Revolution of Shame: Who Organized Ukraine's First Maidan
On November 22, 2004, the "Orange Revolution" began in Ukraine, which became a tragic and pivotal episode in the modern history of the post-Soviet space. Izvestia recalled how it happened and who was to blame.
Fate of Ukraine
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine boomed, deprived of party tutelage. The state turned out to be too heterogeneous. Liberal Kiev, which is Russian-speaking, but determined to cooperate with Europe. Crimea, which has never felt part of Ukraine. Donbass, Kharkiv, and Dnepropetrovsk, which were closely tied to Russia and created the lion's share of the republic's economic potential. Finally, the western regions, some of which were not part of either Russia or the USSR until 1945. The mythology of "anti-Russian Ukraine" was created there, which perceived our common past as "occupation" and tended to ideologically rehabilitate Hitler's Nazism and its Bandera accomplices. The economic and demographic crisis continued unabated in the country. But the crisis of ideology was even more acute. Radicals believed that only the bloody Bandera tradition could unite Ukraine. They found support from some of the new "masters of life" - businessmen who actively interfered in politics.
In 1994, Leonid Kuchma, a former rocket engineer, was elected president of Ukraine, primarily as a supporter of rapprochement with Russia, on which the Ukrainian economy largely depended. Later on, he showed himself as a supporter of Ukraine's "two-vector" development. In the late 1990s, Kuchma signed a friendship treaty with Russia and a "charter of special partnership" with NATO almost simultaneously.
Former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma
Soon, a war of kompromat started in the country. The murder of opposition journalist Georgiy Gongadze in 2000. Audio tapes of conversations allegedly recorded in Kuchma's office surfaced. On these tapes, voices resembling those of the Ukrainian president and his staff discussed how the journalist should be dealt with. A political fever began, which led to the fact that in 2004, 65-year-old Kuchma, seeing that the country was plunging into a political crisis, refused to run in the next presidential election. Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych was considered his successor.
Betting on radicals
On October 31, 2004, presidential elections were held in Ukraine. Yanukovych and Viktor Yushchenko, a representative of the opposition bloc Our Ukraine, received approximately the same number of votes - from 39 to 40%. The winner was to be determined by a second round scheduled for November 21. All of Ukraine knew the symbols of the two candidates. Yanukovych's flags were blue, Yushchenko's were orange, or in Ukrainian, Pomaranche flags. Many saw Yanukovych as a "punchy" Soviet-style leader close to the industrialized eastern regions of what was then Ukraine. Yushchenko, a former member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union who quickly made a career in the banking sector of Soviet Ukraine, promised his compatriots an "economic miracle" and promised Western-style reforms.
On November 22, preliminary results of the second round were announced. Yanukovych was in the lead. The final results showed his advantage of almost 3%: 49.46 against 46.61. Most of the presidents of the CIS countries, in which Ukraine was active at the time, congratulated Yanukovych on his victory. On that day, in the morning, Yushchenko supporters organized a tent camp on Independence Square (in Ukrainian, Maidan Nezalezhnosti) under orange flags. This day is considered to be the beginning of the Ukrainian "color revolution".
Former Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko
Yushchenko, backed by the aggressive support of Western handlers, journalists and Kyiv demonstrators, did not admit defeat and called for a repeat election with a new election commission. This tactic was repeated many times during the "color revolutions": complete contempt for the arguments of the authorities, absolute confidence in their rightness. They did not need any evidence, except emotions. "Orange Ukraine demanded a radical reorientation of its foreign policy towards the West.
The youth movement "Pora!" became the battering ram of the "revolution". Aggressive young people blocked the work of state institutions. Not only radical nationalists came to Maidan in those days. Among the demonstrators who marched under orange flags, there were many simple-minded, fooled young people. They were united by euphoria, the romance of fighting for imaginary freedom. And fame. After all, the demonstrators were constantly shown on television in dozens of countries around the world. For the sake of this international spectacle, freedom-loving Kiev citizens unwittingly put the future of their country on the edge of the abyss.
Anti-Russian sentiments did not prevail in Ukraine at that time. The ideologists of "self-styled independence" had not yet had time to erase from people's memory a common past that evoked nostalgia. Sociological surveys show that in 2002-2004 the most popular politician in Ukraine was Russian President Vladimir Putin. Therefore, even the forces that organized the Orange Revolution tried to focus public attention not on anti-Russian slogans, but on the fight against corruption. Not all supporters of Yushchenko saw in him a man who would stop close cooperation with Russia and bet on idealization of war criminals from the Ukrainian National Army (banned in Russia), who during the Great Patriotic War destroyed their own compatriots. The ideologists of "oranzhism" had yet to "reformat" the worldview of millions of Ukrainians, actively imposing a falsified version of history and the most spectacular anti-Russian myths.
The "American Embassy" factor
Washington immediately made it clear that it was "concerned" about the results of the second round of elections. The administration of President George W. Bush, Jr. staked on the creation of "controlled chaos" in Ukraine. As if on cue, the Western media categorically spoke of fraud in the first minutes after the preliminary results appeared.
