Ukraine Activists Form Group for More Autonomy

KIEV, Soviet Union — Ukrainian activists launched a Baltics-style mass political movement Friday to press for greater political and cultural autonomy for the Soviet Union’s second largest republic.

Addressing the inaugural congress of the Ukrainian Popular Movement for Perestroika, leading Ukrainian writers and intellectuals called for the Soviet Union to be transformed into a “confederation” of sovereign republics. They also demanded changes in the republic’s leadership and the replacement of the hard-line Communist Party leader Vladimir V. Shcherbitsky.

The program of the Ukrainian Popular Movement, or Rukh as it is called, stops short of endorsing independence from the Soviet Union, the position adopted by popular front movements in the Baltic republics of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia. But it is radical enough to alarm Kremlin conservatives sensitive to Ukrainian ethnic unrest.

“We don’t want to leave the Soviet Union. We want an independent Ukraine within a truly free union of independent republics,” said Dimitro Pavlychko, one of the leaders of Rukh and the president of the Ukrainian Language Society.