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Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty
Henry M. Robert

Aboard the Titanic 

22 December, 1998 - 00:00


Every Russian visitor to Ukraine is now anticipated with special interest.
It is obvious that the Russian economic and financial crisis is not a local
event, and everyone will have to find a way to escape it. Hence, the recipe
finding is so captivating. However, visits of Russian parliamentary leaders
convince us of different things: representatives of the deputies' corps
of the neighboring country live in some other country, not in Russia. With
absolutely different problems. Not with Russian ones. There is a country
called the Red Flag Duma. It has its own views of policy, the economy.
and borders. As the living standard of Russians gradually fall, Duma Chairman
Gennady Selezniov proposes to print money and to pay back the debt to international
financial organizations with this paper. There is also another recipe for
combating the crisis fighting, integration. Selezniov during his scandalous
visit to Kyiv, and now his deputy Sergei Baburin proposes we join in. But
join what? The Mythical Russian Belarus union, which helped consolidate
the power of one of the major economic losers, Belarusian President Aleksandr
Lukashenka? The customs union of four (now it seems to be of five), which
is famous in Europe for uncontrolled drug delivery routes, the participants
in which criticize it more persistently than those who failed? Or merely
with Russia, whose government has been failing to decide what to do with
its thrice wretched economy for four months? Do they really want to deal
with our problems as well?

Mr. Baburin, whom I like very much, had not noticed this before, does
not notice it now, and never will notice it in future. The last romanticist
of the rotten empire, he does not want to see that the Soviet Titanic is
already at the bottom of history's ocean, and there is no technology capable
of lifting this clumsy contrivance. He still feels like a passenger or
perhaps even captain of the powerful liner: the sea breeze wafts, he walks
majestically, the public is satisfied, the red flag flies, and Lenin's
portrait hangs by the helm. After all, we all have our dreams. I do not
ask what politics has to do with it; what Ukraine and our bilateral relations
have to do with it.

I merely ask what Russia has to do with it.

 
 

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