United Only In Crime
A Potential Yushchenko-Yanukovych Alliance
Kyiv post is now advocating an NSNU-Regions of Ukraine coalition. While they elsewhere present the case that such a coalition is likely, they go beyond this to say:
...If [NSNU deputies] form a coalition with Yanukovych, not only will they have a solid 300 seats in parliament, which is equivalent to a constitutional vote, they would also represent the interests of a majority of voters across all of Ukraine.
Yes, they have differing views and interests on many issues, but reaching peaceful compromise between competing political forces with different views for the sake of its citizens is what democracy is all about.
Uniting, in the opinion of the KP, is worth it because then they can "pass badly needed reforms within the next several election-free years". In case you missed their point, their outside opinion, from a former US Congressman, says the same thing.
The Conflict-of-Interest Coalition
Have the editors of Kyiv Post completely lost their minds? I've been disappointed by many of their limp opinions in the last few months since losing some staff, but I didn't expect to see this delusional opinion.
The only thing that unites NSNU and Regions are shadow economy business dealings that are grossly against the interests of ordinary Ukrainians. NSNU is for WTO entry, RoU is against, and dragging Ukraine behind. Meanwhile Russia struggles forward as fast as possible to get into the reduced sanctions area and win itself the opportunity, as veto-wielding member, to get concessions from Ukraine later.
NSNU is for NATO, or so they say, while RoU is aggressively against. I've spoken briefly about this before. If NSNU were strongly for the alliance, they would have organized the public information drive they promised. They did not, and now they are merely getting their rewards for mouthing slogans they weren't prepared to back up with action. In any case, if they at least would like some efforts to be made in the direction of NATO, then they're opposed to RoU on this issue, too.
RoU continues its dismissals of the EU, as when Akhmetov said "if we come to Europe today and knock at the door, will they open? I think they won't." Of course they won't, you idiot, Ukraine's judiciary is completely incapable of serving justice, there is a huge shadow economy, transparency is still low, and there are many other things the government should be correcting anyway which will need to be dealt with before serious talk of EU membership. But those would get in the way of your business interests, Mr. Akhmetov, so perhaps that's why you're not so keen.
NSNU pushed through the reprivatization of Krivoryzhstal despite Akhmetov's partial ownership. Does anyone think there will be any more privatization of woefully undercapitalized and decaying industry once Akhmetov himself is calling the shots?
And Reforming Away the Power of Law
As Taras Kuzio, among others, has repeatedly said, one of the greatest failings of the Yushchenko government is that it reneged on its promise "Bandits to Jail!" in favor of the informal "Bandits to Parliament." In an article on Ukraine's NATO aspirations in Ukrainska Pravda, Kuzio wonders what would motivate NSNU to join in coalition with Regions of Ukraine:
Eastern-southern Ukrainians would not give Yushchenko credit for doing a deal with their Regions party. This would lead to Yushchenko not being re-elected for a second term in 2009.
Does Our Ukraine not remember the drop in its support after it signed a strategically futile memorandum with Regions of Ukraine in late September 2005, a memorandum that Yushchenko himself discarded in January?
It is significant that the last moment of unity between the two forces produced a document providing immunity from prosecution to even minor deputies. I would argue that it was an even more major turning point against NSNU than the firing of the Cabinet a month earlier, not to mention a travesty of injustice.
This is what can be expected from any NSNU-RoU alliance.
If Pragmatism Is the Goal, Let Alliances Be Pragmatic Ones
It should not be so hard for the editors of the Kyiv Post to realize that complete stagnation is better than a union that will only be able to agree on regressive measures. Assuming that current poll figures are reflected in the results at the end of March, there will probably be times when NSNU and RoU have to work together on small, obvious issues. So enter in to temporary alliances on only those issues and try to snipe away RoU deputies and other parties to get the necessary majorities on more major issues.
As for who will be PM, this is also obvious. NSNU should, but may be unlikely to, get back with Tymoshenko in the hopes of being able to put together a big enough coalition (with some other allies) to win the PM spot. If they do not get enough seats for this, then what is going to happen is they will, essentially, go back to being the opposition in Parliament. Sad as that is, it is at least truer to the stated goals of NSNU than an alliance with RoU.
Dan McMinn
in 02) Foreign Policy - Russia, 03) Foreign Policy - Western Europe, 05) Foreign Policy - US, 11) Tymoshenko - Bloc Yulia Tymoshenko, 12) Yanukovych - Party of Regions, 13) Yushchenko - Nasha Ukrayina, 21) Public Opinion, 31) Mar 2006 Parl. Election
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Building an orange coalition in pre-election mode was like herding cats. Building an orange-blue coalition in post-election mode would be like cross-breeding cats and dogs — their voters watching in disgust.
