This post originally appeared on The Cosmopolitan Globalist.

WHAT MAKES UKRAINIANS SPECIAL?

The largest humanitarian distribution center in the city of Dnipro in eastern Ukraine. Photo by darvik.photography@gmail.com

CHRISTINE QUIRK, NICE

Nothing, writes Christine Quirk, who has been watching Ukrainians do the hard work of figuring out how to be a democracy. We can do it, too.

If you’ve just tuned in, Ukrainians are superheroes who repel Russian invaders using tractors, Molotov cocktails, and javelin missiles. Led by a former comedian who has buoyed citizens’ spirits through live videos, consolidated NATO, and shamed the shameless in Europe, Ukrainians defend their nation with style and humor, despite overwhelming odds.

Ukrainians, for good reason, have inspired the world. But what makes them so special?

Nothing.

I have been working on democracy and governance programs in Eurasia since 2004, and in Ukraine since 2006. I’ve observed elections and worked on campaigns. As a public opinion research consultant for a variety of clients, I have watched and analyzed hundreds of focus groups over the last five years on topics ranging from the presidential election to LGBTQI rights to pension reform. I have heard ordinary people from every corner of the country describe their frustration and pride in the country’s democratic development. No matter how many grievances they have with their leaders—and they have many—that they vote in fair elections and can speak their minds freely means that Ukraine is a democracy.

It hasn’t always been that way.

In 2004 in what became the Orange Revolution, Ukrainians came to Maidan, in the center of Kyiv, to protest a rigged presidential election. Everyone thought Ukrainians were superhuman then, too. They weren’t. They were just good organizers who believed their democracy was worth fighting for.

The Orange Revolution didn’t happen by accident. It was hard work. Everyone knew the second round of the 2004 Presidential election would be rigged in favor of Viktor Yanukovich, who was the personal choice of term-limited incumbent Leonid Kuchma. Pre-election polls showed Yanukovich was unlikely to win without cheating. When the firehose of state administrative resources was directed toward ensuring a Yanukovich victory, democratic forces (the “Oranges”) stood no chance.

In preparation, throughout 2003 and 2004, Ukrainians worked with closely with the Serbian civil society group Otpor. Otpor had organized the non-violent effort to overthrow Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, a strategy that was based in part in how Poles fought against Martial Law in 1989. Using principals of non-violence laid out in influential texts such as Gene Sharp’s The Politics of Nonviolent Action, leaders of Ukrainian civil society groups like PORA! adapted the lessons to Ukraine’s context.

Activists knew they could use people’s outrage over having their vote stolen as an organizing tool. But they had a lot of work to do.

Every aspect, from the strategic to the tactical, was planned in advance. Pre-election, they had convinced rivals Victor Yushchenko and Yuliia Tymoshenko to campaign as a united front on behalf of the Oranges. Political activists worked to build behind-the-scenes support from legislators, local leaders and even a few oligarchs—those who hadn’t murdered anyone—who could be persuaded to switch sides. Domestic election monitors trained to document and report violations were deployed in every corner of the country. Lawyers strategized how to challenge the violations in the courts, knowing denied petitions would hand them a PR victory. Communications specialists were ready to keep Ukrainians informed about all the ways their votes were stolen. Grassroots organizers used clever tactics—called “softening the ground”—to reduce fear among Ukrainians by showing that a lot of people just like them were fed up too, and ready to take the risk of going to the streets in protest.

When Yanukovich was announced the winner despite election monitors’ reports of widespread fraud and exit polls that showed a clear victory by Yushchenko, the Oranges were ready to mobilize.

Despite the threat of violence, people from around the country came to Maidan. They knew that international and domestic election monitors said the election was neither free nor fair. They weren’t afraid because they saw how many others just like them were facing down police and soldiers. “They can’t shoot everyone” is an operating principle of non-violent protests. Critically, security services refused to shoot protesters, demonstrating the power of non-violence and possible sympathy within the services for the protestors’ message. Under pressure, oligarch-controlled Channel 5 switched sides to tell the truth about the stolen election. Momentum shifted and the Central Election Commission declared a do-over of the election. The compromise candidate few loved but most united behind, Viktor Yushchenko, won.

