The Kivalov Diploma “will be seen as spitting in the face of half of Ukraine”
Is it time for Viktor Yushchenko to resign in disgrace?
Ukrayinska Pravda http://pravda.com.ua/news/2007/11/15/66906.htm published the Honorary Diploma that Serhiy Kivalov, the disgraced Chairman of the Central Election Commission (CEC) in the 1st and 2nd rounds of the 2004 elections, was awarded by the Central Election Commission. Kivalov also obtained a medal.
In typical George Orwellian language, the Honorary Diploma is given to Kivalov in recognition: “For his great individual contribution to ensuring the realisation of the
constitutional rights of Ukrainian citizens and on the occasion of the tenth
anniversary of the formation of the Central Election Commission”.
The head of the CEC is Viktor Shapoval, a loyal member of Yushcheko’s team.
Kivalov was only once the Chairman of the CEC in the 2004 presidential
elections. He was removed by parliament on 8 December as part of a compromise vote. On 3 December 2004 the Supreme Court had annulled the official second round results and called for a repeat run
of the second round within three weeks.
Kivalov was elected to parliament in
2006 and 2007 within the Party of Regions which includes a large number of unrepentant Kuchma era officials who, if Ukraine had the rule of law and the President fulfilled his commitments to the Orange Revolution, they would be today behind bars.
So there we have it. In February the disgraced former Prosecutor Mykhailo Potebenko was given a state medal for his alleged “contribution to improving the rule of law” in Ukraine. The year before oligarch Renat Akhmetov was given a state medal and other oligarchs have also been given such awards since then.
One American colleague who works on Ukraine wrote to me after learning of Kivalov’s award and said:
“And this suggests to this reader at least that Ukrainian officials are not serious about becoming a modern state. This kind of nonsense goes beyond corruption — it suggests that the only thing that really counts for the Ukrainian political elite is personal connections and cronyism. That applies to virtually everybody in the political elite or these shenanigans would not be happening”.
He continued, “In the meantime, it is incumbent up the West to speak out, regardless of whom the intended audience is and will be. To play down this absurdity is to fall victim to the worst kind of associational guilt possible”.
In Ukrayinska Pravda’s eyes the granting of this award to Kivalov “will be seen as spitting in the face of half of Ukraine”. The granting of a diploma and medal to Kivalov insults the one in five Ukrainians who participated in the Orange Revolution.
Yushchenko will not be the president who will bring the rule of law to Ukraine: that is clearly seen by his awards to Potebenko and Kivalov. Kivalov was not only never prosecuted but he was permitted to continue as Dean of the Odesa Judicial Academy where he unveiled a monument to himself in 2005.
This and earlier awards, as well as Yushchenko’s unwillingness to enter a coalition a coalition with Yulia Tymoshenko (even though he called for a “democratic coalition” in the campaign) signals one conclusion: Yushchenko will never win the 2009 elections. Perhaps then it is time for Yushchenko to resign from office rather
Diaspora History’s of Ukraine
I recently spoke at a book launch of Professor Robet Magocsi’s just published Ukraine. An Illustrated History. As with his previous numerous books on Ukrainian history this was again published by the University of Toronto press.
The largely Canadian-Ukrainian diaspora audience at St.Volodymyr’s Institute still remains skeptical about Professor Magocsi since he became Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Toronto in 1980. Their favourite candidate had always been Orest Subtelny; Magocsi had not applied for the position but was invited to apply by the University. The history department in the then pre-multicultural University of Toronto did not want the Chair of Ukrainian History, funds for which had been raised by the Canadian-Ukrainian diaspora.
