Democratic Breakthroughs and Revolutions in Five Post-Communist ...

21break into eastern Ukraine. Ukraine differed from Serbia and Georgia in that theCommunist Party remained more antagonistic to the democratic candidate,Yushchenko, than to Yanukovych and the oligarchs. The Communists are members ofthe Anti-Crisis coalition and government led by Prime Minister Yanukovych. InSerbia the left were in control of the country and as much nationalist as they wereSocialists. The democratic opposition was therefore hostile to the extreme left andright. In Georgia the pro-Russian Justice and Communist Parties did not participate inthe 2003 elections and both are marginal forces.Foreign InterventionForeign intervention can be benign or negative. The former can take the formof the EU intervening in support of the democratic opposition in these five democraticbreakthroughs and revolutions. The EU’s intervention was particularly noticeable inSlovakia and Croatia where it held out the ‘carrot’ of membership. In Serbia, NATOplayed a positive role in ‘softening’ up the regime in its 1999 bombing campaign.This was followed a year later by widespread US support for the Serbian democraticopposition. The intention of NATO and the US was clear: to remove Milosevic frompower. In Georgia and Ukraine there have been allegations by Russia and a minorityof Western reports that their democratic revolutions were ‘US conspiracies’ but theseallegations have never been substantiated. The West has played a positive role inisolating the Lukashenka regime after he manipulated constitutional changes to permithim to stand for a third term. The West’s weak responses to democratic failings inAzerbaijan and Russia to some democracy activists in the region suggests that greatpower politics and oil may trump democracy.