Soviet Union Breakaway Breadbasket

By JOHN KOHAN LVOV

If the Ukrainian nationalist movement needed a Betsy Ross, it certainly found one in Orest Kaledin. On a stroll through Lvov (pop. 860,000), the largest city in the Western Ukraine, the biologist turned flagmaker points to five new yellow-and-blue national banners flapping from the town hall. They are his and his wife's handiwork, says Kaledin with pride. He dreams of designing uniforms and ensigns for a revived Ukrainian army. Pointing out a friend on the street -- a scrawny person of decidedly unmilitary bearing -- he explains confidentially that the young man is destined to become "one of our generals."

Flags are one thing. But an independent Ukraine with its own soldiers? The idea may not be so farfetched: in Kiev last week the parliament overwhelmingly passed a declaration of sovereignty. Stopping short of proclaiming full independence, the document insists that the republic's laws take precedence over Moscow's rule. Furthermore, the decree envisions a neutral, nuclear-free Ukraine with its own army and currency. Even the large bloc of Communist parliamentary deputies joined nationalists in pressing for a fundamental change in relations with Moscow.

Though the declaration leaves open the possibility for the Ukraine to enter voluntarily into a new union of Soviet republics, it goes further than a similar document passed last month in neighboring Russia. Thus the U.S.S.R.'s second largest republic, with a population of 52 million and some of the most fertile farmland, richest coal fields and largest industrial centers in the Soviet Union, has joined seven of the country's 14 other republics in formally loosening ties with the central government.

Nationalist fervor is most intense in the Western Ukraine, in territories largely annexed -- along with the Baltic states -- by the Soviet Union under the terms of the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. In republican elections last March, supporters of the Rukh movement, an umbrella organization for a host of proindependence groups, won a landslide victory in the western section. The radicals did not win a majority of seats in the republic's parliament, but their bloc of more than 100 is sizable enough to prevent the government in Kiev from getting a quorum on key votes.

In Lvov the town hall, bustling with activity, is reminiscent of Lenin's headquarters in the opening days of the Bolshevik Revolution. Only this is a revolution against communist control. Youths in blue jeans huddle in smoke- filled corridors with city council representatives in peasant blouses, discussing plans to purge Lvov of emblems, propaganda posters and street names that are, in the words of one deputy, "trademarks of Soviet power." Busts of Lenin and Marx in two wall niches have already been replaced -- by vases.

Worried about the radical shift in the western half of the republic, authorities in Kiev tried to wrest control of the police, transportation, communication and even veterinary services from local municipalities on the eve of the elections. That has not cowed Lvov's new city council. At a recent session, deputies grilled a local official in charge of light industry and food production. Why was there so little milk? Why were the "bosses" still loading up their cars with scarce goods? "We are a rich agricultural area," complained one speaker, "but everything gets sent to the center."

The revolt has been further fueled by a tangled religious conflict dating back to 1946. In that year Stalin disbanded the Eastern-rite Catholic Church in the Western Ukraine, which professes allegiance to the Pope, turning over property -- and parishioners -- to the Russian Orthodox Church. Ukrainian Catholics still await official recognition, but they have taken matters into their own hands. Whole Orthodox congregations and priests have switched allegiance back to the Vatican.

Amid the euphoria that comes from venting long-repressed political and religious passions, some nationalists may be tempted to believe that independence from Moscow can come with a stroke of the pen. But not all. Lvov's mayor, Vasili Shpitser, concedes that the Lithuanian crisis illustrates how difficult it will be to break economic ties with the center. And without economic viability, no republic can be truly independent. "All our people really want is to speak their own language, worship in their own churches, have something to buy in the shops, and live at peace -- without having to ask for these rights," Shpitser said. But it is a measure of the antipathy felt toward Moscow that many Ukrainians think the only way to achieve those modest demands is to recast the republic's entire relationship with the Kremlin as swiftly as possible.