by Lucan A. Way
in the section "Ukraine’s Orange Revolution"
Journal of Democracy, Volume 16, Number 2, April 2005

Most accounts of Ukraine’s Orange Revolution have focused on the truly remarkable mass protests that followed the rigged second-round presidential vote of 21 November 2004. But there is another side to the Orange Revolution that has received much less attention. The eventual victory of opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko was also the product of severe weaknesses in the old regime and its leader’s failure to keep his own allies in line. It was fragmentation at the top that led first to the decay of authoritarian state institutions and eventually to the fall of President Leonid Kuchma.

Ukraine under Kuchma’s presidency was a model case of “competitive authoritarianism”—a civilian nondemocratic regime with regularly held elections that are competitive but extremely unfair. In such regimes, democratic institutions exist and are regarded as the principal means of obtaining and exercising political authority, but powerholders violate those rules so often that the regime fails to meet minimal democratic standards. [1] Incumbents regularly harass opposition leaders, censor the media, and attempt to falsify election results. Yet elections are regularly held and remain competitive, and opposition candidates can and sometimes do win. [2]

Rarely has a regime been so competitive with a government as undemocratic as Ukraine’s under Kuchma. The combination of highly undemocratic practices and real political competition was first evident in the treatment of the opposition during elections. In contrast to fully authoritarian countries such as Belarus, opposition candidates were neither jailed nor banned from running, but they faced extremely brutal harassment. In the run-up to the 2004 presidential election, there appear to have been at least two attempts on Yushchenko’s life; most notably, he suffered dioxin poisoning that severely disfigured his face shortly before the elections.

A similar combination of abuse and competition prevailed on election day itself. In purely authoritarian regimes, overwhelming vote fraud ensures that, whatever the real state of public opinion, the incumbent will win. In competitive authoritarian regimes, by contrast, there is a limit to the number and percentage of votes that the government can steal outright. In the 2002 Ukrainian parliamentary election, for example, Kuchma ensured that the regime would enjoy absolute support in such closed electoral precincts as prisons, hospitals, and military bases, but was still unable to stop an opposition coalition known as “Our Ukraine” from winning more seats than any other party. [3] In the 2004 presidential election, despite maximum efforts by the authorities to manipulate the balloting, the vote theft is estimated to have been no more than 10 percent.

Comparative authoritarian regimes are also distinctive in their treatment of the media. In fully authoritarian regimes, the opposition is almost completely excluded from all large-audience media outlets, and criticism of the government appears only in small-circulation newspapers and on the Internet. In competitive authoritarian regimes, by contrast, opposition journalists face severe harassment but are still sometimes able to escape repression and get their message across through large-audience media. Beginning in the 1990s, Kuchma gradually tightened control over media, but he was never able to completely shut off criticism of his regime.

Despite the formal privatization of most electronic media in 1995–96, the government retained informal control over almost all the major television networks. The two major news networks, Inter and 1+1— which represent roughly 50 percent of the viewer market—had by the late 1990s come under the control of Oleksandr Zinchenko and Viktor Medvedchuk of the progovernmental Social Democratic Party of Ukraine (United) (SDPU[O]). Moreover, Kuchma’s son-in-law, Viktor Pinchuk, took control of Novyi Kanal, ICTV, and STB, together representing another 15 to 25 percent of the news market.

As a result, during the later years of the Kuchma regime, direct censorship over the content of news programs became more widespread, thorough, and specific. In early 2002, the presidential administration began distributing temniki (literally “subjects” or “themes”)—detailed directives about how certain news items should be portrayed and which events should be ignored. For example, temniki coverage of the political opposition was supposed to emphasize in-fighting between leaders and to portray them as supporters of extremist ethnic demands. Certain individuals, such as opposition leader Yuliya Tymoshenko, were supposed to be entirely ignored. The government also cut back on live talk shows and restricted guest appearances to a narrow group of people trusted by the administration. [4]

At the same time, the opposition continued to have access to high circulation newspapers such as the Socialist Party’s Silski Visti (“Rural News”). Even more importantly, in the runup to the elections the opposition controlled Channel 5, which accounted for 5 percent of the news market in late 2004 and was available in many cities throughout Ukraine. The opposition also dominated the Internet as a political venue. In short, while the opposition was severely disadvantaged relative to the government, it could not be silenced.

