[lbo-talk] Orange Orders Last Stand (the eXile)

[Chris Doss]

("Khokhol" is the mildly derogatory Russian word for
Ukrainians. It means "topknot," and the origin is that
that was how the Zaporozhinian Cossacks wore their
hair.)

The eXile
241
29 Jun 06

Khokhol Porn

Orange Order’s Last Stand
By Kirill Pankratov ( pkirill88 at hotmail.com )

ACTON, MA -- You have to hand it to Ukraine at least
it's way better off than Iraq. The latter, six months
after elections and pressed by American occupiers,
cobbled together a "coalition government" an
artificial and ultimately ineffectual group. If
they're lucky they will perhaps at best slow down
Iraq's descent into a horrible orgy of butchering and
kidnappings which have been unfolding there since the
beginning of this year.

In Ukraine, just barely three months after election,
there is (almost) a new governing coalition formed the
same Yushchenko-Tymoshenko duo, take two. Almost, as I
said as of the time I'm writing this article, the Rada
(Ukrainian Parliament) just finished a session in a
local movie theater at half-strength, because its
regular auditorium was blocked by opposition deputies
from the Party of Regions (the opposition party of
Victor Yanukovich).

Yushchenko-Tymoshenko is not an friendly alliance,
despite both parties' "democratic" credentials. The
"Hurricane Yulia" Tymoshenko was the Prime Minister
right after the "Orange Revolution" until bitterly
falling out with Yushchenko's people in September
2005. She had a particularly nasty feud with the wily
Peter Poroshenko, one of the Ukraine's richest
oligarchs and Yushchenko's chief supporter and
sponsor. Now Poroshenko is slated to be the Rada
speaker. It'll be fun keeping track of how long these
predators with big claws can hold it together. Right
from the beginning of her first run as prime minister,
Tymoshenko pushed radical populist policies which
threw the economy into chaos and pushed many investors
to run for the exits. She was replaced last year by a
steady if uninspiring Russian-born pragmatist Yuri
Yekhanurov, who has remained the acting PM in the last
few months. Unlike Yulia he didn't do much, but at
least he didn't cause much damage either.

Most of the Western media depicts the political
landscape in the Ukraine as two radically distinct
parts: the pro-Russian south-east, and the pro-western
center and north-east. This picture is not only
inaccurate, but totally useless in understanding the
current situation. Actually Ukraine has at least three
distinct parts. President Yushchenko has a solid base
of support only in the extreme western edge of the
country, the parts which in the old days belonged to
Poland or the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His party can
be called pro-western but in fact it is nationalistic
in the narrow, parochial sense, like true village
hicks from those innumerable Eastern European regions,
one always confuses with one another, dating back to
various Ottoman and Habsburg conquests. They simply
want their territory to be a rural, provincial
backwater of the EU, nothing more. To suck from
Brussels' financial teat, hide under Washington's
security umbrella, and entertain rich Western tourists
with their folk dances, their vyshiv-anki and
sharovary clothes. If the rest of the country
completely loses what little remains of its industry
and science, or even if it sinks into the Black Sea,
so be it.

Yulia Tymoshenko's party, BYT, is quite different. It
occupies the center of the country Kiev itself and all
those steppes and forests around it. They are also
Ukrainian nationalists, but of a different kind, not
easily categorized. They are of the "Greater Ukraine"
type, although they don't actually use these words. It
is a zany combination of pan-Slavic imperial dreams,
of which Kiev would become a new unifying center,
restoring the "Kievan Rus" of the 11th century glory,
plus all kinds of social populism and dema-goguery.
They don't have problems with Russia per se; they just
don't want to play second fiddle to Moscow. The BYT is
far more popular than the "Our Ukraine" party and if
new elections were held again soon, it would expand
further into Yushchenko's electoral territory.


Then there is the Party of Ukraine's Regions, the
opposition from the russo-phonic industrial heartland.
It actually came first in the March elections, with
one third of total votes (Yushchenko's party got just
14%). It is considered pro-Russian, but first of all
it is a party of industrial oligarchs and plutocrats,
playing their own game. Ironically, on many economic
issues they are closer to Yushchenko's rather than to
Tymoshenko's party and could more easily find a common
language on dividing Ukraine's spoils between them
than they could with the unpredictable Yulia (one
could recall that both Yushchenko and Yanukovich were
at one time Prime-Ministers under President Kuchma,
and their policies differed fairly little). But
Regions and "Our Ukraine" would never agree on the
main divisive issue NATO and the role of the Russian
language.

