Ukraine’s Orange Revolution Five Years On

Ukraine will hold presidential elections in January 2010 that are likely to give the country a new president. Viktor Yushchenko, elected in January 2005 on the crest of the Orange Revolution, has only 3-4 percent support making it impossible for him to win a second term. He would therefore follow Ukraine’s first President Leonid Kravchuk who also only served one term in 1991-1994.
The story of how Yushchenko came to power with high domestic and international expectations that he largely failed to fulfill will be a fascinating area for future research by historians, political scientists and sociologists.This article provides an initial overview of the Yushchenko presidency; first considering whether it was part of a ’second wave’ of democratic breakthroughs from 1996-2004 (the ‘first wave’ being in 1989-1991) and then analyzing three factors that facilitated the Orange Revolution.A ‘Second Wave’?Were the democratic breakthroughs and revolutions which occurred between 1996 and 2004 in post-communist states part of a ’second wave’, sweeping Romania (1996), Bulgaria (1997), Slovakia (1998), Croatia and Serbia (1999-2000), Georgia (2003) and finally Ukraine (2004)? This remains an area of debate as the ‘Revolutions’ in Georgia and Ukraine are, in some senses, fundamentally different to the five earlier cases.Firstly, the offer of EU membership to the first five countries was crucial in bolstering support for the pro-western and pro-democratic opposition, thereby ensuring their victory in elections. In Georgia and Ukraine the EU has never offered membership.Secondly, Ukraine was unique in experiencing a massive Russian covert and overt intervention in the 2004 elections aimed at preventing the election of the opposition candidate Yushchenko. The EU only intervened reluctantly during the Orange Revolution, at the instigation of new members Poland and Lithuania, to facilitate round-table negotiations between the opposition and authorities.Three factors behind the Orange RevolutionScholarly discussions surrounding the phenomenon of democratic revolutions have been overwhelmingly dominated by American political scientists. This has meant that the discussion has focused on the ‘democratic’ nature of these revolutions (e.g. electoral fraud, human rights violations, democratization) to the detriment of two factors that were at work in Ukraine and Georgia: national identity and social populism.Electoral fraud was undoubtedly crucial in acting as the ‘trigger’ that brought large numbers of Ukrainians on to the streets who were not opposition activists (this differentiated the Orange Revolution from the Ukraine Without Kuchma protests in 2000-2001 where it was mainly activists who took to the streets). But democratisation, human rights and electoral fraud are not sufficient to mobilise millions. zation.As seen during Mikhail Gorbachev’s rule in the late 1980s, anti-Soviet mobilization only proved to be strong in the USSR and Central-Eastern Europe when nationalism and democratization fused together, such as in Poland, the Baltic states, Western-Central Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia - but not in Russia outside Moscow, russified Belarus or in Central Asia.In Ukraine, nationalism was boosted by a second factor, anti-elite social populism, which helped to mobilize Ukrainians against the oligarchic regime and authorities and , specifically, candidate, Viktor Yanukovych.The role of national identity and social populism are missing from the discussion on democratic revolutions . Countries in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) experienced a very different transition to that experienced in the former Soviet outer empire of Central-Eastern Europe and the Baltic states.The USSR was a totalitarian state and empire and these two factors led to what I have described elsewhere as a ‘quadruple transition’ consisting of democratization, creation of a market economy, state-institution building and nation-building. The ‘quadruple transition’ resembles post-colonial transitions found elsewhere in the world.They are more difficult than the dual transitions of democratization and marketization that took place in Latin America and Southern Europe in the 1970s and 1980s, and in Central-Eastern Europe in the 1990s -where there was no need to undertake nation and state building in most countries, and which already exhibited elements of a market economy.The 2004 Ukrainian presidential elections were not only a contest about the future direction of Ukraine but also a contest over national identity in a regionally divided country. The ‘pro-Europe’ candidate, Yushchenko, won majorities in the west and centre of the country (which are predominantly Ukrainian-speaking) while the ruling regime’s ‘pro-Russian’ candidate, Yanukovych, won majorities in the east and south (which are predominantly Russian-speaking).The majority of the participants in the Orange Revolution came from Western and Central Ukraine showing the degree to which Ukrainian-speaking national identity and civil society synthesised together. Civic nationalism therefore played a vital role in Ukraine’s Orange Revolution.The creation of market economies from the fully ‘command-administrative’ economies found throughout the USSR, contrasts to the transition from ‘goulash (semi-market) communism’ to market economies in Central-Eastern Europe. The economic transition in Ukraine, Russia and elsewhere in the CIS produced a small clique of super wealthy oligarchs (many of whom are now in exile in the UK), generated widespread public anger, anti-elite sentiments and a desire for revenge.The Ukrainian Academy of Sciences conducted a yearly survey between 1994 and 2004, asking which element of society was most influential. They found that a majority of Ukrainians believed it to be ‘organised crime’. With Yanukovych put forward as the ruling regime’s candidate, Ukrainian voters in 2004 believed that this was the final leg in the mafia’s take-over of the country. Yanukovych had two criminal convictions and was high in Ukraine’s most powerful Donetsk clan (perceived to be criminal by many).Widespread social anger at a decade of economic transition enabled President Vladimir Putin to turn Russians against liberal democracy by equating the chaos and ‘oligarcisation’ of the 1990s with ‘democracy’ itself. Russians applauded his campaign against oligarchs; only the West protested Mikhail Khodorokovsky’s imprisonment.In Ukraine the democratic opposition channelled social anger against the oligarchs and corrupt ruling elites from the onset of the Kuchmagate crisis in November 2000 (when the president was accused of involvement in the murder of journalist Georgi Gongadze) over the following four years to the Orange Revolution. The main slogan of the Orange Revolution, used repeatedly by Yushchenko at rallies, was not ‘Free Elections!’ but ‘Bandits to Jail!’.Following his election, President Yushchenko has been a persistent critic of Prime Minister Tymoshenko’s ‘populism’ since her first period in government in 2005,but the criticism is unfair because her two governments have merely sought to implement Yushchenko’s 2004 election programme - itself socially populist.The Razumkov Ukrainian Centre for Economic and Political Studies think tank developed Yushchenko’s ‘Ten Steps’ election programme (July 2004) and fourteen draft decrees (October-November 2004). The ‘Ten Steps’ and fourteen decrees became the basis for the Tymoshenko government programme approved by parliament in February 2005; the programme’s preamble stated, ‘The government programme is based on, and develops the basis of, the programme of Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko’s ‘Ten Steps towards the People’…’The ‘Ten Steps’ and fourteen draft decrees are replete with social-populist policies. The ‘Ten Steps’ explains that, ‘Social programmes are not a devastation of the budget, but investments in the people, in the country and the nations future’. Yushchenko pledged in Step two that if he is elected, ‘My Action Plan will ensure priority funding of social programmes. The way of finding budgetary money for this purpose is easy: not to steal, not to build luxurious palaces and not to buy expensive automobiles’.Viktor Yushchenko’s 2004 Election ProgrammeTen Steps Towards the People
1. Create 5 million jobs.
2. Ensure priority Funding for Social Programmes.
3. Increase the Budget by Decreasing Taxation.
4. Force the Government to Work for the People and Battle Corruption.
5. Create Safe Living Conditions.
6. Protect Family Values, Respect for Parents and Children’s Rights.
7. Promote Spirituality and Strengthen Moral Values.
8. Promote the Development of the Countryside.
9. Improve Military Capabilities and Respect for the Military.
10. Conduct Foreign Policy that Benefits the Ukrainian People.
14 Draft Decrees
1. Promote Social Defence of Citizens.
2. Take Steps to Ensure the Return of Lost Savings to Citizens.
3. Increase Support for Child Allowance.
4. Establish the Criteria for Analysing the Activities of Heads of Local State Administrations.
5. Reduce the Terms of Military Service
6. Create a System of People’s Control of the Activities of State Authorities.
7. Struggle against Corruption of High Ranking State Officials and Civil Servants in Local Governments.
8. Reduce the Number of Inspections of Businesses and Ease their Registration Process.
9. Withdraw Peacekeeping Troops from the Republic of Iraq.
10. Defend Citizens Rights to Use the Russian Language and other Minority Languages in Ukraine.
11. Ensure the Basis for Good Relations with Russia and Belarus.
12. Ensure the Rights of the Opposition in Ukraine.
13. Adopt First Steps to Ensure Individual Security of Citizens and to Halt Crime.
14. Strengthen Local Government.
Yushchenko’s RecordYushchenko’s support in 2004 came from a cross-section of Ukrainians and grew out of a large number of expectations. Post-Soviet politicians operate in an inherited political culture where they are unaccountable to voters or the judiciary, whilst other politicians ignore their programmes after being elected themselves. Yushchenko’s fatal mistake was to not appreciate the degree to which Ukrainians were changed by the Orange Revolution and that they would not countenance their president ignoring his programme and societal demands for ‘justice’.Of the three factors that facilitated the Orange Revolution -democratic rights, national identity and social populism- Yuschenko has successfully addressed two, but failed with one. He has presided over Ukraine’s democratization in the holding of two free elections and the emergence of a plural media.Ukraine is the only CIS country defined as ‘Free’ by the Freedom House think tank while during the same period Russia has moved in the opposite direction from ‘Partly Free’ to ‘Unfree’. Yushchenko has also energetically devoted himself to national identity questions, such as reviving Ukraine’s historical memory and commemorating the victims of Stalinism and Communism.The 1933 artificial Ukrainian famine has been raised on an international level. Yushchenko’s nation-building drive has led to poor relations with autocratic Russia where Jozef Stalin is being rehabilitated.Yushchenko’s record in dealing with social populist demands has been a failure. He is perceived as having sought to undermine Tymoshenko’s two governments at every opportunity. No ‘Bandits’ went to jail, the elites remain above the law, politicians remain unaccountable, the judiciary and prosecutors office is as corrupt as it was in the pre-Orange era and only one re-nationalisation took place (Kryvorizhstal).The Tymoshenko’s government policy last year of seeking to repay lost Soviet bank deposits (promised in Yushchenko’s second of his fourteen decrees from his 2004 programme) was blocked by the president and denounced as ‘populist’. Ukrainians supported the policy and Tymoshenko’s ratings shot up making her the country’s most popular politician.Yushchenko’s failure to implement his 2004 programme, and his attempts to undermine governments that sought to do so, have brought four years of political crises and pre-term elections. This failure to implement the social and legal components of his 2004 programme, coupled with his association with four years of political instability, have overshadowed Yushchenko’s two contributions to Ukrainian contemporary history as a democratiser and nation-builder.Ukrainian politicians need to appreciate the rules of the game in democracies; namely, that voters will punish them in elections if they ignore their election promises.

