Rally outside the Verkhovna Rada, 1991

From the personal archive of Yaroslav Kendzor.

24 August 1991, Kyiv.

The video shows a rally outside the Verkhovna Rada. People with blue and yellow flags and EU flags, the flag of the environmental association ‘Green World’, and banners reading ‘Ukraine is leaving the USSR’ and ‘We demand the dissolution of the anti-people CPSU-CPU, which has been irrevocably compromised by bribery’. Speeches by pro-democracy MPs: Vilen Martirosyan on the creation of a Ukrainian army and the removal from power of those who supported the junta; Vyacheslav Chornovil on the fact that he had signed an order under which, on 23 August, the Lviv regional party committee and district party committees, as well as the party archives, were sealed, the printing of party newspapers was halted, and the Lenin Museum would be replaced by a museum of Ukrainian icons, the Communist Party’s accounts were frozen, and so on.