Protectionism is rampant across the board, and so are the spectacles of corruption in Ukraine’s courts and in parliamentary bribery sagas, where the ruling majorities have been routinely formed by persuasive payoffs.
Where to go from here?
Abandoning all hope for a rapid change may be the first right step. A mass culture cannot be cleansed overnight. It is not simply a matter of rounding up “the bandits.” This culture permeates not only Ukraine. It is a Eurasian phenomenon that covers the entire space of the former Soviet Union, and is weaker – but it has not vanished — at its western edges. It is rooted in dishonesty and grotesque lies that are mostly obvious.
This is not to say that the European West is entirely clean. It had its terrible wars and mass murders, including the slave empire “Pax Romana” and later the internal massacres in the old Britannia, the Irish genocide, colonialism and the original sin of racism as part of Christopher Columbus’s glory (this streak is also shared in Ukraine’s and Russia’s mentality). And don’t forget King Henry VIII, who easily matched Czar Peter the Great, who personally chopped off heads of his hapless subjects.
But in the West there also was the Magna Carta, the libertarian Enlightment, and Martin Luther’s rebellion that took on the Church’s vested interests — something that had never happened in the Orthodox Russia, where Church was always part of centralized autocracy.
Russians, however, cannot be denied credit for the accomplishments and legacy of Andrey Sakharov, Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin. Their role in junking the Soviet regime was epochal, even if it was widely castigated in Russia in the aftermath of the post-Soviet socioeconomic meltdown.
But let’s get to Ukraine’s specifics. One approach to a half-way job is to paper over the dysfunction by adopting Russia’s model, in which someone like Prime Minister Vladimir Putin curbs the oligarchs’ infestation. Some thought Yulia Tymoshenko might take a similar route if elected president. That was pure speculation. Others made more definitive bets concerning Tymoshenko years ago. In the crucial February 2010 presidential election runoffs, those who were pro-democracy and were truly concerned for the national face of their country, including the former Yushchenko’s supporters, voted for Tymoshenko. Halychyna went over 90 percent in each of its three oblasts.
There is no doubt that Tymoshenko has become the symbol and the best hope for the national democratic Ukraine at this point. This battle must be faced now, in the now existing circumstances, not in some fuzzy future. Without victory there will be no survival for either a national or democratic Ukraine, and no semblance of economic justice.
It may be a long grind for generations to come.
The democratic camp, after taking a beating in 2010, has been messing around for too long. Its defeat is again guaranteed unless it understands that unity is the command of the day, regardless whether or not the elections next fall are rigged or honest.
It appears that a major progress has been made recently towards the unity of democratic forces. Olexandr Turchynov, first deputy leader of the Batkivshchyna party made it known on March 16 that there will be only one list of opposition candidates – with Tymoshenko as the leader — for the coming elections. If it holds, it will be a watershed, a momentous step towards victory.
But despite the president’s currently low poll numbers, the elections will not be a walk for the democrats. The result is likely to be a close split, honest or not. The Regions Party has a permanent hard-core anti-Orange constituency, determined to re-institutionalize its pro-Russian legacy and exert the same kind of pressure and intimidation that characterized Russia’s dominance over Ukraine.
A telling measure of that split is the recent 38 – 35 percent opinion of Tymoshenko’s prosecution as politically motivated, with the remaining uncertain 27 percent.
As insurance against possible personal fadeout of Yanukovych, the Regions Party has recently consecrated the poli-groomed Sergiy Tigipko as vice chair of the party, who recently dumped his previous political affiliation and apparently has demonstrated how to switch skates on both feet without using hands.
Probing the key aspects of the standoff, perhaps someone should ask who owns the land and soul of Ukraine? That’s where the dog is buried, says an old Ukrainian wisdom. It is located next to the doghouse where land ownership turnover to the oligarchs is now under consideration, as the high-flight society is gorging on a low-road trip.
As for Ukraine’s soul, the same robust assembly has plans to outsource it to the Moscow patriarchate, along with the Pechersky monastery. Hey, nation! Where is your pride buried?
Boris Danik is a retired Ukrainian-American living in North Caldwell,New Jersey.
