The Color Revolutions

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

ROUGHLY FIFTEEN YEARS after crowds of peaceful demonstrators from Prague to Tbilisi brought down Communist regimes that had denied hundreds of millions of people their freedom for more than half a century, the excitement of the late 1980s and early 1990s had given way, at least in much of the former Soviet Union, to a grim reality: building free and prosperous countries was not easy. This was true even after toppling a Communist system that had become economically, spiritually, and politically bankrupt. From Kiev to Astana, former Soviet republics were defined by kleptocracy, fraudulent elections, widespread corruption, and, for many people, poverty and a declining quality of life.

Beginning in 2003, on Rustaveli Avenue in Tbilisi, Georgia, and spreading over the next two years to the Maidan in Kiev and the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek, this began to change. Hope, a commodity that had been in short supply in the Caucasus, Central Asia, and the Slavic countries of the former Soviet Union, returned. Again it took the form of peaceful demonstrators demanding their rights and showing the world that they could only be pushed so far. These peaceful protests—labeled the Rose Revolution in Georgia, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, and the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan—brought an end to governments that had tried to steal one too many elections and sought to replace them with freely elected leaders.

For about thirty months, from late 2003 to mid-2005, these protests—which collectively came to be known as the Color Revolutions—looked as if they might possibly reshape the political terrain of the former Soviet Union. All had their origins in attempts by corrupt post-Soviet governments to steal an election. All brought to power a new government that was, at least initially, viewed as pro-democracy and pro-Western in orientation. All were almost immediately hailed as victories for democracy and as changing the balance between Russia and the United States.

By 2010, however, the democratic promise of the Rose Revolution had fizzled out in Georgia. That same promise disintegrated in Kyrgyzstan, when Tulip Revolution leader Kurambek Bakiev was forced to flee the country, and it suffered a setback in Ukraine with the election of Viktor Yanukovich as president—the same man who had sought to steal the 2004 election. These events raised fears that the democratic advances of the post-Orange Revolution period were being halted or even reversed.

Today, the Color Revolutions are all but forgotten by people who do not follow the region closely. For many they are little more than a footnote to the complex politics of the former Soviet Union. The Color Revolutions were not the paradigm-shifting events they seemed to be at first. Instead, they turned out to be further chapters in the post-Communist evolution of Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan, whose overall impact—while not the same in each of these countries—was, in general, significantly less than first thought and, indeed, hoped. Yet relegating the Color Revolutions to footnote status is a mistake because there are valuable lessons, such as the dangers of conflating democratic breakthroughs with democratization, to be learned from these events. Additionally, the Color Revolutions had a significant impact on both U.S.-Russia relations and Russia's relationships with the former Republics of the Soviet Union—perhaps more so than they did on democratic development in any of the countries where they occurred. By examining these events together it is possible to get a better sense of what the Color Revolutions were and what similarities they shared. This approach also allows us to place all these events in the broader context of political development in the former Soviet Union and the U.S. role in that development.

The Color Revolutions also provide a valuable perspective on the events in the Middle East and North Africa that occurred in early 2011 and saw longtime authoritarian leaders such as El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak in Egypt leave office following large public demonstrations. These countries now face long and difficult roads ahead as they seek to move toward democracy. The failure of democracy in post Color Revolution Kyrgyzstan and Georgia and the substantial backsliding in Ukraine underscore both how the hard work begins when the authoritarian kleptocrat leaves power and the dangers of confusing dramatic moments with democracy. Observers of North Africa would do well to keep this in mind.

