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12/22/2004:

"Why the Fever in Ukraine? A Few Not-So Easy Answers"

KIEV, Ukraine, Dec. 21 - Ukraine's "orange revolution" was either a mass outpouring of popular will or the collapse of an enfeebled authoritarian power.

Or maybe it was the political and judicial maturation of a teenage democracy. Or it was a Western plot concocted in the corridors of American power and carried out with cunning by subversive forces like the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. (The latter is the theory favored in parts north and east of here, particularly in the Kremlin.)

In reality, the political upheaval and mass demonstrations that ultimately overturned Ukraine's fraudulent presidential runoff last month probably resulted from a mixture of all those things. And by all accounts, Ukraine, alone among the former Soviet republics, had several essential ingredients for democracy that had managed to survive the turmoil of 13 years of halting transition: political competition, judicial independence and, of course, the political activism of voters in a vast swath of the world where apathy typically rules.
Full Article: nytimes.com

Ah well yes of course. It's funny how the realm of easy answers is only unattractive when there is something to hide. Mostly, these guys are the masters of the simple explanation.