Reports by international governmental and non-governmental organizations on the 2004
presidential elections in Ukraine constituted a significant factor in generating facilitating
and completing the Orange Revolution. Ukrainian civil society mass media courts and political
parties were the main driving force behind the popular uprising that returned Ukraine to the
path of democratization it had embarked on in 1991. Yet the unambiguous stance and political
weight of such institutions as the EU PACE NATO and above all OSCE played their role too.
The democratic movement benefited from the spectre of international isolation and
stigmatization of the Ukrainian state had President Leonid Kuchma decided to prevent a
repetition of the second round of the voting. The volume collects not all but some of the most
widely discussed reports including English translations of selected sections of the three
reports produced by the CIS International Observers Mission. The latter as well as a report by
an Israeli institute depart from the assessments of the other organizations represented here
allowing for comparison of diverging evaluations of the same events. The volume assembles full
or excerpted official reports of the International Republican Institute Tel Aviv Institute for
the Countries of Eastern Europe and CIS European Network of Election Monitoring Organizations
Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe Organization for Security and Cooperation in
Europe Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights and Commonwealth of Independent
States. Contributions by Jevgen Shapoval and Roman Kupchinsky introduce and conclude the
collection.
