• Українська
  • Русский
  • English
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

June Blues

15 June, 1999 - 00:00

June is a time for university instructors like me to pore
over student theses and write recommendations. This year I do so with more
sadness than ever before. Without doubt, a significant number of my students
will go abroad, and once there they will almost always try to keep from
returning. Looking forward to the fall presidential elections, I can hardly
blame them. On the one hand, we have a President whose policies have been
so clueless (especially in the economy) that during his term the back-to-the-USSR
boys of the hard Left have increased their share of the electorate from
13% to over 30.

With enough influence over local authorities to do as much finagling
as the incumbent, Speaker Oleksandr Tkachenko could quite plausibly wind
up grabbing the brass ring, although there is plenty of mud to be slung
at him concerning the ill-famed Land and People Association and other of
his enterprises that cave cost the Ukrainian state tens, if not hundreds,
of millions of dollars. As avid a proponent of Slavic (read, East Slavic)
solidarity as Batsko Lukashenka, President Tkachenko would be willing to
sell out this country's independence for the biblical Esau's mess of pottage.
And forget about economic reform. The grossly inefficient collective farms
suit the Speaker just fine.

There is no evidence either he or the President understand what is at
the root of Ukraine's industrial ruin, which is largely in the way the
country was industrialized. In a world where all prices were controlled,
nobody really knew what anything really cost, nor did it really matter.
A thing cost what they state said it did, no more and no less. The Soviet
way of doing things was to keep putting labor and materials into something
until it got the product it wanted. Cost-efficiency did not matter. It
made no difference that it took, say, four times as much wood to make a
given amount of paper than in the West or that 500 workers did what fifty
could do with modern technology in Western industry. But when the Soviet
system disintegrated and the Ukrainian economy confronted the outside world,
it began to matter a great deal. Of course, many of the enterprises built
on such principles simply could not survive. They should have been closed.
They were not, they simply stand idle, and they are a major force dragging
this country into its economic abyss.

Facing boycotts and bans, candidates truly capable of turning things
around for the better face an uphill struggle. How can you get your message
to the people if you are banned from the airwaves and all but a handful
of printed publications? How can you explain that there is no way back
to the way things were, when all people know is that what used to be seems
better than what is? There are those who will try, and I wish them every
success. They are my students' and this country's last hope.

 

Rubric: