This page last updated: Friday, January 28, 2005, 9:48:16 AM EST

January 28, 2005
 
BAYHAM ON THE BAYOU: Freedom Rings in Kiev
 
by Mike Bayham
Huntington News Network Columnist
 
Louisiana (HNN) — Ukraine has known only a marginal degree of independence from Russia since it became a country over a decade. Once the second most important state in the USSR, its transformation from "Soviet republic" to a true sovereign republic has been a slow metamorphosis.
 
Though the red banner no longer flies in Kiev, Ukraine's relationship with Moscow has been similar to the Soviet Union's domineering influence with neighboring Finland during the first half of the Cold War, when the Soviet ambassador in Helsinki exercised as much authority as the upper echelon of the Finnish parliament.
 
The leadership of Ukraine went through great pains to appease Moscow and not to irritate Russian sensitivities. Though Russia and Ukraine are no longer part of the late Communist leviathan, the former still casts an imposing shadow over the new country, as was evident through Russian President Vladimir Putin's blatant interference in Ukraine's presidential elections.
 
The 2004 contest for Ukraine's presidency was in essence a referendum on whether the country would maintain the status quo or begin to creep away from Russia's sphere of influence as the race pitted two individuals who represented Ukraine's ideological dichotomy, with the Kremlin's favorite, Viktor Yanukovych, locked into a race against the leader of the "sovereign Ukraine" movement Viktor Yushchenko.
 
The vote had significant implications for both Ukraine and Russia, with partisans sympathetic to keeping a strong connection to Moscow engaging in thuggish activities that ranged from poisoning Yushchenko to massive vote fraud, with one pro-Yanukovych area posting a voter turnout of 127%.
 
However the people of Ukraine rejected the wholesale election rigging that happened in the eastern part of the country, where the highest concentration of ethnic Russians reside and polled strongly for Prime Minister Yanukovych. Clad in orange, the color of Yushchenko's political movement, the citizenry refused to tolerate a reversion to the old ways of having an unelected government running things in a post-Soviet Ukraine.
 
What transpired in Ukraine was not dissimilar from Berlin 1989, where the populace united for themselves a division that was imposed on them by outsiders. What transpired in Ukraine in November-December 2004 was a total revolution.
 
During the presidential campaign, the state media served as an arm of the government establishment that dutifully covered Yanukovvch's candidacy in a most positive light while ignoring that of Yushchenko. In the midst of the election protest, Ukraine's media bolted to Yushchenko's camp and issued a mea culpa for their biased reporting and pledged to no longer "tell the government's lies".
 
Perhaps contaminated with the zeal of the populace and/or recognizing the importance of the times, a branch of the government also joined in as the country's judiciary threw out the tainted election and ordered a second election while a far less reluctant parliament acceded to popular demands by enacting electoral reforms that would limit the corrupt practices that spoiled the last contest.
 
With new election safeguards in place and the world bearing witness, Ukrainians chose to cast their lot with the West and secured a sense of sovereignty by giving Yushchenko a majority. In a comical side-note, the one-time President-elect Yanukovych tried to appeal the new election due to irregularities but the Ukrainian Supreme Court dismissed the move by Putin's tool.
 
The freedom-hungry Ukrainian people received far more than they could have dreamed as byproducts of this historic movement. In addition to the ascension of a dynamic leader who will guide the nation in a new direction, they can now enjoy the fruits of having a free media that will no longer serve as the propaganda apparatus of the state and a feeling of national self-confidence in knowing that they did not meekly inherit their liberty but seized it for themselves.
 
Through the protests and the election of Yushchenko, Ukraine effectively seceded from the former USSR thus ending the era of putting the concerns of Moscow before those of Kiev.
 
Ronald Reagan often spoke of the irrepressible power of freedom; how it can inspire men and women to risk everything to achieve it. The triumph of the "Orange Revolution" in one of the last outposts of Russian imperialism is a testament that the strength of this spirit should not be underestimated.
 
Ukraine, and fellow former Soviet republic Georgia, where a similar popular revolt preceded by a few months the one in Kiev, should give hope to those souls toiling in regions of the world where autocracy still thrives.

Mike Bayham is author of Right From The Bayou: The Opinions of a Conservative Cajun, which is available at iUniverse.com.

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