Flowers trampled underfoot, blood on the asphalt, beatings and arrests of dozens of peaceful people. This was the upshot of the first stage of the Ukrainian revolution known as “Ukraine without Kuchma,” which took place on March 9, 2001. The revolution began six years ago, on Dec. 15, 2000. The organizers and participants of the campaign- socialists, members of UNA- UNSO and the Fatherland Party, and various public figures-lived through the cold of a tent city and survived a siege by bulldozers when the tents were being torn down.
The participants of that campaign are convinced that the new government, despite its many good deeds, has adopted the best bureaucratic traditions of its predecessors. They pledge to take to the maidans again if they don’t start seeing changes in their lives soon.
On Dec. 15, 2000, the Ukraine without Kuchma campaign was launched in the heart of the Ukrainian capital. Protesters put up the first tents on Maidan Nezalezhnosti after Oleksandr Moroz went public with scandalous recordings made by Major Mykola Melnychenko. The campaigners began demanding the immediate resignation of President Kuchma, the head of the Presidential Administration Lytvyn, Minister of Internal Affairs Kravchenko, Prosecutor General Potebenko, and other high officials whose voices were on the tapes.
On Dec. 19 Kyiv witnessed the largest protest rally since the time Ukraine regained its independence. Fifty thousand people flocked to the streets, with thousands more coming to Kyiv from the regions. Mass rallies and street marches became increasingly frequent. The tent city expanded, with a base population of no fewer than several hundred people.
On Feb. 25, in the center of Kyiv, Kuchma was found guilty by a symbolic tribunal. Outraged people burned the president in effigy. A week later, on March 1, police and public utility workers tore down the tents and beat up the people who had been camping in them. Popular resentment reached a critical point. March 9 was around the corner.
On March 9, 2001, the birthday of the famous Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko, the participants of Ukraine without Kuchma gathered for their biggest rally. They were not allowed to approach the Shevchenko monument because the president was scheduled to lay flowers there. Dozens of people were beaten and arrested in Shevchenko Park and several hours later, near the Presidential Administration.
Eighteen people who tried to prevent President Kuchma from approaching the Shevchenko monument were sentenced to two to four years in prison for “organizing riots.”
Remarkably, experts are divided on this campaign. Some say that Ukraine without Kuchma was a precursor of the Orange Revolution, whereas others are convinced that it was an abortive attempt of the Ukrainian opposition to take advantage of an unexpected and convenient occasion-the tape scandal.
The stormy month of March 2000 was a lesson to the present government, at least in the opinion of Volodymyr Chemerys, one of the campaign’s coordinators. He remembers the signature of the incumbent president on the infamous “letter of the three.” In this address Leonid Kuchma, Ivan Pliushch, and Viktor Yushchenko branded the participants of Ukraine without Kuchma as fascists. It was precisely at this time that a group of MPs-Anatolii Matviienko, Taras Stetskiv, and Volodymyr Filenko- wrote an open letter to Viktor Yushchenko condemning his involvement. Six years later they are on one team, as we can see.
“Unlike the Orange Revolution, Ukraine without Kuchma was a popular movement. A political party would not have been able to steer it. The Orange Revolution is, by contrast, a political movement. In my opinion, healthy forces should emerge from a popular movement,” Chemerys says.
Until now the new government has not clearly answered its own question to law-enforcement agencies, the general prosecutor, and the president: “Why was there a clash?” The young men from UNA-UNSO, who have completed their prison terms, say they have no regrets. Meanwhile, many of them lost their families, health, homes, etc.
What did the campaign achieve? What effect did it have on society? Have we broken through the wall of our cell only to find ourselves in the cell next door? We addressed these questions to our experts at The Day.
