ANALYSIS: Russia's Ukrainian problem, or "outwitting the not-too-bright Moskal" (03/08/98)

ANALYSIS: Russia's Ukrainian problem, or "outwitting the not-too-bright Moskal"

by Roman Solchanyk

Russians, it turns out, are not the sharpest tools in the shed. That, in any case, seems to be the conclusion reached by the staff of Ukraine experts at Moscow's Institute for the CIS Countries, which recently issued a lengthy report on the state of Ukrainian-Russian relations against the background of what are perceived to be the current political realities in Ukraine and with a view toward the forthcoming parliamentary and presidential elections.

According to the report, which was published in the premiere issue of Sodruzhestvo NG, a new supplement to the highly respected Moscow daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta, one can properly speak about the phenomenon of a specifically Ukrainian political style, the essence of which is "outwitting the not-too-bright Moskal."

What the authors have in mind is that Russia's policies with regard to Ukraine have been a grandiose failure. The basis for this assertion is equally grandiose in its simplicity and straightforwardness: "Ukraine, in all external and internal directions of its policies, has taken consistently anti-Russian [antirusskie - the ethnic dimension] and anti-Russian [antirossiiskie - the state dimension] positions."

To drive their point home, the experts in Moscow marshal the following arguments. Ukraine is conducting a policy of "Ukrainianizing" its Russian speakers that borders on force and cultural assimilation; refuses to pays its debts for Russian energy supplies and brazenly steals any gas and oil that it can siphon off while conducting a trade war with Russia; strangles the Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol; flirts with NATO; refuses to fully participate in the CIS; and is busy organizing all manner of anti-Russian blocs and "borders" (sic) like the Baltic-Black Sea Union and GUAM (Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova).

Pretty serious stuff. It is not my intention to polemicize with experts from Moscow, but in all fairness it seems that the charge of "forced Ukrainianization" is a bit much. According to official statistics for the 1995-1996 school year, 41 percent of all pupils in Ukraine's general education schools were taught in Russian (down from 43 percent in 1994-1995). This is greater than the proportion of ethnic Russians reported in the last census (22.1 percent). Of course, there are also those 12.3 percent of ethnic Ukrainians who in 1989 declared Russian as their native language. Still.

On the other hand, there are those experts on Ukraine in the West who maintain that the census data do not reflect the true state of affairs. A much more reliable indicator, they argue, is the language of "convenience," which, according to survey research, reveals that Ukrainians and Russians in Ukraine who find the Russian language to be more "convenient" constitute as much as 55 percent of the adult population. Could be.

Nonetheless, the bottom line is that for those citizens of Ukraine who find Russian to be "convenient" there is no shortage of opportunities to exercise their convenience. In places like Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, and the city of Sevastopol, where one would expect the greatest demand for such convenience, the proportion of schoolchildren taught in Russian in 1995-1996 was 99.5 percent, 94 percent, 90.8 percent and 99.98 percent, respectively. True, things are changing. On September 1, 1997, after six years of Ukrainian independence, a Ukrainian-language educational establishment - a gymnasium in Symferopol for 380 students - finally opened its doors in Crimea, marking the beginning of "forced Ukrainianization" on the autonomous peninsula, which is home to more than half a million Ukrainians.

The situation is even more "convenient" for students of Ukraine's institutions of higher education, 45 to 49 percent of whom, depending on the category of the institution's accreditation, get their education in Russian (down from 49-53 percent in 1994-1995). In Crimea, the figure is 100 percent; Donetsk, 92-97 percent; Luhansk, 92 percent; and Sevastopol, 100 percent.

A final observation on the language question: I sometimes wonder what it would be like to pick up the Los Angeles Times and discover that my congressional representative, Henry Waxman, had introduced a piece of legislation in Spanish. In Ukraine, of course, no one finds its particularly odd that some deputies to the Verkhovna Rada cannot or will not conduct legislative business in Ukrainian. We have what we have, as one Ukrainian president was fond of saying. The current Ukrainian president has found it "convenient" (a presidential election is not far off) to insist that knowledge of Ukrainian be dropped as a requirement for a parliamentary candidate in the forthcoming elections. Well, so be it. The Russian language is, after all, a "human" language, unlike that "Banderite jargon" spoken in Lviv and Staryi Sambir.

What about Ukraine's foreign policy orientation?

