Living History
There are books that reflect the times and books that help shape them. The new book by Yury Shcherbak, Ukrayina: Vyklyk i vybir (Ukraine: Challenge and Choice) is both. The author, a representative of the sixties generation in Ukrainian literature, was, like so many others of his type, called to public service by the collapse of the Soviet Union. Author of a book on Chornobyl, he became the first head of Ukraine’s Green Party, independent Ukraine’s first Minister of Environmental Protection, then went to on serve as Ukraine’s ambassador to Israel, the United States, Mexico, and Canada — in each case promoting his nation’s interests with distinction. Then, as he worked in Ottawa, came the telegram unceremoniously informing him that he was dismissed from his duties. He was 69, healthy as many half his age, and sought how he could further serve his country. The result is this book.
Ambassador Shcherbak’s book is best read in conjunction with that of former Foreign Minister Anatoly Zlenko, Dyplomatiya i polityka (Diplomacy and Politics). More a conventional memoir, Zlenko reads easily, a times amusingly, while Shcherbak does not. The latter is a hard-edged, at times difficult textbook of the realities of the world, in which Ukraine has been cast, at times without adequate understanding of those who gave the diplomats orders. For a diplomat is far from being a free man: he is always a representative of others, and sometimes those who give the diplomats their marching orders simply do not understand what those abroad are forced to deal with. By the same token, those who represent Ukraine abroad sometimes lose touch with the domestic political realities that inevitably and always shape foreign policy. Fortunately, in the first crucial years of Ukraine’s independence, Ukraine had as president one of the most adroit political minds of our time. Later, the tasks of the diplomats became more difficult as those they were assigned to represent became more difficult to do so.
Often in Ukraine officials words simply have nothing to do with the unofficial realities of the world we all live in. Can we really expect Ukraine, with its 1998 official per capita GDP of $640 join the European Union where even such comparatively poor member states like Greece and Portugal it was over $10,000 and for realistic candidates like the Czech Republic, Poland, and Slovakia it was over $3500. Obviously not. Things simply have to change here before Ukraine can improve its position there. Ukraine today faces hard choices, and Yury Shcherbak has done a valuable service by outlining what some of those choices are. His book is not easy reading, but it is essential for all who care about what kind of country the Ukrainians of today will bequeath their posterity.
