They are the true optimists of our time. They have the luxury of taking the long view, and there, on the horizon, they can see what many of us can’t: a bright future for Ukraine.
Having talked to a few of the nation’s richest and most powerful list in the last few months, I was recently struck by the similarity of their visions. All of them, bar none, preach a prosperous, democratic future for the nation, with a strong voice in the world.
Victor Pinchuk, the pipe magnate, told me recently that if one reflects on the past 20 years, it’s pretty clear that the nation is moving in the right direction. We’re doing it at our own pace, but we’re treading the path other people took hundreds of years to walk. He’s right.
Oleg Bakhmatiuk, who became a billionaire in just six or seven years by aggressively expanding his agricultural empire, said that God gave Ukraine two things: good land and good location. Thankfully, we have no oil, he says. But the two gifts we have will inevitably push the nation to taking a number of right decisions and taking its rightful place on the global stage.
He predicts that the lack of food in China in 2020, the changes in consumer behavior in India which is happening already, will push Ukraine’s leaders in politics and business to realize what the nation’s natural advantages are, and will make them create the environment to use them. He may be right.
Borys Kolesnikov and Sergiy Tigipko, both deputy prime ministers and multimillionaires, have their own separate strategies for making the nation prosper, and are both working to implement them.
Their ideas include bringing production of international brands to Ukraine, developing the IT sector to make it a locomotive for the export of services, and so on.
They’re working to achieve the best in the current circumstances, as far as I can see.
Lev Partzkhaladze, a Kyiv businessman and multimillionaire, says there already are decision-makers around, himself included, who are not motivated by everyday benefits and material gains but would like to leave the nation better off for their children. I want to believe that.
It may take 20 years for major changes, some of them say. Others think it needs two generations, when the children of the children of the nation’s rulers and nouveau riches start to matter.
Others still think it will only take a critical mass of about 30 percent of people in the government to make a real change.
I like their theories, they make me feel good. But I can’ afford to live in the future all the time. Like many Ukrainians, I have every day needs that cannot be moved back even until tomorrow.
So, I look around today, and fall into despair.
I see that my mother cannot afford new clothes because her only source of income is the minimum pension. After dozens of years of working at a chemical plant she apparently does not deserve any more, according to the state. There are too many people around like her.
I see my children who go to schools designed to deal with factory-made kids who must sit all day at a school desk with their mouths shut, until the teacher asks them to open them. Like most Ukrainians, I cannot afford private Swiss (or even Ukrainian) educators to take care of that problem. Many families face the same problem.
I know that a chief editor from a major weekly magazine fears losing his job because the publisher is running scared after the magazine ran an expose of the president’s opulent private residence, Mezhyhirya.
I know that this magazine is one of the few remaining bastions of free press. There are so few of those free media that the fingers of one hand would be too many to count them. And it takes one strike to kill any one of them.
I could almost feel the pain of regular Ministry of Foreign Affairs staff on Oct. 18, when it became clear that four years worth of work on the association agreement with Europe will be shelved for the time being, either because of the president’s personal animosity towards the imprisoned opposition leader or because people in influential positions benefit from the ensuing chaos.
I know none of this is likely to change any time soon. That’s because those important Ukrainians who talk about European values in front of respected Western audiences then get into their Bentleys and drive back to their luxury homes, all owned by their mothers and sisters to disguise ownership.
They talk about creating new industries, and then, in the privacy of their offices, they approve privileges for their own companies that make the rest of the nation pay.
Those who talk about “reform” and rule of law have yachts and airplanes they could not have earned honestly and fairly in their government jobs.
And I truly see no way out.
At least not until I talk to a rich optimist who can afford a long view.
Kyiv Post editor Katya Gorchinskaya can be reached at [email protected].
