ANALYSIS: Reassessing Ukraine, or why the big picture matters (08/14/05)

ANALYSIS: Reassessing Ukraine, or why the big picture matters

by Alexander J. Motyl

It's time to take a deep breath and step back.

Just as Viktor Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko could do no wrong in their first 100 days, now they seem to be incapable of doing anything right. Indeed, the avalanche of bad news - in the Western press, from Ukraine, and of course in the Russian media - could lead one to think that Ukraine is headed for disaster.

Anders Aslund, a respected economist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, was one of the first harbingers of doom when he wrote earlier in the year that Prime Minister Tymoshenko had "betrayed" the Orange Revolution. Most recently, over 100 Ukrainian journalists demanded that President Yushchenko apologize for insulting one of their colleagues and wondered whether his behavior did not herald a return to the bad old days.

The economy, we are told, is spiraling downward. Foreign investors are skittish. Prices are rising, production is falling, an energy crisis with Russia looms - and what is the government doing? Responding with "populist" policies, its head presumably buried deep in the sand. Worse, government ministers squabble, some appear to be either liars or incompetents or both, and corruption continues. The Orange Revolution, clearly, is dead. Or is it?

Let's look at the "big picture."

Ukraine's policy-makers

First, let's not forget that Ukraine's policy-makers are little different from policy-makers in any other country of the world. They disagree? Good Lord! They implement bad policies? Unheard of! They make mistakes? No way! They are corrupt, stupid and mendacious? They pander to electoral constituencies? They adopt populist policies? They sacrifice economic rationality to political expedience? Only in Ukraine, right?

Indeed, rather than feigning shock at the behavior of Ukraine's politicians, we might do well to examine our own reactions. Should we really be scandalized by the Roman Zvarych affair? Should we really be shocked by President Yushchenko having insulted a journalist? One need not be a cynic to believe that politicians who stupidly embellish their records, lie, or have adversarial relationships with the press are business as usual in democracies.

What is truly shocking is not their silly behavior but the overheated response of their critics. If, as Dr. Aslund argued, Prime Minister Tymoshenko really betrayed the revolution, does it not logically follow that she should, as a traitor, be executed? We know that Dr. Aslund doesn't mean that, but then why use alarmist language that suggests just such a conclusion?

And if journalists insist on their independence and right to investigate all aspects of government officials' lives, shouldn't they develop a thicker skin of their own? Should they really be insisting on apologies? If you're gonna dish it out, you should also be able to take it. That's what the rough and tumble of democratic politics is like.

Competing priorities

Second, let's not forget that all policy-makers in all democratic countries must always balance at least two competing priorities - rational economic policies versus the necessity of getting re-elected. It's easy for outsiders to insist that Mr. Yushchenko and Ms. Tymoshenko adopt "radical economic reform" immediately. It's easier still to decry their efforts to win votes as populism. But recall, once again, that every single democratic leader in the United States, Canada or Europe would do the same thing. After all, policy-makers know that winning elections is not only an exercise in democracy, but also a precondition - indeed, the precondition - of any kind of meaningful reform program.

Note as well that all this talk of the imperative nature of radical economic reform and the interests of investors assumes, in a crudely neo-Marxist fashion, that only economics matters and that democracy, civil society, human rights and all the other components of the so-called "superstructure" do not. Now, I do happen to believe that economic reform in Ukraine is imperative, and the sooner the better. But I also happen to believe that a democratic Ukraine with a vigorous civil society is also an important achievement - and I suspect that many Russians and Belarusians would agree.

The Orange effect

Third, and most important, let's not forget that President Yushchenko and Prime Minister Tymoshenko are not Ukraine. And that means that far more important than what they do or do not do is the direction in which Ukraine, as a country and a people, is going.

Ukraine is a different country today from what it was just one year ago. The voices of doom - all being freely expressed in the media, by civil society groups, students and political activists - attest to the consolidation of democratic norms and behaviors. The population of Ukraine has become empowered, and certain segments - especially intellectuals, artists and young people - have changed fundamentally.

Ukraine's intellectuals and artists - precisely the people who articulate a nation's views of themselves - appear to have experienced a profound shift in self-identification and self-worth. The Orange Revolution gave them the opportunity finally to be able to distinguish themselves from Russia and to align themselves with Europe - and especially with the democratic and liberal values associated with the West.

Even more important, for a very substantial portion of Ukraine's youth the Orange Revolution was a formative generational experience, along the lines of 1968 in the United States, France and Germany. Just as the mass marches and peace demonstrations of 1968 transformed thousands of young Americans, French and Germans - so much so that the effects of that transformation are still felt in the 21st century - so, too, the Orange Revolution will alter the views, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors of at least the hundreds of thousands of young Ukrainians who weathered sub-zero weather for weeks in their struggle for democracy.

For these groups, the Orange Revolution may have created a national myth. Like 1776 for Americans, 1789 for the French, 1968 for generations of youthful rebels in the United States, France and Germany, and 1980 for Poles, 2004 may come to represent a rupture with the past and a breakthrough to a new future for Ukraine's intellectuals, artists and youth. As a result, the Orange Revolution may mold an entire generation of young people, affect culture, and change the habits, thinking and mentality of millions. And these people will transform Ukraine's identity and align it solidly with Western values and practices.

Why institutions matter

These changes in the popular mindset matter because Ukraine has all the institutional preconditions of finally making a successful transition to democracy and the market. Keep in mind that, back in 1991 when Ukraine became independent, the country was - contrary to widespread misconceptions about the nature of systemic change - in no position to embark on genuine systemic reform.

