Kiev’s ‘orange revolution’ coincided almost to the day with the first anniversary of the ‘revolution of roses’ in Tbilisi. The past year was also marked by the ‘mini-revolutions’ in Georgia’s breakaway republics of Adzharia and Abkhazia. The wave of change in the post-Soviet space is gaining momentum and may well become for Russia and other members of the Commonwealth of Independent States a repetition of the ‘velvet revolutions,’ which shook Eastern Europe in the late 1980s. Those years saw the end of an epoch which had exhausted its historical potential; the leaders were not susceptible to change, and even their most loyal associates chose not to defend them. Similarly, in November 2003, the Tbilisi police, as well as the security forces of former Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze, stepped aside before the crowd.

Yet, although there is a temptation to perceive the ‘orange revolution’ in Kiev and the ‘revolution of roses’ in Tbilisi as a continuation of the East European ‘velvet revolutions,’ in reality they are not. Unlike Prague of 15 years ago, the post-Soviet mutiny is not ripening amongst dissidents, intellectuals and students, nor are the oppositional parties responsible for setting up the tents in the central squares. Naturally, no changes are possible without a wave of popular discontent with the government, but genuine tectonic changes take place inside the ranks of the ruling elites.

A change of power in conditions of free competition offers a chance for all groups and political forces to fulfill their ambitions. The reluctance of the ruling regime, however, to relinquish its power, or extend its existence through a successor, dashes these hopes. The realization that there is an absence of prospects generates resistance, in which street support acts as a trump card. The bureaucratic revolutions of the early 21st century are not popular uprisings that change the social order of a country. In a way, they are new versions of the bourgeois revolutions of the 17th-18th centuries, as the most active part of the ruling class feels that the frameworks of the existing political and economic system are already too narrow for it.

THREAT FROM WITHIN

The post-Soviet model of power rests on the controlled transfer of authority; this is the essence of ‘managed democracy.’ These kinds of systems are very stable, and the millstones of the nomenklatura mechanisms easily crush any charismatic amateur. Incidentally, this is one of the reasons why the post-Soviet opposition is so unimpressive. Public oppositional activity appears to be so hopeless for successful self-expression that those who could theoretically become a Russian VЗclav Havel or Lech Walesa [Czech and Polish dissidents turned presidents] prefer to engage themselves in other spheres instead – business, science or journalism, or to simply emigrate.

The threat to bureaucratic stability, however, lies in the depths of the regime itself. Such regimes, even those that have succeeded in building ‘power verticals,’ have to constantly realign their elements to maintain an inner balance. This policy works for some time, until the regime launches “Operation Successor,” which becomes a critical factor. The selection of candidates to the role of successor is a very painful process. Inside the system a new elite is growing, which does not want to continue playing by the old rules of the game.

Some members of the new elite (like Mikhail Saakashvili, a formally loyal follower of Shevardnadze) simply do not have enough patience to wait for their official nomination. Others (like Boris Yeltsin, Akezhan Kazhegeldin, Kazakhstan’s ex-prime minister, or Victor Yushchenko) have been cast aside by the authorities. Still others (like Chisinau Mayor Serafim Urekyan) feel the regime’s instability and go into opposition, while maintaining their high posts.

The challenge sent to the authorities may be quite moderate, but it becomes a clear signal for the nomenklatura. The stronger the regime’s pressure and the greater the risk to give away its intentions, the more tensely the nomenklatura waits for this signal. The former Minister of Foreign Economic Relations of Belarus and former ambassador to Latvia and Finland, Mikhail Marinich, was barred from participating in the 2001 presidential elections in his country and later arrested – but not because he stood a chance to win. This was a clear signal to the Belarusian elite that said: “Don’t even think about challenging us!” In countries where disloyalty is not suppressed like this, everything may collapse overnight, as happened in Adzharia. The outward signs of Aslan Abashidze’s absolute rule did not save him from the panic flight of the nomenklatura, an event which decided his fate.

In fact, the smooth transfer of power has so far only occurred in Russia and Azerbaijan. In Central Asia and Belarus, i.e. in countries where the construction of the ‘power vertical’ has been completed, their leaders have guaranteed for themselves a lifelong right to re-election. This right, however, does not guarantee their eternal rule because the local bureaucracy, placed into such narrow constraints, is experiencing the same inner processes that occur in countries with freer systems.
Shevardnadze paid a high price for the inexcusably long delay in drawing up a cast of candidates to be his successor. This might have served as a lesson for Leonid Kuchma, but the Ukrainian president did not have enough time to make use of it, despite the fact that the looming succession problem had been realized in Kiev almost three years before, when the ruling regime’s vote-rigging powers failed to prevent the Yushchenko-led Our Ukraine coalition from winning parliamentary elections. It became clear then that the regime would not be able to create a serious challenge to Yushchenko in the remaining time. Nevertheless, Kiev considered several options. One of them was the “Russian way” – nominating Vladimir Radchenko, the then head of Ukraine’s Security Service, as Kuchma’s successor. Kuchma, however, rejected that option, as he doubted the would-be successor’s loyalty.

