I have lately been commuting to the idyllic suburb of Pushcha Vodytsia where, in the Pushcha Ozerna Sanitarium once owned by the Communist Party Central Committee, the Institute for Postcommunist Society and the Ukrainian Philosophical Fund are jointly conducting a summer school on the political analysis of postcommunism and modern political philosophy, supported by the International Renaissance Foundation and the Open Society Institute. Sixty or so of the best and the brightest young university instructors from Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, and Moldova were brought to hear lectures from leading scholars from here and abroad on various topics in their fields, to get scholarly literature newly translated into Ukrainian and Russian, and, most importantly, to interact with each other and form mutual support networks that should serve them long into their careers.
The importance of the latter became especially clear to me as I was having lunch with a charming and bright young lady. "How do you get along with your older colleagues in your department?" I asked.
"Well, you have to understand that our Department of Political Science was created on the basis of the Department of Scientific Communism..."
Enough said. We immediately understood each other. It is difficult to convey the uphill battle she and her colleagues must face in an environment reeking of the inertia of a field of study that no longer exists (good riddance!) and populated by an older generation that has little idea of what modern world social science is all about. She and her fellow students are going back into that environment, and through this program the Soros family of foundations is doing everything it can to see to it that those in the front line of the battle for the hearts and minds of university students are well armed.
The lack of competence caused by the Soviet Union's long isolation from the world intellectual process is at the core of the Gordian knot of problems afflicting Ukraine and the other newly independent states. By training young instructors, who will in turn teach new students for many years to come, the organizers and sponsors of this three week program have taken up the sword just as Alexander the Great did to cut through the original Gordian knot.






