Prospects for New Leadership in Ukraine

David R. Marples
for EDMONTON JOURNAL, 17 September 2008

There seems to be no immediate solution to the political crisis in Ukraine, which on September 16 brought about the final collapse of the Orange coalition established after the 2004 Orange Revolution. The electorate can hardly welcome the fall of the current parliament, leading to the third parliamentary election in only three years. But is that the only alternative? What are the causes of the crisis? Why does Ukraine seem to stutter from one bitter internal conflict to another?

One reason is a deep clash of personalities. The two key figures—President Viktor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko—do not get along. To listen to the president of late, an uninformed observer would gain the impression that Tymoshenko is a traitor who has sold out Ukraine to the Russians. Yushchenko has deployed his chief of staff, Viktor Baloha, a Rusyn from Transcarpathia, on a mission aimed at curtailing the career of the flamboyant Prime Minister. According to one account Baloha has forwarded documents to the Ukrainian Security Service that reportedly show Tymoshenko has committed acts of treason.

Tymoshenko is not only the most popular politician in Ukraine, she is—according to an annual ranking of the country’s most notable 100 individuals published in Korrespondent (August 22)—the most influential person as well. Lately she has made a number of maneuvers that seem contradictory: she has supported (with the backing of the Regions Party) the empowerment of parliament over the office of the president; she has expressed a wish to re-form the Orange coalition as the best way out of the current impasse; and she has approached the Regions faction with the goal of forming a new parliamentary majority coalition.

Yushchenko accuses her of joining Regions in supporting Russian actions in Georgia, undermining his own overt support for Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili. The president believes she has taken such steps in order to acquire Russian sponsorship for her candidacy in the 2010 presidential election. However, if the Constitution is indeed amended to give more power to the legislature, then the presidency would be reduced to a ceremonial office.

The ambition of the Prime Minister has always been evident. At times there seems to be a contrast between her lifestyle and public appearance and her avowed goal to eliminate corruption or take on the oligarchs. But equally significant is her refusal to take orders from Yushchenko and become a compliant figure. Her initiatives to promote privatization and to carry out reforms through the Parliament with cooperation from various factions rankle with the conservative Yushchenko, who lacks both her drive and charisma.

Four years on from the Orange Revolution that swept him to power, the president is deeply unpopular within his own country (like Gorbachev he is much more respected outside it), and an article in Ukrains’ka pravda in early September declared him “politically dead.” He has issued a decree giving Baloha the authority to inspect internal troops that led some observers (Yuri Butuzov in Zerkalo Nedeli, for example) to suspect that he wishes to impose direct presidential rule. The Parliament has demanded (323 deputies in favor, well more than the 226 required) that the president dismiss Baloha for obstructing parliament as well as alleged illegal land dealings.

Ultimately, a president needs to reflect the sentiments of the public. Yushchenko’s avowed pro-Georgian, pro-NATO, and increasingly anti-Russian policies do not have overwhelming support in Ukraine. In fact they serve to highlight the regional divisions. On Georgia especially a consensus is plainly lacking.

Thus an August poll conducted by the Razumkov Center asked a sampling of respondents in the different regions of Ukraine which country they perceived as the aggressor in the Russian-Georgian conflict (a question that would have received a unanimous verdict in neighboring Poland). In western Ukraine, 55.2% saw Russia in this role, 15.1% both countries, and 7% Georgia. The center was evenly divided. However, Eastern Ukraine perceived Georgia as the main aggressor (37.2% to 13.8%), and in southern Ukraine almost 57% maintained the same, with only 13.8% citing Russia.

Though the same Center’s webpage does not offer a recent poll on NATO membership, a June 2008 survey indicated that 60% of respondents opposed it, with 20.9% in favor. Incidentally in June 2002, according to this same source, 32% supported accession to NATO. Thus as a policy it has lost its attraction, in part because of the war in Iraq.

Yushchenko’s policies are becoming erratic, and his public utterances, particularly about his Prime Minister increasingly far-fetched. The key question is whether a parliamentary coalition could actually work. Western analyst Taras Kuzio pointed out recently that a substantial portion of the Regions’ deputies opposed Russian actions in Georgia. There is thus no necessity to associate the entire faction with the pro-Russian stance of its leader.

If a coalition between the Tymoshenko Bloc and the Regions is possible, then Ukraine might establish the more stable leadership it requires during a time of political crisis and growing tension in its relationship with Russia.

Ukrainians Are Neither Clearly Pro-Western Nor Pro-Russian

By Mykola Riabchuk

The wise man who distinguished the truth, the lie, and statistics, might well have included among the latter opinion surveys — at least as they function in Ukraine. David Marples’s article in the “Edmonton Journal” (Monday, July 30: “Ukraine’s ties with Russia run deep, and that’s not about to change”) is highly dependent on recent opinion polls. They seem to support firmly not only the first part of the title, which is rather obvious, but the second part as well, which is rather debatable.

