Ukraine's orange advance

My newest article for Novaja Europa:

Ukraine's orange advance

These days have been the fifth anniversary of the the Orange Revolution in Ukraine - an event that has for several years shaped the political life in neighbouring Belarus and Russia. The orange color has since then irrevocably obtained a political sense.

Presidential elections in Ukraine of 2004 have turned to a play with a happy ending: a handsome, intelligent, positive Ukrainian-speaking Viktor Yushchenko has in a tense struggle won against the criminal, negative, bad-mannered Russian-speaking Viktor Yanukovych. The actors have picked up stereotypical roles and performed them on stage of the Ukrainian Maidan Nezalezhnosti square live on TV: tense hours and days of the struggle for vote counts, revoting, week-long concerts, demonstrations, the legendary victorious fight of Klitschko wearing an orange ribbon on his shorts, Yuliya Tymoshenko wearing the orange shirt of Shakhtar Donetsk. For many years Belarus and Russia's public political lifes haven't been giving us such a spectacle and the sense that the fate of the country could be decided by ordniary people. The forgotten taste of democracy once again, for only one month, came to our already Soviet-styled dissident lifes.

Supporters of democracy in Belarus and in Russia have perceived Ukraine's Orange Revolution much more emotionally than the Rose Revolution in Georgia a year before that. Georgia was a distant and strange country while Ukraine was here, so close and seemingly similar to us. Many of us watched the developments on the Independence Square via the Internet, came to demonstrations at the Embassy of Ukraine. The Revolution gave a burst of democratic activity in Belarus and Russia. In Belarus this wave broke in late March 2006. In Russia it has faded after several hopelessly undemocratic elections.

After five years, and in anticipation of the Yushchenko's upcoming resignation, we all ask ourselves whether the Orange Revolution has brought Ukraine what we wanted.

Unfortunately, Ukraine did not have its own Mikheil Saakashvili who would have used the window of opportunity for radical reforms and a radical improvement. Coming to power on a wave of enthusiasm, Viktor Yushchenko turned out to be not strong enough, and thus the moment of his election remains the most vivid event of his presidency.

Last five years in Ukraine were marked by infinite tense parliamentary battles, which are being so joyfully mocked by Russian and Belarusian official propagandists. Ukraine kept sinking in corruption, the economy landed in severe crisis. Ukraine has a democracy and poverty, Belarus and Russia are authoritarian and until recently had the dubious illusion of prosperity, which is now disappearing in Belarus. What is better? Ukrainian democratic government works badly. But at least it obeys the Constitution.

Indeed, the strengthening of an effective pluralistic democracy in Ukraine brought to light the overall lack of political culture: the inability to conduct a civilized dialogue between different political parties, the inability to compromise and generate solutions, the readiness to sabotage the functioning of the state. The fact that these phenomena have now so clearly broken out in Ukraine is in the long run still better than the situation in Belarus and Russia. In these autoritarian countries a democratic political culture is not developing at all.

Ukraine shows us the long path we still have before us to reach civilized political standards. While Ukraine is walking this path and while Ukrainians are learning from their mistakes - we have not even started to move. The way the Ukrainian parliament looks today is the way a democratic Belarusian parliament will look in ten years from now. What Western Europeans are trying to teach the Ukrainians now will be what Ukrainians themselves will be teaching us in ten years from now.

Ukraine has managed to avoid what has happened to Russia and Belarus. Censorship and propaganda on television, repressions against the opposition and shamelessly organized vote rigging - five years ago these methods of politics have been clearly set off the agenda in the Ukraine. Our neighbours have passed the test which Belarus failed in 1996.

During these 5 years Russia has finally turned into a sad example of a corrupt authoritarian petro-state, having buried expectations caused by the first relatively promising years of Putin's rule. During these 5 years Belarus has experienced the collapse of hopes for a democratic change in 2006 and was forced to start transformation of its authoritarian regime, for which the Orange Ukraine soon became an important partner and a bridge to the West.

Authoritarianism is ineffective and therefore short-lived and unsustainable. We see it in Belarus, where the existing system of governance has exhausted itself. Sooner or later Russia's rulers will face a similar destiny, perhaps with the same consequences as last time, when a late understanding ended by the collapse of the Soviet Union.

In many ways Ukraine is now more stable state than Belarus or Russia. At least because the question "What will happen after Yushchenko is gone" does not contain this threatening uncertainty as the questions "what will happen after Lukashenka is gone" or "after Putin is gone". Heaven will not fall on earth, the country will not disintegrate, the will be no more revolutions. Yushchenko's victory gave Ukraine additional five years of crystallization of a pluralistic democracy, and none of the current political actors is strong enough to get the country under an authoritarian rule.

On the eve of the presidential elections in 2010 the disposition looks somewhat like a race between Yuliya Tymoshenko and and Viktor Yanukovych. Ironically, but watching Tymashenko's happy chat with Putin automatically makes one wish Viktor Yanukovych, Yushchenko's antagonist five years ago, to be the winner. It will be funny if he actually wins this election. But this victory will not be what it would be in 2004. The country is not the Ukraine of 2004 and well as Viktor Yanukovych is not himself of 2004 any more.


http://n-europe.eu/article/2009/11/27/aranzhavy_avans_ukraine