A Baltic-Black Sea Union? This is a fine idea, which has been advocated by leaders of the Ukrainian Republican Party (Mykhailo Horyn and Levko Lukianenko) and, in a somewhat different form, by former President Leonid Kravchuk. The problem is that the Baltic part of this equation would prefer to have full membership in NATO, which relegates the idea of a Baltic-Black Sea Union to the status of a non-starter, certainly from the standpoint of a security bloc.

GUAM, on the other hand, is emerging as a reality, and the Russians have only themselves to blame for this work in progress. Most everybody in the Commonwalth of Independent States is sick and tired of Moscow telling them where their national interests lie. It is also true that Ukraine is flirting with NATO. But so is Russia, not to mention Belarus, which is in union with Russia and, according to its president, would like to have a special relationship with Brussels. Conclusion: NATO is in, Russia and the CIS are out.

We can agree or disagree with this or that argument of the Ukraine experts in Moscow. In fact, the study provides many more examples of Ukraine's "anti-Russian" orientation and its apparent success in outsmarting the elder brother. Kyiv is said to be reneging on all of its deals with Moscow, beginning with the agreements establishing the CIS, which were ratified only in conjunction with a long list of qualifications; the same holds true for the Black Sea Fleet agreements and the deals on gas and oil transit through Ukrainian territory; then there is the recent Sea Breeze '97 peacekeeping exercise in the Black Sea; Ukraine's victory in the sugar war; the declaration of Ukrainian national-cultural autonomy in Russia against the background of the closing down of Russian-language schools in Ukraine and Kyiv's reaction to Crimea's recent law on the status of the Russian language; the Ukrainian-Russian treaty of May 27 [sic], 1997, which, horribile dictu, recognizes the state borders of Ukraine and leaves Crimea, Sevastopol and the Russians of Ukraine at the mercy of Kyiv; and, in the final analysis, the disparity between President Kuchma's promises during the 1994 electoral campaign and his actual policies - i.e., anti-Russian.

As an aside, it might be noted that the experts in Moscow are thoroughly puzzled by the fact that any Ukrainian politician, even one who is pro-Russian, once he becomes president begins to mobilize "all of his forces" against union with Russia. Why is that, one wonders?

From the standpoint of the Ukraine analysts in Moscow, this is not the way things were supposed to turn out after the collapse of the Soviet Union. And in order to estimate the chances for a reversal of this apparently sad state of affairs, the report takes a hard look at the programs of Ukraine's political parties and blocs as they prepare for the March elections and sizes up the main contenders in next year's presidential race - all with a view toward their "pro- or anti-Russian" positions.

The stakes are high: "Taking everything into consideration, history confronts our countries with a choice: either, in the event of a real drawing together with Russia, there will be the inevitable resolution of the question of a genuine union of the two countries, or Ukraine will become the center of political, military and civilizational confrontation with Russia not only in the post-Soviet but in the entire East European space. Unfortunately, for now events are developing along the lines of the latter variant," the report notes.

The authors place their greatest hopes on the new Verkhovna Rada, noting that, unlike Russia's Federal Assembly, the Ukrainian Parliament actually has political power. The outlook, however, according to the Ukraine experts, does not inspire a great deal of confidence. A large part of the problem is self-induced. Although the report divides Ukraine's political forces into four camps - nationalist and anti-Russian, centrist, left and pro-Russian - the Ukraine experts in Moscow are actually interested in only one thing: whether a given political party or bloc is pro- or anti-Russian, concepts which, by the way, are never clearly defined. The result is that, with the exception of the Donetsk-based Civic Congress of Ukraine, the authors hope will win 20 seats in the Parliament, the remainder of the political spectrum is to one degree or another viewed as "anti-Russian."

Rukh is described as the "main generator" of the "Ukrainian idea" as well as anti-Russian theories of both the ethnic and state varieties. The party wants Ukraine to leave the CIS, join NATO and implement economic reform on the recommendations of the IMF. This, presumably, defines its "anti-Russianism." It is also said to be in the business of establishing "separatist structures" in Russia's Kursk, Rostov and Voronezh oblasts and in the Krasnodar and Stavropol krais (regions) with the idea of "tearing them away from Russia." Then there are UNA-UNSO, which is characterized as differing from Rukh and other "respectable" nationalist parties primarily by the more radical tone of its political slogans; the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists; and the Ukrainian Republican Party. Included in this group of nationalist anti-Russians are the Liberal Party of Ukraine, which is based primarily in Donetsk and headed by Volodymyr Scherban, and the National Democratic Party headed by Anatolii Matviienko, commonly referred to as the "party of power" because many of its prominent members hold high positions in the upper echelons of government.

