Results of Ukrainian 1999 Political Internet

Early last year The Day tried to forecast the prospects of the Internet’s political resources in Ukraine. How many of those predictions have now come true a year later after the Verkhovna Rada elections and the most resonant presidential campaign?

It is true that 1999 gave a powerful impetus to the Internet in Ukraine. Many new resources have come online, good and otherwise; users have shown increased activity and most successful sites have shown increased ratings. A new resource has appeared: UAtoday (http://www.uatoday.net), developed using such prestigious Russian resources as Gazeta.ru and Vesti.ru. With massive promotional support from Russia, UAtoday took the lead in Ukrainian ratings, for a while, attracting several thousand visitors daily, until certain conflicts occurred (more on this later), destroying the structure of this impressive success. Just before the elections practically every leading politician of Ukraine got him/herself a Web site, and the same applied to every presidential candidate. In the course of preparations for the campaign, quite professional Internet resources were developed in various corners of Ukraine, dealing with politics, political science, and related disciplines. Also, one should note the high activity of enthusiasts who, independently, without having any outside financial support, created rather decent resources — e.g., Novoe ukrainskoe obozrenie, the Politicheskaya zhizn’ Ukrainy almanac, and Vestniki ukrainskoi oligarkhii. Without doubt, the culminating point in the Internet’s political life was Presidential Night on the Internet, a successful project carried out by Global Ukraine. All through election night those visiting the site could follow interviews with presidential candidates, political analysts, and journalists; they could share impressions and news in chat mode, and watch the Central Election Committee’s findings. The success of the action spoke for itself: 4,000 visitors during the night, an absolute Ukrainian Internet record!

Predictions that the Ukrainian side of the Internet would be used by opposing political forces to dump their incriminating information did not come true. The only resource I know of in this sense is the Serp i Molot (Hammer and Sickle) site (it has every right to be nominated as the dirtiest 1999 project). Its authors, wisely concealing their individual identities behind the collective name Doctor Anticom, posed as inveterate enemies of Communism (Bolshevism, to be precise, as the most dangerous variety of that political doctrine). Reading the address’s materials, I was enchanted to meet with crystal-clear manifestations of crystal pure human platitude, with nothing to water it down. While viciously attacking all those allegedly being carriers of B bug (as the site authors referred to Bolshevism), Anticom tried to be ironical, even witty, but its excessive bias was a constant obstacle and the tone constantly shifted to undisguised rudeness. To speak of this hotbed of infection is impossible. The reader was not offered any copies of incriminating documents, not even transcripts of conversations, although the authors constantly hinted at knowing something that would leave the reader breathless. Thank God, the site vanished immediately after the election. The question about who ordered this outrageous project remains open, however. It should be noted that the Doctor’s target of verbal attack included all presidential candidates except Kuchma and Udovenko, and that the site was obviously built by real professionals, meaning that it must have cost a lot of money. Its location was somewhere in the United States. Serp i Molot materials would later appear in periodicals favoring the President.

Can we say, then, that all is well? Apparently not. First, a distinctive feature of most Ukrainian Internet resources is their amateurish approach. Updating site materials is continuous work, meaning no weekends or days off and utter dedication. Aware of the amount of time and effort required, the authors of numerous homemade sites became quickly disappointed and folded up. The same is true of sites belonging to political parties and organizations. In most cases the customer turned out unprepared to splurge after having the site created, rendering it a victim of infant mortality. After all, who is interested to know “news” dating back two or three months? Even parties in possession of quality Internet resources do almost nothing in terms of promotion; no forwarding address is provided in any of the materials available, and no mention of television advertising.

Second, due to the less than high (to put it mildly) living standards in Ukraine, the number of people in a position to visit these sites is still limited. A hundred visitors a day is considered a success, and several hundred means triumph!

Finally, the Ukrainian Internet appears to be totally exposed to bureaucratic arbitrariness and administrative intrusion. Here a case study is the dispute between UAtoday and one of its providers. In the end the project was deprived of its permanent Web site, losing a great many subscribers. It is now trying to regain some of its former position.

Unfortunately, whatever boom there might have been ended immediately after the elections. The once popular Point of View debate club died a quiet death and most other homemade sites came to a standstill. The remaining sites of Ukrainian parties do not warm one’s heart. They are all made according the same pattern: basic instruments, political declarations, several lauding comments/reviews, and that is all. As a result, the sites of the Democratic Union and Batkivshchyna, which spend a horde of hryvnias on newspaper, radio, and television advertising, fail to attract over a dozen visitors a day. This is only natural. People subscribe to the Internet as a source of information; they want facts, commentaries, and ideas. Ukrainian politics and the efforts of its ostensible pillars like the Democratic Union still lack publicity, remaining lobbies, hidden from the rest of society. Batkivshchyna’s pretentious commercials with their repeated motto “Together we will win!” do not contain an answer to the question: Really, then how? And they should. Apparently, the new Ukrainian parodies of parties are so concentrating on their image because they have no coherent content which could be presented this society. They are nothing more than a store display window, a specific entourage for so many influence groups that determine the processes in Ukrainian political life. A characteristic detail is that none of these parties seems to have envisaged the possibility of discussion on its site. Why should they? Meanwhile, one of the most noticeable events of last year was the popularity of various kinds of interactive projects: forums, chats, debate groups, Internet conferences, and polls. Remember the success of 1+1’s “Epicenter” televised debate? The audience showed remarkable interest, because here one saw and heard politicians acting not in their habitual monologue mode but as participants in a heated debate. Never mind that the candidate refusing to participate wound up winning or that other participants could not always keep their civility, check their emotions, or stick to common sense. The important thing was that the Ukrainian society wanted to know what was afoot, rather than be told what its leaders considered it should be told.

Alas, all this is now history. After their shattering defeat in the presidential campaign, the opposition forces did not show any noteworthy Internet activity, except perhaps the Internet version of Cherkasy’s newspaper Antenna (http://www.antenna.com.ua).

1999 results could be summed up briefly as follows: Ukraine’s political life has received adequate Internet coverage, albeit somewhat caricatured. Those that had something to say had a chance to say it and proved successful. Those with nothing to say kept silent or attracted no interest. There were a host of discussions, heated debate, even obscenities thrown both ways. There was foul play. Society demanded hard facts and received image-making clichОs instead. Ukrainian politics, inherently neither public nor transparent, has little use for the Internet, the result being lack of investment in the local networks and shortage of professional Internet projects. In fact, the political quarters have lost interest in this global treasure source of information. Until the next election campaign?