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Action Ukraine Report

"THE ACTION UKRAINE REPORT"
An International Newsletter
In-Depth Ukrainian News, Analysis, and Commentary

"The Art of Ukrainian History, Culture, Arts, Business, Religion,
Sports, Government, and Politics, in Ukraine and Around the World"

"SAVING A 'CURSED' UKRAINE"

"Thus the question can be posed as the following bottom line: is
democracy possible at all? Thus if you try to distill this problem to its
most profound essence: is it possible to break this vicious circle? Is it
possible to save a 'cursed land?' Is the embodiment of human
expectations possible? Is the victory of good over evil possible?"
[article number four)

"THE ACTION UKRAINE REPORT" Year 04, Number 263
morganw@patriot.net, ArtUkraine.com@starpower.net
Washington, D.C., Kyiv, Ukraine, SATURDAY, December 18, 2004

-----INDEX OF ARTICLES-----
"Major International News Headlines and Articles"

NOTE: There is no shortage of excellent reading material these
days about Ukraine. Don't miss reading the nine articles below.

1. "WHAT THEY BELIEVE"
The role of faith in Ukraine's Orange Revolution is hardly surprising
HOUSES OF WORSHIP: By Adrian Karatnycky
The Wall Street Journal, New York, NY, Dec 17, 2004; Page W15

2 "THE MEDIA THAW"
EAST OF THE ODER: Article By Marta Dyczok
The Wall Street Journal, New York, NY, Fri, Dec 17, 2004

3. R(E)VOLUTION UKRAINE:
A REBELLION TURNS TO RULE OF LAW
OP-ED: By Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern.
Chicago Tribune, Chicago, Illinois, Sun, Dec 12, 2004

4. "SAVING A "CURSED" UKRAINE"
Invited Speech by Yuri Andrukhovych,
Ukrainian poet, prose writer, essayist
Delivered to the European Parliament, Strasbourg, France
Wed, December 15, 2004 (Translated by Prof Michael M. Naydan)

5. "EUROPE MUST CLUTCH THE CLOAK OF HISTORY"
OP-ED: By Adrian Hamilton,
The Independent, London, UK, in English, Fri, Dec 17, 2004

6. DISAPPOINTED IN PAT BUCHANAN'S COMMENTARY
LETTER TO THE EDITOR: World Net Daily
By Matthew Matuszak, Lviv, Ukraine
Letter also sent to: The Action Ukraine Report
Washington, D.C., Thursday, December 16, 2004

7. "PUTIN: NEITHER FRIEND NOR FOE"
COMMENTARY: By John Radzilowski
FrontPageMagazine.com, Tue, December 7, 2004

8. LEAGUE OF RUSSIA'S FRIENDS: THE LPR IS ANTI-WESTERN,
PRO-MOSCOW AND ULTIMATELY ANTI-DEMOCRATIC
Ukraine has stood up to fight for freedom, human dignity, individual choice
COMMENTARY: Stefan Niesiolowski
Polish News Bulletin, Warsaw, Poland, Thu, Dec 16, 2004

9. "HOW I LOOK AT THE CHALLENGES FACING UKRAINE"
STATEMENT: U.S. Congressman Rep. Sander Levin (D-MI)
Conference On "Ukraine's Choice: Europe or Russia?"
The New Atlantic Initiative of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI)
Washington, D.C., Friday, December 10, 2004
========================================================
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No. 263: ARTICLE NUMBER ONE
========================================================
1. "WHAT THEY BELIEVE"
The role of faith in Ukraine's Orange Revolution is hardly surprising

HOUSES OF WORSHIP: By Adrian Karatnycky
The Wall Street Journal, New York, NY, Dec 17, 2004; Page W15

Ukraine's Orange Revolution (named for the color adopted by the country's
reformist opposition), is a broad-based movement that brought millions of
citizens into the streets to press for free and fair elections. Now it is on
the verge of a dramatic victory. In just nine days, on Dec. 26, this
nonviolent people-power movement will likely make pro-Western reformer
Viktor Yushchenko the country's next president.

On the surface, the Orange Revolution has had a secular look, with students,
members of the middle class and workers rising up against corrupt rule. The
movement has on its side the sexy Ukrainian girl group Via Gra, Eurovision
song-contest winner Ruslana and the Klitschkos, Ukraine's boxing brothers.
Not to mention Sting and Gerard Depardieu.

But there is another side to Ukraine's peaceful revolution. Interspersed
with earnest youths, families and grandmothers who braved subzero
temperatures at daily rallies for Mr. Yushchenko were nuns bearing orange
sashes, proto-deacons and priest-monks.

The scene at Kiev's Independence Square was part political rally, part rock
concert and part fireworks display. But it was also a religious experience.
Each day's protest opened with prayer. On weekends, religious leaders held
liturgies and prayer services for Orthodox Christians (whose adherents
represent more than 60% of the population), Eastern Rite Catholics (10%),
Protestants, evangelicals, Jews and Muslims. (Some 25% of Ukrainians say
they are nonreligious.)

Mr. Yushchenko, who typically ends his speeches with "Glory to Ukraine,
Glory to the Ukrainian People, and Glory to the Lord, Our God," is a devout
Orthodox Christian from northeastern Ukraine who regularly takes confession
and communion. His faith is reinforced by his American-born wife, Katya
Chumachenko, who last week told the Chicago Tribune: "We're strong believers
in God, and we strongly believe that God has a place for each one of us in
this world, and that he has put us in this place for a reason."

Such sentiments echo the way that President Bush has spoken of his own
faith. And like Mr. Bush, Mr. Yushchenko is careful to sound an ecumenical
tone in his public remarks. At a Dec. 6 interfaith gathering, Mr. Yushchenko
observed that "the spiritual harmony that rules among religious leaders on
the platform is an image of the spiritual harmony present in Independence
Square."

As a result of such careful balancing, Mr. Yushchenko's cause has strong
backing from two influential religious leaders: Patriarch Filaret of the
Ukrainian Orthodox Church and Cardinal Lubomyr Husar of the Ukrainian
Eastern Rite Catholic Church, who on Dec. 6 declared that "at the root of
the crisis is an immoral regime which has deprived Ukrainian people of their
legitimate rights and dignity."

A leader of Kiev's Jewish community, Anatoly Shyhai, has told pro-
Yushchenko protesters that Jews see the Ukrainian state as "an independent,
democratic and European country at the apex of rights and interfaith amity."
Thus religious values have become an important part of Mr. Yushchenko's
moral appeal and his campaign to cleanse Ukraine of high-level corruption
and crime.

Supporters of the government-backed candidate, Viktor Yanukovych, have
also sounded a religious note. Moscow did its part to boost Mr. Yanukovych's
standing by influencing the Kiev branch of the Orthodox Church to support
the prime minister. Mr. Yanukovych, who served two terms in prison while in
his late teens and early 20s, has presented himself as a man of faith to
allay concerns about his criminal past and current links to shady oligarchs.

In rounds one and two of the presidential race, the Moscow-linked Orthodox
Church engaged in active campaigning by distributing campaign literature and
by delivering sermons that would make Jerry Falwell or Jesse Jackson look
nonpartisan.

The role of faith in Ukraine's Orange Revolution is hardly surprising.
Religion has been on an upswing in Ukraine since the collapse of communism,
not least among the young. While both candidates have sought to identify
themselves with faith-based values, Mr. Yushchenko's emphasis on ethical
principles, dignity and clean government is trumping Mr. Yanukovych's claims
to piety and the outreach efforts of his Moscow-backed clerics. -30-
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. Karatnycky is a scholar at Freedom House, which has helped to fund
Ukraine's nonpartisan election monitors.
========================================================
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No.263: ARTICLE NUMBER TWO
========================================================
2. "THE MEDIA THAW"

EAST OF THE ODER: Article By Marta Dyczok
The Wall Street Journal, New York, NY, Fri, Dec 17, 2004

KIEV -- Once again, Ukrainians are preparing to go to the polls to elect a
new president. But this time, on Dec. 26, they have something that was
lacking in the previous two rounds of voting: a relatively independent
media.

Four days into the Orange Revolution, heavy-handed censorship was lifted --
and this suggests that a change of the status quo has already begun. Power
brokers are repositioning themselves in response to the protests,
renegotiating their relations with society and modifying their international
image.