This parliamentary election features too many variables to arrive at a precise forecast of the new Rada’s makeup.
Echelon 1. The Big Three: RoU, NSNU, BYT. The combined firepower of NSNU and BYT matches that of RoU. These elite echelons will set the tone.
Echelon 2. The Small Two: the Socialists and Communists. Equal firepower. The Socialists will join us. The Communists won’t. Each of these players boasts a guaranteed-entry ticket.
Echelon 3. The Do-or-Die Ones: Ne Tak, pro-blue; Vitrenko, pro-blue; Plyushch-Kostenko, pro-orange; Pora-PRP, pro-orange; Lytvyn, neutral; Vitche, neutral. The last echelon in Ukraine’s electoral matrix is the most enigmatic. Whoever makes it past the 3 percent magic mark, their affiliation will count. They might have a balance-altering capacity.
Absent a Gallup-caliber polling service in Ukraine, poll credibility remains a sticky issue. Different strokes from different services. The numbers they post keep dancing a statistical salsa, with variances as wide as the Gulf of Mexico. Experts treat these phenomena as smoking gun evidence that some parties simply stick to their “hired guns.” In summary, until all the votes are in, all bets are off.
Amid hopes of a reasonably fraud-free election a “whistleblowing war” already rages on. Both sides claim that mass fraud is in the making. Both zero in on the southeastern region. The blue ones charge the orange ones with translating the Russian name registries into Ukrainian. What does it look like? Кузнец (Russian) > Коваль (Ukrainian). Linguistic nonsense? Absolutely. In fact, representatives of the Central Electoral Commission have confirmed such incidents. But the Regions are reading more into it. Performed accidentally on purpose, this “registry revolution,” they say, is intended to plant a bureaucratic booby trap aimed at preventing the blue folks from voting blue. Some even go as far as to declare that entire housing projects have been purged from the registry.
The orange ones refute the allegation and charge the blue ones with “dead soul” mining and chain voting. What’s the trick? Re-enfranchising an army of deceased persons and having them vote your way. Vote of mass destruction. NSNU maintains that the local electoral panels are dangerously “understaffed” with their members.
Who’s responsible? The blue ones fault the local police and administrations appointed by the orange “carpet baggers.” The orange ones slam the local legislatures run by the local chapter of the “KKK.”
Interesting 19th-century America analogy, if you dig into it. Hopefully, Ukraine won’t have to wait another hundred years to have its surrogate “Jim Crow” ways abolished. In the meantime, both parties have urged their voters to check their registry records before coming to the polls on March 26.
Last Friday, a poll was taken on Svoboda Slova, the exiled talk show with Savik Schuster, the Russian freedom of speech guru. Q: “Do you believe that an orange comeback coalition will contribute to a stable in Ukraine?” Surprisingly, 59 percent answered yes, while 41 percent answered no. All of it on ICTV, a channel allegedly controlled by Kuchma’s son-in-law, Viktor Pinchuk, the #2 man in Forbes’ Ukraine section. Hadn’t he had his toy trophy Kryvorizhstal removed from him last fall by Yushchenko? That said, Savik insisted that the audience does represent the overall population. An independent polling service does selection, he said. Can anybody imagine such a rich media smorgasbord served under Yanukovych the chef?
Could it be that the KP outsourced their HR function to Donetsk? Joking aside, Donetsk probably did outsource their campaign management to GOP talent. (They say Paul Manafort is in town.) Next, they picked on the Clintonesque “It’s the economy stupid!”, injected some hyperbole, and shaped it into something of a drag queen. An anti-American party tapping into American talent. Or did I get it wrong?
Ukraine has become a fishing pond for PR wizards of all creeds — and a funny convergence point for libs and cons. Now see this: Guys who obviously support federalism and plutocracy trying to get us hooked on demand-side economics and equal opportunity.
Of course, some sort of bipartisan consensus will emerge from time to time. Short of these contingencies, a blue-orange coalition would be rejected viscerally by the grass roots. If attempted, it would result in transplant failure — loathed by both sides. The North and South, the East and West will never come to terms as long as cheating remains the norm. March 26 will be another litmus test for this country.