Magocsi’s selection created resentment from Canadian-Ukrainians because their favourite candidate did not obtain the position and because he was accused of promoting ‘Rusynism’ as a fourth eastern Slavic nationality. The issue of whether Magocsi is the ‘father’ of the Rusyns (in the same way as Mykhailo Hrushevsky is the ‘father’ of Ukrainians) was debated at the April convention of the Association of Nationalities in New York’s Columbia University. Neither of the four debaters, including University of Alberta’s Professor John-Paul Himka or myself, agreed with the notion that Magocsi was following Hrushevsky as a ‘father’ of Rusyns.
As I pointed out in my presentation at St.Vladimir’s Institute, Magocsi’s record should be judged as a whole, and not selectively. In reality he is by far the most productive of Western historians who write on Ukraine. A number of Western historians of Ukrainian descent have never published any books; indeed, recently retired Professor Roman Szporluk never published a book on Ukraine when he was Hrushevsky Chair of Ukrainian History at Harvard University.
Professor Magocsi has no competition as to being the most prolific Western historian of Ukraine. The second runner up in any such competition would be very far behind in terms of the number of his or her published books.
Magocsi’s A History of Ukraine (also University of Toronto Press, 1996) was published this year in Ukrainian by Krytyka publishers with which Harvard University’s Dmytro Cyzevs’kyj Professor of Ukrainian Literature, Professor George G.Grabowicz, is credited. Magocsi’s just published Ukraine. An Illustrated History is planned to appear in Ukrainian and Turkish.
Moagocsi’s book publishing productivity, together with that of Professors Subtelny (York University, Toronto) and Serhy Yekelchyk (University of Victoria), place Canada in the lead in the West in the publication of history books on Ukraine. Subtelny’s Ukraine. A History (also University of Toronto Press) has been published in three editions in 1988, 1994 and 2000. Yekelchyk’s newly published history appeared with the equally prestigious Oxford University Press in 2007. The only other overall history of Ukraine was published by University College London’s Senior Lecturer Andrew Wilson The Ukrainians. Unexpected Nation (Yale University Press, 2000).
The United States has, for some reason, failed to add any history of Ukraine books published since Ukraine became an independent country to this impressive list of Canadian and British-based scholars. The two North American institutes of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS and HURI) have also not produced history’s of Ukraine in the last two decades.
It is not unusual for history and national identity to be inter-twinned, especially in post-Soviet countries such as Ukraine that are undergoing quadruple transitions of democratic and market economy, nation and state building (http://www.taraskuzio.net/journals/economics.shtml). Through translations of their works the impact of Western historians of Ukraine in this process is profound; in Ukraine Subtelny’s Ukraine. A History has been re-published in nearly a million copies in Ukrainian and Russian giving it readers that should be numbered in the millions.
History is alive in a way in Ukraine that it is not in the West. History impacts on presidential decrees, discussions in Kyiv about where to locate new hotels, media debates, school curriculums, election campaigns, political party competition and foreign relations. Recent topical historic issues revolve around the 1933 famine, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, a new statue to Tsarina Catherine in Odesa, the 1709 Battle of Poltava, a new statue to OUN-b leader Stepan Bandera in Lviv and the destruction of national symbols by Russian chauvinists on the Hoverla mountain.
Professor Magocsi’s history writing is not only prolific but his approach integrates the study of Ukrainian history within the European mainstream, thereby contributing one element to the on-going process of Ukraine’s Europeanisation. Professor Magocsi will therefore have influence in the manner in which Ukrainian history will be taught and socialized in Ukraine and the West.
Professor Magocsi pioneered the integration of Ukrainian history into the European mainstream by presenting history as an inclusive, territorial concept. As with British history that incorporates Celts, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Normans, and others so Ukrainian history, Professor Magocsi believes, should focus primarily on Ukrainians while not neglecting other nationalities, from Scythians to Poles, Jews, Russians and others who have lived on Ukrainian territory since earliest times.
Such an approach to history is quintessentially both European and Western. It signifies that all of the events that have taken place on the territory internationally recognized as ‘Ukraine’ in December 1991 is a full part of ‘Ukrainian history’.
