Orange Revolution Can’t Happen Here By Boris Kagarlitsky

www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2004/12/28/009.html

Moscow Times, Tuesday, December 28, 2004. Page 8.

The Orange Revolution in Ukraine has inspired hope in the hearts of the liberal opposition in Russia and struck fear in the heart of the Kremlin. The last few weeks saw countless seminars, round tables and discussions dedicated to a single topic: Could it happen here? Liberal publicists are naturally insisting Russians learn from their Slavic brothers. State ideologues are terrifying the public and each other with the revolutionary phantoms conjured by gangs of young people in the pay of the Soros Foundation.

A real panic seems to have hit the government. Kremlin experts immediately attempted to figure out who the Russian version of Viktor Yushchenko might be. Former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov almost fit the bill: Like Yushchenko, he was also fired from his post and was none too pleased about it. Though Kasyanov never announced any political ambitions publicly, authorities weren’t about to take chances. Temuraz Karchava, the president of the Natsional VIP Club and Kasyanov’s personal financial manager, wound up behind bars. This may have been a subtle little hint from the administration.

The fear of exported revolution was not the only reason for panic, however. The Kremlin politicos who blew it in Kiev managed to rack up a huge amount of expenses. Now they have to answer for more than their diplomatic failures. There could be unpleasant questions as to where all the money went. The easiest excuse is to refer to some almighty power behind the Orange Revolution. The absolute evil embodied by the Americans can come into any country, plop down big bucks and organize a revolution in five minutes. Russian politicos can then say that in the fight against absolute evil, even the huge amount of money dedicated to the Ukrainian elections proved too little: We’re talking about absolute evil here! We need more money!

At the same time, a simple comparison of the situation in Ukraine and Russia reveals that there is no reason to expect a repeat of the Orange Revolution. First of all, in Ukraine and in Georgia, neo-liberal reforms were implemented more gradually and less completely than in Russia. Ukrainian society has remained extremely Soviet. Ukraine is less capitalist, resembling Russia in the mid-1990s. This defined the nature of the mass mobilizations on both sides. Viktor Yanukovych’s supporters in the east were still able to use Soviet methods. The directors of various enterprises could control their employees and get them to demonstrations in the finest Soviet style. The crowds in Kiev, on the other hand, resembled Moscow’s passionate mass demonstrations of the early 1990s.

On both sides, economic status had little effect on individuals’ political decisions. In Kiev, wealthy playboys and impoverished pensioners praised democracy side by side, while in the east, miners risking their lives for pitiful pay and the directors embezzling their wages protested in chorus. A similar situation is difficult to imagine in Russia, which has already gone through capitalism’s school of hard knocks.

On the other hand, Russia’s political system is much stricter than Ukraine’s. There would be no shocked protest of rigged elections, as no serious opposition candidates are allowed to participate in elections in the first place. The Russian Yushchenko would not even be allowed to raise his head on the political scene.

Does this mean that the panic ruling the Kremlin is completely groundless? Not at all. To understand it, however, we need to turn away from political science and do some Freudian psychoanalysis. The crisis in Ukraine allowed the Russian political elite to express its subconscious fears. The elite has been divided, and the united bloc that brought President Vladimir Putin to power has fallen apart. Rival political factions are raring up to battle each other, and they will not be using democratic or “orange” methods. Cruel and shadowy people will fight this fight, and it will be far more frightening than any Orange Revolution.

Boris Kagarlitsky is director of the Institute for Globalization Studies and a columnist for The Moscow Times.