian and East European History and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25744-7_1
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