The Five Coloured Revolutions-Democratization in the Former Eastern Bloc

By Orest Zakydalsky

On Thursday, March  15 , Professor Taras Kuzio (George Washington University, Washington, DC), delivered a lecture entitled Democratic Breakthroughs and Revolutions in Five Post-Communist Countries: Comparative Perspectives on the Fourth Wave, at the Munk Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto. The lecture was sponsored by the Petro Jacyk Program for the Study of Ukraine and the Centre for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at the University of Toronto. Professor Lucan Way (Dept. of Political Science, University of Toronto) acted as chair.

Dr. Kuzio argued that the democratic breakthroughs in Slovakia, Croatia, Serbia, Georgia and Ukraine must be viewed as the continuation of the revolutions of 1989/90 and the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic experienced both national and democratic revolutions at the end of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s. In the case of the five countries discussed by Dr. Kuzio, while national revolutions took place, the democratic revolutions, however, were hijacked by the former Communist elites. In Ukraine in 2004, for example, there was a strong feeling that the Orange Revolution was a culmination of the process that began with Ukrainian statehood and independence in 1991.

There were several factors that led to the democratic breakthroughs in the five countries addressed by Dr. Kuzio. Firstly, these breakthroughs were only possible in states that had not yet become fully authoritarian; that is, despite the efforts of leaders like former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, parliaments in these countries were never brought under full control of the regime and acted as an important centre of opposition to anti-democratic presidents. There was also a significant defection of economic and political elites to the opposition. In Ukraine, for example, Petro Poroshenko, former member of the Party of Regions defected to Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine in 2002. These defections had both positive and negative consequences. On the one hand, defectors from the elitist pro-authoritarian regimes provided essential funding for the opposition. On the other hand, their presence has led to a lack of ideological cohesion and serious rifts in the pro-democratic camps.

Dr. Kuzio further argued that all of the five countries in his discussion had serious political crises that preceded the eventual democratic breakthroughs. In Ukraine, the “Kuchmagate” tape scandal of 2000-01 provided an important “dress rehearsal” for the Orange Revolution. One Orange Revolution participant remarked to Dr. Kuzio that Kuchmagate was Ukraine’s 1905, while the Orange Revolution was Ukraine’s 1917. Significant crises made the ruling elites in the five countries of interest extremely unpopular. In Ukraine, President Kuchma was discouraged from running for another term by abysmally low ratings in the polls. While there were many commonalities among the countries of the ‘fourth wave’ of democratization, each had unique experiences in their democratic breakthroughs. Ukraine, for example, was the only country that had to deal with massive Russian intervention in its domestic affairs.

Dr. Kuzio also commented on the post-revolutionary development of these countries. It will be well newly impossible, he stated, for political elites in Ukraine to “put the genie back in the bottle”; that is, to reverse the process of democratization that had been started. Furthermore, the divisions in the democratic coalitions were inevitable, as they were broad coalitions founded not “for” a certain goal, but “against” the elitist regimes. In this context, the split of the Orange coalition into the hardline Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc and the softline Our Ukraine faction is not surprising. An important factor in this split was the agreement by President Yushchenko to apparently grant Kuchma immunity from prosecution; 3 out of 4 Ukrainians wanted to see Kuchma put on trial, and the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc has benefited from the disillusionment caused by this and other blunders in the first two years of Yushchenko’s presidency.

Dr. Kuzio’s lecture was followed by a spirited discussion with the crowd. The next few years will be particularly important for the democratic development of Ukraine. While the comeback of Viktor Yanukovych has been the cause of great disillusionment among the supporters of the Orange Revolution both in Ukraine and abroad, it must be remembered that the parliamentary elections of 2006 were the first free and fair elections in Ukraine since 1994. Moreover, the press in Ukraine, suffocated by Kuchma and his comrades, is now free of harassment from the authorities. Keeping that in mind, it must be said that the two and one half years since the Orange Revolution, despite the disappointments, have proven to be an encouraging time in the democratic development of Ukraine.