Grim Ending To Ukraine's 'Orange' Fairy Tale

KIEV, Ukraine -- For thousands of jubilant Ukrainians crammed into Kiev's main square on Jan. 23, 2005, a duo of pro-Western politicians were a prince and princess ready to whisk them to a magic land of EU membership and prosperity.
Now with the so-called Orange Revolution that swept the old order from power a distant memory, the tale of Viktor Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko is, like many folk tales, heading for a somewhat macabre end.A victorious Yushchenko took the acclaim of the crowds that day after finally being inaugurated president after a disputed election. Tymoshenko would a few days later become his prime minister.But now Ukraine is among the countries worldwide worst hit by the economic crisis and the two leaders have been engaged in a poisonous feud that has made them a laughing stock in the media.With next presidential elections expected in January, Yushchenko's poll ratings are languishing at less than three percent, possibly making him the most unpopular elected head of state in the world."The economic crisis is more serious than in other countries. But there is another factor: the political instability and constant crisis situation," said the director of the Penta political research center Volodymyr Fesenko."There is a great disappointment with the existing political leadership."The vast independence square in central Kiev that was the main arena for 2004's peaceful uprising is now inhabited by the grubby tents of protesters who have been staging a sit-in against the ruling elite over the past four weeks."Get Usikh!" reads the Ukrainian-language slogan of one movement daubed on its tents along with a broom. "Clear Out!"The country's economy is paying for its continued reliance on exports from Soviet-era heavy industry, whose production has slumped by more than 30 percent as global demand slumped for metal and mining products.Only now have Yushchenko and Tymoshenko agreed to a formal ceasefire in their public battle, a condition set by the International Monetary Fund to give out a US$1.9 billion tranche of a standby loan vital for staving off the risk of default.The weekly Fokus put the pair on its cover as Obi-Wan Kenobi and Princess Leia from the "Star Wars" films, under the headline "With Whom Will the Force Be?." The Korrespondent meanwhile portrayed the pair as child vagabonds in rags with the headline "The Children of Default."A twist in the tale?With the current story ending so badly, the question is what the next chapter will hold for the 46 million inhabitants of Europe's largest country.Yushchenko seems out of the frame, and the latest poll by the Razumkov center think tank shows his vanquished opponent from 2004, Viktor Yanukovich, leading with 19.5 percent and Tymoshenko second with 17.9 percent.The charismatic Tymoshenko, who still styles her hair with traditional Ukrainian braids, is conventionally seen as a pro-Western figure while Yanukovich draws his support from pro-Moscow Russian speaking regions."For the moment, Tymoshenko is the favorite and she has a very good and strong team. But the crisis is working against her. With every week of the crisis, her chances of victory become worse," commented Fesenko.But labels are a tricky business in Ukraine's shifting political world and it was Tymoshenko who signed the deal with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin ending the New Year gas crisis.Oleksandr Lytvynenko, senior political analyst at Razumkov center, said it would be wrong to see Yanukovich's Party of the Regions as an unambiguously pro-Russian force."They can come up with pro-Russian slogans but Yanukovich accused Tymoshenko of acting in Moscow's interests when she signed the deal to end the gas conflict.""It is a party that is not interested in the integration of Ukraine into Russia but with obtaining power in Ukraine itself. The party was always like this."Adding further intrigue is speculation that Tymoshenko could form an alliance with Yanukovich which could see her staying as prime minister and the latter working as a more ceremonial president.And as if that was not enough, the Kiev political world has been abuzz with talk that an outside figure could spring to prominence in the elections.Areseniy Yatseniuk, 34, a pro-Western protege of Yushchenko and an ex-parliament speaker, is winning around 12 percent of the vote in presidential opinion polls although he is only just forming a political faction.Meanwhile, the establishment was rocked by the surprise victory of the Freedom movement of Oleh Tyahnybok, known for his populist Ukrainian nationalist rhetoric, in elections in the western Ternopil region this month."Many people are saying that those in power are yesterday's people and new faces are needed. There is a demand for something new," said Lytvynenko.But for all the bitter disappointments, there have been dramatic changes within society since the Orange Revolution removed a corrupt regime that often seemed stuck in a Soviet time warp."The relationship between people and politics has changed. It has become more rational, critical. There is no sign of the extent of stagnation in public consciousness that there was before 2004," said Lytvynenko.

