After the revolution.
One of the problems with the Great Man Theory of history (or the positive reformist/ progressive side of it) is that there are so few genuinely great (combining "good" and "powerful") men out there. People are so mediocre by nature, and the ambition mixed with charisma that make a successful political leader doesn't seem to change that. There are plenty of examples of good men out there, but good men go wobbly or get else corrupted by the forces that work on them or can't hold on to power. There are historical examples of leaders who get a lock on power, don't go wobbly, channel rather than react to outside forces. But pretty often, they're tyrants or lunatics or both.
Anyway, watching Ukrainian voters reward the party of Viktor Yanukovych -- head villain of the ballot-stuffing, poison-dispensing retrograde forces in the 2004 Ukraine presidential election (or at least the version of it told in the West, which I take at face value) -- with a plurality of the seats in the Ukranian parliament last week was sort of dispiriting. I know it's not terribly surprising, with the two anti-Putin parties splitting the Western, Ukranian-speaking vote. Yanukovych's party actually took a far smaller share of the vote than Yanukovych did in the first-round presidential balloting in 2004. But it's still a pretty ironic denouement from the romance and good-government euphoria of the Orange Revolution. Keeping up that kind of euphoria on the road to wealth and progress would have required, at the very least, a genuinely "great" leader. Yushchenko probably just isn't that rarest of beasts.
Here, though, are two perspectives on the subject that make me feel silly about my initial bemusement. First John Gray on "the hard slog of democracy":
When Leonid Kravchuk led Ukraine out of the embrace of the Soviet Union in 1991, it was not for the love of democracy. It was to satisfy the nationalist instincts of a country that did not relish being effectively ruled by Big Brother to the east, even if Big Brother was Russian-speaking, as were most of those who ruled Ukraine.
The essential power structure of Ukraine did not change under Kravchuk or Kuchma. As had happened for the better part of 70 years before so-called independence, power was held by former Communists, most of them Russian-speaking, who had scant regard for democracy and even less for market economics – whatever that was.
So the essentials of Ukrainian life changed only with the disputed election of Yushchenko in November 2004, and even then the change was not as profound as it first seemed. His support did not extend to the Russian-speaking east and south of the country, where most of the people in power were still the old Communists.
If democracy had been an assumption of Ukraine life for decades, Yushchenko might have been able to work with his Orange revolutionary partner, his first prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko; and she with him. If Russians had not made Russian the language of power in Ukraine long before the Soviet revolution, the country would not have become a textbook victim of cultural imperialism.
And, on a more positive note, Scott MacMillan writing in Slate:
But politicians weren't the real heroes of the revolution. Everyday Ukrainians were. Political speech has been set free under the new regime, and perhaps more important, Ukrainians are finally beginning to craft their national identity. "They were passive and shit on for years," Dickinson told me. "Finally they stood up, and they won. That's ingrained in the history of the nation."
Chalk the negativity up to the national temperament, but there's no denying things have changed. Sunday's vote received a clean bill of health from international observers and went off without a hitch. Yes, corrupt politicians and sleaze-ridden oligarchs will likely remain as easy to find in Ukraine as four-inch stiletto heels, but there's no going back to the stifling days of Kuchma and his cronies. Give them enough vodka, and you can probably get Ukrainians to sing about that.
Maybe the most romantic thing about history is how little fairytale romance there really is.
Anyway, watching Ukrainian voters reward the party of Viktor Yanukovych -- head villain of the ballot-stuffing, poison-dispensing retrograde forces in the 2004 Ukraine presidential election (or at least the version of it told in the West, which I take at face value) -- with a plurality of the seats in the Ukranian parliament last week was sort of dispiriting. I know it's not terribly surprising, with the two anti-Putin parties splitting the Western, Ukranian-speaking vote. Yanukovych's party actually took a far smaller share of the vote than Yanukovych did in the first-round presidential balloting in 2004. But it's still a pretty ironic denouement from the romance and good-government euphoria of the Orange Revolution. Keeping up that kind of euphoria on the road to wealth and progress would have required, at the very least, a genuinely "great" leader. Yushchenko probably just isn't that rarest of beasts.
Here, though, are two perspectives on the subject that make me feel silly about my initial bemusement. First John Gray on "the hard slog of democracy":
When Leonid Kravchuk led Ukraine out of the embrace of the Soviet Union in 1991, it was not for the love of democracy. It was to satisfy the nationalist instincts of a country that did not relish being effectively ruled by Big Brother to the east, even if Big Brother was Russian-speaking, as were most of those who ruled Ukraine.
The essential power structure of Ukraine did not change under Kravchuk or Kuchma. As had happened for the better part of 70 years before so-called independence, power was held by former Communists, most of them Russian-speaking, who had scant regard for democracy and even less for market economics – whatever that was.
So the essentials of Ukrainian life changed only with the disputed election of Yushchenko in November 2004, and even then the change was not as profound as it first seemed. His support did not extend to the Russian-speaking east and south of the country, where most of the people in power were still the old Communists.
If democracy had been an assumption of Ukraine life for decades, Yushchenko might have been able to work with his Orange revolutionary partner, his first prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko; and she with him. If Russians had not made Russian the language of power in Ukraine long before the Soviet revolution, the country would not have become a textbook victim of cultural imperialism.
And, on a more positive note, Scott MacMillan writing in Slate:
But politicians weren't the real heroes of the revolution. Everyday Ukrainians were. Political speech has been set free under the new regime, and perhaps more important, Ukrainians are finally beginning to craft their national identity. "They were passive and shit on for years," Dickinson told me. "Finally they stood up, and they won. That's ingrained in the history of the nation."
Chalk the negativity up to the national temperament, but there's no denying things have changed. Sunday's vote received a clean bill of health from international observers and went off without a hitch. Yes, corrupt politicians and sleaze-ridden oligarchs will likely remain as easy to find in Ukraine as four-inch stiletto heels, but there's no going back to the stifling days of Kuchma and his cronies. Give them enough vodka, and you can probably get Ukrainians to sing about that.
Maybe the most romantic thing about history is how little fairytale romance there really is.
1 Comments:
Only a Great People deserve a Great Leader. The history of the United States is of a People, who alternate between knowing their own greatness, and forgetting it in long stretches of petty selfishness and barbarity. I have no idea, how Americans settled on Abraham Lincoln, after Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan, in a moment of civil discord the scale and intensity of which boggles the imagination.
Maybe, it is a matter of taste, and the baby boomers, taken as a whole, have no taste.
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