THE TENTH ANNIVERSARY OF UKRAINE'S INDEPENDENCE
INTERVIEW: An academic and professional viewpoint of Ukraine
by Andrew Nynka
The 10th anniversary of Ukrainian independence has given us an opportunity to evaluate Ukraine's first independent decade. Below is the conclusion of a three-part series of interviews with academics and professionals on the topic of Ukraine's progress towards building a democratic state and nation.
DR. ROMAN SOLCHANYK is a research analyst with the Rand Corporation based in Los Angeles and a formerly specialist on Soviet nationality affairs at the RFE/RL Research Institute in Munich. He has published widely in scholarly journals and participated in symposia on East European history and Soviet nationality problems, and is the author of a study titled "Ukraine under Perestroika: Politics, Religion and the National Question" as well as the newly released book "Ukraine and Russia: The Post-Soviet Transition," Rowman and Littlefield Inc., 2001.
Q: As a specialist and researcher in the field of Ukrainian affairs, what is your perspective on the progress Ukraine has made in its efforts at state- and nation-building from 1991 to the present?
A: I think it's more useful, more constructive, if we look at Ukraine in "big picture" terms. I could easily say something about language issues or problems with minorities, specifically the Russian minority, or democratic and economic reform, but I think it is better to look at the big picture.
Ten years is not a long time, but people tend to forget the things that were happening in 1990 and 1991. If you recall, most observers, politicians and columnists were saying that such a place like Ukraine couldn't possibly exist. This was the view of the West, not to mention people and politicians in Moscow. If you remember, liberal individuals like [Anatolii] Sobchak, then Mayor of St. Petersburg, or [Sergei] Stankevich, then deputy mayor of Moscow, were basically treating the notion of an independent Ukraine as a joke. On the one hand as a joke and on the other hand as a sort of threat to the world. I remember very clearly, Sobchak, who is now deceased, saying if Ukraine is allowed to have an army and if it is allowed to be independent it will create some kind of third world war. These were well-respected people who, during the period of Perestroika, were appearing on CNN almost every other day.
I remember President George Bush and his famous speech on August 1, 1991, in the Ukrainian Parliament in which he was essentially saying: Ukraine should not be independent because it cannot be independent. It would cause disastrous problems for other people, for humanity. Nobody, whether in Moscow, Washington, or London, believed that this place was, number one, legitimate; and number two, [they believed] if it was independent, it shouldn't be.
I remember very clearly one of these think tanks in Washington - one of these public policy places - actually suggesting that this would be a terrible calamity. They said the best thing the United States could do is to persuade the Ukrainians to voluntarily give away some of its territory, presumably Crimea or Donetsk, to Russia in order to avoid conflict.
It was also predicted that if this place, Ukraine, is allowed to exist we will have some kind of Rwanda situation - some kind of genocide against Russians.
If you look at Ukraine over the last 10 years you will find that it is one of the bright spots among the post-Soviet states. Let's compare Ukraine to its immediate neighbors. Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka - a person who is recognized largely by most people in Europe as a dictator and has brought Belarus to the position of a pariah state in the middle of Europe. Moldova - a country where a large chunk of its territory has not been politically controlled by the capital. Look at Russia. The coup attempt in August, the shelling of the Russian parliament in October 1993, tanks in the streets, individuals like [Vladimir] Zhirinovsky claiming that Finland will be reincorporated into Russia; the list of nonsense that's been going on in Russia, including the two wars in Chechnia, is long. You can look at problems regarding shooting, killing, enclaves and so on. Many of these areas are turning into dictatorships with one-man rule. So, when you compare Ukraine to its "fraternal former Soviet republics," you have a pretty nice place.
Q: Where do you see Ukraine's place in the European context?
A: The major problem that Ukraine faces - the big question mark - is when or if Ukraine will actually become part of Europe.
