You're reading: Q&A: Dmytro Potekhin

The Orange Revolutionary and Znayu organizer talks the nuts and bolts of revolt

Even amid all the media speculation about “revolution templates” last fall, few reported what pro-democracy activists were actually doing to set the stage for the non-stop demonstration against voting fraud that erupted in Kyiv on Nov. 22.

Dmytro Potekhin, who ran one of the million-dollar projects funded by Western donors, was available to talk in Kyiv on Feb. 22 about his non-violent civil campaign.

Having studied foreign donor election activities for the International Renaissance Foundation in 2002, the 28-year-old Kyiv native took stock of the campaign’s deficiencies in designing his own project, dubbed “Znayu” (“I Know”), in time for the 2004 campaign.

In addition to covering the costs of flying delegations of former U.S. Congressmen to Ukraine, the money emboldened voters and helped to smooth over a conflict between twin non-violent activist groups.

Potekhin, who studied international affairs at the Kyiv Humanitarian Institute, worked previously at the Japanese embassy as a political analyst. He left the embassy to join the Ukraine Without Kuchma (UWK) protests, which petered out after a bloody brawl in March 2001 led to the arrests of hundreds of protestors.

KP: How much did your presidential election project cost U.S. taxpayers?

DP: The total budget for the first and second rounds of the contest was $650,000, with an additional $350,000 for the Dec. 26 repeat run-off.

In addition, the U.S.-based non-profit Freedom House chipped in $50,000. Most of the money was spent on publishing leaflets – about 10 million pieces – maintaining a toll free hotline, and placing voter education advertisements.

KP: Were the jolly, non-violent elves funded by Uncle Sam responsible for the so-called Orange Revolution, as some foreign pundits have alleged?

DP: As Aleksandar Maric, one of the co-founders of the Serbian opposition movement Otpor [Resistance] once told me, “Every success is preceded by a failure.” So I attribute what we achieved to lessons learned from the flawed protests organized by the UWK movement five years ago.

KP: When did you start planning for the election?

DP: A long time ago, more than a year before the race began. Together with Anatoliy Tkachuk from the Civil Society Institute and Petro Koshukov from the Europa XXI Foundation, we submitted a funding proposal with the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation (USUF) staff, headed by Markijan Bilynsky in Kyiv and Nadia McConnell in Washington. Koshukov joined in mid-2004. Petro had his own project with Swiss funding. Our projects shared a mission, and we decided to launch a campaign under a joint brand.

The overriding goal of the exercise was to ensure that voter preferences were in conformity with how ballots were cast, and to protect official tallies from being tampered and manipulated.

We had one negative message and three positive ones – why it was important for people to vote, how they should choose their candidate, and what could be done to prevent fraud – targeted at the voters.

The one negative message – don’t steal the votes – was meant to frighten, warn, and educate the authorities.

KP: When did the work begin?

DP: Non-violent presidential election-related protest preparations began after parliamentary elections held in March 2002. A series of training sessions were conducted by people with past experience conducting similar campaigns, including the Serbian civil disobedience campaign Otpor. These activities were funded by the U.S.-based non-profit Freedom House, which organized seminars throughout Ukraine designed to teach activists to independently coordinate their activities and organize others, stage actions, talk with journalists, distribute information and work with young people. The Albert Einstein Institute also funded the printing of 12,000 copies of “From Dictatorship to Democracy” by Gene Sharp, a theoretician specializing in nonviolent protest. The pamphlets were printed locally in Ukraine and an edition was made available on the Internet. Steve York, a film director and author of the documentary film “Bringing Down a Dictator,” about the fall of Yugoslav strongman Slobodan Milosevic, talked AEI into funding publication of the book, which was promoted and widely read through the civil society Internet portal Maidan (www.maidan.org.ua).

KP: How much time was spent on training people?

DP: About a year. Trainings started at the end of 2003. In April 2004 a group of Ukrainian activists visited Novy Sad. By summer 2004 there were several hundred trained activists nationwide. There existed another group in Kyiv led by Mykhailo Svystovych, the co-founder of Maidan and the UWK movement. Svystovych and his associates had for a long time planned to create such a movement, but didn’t have the time, resources or understanding of how to organize the operation themselves. He also came to Novy Sad.

KP: Are they the ones who helped create the non-violent protest Pora movement?

DP: Yes, in early 2003, after protracted discussions about how to name and present the movement publicly. By that time, there existed a structure for a civil disobedience movement with all the same attributes as similar campaigns in Georgia (Khmara), Serbia (Otpor) and Armenia (Mjaft). The name Pora was decided on in January 2004.

KP: What happened next?

DP: Following the creation of the Pora “brand,” replete with its black emblem, logotype, etc., the strategic goal of the campaign was defined: to fight against the system of power under Kuchma. The Internet site Kuchmizm.info (www.kuchizmo.info) was launched. Stickers, reading “What is Kuchmizm?” appeared on March 29, 2004 in 17 cities. Stickers answering, “Kuchmizm is poverty,” “Kuchmizm is banditry,” “Kuchmism is corruption,” etc. answered the question weeks later.

KP: How about the yellow Pora group?

DP: A copycat Pora movement appeared in Kyiv, replete with their own (yellow) logo and campaign in April 2004. The group, led by 31-year-old Ternopil native Vladyslav Kaskiv, appeared out of nowhere and began making the rounds of foreign donors. They created their own Pora (www.pora.org.ua) site, copying content from the kuchizm.info site, and began appearing in photographs with deputies from Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine parliament bloc. In Mukachevo, a yellow Pora activist appeared smiling in a photograph with Yushchenko himself. In several cases during the election campaign yellow Pora flags appeared at Yushchenko rallies, which questioned the declared neutrality of the Pora brand. On April 5 he told the Kyiv-based UNIAN news service that a “Hvylya Svobody” campaign would be launched. But in late April, he started with his version of Pora in Mukachevo. Kaskiv at the time headed the Secretariat of the Svoboda Vybora Coalition, an organization he founded after the presidential elections in 1999.

The copycat Pora, however, created a problem because young activists in the regions were confused and became disillusioned. Many experienced difficulty differentiating between the two groups, and the resulting confusion reminded some of the power-sharing tussle experienced by the Rukh movement, which in 1999 bifurcated into separate, competing entities.

To solve the problem, we brought the two Poras together for negotiations before a congress in Kyiv, where they worked out a common logo. We, in return, redirected part of our budget so that they could deliver our negative message. It became much easier, after they agreed to work together, for us to mobilize young people in the regions.

We brought them together not at a congress, but through negotiations. We redirected a part of our budget to black Pora, because they have regional network. We never gave money to yellow Pora.

KP: What are your future plans?

DP: I’m getting ready for the parliamentary elections, scheduled for 2006.