The combination of authoritarian practices and real competition also prevailed in the relationship between the president and the parliament. In many key areas, the president had significantly more power—de jure as well as de facto—than did the parliament. Kuchma was able to appoint the prime minister and all members of the cabinet as well as regional and district representatives. But in contrast to legislatures in purely authoritarian regimes, Ukraine’s parliament never became a puppet of the president. It refused to pass many of Kuchma’s economic-reform measures in the 1990s, and in 2000–2001, it successfully rebuffed Kuchma’s efforts to further strengthen the presidency.

Throughout the post-Soviet era, the Ukrainian parliament has functioned as a key staging ground for opposition activity by giving deputies relatively easy access to media and immunity from prosecution. According to the law, deputies can be prosecuted only if parliament votes to lift their immunity—which has happened extremely rarely. While such immunity attracted many corrupt businessmen to run for parliament, it also created a safe haven for opposition leaders. Thus, while parliament often had little power over government policy, it provided deputies with legitimacy and a public stage to register dissent and to instigate protest. In November 2000, Socialist Party leader Oleksandr Moroz used the parliamentary venue to publicize accusations that Kuchma had ordered the murder of opposition journalist Georgi Gongadze—an event that generated the first major crisis in the Kuchma regime.

Bases of the Regime

In order to understand both the limitations on democracy and the reasons why authoritarianism never became consolidated in Ukraine, we need to examine the institutional and political bases of the Kuchma regime. Competitive authoritarianism under Kuchma was built on two main pillars: first, an extensive set of largely informal authoritarian institutions and processes that served to harass oppositionists and to falsify election results; and second, a coalition of oligarchic forces in parliament and in the administration that organized support for Kuchma, competing for his patronage.

Most academic studies of the process of democratic transition concentrate extensively on formal laws and constitutions. Unfortunately, such a focus often draws attention away from a regime’s authoritarian features, which in the post–Cold War era are rarely written down or made explicit. Western economic dominance and the international legitimacy of democracy force many regimes to adopt formally “democratic” constitutions while they rely extensively on informal rules to remain authoritarian. [5]

Kuchma’s brand of authoritarianism was sustained by a largely informal set of institutions, inducements, and penalties used to discourage opposition and stimulate vote fraud during elections. Public institutions such as the tax administration, the police, schools, and hospitals had—in addition to their formal tasks of collecting taxes, preventing crime, and providing education and health services—a set of informal functions associated with keeping the incumbent regime in power. For example, tax policies and other laws were selectively enforced, targeting businesses and individuals who supported the opposition. As Yevhen Marchuk, former head of the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) said, “If [your business is] loyal to the authorities, they will ignore or overlook anything. If you are disloyal, you or your business will be quashed immediately.” [6] Businesses that helped the opposition were the frequent victims of harassment by tax authorities, the prosecutor’s office, and other government agencies. [7]

Creative Vote Theft

During election time, still other government institutions, such as hospitals, schools, and military bases, became key instruments in the regime’s vote-stealing efforts. Those in charge of such institutions were expected to help mobilize votes and ensure high vote shares in support of the incumbent regime. In the 2004 election, one-fourth of Yanukovych’s local campaign representatives were heads of universities, schools, or hospitals, and they mobilized “support” in often very creative ways. For example, an observer in one hospital in the southeastern city of Dnipropetrovsk reported that the head of the hospital had claimed double the actual number of patients in the hospital, and then mobilized Yanukovych supporters to vote on behalf of the virtual patients.

Electoral falsification and intimidation under Kuchma were remarkably extensive, thoroughly planned, and well organized. Recently released recordings of remarks by Yanukovych campaign workers indicate that the government made very specific plans to win by a margin of about 3 percent. This margin was large enough to appear solid and  convincing, but close enough for it to look as if the election had been truly competitive. To fulfill this plan, the government created an extensive, secret command-and-control structure. Districts and cities were given norms for the share of the vote that needed to go to Yanukovych, along with extraordinarily precise instructions on how and where to steal votes.