The Color Revolutions

The term Color Revolution is ambiguous with regard to both definitions and cases. Clearly the Rose and Orange Revolutions qualify as Color Revolutions while the Tulip, Bulldozer, and Cedar revolutions in Kyrgyzstan, Serbia, and Lebanon respectively are in something of a gray area. This book will treat only the Rose, Orange, and Tulip Revolutions as Color Revolutions because they share temporal proximity and a post-Soviet context. I will also draw on the Bulldozer Revolution in Serbia at times because, even though it occurred more than three years before the Rose Revolution, it was an important model for the Georgians who went on to lead the Rose Revolution. I will also look at failed efforts to reproduce Color Revolutions in other countries of the former Soviet Union, most notably Azerbaijan and Belarus.¹

The Rose Revolution occurred between November 2003 and January 2004 in Georgia. The government party, the Citizens' Union of Georgia (CUG), led by President Eduard Shevardnadze, committed massive and widespread fraud in a parliamentary election held on November 2, 2003. The fraud continued for several days following the election as the government party continued to increase vote totals for itself and allied parties through fraudulent counting. In the days following the election, two opposition parties, the National Movement, led by speaker of the Tbilisi city council Mikheil Saakashvili, and the Burjanadze Democrats, led by Nino Burjanadze, speaker of parliament, and Zurab Zhvania, Burjanadze's predecessor, led demonstrations and vigils in front of the parliament building in the center of Tbilisi. The central demand of the demonstrators was the resignation of President Shevardnadze.

After several weeks of demonstrations ranging in size from a few thousand to as many as a hundred thousand on the final days, Shevardnadze resigned on November 23. At that time, speaker of parliament Burjanadze, in accordance with Georgian law, became acting president. A few weeks later on January 4, 2004, in a snap presidential election, Mikheil Saakashvili, who had emerged as leader of the opposition and of the demonstrations following the election, was elected president in an election broadly assessed as free and fair but in which he faced no serious opposition.

Ukraine's Orange Revolution was in tone and style similar to the Rose Revolution. In this case, however, it was a presidential rather than a parliamentary election that preceded the revolution. The two major candidates in the 2004 election for Ukraine's presidency were Viktor Yanukovich and Viktor Yushchenko. Yanukovich was the candidate of Ukraine's corrupt outgoing president, Leonid Kuchma; he also enjoyed substantial backing from Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin. Yushchenko, the leading opposition candidate, ran on a pro-Western and pro-democracy platform.

The first round of the election was held October 31. Because there were several other candidates in the race, neither Yanukovich nor Yushchenko was able to reach a majority, so a runoff was scheduled between these two candidates for November 21. Yanukovich's supporters, including many from the Ukrainian government, sought to steal the runoff elections; initial results were broadcast that he had won. This led to street demonstrations in Kiev, which lasted for weeks and drew hundreds of thousands of people to the center of the capital city. Eventually, it was agreed that the runoff would be held around December 26. Yushchenko won that election and after several weeks of appeals was sworn in as Ukraine's president on January 23, 2005.

The Tulip Revolution began, like the Rose Revolution, with fraudulent parliamentary elections, which were held in Kyrgyzstan on February 25, 2005. Widespread protests began shortly after pro-government candidates were announced as the winners in most districts. These demonstrations continued for about a month, spreading to many parts of the country. On March 24, amid calls for his resignation, Kyrgyz president Askar Akaev fled to Russia; he officially resigned on April 3.

For the next several months the question who would take over as president remained unclear. In June, positioning and politicking between Felix Kulov, a long-time Akaev opponent who had been released from jail in March, and acting president Kurambek Bakiev led to a determination that Bakiev would be the Tulip Revolution candidate in the July election. On July 10, Bakiev was handily elected president of Krygyzstan with over 90 percent of the vote.

There are, of course, broad similarities among these three events. All were political transitions rooted in stolen elections that saw a pro-Western, and, at least initially, more democratic president come to power. Street demonstrations of varying sizes, reports from both domestic and international election monitors, and relative nonviolence were all key components of the Color Revolutions as well. As will be discussed in later sections, the U.S. and Europe also played an important but unclear role in these events. Additionally, in all these countries the post-revolution path to democracy has been difficult, with many setbacks.