Like all post-colonial entities, Ukraine consisted of a territory, a population and bureaucrats, but it lacked the institutions that transform a territory, population and bureaucrats into a functioning economy, society and state. Indeed, the behaviors, values, and institutions that survived Soviet collapse undermined genuine statehood, political contestation, economic entrepreneurship and civic activity.

Worse, Ukraine's catastrophic encounter with the 20th century did not help matters. Ukraine experienced some 40 consecutive years of relentless death and destruction, starting in 1914 and ending in 1953. Over three decades of normal totalitarianism then followed. Everyday violence disappeared and the death camps were disbanded, but totalitarianism as a system of rule remained. Living standards improved, but no elements of democracy, the market and civil society could emerge. Sixty years of intrusive party-state domination, irrational central planning and stultifying ideological control produced both a passive mindset and a stable set of institutions and behaviors that reproduced totalitarian rule. In contrast to Nazi totalitarianism, Soviet totalitarianism actually managed to create a new type of civilization and, perhaps, a new type of human being.

Independent Ukraine was the unintended by-product of totalitarian state failure and imperial collapse. And the terrified, incompetent and morally tainted elites of a failed state, a failed society and a failed economy were supposed to transform Ukraine into a successful and stable democracy, market economy, civil society and rule of law state. It took the countries of Western Europe hundreds of bloody years and the systematic violation of human rights both at home and abroad to achieve these goals. The United States, which devastated its native population, instituted full civil rights for blacks only in the 1960s - almost two centuries after its war of independence.

Ukraine's elites, like those of the other post-communist states, were advised to telescope these centuries into a magnificent "great leap forward." It was the height of hubris for well-fed Westerners to dispense such advice; it was also a profoundly immoral and, I suspect, deeply cynical ploy at washing their hands of the mess that Western indifference to totalitarianism had helped sustain. Not surprisingly, some countries, such as Russia, leapt and fell; others, such as Ukraine, did not leap; and still others - those who did make a leap, such as Poland and Hungary - proved successful only because the distance they had to jump was, thanks to the reform-oriented courses they adopted in the 1950s, actually quite small.

Ukraine's initial failure to jump was understandable, even - I believe - correct. Ukraine's indecisiveness in the early 1990s accounts for the fact that it is stable and peaceful today. Indecisiveness also accounts for the fact that Ukraine was able to experience the Orange Revolution and is now poised to reap its benefits.

Despite the widespread perception in the west of Ukraine as a reform-laggard in the 1990s, the reality was rather more complex. Since it is in the nature of institutions to grow slowly and almost invisibly, outside observers failed to see that Ukraine had experienced an enormous transformation by 2004. What appeared to be systemic stasis was really institution-building. Although Ukraine had emerged from the Soviet collapse with few of the institutions of democracy, statehood, rule of law, civil society and the market, it had by 2004 managed to acquire many of them. Most visibly, Ukraine had acquired a vigorous civil society based on a multiplicity of human rights organizations, student groups, churches, businesses, and intellectuals who could all agree that they had had enough of the regime. That civil society spawned a democratic opposition that staged a series of anti-Kuchma public protests in Kyiv in 2001-2002. Those rallies - and the activists, groups, and leaders that emerged from them - were a dress rehearsal for the Orange Revolution, which demonstrated that Ukraine possessed a vigorous democratic citizenry willing to fight, stubbornly and peacefully, for its rights.

More important, 14 years of independence had led to the creation of the very political institutions Ukraine had lacked in 1991. By 2004 Ukraine possessed a state apparatus with a functioning, if inefficient bureaucracy, and skilled policy elites. By 2004 Ukraine had also acquired significant elements of rule of law and democracy, and its economy, though not quite yet fully based on the market, had made significant strides in that direction. Formally democratic and market rules enabled civil society and a political opposition to emerge in a context of increasingly robust political and economic rules of the game.

As significant as the popular upheaval during the Orange Revolution was the fact that all of Ukraine's political institutions - the presidency, the Parliament, the Supreme Court and its parties - acted as genuine institutions in the course of the crisis. Even Viktor Yanukovych, after losing the presidential run-off of December 27, 2004, proceeded to challenge Yushchenko's victory in the Central Election Commission and the Supreme Court.

In contrast to 1991, when Ukraine was in no position to embark on a systemic transformation, today's Ukraine is as suited as Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia were in 1989 to break through to democracy and the market. Like them, Ukraine can finally boast of the political, economic, social and cultural institutional foundations of further systemic change.

Ukraine's future, then, is bright. In about 15 years, it should be no worse off than Poland today. Better still, the international balance of forces works to Ukraine's advantage and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. The United States supports Kyiv more or less unconditionally. Russia is suspicious and angry, and always dangerous, but too weak and too preoccupied with its own internal problems to do too much damage to Ukraine.

Best of all, perhaps, the European Union - always skeptical about Ukraine - can no longer become, thanks to the rejection by the French and Dutch of the EU Constitution, an increasingly centralized entity that would have remained permanently beyond Ukraine's reach. The EU is still skeptical of Ukraine, but, as a weaker and more confederal set of institutions, it is "objectively" more open to Ukraine - provided of course that Ukraine can actually meet its requirements.

Taking a deep breath

So, what's the moral of the story?

First, take a deep breath and treat the extremist language of analysts close to the political trenches with an enormous grain of salt.

Second, don't think that Ukrainian policy-makers are any better, or worse, than any other country's policy-makers. The good news is that they're as stupid, and as smart, as the rest.

And third, don't lose sight of the real issue, and that is Ukraine as a country and not the government that happens to be running it at any one time. Policy-makers, like breathless analysts, come and go. Institutions stay.

Alexander J. Motyl is professor of political science at Rutgers University - Newark, a specialist on Ukraine, and the author and editor of over 10 books. His latest book is a novel, "Whiskey Priest," published by iUniverse.

| Home Page |