From a Dream to the Streets of Kiev

Orange Revolution: A supporter of opposition presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko in Kiev. (Dmitry Lovetsky -- AP)

KIEV

Ever since my childhood, first in the Dnipropetrovsk region of eastern Ukraine and later in the Lviv region of the west, I have dreamed about a miracle -- although back then I did not realize what shape my dream might eventually take. My recurrent vision was of a time when all Ukrainians -- from the west and the east, from the north and the south -- would come together as a single nation.

For the past two weeks, I have been joining demonstrations in Kiev's Independence Square together with my students and colleagues, filled with optimism that my dream is at last becoming reality. Ukrainians from Kiev and Lviv, from Kharkiv and Odesa stand united in our opposition to acting Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych and in our belief that the presidential election was rigged in his favor to prevent the election of the people's choice, Viktor Yushchenko. The people were determined not to leave the streets until the election was overturned, and we didn't. Now the Ukrainian Supreme Court has ordered a rerun of the second round. Everybody feels that we are privileged to play a role in this pivotal moment in our country's history. We dare to hope that we are witnessing the logical culmination of our country's 1,000-year struggle for true independence and unity.

To understand this feeling, you must first understand a little of our history of division. My country has been divided from the 9th century onward, both by outer enemies and inner traitors, so that until recently my dream seemed a mere mirage. Our periods of independence, such as that of the Ukrainian People's Republic from 1918-1919, were so short that people hardly had time to know what it meant. My mom used to tell me that when the Nazis occupied Lviv in 1941, it took them only days to smother independence, which had recently been proclaimed by Ukraine's nationalists. After that the Nazis started to arrest people and take them to Germany. Those very short periods of independence were never completely peaceful, so all the population's energy went into combating outside invaders. Little energy was left to build or even speculate about a common Ukrainian future.

For the first time in our history, Ukraine has now experienced 13 years of peace. Our rebirth began in 1991, when our parliament declared our country no longer part of the Soviet Union. Symbolically, the official name of our capital is now Kyiv, which is a close reflection of how we Ukrainians pronounce it, rather than Kiev, which is how it sounds in Russian.

Throughout those 13 years, a few oligarchs have robbed their own people by privatizing factories, all the time reassuring us that we are fortunate to be living in peace -- and we came to accept that as a significant achievement, because Ukrainians know full well that poverty is nothing in comparison with war. And the period of peace bore fruit. With the support of the international community and non-governmental organizations, we have begun to develop a civil society in Ukraine. As a result, hundreds of Ukrainian and international human rights organizations have worked actively and consistently to advocate human rights, freedom of the press and the rule of law here.

Having benefited from the Pylyp Orlyk Constitution of 1710 -- a Ukrainian document that was one of the first in the world to define standards of political and legal thought and to create a division of powers -- as well as the 1918 Constitution of the Ukrainian People's Republic, which established broad rights and liberties, Ukrainians were bound to be democratically minded. So it was only natural that we should rise in opposition last month when we realized that our right to choose our president in a free and fair election had been so rudely violated.

In truth, this uprising has turned out to be fabulous. Can you imagine being part of an uprising alive with the sunny smiles and sparkling eyes of those who rose in protest? Can you imagine young girls presenting flowers to soldiers as they stand with shields in front of the demonstrators? Can you believe that people have actually been giving food and warm clothes to supporters of Yanukovych who were brought into Kiev by special buses and trains?

Yes, all these miracles have been taking place in Ukraine for the past two weeks, and we call it the "Orange Revolution." Ribbons on our sleeves, on our hats and even on our trousers, ribbons tied to our cars and around our trees and even ribbons on pets have turned our country orange -- a symbol of our desire to break with our past and move toward Europe rather than fall back into the Kremlin's orbit.

People on the streets here are still very excited even though they are tired and understandably cautious. They are no longer scared of Ukrainian policemen or soldiers, who will never fight their own people, to whom they have sworn an oath of allegiance.

Some people suspect that Russian detachments may be used against the demonstrators. Everybody knows that Russia's interference in Ukrainian elections was huge. Russian President Vladimir Putin demonstrated his support of Yanukovych before the elections and was the first to congratulate him on his victory. His heavy-handedness did not work. Even so, Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma has flown again and again to meet with Putin and nobody doubts that the aim is to consult the Russian president about what to do next -- telephone conversations are no longer considered safe.

People are sure that separatist rumblings in eastern Ukraine were scripted with Russian help. But they failed even so. After the separatists made their declarations, many people who had always been pro-Russian started to say that they do not want to live in Russia after all. We are left wondering why Kuchma does not consult with us, instead of going to Putin -- he is still being given a chance to avoid being cursed by his own people.

I know that all democracies have experienced periods in their history similar to the one we are experiencing. The Czechs, the Lithuanians, the East Germans and other former communist subjects went through them more than a decade ago, and now their countries are all members of the European Union. Ukraine's future is in Europe, and the EU has already given a signal that once free democratic elections are held and the results not falsified, Ukraine will get its chance to become an EU member.

One of the provocative arguments made against Yushchenko throughout the presidential campaign was that he is pro-American, that the United States has been financing his campaign, thus advancing its own agenda here. In response, Yushchenko repeated the words of the famous Ukrainian poet Vasyl Symonenko, who was a victim of the Soviet regime: "Let America and Russia keep silence when I talk to you, Ukraine."

True, the United States has extended financial aid to Ukraine over the last 13 years of our independence, but I don't see this as having been done for nefariously self-serving reasons. Even when the U.S. government cut financial support to Ukrainian governmental projects, it continued to support the non-governmental sector and the academic exchanges of professors and students, thus financing the development of freedom in Ukraine. I have profited myself, traveling to the United States and learning there about the rule of law. Unlike Russia, which has always acted surreptitiously, the United States never made a secret of its actions. I think first of all about how in America, the government basically gets permission for this support from its own citizens -- the taxpayers.

On Friday, in my office, we hugged, congratulated each other and wiped away each other's tears when we heard that the Supreme Court had annulled the runoff election results. Similar expressions of jubilation burst out among the tens of thousands of demonstrators in Independence Square, and fireworks crackled in the night sky. The new vote will take place on Dec. 26. We know that this is not the end, that difficult weeks lie ahead. But for the first time, we believe that we the people can do something without having to follow a script, no matter who wrote it. This is the will of the people, who have chosen freedom.

Author's e-mail: mma@iatp.kiev.ua

Myroslava Antonovych, a professor of international law at Kiev-Mohyla Academy, was a Fulbright scholar in 1996 at the Urban Morgan Human Rights Institute of the University of Cincinnati College of Law.