On August 27, the day on which the Voshchanov statement was issued, the Rukh association of Ukrainian democratic parties fired off a statement of its own. It accused the “newly democratized leaders of Russia” of “imperial aspirations” akin to those manifested by the Bolsheviks in 1917. At that time, under the banner of proletarian revolution, the Bolsheviks had crushed the young Ukrainian independence movement and destroyed its democratic institutions.
