Outwardly, the history of the two conflicts between the branches of power looks very much the same. Tired of an endless confrontation with lawmakers in which he is losing power, the head of state risks it all and calls an early election. Parliament does not obey his decree, while society and the elite split on how to interpret the constitution and face the threat of dual power with all the ensuing consequences. The similarity is reinforced by the fact that the revolutionary re-division of power (in Russia in August 1991 and in Ukraine in December 2004) was followed by a crisis in little more than two years.
But it is not worth drawing conclusions based on outward appearances because the events in Russia and Ukraine are fundamentally different.
First, 14 years ago Russia was in the grip of a severe socio-economic crisis. A power struggle in and around the Kremlin was taking place in an extremely explosive situation. For all its endless headaches, contemporary Ukraine is a nation on the rise.
Second, a system for representing different interests was virtually non-existent in Russia in 1993. Leftovers of the Soviet political arrangement were mixed with elements of a new ideology, and the requirements of new social classes were emerging in this chaotic environment. Government property had not yet been divided, and there were no possibilities for a stable combination of interests, let alone a mechanism for their interplay - be it public (a working party structure) or shadow (effective harmonization and lobbying).
Ukraine in 2007 has powerful financial and economic groups, and a system whereby they can express their interests through political parties that rely on their electorate. In effect, the interplay of these interests is the foundation of all the government's policies.
Third, a fundamental issue of power and the future arrangement of the Russian state was being decided on Moscow's streets in October 1993. Each of the warring sides hoped for a complete triumph, and the president achieved it.
The structure of Ukrainian society does not allow any side to hope for a decisive victory. Cultural, historical, and economic differences between regions and social strata will never disappear. This is a reality that every responsible politician should consider. The recent events have demonstrated a clear formula - as soon as a political force resting on economic and other interests tries to sharply tip the balance in its favor, the whole system starts restoring the upset balance.
Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. A radical turn of the wheel after the Orange revolution upset the balance, but the pendulum immediately swung back - the parliamentary elections neutralized the results of the presidential voting. The government compromise in the summer of 2006 struck a new balance which had been eroded over the last few months. When the parliamentary coalition eliminated this balance in order to turn the political configuration in its favor, the other side resolutely resisted the effort.
The Ukrainian political environment is a miniature model of the same multi-polar world that the great powers are building on a global scale. Such a system is always quite unstable, and prone to the emergence of opportunistic alliances and coalitions, but it always strives to reach an equilibrium. Nobody can dominate it completely, just like nobody can run the whole show in the wider world. A two-pole (bipartisan) system is possible in Ukraine in theory, but it is not likely to encompass the country's socio-political diversity. Hence, the only alternative is a complicated, never-ending maneuvering of different forces that slowly moves ahead.
This does not mean that dramatic turns are impossible, but any turn is likely to be compensated for. Ukrainian society has a better ability to govern itself than Russia's. From March to July 2006, almost all government bodies were idle in Ukraine - parliament could not start working, there was no established government, nor were there any sittings of the Constitutional Court. Foreigners might have thought that Ukraine was about to plunge into a chaos, but inside the country people were carefree, and the economy made better progress than it had under Yulia Tymoshenko's legitimate government.
The current sharp collision in Kiev will show what direction Ukraine is moving in. In the winter of 2004-2005, the political elite were responsible enough to refrain from making any abrupt turns. They opted for a civilized competition, no matter how ridiculous it might have looked or how unseemly it might have been from within. If common sense and compromise prevail now as well, Ukraine will prove that it is serious about its European choice.
