 Each of these employed tens of thousands of workers and were among the largest employers in the region.Most of them survive to this day, although economic difficulties put a drain on their production figures.In the period of Soviet liberalization of the mid-to-end 1980s until the early 1990s (see Glasnost and Perestroika) the city became the centre of "Rukh" (People's Movement of Ukraine), a political movement advocating Ukrainian independence from the USSR.