Prof. James Mace, Consultant to
The Day
Few Western readers of Orwell's 1984 realize that he took the name Big Brother from the lexicon of Stalinist nationality policy, that while all the peoples of the Soviet Union were theoretically equal, the Russian nation was the "elder brother" of all the others. One thinks of a line from another Orwellian novel, Animal Farm: "All pigs are equal, but some are more equal that others."
Boris Yeltsin's announced support for President Kuchma, the visit by the heavy-hitters of Russian business, ready for tasty tidbits of the privatization pie in the oil refining industry in exchange for campaign contributions, and the resurfacing of the old stories in the Russian press about Russian money helping to get the incumbent elected in the first place all point to the fact that Big Brother is not just watching this country. He's here and intends to stay.
Some time ago my colleague Mykola Tomenko, wrote about on real and imaginary conflicts in Ukrainian politics. He argued, I think rightly, that the public scenario of a reformist President vs. a Leftist Verkhovna Rada is just so much smoke and mirrors. Real politics in this country (and in Russia, one might add) is over who gets what in a hybrid economy where the state, quasi-privatized businesses, and outright criminals form not terribly productive but profitable administrative economic groups. And this process is shrouded in virtually complete opacity.
If Presidents Yeltsin and Kuchma have their way, Ukraine, which for a while seemed to want to join Europe, will fall more and more into Big Brother's Eurasian orbit and start edging away from the West and what most in the West understand as a market economy. Ukrainian independence is, after all, primarily independence from Russia. The more integrated Ukraine becomes with Russia, the less independent it will be. Given the history of Russian domination of most of Ukraine, this may not seem the best option in terms of Ukrainian national interests. But then, who thinks about national interests when it comes to keeping his job? Presidents included.







