Activists in Ukraine Call for Secession, Ouster of Party Boss

Speakers at a founding conference for the country’s newest independent political movement, this one in the Ukraine, called Saturday for separating from the Soviet Union and for ousting the republic’s longtime Communist Party boss.

At the same time, a leading Kremlin conservative warned that this country’s existence is threatened by its ethnic problems.

Also Saturday, a statement reaching Moscow from Armenians living in the troubled enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh appealed for help from the United Nations to fend off attacks from Azerbaijanis and said that the Kremlin is unable to protect them despite the presence of 4,000 Soviet troops.

These latest developments came amid growing signs that the conflicts among many of the more than 100 ethnic groups in the Soviet Union is perceived by officials here to have reached a crisis point during the last month, while President Mikhail S. Gorbachev was vacationing at the Black Sea.

Gorbachev ended his vacation Saturday night with a previously unannounced address on Soviet television, but he made direct reference only briefly to the nationalities problem, saying it will be dealt with at a Central Committee plenum soon. The long-awaited plenum is likely to be held sometime this month, according to both Soviet and Western sources.

While Gorbachev was away from Moscow, the Central Committee released a tough statement last month calling for an end to “nationalist hysteria,” and the Communist Party media began a campaign against mass movements that have called for independence from the Soviet Union.

But the Kremlin’s efforts to deal with the growing unrest have so far been limited to “just jawboning,” a senior Western diplomat observed last week at a briefing with American journalists.

What steps the Central Committee can take to cool ethnic hostility is very unclear. Western analysts have speculated that a shake-up is likely of some local Communist Party officials, who have been widely criticized for failing to rein in local nationalism.

Call for Leader’s Ouster

In the Ukrainian capital of Kiev, members of the Ukrainian Popular Movement for Perestroika, meeting on the second of a three-day founding session, called for dismissing Ukrainian Communist Party chief Vladimir V. Shcherbitsky and bringing him to trial for his handling of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

“There can be no talk of perestroika (reform) in the Ukraine when the criminals responsible for Chernobyl are still in power,” said Sergei Konyev, a member of the Soviet Parliament. He also called for an end to the “reign of political dinosaurs.”

Shcherbitsky, a Ukrainian party official since 1952, was a crony of former Communist Party boss Leonid I. Brezhnev and has been a full member of the Politburo since 1971. At 71, he is the oldest Politburo member and is considered among the most conservative.

Also at Saturday’s meeting, Levko Lukyanenko, a former political prisoner, called for Ukrainian independence.

“Our whole history is a history of occupation, but we have suffered most under the Russians,” he said. “For this reason, the principal goal of our movement must be to leave the Soviet Union. International law and the Soviet constitution give us the right to independence.”

Meanwhile, Politburo member Yegor K. Ligachev, speaking in the Central Asian republic of Kirgizia, “warned of the possibility of the Soviet Union disintegrating over the nationalities issue,” Radio Moscow reported Saturday.

Ligachev, considered the Politburo’s leading conservative, said that strengthening party unity should be the country’s top priority. He added that Communist members should not take part in “meetings with anti-socialist tendencies,” a reference to the popular movements in the Baltic republics of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, as well as the Ukraine and several other republics.

Also Saturday, word reached Moscow of an appeal published four days ago in a Nagorno-Karabakh newspaper, Sovetakan Karabakh.

The statement by a council of Armenians, who make up the majority in the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave, said that armed Azerbaijanis were massing in the region and were believed to be preparing for attacks on Armenians.

More than 100 people have been killed in ethnic clashes in the area in the last 18 months. Armenians are demanding autonomy for Nagorno-Karabakh, which officially is part of Azerbaijan.

The bleakness of the situation in the area was underscored by a report Friday night on Soviet television that showed buses with bullet holes and broken windows. The buses had been traveling through Armenian populated areas of Nagorno-Karabakh when they were attacked by Azerbaijanis, the report said.

The Armenian statement, addressed to the United Nations, said that Moscow had failed to protect the Armenians and added, “We appeal to you to do everything possible for the security of the Armenian population of Karabakh, even including dispatching a contingent of U.N. soldiers, should this become necessary.”