As I commented during my talk at St.Vladimir’s Institute, it will be a long time before a similar approach limits ‘Russian history’ to the territory of the Russian Federation. It will be an equally long time before such territorial books will be published in KGB.Inc, as Russia is now increasingly referred to, or in the West by historians of Russia. Ukraine is certainly not Russia as our wise Ukrainian leaders have written.
Viktor’s Fate is in Yulia’s Hands
This weekend I was in New York to give my fourth talk on the 2007 Ukrainian elections at the Ukrainian Institute of America, located in a beautiful old building in the upper east side of Manhattan (the equivalent of London’s exclusive Knightsbridge neighbourhood) and across from the world famous Metropolitan Museum. Earlier my talks on the elections were to the U.S. State Department in Washington, the Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Ottawa and to the Ukrainian Federation in Philadelphia.
New York and Paris are cities that receive accolades of being places that one cannot but love and which never sleep. This is certainly true. If you cannot enjoy yourself in New York then the problem is not with the city but with yourself.
We spent the evening after the Ukrainian Institute talk in the Ukrainian area of the lower east side of Manhattan which is a very lively region (the fourth wave lives in a separate region of Brooklyn called Brighton Beach). The lower east side (East Village) became a Ukrainian area after World War II and today is an area of yupification-gentrification.
The message of my four talks was that I believe that the elections were a turning point in Ukraine’s history. After three free and fair elections since 2004 and four victories by democratic forces since 2002 Ukraine should no longer be perceived as a ‘post-soviet Eurasian’ country. The orange revolution began a psychological re-think of Ukraine as an East European country, a process that has been gradually consolidated through two subsequent free elections, a free media environment and open political competition.
That Ukraine’s political trajectory is so divergent from Russia and the remainder of the Eurasian CIS is now beyond any doubt. The process of Ukraine’s movement from Eurasian to European path began during Leonid Kuchma’s second term (Kuchmagate in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin in Russia) and was crowned with the orange revolution. As I remind my audiences, the orange revolution was Europe’s biggest non-violent protest since World War II. One in five Ukrainian participated in the orange revolution reaching as high as thirty percent of western Ukrainians to only five percent of easterners.
We should look at the 2007 elections as a crucial democratic turning point because of Yulia Tymoshenko’s astounding success in increasing her vote from 23 to 31 percent and of reducing BYuT’s gap with the Party of Regions from ten to only two percent. As I repeatedly stressed in my talks, BYuT and Tymoshenko saved the orange revolution (and the Orange Circle NGO in New York!). Without BYuT’s victory we would be now seeing a return of Yanukovych to government and the Anti-Crisis-2 coalition. What would be left of the orange revolution after five years of a third Yanukovych government?
Throughout September it became increasingly obvious that the Party of Regions went into a state of panic at BYuT’s growth in popularity in eastern Ukraine and in Ukraine as a whole.
This panic was evidenced in three ways. Firstly, the Party of Regions focused its criticism on BYuT and Tymoshenko personally. Secondly, as in 2004 the Party of Regions fell back on the Russian language and NATO when it is in panic mode. Thirdly, rumours abounded that the Party of Regions had cancelled their contract with the American political technologist Paul Manafort.
These elections also showed the continued failure of President Yushchenko to create a presidential party machine. The elections showed that there are only two political machines (in American terms) in Ukraine: BYuT and the Party of Regions.
Our Ukraine-Narodna Samoborona (NUNS) continues to be an eclectic mix of nine hetmans most of whom represent only virtual parties. Worst still they continue to be divided into pro-BYuT and pro-Regions wings (as does Yushchenko himself). Lutsenko’s demand that these nine hetmans merge into a single party after the elections is a very admirable strategy but I remain pessimistic that the hetmans will give up their mini-hetmanates.
