Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: Once-Ler

I havent followed all of your discussion, just the last replies to each other, but it looks to me like you both could be right.

Yushchenko, its true, is a politician who's also had some mileage already, both under Kuchma and before that, as a Soviet apparatchik. I dont think that necessarily still makes him a communist, but at least it makes him an ex-communist. His experiences of the last few years may have totally radicalised him - it sure seems so - but sure, there's also the possibility that he's just being an opportunist, riding the waves of public outrage to power.

But *nevertheless* what we are seeing now can still also really be "the people rising up to demand an end to tyrany". I believe it is. The fury, the exasperation, the yearning for change of the masses out on the streets now are all real enough. Even were Yushchenko an opportunist appratchik rather than a sincere convert to anti-communism, he still won't be able to ignore the intent and passion of the uprising that brought him to power, if he does make it.

To wit: Zhao Zhiyang, the political patron of the Tien An Men protests, was an old political hack and a Communist, but did that make the Tien An Men demonstrations any less of a genuine popular uprising? Yeltsin was a political hack and a former Communist apparatchik, and yet he was the hero of the Russian's rebellion against the 1991 coup, and he proceeded to dissolve the Soviet Union, prohibit the Communist Party (at least for a while) and organise free elections. The East-German demonstrators whose mass protest eventually brought Egon Krenz to decide to open the Wall were lead by then-Communists, yet their revolt itself was an expression of genuine anti-Communism, and led to the dissolution of the regime.

It happens, like that. Sometimes you've got to row with the oars you have, however imperfect. The Ukrainian Democrats once tried to put up a genuine dissident, Chornovil, a nationalist intellectual, and he lost the country's first (and to some extent, last) free Presidential elections resoundingly to Kravchuk. Yushchenko is taking a different tack. Hence also the colour orange. Previous protests were dominated by the yellow-blue Ukrainian flag, but its connotations rouses too much instant resistance in Central and East-Ukraine, so Yushchenko's campaign came up with a new, fresh, 'neutral' colour. Hey, whatever it takes, is what I say.


100 posted on 11/30/2004 2:57:11 AM PST by nimh
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 99 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson