Democracy in a dream

I had an amazing dream: Moscow, December two thousand and sixteen. The CEC announces the results of the elections to the State Duma: "United Russia" - 30% of the vote, the united opposition - more than 25%. The new opposition party PERO, which chose to run on its own, is gaining nearly 14% more. Everyone explains the success of the party by the popularity of its leader, the writer Boris Akunin, who decided to leave literature for a while and go into politics. Akunin's chances in the next presidential election are a hot topic in the media. The right flank of the opposition - the association of Russian nationalists "Russia - for the Russians" - receives more than 10%. In total - half the votes! And that's not counting the communists. They, despite many years of strong friendship and fruitful cooperation with the current government (a fact that the leaders of the Communist Party, of course, angrily deny), went to the polls under radical anti-government slogans and won another 13% of the votes.

I dream that on all TV channels in every news release there are reports from the building of the Central Election Commission: opposition leaders have been rallying there for days, demanding recognition of their victory in thirteen districts, where the most gross falsifications in favor of the ruling party were revealed. I dream that United Russia is taking a step forward, proposing to hold a second vote in some of these conflict districts. The outgoing Duma urgently adopts an appropriate resolution - it proposes to Churov's department to call new elections. I dream that at the same time, representatives of the authorities and the opposition are arguing to the point of hoarseness on political talk shows about what to do next with the country, without embarrassing themselves in terms of either the president or the prime minister. And all this - live, at prime time, for many hours in a row. I dream that detailed voting results are being published. It turns out that in Moscow about 75 percent voted for the new non-communist opposition. And in St. Petersburg, Russian nationalists scored the most ...

Unable to take it all anymore, I woke up. How do you like my dream? Non-science fiction?

But change Moscow to Kyiv. Peter - to Lviv. The PERO party, which I hastily invented (I just didn’t figure out how to decipher it) - to the UDAR party (Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reforms). Boris Akunin to Vitali Klitschko - the assumption of the participation of the famous boxer in the presidential elections was also recently perceived as an unsuccessful joke.

And it will not be a dream, but reality. This is exactly what the current political realities in Ukraine look like after the October 28 parliamentary elections.

Why am I doing all this? And besides, what has long been sore: Ukrainian reality is not at all like that caricature picture that, according to my observations, exists in the minds of most people in Russia. Yes, and in the West too. In fact, there is no fictional black-and-white Ukraine in nature, where the evil pro-Russian authoritarian regime of Yanukovych is opposed by the heroes of the Orange Revolution, pro-Western reformers without fear or reproach, the main of which, Yulia Tymoshenko, is also innocently languishing in the dungeon. It is true that Yanukovych is certainly an authoritarian politician. Today he orders music. The losses of the party in power in the list elections will be more than offset by the victories in the "majority". Yes, in historically opposition-minded Kiev, the candidates of the ruling party lost in all 13 single-mandate constituencies, but they won in many other places, and as a result, the first one-party majority in the history of Ukraine may appear in the parliament. So the results of the elections on party lists are not yet a vote of no confidence of citizens in the current government, although it is a completely clear signal of deep discontent. And even if the majority would be with the opposition, Yanukovych has so much power that it seems that he is not afraid of any parliament - the Verkhovna Rada has no more powers than the State Duma.

And in general, some cynics argue that without exception, all Ukrainian opposition parties exist on the money of the oligarchs, who just quietly lay their eggs in different baskets. In addition, those who say it is too early to rejoice at the high results of the left and right orthodox people are probably right. The rise of the communists and ultra-nationalists in the historical perspective may not be in favor of democracy.

But the main thing is something else. In two and a half years there will be new presidential elections in the country. In a country, mind you, where staunch supporters of power make up only a third of all voters; where half the country looks to the West, and the other half to the East; where they speak two languages, where they profess at least two religions, where even the Orthodox are divided into two Churches; where there are two versions of national history, where two different pantheons of national heroes are worshiped - for some it is Stepan Bandera and the soldiers of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, for others - those who fought with them in the forests and mountains of Western Ukraine almost until the end of the 50s; where, as mentioned above, the oligarchs carefully lay their eggs in different baskets, where, finally, there is always a struggle in presidential elections - in earnest and without a priori known result. In such a country, to mourn and bury democracy, as some do, is not only too early, but simply stupid.