ROUGH DRAFT: Instilling self-respect in Ukraine (02/29/04)

ROUGH DRAFT

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

Instilling self-respect in Ukraine

The morning after our infant child was rushed to the hospital, accompanied by my wife, the head nurse entered the room where the two had spent the night - in a damp ward more akin to a jail cell, which hadn't seen a coat of fresh paint or new tiles in at least 30 years - and sternly demanded to know why the room hadn't been cleaned and the floors washed.

When I replied equally sternly that we were still waiting for the cleaning lady, the "sanitarka," she rebutted that in this ward the mothers of the children cleaned the rooms. I was aghast that a medical worker could be so rude and that the hospital had no qualms about mothers of sick children getting on their hands and knees to scrub dirty floors. A bit later, as I left, I couldn't help but notice several "sanitarky" idly chatting near a stairwell.

It was only after I told some friends about this incident that I understood that for most Ukrainians my experience was not unusual. It was just another aspect of living in a post-Soviet country.

Ukraine's service sector, while growing markedly over the last five years in step with the development of Ukraine's economy in general, still leaves much to be desired. While the variety of services offered has expanded, the quality of the service often remains dismal.

Today you can get everything from pizza delivery to in-home massages, from flood insurance for your apartment building to limousine service for your wedding. The luxury stretch vehicle may be a 1988 Lincoln Continental with a well-worn paint job, but the chauffeur, more likely than not, will aim to please. The pizza may get to you cold once in a while, but it is much better than what was produced with old Soviet-era recipes even a mere seven years ago. And what can you say when an insurance company forces you to take flood protection for your 14th story dwelling because it comes in a package with the fire insurance?

When considered on the same level as the rest of the world, the new service sector of Ukraine is developing in a normal manner. It is the old service sector that remains problematic - the one that included care for basic human needs, such as medicine and education, much-trumpeted as the glory of the Soviet system. Today, shorn of the gloss of Soviet propaganda, it is considered part of the dismal Soviet legacy, a system that had a cold disregard for quality-of-life issues, including little respect for the most basic levels of human dignity.

The jarring tumble in the standard of living for most workers that resulted as Ukraine missed economic opportunities after the Soviet Union disintegrated and the bitterness that many hold due to the fate they have been dealt has led to a qualitative decrease in the way workers in the old service sector approach their jobs and responsibilities. The result has been even more aloofness and lack of diligence and care by service workers - at times reaching levels of gross negligence.

In the medical services one must still contend with Ukrainian doctors and nurses colder than the stethoscopes they press to your chest. Yet, the problems run still deeper today. The medical community has been severely disillusioned by the extremely low wage its doctors continue to earn. While doctors earned less than the ambulance driver who brought in their patients during the Soviet era, today their earning potential has dropped further.

The result is unmotivated, uncaring medical professionals performing surgery poorly, accepting bribes openly and even taking part in rare, but much-publicized black-market sales of body parts and newborn babies.

Corruption has become almost endemic in the country's old service sector, most notably in medicine and education. While one can rationalize giving a low paid doctor a few hryvni in appreciation for a job well done, it is more difficult to explain being forced to purchase a term paper from a university professor in order to pass a class. Today, tragically, this is a normal occurrence in Ukraine's education system at the university level.

To a large extent the university system is driven by bribes - from the time you apply, which might include the need to shower a couple of thousand dollars upon strategically positioned deans and professors to ensure your acceptance, through to arranging gifts for the members of the review board before whom you defend your dissertation when completing a doctoral thesis.

Another problem that contemporary Ukraine must contend with is the Soviet attitude and mentality of many workers. Today disgruntled service workers, who learned to put up with the abuses the Soviet bureaucracy meted out by turning cold and unresponsive, take out their current grievances on customers by treating them with what at times seems like even less civility than before.

We all recognize the stereotype of the Soviet-era saleslady: secure in the knowledge she can never be dismissed, she gabs endlessly with her co-workers unconcerned that customers are waiting. That person still lives in the new Ukraine, and I believe that, just as many strains of influenza will do, she, too, has mutated into an even more virulent form.

I came upon her several Saturdays ago as I caught sight of a rather pleasant-looking deli in a local department store. I approached the counter only to find the salesperson in a corner in conversation with a co-worker. After patiently waiting several minutes I approached her to ask - rather condescendingly I'll admit - whether it would be okay if I received some service.

She turned her head towards me in reply but never acknowledged me. Instead, she returned to her station, where another customer had approached, and politely proceeded to serve him first. My jaw dropped.

Rarely one to show reserve when emotion can be utilized, I asked her with raised voice what on earth she was doing? Hadn't she seen me? Her calm and measured reply left me speechless. "Just don't go and ruin my morning already."

My Ukrainian-born wife disagrees with my assertions that the coldness and harshness of the Soviet "service" structure is still in place. She explains that it is I who am searching out its few remnants by approaching older, more hardened looking workers when I go to purchase something and in effect challenging them to cross me.

Perhaps she is right, and I am indeed obsessed with a personal mission to transform a system that is already in the process of change. Substantial evidence exists that a new breed of service worker has appeared: responsive, attentive and polite. These are mostly younger people who generally work for or were trained by firms that are Western-organized or originating in the West. They are bright-eyed, ambitious types who understand that in pleasing the client you assure his return business. They realize that the effort at civility offers rewards.

So, all is not lost. The future is not dire. Ukrainians simply need time to make the attitude adjustment, to learn what the Soviet fog forced them to forget and, most importantly, to raise their standards of living and give themselves some self-respect.

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