The BYuT:Regions division in Our Ukraine has been there since it was founded in 2001. The head of the 2002 Our Ukraine election campaign, Petro Poroshenko, only moved to Our Ukraine after the then newly created Party of Regions failed to elect him as their leader. Poroshenko’s Solidarity party was one of five that merged to create the Party of Regions and after his failed leadership bid he established a new Solidarity party that he took to Our Ukraine. Poroshenko’s Solidarity faction in the Rada was created in 2000 with Kuchma’s support to counter balance the SDPUo.
Poroshenko and Yushchenko have both been long time allies of Volodymyr Lytvyn whom they offered to Kuchma to head the Our Ukraine bloc in 2002 (but Kuchma refused as he wanted him to head For a United Ukraine). Poroshenko and Zaporozhzhia steel magnate Khmelnytsky (in these elections on the Party of Regions list but previously he was a financier of the Greens and Women for the Future) reportedly financed the Lytvyn bloc in this years elections. That shows
Lytvyn’s continued adherence to multi-vectorism.
On the Wednesday after the elections I was by coincidence interviewing Hryhoriy Nemirya, one of the most talented intellectuals in BYuT, in his office at BYuT headquarters in the Podil district of Kyiv. During my interview Nemirya repeatedly received calls from very confused diplomats and journalists as to what Yushchenko had meant to say before he flew to Germany that day. Yushchenko had seemingly implied that consultations should begin on a grand coalition of NUNS, BYuT and Regions.
I attended Tymoshenko’s press conference later that day where she immediately rejected entering any coalition with Regions. NUNS reaction typically came many days later.
The orange coalition has a slim majority of only three deputies (228) which would only increase to 448 if the Lytvyn bloc joined. The Lytvyn bloc are unlikely to join any coalition as they will gain greater personal dividends by being ‘free agents’.
Will then a Rada vote to confirm Tymoshenko receive the required 226 minimum votes?
As after last year’s elections, there is opposition to an orange coalition within NUNS (Yuriy Yekhanurov), from NUNS business men (Poroshenko who is slated to be National Bank chairman), National Security Council secretary Ivan Pliushch and presidential secretary head Viktor Baloga. Clearly none of these opponents have learnt even elementary lessons from last year’s coalition making fiasco and how Yushchenko’s fate is now in Tymoshenko’s hands.
With only fifteen percent support Yushchenko (and a failed presidential party) he cannot win a second term in 2009 without the support of BYuT. A Western Ambassador in Kyiv told me that even with Tymoshenko’s support Yushchenko will still find it difficult to be re-elected. It is time that Tymoshenko’s opponents in the orange camp understood this fundamental reality of Ukrainian politics. Yushchenko has only a slim chance of not repeating Leonid Kravchuk’s fate who only served one term.
Russias Still Does Not Get It
During my visit to Ukraine for the elections I also paid a short visit to Moscow. By coincidence the weekend was Vladimir Putin’s birthday and the anniversary of the murder of the courageous Russian journalist Ala Politkovskaya.
On my way from Red Square to the Tretiakov Gallery I passed a small park where I saw the two Russia’s. On one side of the park was an exhibition of photographs from Chechnya by Politkovskaya. On the other side of the park was a rally of pro-Putin students in orange (!) teeshirts and carrying Russian flags with Putin’s portrait. The youth group (www.putin.su) was a “Club of Putin Fanatics” who were to march to Red Square to celebrate Putin’s birthday.
The difference between Ukraine and Russia was so evident. Could you imagine a “Club of Yushchenko Fanatics” or “Club of Yanukovych Fanatics” in Ukraine? Leonid Kuchma was right in his world famous 2004 book “Ukraine is not Russia”. Vladimir Putin is writing, so I hear, a sequel entitled “Russia is not Ukraine”. He is right!
My Ukrainian colleagues advised me to take the train rather than the plane as it takes you into downtown Moscow, the famous Kyivski Vokzal. I just made the train with five minutes spare - I had failed to take into account the traffic in Kyiv which is as bad, or worse, than London. I have never seen so many expensive SUV’s and jeeps as in in Kyiv (for some reason nearly all black in colour)!
