KUCHMA AND KUCHMISM AS A PHENOMENON

(Part 3, Conclusion. For Parts 1 and 2, see Issues No. 16, 17 )

The Day’s research center presents the third part of a series aimed at understanding a large period in Ukraine’s latter-day history. Below, our regular contributors and experts Yevhen HOLOVAKHA, deputy director of the Institute for Social Studies; Andriy YERMOLAIEV, director of the Sophia Social Study Center; Vadym KARASYOV, director of the Institute for Global Strategies, and Volodymyr FESENKO, chairman of the board, Penta Political Study Center, discuss Leonid Kuchma’s presidency and its consequences for Ukraine.

POSITIVE CRITICISM THEORY

V. F.: Is it possible to rid ourselves of relapses into Kuchmism? It’s a good thing that there is a desire to rid ourselves of this. But there are objective factors that are making such relapses possible. One of the trends of the Kuchma era was a quiet and imperceptible change of political generations. The generation currently in power grew up during the Kuchma era, and in many respects it is affected by the Kuchmism virus. The positive thing is that many people in the current government reject Kuchmism. The problem is, what can they replace it with? What kind of model of human conduct, particularly in political and psychological terms? This model has not been created yet.

A.Ye.: They simply came up with a program of consensus democracy and talked a lot about it. But in the end they emerged as nihilists prepared to destroy everything they could lay their hands on. This contrast between words and deeds undermines the attitude to politics.

L.I.: Society today must respond to this threefold by working out new political projects: not a revanchist opposition on the part of those who lost the presidential election, but a line of conduct where freedom of speech isn’t a game, and where opposition means a competition of ideas aimed at upgrading this society and economy.

V.F.: The credit of trust that the new government has received hasn’t been exhausted. The new government must be criticized — personally, I define it as positive criticism — so that it doesn’t return to Kuchmism, albeit in new forms and on a new level. To prevent such a reverse transformation, we must constantly discuss whatever problems and shortcomings we detect there. Yet there are a number of positive trends.

L.I.: What can we do? Correctly diagnose ourselves so that we will not harbor any illusions, so that we can support healthy things and channel them into a vein in which they must work to raise our standard. We mustn’t call on them not to repeat Kuchmism. The important thing for them is not to repeat what they themselves did previously.

V.K.: But they did it as elements built into the system of Kuchmism. A new era is certainly coming. It marks a transition from Kuchmism — but to what? All we have are statements.

V.F.: Kuchma didn’t know. That’s why he said: tell me what to build.

V.K.: We know about European integration, NATO membership, and so on. However, the electorate didn’t give Yushchenko a mandate for these objectives. Therefore, we’ll still have European and Euro-Atlantic integration problems. Second, how will these two eras be similar and how will they be different? Somehow or other the new era will retain imitations and intrigues; it’ll be even more cynical in certain respects because a new generation is in power, people who grew up when initial capital was being accumulated. The main thing, however, is that unlike Kuchma’s era, which never went further than making brief comments on some political event or another, which stuck to the logic of short-term tactics and perhaps short-term strategy, this era has established broad-range objectives. Second, the statements of the new politicians are marked by a very elevated and fundamentally moral rhetoric; this may result in double standards becoming part and parcel of Ukrainian politics. This is already present in our foreign policy, where the moral value standard doesn’t satisfy the national interests in our relations with certain countries. The same will happen in our domestic policy. It’s already evident against the backdrop of revolutionary rhetoric and revolutionary enthusiasm — that’s right, Andriy, what’s happening in the economy isn’t military capitalism but revolutionary socialism. Against the background of revolutionary events in the economy we are seeing highly moral rhetorical figures and tropes being used, as a linguist would likely put it.

Technologies.

V.K.: Yes. And this moral value, religious payload, ostentatious piety that is being demonstrated by the new government against the backdrop of cynicism in the economy and politics may stoke the fires of social protest and rejection.

V.F.: That’s what happened during Kuchma’s second term.

V.K.: Precisely. And these double standards and, forgive me for saying so, overstated piety that sometimes manifests itself in our foreign and domestic policies, all this may obliterate Ukraine’s positive image that was created after the Orange Revolution...

...and discredit European integration.

V.K.: Absolutely. It may discredit the lofty European integration ideas, let alone creating a potential of inner social tensions in Ukraine. I’m afraid our pendulum may swing from European to Russian integration.

