Learning to be free

The 20th anniversary of Ukraine’s independence is a symbolic Rubicon for the state. It is an opportunity to peek into a concrete time period and appraise the current stage of our development. What has this country done over this rather short and, at the same time, quite a long, period to be able to be called a state, have decent living standards, and enjoy respect in the world?

Independence was not a bolt from the blue, as some keep on saying. It was a natural result of the Ukrainian people’s centuries-long struggle. August 24 was not only an official day when Ukraine proclaimed or restored its independence but also a symbolic conclusion of the Soviet Union’s collapse. It brought about global-scale geopolitical changes. Fifteen new states emerged on the ex-USSR’s map and opened the first page of their own history. Each of the new countries suddenly faced a lot of problems ranging from a very simple one – how to keep people well-fed – to a very difficult one – how to find their own identity.

The history of a new independent Ukraine has been full of various events. From the angle of the four successive presidencies, it is the drama of the first President Leonid Kravchuk, the decade of Leonid Kuchma, the Orange Revolution and the presidency of Viktor Yushchenko, and the current rule of Viktor Yanukovych. Each of these periods was marked with certain events, possibilities, and particularities in this country’s development.

Oddly enough, Leonid Kravchuk is more and more being touted as Ukraine’s most successful president, although he was in office for three years only. Of course, one can blame Mr. Kravchuk for missing good chances in the early 1990s, but everybody appreciates his role in the restoration of independence – he dared to take a step which none of the next presidents did: he banned the Communist Party of Ukraine. Unlike Kuchma or Yushchenko, Kravchuk has even become sort of a “sage of the nation” today.

Leonid Kuchma ruled this country for 10 years of its independent existence. Many are saying that Ukraine had shown Europe’s highest GDP by the end of Kuchma’s term. That is right, but, for some reason, this eventually led to the Orange Revolution. It is Kuchma who resuscitated the Communist Party and made its leader Petro Symonenko his main rival in the 1999 presidential elections. This ploy helped him to be reelected as president. This caused euphoria: another five years in office! But that period also saw the murder of journalist Heorhii Gongadze in 2000. One of the consequences of Kushma’s rule was the opening of a criminal case against the No. 2 president – he is being accused of complicity in the murder of Gongadze and unlawful actions against journalist Podolsky. But the main result of his 10-year rule was the establishment of an oligarchic clan system, with all that this implies, in Ukraine. We are still living in this system.

Of all the presidents of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko stood the best chances to change the country. Coming to power as a result of the Orange Revolution and enjoying enormous public trust, not only in Ukraine but also in the world, he, unfortunately, caused by far the greatest disappointment by the results of his five-year rule. It is surely the fault of not only Yushchenko but also the entire Orange camp. Life did not go worse – on the contrary, there were breakthroughs in the freedom of speech and some economic growth, but still the Ukrainians never saw any radical changes in both domestic and foreign policies. What is much to the credit of Yushchenko is his humanitarian policy. Although he failed to rally our society together, he is the first president to speak about Ukrainian culture, historical memory, Ukrainian heroes, etc., on the topmost level.

Disillusionment with the Orange government resulted in the coming to power of Viktor Yanukovych, Yushchenko’s main rival in 2004. Yanukovych’s team managed to do in six months what Yushchenko failed to do in five years – to take full power in their hands. Since then they have achieved very much: they formed a majority in the Verkhovna Rada with the help of independent MPs, restored the 1996 Constitution (Yanukovych received even more powers than Kuchma had), signed the Kharkiv Accords (in exchange for Russian gas price cuts, they allowed Russia’s Black Sea Fleet to stay behind in the Crimea until 2042), reversed the achievements of the humanitarian policy (non-recognition of the Holodomor as genocide, revocation of the decree to confer the title of Hero of Ukraine to Bandera and Shukhevych, controversial innovations by the Education Minister Dmytro Tabachnyk), approved the judicial, administrative, taxation, and pension reforms (with no apparent effect so far), etc. What seems to be the only real achievement of the current leadership is restoration of the line of command. But the question still remains: what for?

Preparations for marking the 20th anniversary of Ukraine’s independence began in good time – almost a year before. Among the planned festive events was a military parade in Kyiv, but it was canceled later. The ostensible reason is that Yanukovych wanted to save money and channel it into social security. As Den noted in its issues 132-133 of July 29, 2011, a parade does not always mean armored vehicles on Khreshchatyk St. and aircraft in the sky: a parade may just comprise Bohun Military School cadets, a military band, and some light-duty equipment. The parade is a must. Besides, 20 years of independence is not an ordinary event. The overall impression is that the leadership does not care much about Independence Day. It seems to be more important for them to have the opposition leader behind bars. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has already announced that it is not planning to invite a large number of foreign guests for the celebrations. “We are not setting a goal to attract as many foreign delegations as possible to take part in these events. It is, above all, a Ukrainian holiday,” said Oleh Voloshyn, director of the Informational Policy Department at the Foreign Ministry of Ukraine.

Whether or not Independence Day will be a true Ukrainian holiday is also an open question. According to the latest polls conducted by the SOCIS Center for Social and Marketing Research, this country’s population believes that the most important public holidays are Victory Day (48.0 percent), Ukrainian Independence Day (15.5 percent), and International Women’s Day (15.1 percent). In another survey carried by the Razumkov Center a year ago, 57.2 percent of the Ukrainians considered Independence Day a holiday (it is “really a major holiday” for 16.7 percent of those polled, “an ordinary holiday, like all the other official red-letter days” for 40.5 percent), 31.9 percent said it is “not a holiday at all but an ordinary day-off,” and 7.9 percent thought “it should be a workday.”

