THE UKRAINIAN WEEKLY SUNDAY, JANUARY 14, 20012No. 2
Anti-presidential protests resume
KYIV– Following the holiday break,several hundred people gathered in front of the Verkhovna Rada building in Kyiv onJanuary 10 to demand the resignation of President Leonid Kuchma and ProcuratorGeneral Mykhailo Potebenko, Interfaxreported. The picketers accuse Mr. Kuchmaof ordering the kidnapping of journalistHeorhii Gongadze and Mr. Potebenko of impeding the investigation of Mr.Gongadze’s disappearance. Some 100 peo-ple staged a pro-Kuchma picket at the sametime. Meanwhile, Communist Party leaderPetro Symonenko told the Parliament thatthe authorities organized demonstrations“of support to the regime” throughout thecountry on January 10. According to Mr.Symonenko, the authorities resorted tocompelling “children, students and budgetsector employees” to attend those demon-strations. (RFE/RLNewsline)
Tatars seek greater representation
SYMFEROPOL– Mustafa Dzhemilev,the chairman of the Mejlis (Council) of theCrimean Tatar people, told the fourthKurultai meeting in Symferopol this week that Crimean Tatars must achieve betterrepresentation in state offices either bychanging the way elections are conductedor via the adoption of a new Ukrainian law“which would defend the rights of theCrimean Tatar people,” Interfax-Ukrainereported on January 6. (RFE/RLNewsline)
Former bodyguard faces charges
KYIV– Ukrainian officials said onJanuary 6 that they have begun criminalproceedings against Mykola Melnychenko,a former presidential bodyguard who hasaccused President Leonid Kuchma of involvement in the disappearance of jour-nalist Heorhii Gongadze. Mr. Melnychenkohas produced tapes which he says show thatthe Ukrainian president and his aides dis-cussed how to silence the independent jour-nalist. The former security officer ischarged with libel, distribution of falseinformation that defames other citizens andforging of documents, in accordance withArticles 125 and 194 of the UkrainianCriminal Code. Mr. Melnychenko has beenput on a wanted list and a resolution hasbeen made about his detention. (RFE/RLNewsline, Ukrainian Television)
Kuchma rejects bodyguard’s claims
KYIV– President Leonid Kuchma onJanuary 4 said that the former bodyguardwho had accused him of various crimes is“mentally ill” and that he would not com-ment on those allegations, Interfax-Ukrainereported. Mr. Kuchma’s comments came inresponse to a December 2000 RFE/RLUkrainian Service broadcast in which thebodyguard Mykola Melnychenko said thatMr. Kuchma had ordered law enforcementagencies to undermine the reputation of Prime Minister Viktor Yuschenko, DPAreported. President Kuchma also reiteratedthat he has “no final information” concern-ing the fate of journalist Heorhii Gongadze.(RFE/RLNewsline)
Case said to be ‘political Chornobyl”
MOSCOW– Writing in the Moscowpublication Argumenty I Fakty on January3, Aleksandr Kondrashov said that thecase of Heorhii Gongadze is rapidlybecoming a “political Chornobyl” forPresident Leonid Kuchma. He added thatthis explosion is likely to extend toRussian political figures as well. (RFE/RLNewsline)
Health check ordered for peacekeepers
KYIV– President Leonid Kuchma onJanuary 6 told Defense Minister OleksanderKuzmuk to check on the health of Ukrainian peacekeepers in Kosovo follow-ing reports that some KFOR troops hadbecome ill, Interfax-Ukraine reported.(RFE/RLNewsline)
Kyiv rejects Moscow criticism on language
KYIV– The Ukrainian Committee forInformation Policy, Television and RadioBroadcasting on January 5 rejected com-plaints by the Russian Foreign AffairsMinistry about Kyiv’s language policy,ITAR- TASS reported. The Russian state-ment said that Kyiv is trying to drive theRussian language out of the Ukrainianmedia. It said that the Russian statement iserroneous and unfounded. Moreover, thecommittee said that it proceeds “from theassumption that current problems inUkrainian-Russian relations” in this andother spheres can be resolved by talks“without unnecessary emotions.” (RFE/RLNewsline)
Slav Party criticizes language policy
KYIV– The Slav Party of Ukraine hascriticized efforts by the nationalOrthography Commission to revise existingUkrainian language rules, ITAR-TASSreported on January 4. It issued a statementsaying that “the Ukrainian language isbeing tailored to suit the taste of a foreigndiaspora. Most emigrants who have lefttheir homeland are natives of westernUkraine, know as Halychyna, whose localdialect is infected with foreign borrowings.”According to the party’s leader, “the melo-dious Ukrainian language is being brokenexclusively for its closeness to Russian.” Headded that he does not rule out the possibili-ty that Kyiv’s next step will be to replacethe Cyrillic script with a Latin one.(RFE/RLNewsline)
NEWSBRIEFS NEWSBRIEFS
by Paul A. Goble