Until recently, most TV stations were reporting that the opposition
candidate, Viktor Yushchenko, got seriously ill earlier in the campaign from
eating bad sushi, drinking too much cognac or that his facial disfigurement
was caused by a herpes virus. After the Orange Revolution, however, all of
them broadcast the press conference last week where Viennese doctors from
the Rudolfinerhaus Clinic told the world that Mr. Yushchenko had been
poisoned with dioxin.

Media manipulation was not only one of the main problems in Ukraine's
election. It has also been an obstacle to developing democracy, an open
society and a respectable international standing. Yet when falsified
presidential election results in November triggered an unexpected, massive
reaction -- hundreds of thousands of people poured into the streets -- large
numbers of journalists simply refused to report untruthful news any longer.
The international community strongly denounced the election falsifications.
The strength of the protests made Ukraine's establishment realize that power
was shifting and they needed to respond. One thing they did was free up the
media to report in a more honest way.

It is no secret that there has been little freedom of speech in Ukraine for
some time. After the collapse of Communism, Ukraine's media landscape
underwent a radical transformation. State censorship was lifted and
ownership was diversified. However, by the late 1990s the oligarchs had
established control over the main mass-media outlets in the country. Before
that, they had seized the country's main resources and assets through
privatization and created a banking system to finance their operations.
These three pillars reinforced each other and guaranteed their power,
mirroring patterns in Russia and contributing to Ukraine's international
isolation.

The respected Ukrainian journalist Iryna Pohorelova described the situation
as an attempt to create an "information vacuum," so that people would not
know what was really going on and the corrupt establishment could maneuver
easily, out of the public eye. Public opinion polls consistently showed low
levels of trust towards the mass media, and Ukraine's elites believed that
censorship would disempower society and keep it passive.

During the first two rounds of the presidential election campaign this fall,
the mass media were used not so much to promote the establishment candidate,
Viktor Yanukovych -- but rather to create a distorted image of Mr.
Yushchenko. One widely broadcast ad was a cartoon image of U.S. President
George W. Bush, dressed in a cowboy outfit, riding a map of Ukraine which
was stylized to look like a horse. It used colors and logos from the
Yushchenko campaign. But the subsequent Orange Revolution showed that this
approach had backfired, and that made power brokers reconsider their media
strategy.

These media changes provide a window on the power realignments which are
occurring behind the scenes. Ukraine watchers have known for a while that
oligarchs in the country are not a monolithic group but rather a cluster of
competing clans.

The loosening of censorship four days into the protests was the first clear
indicator that the wind had started to shift and that outgoing President
Leonid Kuchma no longer fully controlled the levers of power. The rich and
powerful have started moving to position themselves well in the face of
change. They want to preserve their power in Ukraine and maintain good
relations with Russia, but they also want to be open to the world.

Some have wanted change for a while and already put their support behind Mr.
Yushchenko. An example is sugar magnate Petro Poroshenko, who began
financing the alternative TV station Channel 5 over a year ago. Others, such
as Mr. Kuchma's son-in-law, Viktor Pinchuk, who owns three channels -- ICTV,
STV and New Channel -- represent the new-generation oligarchs who crave
international acceptance and expanded business influence. While thousands
were protesting in Kiev, Mr. Pinchuk gave an interview to the New York
Times, saying that he, too, visited the crowds.

Donetsk magnate and media owner Rinat Akhmetev's TV station TRK Ukraina
continues to be partisan. But rumor has it that he has quietly cut off funds
to Mr. Yanukovych's campaign. The really significant change is that
Ukraine's most influential channels, 1+1, INTER and state-owned UT1, now
report activities of both candidates. One counterbalance to these shifts is
that Yanukovych supporters now prefer to watch the Russian channels
broadcasting into Ukraine.

The lifting of censorship also suggests that Ukraine's oligarchs are
increasingly realizing that old, mid-20th century thinking no longer works
in the era of globalization. Despite their best efforts, they were unable to
create a complete "information vacuum."

During the entire Orange Revolution the Internet, sometimes called Ukraine's
modern samizdat, was humming -- news was getting around. My e-mail box
overflowed regularly. Internet usage in Ukraine has increased from 1% of the
population to 8% in the last three years and continues to grow rapidly.

To borrow a phrase from futurist Alvin Toffler, Ukraine's elites "collided
with the future." They realized that they need to change their attitude
towards information and power, since Ukrainians stood up and said a loud,
Enough! And there is no putting the genie back in the bottle.

Absolute freedom of speech does not exist anywhere, nor will it exist in
Ukraine. However, as Ukrainians head to the polls on Dec. 26, they now have
access to fuller and less biased information, which will, it is to be hoped,
enable them to make an informed choice for their new president. All of this
bodes well for Ukraine. -30- [Action Ukraine Report Monitoring]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ms. Dyczok, associate professor of history and political science at the
University of Western Ontario, is the author of "The Grand Alliance and
Ukrainian Refugees" (Macmillan, 2000). She has been conducting research
on mass media in post-Communist Ukraine for several years.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB110323736951402615-email,00.html
========================================================
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No.263: ARTICLE NUMBER THREE
========================================================
3. R(E)VOLUTION UKRAINE: A REBELLION TURNS TO RULE OF LAW

OP-ED: By Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern
Chicago Tribune, Chicago, Illinois, Sun, Dec 12, 2004

So far in Ukraine there have been no clashes between protesters and
riot police, no mob violence, no executed tyrants, no arrested opposition
leaders--events typical of revolutionary developments.

The political upheaval taking place in this East European country with a
territory larger than France and a population of 48 million do not fit any
description of past European revolutions.

How can this be the case with millions of people taking to the streets,
the president reluctant to assume responsibility for the political crisis
and government officials picking sides in the presidential dispute between
the regime-supported Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych and the
opposition leader Viktor Yuschenko?

In the streets and squares of Kiev, the capital that hosted between
500,000 and 900,000 protesters, people are exceedingly polite: They
wear joyous orange ribbons, the symbolic color of the opposition,
smile to people in the streets, peacefully drink hot coffee, give cigarettes
to riot police, feed and engage in friendly conversations with those who
have come from the country's industrial centers to support the pro-
government candidate.

In other words, they are following the political lead of the Ukrainian
opposition that demonstrated caution and rationality as well as
revolutionary fervor.

This revolution to overthrow the corrupt regime that orchestrated
fraudulent elections in favor of its candidate is strikingly different in
that the Ukrainian opposition has not only resorted to peaceful civil
protests but also is using institutions that guarantee the legality of the
country's political undertakings. The world has never seen revolutions
based on the rule of law, a contradiction that challenges our imagination.

UKRAINE'S DISTINCTION
While mass protests triggering the collapse of communist regimes were
part of democratic revolutions in countries such as Poland, Bulgaria or
the former Czechoslovakia, any popular appeals to legal institutions
such as the Ukrainian parliament or Supreme Court were not.

Of course, it didn't make sense for those opposition forces in East
Europe to turn to their parliaments in search of a legal solution to their
national crises, because their communist-dominated parliaments were
nothing but puppets of the regimes.

In contrast, the picketing of governmental institutions and presidential
headquarters in Kiev by thousands of citizens, the international public
protests and, most important, the stance of the United States and the
European Union on the issue of election fraud in Ukraine has elicited
an unexpected result. Beginning Nov. 27, Ukraine's parliament, the
Verkhovna Rada, emerged as the third power committed to a sober
and balanced approach to the country's political crisis, not beholden to
the government or the opposition.

Although initially the parliament lost many of its members who preferred
to ignore its meetings, pro-governmental members and communists
among them, the remaining members nonetheless formed a quorum
sufficient for decision-making.

Volodymyr Lytvyn, the speaker of the Rada, underscored the parliament's
desire not to be manipulated either by the government or by the opposition
and instead to operate legally. Paradoxically, parliament's decisions have
been legal and revolutionary at the same time.

On Dec. 1, the anniversary of Ukraine's first referendum on independence,
the Rada impeached the government. It condemned as anti-constitutional
the attempts of pro-governmental municipal and district heads in the east
and south of Ukraine to create autonomous regions within the country,
attempts that have threatened not only Ukrainian territorial integrity, but
also the political stability of East Europe. The Rada also called upon
President Leonid Kuchma immediately to resort to non-violent
constitutional measures to control the political crisis in the country.