In the city of Uman, the Ukrainian youth NGO Znayu! discovered a government directive that listed the different types of vote-manipulation techniques (ballot stuffing, bribery, and the like) that were to be used in the November 21 second round of the 2004 presidential election, and which detailed the number of votes to be added by each of these techniques at each polling station. In other cases, parallel directives were issued to encourage voter intimidation. In the southern province of Zaporizhzhia, for instance, many polling places received a second instruction manual—its cover was a slightly different shade of green than the internationally approved one—which indicated that voters should sign the ballot itself, thus eliminating the secret vote. Other election workers reported that they were told to allow multiple voting by busloads of out-of-town visitors carrying absentee ballots. Finally, in case these measures did not produce the right results, the government had a backup plan, having already prepared signed and stamped precinct reports before the election.

Kuchma established an extensive system of incentives and punishments to make sure that election officials cooperated with the government directives. He used the tax administration, the police, and other government agencies to coerce businesspeople, politicians, and state officials into backing the regime during elections. Keith Darden has argued that Kuchma often encouraged corruption because information about such activities could be used to blackmail those involved into supporting the regime. Secret recordings of Kuchma, released in 2000–2001, reveal how he used blackmail to secure rural support in his successful bid for reelection in 1999. In one of these recordings, he tells the head of the tax administration:

It’s necessary for a tax worker to go to every collective-farm head in every village and say: Dear friend, you understand clearly how much material we have on you so that you could find yourself in jail tomorrow . . . And there is probably more than enough material on every collective-farm head. Yes or no? Probably yes. That’s why the police . . . that is, the services . . . they all have to, that is, take to [the task] and have a serious talk with every collective-farm head. [8]

Others complied with government directives out of fear of losing their jobs. After the first round of the 2004 election, 14 district-level state officials were fired in areas where Yanukovych had done poorly. [9] Many election officials also received substantial side payments if they complied with government directives. In the 2004 election, the head of a polling precinct in Zaporizhzhia, which by most accounts was among the less corrupt provinces, reported that polling-station workers were paid extra sums depending on how high the vote was for Yanukovych, and how many falsification techniques they used. In her precinct, she wrote, every polling station received roughly US$5,000 in the election’s first round. Other reports give higher estimates. [10] It is impossible to know precisely how widespread such bribery was, but if just half of Ukraine’s 33,000 polling stations received that amount, it would have equaled a government expenditure of more than US$80 million.

In case all these local falsification methods fell short, there was a mechanism at the very top to “correct” the vote count. Final vote tabulation was controlled from the presidential administration through a computer system that “filtered” results from the localities through a secret computer server before they reached the Central Election Commission, the agency formally charged with tabulating final election results. [11]

The Power of the Oligarchs

The informal authoritarian institutions and processes discussed above were complemented by a loose coalition of oligarchs—wealthy, politically influential individuals—who organized political support for the president. Oligarchic rule in Kuchma’s Ukraine reflected a particular relationship between economic and political power, very similar to the one in Russia under Boris Yeltsin and in Moldova under Petru Lucinschi. Political leaders in most countries rely on the support of business interests, but it is only in oligarchic systems that the business-owners themselves hold legislative seats or other official posts. These oligarchs often gained their wealth through access to cheap privatization, state monopolies, or budgetary resources, and many of them joined parliament primarily to obtain legal immunity or to lobby for their own economic interests.

As in Russia, the number and wealth of oligarchs exploded in Ukraine in the 1990s. In 2000, the state tax inspector reported that 386 of the 450 deputies in parliament were founders of 3,954 businesses, controlling 25 percent of the country’s imports and 10 percent of its exports. Some of them—head of the SDPU(O) Viktor Medvedchuk and Fatherland Party leader Yuliya Tymoshenko (now the country’s prime minister)—used government contacts to gain access to lucrative energy resources. Many others have been accused of using government connections to promote a wide range of businesses and industries.

Partly in exchange for access to state resources, oligarchs helped to mobilize political support for Kuchma in the late 1990s and early 2000s, often drawing directly on their firms. Like Yeltsin, Kuchma relied extensively on oligarch-controlled television networks and newspapers. Television tycoon Viktor Medvedchuk of the SDPU(O) was the driving force behind the distribution of the temniki that controlled television news. Oligarchs in other industries also drew on their workforces to support Kuchma. In the 2004 election, it was widely reported that workers in car, pipe, steel, coal, and energy plants owned by pro-regime oligarchs were mobilized to show up at demonstrations, vote for Yanukovych, and in one somewhat strange instance hold a “strike” to draw attention to the “danger” posed by opposition activity. [12] Such
mechanisms of political mobilization were especially important because
of the lack of strong political parties.