Ukraine has articulated a position that it wants to integrate itself into all European structures: political, economic and security. Now, that's fine, but for it to become a success there need to be some objective and subjective factors in place. Objective factors need to be democratic reforms and economic reforms that would allow you, for example, to become a member of the European Union. And the subjective factor, one of the most important factors, is whether the Europeans are ready to accept a place like Ukraine, and that seems really doubtful.
So I think the big-picture question is: Will Ukraine become a part of Europe in some form or another? Maybe not a hundred percent, maybe it will never be a member of the EU, maybe it will never be a member of NATO. Or will it become what I call a new Eastern Europe, in other words, a new kind of gray no-man's land between the East and the West - between Russia and Europe. That's the big question as far as I'm concerned.
Q: Ukraine has accentuated a desire to build itself into the European framework. Do you believe that the European Union and NATO view this favorably?
A: What I find interesting here is that countries like Bulgaria and Romania, whose economies are, frankly, not very much better than Ukraine's, are being embraced by Brussels, by the European Union. They will eventually become members of NATO, and they may eventually also become members of the European Union, which shows to me that the Europeans, namely that those people who sit around those nice big tables in Brussels and make policy, don't consider Ukraine to be a European country.
I don't know if you saw in the New York Review of Books a couple of weeks ago, Timothy Garton Ash had an article about European issues in which he actually said that in a private conversation with one of the commissioners of the European Union, that individual, he didn't name him, said that there's no way Ukraine will ever become European. NATO's position will be that "oh yeah, we want a stable and secure Ukraine because it serves our security interests," but the notion of Ukraine ever becoming European is considered to be absurd by people in Europe.
Q: Is it fair to say that from early 1991 Europe, for the most part, couldn't see Ukraine as an independent state, but at least now it's come to the point where they recognize it as a state but feel that it's not the type of state they want becoming a part of Europe? Can you comment on this?
A: I think that's very well put. One can think about this as a two-stage process. In the initial stage there was this laughing Ukraine off as an impossibility, as a fake, as an invention, as illegitimate. And if it should actually be allowed to exist it would probably be a danger to humanity, as Sobchak said.
And now this next stage - phase two: "OK, well it hasn't disappeared, but really what do we do with this place?" would be the sound from Europe. The answer would probably be: "Well, we don't do anything." The new Europe, when it finally evolves - when Poland and the rest of the countries become members of the European Union - will stop at the borders of Ukraine.
Q: What degree of legitimacy do you see foreign heads of state giving Ukraine? Have they begun to treat Ukraine as a legitimate independent country?
A: I think it's fair to say that the United States and Canada remain the major supporters of Ukraine in spite of the difficulties there - in spite of the human rights violations. Traditionally a place like Germany, in terms of the European continent, is the leading supporter in terms of credits and economic aid. Traditionally places like Paris have always had a skeptical view of Ukraine. I think it's fair to say that France has not shown any major commitment to places other than Russia in the former Soviet Union. But again, this is anecdotal.
One can certainly distinguish between specific countries, and certainly the United States and Canada stand out above anyone else, and I think that the leadership in Kyiv should consider itself fortunate that this is the case. Even under this administration, although there will probably be cuts in foreign aid, I think the situation could have been much worse.
Q: Can you comment on the development of the Ukrainian language over the course of the past ten years, specifically with regards to any conflicts with the ingrained Russian language?
A: I think that a lot of the diaspora's perception and judgments on issues of language were misplaced. For some reason, even though I considered myself an unbiased researcher, well-educated and so on, it seems to me that subconsciously I bought into this idea that there was a Ukrainian-Russian friction in terms of language.
The point is that there really isn't. Whatever friction there is, is minimal, and if you look at the public opinion surveys you'll find, consistently over the last 10 years, that the overwhelming majority of people have no problems, certainly on an ethnic basis. They don't say that they've been discriminated against. The value that they assign to the language that people speak is minimal, minuscule and so on.
I think this is one of those disparities that you have between the diaspora and the situation there on the ground. Namely, that the language issue really is not much of an issue for the overwhelming majority of the people there.
