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People power is on
track to score another triumph for western values in Ukraine. Over the last 15
years, the old Soviet bloc has witnessed recurrent fairy tale political
upheavals. These modern morality tales always begin with a happy ending. But
what happens to the people ‘once People Power has won?
The upheaval in
Ukraine is presented as a battle between the people and Soviet-era power
structures. The role of western cold war-era agencies is taboo. Poke your nose
into the funding of the lavish carnival in Kiev, and the shrieks of rage show
that you have touched a neuralgic point of the New World Order.
All politics costs
money, and the crowd scenes broadcast daily from Kiev cost big bucks. Market
economics may have triumphed, but if Milton Friedman were to remind the
recipients of free food and drink in Independence Square that "there is no such
thing as a free lunch," he would doubtless be branded a Stalinist. Few seem to
ask what the people paying for People Power want in return for sponsoring all
those rock concerts.
As an old cold war
swagman, who carried tens of thousands of dollars to Soviet-bloc dissidents
alongside much better respected academics, perhaps I can cast some light on what
a Romanian friend called "our clan-destine period." Too many higher up the food
chain of People Power seem reticent about making full disclosure.
Nowadays, we can
google the names of foundations such as America’s National Endowment for
Democracy (NED) and a myriad surrogates funding Ukraine’s Pora movement or
"independent" media. But unless you know the NED’s James Woolsey was also head
of the CIA 10 years ago, are you any wiser?
Throughout the 1980s,
in the build-up to 1989’s velvet revolutions, a small army of volunteers - and,
let’s be frank, spies - cooperated to promote what became People Power. A
network of interlocking foundations and charities mushroomed to organise the
logistics of transferring millions of dollars to dissidents. The money came
overwhelmingly from NATO states and covert allies such as "neutral" Sweden.
It is true that not
every penny received by dissidents came from tax-payers. The U.S. billionauire,
George Soros, set up the Open Society Foundation. How much it gave is difficult
to verify, because Mr. Soros promotes openness for others, not himself.
The hangover from
People Power is shock therapy. Each successive crowd is sold a multimedia vision
of Euro-Atlantic prosperity by western-funded "independent" media to get them on
the streets. No one dwells on the unemployment, rampant insider dealing, growth
of organised crime, prostitution and soaring death rates in successful People
Power states.
In 1989, our security
services honed an ideal model as a mechanism for changing regimes, often using
genuine volunteers. Dislike of the way communist states constrained ordinary
people’s lives led me into undercover work, but witnessing mass pauperisation
and cynical opportunism in the 1990s bred my disillusionment.
Of course, I should
have recognised the symptoms of corruption earlier. Back in the 19805, our media
portrayed Prague dissidents as selfless academics who were reduced to poverty
for their principles, when they were in fact receiving $600-monthly stipends.
Now they sit in the front row of the new Euro-Atlantic ruling class. The dowdy
do-gander who seemed so devoted to making sure that every penny of her "charity"
money got to a needy recipient is now a facilitator for investors in our old
stamping grounds. The end of history was the birth of consultancy.
People Power is, it
turns out, more about closing things than creating an open society. It shuts
factories but, worse still, minds. Its advocates demand a free market in
everything except opinion. The current ideologues of New World Order ideologues;
many of whom are renegade communists, is Market-Leninism - that combination of a
dogmatic economic model with Machiavellian methods, to grasp the levers of
power.
©Guardian Newspapers
Limited 2004
(Mark Almond is
lecturer in modern history at Oriel College, Oxford University.)
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