The Multiple Yushchenko Effect

EXPECTATIONS AND QUESTIONS

On March 29 Our Ukraine held a forum in Kyiv, supposedly to answer questions that would largely effect the course of events for the next year, namely: Will this forum be an independent action or another step in the advancement of the Ukrainian nationwide opposition movement? Will Viktor Yushchenko be supported by the united opposition leaders? How well-formulated is the Our Ukraine leader’s friend-or-foe stand? What kind of potential will this forum show in the current political context?

The forum provided quite enough material for a political-psychological analysis, but it also gave rise to additional questions.

USE THE OTHER ENTRANCE, PLEASE...

Two hours before the forum was called to order, people started gathering a round the [Ukraine] Palace, forming a large and increasing crowd. The security arrangements were professionally rigid; even people showing impressive IDs were not admitted unless confirmed as having special invitations. The security guards kept the crowd under constant surveillance. This author noticed familiar Verkhovna Rada security officers. They were their usual professional selves: smart and efficient.

VIPs were admitted through a side service entrance. I spotted Atena Pashko, Vyacheslav Chornovil’s widow, approach the guards. One of them spoke to her and refused to let her in.

Walking down the stairs, Atena noticed me and, reading the surprise on my face, shrugged with embarrassment. “The guard told me I should use the entrance on the other side,” she told me in a guilty voice.

And then I saw Oksana Bilozir. She approached the entrance confidently, her back straight, dignified as ever, accompanied by an athletic man. That same guard, noticing the singing deputy, courteously held the door open to let them in, smiling and murmuring “You’re welcome!” Of course, Atena Pashko, aged and stooping, wearing simple clothes, could not match Oksana Bilozir in any way, least of all in terms of demeanor. But I still could not help asking myself, Who should be let in and accorded welcome: a young singer placed 70th on the party list or this living legend of the dissident movement, lifelong companion of the late leader of Rukh?

In fact, Mrs. Pashko did not rate even the seventieth place in that roster, perhaps because they thought she might not deserve it.

The ethics of treating dead heroes should always include jealous care for their near and dear. Hennady Udovenko took the floor and solemnly proclaimed that he had just placed flowers on Chornovil’s grave “as directed by Viktor Yushchenko.” The audience applauded, but I could see Atena Pashko’s lonely figure in the gallery and I thought that precisely twenty minutes before the celebrated widow had been given a slap in the face, albeit inadvertently and without instructions from above.

Maybe the organizing committee ought to have entrusted people other than ensigns with screening the guests?

SHOW AMERICAN STYLE

The audience was packed and waiting. All the best people were there: Poroshenko, Kostenko, Udovenko, Bezsmertny, Pynzenyk, et al. All except the man of the hour. The atmosphere was full of suspense.

Viktor Yushchenko appeared suddenly, marching up the aisle, all the way to the front row, accompanied by applause, flash bulbs, followed closely by the television cameras. He was truly in the limelight, elegant as ever, smiling, charming, and waving to the audience. Indeed, he is quite handsome and excitingly charismatic. He is the only one. Indispensable, if only to his bloc.

I had a seat in the front row among his leading advisers and had a gut feeling. Was all that publicity, 90% of the limelight on the leader and only 10% on everybody else, fair?

To seek any kind of logic in things like charisma and public affection is pointless. How can you possibly explain fairness under these circumstances? Love is blind. Someone just happens to be popular with and trusted by the masses.

To an expert, however, it was clear that pains were being taken to maintain the leader’s popularity by his team using a number of promotional factors. The lobby boasted a display of photos, with some 90% of them large Yushchenko portraits, some of the others portraying some of his comrades in arms, but always as a background. The podium had its own background, a campaign banner with a huge photo of Yushchenko with a large screen on each side. After the forum was called to order by Viktor Yushchenko (no presidium onstage), he made the opening address and everyone in the audience could immediately see two Yushchenkos, on each of the side screens, showing him half and full face, meaning that we could actually see four Yushchenkos. Sitting in the audience, I felt exposed to what I am now inclined to describe as a multiple Yushchenko effect. Psychological tests show that multiplying an image has an almost hypnotic effect on those already susceptible to the image, but only to an extent. Here it is important not to surpass a certain limit, otherwise your subconscious and conscious will rebel as you begin to feel like you are becoming a zombie.

