John Laughland has an interesting article on the Ukraine’s opposition movement, in which he takes an oppositional stance. He confirms much of what Kole said in the comments section in the previous blog post on Ukraine from two days ago.
John Laughland has an interesting article on the Ukraine’s opposition movement, in which he takes an oppositional stance. He confirms much of what Kole said in the comments section in the previous blog post on Ukraine from two days ago.
Remember how Kole said that the media’s (and my) opposing ‘pro-western reformers’ against ‘authoritarian nationalists’ was inaccurate because the ‘pro-western reformers’ are often ‘authoritarian nationalists’ themselves. This seems to be the case with Yushchenko, according to Laughland. Nor is Yushchenko a free-marketeer in Laughland’s book:
Contrary allegations — such as those of fraud committed by Yushchenko-supporting local authorities in western Ukraine, carefully detailed by Russian election observers but available only in Russian — go unreported. So too does evidence of crude intimidation made by Yushchenko supporters against election officials. The depiction is so skewed that Yushchenko is presented as a pro-Western free-marketeer, even though his fief in western Ukraine is an economic wasteland; while Yanukovych is presented as pro-Russian and statist, even though his electoral campaign is based on deregulation and the economy has been growing at an impressive clip. The cleanliness and prosperity of Kiev and other cities have improved noticeably.
While it is difficult to verify Laughland’s claims, a different perspective is worth considering.
