Founding member of Pora explains organization's roots and its future

by Andrew Nynka

NEW YORK - Pora, the Ukrainian non-governmental organization credited for its key role in the Orange Revolution, appeared quickly to spring to life last fall. Indeed, the organization appeared so suddenly and was so well organized that critics of the movement said such a feat could be accomplished only with foreign aid. Allegations surfaced that money flowed directly to the group from the United States government.

In an interview conducted exclusively with The Ukrainian Weekly, a Pora co-founder explained that, in fact, the founding of the organization dates to protest actions that took place more than three years before the Orange Revolution. During the hourlong interview, which took place on March 18, the Pora co-founder spoke at length on the topic and about the history of the organization, its role in the revolution and its future.

Volodymyr Vyatrovych, who together with some 11 friends created Pora, spoke at the tail end of a three-week trip throughout the eastern half of the United States - a trip he says was meant to teach people more about Pora (translated roughly as "it's time").

His meetings in the U.S. included a discussion with Dr. Ariel Cohen of the Heritage Foundation, a research and educational institute. Mr. Vyatrovych also met with journalists, representatives of American non-governmental organizations and the public, including at a panel discussion devoted to the topic of the Orange Revolution held in New York City on March 14.

The 27-year-old native of Lviv recently earned a doctoral degree in history from Lviv University, where he wrote his dissertation on the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and the raids that organization undertook beyond Ukraine's borders. As a leading member of Pora, Mr. Vyatrovych was responsible for marketing, coordinating and leading demonstrations.

Pora, Mr. Vyatrovych confirmed, is run by a national coordinating council composed of 10 to 12 people and does not have an individual leader. The council makes decisions and, depending on the organization's needs in a given situation, will either increase or decrease in size. Each member of the council is tasked with a given area of expertise, whether it be communications, fund-raising, etc. At its height, during the first weeks of the revolution, Pora was made up of 12,000 people, though now the organization has some 6,000 to 7,000 members.

While Pora was officially founded on March 28-29, 2004, work and training sessions held throughout Ukraine had already begun by November 2003, Mr. Vyatrovych recounted.

"At this point we had not officially come out into the public so as not to draw attention to our work," Mr. Vyatrovych explained, adding that calling this portion of the organization's history similar to an underground movement would not be inaccurate.

One of the very first actions Pora undertook at the end of March 2004 included an informational campaign to explain "Kuchmism," a term the group's activists coined to describe their view of the state of Ukrainian civil and political society. A website - www.kuchmizm.info - was launched together with the organization's official unveiling. That website is still active and running, and the computer server is kept in the United States, though Mr. Vyatrovych says for security reasons he purposefully is unaware of its exact location.

The interview also caught several lighter moments. On one occasion, Mr. Vyatrovych laughed as he explained an incident during the height of the protests. He was at the front of a column of what he said where perhaps several hundred thousand people marching next to the National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy when a security guard came out and saw a throng of people descending onto the school. "Sorry gentleman, but there is no demonstrating here," Mr. Vyatrovych remembered the security guard saying. "Demonstration?" Mr. Vyatrovych responded to the guard. "In case you missed it, there's a revolution happening." He also took a moment to explain that the popular chant "Razom nas bahato, nas ne podolaty" (together we are many, and we can not be defeated) was coined by Anatolii Bondarenko in 2002 and had sprung from the Spanish phrase "Un pueblo unido, jamas sera vencido," roughly translated as "The people, united, will never be defeated."

The following is a portion of The Weekly's interview conducted with Mr. Vyatrovych. The discussion was held in Ukrainian and has been translated and edited, though the order of the questions remains untouched.

Q: A large part of your trip here to the United States included raising awareness about your organization and, tangentially, to help raise funds for Pora. How do you collect funds, and how can people support your organization?

A: I specifically do not handle those matters. We have a saying taken from other revolutionary times: the less you know, the less you're able to say. In other words, I am not aware of any of our financial matters, and if I'm asked, there is nothing I can say on the topic. You can question me, putting electricity to my fingers, but I can't answer those questions.

Q: Is this an organization-wide philosophy? Is it true that the organization does not have a leader? And why is that?

A: First off, why is that? Because when we began this organization we were aware of people's ambitions to lead and the battles for leadership positions. We saw in other situations that people put more of their energy into figuring out which positions they could occupy rather than into battling corruption.

