The ongoing political crisis is forming a special geopolitical scenography of Ukraine’s further development, revising the basic circumstances of Ukrainian-Russian relations. The problem is not only the presence or absence of someone standing to the side and directing the crisis play, and not even which of the personae the audience really likes. Rather, it is the process of the destruction of the structural affinity between the Russian and Ukrainian political environs. Ukrainian-Russian relations in the 1990s were in many respects built on precisely that likeliness of their respective political bases. Primarily with regard to the models of personalistic and above-party presidential supremacy, weak political parties, parliament opposed to the executive, the dominance of referendum and paternalistic forms representation over the institutions of representative democracy, etc. Second, with regard to the anticommunist lining of the political regime’s coat, with the post-Soviet political system organized as a putrid coalition of the noncommunist majority and as a positive alternative to the post-Soviet Left. Nestling with it are all those “big and small architectural forms” of the authoritarian regime, providing conditions for a temporary macropolitical balance.
Third, with regard to the maneuvering and balancing of the regime between the post-Soviet Right and Left (democrats vs. Communists). In Ukraine, it is between the national democrats and the Left Communist bloc; between the east and west of Ukraine; between the West and Russia. The multivector doctrine and policy became a kind of geopolitical projection of the Ukrainian version of domestic political rift and balancing. Containing the threat of the so-called Left revenge built the basic parameters of the legitimacy of the political regime, its relative stability, and “geopolitical mission” (which turned out quite doable).
In this way in the 1990s the uniform basic codes, political structures, mechanisms, and styles provided the framework conditions for Russian- Ukrainian conditions.
In the late 1990s, the base context of Ukrainian-Russian relations began to come apart. Russia had entered a phase of national integration and political consolidation by activating the mobilization democracy mode, enhancing the presidential vertical, reinforcing the state, and so on. Nor did the Ukrainian consolidation phase exclude the strategy of vertical democratization and achieving a mobilization balance. Radical changes in the original scenario were introduced by the cassette scandal and attendant political actions.
First, a realignment of political forces and reallocation of the nation’s balance among parties are evident; the role of the post-Soviet Left (KPU) is declining, particularly against the backdrop of the KPU leadership’s “opportunistic line” and radical changes are shaping up in the Right amalgamation of parties. Second, there is a new type of conduct adopted by the so-called Center parties. The centrists, stimulated by the rate of political change and the plummeting liquidity of the official administrative assets, are becoming aware that, to paraphrase Karl Marx, it is necessary to live not off power and for power, but off politics and for politics.
The crisis of confidence in the administrative-authoritative basis of the presidential machine stimulates growth within the opposition sphere, finally shaping the axis of political tensions and confrontations, with, on the one hand, parties (as autonomous political agents interested in the development of parliamentary democratic forms), and the above-party presidential system on the other. Perhaps one of the positively stimulating and real ways out of our critically unstable situation lies in the formation of a new Ukrainian party network as a political and legal alternative to the post-Soviet democratic logic and mechanisms. If the current regime refuses to reallocate influence following the logic of parliamentary forms of democracy and party competitiveness, it will be exposed to the risk of a cross-opposition effect of the Right, Left, and Center. In other words, there is a real possibility of counteraction against the regime by not only staff party opposition, but even loyal and semiloyal party sympathizers. We could be witness to structural changes in the political system in various forms with or without Kuchma or Yushchenko; either a coalition multiparty cabinet model or a transition to a party-affiliated presidency bound by an ideological political platform or the formation of a strong executive branch based on the German kanzlerdemocratik model.
In other words, Russia will before long have to cooperate with a different structure and cadre composition of the Ukrainian political class. Domestic political standards in Russia and Ukraine will continue to drift apart. The domestic political context of Russian and Ukrainian diplomacy will undergo basic transformations. Strange as it may seem, this will not interfere with the shaping of a rational relationship with Russia. Moreover, precisely this process of Ukrainian political reform based on party competitiveness, ending in the realignment of political forces, power currents, and constitutional authority, forming a new national party balance and changing the Ukrainian leadership (primarily in terms of top political institution models), will signify the completion of the formation of the Ukrainian body politic — and, by the same token, of the national interests. Ukrainian foreign policy will be able to cast the anchor of stability and efficiency criteria. A new domestic political code will thus be developed in the unreliable critical Ukrainian reality, meaning a Ukrainian, rather than post-Soviet, foreign policy platform.