David Marples perfectly captures the essence of Ukraine’s East-West dilemma in his conclusions. “Ukrainians,” he contends, “are not pro-Western today partly because the example set by Western democracies in recent times has hardly provided a model to emulate: beginning with NATO’s attack on Serbia in 1999 and culminating with the invasion of Iraq. Many also have been alienated by the EU’s negative response to Ukrainian desires for membership. And Ukrainians are for the most part pro-Russian because they see Russia as a strong counterforce to the United States and a nation with which they have more in common than with either the new democracies of Eastern Europe or the long-established democracies that no longer seem capable of providing fitting examples to follow.”

The only big “but” in this case, however, is that virtually all notions and terms in Ukraine are quite vague and fluid. For example, the concepts “pro-Western” and “pro-Russian” do not have the same meaning in the positivistic West and the highly ambivalent and ambiguous post-Soviet Ukraine. True, if being “pro-Russian” or “pro-American” means a sort of Realpolitik, a pragmatic approach to the inherited geopolitical, cultural-linguistic, and economic reality, then Ukrainians (for the most part) are certainly more “pro-Russian” than “pro-Western.” They simply prefer one bird in hand to two in the bush. They prefer the status quo because they feel that — in a country with feeble institutions and no rule of law, weak mechanisms for conflict resolution, low Western support and strong Russian pressure — any instability is dangerous. They opt for a bad peace over a good war just because they do not believe that a good peace is possible.

This does not mean, however, that they absolutely oppose a good peace, i.e., the EU or even membership in NATO, as the opinion surveys purportedly reveal. The surveys point out only that a good peace is not on the agenda (to paraphrase the standard response of Eurocrats to Ukrainians’ claims for EU membership prospects). Ukrainians, therefore, merely choose between the lesser of two evils. Yet again, these “evils” are not the West and Russia per se, but the most likely results people expect in their own cost-benefit analysis. Obviously, the benefits from Ukraine’s western integration would be much higher — but they appear largely unachievable; the costs, i.e., punishment for such attempts by Russia, are rather real and palpable.

To clarify this psychological mechanism, one must refer to the two referendums Ukrainians held in 1991. In March of that year, 70 per cent supported Gorbachev’s idea of a “renewed federation,” in other words, the preservation of the USSR. A few months later, in December, 90 per cent of Ukrainian voters endorsed national independence. This was not some mystical insight or miraculous breakthrough. In March they were quite supportive of independence — but not to the point of rocking the boat and putting their relative well-being and stability at risk. The cost-benefit balance sheet in March was unfavorable for independence. Yet by December, when the Soviet Union de facto collapsed and national independence — declared by the Ukrainian parliament — was a fait accompli, people felt that to oppose independence was more risky, i.e., more destabilizing, than supporting it.

Another graphic example comes from 2002 when president Kuchma, cornered by internal and international scandals, declared Ukraine’s resolve to join NATO. This was a clear attempt to reduce tensions with the US and to counter Ukraine’s growing international ostracism. (Today, few people remember that it was not Yushchenko, the “pro-Western” President, who made NATO membership a national strategic goal, but rather his allegedly “pro-Russian” predecessor). This strategic decision, and the equally strategic choice of sending Ukrainian troops to Iraq — again, made by the “pro-Russian” Kuchma, while the “pro-American” Yushchenko eventually withdrew them — did not evoke any serious protests in Ukraine or even lead to substantial public debate. Ukrainians simply do not much care about such things. Other opinion surveys reveal that such issues as membership in NATO or strengthening/weakening of the status of the Russian language are not among the top ten (and even top twenty) issues of importance to Ukrainians. Moreover, up to 90 per cent of Ukrainians surveyed confess they know nothing or very little about NATO. A few years ago, Ukrainian journalists contrived a nice hoax: they asked the same people about their attitude towards both “NATO” and the “North Atlantic Treaty Organization.” Apparently, in most cases the latter was evaluated much more positively.

This reveals two more problems with opinion surveys in countries like Ukraine: the low political awareness of the people being surveyed and the widespread misunderstanding (and misuse) of terms. The Russian language question serves as a good example of such ambiguity. Thus far there has been no real public debate setting out clearly for everyone what official bilingualism might mean, how it might work in practice, and what legal and other mechanism would be needed to facilitate it. Some people have a Soviet understanding of “two state languages”; they view this as a right of the dominant Russophone group not to learn, and never to use, Ukrainian — an idea that is graphically made real in today’s Belarus. Other people understand the idea in a Western, liberal manner: as a legally prescribed duty of all post-Soviet bureaucrats (predominantly Russian-speaking) to communicate with all citizens — understood as “clients” and as taxpayers — in the language of their choice — and not vice versa, as was the case with Soviet “bilingualism.”

