What Doesn't Kill Ukraine ARGUMENT W h at D o e s n 't Kill U krain e I f it survives the current crisis in one piece, Kiev will have a new lease on its democratic future. BY MARI A POPOVA , OXANA SHEVEL U MARCH 1 2 , 2 0 1 4 kraine's territorial integrity currently hangs in the balance. With Russian troops occupying Crim ea and a referendum on secession scheduled for March 16, the form er Soviet republic m ay not em erge from the current crisis territorially intact. If it does, however, Ukraine will have a new lease on its dem ocratic future. In its 23 years of independence, Ukraine has struggled with both state- and nation-building. Regional cleavages -- between the predom inantly Russianspeaking east and predom inantly Ukrainian -speaking west -- have m ade for an often dysfunctional and polarized political process. Paradoxically, the current crisis has gone a long way toward bridging these divides, with ousted President Viktor Yanukovych's fierce repression, and now Putin's incursion into Crim ea, uniting Ukrainians from across the country in support of the rule of law and civil and political rights. This, in turn, has opened up a new window of opportunity for dem ocracy-building. This window of opportunity, however, has been largely obscured by a m isreading of the origins of the crisis. Ukraine did not end up in the current m ess, as m any have suggested, because the western and central parts of the country refused to be governed by a dem ocratically-elected president with a support base in the east. The western part of the country already had a turn at governing the country, from 20 0 5 to 20 10 , with Viktor Yushchenko as president and Yulia Tym oshenko as the prim e m inister. When Tym oshenko lost a free and fair election to Yanukovych in 20 10 , the transition of power was sm ooth. In 20 12, despite growing concerns over the president's authoritarian m ethods and the chipping away of the m ain dem ocratic achievem ents of the post -Orange Revolution period, the opposition participated in parliam entary elections and accepted the victory of Yanukovych's Party of Regions. The opposition in the center and west of the country did not attem pt to use civil unrest to constrain the president's ability to govern. There were two policy-m otivated protests -- over taxes in 20 10 and over language policies in 20 12 -- but both ended quickly and peacefully. A third policy-m otivated protest, which began on Nov. 21, 20 13 in response to Yanukovych's refusal to sign an EU association agreem ent, would have likely fizzled out in less than two weeks had it not been for the governm ent's harsh response (by late Novem ber, student organizers had already decided to leave Maidan, or Independence Square, in Kiev). But over the course of several days in late Novem ber and early Decem ber, a series of incidents of police brutality and seem ingly random persecution reinvigorated the protests, expanding the num ber of people on the streets exponentially. Thus, Eurom aidan is actually a m isnom er. Both the tim ing of the popular m obilization and the polling data (m ore on that soon) show that the protests weren't fundam entally about the unsigned EU association agreem ent -- or even about western Ukraine's opposition to Yanukovych. Above all, the protests were m otivated and sustained by police brutality; extra-judicial persecution in the form of kidnappings, torture, and killings; and arbitrary crim inal prosecutions of hundreds of protesters. Fig. 1 shows the results of surveys conducted over the last three m onths by Ukraine's prem ier pollster, the Kiev International Institute of Sociology, confirm ing this point. Throughout the three m onths of protests, the m ain m otivating factor that brought protestors to Maidan was the repression that the governm ent perpetrated against protest participants. An EU-oriented foreign policy and the ousting of Yanukovych were only secondary goals. Widespread opposition to police brutality ended up m itigating, rather than exacerbating Ukraine's long-standing regional divisions. The m ajority of easterners and southerners did not express support for the protests in Kiev, but neither did they actively support Yanukovych at any point during the protests. There were no sizable pro-governm ent rallies and no easterners and southerners -- with the exception of paid thugs -- flocked to Kiev to stage counter-protests. On the contrary, som e traveled to Kiev to join Eurom aidan; polls indicate that som ewhere between one-fifth and one quarter of the protesters hailed from the east and south. Others joined local Eurom aidan protests throughout the southeast. In the waning days of the Yanukovych regim e, local Eurom aidan activists in Dnipropetrovsk and Sum y in the east and Odessa and Zaporizhya in the south storm ed regional adm inistration buildings and even lay on train tracks to stop local m ilitary reinforcem ents from traveling to Kiev to suppress the protests. Between 23 and 35 percent of poll respondents from the south and east of the country blam ed the governm ent for escalating the conflict, and between 19 and 27 percent viewed them as a response to corruption and police brutality. I n other w ords, the use of excessive force and arbitrary prosecutions against the protesters started to build national http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/03/12/what_doesn_t_kill_ukraine_why_kiev_could_emerge_stronger_from_crisis[3/13/2014 6:24:10 PM] What Doesn't Kill Ukraine consensus around the importance of rule of law . In other words, the use of excessive force and arbitrary prosecutions against the protesters started to build national consensus around the im portance of rule of law. Ukrainian nation-building was further advanced by the Russian incursion into Crim ea. Pro-Russian dem onstrations in southeastern cities like Odessa, Donetsk, and Kharkiv -- attended not only by locals but also reportedly by Russian citizens, bussed in from the neighboring regions of Belgorod and Rostov -- were countered by substantially larger dem onstrations for a united Ukraine. Polls taken im m ediately prior to the Russian invasion showed that only a m inority of southeasterners supported joining the Russian Federation -- 26 percent in the eastern regions and 19 percent in the southern regions. Outside of Crim ea, where 41 percent of respondents supported secession, the highest support for joining Russia, 33 percent, was in Donetsk. Southeastern oligarchs who previously backed Yanukovych have also spoken out in support of the central governm ent, underscoring the fact that Kiev does not face creeping secessionism in this part of the country. Two notable oligarchs, Serhiy Taruta and Ihor Kolom oisky, accepted appointm ents as regional governors after