Within a week, the Rada restored the reputation of Ukrainian
constitutional law in the eyes of millions and, in the process, sent a
message to the Ukrainian Supreme Court. On Dec. 3, the court
made a historical decision canceling the fraudulent second round of
the elections and ordering a new election.

POWER OF NON-VIOLENCE
These events reinforced Ukrainians' firm belief in the efficiency of
their non-violent strategy. It also made many members of parliament
leave the pro-governmental factions and help form a new parliamentary
majority for whom constitutional law is above personal politics.

It is not surprising that Kuchma's regime did not immediately follow
the parliamentary decisions. The government is still too corrupt to
acknowledge the primacy of legality. It is still trying to talk legality
and walk personal benefit.

Yanukovych, mastermind of the election fraud, rejected as political and
illegal the decision of the Ukrainian parliament that would put him out of
office. Kuchma, a staunch supporter of Yanukovych, tried to ignore the
decision of the Supreme Court.

But Kuchma and Yanukovych, who both hypocritically claimed that they
always respect the law, were caught in a trap. Once the Rada and the
Supreme Court announced their decisions, celebrated throughout the
world as the victory of the Ukrainian democracy, Kuchma and
Yanukovych had to agree with them.

The Ukrainian opposition has gained international and domestic support
due to its non-violent strategy, but if Kuchma continues to twist the
parliamentary decisions to match his agenda, the opposition might want
to exert extra pressure.

But, to the extent that the president and the government consider the
decisions of parliament binding, there is still room for cautious optimism.
For a positive outcome to occur, the European Union and the U.S.
must continue sending an unequivocal message to Kuchma to respect the
legal decisions of the parliament, acknowledge the validity of mass public
protests and be a guarantor of the country's constitution.

ELECTION OBSERVERS WANTED
Canada, the European Union and the Unites States must also closely
follow Ukrainian preparations for the new round of the elections, scheduled
Dec. 26, and provide independent observers to guard against fraud.

Having joined parliament in its allegiance to legality and endorsing a
fair coverage of the election campaign in the mass media, Kuchma might
contribute to the victory of Yuschenko.

Whatever the outcome of Ukraine's "Orange Revolution," it is evident that
parliament, the third power that the regime and the regime's opposition are
trying to manipulate, has made the Ukrainian revolution a unique event in
modern history. Ukraine, a country ruled by a criminal government, may
yet show a non-violent, revolutionary and legal path to national democracy.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, an assistant professor of history at
Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, is a native of Ukraine.
E-mail: yps@northwestern.edu.
========================================================
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No. 263: ARTICLE NUMBER FOUR
========================================================
4. "SAVING A "CURSED" UKRAINE"

Invited Speech by Yuri Andrukhovych
Ukrainian poet, prose writer, essayist
Delivered to the European Parliament, Strasbourg, France
Wed, December 15, 2004 (Translated by Prof Michael M. Naydan)

I first and foremost venture to bring to your attention an entirely personal
vision. The hero of one of my novels, Stanislav Perfetsky, when he delivers
a lecture before a no less worthy audience than the one here, roughly says
the following: "My task is not one of the easiest, and not without grounds I
am abundantly fearful that I will be unable to manage to deal with it as one
should. And the fact of the matter isn't that I don't have anything to say.

It's quite the opposite-I have so much to say about everything, that the
allotted time for listening to me today wouldn't even be enough, and not
even would, I venture to assure you, the remaining days and nights allotted
by Providence for the human race." But all the same, in following the hero
of my novel, I will try at least to outline something for you.

The drama that is occurring today in Ukraine in no way fits into any of the
political science models prepared beforehand for it. The situation is not a
clash of Ukrainian-language Ukrainians against Russian-language ones; even
more so not the opposition of the "pro-European" West of our country vs.
a "pro-Russian" East; and not the settling of scores of certain financial
groups or clans with others. To be fair, I should note that all these
conflicts are partially present, they are, what they call, "in play," but it
is not they that define the essential makeup of what is happening.

First and foremost, a universal historical drama is taking place. It is a
clash between a society, which, in considerable and its additionally most
active, most conscious, most enlightened part, wants democracy, prosperity,
and a nation of laws, against a power that with all its strength is trying
to save an authoritarian, neo-totalitarian form of government, so
successfully and so cynically embodied in reality by all the successor
Soviet Communist regimes in all of the post-Soviet territories (with the
exception of the Baltic countries).

Thus the question can be posed as the following bottom line: is democracy
possible at all? Thus if you try to distill this problem to its most
profound essence: is it possible to break this vicious circle? Is it
possible to save a "cursed land?" Is the embodiment of human expectations
possible? Is the victory of good over evil possible?

Everything else--that, which is on the surface, but less
essential--comprises the political machinations, the play on the linguistic,
religious differences and the differences in mentality in Ukrainian society,
the "hand of Moscow," the Russian geopolitical "Yanukovych" project, the
essence of which in its alternative, openly formulated by the highest state
officials of our large Northeastern neighbor is: "Either a split, or civil
war." Despite the elegance of the formulation I believe in the fact that we
will not give the authors of this project either the former or the latter
satisfaction.

There is so much dysinformation (in less parliamentary talk we can call it
lies), so many scare tactics, physical threats, moral torture, as well as
other dioxins, so much has been dropped on Ukrainian society before and
during this election campaign--this is an unprecedented dramatic experience,
that is worthy of a separate Book of Memory tens of thousands of pages
long, in which forever there will be fixed each citizen's actions, each
gesture invisible to the world of countless "little Ukrainians," who,
similar to the "little Hungarians" in 1956, the "little Czechs" of 1968, or
the "little Poles" of 1980 rose up in defense of their own dignity.

In 2004 a miracle occurred in Ukraine: its society, which over the course
of an entire decade seemed to be feeble, passive and disunited, suddenly
mustered up a collective, non-violent and wonderful feat. The "little"
Ukrainians turned out to be considerably bigger than their--and not just
their--authorities thought they were. They counterposed their creative
poetics against banal geopolitics.

The orange poetics is a quite dynamic argument against the "zone of
grayness," into which for over a decade Ukraine's incompetent and dislikable
leaders have striven to drag Ukraine. For them it has been about a dreary
country, deprived of its own face, invisible to the world. They
"constructed" it as a figure, in conformity with their own gray faces and
secret needs. In his aesthetic validations it is not for nothing that Mr.
Kuchma admits that he doesn't like the color orange, because it is "not
Ukrainian." Orange became the color of the breakthrough of all imaginable
blockades. The color of human ignition in people. Over the course of 16 days
of active resistance on Independence Square in Kyiv it turned out to be the
victory of the people over all the technical means at the disposal of the
authorities.

This is also the victory of Europe as an ethical system of value. My Polish
friend Andrzej Stasiuk writes about it in a marvelous essay as follows:
"Great things are happening in the East. Ukraine has lifted itself up from
its knees. In these last, cold and snowy days of November the heart of
Europe is beating right there, in Kyiv, on the Square of--appropriately
called--Independence. It is right there in Kyiv that the battle for basic
European values is being honed, that in the West those values are understood
as something, comprehensible in and of themselves, something granted once
and for always." Andrzej Stasiuk entitled his essay "Europe, You Have
Become Bigger."

Europe has become bigger by the sum of the Ukrainian regions where Victor
Yushchenko won. After the 26th of December--and I really truly believe
this--it will become bigger by all of Ukraine. Those Ukrainians who vote for
Yushchenko are really voting for freedom, a country of laws and tolerance,
without thinking in the least about the fact that these values are
European--it is enough for them that these are their values and for the sake
of them they are prepared to stand not only days and nights in the December
cold or to walk with flowers in their hands up to the special forces units
armed with loaded weapons. It is in these people that I see what one can
underscore as the European future of Ukraine. And that future has already
begun.

