Kuchma administration authors promote focus on Eurasia (02/25/96)

Kuchma administration authors promote focus on Eurasia

by Marta Kolomayets
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - Well into its fifth year of independence, recognized by more than 150 countries throughout the world as a fledgling democracy committed to market reforms, it would seem that Ukraine has already begun to lay a foundation to secure a place for itself on the map of the Western world.

Recently joining the ranks of the Council of Europe, gaining support from such institutions as the International Monetary Fund and forging partnerships with member-countries of the G-7, Ukraine seems to have found a niche for itself among the European family of nations. And U.S. President Bill Clinton honored Ukraine's historic roots during his May 1995 state visit to Kyiv, saluting it as "one of Europe's oldest nations and youngest democracies."

However, three recently published books - written by high-level members of President Leonid Kuchma's administration - have sent out some alarming signals, as it appears these officials are aiming to construct a Russian authoritarian state in Ukraine with a focus not on Europe, but on Eurasia.

The content of the books is less distressing than the fact that the authors belong to President Kuchma's innermost circle, the men behind the administration's policies, the spokesmen for Ukraine's national interests, the makers of the country's image.

The three books are:

· Volodymyr Hryniov's "New Ukraine: How I See It," (one book released in both Russian and Ukraine, 99 pages in each language;

· Dmytro Vydrin and Dmytro Tabachnyk's "Ukraine on the Threshold of the XXI Century, Political Aspect" [sic] (one book released in Ukrainian and in poor English, 125 pages in each language); and

· Andriy Derkach, Serhiy Veretennikov and Andriy Yermolayev's "The Present, Which Is Lasting Forever, Ukraine: Four Years of its Path" (237 pages in Russian only, with plans for a Ukrainian-language version to be released this year).

Mr. Hryniov is President Kuchma's adviser on issues of regional policy; while Mr. Vydrin, until December 18, 1995, was a presidential adviser on domestic policy.

Mr. Tabachnyk, the best-known name in this collection of authors, is the most visible. A person who began his political career in 1992 as press secretary to then Prime Minister Kuchma, he helped manage Mr. Kuchma's victorious presidential campaign. Perhaps as a reward for his loyal service, Mr. Tabachnyk, 32, was named presidential chief of staff when Mr. Kuchma took office in 1994.

Dr. Derkach is the deputy director of the Presidential Comptroller's Office, while Messrs. Veretennikov and Yermolayev both work in the information/analytical service of the presidential administration, the former as a director, the latter as a consultant.

"I imagine that if any staff members in Bill Clinton's administration were to write these kinds of books, they'd be out of a job the next day. For that matter I can't imagine they would write such books, unless of course they were planning to retire," said Petro Matiaszek, executive director of the Council of Advisers to the Parliament.

Indeed, in the United States, the new book "Primary Colors," described as a roman á clef about the 1992 presidential campaign in America, authored by "Anonymous," has caused quite a stir and has many guessing who would pen such a book. George Stephanopoulos, the senior White House adviser, said recently that the author was not necessarily out of the Clinton campaign. If the person had been, he told The New York Times, "it would be hard for me to express how angry I am."

Even in neighboring Russia, Vyacheslav Kostikov, the outspoken and independent-minded former presidential press secretary to Boris Yeltsin, recently released a book called "Farewell to the President." Mr. Kostikov, who became Russia's ambassador to the Vatican after being relieved of his press secretarial duties, was ousted from this diplomatic posting the day his book came out. He said in a recent interview he wrote the book knowing full well what the consequences would be.

To be sure, the fact that such books have been published in Ukraine testifies to the country's newfound freedom of speech - after decades of repression and tomes of samvydav read surreptitiously and discussed in hushed tones.

But, persistent questions remain. Among them: why were these books published now, and why were they written by government officials?

Two of the books were published by Lybid Publishers ("Ukraine on the Threshold..." and "The Present, Which Is Lasting Forever...," which was the vanguard publisher for Ukrainian history books before independence. Among the titles this publishing house boasts is the already classic "Ukraine, a History," by Orest Subtelny, released in the Ukrainian language in 1991, Taras Hunczak's "Ukrainian History: The First Half of the 20th Century," Marta Bohachevska-Chomiak's "White on White," a history of Ukrainian feminism from 1884 to 1939, as well as Ivan Krypiakevych's "History of Ukrainian Culture."

"We took on these projects intentionally; we were looking for something provocative which would get a discussion going," said Svitlana Holovka, the editor-in-chief of the two books, which were released in October and November 1995.