TARAS HUNCZAK is a professor of history and political science at Rutgers University. His most recent publication includes: "Russian Imperialism from Ivan the Great to the Revolution," University Press of America, 2000.
Q: Is it safe to say that Ukrainian politicians, faced with the possibility of leading a country for the first time, were very timid and inexperienced in 1991?
A: I would say that would be a realistic assessment. They were truly afraid because, after all, there was still a powerful army and KGB control from Moscow, but people on the street were demonstrating outside of the Parliament shouting "Freedom for Ukraine, Freedom for Ukraine!" Thousands of people shouting. They closed the windows in the Parliament building, but the windows were vibrating at the time.
Now, having said that, of course after 1991 what you have is the representatives of Rukh in particular, beginning to escalate their activities, but unfortunately they did not understand what politics is really all about. I cannot fault anybody really. While they had good intentions, they had no experience in political matters. The experience was in the hands of the members of the former Communist Party.
Q: What were some of the expectations for the newly independent Ukrainian state?
A: The expectations were great that there would be a transformation from one system to another immediately and that Ukrainianism would assert itself. Well it didn't. And, objectively speaking, it couldn't because the Soviet Union had been working at its system very consistently for over 70 years and now all of the sudden to change things - well it would have taken more than a human effort. So from my perspective, having spent a lot of time in Ukraine, I would say that, yes, the expectations of the idealists were not realized completely. Although not everything was destroyed by the Communists, despite their efforts to destroy the national idea.
When the pope went to Ukraine the reaction of the Ukrainian people was very positive even in Eastern Ukraine; even what the leaders of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church said in the newspapers was very positive. And that in itself is a very, very positive fact. But there is a revival, so I don't think you can negate everything.
Yes, there is a rather significant Russian influence, but it will take time for those who are under this influence to realize that they are citizens of Ukraine. What the Ukrainians need is not so much an ethnic national consciousness but the idea of political nationalism. Your origin should not be of concern - whether you are a Georgian like Heorhii Gongadze - you are a Ukrainian citizen. In any case, this also takes time. And they seem to be going slowly in that direction. The problem is somewhat in the leadership camp. They seem to be ambivalent about which direction they want to take.
Q: Did you see, in 1991, that the man on the street was highly motivated and certain of what they wanted to accomplish while the government officials were inexperienced and uncertain?
A: For the man on the street to have an idea you have to somehow be educated in the spirit of the ideal. Yes, you did have a protest here and there, but for the most part the typical man on the street in Ukraine was never educated in certain political ideologies. You really have to discuss the intelligentsia because it is the political and intellectual elites that provide a sense of leadership for society, and that elite was not prepared to provide Ukraine with a sense of direction. In Ukraine they were educated to do something else - that everything leads to Moscow. The problem was that there was a sense of inferiority. For example, with this question of language, the residue of the Russian language stays around with people for a long time.
Q: Has there been a change in this mentality since 1991?
A: Well, there is a change among the younger people. I noticed that when I was teaching at universities and giving lectures. There are already elements of youthful exuberance and political consciousness. There are people who are already of a different mental framework. And it is important to note here that we cannot divide this along regional lines. Western Ukraine was not so hot either, despite the fact that the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) was there for a long time, but even today western Ukraine has people left over from the same Soviet regime.
The expectations of an immediate national culture were unrealistic because the dominant culture was the Russian culture. Anybody educated or of some significance spoke Russian. People from a collective farm spoke Ukrainian. How do you change this mentality? It was not so long ago that one young lawyer here said: "What kind of language do we speak here at this gathering?" They replied: "You know, we are pro-Americans, we speak professional English." The person who replied is Ukrainian-born mind you. This kind of problem existed there, and it will take time before this fact changes.
The problem is that change should proceed from the center of the government. If Ukraine had different people at the top who would insist "that in my government, in my Cabinet, in my whatever, you speak the state language - the Ukrainian language." If you go to the Ukrainian Parliament you speak the official language of the Ukrainian Parliament. But it will take a new generation to overcome these obstacles.