The political center is represented by former Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko's Hromada Party and the Labor Party. The report says that Hromada "objectively holds nationalist positions" because it defends "national capitalism" and, like the nationalist anti-Russian camp, supports the idea of a Ukrainian political nation.

The principal exponents of the left are the Communists and Socialists. But there are problems here as well. Although the rank and file of the Communist Party supports integration with Russia, "many members of the Central Committee are national communists." Their leader is the well-known poet Borys Oliinyk, who chairs the Verkhovna Rada's Committee on Foreign Affairs and CIS Relations. Indeed, there is an "alarming" possibility that socialism and communism in Ukraine will abandon traditional internationalism in favor of "Ukrainian national-socialism," the report notes.

This leaves the aforementioned Civic Congress of Ukraine, which is apparently planning to hold a "Nuremberg Trial" of Ukrainian nationalism, as the only real hope. Described as the unifying force of Ukraine's pro-Russian organizations that "firmly holds the idea of all-Russian national-cultural unity," unfortunately it lacks an authoritative national leader and is low on finances. Another serious problem for the Russian movement is the conflict between the Communist Party and the Civic Congress over who owns the "Russian idea" in Ukraine. In the best of circumstances, says the report, and assuming that the communists and socialists join forces with the Civic Congress, the "supporters of various forms of integration with Russia" could total 270 to 278 deputies.

If the prospects in the parliamentary elections are less than ideal, the presidential election looks hopeless. The front runners - President Kuchma, Yevhen Marchuk, Mr. Lazarenko and Oleksander Moroz - are all "anti-Russian" to one degree or another. The problem with President Kuchma is clear: he is not President Alyaksandr Lukashenka (of Belarus). Mr. Marchuk was responsible for "strangling" Crimea and Sevastopol, and it was during his tenure that the program "The Ukrainian Diaspora to the Year 2000" was adopted. Mr. Lazarenko's "anti-Russianism" consists of advocating alternative energy sources and supporting Ukrainian business. As for parliamentary speaker Mr. Moroz, he says the right things, but then acts against Russia's interests.

None of these candidates fully suits Russia, and "today one cannot see and there is no reason to expect the appearance of such a candidate in the near future." The parliamentary elections are "almost the last chance for us to resolve the task of the optimal political safeguarding of Russian interests in Ukraine," the report concludes.

And if this doesn't work?

"...Ukraine, which is run according to the scenario of the 'Galician lobby,' may definitively be transformed into an anti-Russian state and force Russia to concentrate on other tasks: weakening the central authority in Kyiv, federalization of Ukraine with the consequent sovereignization of some of its territories, support for the autonomist movement in Crimea, and the like."

The course of action proposed by the Moscow experts is virtually identical to the plan outlined by Konstantin Zatulin and Andranik Migranyan in early 1997 in a programmatic article titled "The CIS: The Beginning or the End of History," also published in Nezavisimaya Gazeta. This should come as no surprise. Mr. Zatulin, the former chairman of the State Duma's Committee on CIS Affairs and Ties with Compatriots, is the director of the Institute of the CIS Countries. The main thesis of both documents is that the salvation of Russia lies in the destabilization of Ukraine.

Should any of this be taken seriously? After all, Ukrainian-Russian relations are said to be moving forward on all fronts after the signing of the bilateral treaty last May. Moreover, the analysts in Moscow do not appear to be very competent. They did not even get the date of the Ukraine-Russia treaty right and the report is full of other factual errors and inconsistencies. Still, from their particular standpoint, they are quite right in asserting that Moscow's Ukrainian policy has been a failure.

Maybe President Yeltsin was right back in the fall of 1991 when several Moscow newspapers reported that he and his military advisers were discussing the possibility of a preventive nuclear attack on Ukraine. At that time, when Ukraine's First Vice Prime Minister Kostiantyn Masyk asked President Yeltsin about this, the Russian president told him: "You know, Kostia, if you read fewer newspapers you'll feel better."

Roman Solchanyk is an analyst in Santa Monica, where, it is generally recognized, he reads too many newspapers.