KIEV -- A liberal journalist and a communist pensioner may this week become a test case to judge Ukraine's democratic progress, as they wait to discover if they are to be prosecuted for comments they made against the Ukrainian president, Leonid Kravchuk.


The two are under investigation by the prosecutor's office and threatened with charges under articles 125 and 126 of the Soviet criminal code. The charges carry a prison sentence of up to five years for slandering the state through the mass media.


Together with a 94-page list of censored subjects that newspaper editors say has been presented to them, the prosecutions indicate that Ukraine's establishment -- the vast majority remnants of the old Soviet system -- is engaged in a battle against the democratization promised by its leaders.


"It is an attempt to strangle openness in the mass media", said Vitaly Karpenko, editor of Vecherny Kiev, one of Kiev's few independent newspapers.


Vladimir Kniazhitsky, a 24-year-old journalist, was quoted by a newspaper making disparaging remarks about the power of the former Soviet bureaucracy in the republic. He described Kravchuk as a cog in their power structures.


Valentina Yerofeyeva, a 78-year-old Communist sympathizer who is the second subject of investigation for the prosecutor's office, published a letter in Vecherny Kiev. She described both the Russian and Ukrainian presidents, as "degenerates" for betraying their Communist pasts.


Kniazhitsky said he had been questioned three times by members of the state prosecutor's office since the article was published in July and a case was opened against him. "It shows that laws used in Ukraine do not comply with the international acts that Ukraine has signed", said Kniazhitsky.


Glasnost in Ukraine, the second most populous former Soviet republic after Russia, came late. It was barely two years before the Soviet putsch that Gorbachev's openness begin to effect the media here.


"We were shown a 94-page censorship list", said Karpenko, adding that newspapers were not given copies of the list because it was supposed to be secret. He said it had been approved by the cabinet in July and was presented to him on Sept. 23.


Asked how he could follow a secret law Karpenko threw up his hands. "It is an unhealthy reminder of how life used to be", he said.


Although advancement is not conditional on Soviet values in quite the same way as it was before, to be a known objector to the regime remains a severe hinderance in Ukraine.


"We still have the former union censorship structures, they are sitting quietly", said Karpenko.


The heavy handed tactics used to lean on critics of the young state, whose traditions of democracy are minimal at best, have raised fears for the future. Faced with the choice of constructing a European-style pluralistic society or retreating atavistically to the past, Ukraine's rulers appear to be doing the latter.


Ukraine's government is itself now in turmoil, after the parliament dismissed the whole cabinet last Thursday. But the new acting prime minister, Valentin Simonenko, is not considered by Ukraine's liberals to differ greatly from his sacked predecessor, Vitold Fokin.


There is now some attempt to fight, however. Some journalists whose living does not depend on the establishment have pledged to commit "acts of protest" and to boycott official information channels if creeping censorship persists.


Members of Ukraine's diaspora, strongest in north America and Canada, have also written to the Ukrainian president to ask why there is no law on the media. Kravchuk's response to criticism from Ukraine's diaspora in August, however, was to threaten to expel them from the country.