But this concept did not come from Pora, it is something that came from Otpor [the Serbian organization credited with supporting that country's revolution]. But leadership comes from the coordinating council, where specific areas of work are overseen by individual members. For example, work with the mass media, organizational issues, marketing and public relations, fund-raising, etc.

Q: You spoke earlier about the need for security and a culture of security with your organization. Could you elaborate on that?

A: We had these interesting seminars on the culture of security, meaning how to guarantee the safety of our movement. And here there were some basic principles. First, that you should not know about that which doesn't concern your area of work. Next, you shouldn't ask these types of questions - questions that don't concern your area of work.

And these principles need to become the culture of the organization so that, when a person begins to question - Where does our money come from, and where do we keep our money? - these aren't seen as simply innocent questions. When these questions are raised they are already seen as possible provocations. This is a question of creating a culture of safety. And because of this structure life for us went on completely normally.

In all other things we maintained a maximum degree of openness and transparency. Once our movement started we kept nothing hidden - who we were, what we were doing, etc. This was important because we didn't want to give the authorities any reason to wonder what we were doing. The more we made it seem like we were an underground operation, the more we were likely to feel the authority's repression. But we wanted to be absolutely transparent and open. We wanted to make certain that we weren't labeled a terrorist group. We did all kinds of public, open demonstrations. An important thesis of ours was that the enemy of safety is paranoia, meaning a fear of someone watching us, fear that there will be fights with agitators.

Q: How do you reconcile this culture of safety - which means being secretive and closed - with your organization's goal of creating an open, transparent society?

A: The safety culture was an internal necessity. Obviously, the current situation doesn't require this culture of safety. Many of our members, on their own, understood the sense it made not to know too much. So this was something natural for them. It's not that one person knew very much, while another knew nothing.

Q: The Pora website also notes a first stage for the organization. Can you explain this? And, what are the other phases?

A: The first phase was to oversee the election campaign. The next phase, which is now under way, is the concept of the de-Kuchma-zation of Ukraine. In other words, removing those figures from government who were associated with Mr. Kuchma's regime and removing the mentality of these types of people from Ukraine. Our greatest goal is to develop civil society in Ukraine.

Q: Is a portion of your work a fight against corruption? I have in mind here not just on the highest levels of government, but at the very grass roots of society?

A: Absolutely. And one of our projects now is a pilot program to fight corruption in the universities. What we're trying to do is examine the causes of corruption and look at how they can be eliminated. We tried this on a national level earlier. We know this situation must be changed, and we hope to get people beyond the mentality that bringing gifts or money to your doctor or professor or the traffic officer is normal. And we want to show people why this is not normal.

Q: What is the future now for Pora?

A: We are now registered as a non-governmental organization, and we believe our job is to help civil society further develop and ensure that the new government doesn't revert back to the old ways - no matter who is in government. We are often posed the question: Will Pora go into opposition against Mr. Yushchenko? And the answer is that Pora always has been and always will stand in opposition to lies, corruption and crime. And, God forbid Mr. Yushchenko turns to lies, corruption and crime, but then we would oppose him, because there should not be any cults of personality.

Mr. Yushchenko at the moment is the representative of a solid tendency of democratization in Ukraine. Because of this, the people supported him. If Mr. Yushchenko goes in another direction, then we shouldn't be afraid to confront him. And Mr. Yushchenko, as a moral politician, should be thankful that the people will tell him honestly that you've gone too far.

Q: How do you keep contact with all of your members? And how did you contact each other during the revolution?

A: Internet, mobile phones - communication is not a problem for us. First of all, we're also broken up by oblasts. Within oblasts we're also broken into smaller subgroups of several hundred people, so it doesn't require that one person call 6,000. One person who is responsible for contacts in a region can send out information whether through the Internet or a text message on a phone or by a phone call to 25 people and he's covered the country and these people can then call their subgroups.

Q: But this means that you've created a very loose organizational structure. Doesn't it become difficult to have specific directives followed?

A: No. This isn't a problem if it doesn't go past the boundary of our overall strategy. The general strategy is the building and development of democracy and the development of a civil society. As long as the work continues in this direction and it does not go against these ideals, it's even very good because people in Kyiv will not know what to do in Poltava, as an example. Therefore, this is a very good principle for us and it's something like franchising for us. We have a brand, we have several principles, and we give this brand and these principles to people who we see already have these same ideals within them.

And, in principle, it is one of the reasons Pora was so effective. We looked for people who had maximum initiative. You take on maximum responsibility and you do your work.

Q: How then do you handle the situation of people who abuse this franchise, who abuse the name Pora? Won't you have people who go beyond your principles?

