East European Politics and Societies 2011 Kuzio 88 113

Political Culture
and Democracy
East European Politics and

Societies
Volume 25 Number 1
February 2011 88-113
2011 Sage Publications
10.1177/0888325410388410
http://eeps.sagepub.com
hosted at
http://online.sagepub.com
Ukraine as an Immobile State

Taras Kuzio
Johns Hopkins University
The 2004 Orange Revolution and election of opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko,
who had a stellar reputation in previous positions as National Bank Chairman and
Prime Minister, was viewed as a new era in Ukrainian politics, ushering in deep seated
reforms and a battle against corruption. Five years on, his opponent, Viktor Yanukovych,
whose election in 2004 was annulled over election fraud, replaced him as President.
The failure of the Yushchenko presidency to implement the majority of the hopes
placed in it by millions of voters and protestors, specifically to decisively change the
manner in which politics and economics are undertaken, is a good opportunity to analyse why Ukraine is a difficult country, an immobile state, in which to undertake change
of any type. Yanukovychs first year in office points to Ukraine undergoing a regression from the only tangible benefit to have emerged from orange rule; namely,
democratization, media freedom, and free elections.
Keywords: Viktor Yushchenko; immobility; reforms; corruption
he Viktor Yushchenko era (20052010) began with high hopes following the
Orange Revolution but ended with great disappointments and widespread dis
illusionment. The 2010 election of Viktor Yanukovych was less a victory for him
than a defeat for orange forces. In the second round of the 2010 elections, Yulia
Tymoshenko received three and a half million fewer votes than Viktor Yushchenko
on 26 December 2004. Meanwhile, Viktor Yanukovych received nearly half a
million fewer votes in 2010 than he received in December 2004 and won by only
a 3.5 percent margin compared to the 8 percent victory by Leonid Kuchma in 1994
and Yushchenko in 2004. Yanukovych is the first Ukrainian president to be elected
with less than 50 percent of the vote and by a minority of ten (out of twenty-seven)
administrative districts, the same number he won in 2004. Tymoshenko and Yushchenko
both won seventeen administrative districts, although Tymoshenko received fewer
votes. Tymoshenko lost the elections because of five years of misrule by orange
forces that led to more than three million orange voters abandoning her political
constituency.
This article is an attempt to diagnose why the Yushchenko era failed to meet the
high expectations it came into power with and whether there are consistent trends
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Kuzio / Political Culture and Democracy 89
in Ukrainian politics that explain the weakness of the countrys constituency for implementing reform and change.1 Ukraine had adopted evolutionary reform policies
in the Kuchma era, which Motyl and Arel had described as muddling along,2 but
it was assumed that the revolutionary energy unleashed by the 2004 democratic
breakthrough would lead to faster reforms. This proved not to be the case,3 leading
to Wilson describing Ukraine as a slow moving, immobile state that never quite
adapts enough.4 Ukraines biggest failing is not that it is selling out to Russia but
that it has repeatedly missed the chance to reform itself, The Economist pointed
out on 29 April 2010. The Yushchenko era failed to lead to major breakthroughs in
reforms and reductions in corruption, which has led to scholars questioning whether
the November-December 2004 protests should be described as a revolution.5
Writing in an open letter to President Viktor Yanukovych, former President Leonid
Kravchuk said that although the authorities change, the philosophy of state building,
methods and paths to resolve political and socio-economic problems remain
unchanged.6
The article investigates two areas important to the health of a democracy, political
corruption and the rule of law, and is divided into three sections. The first discusses
the outlines of an immobile state and then applies this framework to Ukraine with
a specific focus on political corruption and the rule of law. The second analyzes
political corruption and the rule of law in Ukraine. The third section integrates these two
sectors into a comparative context with Italy and Georgia, which have outperformed
Ukraine in reducing corruption and reestablishing the rule of law.
The Immobile State

Yushchenkos five-year presidency is a good opportunity to gauge the obstacles
to reforms in Ukraine that make it an immobile state. DAnieri has pointed out that
based on Ukraines past lack of performance, the country could be very similar in
2020 with the same unresolved issues of an unstable constitution, poor relations with
Russia, and energy corruption.7 The immobility of the Ukrainian state has generated
a consensus among some Ukrainians and external analysts of Ukrainian politics that
there exist few differences between Ukrainian politicians, breeding cynicism in
Ukraines democracy. An immobile state means that the outcome of elections have
little meaning as Ukraine returns to a broad-based equilibrium and status quo following the instability generated by election campaigns.
Immobility is a product of the many domestic constraints arising from Ukraines
path dependency following centuries of Russian and decades of Soviet rule that
produced the post-Soviet political culture that exists in independent Ukraine. Path
dependent legacies are not unique to Ukraine, and they have been overcome by
other countries in the third and fourth waves of democratization in Latin America,
Southern and Eastern Europe, and Eastern Asia. Three factors could shift a country
90East European Politics and Societies
from immobility to mobility. First, evolution of oligarchs in support of change.

Fukuyama points out that elites first need to accept that the rule of law is to their
advantage, and then this view will lead to the spread of the rule of law to the
remainder of society.8 For some scholars, this process of transition from robber baron
oligarch to entrepreneur businessman was taking place. Following Yanukovychs 2010
election, Karatnycky wrote, First, the oligarchs around Mr Yanukovych became
economically transparent. They hired first-rate managers, rigorously paid their
taxes, promoted sophisticated philanthropy, and became globalized in their tastes
and manners. Just as importantly, they now see their future prosperity integrally
linked to a reduction in corruption, the expansion of free market policies, lower
taxes, fewer regulations, and Ukraines eventual integration into the rich EU market.9
The first hundred days of the Yanukovych administration have shown it to be
disinterested in reforms or in maintaining political stability. There is no evidence
of Karatnyckys and Aslunds optimistic claims about big businesses seeking to
change their operating methods.10 This would suggest that the optimistic view that
oligarchs have a self-interest in reforming themselves is not the case, at least in the
short run.11 Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraines wealthiest oligarch, first entered parliament
in the Party of Regions in the 2006 elections. After the 2006 and 2007 elections,
Akhmetov took the same steps: he took the oath together with newly elected deputies and then never attended another parliamentary session. His voting card continues to be used in his absence.
Second, Stewart12 looks to growing pressure from domestic actors, such as civil
society, the middle class, and youth activists. Participation by one in five Ukrainians
in the Orange Revolution shows the potential for civil society in Ukraine. The majority
of Orange Revolution protestors were from Western-Central Ukraine, showing to what
degree civil society in Ukraine is heavily regionalized and lacking a pan-national presence. The Orange Revolution was less a sign of a robust civil society in Ukraine than
an unusual, out-of-character mass protest that was a product of many factors, not just
protest at election fraud and democratic regression. Two other factors included social
and antielite populism and national identity. Indeed, the assaults on democracy, the
constitution, and media pluralism in the first hundred days of the Yanukovych era have
not sparked mass protests. Scholars should therefore ask why Ukrainians participated in their millions in 2004 but only in their thousands in 2010?
Third, the European Union (EU) was a key actor in assisting slow reformers in
Central-Eastern Europe, such as Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, and Croatia, providing
the inducement of membership for these countries to undertake painful reforms.13 The
EU has never offered Ukraine membership prospects, and although a deep Free Trade
Agreement and Association Agreement may be signed in 2011 or 2012, these will
never have the same disciplining effect upon Ukraines elites as the offer of full
membership. Ukraines progress towards integration into the EU is threatened by
democratic regression under Yanukovychs administration.
The 2004 Orange Revolution, the largest in terms of public participation of any of
the democratic revolutions, and Yushchenkos election did not lead to a burst of
reformist zeal and no concerted battle against corruption. As Aslund has pointed
out,14 such bursts of reformist zeal did take place after Kuchma was elected in 1994
and after he was was reelected in 1999, which brought the 2000-2001 Yushchenko
government into power. On both occasions reformist zeal was then replaced by stagnation and retrenchment. The Yushchenko government adopted energy reforms and
undertook measures to reduce corruption, such as reducing barter and enhancing
transparency, in addition to deep economic reforms. Total annual energy rents of $4
billion, amounting to 13 percent of GDP, were eliminated. Anticorruption measures
in the energy sector were supported by Yushchenko as prime minister but not when
he was president. In January 2006, Yushchenko and Our Ukraine leader and Prime
Minister Yuriy Yekhanurov agreed to maintain the opaque gas intermediary
RosUkrEnergy (RUE), whose annual rents were similar in size to those eliminated by
the Yushchenko government five or six years earlier.
Yushchenko was never a revolutionary, and in this he was similar to Vojislav
Kostunica, who was elected Yugoslav president following the 2000 Serbian bulldozer
revolution. Yushchenko and Kostunica, the former a banker and the latter an academic, have moderate nationalist views, and neither supported radical transformations, unlike Mikheil Saakashvili, who was also a nationalist and a radical reformer.
