The role of the "Ukraine without Kuchma" campaign in the growing socio-political crisis in Ukraine at the beginning of the XXI century

Abstract

The article examines the campaign "Ukraine without Kuchma", which the Ukrainian opposition conducted from late 2000 to mid-2001 with the aim of resigning the current President of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma and his government. The author examines in detail such aspects of the topic as the causes of the protest movement, the main events of the "Ukraine without Kuchma" campaign, the role of various actors in it and the response of government structures. Particular attention is paid to the technologies of nonviolent struggle used by the opposition in attempts to force the President of Ukraine to leave his post, as well as the reasons for the failure of this campaign. In Russian historiography, a detailed analysis of the "Ukraine without Kuchma" campaign is being conducted for the first time. A special contribution of the author to the research of the topic is the introduction into scientific circulation of new sources, including documents of the Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation and materials in Ukrainian. The author comes to the conclusion that the campaign "Ukraine without Kuchma" played an important role in the growing socio-political crisis in Ukraine at the beginning of the XXI century. Despite the final defeat of the protesters, the events of 2000-2001 became the prologue to the "Orange Revolution" of 2004, during which the opposition managed to seize power.