ABSTRACT
This chapter compares and contrasts the factors found during democratic revolutions in Slovakia, Croatia, Serbia, Georgia and Ukraine and analyses differences brought about by pro-European and counter-revolutionary national and linguistic minorities. It also compares the non-violent Orange Revolution and the endemic violence in the Euromaidan. In the Georgian and Serbian democratic revolutions three factors were missing that existed in Ukraine. First, they did not possess regional tensions that were inflamed by the "directed chaos" strategy pursued by the Ukrainian authorities. Second, there were no Russian political technologists employed by the authorities. Third, the democratic challenger was not the target of assassination attempts by the authorities. The chapter contrasts the "directed chaos" strategies pursued by the Ukrainian and Russian authorities in the Orange Revolution and those pursued during the Euromaidan. Since Ukraine became an independent state in 1992, Western and Russian scholars have predicted that inter-ethnic and regional conflict was imminent in Ukraine.