In short, opinion polls in a society such as Ukraine primarily reveal confusion and a secret desire to maintain the status quo — because change is precarious, with easily predictable high costs but mostly indeterminate benefits. Ukrainian society, however, can be considered not only a glass that is half empty — namely, lacking civic maturity, national unity and strong commitment to Western values — but also half full. Forty four per cent of Ukrainians believe that democracy is the best state system, while only 17 per cent opt for authoritarianism; this is actually a good result for a nation that has had very limited experience with a functioning democracy, and even less experience with national independence and self-rule. Neither in Russia nor Belarus can one find anything approaching this.

And the fact that 93 per cent of surveyed Ukrainians opted for “order” as the most needed commodity, while only 25 per cent opted for “liberalism,” does not prove an “authoritarian” preference. It only proves the lack of “order” in the country, and the need to fix a feckless democracy rather than dismantling it in the Russian or Belarusian manner. In this sense, the Orange Revolution, indeed, was not about “pro-Western” or “pro-Russian” orientations, as David Marples rightly suggests, but about the way the country should be run. In other words, it was about values. But if one examines the values of the Kuchma regime, which were opposed by the Revolution, one will see that exactly those values still dominate Russia and other post-Soviet states. Conversely, if one looks at the values defended by the Revolution, we will see that they are the very principles upon which the West is built.

Consequently, the Orange Revolution was clearly pro-Western in its spirit, if not necessarily in political rhetoric and in actual geopolitical programs. So far, it has brought mixed results but, in most terms, post-revolutionary Ukraine is much closer to the fledgling democracies of Eastern Europe than to the consolidated authoritarianisms of post-Soviet “Eurasia.” Thus, the title of Marples’s article might be usefully paraphrased to read: “Ukraine’s ties with Soviet attitudes run deep, but they are changing.”

[Mykola Riabchuk is a Ukrainian writer and political and cultural analyst. He is the author of seven books available in English, French, German, Polish, and other languages. This academic year, he will be teaching at the University of Alberta (in the departments of Modern Languages & Cultural Studies and History & Classics) as the Stuart Ramsay Tompkins Visiting Professor.]

UKRAINIANS SHUN NATO, SUPPORT TIES WITH RUSSIA

By David Marples

In what was termed the Orange Revolution of late 2004, protests in the streets of Kyiv forced a rerun of the second round of the presidential election in Ukraine, resulting in the victory of Viktor Yushchenko over his rival Viktor Yanukovych, who was backed by former president Leonid Kuchma and Russian president Vladimir Putin. Both at the time and subsequently, the outcome was perceived as a victory for pro-Western forces in Ukraine over a ruling group that hitherto was oriented toward Russia.

In similar fashion, the parliamentary elections of 2006 also saw a narrow victory for the Orange forces (which later split catastrophically) over the Regions Party led by Viktor Yanukovych. However, two opinion polls that have been conducted in recent weeks suggest that Ukrainian residents are hesitant about deepening ties with the West and opposed especially to NATO, and a substantial number would rather have some form of union with neighbors Russia and Belarus than join the EU.

On 24 July, Interfax Ukraine cited the results of the most recent survey conducted by the Yaremenko Ukrainian Institute of Social Research and the “Social Monitoring” Center between 10 and 18 July. It is based on 2,014 respondents over the age of 18, residing in 132 cities and villages in all regions of Ukraine, and has a margin of error of 1.34-2.24%.

Less than 20% of respondents are in support of Ukraine joining NATO, with 57% opposed, a figure that would seem to preclude any immediate prospects of a referendum on whether to join the military body. About 25% are in favor of joining the EU, whereas 43.4% wish to join a union with Russia and Belarus, and 27% think it better to pursue equal relations with both the EU and Russia. Thus over 70% of those surveyed support some form of close relationship with Russia.

On the status of the Russian language in Ukraine, the attitude is generally benign: 33.5% feel that the existing status of that language should remain as it is currently; 26.4% believe that it should be raised to the status of a state language; 24.7% consider that Russian should be elevated to the second state language in areas where a majority is in favor of this step; and only 11.7% think that Russian should be removed from official communications throughout Ukraine. Thus over 51% support some strengthening of the status of the Russian language in Ukraine.

These results may be compared to those of another poll carried out between 19 June and 2 July by the Ukrainian Sociology Service and Democratic Initiatives Foundation, with 2,000 respondents from all regions and an error margin of under 2.2% and cited by the Kyiv Post. This poll reveals that had the parliamentary elections–scheduled for late September 2007–been held in early July, the East Ukrainian-based Regions Party led by Yanukovych would have won 44% of the vote and gained about 206 seats in the legislature of 450 members. Regions could then have formed a working partnership with the Communist Party and established a majority government. Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine and the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc would have formed the opposition.