As for the forum, Taras Chornovil described it later as a show American style. Indeed, a young handsome candidate acts precisely that way in a typical US election campaign. It often works, except that this particular scenario would have done better to be adjusted to the Ukrainian mentality. As it was, the organizing committee of that political show, meant to multiply the Our Ukraine leader’s image, achieved an effect best described by quoting from one of those Chukchi jokes, so popular in the Soviet Union’s later days: A Chukchi returns from the XXV CPSU Congress addressed by Leonid Brezhnev mumbling through his hundred-page report and says to his tribesmen gathered in his yurt: “You heard ‘everything for man and everything in the name of man.’ Well, I saw that man!”

NAME A TABOO — OR A COUNTRY OF SCARED PEOPLE

The theme of overcoming fear was not touched on at the forum, but it was inescapable to a psychologist.

“Have no fear!” called a voice off screen and read the running text.

Those taking the floor spoke of attempts to intimidate Our Ukraine members and their supporters.

Those that did all this bullying were repeatedly referred to as “they,” meaning those in power.

As for the latter, experts in the field will tell you that people actually wielding power, whatever the regime, have never formed a homogenous lot. Khrushchev, Beria, Brezhnev, Kosygin, Ligachov, Yeltsin, Hurenko, Kravchuk, and a lot of others have personified precisely that heterogeneity present at all echelons of power.

Today, we have Kuchma, Lytvyn, Yanukovych, Medvedchuk, Azarov, Marchuk, and many others holding important executive posts (not to mention all those others holding power at all those other levels). All of them are different individuals as politicians, managers, and people with different views of the world.

Painting them all black and white would mean discarding centuries of historical experience, showing that a given regime is later urged to be “reformed” by some hitherto faithful servant of that same regime, motivated by circumstances, cold-blooded calculation, the instinct of self-preservation, even that fear to which Ivan Pliushch admitted at the forum when he said that he had earlier been bullied into refraining from criticizing the powers that be.

There are many similar examples: Moroz, Pliushch, Tymoshenko, and of course the current man of the hour, Viktor Yushchenko, along with most other prominent opposition leaders, have taken turns in positions of official leadership.

Hennady Udovenko, obviously carried away by reminiscences of National Democrats fighting Communists in the early 1990s, let it slip: “We were then a fraction of Rukh...” In truth Mr. Udovenko was at the time anything but a member of that faction, being a devout servant of the Soviet regime.

Many others in the audience had also to one time quit the ranks of the regime’s supporters and join the opposition, more often than not because the president dismissed them. I might also add that people in the know would tell you that some of those present at the forum would be happy to accept posts if and when discretely offered by the current regime.

Incidentally, the notion of belonging with those actually wielding power consists, first, in associating oneself with all those others of like mind in some alliance. Second, it gives one carte blanche in how one treats others, applying the rules of war to whomever one assigned to the enemy camp.

Here the so-called enemy homogeneity effect is at play (in other words, you do not discriminate between those you consider your enemies), in contrast to the friendly heterogeneity effect (your friends are different and good to you in different ways).

When some said from the rostrum, “They are preparing for a war against us,” I was reminded of a ranking opponent who once told me, “They must be out of their heads!” In other words, both warring parties are convinced that they are right and everybody else is wrong.

Psychologists are well aware of this phenomenon and call it mirror perception, meaning that inveterate opponents automatically perceive the other’s image as negative.

Viktor Yushchenko, lashing out at those in office, has never mentioned the president’s name, although implying it on every such occasion — not even when he referred to the 1994 elections, saying that “we elected the [current] regime” because of the opposition’s lack of coordination. It is also true, however, that the 1994 winner, Leonid Kuchma, could hardly be described as part of the regime. He was then president of the Ukrainian Union of Industrialist and Entrepreneurs and former premier (as Yushchenko now is). Last but not least, he was in opposition to Leonid Kravchuk. In other words, the reverse was true: the opposition won the elections.

Viktor Yushchenko and company indignantly told the forum what happens when the opposition wins.

As for his avoiding the president’s name, ethnopsychologists note that many tribes never mention “him that instills fear,” lest he get angry and vent his wrath on them.

It is also generally known that people when frightened even subconsciously, act indecisively, taking abrupt turns, avoiding a clear stand, unable to make quick and firm decisions.

If such individuals are in politics, there is the risk of their being susceptible to the outside influence of different forces and people rather than being able to act on their own.

Was this what Anatoly Matviyenko of the Tymoshenko bloc actually had in mind, saying at the forum that Yushchenko is a leader “we will help come to power?”

Mr. Matviyenko, let me suggest that Yushchenko may well become a leader who needs no help or guidance... that he will select his own path. I also think that Viktor Yushchenko is convinced deep down that he is capable of doing just that — although some of his comrades in arms obviously try to “show him the way” now and then.

