Maidan Square

You hear a lot of cynicism about the Orange Revolution of 2004, especially allegations that it was orchestrated by the CIA and paid for in bribes. The CIA seems a bit beleagured these days to pull off a populist regime change. Our study tour group met Dr. Victor Nebozhenko, political scientist and director of ‘Ukrainian Barometer’. We asked how much bribery and manipulation were involved in gathering and keeping hundreds of thousands of peaceful protesters in Maidan Square for night after bitter winter night.

His response:

“You’ll keep answering this question all your life, in your own culture. A person can never know whether he’s the actor in someone else’s play, or whether he’s making the play. Either a person follows someone else’s rules or he follows his own heart.

As far as the bribes during the Orange Revolution are concerned, the bribes were passion, interest, hope. It was great. It was fun. If there were any bribes during the Orange Revolution, they were minor. They didn’t influence the general situation."

Four days after the revolution started in Maidan, there were many expensive, fancy new cars coming to Maidan Square. It looked like they came straight from the Frankfurt tradeshow to Maidan. They bought food for those people from the best restaurants of Kiev and gave it to the protestors. They left straight away. These were the business men who wanted to help.

I spent two months on Maidan, but in the role of a researcher. I was interested to know how it worked. I put my people everywhere, at the entrances and I kept track of how the mechanisms were evolving. It was very important for me to understand the extent ot which it is manageable and the extent to which it was self evolving.

When I came home in the afternoon, I saw my wife putting on an expensive fur coat, and with her girl friends getting into expensive cars and driving to Maidan. And they took my things – my socks and clothes. She said ‘you don’t need them, I’m bringing them to the people at Maidan’. Kiev people wanted to bring something to those people in the square. So I participated in the financing of the revolution, by not wearing those socks. Maybe that was a bribe.

A friend of mine lives in the centre of the capital, and he has an expensive apartment - $400 USD. He brought people from Maidan and accommodated them in his apartment. I don’t know whether you may call it a bribe or not. The cost of Maidan in financial values was about 1 million dollars. That was a huge show, and huge enterprise. You may call it a bribe. You may call it using the Russian technique. But it was great, it was beautiful.

ussia hadn’t been afraid of anyone since 1945, even American missiles. They were not afraid of the Cold War, of the poverty. And the only fear I saw in the eyes of those Kremlin guys was the fear of the Orange Revolution. I calmed them down. I said to them ‘you won’t haven anything like this. It’s purely Ukrainian.’ In this sense, Russia was very jealous, because they are not capable of resolving political conflicts without blood. They have specific historical archetypes. 

So the political historical role of Maidan is enormous. This is the first joint and free protest of the Ukrainian people. Even if the leaders of that revolution were not that good, even if the revolution ate its children, this remains a collective experience which is to the benefit of Ukraine.” 

Comments

[P O'Neill]

Completely off-topic, there was a Ukraine-themed edition of The Verb on BBC Radio 3 last saturday, including a reading of a specially-commissioned story by Andrei Kurkov. Sound file should be here till Saturday.

[Maria]

Not entirely off-topic, thanks for the link. We actually met Andrei Kurkov, and should have a post or two coming up about it.