The Soviet Union's second largest republic has now taken the most significant step preceding a formal declaration of independence. The Ukrainian Supreme Soviet, the republic's highest law-making body, on Monday adopted a resolution calling for Ukrainian sovereignty.
The resolution again exposes one of the central lies that held the Soviet empire together: The Soviet Union is not, as President Mikhail Gorbachev has claimed, a voluntary association of equal republics.The Soviet Union is, in fact, a house of prison nations. And now those nations are saying they want out.
Ukraine is the source of about one-half of the Soviet Union's iron ore, one-fourth of its coal and one-fifth of its grain. As such, the republic is critical to the survival of the Soviet Union, both as an empire and as a superpower.
The Western part of Ukraine currently is dominated by pro-independence groups, and in the Western city of Lviv, the republic's second largest city, a blue and yellow Ukrainian national flag flies over the town hall. The city councils of both Lviv and Kiev, the republic's capital, are controlled by deputies who support independence.
Gains by the independence movement aren't limited to the local level. Despite having only one month to prepare for the most recent elections, Rukh, the Popular Front of Ukraine - an umbrella organization uniting the various pro-independence parties - captured 27 percent of the seats in the republic's Supreme Soviet (the Soviet equivalent of a Parliament).
Rukh's rate of growth has been phenomenal. Although the popular front has existed only six months, its membership has risen from 300,000 to more than 4 million.
The local arm of the Communist Party has been plagued by defections and expulsions. Even Vladimir Ivashko, newly elected president of the republic's Supreme Soviet, issued a call for a separation from the Soviet Communist Party.
Apparently, he wasn't reform-minded enough. When he announced his resignation last week, after only five weeks in office, to take a job as Gorbachev's deputy secretary general, pro-independence forces were elated. They see Ivashko's resignation as an opportunity to strengthen their influence over policy in Ukraine.
Mobilization of popular support for Ukrainian independence is expected to accelerate in the coming weeks, with some of the impetus coming from within the Communist Party itself.
Twelve members of the party recently held a press conference to announce that, because of a "deep ideo-political differentiation," they were switching allegiance to the pro-independence faction within the Ukraine Supreme Soviet.
The ease with which the Ukrainian Communist Party takes on issues such as sovereignty - a topic which would have been unthinkable only a year ago - shows how quickly the spirit of nationalism is growing.
As with other fast-moving events in Europe, the West hasn't kept abreast of developments in Ukraine. Mounting nationalism may mean that a popular uprising for independence is close at hand.
One doesn't need a crystal ball to predict the Soviet response to the impending Ukrainian vote for independence. If the Kremlin has found relatively tiny Lithuania's bid for independence hard to swallow, it will surely choke on a similar demand from resource-rich Ukraine, with a population of 52 million.
President Bush apparently has decided that relations with Gorbachev are more important than the democratic aspirations of the Baltic states. A similar decision on the issue of Ukrainian independence, however, could spell disaster.
If Gorbachev continues to work against the disintegration of the Soviet empire - as he has done in the cases of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Azerbaijan - tensions within Ukraine and other restless republics surely will escalate.
Supporting Gorbachev would place the United States not only on the wrong side of a volatile and possibly dangerous situation, but on the wrong side of history.
(Ivan Lozowy is a research assistant in foreign policy and studies at The Heritage Foundation, Washington, D.C.)