A referendum on the Act of Declaration of Independence was held in Ukraine on 1 December 1991.Dieter Nohlen & Philip Stöver (2010) Elections in Europe: A data handbook, page 1976 An overwhelming majority of 92% of voters approved the declaration of independence made by the Verkhovna Rada on 24 August 1991. The public vote was held in response to the failed August coup and the New Union Treaty not being signed.
Voters were asked "Do you confirm the Act of Declaration of Independence of Ukraine?"Nohlen & Stöver, p1985 The text of the Declaration was included as a preamble to the question. The referendum was called by the Parliament of Ukraine to confirm the Act of Independence, which was adopted by the Parliament on 24 August 1991.Historic vote for independence , The Ukrainian Weekly (1 September 1991) Citizens of Ukraine expressed overwhelming support for independence. In the referendum, 31,891,742 registered voters (or 84.18% of the electorate) took part, and among them 28,804,071 (or 92.3%) voted "Yes".
On the same day, a presidential election took place. In the month up to the presidential election, all six candidates campaigned across Ukraine in favour of independence from the Soviet Union, and a "Yes" vote in the referendum. Leonid Kravchuk, the parliament chairman and de facto head of state, was elected to serve as the first President of Ukraine.Independence – over 90% vote yes in referendum; Kravchuk elected president of Ukraine , The Ukrainian Weekly (8 December 1991)
From 2 December 1991 onwards, Ukraine was globally recognized by other countries as an independent state.Ukraine and Russia: The Post-Soviet Transition by Roman Solchanyk, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2000, (page 100)Canadian Yearbook of International Law, Vol 30, 1992, University of British Columbia Press, 1993, (page 371)Russia, Ukraine, and the Breakup of the Soviet Union by Roman Szporluk, Hoover Institution Press, 2000, (page 355 Also on 2 December, the President of the Russian SFSR Boris Yeltsin recognized Ukraine as independent.Russia's Revolution from Above, 1985–2000: Reform, Transition, and Revolution in the Fall of the Soviet Communist Regime by Gordon M. Hahn, Transaction Publishers, 2001, (page 482)A Guide to the United States' History of Recognition, Diplomatic, and Consular Relations, by Country, since 1776: Ukraine , Office of the HistorianThe Limited Partnership: Building a Russian-US Security Community by James E. Goodby and Benoit Morel, Oxford University Press, 1993, (page 48)Ukrainian Independence, Worldwide News Ukraine In a telegram of congratulations Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev sent to Kravchuk soon after the referendum, Gorbachev included his hopes for close Ukrainian cooperation and understanding in "the formation of a union of sovereign states".NEWSBRIEFS FROM UKRAINE , The Ukrainian Weekly (8 December 1991)
Ukraine was the second-most powerful republic in the Soviet Union both economically and politically (behind Russia), and its secession ended any realistic chance of Gorbachev keeping the USSR together. By December 1991 all former Soviet Republics except the RSFSRRussia's New Politics: The Management of a Postcommunist Society by Stephen K. White, Cambridge University Press, 1999, (page 240) and the Kazakh SSR had formally seceded from the Union.Citizens in the Making in Post-Soviet States by Olena Nikolayenko, Routledge, 2001, (page 101) A week after his election, Kravchuk joined with Yeltsin and Belarusian leader Stanislav Shushkevich in signing the Belavezha Accords, which declared that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist.Historical Dictionary of the Russian Federation by Robert A. Saunders & Vlad Strukov, Scarecrow Press, 2010, (page 75) The USSR officially dissolved on 26 December.Turning Points – Actual and Alternate Histories: The Reagan Era from the Iran Crisis to Kosovo by Rodney P. Carlisle and J. Geoffrey Golson, ABC-CLIO, 2007, (page 111)
Results
Ukrainian media had converted en masse to the independence ideal.
Polls showed 63% support for the "Yes" campaign in September 1991; that grew to 77% in the first week of October 1991 and 88% by mid-November 1991.Ukrainian Nationalism in the 1990s: A Minority Faith by Andrew Wilson, Cambridge University Press, 1996, (page 128)
55% of the ethnic Russians in Ukraine voted for independence.The Return: Russia's Journey from Gorbachev to Medvedev by Daniel Treisman, Free Press, 2012, (page 178)
By region
The Act of Independence was supported by a majority of participating voters in each of the 27 administrative regions of Ukraine: 24 oblasts, 1 autonomous republic, and 2 special municipalities (Kyiv City and Sevastopol City). Voter turnout was lowest in Eastern and Southern Ukraine. The six regions with the lowest percentage of "yes" votes were Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk, and Odesa Oblasts, Crimea, and Sevastopol; all of those regions still had a majority of registered voters marking their ballots "yes", except for Crimea and Sevastopol.
