NEWS AND VIEWS

The importance of graduating Ukraine from Jackson-Vanik

by Michael Bleyzer

As a former direct beneficiary of the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, I strongly believe that the time has long come to graduate Ukraine from its provisions. At the time of its original passage in 1974, the Jackson-Vanik Amendment was directed against the Soviet Union, a country that no longer exists. Ukraine has been an independent nation since 1991 and it is an entirely different country today than the Soviet Union was in 1974.

I emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1978 and came to the United States of America later that year as a political refugee. I became a United States citizen in 1983 and had never thought that I would be able to go back to the country where I was born, much less do business there. I also thought that I would never be able to forgive that country for all the harassment and intimidation it had inflicted upon me as a Soviet Jew.

However, the world has changed a lot since that time. After a 15-year career at Exxon and Ernst & Young, I founded SigmaBleyzer in 1994. We have been successfully working in Ukraine for 12 years now and have become the largest private equity investor in the country. Over the last 10 years, SigmaBleyzer has invested over $150 million in the Ukrainian economy. Our new $250 million private equity fund is now operational in Ukraine.

While Ukraine is facing many challenges in sustaining its fast-paced economic growth and stabilizing its political environment post-Orange Revolution, human rights is clearly not one of those challenges. Since independence, Ukraine has dramatically improved its human rights record and while the country still has various fringe elements that advocate ethnic tension and anti-Semitism, there is also an incredible revival of Jewish life in Ukraine, which I have personally witnessed.

Having worked actively in Ukraine for 12 years, I do not find its human rights and emigration record to be different from most democratic countries, including the United States of America.

I also find it personally offensive when provisions of the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, which was so crucial in enabling Jewish emigration from the USSR (including my own), are being used to exert pressure on Ukraine in other areas completely unrelated to the original intent of Jackson-Vanik. I, therefore, believe that Ukrainian graduation from Jackson-Vanik is long overdue.

The new democratic post-Orange Revolution Ukraine needs the support of the United States. Removing Ukraine from Jackson-Vanik provisions is a critical priority now.

Michael Bleyzer is president and CEO of SigmaBleyzer, based in Houston.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, March 12, 2006, No. 11, Vol. LXXIV

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