Instead of creating a single pro-presidential party, Kuchma, much like Boris Yeltsin, relied on support from a variety of smaller parties, led by often-competing oligarchs. Rather than affiliating with one single group, he distributed political and economic resources to multiple and competing factions, hoping thus to prevent any one of them from becoming too strong and posing a challenge to his rule. As a result, his support in parliament and within his own administration was rooted solely in the short-term economic self-interests of a large and confusing array of small factions and informal groupings. In early 2000, support for Kuchma in parliament was divided between Viktor Medvedchuk’s SDPU(O), Yuliya Tymoshenko’s Fatherland Party, and the new Party of Regions created by the head of the tax administration, Mykola Azarov, and later taken over by Viktor Yanukovych. There was a short-lived attempt before the 2002 parliamentary elections to create a propresidential party called “For a United Ukraine,” apparently modeled on Putin’s United Russia and headed by Kuchma’s former chief of staff Volodymyr Lytvyn. But soon after the 2002 election, this group quickly disintegrated into separate factions.

The System Cracks

For a time, the combination of authoritarian state structures and oligarchic rule served to concentrate executive power. Yet this system also contained the seeds of its own destruction. In stark contrast to Communist Party apparatchiks or SBU officials, oligarchs provide a weak support base: They do not take orders easily, are by nature incredibly opportunistic, and have a weak sense of loyalty. In Ukraine, this ultimately led them to turn against Kuchma at a moment when he seemed vulnerable. The result was a fragmentation of the authoritarian state structures, eventually causing a regime crisis during the 2004 election and the end of Kuchma’s rule.

The oligarchic system created key opportunities for opposition forces to emerge. First, capital flight, while bad for Ukrainian economic development, was important in creating anti-incumbent sources of power. Although the regime’s tax administration could harass opposition businesses to the point of closure, it was unable to touch money that had been sent abroad. Secret recordings from 2000 reveal Interior Minister Yuri Kravchenko complaining to Kuchma that money sent abroad “is extremely difficult [for the government] to grab.” [13] Once the oligarchs had accumulated enough funds abroad, they represented very serious independent threats even if Kuchma shut down their businesses in Ukraine.

Another source of political independence was the robust institution of parliamentary immunity, which forbade criminal prosecution of parliamentary deputies while they were in office. Such immunity protected both criminals and opposition leaders. In the runup to the 2004 election, this meant that the leaders of the opposition campaign—almost all of whom were parliamentary deputies, including Yushchenko himself—did not have to fear imprisonment or interrogation by the authorities.

The opposition also benefited from the oligarchs’ tendency to distribute their resources widely among any and all groups that might be influential. As a result, Yushchenko received secret contributions from numerous business sources in 2002–2003, when he became widely viewed as a favorite in the 2004 presidential elections. David Zhvania, a key Yushchenko fundraiser, boasted in March 2004, “I don’t know of a financial group in Ukraine, or even in Russia, which doesn’t want Yushchenko to become president. Yushchenko has no problem with money.” [14] Even Rinat Akhmetov, the oligarch from Eastern Ukraine who ultimately threw his support behind Yanukovych, reportedly contributed to Yushchenko’s campaign in late 2003.

Finally, Kuchma’s distribution of resources among competing groups increased the chances that these resources would fall into the “wrong” hands. Secret recordings from 2000 reveal Viktor Yanukovych, then governor of Donetsk, complaining to Kuchma that by giving budgetary funds to then–prime minister Viktor Yushchenko, Kuchma was “giving money to the enemy. . . . Understand? We are strengthening them!” [15] It would soon become obvious that Yanukovych’s concerns were well founded.

These opportunities for independent action embedded in the oligarchic system allowed for key defections beginning in 2001, when Kuchma’s former bodyguard Mykola Melnychenko released recordings which hinted that the president had ordered the murder of opposition journalist Georgi Gongadze, and revealed a startling degree of corruption and abuse of power. The release of the tapes severely undermined Kuchma’s reputation both at home and abroad. For the first time since he was elected in 1994, he seemed vulnerable to overthrow. Simultaneously, Yushchenko, whom Kuchma had appointed prime minister in late 1999, emerged as Ukraine’s most popular politician. To Kuchma’s undoubted dismay, a viable alternative to his rule emerged at precisely the same moment that his own popularity was seriously undermined.