SubdivisionPercentage voting for independenceOf votes castOf electorateUkrainian Nationalism in the 1990s: A Minority Faith by Andrew Wilson, Cambridge University Press, 1996, (page 129)Cherkasy Oblast 96.03 87Chernihiv Oblast 93.74 85Chernivtsi Oblast 92.78 81Dnipropetrovsk Oblast 90.36 74Donetsk Oblast 83.90 64Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast 98.42 94Kharkiv Oblast 86.33 65Kherson Oblast 90.13 75Khmelnytskyi Oblast 96.30 90Kirovohrad Oblast 93.88 83Kyiv Oblast 95.52 84Luhansk Oblast 83.86 68Lviv Oblast 97.46 93Mykolayiv Oblast 89.45 75Odesa Oblast 85.38 64Poltava Oblast 94.93 87Rivne Oblast 95.96 89Sumy Oblast 92.61 82Ternopil Oblast 98.67 96Transcarpathia Oblast 92.59 77Vinnytsia Oblast 95.43 87Volyn Oblast 96.32 90Zaporizhzhia Oblast 90.66 73Zhytomyr Oblast 95.06 86Crimean ASSR 54.19 37Russians in the Former Soviet Republics by Pål Kolstø, Indiana University Press, 1995, (page 191)Ukraine and Russia: Representations of the Past by Serhii Plokhy, University of Toronto Press, 2008, (page 184)Kyiv City 92.87 75Sevastopol City 57.07 36National total 90.32 76Post-Communist Ukraine by Bohdan Harasymiw, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 2002,
Reactions Preliminary results Although counting was ongoing throughout the night, by 2 December afternoon, exitpolls and early results were already indicating about a 75% lead in favour of independence, according to both electoral officials and leaders of the pro-independence People's Movement of Ukraine (Rukh). Preliminary results published by the Central Election Commission of Ukraine even indicated about 85% support for "Yes". Later that day, in his role as President of the Verkhovna Rada, Kravchuk announced that about 90% of the Ukrainian population had chosen an independent state. Shortly thereafter, preliminary results also indicated that Kravchuk had won the presidential election, although with a smaller majority of about 60%. His main opponent Chornovil had scored above 25%, especially in Western Ukraine (77% in Lviv Oblast, his home region), more than the 15% which opinion polls had predicted he would receive. Commentators suggested that this would compel Kravchuk to take the demands of Chornovil's supporters and Rukh's platform of a clean political and economic break from the Soviet Union more seriously than the more moderate approach Kravchuk himself had campaigned for.
Gorbachev, Kravchuk and Yeltsin Ahead of the vote, Mikhail Gorbachev frequently argued that Ukraine leaving the Soviet Union without signing the New Union Treaty and joining his envisioned Union of Sovereign States would be a disaster for the whole country, for Europe and the whole world. In TASS, he spoke of 'self-determination with the union', and that 'a breakup would cost us dearly' and 'spill over in into territorial disputes'. However, in a later phone call to U.S. president Bush sr., Gorbachev argued that he would not view Ukraine voting for independence as necessarily breaking away from the (new) union.
In response to the preliminary results announced in the latter half of 2 December, Kravchuk (now the likely President-elect of Ukraine) repeated his earlier statement that he would not sign Gorbachev's New Union Treaty; he no longer trusted such vertical partnerships, only horizontal partnerships 'like the European Community'.
While Gorbachev's spokesperson suggested on 2 December that Ukraine's new-found independence might make it even easier to join a renewed union, and Gorbachev was one of the first to congratulate Kravchuk on winning the presidential election that same day, in the morning of 3 December, he warned that the secession of Ukraine might lead to war and "a catastrophe for the world".
Boris Yeltsin, who was still negotiating with Gorbachev and other Soviet leaders about the New Union Treaty, indicated before the referendum that he could not envision a new union without Ukraine. He said repeatedly it would be regrettable if Ukraine quit the union, but in an interview in Izvestiya in the week before the referendum, Yeltsin announced that if it did, Russia would not sign the New Union Treaty either. If Ukraine would also reject any economic agreements with the other (post-)Soviet republics, as advocated by Chornovil, Yeltsin stated he would henceforth calculate oil and gas deliveries to Ukraine in U.S. dollars instead of the cheaper Soviet ruble as a countermeasure. Unlike Chornovil, Kravchuk still found it important to conclude an economic agreement (perhaps similar to the European Community) with the other (post-)Soviet republics, particularly Russia and Belarus, as long as it was headquartered in Kyiv or Minsk, not in Moscow. Vermont-based Russian nationalist writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was advocating for partitioning Ukraine along voting lines, saying districts with a majority of "No" voters (presumably with a Russian-speaking majority) should be transferred to the Russian Federation instead. This idea lost realistic credibility as soon as it became clear that the majority of all oblasts, including with Russian-speaking majorities in some cities, had voted overwhelmingly in favour of independence, even with a slight majority in Crimea. Yeltsin immediately recognised Ukraine's independence in a statement on 2 December 1991, saying he was going to seek out how Russia could establish diplomatic ties with Ukraine as soon as possible.
Europe and North America Most individual countries in Europe and around the world were quick to respond positively to the preliminary results of the referendum, with Poland and Canada immediately recognising Ukraine's independence diplomatically, and Sweden and Czechoslovakia announcing that they were planning to. For their part, the Foreign Ministers of the European Community, who were gathered in Brussels on 2 December, called on Ukraine to continue to abide by all OSCE obligations which the Soviet Union had previously committed to, including arms control, non-proliferation, and foreign debt. If the Ukrainian government could clarify its future policies, recognition could be discussed, the European Community stated. Bush sr. congratulated Kravchuk with his victory, as well as the "free and fair" manner in which the referendum was held. He would send his assistant Thomas M. T. Niles to establish diplomatic ties with Ukraine, and discuss with the Ukrainian government how to handle human rights, minority rights, and Ukraine's responsibility in conventional and nuclear arms control. Similar to Europe's cautious approach, America's attitude towards Ukrainian independence was to first clarify Kyiv's policies in these domains before Washington could proceed to diplomatic recognition.
Public opinion