L.I.: Remember how much time and energy we dedicated to the formation of the government’s agenda before the elections? I’m not saying that anyone expected the government to accept that agenda. However, totally ignoring expert findings is evidence that someone is eager to make his own mistakes. The Maidan was good, but there are also concrete challenges. The pro-Russian project seems to have been discarded, replaced by a Ukrainian one. The main thing would seem to be to put together a professional team and proceed to develop the Ukrainian project. But what’s actually happening? An electoral pie is being shaped for the 2006 campaign, in the hope that they will be loved for the Orange Revolution only (the way Kravchuk is remembered for the Belovezhskaya Pushcha accords and bloodless separation from the USSR in 1991). There is, however, a competitive environment, a displeased Russia, internal problems, and the inability to meet such professional challenges in every segment. It’s a torch burning close to a powder keg.

V.K.: What about the new government’s program? It’s nonexistent; instead we have a set of moral imperatives. We don’t know what kind of program the government is following.

A.Ye.: As for what the new government can actually accomplish — I don’t mean starting Monday, but in the nearest future — I’d like to say a few words about the metamorphoses of foreign political strategies. First, the new government has already suffered a fiasco trying to set a course on new European romanticism. Proof of this is found in the series of ambitious but absolutely impractical trips made by the president and cabinet members to European countries. This is a generally acknowledged fact. Second, even now we can see the threat of Euro- Atlantic rapprochement getting well ahead of that in Europe. Western analysts are pointing to the threat of Ukraine becoming another Greece or Turkey, but the difference is that these countries, which became NATO members and closely collaborated with NATO countries, didn’t have to cope with the eastern issue facing Ukraine.

L.I.: We also believed we could act that way. But the question is, how? Euro-Atlantic integration demands a 2% GDP. The current budget envisages considerably smaller appropriations for the army, meaning there won’t be a full-scale military reform.

A.Ye.: Kuchma’s paradox is that he was really effective as a state-building manager. By this I mean that the state construction project under Kuchma was purely formal; another thing is that it turned out to be a shallow one. Later, nation-forming, nation- building tasks were formulated by experts from the humanities sphere, then by politicians, and then they were picked up by the government. It was essentially the completion of democratic reforms. For the Ukrainian elite, the complexity of formulating these tasks was that the issue of building a nation had to be solved at a time when self-identity was degrading, as was the actually limited sovereignty. Today these tasks have been taken over by the new government. There is a real threat, however, that the new administration will unwittingly replace the nation-building tasks, as a complex social and humanitarian project, by ethnic or civic construction. If this is the case, xenophobia will surely flare up and the problems of national development will be ethnicized. This will be a normal reaction on the part of a society that doesn’t understand the tasks it is facing.

This task must be rehabilitated. Thank God, this task isn’t news to anyone; it was formed by the transitional, revolutionary period. It’s part of the revolutionary agenda.

APROPOS OF CYNICISM AND PRICE-SETTING

Ye. H. : In my opinion, the problem with the new government is that it is rejecting everything that was done before, and it’s trying to use the empty-head or empty-vessel theory and build something new. Hence the slogans calling for the replacement of all of Kuchma’s corrupt bureaucrats; take everything away from the rich and give it to the poor; let the poor eat all they want, even if it’s only for a couple of months. The total rejection of the past, rather than its serious analysis, invariably results in an even greater number of mistakes. I think the biggest problem is that this anti-Kuchmism may quickly become neo- Kuchmism, or worse still, neo-communism. I am hearing a great deal of communist rhetoric these days, which ought to have been forgotten long ago. I do wish that the Kuchma era were subjected to a serious and comprehensive analysis, so conclusions could be made, leaving good things, destroying bad things, so we could show some progress.

A.Ye.: To be effective, those in power invariably resort to cynical acts; they wield power in a manner that can secure their status. There are very many wealthy individuals among the current political leadership, and their interests are connected with the redistribution and use of what others used to possess.