The Orange Revolution influenced Ukraine’s democratic trajectory in at least two important ways: First, it built the foundation of the civil society which is now supporting the war effort. It taught activists how to unite in broad coalitions, communicate effectively about their goals, and organize people to do the unsexy work of building a sustainable movement. Second, it gave young Ukrainians a deeply rooted sense of their ability to change a government that does not respect the will of the people.

Ukraine stagnated economically and politically in the following years. People became disillusioned with elected leaders who refused to address the issues they cared most about: a poor economy, lack of rule of law and pervasive corruption. Ukrainians hoped President Viktor Yanukovich, who had been legitimately elected in 2010, would keep his promise to sign the parliament-approved EU accession agreement. The agreement would push Ukraine to make the political and economic changes necessary to join in the future. It signalled that Ukraine wanted to take a western trajectory. Even then, a majority of Ukrainians supported it.

Under Kremlin pressure, Yanukovich refused to sign the agreement in November 2013. The country exploded in anger. The Revolution of Dignity—Ukraine’s second revolution in ten years—began.

The organizational foundation built for the Orange Revolution proved solid. The next generation of Ukrainians, who dreamt of a European future, and others who were fed up seeing different rules for the wealthy and well-connected again came to Maidan in the freezing cold. For months, volunteers provided the food, shelter and medical support that made such a large-scale urban protest possible in the middle of winter. To keep spirits up, top Ukrainian entertainers performed and priests held masses in a carnival atmosphere. Everyone knew why they were there: Ukraine’s democracy and European future was at stake.

The protest ended when Yanukovich fled to Russia, but not before snipers opened fire on a crowd of protesters, killing at least 120, and touching off violent street battles. Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa’s 2014 documentary Maidan shows the elaborate organization, the sense of common purpose, and the extraordinary violence of the Revolution of Dignity. Much will look familiar to those tuning in to Ukraine for the first time. Ukrainians punch back hard.

The Verkhovna Rada voted to oust the AWOL Yanukovich for failing to show up for work. A caretaker government was formed, which signed the EU accession agreement. Petro Poroshenko was elected with 55 percent of the vote in the May 2014 election.

In between and since the Orange Revolution and The Revolution of Dignity, Ukrainians have pressured their government to crack down on corruption. They’ve involved themselves in the boring machinery of local government by taking advantage of Ukraine’s decentralization policy, which has given local communities more control over budgets. Because of hard work of multiple NGOs that are fighting the battle against Russian disinformation from multiple angles, Ukrainians have become sophisticated consumers of online information. They vote in elections, even if they don’t like their options. It’s taken twenty years to get to this point, but the progress shows every day of this awful war.

Ukrainian democracy often takes two steps forward, one step back. But Ukrainians won’t let their authoritarian neighbor rob them of the democracy they’ve been working on for twenty years. The only thing that has surprised me over the last two weeks is that Putin didn’t know this.

When the war is over, Ukrainians will lead the effort to build democratic institutions in places like Belarus after Lukashenko and post-Putin Russia. They might even have some lessons for Americans and Europeans.

They’re not special. They’re just democrats.

Christine Quirk is public opinion research consultant who specializes in emerging and declining democracies. She has been working in Ukraine since 2006 for a variety of NGO, government and private sector clients. More information about her work and clients can be found at www.quirkglobalstrategies.com. She lives in France and tweets at @cequirk.

Paul Goble, over at Window On Eurasia, found a guide to civic activism in Russia on Live Journal (Russia’s main blog platform) from a blogger called Noblesse Oblige. Noblesse Oblige has come up with several principles for “Civic Activists in Russia who Don’t Want to Get Beat in the Head.” Paul has translated and I’ve copied his text, so blame him if you don’t like it (unfortunately, his links to the original don’t work).

