Another year, another election

My greeting to everyone after my hiatus.

The biggest news recently in Ukrainian events has been that Yushchenko has disbanded Parliament and called for new election to take place on May 27. The Constitutional Court is now deciding whether this is legal.

Taras Kuzio (writing in EDM) explained what pushed Yushchenko, the great compromiser, to do this: essentially the Party of Regions has been marginalizing him for ages (a fact which many have commented on), which culminated recently when PoR lured Kinakh and his associates away from the Nasha Ukrayina bloc. 

There was the opportunity then, as before, for the Constitutional Court to arbitrate the conflict between Yushchenko and Yanukovych and provide guidance to the whole government. It would have meant that Ukraine's puny judicial branch finally started exerting its authority, finally started acting like part of the triumvirate that makes up a healthy democracy.

Instead as the Kyiv Post points out, the court never overcame its weakness (summing up a record-setting eight months of nothing). Lesson to learn: don't invest any more hope in that institution.

Coalition of the Bored

The Party of Regions has also responded to Yushchenko's pronouncement with another unenthusiastic protest movement. If you want to see what it looks like, I would highly recommend going over to Neeka's Backlog (from which I get the title of this section). She's also got many of the great quotables that have also been mentioned by frequent posters IIU and Elmer. (thanks for all your contributions, you two!)

Another Dead Oligarch

There's not much good news on other fronts to match against the political muckery, either, aside from the ever perky economic growth rate, still holding at 6-7%.

The Guardian has an article on the assassination of Maksim Kurochkin, one of the biggest items of news until President Yushchenko's announcement. The magazine emphasizes the theory that he was shot by rival oligarchs, and that the event shows Yanukovych has lost control of the big businessmen (we're back to the 1990s, said Tymoshenko).

So death and political turmoil are the keynotes of this entry. But rather than end on that, I wanted to mention one idea to moderate the anxiety.  

Even Revolutions Aren't Quick, in Internet Time

It is a heartening testament to our ability to communicate with one another that we manage to save the meaning of some words even after they are appropriated in many questionable ways. The word "revolution" is one example: it seems to hold on to the meaning of "a quick and major change in society, generally accompanied by violence" despite hyperbolic, inappropriate, or just plain odd usages.

Even when the Orange Revolution was going on, I thought the use of the term "revolution" seemed hyperbolic in the context. This is not to say that the event wasn't surprising: I certainly hadn't expected it, and I haven't met anyone I'd reasonably credit with predicting it before it happened. However, I often qualified the term in posts back then as "the Orange Revolution protest movement," because the massive shift in society being referred to didn't seem sudden, but the culmination of years of discontent and increasing anger from Ukrainians.

So I was pleased to find this article, then, which helped me change my mind. It is a scholarly discussion of the progress of democratization in both Ukraine and Russia. And it reminded me of some of the slow, but real progress Ukraine has made. And this, in turn, reminded me of something I've noticed about people in the modern world, myself definitely included: the developed world's notion of "fast" has increased to match the pace of technological advancement, but most non-technological trends still change at their historical rates (for example, building projects are endlessly delayed, political parties are in ascendancy or decline often for two or more four-year election cycles, and outdated rules hang on so long that when they are finally scrapped, they are ushered out with whistles of derision, as commentators wonder why it took so long).

Therefore, it is certainly worth considering the historical examples of revolution. A primary one is the French Revolution: probably the historical archetype of "revolution" as a quick, jarring, and violent change. But it took twenty-six years, at the very least, and that is after discounting nearly a full century before the associated changes panned out. Twenty-five years of change, and it is the definition of quick political turnover.

Taken in this context, the ramifications of the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, and independence, for that matter, will still be felt for a number of years to come. The sea changes will still be going on below, even as the blogosphere focuses attention on the storms on the surface. [the following added later, for clarity] Ukrainians will be voting again, and, while they may grumble at the necessity, their efforts will certainly guide the country more in the direction of the public will. As dibrov_s says, this is good.