NEWS AND VIEWS: Ukraine and the media: a question of image? (09/29/96)

NEWS AND VIEWS

Ukraine and the media: a question of image?

by David R. Marples

About a year ago, a CBS "60 Minutes" program focused on Ukraine. Narrated by Morley Safer, it portrayed the newly independent republic as a hotbed of extreme, anti-Semitic nationalism, about to erupt into ethnic tension and violence. Ukrainians in North America reacted with anger and disbelief. The program was subsequently denounced, inter alia, by the chief rabbi of Kyiv, Yaakov Bleich. Subsequently, much of the Western media has seemed willing to acknowledge the progress made by the country formerly known as the "breadbasket of Europe."

On September 9, however, the prestigious Forbes magazine published an article by associate editor Paul Klebnikov, ostensibly after a visit to Ukraine. The article portrays a country from the perspective of 1991 rather than the present. It describes the city of Kyiv as being bereft of new businesses and foreign cars. Clearly the author has not been caught in a traffic jam in the Ukrainian capital in the past few months, at which time one could freely discern the BMWs and Mercedes on all sides.

More importantly, it once again describes a nation on the edge of civil strife, with a population torn between nationalists dominated by a paramilitary extreme nationalist political group (UNA-UNSO) and a powerful pro-Russian element in the eastern industrial zone. The author then claims paradoxically that there are no significant differences between Russians and Ukrainians, that they are like the Spanish and Portuguese (a comparison incidentally that would cause some amusement in Madrid or Lisbon). When considering Ukraine, "think Bosnia," writes the author. Ukraine, he declares, is an unstable element in the new Europe. Ethnic conflict appears to be imminent.

This reader is puzzled rather than shocked by such an article. The question is why a magazine with a solid reputation among the international business community should indulge in what is manifestly disinformation. At whom is the article aimed? Is it a warning to potential investors not to consider Ukraine as a new market? And if so, why?

The answer might lie in a misperception of the nature of the former Soviet Union, and specifically the relationship between Russia and Ukraine that could derive originally from the academic community. In November 1991 the keynote speech of a scholarly conference in Miami was given by Prof. Jerry Hough of Duke University. He informed some 600 academics that the Soviet Union was essentially a united country under the firm control of Mikhail Gorbachev (Boris Yeltsin was described as a "puppet") and that the declarations of independence by the Soviet republics were not to be taken seriously. Particularly that of Ukraine. Were Ukraine to become independent, he added, it would turn into another Yugoslavia.

After more than 90 percent of Ukraine's citizens declared their approval of the independence vote, on December 1, 1991, speculation was rife among Western academics - particularly Americans - as to which parts of Ukraine would choose to join Russia first. One 1992 article in Foreign Affairs, a journal equal in standing to Forbes but aimed at a political rather than a business audience, noted that were Crimea to secede from Ukraine, the United States should not intervene. Rather this would be a specifically Russian concern. Klebnikov, incidentally, tells his readers that the Russian Premier [sic] Nikita Khrushchev gave Crimea as a gift to Ukraine in 1954. Focus on Crimea was logical in the case of this article. It is after all the only part of Ukraine in which Russians are in a majority.

The Crimean crisis - fostered by the comic figure of Russophile President Yuriy Meshkov - petered out once Kyev took a firm hand, but Ukraine was beset with economic problems. The naysayers forecast a complete collapse unless Ukraine linked its interests with those of its giant neighbor. To many Sovieto-logists, former Soviet leader Gorbachev's statement that a Russia without Ukraine was unthinkable was simply a statement of fact. Ukraine, in their view, had no place in the new Europe. The nuclear weapons issue exacerbated their anger; here was a new republic acting irresponsibly. It posed danger to the entire world, not just Central and Eastern Europe.

Ukraine, however, has weathered the storm. It chose to give up its weapons, to sign the START I Treaty as the first of several that committed it to the NATO Partnership for Peace program. It is far from healthy economically, but it has made substantial steps on the road to reform. It is today a member of the Council of Europe, and has distanced itself both from the NATO alliance and the CIS. It has been described as a buffer or security zone in Central Europe. This month Ukraine introduced its new currency, the hryvnia. Contrary to some fears, there was no collapse against the U.S. dollar.

Ukraine can even make some proud claims vis-à-vis its Russian neighbor. There is no civil conflict in Ukraine such as the Chechnya war within Russia. Its leadership is stable. It has resolved the disputes between the executive and the legislature without resorting to arms. It enjoys a better relationship with the United States and NATO today than does Russia. And though regionalism indubitably exists, it pales beside the rift that has developed between, for example, Moscow and the Russian Far East.

The same claims can be made when comparing the country to many of its former Soviet neighbors. Belarus has evolved into a presidential dictatorship while committing itself formally to reunion with Russia. Kazakstan and Kyrgyzstan have also signed an agreement for a new economic union. Moldova still retains, at least formally, two existing governments, though the Transdniester republic seems to be faltering. Georgia and Tajikistan have remained virtual war zones. Armenia has been devastated by its war with Azerbaijan.

Why then does a perception of Ukraine as an unstable country on the verge of war still pervade some of the Western media? The answer lies partly in the close relationship between the media and the academic world in the United States. That link was symbolized during the Russian presidential elections when the professor of Russian politics at Princeton University, Dr. Stephen Cohen, reported from Moscow as a CBS correspondent. The media relies heavily on the scholarly community for its information. Yet the latter has operated and researched in a Russocentric environment.