COMMENTS
Volodymyr POLOKHALO, political scientist:
The strategic goal of this campaign was to overthrow the Kuchma regime, and the goal was not reached. But the protest detected how the civil part of Ukrainian society viewed growing authoritarianism in the country. The campaign effectively targeted authoritarianism as a political regime that had established itself in the majority of the post-Soviet countries. Ukraine without Kuchma suspended a permanent force-majeur spread of the clannish-oligarchic trend in Ukraine. It was a kind of dress rehearsal, or precursor of the Orange Revolution. In the broad political science context, although the campaign did not involve unusually high numbers of people, it manifested the reserve potential of society, or more precisely, the part of society that was refusing to accept the increasingly authoritarian practices of the Ukrainian government. In the narrow sense, if we want to talk personalities, it revealed the future political leaders-above all Yulia Tymoshenko-who are now the core of the democratic political opposition.
The campaign also sent a signal to Ukrainian political circles about the limitations connected with Kuchma’s third term in office, Kuchma being a symbol of the political regime at that time. As a matter of fact, after the campaign he merely spent the rest of his presidential term as the most influential political figure in the state. Lastly, the campaign also had an international impact, as it directed the world’s attention to sharp conflicts in Ukraine and, more generally, to the problem of post-Soviet authoritarianism.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that from this time on we have felt the moral and political support of the world community at the level of societies themselves. And finally, while in Russia, Belarus, and other countries the authoritarian trend was developing virtually unhindered, Ukraine received a signal for a sweeping democratic mobilization of the various population strata that gave preference to Europe’s civilization and democratic values and standards.
Viktor NEBOZHENKO, political scientist:
First of all, I would like to emphasize historical accuracy. The thing is that the slogan “Ukraine without Kuchma” first appeared in the election campaign of the Hromada Party in 1998, enabling it to find favor with the electorate. The party’s program said in black and white, “Anti-Kuchmaism as ideology.” At that time it was a young opposition party. You may remember that it had two cheerful young politicians, Prime Minister Lazarenko and the businesswoman Tymoshenko, both of whom were out of favor with the government.
The rise of Ukraine without Kuchma was no Yugoslav scenario or some political technique, as it is often claimed. It was the classic behavior of an ideology-free opposition force fighting against political evil personified. I would like to say that those politicians who think they invented this campaign and roused society’s consciousness are wrong. In actual fact they made use of things that had already been tested and found effective. This is a very important nuance because, as you may recall, Hromada garnered 4.7 percent of the popular vote.
It cannot be denied that as a campaign Ukraine without Kuchma took place in different circumstances and had other launch mechanisms, primarily in the form of the Gongadze case and Ukraine’s first-ever political union formed on a foundation that was not purely ideological. The united effort proceeded not only from all the national-democratic forces. Top political figures from the government also joined the campaign and participated in the protests.
All in all, Ukraine without Kuchma was an attempt to have President Kuchma deposed. It was a remarkable movement in that it actively involved average Ukrainians. We had only one other movement of similar magnitude-the independence movement in the 1990s. A decade later people again began saying the same things and believing the same slogans.
Instead of counteracting the movement with a parallel one, the government resorted to oligarchic methods, primarily by persecuting the press, and tried to win by a knockout, but this eventually proved to be counterproductive.
Mykola VASKIV, associate professor, Kamianets-Podilsky State University:
Today it seems that the campaign was premature. In this sense it didn’t really make any hole in the regime’s wall. The campaign was a mass one but not nationwide; it was, in fact, restricted to Kyiv. Only a fringe minority of society was fully cognizant of the rotten and anti-humanitarian character of Kuchma’s regime. But these people could not keep silent, even though they realized that they would not gain wide support. The event that triggered the campaign was, of course, the disappearance of Georgii Gongadze. We still do not know who was behind it, but it seems that there was also a minority group of people trying to artificially escalate the situation and take advantage of it in pursuit of their political schemes.
What did the campaign bring? First of all, experience-experience for campaign organizers. Because during the Orange Revolution there was a strong immunity against provocations of the kind that on March 9 effectively caused Ukraine without Kuchma to fail. Another experience was ascertainment of the fact that the government was afraid of the people. This was proved by the buses that were parked virtually in every yard in downtown Kyiv, with curtains drawn over the windows concealing policemen inside. One got the impression that a true mass campaign would cause a total paralysis of the government. This eventually came about in the fall of 2004.