But since that meaningful word the "future" has resounded, what can we
expect right now? To say it more simply: what can "we" expect from "you"?
First and foremost, honored ladies and gentlemen, the distinct refutation of
what for an entire decade the propaganda machine of Mr. Kuchma has been
drilling into us: that no one is waiting for us in Europe. A refutation of
what Mr. Yanukovych has built his entire campaign on: that in Europe no
one likes us and scorns us, that we are alien to Europe. Honored ladies and
gentlemen, I am convinced that Kuchma and Yanukovych have been telling
us a lie. I--just a writer--have my own particular hopes.

I want to distinctly hear from Europe that Kuchma, Yanukovych and their
spinmasters are wrong, that Europe is waiting for us, that it can not endure
without us, that Europe will not continue to be in all its fullness without
Ukraine.

My fantasies, honored European parliamentarians, have no boundaries. I
have a thousand projects for cultural partnership and a thousand friends
throughout all of Europe, with whom we can realize these projects. We
will make--I expect, with your help--countless steps toward mutual
rapprochement, to denounce that "quarantine line" that divides one
Europe from the other.

"My Europe"--that is the title of Andrzej Stasiuk's and my joint
poetographic book. In conclusion allow me one more poetographic metaphor.
It floats out right away when you look over geographic maps. The maps all
demonstrate one and the same thing to us: in Ukraine there is not a single
drop of water that does not belong to the Atlantic basin. This means that
with all its arteries and capillaries it is stitched right to Europe. -30-
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Yuri Andrukhovych was born on March 13, 1960 in Ivano-Frankivsk,
Ukraine. In 1982 he graduated from the Department of Editing at the
Ukrainian Institute of Polygraphy in the field of journalism.
He began to publish his poetry in literary journals in 1982. In 1985,
together with Viktor Neborak and Oleksandr Irvanets, Y. A. founded the
popular literary performance group "Bu-Ba-Bu" (Burlesque-Bluster-
Buffoneery). This group was a seminal part of the literary culture of the
Eighties in Ukraine and its members continue to be active as writers.
The Andrukhovych's first book of poetry The Sky and Squares appeared
in 1985. Military service in 1983-1984 inspired him to write a series of s
even "army stories," which were published in 1989. The life of a soldier in
the Red Army was also the subject of his screenplay, A Military March
for an Angel (1989), which was used for A. Donchyk`s film Oxygen
Starvation (1991).
>From 1989 till 1991 Yuri Andrukhovych studied at the Maxim Gorky
Literary Institute in Moscow where he was enrolled in "Advanced Literary
Courses." At the same time he published two other books of poetry -
Downtown (1989) and Exotic Birds and Plants (1991, new edition 1997).
Andrukhovych's prose works, the novels: Recreations (1992, new edition
1997), Moscoviada (1993, new edition 1997) and Perversion (1996, new
editions 1997, 1999) had a great impact on readers in Ukraine and abroad
Andrukhovych participated in a few international festivals and meetings for
writers, for example: the Lahti Writer's Reunion, Finland, 1997 and the
Toronto Harbourfront Readings, Canada, 1998.
In November 1998 he was invited by American universities including Harvard,
Yale, Columbia, The Pennsylvania State University and La Salle University,
for literary readings.
Yuri Andrukhovych's literary works have received several awards: "Blahovist"
(1993), the award of the Helen Shcherban-Lapika Foundation (1996), the
novel of the year prize from the prominent literary journal Suchasnist'
(1997), and the Lesia & Petro Kovalev Award (1998). His works also were
translated and published in Poland, Canada, USA, Germany, Hungary, Austria,
Russia and Finland. -30-
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Speech translation by Professor Michael M. Naydan, Germanic and Slavic
Languages and Literatures, The Pennsylvania State University, University
Park, PA, e-mail: mmn3@psu.edu. We thank Prof. Naydan for sending
us a copy of his translation of this important speech.
========================================================
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No. 263: ARTICLE NUMBER FIVE
========================================================
5. "EUROPE MUST CLUTCH THE CLOAK OF HISTORY"

OP-ED: By Adrian Hamilton,
The Independent, London, UK, in English, Thu, Dec 17, 2004

The vote this week of the European Parliament in favour of starting
membership talks with Turkey should presage a decision by the EU leaders
today to start the whole process rolling.

One says "should" partly because one can never be quite certain in Europe
that its leaders will do what is required of them - witness the
extraordinary about-turns over the European constitution and the rows over
keeping to the rules of the stability pact. The major players, including
President Chirac, with important caveats, and Chancellor Schroder and
Prime Minister Tony Blair, more enthusiastically, have all said that they
will give it the green light.

But there's a lot of bad politics about the Turkish application at the
moment, especially in Austria, Germany, France and the Netherlands where
the right-wing anti-immigration parties are rearing their head. Even Chirac
has had to promise a referendum to let the French people decide when
negotiations finally come to fruition.

Such hesitations are understandable, but miss the urgency and importance
of the moment. To say no at this stage, or to fob Turkey off with a "country
membership" or something less than full conjunction would be an act of
religious prejudice and historic recidivism of the worst and most parochial
sort. Europe has an opportunity to reach out to a whole new world of a
bigger, wider and more diverse Europe.

All the objections and the last-minute hurdles being put forward against
Turkey - the demands that it admit to the Armenian genocide, the imposition
of additional rules on labour movement, the proposal for a "privileged
partnership" instead of membership - are little more than masks for a much
more fundamental fear and dislike, and that is of Turkey as a Muslim state.
Even Nicolas Sarkozy, the world's favourite French politician, has made some
deeply dispiriting remarks about non-Catholics. If anything, Europe should
be wanting Turkey in precisely because it is a liberal, modernising country
of Muslims (officially it is still a secular state, although it is now
headed by an Islamic party).

In that sense Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish Prime Minster, is quite right to
insist, as he did in The Independent earlier this week, that Turkey will not
accept second-best, special requirements, lesser membership or anything
other than the straight road to membership that every other country has
followed. Anything less would be an insult, not least to all those in Turkey
which have pushed, harried and argued for the huge changes that have been
needed to get Turkey to this point of even beginning serious negotiations,

Of course Turkey has a long way to go. Anyone who knows Turkey also knows
how very far it is from properly integrating its Kurdish minority, accepting
even a minimum standard for its workers and instituting the kind of law that
would bring it into line with Western Europe. We are not talking here of a
neat homogenous country like Sweden, but a largely Islamic nation developed
through four centuries of empire and then dramatically wrenched away from
imperial habit to modern national state by Ataturk after the First World
War.

The benefit of that change is to produce a formally secular state which, at
least among the elite, feels its future looking westwards and its place in
Europe. The price has been a state that is fiercely nationalistic, with an
army at the centre of its constitution and an attitude to its Kurdish
minority and to human rights that has more in common with Moscow than
Brussels.

Far from that being a bar to full membership, however, it is the very reason
we should be insisting on it. Joining Europe brings with it stringent
obligations in a whole host of fields, from equal opportunities to civil
rights and financial disciplines. Lock Turkey in those negotiations, and
keep absolutely firm on their requirements, and you help all those in Turkey
wanting modernisation. Accept it as something less than an equal European
and you accept it as a basically different country with lesser standards for
its own people. Which is why so many Kurds and even Armenians want the
negotiations to go ahead.

Voting today for negotiations to start does not mean immediate membership.
Talks could last a decade and there is no reason why the EU should
compromise its own principles, at it seemed to be doing with Romania, in
order to include it. But there is equally no reason to make Turkey a special
case in negative terms, forcing on it special obligations which are not true
of everyone.

Of course politicians have to take note of their domestic opinion. At a time
when a leading Dutch documentary director has been murdered in the
Netherlands, 191 have been killed in the Madrid bombing and the police
forces of almost every European country are issuing warnings about the
dangers of attacks from Islamic extremists, now is not a good time to talk
of Turkey's potential contribution to multiculturalism in the Union.

But politics has to be about the promotion of causes in inconvenient times
as well as propitious ones. The Muslim aspect to Turkey's membership is
important, not only because to turn it down would be to send such hostile
messages to Muslims within Europe as well as its neighbours outside. Yet in
some ways one can exaggerate this aspect. Turkey has its own history and
ethnic background which make it quite separate from the Arabs and Iranians
around it, or the Pakistani, North African and Bangladeshi Muslims
populations within Europe.