They should not be universally condemned for such an approach. During the Soviet period it was possible to discern republican policies merely by examining the Moscow press and journals. Occasional dissent from centralized decrees was quickly quashed. Under such circumstances there was less scope for new scholars to study the non-Russian republics. Yet it was overdone. Moscow became the focus of foreign journalism. With a few notable exceptions, most foreign correspondents operated from their enclave in the Russian capital. During the Gorbachev period there was little incentive to venture outside Moscow and St. Petersburg (Leningrad). The changes in these two centers were so stupendous that foreign observers could barely keep pace.

Yet all Russian leaders, including Messrs. Gorbachev and Yeltsin, pursued a form of Russian nationalism. The Soviet Union may have deprived the Russian branch of the Communist Party of its own Politburo, but that seemed immaterial given Russia's predominance in the ruling bodies of the union. Soviet history in the post-war period began to portray even the tsars as essentially benevolent rulers who "civilized" barbarian regions such as Central Asia, bringing prosperity, literacy and economic development. It was all but forgotten that the Russian/Soviet period in their respective histories occupied but a page in a vast volume of events.

When the Baltic states began to take steps to leave the Soviet Union, the silence among the Western media camp - outside the small diaspora - was deafening. Lithuania's declaration of independence in March 1990 was ignored by the United States, despite the fact that the Americans had never formally recognized its annexation by Stalin's USSR in 1940. The issue at hand was the survival of the Gorbachev regime. Mr. Gorbachev's achievement was to lift the threat of repression from secessionist republics (though as the Lithuanians discovered, that threat still remained to some extent). Having taken that step, Mr. Gorbachev could only watch the course of events that were beyond his control.

Western scholars to some extent still refused to see the writing on the wall. It was stated recently in a Western journal that no one foretold the end of the Soviet Union. This is a myth. Even such a maligned figure as the Rev. Sun Yung Moon, leader of a religious cult, predicted the end of the Soviet Union as early as 1987. No one listened to him or to academics outside the Russophile sphere who warned continually that the union was essentially unstable.

In the Brezhnev period, most academics were convinced and indeed continued to write that the situation was stable; that Brezhnev lived up to his Russian name "bereznyi" (careful). Thus was established the theory that from 1964 to 1982 the Soviet Union became a super power with a virtually unchanged leadership, a period of sustained economic growth, prosperity and, above all, lack of change. In fact that period was rife with political factionalism, corruption and crimes. In this period, Ukraine and Belarus attempted to forge their own political paths. The Communist leadership of both states had to be ruthlessly purged as a result.

Many Western academics also ignored the national question in Mr. Gorbachev's USSR, just as Mr. Gorbachev himself did. This is why they fail to comprehend the post-Soviet world; one in which some newly independent republics, including Ukraine, have opted to choose a political path different from that of Russia. It is not entirely an illogical approach. Matters would be much simpler if the former Soviet Union were somehow a single political entity. On a foreign policy level, a single state would be much easier to deal with. And we have grown accustomed to negotiating with Russia and Russians.

The world today, however, is much more complex. Ukraine is a nation of paradoxes and contradictions. The coal miner in the Donbas may not see life from the same perspective as the farmer in Ternopil. He does not speak the same language and he does not have the same history. Ukraine would surely be unique, however, were it unicultural and homogenous. Neither the Kravchuk nor the Kuchma regimes have attempted to attain such a status. Rather, existing differences are recognized and tolerated. Nation-building has just begun. The Ukraine of tomorrow may look very different from the Ukraine of today. Western observers should recognize this fact. Having two or more cultures, two or more languages does not necessarily weaken a nation or hamper its resolve. Russians and Russian speakers in Ukraine are not citizens of Russia constantly casting their eyes eastward for succour and guidance. Far from it.

The Western media, particularly that of the U.S., prides itself on its objectivity, its detachment from politics, its ability to solicit information even in restrictive situations. Thus far, it has not always achieved such dispassion in the case of the former Soviet Union. There remains a tendency to perceive matters from a Moscow perspective, to associate democratic reform and its prospects for future success exclusively with the Russian Federation.

Transgressions in this huge and pulsating state are often overlooked. The astonishing tank attack on the Russian Parliament in December 1993 would have received outright condemnation had it occurred in Kyiv or Chisinau. In Moscow, in general, it was tolerated as essential for the safeguarding of the democratic process, a form of double-speak that would have delighted the late George Orwell.

Yet there cannot be one law for reforming Russia and another for the non-Russian states of the former Soviet Union. Most Russians in Russia feel something for Ukraine, it is fair to say. They do not generally look on Ukraine as a foreign country. Conversely, most Ukrainians today regard Russia as a foreign state, albeit one to which Ukrainian history has been tied in the recent past. Western observers have no right to link themselves to one perspective or another.

But as the Klebnikov article has shown, little has been learned from past mistakes. Occasionally, even after five years of Ukrainian independence, reputable Western journals issue articles and TV programs are broadcast that replicate the perspective that Ukraine is in reality part of Russia (or at least is spiritually linked with Russia) and that any form of self-assertion in Ukraine is, ipso facto, extreme nationalism, chauvinistic and intolerant in outlook, holding up as examples tiny minority groups on the very fringes of society.

The reality is otherwise. And such articles and programs constitute propaganda that in form and content is as disreputable as the Soviet propaganda of the past, which sought to disseminate the view that the old union was nothing less than a happy family of peoples content to dwell and work under the hammer-and-sickle flag, and with portraits of Lenin on every street corner and factory wall.

David R. Marples is professor of history at the University of Alberta and director of the Stasiuk Program on Contemporary Ukraine at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies.

David R. Marples is professor of history at the University of Alberta and director of the Stasiuk Program on Contemporary Ukraine at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies.