KIEV -- Standing in light rain yesterday, watching as several hundred students protested outside the Interior Ministry, Stepan Khmara couldn't help but hope that things are about to change very fast in his country.

A veteran opposition legislator in Ukraine's parliament, Mr. Khmara doesn't think the landscape will be altered by tomorrow's presidential election. He believes President Leonid Kuchma's regime will falsify the results to deny victory to the front-runner, Viktor Yushchenko.
The change, he believes, will flow from what happens on the streets after results are announced.

“I think the regime will fall,” he says, referring to demonstrations that are expected to draw hundreds of thousands to protest against a campaign many Ukrainians say is one of the dirtiest ever. “A very smooth revolution has started. No regime can stay in power against such mass protests.”

It's a scenario many here are embracing. Talk of a popular, peaceful, revolution on the streets of Kiev is so advanced that the uprising already has a name. If it's successful, they say, it will be quickly dubbed the Chestnut Revolution after the trees that line Kiev's central Khreschatyk Street — the place of rallies 14 years ago that called for an end to the Soviet Union.

This time the goal will not be Ukraine's independence from Moscow, rather the end of 10 years of quasi-authoritarian rule by Mr. Kuchma, who is seeking to hand over power to his handpicked successor, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich. Mr. Kuchma's regime has been named one of the most corrupt on the planet by Transparency International. There are long-standing allegations that the outgoing president personally ordered the murder of an investigative journalist in 2000.

International observers have declared the election process deeply flawed, and Mr. Yushchenko's supporters have said in advance that they plan to take to the streets after polls close. Ukrainians yesterday were scrambling to buy hard currency as a hedge against instability, and the main question is how authorities will react in a country where traces of the old Soviet police state remain.
Although protest leaders have been preaching non-violence, Mr. Kuchma has threatened to declare a state of emergency and use force to restore order. “It's unpredictable what will happen,” said Natalya Belitser, a researcher with the Pylyp Orlyk Institute for Democracy, a Kiev think tank. “Our authorities themselves have no clear idea what they will do. They're in a panic.”

If there is a Chestnut Revolution, either this week or after a run-off vote that may be held on Nov. 21, it will be said that it was born in a cramped basement off Mikhailovsky Square in central Kiev, where student activists in yellow Che Guevara T-shirts gather each day under a banner that reads “We're not afraid.”

Members of Pora (Ukrainian for “it's time”) say they admire Che not for his socialist politics or his violent tactics, but simply as a fellow revolutionary who got the job done. “Che Guevara is known worldwide as a person who represents revolution,” said Yuriy Polyukhovych, a 23-year-old economics graduate and Pora co-ordinator for Kiev.
In many ways, the battle between authorities and the would-be revolutionaries has been going on for some time. Pora, which has posters and graffiti all over Kiev calling for people to take to the streets after tomorrow's vote, has for weeks been locked in confrontation with the government, which has raided the group's offices around the country, detaining dozens of activists.

The group, which claims 10,000 active members and many times that number of supporters, applied to hold a 500,000-person rally in downtown Kiev tomorrow night — a request the city rejected. The demonstration is scheduled to go ahead anyway, and the city has responded by erecting a metal fence around the offices of the Central Election Commission, where the marchers intend to focus their protest.

“There won't be any revolution here,” police chief Oleksandr Milenin said. “We are ready for the unexpected.”

Police say they found explosives and counterfeit money in some Pora offices, charges Mr. Polyukhovych scoffs at. “These are just provocations,” he said. “They're afraid of people who are in favour of free and fair elections.”
The revolt, if it happens, would not be entirely homegrown. It would be the latest in a chain reaction that started four years ago in Belgrade when Serbians, led by a student group called Otpor (Serbian for resistance) toppled Slobodan Milosevic.

After that astonishing success, Otpor activists realized they had something valuable and even transferable — a how-to-dispose-of-a-dictator playbook that turned out to be in demand across Eastern Europe.

Otpor members — funded by organizations connected to billionaire financier George Soros — fanned out across the continent, giving training sessions in non-violent resistance to like-minded youths in several former Soviet republics. These were people who had expected liberal democracy to follow when the Soviet Union collapsed 13 years ago, only to see new authoritarian leaders step into the ensuing power vacuum.

Last fall, in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, tens of thousands of people took to the streets of the capital, Tbilisi, in the wake of a falsified parliamentary election. They stayed there for weeks until President Eduard Shevardnadze stepped down to avoid bloodshed. Leading the demonstrations was a group called Kmara (Enough), a youth organization modelled on Otpor that emulated the Serbian group's pacifist street tactics during what became known as the Rose Revolution.

Now, Otpor members are in Kiev, agitating against Mr. Kuchma's regime and advising Pora. Otpor member Marko Markovic, a Croat who works out of the offices of a local pro-democracy group called Znayu and has a large poster of Mr. Yushchenko over his desk, says Ukraine is ready to follow the path already taken in Georgia and Serbia.
The desk next to his is empty. Alexander Maric, a Serbian national, used to sit there until he was detained at Kiev's Borispol Airport and deported from the country, named a threat to national security.

“The authorities are scared,” Mr. Markovic says with a wide smile. “That means we're winning.”
In the end, it will not be Pora or a few Otpor activists who bring crowds into the streets on Sunday night, but Mr. Yushchenko himself. The opposition leader has genuine popularity in Kiev and areas west of the capital, while Mr. Yanukovich's support is based in the Russia-leaning industrial belt in the east of the country. Despite the administrative help he has received, he trails by several percentage points in most opinion polls.

Mr. Yushchenko, who himself once served as prime minister under Mr. Kuchma, has found new fire in his belly since an alleged poisoning incident last month that sent him to hospital for more than three weeks.

When he returned to the campaign, his face disfigured, the charismatic pro-Western reformer sharpened his attacks on the administration, which he says tried to have him killed. He has repeatedly sought to demonstrate strength by summoning tens of thousands of supporters to weekend demonstrations in Kiev.

But his campaign has been hindered by the poisoning incident, restricted access to the media and the refusal by airport staff in several cities to allow his campaign plane to land. Judging by recent statements, he seems to have given up all hope that tomorrow's vote will go fairly.

“We can change the current circumstances only through massive public action,” he said this week. “And in the case of attempts to falsify the outcome of the vote, I will be calling on the nation to do that.”

The Globe and Mail; 30 October 2004