More profoundly, Turkey is important because it represents a whole new
leap towards regional integration in Europe. It brings with it not just an
Islamic background but a military force in Nato, a reserve of labour and
interconnections that spread out to Central Asia and beyond.

This year's enlargement of the Union from 15 to 25 members was meant to be
the end of the story for the time being. But everywhere round Europe - in
Ukraine, Georgia, Turkey and now Romania - the older order is collapsing and
new democratic governments are coming to power who see in the EU both a
path to the future and a means of consolidating change. Belarus and even
some Arab states around the Mediterranean could well follow in the coming
years.

It's a development most European politicians have been slow to grasp and
fearful of embracing. The EU was desperately slow to respond to Viktor
Yuschenko's call for EU partnership, and to the change in government in
Bucharest. Even though they know that existing enlargement has changed
forever the tight, inward-looking club of Western Europe, the instinctive
response of EU governments is to look inwards and backwards. It won't work.
The dam has broken, and leaders have the choice of either embracing this
change or turning aside and pretending it isn't happening for fear that they
cannot control it.

In the nervy and uncertain days before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the
reunification of Germany, Chancellor Kohl liked to quote Otto Bismark's
statement about clutching the cloak of history (God, as he called it) as He
swept by. Kohl took the chance, and he was no Bismark. Today's European
leaders are arguably even less statesmen than Kohl. But history is passing
by, and on Friday, and over the coming months in Central Europe, they have
the chance to touch its cloak. (a.hamilton@independent.co.uk)
========================================================
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No. 263: ARTICLE NUMBER SIX
========================================================
6. DISAPPOINTED IN PAT BUCHANAN'S COMMENTARY

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: World Net Daily
By Matthew Matuszak, Lviv, Ukraine
Letter also sent to: The Action Ukraine Report
Washington, D.C., Thursday, December 16, 2004

Dear World Net Daily:

As an American who has lived in Ukraine for eight out of the last nine
years, I was disappointed by Pat Buchanan's Dec. 6 commentary piece "What
are we up to in Ukraine?" (www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=41787).
As I read Buchanan's commentary, I started to think of all the wild claims
of the Russian Orthodox Church about the present Ukrainian situation:

• They claim that opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko's wife (an
American citizen who long ago applied for Ukrainian citizenship) is a CIA
agent.
• They claim that Yushchenko has lots of Western backing, and so on.
• They also claim that, if he becomes president, Yushchenko will
outlaw the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine (which is officially called
the Ukrainian Orthodox Church).

Fine, maybe Yushchenko does have a little financial backing from some of
those sources named by Buchanan. (I can't verify that very easily.)
Nevertheless, I doubt that they have given him as much backing as Russia
has given to pro-government candidate Viktor Yanukovych's campaign,
hundreds of millions of dollars, as I understand it.

Also, I don't believe this disinformation that the US fixed the polls. This
is simply absurd! There's so very much evidence to indicate that the
Ukrainian government falsified the election results in many different ways:

• lots of absentee voting
• more than 100% voter turnout in numerous Yanukovych-supporting
areas
• mysterious delays when individual areas sent election results to
centralized Kyiv before those results were announced
• reports of busloads of people travelling from poll to poll and
voting for Yanukovych everywhere
• Putin congratulating Yanukovych on his victory before anyone in
Ukraine had announced it...
• People in various positions being pressured by their bosses to vote
for Yanukovych. For example, sailors in Sevastopol being told that they
will spend 2 years in the hold without leave if they don't vote for
Yanukovych. University rectors telling students how to vote, etc.

This is in addition to the fact that, before the election, virtually all the
big radio and tv channels (generally run by the state or privately by
oligarchs that support Yanukovych) ran only positive info about Yanukovych
and only negative info about Yushchenko.

The previously-mentioned Ukrainian Orthodox Church was unquestionably
telling its faithful to vote for Yanukovych, bishops telling priests what to
preach, giving out campaign materials (and financial "bonuses"), slanderous
anti-Yushchenko materials being stored in Orthodox churches, and so on.
(See www.risu.org.ua for lots of details.)

In fact, 21 Orthodox priests ended up making a statement about this after
the election. Orthodox young intelligentsia criticized hierarchs for their
pre-election actions. Some members of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church have
even called for Prime Minister Yanukovych and President Leonid Kuchma to
resign because of the scandal related to the election falsifications.

In Kyiv, hundreds of thousands of people have been camped out in the cold
for many days, some for over two weeks. Many of these are people I know
and work with. They are being fed and treated very hospitably by private
residents of Kyiv. (See www.ucu.edu.ua/tak for some simple accounts of this
or eng.maidanua.org for other grass-roots news.) These include students,
teachers, and simple people from all over. ALSO, I am really offended,
disturbed, etc. by this paragraph of Buchanan's:

Our most critical relationship on earth is with the world's other great
nuclear power, Russia, a nation suffering depopulation, loss of empire,
breakup of its country and a terror war. That relationship is far more
important to us than who rules in Kiev.

I haven't admired Buchanan for a while. I did admire his autobiography,
"Right from the Beginning," in which, among other things, he talks about
FDR being a traitor for allowing Catholic Poland to fall into Soviet
influence.

But here his attempt to discredit the democratic protests of hundreds of
thousands of Ukrainians, who have put up with an incredibly corrupt
government for 13 years (not to mention Soviet domination, Nazi occupation,
Stalin's famine, etc.) is pretty insulting.

These people are, justifiably, protesting a grossly falsified election by a
terrible government. If those US organizations that he mentions DID pump
some money into Ukraine, I really don't know where it went! I can imagine
Buchanan as a political writer back during the time of the American
Revolution, casting grave doubts on the motives of Americans who protested
"taxation without representation" and so on.

Respectfully, Matthew Matuszak, Director,
Religious Information Service of Ukraine (RISU)
Ukrainian Catholic University, Lviv, Ukraine
E-mail: matuszak@ucu.edu.ua
=========================================================
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No. 263: ARTICLE NUMBER SEVEN
Letters to the editor are always welcome
=========================================================
7. "PUTIN: NEITHER FRIEND NOR FOE"

COMMENTARY: By John Radzilowski
FrontPageMagazine.com, Tuesday, December 7, 2004

Dr. Ariel Cohen’s vision of a Russia allied to the U.S. in the war on terror
is an optimistic one (FPM, “Putin: Friend or Foe?” Nov. 29, 2004). His rosy
scenario bears much similarity to the visions proposed by proponents of
détente in the 1970s. After all, were we not both superpowers? Did we not
both have interests? Did not our respective peoples merely want to live in
peace and security? That vision, based on superficial realpolitik, fell
apart in the 1980s as the corrupt and criminal nature of the Soviet Union
became so plainly manifest that even the blindest could not fail to see it.

Everyone should agree that cordial relations between the U.S. and Russia
are essential to America’s national interests. Russia can in theory play an
important role in the war on terror and in this fight we need every
advantage we can get.

However, Russia is not an ally in any conventional sense of that word. Nor
should we accept specious comparisons between the Islamist threat facing
the West and Russia’s conflict with the Chechens.

Russia is an “ally” of the U.S in the same way that Saudi Arabia and
Pakistan are “allies.” We are pleased when these countries kill or capture
al Qaeda operatives or provide intelligence on our enemies. We know that al
Qaeda is a threat to the House of Saud and that radical Islam is a threat to
the authoritarian regime in Pakistan. Yet al Qaeda’s threat to Saudi Arabia
is not the same as its threat to the U.S. and to the West as a whole.

We know that both Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have serious internal and
structural problems that make them just as much sources of instability and
terrorism as helpers in the fight against those threats. Although the U.S.
can accept help from Saudi Arabia, that does not mean any American should
be asked to accept the steady stream of anti-Semitic and anti-Western
propaganda that originates there. Nor should any American be sanguine that
a “special relationship” between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia allows us to
overlook Wahabi extremism as it is exported abroad or as it results in the
abuse or repression of internal dissenters or non-Muslims.

For these reasons, the U.S.-Saudi relationship is complex and demands very
careful diplomacy that will not implicate the U.S. in the internal messes of
the kingdom.

