National Democracy (Ukraine)
National Democracy has its origins in the late 19th century, when Ivan Franko and Yulian Bachynsky, two left-wing Ukrainian politicians and cultural figures in Austria-Hungary, developed the ideology.
Stanislav Dnistrianskyi [uk], a leading ideologist of National Democracy during this period, expressed the view that states established on the basis of ethnicity possessed unique cultures of statehood.
[4] National Democracy began to be reformulated around the time of the Revolutions of 1989, with the formation of the People's Movement of Ukraine (or Rukh), taking inspiration from the Lithuanian Sąjūdis and Polish Solidarity.
Following these events, the former dissidents and human rights activists that made up the National Democratic movement began organising under the slogan of "building the state".
Doroshenko has also pointed to the fragmentation of National Democracy in electoral politics as self-damaging, pointing to the fact that the presence of three separate National Democratic candidates (Viacheslav Chornovil, Levko Lukianenko, and Ihor Yukhnovskyi) in the 1991 Ukrainian presidential election assisted in bringing about the victory of Leonid Kravchuk.
[5] Kravchuk initially sought out the support of National Democrats in governance, but these attempts were rejected by many of the movement's more radical voices, such as Chornovil, who had no intention of working with an ex-communist politician.
Pragmatists such as Ivan Drach, Mykhailo Horyn, and Volodymyr Yavorivsky (among others) formed the Congress of National Democratic Forces [uk] in an effort to further support for Kravchuk.
[8] The 1999 Ukrainian presidential election, in which Chornovil was considered a serious competitor,[9] instead resulted in a contest between Kuchma and Communist leader Petro Symonenko.
[11] During Kuchmagate, Yushchenko and the movement's pragmatist described the anti-Kuchma opposition as "politically destructive" and "extremist", and refused to oppose the president outright even as he was removed as prime minister in April 2001 through Kuchma's machinations.
[11] In November 2001, Yushchenko stated that his new Our Ukraine, an electoral alliance of pragmatic National Democratic parties, would offer Kuchma "constructive criticism from a bloc with a patriotic stand".
[12] Yushchenko was chosen as the candidate of the People's Power coalition between Our Ukraine and Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc for the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election,[13][14] which he won after the Orange Revolution forced a re-run of the second round of voting after allegations of electoral fraud.
