RESPONSE TO FORBES: CIUS director criticizes article as biased and anti-Ukrainian (11/03/96)

RESPONSE TO FORBES

CIUS director criticizes article as biased and anti-Ukrainian

Following is the text of a letter to the editor of Forbes magazine written by Dr. Zenon E. Kohut, director of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, in response to the recently published article titled "Tinderbox" by Paul Klebnikov.

Dear Mr. Michaels:

Paul Klebnikov's article "Tinderbox" represents one of the most biased pieces of journalism on Ukraine that I have seen published in the West. It harbors anti-Ukrainian sentiments, justifies Russian interference in the internal affairs of neighboring countries, and even advocates changes in borders in Eastern Europe.

Mr. Klebnikov boldly asserts that Ukraine is currently "riven between those who want reunion with Russia and those who want to remain independent." Where did he obtain this information? It seems to be based on conversations with two persons, one in Odesa, who prefers Russian to Ukrainian TV, and another in the Donbas, who prefers to speak Russian and not Ukrainian. Is this any basis to reach such a conclusion?

According to the survey cited in the article, 70 percent of Ukraine's population supports the country's independence. There are no anti-independence blocs in the Ukrainian Parliament. So the image of Yugoslavia or Chechnya that Mr. Klebnikov continually brings into his article in connection with Ukraine has nothing to do with Ukrainian realities. Moreover, unlike Yugoslavia or Russia, Ukraine has managed to obtain and preserve its independence without spilling a drop of blood.

The article mentions some of the real problems in the Ukrainian economy, but the way those problems are presented in the article and the measures proposed by the author to solve them are very strange, to say the least.

Indeed Odesa used to be one of the wealthiest cities in Europe at the turn of the century, but its wealth is long gone, not because of Ukrainian independence, but because of decades of Communist misrule and the shift of trade routes in eastern and southern Europe. The drop in the productivity of Odesa ports after Ukrainian independence is very moderate and actually represents a success story compared to the decline of the GNP both in Russia and Ukraine.

Mr. Klebnikov sees the solution to many of Ukraine's problems in its reintegration with Russia. He makes Russia seem like a prosperous country and not a nation in the midst of both political and economic crisis. Moreover, Belarus is attempting such a "reintegration" with Russia, and this has brought no relief to Belarus' struggling economy.

Mr. Klebnikov states that Yeltsin's government did not exploit Ukraine's economic problems or pro-Russian sentiments in eastern Ukraine. This is simply not true. On a number of occasions Russia used Ukraine's dependence on Russian energy to gain political concessions on the issue of the Black Sea Fleet from the Ukrainian government. Moscow's mayor, Yurii Luzhkov, Boris Yeltsin's close political ally, has repeatedly pronounced Sevastopol to be a Russian city. The article also states that because Russia is a democracy the "Russian president cannot ignore the pleas of the Russian-speakers in Ukraine if they ask for his help." The slogan of protecting Russian-speakers in the former Soviet republics is used by Russian hawks as a political tool and reminds one of Nazi policy towards Czecho-Slovakia on the eve of the World War II.

Mr. Klebnikov tends to exaggerate the importance of the language issue in contemporary Ukraine. The vast majority of the citizens of Ukraine are bilingual and can easily switch from one language to another. There are no sharp political divisions along language lines in Ukraine, and it is very naive to judge something happening in Ukraine solely on the basis of the language issue.

The article states, for example, that "Ukrainian Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko blamed the Russian-speaking coal miners for a bomb that narrowly missed him in Kyiv in July." This is not true in terms both of facts and interpretation. First of all, Mr. Lazarenko never blamed the miners, but instead those forces that did not want him to meet with the miners. Secondly, Mr. Lazarenko himself comes from the predominantly Russian-speaking Dnipropetrovsk region and in no way implied that Russian-speakers were presumed disloyal. The whole incident has nothing to do with Russian- or Ukrainian-language speakers. Instead, it is widely believed to be the result of the ongoing struggle between two east Ukrainian regional elites - one from Dnipropetrovsk, another from Donetsk.

The article is full of statements that betray Mr. Klebnikov's ignorance on many issues of Ukrainian history and the current political situation. He states, for example, that Crimea was given to Ukraine as a gift by "Soviet Premier" Khrushchev in 1954. Khrushchev was not a premier in 1954. At that time he was locked in a power struggle with his more powerful competitors like Malenkov and Bulganin and was able to accumulate power only in 1956-1957. That means that he could not make any gift, especially as precious as Crimea, in 1954. Instead, the decision to "give" the Crimea to Ukraine was made by Moscow in order to use Ukrainian resources in the process of post-war restoration of the Crimean economy, which had been completely devastated by the Nazis.

Klebnikov also does not know that it was the Ukrainian referendum of December 1 that put an end to the existence of the USSR, and Ukrainians did not vote for their independence when the "Soviet Union was dissolved anyway" as the article states. There is also no proof as to the author's claim that money is taken by the state from eastern Ukraine to subsidize the more rural west. Agricultural production, when it comes to the Russian market today, is as marketable a commodity as the iron ore extracted in eastern Ukraine.

One can go on and on listing inconsistencies, mistakes and examples of political bias in Mr. Klebnikov's article. Clearly, its goal was not to inform the readers of Forbes magazine about the situation in Ukraine. Rather, it attempts to justify Russian interference in Ukraine and to undermine Western confidence in its future, just as Ukraine has entered onto the path of real economic reform, introduced a new currency and adopted a new Constitution.