Let's Roll!
"ORANGE CHALLENGE FOR CIS COUNTRIES"
OPINION: The Messenger, Georgia's English Language Daily
Tbilisi, Georgia, Wednesday, January 5, 2005
President Mikheil Saakashvili made the unexpected move on the last day
of 2004 of leaving for Ukraine to ring in the New Year with Ukrainian
President-elect Viktor Yushchenko. Despite opposition criticism,
Saakashvili did not back down and spent the first few days of 2005 in
Ukraine.
The two presidents held several informal meetings, discussing mutual
problems and prospects for the development of their countries. One major
challenge for the two post-revolutionary states in 2005 is integration into
the European Union. Both countries have declared EU membership as an
official priority, though both have a long way to go in order to achieve
this goal.
Before his departure, Saakashvili again underscored the importance of the
Orange opposition victory in Ukraine and named this event as the most
significant of 2004. In an interview with Kviris Palitra, the president
mentioned that he had predicted such developments long ago. "I know
Ukraine very well and although many people insisted that no parallels could
be drawn between Georgia and Ukraine, I saw it differently and stated at all
official meetings that it is impossible to stop democracy."
Georgia's Rose Revolution was the most important event in the former Soviet
Union in 2003, and many considered it a fluke and thought it impossible
that such events could be repeated elsewhere in the CIS. But the Orange
opposition's victory at the end of 2004 proved that Georgia's peaceful
revolution was not an isolated event.
After coming to power, Saakashvili visited Ukraine almost immediately where
he openly supported the local opposition. Many criticized him and accused
him of having "Che Guevara syndrome," in trying to export revolution to
Ukraine. At the time, critics warned that this could undermine
Georgian-Ukrainian relations. The rule of President Leonid Kuchma seemed
strong at the time and at first glance a pro-western opposition victory in
Ukraine seemed unimaginable.
It can be said that the velvet revolutions in Eastern Europe have featured
opposition forces with liberal values overcoming undemocratic regimes
composed largely of former communists. However attitudes towards the
Georgia and Ukraine revolutions are not uniform. Some see at the heart of
theses revolutions American dirty tricks aimed at bringing forces loyal to
their interests into power in the former Soviet Union.
Indeed, foreign influence on local elections has played a significant role
in both countries - both the West and Russia were active in the Ukrainian
elections. But no outside involvement can be decisive: in the end it is the
will of the people themselves and the overall situation in the country that
matters.
The failure of the pro-Russian Ukrainian presidential candidate Yanukovich
and his forces has dealt a serious blow to Russia and its position in post
Soviet space. Several analysts now predict that the Ukrainian example could
prove significant for neighboring Moldova and Belarus. The leaders of the
Central Asian republics are also seriously concerned. The Russian newspaper
Nezavisimaya Gazeta wrote that "the events in Georgia and especially
Ukraine have caused the leadership of these countries to lose their fearful
respect of Moscow. It makes no difference to these countries why Russia
lost - due to a lack of wise strategy or to poor political technologies."
In any case, the success of the Ukrainian revolution is of greatest
importance to Georgian geopolitical strategy. Georgia now has a partner
with very similar domestic and foreign policy challenges aimed in the long
run at integration into NATO and the European Union.
This could well be the groundwork for very close cooperation between the
two countries. Their collaboration is very important, for the velvet
revolutions are only the beginning and both states have major challenges
ahead. In Ukraine, in particular, the strongly pro-Russian sentiment that
exists in the eastern part of the country will mean the new president, who
will face a strong opposition in the local parliament, the Rada, will have
to work hard to keep the unity of the nation and proceed with democratic
changes.
For Georgia, too, many challenges lie ahead. Closer ties with a supportive,
like-minded Ukraine will make overcoming these challenges easier.
"EYE ON EURASIA: DROPPING BIG BROTHER"
Ukrainians are looking at Russia and Russians in a new way
By Paul Goble, for United Press International (UPI)
Tartu, Estonia, Tuesday, January 4, 2005
TARTU, Estonia, -- Recent statements by Ukrainians and even
by ethnic Russians living in Ukraine cast doubt on suggestions by senior
Russian Federation officials that ever more non-Russians in the post-Soviet
states are again looking to the Russians as their "elder brother" as Moscow
commentators routinely claimed in the past.
Instead, these comments from Ukraine suggest that Russian actions there
have so alienated the citizens of non-Russian countries that Moscow will
not be able to draw on the kind of residual loyalty it had felt it had in
the decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union and may be driven either
to cede its interests in other former Soviet republics or employ other
means to advance them.
The statements of Ukrainians and ethnic Russians living in Ukraine were
posted on a Russian nationalist website last week and do not even purport
to be a representative sample.
(http://www.apn.ru/?chapter_name=print_advert&data_id=321&do=view_single)
But their observations are not inconsistent with other reporting and thus
merit close attention.
One Ukrainian said that earlier Russia had been for him a "brother,"
even if not "an elder one." But because of Moscow's intervention in the
Ukrainian elections, he said he wanted to say that he no longer liked
Russia or Russians, something for which the Russians had only themselves
to blame.
Another Ukrainian said that "the revolution in Ukraine had revealed the
real attitude of Russians to Ukrainians" and that as a result, most of his
"Russian friends had passed into the camp of enemies." Russians, he added,
do not want to understand that "before God, all are equal" and that "sooner
or later all empires, however great, collapse."
A third said that she had always written "Russian" on the nationality
line of various forms, but now "when remembering that, [she] felt a sense
of shame." And she added that while she had never had any illusions about
the attitudes of the Russian state toward non-Russians, she had been
shocked in recent weeks by the "aggressive" attitudes of ordinary Russians
toward Ukrainians.
Yet a fourth said that relations between Ukraine and Russia "will never
be the same." Rather, he suggested, Ukrainians in the future will look on
Russians in the same way Russians have looked on Ukrainians. That marks
a big change. Earlier, he said, he had wished Russia and its people well
because he felt "they were ours." Now, he said, they are "simply ,they.'"
A fifth added that there was a clear analogy in this case with
situations in some families. A brother who insults and belittles you is
still a brother, and you love him. But if at some point, he takes out a
knife and kills your favorite cat, "he remains [your] brother. [But only]
technically."
Other observers of the Ukrainian scene have reported similar comments,
and at least one has pointedly noted that even "the majority of Russians in
Ukraine have long ago become Russian-speaking Ukrainians." As a result, the
differences between them and Russian-speaking Ukrainians is not terribly
important. (http://www.rustrana.ru/print.php?nid=4985)
These comments are especially interesting because they contradict
arguments even now being made in Moscow by Russian analysts and officials.
In the current issue of "VVP," an analytic monthly close to the Russian
government and the Orthodox Church, one writer suggests that ever more
non-Russians are again coming to view Russia as "an elder brother," albeit
one less dominant than in Soviet times. (http://2vp.ru/print.php?id=287)
That author, Sergei Il'in, adds that this shift reflects both growing
economic integration in the post-Soviet region and the need to cooperate in
the struggle with international terrorism. That counter-terrorism plays
that role was stressed by several senior Russian Interior Ministry
officials last month. (http://mvdinform.ru/index.php?newsid=4820)
The comments of Ukrainian citizens cited above, however, suggest that
any broader cooperation, any return to a time in which non-Russians will
look up to the Russians as their specially beloved "elder brother" is
probably not in the cards -- if indeed most non-Russians ever really felt
the way that Russians and the Soviet government typically claimed.
Political changes in Georgia and Ukraine have transformed the political
landscape not only in the non-Russian countries but in the Russian
Federation as well -- even if many Russians and especially Russian
officials are not yet prepared to acknowledge the extent of that tectonic
shift.
But both officials and ordinary Russians are likely to have at least one
additional reason in the next few months to recognize that their status in
the post-Soviet states has changed and that the post-Soviet states are in
fact foreign countries.
On Dec. 30, the Russian Foreign Ministry reminded the citizens of the
Russian Federation that in the near future, they will need foreign
passports to travel to all Commonwealth of Independent States countries,
something they have not always needed in the first 13 years since the
collapse of the Soviet Union. (Interfax news agency as cited at
http://www.strana.ru/print/237130.html)
Paul Goble teaches at the Euro-college of the University of Tartu
in Estonia.
>The crumbling of the formidable Communist Empire, unleashed by Gorbachev's perestroika...<
Guess news hasn't gotten to the Ukraine about Ronald Reagan. Or it could be a typically mis-informed liberal.
-George
Yea, a German scumbag would change history thusly. The name "Rus" was first recorded in writting by officials of the Eastern Roman Empire/Byzantium as Kievian Rus. They were the founders of today's Russians and of the ones that gave Russia their conversion to Christianity.
The Rus state moved north when the Mongols invaded. The Russian re-liberated their lands after they defeated the Mongols and Lith-Poles.
That German linked article is - dare I say Nazi-ish - revisionist history!
A nice piece of never-ending saga about those Oriental (or Asian) totalitarian Russians vs. yet another democratic and free nation :))
<Why Ukrainians, who had not been much different, in Western eyes, from Russians and other "Soviets", managed to be, in actuality, so profoundly and unexpectedly different?
Well, in fact, the only difference is in timing. Ukraine has received its independence in 1991 without actually paying for it. It was the Russians who defeated the communist coup in August 1991. Ukranians watched the 1991 coup on TV. It was the Russians who repeatedly took to the streets in 1988-1991. It was the Russians who elected Boris Yeltsin, at that time an opposition candidate purged by now so vegetarian Gorbachev from the Central Committee, against much heavier hand of all-powerful then Communist Party. It was the Russians who handed completely peacefully independence to all former Soviet republics. Finally, it was the Russians who were largely and utterly betrayed by the West in their drive to democracy. Instead of embracing the new Russia, the West was (and is) still largely thinking in terms of die-hard Cold war cliche. The West has actually never been interested in democratic Russia. Having Russia as enemy is so much more convenient.
Now the West is interested in Ukraine as yet another means to contain Russia. I wholeheartedly support Ukrainians in their desire of better life. I feel sorry for them that they like us will be betrayed and used by others. In a couple of years, or even sooner, the Ukranians will see that the only result of their effort is that yet another group of oligarchs is plundering their country. And the only use the West would have for the Ukranians is to guard the borders of the "civilized world", like ancient Rome had used one barbarian tribe against the others.
We Russians are indeed in some sense an older brother for Ukrainians. Not that we want to rule them or bully them, all that is silly nationalistic cliche. Being older means just that we had been on these ropes before. When I say that I fully understand that I piss against the wind and kids and juniors never appreciate what their elders tell them. It does not affect though the truth of what is said.