Paper - Chair of Ukrainian Studies

international CONFERENCE
In retrospect, he sees this disappointment as confirming a sober rule about change
in Ukraine. Thus he recalls that in 1991, when independence was achieved, there was
“no fear … People were waiting for changes. But it was swept away, these expectations. [It
was] similar after the presidential elections in 2004. Expectations were very high … I could
not sleep for several nights … And now it looks as if quick changes are not our fate.”
He also, however, repeats several times that he believes that “the general principles”
of the Orange Revolution will remain. His expectations for the future are, however,
effectively more mixed. In particular, he expresses his worries that the new government
will not only lower taxes for big business but also increase the burden on small business,
i.e. market traders like him and those his organization represents. His idea of how to
resist such a development is ambiguous. He refers to petitioning the government directly
“from below.” Yet while he stresses that generally business and politics should be disentangled,
he also looks precisely to this connection when seeking redress against a feared
government intervention:
“Does [Mykola Azarov] mean that small business will suffer and will [have to pay] higher
taxes? … [In order to protest such an outcome] we will write letters to the government.
The owner of the market is an oblast deputy from the Party of Regions. He should be
interested in supporting this market.”
At the same time, “business and politics have to be separated. I have seen what
was going on in Pryluky and I think that these two things are not good to combine. One
cannot use state bodies for solving business questions.”
Our interviewee in Sloviansk, assumed that almost everybody in his region have
to be happy because Ianukovych has been appointed a prime-minister, “since this is
Donbass. This should be good for Donbas,” yet in his opinion for Ukraine generally
Iushchenko would better.
The Complexity of Assessments and Expectations
While we have found that virtually all respondents were willing to make meaningful
statements about their hopes and anxieties about the present and the future, these
statements usually turn out ambivalent. A particularly telling but typical example is the
Medzhybish curator’s response. As noted above, she is explicit about her disappointment
by the recent return to power of Viktor Ianukovych and a general failure of the “politicians”
to make use of the opportunity offered by “the people’s” Orange Revolution as
well as about her overall sense that her raion is still poor and youth and schools in a bad
state. Moreover, she deplores general corruption, insufficient respect for the law as well
as elite conspicuous consumption. As also noted above, at the same time, she repeatedly
cites specific evidence of rising prosperity, such as more births, better dress or the celebration
of weddings in parties outside the home.
What should be pointed out here is that we need to be careful before labeling
such ambivalence as a priori contradictory. In fact, the curator also shows an apparently
undented expectation that Ukraine cannot but finally improve, stating that the “15 years
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