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Petrivka

02 February, 00:00

Roman Boiko's article in this issue, "Petrivka 1999," ought to be read not merely as a human interest story but as a microcosm of how Ukraine really works or, more precisely, fails to do so. Although I go through Petrivka on my way to work almost every day, I know my local bazaar much better, and can assure you that both work exactly the same way, police and racketeers parasitizing on those standing there and often working hand in glove. The main difference is that the racketeers will at least try to watch out that nobody steals anything from their "clients" and keep order if need be. Obviously, they are much more popular than the official but largely ostensible guardians of law and order. In fact, once you get to know the traders, they become quite open and will even introduce you to their racketeer acquaintances, who then might just propose you a lift to work and explain precisely how things work. In other words, what is striking is not that such things happen but that they take place so openly, in full view of anyone who cares to look.

The author ends his disturbing material with an invitation to readers to continue the discussion of why things are this way. I plan to take part, but even now I can give you the gist of what I plan to say. What Western experts have begun calling the virtual economy is propping up an equally virtual state which tries to do more than it can, thus doing virtually nothing effectively except inconveniencing people in its unending attempt to get whatever it can to support itself. This is the root of Ukraine's poverty, its dysfunctionality, and finally of its nonviability as currently structured. Places on the sociological food chain vacated by the state were immediately occupied by its unofficial twin, the racket, which in its own fashion carries out such traditional and indispensable state functions as keeping order and collecting its own taxes.

Recently my wife ran into an old friend, one of the initial organizers of Rukh, now a People's Deputy and prominent national democratic politician. "You know," he said, "Jim did so much for Ukraine as a historian, but now he's become so critical of everything. You can't just criticize everything. After all, we do have Ukraine." I wish I could change his visage and take him for a walk through the bazaar to show him what that Ukraine really is. Things simply cannot go on this way. The denial of pain at the heart of Christian Scientist doctrine does not work terribly well when one has appendicitis, and, figuratively speaking, this country does.

Newspaper output №:

№4, (1999)

Section

Day After Day