aaus-list @ ukrainianstudies.org -- [aaus-list] Invitation: AAUS Meeting on Saturday and ASN FinalUkraine Lineup
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The Annual Meeting of the American Association for Ukrainian
Studies will be held in Room 1219 (Harriman Institute Conference Room),
Saturday, April 16, 1:15-2:45 PM.
Important issues concerning the June 29-July 2 MAU Congress in Donetsk
will be discussed. The usual drinks and sandwiches will be provided.
We look forward to seeing you all there!!!
Our thanks to Dominique Arel for the Ukraine Lineup.
Myroslava T. Znayenko,
President, AAUS
April 12, 2005
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The Ukraine List (UKL) #344
compiled by Dominique Arel
Chair of Ukrainian Studies, U of Ottawa
10 April 2005
1-ASN 2005 World Convention Ukraine-Final Panel Lineup
2-Eurasia Daily Monitor: Berezovsky Threatens to
Open Pandora's Box Created by Fugitive Ukrainian
Bodyguard
3-The Times (UK): Security Chief Chervonenko on
Attempted Assassination of Yushchenko
4-The Guardian (UK): John Laughland, The Mythology of People Power
5-BBC Monitoring: Russian TV Slams Yushchenko for
Indecision on Victory Day Visit to Moscow
6-Tatyana Zhurzhenko: Orange Victory: Ukraine
Tastes the Exotic Fruits of Democracy [from IWM
Newsletter, Winter 2005]
7-Marko Bojcun: Ukraine Beyond Postcommunism
(forthcoming in Debatte: Journal of Contemporary
Central and Eastern Europe, May 2005).
**Thanks to Olga Bogatyrenko, Marko Bojcun, Orest
Deychakiwsky, John Paul Himka, E. Morgan
Williams, Roman Zurba and to CIUS, HURI, and the
Kennan Institute for supporting our translation
project**
#1
ASN 2005 World Convention
Columbia University, New York, 14-16 April 2005
Ukraine panels lineup
The Tenth Annual World Convention of the
Association for the Study of Nationalities (ASN)
will feature 95 panels and thirteen screenings
and multimedia presentations. The full
preliminary program of the Convention is
available at www.nationalities.org. Enclosed
below is the lineup of Ukraine panels, one of the
strongest in years. The Ukraine section will
feature 14 panels and 58 participants from the
US, Canada, Ukraine, the UK, Germany and France.
The Ukraine section of the ASN Convention is
sponsored by the Chair of Ukrainian Studies,
University of Ottawa. Its Program Committee is
comprised of Alexandra Hrycak, Oxana Shevel, and
Dominique Arel.
A registration form is available at
http://www.nationalities.org/asn_2005_registration.pdf.
--DA
SESSION I
THURSDAY APRIL 14, 1.00-3.00 PM
Panel U2
Identity in Ukraine and Belarus
Chair
Zenon Wasyliw (Ithaca College, US)
wasyliw@ithaca.edu
Papers
Germ Janmaat (Institute of Education, London, UK)
g.janmaat@ioe.ac.uk
History and National Identity: The Great Famine
in Irish and Ukrainian History Textbooks
Tetyana Koshmanova (Western Michigan University, US)
tetyana.koshmanova@wmich.edu
National Identity and Cultural Coherence in Educational Reform
Tanya Richardson (University of Cambridge, UK)
pryvit99@yahoo.com
Contesting the Nation, Reproducing Empire:
History, Place and Identity in Post-Soviet Odessa
Anna Zadora (Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Strasbourg, France)
anna_zadora@hotmail.com
The Role of Historical Education in the
Construction of a Belarusian National Identity
Discussant:
Hugo Lane (Polytechnic U, Brooklyn, US)
hlane@duke.poly.edu
SESSION II
THURSDAY APRIL 14, 3.15-5.15 PM
Panel U4
Ukrainian Narratives of Moving into, out of, and through Empires
Chair
Catherine Wanner (Penn State U, US)
cew10@email.psu.edu
Papers
Jennifer Dickinson (University of Vermont, US)
jennifer.dickinson@uvm.edu
Joining the Empire: Oral History Narratives of
Becoming Soviet in 1940's Zakarpattia
Natalia Shostak (University of Saskatchewan, Canada)
natalia.shostak@usask.ca
Migrating through the EU: Ukrainian Migrant
Workers' Narratives in Contemporary Perspective
Jessica Allina-Pisano (Colgate University, US)
JAllinaPisano@mail.colgate.edu
Identity in the Ukraine-Slovakia Borderlands: The
Politics of European Union Expansion in a Divided
Village
Tatiana Zhurzhenko (Kazarin Kharkiv National U, Ukraine)
tzhurzh@postmaster.co.uk
Identity in the Ukrainain-Russian Borderlands:
Local Narratives of Spatial Reorganization and
Social Change
Discussant:
Paul Robert Magocsi (U of Toronto, Canada)
ukr.chair@utoronto.ca
SESSION III
THURSDAY APRIL 14, 5.30-7.30 PM
Panel V3 Multimedia Presentation
Ukraine's Orange Revolution Through Photos, Films and Music
with
Taras Kuzio (George Washington University, US)
tkuzio@gwu.edu
THURSDAY APRIL 14, 8.30-10.30 PM
Film presentation: Mamay
with Yuri Shevchuk (Columbia U, US)
sy2165@columbia.edu
SESSION IV
FRIDAY APRIL 15, 9.00-11.00 AM
Panel U5
Ukraine Under Leonid Kuchma, Part I
[Special 2005 Issue of Problems of Post-Communism
on "Ten Years of Leonid Kuchma"]
Chair
Roman Senkus (CIUS, U of Toronto, Canada)
r.senkus@utoronto.ca
Papers
Sarah Whitmore (Oxford Brookes U, UK)
swhitmore@brookes.ac.uk
State and Institution Building
Oleh Protsyk (European Centre for Minority Issues, Germany)
protsyk@policy.hu
Constitutional Politics and Presidential Power
Alexandra Hrycak (Reed College, US)
Alexandra.Hrycak@directory.reed.edu
Gender Issues
Discussant:
Paul D'Anieri (University of Kansas, US)
p-danieri@ku.edu
SESSION V
FRIDAY APRIL 15, 11.15 AM-1.15 PM
Panel Workshop U9
The Hidden Politics of Persuasion and Coercion:
New Approaches to the Ukrainian State
Moderator
Dominique Arel (Chair of Ukrainian Studies, U of Ottawa)
darel@uottawa.ca
Presentations
Andrew Wilson (U College London, UK)
Virtual Politics: Faking Democracy in Ukraine
alwilson@ssees.ac.uk, awilson8795@hotmail.com
Jessica Allina-Pisano (Colgate U, US)
JAllinaPisano@mail.colgate.edu
Informal Institutions, Capillary Power, and State Hegemony
Keith Darden (Yale U, US)
keith.darden@yale.edu
The Politics of the Blackmail State
SESSION V
FRIDAY APRIL 15, 2.45-4.45 PM
Panel U10
The Regional Factor in Ukrainian Politics
Chair
TBA
Papers
Lowell Barrington (Marquette U, US)
lowell.barrington@marquette.edu
Disentangling and Re-entangling Region,
Ethnicity, and Language in Ukrainian Mass
Attitudes
Yaroslav Hrytsak (Lviv State U, Ukraine)
hrytsak@franko.lviv.ua
and Oksana Malanchuk (U Michigan, US)
oksana@umich.edu
A Story of Two Cities, 10 Years After: The Lviv-Donetsk Comparison
Dominique Arel (U of Ottawa, Canada)
darel@uottawa.ca
Understanding the Regional Factor in Ukrainian
Politics: The Evidence from the 1994 and 2004
Presidential Election Surveys
Discussant:
Roman Szporluk (Harvard U, US)
szporluk@fas.harvard.edu
SESSION VI
FRIDAY APRIL 15, 5.00-7.00 PM
Special Roundtable U13
Yushchenko's First 100 Days
Chair
Marc P. Berenson (Princeton U, US)
berenson@princeton.edu
Participants
Daniel Bilak (Research Fellow, Chair of Ukrainian Studies, U of Ottawa, Canada)
Daniel.Bilak@gowlings.com
Mychailo Wynnyckyj (U Mohyla Academy, Kyiv, Ukraine)
mwynn@lavalink.com
Françoise Ducros (CIDA, Ottawa, Canada) [to be confirmed]
francoise_ducros@acdi-cida.gc.ca
Adrian Karatnycky (Freedom House, New York, US)
fhpres@aol.com
SESSION VIII
SATURDAY APRIL 16, 9.00-11.00 AM
Panel U11
2004 Ukrainian Presidential Elections I
Chair
Taras Hunczak (Rutgers U, US)
thunczak@andromeda.rutgers.edu
Papers
Ivan Katchanovski (Independent Scholar, Ukraine)
ikatcha1@gmu.edu
Regional Political Cleavages and Electoral Behavior in Ukraine in 1991-2004
Volodymyr Paniotto (Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, Ukraine)
paniotto@kmis.kiev.ua
The Impact of the Ukrainian Presidential Election
on Ethnic Relations in Ukraine
Idil P. Izmirli (Institute for Conflict Analysis
and Resolution, George Mason U, US)
Misket@aol.com
From Communist Totalitarianism to Corruptrocracy:
The Impact of the Ukrainian Presidential
elections on the Crimean Tatar Question and
Regional Security in Central Eurasia
Yuliya Zhadan (Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris, France)
yulia_zhadan@yahoo.com
Ukrainian Language Issue in the Crimea: An
Insight into 2004 Presidential Election Debates
Discussant:
Christian W. Haerpfer (Kennan Institute, Wilson Center, Washington, DC)
HaerpferC@wwic.si.edu
**
Roundtable U7
A Feminine Perception of Ukraine in Geopolitics and Literature
[sponsored by the Shevchenko Scientific Society]
Chair
Myroslava Znayenko (Rutgers U, US)
Znayenko@andromeda.Rutgers.edu
Presentations
Serhii Bilenkyi (Harvard U, US)
serh.bilenky@utoronto.ca
Michael Naydan (Pennsylvania State U, US)
mmn3@psu.edu
Larissa Onyshkevych (Shevchenko Scientific Society, NY, US)
larissa@onyshkevych.com
Anna Chumachenko (Kherson U, Ukraine)
jlassowsky@clarion.edu
SESSION IX
SATURDAY APRIL 16, 11.15 AM-1.15 PM
Panel U6
Ukraine Under Leonid Kuchma, Part II
[Special 2005 Issue of Problems of Post-Communism
on "Ten Years of Leonid Kuchma"]
Chair
Alexandra Hrycak (Reed College, US)
Alexandra.Hrycak@directory.reed.edu
Papers
Hans van Zon (U of Sunderland, UK)
hans.van-zon@sunderland.ac.uk
Political Culture and Democratisation
Stephen Shulman (U of Southern Illinois, US)
shulman@siu.edu
Inter-Ethnic Relations, National Identity and Integration
Taras Kuzio (George Washington U, US)
tkuzio@gwu.edu
Ukrainian Foreign and Security Policy
Discussant
John Payne (MIT, US)
JPayne1138@aol.com
**
Panel U12
Ukrainian Migrants in their Encounter with the European Union
Chair
Vitaly Chernetsky (Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, Cambridge, US)
vchernet@fas.harvard.edu
Papers
Kerstin Zimmer (Phillips U, Germany)
Kerstin.Zimmer@web.de
Going West: Ukrainian Migrants Facing Shifting EU Migration Systems
Natalia Patsiurko (McGill U, Canada)
nataliya.patsyurko@mcgill.ca
Multiple Responses to Economic Uncertainty:
Migration and Entrepreneurship as Substitutes for
the State Employment in Ukraine
Adrian Ivakhiv (U of Vermont, US)
ivakhiv@verizon.net
Identity and Nomadic Space in the Borderlands of East Central Europe
Discussant:
Oxana Shevel (Purdue University, US)
shevel@polsci.purdue.edu
SESSION X
SATURDAY APRIL 16, 2.45.-4.45 PM
Special Panel U8
Is Ukraine in Europe or Eurasia?