These similarities, however, obscure key differences among the Color Revolutions. Some of these differences are obvious: the election that led to the breakthrough in Ukraine was a presidential vote, while the elections in Georgia and Kyrgyzstan were for parliament. The Rose and Orange Revolutions were much less ambiguously led by young, reform, and western oriented politicians than was the case in Kyrgyzstan. Other differences are less obvious but equally important. For example, the election in Ukraine between Yanukovich and Yushchenko was competitive, with the Ukrainian electorate divided roughly evenly, while the parliamentary election in Georgia saw the party of incumbent president Eduard Shevardnadze soundly rejected by the voters. Similarly, the Tulip Revolution saw scattered incidents of violence while the Rose and Orange Revolutions were far more peaceful in this regard.

What We Can Learn from the Color Revolutions

The Color Revolutions raise a number of questions concerning not only political developments within Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan, but also the broader geopolitical context in which they occurred, how these events effected relations between competing political powers in Eurasia, and the extent to which they brought about enduring political change.

The first question is whether common political environments or conditions contributed to the Color Revolutions. The relative openness of the previous regime, the strength of civil society and degree of freedom enjoyed by citizens of that regime, the widespread unpopularity of the existing government—all are areas that need to be explored. Another set of explanations looks at the political opposition, the degree of unity, strength, and popularity of that opposition, and the extent to which the Color Revolution was part of an opposition strategy, or more the result of the way events unfolded at the moment.

A second question is the nature and extent of the role of the west, particularly the United States, in the Color Revolutions. There has been substantial debate and disagreement on this question in the three Color Revolution countries, the former Soviet Union in general, and western countries.² In the west, this question has become laden with partisanship as left critics of the Bush administration have suggested that U.S. organizations played a major role in these three Color Revolutions, and that the Color Revolutions were not about democracy at all, but about efforts of the U.S. to bring pro-western governments into power (MacKinnon 2007; Engdahl 2009). Others in the U.S. have argued that the Color Revolutions were homegrown political events in which the U.S. played a productive but modest supporting role (Mitchell 2008; Way 2008).

A third question is the extent to which the Color Revolutions represented meaningful democratic breakthroughs in these three countries. At the time, all three events were viewed by western governments as advances for democracy and even evidence of the ongoing spread of democracy throughout the world. However, in all these countries, the post-Color Revolution governments have struggled a great deal to deliver on the democratic promise of the Color Revolutions. As the new governments have struggled, western powers—again, most notably the U.S.—have not been able to successfully craft policies for these three countries that reflect the challenges of building democracy in a post-Color Revolution scenario. In Georgia, for example, the U.S. was largely uncritical as the country slipped away from the early democratic promise of the Rose Revolution. U.S. policy in Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine was quite not the same as in Georgia, but it also failed to help the consolidation of democratic gains as effectively as it might have, albeit in different ways and with different outcomes.

Fourth, were the Color Revolutions linked not just by temporal and spatial proximity and the broad similarities listed above, but by efforts by the leaders of each to build on the previous Color Revolutions? In the Georgian case, the model may have been the Bulldozer Revolution in Serbia. The Ukrainians consciously sought out a Georgian model, Georgians, and Georgian advice, while the Kyrgyz sought similar advice and guidance from both Ukrainian and Georgian Color Revolutionaries. In the months leading up to the Rose Revolution, several civic and political leaders in Georgia visited Serbia to work with their counterparts in that country while Serbian civic activists came to Georgia to work with Georgian ones. After the Rose Revolution, Georgians worked in a similar capacity with Ukrainians and Kyrgyz in the months preceding the Orange and Tulip revolutions.

A related point is that in addition to these Color Revolutions, as well as the Cedar Revolution, which very deliberately sought to model itself on the Rose and Orange Revolutions, efforts were made by democratic activists in Azerbaijan in 2005 and Belarus in 2006 to use fraud-ridden elections as the springboards to Color Revolutions. These efforts failed, but remain part of the larger Color Revolution story.