One of the lessons of the post Cold War World that was brought home on 9/11
was that a country’s internal problems can have global consequences. Feeding
any people a steady diet of extremist Islam, hatred of the west, internal
repression and poverty, results in a deadly cocktail that will spill far
beyond the borders of any one country. Moreover, papering over these
problems with a handy authoritarian leader at best delays the inevitable and
at worst simply tightens the lid on the pressure cooker. Freedom for the
peoples of the Middle East—however messy that may be in the short-term—
is a far better strategic option than cozying up too closely to regimes that
are uncertain allies and likely to cause as many problems as they solve.

America’s relationship to Russia must proceed on a similar basis. Russia’s
internal problems are far more serious than Cohen seems to realize. They are
not a matter of whether Putin implements this policy or that, or whether
there are slightly more or slightly fewer democratic mechanisms in place.

Unlike the Saudi elite who have a moral code—albeit often warped—the
Russian elite and the elite in most of the post-Soviet states are completely
amoral. This was the parting gift of the old USSR. Thus selling arms to
terrorist regimes carries no moral stigma and would only matter if one
were caught and had to face negative publicity from those who still care
about right and wrong. Ordinary Russians exist only to serve this elite,
their lives and fortunes matter little to their “leaders,” a point that has
been proven again and again from the Kursk tragedy to the Russian
government’s cynical response to the Beslan massacre.

This world view has led Russia to play a major role in creating Iran’s
nuclear capability—one of the most serious emerging threats to U.S.
security and one which Cohen simply ignores.

While Putin has organized Russia more efficiently, he has done nothing to
address the nation’s internal problems. Indeed, his efficient organization
may simply make the stealing and abuse of power more ubiquitous. Basic
economic reforms have gone nowhere and Russian economic growth in
recent years has been due largely rising prices of oil and natural gas.
Basic agricultural production has crashed to the point where Russia
cannot feed itself. The only mitigating fact is that Russia’s population is
crashing just as fast. Moscow thrives, providing a neon-bright façade
for Americans visiting the Potemkin village.

Americans live in a world where there are clear political and mental
distinctions between the government, the private sector, and illegal world
of criminals and Mafiosi. While in Russia such distinctions may exist on
paper, in reality these three are fused into a single entity. No government
in the post Soviet sphere can seriously crack down on organized crime or
provide a level playing field for business. To do so would mean undermining
its own raison d’etre. Crackdowns in Russia have occurred only against
businesses or criminal organizations that compete or interfere with the
interests of the most powerful members of the elite.

Russia’s foreign policy remains strongly anti-American and anti-Western.
While Americans may have forgotten who won the Cold War, the Russian
leadership does not suffer from similar amnesia. No amount of back-slapping,

looking Vladimir Putin in the eye, or vodka toasts to eternal friendship at
diplomatic receptions is going to change that. While Russia’s gesture to
forgive a large portion of what it is owed by Iraq is a positive step, the
Russian elite made a lot of money on the Oil for Food scheme and can
afford to be generous. And no favor comes without its price.

At present the main thrust of Russian foreign policy has been aimed at
retaking control over the former Soviet empire and undoing the results of
the Cold War. In Georgia and Ukraine this has backfired disastrously thanks
to crude, hamfisted pressure and bribery. The net result has been an
increase in pro-American feeling in both countries. (Ukraine currently
stands at a turning point which may—it is hoped—result in a rebirth of
democracy and greater support for Western values.)

Consider, however, how a similar mistake would play in the largely Islamic
states in former Soviet central Asia. Unlike the more Western-oriented
Georgia and Ukraine, if pushed too hard by Russia where would these
countries turn? Toward the U.S. or toward radical Islam? This is a mistake
we cannot afford to have the Russians make.

On a tactical level, Russia’s help is worth little. The Russian military is
a human rights abuse waiting to happen. Its campaign in Chechnya has been
a disaster, accomplishing almost nothing at high cost. What military help
would Russia provide to the U.S.-led coalition? Where would Russian troops
be useful? Iraq? Afghanistan? Let’s be serious.

All rumors aside, Chechen terrorism remains a threat mainly in Russia.
Almost no Chechen fighters were encountered by U.S. forces in Afghanistan or
Iraq and there have been no Chechens detained at Guantanamo Bay. While the
Russian authorities have taken to blaming most high profile acts of violence
in Russia on Chechens, this is merely a convenient dodge. While Chechen
links to al Qaeda are no doubt real, their practical significance thus far
has been minimal.

American policy toward Russia has too long been captive to dewy-eyed
Russophiles and short-sighted realpolitik. Russia is important, just as
other undemocratic and potentially unstable regimes like Saudi Arabia are
important. Good relations with these states can provide us with advantages
in the war on terror but this comes with a price. If we embrace them too
closely, America’s prestige will be co-opted in their effort to repress
internal dissent and stifle freedom. We can work with the Russians, but
viewing them as friends and allies is dangerously naïve.

Ronald Reagan always said “trust but verify,” which is bit like not trusting
at all. If President Bush can look Vladimir Putin in the eye and “get a
sense of his soul,” then surely he can insist that the Russian leader to
halt all nuclear aid to Iran. This would create some basis for believing
that the Russians are serious about combating terrorism rather than
advancing their quest for empire.

In the fight against terrorism, our immediate tactical goals are served by
working with the Russias, the Pakistans and the Saudi Arabias of the world.
But a long-term strategic victory will only be achieved by spreading freedom
and supporting its growth—whether in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Ukraine. We
should never confuse our tactical needs with out long term strategy. Only
freedom can vanquish terrorism and while Vladimir Putin may not be our
enemy, he is hardly a friend of freedom. -30-
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
John Radzilowski, Ph.D., is senior fellow at Piast Institute
(www.piastinstitute.org) and author or co-author of eleven books. He
lives in Minneapolis and can be contacted at jradzilow@aol.com.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
LINK: http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=16199
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ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No. 263: ARTICLE NUMBER EIGHT
=========================================================
8. LEAGUE OF RUSSIA'S FRIENDS: THE LPR IS ANTI-WESTERN,
PRO-MOSCOW AND ULTIMATELY ANTI-DEMOCRATIC
Ukraine has stood up to fight for freedom, human dignity, individual choice

COMMENTARY: Stefan Niesiolowski
Polish News Bulletin, Warsaw, Poland, Thu, Dec 16, 2004

WARSAW - The following is a summary of an article, featured in Gazeta
Wyborcza, by Stefan Niesiolowski, conservative politician, co-founder
of the National Christian Union (ZChN).

Ukraine, where a post-communist and pro-Moscow government, hoping to
repeat the Belarussian scenario, falsified the elections, has stood up to
fight for freedom, respect of individual choice, human dignity, and a
removal of corrupt, dishonest, and cynical politicians, usually of communist
provenience, openly supported by Russia, often more pro-Russian than
pro-Ukrainian. Rarely are all the reasons moral, political, legal so
clearly on one side, and supporting that side is obvious and needs no
further explanation. From the Polish national point of view, the camp of
Victor Yushchenko generally represents a pro-western and pro-Atlantic
option, thus opposing Russia's attempts to weaken the statehood of its
neighbour and dominate it, i.e. a strategy of rebuilding Moscow's empire
with all the consequences of that. As long as Ukraine remains independent,
the rebuilding of that empire is impossible.

For Poland, it is one of the most important things, in terms of not only its
eastern policy but also the overall geopolitical situation in this part of
Europe. This is where the threats to Poland's security and independence over
the past several hundred of years were arising. It would thus seem that
Poland's support for the democratic camp in Ukraine is obvious and that all
political forces should be unanimous on the issue. It is not the case, and
there is something in Poland that Stefan Bratkowski on another occasion and
speaking only about the League of Polish Families dubbed the League of
Russia's Friends [Liga Przyjaciol Rosji.]

The League of Russia's Friends is anti-western, pro-Kremlin, populist, at
best unsympathetic, and in reality hostile towards democracy, and seeing its
chance in Moscow-style authoritarian government, if by some miracle one of
the parties comprising it came to power. It is above all the League of
Polish Families. The circular of its youth organisation so sees the
situation in Russia: "It is clear that there has been a breakthrough in
Russia. It has to do of course with the new president.