Yanukovych's ouster. The fact that the current crisis has actually am eliorated the regional divide presents Kiev with a unique opportunity to advance dem ocratization by calling early elections, not just for the presidency, but also for the parliam ent and for local councils. After the tectonic shift in the political landscape brought about by recent events, the electorate should be given a chance to select new representatives. New parliam entary elections would not only increase the legitim acy of the post Yanukovych governm ent in Kiev, but could also foster healthier political com petition. In the years since independence, dom estic political com petition has been driven too m uch by the east -west divide, and not enough by the kinds of econom ic and social issues that divide parties in m ature dem ocracies. With the vast m ajority of Ukrainians united on the question of sovereignty and against Russia -dom inated geopolitical projects, however, political com petition can finally begin to develop along social and econom ic issues. This in turn m akes it m ore likely that politicians will be judged by their ability to address corruption and im prove the econom y, rather than whether they are on the "right" side of the cultural and geopolitical divide. At the sam e tim e, the im plosion of Yanukovych's Party of Regions, which has dom inated the country's southeast for the past decade, opens the way for new political players. This m ay strengthen voter and civil society activism in a region where, due to one-party dom inance, civil society has been m ore passive. A new political party representing southeastern interests in Kiev would likewise guard against a sense of disenfranchisem ent that could breed radicalization and separatism . Elections are also likely to reduce the electoral appeal of far -right parties, because voters will no longer view supporting them as a protest vote. The Eurom aidan protests also left the governm ent with a m andate to strengthen civil and political rights and work towards strengthening the rule of law. To this effect, the new governm ent should establish a South African -style truth and reconciliation com m ission to investigate the violence that occurred over the last three m onths. It should not turn these issues over to Ukraine's perennially weak and politicized courts, which have been thoroughly discredited by their role in the protests -- jailing protesters on flim sy evidence and then releasing them in batches at the executive's beck and call. The pressure on judges during this period was so pervasive and effective that the one judge who pushed back against the Yanukovych governm ent was quickly forced to resign. Against this backdrop, any future court decisions that are in line with the preferences of the current governm ent will be perceived as illegitim ate by the opposition and as a continuation of the tradition of politicized justice. Com m itting any decisions with political ram ifications to the judiciary will therefore deepen the rule of law problem and inflam e regional tensions. Instead, the governm ent should pursue slow and careful reform s to depoliticize the judiciary and the prosecution. Equally im portant, the new governm ent should keep in m ind that the protests did not give them a m andate to pursue a m ajor change in geopolitical course. They should not touch the Russian Black Sea Fleet question with a 10 -foot pole and neither should they bring up the question of NATO m em bership any tim e soon. A poll from early March suggests that in a hypothetical referendum on EU accession, 62 percent of Ukrainians would vote in favor -- a slight increase from 55 percent who said they would do so in February. But again, any m ove towards the European Union has to be careful. It is possible that the boost in European popularity is a product of the EU association with lower corruption and stronger rule of law, rather than any change in Ukraine's geopolitical or cultural orientation. But if the new governm ent m ust m ove slowly and deliberately, a window of opportunity for the dem ocratic project has nonetheless been opened up. Because of the unifying force of the recent crisis, the central governm ent can now afford to pursue policies -- such as elevating the status of the Russian language and giving regions m ore autonom y -- that were previously perceived as dangerous due to their potential to dilute national identity, weaken central governm ent control, and underm ine Ukrainian sovereignty. Language policies are a case in point. Polls show that am ong the three m ost com m only discussed options for language policies (Ukrainian as the only state language with Russian having no form al status, Russian as a second state language on par with Ukrainian, and Russian language officially having the status of a regional language in regions where the m ajority of the population wants it) the third option is the m ost popular. Forty-seven percent of respondents prefer m aking Russian a regional language, whereas only 19 and 28 percent of respondents prefer the other two options, respectively, according to a 20 13 poll by the Kiev International Institute of Sociology. Finally, stronger national unity and increased support for anti-corruption and rule of law initiatives can, in the m edium -term , facilitate m uch -needed and m uch -delayed econom ic reform s. Ukraine needs to reduce its dependency on Russian gas, which in turn necessitates m odernizing its outdated industrial plants. Structural reform s would be undoubtedly painful for the population, but what better tim e to call on Ukrainians to sacrifice econom ically than after a Russian invasion, and after the m ind -blowing plunder of the state treasury during four years of Yanukovych rule? What Russia views as punishm ent -- annulling an agreed -upon gas price reduction and halting nuclear fuel supplies to Ukrainian power plants -- actually gives the new governm ent political cover for doing what needs to be done anyway to save the econom y. With Western states and donors focused on the crisis and offering substantial aid -- such as the $ 15 billion offered by the European Union, plans to scrap tariffs for Ukrainian goods on the EU m arket, and the aid package recently approved by the U.S. Congress -- Ukraine m ay be in a better position to m ove ahead with dem ocratic and econom ic reform s than at any other point since independence. With the West willing to help and its citizens willing to endure som e econom ic hardship, there's no telling what the new governm ent in Kiev can accom plish. DIMITAR DILKOFF/ AFP/ Getty Im ages http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/03/12/what_doesn_t_kill_ukraine_why_kiev_could_emerge_stronger_from_crisis[3/13/2014 6:24:10 PM]