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