Bush Praises Union Treaty in Restive Ukraine

President Bush pointedly praised Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev and his Union Treaty on Thursday in the ancient city of Kiev, where surging Ukrainian nationalism could derail Gorbachev’s ambitious plan to save the Soviet Union from disintegration.

Although Bush told the Ukrainian legislature that the United States would not try to choose between winners and losers in political competitions involving the republics and the central government in Moscow, he went on to praise the Union Treaty and cautioned against pursuing “the suicidal course of isolation.”

Bush delivered his not-entirely-welcome message first in an address to the legislature--the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic--and later at a luncheon set amid the baroque splendors of Mariinsky Palace, built in 1742 for the daughter of Czar Peter the Great and later used as a Bolshevik headquarters during the Russian Revolution.

Under gray skies and scattered rain, the President also paid an emotional visit to the memorial at Babi Yar, where Nazi occupation forces slaughtered more than 30,000 Jews in a 36-hour period, part of Adolf Hitler’s “final solution”--the Holocaust.

The President’s voice faltered as he described the systematic slaughter at Babi Yar that eventually claimed the lives of more than 100,000 Jews, Gypsies and others considered undesirable by the Third Reich.

“The Holocaust occurred because good men and women averted their eyes from unprecedented evil,” Bush said, his voice choked with emotion, “and the Nazis fell when good men and women opened their eyes, summoned their courage and faith and fought for democracy, liberty and justice and decency.

“None of us will ever forget.”

Afterward, the President and Mrs. Bush were visibly moved as they mingled with a group of survivors of the Babi Yar massacre and children from a Jewish youth camp.

Thousands of people lined both sides of the broad avenues, waving and cheering as Bush’s motorcade, escorted by police cars and motorcycles, snaked its way from the Ukrainian legislature’s building to the Babi Yar memorial on a hill several miles away.

They waved huge blue and yellow Ukrainian banners and small American flags, some also holding aloft banners and posters bearing such slogans as “Kiev Is Not Moscow, the Ukraine Is Not Russia.”

So intense is the debate over the Ukraine’s future that sidewalks throughout downtown Kiev were choked with clusters of people passionately debating whether the republic should remain in the Soviet Union as a member of a loose confederation or insist on complete independence.

Earlier Thursday, Bush concluded his summit meeting with Gorbachev in Moscow before flying to Kiev and then on to Washington. “The Soviet Union will forge its own future in its own way,” he said in remarks during the departure ceremonies.

The Ukraine, subjugated by repeated Russian conquests over a period of more than 200 years and containing a population of diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds, has long been torn by the kinds of conflicting currents that now threaten to engulf the entire Soviet Union.

Ukrainian leaders have been generally supportive of the Union Treaty. But the independence movement in this republic of more than 50 million has showed signs of increased strength since the legislature ignored Gorbachev’s wishes and postponed action on the treaty until September.

The Ukraine already has declared jurisdiction over Soviet enterprises on its territory and claimed the right to form an army and mint its own currency. And Grigory I. Revenko, a native of the Ukraine and Gorbachev’s adviser on the Union Treaty, has acknowledged that even if the republic signs the treaty, that will only be the beginning of a long process of negotiation and interpretation.

Leonid Makarovich Kravchuk, chairman of the Ukrainian legislature, who led the drive to delay consideration of the treaty, told Bush in a welcoming ceremony that since signing its Declaration of State Sovereignty last year, the Ukraine has been, “step by step, moving along the road to its high aim--sovereignty, bringing about stability and civil peace.”

“Fifty-two million representatives of different people--the Ukrainians, the Russians, the Poles, the Jews, the Bulgars--are working together on this land,” he declared. “And for them, Ukraine is their home. We have resolutely chosen the road to democracy, market economy and sovereignty; and this choice of ours is supported by the majority of the people.”

Later, during a 35-minute meeting with Kravchuk at the Mariinsky Palace, Bush said the Union Treaty would support greater dealings between the Ukraine and the United States and that “perestroika and glasnost have opened up opportunities for the United States and Ukraine.”

Bush, declaring that the United States would not “meddle” in Ukrainian affairs, said some people have urged Washington to choose between supporting Gorbachev and supporting independence-minded leaders throughout the Soviet Union.

“I consider this a false choice,” Bush said. “President Gorbachev has achieved astonishing things, and his policies of glasnost, perestroika and democratization point toward the goals of freedom, democracy and economic liberty.”

While the United States will maintain the strongest possible relationship with Gorbachev’s government, he said, “we also appreciate the new realities of life in the U.S.S.R. We therefore want good relations--improved relations--with the republics.”

Bush said the treaty--resulting from what is commonly called “the Nine-Plus-One Agreement,” since the leaders of nine of the 15 republics have agreed on it with the central government--holds forth the hope that republics will combine greater autonomy with greater voluntary interaction--political, social, cultural, economic--rather than pursuing “the suicidal course of isolation.”

Opposition legislators were clearly disappointed that Bush voiced public support for Gorbachev’s treaty.

“We think the treaty is against democracy,” said Vyacheslav Chornovil, chairman of the Lvov regional government and one of the most powerful leaders of the opposition. He said he liked the part of Bush’s speech extolling the virtues of democracy, and “it didn’t hurt for the Communists to hear it.”

Mikola Korobko, a lawmaker from the southern Ukraine, said: “Obviously Bush does not think the peoples of the disintegrating (Soviet) empire have the right to decide their own future. We are not satisfied with his speech.”

Signs of the Ukraine’s ethnic divisions and the passionate independence movement were evident throughout a crowd of several thousand who crowded the Square of the October Revolution to welcome Bush’s motorcade.

Spectators interviewed by visiting journalists eagerly debated the treaty issue. Many of the treaty’s critics were younger Ukrainians who see Moscow as a barrier to a freer and more productive life. Some of the treaty supporters were Russians, who make up about 20% of the republic’s population; many others were older Ukrainians who want the stability and reduced tensions among the republics that they hope it will bring.

The young Ukrainians generally dated their troubles to the October, 1917, Communist revolution that brought to power V. I. Lenin, whose statue dominates the square where they stood awaiting Bush’s motorcade.

Dimitri Tradyuk, a 35-year-old worker at the Lenin Forge Shop who carried an anti-treaty sign, said: “To be independent you have to have your own army, your own borders and your own monetary system. This we don’t have yet.”

Tradyuk said he has no fear of retribution for protesting, even though Communist authorities here canceled his bonus last year to punish him for similar activity. Asked why so many people here appeared to be gloomy, he said, “How can we not be gloomy when we live in such poverty?”

A 58-year-old engineer standing nearby reacted indignantly to what he saw as “slandering the Communist Party.”

The engineer, a Russian who said he is a Communist but did not want his name used, asked: “Why should we have two armies if we are disarming? I have a daughter in Russia and a daughter in Moldavia. Why should we have borders? What’s the sense? We should help each other.”

The engineer said he had “no doubt” that the Ukraine would sign the treaty, but another, 28-year-old Fedjko Valery, a Ukrainian, insisted, “We will not sign it” and declared that there is a strong anti-treaty movement among Ukrainians.

The friendly crowd that greeted Bush contrasted sharply with the welcoming crowd that gathered for the last visit by an American President--Richard M. Nixon in 1972.

Then, hundreds of Communist workers, recruited by the party for a carefully staged and controlled reception, waved U.S. and Soviet flags as Nixon’s motorcade passed. Other spectators were ordered not to demonstrate, but thousands of them defied the policy and waved anyway.

Times staff writer Elizabeth Shogren contributed to this report.