So what could one say happened over the last 10 years? Well, even the latest reports show a growth in Ukraine's economy. It is not reflected yet in the income of the people, but it takes time. We should understand Ukraine still has to retool its industries to serve consumers.
Q: Do you believe the recent upturn of the economy is a sign of significant future growth, or is it a mere glitch and will subside?
A: Well, we don't know which way it will turn. Look at the American stock market for God's sake. There seems to be no rhyme nor reason for its recent activity. It goes up and down, and up and down, and yet everything seems to be functioning. It seems that in the diaspora some people read with satisfaction the shortcomings in the country and pretend they are suffering while, at the same time, they don't contribute a penny to help Ukraine. There are many permanent critics. I can say that with authority because I spend a lot of time organizing various types of assistance.
There are a lot of problems, there is no doubt about it, but look at the issue of education. In the city of Kyiv for example, schools have been Ukrainianized to the point where I think that only 17 schools are left with the Russian language of instruction. That is a fantastic accomplishment for a city in which something like five, or thereabout, families spoke Ukrainian in 1905. There are things that have improved and yet there are still problems.
There are problems with the press, for example, as everybody knows, publication of books, etc., but these things are passing. In 10 years things have improved tremendously. Even the Ukrainian armed forces publish a journal called Ukrainian Army - perhaps the best military journal in Eastern Europe. So I am not enthusiastic, but in a guarded fashion I am optimistic that things will improve with the passing years as the younger generation comes to power.
As far as the economic condition, you had people who lost a sense of private property. John Locke said that what constitutes an independent country of equals is their belief in the protection of life, liberty and property. Well, they lost that sense of property - individual property. In Soviet-era Ukraine you had collective farms and an industry - instead of being created to serve the needs of community, three-quarters of it was created to produce and serve the interests of the Soviet military machine. Even today this remains a problem.
Q: There is a common belief that Ukraine's future can follow three paths: towards a union with Russia and Belarus towards the other polar extreme, nationalism; or towards a middle or "muddled" path in between both of the previous directions. Will Ukraine stay this middle path or will it, in the future, decide its own destiny?
A: The muddled way is a good expression, it's kind of making declarations as President Leonid Kuchma does but never really making any significant change or movement. Ukraine will not go the way of [Belarusian President Alyaksandr] Lukashenka or go towards Russia for a very simple reason: even the oligarchs of Ukraine are enjoying their independence, and their children will not want to become subservient to what somebody says in Moscow, money or no money. Ultimately, people who already made all of their money like the Kennedys want to be in politics - they want to be in decision-making positions.
The oligarchs may at some crucial point become the real champions of independence, should it become necessary, because it would affect them most directly. So Ukraine will continue to be an independent state, and I think that the younger generations will champion this cause. Part of the problem with Ukraine is these old administrators. Right now, because there are still so many of this older generation, they control the process due to their number of votes. The collective farms, the factory administrators and the veterans of the so-called "Fatherland War." Basically they're true Stalinists.
With their passing the country will gain a new opportunity for the younger people to develop the country as they see fit. I think the future of Ukraine is a democratic society concerned with the well-being of its citizens.
ADRIAN KARATNYCKY is the president of Freedom House and author of "New Nations Rising: The Fall of the Soviets and the Challenge of Independence," Wiley, John & Sons Inc., 1993 and "Freedom in the World: The Annual Survey of Political Rights and Civil Liberties 1997-1998," Freedom House, 1998.
Q: What progress, if any, has Ukraine made over the course of its first independent decade?
A: Well, the first point to be made is the fact that Ukraine exists as a relatively functioning state. That it is now in its second year of some significant economic upturn, the fact that it is at peace with its neighbors, and the fact that it is, in terms of inter-ethnic relations, at harmony at home suggests that a lot has been accomplished. It is very true that many people regarded the possibility of Ukrainian statehood with skepticism. They thought that there would be an early move towards the Commonwealth of Independent States, and I think it is to the credit of the leaders of Ukraine, both in terms of opposition and civil society, and also government leaders, that they steered a course that built statehood. And that is an immense accomplishment and cannot be denigrated or denied.
