Rise and Fall of Democratic Expectations in Ukraine

Résumé du document

L'essai développe les multiples tentatives de démocratisation de l'Ukraine depuis la chute de l'URSS à travers des soulèvements populaires au succès mitigé. Il décrit également les facteurs économiques et géopolitiques qui ont contribué à la sclérose de l'Etat de droit en Ukraine durant les années 1990 et 2000. En effet, la position charnière de l'Ukraine entre l'Union européenne et la Russie, pays avec lequel elle partage une histoire multi-séculaire jonché d'épisodes sombres, a des conséquences non négligeables en politique intérieure. Enfin, un questionnement est porté sur l'appellation "Révolution orange" : au vu des changements ayant réellement eu cours au sein de l'Etat ukrainien dans les années 2000, peut-on parler d'une "révolution" ?

Extraits

[...] The actions of this elected government are controlled by independent institutions and guaranteed by a solid State Constitution. Several internal factors hinder Ukraine's possibility of becoming a democracy. This incapacity to develop proper rule led to the rise of democratic expectations in November 2004, in the population, but also among political and economic leaders, that hoped that the changes would benefit them. However, these hopes for change, from the top of the establishment and the lowest strata of the population should be tempered, bearing in mind the influence of foreign powers. [...]

[...] As the country was torn apart by struggles between elites and the adaptation of the institutions, the different identities of Ukrainians began to take a considerable importance for them, to the point of undermining the very idea of a Ukrainian nation. Worse still, this division finally led to the implosion of the eastern part of the country. The erosion of Ukrainian national identity : towards civil war ? Indeed, the country faces many challenges regarding its identity. It is not simple to define Ukraine's ethnic, linguistic and regional affiliations. To simplify, one might view Ukraine as having partly overlapping regional, linguistic, and ethnic cleavages. [...]

[...] Instead, a society of suspicion and distrust emerged, leading to profound social atomization. That is why, even after the independence, participation in social and political organization was very low, absence that persisted after 2004. Finally, economic inequalities between Kyiv, the three clans' regions (Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Donbas) and the rest of the country created grudges in the population. In the poorest parts of the country (mostly in the far south and far west), the government is accused of corruption and of targeted privatization to the benefit of the Red Directors, which impoverish those agrarian areas of Ukraine. [...]

[...] One case of a successful revolution is put forward by opponents in a given country to emulate people. Afterwards, opponents look for their counterparts for advices. On July 2th 2004, Yushchenko's Our Ukraine and the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc established the Force of the People, a coalition which aimed to win the November 2004 presidential election. The election took place in a charged atmosphere because of Yanukovych's team and the outgoing president's administration using their control of the government and state apparatus for intimidation and concrete threats: in September 2004, Yushchenko suffered dioxin poisoning under mysterious circumstances. [...]

[...] The concrete consequences of the Orange Revolution suggest that 2004 has not transformed the country as one might think. Issues and consequences inherited by Ukraine after the Orange Revolution Indeed, the Orange "Revolution" helped to accelerate democratic development but has also raised new problems in Ukraine as the country did not really change its modus operandi : oligarchs and the president's powers seem to be as influential as they were. Moreover, the uprisings highlighted the division between two Ukraine, raising the fear of a potential civil war. [...]