Ö³êàâèé op-ed
06/27/2003 | Maêñèì
Nations do not always get the leaders they deserve, but they almost always get leaders generated by conditions.
http://www.kyivpost.com/opinion/oped/16617/
2004 elections likely to change little
William Gleason
“The tragedy of Ukraine today,” Sergey (not his real name) sighed, “is that public opinion is emerging as a force to be reckoned with at exactly the moment when conditions do not favor market-oriented democracy or rule of law. I am talking about deep and widespread poverty, soaring unemployment, the absence of a free press, weak political parties, and – rightly or wrongly – disillusionment with the West. And that disillusionment plays into Kuchma’s hands and those around him whose natural instincts are antithetical to building an open society or sustained dialogue with the West.”
I listened carefully as Sergey continued. That snowy February evening, replete with heaps of food, too much wine, and scintillating conversation for which Ukrainians are justly famous, was drawing to a close. A Fulbright scholar from Eastern Ukraine whose political insights matched his intellectual grasp of Western law and philosophy, Sergey was in a somber mood. Alone among the experts on international relations whom I interviewed during my return visit to Kyiv last winter, Sergey focused on the domestic component of Ukraine’s global posture.
“You know,” he grimaced, “too many Americans and, maybe, too many Europeans want to blame it all on Kuchma or a few other rotten apples. Of course Kuchma is bad and his policies, especially his foreign policy, are disastrous for Ukraine. Not to mention his paranoid personality and insecurity in the face of excellence from anyone in his administration.
“But you see, Bill, the absence of democracy in 2003 goes far beyond one man or one clan or a group of clans, for that matter. Authoritarian regimes are not always forced on a people. Sometimes they are embraced by people for a spell. Even an otherwise cultured nation can go off track, so to speak. Look at Nazi Germany in the 1930s or at several Latin American countries today.
Under certain conditions, people quite willingly reject what you and I take for granted – a democratic society. They reject democracy not because they do not value freedom, but because for the moment their priorities and needs are elsewhere. And that, I fear, is where we may be heading in Ukraine now, with all that implies for Ukraine’s standing in the eyes of the Western community,” Sergey intoned, reaching across the table to top off my wine glass for the umpteenth time.
“One question,” he said, a tight-lipped smile planted on a handsomely etched face. “If elections in Ukraine in 2004 were absolutely free and fair, how would we vote? And I’m not talking specific leaders or individuals, or even specific parties. I’m talking about ideas and values.”
I sipped the wine slowly.
“A substantial majority of Ukrainians would vote left of center, probably considerably left of center. They’d vote for a watered-down version of Soviet-style socialism; jobs for everyone, inexpensive and universal medical care, cheap transportation and cheap rents. Never mind the observation that, practically speaking, this is a wish list akin to Disneyland (Sergey has been to Disneyland so I did not quibble with his analogy).
“The fact is that Ukrainians, with the exception of most Western Ukrainians and a thin veneer of educated elite in major urban centers, are Soviet in mentality and psychology. And that is not going to change with our rapidly aging population and the enormous need for state assisted health-care, education, and social services. Any presidential contender who openly advocates a free market ideology in 2004 will get no more than 20 percent of the vote, 25 percent tops. Not exactly a winning number, correct?”
The implications of Sergey’s sweeping assessment of the Ukrainian ethos run deep and disturb, promoters of democracy and policymakers, both in Ukraine and the West. It is a society conservative from top to bottom.
Conservative in the deepest sense of the word: a people terrified of change and averse to risk-taking. Moreover, that attitude – fear of change – is unmistakably realistic, given Ukraine’s history across the past century, including the decade since independence. The sad fact is that virtually every time that sweeping change has occurred, be it in 1917, 1932, or 1991, conditions for the average person have worsened dramatically and suddenly. It is but a small jump mentally from that point to the unalterable perception (call it a gut feeling) that all change is threatening. Or, as the maxim goes, better the devil you know than the one you don’t.
Unless underlying material conditions improve enough to create a decent-sized middle class, citizen behavior through voting will frustrate believers in democracy, whether in Kyiv, Brussels, or Washington, D.C. A deeply entrenched authoritarian regime – never mind the rhetorical acceptance of democracy by Kuchma & Co. – combined with an impoverished people fearful of what lays ahead, calls into question the significance of elections for Ukraine’s democratic transition. As Sergey intimated, a truly fair vote would backfire because, and this is the key point, democracy historically flowers from processes of socioeconomic development stretching over decades if not centuries, whether in England, Italy or Japan. Ukraine is only at the dawn of that transformation and it is too much to ask a people schooled in politics under Soviet tutelage and decimated by economic collapse since 1991 to fly in the face of history; to jump over historical stages and perform miracles. Way too much.
The suspicion that economic conditions are more fundamental to an understanding of Ukraine’s prospects in 2003 than corrupt leadership or a tenuous civil society has another corollary: Fair elections could produce a deeply divided country unhinged by civilization’s fault lines. As Sergey noted, Galicia and Volhynia naturally would gravitate to the West while the rest of Ukraine would swing eastward, in the direction of Russia.