Yushchenko and Kostunica soon came into conflict with their more radical revolutionary allies, Yulia Tymoshenko and Zoran Djindjic, respectively, while Saakashvili fell
out with his moderate ally Nina Burjanadze. Yushchenko had been a faithful loyalist
of the Kuchma regime throughout the corrupt transition to a market economy in the
1990s and had never shown an inclination to go into opposition, refusing calls from
national democrats to stand as a candidate in the 1999 presidential elections. The
Yushchenko government and Deputy Prime Minister Tymoshenkos policies to reduce
corruption in the energy sector had brought forth opposition from big business interests who received support from Kuchma to organize the April 2001 vote of no confidence in Yushchenko. The vote pushed Yushchenko into the role of opposition leader,
where he never felt comfortable, and following the 2002 elections he sought to negotiate his return as prime minister under a pro-Kuchma coalition but lost the position
to Yanukovych.15
Gordy classifies Kostunica as supporting a soft transition while Djindjic backed
a hard transition.16 The difference between a soft and hard transition rests upon
attitudes towards dealing withand breaking fromthe former regime. Kostunica
and Djindjic could be compared and contrasted to Yushchenko17 and Tymoshenko/
Saakashvili, respectively. Supporters of a hard transition desire a more radical break
with the former regime that would include punishment for their crimes (i.e., war
crimes, murder of journalists, abuse of office, corruption, election fraud). Yushchenko,
like Kostunica, lacked political will to institute criminal charges against senior members of the ancien regime. The Democratic Party of Serbia that Kostunica led and Our
Ukraine that Yushchenko was honorary chairman of both lost popularity to political
forces supporting hard transitions as well as to political forces defending the ancien
regime. The lack of political will exhibited by Presidents Kostunica and Yushchenko
permitted political forces representing the ancien regime to reemerge, whether nationalists in Serbia or the Party of Regions and Yanukovych in Ukraine. The Yulia
Tymoshenko bloc (BYuT) became the most popular national-democratic force in the
2006 and 2007 elections, winning double the number of votes of Our Ukraine and
reversing the 2002 elections where Our Ukraine had won three times more votes than
BYuT. In 2010, Tymoshenko proved unable to win all of the Yushchenko votes that he
received in the rerun second round in December 2004.
Yushchenko did not bring change and move the Ukrainian state from immobile
to mobile because he was misread as a liberal reformer. In reality he was a conservative. Aslund writes that Yushchenko campaigned in 2004 on a platform of good
governance, private property, and European integration with a focus on universal
values, notably freedom and legal justice, directed against oligarchs, repression, and
corruption.18 In reality, Yushchenkos 2004 election program was more social populist than conservative, and was as much anticorruption, antioligarch, and antielite as
it was promarket reform. His 2004 and 2010 election programs did not mention
support for joining the EU or NATO.19 To argue, as does Aslund,20 that Tymoshenkos
2005 government was almost exactly the opposite of the liberal Yushchenko
therefore ignores the fact that the Orange Revolution was fuelled as much by social
populism against corruption, abuse of office, and ruling oligarchs than by proreform
sentiments triggered by widespread election fraud. The 2005 Tymoshenko governments policies, including seeking to arrest culprits of the old guard, were therefore policies that had received widespread support by Yushchenko in the 2004
elections and Orange Revolution through slogans such as Bandits to Prison!21
These slogans were highly popular among orange voters, and Yushchenkos failure
to pursue justice was the major factor that led to a decline in his popularity. In 2005
Tymoshenko was therefore not at cross-purposes with Yushchenko but was seeking to implement the policies that he had backed during the 2004 elections.22
Political Corruption and the Rule of Law

Political corruption, in the view of Ukraines leading think tank, the Ukrainian
Centre for Economic and Political Studies (the Razumkov Centre), is the main obstacle
for the further development of Ukraine as a full blown democratic state.23 This factor
is not reflected in scholarly studies, which have largely ignored the two areas analyzed
in this article: political corruption and the rule of law. The Razumkov Centre pointed
to the fact that political corruption has increased in the past decade and become an
inalienable component of Ukraines political system. The lack of revolutionary
change that accompanied Yushchenkos 2004 election has entrenched the immobility
of the political system and deepened political corruption. The head of the Council of
Europes Group of States Against Corruption (GRECO) believes Ukraine shows
the least evidence of a struggle against corruption of all countries known to
myself.24
Ukraine has adopted seven laws, two criminal codes, sixteen presidential decrees,
ten government resolutions, two instructions, two Supreme Court resolutions, and
two orders from the finance ministry and civil service to ostensibly combat corruption. Yet despite one of the largest and most rapid transfers from state to private control
of any economy, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and prosecutor-generals
office has never investigated or convicted respectfully a single member of the
Ukrainian elites for abuse of office or corruption. Criticism of political corruption
translates into rhetoric that is especially pronounced during election campaigns but
is never translated into criminal prosecutions or sanctions. Prosecutor-General
Medvedko pointed out, Evidence of corruption appears when we have a change of
government. A government goes into retirement and immediately all of its members
become corrupt but when they are in power this is not the case.25 An October 2010
audit for corruption in the 2007-2010 Tymoshenko government was criticised for
being politically motivated, as it is impossible that only one out of fourteen governments in Ukraine was corrupt. Politicians are unwilling to show the greatest commitment to opposing corruption, namely, agreeing to institute criminal charges
against members of their own political force. Politicians defend their colleagues from
accusations of corruption and election fraud by claiming that the charges are a product
of political repression. The political elites of Ukraine are not ready to adopt a noncorrupt style of political activity and also not ready to fully counter political corruption, the Razumkov Centre concluded.26 In 2005, Yanukovych claimed that charges
threatened against himself and his political force for election fraud was political
repression. Five years later, Tymoshenko used the same defense when the Azarov
government claimed its predecessor had misappropriated large amounts of financial
reserves.
The lack of separation of elites from the state leads to ruling elites seeing the state
and budget as sources of funds and largesse that they can draw upon. Budget costs
are stolen by all who have access to them, Interior Minister Lutsenko said.27 Political
forces in power have an advantage during election campaigns because they have
access to budgetary resources, which can be used to not only make money for the
election campaign but to buy the loyalty of opponents.28 The Yanukovych government claimed that its predecessor, the Tymoshenko government, had stolen
100 billion hryvni for corrupt purposes and to use during the 2010 elections (interestingly,
no criminal charges have been threatened against former President Yushchenko, suggesting that there is a political motive behind them).29 The rapid establishment of a
power vertical by President Yanukovych, pressuring the Constitutional Court to
issue a ruling in support of coalitions composed of factions and individual defectors,
has sparked concerns of a return to the competitive authoritarianism of the Kuchma
era and of preparing administrative resources for upcoming local and parliamentary
elections.30 The Constitutional Courts 2010 ruling contradicted its own 2008 ruling
that only factions could establish coalitions, leading to a firestorm of criticism at
the Courts susceptibility to political corruption. On 1 October the Constitutional
Court ruled that the 2004 constitutional reforms had been undertaken unconstitutionally and returned Ukraine to its 1996 semipresidential constitution. Two years
earlier the Court had refused to rule on the constitutionality of the 2004 reforms.
In April 2010, the Court had similarly reversed its 2008 ruling on how parliamentary coalitions could be formed, only by factions (2008) or factions and individuals (2010). Ukraines proportional system elects parties and blocsnot individuals.
The 2010 rulings promote political corruption as they encourage the authorities to
bribe,31 coerce, or blackmail opposition deputies to join the Stability and Reforms
coalition.32 This, in and of itself, overturns earlier election results and could lead to
wholesale political instability if the coalition induces enough deputies to defect to
achieve a constitutional majority of three hundred.
Political corruption in Ukraines elites breeds broader public cynicism about the
value of voting and towards their political representatives, as seen in the low voter
turnout during the 31 October 2010 local elections. During the 2010 elections, enterprising Ukrainians sold their votes on the internet.33 It is illusory to believe that young
people who enter such a corrupt political system will begin to respect the rule of law
because they are from a different, less soviet, generation.34 Fairbanks points out that
this works two ways. Elites hold contempt for, and are cynical towards, their supporters, while the public in post-Soviet countries have among the highest levels of contempt and mistrust towards governments anywhere in the world.35 On the same day
President Yanukovych signed into law a decree outlining celebrations for the twentieth
anniversary of the June 1990 Declaration of Sovereignty, he reduced the countrys
sovereignty by signing into law the treaty extending Russias Black Sea Fleet base
in Sevastopol in exchange for discounted gas. A Ukrainian newspaper pointed out,
Of course he does not understand the irony of this.36
An unwillingness to tackle corruption can be seen in the persistence over two
decades of a permanent shadow economy roughly equal to half the economy. In 2003,
towards the end of his two terms in office, Kuchma described the shadow economy, which had by then reached half of Ukraines GDP, as the scale of a national
epidemic.37 The size of the shadow economy did not decline in the Yushchenko era.
Ukrainian official estimates claim the shadow economy represents 40 percent of
GDP, while the World Bank estimates it to still represent half of GDP. The share of
the shadow economy in Ukraines GDP has remained constant during the transition
to a market economy in the 1990s and following the return to economic growth in
2000. A country with half of its economy in the underground inevitably experiences a
large influence of political corruption over the political system and high levels of influence of organized crime over business. The shadow economy acts as a large, nontransparent source of funding for political parties during election campaigns.
