CAN THE CHILEAN SOCIOECONOMIC REFORMS SCENARIO BE PLAYED OUT IN UKRAINE?

By Mykola TOMENKO,
Candidate of Science (History), Director, Institute for Political Studies

Today's quest for different variants of authoritarianism as a method of economic reform is nothing new. Leonid Kuchma's Administration has on more than one occasion tried to offer this or that "experience," referring to the emergency situation which has developed. The public opinion is being prepared using the traditional brainwashing recipe: a series of conferences propagandizing a certain way to work an economic "wonder," culminating in an exchange of official delegations.

The Presidential team's reflections on the Chilean, Korean and other variants are probably explained by a "genre crisis" in the first place, as well as by an attempt to legitimatize unconstitutional decisions. From a political and technological standpoint, any forms of authoritarianism, particularly in the economic domain, require two preconditions: (a) the presence of a strong political leader relying on massive support and (b) the popular ideology of reforms, capable of convincing the populace and the political elite that constitutional and civil rights must be curbed somewhat in order to achieve positive economic results. Even more so, this leader must have sufficient political resources to implement this strategy. In the presence of the above conditions, any talk about following the Chilean course seems to me a cheap farce, on one hand, and fraught with danger on the other. I think that the "Chilean miracle" has nothing to do whatsoever with Ukraine in general or Leonid Kuchma's presidency in particular.