At the same time, I think it is very clear that Ukraine's evolution, economically and politically, has been distorted by the definite emergence of very high levels of political and economic corruption by patterns of semi-authoritarian behavior at the top echelon of its leadership.
Yes, a journalist can be killed under very suspicious circumstances, but what this does is it brings greater international attention, greater public scrutiny domestically and greater examination of the types of issues that this man was addressing in his life. It seems to me that in the Gongadze case we have an embodiment of two co-existing Ukraines.
One is the democratic, open and tolerant Ukraine in which there are more and more Ukrainian citizens, particularly in the younger generations, that believe society has to be governed by the same open rules they see in Western Europe, the United States or even in Central Europe in places like Poland, Hungary, or the Czech Republic.
The other Ukraine has people enmeshed in this more corrupt system who want to keep things in the dark, who want to know what other people are doing to discover their wrongdoings, the corruption and the malfeasance which is part of the current Ukraine.
It seems to me that you're dealing with a quasi-authoritarian president who has limits on how he can function and behave. You have a fairly active civil society, particularly in the center in Kyiv, where a lot of the politics is shaped. You have economic growth with some new pluralistic economic forces, and you have economic players who are not playing by the old corrupt rules, who are making money the old fashioned way - they're earning it.
Q: Are the citizens of Ukraine, the general population, passive about what's happening to Ukraine? And, if that is the case, how do you break that mentality - break the citizens' Soviet mentality?
A: In order to encourage its citizens, Ukraine must look after economic growth, the creation of a bigger middle class, ensuring that its citizens do not have to worry about the next week's paycheck - Ukraine must first solve these issues. If the patterns of economic growth are sustained I think that Ukraine's society will become more interested. Once this begins you will see more interest groups developing to sustain that pattern of growth.
Secondly, I think that we've seen a change in Ukrainian politics. Although you still have - and I think this is the biggest obstacle that continues in Ukraine - the fact that about 25 to 35 percent of the electorate always cast votes for an irrelevant opposition party that, in the Parliament and even in presidential politics, makes it very difficult to shape a broad coalition so long as this irrelevant Communist Party exists. The reason being that it siphons off protest votes and opposition votes from people who are legitimately unhappy with the situation. It puts them in a direction which is so unconstructive that neither the oligarchic pro-presidential groups nor the anti-presidential reformer groups can be in a stable bloc or coalition.
There is some attrition of the Communist vote - it's a generational thing. It's also very important that you have such factors as [Oleksander] Moroz and [Yulia] Tymoshenko - two structures around which radical opposition sentiments have an electoral expression which is outside that of the Communists or some ultra-nationalist or extremist party. The development of a normal left and a normal right in Ukraine, which I think we are beginning to see, suggests that maybe that deadlock will be broken. In Ukraine you will have normal civic activism, people preparing and people basically focusing on electoral politics, the use of the media, normal civic activism. Some of this is beginning in Ukraine and, as the economic turnaround takes hold, you will see more of it in the future.
Q: Which of the three broad directions, in terms of international affairs, do you see Ukraine taking: back towards Belarus and Russia; towards nationalism and the far right; or an indefinite path or "muddled way"? If Ukraine is taking this last path could this be a case of Ukraine's inexperience on the national stage or a case of geopolitics - playing the East off against the West?
A: Well, I think that the current elite will continue this attempt, in effect to balance off Russia and the West to maintain the maximum degree of room to maneuver in terms of corrupt practices and quasi-democratic practices at home. That's a very auspicious place to be, but I do think that concessions have to be made to external factors: public opinion, pressure from the West and also an alternative pressure from Russia.