The age of our independent state is often compared to that of an individual. A 20-year-old individual is quite a mature personality who is fully independent and able to make decisions on their own. Cardinal Liubomyr Huzar, the former head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, said in an interview with the Religious Information Service of Ukraine: “I think that what we have gone through in the past 20 years is only natural. We are the people who are just awakening to freedom and begin to learn to be free in the full sense of this word: free inside and outside, and aware of our own dignity and the dignity of other people.” The current condition of Ukraine is the result of the work of not only politicians but also of each of us. Therefore, we are also responsible for what Ukraine will be tomorrow.

COMMENTARIES

We have asked some of The Day’s experts to answer the following questions: what achievements and failures do you think Ukraine has seen in the 20 years of independence? What chances have been missed? Where can inspiration be drawn from today? Can there be an alternative to the current vector of Ukraine’s development?

“HISTORICAL THINKING LAYS THE GROUNDWORK FOR ALTERNATIVE THINKING”

Levko LUKIANENKO, public and political figure, writer:

“Ukraine restored its independence after seven centuries of colonial slavery and thus put a big exclamation mark at the end of the years-long struggle for independence. The national dream came true at last, and Ukrainians are now a political nation. This is in fact the greatest achievement in all these years. Naturally, there had been attempts to restore statehood before, such as the Cossack state. But the latter was not a state of the entire nation. Today, there is a nation state on almost all the ethnic territory of Ukraine. The 20 years of independence is an important period of the Ukrainian people’s liberation and reappraisal of values. Nearly 52 million people found themselves in a situation, when one has to reconsider their views, relations with their colleagues and people in other social spheres. For, in the USSR, people had persistent stereotypes about how to organize their own life. Those 70 years of strict communist censorship cultivated long-lasting negative views about very many things in people, such as, for example, that Symon Petliura or Ivan Mazepa were enemies of the Ukrainian people. These stereotypes became so deeply rooted in Ukrainian minds that it was impossible to debunk them quickly. But independence paved the way to freedom. People received an opportunity to compare the new ideas of a democratic society with the ideas that had been forced on them for many years as well as their level of knowledge with that of Europeans. That was a school that made people reappraise almost everything, including material and spiritual values.

“The Ukrainians often did not know what to do with this freedom – they even shunned it because they also had to reconsider economic relations. For example, it had been common knowledge that businesses could only be owned by the state. But people soon began to get used to private owners. The same applies to the informational space and agriculture. All these processes effectively helped Ukrainians to be cured of the inferiority complex.

“I do not think there have been any missed chances in the period of independence. Yes, we can admit a large number of mistakes. I would single out, among other things, the fact that we failed to replace the occupation administration in 1991. The parliament was still full of people brought up in a pro-Moscow, anti-Ukrainian, spirit, for whom Bandera and Petliura were terrible enemies. So those people were doing their best to prolong the Soviet era in Ukraine. They sometimes managed to do so, for people were so zombified that they would elect Communists to the Verkhovna Rada. The Communists would in turn cultivate the opinion that the Ukrainian idea is hostile. The first president came from the Communist Party, the second was a former Soviet-era industrial manager, the third seemed to belong to the nomenklatura rather than to the people, and I would call the fourth one ‘the fifth Moscow column.’

“To create conditions for an alternative to the current development of Ukraine, one must spread historical knowledge. For historical thinking lays the groundwork for alternative thinking. Accordingly, all patriotic forces should be aware that only the proliferation of the national idea and historical awareness can oust communism and many anti-Ukrainian myths from human minds. In other words, the movement of Ukraine from a colonial condition to its own self should be accompanied with the recognition of its self-identity. From this angle, the mass media play by far the greatest role for the populace. I must say that, objectively, we are marching in the right direction – bearers of the communist ideology are gradually sinking into oblivion, and new generations, which are not afraid of the KGB, Siberia, or the Cheka, and know what freedom is, are being born.”

“OUR PEOPLE PROVED TO BE MATURE ENOUGH”

Myroslav POPOVYCH, full member, National Academy of Sciences, Ukraine; Ph.D. (Philosophy); director, Hryhorii Skovoroda Institute of Philosophy:

“Establishing a democratic system was Ukraine’s greatest achievement. This factor clearly distinguished our state from all the other former Soviet republics. I am very proud that our people proved to be mature enough to create this kind of conditions for development and to be able to make use of them. Things would be all right now in the state if we had not bungled in economic and political matters. For Ukraine has not made any major progress in this field, still clinging to the old industrial pattern. This factor, in fact, provoked the ongoing crisis. If we get over the crisis, we will get over the reforms. For reforms can only be possible if reformers derive support from the majority of the population. But I do not see this in today’s Ukraine. The state is gradually being brought back to the situation that existed 10-15 years ago, when there was a danger of people being drawn into a totalitarian regime.

“As for economic reform, there is no alternative to it because almost all the political parties have chosen to back this vector of development in this sphere. The only question is the extent to which our political leaders may take a sober approach to the solution of urgent problems.

“We can see today that the political elite are, figuratively speaking, in no hurry. They are trying to cling to the material benefits which political power makes available to them. I am not generalizing, of course, but in most cases our powers-that-be are very shortsighted and narrow-minded political figures.”