Lalulu,
For the sake of our “open-book” financial and political management, I think we should walk the extra mile. As a native speaker of Ukrainian and Russian living in Kyiv since 1980, I’ve been a voracious consumer of the local media. If need be, I can enrich Dan’s account by several degrees of magnitude. So, at the risk of posing as a fig leaf for the anatomy of Yushchenko’s pre- and post-Revolution failures, let me unearth a few more geological layers.
Let’s go back to 1992-94. Who was who when hyperinflation hit Ukraine? Kravchuk: President, 1991-94. Kuchma: Prime Minster, 1992-93. Zvyahilsky: Acting Prime Minister, 1993-94. Yushchenko: Governor of the National Bank, 1993-99. Notice Yushchenko’s undercapitalization in terms of time horizons.
Kuchma came to office as a man with no plan. His famous parliamentary address quote: “Tell me what to build, and I’ll build it.” However, his lack of vision did not prevent him from enjoying Goliath-like powers. His decrees became the law of the land the moment he inked them. In this prolific role, he churned off a score of loophole-laden ones that, experts believe, contributed to a saga of bigtime Ponzi schemes of the mid 90s.
After Zvyahilsky had stepped down, he spent some time in Israel as charges of embezzlement were filed against him in Ukraine. Surprisingly, on his return, the prosecution dropped the charges. He has been a member of the Regions Party for the last couple of years and is running for reelection.
When the summer 1994 presidential campaign arrived, Kuchma tanned himself as a pro-Russian, Soviet-style exec struggling to rescue the Ukrainian economy from the throes of stagflation and isolation from Russia. Despite his less-than-stellar track record as Prime Minister, he made a home run, because the incumbent-intellectualizer Kravchuk just couldn’t help himself. His immortal quote: “We only have what we have.” In the current episode, Kravchuk is on a mission to get his parliamentary groove back–as the anti-NATOrange face of the guerilla brand Ne Tak. Chances of success? Modest.
Should these veteran policymakers be taken into account, Yushchenko’s financial footprint would pale by comparison. In those early days of Kuchma’s officialdom, covering budget deficits by printing money was considered a panacea. And the money-printing machine was not entirely Yushchenko’s business.
Yushchenko would keep a low profile all the while. By the end of 1994, hyperinflation had been harnessed. On September 2, 1996, the hryvnia went into circulation. Initially equal to the Deutsche mark, it became a store of value with unparalleled staying power throughout Ukraine’s independence. All of a sudden, the Russians, who had long poked fun at our hyperinflated karbovanets, had the tables turned on them. The ruble no longer ruled in Ukraine. And when Russia defaulted in 1998, Ukraine experienced a softer blow. Do the math:
Ruble: 27,0 (1999), 20,65 (1998), 5.960=5960 (1997), 5.121=5121 (1996)
Hryvnia: 5,44 (1999); 3,9264 (1998); 2,0385 (1997); 1,848 (1996).
http://www.trud.org/guide/rossia.htm
http://www.trud.org/guide/ukraina.htm
Besides internal failure, a new dimension came to light in that crisis. Ironically, Yeltsin’s Russia reached out into the world economy only to have its stock market crash — a year after the Asian contagion had erupted. In contrast, Kuchma’s Ukraine carried on a more cocooned existence and had no stock market to start with.
But as Governor of the NBU, Yushchenko made the right call, keeping away from the money-printing machine. At the end of the day, it saved Ukraine a lot of grief.
God bless the hryvnia, the ruble, the euro, and the almighty dollar.
P.S. Of those polled in the 2001 census, 67 percent considered Ukrainian their mother tongue. A total of 78 percent considered themselves Ukrainian. Ukrainians are a majority of the population everywhere except for the Crimea.
Virtually every Ukrainian speaks Russian, while only a fraction of Russians speak Ukrainian. Many of them have been living here for decades. It appears that in this "mall" we call Ukraine a lot of Russians prefer shopping for Russian, while boycotting Ukrainian. I have every reason to doubt that Russian Americans could command the same kind of privileges in America, let alone Ukrainian Russians in Russia.
Therefore, I still have a dream that one day Russian Ukrainians will enjoy their linguistic rights without eschewing their responsibilities.
As Kuchma would say: Ukraine - not Russia, so I will say onto you: America -not Ukraine. 'Ukrainian' is not a responsibility. The 78 percent figure is hyperinflated or inaccurate: for the record, many Russians put down Ukrainian nationality in Ukrainian passports for fear of getting fired or not having access to social programs/pensions. This policy allowed Kravchuk to declare in 1994: "There are no Russians in Ukraine, and the 11 million Russianspeaking do not present a problem." I don't have to tell you that unfortunately Ukrainian fascism is a mainstream reality (Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists, Union of Ukrainian Youth, Ukrainian National Assembly, Ukranian National Self Defense/UNSO, Social Nationalist Party of Ukraine). Listen to what these organizations preach in public and maybe then you may understand why those figures may just be a bit inaccurate.