No one can argue that discussion is not an important factor in developing thoughts and ideas, but the two works were released by Lybid in a limited edition. According to Mr. Holovko, only 1,000 copies of each book were printed, and all the copies were immediately handed over to the author. So, how much discussion can a book that is impossible to obtain generate?

Well, the Vydrin/Tabachnyk book did indeed cause a flurry of excitement. As pointed out in a recent article by Victor Baciuk on the pages of The Weekly, the thesis of the book is that the future of Ukraine lies not in Europe, but in the Eurasian continent, where Ukraine should be a "strategic partner of Russia."

Despite rumors that President Kuchma had pulled the book off the presses, no one has been able to confirm this. Indeed, one editor at Lybid, who did not want to be identified, said the reason for the haste in which the book appeared - complete with typographical errors and a bad English-language translation - was because Mr. Tabachnyk needed to submit it to his examining board before he was awarded a doctorate this autumn. The book, financed by the Ukrainian Fund in Support of Research in the Sphere of National Security and the MacArthur Foundation in the U.S. (referred to in the book's acknowledgments as the MacArthur Fund), is not available at bookstores, kiosks or book fairs. The few copies that do circulate in Kyiv are said to be copies stolen off the printing presses.

President Kuchma has never mentioned the book in public, but in several private meetings he has said he has neither read the Vydrin/Tabachnyk work, nor is aware of its contents.

Ivan Lozowy, executive director of the Institute of Statehood and Democracy in Kyiv, is convinced, however, that the ideas expressed in this book, as well as the Hryniov and Derkach/Veretennikov/ Yermolayev works, convey President Kuchma's line.

"The general policy of this administration is that Ukraine is some kind of amorphous, ethnically neutral state, some multi-ethnic republic," he explained.

"The fact that high-positioned government officials get away with this with no repercussions is proof of that," he added. (Mr. Vydrin's departure from the administration in December is believed to be unrelated to the book. He was one of three aides who left at the time, and news reports did not cite the book as a cause for his dismissal.)

"President Kuchma should be trying to restore a sense of Ukrainian national identity in his state. This is his mistake; this powerful idea should be tapped into," said Mr. Lozowy.

Instead, Mr. Kuchma has as his adviser on regional affairs a man who criticizes the idea of a national state and prefers to see Ukraine as a federation of loosely strung-together regions - Mr. Hryniov.

Mr. Hryniov's book was published by the prestigious Abrys Publishing House, which among its first projects in 1991 released a book of Ukrainian heraldry. The Hryniov book is unique in presentation: released in a small soft-cover format, half of it is published in Russian; but when you flip it upside down and turn it around, you have the identical text in Ukrainian.

Mr. Hryniov, a leader of the Party of the Inter-Regional Bloc for Reforms, does not reveal who financed publication of his book, which was released in May 1995 in an edition of 5,000 copies - all of which the author picked up from the printer for his own use and distribution.

In a review of the book published in the parliamentary newspaper Holos Ukrainy (Voice of Ukraine) on December 12, 1995, signed by national democratic deputies Roman Bezsmertnyi, Levko Horokhivsky, Levko Lukianenko, Pavlo Movchan, Volodymyr Yavorivsky and others, as well as leading Ukrainian activists, the authors state that Mr. Hryniov regards the new Ukraine as a new colony, where the Russian language is on equal, if not higher footing than the Ukrainian language. The author goes on at length about the Russian language, they note, devoting one full chapter to the language issue, and coming to the conclusion that the state should speak the language of its people, and not vice-versa. Mr. Hryniov also promotes a cultural, economic, political and military union with Russia, surmising that, without Russia, Ukraine will be just a provincial territory.

Mr. Hryniov writes: "Throughout history, an important fact in the social development of the majority of Ukraine's current territory was the phenomenon of unity and co-existence of two very similar peoples - similar in language, culture and historic past - the Ukrainians and the Russians."

Mr. Hryniov is particularly critical of western Ukrainians, whom he characterizes as nationalists, and refers to nationalism as a "tragic consequence of a difficult historic past for the people of the western regions of Ukraine."

Indeed, Mr. Hryniov comes to the conclusion that "Ukraine can develop happily as a state only if it excludes any kind of national priorities from its agenda."

The Russian-language book "The Present..." also concentrates on the idea of a multi-ethnonational orientation for Ukraine, despite the fact that nearly 75 percent of the country's population is ethnically Ukrainian.

Mykola Tomenko, a historian who is vice-president of the Ukrainian Perspective Fund and director of the Institute of Post-Communist Society in Kyiv, notes that this book even argues that "total Ukrainianization suffocates the rights of Russians who feel themselves strangers at someone else's party."