A Russian joined me in the SV compartment. He seemed to be an intellectual but I remained cautious asa foreigner in explaining my views. His anti-Putin sentiments seemed genuinely those of the Moscow intelligentsia.
In Moscow I stayed with a Western diplomat whom I acquainted on an earlier occasion when I headed an OSCE election mission in Odesa. He explained to me that Russians still do not get it, as you would say in English - they simply cannot understand developments in Ukraine. Russians see “chaos” - not democracy - as associate this “chaos” with Russia’s own “chaos” in the 1990s under the incoherent and barely sober Borys Yeltsin. Russians do not see democracy in Ukraine as they do not understand that uncertainty is a natural product of democracy.
Back in the 2004 elections it was no different. Russian political technologists who worked for the Viktor Yanukovych campaign (through Viktor Medvedchuk and Leonid Kuchma) never understood Ukraine. I remember following their so-called analyses and predicted they would be wrong. During the regular internal US government seminars on the Ukraine elections usually held at the State Department we were more likely to predict events correctly than Russian political technologists.
What are the origins of these Russian views on Ukraine?
A Norwegian scholar Tor Bukkvoll gives a number of answers in an academic article he wrote 6 years ago. He says (I believe correctly) that Russians do not get Ukraine because they do not see it as a foreign country. Therefore, they have no policy towards Ukraine.
Other reasons are what the Moscow scholar Dmitri Trenin, with whom I was on a panel with in Washington earlier this year, says are the lessons learnt by Putin from his crass intervent5ion in Ukraine in 2004. Namely, that there is no such thing as a “pro Russian” force in Ukraine. The Party of Regions is not “pro Russian” in the Moscow sense of that term. Five years ago I wrote an article entitled “Ukraine’s Foreign Policy: Neither Pro-Western nor Pro Russian, but Pro Kuchma”. Party of Regions foreign policy is pro-Regions, Renat Akhmetov and Donetsk - not pro-Western or pro-Russian.
If , after all, Alyaksandr Lukashenka is not “pro Russian” enough for Moscow than who is in Ukraine?
We should all thank Russians for their arrogance, chauvinism and incomprehension about Ukraine. May it continue indefiinetly!
On my way back to Ukraine I shared a compartment with a Russian young woman. As we arrived in Kyiv I said to her “Welcome to democracy”. Her face growled in response to my point that Ukraine is not Russia.
Falsification, London Time
With Kyiv now full of angry views that Regions are again reverting to their 2004 methods in falsifying elections in the Donbas in favour of themselves and the Socialists it is also worth looking at falsifications in the West.
My father, Jozef Kuzio, became a Ukrainian citizen in 1998. Although he had lived in England since 1948 he, like many British-Ukrainians who came after the war, never took out British citizenship even though they were entitled to. In 1997 Ukrainian legislation changed so that there was no longer any need to live 5 years in Ukraine, a normal residency requirement for citizenship applications in Western democracies.
My father qualified for citizenship because he was born in Ukraine and did not have citizenship (Ukraine does not recognise dual citizenship).
He voted in three elections in 1999, 2002 and 2006 with no problem in the London Embassy of Ukaine building.
On Sunday he travelled to London to vote again. This time, his name was not on the list at the Embassy and he was not allowed to vote. This was strange as allegedly the ame voter lists were used as last year.
For him to travel 440 miles (800 kilometeres) in one day to and from Yorkshire to London is very strenuous for an 81 year old man. And, of course, to travel at his own cost.
The trip was wasted as he was unable to vote for one of the two orange blocs. Many others could not vote at the London Embasy.
As polling figures show, most Ukainians living in the West voted for Yushchenko in 2004 and for orange parties. Was this another attempt to block their votes and violate their rights as Ukrainian citizens?