COMMENTARY: Dispelling myths surrounding the Orange Revolution (01/30/05)

COMMENTARY: Dispelling myths surrounding the Orange Revolution

by Prof. Michael M. Naydan

In my professional life, I am an educator and expert in two areas: Ukrainian and Russian literature. So I have an intimate knowledge of both languages and cultures, and have taught and published on them for over 25 years. From a personal perspective, though, as the Springsteen song goes, I was "born in the U.S.A.," I am the offspring of Ukrainian émigrés who survived the Nazi Ostarbeiter camps in World War II. My parents came to the United States to start a better life in the haven of American shores.

I am, in my outlook, part of the Western "conspiracy" for democracy, someone who fervently wants Ukraine to be represented by a democratic government deserving of its people. For that matter, I hope Russia someday attains that, too.

I am particularly proud of the Ukrainian people for rising up together in one voice to say "yes" to Viktor Yushchenko and "no" to the corrupt government of Leonid Kuchma, for standing together for weeks in the frigid cold of Kyiv's appropriately named Independence Square, to take back an election that had been stolen from them.

I am also indebted to the many journalists, governments and other individuals of conscience throughout the world who firmly cast their support for truth, for openness, for honest government in Ukraine. In a perverse kind of way, I am even indebted to Mr. Putin for his coercive meddling in the Ukrainian election that brought Ukraine to the attention of the rest of the world and ignited the opposition forces.

It is hard to hide a nation of nearly 50 million people, but tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union managed to do so for three centuries. Mr. Putin's desire, in opposition to the entire civilized world, was to coerce Ukraine to become part of his mythical new Russian empire. But as a result of the recent turmoil, Ukraine, thankfully, has been discovered by Europe and the rest of the world.

The new Yushchenko government, once given the chance, will certainly strive to clean out the cadres of corrupt officials in Ukraine and open the doors of the country to trade and investment. The new Yushchenko government additionally will remove the media blockade against the truth in those Eastern areas of Ukraine to open up free discourse and to allow the notion of a civil society to expand throughout the country.

This will not happen overnight, as there will be opposition from the Yanukovych-led extremists and criminal elements, but with the moral will of the people, and the political and economic support of other democracies in the world, the path to reform will be set.

In the reporting on events in Ukraine, there are certain myths that have been propagated in the media that, I think, need correction. The major one is that Ukraine is sharply divided ethnically between Ukrainian "nationalists" and Russian speakers in the East. I offer the description of a brief meeting I recently had to show the flaws in the myth.

A Russian student from Kyiv came to my office a few days ago to discuss the language requirement at Penn State. He said he had just arrived on campus two days earlier from demonstrations on Independence Square in Kyiv. When one of my colleagues asked him why he had been demonstrating, the student answered that it wasn't a Ukrainian vs. Russian issue; he was showing his support for democracy. He unplugged the earphones from the mp3 player attached to his belt and proudly played the Ukrainian rap-inspired chant sung by hundreds of thousands on Kyiv's Independence Square: "Together we are many, we cannot be defeated!" While this small exchange with the "orange" Russian student from the Ukrainian capital is anecdotal, it is representative of the larger picture.

There are many ethnic Russians in Ukraine (as well as those in Russia for that matter) who support the Orange Revolution. They are tired of corruption, tired of not having an honest government accountable to the people. Viktor Yushchenko offered the only hope for even a chance at that. And Mr. Yanukovych turned out to be the vilest of candidates - a common street thug from the Donetsk mafia who cannot even speak Ukrainian, the state language of the country, with a Russian vocabulary rife with untoward expressions from the criminal argot of his shady background. Mr. Yushchenko, in contrast, campaigned in both Ukrainian and Russian, firmly promising to protect the language and civil rights of all minorities in Ukraine.

A second major myth in the press has been that the conflict was between the heavily Catholic Western Ukraine vs. the Orthodox East. While it is true that the so-called Greek-Catholics (of the Byzantine Rite), mostly located in Western Ukraine, heavily favored Mr. Yushchenko (who himself is Orthodox), Catholics comprise approximately only 11 percent of the population, wile Orthodox believers make up about 55 percent. Therefore, vast numbers of Orthodox believers as well as other denominations had to have supported Mr. Yushchenko for him to win.

A third myth generated by Mr. Putin and his political operatives is that the United States meddled in the election on behalf of Mr. Yushchenko to overturn a Yanukovych victory. While the United States, in fact, has channeled money into organizations promoting democracy and civil society in Ukraine over the past decade, it has remained completely neutral in the campaign.

In Mr. Putin's warped logic, his own heavy-handed visits to Ukraine to support Mr. Yanukovych, his spending of an estimated $300 million on behalf of Mr. Yanukovych's campaign, and his sending of cadres of his own "political technologists" to manipulate the media with disinformation and then to steal the election he fabricating of over 3 million votes in the second round, were not "meddling."

Need I say more?

The new Yushchenko government of Ukraine will need the continued support of the world to maintain its democratic momentum. Mr. Yushchenko's upcoming inauguration, however, does guarantee that there will be a fair Ukrainian election in five years. If, for some reason, he happens to fail in his term as president, the opposition will have the chance to make its case. And that is the major lesson of democracy.

Prof. Michael M. Naydan is with the department of Germanic and Slavic languages and literatures at The Pennsylvania State University.

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