I don't think that a Belarusian type solution is possible for Ukraine because the kind of passivity you see and the lack of national consciousness that you see in Belarus you could maybe extend to a portion of the Ukrainian population, primarily in the more Eastern outposts, but I don't think that you can say that for all of Ukraine. There is a very substantial, engaged and nationally patriotic electorate which would oppose moves towards either political repression or towards integration with Russia.
And I don't think that any leader who is in the middle of political difficulties, as President Kuchma is, would dare take his country on a path that would increase internal domestic tensions. I think that what this whole crisis has shown is not the strength of Kuchma but, in a sense, the limited space for him to maneuver. He is trapped by the oligarchic structures that have emerged in which he has either, if you believe the tapes, encouraged or at the very least, if you believe the evidence, has never attempted to resist or fight against.
Geopolitically President Kuchma cannot lean to one or the other direction because of his weakness - his inability to take on a full-fledged conflict either with Russia or the West. President Kuchma has tried to make compromises with existing political movements which he does not control and which he cannot fully trust. So I think he is in a more vulnerable position, but at the same time this also means that he is behaving in a more reasonable fashion. He is not moving in an authoritarian direction, he is not lurching either towards Russia or towards the United States. So this uncertainty around the president, which in some sense looks like stability, is a stability built on the fact that he has chosen to make substantial compromises. And with each of these compromises he has made, with external and internal forces, his room to maneuver as a completely unchallenged authoritarian leader is constricted and constrained.
Q: What will help Ukraine gain popular standing in the eyes of Eastern Europe, NATO and the European Union?
A: The things that are encouraging officials in Europe and the United States to think positively about the integration of Ukraine into the world community is precisely the civic reaction and trouble caused by civil society and the independent media which the Ukrainian elites complain about. I think that Europeans, if they think the Ukrainian public is passive and doesn't share their views of an open rule-of-law-based system - if they believe that the populace is simply content with authoritarian and corrupt practices - will hesitate about Ukraine's integration into Europe.
Ukraine stands a stronger chance of integration into Europe if they show a dynamic European consciousness or a democratic consciousness mobilizing itself through media and civil society - in other words, when the people on the streets protest they are actually helping Ukraine's earlier ascension to the West. Although the Ukrainian government may think they are creating an image of instability in the country, they're actually creating an impression of forward-thinking openness and a future that is a fully realized democracy within Ukraine.
The Ukraine of today is very different from the Ukraine of five years ago which had money poured into it. To some degree it is different because some of that money has made it to civic groups, some of it has made it to independent media, some of it has made it to help less corrupt forms of privatization and some efforts to promote and push the economic education of the political elite to a degree where you now have a very large cohort of people working in ministries and the private sector who know what the country needs - who know that it needs only the political will at the top and the political will within the Parliament to fix the remaining gaps.
Q: In general, what are some of the differences in Ukraine between now and five years ago?
A: Well, I think you have a much better probing media. You have some substantial land reform and some sense of direct ownership or direct responsibility which has made the agri-business/food-processing sectors much more potentially efficient and independent of their old subsidy orientation, a very different civil and civic society with a practical understanding of the craft of building a modern political system, a substantial amount of sophistication in civil society. You now have ministers and individuals who've worked in government and Parliament who understand the types of reforms and structures that are necessary in order to implement and promote change. You now also have the experience of two years of economic growth so that you don't have the kind of intense skepticism that greeted the past economic reform package five years ago.
Q: We spoke earlier about the level of corruption in Ukraine. Has it gotten worse?
A: I think it's gotten far worse in the last few years. It's really within the last four or five years that it has gotten considerably worse and become systemic rather than episodic. Many of the younger generation feel that they can operate in a normal, more open environment and know how to operate and succeed economically in a transparent society.
If these politicians don't make a move toward open, transparent reform and continue to operate under the basis of past corruption with these skeletons in their closet, once the democratic opening comes, as it inevitably will, whether it comes in two years, in five years, or in 10 years, these people will - well, let them read the reports of what's going on in Croatia today. That's their future.
CONCLUSION
Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, September 2, 2001, No. 35, Vol. LXIX
| Home Page |