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.

ORANGE CRUSH

"Razom nas bahato! Nas ne podolaty!" The rhythmic chant spread through the crowd of hundreds of thousands that filled Kiev's Independence Square on the evening of November 22. "Together, we are many! We cannot be defeated!" Emerging from a sea of orange, the mantra signaled the rise of a powerful civic movement, a skilled political opposition group, and a determined middle class that had come together to stop the ruling elite from falsifying an election and hijacking Ukraine's presidency.

Over the next 17 days, through harsh cold and sleet, millions of Ukrainians staged nationwide nonviolent protests that came to be known as the "orange revolution." The entire world watched, riveted by this outpouring of the people's will in a country whose international image had been warped by its corrupt rulers. By the time victory was announced--in the form of opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko's electoral triumph--the orange revolution had set a major new landmark in the postcommunist history of eastern Europe, a seismic shift Westward in the geopolitics of the region. Ukraine's revolution was just the latest in a series of victories for "people power"--in Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia in the late 1980s and, more recently, in Serbia and Georgia.

THE WINDS OF CHANGE

The spark that ignited the popular fire in Ukraine's case was election fraud. Nonpartisan exit polls during the November 21 presidential runoff election had given Yushchenko a commanding lead, with 52 percent of the votes, compared to Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich's 43 percent. Yet when the official results came in, Yanukovich, the favorite of Ukraine's corrupt elite, had supposedly beaten the challenger by 2.5 percent.

This tally was immediately challenged. When the polling stations had first closed, the Central Election Commission (CEC) had reported that voter turnout in Ukraine's Russian-speaking eastern districts was consistent with the nationwide average of 78 to 80 percent. But four hours later, after a prolonged silence, the election commission radically increased the east's turnout figures. The eastern Donetsk region--Yanukovich's home base--went from a voter turnout of 78 percent to 96.2 percent overnight, with support for Yanukovich at around 97 percent. In neighboring Luhansk, turnout magically climbed from 80 percent at the time the polls closed to 89.5 percent the next morning, with Yanukovich winning 92 percent or more of the votes. Indeed, in several eastern districts, turnout was as much as 40 percent greater than during the first round of the presidential election three weeks before. This "miraculous" last-minute upsurge was responsible for approximately 1.2 million new votes--well over 90 percent of which went to the regime's favorite, giving him enough for a comfortable 800,000-vote margin of victory.

Throughout election day, independent domestic monitors sounded the alarm about the emerging fraud. Numerous reports indicated that roving teams of voters, tens of thousands in all, were being transported in trains and buses from polling station to polling station, each armed with multiple absentee ballots. If each of these people cast ten ballots, this voter "carousel" would have padded the final result by at least half a million votes.

The efforts to steal the election for Yanukovich had started much earlier, however. For six months, government-controlled national television had subjected Yushchenko to a steady torrent of negative press and distortions, while refusing him the opportunity to defend himself. Yushchenko's campaign faced other impediments as well. Sometimes his plane was denied landing privileges minutes before major rallies. Road barriers slowed his travel and, once, a truck tried to force his car off the road. Yushchenko's private security detail discovered that he was being followed by a state security operative, who was caught with false identity papers, multiple license plates, and eavesdropping equipment. Then, on September 6, Yushchenko became gravely ill. His mysterious sickness forced him from the campaign trail for nearly a month, leaving his body weakened and his face badly scarred. Later tests revealed that he was suffering from dioxin poisoning. The opposition cried foul, but the government-controlled media responded that Yushchenko had contracted the disease himself, by eating contaminated sushi, getting herpes, or undergoing botox treatment to preserve his 50-year-old good looks.

Yushchenko was not the only one to face harassment. Activists from his political coalition were arrested on false charges. Students living in university housing were told by university officials that if their districts voted for the challenger, they would be evicted from their dorms in the middle of winter. When election day came, at polling sites in several areas where support for Yushchenko was high, monitors discovered that pens had been filled with disappearing ink, so that ballots would appear blank after they were cast.