The United Georgian Communist Partyhas voted to rehabilitate former Soviet dic-tator Joseph Stalin, a man it describes as“the most gifted politician of the 20th cen-tury” and an obvious role model forRussian President Vladimir Putin.Speaking at a party conference last week in Tbilisi, Panteleimon Giorgadze,Georgian Communist leader and retiredgeneral said that this decision, which dele-gates to the congress adopted unanimously,reflects the party’s desire to boost the repu-tation of Georgia’s most famous native son.But they added that its timing was the resultof Mr. Putin’s decision to resore the Sovietnational anthem – albeit with new words.Indeed, People’s Patriotic Movementleader Vakhtang Goguadze, a close ally of the Georgian Communists, added that theRussian leader had inspired them becauseof his self-evident commitment to rebuild-ing a strong state: “Not genetically, not bio-logically, of course, but politically, because[Putin’s] besotted with this brilliant manand it shows in what he does.”Even though they suffered as much ormore from Stalin’s actions, Georgians typi-cally have had their own and more positiveview of the late dictator. When NikitaKhrushchev denounced Stalin’s crimes in1956 and launched his de-Stalinizationcampaign, some Georgians tried to keep hismemory alive by maintaining a museum inStalin’s memory in his native town of Goriand marking his birthday every December21. In the late 1980s a local GeorgianKomsomol official spoke for many of hisfellow countrymen when he publiclyaffirmed that “As long as I live, my godswill be Jesus Christ and Stalin.”Because of this national history, manyboth in Georgia and elsewhere may betempted to view this latest decision as auniquely Georgian affair. But in fact, it bothreflects and raises three larger issues of post-Soviet history.First, it calls attention to a new break with the politics of the first post-Sovietdecade. During the presidency of BorisYeltsin, few leaders, except for theCommunists, were prepared to look back tothe Soviet past with anything but anger.Most explicitly cast their policies in termsof breaking from or overcoming that past.Across the CIS and beyond, most peopleviewed politics as a struggle betweendemocrats and communists, one that theybelieved time would resolve in favor of theformer rather than the latter. Throughout histerm in office, President Yeltsin routinelyexploited this conviction to gather supportfor himself. But now that has changed.As political observers AntoninaLebedeva and Ilya Bulavinov point out inthe current issue of Moscow’sKommersant-Vlast, politicians in Russia nolonger can be “simplistically divided intodemocrats and communists as they couldbe through almost the entire Yeltsin era.”Instead, they argue, the dividing line runsbetween those politicians who are withPresident Putin and those who who areagainst him, with the latter being “infinitesi-mally few.”
The rehabilitation of Stalin: a role model for Putin?
ANALYSIS
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EEKLY
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The Ukrainian Weekly, January 14, 2001, No. 2, Vol. LXIX
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2001 The Ukrainian Weekly
Paul Goble is the publisher of RFE/RL Newsline.
“Diplomats from other countriesbemoan the fact that American diplo-macy is done on the cheap. Going tothe Department of State or anembassy to witness the devastatingeffects of budget cuts takes a sharpeye. Some things are tangible – suchas diplomats in Ukraine working inunheated metal shipping containers.”
– Thomas R. Pickering, undersec-retary of state for political affairs,speaking about “Foreign Policy and a New Administration: What Stays theSame and What Changes” at theUniversity of Virginia inCharlottesville on November 7.
Quotable notes
“...in many post-Sovietcountries, the politics of the 21st century arelikely to be defined bythose of the 20th, andthe battle betweenthose who want thesecountries to movetoward democracy andthose who do not seemscertain to continue.”
Second, the Georgian Communists’deci-sion, like Putin’s promotion of the old-newnational anthem and of Soviet-era militaryflag, inevitably opens the way for thereconsideration of issues that many hadbelieved were settled. When the discussionof Stalin was anathema, few people couldconsider supporting any of his ideas or tryto mobilize political support for any returnto what he represented. Now, at least somewill be willing to try to do just that.By rehabilitating Stalin in this way, theGeorgian Communists have thereby openedthe door to such discussions and suchattempts at mobilization. Neither they norothers who follow them may succeed inwinning that political struggle, but theirdecision last week at least permits them tore-enter the political fray, a developmentthat inevitably will change the politicalscene not only in Georgia but in other post-Soviet states as well.And third, this decision highlights justhow little progress some in the region havemade over the past decade and how ardent-ly at least a few want to return to the past.Even as the Georgian Communists weresinging the praises of Stalin as PresidentPutin’s role model, Moscow pollsters werereporting that a majority of Russians,Ukrainians and Belarusians support therestoration of a single state among them.According to a poll taken by theMoscow Humanitarian Academy, 61 per-cent of Russians, 53 percent of Ukrainiansand 69 percent of Belarusians want to livein a single state, with 38 percent of theRussians, 43 percent of the Ukrainians and57 percent of the Belarusians saying theyfavored the restoration of a unitary state of the kind which existed in pre-1917 Russia.Again, even these widespread attitudesare not necessarily going to be translatedinto a new-old political reality, but boththey and the rehabilitation of Stalin are areminder that in many post-Soviet coun-tries, the politics of the 21st century arelikely to be defined by those of the 20th,and the battle between those who wantthese countries to move toward democracyand those who do not seems certain to con-tinue.
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