The Opposition Crystallizes

While Kuchma withstood initial calls for his resignation following the release of the tapes, the crisis led to a gradual hemorrhaging of his ruling coalition. With a few important exceptions, the leadership of the pro-Yushchenko movement had all been closely tied to Kuchma—most just a few years or even months prior to the November events. [16] Yushchenko himself once even claimed that Kuchma was like a “father to him.” [17] Yuliya Tymoshenko, the leader of the radical wing of the pro-Yushchenko movement, led a pro-Kuchma parliamentary faction in 1998–2000. Petro Poroshenko, Yushchenko’s advisor and fundraiser and the head of the only pro-Yushchenko television station, started his political career in the progovernment SDPU(O) and was a founding member of Yanukovych’s Party of Regions. The head of the Yushchenko campaign, Oleksandr Zinchenko, was until early 2003 a leader of the SDPU(O) and the head of the virulently pro-presidential Inter television station.

The survival of Kuchma’s regime was further threatened when numerous members of the government and the regime’s majority faction in parliament defected to the opposition in the months before the election. In mid-September 2004, parliamentary speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn, who had once headed the propresidential faction in parliament and been considered one of Kuchma’s closest allies, publicly broke with Kuchma, bringing about 40 other deputies with him. Under Lytvyn’s leadership, the parliament subsequently became the first governmental institution in Ukraine to back the demonstrators when, five days after the start of the protests, it declared the second-round results invalid and demanded that a repeat second round be held on December 26. It was thus Kuchma’s erstwhile allies who gave the opposition its first base within central institutions.

Tymoshenko, Poroshenko, and Zinchenko—sometimes referred to as the temperament, purse, and brain of the Yushchenko movement—provided key financial and organizational support that helped to channel the enormous grassroots anger over the stolen elections, making the revolution possible. As the opposition faced serious harassment from authorities and virtual exclusion from most media, Poroshenko’s stridently pro-Yushchenko Channel 5 played a particularly important role during the demonstrations. Beginning in the early hours of November 22, after it became clear that the government had stolen the second round, Channel 5 became a key mobilizing tool for the opposition, showing pictures of young people waving orange Yushchenko banners, and calling on people to come to Independence Square to “defend their constitutional rights.” Throughout the events, Channel 5 was broadcast on large television screens both around the square and around the country.

In addition to organizational muscle, the defectors provided invaluable financial resources. The opposition movement relied extensively on contributions from domestic businesses. Roughly a third of the Committee of National Salvation that managed the Yushchenko movement during the Orange Revolution consisted of businesspeople. According to sources within the opposition, the movement had raised at least US$100 million by mid-December 2004. While a recent account in the Nation has suggested that the United States orchestrated the events in Ukraine by financing civil society and other groups, [18] it is clear that the opposition had plenty of domestic sources of funding, and that it was hardly dependent on money from abroad.

Domestic contributions helped to pay for both the election campaign and the revolution itself. Throughout the country, such funds paid for campaign offices, advertising, and equipment for rock-concert–style rallies, as well as the ubiquitous orange-logo scarves and banners. On election day, domestic funding covered the cost of transportation for observers and of thousands of $300 video cameras to record violations of the electoral law. During the revolution itself, these funds paid for tents, camp kitchens, styrofoam flooring, heaters, food, and train and bus fares for thousands of demonstrators.

What Went Wrong on Election Day?

Fragmentation at the top, together with strong regional differences between eastern and western Ukraine, led to a partial breakdown of the authoritarian state structures during and directly after the second round of voting on November 21. The first failure occurred on election day. Apparently, the government had expected that the elections would generally be considered flawed—but also that there would be real controversy among parts of the opposition and Western governments alike as to whether the election had in fact been stolen. Such a scenario would have significantly dampened the Western response as well as the demonstrators’ motivation to take to the streets.

