You're reading: VoxUkraine: How pain and injustice turned Ukraine into a ‘left wing’ nation

In 2017, 63 percent of Ukrainians believed that the government do not make efforts to reform the country. 77 percent of the population cannot name a single successful change. Most Ukrainians oppose liberal market reforms, such as land market or privatization. Ukrainian reformers tend to blame the Soviet mentality as an explanation. But that is not the case. In 1992 most Ukrainians were supportive of the land reform and privatization. That support was lost throughout the country’s post-soviet history.

The popularity of reforms and reformers has been studied in dozens of economic papers over the past decades. Ukraine appears in most of them. They show that the Soviet legacy, the population’s ignorance and populists’ myths are less to blame than is usually claimed. Yet the mass public dissatisfaction with the progress is the right way to lose another chance for success.

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