PERSPECTIVES: The game goes on (07/30/06)

PERSPECTIVES

by Andrew Fedynsky

The game goes on

What a paradox that the Ukrainian people should be on such a roll, while the country is stuck in a political rut.

The December 2004 election that brought President Viktor Yushchenko into office also quantified the split between Ukraine's Western regions, oriented on Europe, and the pro-Russian east. Confirming that division, parliamentary elections in March created political gridlock where the country, like a car spinning its wheels, became mired ever deeper in political morass.

By many measures, the country is doing spectacularly well.

In June, every region, along with millions in the diaspora, united behind Ukraine's team as it scrapped its way to the quarter-finals in the World Cup. Two weeks later, bicyclist Serhiy Honchar wore the yellow jersey at the Tour de France for three days in a row, identifying him as the leader of the world's premier bicycle race. Another Ukrainian, Yaroslav Popovych, won the tour's 12th stage on Bastille Day. In heavyweight boxing, Volodymyr and Vitalii Klitschko have been dominant for years.

Singer-performer Ruslana won the Eurovision Song Contest in 2004. Ukraine's First Lady Kateryna Yushchenko has been featured on American network news programs and, showing her elegant side, in fashion magazines, as well. The hryvnia is stable; the economy is growing; Kyiv's skyline is dotted with construction cranes; Ukrainian arts institutions are introducing the world to a long-hidden culture.

In global politics, President Yushchenko enjoyed warm welcomes around the world, including a joint session of Congress in 2005, which earlier this year responded positively to his appeal to lift Jackson-Vanik trade restrictions; Ukraine's friends and allies indicate support for the country's aspirations to join NATO and the European Union; Cardinal Lubomyr Husar was mentioned as a candidate to succeed Pope John Paul II.

Ukraine's independence unleashed vast creative forces. It makes you wonder what might have been had the Soviet Terror not devoured the country's cultural elite, had the Famine-Genocide never occurred. Now Ukrainians, having rejected the system that dealt such catastrophe, are displaying world-class talents, even as they struggle at basic government.

The seeds of Ukraine's current struggle were sowed long ago.

Indeed, this generation's government gridlock is a 21st century shadow of a devastatingly violent dynamic that began with Bohdan Khmelnytsky's revolution against Poland in 1648 and continued for 300 years. After Khmelnytsky's death in 1657, a top aide, Ivan Vyhovsky, became hetman. Repudiating the 1654 Pereiaslav Agreement with Russia, he steered his country away from Moscow and back toward Poland, winning an overwhelming military victory over Russia in the Battle of Konotop, only to be defeated in political intrigues that followed. Ironically, his fellow Kozaks turned him over to Poland for execution in 1664.

Vyhovsky's successor, Ivan Briukhovetsky, tilted completely toward Russia, signing a treaty placing Ukraine under direct authority of the tsar. In return, Briukhovetsky acquired titles, properties and the enmity of his people. In 1668, a Kozak mob, angry over the concessions he had made, seized him, chained him to a cannon and beat him to death "as if he were a mad dog."

In 1709 Hetman Ivan Mazepa made a bid for independence by allying himself with Sweden, only to have many of his fellow Kozaks hedge their bets and stick with Tsar Peter, who won a pivotal battle at Poltava and is now known as "the Great." In the last century, during World War I when Ukraine declared independence and again in 1942-1952, Ukrainians lined up on either side of the east-west divide in bloody civil war.

When the Soviet Empire collapsed in 1991, Ukraine and every other Soviet republic declared independence, with one exception: the Russian Federation. Where other Soviet peoples considered themselves liberated, most Russians saw themselves as already independent and, at the same time, considerably diminished.

Ever since, Ukraine has been trying to consolidate its statehood; Russia, particularly under Vladimir Putin, has been working to undermine it. Those two impulses clashed in the 2004 presidential election in Ukraine when the critical issue was the country's orientation: toward Europe or Russia? Related issues involved corruption and the age-old questions of who distributes political jobs, invests capital, goes to Washington, Geneva, Brussels, Paris and Moscow to represent the country. The Orange Revolution was thought to have resolved things once and for all; until Russia cut off gas to Ukraine on New Year's Day 2006. It was generally understood that Mr. Putin continues to dream of a reconstituted empire.

Despite political troubles, several dynamics bode well for Ukraine. Above all, in 1991, every single oblast in Ukraine overwhelmingly voted for independence - by an overall margin of 9-1. Now 15 years later, Ukrainians of all stripes and languages identify with their country and its symbols. Donetsk rooted for the national soccer team no less than Lviv.

Happily, Ukraine (unlike Russia), is a democracy and the country is free. The struggle to control Ukraine's government, and therefore set policy, has been orderly and peaceful - with the troubling and ominous exception of shadowy murders, convenient car accidents and the ghastly poisoning of Mr. Yushchenko. That the struggle is taking place in the full glare of world media - Internet, videophones, 24-hour news cycles - is critical. Now, with the mid-course correction the streets delivered in December 2004, Ukrainian elections accurately reflect where the country is: pro-Russian parties represent a little less than half the people, but they're organized and disciplined; those oriented on the West have more votes, but are less unified.

East/west in Ukraine is a reality, and both sides have a stake in governing their country. The central political challenge is to bring them together, checking and balancing each other, while moving the country forward. Rooting for the soccer team and respecting free expression is a start. An electoral and governing process that harnesses political forces to facilitate economic prosperity and cultural expression is progress. Getting Russia to stop interfering would bring surefire success, only that's not likely to happen. History, as Mark Twain once said, doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes.

And so the game continues, testing yet again which is more powerful: Ukraine's age-old instinct for independence or Russia's drive toward empire.

Andrew Fedynsky's e-mail address is: [email protected].

| Home Page |