INTERVIEW: Dr. Frank Sysyn comments on Ukraine at eight years (08/29/99)

INTERVIEW: Dr. Frank Sysyn comments on Ukraine at eight years

Dr. Frank Sysyn is director of the Petro Jacyk Center for Ukrainian Historical Research at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies. The interview, which covered developments related to Ukraine as it marks its eighth anniversary of independence, was conducted in Toronto by Andrij Kudla Wynnyckyj.

Q: How is Ukraine faring in its project of state-building? Has its independence become more or less secure?

A: Few people could guess that in the eighth year of Ukrainian independence the project of Ukrainian state-building, and even the viability of Ukraine as a polity, would still be in such question.

Even as it was difficult to imagine the break-up of the Soviet Union a few years before it happened, just so it was recently difficult to conceive that Ukraine would still be so stagnant as a society today.

In the first few years of independence, many commentators were surprised by the stability of the Ukrainian state and its ability to negotiate certain problems of foreign affairs, as well as those involved in the establishment of its own domestic institutions.

The relative absence of strife, either on linguistic, ethnic or regional grounds, also suggested that Ukraine had overcome its major crisis. Still other positives were the country's natural resources, the new opportunities afforded by international aid programs, the cutting of some of its ties to Russia, and the appetite for power shown by its elites to run a country rather than a province.

When the reform-minded Leonid Kuchma came to power in 1994, there was every reason to expect progress.

Of course, it hasn't occurred. In the past two or three years, we've actually seen an erosion of some of the early accomplishments in state-building.

The question remains: will this current crisis be fatal, crippling, or will it simply dwarf the country's potential? By comparison, during the course of much of the century, Argentina was considered ready to greatly improve its position in the world, and yet didn't manage to do so.

Q: What are some of the more salient problems and disappointments?

A: Many believed, both within Ukraine and without, that the structures of independent statehood could be a major force of positive social transformation.

Many were confident that it would suffice if the rules of a civic society would be adopted and certain norms for cultural, religious and other life were be established.

In part, these expectations were due to a conceptual confusion. After all, statehood at the end of the 20th century is considerably different than it was at the outset of the century. States in the early period were indeed effective shapers of society, for example, in terms of language and cultural policies. This is much less true in the current global age, when things such as world diasporas and "languages of the marketplace" function regardless of the influence of states.

We in the diaspora, but also people in Ukraine, have been particularly surprised at the weakness of Ukrainian language and culture, even when the terror practices against them have been removed. Perhaps the wounds they sustained were greater than we had thought.

Probably, the expectation that administrative measures would be put into practice without a consensus in the élite was misguided. While an élite culture of Ukrainian visual artists and writers exists, it is almost entirely divorced from the popular level of culture, because the state abandoned the distribution system that formerly disseminated it.

Just as generals fail in the early going of a new war because they fight according to the old methods, so an old manner of resolving problems will not be effective in a changed set of circumstances.

This begs the question of whether the Ukrainian state is an effective mechanism at all. Does it set up the legal, economic and social structures in a fashion that allows a population to carry on productively with life? So far, it appears the Ukrainian state has failed this test.

With the failure to prompt the formation, for example, of real private enterprise and a market economy (largely because privatization measures were corrupt and half-hearted), there can be little prospect of people functioning economically outside state structures.

The result is a population that cannot break its dependence on the state, and yet the state cannot meet its payments to these dependents because the sham privatization that allowed wealthy, influential and even semi-criminal clans to take root has sapped the government's resources.

Furthermore, these clans are not yet interested in allowing the formation of a civic society and effective political structure that would spur growth or efficiency in production and distribution.

Q: Is the population, then, further alienated from this state and, by extension, from the idea of Ukrainian independence?

A: Ukraine's population has no real alternative to the state as an agent of social organization. It is trapped. There is considerable alienation from the current power structure. There is also alienation from what many conceive to be the results of the break-up of the USSR, including "reform," "Ukrainian independence" and "the national democrats."

Of course, in practical terms, reform has not been carried out and Ukrainian independence did not bring about the economic crisis in which the Soviet Union already found itself, although the USSR's break-up did serve to deepen some elements of that crisis.

Because of this, Ukraine's citizenry is finding it difficult to connect with espoused goals such as a prosperous or "European" society, and even more difficult to conceive how they might attain them.

Q: Is there an identifiable source of stagnation at the grassroots level?

A: Poverty and institutional breakdown seems to have caused a freezing of old social attitudes. Also, although one hears of a large exodus out of the country, there actually appears to be little movement within Ukraine, and very little contact between regions.

Ukraine is in particularly dire need of such movement to overcome various regional antagonisms and differences (linguistic and other) and promote greater integration.

In addition, for eight years we have heard the constant refrain, "young people in Ukraine think differently." And yet we know from North American experience that older people tend to be more consistent and effective in using their votes.

On the other hand, it's an even deeper issue in Ukrainian society, since if one is not in government, there's nowhere to go. Quite simply, the refusal to retire is endemic. This has blocked any generational shift that one might have expected to have begun by now.

