THE RIPENING OF THE ORANGE REVOLUTION

What was it? In the past few months The Day has been posing this question about the Orange Revolution to many experts and politicians. We offer a series of articles by Stanislav Kulchytsky whose answer is situated within a broader historical context.

My article, “The Orange Revolution: Between the Past and Future,” appeared in the Ukrainian issue of The Day on December 27 (not translated in this digest). However, even after the article was published, this issue has continued to hold my and many other peoples’ attention. The question that is most often asked is: “What was it?”

Politicians and political scientists are analyzing the events of the Orange Revolution, comparing them with events that are unfolding in other post-Soviet republics. In their analysis historians go back in time and discern in these events the consequences of what happened in the past. In the January article in The Day I attempted to combine both analytical directions. This method was so promising that I decided to elaborate this question in book form. I would like to share with readers of The Day the key ideas contained in the first chapter of this still uncompleted work.

IT WAS A REVOLUTION

The combination of the words “Orange Revolution” originated during the 2004 presidential elections. It has entered into common usage, but not everyone recognizes the revolutionary nature of these events. Therefore, it makes sense to begin by comparing two contradictory statements. As a rule, comparisons lead to new knowledge.

The final 2004 issue of the magazine Krytyka [Criticism] carried the materials of a roundtable discussion entitled “The Time of the Ukrainian Choice: Between Revolution and Reform.” This interdisciplinary seminar with the participation of regular Krytyka contributors was held on December 8, i.e., in the heat of events. The writer Mykola Riabchuk called the political crisis a revolution designed to fundamentally change the country’s system of government that was formed in 1917. He called the events that were taking place an attempt to bring to completion the revolution of 1991, when the Soviet system was not shattered, only modified. Between 1991 and 2004 our society underwent fundamental changes. First, civil society acquired an economic groundwork in the form of small, medium, and large businesses. Second, society became more open owing to the technical advances in the mass media and freedom to travel abroad for millions of Ukrainians. Third, the last generation of the Stalin era disappeared, and a generation of people who do not remember Leonid Brezhnev’s rule reached adulthood. This is Riabchuk’s hypothesis.

In a March 1 interview with The Day , Leonid Kravchuk said: “This wasn’t a revolution. A revolution took place in 1991, causing a change of system: socialism gave way to pluralism, elections, and market economy relations among countries and inside them.” When asked what it was, Leonid Kravchuk answered with conviction: “It was a change of team. Revolutions change the country’s life at the core. In this case, only new people have come to power, incidentally, those who were in power before.”

Comparing the two statements, I would agree with the former. Leonid Kravchuk’s unquestionably sincere answers reflect the stereotypes of a Soviet person. The way he sees it, whereas on August 23, 1991, we were still living under the old political system (he prefers the familiar terminology — socialism), on August 25 it was already a totally different system (in this case, the veteran politician avoids the most appropriate term — capitalism). Indeed, we were all led to believe that before November 7, 1917, the former Romanov empire was a capitalist state, while the building of socialism began on November 8. Only one day, November 7, was assigned for the Great October Socialist Revolution. Did everything change in our country on August 24, 1991? What pluralism, elections, and market economy relations were there to talk about?

It is up to historians to answer these questions. To grasp the essence of the Orange Revolution, we must examine what led up to these events and determine their place in a string of other related events. First and foremost, let us address the question of typology.

Historians classify all cataclysmic social conflicts into civil wars (social, religious, interethnic) and revolutions. Not every civil war is a revolution, but almost every revolution is accompanied by a civil war.

Whenever a revolution ends without bloodshed, its grateful participants call it “a velvet revolution.” Unlike wars that are touched off by social conflicts but have little effect on social relations, revolutions change the social system. More than one revolution is sometimes required for this to happen. After the French revolution of 1789, for example, two more “corrective” revolutions took place, in 1830 and 1848.