V.K.: I think that we should figure out the difference between cynicism and price-setting. I wonder whether the Kuchma era was characterized by cynicism and the new era, by price- setting; or maybe vice versa. Second, we are constantly encountering the issue of links between the personality, politician, situation, era, and the times, because all the good things we’ve had we did despite rather than owing to certain politicians. One thing is obvious: politicians and society often find themselves in a situation of conformity, and Kuchma’s emergence and ten-year term of office are definitely not coincidental; it’s a characteristic of this society. Except that it’s not clear who is the decent or unrespectable double, as a psychoanalyst would put it. Either this society is Kuchma’s double or it is some collective mental projection, which is more likely. In this sense it’s important for the coming era; how well the new regime and new society will correspond to each other. In aphoristic terms, the previous era was one of unrealized hopes and lost opportunities. So far, I see the new era as one of overstated expectations and the absence of opportunities to make these hopes come true — and these hopes can be substituted by revolutionary expediency. I also see this expediency as an attempt to achieve a compromise between overstated expectations, hopes, attractions, and the actual resources possessed by the new government and politicians.

Ye.H.: Right. During the Kuchma era the government didn’t try to create a sacred aura around itself. Now we have a very tangible element of sacralization. This reminds me of the White Brotherhood; this was a very bizarre period. I only hope we don’t have an Orange Brotherhood. In general, a modern society avoids sacralization. But we have this threat and I’d like to caution against it.

V.F.: I find myself acting as an advocate. What is there to inspire hopes that there will be no transformation and revival of Kuchmism? First, the new government relied on a mass and institutionally complete political movement that had gone through the school of opposition. Kuchma came to power owing only to a situational, political conglomerate; Bonapartism was present in the struggle for power and afterwards. Today a new form of party system is being created. I think the new trend to create a party in power is an attempt to borrow from Russia’s rather than the Soviet Union’s experience. In this sense there is a hope that there were many among those that fought against Kuchmism and helped Yushchenko win the elections who even now are critically assessing the new government’s trends. This is precisely what we understand as positive criticism, which relies on certain values. These people know what they want and where they are headed. That’s something we didn’t have on a mass scale in the mid-1990s.

Thank God, the new cabinet was formed without looking back at what they wanted when they were waging the revolution. Society didn’t even have time to utter a peep. So, it’s safe to assume that changes will be made using whatever patterns they choose. Opposition finance centers will be attacked methodically, under the pretext of combating various forms of crime.

V.F.: There is such a tendency, but even during the formation of the government one could discern an innovative approach; this government was formed based on an agreement — albeit informal and uninstitutionalized — between various political parties. This government exists de facto rather than de jure, yet in many respects it is essentially constitutional, something we didn’t have under Kuchma.

L.I.: They didn’t promise a political union but a partially constitutional government and an opportunity to work for the good of Ukraine, regardless of who was where and who voted for whom. I’m not saying that this can be trusted. I’m saying that they did make such declarations. Then they made some fast substitutions, which was probably correct from the standpoint of political logic. On the other hand, it’s a trap that will not let us live normally until the parliamentary elections.

A.Ye.: What can we hope for? I’ve often talked about how this government and this president look. I believe that political reform could play a very important role. This is a trite and essentially exhausted subject, but if this reform happens in 2005, we’ll have tectonic shifts.

L.I.: Look what’s happening. All the political elites agree to the reform, even those that until recently adamantly rejected its feasibility. Was it because they knew that they couldn’t expect anything good from a consolidated government?

V.F.: Efforts were made during the Kuchma period to discard the Soviet mentality, but such partial attempts proved futile. Now we’re in the process of ridding ourselves of Kuchmism.

V.K.: What makes one feel pessimistic is that the new government doesn’t actually have a new opposition. The previous regime never became mature enough to have it. Most likely we’ll never have a respectable and creative opposition. Voting for the prime minister and the budget was a vivid manifestation of Kuchmism in politics as practiced in Ukraine at the time. All of a sudden they had 376 votes, with every MP with his hand in his pocket showing the middle finger.

V.F.: The new opposition will emerge after the elections in 2006; it will be sired by the new regime. Also, it’s a positive fact that the new government is heterogeneous because this is a precondition of progress.

POLITICAL STUDIES ON-LINE

What does the past decade mean to you personally?

