NEWS AND VIEWS

Assessing Ukraine: Anders Aslund responds to Alexander Motyl

by Anders Aslund

In The Ukrainian Weekly (August 14), Alexander Motyl faults me for being overly critical of the Yushchenko-Tymoshenko government, with reference to my Washington Post article (May 18) on Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko's economic policies. By happenstance, I did not have time to respond before the Yushchenko-Tymoshenko team fell apart, but let me deal with the substantial arguments.

First, The Washington Post put the title "Orange Revolution Betrayed" on my op-ed article. As any writer should know, you do not choose the headline of an op-ed article. This is the prerogative of the newspaper editors. Since I did not use the words "betray" or "betrayal" anywhere in the article, nobody can accuse me of having used such a word.

Second, Prof. Motyl complains that the new Ukrainian government was criticized for its loud disagreements. Well, that government fell apart three weeks after the publication of his article. We would be very poor observers if we did not focus on the splits in a regime just before its collapse. A prime minister who publicly criticizes individual businessmen and members of her government of all kinds of immoral acts is an unusual occurrence worthy of attention. So is a president's repeated repudiation of his prime minister's major decisions. The discord in the former Ukrainian government was just extraordinary. To tell people not to pay attention to it is neither sensible nor realistic.

Third, Prof. Motyl also reacts against excessive discussion of the government's corruption (without reference to me). Well, since the government finally fell apart, President Viktor Yushchenko has accused former Prime Minister Tymoshenko of personal malfeasance to the order of 8 billion hrv, that is, almost $1.6 billion. Current and former administration members are hurling multi-million-dollar corruption accusations against one another. This is rather unusual. If we think that corruption is a bad thing, which of course we do, we had better pay attention to these interesting accusations. Corruption must never be swept under the carpet.

Fourth, Prof. Motyl dislikes the criticism of the Tymoshenko government's populist economic policies, arguing that every sensible government is populist in order to win elections. Yes, but to a degree. The Tymoshenko government's populism was just extraordinary, both in principle and in its effects. Over the past five years, Ukraine's GDP has grown by an annual average of 8.4 percent. Last year, it surged by 12.1 percent. During the first eight months of 2005, Ukraine's GDP increased by only 2.8 percent over the same period in 2004. The growth rate has fallen every month but July, and in August Ukraine's GDP contracted by 1.6 percent. Clearly, the Ukrainian economy is heading to a dismal growth rate of 2 to 3 percent this year. This is a unique deterioration. Last June, monthly GDP fell for the first time since 1999.

As I indicated last May, this decline can be explained almost entirely by the former government's economic policy. The main problem was the government's re-privatization debate, which undermined all property rights, leading to plummeting investment and construction (after a massive boom). Another concern was a massive increase in the total tax burden. A third issue was the willful and arbitrary intervention by the former prime minister in the economy, attempting to regulate prices and trade in gasoline, meat and grain. Promised market economic reforms, by contrast, were not delivered. For any economist commenting on Ukrainian economic policy, it would be dishonest not to pass a clear judgment.

For the rest, Prof. Motyl does two things. First, he emphasizes domestic political and democratic achievements. I agree. The current democratization is the main thing. The foreign policy changes after the Orange Revolution are also to be welcomed as great achievements, but that does not make the awful economic policies any better, and that happens to be my professional preoccupation.

Second, he falls into the old Ukrainian whining about how poor Ukraine is and how it has suffered throughout its history, and therefore nothing can be demanded from it. But many other nations have also suffered. Most of Ukraine's neighbors come to mind. Some nations prefer whining over actions, but sooner or later many nations come to their senses, realizing that only they suffer from the hypocrisy of low expectations. Poles used to whine for two centuries until they became serious about accomplishing something in 1989. Frankly, I had hoped that the departure from the old whining would be one of the main achievements of the Orange Revolution, which amounts to saying Ukraine is inferior and cannot become a normal country or compete with others. I hope Ukrainian patriots find statements of that nature denigrating. If you demand nothing of yourself, you will accomplish nothing.

Anders Aslund is director of the Russian and Eurasian Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, September 25, 2005, No. 39, Vol. LXXIII

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