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Has a nuclear nightmare created a more empowered electorate in the Ukraine?
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By Cynthia Annett | February 15, 2005
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Not long ago I had the good fortune to attend the last big party of the
"Orange Revolution." For weeks we had anxiously watched the news while
the Ukrainian presidential campaign unfolded, passing emails back and
forth trying to decide whether it would be safe for us to travel to
Kyiv. We were an odd assortment of colleagues, Americans and Russians
and Ukrainians, and there had been a lot of talk of the potential for
either anti-American or anti-Russian violence, depending on how the
election turned out.
But then we were actually there. Watching the fireworks go off while
rock music blared through downtown Kyiv, it was impossible not to feel
like a great weight had just been lifted off everyone's shoulders. Even
my Russian colleague broke into a smile at the sheer exuberance around
us. He commented that being on the streets during Viktor A.
Yushchenko's inauguration was like being in a time warp, taking him
back to the days of the pro-democracy demonstrations of the late 1980s
in Moscow. But he said he suspects that the Ukrainians missed out on
the euphoria of the original democratization movement because, as he
put it, "when everything fell apart they were left with Chernobyl". In
his opinion, that was an injustice and a terrible burden. We agreed
that what we were witnessing seemed almost as if an entire society was
emerging from a kind of decades-long post-traumatic stress.
The feeling we all had of catastrophe averted was legitimate. That the
protests had ended peacefully was a miracle; it could have ended badly.
The government had raw power on its side. People were being abducted,
murdered, thrown in prison, fired from their jobs and professionally
ruined, threatened by police and military violence...it was really ugly
and getting uglier.
On the side of the opposition were university professors, students,
environmentalists, musicians, journalists, housewives: an opposition
completely lacking the ability to defend itself from the military
intervention they expected to face. My Ukrainian friend and colleague
honestly feared for her life last fall when she agreed to work as an
election monitor in a prison. And there was every reason to believe
that the army would open fire on the protestors: the military was in
fact mobilized and the orders were given for them to go to Kyiv and
disperse the crowds.
There were two critical decisions that saved the opposition: the elite
special operations forces sided with the opposition at the last minute;
and the upper echelons of the military demanded written orders before
they would allow troops to open fire on civilians. Then, President
Leonid D. Kuchma bowed to intense international pressure and refused to
sign the orders and Prime Minister and presidential candidate Viktor F.
Yanukovich apparently realized it would not be a good move for his
campaign. So the order to open fire was never issued. But it got that
close.
Below the unassuming demeanor of the Ukranian opposition leaders there
is a toughness you don't see in most American liberals. That toughness
comes out of almost two decades of dealing with the aftermath of the
Chernobyl catastrophe. You can't overstate the importance of Chernobyl
in the lives of people in Kyiv. The kids who fueled the Orange
Revolution are the first generation born after that catastrophe, and no
one knows what the effects will be on their health, as they grow older.
The average lifespan in Ukraine, especially the area around Kyiv, is
far below that of most Europeans. So many people died in the initial
clean-up and so many are suffering from cancer and other health
problems from the continuing work of monitoring and containing the
radiation that there probably aren't any families that haven't been
affected.
Chernobyl is the Ukranian's version of Albert Camus' story "The
Plague", both literally and allegorically. After all, beyond the
obvious issue of the ongoing threat to their health, these were the
people who were lied to by the Soviet government during the cover-up of
the catastrophe in the 1980's and needlessly exposed to radiation
poisoning. I was humbled by the courage of the people I spoke with who
regularly worked within the exclusion zone and the reactor site itself.
Those were the people opposing Kuchma and Yanukovich and in reality
there isn't much that actually scares them anymore.
Chernobyl is something those folks live with on a daily basis and is
far from forgotten. That's why I don't think the political activism in
Ukraine is simply a reaction to historical events; I think it's a
reaction to current, lived reality.
With help from the international community, Ukraine is currently in the
process of building a new sarcophagus around the destroyed reactor and
will soon begin the process of removing the nuclear waste that still
threatens them. While this is going on they need to have confidence
that there won't be further accidents. And they need to be confident
that they are getting honest information about issues impacting their
health.
There's a pervasive desire in Kyiv to get on with life and make things
work again. Kuchma, and his successor Yanukovich, were not providing
them with confidence that things would move forward, and in the end
those two were defeated by a courageous and energetic grassroots
movement that was twenty years in the making.
What a party.
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