Most notably, there was a failure to deliver the vote in favor of Yanukovych in parts of western Ukraine, which strongly backed Yushchenko and tended to view Yanukovych’s campaign as part of an effort by Russia to “colonize” Ukraine. In the western province of Lviv, for example, police and tax authorities refused to distribute absentee ballot certificates probably intended for use in multiple voting. In some cases, local authorities may even have facilitated minor fraud in favor of Yushchenko. [19]

The breakdown of authoritarian structures was not limited to Yushchenko strongholds, however. Election-day audio recordings suggest that Yanukovych campaign officials were both surprised and concerned at the results coming in from pro-Yanukovych provinces, such as Kharkiv in the northeast. [20] In some cases, it appeared that vote-stealing measures had failed because of the conscientiousness of local officials. For example, many officials, as I observed in Zaporizhzhia, ignored or corrected mistakes in the voter rolls designed to disqualify likely Yushchenko supporters from casting their ballots. As one poll worker told me, “It makes no sense to exclude these people. I know who [they] are. They are my neighbors.”

In other cases, the failure of some officials to assist in the vote theft appears to have been rooted in a fear of the legal consequences if they were caught. The law in Ukraine stipulates multiple-year prison terms for certain types of electoral manipulation. One poll worker in Zaporizhzhia explained that many of her colleagues had been too scared to assist in the falsification efforts, because “even if you are paid off . . . who wants to sit in prison so that some candidate can win?” [21]

The result was that the incidence of electoral fraud, which can be roughly measured by comparing the results of the very dirty November 21 contest with the relatively clean December 26 vote, was highly sporadic. In the provinces of Zakarpattia, Sumy, and Kirovohrad, significant vote theft is evident from the greater than 10 percentage-point difference in Yushchenko’s vote share, and in the case of Donetsk, from the significant decrease in turnout. In most other provinces, however, there seems to have been remarkably little successful fraud on November 21. [22] The failure or weakness of falsification efforts in some provinces meant that Yushchenko received overwhelming support in the western parts of the country, as well as a fairly high share of votes in many densely populated eastern and southern provinces—including 24 percent in Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia.

The regime’s failure to steal as many votes as planned in most parts of the country forced it to overplay its hand in places it did control—most notably Yanukovych’s home province of Donetsk—thus making the falsification obvious to the public and the outside world. On the morning after the polls had closed, government officials increased the official figure for countrywide turnout from 78.7 to 80.7 percent. In order to beat Yushchenko by the planned 3 percent, the government had to increase turnout in Donetsk alone to a patently implausible 96 percent, which was an 18 percentage-point increase from the first round.

By itself, Donetsk appears to have accounted for between one-quarter and one-third of all votes stolen on behalf of Yanukovych. Observers reported that many poll workers in that province engaged in open and public ballot stuffing, not even attempting to conceal the fraud. Such actions made the vote theft obvious to all but the most ardent Yanukovych supporters. Undeniable evidence of overt fraud in Donetsk, Kirovohrad, and other regions was essential in generating the virtually unanimous and stinging international condemnation of the elections.

The Revolution

A breakdown of central control in the days after the November 21 stolen vote undermined efforts to suppress demonstrations. On the morning after, when demonstrators began to gather on Independence Square, many assumed that the authorities would shut off access to Kyiv. The government was clearly prepared for some kind of protest (although no one expected the scale that eventually emerged). Even in the absence of a stimulus created by a stolen election, the opposition had brought over 50,000 onto the streets of Kyiv in an illegal demonstration in early November. Kuchma had warned on television before the second round that “Revolution will not be tolerated!” and police chief Mykola Bilokon appeared on television to assure viewers that in Ukraine, in contrast to Georgia, the police would defend “the constitutional order.” In the province of Kirovohrad, where I observed the second round, many polling stations had a letter from Bilokon posted at the door, warning voters to refrain from “unconstitutional acts” after the election.

Yet in the critical 48 hours after the second round, government efforts to halt the march of mostly western Ukrainians into Kyiv were stunningly ineffective. The command structure of the police in these critical hours was very weak. As I witnessed driving from Kirovohrad to Kyiv on the night of November 22, police in some provinces (Kirovohrad, Zhitomir, Mykolaiv) actively hindered movement to Kyiv, while in other provinces (Lviv, Ternopil, Cherkassy, Kyiv city) they did so only sporadically or even, as in Lviv, assisted the protestors trying to get to Kyiv. Opposition activists reported that parliamentary deputies were able to use their status to intimidate policemen into taking down roadblocks. By November 23, buses and cars carrying demonstrators were able to move freely into the capital.

