During the Orange Revolution, we rehearsed a song in “English.” Our drummer jokingly sang the chorus to the words “Yushchenko — so! Yushchenko — not so!” It fit the melody perfectly. And it was funny.
Now, of course, what you hear these days isn’t funny — just sad memories of Maidan. “We were so disappointed…” And of course, Yushchenko — the bastard — screwed everything up.
My memories of Maidan are only positive. And what makes me sad is precisely this “disappointment” and the accusations against Yushchenko. In my view, this shows that despite its significance for our history, Maidan was not yet a “bourgeois-democratic revolution.” It was a revolution, certainly, but a rather infantile one.
I never placed any hopes in Viktor Andreevich Yushchenko. Not before Maidan, not during it, not after. And the issue here is not about the man himself or his abilities. The point is understanding that positive change does not depend on “the authorities.” Only negative change depends on them. No matter how super a president you are, with a clear program and well-trained bureaucrats, if “the people” have no desire to change anything, you will not succeed. It turns out that Ukrainians had no desire to change anything. Because desire only counts when it is reinforced by action. Take me, for example. Right now, I desire a MacBook. I want one desperately. But for all intents and purposes, this desire is an empty sound, because I’m doing nothing to make it reality. It’s the same with Ukrainians. Their hearts, eyes, noses, and other organs screamed for change. But at the same time, Ukrainians expected Yushchenko to do everything for them. Their role, as it turned out, was to stand in the square and chant “Yushchenko — so! Yushchenko — not so!” And then, they figured, you would handle the rest somehow, and we would sit back and wait for the improvement to arrive.
Thus, most Ukrainians consider Yushchenko a bad president. He didn’t do good things for them. Although, if we assume a president can be of any use at all, Viktor Andreevich was the best president possible. Because a president’s job consists of fulfilling Article 106 of the constitution. And Viktor Andreevich fulfilled it as best he could. He vetoed various laws. He dissolved parliament. Ukrainians, however, don’t need that kind of president. They need a president who doesn’t care about the constitution and laws — because he must do good things for them.
In 2010, Ukrainians chose exactly such a president for themselves. And, most importantly, his main opponent in those elections did not differ in this respect whatsoever, meaning that either way we would have gotten a president who could do whatever he wanted. Now Ukrainians are sad that the president does what he wants. Because for some reason, he wants what they don’t want. Perhaps that is sad. But not at all surprising.