ANALYSIS: 'Kuchmagate' and the Ukrainian diaspora (PART I) (12/24/00)

ANALYSIS

'Kuchmagate' and the Ukrainian diaspora

by Taras Kuzio

PART I

Recent events should force us to sober up to the fact that, nearly a decade after Ukraine became an independent state, what is being built in Ukraine is very far from the ideals that the diaspora holds dear. First came former Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko's theft of millions, then allegations that National Deputy Viktor Zherebtski stole German government compensation for Ukrainian slave laborers and now "Kuchmagate."

Just how many more scandals are needed before the diaspora wakes up to what is going on Ukraine? It is time to realize that the main threat to Ukraine's independence rests not with an external country (i.e., Russia) - but internally, from Ukraine's own Lukashenka.

We receive disturbing news on a daily basis about what kind of regime has been built in Ukraine under President Leonid Kuchma since 1994. The picture we are obtaining is, without any exaggeration, truly shocking.

An officer in the presidential guard (a department of the Security Service of Ukraine - SBU), 34-year-old Mykola Melnychenko from the Kyiv Oblast, who is now living in fear for his life in an undisclosed member-country of the European Union, has revealed that the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVS) has a special purpose unit called Eagles (Orly) whose services are called upon to do dirty work. The presidential guard has confirmed that Mr. Melnychenko worked for it for three years, until early November when he resigned.

The MVS does have a special-purpose police unit called Berkut (Golden Eagle) that has an unsavory reputation; its unit broke up the funeral procession for Patriarch Volodymyr Romaniuk in June 1995 in Kyiv. It is unclear, however, if Orly and Berkut are linked.

Oleksander Moroz, former chairman of Parliament and Socialist Party leader, as well as non-left deputies such as Serhiiy Holovatyi, former minister of justice, now allege that Orly were involved in organizing a car "accident" for Rukh leader Vyacheslav Chornovil in March 1999.

Although few of us in the diaspora knew Heorhii Gongadze, the diaspora is well aquainted with Mr. Chornovil's struggle for national and human rights in Ukraine since the 1960s. Dmytro Ponomarchuk, whom I met in August in Kyiv and who is the only survivor of the car crash, has always been convinced that it was not an accident.

Mr. Chornovil died only a month after publicly announcing that he would not support Mr. Kuchma in the October 1999 presidential elections. His death exacerbated the split in Rukh and neutralized any center-right threat to President Kuchma's bid for re-election. Hennadii Udovenko, one of the leaders of Rukh, has demanded that the parliamentary investigation into Mr. Chornovil's death be re-opened.

If the existence of Orly proves to be true, it will not come as much of a surprise. In November an anonymous letter from a Belarusian KGB employee to the independent news agency Belapan revealed that the Belarusian presidential administration had a similar special purpose unit called Almaz that was involved in the murder of Russian Public Television (ORT) cameraman Dmitryi Zavadskyi and opposition politician Viktor Gonchar.

And we had thought that Ukraine was not Belarus!

While Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka was introducing a neo-Soviet regime, suppressing political freedoms, imposing a command administrative economy, continuing Russification and seeking reunion with Russia, President Kuchma talked about creating a democratic market economy and returning Ukraine to Europe. In reality, Mr. Lukashenka was being the more honest of the two: what he said he was going to do he has undertaken, while Mr. Kuchma has consistently done the opposite.

As the respected Kyiv weekly Dzerkalo Tyzhnia (December 2) put it: "Ukraine is now being determinedly transformed into a second Belarus, and this transformation is being furthered not only by the authorities but also by society. The most significant difference between Ukraine and the neighboring state is our hypocrisy: we continue to make pretensions of decency, while in Belarus they have long ago ceased to bother themselves with such attempts."

Of course, President Kuchma should be considered innocent until proven guilty. Unfortunately though, his actions since the allegations were first made on November 24 have not been those of an erroneously accused man. It took him 12 days to make an official reply on Ukrainian TV, and he has sought to not deal with the allegations per se, but to blame them on a conspiracy by domestic opponents and foreign intelligence services intent on destabilizing Ukraine.

Deputies were illegally searched and video evidence they had with them was purposefully damaged at Boryspil airport. The media are prevented from publicizing the issues: the SBU is ordering printing houses to halt the publication of newspapers while the tax police have launched "investigations" into independent media. Radio Liberty confirmed that its Ukrainian partners have been targeted by the tax police

Ukraine's "capture"

Not surprisingly, Kuchmagate has revealed many aspects of the Ukrainian state that the authorities would prefer be kept quiet. The recently released World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 2444 discussed why countries such as Ukraine had stagnated. The conclusion was that these countries had been "captured" by oligarchs and other corrupt elites that run the country for their own narrow interests. In a comparison of "state capture," Ukraine is one of the highest. The World Bank found that the oligarchs shape the policy-making, regulatory and legal environments to their own advantage at the expense of the rest of the economy and the populace.

The capture of the Ukrainian state by a small corrupt elite has four ramifications.

First, the economy is kept in a partly reformed state, suspended between communism and capitalism. This is favored by the oligarchs and elites who are highly conservative and favor the status quo. They devise ever new phrases to describe its benefits: since 1995 Ukraine's elites have talked of taking a mythical "third Ukrainian path" and a multi-vectored foreign policy, both of which have led only to stagnation.
Second, economic growth is stifled. In Ukraine this has meant that the socio-economic crisis has been prolonged unnecessarily. Half of all GDP is produced in the shadow economy, which is preferable to those who have captured the state. High levels of bureaucratic corruption and criminality, the World Bank believe are directly related to the capture of the state by a small group of corrupt elites, which leads to widespread poverty of the people and stagnation of society.
Third, the social consequences are huge. The state cannot provide social services to the populace, or pay wages, pensions and social welfare benefits.
Finally, these policies stifle democratization because they create a corporatist state through "Latin-Americanization" that stifles civil society.

It is, therefore, not surprising that Ukraine's civil society is so weak. Two of Ukraine's leading sociologists, Valerii Khmelko and Volodymyr Paniotto (International Institute of Sociology, National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy), have pointed out that the state bureaucracy in Ukraine is a state racket, interferes more than in the late Soviet era, stifles private enterprise and initiative, and suppresses the growth of civil society by making sure that the people are preoccupied with daily survival. They conclude, "That is why the majority of social institutions that we have are in effect of a very deformed type" (Den, December 9).

Despite nearly a decade of democratization in Ukraine, its civil society, measured in terms of the population involved in NGOs, has not increased but actually has declined from 15 percent in 1991 to 12 percent now. A full 95 percent of the population is so atomized that they will not take part in politics, even if their rights are infringed upon (Den, October 24).

Dr. Taras Kuzio is the author of "Ukraine: State and Nation Building" (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), "Ukraine: Perestroika to Independence" (London and New York: Macmillan, St. Martin's Press, 1994 and 2000) and joint author of "Politics and Society in Ukraine" (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1999). He is also editor of "Contemporary Ukraine: Dynamics of Post-Soviet Transformation" (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1998), and joint editor of "State and Institution Building in Ukraine" (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999).

PART I

CONCLUSION

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