The social system can be changed with the help of revolutions or reforms, or both. Mankind follows a single path of development: from a traditional to democratic society. Moving along this path, the subjects of a monarch become citizens and the populace becomes a nation. The main characteristic of a traditional society is the monarch’s sovereignty, and that of a democratic society is the sovereignty of the people, who elect the country’s leaders in free elections. But woe betide those nations that in their transition from a traditional to democratic society have voluntarily chosen or were forcefully pushed onto a wrong path.

The Russian revolution of 1917 handed the country to a political force that, although it came from the people, destroyed or subordinated all alternative forces or structures in society. When the Bolsheviks came to power, they established a totalitarian dictatorship, and in the spring of 1918 they started their own revolution — a communist revolution. Implemented for two decades by means of forcefully imposed reforms, this revolution created a “commune state” — a kind of civilization that was completely different from the external world. The enslaved society could not produce any alternative structures capable of challenging the communist regime, political system, and lifestyle. Incapable of evolving, Soviet communism was doomed to exist in an unchangeable state until the problems it created had reached a critical mass. In Ukraine it existed for three generations.

The revolution of 1989-1991 destroyed the external (the Central and Eastern European countries) and internal (the union republics of the USSR) Soviet empire. At the turn of the 1980s-90s, few viewed the meltdown of the Communist Party of the USSR, which had held together this empire by means of its dictatorship, as a full-fledged revolution. In a series of articles in The Ukrainian Historical Magazine, dedicated to the 10th anniversary of Ukraine’s independence, I attempted to establish the causes, specifics, and motive forces of the Third Ukrainian Revolution of 1989- 1991 (2002, Nos. 2, 3, 4). In my view, our revolution was no different from the anti-communist revolutions in nearly three dozen countries that sprang up on the ruins of the Soviet empire. Yet it was very different from all the earlier bourgeois or bourgeois-democratic revolutions. Anti-communist revolutions occurred as the disintegration of an artificial system that was created forcefully and in line with communist doctrine. The self-disintegration of the system resembled a revolution that was equally unexpected for the Communist Party nomenklatura and the Soviet people.

The 1989-1991 revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe and the union republics of the USSR had many characteristics in common, which were due to the nature of the communist system and its qualitative and civilizational differences from the democratic system. However, the period of time spent in the Soviet camp has divided post-communist countries into two groups. In some of them, such as the former Baltic republics of the USSR, the totalitarian regime had not completely digested the civil society structures that existed before the Soviet empire engulfed them. Only one anti-communist revolution proved enough for them to join the countries of the Euro- Atlantic civilization. The vestiges of communism in daily life, public consciousness, and the economy were eradicated as part of an evolutionary process. Elements of a weak civil society, which had formed before 1917 or in the first months after the fall of the autocracy, were completely crushed in most of the post-Soviet states. Democratic structures could begin to develop in these countries only after 1991. It is no wonder that from the outset these countries were full of new “corrective” revolutions. Ukraine, for one, spent a long time getting rid of communism both by means of reforms (such as the adoption of the Constitution in 1996) and by revolutionary means, which resulted in the change of leadership in 2004.

Two important conclusions follow from these observations. Let us first formulate them and then proceed to support them with specific evidence. Life itself generates this evidence. Like before, the post- Soviet states are on the march. The processes underway in them are far from complete.

The first conclusion: The bitter confrontation in Ukraine at the end of last year was a result of the ill- will of individual spin doctors and irresponsible politicians. The elections are over and the antagonism has vanished, although not entirely. Differences among people and territories, which have always existed, remain. Ukraine is objectively divided along many lines, but there is nothing threatening about this. The strength of any consolidated society lies in differences, not in uniformity.

The second conclusion: There is no doubt that multicolor revolutions, such as Georgia’s Rose Revolution or Ukraine’s Orange Revolution, will flare up in other countries that formed after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Everything will depend on the maturity of individual civil societies. Civil societies are evolving everywhere, albeit at a different and often slow pace. It cannot be otherwise, because the death of the Communist Party of the USSR marked the end of communist dictatorship, which was unprecedented in terms of its penetration into the very pores of society.

“THE PARTY OF POWER”

Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms began two decades ago, ushering in the final phase in the existence of the Soviet Union. In the course of reforms, the bureaucratic perestroika touched off a chain of events outside the Kremlin’s control, which undermined the Leninist and Stalinist “commune state.”