Following years of incompetent Yeltsin government, times of crisis, mafia,
corruption, oligarchy, the Russians have finally been given what all poor
and crisis-stricken societies dream of: an outstanding man who is able to
overcome the problems and initiate the necessary reforms. Ah, this Putin! I
look with admiration at the Russian government's recent achievements?
Perhaps it will be an exaggeration, but Russia appears the only country in
Europe striving towards freedom." (L. Goebel, Great, Imperial Russia,
"Wszechpolak," December 2002).

Roman Giertych thinks he is Roman Dmowski, and like Dmowski is against
an independent Ukraine. But Giertych is not Dmowski, and there are no
indications to believe that is going to change. Giertych refuses to
acknowledge that the situation of and around Poland has fundamentally
changed. What a 100 years ago was political realism, characteristic for
Dmowski's foreign policy, is in Giertych's version today only mockery and
limited doctrinairism. National mottoes, symbols, and traditions are
discredited and ridiculed, like in the use of the name "All Polish Youth" by
people looking and behaving like skinheads whose actions verge on the
political and ordinary hooliganism, and who instigate street brawls as if
they were common criminals.

Among the defenders of Russia and its interests (not only in Ukraine) is the
Self-Defence whose leader has a habit of supporting people and things vile,
all kinds of dictators, tyrants, and satraps, from Belarus's Lukashenka, to
Saddam Hussein. This is perhaps a result of his own dictatorial manners and
filiations, a structural hostility towards democracy, and a deep hatred
against the whole Solidarity legacy and the tradition of freedom subscribed
to by the democratic opposition. That is accompanied by his complex of a
coarse boor that can be accepted only by people like him.

In the camp of Russia's friends are of course also the most uncompromising,
hardline, fossil communists (the term "post-communists" would be too kind)
affiliated with the Trybuna daily, such as its editor in chief Marek
Baranski, an apologist of the Polish martial law of 1981. Again we see a
division on the Polish leftwing between the camp of Aleksander Kwasniewski,
whose policy on Ukraine has been rational and consistent with Poland's
interests, and the hardline communists, whose views on other domestic and
foreign policy issues are as hard-hat.

As Bartlomiej Sienkiewicz, the former chief of the Eastern Studies Centre,
rightly noticed: "Russia's expansive policy is based on its own Security
Doctrine' and "Defence Doctrine' (both endorsed in 2000 and signed by
the incumbent president), which openly speak of an economisation of foreign
policy,' as well as on numerous official statements elaborating on the idea.
The best known of these is a paper by Anatoly Chubais, unveiled in
Petersburg in March this year, in which Chubais describes Russia's mission
and ideology in the 21st century as 'liberal imperialism.' The paper was
part of Vladimir Putin's re-election campaign, whose main motto was
precisely a return to Russia's imperial tradition."

Poland, writes Niesiolowski, cannot, does not want to, and should not strive
to have any kind of a "protectorate" over Ukraine, to replace the Russian
influence there with Poland's, to square historical accounts going back
several hundred years. In fact, no one proposes such a policy in Poland
because it would be suicidal, ineffective, and would isolate Poland in the
world. It cannot be helped that Poland's support for freedom and democracy
is perceived this way by people eager to exploit anti-Polish stereotypes and
complexes to their own ends. A democratic Ukraine will certainly be a better
and more stable partner of both democratic Poland and democratic Russia
than a country governed by people with criminal records and suspected of
murdering nosy journalists and their own political opponents. The wounds
of Poland's and Ukraine's difficult neighbourhood over the centuries are
finally being healed, and the two countries have reconciled themselves.
After the orange revolution, nothing will ever be the same again between
Poland and Ukraine.

Yet the League of Russia's Friends has supported Lukashenka, Yanukovich,
Putin all that which means Russia's imperial policy. At a time when
hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians were demonstrating against the electoral
falsifications, planned and executed by the Kuchma and Yanukovich camp,
openly supported by Russia, the LPR's periodical in Lodz wrote: "They are
demonstrating on Kiev's main square and staging a noisy chutzpah. Few
observers wonder why, in the lair of most fervent Ukrainian nationalism,
people are demonstrating under orange flags rather than under Ukraine's
national colours. Someone says it is but a campaign gimmick. But it is not
clear who.

No is asking what will happen when the emotions subside and people start
asking where these strangely alien colours come from. What happens if Our
Ukraine loses the elections and turns out not to have been so our after all?
It is in Poland's national interest to walk hand in hand with the other
Slavic peoples, with the Belarussians, the Slovaks, and the Serbs? Let's
help Ukraine but let's not meddle with its own affairs." (Szcze ne zmerla
Ukraina, "Aspekt Polski" no 11, November 2004).

The mixture of nationalism with communism and populism common for the
members of the League of Russia's Friends is very similar to the views of
[communist politician] Mieczyslaw Moczar who in a bid for power in 1968,
writes historian Jerzy Eisler, proposed a "system of national communism
based on a mixture of communist, nationalist, and populist ideology combined
with a policy vision that was an anti-liberal and crypto-nationalistic
(openly anti-German)." Such slogans are also present in the statements made
by Giertych, Lepper, Baranski, and many other leaders, wannabe leaders, and
ideologists of the camp pretending to the role of Poland's moral and
political saviours, true Poles, and nationalists. Among the politicians,
apologists, and supporters of the League of Russia's Friends are former
members of the communist party and its numerous subsidiaries and affiliates,
communist-era pro-regime commentators, members of infamous propaganda
campaigns, and history's falsifiers, but there are no people who fought for
independent Poland and had the courage to go to jail to defend their views.

What Baranski seems to want is national communism, meant as a domestic
dictatorship using law enforcement and censorship to introduce forced
equality and brotherhood; for Giertych, it is the hostility towards the
"liberal and rotten" West, isolation, and autarchy; Lepper dreams of a
country without foreign capital, owned by the working classes, and run by
the Self-Defence's outstanding "experts" and "economists," many of whom are
former communists, who will give everyone as much money as he or she needs.
All these people hate those who under communism organises the democratic
opposition, fought for a free, independent, and democratic Poland, and for
the human rights.

The League of Russia's Friends, writes Niesiolowski, does not criticise the
communist Poland, directing its hostility solely against the post-1989
democracy. The year 1989 is not a date of triumph for it and one of the
happiest dates in Poland's contemporary history, comparable with the
regaining of independence in 1918, but another partition, beginning of
biological extermination, a generator of genocide and national catastrophe.
The problem of the communist legacy and its tragic consequences does not
exist, the only thing that matters is punishing the "criminals" responsible
for the post-1989 democracy's "crimes." This is something on which the
nationalists and the communists fully agree.

The League of Russia's Friends has only one enemy the West. One example
are its views on the Iraq war, where the hatred against the US has assumed
such proportions that the terrorists cutting people's heads off are likened
to the heroes of Poland's II world war-era underground resistance (a famous
statement by the LPR's Zygmunt Wrzodak), while the US soldiers are
compared to the Nazis.

It could seem, writes Niesiolowski, that amid the Polish democracy's
complications and conflicting interests there are issues on which there is
consensus and unity. The Ukrainian opposition's peaceful fight for freedom
and respect for the people's will seemed to be one such issue. Yet it has
turned out again that there is a group of demagogues in Poland who in their
bid for power are prepared to sell their own country.

This is actually nothing new. The people who welcomed Russia's intervention
in the late 18th century also spoke of defending Poland against the corrupt
western influence and called themselves the truest patriots. So did the
communists, who pushed the country into crisis, slavery, and dictatorship
under the slogans of freedom, equality, and democracy. The League of
Russia's Friends remains in place. -30-
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ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No. 263: ARTICLE NUMBER NINE
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9. "HOW I LOOK AT THE CHALLENGES FACING UKRAINE"

STATEMENT: U.S. Congressman Rep. Sander Levin (D-MI)
Representing the 12th Congressional District of Michigan
Conference On "Ukraine's Choice: Europe or Russia?"
The New Atlantic Initiative of the American Enterprise Institute
Washington, D.C., Friday, December 10, 2004

INTRODUCTION
Thank you for inviting me to join you today. When I first received the
invitation last week, I approached it with both enthusiasm and some
trepidation. Enthusiasm, because I like so many others have been focused
every day on the exciting news coming out of Ukraine and I welcomed the
opportunity to join the debate. Some trepidation, because I am not an expert
on Ukraine.

