Chestnuts and Revolutions

Wall Street Journal Europe
November 15, 2004
Editorial


Last February, these columns called for a "Chestnut Revolution" in Ukraine.
With Kiev's famous kashtany in mind, we suggested that this year's
presidential election, heading toward a dramatic climax next Sunday, was a
wonderful opportunity for an outbreak of popular democracy.

Soon after, this little chestnut took on a life of its own in Ukraine.
Pro-democracy activists fighting authoritarian President Leonid Kuchma
embraced Kashtanova Revolutsiya, or Chestnut Revolution, to mobilize
supporters ahead of the poll. The student wing of Rukh, a party which led
the fight for independence back in 1991, calls its Web site
www.kashtan.org.ua and its periodical carries that name. The Internet and
media are flush with references as opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko faces
off against Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych in the run-off. Mr. Yushchenko
edged the Kuchma prot?©g?© in the first round Oct. 31.

"This looks like a revolutionary movement -- a 'Chestnut Revolution,' as
people say in Ukraine," Grazyna Staniszewska, a Polish member of the
European Parliament who's a monitor for Sunday's poll, told the European
Voice newspaper, comparing Ukraine today to Solidarity-era Poland. "What is
happening now is the triumph of democracy and the birth of civil society,
things that you can only dream of in Russia. . . . [The EU] must help the
Chestnut Revolution."

As any political slogan, the meaning of this one can be easily twisted.
Arguing that the opposition would do anything to win, the Yanukovych
campaign committee last month appealed to President Kuchma "to take all
possible measures to prevent the implementation of 'Chestnut
Revolution-scenarios' and to ensure law and order during the election
process." According to independent election observers, the Kuchma government
did indeed take steps to help their man: Widespread fraud, state
intimidation of media and the harassment of opposition parties and groups
allegedly marred the first round vote.

Along with Ukraine's oligarchs, the Kremlin prays for a Yanukovych victory.
President Vladimir Putin found time Friday to make a second visit to Ukraine
in two weeks to campaign for the pro-Russian prime minister. To the
autocrats in Moscow, free elections next door pose a direct challenge to
their ways. Andrei Kokoshin, the head of the Russian Duma's CIS affairs
committee, earlier this month said: "I think we must not rule out an
attempted chestnut coup or a chestnut revolution."

The serendipitous, and ultimately irrelevant, origin of the phrase in our
pages fuels accusations that democracy in Ukraine is some sort of Western
conspiracy. Playing to public fears, the Yanukovych campaign claims that any
"revolution" would be bloody, as if this was 1917.

Let's be clear. In post-Soviet Europe, democratic revolutions have been
homegrown and peaceful -- from Czechoslovakia's 1989 Velvet to Georgia's
Rose Revolution last year. The assertion of popular sovereignty against
illegitimate rulers is the very opposite of a coup. This may be the year of
Ukraine's coming of age. Proving fatalists wrong, the presidential poll
energized the country, showing that democracy can flourish in this region.
Mr. Kuchma could try to rig the poll. Or the retiring president might
join -- rather than get swept up by -- the Chestnut Revolution.