Ukrainians have a very low trust in political institutions and therefore in Ukraines
democracy because they see the elites as existing above the law and because of their
perception of high levels of corruption within these institutions. This view of entrenched
institutional corruption holds throughout the country; when asked if normal and
political corruption exists in Ukraine, the response is yes, averaging 87 to 91 percent
over Ukraines four regions and giving a national average of 85 percent.38 When
Ukrainians were asked if parliamentary deputies were interested in combating corruption, 82 percent said no.39
An opinion poll asked which parliamentary political forces are most prone to corruption and which most seek to combat it. The Party of Regions was considered to
be the political party most prone to corruption (14.3 percent), followed by the
BYuT (13.6 percent); the Party of Regions received the lowest level of trust as a
political force that actively combats corruption. BYuT scored 13 percent and 14.9
percent, respectively, the only political force where more Ukrainians believed they
were both prone to corruption and seeking to combat it. Low public trust in the Party
of Regions combating corruption did not prevent them from winning first place in
the 2006 and 2007 parliamentary elections or Yanukovychs ability to win the 2010
presidential elections. This public view of the Party of Regions concurs with a 2007
study by Neutze and Karatnycky that found the Party of Regions to be ignoring corruption as an issue in its election program. Following criticism of this absence, the
Party of Regions outlined a vague program that Neutze and Karatnycky found lacked
new or more specific ideas for fighting corruption and showed evidence that anticorruption efforts simply are not a priority for the Party of Regions.40 Yanukovychs
2010 election slogan was Ukraine for the people! which, as the opposition pointed
out, contrasted with his own insider privatization (during his 2002-2004 government)
of a former central committee of the Soviet Communist Party residency Mizhirya
outside Kyiv with 140 hectares of land.41
Why is political corruption a major problem in Ukraine? Below, I discuss four
factors that contribute to the Ukrainian states immobility and corruption: political
culture; weak political will and civil society; institutions; and business, parties, and
ideology.
Political culture. Ukraine inherited a path dependent political culture from Eurasia,
Russia, and the USSR. This was compounded by a deformed political culture that
emerged during the countrys transition to a market economy in the 1990s, where
institutionalized oligarchic capital and clannish power took hold and society became
divided into the super wealthy and the poor. Ukraine is led today by an oligarchicimmoral elite, former President Kravchuk believes.42 The Razumkov Centre found
there to be a low level of political culture and morals of state and political elites.43
This leads to tolerance of corruption and not seeing this phenomenon as abnormal,
the acceptance of double standards, and a disrespect towards ones political opponents and citizens.44 Progress in democratization, as evidenced by the holding of
free elections and the existence of media pluralism, is a product of regional diversity that produces pluralism by default, rather than tolerance towards those holding different political views. Tolerance of opponents and a desire to compromise are
rare commodities in Ukrainian politics. Commenting about the Yanukovych administration, Leshchenko wrote, Democratic traditions are not very developed in the
new presidential team.45 Opposition groups are not seen as legitimate in postSoviet societies, and authoritarian parties of power seek to weaken, divide, and
control them so that they cannot become a threat to their power base. A loyal,
dependent pocket opposition is far preferable.
The question of whether Ukrainian parties support democratic values has not been
tested, as parliamentary deputies and voters will not admit to being antidemocratic
during opinion polls. Nevertheless, a third of Ukrainians do readily admit to being
ready to give up democratic freedoms for stability and order. Autocratic tendencies
are visible in all of Ukraines political forces and leaders but are sometimes clouded,
as, for example, Yanukovychs image during the 2010 elections, when Yanukovych
successfully portrayed himself as a reborn democrat who had learned the lessons of
2004. During the 2010 elections, the Yanukovych campaign successfully used their
U.S. political consultants to provide them with a democratic image that portrayed
them as a viable democratic alternative to Tymoshenko, who was usually depicted
as a populist and autocrat. The steps of the Yanukovych team since his election
have shown up the fallacy of the Party of Regions internal democratization. Umland
believes they have an ambivalent relationship to democratic norms and their
behavior still largely follows the pattern of its 2004 dealings that caused the
Orange Revolution. The key for such a mindset, Umland argues, is not what is
lawful or constitutional but what the Yanukovych administration can get away with,
as there is no fear of criminal prosecution and the opposition remains weak.46
Politics becomes a zero-sum game where the opposition and authorities seek to
destroy one another. The failure to institute criminal proceedings for massive
election fraud in 2004, which the Supreme Court overturned and parliament
denounced, has led to the return to power six years later of the organizers of the
fraud who do not fear criminal prosecutions (which in 2005 they did fear).
Ukraines elites at the business, political, and national levels, as with the new elites
that have emerged in Russia and other post-Soviet states, do not plan beyond the short
term. As the transition to a market economy was being launched in the mid-1990s by
then newly elected President Kuchma, he complained, Everyone here views himself
as a transitional figure. They want to grab something and run off with it. Im taking
about people at the very top.47 Fifteen years later, the short-term mentality of Ukraines
elites (which Yushchenko once defined as a momentocracy) has not changed, pointing
to how this culture is deep-seated and difficult to change. In the short term elites expropriate as much as they can because of an unstable tomorrow and because they can do so
with unrestrained impunity.48 Greed in Ukraines elites would seem to be insatiable.
Weak political will and civil society. Holmes believes political will to be a necessary but insufficient condition in the fight against corruption. A country also needs
state capacity, a loyal apparatus, and a population interested in reducing corruption.49
A lack of political will among all Ukrainian leaders is compounded by the deep
disillusionment of Ukrainians arising from the Yushchenko era. Yushchenko left
office with a high negative level of trust of 83 percent, higher than Kuchma after
two terms when he left office in 2004. Interior Minister Lutsenko complained that
Yushchenkos anticorruption program lacked concrete responsibilities and political
will. In the absence of political will we will continue to hold meetings, write plans,
concepts and other activities which will not bring us anything.50 Yushchenkos
lack of political will is especially pronounced when he is compared to President
Saakashvili.
Weak societal pressure enables Ukraines elites to live above the law. When asked
who is interested in fighting corruption, 69 percent of Ukrainians answered society
was, the only answer with a high proportion answering yes.51 Ukrainians gave a high
proportion of no answers to whether they believed that state institutions were interested in combating corruption. The newly established National Anticorruption
Committee met once in Yanyukovychs first year in office and issued no new initiatives. Media pluralism exposes corruption, but the immobile society prevents any
further investigation and prosecution. Low trust in state institutions and high negative
levels of trust in all Ukrainian politicians, including new faces Arseniy Yatseniuk
and Sergei Tigipko,52 are a reflection of the lack of efficacy that Ukrainian citizens
feel they have over their political leaders, who are unaccountable for their actions.
Soroka points out that the Yushchenko era did not witness an increase in the influence
of voters over politicians.53
Institutions. Ukraine lacks a single coordinating center to combat corruption; the
National Security and Defense Council (NRBO) could not act in such a role as it
was misused in the Yushchenko era as an opposition Cabinet of Ministers, rather
than as a vehicle to coordinate law enforcement structures. Ukrainians perceive and
feel there to be high levels of corruption in the very institutions, the judiciary and
prosecutor-generals office, that are tasked to deal with abuse of office and political
corruption. Corruption in the legal sector is propounded by an instrumental attitude
to the law. Criminal cases against members of the elites are opened, go nowhere,
investigations are purposefully slowed, eventually closed, and the individuals return
to public office.54 The prosecutor-generals office is where criminal cases die.
Prosecutor-General Medvedeko admits that we have no achievements, not a single
person has been brought to criminal responsibility.55 No progress was made in the
Yushchenko era on any of the high-profile abuse of office criminal cases, with politicians, the prosecutor-generals office, Interior Ministry, and courts accusing each other
of stalling investigations.56 Little wonder that Yushchenko was forced to admit that
there was merely an illusion of a struggle against corruption;57 in other words, the
struggle against corruption continued to be virtual in the Yushchenko era, as it had

been in the Kuchma era.58 This is compounded by misuse of the rule of law and
political interference in the judicial process under President Yushchenko. Yushchenko
told prosecutors and the SBU that you are not a threat to those committing corruption.59 Intervention by chief of staff Viktor Baloga into Ukraines domestic affairs in
2008 and 2009, when he acted as a de facto vice president, infringed the constitutional prerogatives of the presidential secretariat but were permitted and encouraged
by President Yushchenko.60
A 2000 opinion poll found 72 percent of Ukrainians agreeing that the removal of
parliamentary immunity would assist in reducing corruption.61 Orange parties
included this goal in election platforms, with Our Ukraine-Peoples Self Defence making it a central component of their 2007 election campaign, but it was never adopted
by parliament. Immunity from prosecution would be an important step in reducing the
number of businessmen in parliament, but it could only be undertaken in conjunction
with other steps that included an amnesty on illegally earned capital. Businessmen enter
parliament to receive immunity because of their fear of potential criminal prosecution
for past deeds. Although no elites have ever been prosecuted, they view this contract
in the same manner as an insurance policy that they hope they will never have to
access.
Business, parties, and ideology. The weakness of ideology in Ukrainian political
parties contributes to patronage and corruption as ways to maintain political loyalties.62
Parties and blocs are often political projects with the aim of achieving power and
the largesse that accompanies this rather than vehicles designed to represent socioeconomic groups and promote ideological programs. New projects are established
during elections with no other purpose than to enter parliament, rather than to build
a multiparty system. Loyalties to ideologies are rare except to strongly held national
identities that exist in regionally diverse states such as Ukraine. Party programs are
weak and not developed in opposition in preparation for assuming office following
elections. At the same time, the opposition castigates the program of those in power
and demand they step aside. The Georgian opposition has been criticized for only
having one program, that of removing Saakashvili. The opposition Party of Regions
claimed they had a reform program and team of professionals ready to implement and
take over after Yanukovych came to power. Both claims proved to be illusorythe
Azarov government is not a reformist one and its Cabinet Ministers are anything but
professionals. The majority of the Cabinet are from the Kuchma era, conservative in
viewpoint and driven as much by a desire for revenge for the humiliation of losing
the 2004 elections as they are by economic and fiscal reforms.
