The Wild East

This week we offer the reader in this number of indications of just how bad things are and why they don't seem likely to get much better anytime soon. Object lessons are offered in this issue by the political portrait of Volodymyr Horbulin, the nation's leading gray cardinal and, like most at the top, a holdover from the Soviet Ukrainian administrative elite (who else is there?); Deputy Premier Tyhypko's gobbledygook on the country's foreign debt fiasco; the fact that various parties control various parts of a bloated state machine which cannot move in a single direction; that Parliament Speaker Moroz says we are becoming a raw materials colony of the West; and that hookers are a major "raw" export item. No wonder that 45% of the population express regret that the Soviet Union disintegrated. And most of those who will soon vote fail to understand that so much has been lost, degraded, or socked away abroad that there is no way back to Brezhnev-style "normalcy" without an interlude of what could be called primitive socialist accumulation. The previous such interlude was called Stalinism and cost millions of lives. The longer this country delays its choices the starker they become. And nobody in power here really seems to want to think about this. Despite the nationwide mourning for the defeat of Kyiv Dynamo, the Ukrainian national sport is not soccer but managing to avoid facing unpleasant realities. The country is already turning its gaze to Russia (under the guise of "multivector" waffling), the West is distancing itself (to loan or nor to loan?), and nobody seems to want to face what all this means.