Politically, there has been a tremendous decay in the leadership and the intellectual cadres of the national democratic movement. With the forces for reform outside of this camp very weak, and the forces of the left on the rise, national democrats have been maneuvered into reflexive support for existing state structures as a counter to threats to Ukrainian statehood.

Q: This process was already under way for some time, but do you think the death of Vyacheslav Chornovil accelerated it?

A: Perhaps his death accelerated it. One always hopes that such a cataclysm might bring about a resolution of this kind of stasis, but there are few signs that it will occur any time soon.

Some suggest that the Bulgarian option should be followed, whereby the left is allowed to take over, and through failure in governing finally unmask the bankruptcy of their ideology. This would clear the air of those who would insist on a path backward, and thereby make moving forward easier.

Others counter that this scenario would not unfold in this fashion in Ukraine, and instead the country would spin towards a situation similar to that in Belarus - the rise of a dictatorship with a stagnant economy.

And yet, Oleksander Moroz has shown that he is seen as "one of the few honest leaders," capable of marshalling popular support. It is an open question whether his "clean but ideological" leadership would compound Ukraine's economic problems, since he has shown no inclination to move forward with land privatization, and yet some analysts have pointed to a willingness to compromise rightward on other issues.

On the surface, it appears that Ukraine is headed for stagnation in another respect, in a re-election of President Kuchma. A great source of malaise has been the complete lack of ideological conviction of any sort on the part of the presidential administration. Many, particularly in the media, have come to view the administration as an enemy.

However, no one can gauge the extent of the alienation and anger of the largely elderly group of voters that are likely to participate in this fall's poll.

There are probably some surprises in store. The degree of anger may be higher than we assume and the presidential administration's ability to manipulate the vote made be lower. Anything is possible.

Q: Over the years, even as the domestic economy has suffered and its civic institutions appeared to be in disarray, Ukraine's foreign policy was conducted ably. Has this trend continued?

A: I believe Ukraine's international standing also has been damaged in the past two years. The success and forward motion of the country's foreign policy has halted. While the country is nominally continuing to integrate with European and other international bodies, one need only look at the Ukrainian government's rather confusing actions during the conflict in Kosovo to see that there is no longer a single set of Ukrainian policies.

There was confusion as to what to do with Ukraine's peacekeepers; one set of signals was sent by the Verkhovna Rada and another by the Foreign Affairs Ministry, and there was also a tendency to wait and see what Russia would do or say.

In other areas, it still remains highly questionable whether initiatives such as the Georgia-Ukraine-Azbekistan Azerbaijan-Moldovan (GUUAM) arrangement is viable because of difficulties in dealing with Moldova.

Q: Is Ukraine failing to capitalize on the efforts made by Poland, failing to heed advice that effectively seeks to shepherd Kyiv closer to Europe?

A: Poland is indeed trying to play a positive role in Ukraine, but it doesn't matter that much to the élites that control the country. Conceptually, Poland is still quite distant for Ukrainian minds, even those living in western regions.

First, the successes of the Polish economy and the Polish state are not seen as yardsticks for Ukraine, because Poland, it is said, did not have to deal with as many adverse conditions.

Second, there is still a very palpable post-imperial complex in Ukraine, whereby Poland is dismissed as a "little country," while Ukraine is seen as a former part of the one of the world's great powers.

Third, rather than enthusiasm for integration with Europe, there continues to be a strong current that favors neutrality or "non-bloc status" between Russia and the West. Of course, the prospect of actually joining Europe is not imminent, particularly because of the ruling élite's propensity to postpone important decisions. Europe has shown an insistence that any move toward integration be wholehearted.

Then again, Poland has a very strong economic and political interest in Ukraine (it has a better understanding of what the collapse of Ukraine would mean for everyone on the continent), and has already served as an intermediary for smoothing relations with Germany.

Poland's position on Ukraine is informed, to my mind, by a more realistic view than that of many in the West of Russia's potential, or lack thereof, to form a society with a stable economy and stable political structures.

To be fair, the expansion of NATO and the European Union eastward is not entirely without its backers in Kyiv, and all is certainly not lost on this front. The recent meeting of presidents in Lviv did bring Ukraine to the fore as a state.

Q: You mentioned the socio-economic "Belarus option." It seems that in geopolitical terms, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka's inclination towards some kind of Slavic union with Russia is gaining favor in Ukraine.

A: In the end, Ukraine will decide this issue. Lukashenka is viewed with skepticism by almost everyone, so it is not likely that any such move would be made while he is in office. In Russia, there's a lot of rhetoric on this score, but there is also a large body of the leadership in Moscow that doesn't want to deal with it creatively - it would much rather see a return to conditions wherein Russia simply dominates over the three countries.

Of course, if support for such a union continues to gather momentum in Ukraine, a willingness to negotiate might emerge in Russia's ruling circles. They would have to come to some form of compromise with their counterparts in Ukraine, which they have as yet been unwilling to contemplate.

However, the question of how the most recent "Time of Troubles" in Russia will end, and what effect this will have on Ukraine, is still very open.

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