EDITORIAL: Creeping fatalism (09/06/98)

EDITORIAL

Creeping fatalism

Ukraine has managed to do it again: take a step backward as it trudges ahead slowly with political and economic reforms.

This time the movement was caused by the recently-elected chairman of the Verkhovna Rada, Oleksander Tkachenko, who decided to take advantage of the invitation handed to him by Ukraine's president to give the official Independence Day address. He used the opportunity to present a very dubious and arcane argument that Ukraine is part of a Slavic brotherhood that it cannot live without, and that the Soviet Union played a positive role in helping to develop a Ukrainian identity and a Ukrainian state.

Please remember that this was a gathering of high government officials and invited guests to celebrate seven years of Ukraine's independence from the Soviet Union.

Instead of concentrating on that which led to the August 24, 1991, proclamation, or that which has happened since, good and bad, Mr. Tkachenko came up with statements praising the Soviet Union and calling for closer ties with Slavic brethren Belarus and Russia.

The 59-year-old Mr. Tkachenko, a leader of the Agrarian Party and the last minister of agriculture of the Ukrainian SSR, without reservation told the crowd, "I ask you not to be ashamed of the 70-plus Soviet years. This is our history, our life. Without those years there would have been no Ukraine."

At other moments, he called Russia and Ukraine "twin sisters," stated that Kyivan Rus' was actually a Slavic empire and not a Ukrainian one, and declared one-time First Secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine Volodymyr Shcherbytsky to be one of the great builders of the Ukrainian state.

The speech was received coolly by most of the government leaders sitting on the dais and by the audience. But that is small consolation. As a reporter from the Lviv-based newspaper Visti z Ukrainy pointed out to our Kyiv correspondent, as little as three or four years ago such remarks would have been whistled down, not merely received with cool reservation.

Today there is a creeping fatalism moving into Ukrainian society that perhaps the "old days" were not so bad and the country has no choice but to return to a Soviet Communist system, even with all its faults. After seven years of "democracy" and "free markets" people do not see a light at the end of the economic tunnel they have been thrust into.

As we all know, wages and pensions are still not being paid. The average Ukrainian makes enough to survive, but not enough to live comfortably.

Ukrainians do not see that their country still remains in a transition stage. They want results. They want to see that capitalism offers not only the government and business leader, but also the average person, some ability to climb the economic ladder. They properly blame their leaders for not moving decisively in one direction or the other. They also blame them for large-scale corruption: leaders filling their pockets at the expense of the people.

Nonetheless, Mr. Tkachenko's speech did not impress as words that reflected widespread popular opinion. They were merely those of a long-time government apparatchik who still has not come to terms with a Ukraine separate from big brother (twin sister?) Russia.

After the Parliament chairman was elected in July, politicians as well as political pundits said there was no need to worry about the election of the controversial and politically left-oriented Mr. Tkachenko: he was a pragmatist and would work to get economic reform laws passed in the Verkhovna Rada.

By his words, it seems the "pragmatic" Mr. Tkachenko fooled everybody, including President Kuchma, who gave the Verkhovna Rada chairman the venue from which to spout. Now, however, he has revealed his true stripes for those who hadn't noticed them earlier.

In the end, the question for Ukraine remains one that has been discussed often: Can anybody expect former die hard Communists to change that in which they believed for a good portion of their adult lives? So far the evidence suggests not.

That, unfortunately, also seems to mean that Ukraine will have to wait at least another generation for a leadership that truly believes in an independent Ukraine, democracy and free markets. Until then each step forward will be a difficult one.

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