SUMMARY:

The article addresses the nature of the recent so-called “color revolutions” in Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan from the angle of gender. While widely interpreted as a second attempt of democratization and of accomplishing the post-Soviet nation building, color revolutions have another aspect. The political opposition in Ukraine, Georgia, and to some extent in Kyrgyzstan presented the revolutions as an “anti-corruption” project, aimed at transforming the “power of clans” and the informal institution of the presidential “Family” into a normal democratic system. From this point of view color revolutions were targeting the informal structures of family and (quasi-) kin relations, localism and clientalism in post-Soviet politics as main obstacles on the way to “Europe.” Color revolutions would then be a project of liberal-democratic normalization of the post-Soviet gender order, which could restore the normative public-private divide by separating business from politics, and both of them from the family. The “Family” as an informal institution of capitalist accumulation, political decision-making, and redistribution of economic resources therefore needed to be transformed into the “nuclear family” of modern democratic politics or honest business. From this perspective, the political rivalry between Victor Yanukovich and Victor Yushchenko during the Ukrainian presidential elections in 2004 can be interpreted as a competition between two types of masculinity, as they were also represented in post-Soviet politics: an exaggerated post-Soviet masculinity on the one hand, and a “soft” European-style democracy on the other. By associating post-Soviet “strong masculinity” with the criminality of the ancien régime and with Yanukovich’s criminal record, the political opposition legitimized the need for pro-European democratic reforms. Similar strategy was used by Yulia Tymoshenko: representations of her militant, strong femininity (which corresponds to some Ukrainian cultural archetypes) turned her into a “uncompromised anti-clan politician.” Tymoshenko used her femininity to her advantage, allowing her to distance herself from the “dirty world of men’s politics.” As recent developments demonstrate, the promises of color revolutions, among them the separation of the “family” from politics, are not easy to fulfil. But even transformed from an informal institution of power into merely symbolic capital, the family remains the central metaphor and an important site of post-Soviet politics.