Equally important, the state railway appears to have played both sides, facilitating the transport of regime supporters from eastern Ukraine to engage in multiple voting, but also allowing the opposition’s bulk purchases of train tickets to bring protesters to Kyiv. Minister of Transportation Georgiy Kirpa paid dearly for this failure to hinder the opposition—Yanukovych reportedly punched out two of Kirpa’s teeth. It also appears that in some cases local officials assisted those trying to get to Kyiv. Protestors from the western province of Ternopil told me that some state-university deans and city-administration officials helped to organize transportation to the capital.

A more concerted and coordinated government effort to block protestors from coming into the capital would have significantly hampered the demonstrations. Though the Ukrainian protestors were both angry and enthusiastic, they were not as well organized as, for example, their Serbian counterparts had been in October 2000. The protestors that descended upon Belgrade in that year had brought weapons and bulldozers to deal with any police resistance. [23] By contrast, protestors in Ukraine had no choice but to pull over when the police chose to wave them down on the highway.

The most important breakdown of central authority occurred in the capital itself. The mayor, the local police, the city administration, and the vast majority of residents openly backed the protestors. The city government allowed protestors to sleep on this first floor of the administration building and provided key logistical assistance to the demonstrations. As one organizer explained, “All the issues of food, water, bio toilets, and cleaning were solved due to the fact that the organizers of the demonstration closely cooperated with Kyiv city administration. . . . Every morning ten to twelve dump trucks were carrying garbage from Kyiv!” [24]

Finally, Taras Kuzio has noted that, in the wake of the stolen second round, large sections of the police, military, and intelligence services began to break openly with the regime. On Channel 5 as well as on the stage set up on Independence Square, many government-agency leaders publicly expressed opposition to the regime. In the early days of the demonstrations, the intelligence services provided the opposition with taped phone conversations among Yanukovych staff, revealing the candidate’s direct complicity in the falsification efforts.

At the same time, many security officials began openly questioning the legitimacy of the Kuchma government. Kuzio quotes a security guard at the presidential-administration building: “I don’t know whether Kuchma or Yushchenko is now president.” [25] On November 28, Kuchma reportedly resisted calls to use force against protestors. Yet by this point, such a move would have been immensely risky. It is likely that many security forces would have refused to follow orders to suppress the demonstrations, and it is possible that such orders would have sparked violent conflict between the different branches of government. [26]

The unexpectedly massive demonstrations terrified many close Yanukovych allies into abandoning ship. In the days after the demonstrations began, two of Yanukovych’s main public representatives—his campaign manager and his representative in parliament—distanced themselves from the candidate. Simultaneously, large numbers of previously pro-Yanukovych deputies from the various proregime factions in parliament defected to the opposition. Nikolai Tomenko, a leader in the Yushchenko camp, noted that most of these defectors were businesspeople who did not want to be left on the losing side. By mid-December, it had become clear to most that supporting Yanukovych was a bad career move. Without such business (and government) support, many provincial Yanukovych campaign headquarters had to move out of their large, central offices into more modest headquarters. Only the sincere and motivated activists remained. Nestor Shufrich, an ardent Yanukovych supporter, commented, “The rats are swimming from one [side] to the other.” [27]

Businesses flocked to support Yushchenko in the repeat second round on December 26. At one polling station that I visited in the southern province of Mykolaiv, an auto-transport worker from Kyiv told me that his boss had recruited him and forty of his coworkers to help represent Yushchenko at polling stations around the country. At another polling station in the same province, the head of an agricultural firm in Ternopil reported that he had sent two busloads of his employees to act as observers for Yushchenko. A wide range of businesses provided a total of 6,000 observers in eastern Ukraine for the repeat second round.

In sum, most accounts of the Orange Revolution have focused on the truly surprising and historically momentous display of mass protest by the idealistic youth who braved Kyiv’s ice-cold streets after the stolen second round on November 21. Yet to fully understand Ukraine’s revolution, one needs to look closely at the bases of Kuchma’s rule. The collapse of Kuchma’s competitive authoritarian regime was rooted in its inherent weakness and the resulting fragmentation of the top echelons of power. Kuchma’s brand of oligarchic rule ended up spreading its resources too widely among too many people whom the president could not control. As a result, Kuchma was brought down at the hands of his own former allies. Only time will tell whether the opportunities created by Kuchma’s fall will lead to the emergence of a new democratic order out of the ruins of the old regime.