A fifth major question to explore, which increasingly seems like one of the most important issues, is how nondemocratic regimes, primarily but not exclusively in the former Soviet Union, responded to the Color Revolutions. In much of the region, Color Revolutions put a real fear in nondemocratic leaders. They sought to ensure that they would not fall victim to further Color Revolutions through a variety of tactics, including restricting the abilities of foreign and domestic nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to function in their countries, changing election laws and election systems, and increasing domestic surveillance and harassment of members of the political opposition.

Last, how did the Color Revolutions have an impact on relations between the U.S. and Russia due to Moscow viewing the Color Revolutions as evidence of growing American influence and ambition in the region? Russian efforts to push back against a perceived wave of Colored Revolutions and the ascendance to power of pro-American leaders, notably in Georgia through the Color Revolutions, also raises important questions about these events.

The Yushchenko and Saakashvili governments immediately accelerated their country's quest to join NATO. These aspirations were initially met with strong support and encouragement by most members of the alliance. This contributed to even greater rancor in Moscow as the Russian leadership viewed NATO expansion as a threat to Russian influence in the region. Georgia and Ukraine's hopes of joining NATO were not successful, but are still alive, particularly in Georgia. In 2008, NATO decided not to offer a Membership Action Plan (MAP) to either country, but promised that at some point they would both become members. This ambiguous approach did not lessen Russian anger while keeping hopes in Tbilisi and Kiev alive. The 2008 Russia-Georgia war pushed Georgia's NATO membership farther into the future.

Revolutions Defined

The phrase Color Revolution itself is problematic. Although I will use this phrase throughout this book to describe the political events in 2003–2005 in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, the term is stronger in terms of imagery and connotations than on descriptive or analytical accuracy. The media often use the term revolution because it is dramatic and exciting, but that is not enough on which to rest a serious claim that these events were truly revolutions.

The Color Revolutions were, to a great extent, neither colors nor revolutions. Roses and tulips are primarily flowers; an orange is a fruit as well as a color; and the question whether or not these three events qualify as revolutions is legitimate, not only important for academic purposes. The use of the term revolution in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan has raised the expectation of change among domestic populations, contributed to a new narrative about the country's recent history, and given additional legitimacy to the actions of revolutionary governments. Calling these events revolutions implies that the changes were dramatic and substantial, although in many respects this assumption is debatable. Moreover, the word revolution makes it easy to overstate the initial political gains and significance of these events.

The term revolution suggests that the events of November–December 2003, November–December 2004, and spring 2005 in each of these countries constituted a distinct break with the past rather than simply being a part of a longer post-Communist continuum, but this is far from obvious. In Georgia, where the new leadership had very few ties to the Communist period, it can be argued that the Rose Revolution represented a decisive turning point, but this is a more contentious claim in Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, where, for example, the new revolutionary leaders still seemed relatively clearly tied to the Communist era.

The Color Revolutions may be best understood in Georgia as the last phase of the post-Communist transition. In Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan the Orange and Tulip Revolutions may also be better understood as components of those country's ongoing post-Communist transitions. These attempts to place these events analytically, however, must be balanced against the almost universal assessment by policy makers in the west that these events were revolutions constituting a significant break with the past.³

The Color Revolutions do not meet the threshold set by Huntington (1968), Goldstone (1991), and others, nor do they qualify as what Skocpol (1979) refers to as social revolutions, but this does not mean that they were in no way revolutions, or that analyzing them as revolutions is a fruitless endeavor. While these events are undoubtedly best understood in the context of the three countries' continued transition away from the Soviet period, they were, at least at first, more than just another step in the gradual transitions of these countries. Additionally, the change in leadership from Kuchma, Shevardnadze, and Akaev to Yushchenko, Saakashvili, and Bakiev respectively was brought about through street demonstrations, albeit of varying sizes and presence outside the capital, and precipitated by a stolen election.

