A storm sweeps the post-Soviet space

asiatimes: The last 10 days of September were pivotal in the transition saga of the "post-Soviet space". The events in their rush seemed like a delayed summer storm blowing across the immense deserts of the Central Asian steppes, smashing up the debris of fanciful notions accumulated over the past decade and a half, and offering clarity to the landscape.

It all began in Ukraine in the midriff of Eurasia, where by early September the signs of what many had already anticipated began appearing - the inevitable unraveling of the eight-month-old "Orange" revolution.

There was scarcely any foreplay in what was happening. As the prominent Russian political observer and chief editor of the prestigious journal Politicheskiy Klass, Vitaliy Tretyakov, wrote recently, "Broadly speaking, the political question concerns the character of the so-called Orange revolution in Ukraine...Apparently a few people would continue to believe that the Orange revolution was really a revolution - a free, democratic and spontaneous revolution. Even Western experts and journalists, who had, as if on someone's orders, uniformly described the events in Kiev 10 months ago as a spontaneous outburst of love for freedom by democratic-minded masses, have presently, without battling an eye lid, begun describing the Orange revolution as a coup within Ukraine's political elite that was artificially and skillfully orchestrated, inspired and financed from the outside." Read more