[sponsored by the Shevchenko Scientific Society]
Organizer
Larissa Onyshkevych (Shevchenko Scientific Society, NY, US)
larissa@onyshkevych.com
Chair
Mark von Hagen (Columbia U, US)
mlv2@columbia.edu
Papers
George G. Grabowicz (Harvard U, US)
grabowic@fas.harvard.edu
Paul D'Anieri (U of Kansas, US)
p-danieri@ku.edu
Alexander J. Motyl (Rutgers U, US)
AJMotyl@andromeda.rutgers.edu
Respondents:
(former) Ambassador Yuriy Shcherbak (Ukraine)
uscherbak@rada.gov.ua
(former) Ambassador Derek Fraser (U of Victoria, Canada)
fraserd@uvic.ca
Nadia Diuk (Director, Europe & Eurasia, National Endowment for Democracy)
nadia@ned.org
Gene Fishel (Department of State, Washington, DC, US)
ACefishe@us-state.osis.gov
SESSION XI
SATURDAY APRIL 16, 5.00-7.00 PM
Panel U1
2004 Ukrainian Presidential Elections II
Chair
Olga Bogatyrenko (UC Davis, US)
obogatyrenko@ucdavis.edu
Papers
Yann Breault (U of Québec in Montreal, Canada)
ybreault@mail.com
Ukraine's Endangered European Identity: Did the
2004 Presidential Election Results Change
Anything?
Oksana V. Jensen (American U, US)
okaluh@irex.org
2004 Presidential Election in Ukraine: an
Indication of Democracy or a Testament of
Political Corruption?
Ilya Khineyko (U of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada)
khineiko@ualberta.ca
View from Russia: Russian Media Coverage of the
2004 Presidential Elections in Ukraine
Olga Filippova (Fulbright Scholar, Indiana U, US)
ofilippo@indiana.edu
Tracking Ukraine's "Orange Revolution"
through Cyber-Ethnography: A View from Kharkiv
Discussant
Olga Andriewsky (Trent U, Canada)
oandriewsky@trentu.ca
**
Panel U3
Civic and Cultural Change in Ukraine: Taking Stock of the Literature
Chair
Jaroslaw Martyniuk (Intermedia, Washington, DC, US)
martyniukj@intermedia.org
Papers
Catherine Wanner (Penn State U, US)
cew10@email.psu.edu
Anthropological Approaches to Cultural Politics in Ukraine
Wsewolod Isajiw (U of Toronto, Canada)
isajiw@chass.utoronto.ca
Civil Society in Ukraine: Toward a Systematic Sociological Research Agenda
Oxana Shevel (Purdue U, US)
shevel@polsci.purdue.edu
Citizenship and Nation-Building in Ukraine
Discussant:
Ilya Prizel (U of Pittsburgh, US)
ilp1@pitt.edu
#2
Berezovsky Threatens to Open Pandora's Box
Created by Fugitive Ukrainian Bodyguard
by Oleg Varfolomeyev
Eurasia Daily Monitor, 4 April 2005
Russian emigre tycoon Boris Berezovsky claims
that he has the tape recordings made by Mykola
Melnychenko, the fugitive former bodyguard of
former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, in
Kuchma's office in 1999-2000. Many observers
believe the recordings may shed light on the
murder of journalist Heorhiy Gongadze and secret
sales of Ukrainian arms to rogue states such as
Iraq and Iran. Berezovsky, ahead of Ukrainian
President Viktor Yushchenko's visit to the United
States, has accused Kyiv of being unwilling to
solve the Gongadze puzzle. He also hinted that
the recordings might cast a shadow on Russian
President Vladimir Putin.
In early March Hryhory Omelchenko, who heads the
Ukrainian parliamentary commission looking into
Gongadze's murder, failed to persuade parliament
to hear his report on Gongadze. Speaker Volodymyr
Lytvyn said that Yushchenko had asked parliament
to postpone the hearing. Omelchenko, who holds
Kuchma and Lytvyn responsible for Gongadze's
death, accused Yushchenko of having guaranteed
immunity to Kuchma -- a charge that Yushchenko
indignantly denied. An interview with Volodymyr
Tsvil, a former consul in Munich who helped
Melnycchenko escape from Ukraine in 2000,
released on March 17, strengthened suspicions
that the recordings might be used to blacken the
new authorities. Tsvil claimed that the
recordings contain "a lot of conversations of
Kuchma with Yushchenko and [Prime Minister Yulia]
Tymoshenko, in which they look much worse than
they claim to be."
Melnychenko was expected to return to Ukraine
after the Orange Revolution and testify under
security guarantees from Yushchenko. But the
suspicious death of former Interior Minister
Yuriy Kravchenko caused Melnychenko to fear for
his life. In an unexpected move, Melnychenko
turned to Berezovsky for help. Berezovsky
evacuated Melnychenko from Warsaw to London. The
head of Berezovsky's Civil Liberties Fund (CLF),
Alexander Goldfarb, also revealed that the fund
began to financially assist Melnychenko several
years ago (see EDM, March 18).
In a March 19 interview, Berezovsky specified
what kinds of assistance Melnychenko had
received. He said that the CLF paid for the
recordings' transcription and authenticity checks
in the United States. This prompted an angry
reaction from Melnychenko, who said that
Berezovsky had nothing to do with the financing
of the procedures to authenticate the recordings.
But on March 28 the CLF stated that in April 2002
it spent more than $115,000 to decipher
Melnychenko's recordings in the United States and
to publish them on the Internet. As proof, the
CLF produced a list of 16 fragments of
conversations in Kuchma's office relating to
Gongadze's death; 14 of them were posted on
Ukrayinska pravda on March 31. Most of the
fragments are widely known and add nothing to the
general picture; they are also Russian
translations of conversations spoken mostly in a
mixture of Ukrainian and Russian. As such, they
can hardly serve as convincing proof that
Berezovsky has possession of the recordings.
On March 30 Berezovsky said that Melnychenko had
given him all the recordings he had. He said that
U.S. experts had confirmed the authenticity of
the recordings that implicate not only Kuchma,
but also Putin. Berezovsky called the attitude of
the new Ukrainian government "strange" as, he
said, Kuchma should have been officially charged
long ago. But Melnychenko issued a statement on
the same day, calling on the Security Service of
Ukraine (SBU) to "stop Berezovsky's illegal
activities." Melnychenko denied having ever
passed his recordings to Berezovsky and accused
him of trying to "influence the Ukrainian
authorities for personal gain." As is known,
Berezovsky had advertised his plans to come to
Kyiv "within weeks," but failed to specify the
goal of his visit. According to Melnychenko,
Berezovsky earlier in March offered him money for
the recordings, but he turned down the deal.
In response, Berezovsky's aide Goldfarb accused
Melnychenko of conspiring with the Russian
Federal Security Service (FSB). On March 31
Goldfarb told Ukrayinska pravda that Melnychenko
had visited Moscow late last year. "They want
Melnychenko's recordings to be discredited
because they contain materials implicating
Putin," he said. And on April 1 Berezovsky told
Interfax-Ukraine that he is going to open a whole
Pandora's box of compromising materials.
Berezovsky said that not all of Melnychenko's
recordings have yet been transcribed, and that he
also had "other similar materials from different
sources." "I intend to publish the part of the
recordings that deals with relations between the
previous Ukrainian government and the Russian
government implicating both in corruption," he
said.
