PERSPECTIVES: The carrot and the stick (05/18/97)

PERSPECTIVES

by Andrew Fedynsky

The carrot and the stick

Three cheers to the Clinton administration for standing firm on aid to Ukraine, and three cheers to Congress for investigating corruption that threatens Ukraine's future. Make no mistake about it: the United States invests a lot of money in Ukraine, but Rep. Tom Foglietta (D-Pa.) had it right when he argued in the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations that $300 million is a small amount to invest when the goal is to prevent a recurrence of the Cold War. And make no mistake about this: if Ukraine fails to establish itself as an independent, democratic country and is reabsorbed into a new Russian empire, a renewed era of hostility would be virtually inevitable and the costs of that would be incalculable.

That's why we need the administration's firmness on aid to Ukraine with Congress' scepticism on how that aid is spent. Now the ball is in President Leonid Kuchma's court to take on the corruption that is Ukraine's biggest enemy. There's a lot riding on the outcome.

For most people in the West, Ukraine is still a relatively novel concept. "Part of Russia" is how the popular mind defined Ukraine. That definition, was firmly, albeit partially, based on reality. For more than 300 years, Ukraine was a colony of Russia with the Kremlin calling all the shots. The tsars even referred to Ukraine as "Little Russia." Later, in the Soviet era, Ukraine was a "Soviet socialist republic." The economy, the political system and every aspect of life were controlled and coordinated from the Kremlin in Moscow. The Russian language prevailed on the streets of Ukraine, in the media, in the schools. To all appearances, the country truly was "part of Russia."

For generations, an ocean of blood was spilled and millions of lives were ruined to enforce that view. The result was two societies: the vast majority that was afraid to lift its head or its voice, and the small elite that enforced a privileged lifestyle using the tsarist Okhrana, the Cheka, NKVD, KGB and other terrorist organizations. When the end came in the summer of 1991, everyone was caught by surprise and no one, it turns out, was ready for real change.

The changes, of course, have been momentous. Ukraine has an army that wears a "tryzub" (trident) on its shoulder bars. The blue-and-yellow banner flies from all the flagpoles in Ukraine (well, nearly all). First the karbovanets and now the hryvnia have replaced the ruble. The Ukrainian national anthem blared from loudspeakers at the Olympic Games. Ukrainian was declared the official state language. And so on ...

In a way, Ukrainian independence meant total victory for the nationalists - everything the dissidents had fought for was won. In many other ways, though, little has changed.

Lenin's portrait might have come down and Shevchenko's replaced him, but the portrait was hung on the same nail. Seen from another perspective, therefore, independence was simply something the nomenklatura (the small ruling class) had to do to survive. After all, Leonid Kravchuk, independent Ukraine's first president, was also the ideology chief of the Communist Party of Ukraine, the organization that had fought against Ukrainian independence with every resource it had, including prison, torture and terror. That organization, that government, remained intact after independence had been achieved. As for the nationalists - with no platform to take Ukraine beyond the national emblem, flag, anthem, language, etc. - they've splintered into a hundred irrelevant factions.

Now please don't get me wrong about Leonid Kravchuk; he's one of my heroes. His role in Ukrainian history is the same as Hetman Ivan Mazepa's, only President Kravchuk succeeded where Hetman Mazepa failed. Mr. Kravchuk's other great service to Ukraine was to conduct a fair and free election, then relinquish power to his successor.

Unfortunately, the price for leading Ukraine out from under Russian domination was preserving the old way of doing things. In 1991, that may have been the only way. Now, however, anyone with a project has to go to the same army of bureaucrats who had served during Soviet times. Instead of the hammer and sickle, there's a tryzub on the wall, but the same maddening forms have to be completed and sent down the hall to be stamped, then upstairs to be validated, then back to the oblast to be confirmed and on and on ...

Inherent in each encounter, it seems, is the arrogance of petty authority, and implicit in each transaction is the bribe. And that's where the impression comes that corruption is rampant. It is, and it has to stop if Ukraine is to be taken seriously, if Ukraine is to prosper. That's President Kuchma's challenge. He, too, is a man of history who has already made a mark by stabilizing the currency and pushing the Verkhovna Rada to ratify the Constitution.

Congress and the media have been tough on Ukraine recently, and they should be. But they also need to understand where Ukraine has come from and share the vision of where the country is going. Ukraine is a troubled society, its population depleted by three generations of famine, mass murder and war, its people traumatized by decades of terror.

The old has not yet died and the new is struggling to be born. The networks developed by the KGB that interlock with the bureaucracies of the Soviet central planners are still intact, now plying what passes for business in Ukraine. It's very worrisome, but it cannot cancel what happened five and a half years ago when Ukrainians went to the polls for the nation's first free nationwide election: more than 90 percent rejected the old, evil system and voted for the vision of an independent country with a free market economy. The vast majority that had been silent for generations finally raised its voice and said "yes" to Ukraine.

Three weeks after The New York Times published the article that brought Congress down on corruption in Ukraine, the newspaper published an interview with 84-year-old Sir John Templeton, "the dean of international investing." His advice for the most promising investment opportunity in the world today? You guessed it: Ukraine. Despite the difficulties, despite the corruption, he sees the same promise that 90 percent of Ukrainians saw when they voted for independence in December 1991. They bet their lives. Sir John is telling investors that it's now safe to bet their money.

It's less than six years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the stakes are too high for the United States to turn its back on Ukraine. Aid to Ukraine will pay the United States, indeed the world, many dividends for years to come. It's an investment Congress should make on behalf of the American people.

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