The electorate breakdown is much more accurate reflection of the ethnic breakdown since Ukraine votes along ETHNIC lines. And this will become even more apparent in Parliamentary election.
Also majority of Ukrainians (not Russians) are PRO Russian official language status. I believe its in high 70s percentagewise. I don't have a direct link. But the issue was raised repeatedly and, please note, Yushenko and his nazi buddies do not want a language referendum. Hmmm, I wonder why?
Actually, there has been research done on this topic by non-Ukrainian scholars. They came to conclusions that around 70% identified themselves as "Ukrainian." Of course, this is a loose definition of "Ukrainianness," not a rigid one as you are suggesting. Identity is fluid, not inert. I can dig up the citation, but I doubt that you will read it.
"The electorate breakdown is much more accurate reflection of the ethnic breakdown since Ukraine votes along ETHNIC lines. And this will become even more apparent in Parliamentary election."
Ukraine is not Yugoslavia. Ethnocentric parties will not make past the 3% threshhold. Just because a bunch of skinheads march on May Day does not make their views mainstream.
"Listen to what these organizations preach in public and maybe then you may understand why those figures may just be a bit inaccurate."
Listen to what actual mainstream politicians say (and this certainly includes parties that will make it past the thresshold -- NU, BYuT, PR) and you will realize that ethnicity is less of an issue than you would like to believe. Look at electoral data and you will learn that extremist parties do not fare well in elections.
Ironically, you have fallen prey to the same type of extreme rhetoric utilized by extremist groups in Ukraine by making very hyperbolic conclusions that Yushchenko is a Nazi. Go ahead and say it, but who is really going to take you seriously when we hear every day "Bush is a Nazi. Putin is a Fascist. Donald Rumsfeld is a Hitler. Saddam is Hitler. Milosevic is a Nazi. Cartoon protesters are Islamofascists, etc?"
Yawn.
Ukrainian citizenship does imply rights and responsibilities. Ditto for Russian or US citizenship, for that matter. We don’t need the double standard, don’t we?
For more than a century, millions of Ukrainians have mastered Russian and English to become productive citizens of their host countries. If I were a member of the largest minority in Russia or America, would I be able to get a decent job without speaking the language of my host country?
Kuchma’s claim to fame started in a village where hardly a person spoke Russian. He quickly absorbed Russian in college and later on would trace himself as Russian. He rediscovered his Ukrainian roots only when he became Prime Minister. And he barely spoke Ukrainian at the time. But motivation moves mountains. He relearned Ukrainian and, in the twilight of his presidency, begot an international bestseller in Ukrainian:)
That’s why I just don’t believe that mastering Ukrainian, a Slavic language that has so much in common with Russian, creates a linguistic challenge for goodwilling Russians. The 2001 census did show a slightly stronger standing for the Ukrainians. Still, it was not a distant cry from the 1989 Soviet census to validate suspicions of rampant Ukrainization. In the good old Soviet times, many Ukrainians would dress themselves as Russians. What was the trick? Once they buried their ethnic identity and couched their credentials in the language of cultural superiority, they could gain access to better jobs. That’s how millions of Ukrainians unlearned their mother tongue. I doubt that the Russians would entertain the sort of cultural transition experienced by millions of Ukrainians.
In fact, learning Ukrainian never implied unlearning Russian. When Ukraine became independent, the Ukrainians did not retaliate by stigmatizing the Russians culturally. Had they done so, the Russians would have either walked away en masse or crammed themselves with Ukrainian. If all-out Ukrainization happens to be the case, then why do they have just a couple of Ukrainian schools in the entire Crimea and Donetsk?
Ukraine does vote along ethno-geographic lines to a high degree. But other patterns also come into play. In December of 1991, the Ukrainians were not alone in voting for Ukraine’s independence. In July of 1994, the Russians living in Ukraine were not alone in voting for a pro-Russian Kuchma. In October and December of 2004, large numbers of Russian-speaking intelligentsia voted Yushchenko. And Yushchenko defeated Yanukovych in a total of two rounds — round 1 and 3. The March 26 parliamentary election does not promise a landslide victory for any single party.