Former FSB colonel Alexander Litvinenko, who is
linked to Berezovsky, revealed another sensation
the same day. Speaking from London with
Interfax-Ukraine, Litvinenko said that
Melnychenko had told him that the bugging of
Kuchma's office had been organized by Yevhen
Marchuk, who was secretary of the National
Security Council when Gongadze was killed.
Marchuk has denied this. But he is an easy
target. None of the known scandalous recordings
reveals anything wrong about Marchuk; furthermore
in 1999, when the bugging apparently started,
Marchuk ran in presidential elections against
Kuchma on an anti-corruption ticket.
Kyiv's reaction to Berezovsky's revelations has
so far been calm. SBU chief Oleksandr Turchynov
said that his agency has started to check
Melnychenko's accusations against Berezovsky.
Previewing Yushchenko's U.S. visit, State
Secretary Oleksandr Zinchenko has said that
Yushchenko is not planning to meet with
Melnychenko there. Prosecutor-General Sviatyslav
Piskun, however, is expected to meet with
Melnychenko in the United States.
(Tribuna.com.ua, March 17; Ukrayinska pravda,
March 18, 28, 31; Korrespondent, March 19;
Kievskiye vedomosti, March 29; Gazeta Po-Kievski,
Obozrevatel.com, March 30; Segodnya,
Interfax-Ukraine, Channel 5 TV, April 1; Den,
April 2)
#3
Could I Have Stopped This?
Security chief Yevhen Chervonenko still worries
that he could have done more to prevent the
attempted assassination of Ukraine's new
President, Viktor Yushchenko
by Jeremy Page
The Times (London, UK), 1 April 2005
YEVHEN CHERVONENKO'S instincts told him something was wrong as
soon as he saw the two black Mercedes-Benz 4WDs waiting in Podil, the
old quarter of Kiev.
He could tell by the number plates that the cars were from the SBU,
Ukrainian state security. Moments later, a senior SBU officer climbed out
of one of the 4WDs and told him to call off his team of bodyguards.
It was September 5 - less than two months to go until Ukraine's presidential
election - and Chervonenko was working as security chief for the 51-year-old
liberal opposition candidate, Viktor Yushchenko.
Chervonenko says: "I twice checked the order to remove the guards, so my
conscience is clear. But if I had known then whom he was going to meet, I
would have disobeyed the order; even if it cost me my job."
What Yushchenko had not told him was that he was going to have a secret
dinner with the head of the SBU, Igor Smeshko, at the dacha of the deputy
chief, Volodymyr Satsyuk, outside Kiev.
Chervonenko, 45, called off his security team, and Yushchenko drove off
with the SBU officers and his campaign manager, David Zhvania.
The meal that night, according to both men, consisted of boiled crayfish, a
salad of tomatoes, cucumbers and corn, and some beer, followed by cold
meats, and vodka and cognac.
According to some of the world's top toxicologists, it also contained a huge
dose of TCDD, the highly toxic dioxin that was a component of the US's
Vietnam War defoliant, Agent Orange.
Yushchenko's wife was the first to notice that all was not well when she
tasted something metallic on her husband's lips as she kissed him that
night. He brushed aside her concerns.
The next morning, however, Yushchenko started complaining, after taking
a sauna, of nausea and severe head and stomach pains. Within hours, he
was doubled up with pain.
As the poison spread over the next few days, lesions and cysts erupted on
his face and back - even along the lining of his intestines. When he was
rushed to the exclusive Rudolfinerhaus clinic in Vienna on the night of
September 10, doctors said that he was suffering from multiple organ
failure and had barely 12 hours to live.
Six months on, Yushchenko's symptoms are clearing, but the poison that
almost killed him remains shrouded in mystery. Such are the sensitivities of
the case that Chervonenko refused to say who he thought was behind the
poisoning. Nevertheless, his story provides an insight into the silent war
still being waged behind the scenes of Ukraine's "Orange revolution", as it
became known. It also reveals the personal anguish of a man who probably
saved Yushchenko's life, yet still blames himself for failing to protect
him.
"This is a pain that I have to live with," Chervonenko says, at his desk in
the Ministry of Transport, which he now runs.
Chervonenko had known better than almost anyone that there was a real risk
of assassination in a country where critics of the Government had a habit of
dying in road accidents. Some supporters of the pro-Russian Prime Minister,
Viktor Yanukovych, had used everything during the campaign, from flyers
portraying Yushchenko as Hitler to telephone death threats to prevent him
from winning. Even the two state-security agents assigned to protect
Yushchenko could not be trusted.
So Chervonenko built up his own security team of 55 guards - all former
intelligence, special forces and police officers. He devised an elaborate
system of reconnaissance, intelligence and physical protection, even
testing Yushchenko's food and drink before the politician touched it.
Only on the evening of September 5 he let his guard down, a decision
he says he will regret for the rest of his life. He called off his security
team and Yushchenko drove to the dinner with the SBU officers.
The importance of his role in the Orange revolution has come to light
only since he resigned as Yushchenko's security chief on the day of his
inauguration, January 23.
It was he who had first decided, during a rally in Donetsk, the home town of
Yanukovych, that Yushchenko needed professional protection. "I was the one
and only man who could argue with Yushchenko and convince him. Now that
he's President, I can't," Chervonenko says, jokingly. "The hardest thing was
persuading him to be driven in a bullet-proof car. It was a war. But our
weapons were information and bravery. My security system was based on
aikido (a Japanese self-defence method). I tried to provoke them to take
the first step then I'd take counter-measures."
Altogether, he estimates that his security team foiled at least two
assassination attempts, including one when a powerful bomb was found
outside campaign headquarters on November 21, the day of the second
round of the election. But his successes will for ever be overshadowed by
the fateful security breach on September 5.
Ukrainian newspapers have quoted Smeshko, the SBU chief, as saying that
Yushchenko felt ill before the dinner and had postponed the meeting at least
once because of his health. But Chervonenko says that his boss had been
in good shape before the dinner.
Yushchenko had been supposed to go to a buffet dinner in Chernigov, where
all the food had been tested. Instead, he decided to go and visit an artist
friend whose wife had just died, and then a local businessman who was
funding the opposition. Yushchenko drank some homemade liquor with the
artist and had some fish and vodka with the businessman. Chervonenko
tasted both. "If Yushchenko took a piece of tuna sushi," says the former
guard, "I would try it first. He'd make sure that I tasted it first."
Then they drove to Podil, where they met the SBU officers. By the time
he saw Yushchenko the next day, the poison was already taking effect.
For five days, Ukrainian doctors were nonplussed. They wanted him to
check in to a state hospital for closer examination. Chervonenko refused.
"I knew that in communist times and after independence, some generals
and politicians went in there and came out feet-first," he says. "I listened
to the doctors in Ukraine and understood that we had to leave. We were
being bullshitted."
On the night of September 10, he chartered a private plane to fly
Yushchenko to Vienna. Only on the plane did Yushchenko tell his security
chief where he had been on the evening of September 5. Over the next
few weeks, Chervonenko rarely left Yushchenko's side. Twice, he and
Yushchenko's wife authorised doctors to operate on him in intensive care.
"I didn't have time for feelings," Chervonenko recalls. "I had to analyse
the information from the doctors. To begin with, they didn't all have the
same opinion. We had to decide what to do to save his life."
But even the former rally driver's nerves almost cracked after he gave
permission for doctors to insert a catheter in Yushchenko's spinal column
to allow them to inject more painkillers.
"All my life I never kneeled," he says, " but I was on my knees in the
intensive-care unit, because no one knew what was going to happen. I
felt the weight of responsibility of 48 million people."
Chervonenko's loyalty was not lost on the new Ukrainian President. When a
Cabinet was selected after his inauguration, Chervonenko was appointed
Minister of Transport, and now he is the target of death threats. He has
retained four of the security team who guarded Yushchenko and now, for
the first time, also has to use a bullet-proof car himself.
Yet even in his new role as Transport Minister, with his own life under
threat, he cannot quite let go of his sense of responsibility for
Yushchenko's safety. Taking a drag on his cigarette, he pauses, then
says: "I will be like an eagle which flies above and sees all possible
risks for Yushchenko, because Ukraine needs him."
#4
The mythology of people power
The glamour of street protests should not blind
us to the reality of US-backed coups in the
former USSR
by John Laughland
The Guardian (UK), 1 April 2005
John Laughland is a trustee of www.oscewatch.org
and an associate of www.sandersresearch.com
Before his denunciation yesterday of the
"prevailing influence" of the US in the
"anti-constitutional coup" which overthrew him
last week, President Askar Akayev of Kyrgyzstan
had used an interesting phrase to attack those
who were stirring up trouble in the drug-ridden
Ferghana Valley. A criminal "third force", linked
to the drug mafia, was struggling to gain power.
Originally used as a label for covert operatives
shoring up apartheid in South Africa, before
being adopted by the US-backed "pro-democracy"
movement in Iran in November 2001, the third
force is also the title of a book published by
the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,
which details how western-backed non-governmental
organisations (NGOs) can promote regime and
policy change all over the world. The formulaic
repetition of a third "people power" revolution
in the former Soviet Union in just over one year
- after the similar events in Georgia in November
2003 and in Ukraine last Christmas - means that
the post-Soviet space now resembles Central
America in the 1970s and 1980s, when a series of
US-backed coups consolidated that country's
control over the western hemisphere.
Many of the same US government operatives in
Latin America have plied their trade in eastern
Europe under George Bush, most notably Michael
Kozak, former US ambassador to Belarus, who
boasted in these pages in 2001 that he was doing
in Belarus exactly what he had been doing in
Nicaragua: "supporting democracy".