Yushchenko, Saakashili, and Bakiev, at least initially, all saw themselves, and for the most part, were viewed by the Ukrainian, Georgian, and Kyrgyz populations more broadly, as representing a significant break from the immediate past. Although none of these leaders were driven by what could rightfully be called called ideology, they all had a vision of moving their country in a new direction.⁴

Coming to power because of street demonstrations following a fraudulent election does not, however, in of itself, make a revolution. Neither does the stated desire to break decisively with the previous administration or reorient the country's foreign or domestic politics. Moreover, all three Color Revolutions overthrew regimes that were also relatively new without established means of political succession, and largely transitional in nature.

Another way to approach this question is to look at how revolutionary the regimes were once they came to power. The three countries look quite different when analyzed this way. The Rose Revolution in Georgia was a more singular event for that country than the Orange and Tulip Revolutions were for Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. In Ukraine, the cleavages that divided society and the electorate into two separate camps in the hotly contested, initially stolen 2004 presidential election, did not by any means disappear following the Orange Revolution. Rather, they reappeared as the central divisions in several elections beginning in 2005. Additionally, Ukrainian society remained deeply divided on key issues, most notably orientation toward Russia and democracy, which were central to the vision of the Orange Revolution.

Bakiev's government began its tenure by making revolutionary promises but within a few years became mired in the same corruption and lack of democracy that had characterized Akaev's later years. Bakiev also leveraged U.S. need for access to the Manas Air Force Base for almost unlimited support for his regime.⁵ It is therefore hard to argue that the Tulip Revolution represented some revolutionary break with the first decade or so of post-Communist Kyrgyzstan.

The post-Revolution government in Georgia has been the most committed to pursuing a political course and implementing a set of policies that can be described as revolutionary. While the government has not succeeded in achieving all its goals or keeping all its revolutionary promises, it has sought to reorient Georgia's domestic and international policies. Saakashvili's commitment to the west, linking Georgia's future to that of the U.S. rather than Russia, has been unequivocal. Similarly, the government has pushed through a set of political and social reforms that have sought to sweep away the corruption and stagnancy of the Shevardnadze years and replace that with a free market economy. The government's enthusiasm in this area has won praise from the World Bank, the Bush administration, and other supporters of free market economies, quick privatization, and little government support or involvement in the economy.

The break with the past in Georgia and the change in the domestic and international and domestic priorities are distinctly political. These new policies have not always led to meaningful changes in the lives of ordinary Georgians. The quality of life for many Georgians has improved since the Rose Revolution but not in a revolutionary way that has changed social structures or anything of that nature. In this regard, the Rose Revolution could be, in Skocpol's framework, described as a political but not social revolution.

Defining Color Revolutions

The Orange, Rose, and Tulip Revolutions have distinct characteristics that make them stand out from other political developments in countries in transition. A good definition of Color Revolutions reflects that while thus far they have only occurred in a few countries, similar events could conceivably occur in other countries as well. While this might be unlikely, it helps ensure that the definition is analytical, as well as descriptive. Thus, a useful definition of Color Revolution must capture the commonalities that make it possible for this term to represent a discrete political phenomenon, but efforts to do this must also be tempered by recognizing the distinct characteristics and real differences between these political events.

The key elements shared by the three Color Revolutions can be summarized as follows:

• Color Revolutions leverage stolen elections into political breakthroughs.

• Color Revolutions, at least in the short term, are widely viewed as democratic breakthroughs.

• Consolidating post-Color Revolution democracy is very difficult, so Color Revolutions can more accurately be described as transitioning from one form of semidemocracy to another, rather than as an unambiguous step forward for democracy.

• Color Revolutions are largely nonviolent.

• Color Revolutions occur in countries where for a variety of reasons the state, and government, are weak.

• While civil society organizations and public activity of varying sizes are present, Color Revolutions are political events in which politicians play the major role.