The essence of Gorbachev’s main reform was in making Soviet government bodies independent of Communist Party committees. The transfer of authority to local governing councils in 1988 fundamentally changed the nature of the Soviet government. Losing its attributes of dictatorship, it increasingly became dependent on the people.

Between 1917 and 1988 the Soviet government was a kind of two-headed Janus: a symbiosis of the councils’ fully-fledged administrative power and the dictatorial rule of party committees. “The democratic centralism” underpinning the Communist Party and all other Soviet structures required the absolute subordination of lower- level authorities to higher-level ones.

With the exception of a host of oligarchs, Communist Party members were only indirectly involved in communist dictatorship. The millions of rank-and-file party members created a misleading political party faНade for the governmental structure, which was the Communist Party of the USSR. After it seized power, the Bolshevik party split into two parts — an external party and the party core. The external party was comprised of the mass of members, and the internal one was a caste of leaders, in which iron discipline ruled. Party power and state power was concentrated in the hands of oligarchs — members of the Central Committee Politburo. Despite their unlimited powers, this caste of leaders, i.e., the Communist Party and the Soviet nomenklatura, was not the bearer of dictatorial power, but only its vehicle. It ruled the country only because it received mandates from the oligarchs.

The elimination of the Communist Party dictatorship brought about an unexpected collapse of the government. It turned out that after losing its party-of-power status, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union lost even the communist and Soviet nomenklatura’s interest. To remain on the cusp of the revolutionary wave, representatives of the Kremlin-appointed Kyiv nomenklatura, who came to be known as “sovereign communists,” supported the idea of Ukraine’s sovereignty. The communist-controlled Verkhovna Rada of the Ukrainian SSR adopted the Declaration on State Sovereignty. Immediately after the coup of August 19-21, 1991, the Verkhovna Rada proclaimed Ukraine’s withdrawal from the Soviet Union, and the communist leadership of the Ukrainian parliament officially banned the Communist Party of Ukraine.

What is the origin of the paradox whereby sovereign communists became the motive force of the anti-communist revolution? In reality, this is an imaginary paradox. The sovereign communists were not the motive force behind a revolution bent on destroying a system that could have continued to exist. The revolution occurred in the form of self-destruction of a system that had outlived itself. Since it was a totalitarian system, it was run by only one organized force — the nomenklatura. In this specific revolution the nomenklatura was guided by the motive of preserving its grip on power. As the famous dissident Yuriy Badzio wrote in 1994, “It’s quite natural that power had to end up in the hands of the nomenklatura. We simply didn’t have, and still don’t have, another sociopolitical group that would be developed enough in quantitative and qualitative terms to be able to build a new state.”

The anti-communist revolution of 1989-1991 affected the “party core” in different ways. A relatively small part of the nomenklatura, mostly functionaries of the older generation, held on to their old ideological positions. Unable to give up their principles, the orthodox party men gave up their government posts. These people were accustomed to appointments based on dossiers, and could not stand the competition in free elections. Some of them retired from politics, while others occupied leading positions in leftist parties or veterans’ organizations.

Part of the communist and Soviet nomenklatura used the hidden Communist Party gold reserves or high posts in economic structures to form a small but influential class of bankers, financial bank presidents, and owners of enterprises and commercial firms.

Those nomenklatura representatives who were positioned between extreme groups became the “party of power” that was made up of essentially non-partisan members after the Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU) was banned. The composition of this government corporation became more diverse than it was in the Soviet period, since appointments were no longer based on dossiers, but on the actual expertise (including criminal ties) of individual members. However, professional managers formed the backbone of this corporation. Most of them were experts in various sectors of the economy and culture, and were once meticulously selected for managerial posts by Communist Party committees. Without experts with organizational experience, society would not have been able to function normally. At the same time, Soviet- era functionaries brought with them such qualities as corporativism, clanship, mutual cover- ups, conservatism, cynical pragmatism, and lack of principles. After 1991 added to this blend was rampant corruption, which was caused, on the one hand, by the state’s inability to ensure adequate living standards for its functionaries, and on the other hand, by their desire to turn ephemeral power into material riches as quickly as possible.