The weakness of ideology leads citizens to believe that there is little difference
between political forces or candidates, with voters therefore falling back on loyalties
to regional and national identities. In the 2010 elections, President Yushchenko called
on Ukrainians to vote against both candidates in the second round as they were both
allegedly Moscow projects. Yushchenkos interference reduced orange votes for

Tymoshenko, not votes for Yanukovych, and could have contributed to her defeat.
Tymoshenko received 3.5 million fewer votes in the second round of the 2010 elections than Yushchenko received in the rerun second round in 2004.
The presence of large numbers of businessmen in factions, who provide funding
for election campaigns in exchange for parliamentary immunity and the possibility of
further enrichment, encourages disloyalty to political groups. Defections are therefore
common from the democratic opposition,63 and bribery of deputies is commonplace.
Scholars have not analyzed why these defections are one-way in the Ukrainian parliament, from the democratic opposition to the pro-Kuchma coalition in 2002 to 2004 and
to the Party of Regions in 2006 and 2007 and since 2010. Do Party of Regions businessmen not defect to the democratic opposition because the opposition lacks the
financial resources to bribe them and the kompromat to blackmail them? The neoSoviet paternalism and political culture found in eastern Ukraine generates greater
party and voter discipline.
Political parties are not financed from membership dues but by the business sector,
a factor compounded by the lack of separation of business and politics and the presence of oligarchs in all political forces, including in the Communist Party. The cost of
receiving a place on the party list that is likely to enter parliament requires donations
in the millions (of dollars). Half of Ukraines fourteen wealthiest oligarchs are parliamentary deputies. A major source of political corruption is through the financing of
political parties by funds controlled by big business in the shadow economy.
Businessmen can be easily intimidated to toe the line promoted by the authorities, and
businessmen are often willing to realign with the newly elected authorities. Davyd
Zhvannia, a businessman who provided funding for the Pora (Its Time) youth NGO,
which played an important role in mobilizing young Ukrainians in the Orange
Revolution in the 2004 elections, defected to the pro-Yanukovych Stability and
Reforms coalition in 2010 and voted for the Black Sea Fleet treaty extending the lease
of the Sevastopol naval base. Pora party leader Vladyslav Kaskiv joined the Azarov
government.
Ukraines Immobile State in Comparative Context

Italy and Ukraine
Italy was a founding member of the EU in 1957, long before the Copenhagen
Criteria for membership were adopted. Where Italy differs from Ukraine is the
degree to which political will eventually emerged to combat corruption and organized crime. The Yushchenko era showed the degree to which there was little
political will and an inability within the elites to police themselves. A second similarity is the prevailing longevity of regionalism and different regional political
cultures. Italy united as a state in the 1860s but shows few signs of overcoming its
deep regional diversity between the north and south, even after half a century
of EU membership.64 As Italy moves towards celebrating 150 years of unification,
polls show that more than half think Italians are not a single people, and 15 percent
of Italians would support the division of their country.65 Inherited political cultures
embedded in Ukraines regional diversity are also unlikely to completely disappear.
Putnam contrasts the political cultures of Northern and Southern Italy with Northern
and Southern America, respectively. Although studies of Ukraine have tended to
focus on Ukraines East-West regional split, the Yushchenko era points to there being
similar types of behaviors and political cultures that cross linguistic and regional lines
that make the orange and blue-white political camps not so dissimilar. Nevertheless,
a more neo-Soviet political culture does exist among Eastern Ukrainian voters and
their political representatives, the Party of Regions and President Yanukovych.
The Democrazia Christiana (DC) party dominated Italian politics during the Cold
War and became synonymous with corruption. The DC abused the Office of Public
Works, especially in Southern Italy, making it Italys most shameless and lucrative
patronage engine.66 The DCs dominance of Southern Italian politics in the postwar
era through a nexus that linked the state, business, organized crime, and politics is
similar to the political machine and nexus upon which the Party of Regions is based
in Donetsk.
Italys judiciary, media, and political parties only began to tackle the problems of
corruption and organized crime in the 1980s and 1990s following a decade when the
Italian state was under siege from left and right-wing extremists and terrorists as well
as subversion from within by the P2 Masonic Lodge. Following the 1967 military coup
detat in Greece, the Communist Party of Italy (PCI) became alarmed at the possibility
of a right-wing coup detat as there had been two attempted coups in Italy in 1964 and
in 1970 by neo-fascist groups with links to the security forces. After the PCI embraced
euro-communism under its leader Enrico Berlinguer, a historic compromise between
the PCI and DC sought to forestall a right-wing coup detat.67 The historic compromise collapsed after DC leader Aldo Moros assassination in 1978 by the Red
Brigades, an extreme left terrorist group.
It was not the Italian state that took on organized crime but rather heroic ministers,
magistrates and police, supported by a minority of politicians, administrators, journalists and members of the public.68 These patriotic and brave individuals faced danger:
no matter how prominent, any public figure who stood in the way of Sicilys state
within a state was going to be killed.69 The Catholic Church also came out for the
first time in the 1980s and 1990s against organized crime. Many of these brave individuals lost their lives in the war against organized crime and corruption.
Following the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, the DC collapsed after a
third of DC and Socialist Party parliamentarians were place under investigation for
corruption. The DC was replaced in 1993 on the center-right by Forza Italia, launched
by oligarch and media magnate Silvio Berlusconi, who himself has been dogged by
corruption scandals and accusations of links to organized crime. In March 2009, the
People of Freedom Party was launched by Prime Minister Berlusconi through a
merger of Forza Italia and the post-fascist National Alliance (formerly the Italian
Social Movement), the spiritual heirs of Mussolinis fascist blackshirts.70 The populist
Northern League, which had joined coalitions with Forza Italia and the National
Alliance, refused to merge into the People of Freedom Party.
This brief sojourn into Italian history leads to four conclusions for Ukraine. First,
diverse regional identities and political cultures will never completely disappear. Italy
has been nation-building since the 1860s but retains a profound north-south divide.
Ukraines regional diversity will remain a permanent feature of its political system
and inhibit the manner in which political parties can operate nationally and thereby
influence the outcome of elections. It also gives party leaders and political consultants
an incentive to deepen the regional divisions and thereby solidify their electoral
bases. This would be one way to explain the return of antinationalist ideology to the
Yanukovych administration that is used to depicting the opposition as anti-Russian
and extremist nationalists, which facilitates mobilization of their core electorate in
eastern Ukraine and the Crimea. Second, political will is not always apparent in longestablished states and takes time to manifest itself. As Dickie points out, it took the Italian
state 130 years to become serious about combating organized crime and corruption.71
Seven times Italian Prime Minister Guilio Andreotti was only placed on trial in 1995 for
his connections to organized crime in Southern Italy where the DC had a compact with
the mafia in exchange for votes and patronage. Andreotti was also accused of asking the
mafia to assassinate a journalist in 1979 who was blackmailing him.72
Third, the DC, Forza Italia, and People of Freedom parties developed regional
nexuses of business, politics, crime, and state institutions similar to that undertaken by
the Party of Regions political machine in Donetsk.73 Headed by oligarch Berlusconi,
the different permutations on Italys center-right have retained popular support and,
with the emergence of the Liga Nord, expanded into Northern Italy, where the DC
was weakly represented in the Cold War. The Party of Regions was one of the last
centrist political parties to be established in Ukraine in 2001. It united big business
and regional interests and was the only centrist party that managed to established
unbridled dominance in two regions, the Donbas (Donetsk-Luhansk oblasts) and the
Crimea. Other centrist political parties established in the 1990s either had no
regional base (i.e., Peoples Democratic Party, Agrarian Party), a weak regional base
(i.e., Social Democratic United Party) or faced competition in their regional base
(i.e., Labour Ukraine Party in Dnipropetrovsk was supported by oligarchs Viktor
Pinchuk and Tigipko but opposed by Igor Kolomoysky and Tymoshenko). The Party
of Regions and Yanukovych came first in all three elections in 2006 to 2010.
Fourth, institutions need to be established backed by political will. Direzione
Investigatiwa Antimafia, an Italian version of the FBI, was not established until the
early 1990s and received support from the paramilitary Carabinieri and military.
Ukraine has discussed the need to establish a National Investigation Bureau (NIB),
modeled on the FBI, since the second half of the 1990s to combat organized crime
and corruption, but the political will to move in this direction has always been
absent. In 1997 Vasyl Durdynets, head of the presidential Coordinating Committee
to Combat Organised Crime and Corruption, became the first brief head of the NIB,
but parliament never gave its approval for the new institution. Ukraine has a proliferation of agencies in the NRBO, Interior Ministry, Security Service, and ProsecutorGenerals Office that have responsibility for combating organized crime and
corruption, but either individually or combined they produce few results, and as a consequence Ukraines elites continue to remain above the law. With the exception of the
NRBO, Ukraines institutions are inherited from the Soviet era. A National Guard,
established in 1991 from special forces units in the Interior Ministry, emerged as an
elite paramilitary unit similar to Italys Carabinieri, but it was abolished by President
Kuchma in 2000, and its units were transferred back to the unreformed Interior
Ministry. Yushchenko mishandled plans to revive the National Guard by seeking to
have the force placed directly under parliamentary control and therefore parliament
rejected his draft law on the National Guard; in the 1990s it had been under joint
parliamentary-presidential control.74
Georgia and Ukraine

No systematic program against corruption took place during President Yushchenkos
presidency, and Ukraines struggle against corruption has therefore been consistently
lacking throughout two decades of independence.75 Although Yushchenko had promised to put Bandits in Jail! during the 2004 elections and Orange Revolution, he
never sought to follow through on this election promise, and Ukraines elites continue
to remain above the law. Members of the ancien regime fled abroad in December
2004. Some, such as Volodymyr Shcherban in 2005, have returned to Ukraine,
fearing real prosecution abroadas in the case of Pavlo Lazarenko in the USA
greater than virtual prosecution at home. In contrast, in Georgia, Arresting officials
of the old regime and their cronies has been a hallmark of Saakashvilis tenure.76
Members of the ancien regime began to return to Ukraine following Yanukovychs
election in 2010.