Seen from this perspective, from the vantage point of Ukraine’s dire economy, the Ukrainian-Russian nexus takes on added coloration. Remember first of all that many Ukrainians, particularly those from the eastern and southern regions of the country, voted for an end to the Soviet Union in 1991 because they expected their standard of living to rise dramatically. That has not happened, nor is it about to.
Remember too that foreign direct investment from the West has been, and is, abysmal. As everyone knows, improvement in FDI is tied squarely to economic and political reform of the highest order, an iffy likelihood given both the power of the Presidential Administration and the divided nature of the parliamentary opposition (does anyone really expect Yushchenko and Symonenko to work together through the 2004 elections?).
Only one country stands ready to invest in Ukraine to any appreciable degree: Russia. Ukraine’s eastern neighbor is a country flush with cash, a country already employing millions of Ukrainians, a country whose ambassador to Ukraine could almost single-handedly underwrite whole companies because of his enormous personal wealth. And a country deliberately blind to the criminal doings of the Kuchma cohort dating back to Gongadze, at least.
Does this mean that Ukraine is destined to become unglued or to be swallowed up by its eastern neighbor? Nothing in history is inevitable and Clio, the muse of history, always exceeds our limited imaginations. 1989 and 1991 confounded the experts who assumed that communism was here to stay. 9/11 was totally unexpected by virtually everyone on the planet, save the perpetrators of the carnage and a few intrepid intelligence analysts whose reports of horrors to come were passed over by their superiors. The EU, the preserve during the heights of the Cold War of Western Europe, now stands on Ukraine’s doorstep. Who could have foreseen any of this a mere fifteen years ago?
To suggest then that Ukraine is finished is both ahistorical and melodramatic, postures this writer denies. But it is not farfetched to suggest that economic conditions are driving Ukraine eastwards, with all that it implies domestically and geopolitically. Nor is it exaggerated to suggest that Western policies toward Ukraine must go well beyond blaming leaders for non-democratic results so far, as natural as it may seem. Kuchma’s contributions to Ukraine’s debacle since 1994 are well documented.
It is a truism to say that as long as Kuchma dominates the political landscape, Ukraine is going nowhere. However, Sergey’s point remains: if material conditions stay pretty much as they are today, Kuchma’s removal may not mean much. Nations do not always get the leaders they deserve, but they almost always get leaders generated by conditions.
William Gleason Ph.D. is a historian specializing in Russia, the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe who is currently Ukrainian course coordinator for the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Service Institute. The above is the third of a trilogy of articles based on his last trip to Ukraine.
http://www.kyivpost.com/opinion/oped/16617/
2004 elections likely to change little
William Gleason
“The tragedy of Ukraine today,” Sergey (not his real name) sighed, “is that public opinion is emerging as a force to be reckoned with at exactly the moment when conditions do not favor market-oriented democracy or rule of law. I am talking about deep and widespread poverty, soaring unemployment, the absence of a free press, weak political parties, and – rightly or wrongly – disillusionment with the West. And that disillusionment plays into Kuchma’s hands and those around him whose natural instincts are antithetical to building an open society or sustained dialogue with the West.”
I listened carefully as Sergey continued. That snowy February evening, replete with heaps of food, too much wine, and scintillating conversation for which Ukrainians are justly famous, was drawing to a close. A Fulbright scholar from Eastern Ukraine whose political insights matched his intellectual grasp of Western law and philosophy, Sergey was in a somber mood. Alone among the experts on international relations whom I interviewed during my return visit to Kyiv last winter, Sergey focused on the domestic component of Ukraine’s global posture.
“You know,” he grimaced, “too many Americans and, maybe, too many Europeans want to blame it all on Kuchma or a few other rotten apples. Of course Kuchma is bad and his policies, especially his foreign policy, are disastrous for Ukraine. Not to mention his paranoid personality and insecurity in the face of excellence from anyone in his administration.
“But you see, Bill, the absence of democracy in 2003 goes far beyond one man or one clan or a group of clans, for that matter. Authoritarian regimes are not always forced on a people. Sometimes they are embraced by people for a spell. Even an otherwise cultured nation can go off track, so to speak. Look at Nazi Germany in the 1930s or at several Latin American countries today.
Under certain conditions, people quite willingly reject what you and I take for granted – a democratic society. They reject democracy not because they do not value freedom, but because for the moment their priorities and needs are elsewhere. And that, I fear, is where we may be heading in Ukraine now, with all that implies for Ukraine’s standing in the eyes of the Western community,” Sergey intoned, reaching across the table to top off my wine glass for the umpteenth time.
“One question,” he said, a tight-lipped smile planted on a handsomely etched face. “If elections in Ukraine in 2004 were absolutely free and fair, how would we vote? And I’m not talking specific leaders or individuals, or even specific parties. I’m talking about ideas and values.”
I sipped the wine slowly.
“A substantial majority of Ukrainians would vote left of center, probably considerably left of center. They’d vote for a watered-down version of Soviet-style socialism; jobs for everyone, inexpensive and universal medical care, cheap transportation and cheap rents. Never mind the observation that, practically speaking, this is a wish list akin to Disneyland (Sergey has been to Disneyland so I did not quibble with his analogy).