Saying that Ukraine is a country inhabited by frightened people, Viktor Yushchenko must have been referring to those “others.”

Perhaps the truth is that everyone must overcome his fears and act on his own. Although, being a psychologist, I will venture my own opinion: being completely without fear is indicative of a degree of idiocy.

CRITICISM OUT OF THE BUCKET OR JUST OUT OF THE BLUE

Most of those addressing the forum kept in a rather restrained vein of criticism and accusation. Unlike the radical verbiage dominating the joint opposition’s actions, most OU people strove to sound analytical, submitting proposals, suggesting plans, trying not to sound like campaign workers. Nevertheless, many were quite emotional. Viktor Yushchenko adopted a restrained analytical stance, declaring that he did not want to waste time on criticism “from out of the bucket” (roughly translated, not to engage in mudslinging — Ed.), thereby distancing himself from the radicals in his own and other opposition camps.

Whether from that bucket or some other vessel, a great deal of criticism was poured on the heads of the powers that be.

The audience heard (and approved) that those currently in high office are splitting into factions, persecuting, destroying, and looting all kinds of things... Oleksandr Moroz contributed a political-sexual motive, saying that the regime was raping its subjects, doing so by “collecting protocols [signatures] in support of the political reform” (the Socialist leader has resorted to such arguments on more than one occasion; suffice it to recollect the parliamentary debate on the dispatch of the Ukrainian radiological, chemical, and biological warfare defense battalion to Kuwait. Oleksandr Moroz said then, “We acted like a whore offering her services.”

Well, Mr. Moroz, can you really see this as rape? Remember what we did when we were young? Those in power did make us do things best described as rape — and we did it and wanted everything kept off the record. Do you remember all those regional committee Parteigenossen, all those warming their seats, loath to leave them, of course? They are still alive and well. Most interestingly, this is true of both the rape victims and the supposed rapists.

Why not face the audience and say that any regime is a machine of enforcement and that it innately corrupts practically every functionary, that any regime has to be replaced now and then, and that its temptations are too strong to withstand by those who, ten or fifteen years ago, so ardently lashed out at the new regime and then became its leaders?

Anyone saying out loud that he wanted power would be considered ill- mannered or simply out to lunch, so all those seeking their places in the political sun declare they are only out for everyone’s good. Yet, after getting there and having no time to do anything for everybody’s good, they are surprised to be condemned by all those now lusting after their posts, pretending to be determined to and capable of restoring justice, whatever that is.

An age-old scenario is being played out. New leaders once again promise the masses to change the political system so that the man in the street can live in some kind of heaven on earth, making such statements and smiling to themselves at that hoary plebeian credulity.

When I heard them say during the forum that autocracy was about to befall Ukraine, I thought: We all know that something is befalling us, coming out of the blue, but not all of us know who is behind all that and what is actually happening.

YU+YU=?

Viktor Yushchenko said it was important to unite and have various political forces come to terms, stressing that “we can have our cherished dream come true only by combining our efforts.” Whose efforts? Petro Symonenko was not in attendance, a possibility foreseen by the organizing committee. There was a motto reading “Yu+Yu” [meaning Yuliya Tymoshenko and Viktor Yushchenko]. Mrs. Tymoshenko did not attend the forum for “family reasons.” Oleksandr Moroz did, said he supported the project but warned, “Anyone sitting in the presidium in place of Medvedchuk, even one of your own people, would mean that the whole affair will end up in the same old way.”

I might as well point out that, should any of the opposition radicals have appeared at the podium, the whole affair would have taken a fundamentally different course. As it was, the proposed joint efforts could be taken at the forum, owing to the presence of guests of honor, such as Anatoly Matviyenko (Tymoshenko bloc), Socialist Oleksandr Moroz, United Social Democrat Yury Buzduhan, Viktor Kononov (Greens), Serhiy Odarych (Yabluko), Stepan Havrysh (Democratic Initiative), and Ivan Pliushch (on his own).

Among others addressing the forum were OU people, so the stated attendance by 52 parties and 118 volunteer organizations remains anyone’s guess.

In other words, the long-cherished uniting of efforts could be accomplished by OU-affiliated volunteer and political organizations. Will this be enough to win the presidency? Viktor Pynzenyk said in his address that Our Ukraine’s scope did not provide for any sizable and substantial changes.

WHO WELCOMES WHOM AND WHERE?

