Focus: Talking about a revolution

November 28, 2004
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1378260,00.html
Focus: Talking about a revolution
For seven days thousands of young people have partied in the streets of Kiev, hoping to turn their country towards the West. It’s an incredible display of people power, reports Mark Franchetti, but behind the scenes government forces are now massing

Draped in a blue pro-government flag and swigging from a vodka bottle to keep warm, Viktor Kolukh was in no mood to compromise yesterday. A hefty miner with thick, tattooed hands, he had travelled 600 miles by bus from Ukraine’s heavily industrialised east with an unmistakable message for the opposition demonstrators on the streets of Kiev.

Cheered on by dozens of fellow miners gathered around a camp fire, Kolukh spat contemptuously on an orange opposition banner and trod it deep into the snow.

“We want to avoid violence but the situation is very tense. It could blow up any moment,” said Kolukh, 34. “The opposition must accept that it lost the elections. We are patient but if the results are annulled and we are robbed of our victory, there will be blood on the streets.”

While television cameras have focused on the carnival-like sea of hundreds of thousands of orange-clad protesters in the Ukrainian capital, the blue army of men like Kolukh has been steadily on the march, pouring in by bus and train from the east.

These mostly impoverished miners and industrial workers voted in Ukraine’s disputed presidential election for Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Russian prime minister who is fighting to hold on to a victory widely condemned as rigged.

Some 20,000 cheered Yanukovych as he called on them to do all in their power to stop a constitutional coup — raising fears, as the standoff entered its seventh day, that the remarkably festive mood in this ancient city could turn violent, with repercussions far beyond Ukraine’s borders.

Tomorrow, if it is not overtaken by events this weekend, the Ukrainian Supreme Court is due to hear evidence about the vote-rigging and decide whether the result should stand.

The opposition wants another election. Kolukh and his friends are ready to fight: “If the courts rule against Yanukovych we will not accept it. He won the elections and is our president. If he is not sworn in, anything could happen. We won’t go home empty-handed.”

Is he right? Or does Ukraine’s destiny lie with Tatyana, a 29-year-old blue-eyed blonde draped in an orange poncho, who five days ago left her job as a hotel receptionist to take to the streets? “This is our chance to shape our future,” she said. “We are not violent. We have been out for days without causing a single violent incident. We want to achieve our goals by peaceful means but we will stand firm to the end. It’s a wonderful feeling. We are changing our country and turning our back on our authoritarian past.”

In what is now being dubbed the Chestnut Revolution, because of Kiev’s numerous chestnut trees, the number of young protesters in Independence Square grew yesterday, beating drums and dancing, waving orange flags as they surrounded the presidential palace and government buildings. Pretty young women smiled at heavily armed riot police and placed flowers in their shields and gun barrels.

EUROPE has seen nothing as joyous as Ukraine’s popular revolt since 1989 when the fall of the Berlin Wall set pro-Moscow regimes toppling all across the old communist bloc. More than a decade on, Kiev is reliving the same romantic scenes, the same sense of history on the move as exuberant pro-western crowds brave heavy snow and bitter winds to defy the dead hand of the apparat.

Ukraine, however, is different. It is not an outlying colony of the Soviet bloc but an integral part of the Russian soul, its eastern region ruled from Moscow since the 17th century. Its relationship to Russia is roughly analogous with Scotland’s to England. It has supplied Moscow with political leaders, soldiers, engineers, inventors, artists, writers — plus food, fuel, holiday homes for the Russian elite and a base for Moscow’s nuclear submarine fleet, which Russia still uses.

Pulling in the other direction against this bond are memories of the abuse that Ukraine has suffered at Moscow’s hands, particularly under communism. Stalin slaughtered its peasants when he collectivised their farms on Ukraine’s famously rich “black soil”, and reprisals after the second world war on those Ukrainians who had welcomed the conquering Germans as liberators, only to be reconquered by the Red Army, were brutal.

The most visible dividing line is the River Dnieper, which, running south through Kiev, bisects the country before emptying into the Black Sea. To the east, people are mainly Russian-speaking and Orthodox Christian, working in mining, traditional industries and the military. In the west, they are mainly Ukrainian speaking and Greek-Catholic, with a largely rural economy.

The current electoral dispute is not simply about fraud but about a deeper conflict over these complex historical, political and religious roots. It could be described as a clash of rival visions of Europe — if not of civilisations.

Ukraine has long reflected the continuous debate in Russia between Slavophiles and westernisers. Slavophiles in 19th-century Moscow and Kiev saw Russia as “the third Rome”, chosen by God to rekindle the flame of true Christianity and conquer the world for the true faith. Westernisers saw Russia’s — and Ukraine’s — future as part of a democratic and secular Europe.

Yanukovych, who is campaigning for virtual reunification with Russia and Belarus to help President Vladimir Putin create a big Slavic power to counterbalance the European Union and America, represents the Slavophiles. The opposition presidential candidate, Viktor Yushchenko, represents the westernisers’ dream of joining the EU and Nato.

As a result, Ukraine is work in progress, an accidental country looking for an identity. Sandwiched between Russia and four Nato members, it has become the vortex of a mini cold war over the past week as Moscow and Washington fight by proxy over its future. Russian interference has been blatant. America’s has been more subtle, but money has been channelled to Ukrainian westernisers.

THE present confrontation was sparked off by Ukraine’s third presidential election since it gained independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. After two five-year terms, Leonid Kuchma, the authoritarian president, is stepping down. The two men vying to replace him could not be more different from each other.

Yanukovych, a burly former governor from the eastern Ukraine who in his youth was convicted of robbery and assault, is close to the country’s most powerful oligarchs — wealthy businessmen who made their fortunes in privatisation deals under Kuchma.

Yushchenko, married to an American citizen of Ukrainian descent, is a liberal-minded economist who favours freeing the Ukrainian economy of state controls.

Less than three months ago Yushchenko was a handsome, fit 50-year-old. But he was rushed for treatment in Vienna after falling ill with a mysterious disease that has left him horribly disfigured.

Yushchenko claimed that he had been poisoned in a secret operation sponsored by Russia’s former KGB. The Ukrainian government denied any wrongdoing and claimed the extraordinary physical transformation was caused by “bad sushi”.

Long before the result of last Sunday’s election was announced, Yushchenko called his supporters onto the streets — where yesterday the demands for a rerun of the election grew relentlessly while the Ukrainian parliament met in emergency session.

There were ecstatic cheers from the multitude when parliament ruled by a large majority that the election was fraudulent and had failed to reflect the will of voters.

Last night, the crowds were still on the streets, determined to keep up the pressure in advance of the Supreme Court’s verdict tomorrow.

The court is comparatively independent-minded, but the exact legal status of Yushchenko’s appeal is in doubt. Ukrainian law does not provide for an all-encompassing appeal of national election results, only region-by-region appeals.

Some feared that the joyful street parties and open-air concerts could still turn into a bloodbath. Lurking in the background, phalanxes of stone-faced riot police and Ukrainian special forces in black body armour and helmets, brandishing machineguns and batons, stood guard silently around the presidential palace.

The key to the revolutions of 1989 was the compliance of the security forces in bowing to the wind of change. There has been little sign that today those same forces would be prepared to switch sides and join the opposition. But one woman student leader said confidently: “Of course the army or police won’t fire on us. They have children our age. They would never harm us.”


Additional reporting: Amir Taheri