The biggest source of corruption in Ukraine has always been from energy rents. The
2006 gas contract continued to include the opaque RosUkrEnergo (RUE) gas intermediary, first established by Presidents Vladimir Putin and Kuchma in 2004 to replace
Eural Trans Gas, which injected billions of corrupt finances into Ukraines political
system. In 2006 the government was led by Our Ukraine leader Yekhanurov, a close
ally of President Yushchenko, who continued to defend RUE against Tymoshenkos
plans to remove the gas intermediary, which she succeeded in undertaking with the
January 2009 gas contract with Russia. The gas lobby took control of the Party of
Regions and sections of Our Ukraine and infiltrated state institutions, such as parliament
and the presidential secretariat, and the media, such as Inter, Ukraines most watched
television channel. The Yanukovych administration and government has a large RUE
gas lobby representation.77
The German think-tank on worldwide corruption, Transparency International, found
that Ukraine improved its battle against corruption only in 2005 and 2006 but then
regressed after 2007 to the low levels found in the Kuchma era. In 2009, Yushchenkos
last year in office, Ukraines Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) ranking was worse
than in 2004, Kuchmas last year in office. The return to high levels of corruption in
2007 to 2009 is a product of the countrys lack of leadership, weak political will to
combat corruption, political crises, and interelite conflict.
Georgia represents a different trajectory to Ukraine. Since the Rose Revolution,
President Mikheil Saakashvili has shown the political will that was absent under
Yushchenko to combat corruption and provide a better business environment. The
World Banks Ease of Doing Business ranked Georgia 16th and 11th in 2009 and 2010,
placing it alongside European and North American economies. Ukraine was ranked
during the same two-year period as 146th and 142nd. The World Banks rankings on
Starting a Business and Protecting Investors showed a similar gulf between the countries, with Georgia ranked 5th for Starting a Business in both 2009 and 2010, while
Ukraine was ranked 126th and 134th. Georgia was ranked 38th and 41st in 2009 and
2010 under the Protection for Investors, while Ukraine again received a poor ranking
of 143rd and 109th.78
A similar gulf between Georgia and Ukraine exists in their rankings by Transparency
International. Georgia entered the post-revolutionary era in a worse position than
Ukraine with the country a de facto failed state. Between 2005 and 2009, Georgias
CPI ranking dramatically improved from 130th to 66th. During the same period,
Ukraines CPI ranking improved from 107th to 99th in 2005 and 2006, during the
first of two Tymoshenko governments, but then regressed over the next three years
to 146th, lower than in the last year of Kuchmas rule (122nd). In the last years of
Yushchenkos presidency, 78 percent of Ukrainians did not feel there was a struggle
against corruption, with 22 percent seeing efforts to combat corruption.79 Political
instability (in addition to weak political will) influenced the deterioration in Ukraines
CPI ranking during the last three years of Yushchenkos presidency. Similar contrasts
between Ukraine and Georgia in corruption scores are given by Freedom Houses
Nations in Transit. These show, in comparison to Transparency International, a smaller
level of improvement in Georgia and a stable high level of corruption in Ukraine
throughout the 2004 to 2009 period, at 5.75 (with 7 the worst ranking).80 Transparency
International found that Georgia progressed in its battle against corruption each year
since 2004. In 2009, only five countries in the European Union and the European Free
Trade Agreement had better rankings in dealing with corruption than did Georgia.81 The
2009 Global Corruption Barometer ranked Ukraine 4.3 (with 5 the worst and 1 the best),
while Georgia received a ranking of 3.1, a level better than the USA (3.7) or Canada (3.2).82
Georgia and Ukraine took different paths following the Rose and Orange
Revolutions83 that may account for some of their discrepancies in levels of corruption.
In 2004, Georgia moved towards a superpresidential system, and two years later Ukraine
moved in the opposite direction towards a semiparliamentary system. Georgias and
Ukraines ability to fight corruption is unlikely to be fully a product of strong presidential systems. Ukraine improved its CPI ranking during Yushchenkos first year in office
under the 1996 presidential constitution, but this was more a product of revolutionary
fervor and the Tymoshenko governments closure of high-level corruption, such as
customs contraband and free economic zones. Regime type and constitution does not
tell the full story, as the political will to break with the past was greater at the presidential level in Georgia than in Ukraine. Yushchenko, after all, was president under
two constitutionspresidential and parliamentaryand showed the same low level
of political will throughout his presidency. In other words, Ukraine proved to be more
of an immobile state than did Georgia. Ukraines return to a presidential system in
October 2001 is unlikely to lead to stronger political will to combat corruption.
A month after Saakashvilis January 2004 landslide 96 percent victory, Georgia
changed its constitution to a superpresidential system.84 Such constitutions have
invariably led to autocratic regimes in Russia and other former Soviet republics.
Georgias democratic progress was stymied by the adoption of a presidential constitution with parliament and opposition parties marginalized, the executive monopolizing power and autocratic tendencies emerging in the presidency. Freedom House
ranked Ukraine and Georgia free and partly free, respectively, throughout the
2005 to 2009 period. Democratic breakthrough in Ukraine was stronger because of
the countrys accompanying constitutional reforms towards parliamentarism, the
political system adopted by successful democratic Central-East European and
Baltic post-communist states.85
The Orange Revolution was both a mass popular uprising and an elite compromise. One component of Ukraines pact was the inclusion of constitutional reforms
during roundtables between regime and opposition soft-liners86 in November and
December 2004 brokered by the EU.87 On 8 December 2004, parliament voted for
a compromise package that included nearly identical constitutional reforms voted
down in the spring of that year. Tymoshenko, head of BYuT, the radical wing of the
opposition, was not invited to the roundtables, and her political force voted against
the compromise package. Ukraines parliament increased its powers, with the government moving from control by the president to a parliamentary majority. Ukraines
move to a parliamentary system contributed to the countrys democratization while
the semi nature of the poorly crafted reforms contributed to institutional conflict
and instability.
Georgia and Ukraine differed in other ways. Saakashvilis popularity declined during his first term from 96 percent in the 2004 elections to 53 percent in the preterm
January 2008 elections, but he nevertheless maintained a strong base of support.
Yushchenkos popularity plummeted from autumn 2005 after the disintegration of the
orange coalition and only recovered partially in 2007 when he dissolved parliament,
but it again rapidly declined in 2008 and 2009 to less than 10 percent.88 After winning
52 percent in the rerun second round of the elections on 26 December 2004,

Yushchenko received an embarrassing fifth place with 5.45 percent in the first round
of the 2010 elections. Kravchuk entered the second round of the 1994 elections after
economic collapse and hyperinflation where he, although eventually defeated, received
44 percent of the vote. The orange candidate in round two of the 2010 elections
(Tymoshenko) received the same 44 percent vote as Kravchuk received in July 1994.
The United National MovementDemocrats coalition that brought Saakashvili
to power remained united until April 2008, whereas Yushchenko removed the
Tymoshenko government only eight months into its tenure, dividing the orange coalition for eighteen months between September 2005 and February 2007. In Georgia,
the two wings of the Rose Revolution (Burjanadze-Democrats and United National
Movement [UNM]) had merged into the UNM. In Ukraine, the three wings of the
Orange Revolution (Our Ukraine, BYuT, Socialists) were divided during the majority
of the Yushchenko era, and the nine parties in the Our UkrainePeoples Self Defense
bloc failed to merge into a single presidential party. Yushchenko and businessmen
in Our Ukraine had always favored a grand coalition with the Party of Regions over
a coalition with BYuT. President Saakashvilis UNM has remained a largely monolithic party of power, while Yushchenko contributed to the stagnation and disintegration of Our Ukraine as a political force. The UNMs support did not decline
precipitously, and it received 67 and 59 percent, respectively, in the March 2004 and
May 2008 Georgian parliamentary elections. Our Ukraine received 24 percent in the
2002 elections and only 14 percent in the 2006 and 2007 elections, winning in the
latter case only one administrative district, Balogas home region of TransCarpathia.89
Georgias revolutionary leaders and reforms were not threatened by the ancien
regime returning to power or pro-Russian political forces, unlike in Ukraine and
Serbia, as such forces are unpopular in Georgia.90 Kostunica won 50.24 percent in the
first round of Yugoslavias 2000 elections to become the last president of Yugoslavia,
2 percent less than Yushchenko. Slobodan Milosevic came second in the 2000
Yugoslav elections with 37.15 percent, while the combined nationalist vote of the
candidates who took second, third, and fourth places was 45.98 percent.91 Kostunica
was therefore elected by just over 50 percent of the vote, compared to the combined
nationalist vote of 46 percent, a similar voter range of Yushchenkos 52 percent to
Yanukovychs 44 percent. Yugoslavias 2000 and Ukraines 2004 election results
show that the ancien regimes were still respectfully supported by a sizeable proportion of the Yugloslav/Serbian and Ukrainian populations. The defeated candidates in
the Yugoslav and Ukrainian revolutions, who led the Socialist and Radical parties,
on the one hand, and the Party of Regions, on the other, remained formidable
obstacles to democratic and economic reforms, reducing corruption, and integration
with Europe.92
In September 2004, Yushchenko was poisoned, and two months later an attempt was
made to blow up his election campaign headquarters.93 In Belgrade, protestors set the
parliament ablaze, and in March 2003 Prime Minister Zoran Djindic was assassinated.
