Apart from timely and urgent measures on "filling in the gaps and plastering
over the cracks," the current crisis, the most dangerous since Ukraine's
independence, also makes our people face the painful problem of who, in
fact, runs this country. The question "Does Ukraine have a political elite?"
can be heard more and more frequently in the mass media, in conversations
while waiting in line, from various podiums, and at seminars on politics
alike (on the street this question is phrased more rudely). For what particular
sins did our country get this very kind of elite? (The question "Why did
our 'progressive-reformist' elite have such bad luck with the country and
the people?" is asked much less frequently.) Does the elite we have really
deserve this proud name? In the situation we all have found ourselves,
these questions are by no means academic but exclusively practical.
Everyone can be sure at least of one thing - Ukraine does have a political
elite. However, one needs to understand this concept correctly - here it
is not the elite who run the country, but whoever runs it is defined by
necessity as our political elite. In this sense the political elite, just
like the mafia, is absolutely immortal. Cannibal tribe chiefs who decide
whom a tribe will eat today and whom it will hunt for tomorrow are none
other than the political elite of the tribe, which later becomes the elite
of a tribe union, and so forth, all the way up to the creation of state
institutions (by that time, of course, cannibalism as such remains in the
past). All this is historic fact. There are countries without a statehood,
but there has not been a single human community registered without a ruling
stratum. And it is not surprising, since the basis of political leadership
- hierarchic relationships - came into being long before humankind did.
A more difficult question is how elitist our national elite is, and
how adequate its activity is to the general situation in the country and
the crisis that struck Ukraine. Unfortunately, it is difficult to say anything
good about our establishment. On the one hand, it is obvious that neither
the political elite groups nor their tightly intertwined business elite
groups generally accomplish their "textbook" mission: "to organize means
to unite many people in a happy, successful, joint activity; to arrange
people and objects in such a way that the desired useful action is fully
accomplished" (Sombart, Bourgeois). On the other hand, theoretically
we cannot rule out the possibility that we are content with the aberration
of closeness and are simply unable to see a well-thought-out and wise strategy
behind the slapdash measures of the President, Parliament, the government,
and the NBU. This strategy will yield its beneficial fruit in the somewhat
distant, perhaps even very distant, future. At any rate, thus far we have
not seen a focused, long-term policy behind the government's actions, and
from a glance these actions look like a fussy and reflex desire to urgently
rob those who have not gone bankrupt or hidden "in the shadows". Government
resolutions on "the domestic manufacturer" increasingly remind people of
the legendary Drakont, who, when asked why his laws stipulated capital
punishment for both state treason and a trifle theft, responded that he
could not think of a more severe punishment for grave misdemeanors.
The people of Ukraine and their rulers are enduring the hardships of
this "transition period" together, but in different ways. Lately, politicians
and political scientists, while reflecting on the patience and hardiness
of our "tolerant" population, have virtually been ignoring the fact that
nominal stability had been achieved almost exclusively by way of simplifying
the social structure of society and irreversibly degrading its infrastructure:
in the cities, streets are not lit anymore and public transportation is
almost at a standstill; in the countryside, gas and electricity shutoffs
are a regular occurrence; payments between remaining functioning enterprises
are getting increasingly difficult to make; factories are going out of
business; doctors, teachers, scientists, and other qualified specialists
are forced to change their occupations and become petty traders, salespeople
and the like in order to survive. This is all very bad in and of itself,
yet the causes of the catastrophe are not in it but rather in the unproductive
use of the resources pumped out of the country.
One of the consequences of the first wave of the crisis (economists
believe that the worst is yet to come) is the obvious lack of resources
for the elite themselves. In his time Schelderupp-Ebbe, the first to research
the hierarchy phenomenon using domestic chickens as a basis, introduced
the term "pecking order" to determine the hierarchical structure (the highest
rank sets priority access to feed). It is not difficult to see that the
relationships between groups of political and business elite are currently
being simplified and are mostly boiling down to "inter-genera struggle"
for access to the feeder.
This tendency displayed itself most vividly (since it was before the
crisis, it took a relatively mild form) in the months-long agony of Pavlo
Lazarenko's premiership ("an endless nightmare"), whose main flaw in relation
to the other elite groups (a real flaw, but not publicly incriminating)
was that he, according to a journalist's accurate definition, "did not
know how to share". It is possible, however, that the experienced Pavlo
Lazarenko did foresee the repletion of the country's reserves, an end of
his premiership, and the economic consequences of his resignation for commercial
structures close to him, and therefore was prudently trying to take as
much as possible.
It is no secret to anyone how closely related proximity to the
government and a chance to do business in our country really are. To a
larger or lesser extent, this connection exists in most countries, including
the most developed ones (where it is called lobbying). However, the lobbying
that widely uses state institutions (mostly the executive branch) for creating
favorable conditions for "their people" and the most unfavorable ones for
all other competitors is called corruption. In Indonesia, for example,
until recently virtually all profitable entrepreneurial sectors were divided
between President General Suharto's family members. Ukraine has not gotten
that far yet, but the principal difference between this country and Indonesia
or other "developing countries" (or not really developing) is not the level
of corruption or the fact that we are a "great European nation,"
but rather the much harsher climatic conditions. We have very cold winters
and we need to somehow keep ourselves warm (in the future, one must remember,
near hand-made hearths). Besides, such a useful plant as, for example,
the banana-tree does not grow in Ukraine (unfortunately, this is the only
reason why Ukraine cannot be called a banana republic). And the banana
is not only a tasty and nutritious product, but the tree also has leaves
wide enough to allow working people to wrap themselves and sleep through
a warm southern night right on the ground. Regular funding is necessary
to maintain our country's usual infrastructure at the level of minimal
needs, and therefore the "eating away" of Ukrainian potential has been
going on at a tremendous speed.
It is the quick repletion of the country's resources, including
such a strategic one as the people's trust in the government, that became
the real reason for the general crisis in Ukraine. No "pyramid" (and our
financial and economic systems have been developing according to the "pyramid"
principle) can exist too long. At some point, this system collapses because
of the fallaciousness inherent in its structure, and an event that triggers
a breakup is just a straw that deals the final blow to the camel. Russian
authorities have much more grounds to cite the world crisis than Ukrainians
have to cite the Russian crisis. Moreover, objectively the Russian crisis,
which, to name just one thing, has caused the the drop in energy prices,
could give the Ukrainian leadership a chance to balance "on the verge"
for some more time, provided the domestic conditions were at least a little
more favorable. The responsibility of the current ruling elite for "organizing"
the crisis and the "revolutionary situation" in which we all now live is
enormous. This is the kind of "elite" we have. One could, perhaps somewhat
cynically, quote Leonid Kravchuk, "We have what we have," if it were not
for the fact that we will have to live and work nowhere else but here,
in our country, in Ukraine.






