In 1927 Julian Benda published his classic La Trahison des clercs, somewhat inexactly translated as The Treason of the Intellectuals. Actually, the French word, clerc, which comes from the same root as the English word, cleric, implies something higher than mere dedication to intellect, more like a dedication to truth. In this sense Yuri Andrukhovych's column is a tribute to today's intellectual (in Benda's sense) as one who sees his duty in speaking truth to power.
I, too, remember those early days of independence, especially the student hunger strike of 1991 that brought down the government, when so much seemed possible along with the gradual disillusionment and despair that set in as it became clear how little for the better – and how much for the worse – things had really changed. Yuri's criticism is made from love and not malice; it is the filial love of an alcoholic's offspring, watching helplessly as his beloved parent sinks deeper and deeper into degradation, farther and farther from what he could and ought to be.
A clue to the source of all this is found in Vitaly Portnykov's column on Russia, for the system he describes there has been borrowed lock, stock, and barrel by the Ukrainian oligarchs who used their Russian counterparts as role models. The consequences, this time without emotion and artistry but in the sober prose of analysis, are described by Oleksiy Plotnykov rather clearly. I do not share his suspicion of the West; if it were not for the fact that outside forces are in a position to compel local magnates from curbing at least their most socially dysfunctional appetites, the country would be even worse off than it is, and much of what they are demanding (cutting back government and closing at least some bankrupt enterprises) is both clearly necessary to any hope for getting out of our endemic crisis and clearly not in the private interests of those who have power and influence here. Andrukhovych is right to expect nothing from all those nomenklatura holdovers who haven't had a new idea since Brezhnev was in his prime. And it is they who run this country.






