Fourth of July

Even as a little tyke setting off firecrackers and bottle rockets (God only knows how I managed to keep all my fingers and other appurtenances unscathed), the Fourth of July was always my favorite holiday. Only later did I begin to understand what the US Declaration of Independence as a codification of Enlightenment liberalism and what its “self-evident” truths mean. And it was only as an expatriate that it began to dawn on me what makes Americans special, for perhaps only by living in another country and culture can you fully comprehend how much you are a product of your own.

The USA has done a great deal to help Ukraine evolve into a democracy of the Western type, and only recently does America seem to have understood just how remote that goal remains. During his recent visit here President Clinton struck precisely the right note in his speech to young Ukrainians: despite real achievements you don’t have a functioning democracy or a market economy yet, and he repeatedly quoted in Ukrainian Shevchenko’s famous call: fight and win! And let there be no mistake about it: those young people will have one hell of a fight if they are to get those things everyone seems to want in theory and very few have a real understanding of exactly how they work.

Not the least reason for America’s success is that its citizens already had substantial experience in self-government before independence, and they did not have to carry the dead weight of inherited structures and institutions that had outlived their usefulness. Independent Ukraine had no political experience except for that of the nomenklatura and inherited all the dead weight of the Soviet system. Its political class is basically the same as it was in the Soviet period, and the weight of the structures and institutions inherited from the Ukrainian SSR is one of the main things keeping this country in economic decrepitude. Still, if one can extend the Ukrainian people a Fourth of July wish, it is that this nation makes its own experience in governing itself as successful as the Americans have theirs. The first step in achieving anything is believing it is possible to achieve. With all my heart, I believe there is nothing Ukrainians cannot achieve if only they will convince themselves that they can do it. Then, fight and win!