Lucan A. Way, assistant professor of political science at Temple University, is a 2004–2005 visiting scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. He is currently writing a book on the obstacles to authoritarian consolidation in Belarus, Moldova, Russia, and Ukraine. From October to December 2004, he served as an international observer in the Ukrainian elections.

NOTES
[1] Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way, “The Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism,” Journal of Democracy 13 (April 2002): 51–65.
[2] Since 1989, competitive authoritarian regimes have existed in at least 37 countries in East Asia (Cambodia, Malaysia, Taiwan), the Americas (Dominican Republic, Guyana, Haiti, Nicaragua, Mexico, Peru), Central Europe (Albania, Croatia, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia), the former Soviet Union (Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Russia, Ukraine), and sub-Saharan Africa (Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, Senegal, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe).
[3] Andrew Wilson, “Ukraine’s 2002 Elections: Less Fraud, More Virtuality,” East European Constitutional Review 11 (Summer 2002): 91–98; Erik Herron and Paul E. Johnson, “It Doesn’t Matter Who Votes, But Who Counts the Votes: Assessing Election Fraud in Ukraine’s 2002 Parliamentary Elections,” unpubl. ms., available at www.ku.edu/herron/elections/papers/fraud.pdf.
[4] Human Rights Watch Report, “Negotiating the News: Informal State Censorship of Ukrainian Television,” March 2003, 21–22.
[5] This point has also been made by Keith Darden in “Blackmail as a Tool of State Domination: Ukraine Under Kuchma,” East European Constitutional Review 10 (Spring–Summer 2001): 67–71. For a particularly sophisticated treatment of informal institutions in Ukraine, see also Jessica Alina-Pisano’s forthcoming article in World Politics.
[6] Quoted in the Razumkov Centre Analytical Report, “The System of Democratic Civilian Control over Law-Enforcement Bodies: Its Effectiveness and Shortcomings,” National Security and Defence (Kyiv) 52 (April 2004): 21.
[7] See, for example, Podrobnosti (Kyiv), 9 June 2004; Zerkalo Nedeli (Kyiv), 14–20 August 2004.
[8] Keith Darden, “Blackmail as a Tool of State Domination.”
[9] Ukrayinska Pravda, 12 November 2004.
[10] Pochta Zaporizhzhia (Zaporizhzhia), 14 December 2004; Ukrayinska Pravda, 16 November 2004.
[11] Zerkalo Nedeli (Kyiv), 25 December 2004.
[12] Ukrayinska Pravda, 12 November 2004.
[13] Mykola Melnychenko, Kto est Kto na divane Prezidenta Kuchmy (Who is who on President Kuchma’s sofa) (Kyiv: publisher unknown, 2002), 86.
[14] Ukrayinska Pravda, 7 March 2004.
[15] Mykola Melnychenko, Kto est Kto na divane Prezidenta Kuchmy, 116.
[16] At least two-thirds of the Committee of National Salvation that led the pro- Yushchenko movement were former Kuchma allies.
[17] Jamestown Foundation Eurasia Daily Monitor 1, 24 September 2002.
[18] Jonathan Steele “Ukraine’s Untold Story,” Nation, 2 December 2004.
[19] Zerkalo Nedeli, 20 November 2004. There were some reports that some residents had been allowed to vote on behalf of their relatives residing abroad.
[20] Ukrayinska Pravda, 26 November 2004.
[21] Pochta Zaporizhzhia, 14 December 2004.
[22] In most regions, support for Yushchenko was only 2 to 5 percent higher in the December 26 repeat election than in the November 21 second round.
[23] For a detailed and dramatic account of how Serbian protestors marched into Belgrade after Slobodan Miloševiæ stole the presidential election in late 2000, see Dragan Bujoševiæ and Ivan Radovanoviæ, The Fall of Miloševiæ: The October 5 Revolution (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2003), 44–52.
[24] Pochta Zaporizhzhia, 11–17 December 2004.
[25] Taras Kuzio, “Security Forces Begin to Defect to Viktor Yushchenko,” Jamestown Foundation Eurasian Daily Monitor, 1 December 2004.
[26] Ivan Lozowy reports that Kuchma may have in fact issued an order on November 27 “to use force against the opposition’s demonstrators, but the militia delayed and then disobeyed.” Ukraine Insider, December 2004.
[27] Ukrayinska Pravda, 1 December and 15 December 2004.