Ukraine’s first-ever Maidan—or the student hunger strike later known as the Revolution on Granite—is not remembered by everyone who, 35 years ago, was old enough to care about politics. Despite Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost, reliable information about the protest reached only a limited number of media outlets.
I was fortunate: the newspaper Molod Ukrainy, where I worked at the time, covered the events on Maidan (then called October Revolution Square) with remarkable impartiality, even under the wary eye of the censor perched on the fourth floor of the Presa Ukrainy complex, scrutinising everything that went to print. The communist press, by contrast, poured scorn on the protesters with gusto. “Everything you cannot stop must be discredited,” a Moscow chekist seems to have declared in one of the old Soviet films.
Anticipation. That’s the word that best captures the electric atmosphere on the central square of then-Soviet Kyiv. It was, perhaps, the first taste of open, unpunished freedom—a freedom that hinted at sweeping change far beyond the students’ immediate demands. Kravchuk, the party’s ideologue at the time, dismissed those demands as “too complicated,” but the air itself seemed to whisper of transformation.
In October 1990, a few dozen very young people took to the square for a hunger strike. Kyiv residents brought blankets and warm clothes, stopping to chat—or sometimes to argue. Stepan Khmara appeared almost daily. The Soviet militia left little room for illusions: even though the protest was not banned, provocations were never in short supply. I remember the tents, the camp beds, the white armbands of the protesters so clearly, it feels as if I saw them yesterday. The young Oles Doniy, Markiyan Ivashchyshyn, Lesia Honchar, Anzhelika Rudnytska, and the late Hannusia Honcharyk… there were few of them—the ones actually fasting. Far more came to show support: to offer solidarity, ensure the tents remained intact, ward off provocateurs, or to write a report (as I did).
The student protest lasted from 2 to 17 October. The demonstrators demanded the resignation of Vitalii Masol, then head of the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR; that military conscripts serve only within the republic; rejection of the new Union Treaty pushed by Mikhail Gorbachev; the transfer of Communist Party and Komsomol property to local authorities; and new elections to the Verkhovna Rada. In essence, it was the first sign of a renewed triad—“decolonisation, decommunisation, derussification”—even if those terms were not yet in use at the time.
The protest, which must have seemed both exotic and audacious to Muscovite eyes, fitted seamlessly into the political landscape of Ukraine’s capital. Even as the Soviet system limped through its final year, the genetic memory of Ukrainians—finally able to breathe more freely—awoke, activating its ancient code. The veche of Kievan Rus’, the Cossack councils that elected hetmans—these distant forms of direct democracy seemed to be reborn in a new guise, their essence unchanged.
“It is time to choose: either we achieve an independent, democratic Ukraine, or we remain a colony of the Russian empire; remaining spiritually impoverished, denationalised people,” the protesters’ statement declared. That call, as we see today, still resonates. But those who chose Ukraine are now far outnumbered. And in that lies our strength—and our chance. The efforts of earlier generations of freedom fighters were never in vain, even when they fell short of achieving fundamental change.
The first partial student victory—though only three of their demands were met despite the Verkhovna Rada’s resolution—was both exhilarating and chilling, carrying with it the shadow of impending war. Moscow has never tolerated freedom—its own or anyone else’s—and goes beyond mere dislike: it ruthlessly crushes it whenever the opportunity arises. Why didn’t war erupt in the early 1990s, as it did in Transnistria, Georgia, Azerbaijan, or Tajikistan? Because Gorbachev had lost both popularity and influence, and Yeltsin had other plans. Yet Russian agents and imperial ambitions had not vanished. Nor had those ready to work for Moscow for a quick profit.
By the time of the Revolution on Granite, Ukraine’s Declaration of State Sovereignty had already been adopted. Former political prisoners were returning from exile: Vyacheslav Chornovil, Ihor Kalynets, the Horyn brothers, Levko Lukianenko, and Stepan Khmara, who became the “good angel” of that first Maidan. Yet the hunger strikers’ call for renewed leadership went unanswered. Why?
At that time, the critical mass of those demanding systemic change simply wasn’t enough. Those brave enough to take to the barricades did not always know what kind of state to build on the ruins of the former colony. Banning the Communist Party was not followed by lustration, allowing party activists to quickly reinvent themselves and take over the new political forces. Deputies of the Verkhovna Rada—including the democrats—did not rush to relinquish their powers or organise new elections, as laid out in the resolution of 17 October 1990. The transition to a single state language was not backed by a Ukrainian-language exam for civil servants, as had been done in the Baltic states… The list goes on. Independence became a compromise between the communists and the national democrats.
But what if all the demands of the first Maidan had been met? History does not deal in hypotheticals, yet imagine early parliamentary elections taking place immediately, in the first half of 1991. It is entirely possible that the Verkhovna Rada would have looked very different, without the communist majority (group 293). A parliament of a different calibre might well have dared to implement systemic reforms, echoing those sweeping through Central and Eastern Europe. A real chance could have emerged to renew the political generations in power… but it did not happen.
Despite the unmet demands—including those about Communist Party funds, which a few hotheads are still chasing—the Revolution on Granite restored a sense of historical continuity. It revived Ukrainians’ right to dissent, to their own “signature” form of protest, echoing the ancient veche and the Cossack “black councils.” The first Maidan was not a reboot; it was a link reconnecting a development process fractured by the empire. A kind of starting point for irreversible change, even if the empire refuses to acknowledge that irreversibility.