Reforms in both Serbia and Ukraine were stymied by the national question, but in the
case of the former these related to external issues in the former Yugoslavia (Serbia,
outside Kosovo and Vojvodina, is mono-ethnic), while in the latter they related to
competing visions of national identity. The Rose Revolution destroyed the Eduard
Shevardnadze regime and his parties of power, Citizens Union of Georgia and For a
New Georgia94 and Ajarias Revival. In the 2004 elections, Teimuraz Shashiashvili
came second with only 1.9 percent to Saakshvilis 96 percent. The Orange Revolution
and Yushchenkos slim 8 percent victory failed to marginalize the most powerful
political force from the Kuchma era, the Party of Regions,95 which came first in
the 2006 and 2007 elections while its leader, Yanukovych, won power in the 2010
elections.
Victorious candidates in Ukraines presidential elections have received between
52 (Kuchma 1994, Yushchenko 2004) and 62 percent (Kravchuk 1991), with a victory
in the first round only occurring on one occasion when Kravchuk was elected in
December 1991. In Georgia, every presidential election since 1991 has produced
landslides for Zviad Gamsakurdia, Shevardnadze, and Saakashvili of between 74 and
96 percent and Saakashvili won a second term in 2008 in the first round (with, on
this occasion, his nearest rival Levan Gachechiladze winning 27 percent of the vote
compared to Saakashvilis 52).96 Ukraines regional diversity has traditionally been
treated as a source of its internal weakness, but it also prevents monopolization of
power by any political force. Our Ukraine, BYuT, and the Party of Regions have each
received between 24 and 34 percent in the 2002, 2006, and 2007 parliamentary elections, and it would be nearly impossible for any Ukrainian political force to receive
more than 50 percent, unlike the UNM (or the Unified Russia party led by Prime
Minister Putin).
Ukraines regional divisions have provided the opposition with a strong base of
support either in Western Ukraine (orange forces) or in the Donbas and the Crimea
(Party of Regions). Aslan Abashidze controlled the Adjarian region of Georgia under
Shevardnadze in a quid pro quo whereby Abashidze nominally recognized Georgian
sovereignty in exchange for no interference by the central authorities in Adjarian affairs.
Abashidzes Democratic Revival Union won 95 percent of the vote in Adjaria in the
fraudulent 2003 elections. In the 2002, elections the pro-regime For a United Ukraine
(ZYU) bloc won its best result in Donetsk oblast (37 percent), facilitated by then
Donetsk Governor Yanukovych. Kuchma repaid Yanukovych by appointing him prime
minister in November 2002, which made it certain that he would become the authorities presidential candidate in the 2004 elections. The Party of Regions, reliant
on the Donetsk political machine, was formed in 2001, joined the ZYU bloc in the
2002 elections, and established two factions in the Ukrainian parliament, European
Choice, led by Azarov, and Regions of Ukraine, loyal to Yanukovych. Following
Yushchenkos election in 2004, the Party of Regions became an independent
political force, coming first in the 2006 and 2007 elections with 31 and 34 percent of
the vote, respectively, and Yanukovych winning the presidency in 2010 with 48
percent of the vote. Azarov was the first Party of Regions leader in 2001 to 2003
and again from 2010. In 2003 and 2004, Abashidze was removed by popular local
protests, central intervention, and Russian intermediaries. Regional parliamentary
elections were held in June 2004, in which Victorious Adjara, a new party backed
by Saakashvili, won twenty-eight out of thirty seats in the Adjarian Supreme Council.
Orange forces were never able to remove the Party of Regions from their Donbas
and Crimean strongholds and never sought to launch criminal proceedings against
Kuchma, Yanukovych, or other senior officials.
Yanukovych and the Party of Regions won between 4448 (2004 and 2010)
and 3134 percent (2006 and 2007) of the vote, respectively, in presidential and
parliamentary elections between 2004, when they first participated independently,
and 2010. Georgia reduced its 7 percent threshold to enter parliament to 5 percent,
higher than Ukraines 3 percent, and this reform permitted three political forces
(other than the UDM) to enter the Georgian parliament in 2008. Both Ukrainian parliaments elected in 2006 and 2007 had five political forces, with the orange coalition
winning slim majorities in both elections. The UNM dominated the Georgian parliament to an extent that Our Ukraine (even with BYuT) never could, and orange
forces could never monopolize power in the manner of the UNM in Georgia.
A comparative analysis of Georgia and Ukraine also needs to bring in two further
differences. Saakashvili inherited a failed state and successfully prioritized statebuilding, while Yushchenko inherited a strong state and prioritized nation-building.
Interelite infighting, the stagnation of Our Ukraine and fragmentation of the national
democrats, as well as a lack of further improvements to the 2006 constitutional
reforms to reduce interinstitutional conflicts, led to the Ukrainian state being weaker
at the end of Yushchenkos presidency. The Georgian state, in contrast, was stronger,
although it was decapitated with the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia
after the August 2008 Russian invasion.
A second difference between Georgia and Ukraine rests on personalities, with
Saakashvili far closer in spirit and rhetoric to Tymoshenko. Saakashvili and Tymoshenko
are both charismatic, unlike Yushchenko or Burjanadze, and both have been accused
of being populists.97 Jones describes Saakashvili as emotional, angry, confrontational,
patriotic, tough and states that he understood what Georgian voters wanteda
virile, excitable and uncompromising hero with the promise of economic and political salvation.98 Tymoshenko has similar traits but has two drawbacks in relation to
Saakashvili. First, she is a woman in a highly masculine and sexist post-Soviet cultural
environment. Second, her mixed Armenian-Ukrainian ethnic heritage undermines
her nationalist credentials in the eyes of some Western Ukrainian voters.99 These two
factors, coupled with Ukraines greater regional diversity, mean that Tymoshenko
could never become a Ukrainian Saakashvili, and therefore it was wrong to perceive her as a threat to Ukraines democracy if she had won the 2010 elections.
Conclusion
Prospects for change and reform are poor in Ukraine because four major constraints
limit the ability of any leader to undertake radical reforms, particularly in areas that
impact upon the interests of the elites. First, Ukraines political culture has been shaped
by its path dependency (inherited historical legacies) from foreign imperial rule, much
of it non-European, the devastation of Soviet totalitarianism, and a corrupt and rapid
transition to a market economy. In the past half century, Ukrainians have experienced
Leonid Brezhnevs three decade era of stagnation and Kuchmas rapid transition in
less than a decade to a market economy. Second, pressure from within society for
change is weak; the one exception where this was not the casethe Orange
Revolutionwas an aberration to the normal passivity of Ukrainians. This is compounded by weak political will from Ukraines elites for change and a short term
interest in politics for the purpose of personal enrichment that is at odds with the
countrys medium-long term national interests. The failure of the Yushchenko presidency to undertake expected reforms in a wide variety of areas showed the fallacy of
assuming that orange forces are de facto reformist.
The Yushchenko era continued to show Ukraine is an immobile state. Italy and
Georgia have shown the importance of political will from political leaders, state officials, journalists, and civil society activists to effect profound changes. While
change and reforms remain popular among Ukrainian citizens, they lack efficacy
and the ability to implement their demands. Meanwhile, the countrys elites prefer
the stable status quo and an immobile state. Third, there is an absence of pressure
from outside. NATO and EU membership were two major catalysts of domestic
change in post-communist Europe, but neither institution has played a similar role
in Ukraine. Although NATO operated an open-door policy on membership, Ukraine
never saw itself as a serious candidate for NATO membership after its attempts to
obtain a Membership Action Plan was turned down by NATO on four separate occasions between 2002 and 2008. The Yanukovych administration has closed the door
on NATO membership and therefore undermined the ability of NATO to play a role
in reducing the countrys immobility. The EU, a more important catalyst of change
in slow post-communist reformers such as Romania and Bulgaria, has never operated an open-door policy on membership towards Commonwealth of Independent
States (CIS) countries such as Ukraine. The absence of an EU membership offer to
Ukraine contributes to the countrys immobility by not providing an external source
of pressure for change. The importance of external pressure could be seen in the 2010
IMF agreement negotiated by the Yanukovych administration, which agreed to undertake unpopular energy reforms in exchange for financial support to alleviate its
budget crisis.
Inherited political culture, weak domestic pressure for reform, and an absence of
external pressure from the EU for deep-seated reforms all point to Ukraine remaining
an immobile state for the foreseeable future.
Notes
1. With the exception of surveys conducted in Ukraine, few scholarly studies have probed this question.
For an early analysis, see Paul Kubicek, Post-Soviet Ukraine: In Search of a Constituency for Reform,
Journal of Communist Studies & Transition Politics 13:3(1997): 10326.
2. Alexander Motyl, Making Sense of Ukraine, Harriman Review 10:3(1997): 17; Dominique
Arel, The Muddle Way, Current History 97:621(1998): 34246; Marta Dyczok, Ukraine: Movement
without Change, Change without Movement (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic, 2000); Andrew Lushnycky
and Mykola Riabchuk, eds., Ukraine on Its Meandering Path between East and West (Bern, Switzerland:
Peter Lang, 2009); and T. Kuzio, Virtual Reform in a Virtual State, Kyiv Post, 8 May 2003.
