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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

Form Without Content

13 November, 2012 - 00:00

Robert Conquest, the doyen of classical Western Kremlinology, once told me that the old formulas for studying Soviet politics stopped working sometime in the 1960s. In the Stalin and Khrushchev period one could always associate specific positions with specific players: one policy or initiative could be associated with Malenkov, another with Kaganovich, and yet something else with Molotov, etc. And reading in the press these subtle differences in what seemed to be the totalitarian monolith was what Kremlinology was all about. But then something happened around the fall of Khrushchev. The new generation of political players ceased to stand for anything anyone could figure out. They would change positions overnight, change personal loyalties, do just about anything to survive and advance in what had become a game with no political content whatever.

This kind of political gamesmanship devoid of any content seems to have survived into the post-Soviet period as well. The most vivid example seems to be Hromada, which former Premier Lazarenko created, seems now to want to purge of “accidental people” (after all, he paid for it and can do what he likes), and which has no discernible position except for a “Left-Center” orientation, because that is where the polls show the voters are. Today he can be for Kuchma, tomorrow ally with the Communists, and it were in his political interests to do so, one can hardly doubt that he would make a deal with the National Front.

It has become a commonplace to complain about the lack of professionalism in Ukrainian politics. I think this is a mistake. The average People’s Deputy is rumored to have spent a million bucks getting elected, and given the amount of money rumored to have flowed last session over, say banning imported used cars, Ukraine’s politicos have every reason to expect their investment to pay off handsomely, if they can ever elect a Speaker. That’s professionalism for you. But ask most of them what they actually stand for...

 

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