Pragmatists in the “party of power” showed their readiness to relinquish communist newspeak and switch to ideological values common to all mankind. In 1992 Ukraine’s first president Leonid Kravchuk called on his former opponents in the Rukh Popular Movement “to provide an ideological basis for a new Ukraine.” However, sovereign communists were not psychologically ready to immediately give up their communist stereotypes.

Left-leaning parties launched the political structuring of the post- communist society. The appearance of leftist parties should be viewed as a revival of the “external CPSU” in the face of steadily declining living standards. The first to appear on the left side of the political spectrum was the Socialist Party of Ukraine (SPU). Its founding congress in October 1991 declared that the SPU had 60,000 members. Independent estimates suggest that the real number of socialists was half this figure. During the registration procedure it was learned that 90% of prospective SPU members were former members of the banned CPU. The SPU’s ranks were subsequently replenished exclusively by former communists. The intentions of the SPU’s founding father, Oleksandr Moroz, to modernize its ideology and policy never materialized. The party never became social-democratic. In terms of its ideology it differed little from the former CPSU.

In 1992 the Peasant Party of Ukraine (SelPU) held its founding congress. It was created by collective farm chiefs and state farm directors to lobby their interests in the government and parliament. The mastermind and leader of SelPU was then Agriculture Minister Oleksandr Tkachenko. It was declared at the moment of registration that the party had 65,000 members. In reality, it was a phantom party without an organized membership. Nonetheless, it had significant influence in the countryside because it was a league of agrarian directors.

Having proclaimed political pluralism, the “party of power” did not find any reasons to ban the creation of communist cells. It did not lift its ban on the CPU as an offshoot of the CPSU, as in this case the latter could demand the restoration of its property rights. However, in May 1993 the Verkhovna Rada presidium ruled: “Ukrainian citizens who share communist ideas may form party organizations in line with current Ukrainian legislation.” With all legal obstacles out of the way, in 1993 the CPU held a “renewal” congress in Donetsk. Toward the end of that year the party had 120,000 members headed by Petro Symonenko, a little-known party functionary from the Soviet period.

The appearance of the midget Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine (PSPU) in April 1996 was the result of the unrestrained ambition of its leader Natalia Vitrenko, “a Zhirinovsky in a skirt,” as the press dubbed her. Owing to former President Kuchma’s desire to erode the positions of his opponent Oleksandr Moroz, and because of the noisy and scandal-mongering PSPU leader, who was a regular fixture on state-owned television channels, this party played a certain role in political life.

The Rukh Popular Movement of Ukraine dominated the right spectrum of political forces. Its formation as a political party was completed in December 1992. The membership of the new party did not exceed 30,000 (in 1990 Rukh had 600,000 members). Having overestimated Rukh’s political influence, its leader Vyacheslav Chornovil hatched a strategy to disband the Verkhovna Rada and hold new parliamentary elections on a multiparty basis. However, his campaign to collect signatures in support of a referendum to disband parliament ended in a fiasco.

THE PRESIDENT OF UKRAINE

Two widely known terms derive from different grammatical forms of the same word: president (Lat. praesidens, he who sits in front) and presidium (praesideo, I sit in front). They determine individual or collective leaders in institutions and organizations, as well as in a republic. The semantics of these terms indicate their membership in a democratic society. A person sits in front to preside over a meeting, i.e., organize and generalize the statements of those with the right to speak.

The head of state can never be a collective presidium of any representative body of government, only an individual vested with power — the president. The sole exception to the rule was the Soviet system of republican government founded on populism. Soviet constitutions identified the head of state as the presidium of the All-Russian (All-Union since 1922) Central Executive Committee of Workers’, Peasants’, and Red Army Deputies’ Councils, and since 1936 — the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. In reality, the person who chaired the highest state organ (presidium chairman, popularly known as the “all-union elder”) did not occupy the top rungs in the Communist Party and Soviet hierarchy.