Cleaning Up Ukraine

Ukraine needs to reform its corrupt gas sector and reduce its dependency on Russia. It's in the EU's interest to help.
The war in South Ossetia in August last year evidently taught Russian leaders the value of PR: however shaky your story, it's worth getting your side out there as loudly and as often as possible.Well before the dispute began, the Russian side was spreading its message in foreign-language media and in EU capitals that this was a "commercial" dispute, and that Ukraine was to blame. They set up a website to provide "facts" about the dispute. The site also carried English-language media reports that followed their interpretation.Even if we accept the argument that the spat began as a commercial argument, Moscow's PR efforts, combined with their actions during the crisis, have demonstrated a clear political aim: to discredit Ukraine and its leaders in the eyes of the EU and Ukrainians.By showing Ukraine as an unreliable transit partner, Russia hoped to push its case for the Nord and South Stream pipelines bypassing the country and to gain some amount of control over Ukraine's pipeline network. In this way it hoped to undermine Ukraine's primary bargaining tool in gas negotiations: its control over gas pipelines.Two of the main accusations about Ukraine's reliability need questioning. First, Russia accused Ukraine of siphoning gas from transit supplies, the reason originally given for cutting flows. The jury remains out on this, but EU energy commissioner Andris Piebalgs has said he has seen no evidence that Ukraine took gas without permission.Second, Russia accused Ukraine of not keeping its side of the agreement to resume gas supplies to Europe on 13 January. But not only did the Ukrainian side complain that the gas was sent in such a way that made delivery impossible, this was also confirmed by independent analysts and EU sources.To deliver the gas would have required supplies to be cut off to the populous areas in the east of the country, leaving the Ukrainian authorities between the devil (an angry EU waiting for deliveries) and the deep blue sea (a backlash from Ukrainians already angry at their handling of the economic crisis).One of the more ironic accusations from the Russian side was made by Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin on 8 January, when he blamed the crisis on the "high degree of official corruption" in Ukraine and the fact the Ukrainian leaders were fighting for "the possibility to maintain one or other intermediaries so that they can use the proceeds for their personal gain and also get resources for future political campaigns."The intermediary concerned was RosUkrEnergo, set up by none other than then-Russian president Putin (along with ex-Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma) – 50% of which is owned by Gazprom.Gazprom itself has been described by one economist as "effectively an economic crime syndicate"; insiders have spoken of private slush funds and given detailed accounts of the complex nexus of political and business interests at its heart.Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko has, by and large, been singing from the same hymn sheet in obliquely accusing Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko of corruption through RosUkrEnergo.It suits both her and Putin to try to weaken Yushchenko. Tymoshenko is involved in a long-running political battle with the Ukrainian president, and should win points at home for showing she can do a deal with Russia and removing RosUkrEnergo from the trade; Putin is furious with Yushchenko for his moral support of Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili during the war with Russia in August last year and clearly wants a more pliant leader in Kiev.But there has been one clear winner in the gas crisis – Ukraine's pro-Russian opposition leader Viktor Yanukovych. Already benefiting from public dissatisfaction at the authorities' handling of the economic crisis, the man defeated by the Orange Revolution has been able to pose as the only one who could strike a good deal with the Russians and follow Moscow in blaming Ukraine's "Orange" leaders for the problem. A recent poll put support for Yanukovych in the upcoming presidential elections at 23%, compared with Tymoshenko at 14% and Yushchenko at 5%.The relative success of Russian PR (compared to previous efforts) has been enhanced by the Ukrainian leaders' propensity to consistently shoot the country in the foot with their infighting and inability to deal with the corruption that cripples the country's gas sector.But the PR drive failed in its aim to obfuscate the corruption problems on Russia's own side of the gas trade and redefine our image of Gazprom as a purely commercial entity. In fact, by focusing on the Ukrainian side of the problem it has highlighted the country's potential role in a solution.By giving Ukraine incentives to clean up its gas sector, the EU can put to the test the claims of all three of its top political figures to be pro-European and at the same time reduce Ukraine's dependence on Russia.

