A friend of mine named Andrey just called me from Maidan, where a huge crowd is gathered to hear Yushchenko and celebrate victory with him. He just got the news from the exit polls. He was the pessimist to match my optimism all through the election campaign, right up until the last couple weeks before round one, when I started to doubt my own optimism.

Here is what he said: "Hi Dan, have you heard the news, the exit polls are saying Yushchenko won!"

"Yeah, I have them on my computer in front of me, they're Razumkov 56% to 41%..."

"Aww, but the specific numbers don't matter all that much. The important thing is he won, he actually won. This is just greeeeat. I can't even explain it to you, you just don't understand how great this is. If you had told me six months ago that Yushchenko could actually win, well I wouldn't, I couldn't have believed it."

"But he's won," he continued, "This is the greatest thing, this is a happier moment for me than when I won [a scholarship to go study at an American University for a year]. This is the happiest I've ever been about living in Ukraine."

"Yeah," I said, "I hear Yushchenko's going to be going out on Maidan to celebrate. Are you there? Because I can hear a lot of noise behind you."

"I'm out on Maidan right now, and they have phones here that you can use to call anywhere in the world for just a couple griven a minute, I'm going to call every one of my friends in the US and tell them the good news!"

"You do that, buddy."

I don't think there was another person in Ukraine I would have been happier to see get excited about this vote. This is what the vote means.