I want to write about the presidential elections, those past and still to come. I voted for Marchuk. I am not going to dwell on my turning out “dumber” and in the minority, while all those others bothering little about scruples ended with the majority. History will eventually dot the i’s and cross the t’s. However, one cannot just sit back and watch. I am a perfectly ordinary man, a small cog in a giant machine called Ukraine. Yet I can see the criminal nature of the existing regime. Corruption and bureaucrats have suppressed that part of the populace which is determined to do something for themselves and for Ukraine. And no one touches that small part which continues to plunder Ukraine, getting rich at the expense of all the others. Indeed, who can do them any harm? Dog does not eat dog.
One can talk for hours on end about how bad the situation is in Ukraine, yet this can only make one feel even more depressed.
This time I want to ask the Editors and staff to support Symonenko in the second round. Kuchma means death to Ukraine. Not as an individual but by what he has created around himself, and even more so by what has taken shape based on his criminal policy. I do not share Communist views, but I am choosing the lesser of two evils. After all, this is not 1937 and coalition is not a one-party system. I am not afraid that Symonenko will ring down the Iron Curtain. I believe that enterprises will start working. Factories and plants will be taken away from thieves and returned to the collectives and land will be given the peasants, not in the Leninist way but in accordance with the development of this country and the person, so we can live and work for ourselves and for Ukraine, rather than feed the hordes of bureaucrats and Mafia clans.
One cannot live in a country with double-standard morals. I thank you for your struggle for Ukraine.
With respect,
A. PUZENKO,
Kyiv
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I could survive the first couple of days after the [first round of] the elections thanks to Tetiana Korobova and Natalia Lihachova. The former helped me with her two-column “Titanic Sets Course” (11.02.99) [not translated — Ed.] and the latter with her brilliant analysis and deep-going generalization on “St. George’s Day Televised” (ditto —Ed.). I am grateful to both these authors and feel they are my closest friends or like sworn Cossack brothers that fought side by side and survived the Battle of Berestechko.
And now let me tell you what I, your true adherent, voter, and Marchuk campaigner, am going to do next. I am a veteran anti-Communist and a convinced nationalist. Yet I am going to vote for Symonenko, for the first time in my life. And I hope I will convince other like-minded people, colleagues, friends, and relatives to follow suit. Yes, being in an “independent” Ukraine, I will vote for my old ideological enemies, and I will do so being of sound mind, in cold blood, reasonably, and rationally, the way a computer hacker goes about his job no matter what some of The Day’s authors say about the Left and Right being birds of a feather. And Vitaly Portnykov might save his breath trying to convince us that Marchuk’s voters will not participate in the second round. And I am not scared of that Red revenge engineered in the Russian Berezovsky’s campaign headquarters. There can be no worse regime than that created by Kuchma and his entourage, based on jailhouse morals, one that in matter of 5-6 years has succeeded in corrupting the entire society, turning it into one big prostitute, making Ukrainians beggars and strangers in their own land. If I am to choose between Mr. Volkov and Comrade Kriuchkov, I shall choose the latter, knowing full well what to expect from him.
To those alleging that with the coming of the Communists the Ukrainian state will collapse I will say that we have already lost our Ukrainian state, and we will all see this in a year or year and a half. So the Communists will invalidate the Constitution? So what? This Constitution has long been trampled by the herds of Kuchma bureaucrats. Now an inoculation using a vaccine called Symonenko is a very timely procedure to follow, for it will instantly show whether this organism has any potential to survive and an immune system to fight the disease. If it does it will produce antibodies and respond vigorously by mobilizing all the national patriotic forces, there will emerge a powerful Right opposition, the entire public life will receive a strong impetus; there will be a new popular movement, Rukh-2, along with actions the way it happened in Belarus on October 17, etc.
Well, if nothing happens, what will it matter where to meet one’s dying day: in beet Columbia or reborn Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic? I will not emigrate anyway!
With respect,
O. VALOVSKA,
Vinnytsia
PS: Rukh be damned for stealing votes from Marchuk and Moroz and then declaring “Mission accomplished” only to side with Kuchma. Another proof that these people badly need a Symonenko injection.
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I have on more than one occasion criticized the current President, Leonid Kuchma, including in the media, for his indecision and inconsistency in carrying out reforms; for allowing corruption and lawlessness to engulf the echelons of power, resulting in the mind-boggling enrichment of insolent sharpies and dramatic impoverishment of the bulk of the people, leaving the national purse empty. I have not changed my views.
However, in the runoff we will have to choose not so much the President as a personality as the further course of the development of our society.
And Petro Symonenko as a person is not the point. He could be a capable man; we have never seen him perform. The point is the totalitarian system and dictatorship of the proletariat which he and his like offer. While the first coming of Communism was brought about by sincerely dedicated revolutionaries supported by people who trusted them, today all preparations for its second coming are being made using roguish and cynical methods, ranging from Symonenko to a bazaar woman selling her wares, cheating left and right, shouting expletives, and trumpeting in support of Symonenko. Now there is a severe struggle for a place by the feeding trough underway at all levels, primitive and ruthless.
And again, Symonenko is not the point but the system that could beat such “giants of thought” as Marx and Lenin and beget despotic Joseph Stalin, when the iron Felix Dzerzhinsky was followed by sadists Yezhov, Beria, et al.
Thus hard as Symonenko and his comrades try to disown their predecessors and their crimes against humanity, no matter what they say about following “a different road,” the totalitarian system will invariably make them precisely the same as those who preceded them. There is a Japanese adage that says, “Hard as a tadpole may object that he does not look like a frog, he will grow into one.”
That is why I will vote for Kuchma. And I say to all of you: think before you leap!
V. HONCHAR, pensioner,
Bucha, Kyiv oblast
* * *
It is horrible even to think of what they will do when they come to power. Talking to people, I mostly see their strong dislike of the Reds. However, some say that Kuchma is a crook, because he wants to raise utility rates (few can understand why this should be done and besides many persist in their Soviet habit of paying no bills) and that the Communists will not be able to stage terror, because the West won’t let them kill people en masse.
Regrettably, there are people (opposed to Communism) who do not want to take part in the elections, saying that Kuchma will win anyway. A very poor and dangerous judgment! The Communists will herd their supporters to the polls and get the actual number of votes in their favor.
Our society is extremely politicized. Maybe this is not so good, but this is what we need at the moment to finish them off, finish the job left undone by Yeltsin and Kravchuk.
Too bad I am in no position to assess people’s sentiments all over Ukraine, so I have lived for the past month in constant fear. I mean I am truly terrified, terrified for myself and my wife (we are so lucky not to have children now!), my relatives and friends who want to make their own decisions, read books and listen to music they really like, browse the Internet, voice their views, work and not be afraid to get the pink slip for failing to report for a subbotnik . Maybe THEY will at least allow us to leave this country.
With respect,
Serhiy VORONOV,
Kharkiv