3. Askold Krushelnycky wrote that Yushchenko promised a lot while delivering little or nothing.
He was a petty person of little vision, full of hot air and unwilling to take any hard decisions. See
A. Krushelnycky, Yanukovych Lives Up to Low Expectations, Kyiv Post, 16 Apr. 2010.
4. Andrew Wilson, UkraineFrom Orange Revolution to Failed State? (Talk given at briefing in
Washington, DC, 29 May 2009), http://ecfr.eu/content/profile/C33.
5. See M. Riabchuk, Whats Left of Orange Ukraine? www.opendemocracy.net, 22 Apr. 2010.
6. Leonid Kravchuk, www.pravda.com.ua, blog, 6 Apr. 2010.
7. Remarks made by Paul DAnieri at the Ukraine 20102020: Politics, Geopolitics and Future
Trajectories (Symposium, Kyiv, 18 Dec. 2009).
8. Francis Fukuyama, Transitions to the Rule of Law, Journal of Democracy 21:1(2010): 138.
9. Adrian Karatnycky, Reintroducing Viktor Yanukovych, Wall Street Journal, 8 Feb. 2010.
10. See ibid.; and Anders Aslund, How Ukraine Became a Market Economy and Democracy
(Washington, DC: Petersen Institute of International Economics, March 2009). Ukrainian oligarchs can
act like Arab Sheikhs buying French castles and Dutch yachts, sending their children to British schools,
and wearing Italian suits but remain the same feudalists. See Ostap Kryvdyk, Chy ye zhyttia pislia
Yanukovycha? Ukrayinska Pravda, 10 Feb. 2010.
11. T. Kuzio, Ukraines Oligarchs and Democratic Regression: Why Are They Silent?, Eurasia
Daily Monitor, 22 Sept. 2010.
12. Susan Stewart, Ukraines Greatest Challenge, www.europeanvoice.com, 13 Jan. 2010.
13. Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way, International Linkage and Democratization, Journal of
Democracy 16:3(2005): 2034.
14. The first four months of 2000 saw the greatest reform drive that Ukraine had seen since the fall
of 1994. It was broader and more comprehensive, and it would put the market economy right. Quoted
from Aslund, How Ukraine Became a Market Economy and Democracy, 133.
15. Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko said that Yushchenko was never an ardent supporter of undertaking
protests in the 2004 elections and preferred back room negotiations. Y. Lutsenko cited in Ukrayinska
Pravda, 21 Nov. 2008. At roundtable negotiations the authorities, although in a weak position, dictated
terms to Yushchenko, who at that stage controlled the security forces and the streets of Kyiv.
16. Eric Gordy, Serbia after Djindjic. War Crimes, Organized Crime, and Trust in Public Institutions,
Problems of Post-Communism 51:3(2004): 1017.
17. The September 2004 poisoning and November 2004 attempted bombing of Yushchenkos election
headquarters point to the authorities and Russia perceiving Yushchenko as likely to implement the radical
election slogans that he and Tymoshenko campaigned upon. This was also evidenced by suicides and
officials fleeing abroad after he was elected. In a similar manner, Djindjics reforms were seen as a threat,
and he was assassinated. The authorities were not to know that Yushchenko never intended to implement
his election slogan of Bandits to Prison! and that he would do everything in his power to thwart
Tymoshenkos ability to implement them.
18. Aslund, How Ukraine Became a Market Economy and Democracy, 179.
19. See http://www.cvk.gov.ua/pls/vp2004/wp0011.
20. Aslund, How Ukraine Became a Market Economy and Democracy, 202, 205, 207.
21. Yushchenko, presenting his candidacy for the 2004 elections, said, The authorities will work for
the people, corruption will be ended, all will be equal before the law, and bandits will go to jail (UNIAN,
1 July 2004).
22. See T. Kuzio, Populism in Ukraine in Comparative European Context, Problems of PostCommunism, 45:6(2010), IN PRESS.
23. Introduction to special issue on political corruption of Natsionalna Bezpeka i Oborona 7 (2009),
http://www.uceps.org/ukr/journal.php and http://www.uceps.org/eng/journal.php?
24. Interview with GRECO head Drago Kos in Zerkalo Nedeli, 16-22 October 2010.
25. Interview with Oleksandr Medvedko in Zerkalo Nedeli, 2430 Jan. 2009.
26. Natsionalna Bezpeka i Oborona 7(2009).
27. Lutsenko cited by Ukrayinska Pravda, 15 Apr. 2009.
28. Serhiy Leshchenko, Yulia Tymoshenko povtoruye kadrov karuseli Viktora Yanukovycha,
Ukrayinska Pravda, 15 Apr. 2009.
29. Deputy Prime Minister Volodymyr Sivkovych cited by Ukrayinska Pravda, 11 May 2010.
30. Valeriy Honcharuk and Yaroslav Pavlovsky, Yanukovych hotuye adminresurs pid vybory,
Ukrayinska Pravda, 5 May 2010; and P. Byrne and S. Tuchynska, Police Move to Dampen Protest
Turnout, Kyiv Post, 11 May 2010.
31. Tymoshenko claimed that bribes of up to $5 million were being offered to opposition deputies to
defect to the Stability and Reforms coalition. Tymoshenko cited in Ukrayinska Pravda, 16 Apr. 2010.
32. The biggest example was Tymoshenkos legal adviser Andriy Portnov, who defected after agreeing
to become deputy head of the presidential administration (Ukrayinska Pravda, 12 Apr. 2010). See Viktor
Chyvokin, Yanukovych doukomplektovuye svoyu administratsiu, Ukrayinska Pravda, 5 May 2010.
33. A Dnipropetrovsk-based company organized the sale of votes and also offered to rent protestors
to political parties. See Ukrayinska Pravda, Zhyttia, 4 Apr. 2010. See T. Kuzio, Political Tourism and
Managed Civil Society in Ukraine, Eurasian Daily Monitor 4:100(22 May 2007).
34. M. Riabchuk, Kompleks Lioventalia, www.zgroup.com.ua, 7 Apr. 2010.
35. Charles H. Fairbanks, Georgias Soviet Legacy, Journal of Democracy 21:1(2010): 144.
36. Yuriy Butusov, Inna Bedernykov, and others, My sami otkryly vorota, my sami, Zerkalo Nedeli,
2429 Apr. 2010.
37. Leonid Kuchmas independence day speech published in Uriadovyi Kurier, 27 Aug. 2003.
38. Natsionalna Bezpeka i Oborona 7(2009), 6.
40. Jan Neutze and Adrian Karatnycky, Corruption, Democracy and Investment in Ukraine (Washington,
DC: Atlantic Council of the United States, 2007), 28.
41. Tymoshenkos comments are cited in Ukrayinska Pravda, 8 Apr. 2010. See Svitlana Tuchynska,
Ukrayinska Pravda exposes presidents Mezhygirya deal, Kyiv Post, 6 May 2010.
42. L. Kravchuk, Ukrayinska Pravda, blog, 6 Apr. 2010.
44. Yushchenko issued a decree on his last day in office appointing Kyiv Mayor Leonid
Chernovetsky, who is unpopular and widely believed to be corrupt, to the Higher Judicial Council. The
decree was defined as secret and not published on www.president.gov.ua. The decree was rescinded
by Yanukovych. In an interview in Den (31 Mar. 2010), Yushchenko clamed he was in opposition to
the authorities. Ukrayinska Pravda on the same day published photographs and analysis of a government
dacha that Yushchenko is seeking to receive in perpetuity from the authorities. See S. Leshchenko,
Blysk ta ubohist opozytsionera Yushchenka, Ukrayinska Pravda, 31 Mar. 2010. Yushchenko and Our
UkrainePeoples Self Defence have been at the centre of protests against the appointment of Dmytro
Tabachnyk as education and science minister in the Azarov cabinet, proposing a no-confidence resolution in parliament on 30 March 2010 for his dismissal. At the same time, Our Ukraine party leader
and former chief of staff Vera Ulianchekos husband agreed to become deputy education and science
minister.
45. S. Leshchenko, Faktor Herman yak vstup do klanoznavtsva ukrayinskoii polityka, Ukrayinska
Pravda, 24 Mar. 2010.
46. Andreas Umland, Is Europe Losing Ukraine? Foreign Policy Journal, 12 Apr. 2010, http://www
.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2010/04/12/is-europe-losing-ukraine/.
47. Kuchma cited by Reuters, 12 Dec. 1994.
48. See the comments by the spouse of a wealthy Russian oligarch in Mark Hollingsworth and Stewart
Lansley, Londongrad. From Russia with Cash. The Inside Story of the Oligarchs (London: Fourth Estate,
2009), 183.
49. Leslie Holmes, Crime, Organized Crime and Corruption in Post-Communist Europe and the CIS,
Communist and Post-Communist Studies 42:2(2009): 285.
50. Lutsenko cited by Ukrayinska Pravda, 21 Apr. 2008.
52. New face candidates in the 2010 presidential elections included Sergei Tigipko (with 50 negative:
32 positive ratings), Yatseniuk (56:32), and Grytsenko (54:22). Tymoshenko and Yanukovych received
67:30 and 55:42 negative-to-positive ratings, respectfully. Incumbent Yushchenko had 83 percent negative
trust levels and only 14 percent positive. Clearly Ukrainian voters were disillusioned with the entire
Ukrainian political spectrum on the eve of the 2010 elections. Even the extreme right during a period of
deep economic crisis did not receive high support with Svoboda (Freedom) Party leader Oleh Tyahnybok
receiving 65 negative : 11 positive levels of trust. See Positive and Negative Impressions of Ukrainian
Politicians, in Public Opinion in Ukraine 2009. Findings from an IFES Survey (Washington, DC:
International Foundation for Electoral Systems, December 2009), http://www.ifes.org/pubsearch_results
.html?type_group_0=&region_name_0=Ukraine&keyword=ukraine&t=sp.