But for some reason, many on the left seem not to
have noticed this continuity. Perhaps this is
because these events are being energetically
presented as radical and leftwing even by
commentators and political activists on the
right, for whom revolutionary violence is now
cool.
As protesters ransacked the presidential palace
in Bishkek last week (unimpeded by the police who
were under strict instructions not to use
violence), a Times correspondent enthused about
how the scenes reminded him of Bolshevik
propaganda films about the 1917 revolution. The
Daily Telegraph extolled "power to the people",
while the Financial Times welcomed Kyrgyzstan's
"long march" to freedom.
This myth of the masses spontaneously rising up
against an authoritarian regime now exerts such a
grip over the collective imagination that it
persists despite being obviously false: try to
imagine the American police allowing
demonstrators to ransack the White House, and you
will immediately understand that these
"dictatorships" in the former USSR are in reality
among the most fragile, indulgent and weak
regimes in the world.
The US ambassador in Bishkek, Stephen Young, has
spent recent months strenuously denying
government claims that the US was interfering in
Kyrgyzstan's internal affairs. But with
anti-Akayev demonstrators telling western
journalists that they want Kyrgyzstan to become
"the 51st state", this official line is wearing a
little thin.
Even Young admits that Kyrgyzstan is the largest
recipient of US aid in central Asia: the US has
spent $746m there since 1992, in a country with
fewer than 5 million inhabitants, and $31m was
pumped in in 2004 alone under the terms of the
Freedom Support Act. As a result, the place is
crawling with what the ambassador rightly calls
"American-sponsored NGOs".
The case of Freedom House is particularly
arresting. Chaired by the former CIA director
James Woolsey, Freedom House was a major sponsor
of the orange revolution in Ukraine. It set up a
printing press in Bishkek in November 2003, which
prints 60 opposition journals. Although it is
described as an "independent" press, the body
that officially owns it is chaired by the
bellicose Republican senator John McCain, while
the former national security adviser Anthony Lake
sits on the board. The US also supports
opposition radio and TV.
Many of the recipients of this aid are open about
their political aims: the head of the US-funded
Coalition for Democracy and Civil Society, Edil
Baisalov, told the New York Times that the
overthrow of Akayev would have been "absolutely
impossible" without American help. In Kyrgyzstan
as in Ukraine, a key element in regime change was
played by the elements in the local secret
services, whose loyalty is easily bought.
Perhaps the most intriguing question is why? Bill
Clinton's assistant secretary of state called
Akayev "a Jeffersonian democrat" in 1994, and the
Kyrgyz ex-president won kudos for welcoming
US-backed NGOs and the American military. But the
ditching of old friends has become something of a
habit: both Edward Shevardnadze of Georgia and
Leonid Kuchma of Ukraine were portrayed as great
reformers for most of their time in office.
To be sure, the US has well-known strategic
interests in central Asia, especially in
Kyrgyzstan. Freedom House's friendliness to the
Islamist fundamentalist movement Hizb ut-Tahrir
will certainly unsettle a Beijing concerned about
Muslim unrest in its western provinces. But
perhaps the clearest message sent by Akayev's
overthrow is this: in the new world order the
sudden replacement of party cadres hangs as a
permanent threat - or incentive - over even the
most compliant apparatchik.
#5
Russian TV slams Ukrainian leader for indecision on Victory Day visit to Moscow
Channel 3 TV, Moscow, in Russian, 28 March 2005
[translated by BBC Monitoring]
International leaders' readiness to attend Victory Day celebrations in
Moscow is a sign of their countries' attitude to Russia, commentator Andrey
Dobrov has said in his "Main Theme" regular slot on Moscow Region Channel 3.
He was particularly put off by Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko's
wavering on the subject. The following is an excerpt from Dobrov's
commentary broadcast by Russian Channel 3 TV on 28 March:
Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko is becoming one of my most favourite
politicians. No-one can so elegantly come out of the most complicated
situations. The other day he joined the anti-Russian bloc: I mean those
foreign leaders who refused to come to Moscow for the 60th anniversary of
victory [in World War II, celebrated on 9 May]. And today he said that he
may come after all, but not for long, just pop in for an hour. As the saying
goes, now both the wolves have eaten much and the sheep have not been
touched.
From the attitude of neighbouring presidents to the 9 May events in Moscow
one can easily say who is our friend and who is a potential enemy. I mean
the leaders of Estonia, Lithuania and Georgia, who have refused to come for
the celebrations. And the Japanese prime minister, too. Well, Japan is far
away and its economy does not depend on Russia. Thus the Japanese may
continue spoiling relations with us for another 100 years over the northern
territories, which by the way we got as a result of the victory in World War
II.
Ukraine is not just nearby, but its economy depends greatly on that of
Russia. I think that this determines such a strange position of Yushchenko:
I will not come on 9 May, only on 8 May, then suddenly - I will come on 9
May, but just for an hour.
Yushchenko has tried to cancel a military parade on Hreshchatyk [Street, on
9 May]. He wanted to put up tables and entertain war veterans. Moreover,
there was a possibility that Red Army veterans and veterans of [Ukrainian
nationalist leader Stepan] Bandera's units might find themselves at the same
table. More than once Yushchenko called on them to come to terms with each
other. [Passage omitted: Yushchenko makes the statement in Ukrainian]
The Supreme Council [Ukrainian parliament], however, voted against a lunch
and in favour of a parade. Which is only natural: the Ukrainians may have
overthrown [former President Leonid] Kuchma and his comrades-in-arms, but
this does not mean that they will immediately start re-writing history
books.
Only marginal politicians in Ukraine and Georgia speak of centuries-long
occupation of their states by Russia. For the overwhelming majority of
normal people history remains as it used to be and 9 May remains the day of
the common victory.
Interestingly enough, at this very time when the issue of Yushchenko's visit
to Moscow was discussed, a story of Russian marines landing on Ukrainian
territory was leaked to the Ukrainian press. [Passage omitted: relatively
unbiased correspondent's report on the landing of Russian marines on the
Opuk range in Crimea on 23 March.]
Between ourselves, [it was] not a great incident. I do agree with Viktor
Yushchenko's definition of it as a military blunder. The Ukrainian military
have made more serious mistakes in the past. Suffice to recall how they
managed to down our airliner with Israeli passengers aboard during a war
game [in 2001]. And here there have been no casualties, no damage. In the
long run, the issue would have been resolved at the chiefs-of-staff level.
However, the story of the marines' landing was immediately blown up. They
started saying again that the presence of a foreign fleet in Ukraine
violates the country's sovereignty. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Borys
Tarasyuk said today [28 March] that Ukraine considered the incident to be an
attempt to violate the 1997 treaty on the Black Sea Fleet. Moreover,
Tarasyuk stressed that there were two possible theories behind the incident:
either the Russian authorities had no control over the actions of its Black
Sea Fleet or they wanted to test the readiness of the new Ukrainian
authorities.
Tarasyuk's statement could be viewed not just as unfriendly, but as a
provocation. Looking at how powerfully Viktor Yushchenko is manoeuvring
between the anti-Russian GUUAM bloc [consisting of Georgia, Uzbekistan,
Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova] and Russian capital, one can understand
that things cannot go on like this forever. Sooner or later problems will
arise that cannot be resolved so elegantly as the issue of the 9 May
celebrations in Moscow. It will not be possible to pop in for an hour.
In a year, Ukraine will be holding general elections. I am sure that by that
time our naval bases will become a special issue. The logic of today's cold
war easily allows for such forecasts. What would Yushchenko do then? Rush to
help what is left of our Black Sea Fleet? For some reason I do not think so.
It is quite possible that the 60th anniversary of the victory will be the
last occasion to unite our countries that used to be a single empire but are
now at full speed going in different directions.
#6
Orange Victory: Ukraine Tastes the Exotic Fruits of Democracy
by Tatiana Zhurzhenko
Post-Newsletter of the Institut für die
Wissenschaften von Menschen, Vienna, and of the
Institute for Human Sciences at Boston University
www.iwm.at, No. 87 (Winter 2005)
Tatiana Zhurzhenko is Associate Professor of
Philosophy, V. Karazin Kharkiv National
University (Kharkiv, Eastern Ukraine). She was an
IWM Junior Fellow in 2001, and from 2002-04 a
Lise Meitner Fellow at the Institut für
Osteuropäische Geschichte, Universität Wien,
where she worked on a research project on the
Ukrainian-Russian border regions.
Tatiana Zhurzhenko
With the inauguration of the new Ukrainian
president, liberal opposition leader Viktor
Yushchenko, on January 23, 2005, dramatic weeks
of struggle for justice and of resistance against
a corrupt regime came to a happy end. But the new
leadership faces a lot of challenges, at home and
in international relations. Ukrainian scholar
Tatiana Zhurzhenko gives her insights.
UKRAINIAN HISTORY has not had many of such
moments, and it is hard not to be optimistic and
proud. Whatever the political arrangements among
the ruling elite will be, it is the people who
are the main winners. The citizens of Ukraine
woke up from years of political passivity to
defend their choice. In a little more than a
month, a society has emerged which wants to be
informed and respected, which insists on its
newly won freedoms.
The unique moment of solidarity between the poor
and the rich, between the Russian-and the
Ukrainian-speakers, between students, workers and
pensioners against the corrupted regime
represents the birth of the Ukrainian political
nation. It is the first time in Ukrainian
post-Soviet history that the president has a
truly democratic mandate, that his victory
is not a result of dirty political techniques and
clever manipulations of formal democratic rules.
Unlike his predecessors, Yushchenko has been
elected in a situation of real choice and hard,
sometimes brutal competition against the enormous
pressure of the state propaganda machine. The
moral credit he got from the people is the best
starting point for the long-expected reforms.
