Prove di democrazia? Il partito comunista dell’Ucraina e le elezioni sovietiche del 1989

The elections for the Congress of People’s Deputies in March 1989 were a milestone in the process that, in Mikhail Gorbachev's intentions, should have led to the gradual transition of Soviet power from the Party to the State. In Ukraine, they brought out the contradictions of a society which was fragmented, by historical and cultural profile, in different regional realities and favored the politicization of the informal groups and organizations born during the glasnost. The elections also highlighted the differences between the Ukrainian and the federal leaderships, especially in evaluating the progress of the perestroika, as well as the divisions within the political leadership of the Republic, whose a part was not alien to emerging nationalism. On the contrary, the nationalist impulses had infected non-secondary areas of the Communist Party of Ukraine, such as some sectors of the Komsomol and local cadres, especially in the Western regions.