PERSPECTIVES: Subject: What's happening in Ukraine? (09/25/05)

PERSPECTIVES

by Andrew Fedynsky

Subject: What's happening in Ukraine?

A friend sent me an e-mail: "What's happening in Ukraine?" Like so many others, he had followed the Orange Revolution and rooted for Viktor Yushchenko and the millions of ordinary citizens who stood in the December cold in towns and cities throughout Ukraine, most notably the maidan in Kyiv, where huge crowds gathered daily for speeches, prayer, rock 'n roll and television cameras that beamed images from the stage onto giant screens high above the crowd and to hundreds of millions of homes throughout the world.

What people saw was a man of uncommon courage rallying his people to rise against entrenched politicos who had stolen the election for president. Viktor Yushchenko, movie-star handsome at the beginning of the campaign, offered his poison-ravaged face as a symbol of what was wrong with his country. The smell of conspiracy, intrigue and an ever-present threat of state-sanctioned violence, stoked the fervor and idealism of the masses, who demanded no less than an honest election. For a nation that had seen more than its share of revolutions, that was revolutionary.

The Orange Revolution, in fact, was a continuation of the one from a dozen years earlier, when Ukrainians and others rose up against the Soviet system. Kyiv has plenty of reminders of the Soviet era: drab apartment buildings, clunky cars, the Russian language, a couple of Lenin statues, sidewalk vendors with gold teeth selling hammer-and-sickle badges and busts of Stalin, mass graves in the Bykivnia Forest.

The 1991 revolution was animated by an overwhelming sentiment to sweep away 75 years of communism, during which Ukrainians endured terror, a man-made Famine, a world war and wholesale assaults on their language and culture. The dissident movement, which began in the 1960s as a lonely struggle waged by a few individuals, by the late 1980s had escalated into a mass movement. Once the uprising became unstoppable, professional politicians took over: men like Ukraine's Leonid Kravchuk, Russia's Boris Yeltsin and Georgia's Eduard Shevardnadze, who had risen to power in the same system they were now dismantling. As a result, what started as a revolution ended as a compromise.

Independent Ukraine adopted all the forbidden accouterments of national sovereignty: the trident, blue-and-yellow flag, Ukrainian language, anthem and currency, an army, free speech and democracy. In return, the apparatchiks who had previously punished people for advocating Ukraine's ancient colors and symbols, got to remain in power. Obligingly, they removed Lenin's portrait and, on the very same nail, replaced it with Taras Shevchenko's. Ignoring all the dozens of political parties that emerged, a handful of insiders worked to maintain the power they had enjoyed in the Soviet era. Privatization of government assets became an excuse for a privileged few to amass fortunes in manufacturing, energy, the media, food production.

Out of this tangle, a central banker - the technocrat who had laid the foundation for a stable currency and economic growth - emerged as a reformer, putting together a coalition he called Our Ukraine, implicitly aligning himself against "Their Ukraine." Promising to orient Ukraine on Europe and the West, Mr. Yushchenko adopted the color orange and the slogan "Yes!" (Tak!). As we all know, what began as a political campaign, ended up as a revolution.

Now it's history. Following the formula of every revolution that preceded it, the Orange Revolution has given way to practical politics. President Yushchenko dismissed his government, including a number of officials who had stood shoulder to shoulder with him at the maidan. They were still his friends, the revolutionary-turned-president said, but he dismissed them nonetheless. He had his reasons. Certainly, there's no shortage of political analyses explaining it all. Never mind that they range from A to Z, black to white, triumph to catastrophe.

Ukraine is a rich land, blessed with abundant natural resources, fertile soil and a strategic location. Maybe that's why it's been burdened with so much history. Lots of monuments in Kyiv testify to that.

Bohdan Khmelnytsky, who liberated Ukraine from Poland in 1648, establishing the first independent state in Ukraine since the days of Kyivan Rus', sits frozen on a rearing steed next to the 1,000-year-old Cathedral of St. Sophia. A few blocks away, there's Taras Shevchenko. His poetry in the 1800s mobilized a nation of serfs to rise up against imperial Russia. Nearby, the scholarly Mykhailo Hrushevsky sits, book in hand. In 1918 with the Russian empire buried in the mud and gore of World War I, he stood at St. Sophia Square, next to Hetman Khmelnytsky and declared Ukrainian independence, even as Vladimir Lenin was setting up a rival government that ultimately seized power and presided over a 75-year reign of terror, famine and stagnation.

Like the nesting dolls sold at sidewalk stands all over Kyiv, Ukrainian history opens up to one revolution after the other - 1648, 1918, 1991, 2004 - all pursuing the forbidden goal Shevchenko articulated in his poetry in the 1840s: "In your own Home, your own Truth, Power and Freedom!"

At the maidan - Independence Square - a giant column commemorates the 1991 revolution that swept away the Soviet Union. So far, there's no monument to the Orange Revolution, unless you count the T-shirts and other orange souvenirs the sidewalk vendors sell throughout Kyiv. With the first anniversary of the dramatic days of last December soon upon us, serious work still needs to be done. I don't know Mr. Yushchenko's deepest thoughts, but you have to think that, every morning when he looks in the mirror, he reinforces his resolve to frustrate the plots of his would-be assassins. The best way to do that is to fulfill the promise of the revolutions of 1648, 1918, 1991 and the Orange one he led last year.

Those Mr. Yushchenko dismissed include the charismatic former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who declared her outrage and vowed to challenge Mr. Yushchenko in the coming parliamentary elections and then in the presidential election of 2009.

Think about that: to settle political differences, a leading figure threatens her opponent with a vigorous campaign in an honest election. If that's what ultimately happens, I can't help but think that the Orange Revolution will have been justified. The winners will be the people of Ukraine who courageously acted on their faith in democracy.

So, what's happening in Ukraine? Just look at the forest of construction cranes on Kyiv's horizon. In more ways than one, Ukraine is a work in progress.

Andrew Fedynsky's e-mail address is: [email protected].

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