It seems, however, that too many political and
moral expectations are now projected on
Yushchenko. Maybe it is unavoidable that the
"Orange Revolution" is widely perceived in
eschatological terms, as a final victory over
evil. But, if the promised reforms succeed, what
the Ukrainians will have is a boring Western type
of democracy which does not need heroes and mass
street actions. The paradox is that democracy
cannot function without a founding myth of a
heroic sacrifice encoded in the national memory.
It is not the least achievement of the Orange
Revolution that now the Ukrainians finally have
their own myth, indispensable
for every modern nation. Since 1991,
state-employed intellectuals and politologists
have
tried, without much success, to construct a
"national identity" and "national idea." Finally
they can relax: "It is fashionable now to be
Ukrainian," Yushchenko recently said.
An essential element of this new national myth is
that, for example, the students from
Russianspeaking Kharkiv rallied at the Majdan
together with L'viv students. Despite the
persistent East-West divide of the country, the
Orange Revolution has made it much easier for
Russian-speakers to identify with the Ukrainian
nation now than it was for them in the early
'90s, when Ukrainian post-Soviet identity
referred to an exclusive ethnic and linguistic
core. With the Orange Revolution, a political
nation of Ukrainians has emerged, which includes
all Ukrainian citizens regardless of their
language and ethnicity. In 1991, the hopes of
many Russian-speaking Ukrainians for reforms were
still connected more with Moscow and Yeltsin than
with Kyiv and its provincial and conservative
communist nomenklatura. It was only in November
2004 that orange Kyiv has become the real capital
of the Ukrainian nation.
A New Deal between Ukraine's West and East?
The East-West divide of the country, which became
so visible again during these elections, will of
course not disappear overnight. Unlike in the
earlier "Velvet Revolutions" in Central Eastern
Europe, Ukrainian opposition leaders will have to
deal with a more heterogeneous society. It will
be a difficult challenge for the new president to
follow his reformist course and, at the same
time, find a way to meet the interests of those
Ukrainian citizens who
voted for his opponent. But there is also a
positive side to the threat of separatism evoked
by some regional leaders in the East and South:
it has made the Ukrainians aware that the unity
of the country is not something given and
guaranteed, but that it has to be protected by
its citizens.
Mass demonstrations in Russian-speaking Kharkiv
against the separatist course of governor
Kushnaryov are only one example. To play the
separatist card was perhaps the biggest mistake
of Yanukovich, especially given his official
position as Prime Minister. Contrary to common
fears, Yushchenko's victory could open the way to
a new political deal between the East and West of
Ukraine. Some politicians from the opposition,
such as businessmen
and the leader of the "Yabluko" party, Brodskiy,
have already proposed some compromises in
cultural policy: for example, reintegrating
Russian literature into the school curricula.
Yushchenko agreed that the issue of Russian
language in Ukraine should become a subject of
serious discussion free from political
speculation.
Indeed, if Yushchenko wants to find the way to
the hearts of his East Ukrainian compatriots he
has to be sensitive to the language issue. In a
more independent Ukraine, there is a chance that
Russian language and culture will not be seen
anymore as a threat to national unity and
identity, but as an asset. And, in perspective,
Russian-speakers will win: Russian language
rights can be better protected within the
European legal space than through the help of
populist Russian politicians like Moscow's mayor
Luzhkov.
Orange and Velvet Revolutions
The other difference between the Ukrainian
situation and the Velvet Revolutions in Central
Eastern Europe is that some tasks have already
been finished. Privatization is more or less
done, no matter how unjust it might look in the
eyes of the people. Ukraine has already passed
the low point of transformation hardships: its
economy, though destabilized by the recent
political crisis, is growing. At the same time,
Yushchenko will not be a Ukrainian
Putin (who also owes his popularity to an
anti-oligarchic program), and it is rather
improbable that there will be a Ukrainian
Khodorkovski case. The best Yushchenko
could achieve is to establish transparent rules
for the Ukrainian capitalists and force them to
work for and not against the national interests.
This will be difficult, but there are already
some encouraging developments, e.g., business
groups which show some interest in bringing
their corporate policy in line with European standards.
In any case, the interests of the powerful
Donetsk clan go far beyond the borders of the
region and even of Ukraine, and its
representatives probably do understand that they
need active support of the state to enter
European markets. There are of course also some
geopolitical parallels with the era of the Velvet
Revolutions of 1989. Ukraine seems to be
repeating the scenario of escaping its satellite
status in order to "return to Europe."
Attempts to construct a Ukrainian geopolitical
identity according to the Central
European model - Ukraine as an authentic part of Europe having been kidnapped
by Russia - are very popular among Ukrainian intellectuals. But, in fact, this
model only fits for the west of Ukraine.
For the rest, it is more complicated:
pro-European and pro-Russian orientations are not
mutually exclusive here. Against this backdrop,
imposing the agenda of a NATO membership right
now could add to the existing tensions in
Ukrainian society.
Ukraine between a Divided West and Russia
Contrary to 1989 - the golden age of VelvetRevolutions - the West itself is now
divided. The US as a model of perfect democracy
is rather compromised by its foreign
and domestic policy. The Western anti-American
sentiment has contributed to the interpretation
that the democratic opposition in Ukraine is a
creation of
Washington. Indeed, the support of the Bush
administration makes it difficult for
many to appreciate the truly democratic
achievements of the Ukrainians. Ukrainian
troops in Iraq were aimed at covering dubious deals of Ukrainian oligarchs and
Kuchma's administration. Democratic Ukraine does
not need these kinds of arrangements
anymore. NATO membership is certainly not the
most urgent issue on the Ukrainian agenda, and
the US would show real commitment to Ukrainian
democracy by supporting it even if it
does not bring an immediate geopolitical dividend.
The issue of EU membership for Ukraine is a
different question. Such an aim could unite the
Ukrainian elites in the long run. The Orange
Revolution has certainly put a challenge to the
EU in terms of its moral and political
responsibility in the region. But are Europeans,
and EU
officials in particular, really happy that their
values have triumphantly traveled to the East? If
Yushchenko's government will successfully
implement his reforms, the EU has to respond with
something more serious than just offering the
status of a "good neighbor." There have already
been initial signs that the prevailing attitude
is changing: on January 13, the European
Parliament voted overwhelmingly to endorse
Ukraine's aspirations for EU membership.
Finally, Russia seems to be the most difficult
problem at the moment. The reactions of Putin
show that the Ukrainian oppositional movement is
seen as a threat not only to Russia's plans for
economic and political integration of the
post-Soviet space, but also as a threat to the
authoritarian political regimes in Russia and in
other CIS countries. Lukashenka in Minsk must
have had some orange nightmares recently. Until
now, Russian regional hegemony
has been based on corrupted, and therefore
controllable national ruling elites. This might
change now. Yushchenko's presidency can be seen
as a chance to build serious pragmatic relations
between the Ukraine and Russia that are not
dependent on personal deals and interests of
oligarchic clans, but instead on national
interests.
#7
Ukraine Beyond Postcommunism
by Marko Bojcun
Forthcoming in Debatte: Journal of Contemporary
Central and Eastern Europe (Vol. 13, No. 1, May
2005)
The 2004 presidential elections have brought a
sea change to the domestic situation in Ukraine
which, in turn, profoundly changes the country's
external orientations towards both Russia and the
European Union. The purpose of this article is
twofold: on the domestic side I aim to
investigate the background to these elections and
to identify the principal forces behind
Yushchenko's victory. And on the external front I
will explore the impact of the elections upon the
dynamic of European integration and enlargement
along its eastwards vector -i.e. from the EU
through Ukraine into Russia.
My main conclusion is that the domestic changes
brought about - or brought to light - by the
course of the 2004 presidential elections have
significantly altered the prospects of Ukraine's
accession to the EU, as well as altering the
general dynamics of European integration along
its eastern vector. First, the elections have
brought to the fore in Ukraine a new generation
of people who favour a liberal democracy, a
transparent and competitive market economy and
Ukraine's full membership in the European Union.
Second, they have produced a new state leadership
under President Victor Yushchenko whose
overriding foreign policy objective is EU
membership. Relations with the Russian Federation
will be restructured in the light of this
objective. Third, the election itself and the
subsequent appointment of the new government
under Premier Yulia Tymoshenko have thrown into
doubt the strategy of President Vladimir Putin,
carefully built since 2000, to integrate Ukraine
as a member of its new sphere of regional
economic integration - the Single Economic Space
(SES). And fourth, it has called into question
the common operative concept of Russia and the EU
with respect to their mutual relations.
Background
Since its independence in 1991 Ukraine evolved a
political-economic system variously called "state
oligarchy" and "oligarchic capitalism" which
involved the intimate collaboration of the
state-political elite with private business
people in the construction of a small number
-some five or six- vertically integrated empires.
Such empires, each typically including
production, distribution, banking, media and
other assets, as well as their own electoral
machines, rapidly accumulated capital in the
1990s by virtue of the protection of their
domestic markets from competition, privileged
access to licences to trade abroad, and
absolution from state taxes.
These oligarchic formations emerged first on the
basis of their trade in Russian oil and gas. They
provided the initial capital while state
officials ordered the oil and gas and provided
the licences for domestic and foreign trade.
These early ties later made them the natural
conduit for inward Russian private investment,
which came to buy into denationalised industries,
including the strategic state enterprises that
were privatised during the last years in power of
Leonid Kuchma. (1) Insofar as the Ukrainian state
guaranteed all debts to Russian oil and gas
providers (such as Gazprom), which the private
traders often failed to honour, the Ukrainian
taxpayer was lumbered with a large external debt
to Russia. The debt provided the Russian state
with a useful lever to exact all kinds of
concessions in other spheres.