Investigators Close Inquiry Into Execution of Last Tsar

Investigators have closed an investigation into the shooting of Tsar Nicholas II and his family by Bolshevik revolutionaries in 1918.Opened after the Soviet collapse, the investigation was broadly viewed as a review of the country's communist past -- considered by some as 70 years of national glory and others as a bloody nightmare."Today I signed an order to close this criminal case," investigator Vladimir Solovyov, who has conducted the inquiry for 15 years, said Thursday, Itar-Tass reported."We have no information that would suggest that those were not the royal family," he said of the bodies of the tsar, his wife and three of his children.A group of Bolsheviks dumped their bodies into a pit near the house in Yekaterinburg, in the Urals, where they had shot the family during a civil war between supporters of the emperor and revolutionaries who supported Vladimir Lenin."Their bodies and the cause of their death have been identified," Solovyov said.The family was reburied in the imperial crypt of the St. Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg. Officials said last year that they had identified the missing remains of Nicholas II's 13-year-old heir, Grand Prince Alexei, and daughter Grand Princess Maria.Solovyov said the results of the investigation would be presented in early March at a conference but that the issue of what to do with the remains of Grand Prince Alexei and Grand Princess Maria was still to be decided.

Ukrainian Criminals Find Refuge In Russia

KIEV, Ukraine -- Corruption was endemic in Leonid Kuchma’s Ukraine and continues to plague the country under Victor Yushchenko. Law enforcement officials have attempted to prosecute some Kuchma era officialsBut in several cases, the men have fled the country and found refuge in Russia.In an attempt to bring at least one prominent person to justice, prosecutors accused Ihor Bakai, the gas tycoon and head of Naftogaz Ukraine from 1998-2000, of illegally misspending Hr 828.5 million of state funds, of abuse of power, extortion and theft of state assets.After the Orange Revolution, Bakai fled to Russia where he was granted citizenship. An international arrest warrant for Bakai was issued in May 2005. Russia has refused to hand him over.Other former officials are charged or wanted for questioning in Ukraine: former Interior Minister Mykola Bilokon, former mayor of Odessa Ruslan Bodelan, former Kiev Oblast governor Anatoliy Zasukha and the former deputy chief of the State Security Service of Ukraine, Volodymyr Satsyuk, all fled to Russia.Even if Moscow agreed to extradite the suspects, there are no guarantees that Ukrainian officials will prosecute them.Former Sumy governor Volodymyr Shcherban fled to the United States on an “investor’s visa” after the Orange Revolution. He was wanted in Ukraine on corruption charges.Shcherban triumphantly returned in November 2006, with the help of high-priced U.S. lawyers and his political ally Victor Yanukovych, who had just become prime minister.The case against Shcherban was shelved..