A: Yes. This is absolutely logical. We have our definite principles, and if groups go past them, then we say, "Thank you, gentleman. Sorry, but we're no longer working with you."

Q: And who makes this decision?

A: The decision is made by the coordinators of all the other regions and the rest of the national coordinating council. So there is no individual decision that is made, but these issues are resolved by our councils.

Q: Can you address the question of Pora becoming a political party?

A: This is an example of Pora principles being broken. The principles of Pora include independence from political parties. We worked with those political parties that we believed were necessary for the revolution and beyond politics. If Pora were to become a political party, we would need to adopt a detailed position. We would have to turn away those people who would want to work for other political parties. We would have to become an organization that fights for power. But Pora is supposed to be an organization that fights control of power. Therefore, if we become a part of this power, how are we able to control it? So when these principles are broken we protest against them, but unfortunately in Ukrainian law there are no mechanisms to protect us from this.

Understand that we weren't thinking that we had to create a brand when the revolution started. You see, the name "Pora" cannot be registered because Ukrainian law won't allow it - it's a commonly used word. The one thing we can do is spread information about ourselves and we know that if a political party with the name Pora did emerge it would never have what we have and that's cadres of people.

The people would not go for this. The one thing that could happen is that they assume the brand Pora. Our work right now is to categorically distance ourselves from this.

Q: You've mentioned that the co-founders of Pora were initially involved in the Ukraine Without Kuchma movement in 2001 and the Arise Ukraine movement after that. Is it fair to say then that for Pora this is almost a third take at large-scale protests? Because for many of us in the West it appeared that Pora appeared rather rapidly. It's not accurate then to say that Pora just sprung up, seemingly out of nowhere, is it?

A: That it looked as though this was something that fell from the sky was a surprise and this gives a special public relations effect - a sort of "Ohpa!" that something new has appeared.

Q: You know, this could have helped you, but it can also have a negative effect. People in the West have said: See, the U.S. gave Pora money, because how else could an organization form so quickly?

A: OK. But at the moment we are not doing this. At the moment we're doing the opposite. In interviews and in our work we're showing people logically where we came from. It is this period since the revolution that we're showing people where we came from, who we are and how this happened. Obviously this is our responsibility now to show people, and we are constantly talking about this - that this in fact did not come from the heavens, that American money and the CIA had nothing to do with this.

Q: Was safety an issue for you or other members of Pora during the Orange Revolution? If so, what steps did you take to ensure your safety?

A: If we saw that some of our members were being followed or watched by the police, we would try to completely put the public spotlight on the person being followed. We would get them interviews and then the police would be afraid to touch them. We also had a system in place that if the police arrested a person, then that person was supposed to try to call a phone number and say that he was being held at such-and-such a place. We also walked in two groups. In the front group there were four people and in the back group there were two people. If people in the front group were detained then the second group was supposed to take down the make of the car and the license plate number and make a note of where the car went. After that we'd call police officers we knew and start asking questions. We had the phone numbers of police representatives in all regions of Ukraine and we'd have our people call them over and over, asking why our people were detained, what were the charges, etc. If that didn't help, we'd call politicians we knew and get them to call the police with similar questions. If that didn't help, we'd ask politicians and journalists to come join us to protest where the people were being held. Usually after a couple of days of this they'd be overwhelmed and would let our people go.

When we asked why our people were being held, they'd say: "Ok, you can go. Sorry, this was all a misunderstanding. We accidentally detained you." We'd ask: "Who was holding our people, and why?" They'd say: "We don't know." The entire situation was completely laughable - how is it that they wouldn't know who was holding our people. Come on.

Q: Last question for you. The New York Times wrote about the Ukrainian security services' work during the Orange Revolution. Did you have any official contact with members of Ukraine's security service?

A: Let me say a word about this report. It seems to me that it was PR for the SBU [Security Service of Ukraine]. Nicely thought through, but PR for the SBU. I'm not certain if the SBU generals really played such an important role in the revolution. I'm convinced that, from a grass-roots level within the SBU, it is correct. Many members of the SBU and police worked to quietly sabotage any official orders to go against the people. They understood what their orders meant and they just decided not to follow them. Therefore, a quiet sabotage did occur.

With regard to our official contacts with the SBU: no, there were no direct contacts. They would walk through the streets and quietly tell us: "Hey boys, be careful. There may be trouble."

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, April 3, 2005, No. 14, Vol. LXXIII

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