Ukraine is meeting its seventh year of independence in an extremely complicated situation when almost every day reminds it of its economic dependence on its creditors. Hence the question: is Ukraine independent in reality, rather than legally, formally? A truly independent polity is recognized by other countries, but only inasmuch as a formal prerequisite which is necessary but not final. Real independence is when a given country reaches a truly equal status in its relationships with all other polities, meaning that it and other countries become economically interdependent. So far, Ukraine is only dependent on other countries economically, while its political independence remains mostly formal, de jure, lacking de facto status. To become truly independent, Ukraine must build its economic relationships with the other countries on a more or less parity basis.
For Ukraine, this parity is an important precondition also because it has direct bearing on the formation of its national political guidelines in most of the Ukrainian territory — primarily in Left-Bank Ukraine and particularly in its southeast. Quite a number of polls testify to the fact that all the efforts made by the local authorities to Ukrainize the bureaucratic structures, media, and above all institutions of learning have proved not only futile, but also made the populace take a dim view of the very idea of national independence. And without really supporting this idea another important — numerically rather than essentially — element of the notion of independence, a single political nation, is hard if possible to achieve. I mean a body politic unanimous in its desire to exist as a single polity, i.e., that this desire is prevalent in all its territories.
A political nation can exist basically when there is a national political elite — precisely, a single whole formed by the political, economic, ideological, religious, scientific, and other elite communities — without which there can be no mature macro-social organism. Such elite communities are composed of extremely talented personalities having the energy and willpower to reveal their singular capacities under certain social conditions. If and when individuals at the upper echelons prove to fit into such an "elite" pattern, i.e., when they prove that they can live up to their image as able and innovative administrators, not only exercising their exclusive rights, but also carrying out their responsibilities toward a given society, developing it and enhancing its independence, every community member will have the real opportunity to reveal and implement his/her creative talent. This is the only correct road toward genuine national independence.






