| Abstract [eng] |
This analysis is aimed to provide a more comprehensive approach towards this century’s “coloured revolutions”, which have taken place in Georgia (2003), Ukraine (2004) and than moved to other post soviet countries. Obviously, this conspicuous and epidemic phenomenon proved an existing political viability in the slow-moving transitional countries. But still, it is not clear if this post soviet styled political instability reflects anything more than a tremor without long lasting democratic effects to future political and social developments of CIS countries. The author observes an existing academic confusion while trying to define “colour” events and evaluate the prospects of such kind of “democratic breakthrough” in CIS. Therefore, avoiding any miscalculations in this analysis, “coloured revolutions” are defined as revolution situations without revolution outcomes. That means, the success of “colour” events is limited to the cases where partial change of ruling elite has taken place. “Post colour” political developments are not taken into the account. The author selects three different cases – Georgia and Ukraine (two examples of successful “colour” change) and Belarus (the case of failed “revolution”). The main aim of these cases’ analysis is to define and examine factors which cause high-degree of political instability and partial political changes in elite level and try to explain why the same kind of revolution situation does not evolve in other countries of the region. The analysis consists of three stages – (1) the evaluation of foreign influence; (2) the search of the post soviet society’s role; (3) the analysis of a state and power of ruling elite. The results of this three-case and multi-level investigation help in defining the structure of post soviet political change possibilities. The main findings of the analysis are as follows: 1. The societies didn’t experience any significant changes before “colour” events. So that, the role of the mass was very limited in the context of post soviet political change. 2. The role of the West was very important for political developments of post soviet states. Contrary to Belarus, the successful “colour” states – Ukraine and Georgia – were used to develop fairly close ties with US and EU through different economic, geopolitical, NGO’s channels. So that, foreign influence can partly explain the “colour” success. 3. One of the main factors determining revolution situations in post soviet states is the change in power resources of the ruling elite. This change enables political struggle between divided elite groups and till then being rather closed political system opens for political change. |
