Ukraine is preparing to “celebrate” its 10th year of independence following the breakup of the Soviet Union.
In particular, Kyiv is building in a frantic effort to spruce up its main street for the August festivities. Both ends of the street are impassable, with Maidan virtually destroyed in a 24-hour-a-day effort to build a multi-level underground mall.
The building effort is unprecedented.
This activity has also served as a backdrop for the Rada’s also-unprecedented, recent toppling of the reformist government of Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko.
In the streets, cafes and homes of Kyiv it is almost universally felt that Yushchenko represented the first and best bet to lead Ukraine out of the economic quagmire independence has come to represent. The efforts of the Yushchenko government, headed by Ukraine’s first leader who wasn’t a former-communist, resulted in 6 percent growth in GDP – the first increase since the creation of independent Ukraine.
With Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma himself facing an impeachment challenge – over accusations of complicity in the murder of Georgy Gongadze – the Rada’s Communist-dominated block voted overwhelmingly to reject Yushchenko.
Why would the Rada oust an overtly and obviously successful government on the verge of the first real milestone in the country’s brief independent history? The answer can be found in the streets, metros, bazaars, buses and trams. The 6 percent growth pales against the disaster “reform” has come to mean across the socio-demographic spectrum.
The reform of the last decade has meant for the vast majority of people unemployment, hunger, cold and a loss of savings, status, health care, access to quality higher education and, for many, a loss of hope.
To a great extent, as articulated quite accurately by Stephen Cohen in his recent book “Failed Crusade,” this situation is the fault of a misguided U.S. policy that tied financial assistance to Ukraine with domestic economic policies that impoverished the country and resulted in the creation of an oligarch class that has looted the nation’s treasury, property and resources.
Our imposition of reduced social services beyond anything close to what we would tolerate here at home has engendered a resentment of Americanism that was never successfully accomplished during 70 years of Soviet propaganda.
I thought long and hard about this as I passed another of the many beggars at the metro station. As the babushka sobbed out loud, one of my friends commented that she was “acting.” I was certain she was not.
It is this growing stratification that serves as the basis for the Communist resurgence and their power in the Rada. However, this is not 1917. The clock cannot – and will not – be turned back.
My political instinct tells me that Yushchenko will be back, possibly as a candidate for president in the next election. The economic growth of the last year may well continue regardless of who is prime minister. I have seen the emergence of a small but increasingly stable middle class – led in some cases by former students of mine in the Sterling [New Jersey] High School Ukrainian Student Exchange.
I have seen the emergence of new institutions of higher learning that are independent of the creaking state system. I have continued to work with young people in the schools for which the Soviet Union is already something from the history of another generation.
Those young people represent the clean future upon which the destiny of Ukraine and the former Soviet republics will be built. Our own republic, after 10 years, had to scrap its governmental system and start anew. By that measure, Ukraine is ahead of the game. Nevertheless, events move faster now.
Ukrainians must resolve to put personal aggrandizement aside and meet the needs of the 80 percent of their population that must be rehabilitated. The converse is scary. The young people of Ukraine have a golden opportunity to build their nation.
Remo Domenico is a high school vice principal in New Jersey. He periodically visits Russia and Ukraine.