In 2000-1 President Putin was able to gain
President Kuchma's acquiescence to a number of
agreements that furthered Russian acquisition of
strategic industrial assets in exchange for
foreign debt, that promoted joint production of
arms and weapons systems, and got Ukraine's
agreement to co-ordinate its foreign policy in
respect of relations with NATO and the EU with
Russia's foreign policy. Many of the details of
these agreements were kept secret. (2)
Between 2000 and 2004 the Ukrainian economy
finally emerged from its downward spiral and
annual GDP began to grow again, reaching some 12%
pa in 2004. The recovery was based upon strong
international commodity prices stimulated mainly
by Asian demand, which led to a boom in Ukrainian
exports of steel products, chemicals and
machinery. Much of the economic recovery was
experienced in Eastern Ukraine, where average
wages and salaries grew to around 700 hryvnia a
month by mid 2004. The western Ukrainian
provinces in the same period also started to
recover, but at a slower pace. Average monthly
wages in Lviv, the most prosperous oblast of the
region, grew to around 500 hryvnia by mid 2004.
(3) However, mass migration into Central and
Western Europe continued, and the remittances
West Ukrainians sent home make an important
contribution to the economic survival of the
region's inhabitants. Most of the emigrants are
young and well educated. No doubt, their
experiences of Central and Western Europe's
relatively high levels of economic development
have also contributed to Ukrainian society's
inclinations towards "the European way of life"
notwithstanding all the hardships and indignities
they have to endure as immigrants there. The big
social, economic and subjective disparities
between Eastern and Western Ukraine provide an
important part of the explanation for the way in
which the electorate was polarised during these
last elections
At the state political level Leonid Kuchma
fashioned a model of "managed democracy" or
"democratic authoritarianism" during his term in
office. On a public level the electorate was
presented with choices - in the 1998 presidential
elections, the 1999 referendum on
constitutionally strengthening the presidency,
the parliamentary elections in 2002, and the most
recent presidential elections - all of which were
manipulated by repression, abuse of state office
and fraud. During this time the mass media came
under the control of either of the oligarchic
formations or the President's Administration.
State censorship returned with the daily
instructions from the President's Administration
(temnyky) going to all editorial offices.
Journalists were persecuted and murdered.
The political party system evolved under the twin
influences of ideological differentiation of
politically active people on the one hand and the
episodic coalition making between various
business interests on the other. From the 1994
parliamentary elections onwards increasing
numbers of business people sought political
office to advance their private interests and to
gain immunity from prosecution. By the time of
the 2004 elections 300 of the Verkhovna Rada's
450 parliamentary deputies were dollar
millionaires. (4)
The oligarchic clans were competing for control
of key state offices and institutions. Kuchma's
1994 accession to the presidency opened the door
for the Dnipropetrovsk clan to enter the central
government institutions and to cohabit there
alongside the Kyiv clan which was already grouped
around the first President Leonid Krawchuk, the
Dynamo Kyiv football team and the so-called
Ukrainian Social Democratic Party (United).
Kuchma subsequently built a vertical chain of
command under his administration that penetrated
into all the country's regions and decided
practically all appointments of regional state
authorities of any significance -i.e. governors,
state prosecutors, tax inspectorates, police
forces.
Victor Yushchenko came into politics from a
career in banking. He was chairman of the
National Bank of Ukraine from 1996. In 1999
Kuchma nominated him as Prime Minister.
Yushchenko in turn chose Yulia Tymoshenko, who
had been involved in the gas trade business in
the 1990s, as his deputy responsible for the
national fuel and energy complex. Together, they
worked on several fronts: to end theft by traders
of oil and gas from the transit pipelines
bringing Russian fuels into Ukraine; to collect
debt arrears from these traders; and to open up
the privatisation of energy distribution assets
to investors from outside President Kuchma's
circle. Georgi Gongadze, who established the
internet newspaper Ukrayinska Pravda in April
2000 was most likely murdered in September that
year for his efforts to publicly document the
political struggle between Yushchenko's cabinet
and Kuchma's business allies over the fuel and
energy complex. For her efforts Tymoshenko was
driven out of the Cabinet in January 2001 and
imprisoned for a month. The Russian authorities
initiated extradition proceedings against her,
citing charges that she had bribed Russian
officials while she was a gas trader. Yushchenko
was dismissed by a vote of the Verkhovna Rada in
April 2001, which Kuchma did not at all oppose.
By the time of his dismissal Yushchenko was the
most popular public figure in Ukraine. During his
term in office he had managed to pay up wage and
salary arrears of public sector workers, as well
as pensions and student grants. He was persuaded
to head up a 10 party centre right coalition
(Nasha Ukraina) that contested the 2002
parliamentary elections which subsequently won
23% of the popular vote and 112 seats. The
pro-presidential coalition Za Yedynu Ukrayiny
took 12% of the vote, but gained 102 seats in the
Rada by virtue of its strong performance at the
constituency level. (the electoral system is
based on proportional and constituency
representation). Nevertheless it increased its
effective weight by blocking with the Communist
Party, who had 66 seats and by drawing some of
the 100-odd independent deputies over to its
side. Kuchma faced no big threat at home despite
his deepening international isolation from late
2000 as a result of the unsolved murder of
journalist Georgi Gongadze, the cassette tape
scandal and the sale of the Kolchuga anti-radar
system to Iraq. However, he was approaching the
constitutional limit of time he could serve as
president and so was looking for a safe exit.
Prime minister from November 2002, Victor
Yanukovich was sponsored by the Donetsk clan. As
governor of Donetsk province he had served both
Kuchma in Kyiv and Renat Akhmetov, the richest
man in Ukraine who made his fortune in the
eastern Donbas region. (5) Once installed,
Yanukovich smoothed the path for the Donetsk clan
into the central state institutions. Now the
Donetsk, Kyiv and Dnipropetrovsk clans cohabited
and negotiated between themselves their
respective spheres of influence. People in Kyiv
noticed the arrival of the donechanny. The new
Procurator General under Yanukovich's government
dismissed the 17 top officials and 2,000 of the
employees of the Procuracy during his first year
in office and replaced them all with his own
people from Donetsk. (6) The new arrivals brought
new money from eastern Ukraine. They drove up
real estate prices as they hunted for well
located apartments. They were known to be
ruthless in getting control of businesses and
markets in Kyiv. Here lies another clue for why
80% of Kyiv voted for Yushchenko.
Using the tax inspectorate, secret police,
ministry of the interior and criminal gangs the
regime exacted tribute and loyalty from all
unabsorbed business people that could potentially
threaten their hold on power. After the 2002
parliamentary elections in which Victor
Yushchenko's Nasha Ukraina coalition performed
well, its business supporters were subjected to
intensive pressure by state authorities. In the
year leading up to the 2004 elections all
businesses were squeezed for contributions to
Yanukovoch's campaign. These developments
generated enormous tensions in the business class
as a whole and polarised it around contending
conceptions of the relationship between state and
market - the existing one and the social
market/liberal democratic conception.
Kuchma nominated Victor Yanukovich to stand in
the 2004 election - to ensure continuity of
property relations and to protect himself from
possible criminal prosecution after he left
office. Yanukovich's team campaigned on a
platform of stability and order as preconditions
for further economic recovery. In the middle of
their campaign they added the demand to make
Russian a second official state language on the
advice of Russian "political technologists" led
by Gleb Pavlovsky, sent in to support them. They
relied on the so-called "administrative vertical"
of the President's Administration which got the
vote out in government offices, universities,
prisons and the armed forces. Yanukovich was
endorsed twice by President Putin, the second
time during a state visit to Ukraine. At the same
time, the mass media portrayed Yushchenko to the
eastern and southern electorate as a fascist, a
stooge of American interests and an oppressor of
the Russian minority who would ring the eastern
provinces with barbed wire, close all Russian
schools, ban the literature of Pushkin and Gogol,
and "bring Sevastopol to its knees" (where
Russia's Black Sea Fleet is docked). During the
voting in the first and second rounds the
Yanukovich team resorted to massive fraud,
including the interception and alteration of
electoral returns sent by the regional election
commissions to the web server of the Central
Election Commission.
The Yushchenko campaigned on a platform of ending
what he called "the clan oligarchic system" and
creating an open, competitive market economy, for
the creation of a liberal democratic political
system, and Ukraine's accession to the European
Union. Yushchenko promised at every step to
review the privatisation of Krivorizhstal, the
biggest steel plant in the country, which in 2004
went via a restricted tender process to Kuchma's
son in law Victor Pinchuk and to Renat Akhmetov.
He also vowed to restore press freedom and to
resolve the murder of Gongadze. He portrayed his
opponent as a partner in the "criminal regime of
Kuchma-Yanukovich-Medvedchuk" (7)
After the voting in the second round on November
21 when Yanukovich was initially declared the
winner by the Central Election Commission,
Yushchenko claimed fraud and called his
supporters out onto the streets. Some
preparations had been made by the Yushchenko camp
to protest electoral fraud, which was widely
anticipated. However, on the eve of the protests
the student organisation Pora, who had principal
responsibility for mobilising them, told
Yushchenko's headquarters they could only get
around 15,000 people into the streets of Kyiv
within two days. (8) As it turned out over
200,000 people joined the protest on its first
day. So began 16 days of continual mobilisations
that paralysed the central state institutions in
Kyiv and led to the invalidation of the November
21 official result and the repeat of the second
round of the elections on 26 December. Yushchenko
won the elections by a 52 to 44%.
Yushchenko and Yanukovich were supported
financially, diplomatically and in other ways by
the United States of America and the Russian
Federation respectively. (9) For some observers
this undeniable fact tended to obscure - or even
to invalidate - the fact that the confrontation
in November and December was driven fundamentally
by domestic Ukrainian forces. But neither the
Russian special troops holed up in the building
of the President's Administration, nor the public
refusal of the American Administration to accept
the official outcome of the November 21 ballot,
nor even the deals that were made secretly
between the leaders of the great powers affected
the immediate outcome, which was an affirmation
of the democratic and national rights of the
Ukrainian people. In the future, however,
agreements by the great powers in the heat of
that crisis will indeed shape the conditions in
which Yushchenko pursues his domestic and, more
significantly, his foreign policy objectives.