Ye.H.: I have conflicting emotions. After all, I spent 10 years under President Leonid Kuchma and all those years I oscillated contrary to the “general line.” I was resolutely opposed to him as a presidential candidate because I had been bitterly disappointed in him as a prime minister. Then gradually I convinced myself that there were positive aspects to the regime — we’ve discussed these. In a way I believed that it shouldn’t be destabilized. The mid-1990s marked a period of an especially strong, objective destabilization of society, in the course of privatization, reallocation of property, and accumulation of capital. Anything could have happened at the time. When they invited me to join a board of experts subordinated to the president, I agreed. I believed that my recommendations would be useful. It’s another matter altogether that the board turned out to be a purely nominal entity. I realized that no one needed any recommendations; that decisions were being made according to a different principle. I was pained to witness brutality and cynicism. Add to this Kuchma’s remark about the passenger liner that was shot down [over the Black Sea] — when he said that, after all, it wasn’t much of a tragedy.

After that I quit the board of experts. What would I like to note in particular? I didn’t feel scared. I took the step of writing a nasty statement to the effect that I didn’t want to remain in their ranks, etc., and submitted it. However, I didn’t think that I would be persecuted afterwards. I realized that it was my personal stand and that it had nothing whatsoever to do with what was happening in society. The [previous] regime also demonstrated an inadequate attitude to the media and it made me suffer. Politicians form a very soft environment that can be pressured. The media constitute a tough one, here only a degree of pressure can be brought to bear, but once the grip relaxes, it hits back like a compressed spring. This is precisely what happened during the tape scandal and during the last elections. I didn’t feel scared, nor did I feel dependent on Kuchma. I retained some personal freedom. Now we often hear that there was no freedom of speech at the time, and that now one can say whatever one wants. This is baloney, of course. Personally, I said whatever I wanted to say and was responsible for every word I wrote. There was a lot of criticism of the regime and I didn’t feel that I would be persecuted as a result. Therefore, I’d rather say that to me personally that period was marked by an awareness of some wasted influence. Decisions were then being made behind closed doors, in a very narrow circle, without paying any attention to the recommendations of people who ex officio had to formulate and submit such recommendations. I also felt there was nothing I could do. I would describe it as a period of enlightenment. And if I took part (I did try to take an active part) in social processes, through the media, it was mostly in terms of enlightenment. I’d be happy if the new leadership realized that views expressed by competent people should actually be taken into account rather than put on record and shelved.

We’re a very long way from this.

Ye.H.: No, why? Not if they adopt the idea of national reports on the most important aspects of our development. We must have a policy that is formulated in accordance with a certain strategy, not spontaneously, and with the aid of competent domestic as well as foreign experts. We could discuss a number of issues with foreign colleagues. Those are the kinds of prospects I’d like to see.

V.K.: Your question sounds very existentialist. Much could be said on the subject, but I’d like to focus on two things. Professionally speaking, that period was quite interesting: it was one big political experiment, improvisation, intrigue, etc. And all of this provided ample material for political studies and a good incentive. In the West, the situation is rather dull, considering that there are set patterns. Here new institutions are being set up, and political science is being studied not according to textbooks but daily realities, live broadcasts, in an on-line mode. It’s a true political online operation with all its shortcomings.

Like open-heart surgery.

V.K.: Probably. Bad political experience and the negative aspects of that era are very good for political scientists and experts as material for analysis. This is good material, data, bytes to generate an analytical pretext and to evolve. As for the civic component, I became aware of my new Ukrainian national identity, back in the 1990s, not because of but despite everything that was happening. A revolution of identity was taking place. Not because it was the Kuchma era, but because it was an era of a new, independent state, and we found ourselves involved in the process. Joseph Heller writes in his book Picture This that for Rembrandt the best years were behind, but the best pictures were still ahead. I do hope that the best years, books, and days, including The Day, are still ahead.