Viktor Yushchenko, addressing the forum, stressed that Our Ukraine had no strategic divergences with the Tymoshenko bloc. “You are welcome, Yuliya Volodymyrivna (Tymoshenko), Levko Hryhorovych (Lukyanenko), and Anatoly Serhiyovych (Matviyenko),” he declared. As for Ms. Tymoshenko, the words of welcome should obviously be accompanied by a more substantial proposition. Perhaps this is what Odarych had in mind when he said from the podium that the Tymoshenko bloc should stop haggling about the premier’s seat.

Later, one Tymoshenko functionary and a people’s deputy who had not attended the forum on principle, told me, “What was there really to trade?” Of course, there is nothing unusual about political haggling over a coalition being shaped. No one wants to pass up a bargain, after all.

Yushchenko’s most impatient comrades in arms, probably wishing to spur on their allies’ thinking, declared from the rostrum that everything was clear, there was no room for doubt; and everyone could see the future president in the hall.

Poroshenko was the first to say that, smiling happily. He was also once a premier candidate to be pondered seriously, although he might as well adopt the ladies-first rule. After all, there were enough portfolios to be handed out — and the man was Viktor Yushchenko’s old friend, meaning that he rated a place in the sun. After proclaiming Yushchenko the presidential candidate, the promo campaign began slowly, leaving behind confused allies. Ladies and gentlemen, the time has come.

WHO TO BLAME AND WHO TO FORGIVE?

Viktor Yushchenko said all those quitting the Tymoshenko bloc and Our Ukraine should be forgiven; they were “pressured” by the regime. He added that he was trying to do so himself. Indeed, political betrayal is viewed morally from only one angle, even though our deputies in Verkhovna Rada seem to have cultivated switching factions from the outset, if personally worthwhile. However, the lawmakers and others who support their leader also expect him to reciprocate, particularly those who offer their reputations, businesses, and other potentialities.

Should the leader fail to measure up — especially when making them suffer because of his mistakes of inaction — some of his exponents would be likely to ask themselves what they should do under the circumstances.

As it was, the leader told the forum they should be patient and the situation would change soon.

Some were prepared to be patient, but others could or would not be.

Have all those leaders done their best to reinforce the positions of their factions, those of their members, or to have them protected from pressure or any other kind of negative influence?

True or not, the legislative grapevine has it that one of the reasons for people quitting the Tymoshenko bloc and Our Ukraine was disillusionment with their leaders’ actual deeds and declarations, also with their struggling to get close to the head of state. Could this mean that there is plenty of guilt to go around according to one’s awareness of that guilt?

A TRULY PAINFUL QUESTION: WHO GOT WHAT?

Even though the leaders call for unity, their ambitions remain a very pressing issue, at the first and other echelons. Petro Poroshenko, in fact, said in his address to the forum that the issue was a painful one.

Viktor Pynzenyk obviously tried to allay such ambitions, saying that each of those that had joined must have certainly suffered some losses, but that they would all wind up benefiting.

I do not know who has suffered what in the OU camp. What they have obviously gained is political support, getting them seats in parliament, and they are now actively preparing for the presidential race, hoping to win it. Perhaps they will — but they could also lose the game.

Yushchenko’s entourage believes that he is the perfect presidential candidate and that all those still considering going over to his camp ought to do so now.

This attitude was evidenced at the forum by the presence of a single poster, reflecting the vox populi, reading that the nation’s glory would be revived only when Yushchenko had received the mace of authority.

Oleksandr Moroz, however, quoted Leonid Kravchuk as saying that even an angel, if elected president, would grow devil’s horns.

Lest this happen, the forum called for “changing the system” (repeating a [Soviet] dissident slogan popular forty years ago), presenting it as a newly discovered truth.

A FORCE WITHOUT A NAME

The forum climaxed in Viktor Yushchenko’s statement about the setting up of a new public-political force that would evolve into a European- type party. He did not tell those present its name (I happened to hear about the idea and the name from Viktor Yushchenko a year ago; it was also then that Roman Bezsmertny showed me OU’s table of organization in terms of top posts).

At the forum, Mr. Bezsmertny was true to himself as head of Yushchenko’s campaign HQ, issuing instructions for the coming elections. So far, this new force remains known as Our Ukraine. The project is underway.

Several other nearby political projects are about to begin. It remains to be seen who will be in command and who will run the errands.

The forum ended, and those in attendance left the hall. Viktor Yushchenko’s large smiling portrait was dismantled. His exponents are convinced that the man will be smiling when he hears the election returns. No one will then dare dismantle his portraits anywhere.

Perhaps, but what do his opponents think?