Why did Yushchenko win?
The elections provided an arena for mass actions
that revealed a big change in popular
consciousness has accumulated in Ukrainian
society in recent years. It is comparable to the
change registered in Central European societies
at the end of 1989 because it represents the
expression of a "systemic choice". Of course, it
is distinct from the choice that 1989 offered to
Central Europe insofar as the Ukrainian
protesters were rejecting a "post-Communist"
system which had evolved in Ukraine after 1991.
However, there are important similarities in
popular consciousness. Yuri Lutsenko, an
organiser of the Kyiv protests, recalled during
these events:
...the people standing on Independence Square are
not so much for Yushchenko as for their own
freedom. Yushchenko's not ideal, he's not the
optimal person. But he is the key that opens the
door to their freedom. And this door opens only
in one direction. True, there will be a lot of
disappointments afterwards, as there was in the
Czech lands, in the Baltics, but no -one there is
asking to come back into the Soviet Union. Those
who stand on the Square know that for all his
characteristics that evoke criticism, Yushchenko
is the key that opens the door to our freedom.
And that understanding unites the Square more
than anything else. (10)
The mass protest was ignited by the realisation
of many people that their democratic choice would
be denied if they did no more than vote, and that
the system of rule created during the Kuchma
years would be consolidated by his chosen
successor. By their actions they gave Yushchenko
a chance to contest an election on December 26
that was safeguarded from fraud. This protest
was widespread. At the outset it was largely
spontaneous and beyond the control of
Yushchenko's organisation. Very quickly, however,
the protest in Kyiv became highly organised and
directly against the regime of President Kuchma.
There was a firm electoral majority in support of
Yushchenko. I have not yet made a detailed
analysis of voting patterns, but it is possible
to describe broadly the main segments of the
population that voted for each candidate.
Yushchenko gained a majority in 17 out of 25
provinces stretching from the west through the
centre and over the north east of the country.
His supporters included the younger generation of
people who did not experience Stalinism, many of
whom have also been exposed to life in Central
and Western Europe; working class people who have
not benefited from the recent economic recovery;
a reviving middle class of independent
professionals and small-medium business people; a
group of big business people who have not enjoyed
state protection during Kuchma's tenure; and of
course the overwhelming majority of the city of
Kyiv. The electoral majority behind Yushchenko
was socially diverse, but ideologically united in
support of liberal democracy, an open market
economy, membership in the European Union and
Ukrainian independence from Russia.
By comparison, Yanukovich electoral base was
concentrated in the south east and south of the
country, which is heavily populated, contains a
large Russian minority, and is home to the
country' biggest industrial concerns in
metallurgy, machinery, heavy equipment, weapons
and ship building. Eastern Ukraine's economy has
been tied up with Russia's since before the 1917
revolution. These demographic and economic
realities have encouraged the popular view in the
eastern oblasts that Ukraine needs to deepen its
ties with Russia rather than with the European
Union. And they led Yanukovich to appeal to
pro-Russia sentiments in the eastern electorate.
Yanukovich also appealed to people who had
experienced the recent economic recovery and who
saw him as responsible for it in some way in his
posts as Donetsk governor and Ukrainian prime
minister. Yanukovich relied on the financial
support of big business leaders in Kuchma's
entourage. He also made good use of state
resources and personnel both for the election
campaign and for the struggle after November 21
to control the streets of Kyiv - trains,
airlines, army food rations, university rectors,
etc. (11) All this made for a campaign asking
voters simply to endorse the status quo and for a
strategy based on the assumption that the people
would do nothing other than vote. In the end
Yanukovich's electoral base -which at 44% was not
much smaller than the victor's 52%- was unable to
match his opponent's capacity to mobilise both at
the ballot box and on the streets.
There was a deep split in the business class by
the time of the 2004 elections. Anders Aslund of
the US based Carnegie Foundation for
International Peace has described it as a
struggle between the millionaires and the
billionaires, with Yanukovich representing the
three most powerful oligarchic clans (of Kyiv,
Dnipropetrovsk and Donetsk) and Yushchenko having
the support of business people excluded from the
state's patronage. Yushchenko said himself that
he recognised people on Independence Square whose
daily turnover exceeded his election campaign
fund. Mercedes, Lexus and BMW automobiles in
Kyiv's fashionable district above the city centre
were adorned with orange ribbons from the first
days of protest. The business men and women in
the Nasha Ukraina coalition provided the funds
that kept the mass demonstrations in the centre
of Kyiv properly clothed, fed, housed in
dormitories and tents, cared for in field
hospitals, not to mention entertained day and
night for sixteen days. (12) An observer in
Kharkiv, the biggest city in the east alongside
the Russian border, noted that the middle and
upper classes there split, with the big
industrialists and the technical specialists
employed by their concerns going with Yanukovich
(they were grouped around the Oblast
Administration appointed by Kuchma), while the
independent professionals, the "humanitarian
intelligentsia" and the merchants (grouped around
the City Council) went with Yushchenko. The
working class of Kharkiv also split, with the
downtown inhabitants tending to go with
Yushchenko and the far more numerous residents of
the outlying "dormitory districts" going with
Yanukovich. (13) Many Ukrainian commentators have
not hesitated in calling the recent events a
bourgeois revolution against the oligarchic
regime, citing such sociological evidence and the
prevalence of demands for free markets and
democratic choice among the mobilised public.
Not only did the business class split - so did
the state political elite. In the months leading
up to the elections leading members of the
Sluzhba Bezpeky Ukrainy (SBU) - the secret police
led by Ihor Smeshko began working closely and
covertly with Yushchenko. The full story of this
relationship is yet to be told. However, it is
already known that Smeshko was deeply offended by
Yanukovich's behavior in office and did not want
to serve him. The SBU lent assistance to
Yushchenko that contributed to the final outcome
of his struggle with Yanukovich. They provided
him with physical protection (there were two
attempts on Yushchenko's life during the campaign
- the poisoning and a foiled bombing plan). The
SBU exposed the organisation of electoral fraud
by releasing tape recordings they had made of
telephone calls to and from Yanukovich's shadow
headquarters in Kyiv where the fraud was
organised. And finally, they prevented the other
power organs, notably the army, interior
ministry's troops and special forces, from
forcibly suppressing the mass mobilisation. (14)
Then, of course, there was the decision of the
Supreme Court to invalidate the second round of
the elections. This represented another
significant split in the state political elite.
Still another factor which contributed to
Yushchenko's victory was the set of
miscalculations by the managers of Yanukovich's
campaign. The blanket coverage of Ukrainian
cities with billboards of Yanukovich's face was
received by the public as so much overkill in
view of the near total absence of Yushchenko from
public advertising space or media coverage. Then
there was the attempt by Yanukovich to elicit
sympathy to match the sympathy Yushchenko started
to receive after his poisoning. He was filmed
alighting from a bus and being knocked to the
ground by a raw egg breaking on his chest, after
which he was carried prostrate to a waiting
ambulance. The much televised incident evoked a
wave of bad eggs jokes across the country. But
the most serious miscalculation was to involve
President Putin in his campaign. Putin's
endorsements, the second coming during a state
visit to Ukraine, rebounded on Yanukovich: they
were widely resented in both camps as
interference in the country's affairs. This would
lead Yushchenko to say in the closing stages of
his campaign that no more would a Ukrainian
president be chosen in Moscow. In fact, Putin's
involvement contributed to the discovery of their
national identity by many easterners who hitherto
identified principally with their region and with
Russia. (15)
Finally, we can note the international attention
that was focused on the crisis and the mediating
role played by Poland, Lithuania and the EU's
representative in external affairs Javier Solana
at key points of deadlock. Undoubtedly, there
were also private discussions between the state
leaders of Russia, USA, Germany, possibly others,
that persuaded Putin to accept the logic of
developments in Ukraine. These discussions may
have also played a part in the withdrawal of
Russian special forces from inside the blockaded
President's Administration in downtown Kyiv. They
left the building hours before EU, Polish and
Lithuanian leaders arrived in the capital. How
they got there in the first place is still an
untold story. (16)
What is new in Ukraine's European orientation?
Yushchenko has stated that EU membership will be
his government's central objective in foreign
policy, and that relations with Russia will be
rebuilt so as not to contradict this objective.
The elections have shown that at least half of
the country supports the goal of membership in
the European Union. This represents a qualitative
change in public opinion - all opinion surveys
and previous elections have shown only small
minorities inclined towards EU membership.
Tymoshenko has said that her government will now
work to create a solid public consensus behind
this policy goal.
From 1994 the official policy was in favour of
European Union membership. But it was marked by a
formal adherence even to the limited objectives
of partnership with the EU contained in the 1994
Partnership and Co-operation Agreement. Ukraine
became a member of the Council of Europe in 1995
and has spent most of its time since then
defending itself against charges that it violates
the Council's basic principles. (17) So Kuchma's
assertion of Ukraine's "European vocation" came
to be seen by the EU member states as merely a
pious declaration. The contradictory evidence
included the entrenchement of an authoritarian
regime which practiced intimidation and violence
against its critics, the consolidation of a
capitalist class integrated with the state in a
patron-clientelistic relationship, and the
exclusion of Western investors from the domestic
market. Finally, stronger ties were developed,
especially from 2000 onwards, with the Russian
state and its big business operators (see below).
The EU member states and their own business
interests took this last development to mean that
Ukraine was bound to return to the traditional
sphere of Russia's influence, and so they should
fashion their own foreign policies towards Russia
and Ukraine in keeping of this tradition.