My interest in Ukraine heightened when I began to represent 12 years ago an
active Ukrainian community at home in Michigan. New relationships for which
I am grateful spawned my participation the Congressional Ukrainian Caucus
as a co-chair and sponsorship of legislative initiatives such as a bill to
construct a memorial in Washington, DC to honor the victims of the Famine-
Genocide of 1932/33, resolutions commemorating the Famine-Genocide, a
bill to grant a federal charter to the Ukrainian American Veterans, Inc, and
legislation extending permanent normal trade relations to Ukraine.

Most recently I participated on the day before Thanksgiving in a
demonstration in front of Ukraine's Embassy in Georgetown. Ukrainian
Americans from across the country came to Washington to protest the
widespread election fraud in Ukraine. We gathered together in the rain just
as the AP Wire announced that Ukraine's Election Commission had certified
the election of Victor Yanukovych. Ukraine has come such a long way since
then.

During the last few weeks the Ukrainian people have crossed what history
hopefully will record as a milestone. One reflecting the will of the
Ukrainian people, to stand-up for democracy and genuine liberty for their
country. It has been stirring to watch the hundreds of thousands braving the
bitter cold and snow in Independence Square in Kyiv and throughout the
country, demanding to have their voices heard and their just demands met,
namely, free and fair elections.

It also was encouraging how quickly and resolutely critically important
elements of the government have joined in supporting the protesters demands,

including the formerly government controlled media and the police and
security services. The media is now increasingly reporting honestly about
developments and the police, by and large, are truly performing admirably.

The single most important act was by Ukraine's Supreme Court, which
unanimously determined that the November 21 election was irrevocably flawed
and called for the second runoff election on the 26th of this month. This
was a watershed decision that truly put the country on the right course for
rectifying the gross injustice perpetrated on October 31 and November 21.

In recent years, I have focused on the challenges of international trade and
globalization. On these issues my aim has been to find within an active
internationalism a creative and consistent approach reflecting broadly-based
American interests. Within that same screen, let me indicate how I look at
the challenges facing Ukraine. I group them as to, in my view, what are
NOT the issues and what ARE the issues.

WHAT THE ISSUES ARE NOT
A. East vs. West Ukraine
As a non-expert on Ukraine, I have read reports in recent days about the
divisions within the country and I have talked with knowledgeable people
about the demographic divisions within Ukraine. Having just completed an
election in our own nation where there were significant geographical
divisions, we should not lightly dismiss their existence. But as is true in
our nation where the common bonds remain strong, I think we should be wary
of those in Ukraine who magnify differences and minimize common heritage for
their own short term political purposes. I believe that Ukraine as a whole
prefers to look to Kyiv, not Moscow. Further, it is hard to believe that the
Russian Government does not understand what would be the consequences of
a break-up, in terms of resulting turbulence, both for Ukraine and for
Russia.

B. Ukraine's choice is between Europe and Russia
I know this is the title of this meeting and I would surmise that people
more knowledgeable than I am have earlier today commented on this as a
theme.

There clearly is truth to it. Ukraine has strived for ages, surely in the
Soviet era, to throw off the yoke of its neighbor. Memories remain vivid and
emotions appropriately remain very deep about the Soviet repression, about
the horrendous horrors and loss of life from the Famine/Genocide. Ukraine
has long been part of Europe, and we want to encourage further integration.
At the same time, because of its geographical position and its economic and
cultural relationships with Russia, Ukraine hopefully can both help provide
some constructive bridging between Russia and the rest of Europe, and as
Ukraine evolves further as a free society, help move and pressure Russia to
follow a similar path toward full democracy and freedoms.

C. An example of a new era for the use of American unilateral rather than
multilateral action
The story of the unfolding of democracy in Ukraine remains being written,
and clearly the outcome to date was shaped more by internal forces than
external action. But it does seem clear that, if not determinative, there
surely was a significant impact from the collaborative, common response and
pressures from the U.S. and the E.U. acting in consonance. When it came to
Ukraine's steps towards real democracy, rekindling of America's
traditionally common bonds with Europe and other democracies was a major
asset. Recent American relationships with President Putin that were driven
substantially by our approach to Iraq, and search for support of that
approach may have led President Putin to miscalculate how far he could
interfere and the reactions which would come from democratic nations about
his heavy interference with democratic forces within Ukraine.

The collaborative international response to the attempt to rig the Ukrainian
election should serve as a clear sign to all nations, including Russia, that
the vital war against terrorism requires more not less concern about the
development of democracy everywhere

WHAT THE ISSUES ARE
A. Will a momentous step be pursued?
On the heels of the landmark Supreme Court decision, the Ukrainian
Parliament adopted, by an overwhelming majority, changes to the election
law, including the appointment of a new Central Election Commission that
includes in equal numbers representatives of both candidates. The changes
will help prevent the more egregious forms of tampering and fraud that
marred the first two rounds of the election. The Ukrainian Parliament is to
be commended for taking this important step in regaining the confidence of
the Ukrainian electorate that the vote on the 26th will be fair and
transparent.

There must also be a substantial increase in the number of international
observers at the 33,000 polling sites across Ukraine. It is important for
the Ukrainian people to see that the international community, particularly
the United States, not only provides declaratory statements encouraging fair
and free elections, but actively participates in the elections as observers.
The U.S. State Department has announced it will seek a $3 million obligation
for observation of the run-off election.

With some regions reporting voter turnout as high as 96 percent, as in the
Donetsk district, there must be strict controls in place to manage ballot
production and distribution. Observers noted people being bused from one
district to another and repeatedly casting ballots with the use of absentee
voting certificates. Observers should be allowed to view the ballot
printing, and a record needs to be kept of the number of ballots printed and
distributed to the polling sites.

In addition, both candidates must have an equal opportunity to express their
views in the media, and the media, in turn, needs to be protected from the
intimidation and coercion that has marred previous election coverage.

B. Will the U.S. and other nations provide consistent support for evolving
democratic institutions?
In large measure the scenes of thousands taking to the streets for democracy
is the result of a civil society taking hold in the country - the nurturing
of a sense of personal responsibility and social awareness. Institutions
like NDI, IRI, NED and so many others, including the UCCA on behalf of the
Ukrainian American community, have been working in Ukraine over the course
of the past decade and a half, helping to develop civic organizations and
institutions that are the wellspring of a democratic society.

United States financial assistance to Ukraine and these institutions has
been steadily declining over the past several years. From 2001 to 2004, U.S.
aid to Ukraine dropped 42 percent, from $183 million to $106 million, and
even less will be provided in 2005. These funds are not only used for
democracy initiatives, they also go toward small business development,
cultural exchange programs and nuclear safety efforts.

The U.S. should be doing more, not less, to help build a civil society in
Ukraine. There needs to be a more consistent, persistent structure of
support.

In the event that international observers deem the election on the 26th
fair, the US and Europe should make available to the new government of
Ukraine additional assistance in implementing the long pending democratic
and economic reforms.

Based on my discussions with the Ukrainian-American community over now
many years, an effective structure of support also needs to include more
systematic involvement of the Ukrainian-American diaspora, with all of its
skilled personnel in so many fields. Many would like to help and surely
initiatives by individuals are vital. But it cannot work well enough if it
is helter skelter. To be organized and effective, it takes continuing
attention and resources.

c. Will Ukraine build a democratic society blessed with justice and
pluralism?
In the years that I have represented Ukrainian-American constituents, we
have shared many cultural and important commemorative events. We also
have discussed Ukraine's past and their fervent hopes for the future of
their
nation of origin about which there remain strong feelings of concern, pride
and identity. This interaction has intensified these last few weeks as all
of us American have witnessed the incessant outcry, including among the
youth of Ukraine, for democratic rights.

This would seem to provide, in terms of the shape of its evolving society, a
chance for Ukraine to combine a fresh start along with its long history.
Victor Yushchenko in a recent Op Ed said: "The people of Ukraine recognize
that an economically prosperous nation-state tolerant of its bilingualism
and multiethnic society, and respectful of all religious confession, is
Ukraine's strength and not her weakness".

May Ukraine live up to these words in the days ahead. Its doing so is vital
for Ukraine; it also would will send an important message to all the world,
including to the people of our nation. -30- [Action Ukraine Monitoring]
=========================================================
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