For Yushchenko's NSNU ("Our Ukraine") party this seems
to be the last stand. His personal popularity is at
the all-time low, less than 5% by most estimates,
resembling Yeltsin's circa 1994-5. Very little remains
of his charisma of the winter of 2004-5, during the
standoff on Maidan. If the coalition fails and new
elections are called, he'd be lucky to get a seat in
the Rada. It seems that Yuschenko now has pretty much
given up on any serious economic or structural reforms
and is desperately pursuing two main agendas: the
ukrainization of all spoken and written language, and
NATO membership.

Both of these goals put them at odds with solid
majority of the Ukraine's citizens. Far more of them
consider Russian to be their first language than
Ukrainian, and this despite attempts at ukrainization
since the USSR's breakup. As for the NATO membership,
the idea has support of just 12-15% of the population
and that's dropping, while some 60% is firmly against
it. Even among Yushchenko's base it has only lukewarm
support, while all the southeast is completely against
it. If put to vote in an honest referendum, NATO
membership does not stand a chance.

And yet this is exactly what is almost fanatically
pushed by Yushchenko's party, encouraged by
Washington's neocons. The opposition is also firming
quickly. Last May, vigorous anti-NATO protests erupted
in Crimea when a small delegation of US military came
in preparation of the annual "Sea Breeze" maneuvers.
Previously these exercises never attracted much
attention. This time Americans were blocked in the
Black Sea resort, while the crowd outside the gates
chanted "Yankees go home!" and other slogans. On June
6, members of Crimean Legislative Assembly proclaimed
the peninsula "NATO-free territory," prohibiting
transportation of the alliance's military equipment.
The planned maneuvers collapsed completely.

Most of the protesters were local, but some Russians
also came loosely organized in the manner of the
antiglob-alist movements. Ukrainian police and secret
services tried to arrest and deport them. Then it
turned really ugly. One activist, Yuri Khadartsev of
the ZUBR (For Ukraine, Byelorussia, and Russia)
movement, was killed by two shots in the head on June
8. A suspect was arrested, but very little is known
further in this case. Needless to say, this news
wasn't reported by the Western media at all. Had an
"Orange" activist been killed in Moscow, we'd see
headings like "Another political activist is murdered
in Russia," and "Democratic politician from Ukraine is
brutally killed in Moscow," with unsubtle allusions to
the rise of neo-Stalinism, splattered all over the
newspapers.

It wasn't the last of the killings that week. On the
same day that Khadartsev got whacked, a member of the
Nezhin city council from Yulia Timoshenko's (BYT)
party, Grigory Potilchak, was killed by two shots to
the head. And a member of Zaporozhye city council from
the BYT faction, Viktor Savkin, was killed in the
presence of his 13-year daughter on June 10 in Yalta.
Such are the realities of the Ukrainian politics
today.

In the meantime, Russia and Ukraine remain culturally
as close as ever, despite all the shenanigans that're
going on between them. Most Russian soccer fans
closely follow and cheer the Ukraine's team at the
World Cup now (because the Russian team itself was so
bad, it didn't make the Cup at all). New Russian
movies and TV shows are viewed all over Ukraine. The
hugely popular 10-part TV series Master and Margarita,
based on Bulgakov's famous book, were watched and
discussed in Ukraine last winter as passionately as in
Russia itself. Ukrainian pop and rock groups have very
lucrative pickings on their Russian tours, including
the overtly nationalistic Ruslana babe, the 2004
Eurovision winner.

But politics is hardening and getting further
polarized, especially since the March elections. And
now there is another big event looming on the horizon
the second round of the "gas war" related to the price
of natural gas exports from Russia to Ukraine and
transit further to Europe.

The first round (see my earlier article
http://www.exile.ru/2005-December-28/gas_attack_the_ukraine_gives_itself_indigestionby.html)
was resolved unexpectedly quickly in the first days of
January, after Gazprom cut its exports to Ukraine for
a few days, and Ukraine itself cut gas transit to
Europe. But it was only a temporary compromise, valid
for half a year. Now in July a new series of
negotiations are coming up, and Ukraine faces even
more price hikes. Its economy is already feeling the
pinch, and it's piling up billions of dollars of debt
to Gazprom. It is very likely that after July the gas
price for Ukraine will become higher still.

Three months passed since the parliamentary elections,
and things are not getting any clearer, or any better.
The show must go on. The show that is Ukraine, that
is.




Nu, zayats, pogodi!

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