The new leadership in Kyiv has made clear its
intention to implement the PCA, in the first
place to establish the institutional, legal and
regulatory framework for a free trade area with
the EU. It will abolish visa requirements for
incoming EU citizens as a first step to
negotiating looser visa requirements for
Ukrainians travelling to EU countries. It has
re-opened the investigation of Gongadze's murder
and is ready to institutionalise safeguards on
press freedom, minority language rights and other
commitments it has formally entered into with the
Council of Europe. In return it is pressing for
recognition of market economy status in cases of
anti-dumping investigations (both from the EU and
the USA). It is seeking the EU's support for its
entry into the World Trade Organisation. It
expects to renegotiate within months its Action
Plan with the EU in the context of the Wider
Europe policy, and then to move in 2007 beyond
this framework (which is intended for EU
relations with more or less permanent neighbours)
towards negotiating an EU accession strategy. (18)
Needless to say, the EU member states have had
different initial reactions to the EU aspirations
of the new leadership. Poland, Lithuania and
other states neighbouring Ukraine have been
supportive, while Germany, France and Spain have
greeted these aspirations with silence.
Discussions are underway between Germany, Poland,
Lithuania and some other states to agree a joint
response. (19) However, there are more complex
divisions and alliances within the EU. On 13
January the European Parliament issued a
resolution supporting Ukraine's membership
aspirations. Everyone was overtaken by the speed
of events and it will take some time for EU
member states to agree a new orientation towards
Ukraine, if ever they do. The EU enlargement
agenda is already full of items creating
dissension between its members.
What is new in Ukraine's Russia policy?
From the mid 1990s into the new century Ukraine's
official policy to seek EU membership was at
increasingly odds with the economic interests of
Kuchma's entourage. After all, the oligarchs who
coalesced around him had began their careers
trading in Russian oil and gas, selling steel in
return, and then becoming the main conduit for
Russian investment into Ukrainian privatising
assets. From 2000 on Kuchma agreed to deeper
economic integration with the Russian Federation
(20) which constituted a major step forward in
the Russia leadership's longstanding goal to
rebuild its own region of economic integration.
On the eve of the 2004 elections, Kyiv dropped
its formal intention to join the EU from its
foreign policy altogether.
The new government is rebuilding relations with
its Russian counterpart. First of all they have
long standing common interests to be preserved,
but from the point of view of the Ukrainian
leadership these should now be put on a new
foundation. Yushchenko's first foreign policy
engagement took place in Moscow on the day after
his inauguration. It yielded only one, but
revealing, substantial public statement - that
they had agreed terms for the following year for
transit of Russian gas across Ukraine. (21)
Ukraine is strategically located as the transit
corridor for more than 90% of the Russian oil and
gas going westward into Europe. Since 2000
President Putin made it a key objective of his
relations with Ukraine to secure long term
co-operation between the two states in the
continental oil, gas and electricity trade.
Putin aimed to provide Russian upstream suppliers
of energy resources with favourable conditions
for moving westward and becoming transnational
players on world energy markets. This requires as
a first step to take control of the key transit,
storage and refining facilities that lie between
the Russian centres of energy production and the
consumption markets of Europe.
Putin's strategy has been thrown into doubt by
Yushchenko's election. A plan long held in
abeyance to use transit facilities (the Odesa oil
terminal on the Black Sea coast and the
Odesa-Brody trunk pipeline going into Western
Ukraine) to secure Caspian Sea sources of energy
both for the Ukrainian market and EU markets has
now been revived. The Ukrainian and Polish
governments, the European Commission and a
consortium of state-owned and private companies
are now working on the plan to bring Caspian Sea
oil and gas from Kazakhstan through Azerbaijan
and Georgia, over the Black Sea to Ukraine and on
to Poland. The route bypasses Russian territory.
This plan would involve extending the Odesa-Brody
line into Plock in Poland and onto Gdansk. It had
been blocked until now by agreements between
Russian and Ukrainian oil and gas transit
companies (Ukrnaftogas, Transneft and others) to
reserve Ukrainian trunk line capacity solely for
Russian energy carriage. The plan is attractive
to the new Ukrainian government because it will
provide an alternative to Russian energy supplies
and thus lessen Russia's potential influence in
Ukraine; as well, it will also make Ukraine a
more autonomous participant in the
transcontinental energy trade. It is also likely
to sharpen competition between Russian and
Western interests in the Caspian Sea region and
the energy corridors running from it in several
directions. (22)
Yushchenko has now called for a review of
agreements with Russia arising from previous
period. Some of them were made secretly between
the presidents and were not subject to public
scrutiny or parliamentary approval. The new
government has also initiated a review of the
privatisation of up to 3,000 state enterprises,
which inevitably touches upon substantial Russian
investments in Ukraine. Some of the
privatisations in question were tied up with the
debt for equity swaps agreed between Kuchma and
Putin in 2000-2001.
Continental integration - is there still a common view?
Co-operation in continental energy trade and
Ukraine's current dependence on Russian energy
supplies both fall within a broader scheme of
Russian led regional economic integration pursued
by the Putin leadership. The new Ukrainian
government want to review the terms of their
participation in this scheme and to determine
whether they should become more or less involved.
Tymoshenko, for example, believes that Ukraine
stands to gain advantages by concluding a new
long term energy agreement with Russia because on
that basis it can negotiate the removal of some
140 barriers to trade facing Ukrainian exporters.
The Ukrainian economy is recovering over a
broader range of sectors than the Russian economy
and its commodities are competitive on Russian
markets. However, the doubters in Tymoshenko's
cabinet will be arguing that deeper trade ties
with Russia require institutional and regulatory
foundations that will inevitably mirror, rather
than complement, the EU free trade area envisaged
in Ukraine's PCA with the European Union.
This last point is the most serious in view of
the new government's EU membership aspirations.
The Single Economic Space, Russia's blueprint for
a single market in Eurasia, is an alternative, a
mirror, to the regional integration sphere of the
European Union. It forms one side of a bipolar
architecture of continental integration, in which
two separately functioning regional political
economies are connected by a corridor exchanging
Russian energy carriers for European capital and
technique. This is the operative concept of
European integration shared by Russian and German
state leaders, and possibly others. But for the
new leadership in Kyiv it is an unworkable
concept. Ukrainian territory lies between the
European Union rock and a Russian hard place. The
2004 elections revealed that more than half the
Ukrainian population wishes to become part of the
European Union. Should that proportion grow into
a solid consensus in the coming period - and it
would grow principally by winning over the
Eastern Ukrainian population - then the
foundations of Russia-Ukraine co-operation will
increasingly require reconciliation with
Ukraine-EU relations. That will present a
formidable challenge to all forward looking
Europeans.
ENDNOTES
(1) See reports of the first strategic
enterprises going to Russian investment capital
in 2000 and 2001 in Moscow Interfax 12 February
2001; Ukrayina moloda 21 February 2001; Zerkalo
nedeli 14 April 2001.
(2) Marko Bojcun, Russia, Ukraine and European
Integration, European University Institute
Working Paper HEC No. 2001/4, EUI, San Domenico
Italy, 2001; pp. 15-20.
(3) For a comparison of the economic and social
disparities between Eastern and Western Ukraine
see Anatoli Romaniuk et al., Lvivshchyna; portret
na foni prezydentstskykh vyboriv 2004 - A
Portrait of Lviv on the eve of the 2004 Elections
( www.uceps.org/additional project/172/Lviv.doc)
and Analitychniy zvit - Analytical report, a
parallel study of Donetsk oblast on the eve of
the elections (www.uceps.org/additional
project/172/Donetsk.doc). These studies were
commissioned by the Razumkov Centre for Economic
and Political Studies in Kyiv and financially
supported by the Charles Stuart Mott Foundation.
(4) "Crossing Continents" programme on BBC Radio 4, 6 December 2004.
(5) Zerkalo nedeli 26 June-2 July 2004.
(6) Ukrayinska Pravda 20 December 2004
(7) Dzerkali tyzhnia 16-24 December 2004.
(8) Dzerkalo tyzhnia 11-17 December 2004.
(9) Agence-France Presse, 15 February 2005, The
Weekly Standard 27 December 2004.
(10) Dzerkalo tyzhnia 11-17 December 2004.
(11) Ukrayinska Pravda noted on 16 December 2004
that the Yanukovich camp brought 18 trainloads of
his supporters into Kyiv during the mass
mobilisations, and fed them on army rations. At
one stage 89 buses from Donetsk were parked on
one of the bridges over the Dnieper River, having
discharged their passengers to walk on to the
city centre. As well aeroplanes flew students
into the capital.
(12) Zerkalo tyzhnia 11-17 December 2004. Agence
France-Presse 17 February 2005.
(13) Author's interview with Dr Alexandr Fisun,
National Institute of Strategic Studies, Kharkiv,
29 January 2005.
(14) C.J.Chivers "How Ukraine's top spies changed
the nation's path" New York Times 17 January 2005.
(15) Dzerkalo tyzhnia, 30 October-5 November 2004.
(16) Dzerkalo tyzhnia, 11-17 December 2004.
(17) Marko Bojcun, Ukraine and Europe: a
difficult reunion, Kogan Page, London, 2001; Part
2.
(18) Yushchenko's address to the European
Parliament 23 February 2005; BBC Monitoring
Service UK 23 February 2005.
(19) Ukrayinska Pravda 12 January 2005.
(20) Marko Bojcun, Russia, Ukraine and European
Integration, European University Institute
Working Paper HEC No. 2001/4, EUI, San Domenico
Italy, 2001; pp. 15-20.
(21) Financial Times 25 January 2005..
(22) Zerkalo tyzhnia 29 January-4 February 2005.
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