A.Ye.: Those ten years meant a lot to me. Without a doubt, those were the years of my professional maturation. We entered that era when we were very young, almost fresh out of university. That era began when I was jobless, but then events took a sudden course, and my friends and I found ourselves in the administration of the ex-president of the first convocation. I didn’t mention Kuchma the legend for no reason. At the time, many of us believed in that legend and shared many of his convictions. And so, considering our age and the desire to be involved, we worked hard and honestly on the president’s original team. Each of us did his best. By the way, we quit in 1996 of our own accord, without taking any vengeful steps. The “royal court” mentioned earlier was one of the main reasons behind our disillusionment, although I can’t say that we were disappointed at the time in the president and his regime. There were other motives, mostly inner ones. It so happened that I had worked in the apparatus of one of the governments, and I saw with my own eyes many things associated with capitalism and power. And so I’d rather divide those ten years into two stages: (a) connection to power structures and (b) inner independence that began in 1999. I had become a Ukrainian in those years and entered the era as a convinced and theoretically rather well equipped Eurasian. I’m not rejecting what I did and what views I harbored at the time, but I did undergo a transformation, probably because I’m a child of the times and my country. And the conclusion I drew is quite simple and everybody must know it: Do it yourself! Roughly speaking, I was left disillusioned and no longer wanted to work for someone else. Well, this doesn’t mean that you won’t work for anyone else or that you must quit your profession, because a profession yields profit and allows you to move forward. However, your job must make sense; you mustn’t do something that doesn’t make sense even though it pays well.

And so the last period is associated with projects that I consider my own: the Sophia Center in 2002, the Ukrainian Club — practically everybody at this roundtable is a member in one way or another. There is a project for 2005, a forum in Sevastopol. I hope it will work and we’ll meet there this summer. And so the do-it-yourself principle is the main conclusion I reached after the Kuchma era. Whether or not I’ll be able to implement it now that we have a new-ism (we haven’t figured out which exactly) is hard to say. I know one thing; I’m not giving this thing to the new regime. If it makes any encroachments on it, I’ll fight it as best I can.

V.F.: I’ve worked out an interesting formula, juxtaposing things social and personal. I remembered polls in which respondents were more critical about the situation in their country than their personal situations. Likewise, in assessing the Kuchma era, we have directed many critical words at Leonid Kuchma and that period. As for personal trajectory, I found that period very positive, although in many respects paradoxical and complicated. Of all the years of independence, 1993 was the hardest for me. It was a period of decline, when for the first time in my life I felt I had become accomplished professionally and socially. I was born in a family of modest means but now I was a family man, my children were growing, yet I felt I was on the verge of poverty and had to struggle to survive. I had to rebuild my life in many ways. In 1994 I consciously voted for Kuchma, although I could see and critically analyze his activities as prime minister. Like many others in eastern Ukraine, I voted for him also because at the time Kuchma was closer to me than Kravchuk. I knew the type. The Kuchma period was when I started mastering new professional and social practices. Whereas before I mostly did teaching jobs, now I had certain skills in the nongovernmental and nonprofit sector. I had accumulated interesting but controversial experience in the International Renaissance Foundation. Now I knew what project thinking was all about, how to write and evaluate projects; I could appreciate the performance of international structures. In 1994 I made my first trip abroad and could draw comparisons. After that I was even more convinced that we had to set our course on the West. Although I’m Russian mentally and ethnically, I represent a very interesting phenomenon; over the years I have become Ukrainian in political and civic terms. Paradoxically, I was becoming Ukrainian while visiting Russia and the West. My Ukrainian essence was asserting itself. Professionally, I drifted away from academic political science and toward the applied one. In a way, my personal trajectory and my colleagues’ experiences are very similar. Here very interesting things can happen. First, when you confront the world of practical politics, you suddenly realize that academic knowledge is useful, but practical politics is different; it’s being implemented according to different principles. A combination of academic and applied knowledge is necessary. Familiarizing myself with big-time politics was a revelation rather than a shock. Before, I had suspected that members of parliament and noted politicians in power weren’t all geniuses but mostly ordinary people, even if they have a broader world outlook, different kinds of experience, and different qualities. But when I saw them at arm’s length — they say that people who visit a meat-packing factory don’t eat sausages afterwards — the same thing happened. If most of the electorate could see the lawmakers at work in the Verkhovna Rada, I’m afraid the next elections would show a miserable turnout.

They’d probably opt for a monarchy.

V.F.: Maybe a monarchy or a dictatorship, I’m not sure. Unfortunately, we don’t hold parliamentarism in great esteem anyway. Getting to know practical politics, including what they’re doing in parliament, adds to the cynical attitude to politics and politicians. In fact, I know the new team well enough. It has many people who really want changes for the better, but there are also quite a few who are still very much under the spell of Kuchmism. Nevertheless, I regard our future with optimism. As for my personal prospects, I’ve noticed that changes take place every 5-7 years, so I expect them in 2006-07.