Ukraine's Orange Revolution

Adrian Karatnycky

From Foreign Affairs, March/April 2005

Summary:  The electoral triumph of opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko and the victory of the Ukrainian people over their country's corrupt leadership represent a new landmark in the postcommunist history of eastern Europe, a seismic shift Westward in the geopolitics of the region. But what will come next for the new president--and the rest of the former Soviet Union?

Adrian Karatnycky is Counselor and Senior Scholar at Freedom House.

Old media, too, played a modest role. Despite the government's nearly total control of political content on national television and the significant pressure placed on independent media, a significant array of objective newspapers and local radio stations continued to function. And there was one opposition television station: Channel Five had a national audience of only around 3 percent and was confined to cable television, but it was popular in Kiev and several other cities.

In the days before the orange revolution, journalists, bristling at government control and censorship, launched strikes and public protests, demanding the right to tell voters the truth. On one national television channel, known as 1+1, the entire news team of producers, reporters, and editors walked out, forcing the station's news director and government loyalist Vyacheslav Pikhovshek to hold multi-hour talk marathons by himself. He soon became the butt of jokes, including, "Question: What does 1+1 stand for? Answer: Pikhovshek and a cameraman."

In banishing Yushchenko from national television, the authorities forced him to run a campaign based on grassroots meetings. In July, August, and early September, Yushchenko and his representatives crisscrossed the country at a blistering rate of five or six meetings per day. Reports told of Yushchenko gathering crowds in the tens of thousands in cities and towns across eastern and central Ukraine. These meetings helped create networks of civic and party activists, crucial in organizing the mass protests.

A final factor in the orange revolution's success was its experienced leadership. In 2001, a significant anti-Kuchma movement had flourished in Ukraine, prompted in part by the president's "tapegate." Although these mass protests eventually dissipated amid violence instigated by agents provocateurs, they represented a kind of dry run for the next revolution. Many of the leaders of the most recent civic protests cut their organizational teeth four years ago.

FIGHT THE POWER

With the massive criminal voter fraud well documented in the aftermath of the runoff vote, Yushchenko and his advisers opted for a two-track strategy: one revolutionary and the other constitutional and institutional, revolving around efforts to appeal to both the parliament and the supreme court.

Engaging the revolutionary strategy, Yushchenko declared himself president and took the oath of office in an abbreviated session of the parliament on November 22--the first day of the nationwide protests. As "president," he called for a nationwide general strike, urged the militia and the military to stand with the people, and called on local governments to transfer their allegiance to him and his council. In the hours that followed the "swearing in" ceremony, palpable nervousness filled the air. Would the authorities respond with force? Fortunately, the answer was no. Yushchenko's risky tactics paid off, creating confusion within the security forces' rank and file. Ukraine suddenly had three presidents: the outgoing but still incumbent Kuchma; the "official" winner of the runoff, Yanukovich; and Yushchenko, whose swearing in had been covered by the increasingly open national media.

As C. J. Chivers of The New York Times revealed, Ukraine's military and security services began to fragment as the protests gained strength. Although Yanukovich and other hard-liners demanded that force be used to disperse the protesters, the authorities dared not intervene with the military and the SBU divided. According to Chivers, after the Interior Ministry unilaterally marshaled troops to attack the demonstrators, SBU leaders made clear that they would use force to protect the protesters. The cooperation of segments of the SBU with the Yushchenko camp appears to have been a crucial element in preserving the peace.

But Yushchenko's inner circle also understood that a successful civic coup could set a precedent for street-driven politics and remain a long-term source of institutional instability. The actions of the protesters therefore needed to be reinforced by constitutional bodies. Popular demand and coordinated pressure from the international community pushed forward the institutional approach. Soon, deputies from the government majority began to turn to Yushchenko, as Kuchma's power waned and the scale of the fraud became incontrovertible. On November 27, after days of mass protests and the siege of the cabinet of ministers, the presidential administration, and Kuchma's residence, parliament met and by a clear majority voted to declare the poll invalid. Six days later, Ukraine's supreme court annulled the results of the runoff, accepting Yushchenko's legal team's evidence of massive fraud and official high-level conspiracy. The court called for fresh elections.