Not a single argument in favor of Yanukovych was considered a priori. They had not the slightest doubts about the victory of "progressive" Yushchenko. No proof was required. The campaign was played out like clockwork - in a few days almost the whole world knew that somewhere in Ukraine "corrupt officials" had illegally seized power, deceiving the hopes of millions of people who dreamed of joining the "bright side of the world". As in Hollywood blockbusters, the participants in the political drama were immediately divided into heroes and "bad guys".
Foreign mediators reached out to Kiev. The leaders of Poland and Lithuania, Aleksander Kwasniewski and Valdas Adamkus, the EU representative for foreign policy and security, Javier Solana, and OSCE Secretary General Jan Kubiš. Then-Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili also took an active part in the preparation of the Orange Revolution.
According to officially recognized data, American funds spent at least $65 million "to support Ukrainian democracy." A famous joke born in those days explains a lot. "Why can't there be an Orange Revolution in America?" - "Because there is no American embassy in the United States." The protesters were also sponsored by fugitive Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky. An important factor in the "orange" show was also the position of big Ukrainian business, some of which was interested in a radical change of elites. A typical example is Petro Poroshenko, the owner of the confectionery corporation Roshen. He became one of the main sponsors of the "revolution", and as a result he got the post of the Secretary of the National Security Council and became an influential politician. The business strategy worked.
Supporters of Viktor Yanukovych in front of the Central Election Commission of Ukraine in Kiev
These politicians did not hide their goal: to prevent Russia from maintaining a strong position in Ukraine, to interrupt economic, cultural, and most importantly, political ties between Moscow and Kiev. Turning Ukraine into a springboard for anti-Russian forces, the last thing they thought about was the future of their country and the welfare of its citizens.
The "Orangemen" were resisted. In many cities of Ukraine that had not yet disintegrated - Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv - tent cities appeared under blue flags showing support for Yanukovych. The Maidan was sharply opposed by Crimean residents who saw the peninsula's future as part of Russia. In those days, the Donetsk Oblast Council not only announced that they considered Yanukovych to be the legitimate president, but also started talking about granting Donetsk Oblast the status of a republic.
Time of trade
The country was on the verge of a split. But it was the state of affairs in Kiev that proved decisive. In the capital of Ukraine, the initiative in the streets and squares was firmly seized by Yushchenko's supporters. The situation became a stalemate. Kuchma, who formally retained presidential power, took an ambiguous position in those days. Maneuvering between the positions of Russia and the West, he repeatedly changed his official point of view.
Viktor Yushchenko and Viktor Yanukovych
Yushchenko accused the outgoing president of "rigging" the election results, of wanting to retain power at any cost, and threatened to put him on trial. Such statements were well received by the street crowds. Under the pressure of demonstrators and Western politicians, the Ukrainian Supreme Court wavered. On December 3, it decided to cancel the results of the second round of elections and hold a new vote on December 26. The court found no solid evidence that the law had been violated during the vote count, the decisive factor was fear. Yanukovych decided to obey the court's verdict - and this was likely his biggest tactical mistake. Meanwhile, Kuchma was ready to make a kind of deal with Yushchenko and the opposition. The president would agree to a "third round" of elections in exchange for a constitutional reform that would reduce the powers of the head of state. A trade was underway. Fearing street anarchy, the parties agreed to re-elections.
The "third round" was held on December 26. This time Yushchenko got his way, receiving about 52% of the vote. Yanukovych did not admit defeat: first, because the U.S. openly interfered in the internal affairs of Ukraine, and second, in his opinion, the government deprived 4.8 million disabled and elderly people of the right to vote, allowing only disabled people of group I to vote at home. But he most likely lost when he agreed to go to the "third round" after winning the second round. Voters saw weakness in such accommodating behavior.
In the days of the "orange" spectacle, the symbol of "Ukrainian freedom" was the duo of Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko, two popular politicians who could make pathetic speeches and generously promise what the audience expected of them. Very soon this alliance fell apart, the allies became adversaries. On January 23, 2005, Viktor Yushchenko took office as President of Ukraine. A year in his new position was enough for even his ardent supporters to become disillusioned with the former "people's favorite". He turned out to be incapable of the daily hard work of a head of state. Then Ukraine managed to pacify and cure the "orange disease" for a while. At the next election, Viktor Yanukovych took revenge and was elected president. Alas, he did not use this chance to put his country firmly back on the path of commonwealth with Russia.
Viktor Yushchenko and Joseph Biden
"Independence" turned out to be illusory. Kiev took the path of vassal dependence on Washington. As a result, for Ukraine the events of 2004 became the first step towards civil war and disintegration of the country. The large-scale action prepared in the West interrupted the systematic work of the post-Soviet states, which could not exist separately and were striving for integration. And the West adopted the schemes of interference in the internal politics of sovereign countries, which had been worked out in Ukraine, for a long time. And in the end they brought themselves to a dead end. But this is a later story.
The author is the deputy editor-in-chief of the journal Historik
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