In presidential republics, the president heads the government and is popularly elected. In parliamentary republics, the president has representative functions and is elected by parliament. In most democratic countries with a republican form of government, powers are divided between the president and parliament in differing proportions. Depending on the extent of presidential powers, the republic is considered a presidential-parliamentary or parliamentary-presidential one. In all cases, even when the president has representative powers, s/he is the head of state and is placed above the branches of democratically structured government — executive, legislative, and judicial. But to be placed above branches of government does not mean to replace them. As the head of state, the president coordinates the activities of different branches of power.

The presidential post was first introduced in the US Constitution of 1787. The American president combines the powers of the head of state and government. Executive power is concentrated in Congress, which is made up of the Senate and the House of Representatives.

In July 1991 the Verkhovna Rada of the Ukrainian SSR passed a law introducing the post of Ukrainian president. A brief addendum was made to the 1978 Con-stitution, which was intriguing in its terseness: “The president of Ukraine is the head of state and the head of executive power in Ukraine.” These dozen-odd words did not offer any idea about the president’s functions in his country.

Soviet constitutions were considered the most democratic in the world. In particular, they declared the division of power into three independent branches, which balanced one another to prevent any one of them from developing into a dictatorship. But these constitutions looked legitimate only because the dictatorship was camouflaged by Soviet governmental bodies. The constitutional reform of 1988 put an end to the dictatorship of Communist Party committees. In the 1978 Constitution of the Ukrainian SSR, the article declaring, “The people govern the state through Councils of People’s Deputies that form the political basis of the Ukrainian SSR. All the remaining government bodies are subordinated and accountable to the Councils of People’s Deputies,” was filled with real substance for the first time.

However, the format of government remained dictatorial. The members of the nomenklatura, who filled the councils, intended to build the same Soviet hierarchy instead of the vertical of Communist Party committees. The presidential post, which was alien to this system, stood in the nomenklatura’s way. Parliamentary Speaker Leonid Kravchuk could brilliantly handle peoples’ deputies, but lost control over parliament once he was elected president of Ukraine. His attempts to fill with real substance the constitutional declaration about the president as the head of state proved futile. Members of parliament were not content to do only routine legislative work. Much like the deputies of local councils, they coveted the functions of executive power, which made it possible to influence appointments and control cash flows.

The position of the former Communist Party and Soviet nomenklatura changed in independent Ukraine. From being mouthpieces of Communist Party chiefs they turned into real administrators and for the first time obtained the opportunity to acquire property. Even though they had to compete for posts in public elections, it proved quite easy to impose their candidacies on voters. However, elections are expensive, so many parliament and local deputies used every day they were in power to offset their expenses and ensure a prosperous future for their children.

The country became more and more immersed in anarchy and chaos. The confrontation between president and parliament against the background of an economic crisis ended when both sides decided to resign and appeal to voters for support in the new elections.

Displeased with a government that had proven incapable of resolving the crisis, voters did not place their trust in the incumbent president and elected a representative of the Soviet cohort of directors, Leonid Kuchma. A majority of parliamentarians from the previous convocation were not reelected.

Most of the new representatives of the “party of power” belonged to a corporation, which in the not so distant past was known as the Communist Party and the Soviet nomenklatura. Public nostalgia for the Soviet past, which was brought on by 0the economic crisis, ensured parliamentary seats for many representatives of leftist parties. This meant that the “party of power” was expanded through the influx of people who longed for a return to the past. They did not want to grasp that the communist system had self-destructed and could not be revived.

Because of the flaws in the election law, parliament began its work in the spring of 1994 with only 338 out of 450 deputies. The bloc of leftist parties, the biggest of the party factions, did not have a majority of votes, but still managed to have its leader Oleksandr Moroz elected as parliamentary speaker. Rushing to capitalize on their advantage, which could disappear after the by-election, in 1994 the leftists pushed a bill through parliament in the first reading: if voted into law, the bill “On Local Councils and Local Self-Government” would have paralyzed the executive power. For the second reading the bill was prepared under a title common to the Soviet period: “On Local Councils of Workers’ Deputies.”