LETTERS TO THE EDITOR (10/02/05)

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

A reader's reaction to Aslund's response

Dear Editor:

Re "Assessing Ukraine: Anders Aslund responds to Alexander Motyl" (September 25), it is indisputable that Ukraine's leaders have not exactly distinguished themselves over the last several weeks, and with respect to the state of the Ukrainian economy and its causes, I simply am not competent to judge Dr. Aslund's assessments. I do, however, know that Dr. Aslund should avoid making silly historical generalizations about matters with which he seems to have but a superficial acquaintance.

To compare what Ukraine experienced in the 20th century to, for example, Poland, or Ukraine's other neighbors betrays a rather remarkable degree of historical illiteracy. What follows for purposes of evaluating current events from the depredations visited upon Ukraine until very recently is another matter, but let's at least get the history right.

Bohdan Vitvitsky
Summit, N.J.

Motyl's answer to Aslund's response

Dear Editor:

Anders Aslund appears to have misunderstood my article, "Reassessing Ukraine, or why the big picture matters." So, let me clarify a few points.

First, the article was decidedly not about him or his scholarship. That should be obvious. I used the title of his op-ed piece as an example of a larger alarmist trend in analysis of Ukraine. I trust that The Ukrainian Weekly's readers know that it is standard practice in both journalism and scholarship to illustrate a point by citing an illustrious example.

Second, the article is about putting recent events in Ukraine into perspective, or what I call the "big picture." I make a few simple, and to my mind yawningly obvious, claims: 1) that "Ukraine's policy-makers are little different from policy-makers in any other country of the world"; 2) 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"; 3) that "President [Viktor] Yushchenko and Prime Minister [Yulia] Tymoshenko are not Ukraine."

The thrust of these claims should be obvious: that we should view day-to-day politics in Ukraine in comparison to other countries and in light of larger institutional trends in Ukraine as a whole. If we do, the picture looks rather less dire than the alarmist language of much recent analysis would suggest.

Third, my article does anything but "whine." Quite the contrary, I argue that Ukraine has made enormous progress in the last few decades. Indeed, I even hazard the wildly optimistic prognosis that Ukraine "in about 15 years should be no worse off than Poland today." Gosh, if that's whining, let us all by all means whine.

One final point: The change in Ukraine's government - and the response it's provoked among analysts - only proves my point about intemperate language and the importance of the big picture. How many times have we been told recently that Ukraine is in crisis, that the Orange Revolution is dead, that its ideals have been betrayed? But consider what happened. A president and prime minister disagreed. The president fired the prime minister, as he is constitutionally entitled to do. The president found a replacement. Parliament refused to approve him. So the president cut a deal with the opposition in order to get his candidate approved. Sound familiar? It should. That's the way all functioning democracies behave.

In sum, if you really want to understand what's going on in Ukraine, try leaving the trenches and looking at a map from time to time.

Alexander J. Motyl
New York

Questioning writers' qualifications

Dear Editor:

Much time and space could have been spared, had Taras Kuzio and Orest Deychakiwsky (August 7) prefaced their community remarks with their personal credentials. I may be accused of thinking like an attorney, but it seems to me that opinions on subjects should be offered by experts. I know both gentlemen including their background and expertise. I dare say they simply do not qualify.

Askold S. Lozynskyj
New York

Editor's note: In fact, the authors' credentials were given in the italic paragraphs that accompanied the article.

Re: labor leader's true sympathies

Dear Editor:

During the Liberty Medal award ceremony in Philadelphia, Congressman Curt Weldon described with unbridled enthusiasm the "solid support in the [Verkhovna] Rada" that President Viktor Yushchenko received from a man Mr. Weldon called, apparently mistakenly, a "leader of the Solidarity labor movement" in Ukraine, Mykhailo Volynets. He then pointed Mr. Volynets out in the crowd and asked him to join Mr. Yushchenko on the stage.

Mr. Volynets, hastily put on his jacket and scurried up the stage steps, graciously kissing the hand of Ukraine's first lady, before smilingly bear hugging Mr. Yuschenko. It turned out to be a replay of Brezhnevite mendacity.

Just three days later, Mr. Volynets, actually a member of Yulia Tymoshenko's party, was not present to vote as the Verknovna Rada failed to confirmed Mr. Yushchenko's choice for prime minister, Yurii Yekhanurov.

If Mr. Volynets was still in the U.S., perhaps we should have bought him a one-way ticket to Kyiv so that he could have put his vote where his hug was.

Andrew Fylypovych
Philadelphia

We welcome your opinion

The Ukrainian Weekly welc.omes letters to the editor and commentaries on a variety of topics of concern to the Ukrainian American and Ukrainian Canadian communities. Opinions expressed by columnists, commentators and letter-writers are their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of either The Weekly editorial staff or its publisher, the Ukrainian National Association

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