A year before the elections, Kuchma sought out the Kremlin’s reaction to his possible third presidency. Moscow, tired after repeatedly explaining itself to its Western partners with regard to another “fraternal” president (Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus), did not agree to that variant. Thus, Ukraine began to implement a scenario of its own: Kuchma would take the post of prime minister, whose powers would be essentially extended, while the functions of a new president would be reduced to representative ones. Characteristically, the political reform, in accordance with which this scenario was planned to be carried out, was thwarted by Victor Yanukovich who was not interested in playing the role of an understudy.

Three years ago, studying the pre-election lists of Kuchma’s and Yushchenko’s parties – the real and potential parties of power – was a captivating occupation. While Kuchma’s list would include a governor, for example, Yushchenko’s list would include a vice-governor or ex-governor. Things were the same with ministers and big business figures. Kuchma’s list included an oligarch who pinned his hopes only on the incumbent authorities, while Yushchenko’s list included a candidate for the oligarchs, whose only obstacle to the top of big business was the ruling regime. The new president’s closest associate, Petro Poroshenko, was, incidentally, one of the founders of the Party of Regions which was behind Victor Yanukovich. In other words, the new people coming to power in Ukraine are not terribly different from those whom they are replacing. The situation is not the same as Vaclav Havel replacing GustЗv HusЗk in Czechoslovakia, for example, or even Algirdas Brazauskas replacing Petras Griskevicius and Ringaudas Songaila in Lithuania.

TWO PROJECTS

The extensive record of the post-Communist transformations has shown that the desire to be free from external dependence is the most efficient stimulus for liberal reforms, which, however, are very painful. “Away from the empire!” was the main slogan of the ‘velvet revolutions’ in Eastern Europe.

The takeovers of power in all the republics of Transcaucasia in the early 1990s took place under the same slogan, while the first president of Ukraine, Leonid Kravchuk, came to power largely due to the support of the nationalist Rukh movement. Rukh was not remotely a liberal movement, nor were all the other people’s fronts, including Lithuania’s Sajudis. Unlike regular parties, these people’s fronts do not need profound programs or an intelligible ideology. They are created with only one purpose: to defeat the ruling regime; thereafter, they become the material for normal political structures, as happened in Eastern Europe and the Baltics. Occasionally, however, this process fails, as was the case in Ukraine, Belarus or Transcaucasia, where the initial impulse of escape proved not enough to make a breakthrough into a new reality.

Developments in the autumn of 2004 illustrate what transformation this anti-imperial impulse has undergone. The Ukrainian political scientist Oles Doniy believes that the ‘orange revolution’ is not what is generally viewed as the conclusion of the political process which began with the student protests in 1990, and continued with the protest movement under the slogan “Ukraine without Kuchma” in 2000-2001. Doniy believes that the recent developments are a continuation of a very old competition between two projects in Ukraine – “Russian” and “Ukrainian.”

The Ukrainian consciousness is traditionally divided. On the one hand, the Ukrainians want to regain the independence they once lost; on the other, they gravitate toward empire, in which Ukraine was always a cornerstone and an important component (but never a colony). Accordingly, the “Ukrainian project” was until recently devised to spite Moscow: the Ukrainian language as a form of self-assertion, together with the endless debates on language, the Crimea and the Black Sea fleet. The “Russian project” was intended to preserve Ukraine’s former orientation to Russia and thus reflected the habits of the post-Soviet nomenklatura and the peculiarities of its business.

At the same time, both projects are actually Ukrainian, and their presence does not mean the country’s division, although the problem of its political and geographical heterogeneity does exist. These projects also have a rather distant relation to the problem of language and self-identity which, in turn, no longer depends on the language very much. Between the censuses of 1989 and 2001, the number of Ukrainian citizens who consider themselves Ukrainians increased by three million people, although the majority is still Russian-speaking.

The Yushchenko-Yanukovich confrontation in 2004 was a remake of the 1994 confrontation between Kravchuk and Kuchma. The rivalry between the former Ideology Secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party, who accidentally became an exponent of the interests of the more nationalistic part of the elite, and a representative of the former Soviet military-industrial complex, who inspired hopes for the revival of a great country, ended in Kuchma’s victory (i.e. in favor of the Russian cultural project). Kuchma’s role in that project was very negative, as Russian influence in Ukraine began to be strongly associated with a corrupt and undemocratic regime due to his policy. Therefore, businesspeople and representatives of the bureaucracy who were not needed by this regime, yet sought their political self-determination, inevitably came to the only existing alternative – the “Ukrainian project.”

