Former prime minister Viktor Yanukovych could secure a victory in Ukraine’s upcoming presidential run-off, according to a poll by the Kyiv International Sociology Institute. 55.9 per cent of respondents would support Yanukovych of the Party of Regions (PR) in next month’s ballot, while 40.7 per cent would vote for current prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko. ~Angus-Reid

Well, I stand corrected. From what I had understood a few weeks ago, I concluded that Tymoshenko would have a better chance in the run-off, but she has evidently been unable to win over the supporters of the minor candidates and Yanukovych seems set to be elected the new Ukrainian president tomorrow. It does not matter to America one way or the other who prevails, but it is worth reviewing some of the wailing being done by pro-Orange Westerners to remember the misguided enthusiasm and ideological mania that dominated Western views of events in Ukraine a little over five years ago.

The most comical expression of unadulterated pro-Orange propaganda comes from Taras Kuzio. Even amid the ruins of the Orange coalition, Kuzio is still flacking for their completely discredited cause. So desperate is he to find some significance in the run-off between Tymoshenko and Yanukovych that he is simply repeating the 2004 propaganda lines that the election represents is a battle between the future and the past, West vs. East, Europe vs. Russia, etc. Kuzio concludes:

On Sunday Ukrainians are faced by a stark choice between democracy or counter-revolutionary revenge and Soviet nostalgia.

This isn’t true. The choice will be between a drab functionary and ex-Kuchma hack and a megalomaniac. On major policy decisions, the two candidates are drearily similar, and their agendas are no longer defined by the 2004 fantasies of full integration into the security, economic and political structures of Europe and dramatic political reform at home. Many Westerners are lamenting the death of the Orange Revolution, but the important thing to understand is that the goals of that revolution were always unrealistic and were bound to be disappointed. The Orange Revolution died as soon as its leaders took power. The illusions they were peddling could not withstand contact with political reality.

Each of the “color” revolutions celebrated by democratists in the past seven years has failed entirely or won power and subsequently presided over the ruin of its country. As with the Rose Revolution, the figurehead of the Orange Revolution became abusive of and corrupted by power, and in different ways both Saakashvili and Yushchenko have presided over the ruin of their respective countries. Yushchenko presided over the total paralysis of the Ukrainian political system, and, of course, Saakashvili ushered in the military defeat and partition of his country. The “Tulip” revolution installed an arguably worse authoritarian in the place of another. The “Cedar” revolution freed Lebanon from a Syrian presence only to preside over the extensive bombardment of Lebanon by Israel. None of these revolutions has led to much good for these countries, most of them have scarcely changed any of the problems that supposedly motivated them.

Adam Brickley’s “eulogy” is much more balanced and informed, but it still contains within it the echo of the absurd, ideologically-driven arguments of five years ago:

These [Yushckenko and Tymoshenko] were the two who were supposed to lead Ukraine to a glorious, democratic future — and none of us would have guessed that they could fall so far, so fast.

Actually, the skeptics of the revolution assumed that it was a sham, and we assumed that the leaders of this revolution simply represented one clique of interests against the clique represented by Kuchma and Yanukovych. We didn’t expect them to fall far or fast because we didn’t think they had very far to fall, and they proved us right. Five years ago enough people favored the clique that was not in power, and tomorrow they will switch back to the clique that was in control before. The trouble here is that people like Brickley talked about a “glorious, democratic future” for Ukraine five years ago and they were serious.

Something else that linked the failures of the Orange and Rose Revolutions was their overt trafficking in virulent anti-Russian nationalism. It was this nationalism and the goal of “reintegration” that propelled Saakashvili into the disastrous escalation that led to the August 2008 war. It was this kind of nationalism that also made Yushchenko reflexively hostile to everything Russia did and pushed him into alignment with Saakashvili’s government against Ukraine’s own interests. In the end, it was sympathy for Saakashvili’s own self-destructive path that weakened Yushchenko at home and damaged his coalition’s ability to govern. As the Angus-Reid report reminds us:

In September 2008, Ukraine’s governing coalition split in great part due to disagreements over a Georgia-Russia conflict. In the days following an incursion by Russian forces into South Ossetia, a Georgian breakaway province, Yushchenko asked the government to fiercely condemn Russia’s actions in Georgia, but Tymoshenko refused to take a strong stance against Russia. Yushchenko left the coalition as a result.

The break-up of the governing coalition made it that much more difficult for Ukraine to respond to the devastating effects of the financial crisis, and the disagreement over how to respond to the war deepened the rift between Tymoshenko and Yushchenko. All of this was a result of pursuing a maniacal hostility to Russia. His rivals understood that this hostility was and would continue to be damaging to Ukrainian interests. In the end, the same virulent nationalism that helped put Yushchenko in power was what drove him to make some of the decisions that ultimately wrecked his coalition.

No matter who wins tomorrow, Ukraine will have a president that is at least somewhat more reasonable and more interested in governing according to actual Ukrainian interests rather than pursuing hostility to Ukraine’s largest neighbor and trading partner. This will not fix dysfunctional government, corruption or Ukraine’s dire financial problems, but it will be a small improvement over the disastrous presidency that is now coming to an end.