Oh bury me, then rise ye upfrom My Testament by Taras Shevchenko (trans John Weir)
And break your heavy chains
And water with the tyrants' blood
The freedom you have gained.
And in the great new family,
The family of the free,
With softly spoken, kindly word
Remember also me.
The United States is deeply disturbed by extensive and credible indications of fraud committed in the Ukrainian presidential election. We strongly support efforts to review the conduct of the election and urge Ukrainian authorities not to certify results until investigations of organized fraud are resolved. We call on the Government of Ukraine to respect the will of the Ukrainian people, and we urge all Ukrainians to resolve the situation through peaceful means. The Government bears a special responsibility not to use or incite violence, and to allow free media to report accurately on the situation without intimidation or coercion. The United States stands with the Ukrainian people in this difficult time.posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 10:31 PM on November 23, 2004
"Yushchenko, by contrast, is a civilized, intelligent man running on an anti-corruption, pro-European integration platform. People from the Russified east worry that they might be marginalized if Yushchenko were to win, but that fear is blown way out of proportion. So, the Yanukovich team has adopted several strategies. The most effective is the most simple: they'll probably just stuff the ballot boxes. Lest anyone doubt his democratic credentials, at the end of August Yanukovich was quoted saying, "I do not believe in exit polls. These are new technologies that will be tested in Ukraine for the first time. We do not know how to manipulate them."Yeah, this train wreck has been coming down the tracks for a while.
Yanukovich wouldn't have a prayer in a free and fair head-to-head election against Yushchenko. Not only does he charisma, but he is an ex-convict who has served time twice. In much of the US, as a convicted felon, he wouldn't even be allowed to vote for himself. Sixty-five percent of Ukrainians are against a former prisoner becoming president. Not a single person out of dozens I asked said they would vote for Yanukovich (of course, this was in relatively cosmopolitan Kiev and western Vinnitsa; the east might be different).Yet they failed to predict that anyone would do much about it...
Yushchenko, by contrast, is a civilized, intelligent man running on an anti-corruption, pro-European integration platform. People from the Russified east worry that they might be marginalized if Yushchenko were to win, but that fear is blown way out of proportion. So, the Yanukovich team has adopted several strategies. The most effective is the most simple: they'll probably just stuff the ballot boxes. Lest anyone doubt his democratic credentials, at the end of August Yanukovich was quoted saying, "I do not believe in exit polls. These are new technologies that will be tested in Ukraine for the first time. We do not know how to manipulate them."
Rzhavsky's hypothesis is that if Yanukovich wins, most Ukrainians will be convinced the election was a fraud and take to the streets. If Yushchenko wins, there will be powerful vested interests with too much to lose to give up quietly. However, this is the same country that couldn't even muster enough will to dethrone Kuchma after tapes implicated him in the beheading of muckraking journalist Gregory Gongadze. No matter how blatant the theft of the elections, few people believe Ukrainians will muster the political will necessary to overturn the results. Short of an extremely well organized strike like we saw in Georgia's Rose Revolution, the results of the election are likely to stand. It's not likely, as Ukraine is much bigger, there's much more money at stake, and the entrenched powers now know what to expect from the opposition.About Asparagirl's take on this: Sure, the Putin angle is important, but keep in in mind that the Ukrainian East is pretty much Russian-speaking and that the deciding factor behind the muscle that's working for Yanukovich is the fact that the local oligarchs are for him. The idea that Yanukovich is in any meaningful way a "commie-stooge" clashes with the fact that his more powerful supporters are in favour of a very unrestrained form of capitalism... Also the Ukraine was not annexed by the USSR, it was always part of (Czarist) Russia.
"Following the Russian Revolution in 1917, Ukraine was briefly independent in two states, then united, in 1920. By 1922 Ukraine was split between Poland and the Soviet Union. Soviet Ukraine experienced two famines (1921–22 and 1932–33)—the second of which was artificially created by the Soviet gouvenment, and termed the "Holodomor"—in which many millions died (scholarly estimates range from 4 to 10 million dead).I stand by the word "annexed"; to do otherwise is to pretend that they're somehow naturally a part of Russia (or Poland) or that they had any say in the matter.
In 1918 Poland invaded the Soviet Russia (the Soviet Union was not formed until 1922), claiming that all territory West of Kiev belonged to Poland, and attempting to incorporate Ukraine, and Lithuania into an East European Coalition. The Poles were repulsed, but some nationalists still claim Kiev as the Eastern border of their nation.
At the onset of World War II, in 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Poland and incorporated Western Ukraine into the Ukrainian SSR."
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And sorry for making a rilly rilly long FPP with paragraphs and too many links and stuff. But this is not just a case of some national election being contested somewhere. It's about the possibility of a resurgent Russia rigging elections and exerting military control over the former USSR's now-independent nations.
Solidarity protests are being held in many major Western cities tomorrow, for those with the time and inclination to join in.
posted by Asparagirl at 8:52 PM on November 23, 2004