Today, competition between the two projects continues, but their content is changing. As the Ukrainian state is developing, the “Ukrainian project” is gradually becoming valuable per se, while the issue of confrontation with Moscow is receding into the background. Those who voted for Yushchenko proper, or simply against Yanukovich, did not necessarily vote “against Moscow.” Similarly, the supporters of Yanukovich were not casting a vote “for Moscow.” The “Ukrainian project” is gradually being transformed, albeit with difficulty, into a civil state project. The “Russian project” is not against the Ukrainian state either, but it relies on other, more Soviet principles of state construction.

Whereas ten years ago the “Russian project” was advanced by Leonid Kuchma, for whom Moscow was a habitual center of governance, Yanukovich and his business patron Rinat Akhmetov, the leader of the Donetsk group, are guided by other motives. They owe all their achievements exclusively to independence, or perhaps to two kinds of independence – that of Kiev from Moscow and that of Donetsk from Kiev; they understand perfectly well that the second kind of independence would have been impossible without the first one. Their business is based on subsidies from Kiev, on the monopoly blessed by Kiev (on mutually advantageous terms, of course), and dumping exports to the West. Such things are impossible in Russia today.

And even in Donetsk, where the people are believed to support the idea of reunification with Russia, things are not quite that simple. The majority of Donetsk residents consider themselves Ukrainians. Some time ago, it was at the Donetsk coal mines that Rukh and even the Helsinki Group set up their first East Ukrainian organizations. Miners came to Kiev to express their solidarity with student protests and even warned Kuchma against attacks on Yulia Timoshenko, the then vice-premier in charge of the fuel/energy sector, who decided to bring order to the coal-mining industry.

Yushchenko’s victory has sparked a color-changing process among the bureaucracy. Businesses, sidelined by the previous regime, have sensed an opportunity for restoring their positions. Almost every regional leader who stood with the “white-blue” team of Yanukovich-Akhmetov now has an “orange” opponent. Yanukovich is opposed by the leader of the Donbass Industrial Union, Vitaly Gaiduk, for example, while the “white-blue” chief of the Kharkov administration, Yevgeny Kushnarev, is opposed by Kharkov Mayor Vladimir Shumilkin, and so on. The new elite, which was formed under the conditions of Kuchma’s Byzantine system, is gradually discovering that a state where one need not spend energy on endless maneuvering between clans and interests offers much more political opportunities.

THE NOMENKLATURA’S  NEW GOAL

The “contest of projects,” like the one in Ukraine, is actually occurring in all the CIS countries, and a preference is being given to an ideology which until recently could be called “national,” but which now could be described as a “civil-state” ideology. Since the choice of alternatives is not wide, these projects objectively gravitate toward the European model. In the early 1990s, the nomenklatura realized what benefits that sovereignty (a “flight from empire”) could bring; likewise, today the bureaucrats have realized the opportunities they will have if their state successfully develops and is recognized by the West as a “friend.”

Late February will see elections in Kyrgyzstan, where the opposition is wearing yellow and officials are rapidly growing “yellow,” too. The outcome of the elections in that country, however, is not evident. In Moldova, by contrast, only a miracle can save the ruling Communists from the “yellow-orange” offensive, led by Chisinau Mayor Serafim Urekyan. In Kazakhstan, many veteran members of the elite are ready to support a nomenklatura riot. The Belarusian nomenklatura is waiting for a signal, as well, and President Alexander Lukashenko is going to encounter great difficulties at the next presidential elections, despite the perfect ‘power vertical’ which he has built; who will lead the opposition is the only thing that remains unclear. Mikhail Marinich will be released from prison only in five years, however, no one expects the “Belarusian project” to be victorious so soon anyway.

Political scientist Dmitry Furman once wittily described the CIS as a “community of presidents helping each other.” They could engage in heated debates over any issue, but all their differences – be it the Pankisi Gorge or the Black Sea Fleet – moved into the background whenever the phantom of an “Operation Successor” began to loom above any one of them. The breach made in this united front by Mikhail Saakashvili is steadily widening, and one should not blame Russian political technologists or Kremlin strategists for this situation, as this process is absolutely objective. From a foreign policy perspective, there is nothing dramatic about it. After all, what Moscow sees as the ghost of future isolation may turn out – if Moscow displays a sound approach – a stimulus for catching a slowly departing train, especially since there are no other stimuli in Russia for change, nor is there a “contest of projects.” On the contrary, all possible alternatives have receded into the background, giving way to only one project – that of a vague revenge. Only the pickets of protesting pensioners can be viewed as a resemblance to something “orange,” however much it may seem like a parody. Such movements can hardly serve as a decent political niche for equidistant products of the nomenklatura disintegration.

Thus, Russia may end up being one of the last post-Soviet countries to undergo a bourgeois revolution, and even then it will be a managed revolution, just like the present democracy.