First of
all the Ukrainian people should not beat themselves up over the fact as the British
have been working on theirs since the 1600’s and the Americans since the 1750’s
and many, in both nations, would say that they still don’t have it right.  Democracy like societies evolve over time and
Ukraine
is at a very early stage in that evolutionary process.  The real question is not; ‘Are we a
democracy?’ but ‘Are we on the right path to build a viable democracy?’ and
these are two very different questions.

The people
of Ukraine like all the
other countries of the former Soviet Union
were subjected to 70 years of the most intensive political indoctrination the
world has ever known.  The Soviet system
combined all the evolving techniques of propaganda with psychology,
intimidation and mass media to convince its citizens that they lived in a neigh
perfect socialist world. 

Political indoctrination
was bannered across streets, factories and schools, the papers carried
political change as headline news, radio and later television carried the
messages the central government wanted the people to hear. 

In reality
few people in any country would have been able to resist what was unfettered
social engineering.  Those that saw
through the façade were quickly removed from influence and in many cases from
society altogether.

The people
were so well indoctrinated to expect everything to come from the party, the
system and the government it was only natural for them to expect that
‘democracy’ would also come down from on high. 
It didn’t and that was never the intention as it was not in the
interests of those that seized both wealth and power to have a population that
understood that what they were doing was fundamentally undemocratic, antisocial
and morally degenerate.

Democracy
and democratic practice have never been publicly disseminated in any country of
the former Soviet Union therefore is it really
any wonder that very few former soviet countries are now considered to be
democratic.  The Baltic
States and the Balkan countries have a veneer of democracy but
this could easily be undone in one election as the veneer has little or no social
foundation.

Since Ukrainian
independence there have been no mass public education programmes in democratic
practice financed by the government or the international community and even today
Ukrainian children are only taught ‘democracy’ as a political theory in their
11th grade for a few hours a month.  Furthermore there is no requirement for any
President or Prime Minister to have any in-depth understanding of democratic
process or procedures, nor government Ministers, Rada Deputies, Regional
Governors, Senior Civil servants, Mayors or local deputies.  In fact, despite the people voting for a
democratic system, there are very few people in power who understand how a
democracy should work in practice. In reality the blind leading have been
leading the blind and the one eyed man has been king.

In 2010
and 2011 the People First Foundation carried out a series of national research
programmes to ascertain the real levels of democratic understanding in Ukraine.  Their results identified that whilst 98% of
Ukrainians voted for independence and a democratic society in 1991, only 22%
believe they understand what a democracy is and how it works, 43% felt they
knew something, 18% had heard something about democracy whilst 17% admitted to
knowing nothing about it.  Worse still, cross
questioning of the 22%, identified that barely 4% had any real understanding of
how or why democracy works in practice.  

Therefore
it would be easy to assume that at present Ukraine
and probably most of the States of the former Soviet Union
are not on a path to democracy as their peoples have no fundamental understanding
or consensus upon which to build. 

One might
think that all these countries have to do is to turn to the west and democratic
understanding will flow but this too would be a mistake as surprising as it may
seem democracy is not formally taught in the west either.   Yes, there are literally hundreds of
university courses on the many aspects of democracy but there is little or no
education in the fundamentals because in the west democracy is the system that
binds their societies together. It is a societal glue that consists of a
delicate balance between personal dignity, the political system, the law,
social justice, morality, education and public acceptance of the need for
social limitations in the interests of the majority. 

The
European collective ‘democratic’ consensus has evolved over 300 to 400 years
and is the result of its shared history and shared disasters.  Ukraine too shares much of that history
however the historical events of the past 300 or so years in Ukraine have been
dominated by a very different set of values thus the collective consensus in
Ukraine is appreciably different from that of Europe today.  Similarly turning to the East is equally
unproductive as all the states of the former Soviet Union
are suffering from a very similar dilemma. President Putin may talk of ‘Russian
democracy’ but clearly his understanding of the principles and practice of
democracy are markedly different from the commonly held view.

One might
think that Ukrainians can turn to the internet as the modern day fountain of
all knowledge but again research indicates that whilst there are some 207
million references to democracy on the web virtually all refer to specific
aspects of democratic activity and theory. 
Similarly there are some 1.7 million learned articles on democracy, but only
556 are in Russian and 315 are in Ukrainian making it virtually impossible for
even the most ardent of scholars to follow the subject without a compass.

And it is a
compass that could well provide the answer for whilst it is laudable for the
many to weather the cold on ‘Maidans’ across the nation and indeed across the
world, without clear direction it is probable that there sacrifice will again
be wasted.  Sadly the opposition do not
seem to be able to find the answer as they too seem steeped in the political
ideology of the past.

It is time
for Ukrainian politicians of all parties to put away their rhetoric and to sit
down together with intellectuals, oligarchs, social leaders, the churches, the
military, the security services, and the judiciary to thrash out the very
principles upon which the nation of Ukraine should be founded to enshrine those
principles in a new constitution and then to agree to stick to it in the
interests of the nation.  It is no longer
enough to argue in favour of East or West or to rely on the rhetoric of
populism.  Ukraine needs a national vision
enforced by the rule of law and that can only be reached through consensus.  This step alone will be the first on a path
to real democracy.

The people
of ‘Maidan’ are not standing in the cold because of what the President or the security
services did or did not do, they are there because they want answers to one
simply question. ‘What is our tomorrow?’ and until that question is answered no
political force in Ukraine
is going to be able to unite the people into one viable nation.

Martin Nunn is chief executive officer of Whites Communication in Kyiv, where Martin Foley also works.