The Vydrin/Tabachnyk book includes a chapter titled "Russians in Ukraine," from which an excerpt follows (in the book's English-language version): "Really, Russians have some reasons to feel discomfort in Ukraine. First of all, it concerns the status, rights, and opportunities of Russian language in political and social life..."

Mr. Tomenko observed that the authors of all three books think it important to weaken the influence of government representatives who hail from Ukraine's western regions and to strengthen the influence of Russians.

For example, Messrs. Vydrin and Tabachnyk write:

"One is able to foresee that the main part of Russian diaspora in due time will take part in political life, trying to increase the volume of their rights. This process will be carried out with the help of different mechanisms and factors...the Russian minority's fighting for places in the high organs of power with the aim to decrease the influence of dominating in policy representatives of Western regions will be more intensive. The key questions, due to them there will be conflicts in the Parliament and in the highest structures, undoubtedly will be the following: changes in external policy of Ukraine, Ukraine-Russia interrelations, the character and level of coordination. The political course of Ukraine will be essentially changed and reoriented from the West to the East, if the certain critical Russian mass gets the highest echelons of power." [sic]

In pursuing these three books what becomes evident is a view of Ukraine in some sort of ill-defined "Eurasian union," whose economic sphere is dictated by the red directors (former Communist Party members who have gotten rich on state enterprises) as well as financial industrial groups that focus on two spheres of development, the high-tech industry and the natural resource industry of gas, oil and coal.

Not one of the three books discusses any kind of cultural policy, nor is there any exploration of spiritual, cultural or historical legacy.

Indeed, pointed out Mr. Matiaszek, what is missing is an ideology. "Ideology was always regarded as a bad word, so now it is just avoided."

Messrs. Vydrin and Tabachnyk even note in their work that President Kuchma has been burdened with the "national-liberal policy" course of his predecessor, Leonid Kravchuk, which is supported by the West, namely the United States and Western democratic organizations. They note "the artificial and excessive 'elitarization' of Ukraine on the international level, carried out by the Atlantic West, to prolong maximally the opposition between Kyiv and Moscow and finally to shape the buffer character of "Euro-Asian belt,' still not formed, which Ukraine is going to join." [sic]

The authors of both Lybid publications promote the idea that the U.S. has been intent on establishing a new world order, and it has been interested in giving Ukraine high priority in this "new era" policy, under the condition that the "algorithms of Ukrainian policy had to be coordinated with and depended on the interests of the world leader" (i.e., Bill Clinton). [sic]

The lack of direction for Ukraine is what is most disconcerting for the citizens of Ukraine, observers here pointed out.

"What I see here is a bigger problem: there is no administration policy, and so it seems that Ukraine does not know where it is going. There is no vision, no sense of policy. So what emerges: bureaucracy in the worst sense of the world. It seems that they've been reduced to playing survival of the fittest," said Mr. Matiaszek.

Viktor Tsymbaliuk, a member of the Rukh leadership who reviewed the Vydrin/Tabachnyk book for the Rukh weekly newspaper Chas/Time, wrote that the authors regard the development of parties and the search for compromise in government policy as a course without a future.

"The search for compromises contradicts the immediate need to accept quick and radical decisions," write the authors, who also explain that there are no parties that tackle economic reforms. There are also no parties that have been able to lay a strong base, no dominant center, note the presidential advisers.

And, they continue, the country never had a political elite; the Communist Party was something even bigger. There were no leaders, and even today, they write, the leaders offer words but are not action-oriented.

What is clearly lacking in Ukraine is the absence of a party structure, the lack of political backing that could give a leader a solid foundation to build upon, explained Mr. Matiaszek. "Where can the president turn for support?

"Although I don't think these books will have a great impact on society," added Mr. Lozowy, "they do show Ukraine's political backwardness and a lack of responsibility to the state and to the people."

Mr. Tsymbaliuk, who said he is convinced all the books came out with Mr. Kuchma's blessing, noted:

"If you take what Vydrin and Tabachnyk say for the truth, then they build a pretty convincing argument that Ukraine, with President Kuchma at the helm, is building an oligarchy with an authoritarian political regime, where the interests of the industrial, corrupt pro-Russian elite are a top priority."

"I wonder if the president is grateful to the authors for exposing the secret Kuchma ideology - one that promotes the Ukrainian president as the leader of the left-centrist forces, one who is gearing his energies toward Russia and Eurasia, as promised during his presidential campaign," noted Mr. Tsymbaliuk.

Mr. Tomenko, however, was more cautious in his analysis: "the publication of these books shows that the presidential team is building a Russian state. The question remains: What kind of state is the president building?"

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