On August 26 Ukraine’s Independence Day had already become part of history, along with the ceremonious meeting and gala show at the Ukraine Palace of Culture, military parade, “mass festivities,” and fireworks. Ukraine was back to its daily work routine. Still, people are sure to continue discussing what they had seen and heard for several days at least.
Of course, the focal event was Speaker’s Oleksandr Tkachenko’s address to the festive audience at the Ukraine Palace of Culture. People expected not the usual festive verbiage but an account of how the authorities intended to get Ukraine out of its endemic crisis.
Among the traditional Ukrainian historic names like Princes Volodymyr the Great, Yaroslav the Wise; Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky; scientists Vernadsky, Paton, and Koroliov; performers Anatoly Solovianenko and Sofiya Rotaru, other figures were mentioned whose repute could well be questioned by many: Stakhanov, Kryvonis, Demchenko, Shelest, and Shcherbytsky. The Speaker declared: “Do not be ashamed of your 70-year Soviet history. It is our history.” He assured all those present that most of the Ukrainian people would support this idea. The more so that one could not deny one’s history, especially those who had worked hard and honestly; they had nothing to feel ashamed of, except the amounts they were being paid as hard-earned pensions.
On the other hand, one should learn one’s historical lessons. The Stakhanovites had always symbolized the people’s “heroic selfless labor.” The Communist Party said that something had to be done and one and all did as directed.
Great! The Dnipro hydropower station was built largely with forced labor, then followed the “virgin land” campaign when millions of Komsomol members were happily dispatched to faraway steppes to start agrarian projects that would be abandoned not many years later, along with their undernourished, underpaid but officially lauded “heroes of labor.” And the same was true of the industrial giants, coal mines, oil refineries, and spacecraft. The Soviet Union was amazing the rest of the world by its industrial and scientific progress – except that few knew or understood its cost: millions of human lives wasted. And no strikes, no Parliament, no President. A handful tried to protest but were quickly and effectively dealt with by the KGB. Yet even these ideal totalitarian conditions betrayed the political leadership’s total incompetence and degradation.
One question the Ukrainian Speaker should be is asked is, Why mention Stakahnovite “shock workers” on a par with those of hard-line Communist functionaries? But then Mr. Tkachenko’s next statement could serve as an answer: “We have not been able to put the legacy we received (from the USSR? – author) to good use.” We? Who does he have in mind exactly? Coal miners? Schoolteachers? The villagers whom the Speaker seems to love so much? All these people were kept away from that “legacy” without any hope of ever partaking of it. Most likely “we” is a tribute to the customary party verbiage, actually meaning the politically chosen totalitarian few. Old habits die hard.
Oleksandr Tkachenko referred to the experience of the “young Soviet country and United States” dating from the 1930s. The Soviets, allegedly, solved their problems by carrying out Lenin’s New Economic Policy. The Speaker stressed that afterward the Soviet Union, relying on the resolute and unswerving stand taken by its political leadership, became a superpower. As for the United States, the Speaker noted that President Roosevelt straightened out things in the fiscal domain, particularly with regard to cash settlements, creating all those famous groups working in return for clothes, food, receiving the token $1.00 a day for their work.
Mr. Tkachenko even quoted Roosevelt, about being the last US President if he failed to measure up, a veiled warning addressed to the Ukrainian Chief Executive.
So much for the Ukrainian Speaker’s first major public appearance, except perhaps one of his closing remarks that seems worth quoting: “We will be able join the world’s eight most important countries if we roll up our sleeves and get down to work.”
The Speaker adhered to the good old Communist Party tradition, naming the enemies allegedly preventing Ukraine from becoming one of the world’s most economically advanced states. Foreign manufacturers crowding the Ukrainian market with all those toothpastes, cigarettes, and lighters. Also businessmen operating internationally, caring only for building personal fortunes.
A very elegant statement: “All branches of power must unhesitatingly carry out every directive of the President.” After all, who can afford to disobey the President’s directives? Provided, of course, they do not run counter to the Constitution. And if this is not done, who is to blame? If the manager of a State-run enterprise complained at a Cabinet meeting that his subordinates refused to obey his instructions and this was why his enterprise was showing such bad performance, he would be fired, then and there, relying on the time-tested principle: if you cannot manage your business, we will find a replacement.
Who is to blame for Ukraine’s overriding corruption? The Speaker blamed the media. In his words, Ukraine’s periodicals and TV programs are like refresher courses teaching government bureaucrats to take bribes and embezzle private property. Now this one requires no editorial comment.
“We have agreed with Leonid Kuchma that we should take the first step in correcting the situation together,” Mr. Tkachenko declared. What had the Speaker and Chief Executive actually agreed upon? A big secret so far. Although, with the President’s knowledge and consent, Oleksandr Tkachenko lifted the veil a bit. A “National Program of Ukrainian Rebirth” will be made public shortly.
This will be highly dubious should it rely of the prescriptions cited by the Speaker from the 1930s: Roosevelt, Stalinist People’s Commissars, Shcherbytsky period regional Party committees, and struggle against foreign cigarettes and lighters. After all, gentlemen, what year is it?