“The fact is that Ukrainians, with the exception of most Western Ukrainians and a thin veneer of educated elite in major urban centers, are Soviet in mentality and psychology. And that is not going to change with our rapidly aging population and the enormous need for state assisted health-care, education, and social services. Any presidential contender who openly advocates a free market ideology in 2004 will get no more than 20 percent of the vote, 25 percent tops. Not exactly a winning number, correct?”
The implications of Sergey’s sweeping assessment of the Ukrainian ethos run deep and disturb, promoters of democracy and policymakers, both in Ukraine and the West. It is a society conservative from top to bottom.
Conservative in the deepest sense of the word: a people terrified of change and averse to risk-taking. Moreover, that attitude – fear of change – is unmistakably realistic, given Ukraine’s history across the past century, including the decade since independence. The sad fact is that virtually every time that sweeping change has occurred, be it in 1917, 1932, or 1991, conditions for the average person have worsened dramatically and suddenly. It is but a small jump mentally from that point to the unalterable perception (call it a gut feeling) that all change is threatening. Or, as the maxim goes, better the devil you know than the one you don’t.
Unless underlying material conditions improve enough to create a decent-sized middle class, citizen behavior through voting will frustrate believers in democracy, whether in Kyiv, Brussels, or Washington, D.C. A deeply entrenched authoritarian regime – never mind the rhetorical acceptance of democracy by Kuchma & Co. – combined with an impoverished people fearful of what lays ahead, calls into question the significance of elections for Ukraine’s democratic transition. As Sergey intimated, a truly fair vote would backfire because, and this is the key point, democracy historically flowers from processes of socioeconomic development stretching over decades if not centuries, whether in England, Italy or Japan. Ukraine is only at the dawn of that transformation and it is too much to ask a people schooled in politics under Soviet tutelage and decimated by economic collapse since 1991 to fly in the face of history; to jump over historical stages and perform miracles. Way too much.
The suspicion that economic conditions are more fundamental to an understanding of Ukraine’s prospects in 2003 than corrupt leadership or a tenuous civil society has another corollary: Fair elections could produce a deeply divided country unhinged by civilization’s fault lines. As Sergey noted, Galicia and Volhynia naturally would gravitate to the West while the rest of Ukraine would swing eastward, in the direction of Russia.
Seen from this perspective, from the vantage point of Ukraine’s dire economy, the Ukrainian-Russian nexus takes on added coloration. Remember first of all that many Ukrainians, particularly those from the eastern and southern regions of the country, voted for an end to the Soviet Union in 1991 because they expected their standard of living to rise dramatically. That has not happened, nor is it about to.
Remember too that foreign direct investment from the West has been, and is, abysmal. As everyone knows, improvement in FDI is tied squarely to economic and political reform of the highest order, an iffy likelihood given both the power of the Presidential Administration and the divided nature of the parliamentary opposition (does anyone really expect Yushchenko and Symonenko to work together through the 2004 elections?).
Only one country stands ready to invest in Ukraine to any appreciable degree: Russia. Ukraine’s eastern neighbor is a country flush with cash, a country already employing millions of Ukrainians, a country whose ambassador to Ukraine could almost single-handedly underwrite whole companies because of his enormous personal wealth. And a country deliberately blind to the criminal doings of the Kuchma cohort dating back to Gongadze, at least.
Does this mean that Ukraine is destined to become unglued or to be swallowed up by its eastern neighbor? Nothing in history is inevitable and Clio, the muse of history, always exceeds our limited imaginations. 1989 and 1991 confounded the experts who assumed that communism was here to stay. 9/11 was totally unexpected by virtually everyone on the planet, save the perpetrators of the carnage and a few intrepid intelligence analysts whose reports of horrors to come were passed over by their superiors. The EU, the preserve during the heights of the Cold War of Western Europe, now stands on Ukraine’s doorstep. Who could have foreseen any of this a mere fifteen years ago?
To suggest then that Ukraine is finished is both ahistorical and melodramatic, postures this writer denies. But it is not farfetched to suggest that economic conditions are driving Ukraine eastwards, with all that it implies domestically and geopolitically. Nor is it exaggerated to suggest that Western policies toward Ukraine must go well beyond blaming leaders for non-democratic results so far, as natural as it may seem. Kuchma’s contributions to Ukraine’s debacle since 1994 are well documented.
It is a truism to say that as long as Kuchma dominates the political landscape, Ukraine is going nowhere. However, Sergey’s point remains: if material conditions stay pretty much as they are today, Kuchma’s removal may not mean much. Nations do not always get the leaders they deserve, but they almost always get leaders generated by conditions.
William Gleason Ph.D. is a historian specializing in Russia, the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe who is currently Ukrainian course coordinator for the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Service Institute. The above is the third of a trilogy of articles based on his last trip to Ukraine.
³äïîâ³ä³
2003.06.27 | chytach
"..as long as Kuchma dominates the political landscape, Ukraine
is going nowhere..." Ùî òóò ìîæíà äîäàòè...