9
“Orange Revolution” in Ukraine: Transitological Interpretation
thesis about the incomplete character of the Ukrainian political nation (which, mean-
while, does not go beyond the borders of Western and Central Ukraine). He goes further
claiming that non-acceptance of ideas of “the Orange Revolution” in the East and the
South of Ukraine is based on the fear of exclusion from the national project. Here it seems
necessary to agree with Arel that the greatest challenge for Ukraine in the next few years
will be the overcoming of regional distinctions and expansion of the political nation in
the East and the South of Ukraine.
Finally, there was an attempt made to present the opinions of Western, Ukrainian and
Russian experts on the events of “the Orange Revolution” in the book edited by famous
economist Anders Aslund and by professor of Political Science department of Stanford
University Michael McFaul “Revolution in Orange: The Origin of Ukraine’s Democratic
Break-through”[15]. The collection was published by Carnegie’s Fund in Washington and,
probably, was intended to maintain a positive image of “the Orange Revolution” among
western readers.
Judging by the subtitle of the collection and the last chapter content in which M.
McFaul compares the events in Ukraine with the events in Serbia, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan
“color revolutions” are electoral or democratic breakthroughs which clear the road for
democratization in the countries of the former communist bloc.
As it is seen from the presented review of publications of
most authoritarian western
scientists none of them uses the concept of revolution in a literal sense.
There is a clarification given by an American political scientist that is typical of west-
ern researchers who use the word «revolution» in their texts. “The use of the word “revolu-
tion” is not meant to imply any long term consequences of these events [in Serbia, Georgia,
Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan], but rather only to identify that the pro-democracy movement in
each case was in fact successful in overthrowing the current regime” [16].
The offered brief review of publications does not cover everything that has been writ-
ten about “the Orange Revolution”. Here I have presented the reception of revolution
discourse by a scientific community taking into accounts points of view of representatives
of different public disciplines. As we see, the majority of Ukrainian scientists to this or that
degree tend to accept the idea that the events in November-December 2004 in Ukraine
give a good reason to consider them a revolution while western researchers prefer to use
the term “revolution” as a synonym of mass actions of political protest contributing to the
overthrowing of the current regime.
Intrinsic Characteristics of Revolution
In my opinion, the majority of domestic scientists who tried to define the essence of
the events of the end of 2004 in Ukraine by using a comparison with “classical” revolu-
tions or even with newest “revolutions” of the 80s of the XXth century went the wrong
way. The matter is that there is no “ideal type” revolution with which one could compare