53. Serhiy Soroka, ZAT Ukrayina, kerovane uriadom oligarkhiv, Ukrayinska Pravda, 13 Apr. 2010.
54. A case in point is Vasyl Tsushko, interior minister in the 20062007 Yanukovych government, who
was criminally charged with abuse of office after sending Berkut riot police to storm the prosecutor-generals
office in May 2007. The case was dropped after Yanukovychs election, and he returned as minister of
economics in the Azarov government. Tsushko is a member of the Socialist Party that defected from the
orange coalition to the Party of Regions and Communist Party in July 2006, which together established the
Anti-Crisis coalition.
55. Interview with Medvedko in Zerkalo Nedeli, 2430 Jan. 2009.
56. See interview with Prosecutor-General O. Medvedko in Komsomolskaya Pravda v Ukrayini, 20 Apr.
2010. See also Peter Byrne, Once Criminal Suspects, VIP Exiles Now Return Home as Cases Dropped,
Kyiv Post, 24 Apr. 2010.
57. Yushchenko cited by Ukrayinska Pravda, 21 Jan. 2009.
58. See T. Kuzio, Ukraines Virtual Struggle against Corruption and Organised Crime, RFERL
Crime, Corruption and Terrorism Watch, 6 Sept. 2002.
59. Ibid.
60. T. Kuzio, Inferiority Complexes of Baloha, Yushchenko Led Them to Each Other, Kyiv Post,
5 Feb. 2009.
61. Opinion poll cited from Den, 25 Jan. 2000.
62. For background see T. Kuzio, Comparative Perspectives on Communist Successor Parties in
Central-Eastern Europe and Eurasia, Communist and Post-Communist Studies 41:4(2008): 123.
63. See Running Man, which lists the top ten defectors in parliament, with the prize going to
Mykhailo Zubets who has changed factions a record seven times. Ukrayinsky Tyzhden, 1925 Feb. 2010,
pp. 2021.
64. Adrian Lyttelton, The National Question in Italy, in Mikulas Teich and Roy Porter, eds., The
National Question in Europe in Historical Context (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993),
63105.
65. Italian Politics. Centrifugal Forces, The Economist, 13 May 2010.
66. John Dickie, Cosa Nostra. A History of the Sicilian Mafia (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2004), 281.
67. Dickie writes that this saved Italy from Chiles fate. Ibid., 350.
68. Ibid., 386.
69. Ibid., 385.
70. The Guardian, 28 Mar. 2009.
71. Dickie, Cosa Nostra.
72. Il Divo, a 2008 film, tells the story of Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti, who was elected to
parliament seven times after 1946, and his relationship to the mafia and to DC leader Aldo Moro, who was
assassinated in 1978 by the Red Brigades terrorist group.
73. Kersten Zimmer, The Comparative Failure of Machine Politics, Administrative Resources and
Fraud, Canadian Slavonic Papers 47:12(2005): 36184.
74. Grytsenko, former defense minister and head of parliaments committee on national security and
defense, opposed Yushchenkos plans for a National Guard. Grytsenko was elected in 2007 as a deputy
in the Our UkrainePeoples Self Defence bloc but broke with Yushchenko in 2008.
75. T. Kuzio, Ukraines Virtual Struggle.
76. Whit Mason, Trouble in Tbilisi, The National Interest (Spring 2005): 140.
77. See T. Kuzio, Gas Lobby Takes Control of Ukraines Security Service, Jamestown Foundation,
Eurasia Daily Monitor 7:53(18 Mar. 2010).
78. See http://www.doingbusiness.org/EconomyRankings/.
80. http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=17
81. See http://www.transparency.org/news_room/in_focus/2008/cpi2008/cpi_2008_table.
82. See http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/gcb/2009.
83. C. H. Fairbanks, Georgias Rose Revolution, Journal of Democracy 15:2(2004): 11024.
84. Fairbanks calls the Georgian reforms a hyper-presidential constitution. Ibid., 118.
85. Michael McFaul, Conclusion: The Orange Revolution in a Comparative Perspective, in A. Aslund
and M.McFaul, eds., Revolution in Orange (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment, 2006), 193. Henry
Hale reaches similar conclusions in Democracy and Revolution in the Post-Communist World: From
Chasing Events to Building Theory, World Politics 58 (October 2005): 13365.
86. Soft-liners at the three round tables included Kuchma, former Parliamentary Speaker Ivan Pliushch,
Parliamentary Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn, and Yushchenko. See interview with Yevhen Chervonenko
in Ukrayinska Pravda, 8 Aug. 2008. Kuchma, who was then leaving office, was opposed to taking responsibility for bloodshed. See Heorhiy Kasianov, Ukrayina 1991-2007. Narysy novitnoii istorii (Kyiv: Nash
Chas, 2008), 337. The 27 November 2004 parliamentary resolution denouncing election fraud in the
second round was not supported by two hard-line factions: the Party of Regions and Social Democratic
united Party. See The Mariinsky Palace Negotiations: Maintaining Peace throughout Ukraines Orange
Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Program on Negotiations, Harvard University Law School, 2006), http://
www.pon.harvard.edu/.
87. Steven Pifer, European Mediators and Ukraines Orange Revolution, Problems of Post-Communism
54:6(2007): 2842.
88. See http://www.uceps.org/ukr/poll.php?poll_id=89.
89. The Our Ukraine party, the Fatherland Party (founded in 1999 and led by Tymoshenko), and UNM
are observers in the European Peoples Party, the European Parliaments center-right political group. Parties
from non-EU member states cannot become full members of political groups.
90. Georgia has no pro-Russian Communist Party, a party that dominated Ukrainian politics until the
2002 elections. Two of its three pro-Russian regions, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, were frozen conflicts
and beyond the central governments control until they became quasi-independent states following
Russias August 2008 invasion. A third, Adjaria, was brought back under central government control in
2004 to 2005. Pro-Russian Donetsk and the Crimea, which also have decidedly pro-Soviet leanings, are
two strongholds of the Party of Regions and Yanukovychs administration.
91. The 2000 nationalist vote includes Milosevic (37.15 percent), Serbian Radical Party candidate
Tomislav Nikolic (5.88 percent), and Serbia Renewal Movement candidate Vojislav Mihailovic (2.95 percent).
92. Alexander J. Motyl, Ukraines Democracy in Danger, Wall Street Journal Europe, 30 Mar. 2010.
93. T. Kuzio, Russia and State-Sponsored Terrorism in Ukraine. Parts 1 and 2, Eurasian Daily Monitor
1:9091(2223 Sept. 2004), and Yushchenko Poisoning Investigation Nearing Climax, Eurasian Daily
Monitor 2:35(18 Feb. 2005). On the attempt to blow up the headquarters, see the interview with
Yushchenkos bodyguard Y. Chervonenko in Ukrayinska Pravda, 8 Aug. 2008.
94. These resemble similar parties of power in Ukraine (e.g., For a United Ukraine [2002 elections])
and Azerbaijan (New Azerbaijan).
95. Other centrist parties that had supported President Kuchma, such as the Social Democratic united
Party, Peoples Democratic Party (NDP), and Labour Ukraine Party, were marginalized in the post-Kuchma
era. The Agrarians were renamed the Peoples Party of Ukraine after Lytvyn was elected leader and they
became the basis of his eponymous bloc that entered parliament in 2007.
96. Fairbanks believes that the result was falsified to prevent a second round as post-Soviet leaders
prefer not to risk competition. Putin and Alyaksandr Lukashenka, both popular presidents, would also have
won second rounds but always engineered first round victories. Fairbanks, Georgias Soviet Legacy.
97. Although Tymoshenko is usually defined as a populist in Ukrainian politics, all Ukrainian politicians are populist to varying degrees, especially during election campaigns. During the 2010 elections,
Yanukovych and Yushchenko outdid Tymoshenko in their populist election promises (personal observation
during fieldwork in Ukraine in August 2009 to February 2010). See T. Kuzio, Whos Populist in Ukrainian
Politics, Kyiv Post, 4 July 2007; and for a more extensive treatment, Kuzio, Populism in Ukraine in
Comparative European Context, Problems of Post-Communism.
98. Stephen F. Jones, The Rose Revolution: A Revolution Without Revolutionaries? Cambridge
Review of International Affairs 19:1(2006): 43.
99. See Alexandra Hrycak, Gender Biases Are a Factor in Yulias Defeat, Kyiv Post, 16 Mar. 2010;
and T. Kuzio, Gender Bias, Anti-Semitism Contributed to Yanukovychs Victory, Kyiv Post, 19 Mar. 2010.
Taras Kuzio is an Austrian Marshall Plan Foundation visiting fellow at the Center for Transatlantic
Relations, School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Washington, DC. He
has been a Visiting Professor at the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies, George
Washington University, and a Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Russian and East European
Studies, University of Birmingham. He is the author and editor of 14 books, 5 think-tank monographs,
25 book chapters and 60 scholarly articles on post-communist politics and has guest edited 6 special
issues of academic journals. He is the editor of the bimonthly Ukraine Analyst. Taras Kuzio received a
BA in Economics (University of Sussex), MA in Soviet Studies (University of London) and a PhD in
Political Science (University of Birmingham).

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