Revolutionary Justice

By Walter Kish

All the political pundits in Ukraine are currently trying to dissect the results of the parliamentary elections last week and, in particular, working to make sense of Yulia Tymoshenko’s surprisingly strong showing and the corresponding collapse of Yushchenko’s  Nasha Ukraina (Our Ukraine) bloc. None of the major polls prior to the election foresaw Tymoshenko’s confident second-place hold on 23 per cent of the vote, compared with Yushchenko’s anemic 14 per cent. It is obvious that most of those previously “undecided” voters opted for Yulia when they entered the polling stations.

Yet, we should not be so surprised. It was well known that a large segment of the long-suffering masses that had brought about the Orange Revolution in 2004 have been more than a little disillusioned with Yushchenko’s failure to deliver on the many promises for reform he made on the Maidan. The internecine struggles within his coalition, his subsequent dismissal of Tymoshenko’s government, and his incomprehensible deal with the Yanukovych forces last fall, all served to seriously undermine his popularity and support. To compound the situation, Our Ukraine ran a very lacklustre, makeshift election campaign, while Yulia constantly hammered on Yushchenko’s many weaknesses and mistakes, while strongly positioning herself as the only one still true to the spirit of the Orange Revolution. 

The bottom line is that Yushchenko totally misread the mood and aspirations of those who had brought him into power. Since becoming President, he has focused primarily on economic and foreign affairs issues. He has traveled widely, and made Ukraine’s entry into the European Union and the World Trade organization a major priority of his Presidency. While important in the long run, this was done to the neglect of more important short-term issues and needs. Specifically, his efforts to reform the corrupt and ponderous government bureaucracy have been tentative and marginal. 

What he failed to comprehend was that the major reason that all those millions risked their lives and futures on the Maidan during the Orange Revolution was to rid the country of the venal corruption that has robbed them of their wealth and freedom. They wanted an end to the oligarchic monopoly on wealth and power. A revolution creates a strong expectation of revolutionary changes, changes that Yushchenko failed to deliver. When Ukrainian voters went to the polls, it was with the painful awareness that all those “bandits” that Yushchenko promised to bring to justice were there on the ballot, and soon to be in Parliament, where official immunity would enable them to continue to amass even further wealth while laughing at any attempts to make them accountable for their past misdeeds.

The message the voters wanted to send to Yushchenko was that the revolution was not yet over, and that if he would not lead it, then they would turn to Tymoshenko to carry it through to the desired conclusion. Quite obviously, they also made it quite clear that they expect the promises made on the Maidan to be kept.

As much as we may fault Yushchenko for his failure to capitalize on the revolutionary energy that brought him to power to effect revolutionary changes in the Ukrainian political power structures, we should realize that he is part of a longer Ukrainian historical tradition of failing to seize the moment of opportunity to change the course of history. As former dissident and historian Valentyn Moroz makes abundantly clear in his recent book “Ukraine in the Twentieth Century,” subsequent to the 1917 revolution that brought about the collapse of the tsarist Russian empire, the key leaders of the Ukrainian nationalist movement of that time, namely Petliura, Vynnychenko and Hrushevskiy, also failed to capitalize on the strong grassroots desire of the Ukrainian masses to create an independent Ukrainian state. 

In those early years before the Bolsheviks had consolidated their power, when the conditions were right to break free from centuries of Russian domination, these leaders displayed a political tentativeness, deferring to leaders and political events in St. Petersburg and Moscow, and sought an accommodation with the political movements in the Russian heartland, rather than taking their own initiative. By the time they found their self confidence and nerve, it was too late, and the newly formed Red Army crushed Ukrainian aspirations for another four generations.

Yushchenko should take a lesson from history. He has a golden opportunity to put Ukraine on a hard-fought and well-earned track to full and independent statehood. He should draw confidence and strength from the people who put him into power, and not vacillate in the tentativeness that he has shown over the past year.