Searching for political prospects is currently the order of the day for many Ukrainian parties. Some of them find this search tortuous and tormenting, for they are facing the threat of missing life’s moveable feast. The example of the UNR (Kostenko’s Rukh) is the most glaring in this respect. Starting with splitting Rukh seemingly for the considerations of political modernization and making, to put it mildly, a lackluster show in the presidential elections, UNR then evolved as a pro-presidential party and Verkhovna Rada fraction. It is obvious today that, coming closer to Yuliya Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna (Fatherland), UNR is promoting the formation of a second center of influence favoring the Prime Minister, as many observers believe. This may be true as long as Ms. Tymoshenko remains Vice Premier. But the UNR’s chief dilemma seems to come down to its own adequate self-assessment vis-a-vis future political configurations.
Last week’s meeting of the parliamentary majority, at which a new coordinator was elected, saw an event which characterized very precisely not so much the distribution of forces among the Right and Center as the distribution of roles among the factions. At the moment, when People’s Deputy Surkis, who came to Hrushevsky Street on such an occasion, was calmly exchanging greetings with his faction colleagues and when Deputy Udovenko had finished congratulating Deputy Karpov, just elected majority coordinator, Deputy Cherniak came close to spoiling everyone’s mood. He began to chide aloud his majority colleagues for not supporting putting on the agenda the elimination of totalitarian (i.e., Soviet) symbols in Ukraine.
Shaking my head and making sure this is not a dream and we are in 2000, not 1991, I saw perhaps most of those present in the session room doing the same. When Mr. Cherniak broke off, looking as if he had done a good job, I remembered his constituency in the district center of Korets, where this deputy’s cobweb-filled reception room was eventually turned over for other needs. So what is Mr. Cherniak going to do in his constituency? Monuments to Communist leaders were briskly removed there as long as nine years ago, then other “symbols of totalitarianism” began to decline and fall, such as industrial enterprises that once turned out products, holiday camps that received children in the summer, and other signs of the former life. The district’s life pivots, as before, around the district center’s marketplace, over the control of which the local authorities and law enforcement bodies are wrangling. Next to Cherniak’s constituency lies that of Pavlo Movchan, his colleague from Kostenko’s faction, who makes up for failures to visit his electorate with his impressive beard, making regular appearances on television. Undoubtedly, there is no way back for these Deputies to the same constituencies during the next elections. One must look for a proper place and prove one’s indispensability on the political stage in order not to fall out of the process forever, as was the case with Stepan Khmara, Mykola Porovsky and a few more dozens of the day-before-yesterday’s politicians who now represent no interest at all.
Striving to seize power in the Popular Movement (Rukh) eighteen months ago and actively pushing the still living Vyacheslav Chornovil out of the leadership, Kostenko’s current followers would accuse the then party leader, almost openly, of hindering active trade in Rukh’s political prestige and in a few dozens of parliamentary votes. After the Rukh split and Mr. Chornovil’s death in an accident, Kostenko’s group seemed to be getting everything it wanted. They managed to keep intact the Rukh coat-of-arms on the newly-formed party’s banner, without which they might as well be grinding shovels to dig their own political grave. But even after registering under the strange name of UNR-RUKH, the new party’s leadership proved unable to stop the collapse of their entity both in parliament and the regions. And even before the split, Rukh was not too powerful a force in the provinces. What was bringing it votes was the party’s well advertised name rather than any real prestige of its local functionaries. A year after the split the situation became almost completely absurd: in most regions Rukh stalwarts see no difference between each other and try to unite as soon as possible so as not to lose authority altogether. Meanwhile, the capital continues to see long and futile talks on reunification, which is impossible in principle. The Kostenko group did not stage a mutiny in order to now return to a party where their vacancies have already been filled. On the other hand, it is risky to lean in earnest on Batkivshchyna.
It is now in general difficult to understand whether Kostenko has been trying to form a coalition, cooperate with, or just support morally the party element resuscitated from Pavlo Lazarenko’s now defunct Hromada. More and more euphemisms more suitable for financial debates are heard. There is nobody to ask whether Ms. Tymosheko’s group lent money to Kostenko’s Rukh because nobody will tell. Only the occasional reaction of some individuals can make you think that Rukh people were once doing something but now they are mostly making promises. To see which way the wind is blowing, you have to read the Kostenko people’s interviews and statements between the lines. For instance, the week before last People’s Deputy Chervony told an allegedly pro-premier youth newspaper that “our friendship with the oligarchic factions was rather ill thought- out.” Precisely “thought-out,” and not “paid out,” as one would think promptly. The Kostenko men were clearly at odds with Surkis and Volkov. Moreover, they would often accentuate the ethnic roots of some oligarchs and of their former fellow party member Brodsky. Regularly visiting Deputy Movchan’s constituency, Deputy Chervony loudly calls Deputy Udovenko as Judasenko, thinking only afterward.
They must think indeed, for the Kostenko team will fare very poorly without Batkivshchyna. The most sober-minded are returning, one by one, to the original Rukh, being well aware of where the foundation of a new Right bloc will be laid. Those left overboard, even in spite of the most heartfelt pleas, will have to content themselves with the well-worn record of the early-1990s hits about monuments and the Ukrainian church, a pathetic parody, which the mass action to keep Ukrainian Orthodox Church hierarchs clear of the restored Assumption Cathedral amounted to, showed that the church card is no longer a trump, even with massive media support. One can also scream about the decline of the Ukrainian language, but this stratagem has nothing to do with Kostenko. Show-piece enmity toward Russia is a field on which the well-fattened herds of several more dozens of parties have long grazed.
Mr. Cherniak’s desperate call to “combat the symbols of totalitarianism” displayed, contrary to the author’s wishes, the fact that Rukh-2 has no firm ground to stand on. The Kostenko party’s political platform looks unattractive, as do the provincial “symbols of totalitarianism” which have gradually been grown over with ill weeds, ruined, and pilfered by the local population as good building material. Balancing between “buyers” and voters, the Kostenko Rukh people have lost the political clout necessary for independent political existence. As a result, all they have to do is to recall their own existence in the parliamentary majority by means of not terribly fresh political statements.
