Many still remembered the Holodomor, often talked about as the Ukrainian holocaust. The Holodomor, also known as the Great Famine, was a man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine in 1932 and 1933; it killed millions of Ukrainians. It was part of the wider Soviet famine, which affected the major grain-producing areas of the country. During the Holodomor, millions of inhabitants of Ukraine, the majority of whom were ethnic Ukrainians, died of starvation in a peacetime catastrophe unprecedented in the history of the country. When the famine started, Stalin exported almost two million tonnes of food out of Ukraine, thus removing the little people had to survive on. Then he barred the people who were hit the hardest from moving to any other part of the country. They had no food, and with no means of escape they could do nothing but wait for death. In response to the demographic collapse, the Soviet authorities ordered large-scale resettlements, with over 117,000 peasants from remote regions of the Soviet Union taking over the deserted farms in eastern Ukraine.
The elections held in late 2004 were the fourth presidential elections to take place in Ukraine following its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. They were both dramatic and controversial. Ultimately, they became a contest between Viktor Yanukovych, the incumbent prime minister, and Viktor Yushchenko, who was at this time the opposition leader.
According to the results announced on 23 November, the run-off election had been won by Prime Minister Yanukovych, but the results were challenged by Yushchenko and his supporters, as well as by many international observers. They all claimed that the election, held in a highly charged political atmosphere, had been rigged and there were allegations of media bias, voter intimidation and even the poisoning of candidate Yushchenko with dioxin. The proceedings became a cause for national and international concern and in the end Yanukovych’s victory was ruled fraudulent and annulled by the Ukrainian Supreme Court.
Under intense scrutiny by domestic and international observers, a second run-off was held and declared to be ‘fair and free’. Yushchenko was declared the official winner and at his inauguration on 23 January 2005 in Kiev (also written as Kyiv), he nominated as his prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, the first woman ever to be appointed prime minister of Ukraine. Her tightly braided blonde hair soon made her an internationally recognisable public figure. Yanukovych was left empty-handed and bitter, as he felt the court’s ruling had been a great injustice. Political turmoil occupied the first few years of Yushchenko’s presidency.
Even Yanukovych could never have predicted or foreseen that he would one day become such an important man. He liked to tell the press that he grew up barefoot and hungry. By the time he was in his teens he seemed destined to lead a life of crime when, just barely sixteen, he found himself on trial for robbery and assault and was sentenced to prison. The fiftieth anniversary of the Russian Revolution in 1967 saved him from a ruinous destiny; he was granted a pardon after serving eighteen months and released.
Thankful to the Russians for the pardon he had received, the young Yanukovych joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He ultimately became the manager of a transport company, studied international law and became a professor of economics, although many were doubtful about the way in which he had acquired his degree.
In the region of Ukraine where he had grown up the main language was Russian, so he learned Ukrainian much later in life. Although he started studying the language after taking office in 2002, even as late as 2013 he still found it difficult to express himself in proficient Ukrainian and would switch to his native Russian when dealing with difficult subjects. Because of this, the opposition often found him a somewhat dim political candidate.
Before the 2004 elections Yanukovych’s ego had been badly dented by what became known as the candidate’s ‘assassination by egg’. On a visit to a university, an egg was thrown at him by an activist and he had reacted dramatically, collapsing in the street, groaning and clutching his chest. Assuming someone had attempted to assassinate him, he was rushed to hospital and taken into intensive care. Just hours later he was discharged from hospital after the staff found nothing wrong with him, except for a soiled shirt front. He was the target of ridicule from the opposition for months afterwards.
In the six years that followed, Yanukovych perceived Yulia Tymoshenko, the woman who had taken the prime ministership from him, as his perpetual rival. She was ten years younger than the burly and somewhat coarse Yanukovych, and pretty to boot. Because of her resemblance to actress Carrie Fisher, she was nicknamed the ‘Princess Leia of Ukrainian politics’. Not simply good-looking, she was also a practising economist and academic and, prior to her political career, she had been a successful, albeit controversial, businesswoman in the gas industry. This had made her one of the richest people in the country.
Before becoming Ukraine’s first female prime minister in 2005, Tymoshenko became known as one of the initiators of the Orange Revolution in Ukraine. The Orange Revolution of 2004 had been aimed at stopping Yanukovych from becoming president after the election that was widely believed to have been rigged. After those elections Tymoshenko asked people to demonstrate wearing orange symbols, the colour of her party, in an effort to denounce Yanukovych’s presidency. Tymoshenko called Kiev residents to gather on the square and asked people from other cities and towns to come to Kiev and stand for their choice and demand that the ‘real’ winner, Yushchenko, become the people’s president.
On 22 November 2004, massive protests in favour of Yushchenko and Tymoshenko broke out in cities across Ukraine: the movement became known as the Orange Revolution. During the tumultuous months of the revolution, candidate Yushchenko suddenly became gravely ill, and was soon found by multiple independent physician groups to have been poisoned by TCDD dioxin. Yushchenko strongly suspected Russian involvement in his poisoning. But he and Tymoshenko had formed a pro-West pact and ultimately won the re-run of the elections that year.
A deep hatred of Russia had simmered among the ethnic peoples in northern and western Ukraine for eighty years now. They were the ones who wanted reform and the severance of ties with Russia. They wanted nothing more than to turn their hopes to the West, because this held a promise of better times if their country became a member of the European Union. They were the supporters of the pro-West Viktor Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko.
But in the eastern part of the country the ethnic Russians and a large section of pro-Russian voters backed Yanukovych; he had promised to investigate all options that the European Union offered, but these voters felt assured that he would not turn his back on them. The nation was bitterly split.
Six years later in the first round of the 2010 presidential elections Yulia Tymoshenko ran against Yanukovych. She received 25 per cent of the votes and Yanukovych 35 per cent. Although she was behind, it was a surprise that Yulia Tymoshenko had managed to gather even this many votes. During Yushchenko’s and Tymoshenko’s reign, the country had been brought to the verge of bankruptcy as Russia implemented ever more sanctions in retaliation for the efforts of Ukraine to become part of the European Union. During the height of winter, Russia had tuned off the gas supply to Ukraine, and the fear of another Holodomor had left the older population anxious. Many of them turned to Yanukovych. In large parts of the country Yanukovych was admired because he had been a street kid, raised in a violent town by his grandmother, and had managed to achieve success by the force of his own willpower.
Nonetheless, Yanukovych’s comeback against Tymoshenko in 2010 was not a convincing victory. Neither candidate managed to secure a clear majority in the preliminary voting and Yanukovych’s victory in the run-off on 7 February 2010 was by a narrow 3.5 per cent. In the aftermath Tymoshenko refused to acknowledge the defeat, accusing her rival of having forged the outcome of the elections. It was only after Yanukovych managed to secure a parliamentary majority of five that Tymoshenko finally withdrew.