• The role played by the international democracy assistance community varies substantially, but in all cases it is pivotal, even if minor.

The third element has become clearer now that all the Color Revolutions are several years old. Nonetheless, it is an important and distinctive element of Color Revolutions. Continuing to examine these events solely as part of an exploration of the advance of democracy not only is misleading but obscures the more serious question of the difficulty of developing democracy in the non-Baltic former Soviet countries. However, at the outset, as noted in the second element, the Rose, Orange and Tulip Revolutions were all viewed as important steps forward for global democracy. Thus, a central aspect of Color Revolutions, which we can see now with the benefit of a few years hindsight, is disappointment. None have lived up to their initial democratic promise.

Defining the role of international democracy assistance in the Color Revolutions is challenging because, as overlooked by many, the impact of this assistance varied substantially depending on the country. In all cases—even if only, as in Kyrgyzstan, through funding and nurturing the civic organization Kelkel—western donors contributed something essential. However, it must also be borne in mind that there have been hundreds of elections around the world where international donors' involvement in democracy assistance was comparable to Kyrgyzstan, and even to Georgia, but where nothing dramatic at all occurred.

The definition I offer shares some of Way's (2008) observations. The weakness of the state is viewed by both of us as an indispensable attribute of Color Revolutions. Some might argue that this is a tautological approach because we can define weak states as those where Color Revolutions occur. Radnitz (2010) makes a notable contribution to the centrality of state weakness to Color Revolutions by fleshing out the economic causes of this weakness.

Members of the business class (in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan) remained neutral or joined the opposition rather than support the incumbent, and critical members of the regime defected. The resulting weakness of the regime rather than ‘people power' per se, gave the opposition legitimacy and undermined the ability of the regime to sustain itself by force. (135)

Silitski (2009) recognizes the relevance of state weakness to Color Revolutions butis also concerned about the potential for tautology. It is a mistake simply to define a regime as weak because a Color Revolution occurred in that country. He argues that Russia, for the first years of Putin's rule was, in fact, quite weak, but Putin's regime flourished nonetheless.

It is hard to determine ex ante a regime's power or its repressive capacity. We can say with authority that a regime is strong only after it has succumbed to or survived challenges…. Such matters as political culture, institutional checks and balances on incumbents, and the self-restraint of rulers must also be taken into account. (88; emphasis original)

Silitiski's point is important, but not entirely accurate. It was not at all hard to see that Shevardnadze's Georgia, for example, was a weak state. There were many clear indicators of this, including heavy dependence on foreign assistance, limited control asserted by the central government over much of the territory of Georgia, extremely poor service delivery, and widespread corruption. All these indicators of a weak state were present in Georgia during the years immediately preceding the Rose Revolution. Moreover, they were considerably less apparent in neighboring Azerbaijan, where attempts to replicate a Color Revolution in 2005 proved unsuccessful.

My definition omits entirely two points that McFaul and Beissinger include in their definitions of Color Revolutions: opposition unity and youth activism.⁶ I have deliberately left these out because they were not key components of Color Revolutions; and, moreover, it is certainly possible to have a Color Revolution without either of them. The role of youth has been at times overemphasized by scholars such as Bunce and Wolchik (2004) and Kuzio (2006) as well as many youth activists themselves, who have made something of a cottage industry of traveling around the region describing their role in Color Revolutions and writing pieces describing, and generally overstating, their role.⁷ In this regard, I also draw on D'Anieri's (2006) focus on the impact of politicians as one of the overlooked components of Color Revolutions.

The roles and size of the four major youth organizations, Otpor (Serbia), Kmara (Georgia), Pura (Ukraine), and Kelkel (Kyrgyzstan) varied significantly. Otpor and Pura were the largest and most relevant, while Kmara and Kelkel played peripheral roles in the Rose and Tulip Revolutions. The youth organizations best