The nation shouldn’t have to put up with any attempts to gloss over the hideous Kuchma legacy through cynical manipulation of facts. One such attempt appeared in an Aug. 28 opinion piece published by the daily English-language newspaper Moscow Times.
The article was written by Anders Aslund, a Swedish economist who worked as an economic adviser to Kuchma during the 1990s. Today, he’s a senior research fellow of the Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics based in Washington, D.C. The think tank’s board of directors includes Victor Pinchuk – Kuchma’s son-in-law and Ukraine’s No. 2 tycoon – who describes himself as a supporter of the Institute’s Eastern European and Ukrainian Program. These ties help explain the ludicrous “Leonid Kuchma Built a Prosperous Ukraine” headline above Aslund’s opinion piece, which praised the ex-president’s so-called economic achievements.
Yes, the Kuchma era was certainly prosperous for the president’s friends, relatives and other insiders who got rich quick by acquiring state-owned businesses cheaply and unfairly. The shamefully opaque privatizations of the 1990s essentially looted the rest of the population, which should have benefited much more from the sale of state assets. Far from prosperous, the Kuchma years meant destitution and desperation for most Ukrainians. But far more damaging is that the country’s business elite continues to run post-Kuchma Ukraine with their wealth and influence today. Aslund’s fairytale portrays Kuchma as a human rights champion. “He allowed democracy and all its freedoms to be secured,” Aslund wrote. “Few people have done so much for their country.”
Let’s deconstruct the Aslund myths by starting with the tapes of Mykola Melnychenko, the former presidential bodyguard who claimed to have secretly recorded more than 700 hours of conversations involving Kuchma in 1999 and 2000. If the events described in the recordings are true, Ukraine was essentially a criminal state with Kuchma as its mafia godfather. The foul-mouthed Kuchma and his associates, according to the tapes, brazenly talked about bribery, tax evasion, rigging elections and punishing enemies. Georgiy Gongadze, the muckraking journalist murdered in Sept. 2000, was a major irritant to Kuchma, according to the tapes.
While we may never know whether Kuchma deserved to spend his 70th birthday last month in prison or enjoying retirement, the Melnychenko tapes certainly have a ring of authenticity. Because the recordings implicated so many in the Kuchma power structure, including some still in public office, it is easy to guess why a credible investigation has never been launched.
It remains Ukraine’s sad circumstance not to be any closer to the truth years later, even with the tarnished heroes of the Orange Revolution holding the two most powerful posts in government. The maddening injustice of it all raises suspicions that a secret deal was made to turn the page and hope that people will forget over time.
The ability to stifle investigations or manipulate them to inconclusive ends, to muzzle the news media and treat one's own people with disdain, hardly qualifies someone as a champion of freedom and democracy. To the contrary, the despotic excesses of the Kuchma era fueled the Orange Revolution, no matter what sullied “scholars” such as Aslund write.
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