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Ukraine's election contest is a rebuke to autocracy By Chrystia Freeland Published: November 19 2004 20:20 | Last updated: November 19 2004 20:20 Politics in Ukraine, where voters will choose a new president on Sunday, remains an esoteric subject in western capitals. But in Moscow it is a hot topic. A few weeks ago, at a party at one of the hotels glittering on the edge of Red Square, I listened as Mikhail Zadornov, a reformist member of parliament and a former finance
minister, described his recent Kiev visit to an avid Russian journalist. ADVERTISEMENT
Mr Zadornov explained that the Ukrainian political and business establishment was uncertain whether Viktor Yanukovich, the pro-Russian prime minister backed by the current regime, or Viktor Yushchenko, a pro-western former prime minister, would win. The journalist was puzzled: if the state was supporting Mr Yanukovich, how could he lose? "You don't understand," Mr Zadornov replied, "Ukraine is not like here. It's not all already decided. It's a real race." Today it is still not decided, and that is why Ukraine's election is so important. The past few years have been depressing for those who believed the collapse of the Soviet Union meant democracy could finally come to that great swath of the globe inhabited by eastern Slavs and their eastern and southern former Soviet neighbours. The initial promise of the early 1990s has given way to increasingly authoritarian regimes; first in central Asia, then in Belarus and, most recently, in Russia. Instead of calling the-end-of-history the simplistic but also generous view that the whole world would soon be democratic and capitalist - students of the former Soviet Union have started to revert to bleaker theories about Russian cultural uniqueness; its historical unpreparedness for democracy; and even the alleged craving of its people for the strong hand of an autocrat. Ukraine's lively democratic contest is a powerful rebuke to that school of thought. It is not that the Ukrainian regime has been innocent of creating the sort of "managed democracy" that allowed Boris Yeltsin to pass the presidential mantle to a hand-picked, previously obscure, successor, and that Vladimir Putin has used to exclude everyone apart from his henchmen from the Russian political space. Kiev has practiced the usual tricks - using the media controlled by the state and by friendly business oligarchs relentlessly to promote its candidate; finding administrative pretexts, especially in the provinces, to block opposition rallies; harassing businesses and media outlets friendly to the opposition through the tax authorities and other government agencies. However, these techniques have not quite worked. In the first round of voting last month, irregularities prompted stiff protests from western observers, including the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe. But voter turnout was an enthusiastic 75 per cent. Moreover, ordinary Ukrainians did not just vote, they seemed committed making to sure each vote counted. "What I encountered were plumbers, teachers, pensioners, students, doctors, housewives and farmers all working together very hard to ensure that the elections in their polling stations were free and fair," reported Daniel Bilak, a Canadian lawyer who officially observed the first round of voting in Kherson, a depressed industrial city in southern Ukraine. "They knew that the results would likely be 'corrected' at the territorial level or higher. They didn't care. Most were determined to provide their neighbours with
an opportunity to cast their ballots, regardless of whom they supported." That grassroots determination is having a real effect on the Kiev elites. As a Russian oligarch with strong personal ties to Ukraine told me, the difference between Russia and Ukraine is that the Ukrainian authorities are scared - scared of western opinion, but most of all, scared of their own people. Their fear manifested itself most clearly late last month when the Central Electoral Commission publicly conceded, albeit after an unseemly delay, that in the first round of voting Mr Yushchenko narrowly won. For Moscow, Ukrainian pluralism has a powerful demonstration effect. It is easy for Russians, both the enfeebled liberals and the triumphant authoritarians, to shrug off the examples of Poland, the Baltic states and even Georgia - countries separated from Russia by a huge historical, religious and cultural gap. Comparisons with Ukraine are harder to dismiss. "The building of real democracy, with real choice in Ukraine, gives a chance for democracy in Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan," Mr Zadornov told me on the eve of the final ballot. "If the rules of the game are followed in Ukraine, that is a strong example that this is possible in the post-Soviet space." Most observers see Mr Putin's aggressive support for Mr Yanukovich as the latest Russian reassertion of its historical suzerainty over the territories once controlled by the Russian empire then the Soviet Union. But Mr Putin is also defending the political system he has done much to create and on which his power depends: increasing centralised state control over politics and the economy, un...