These are by far the most useful guidelines for FSU civic activism that I’ve come across. More importantly, they are applicable to most of the countries in the FSU, not just Russia. I say that as someone who spent three years trying, without any measurable success, to encourage civic activism in Ukraine and Azerbaijan. My only quibble is that NO could have elaborated a little bit more. I’d love to read some examples of how these principles have or haven’t worked in real life.

What I really like about them is that they are lessons that can only be taught by someone who understands the political environment of the FSU at a native level and who has learned from personal experience that many of the principles taught by well-meaning “experts” from western Europe or America are pretty much useless. It might be retitled “Think like an Apparatchik!”

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There comes a time when election protesters need to sit down and shut up. In Georgia, that time has come. Let’s look at the data:

  • A credible, pre-election poll shows the president at 46% among the likeliest voters, with projected support at 52%;
  • An exit poll that put the president’s support at 54% [though with 28% refusing to participate, the results of this poll are highly suspect];
  • Two parallel vote tabulations (PVTs) conducted by respected NGOs that put the president’s support between 50% and 53%.
  • Multiple international observation missions deem the election “broadly democratic” (although not without citing serious shortcomings).

Official results (at this point) give the president 53%. I love a good conspiracy as much as the next person and former Soviets are better than anyone at spinning them, but sane people really need to look hard at how all these disparate data points converged to tell a very clear story: Mikhail Saakashvili exceeded 50% and avoided a run-off.

Instead of wasting their supporters’ energy and anger by making them stand outside in the freezing cold for no good reason, the opposition parties (such as they are) should focus their resources on organizing around Misha’s shortcomings as a leader and creating a viable alternative. They need to be thinking about the next election now (or, rather, yesterday). Continued carping about this one diminishes their own credibility both with the Georgian electorate and the international community.

One of the biggest strategic errors of parties in this part of the world is they are always fighting the last election, and never thinking about how to win the next one.

Additionally, in advance of the parliamentary elections, they should talk to the Ukrainians about creating a partisan election monitoring program (starting NOW). They need to have a legal, PR and grassroots strategy in place that documents, challenges, quantifies and systematically publicizes election violations. Even the Azadaliq coalition in Azerbaijan managed to get part of a program in place in 2005 (a lot of good it did them, but like the Georgians, before they met with the Ukrainians their idea of challenging the election was running everyone out in the streets to get their heads beaten in by the authorities).

Although I think the Georgian opposition doesn’t have a leg to stand on, I don’t think the President’s victory celebrations should obscure two very important points. First of all, this election had some serious problems, ranging from technical problems (according to IRI’s report) to instances of intimidation, problems with voter lists, lack of access to the media and abuse of administrative resources (cited by the ODIHR/International Mission).

While I do not believe the fraud had a substantial impact on the final results, could there have been enough at the margins to push Saakashvili over the 50% threshold? Certainly. Could voters have felt too intimidated to make any other choice? Absolutely. The latter is not the kind of manipulation that can be detected by exit polls or PVTs or measured by observers, but it needs to be taken into consideration.

Secondly, if I were Saakashvili and his advisers, I’d drink my Saparavi today and start tomorrow with a cold-eyed analysis of why an incumbent President who enjoys substantial administrative advantages and an exceptionally weak opposition barely managed to get majority support. That’s embarrassing and certainly no mandate. I was amazed at how deeply Georgians were troubled by November 7th, a traumatizing event to people who thought the country was on the road to democracy. I agree. The West also needs to keep the screws turned on Saakashvili. However, with a strategic pipeline located on Georgian soil, the latter suggestion is probably wishful thinking.

Did you like Russia’s election? Get used to that model because many of the same strategies and tactics will be used by Azerbaijan’s ruling party (YAP) in the October 2008 Presidential election. I doubt, however, that Ilham Aliyev will be satisfied with Unified Russia’s 64%.

Radio Free Europe wrote about five myths about the Russian election last week. Because the myths are the same, it provides an excellent platform to discuss the Azerbaijan election.

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