At the start of the 1990’s, former radical dissidents obtained the result that only those people not soiled by ties to the former regime would work in the state apparatus and organs of power. Then members of the Helsinki committee fell out with them. Owing to anxiety about the social sphere and to the detriment of historical validity, they started to cooperate with former party autocrats and procurators. As a result, power returned to communist ideologists who had given up their party cards. This led to human rights activists, who had supported the candidature of the former dissident Vyacheslav Chornovil in 1991, switching their support on his defeat to the side of the former secretary of Soviet Ukraine’s communist party, Leonid Kravchuk. Thus commenced the epoch of total cooperation with the authorities, with self-censorship even in human rights circles.

After the victory of the leader of the opposition, Viktor Yushenko, the first serious test will be that of personnel selection. Yushenko has travelled a long path from member of the CPSU all the way up to head of the state bank and prime minister. His current colleagues include Alexander Zinchenko, Julia Timoshenko, Anatoli Kinakh, Alexander Moroz, Viktor Pinzenyk, Yuri Yekhanurov, Gennady Udovenko, Yuri Kostenko, Alexander Omelchenko and others. They received their first training as Komsomol-Party activists. The majority of them received important state posts in the years of Kuchma rule. Now, they do not have the right to reproach deserters as they themselves are in various measures guilty for the political and economic crisis. Apparently, under the new authorities servers from the old regime will be able to work once again with the “blessing of the people and democracy”.

Many journalists also wish to gain advantage from the revolution. Until very recently their symbols were money bags and portraits of Leonid Kuchma. Their merit is further reduced by their having earlier thrown mud at the opposition, but now, moving to the opposition, they are coated in the soot of their former bosses and sponsors. Sometime in the past Admiral Alexander Kolchak, having occupied a town, told his subordinates not to harm journalists and artists. “You see they serve any authority”. These words neatly characterize today’s situation in Ukraine. While in the last five years only a few newspapers, such as Selskiye Vesti, Ukraina Molodaya, and Tovarish, with a few others, sharply criticised Leonid Kuchma, now it happens that even court scribes and their TV brethren show their “reservations” towards the head of state. All wish to be heroes, having been part of the revolution, and hope that as a result they will profit handsomely from it.

Human rights activists are enraptured by Viktor Yushenko. As thirteen years ago, they are preparing to cooperate with the new regime. The result of this dancing before the new leader and his entourage is all too evident, as the example of the Moscow Helsinki group has shown. Together with the Kremlin they have founded a cheerful round table called the Civil Forum.

Of course, Viktor Yushenko is a politician of the new generation. His analytical and serious approach to economic and legal problems can lead the country into the European arena. However, fawning at him and referring to him as Your Excellency, as the poet Roman Lubkivsky and other flatterers have done, is hardly appropriate in the age of progression towards freedom and the revival of spiritual culture.