Orange out of fashion, but still evokes warm memories in Ukraine

Orange out of fashion, but still evokes warm memories in Ukraine one year later[ Eds: Anniversary is Nov. 21, Ukraine plans to mark it Sunday, Nov. 20[ With BC-EU-FEA-GEN--Ukraine-Orange Revolution-Timeline[ AP Photos NY122-124[ By MARA D. BELLABY= Associated Press Writer= KIEV, Ukraine (AP) -

Orange still evokes warm memories in Ukraine

Mara D. Bellaby Associated Press/Kiev

One cold day this fall, Inna Grigoryeva put on her orange scarf.

It was her way of adding a bit of cheer to a gray day and she was overwhelmed by the reaction -- looks of surprise and affection and hope. Several people smiled.

Orange, the emblematic color of Ukraine's peaceful revolution last year, is rarely seen on Kiev's streets these days. Orange symbolized Ukrainians' bright hopes. Reality, a year after hundreds of thousands of demonstrators converged on Independence Square, has taken on a darker hue, muddied by unfulfilled promises and fallible heroes.

"The fairy tale written on Independence Square now calls to mind a murder mystery. Only the victim isn't a person -- but hope," said Andrei Yusov, a leading member of the youth group Pora that was a driving force in the protests.

As Ukraine prepares for the first anniversary of the drama that filled television screens worldwide, Ukrainians are grumbling about higher prices and public trust has plummeted over allegations of corruption.

The revolution's leaders have turned on each other - President Viktor Yushchenko's party votes more often with its old enemy, Viktor Yanukovych's bloc, than its ally of last year, Yulia Tymoshenko -- and those who hoped for a quick welcome into the European Union feel let down.

Opinion polls show Ukrainians increasingly think the country is headed in the wrong direction. So there's a natural inclination to fall back on the heady days of last November.

"For maybe the first time, the whole world learned where Ukraine was -- and not because of Chernobyl or some other catastrophe but because of the revolution ... it defined us," said Petro Poroshenko, a tycoon who used his television station to break the government's media blackout of the events unfolding in Kiev.

How the revolution started

The Orange Revolution began the day after polls closed in the Nov. 21 presidential election. As the election commission churned out fraudulent vote counts in favor of then prime minister Yanukovych -- who was supported by Russia -- reformist opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko summoned his partisans to Independence Square.

Hundreds of thousands came, setting up tents and outdoor kitchens and vowing to stay until justice prevailed. They demanded freedom, democracy, an end to corruption and, simply, the chance to live in a normal country. They chanted "Yu-shchen- ko!" through the night. Normal life stopped.

Riot police waited in buses for orders. President Leonid Kuchma called for an end to "this so-called revolution." European envoys scrambled to mediate, as Ukraine's raucous parliament went into emergency session. Politicians in the Russian-speaking, strongly pro-Yanukovych eastern provinces, began talk of secession.

The protesters were cheerful and disciplined: drinking beer and tossing cigarette butts were frowned on and garbage was diligently picked up. Yushchenko's ally, the more radical Yulia Tymoshenko, urged a nationwide strike -- which could have provoked a violent crackdown -- but the strike didn't gel.

Twelve days after the protests started, the Supreme Court declared the vote count fraudulent and ordered a new election. Kiev erupted. A light display flashed Yushchenko's name on buildings around the square, and fireworks exploded. It was more rock concert than revolution.

"The revolution became a symbol of the spirit and patriotism of Ukraine," said Yushchenko's former chief-of-staff, Oleksandr Zinchenko. "It wasn't just about one person ... it was about our freedom."

But the goodwill didn't last long after Yushchenko won the rerun and took office.

The revolution created high expectations, but the revolutionaries were a mismatched group of reformers, Socialists, and populists united only by hatred of Kuchma's regime.

They inherited a nation divided between pro-Russian east and nationalist west. Yushchenko won office with just 52 percent, and many in the east felt the country had been hijacked.

Initially, the government pursued reforms with fervor -- raising pensions and salaries, sacking 18,000 bureaucrats, and summoning former officials for questioning. Yushchenko traveled to the hostile east to make clear he was "the president of the whole country" -- and was pelted with snowballs.

One of the most contentious issues was addressing the Kuchma era's murky privatization deals in which much of the state's prime industry was sold off to insider tycoons in cut-rate deals. Tymoshenko, who became prime minister, wanted hundreds of these deals canceled; Yushchenko resisted such a radical strategy.

The Tymoshenko government's heavy-handed intervention in the economy spooked investors and was blamed for triggering a jump in meat, sugar and gas prices. Economic growth slid to below 4 percent -- a shocking decline from the previous year's 12 percent -- partly due to lower world prices for Ukraine's metal exports.

Opinion polls show that Ukrainians credit Yushchenko for advancing democracy and improving Ukraine's international image.

Stalled reforms

It's the other promises -- improving the standard of living, restoring trust in government, fighting corruption -- that Ukrainians complain have stalled. The country went ahead with re- privatizing the giant Kryvorizhstal steel works, but put other such moves on hold.

Yusov, the youth leader, admitted he's not as disillusioned as he sounds. He noted that although the Orange Revolution team turned on each other with mutual allegations of corruption in September, the scandal was played out on the nightly news, a level of transparency unheard of a year ago.

"The people and the government have become closer, but it is not because the government moved closer to the people, it's the people who stepped right up into the face of the government," Yusov said.

The glamourous and media-savvy Tymoshenko sniped that the stolid Yushchenko, a former banker, was simply fed up with seeing her face on television all the time, and many Orange Revolution supporters complain the president is cozying up to the revolution's enemies.

Yushchenko held a fence-mending meeting with the oligarchs of eastern Ukraine, the country's industrial powerhouse and a key battleground for parliamentary elections in March, and made a politically expedient but ideologically uncomfortable truce with Yanukovych.

He also sent conciliatory messages to Russia after it threatened to increase oil prices. Russia remains a key economic partner for Ukraine, and the two countries' historic ties made a clean break difficult for millions of Russian-speaking Ukrainians.

"The revolution couldn't carry on indefinitely. At some point the government had to settle down," said analyst Mykhailo Pohrebinsky.

For all the disappointments of the last year, Inna Grigoryeva -- who recently donned her old orange scarf -- thinks the revolution brought fundamental change. The Kiev newspaper columnist first noticed the change last year, when riding home on a crowded minibus, jostled by fellow passengers. Usually that makes her blood boil.

But "that time, I looked around and realized, these people went to vote just like I did, and they put their little cross next Yushchenko's name just like I did. I couldn't get angry at them. We were all taking a risk. We were all hoping for better."

She saw those same feelings reflected in the eyes of Ukrainians this year, their gazes again drawn to her orange scarf. On Nov. 20, when the country marks the revolution's first anniversary, "all of Kiev will be orange," she predicted.

GetAP 1.00 -- NOV 11, 2005 07:24:41