This same poll also revealed the declining faith of residents of Ukraine in democracy (only 44% feel that it is the best state system), whereas a substantial group–one fifth of respondents–believes that Ukraine would be better off with an authoritarian system. On the question of whether order, democracy, freedom, or liberalism was needed, “order” was the preferred commodity, with 93% in support whereas less than 25% opted for liberalism.

The results of these two polls are both disturbing and revealing. On the one hand, they suggest that the progress of Ukraine toward a Western-style and Western-leaning democracy has been consistently exaggerated by some Western sources. On the other hand, they offer a more accurate account of the way Ukrainians really think. A large plurality or even a small majority of residents of Ukraine prefer closer ties with Russia and have some facility in the Russian language. A similarly substantial portion of the population is skeptical about Western influence, democratic structures, and the way the country has been run since the success of the Orange Revolution.

In truth, the Orange Revolution was not about a pro-Western or pro-Russian orientation at all (Putin’s ill-advised interventions notwithstanding). It was about the way the country had been run for the previous decade, with a spate of political murders, corruption, and muzzling of the media by the Kuchma government.

Ukrainians are not pro-Western today partly because the example set by Western democracies in recent times has hardly provided a model to emulate: beginning with NATO’s attack on Serbia in 1999 and culminating with the invasion of Iraq.

And Ukrainians are for the most part pro-Russian because they see Russia as a strong counterforce to the United States and a nation with which they have more in common than with either the new democracies of Eastern Europe or the long-established democracies that no longer seem capable of providing fitting examples to follow.

Confessions of an Ethnic Russian

By Ilya Khineyko

It has become commonplace to point out that many Russians in Ukraine, and other post-Soviet republics for that matter, are clinging to the Soviet past. However, despite the lack of loyalty to the respective newly independent countries in which they reside, there is little attachment to the current Russian Federation. A number of scholars have argued that the persistence of Soviet identity is rooted in the historic experience of Russians who suffered a loss of identity following the USSR’s own ‘nationalizing’ project aimed at creating a Soviet people. This factor helps to explain why ethnic Russians in the republics did not rush en masse to save the USSR in 1991. However, it cannot account for the absence of ethnic Russian mobilization in the post-Soviet period. The text below helps to shed light on this issue. As an emotional invective, evidently written by an ethnic Russian, it represents an attempt to explain how ethnic Russians feel about their status and perspectives in Ukraine as well as their relationship with Russia. Whether the opinions of the anonymous author of this internet posting are indicative of a broader societal trend remains an open question. However, it does provide an interesting insight into the psychology of this relationship.

Levchenko speaks again

After holding a press conference devoted to the language issue, Levchenko was assaulted by protesters and threatened with violence by a member of his own party.

By Ilya Khineyko

“Lately, Mykola Levchenko, has become one of the newsmakers in our country” wrote Anton Zikora from UNIAN. Indeed, the controversial statements by this previously little known official from the Donetsk city council and a very public rebuke from prominent figures in the Party of Regions have made headlines in the Ukrainian online media. After running an interview with Levchenko on March 6, UNIAN decided to provide him with another opportunity to express his views by holding a press conference on March 13.

Interview with Mykola Levchenko

By Ilya Khineyko

We’ve written before about a recent linguistic controversy in Ukraine. The man at the center of this scandal, Mykola, or Nikolay, the name he evidently prefers to go by, Levchenko, was interviewed by the prominent Ukrainian news agency, UNIAN. The remarkable thing about the interview is not Levchenko’s views on the language issue per se but an opportunity to get a glimpse into his Weltanschauung. Levchenko is a young man. Born in 1979, he was only 12 years old when Ukraine became independent and so he arguably belongs to the first post-Soviet generation of Ukrainians to whom the USSR was just a childhood memory. It is still debatable whether his views are just his idiosyncratic opinions or, using the title of a book familiar to any Russian-speaker, Levchenko is indeed a “Hero of our time”.

Tempest in the (linguistic) teapot?

A statement by a minor Donetsk official has become a subject of national controversy.

by Ilya Khineyko

The language issue is a perennial topic of Ukrainian politics. Ever since Ukraine adopted its current constitution in 1996, which made Ukrainian the sole official language of the country, the opponents of the current status quo have been trying to open up a debate on the status of the Russian language in Ukraine. It has been argued that the current lack of any formal provision regarding the status of Russian is discriminatory towards Russian-speakers who constitute – the estimates vary – up to 50% of the country’s total population and make up a majority in the East and South. The proponents of granting Russian the status of a second state or an official language have maintained that such a decision will be a step toward equality in the linguistic sphere. That is why a statement made by the secretary of Donetsk City Council, Mykola Levchenko, 29, has stirred a great deal of controversy and prompted a response from the influential figures of the Party of Regions, Hanna Herman and Taras Chornovil.