LETTERS TO THE EDITOR (09/14/97)

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

What is Kuchma doing to end crisis?

Dear Editor:

The Weekly's editorial (July 20) about the recent meeting of Ukrainian American community leaders with President Leonid Kuchma was right. However, the polemics in its wake have apparently exceeded the usual norm for gusto. Such ardor could be better spent on more pressing questions, such as: what is the president doing, if anything, to lift Ukraine out of its - euphemistically speaking - crisis?

In an August 20 article in The Weekly, James E. Mace painted a dismal landscape of Ukraine's Orwellian economic mess and corruption at all levels, brought about by the continuing existence of inherited Soviet structures. However, it is often forgotten that Ukraine has never had a happy economic configuration, except perhaps in its myths.

Communism was a disaster. The capitalism that existed in Ukraine and Russia before the Bolshevik Revolution was no bonanza. The socio-economic order in tsarist Russia was abysmal, and from the middle of the 19th century the country was boiling in revolutionary ferment.

In Halychyna, under the Hapsburg empire, the rendezvous with capitalism was not much happier. Ivan Franko's classics, "Boryslav Laughs" and "Boa Constrictor," vividly portrayed the ordeal of the working class, and have become part of Ukraine's literary pantheon and national credo.

Ukraine's elite today, within and outside of government, knows that, in the West, capitalism did not acquire a human face until the second quarter of the 20th century, partly as a response to the Communist menace in Europe and to the devastation of the Great Depression in America. In the United States, anti-trust and consumer protection legislation, the Wagner Act affirming the right of labor unions to collective bargaining, and above all, the New Deal reforms transformed Darwinian 19th century capitalism into an enlightened modern version we now take for granted, but which, in recent years, has not been immune from the shenanigans of "the global economy."

The connective lesson for Ukraine's politicians is that socio-economic stability in Western societies was achieved not without steadfast leaders, the likes of Teddy Roosevelt, who did not hesitate to challenge the robber barons of his day. J.P. Morgan, whose monopolies stifled the competition in America's economy at the turn of the century, chafed bitterly when the president used his power under new anti-trust laws. Morgan's now famous words were: "I bought him, but he didn't stay bought." This was the time when America's financial moguls openly bragged that they had the best Supreme Court judges money could buy.

The notion prevailing in Ukraine that the government must protect citizens from exploitation is widely shared in the United States. In Ukraine, it is magnified by the outrageous behavior of today's enterprising nomenklatura who bled the country dry and deposited its wealth in private bank accounts abroad. It is arguable whether this behavior can be attributed solely to the Soviet legacy or to the predisposition of the predatory and criminal element to float to the top of any form of government in societies not accustomed to playing the game by some sort of rules.

Boris Danik
North Caldwell, N.J.

What is diaspora's responsibility?

Dear Editor:

In your August 24 issue, under the heading "Vox Populi: Ukraine and the diaspora - six years after" by Roman Woronowycz, The Ukrainian Weekly poses the question: What is the diaspora's responsibility?

I believe that one of the diaspora's most important responsibilities (in order to speed up the national awakening in Ukraine) is to financially support Ukrainian universities, especially the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in Kyiv.

The National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, on a par with other Western universities, every year graduates a cadre of highly educated, intelligent and dedicated young people, who will be able to intellectually and politically challenge the present ruling majority at all important levels of national political, economical, conventional life, and who may become the nucleus of a new leadership who will steer the new Ukrainian nation in the right direction.

Those young people will not be burdened by the residue of the former Soviet mentality in regard to national priorities, such as language, economical reforms, political demogaguary etc.

The other important responsibility is to support the "pro-Ukrainian" print press in Ukraine, especially now as the upcoming elections to the Verkhovna Rada loom ahead.

Myroslaw Burbelo
Westerly, R.I.

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