Journal of East-European and Asian Studies
Vol. 1, No. 1, April 2009
Georgia 2003 and Ukraine 2004: Two Acts, One Play?
Donnacha Ó Beacháin* and Abel Polese**
“Man gets rid of fear and feels free. Without that there would be no revolution”
(Ryszard Kapuściński, Shah of Shahs )
Introduction
Following the so-called color revolutions, which consisted of the destabilization of several post-soviet presidential regimes and their replacement by a more western oriented political elite, many analysts – predominately but not exclusively Russian1- have identified what is in their view pre-manufactured movements which, with the support of western politicians and western money, try to convert the former soviet space into an area under the sphere of influence of the EU and USA. In recent years, popular wisdom in some CIS countries has maintained that the movement that gave birth to Solidarnosc in Poland - the most successful opposition movement of the Cold War - has been updated and it is now ready for export to any country wishing to overthrow its government. They point to publications like Gene Sharp’s From Dictatorship to Democracy2, which has provided the dissidents with theoretical and practical tools to use when training new members of the opposition on how to manage masses and to set up a kind of revolution3 that

has proven successful already in several countries (Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine and partially Kyrgyzstan). According to Russian President Vladimir Putin, a semi-authoritarian model is needed in CIS countries, as western-style democracy is neither desirable nor viable; it will take time for their own version of democracy to develop. The OSCE, according to this view, has become an instrument of political pressure complementing the work of countless NGOs and newspapers financed by America to disparage the reputation of post-communist regimes and puncture their democratic pretensions.
This article maintains that this thesis favored by so many Russian analysts is too simplistic. For one thing, it begs an obvious question: if the combination of money, training and networking is enough to destabilize a regime, why then has it worked only in some cases and not in others? The determinants of the revolution, ceteris paribus, are the people, who may or may not be willing to stand up and fight for their rights. Where