I reject nazism in any form. I’m not a fan of KUN/UNSO extremist escapades, and I don’t think they are as active in Ukraine as skinheads are in Russia. At the end of the day, actions speak louder than words: On March 6, an elderly Cuban was murdered in Moscow.
http://www.mosnews.com/news/2006/03/06/cubaman.shtml
Can anybody recall a single Russian slain in the streets of Lviv by Ukrainian nationalists, given the fact that Russian troops slaughtered and deported their fellow people by the tens of thousands? It’s still the other way around. A famous Ukrainian songwriter was slain in Lviv by a Russian who didn’t like Ukrainian songs.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,393658,00.html
Can anybody imagine a Ukrainian who would demand that a famous Russian songwriter stop singing Russian songs in a Moscow café, let alone assault him? What would be the consequences for the Ukrainian community? No Russians were killed in revenge, and that makes the Ukrainians different.
Kyiv rejects the idea of a referendum in the Crimea for exactly the same reasons why Moscow would reject one in Kaliningrad. Neither Ukraine nor Russia exhibits much interest in promoting separatism on its own soil.
More than 8 million Russians live in major Ukrainian cities: Kharkiv, Odessa, Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Luhansk, Kyiv, Lviv. Almost 3 million Ukrainians live all across Russia: St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kursk, Stavropol, Khantymansiysk, Komsomlsk. Have all the Ukrainians living in Russia mastered Russian? Yes. Have all the Ukrainians living in Ukraine mastered Russian? Yes. Have all the Russians, or at least younger people, living in Ukraine mastered Ukrainian? As of today, the answer is no.
http://www.ukrcensus.gov.ua/results/general/nationality
http://www.perepis2002.ru/ct/html/TOM_04_01.htm
The best way to promote unity and uniqueness is to treat people as linguistically capable and responsible individuals. It means individuals who are neither forced to forget their mother tongue nor are loathe to learn the mother tongue of their host country.
Taras: That was masterfully done, with great supporting links even. I'm certainly going to direct people here in the next entry.
There is so much to admire with Ukrainian culture.
There is also admirable parts of Russian culture, but not it's political culture.
dlw
"Russian troops" never slaughtered Ukrainians in Lvov/Lviv.
OUN/UPA forces did butcher Poles, Jews, Russians and those Ukrainians who didn't agree with them.
Bigoted extremism in Russia is overrated. Especially when compared to some other parts of the former Communist Europe.
There're admirable facets of Ukrainian culture, unlike its political one.
On the language issue, should all Americans become bilingual? Likewise with Canada's population. Switzerland has three main ethnic groups (Germans, Italians and French)represented by cantons. Is everyone in Switzerland trilingual?
Are the famous athletes Datsyuk, Plushenko, Davydenko, Kovalchuk and Kirlienko - Russian or Ukrainian?
I will be directing some to this discussion.
> On the language issue, should all Americans become bilingual?
Most definitely!
There's a joke I heard a few years back:
A person who speaks two languages is called "bilingual". A person who speaks three languages is called "trilingual" or even "polyglot". So what do you call a person who only speaks one language?
A.: "American".
If readers in America have a cultural heritage closely associated with a language other than English, I highly recommend making fluency in that language an educational priority. (My roommate, for example, doesn't speak a word of Thai, though his father is from Thailand.)
If, however, your roots go back to Engl-land, or circumstances make the study of your ancestral tounge unpleasantly difficult (Who would you speak Thai to, anyway? I've only ever met one person who spoke it, as far as I know, and that was in Kiev) I suggest something with a rich tradition of world literature. Learn Italian; read the Divine Comedy. Learn Chinese; read the Tao Te Ching. Learn Russian; read War and Peace.
If anyone knows what to read once you've learnt Ukrainian, let me know. I've tried Shevchenko a few times, but he doesn't seem to do it for me, on the whole.
Russian only speakers in Ukraine's Communist drawn boundaries benefit from learning English since it's the modern day lingua Franca.
French!
We all have the multiple language acquisition ability in spades as children and then lose it if we don't use it.
The best way to prep a child for learning languages is to have one parent speak in one language consistently to the child and the other parent speak to the child in the other language.
It is a vestige of past imperialism to think that some languages are inherently better than others. Some languages reflect more past usage and development in some areas, but that doesn't mean that others should not have the opportunity to catch up.
dlw
dlw
About acquisition: I can see how segregating and balancing the languages in such a way would be useful, but it seems awfully inconvenient in families where the parents share a native language. Do you suppose results would be almost as good if the house spoke one language on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and the other in between?
Anyway, the whole discussion brings back memories of a fellow I knew who had plans to raise his children speaking both English and Esperanto. Quite an interesting guy.