I always thought Ukraine’s real birthday was on Dec. 1, not Aug 24. I was in Kyiv in August 1991, learning Ukrainian at “MAU” (pronounced like Chairman Mao), the International Association of Ukrainian Studies.
We were all fearful on the morning of Aug. 19, precisely because Ukraine was largely a bystander to events unfolding elsewhere (unless you count the fact that Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s longer-than-expected holiday was on Ukrainian territory in Crimea).
After two days of Ukrainian Communist Party leader Leonid Kravchuk’s prevarication, Rukh nationalists and others deserve credit for making sure the Verkhovna Rada seized the initiative and declared independence on Saturday, Aug. 24, before all Soviet institutions swung back into action on Monday, Aug. 26.
Small margins matter. But in truth the opportunity to act was created by the collapse of central power elsewhere.
In December 1991, on the other hand, the Ukrainians were active players: The decisive vote in the Ukrainian independence referendum defined the Soviet end game.
Moreover, despite the rapid succession of events at Belovezhskaya Pushcha [in Belarus, where on Dec. 8, 1991, the leaders of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine decided to dissolve the Soviet Union] and Almaty [Kazakhstan, which declared independence on Dec. 16, 1991] that left many people confused, the Ukrainian position that the Commonwealth of Independent States meant precisely that prevailed.
Small margins matter. But in truth the opportunity to act was created by the collapse of central power elsewhere.
The new independent states had certain common interests, but the CIS was not a sovereign replacement for the USSR.
Still, either date makes Ukraine 20 years old, between rival definitions of maturity at 18 or 21. There is no doubt that Ukraine has not developed as far as we hoped it would back in 1991.
The Baltic States are smaller and their national movements were stronger and more united in purpose. But starting conditions were not that different.
There have been moments of hope and several false dawns for Ukraine since 1991, most obviously after the 2004 Orange Revolution. But Ukraine has never had the incentive to make difficult changes provided by the early promise of European Union and NATO membership for the Baltic States.
But finally Ukraine is within sight of a partial equivalent. The DCFTA. Yes, really. Its dull bureaucratic acronym masks the fact that a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement with the EU could provide the long-missing transformative power that anchored states like Estonia and Poland back in the West after 1989.
The total volume of EU-Ukraine trade in 2010 was 28.7 billion euros; 31.4 percent of Ukraine’s trade was with the EU; foreign direct investment inflows in 2010 were estimated at a low 2.9 billion euros.
Trade at least was up on the recession year of 2009, though FDI was down; but all these figures are way below potential and could easily multiply overnight. Ukraine‘s exports to the rest of the world will also surge once they are certificated by the EU.
Most importantly of all, the DCFTA offers macroeconomic benefits to Ukrainian society as a whole, consumers and producers alike.
Agreement is, of course, not implementation, which would no doubt be slow and partial.
Implementation costs would also be high, particularly the building of new institutions to ensure that commitments made on paper are implemented in practice.
But, given the chance, the DCFTA would introduce a large proportion of EU commercial law and restructure large parts of the country’s still Soviet state bureaucracy along modern, market-friendly lines.
An accumulation of small steps would transform the way Ukraine does business, the way the state is run, the lives of ordinary citizens, workers and consumers, and the way business and politics interact.
Ukraine under President Viktor Yanukovych is in danger of becoming what academics call a “competitive authoritarian” state; that is, one where there is apparent competition for power but the rules of the contests are fixed.
Russia’s rival customs union proposal mainly offers selective benefits to favored oligarchs (cheap energy once again) and lumps together unrelated issues like natural gas prices, export tariffs and even border disputes.
Despite Russian rhetoric, the DCFTA is not incompatible with maintaining and even expanding the obvious benefits of trade with Russia, particularly because the Russian project is based on copying much of the EU rule book, the acquis communautaire, so that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s dream of a Eurasian Economic Union can one day be a partner of the EU.
But this is not where we are in August 2011. By all accounts the EU-Ukraine negotiating team are making progress, but the putative “agreement” (whether an actual signing or not) at the EU-Ukraine summit in December is under threat for political reasons. And we all know what these are.
Ukraine under President Viktor Yanukovych is in danger of becoming what academics call a “competitive authoritarian” state; that is, one where there is apparent competition for power but the rules of the contests are fixed.
So far, the new authorities have concentrated on fixing the rules, but there is no meaningful competition at all if your main opponent is taken out the game.
With no disrespect to minor opponents and no assumption that ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has a divine right to remain leader of the opposition, at the moment she still is.
European leaders like Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt have therefore rightly made the Tymoshenko trial a red line. The 2012 Rada elections will be rendered meaningless if Tymoshenko is in jail or if an “administrative” sentence prohibits her from participating.
The problems with the trial itself are well-known. The impression of political selectivity was guaranteed by the scatter-gun approach of the prosecution to select any charge that might stick. The attempt to avoid the trial turning into political theater by cramming it into a tiny courtroom with a youthful judge has obviously backfired.
European leaders like Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt have therefore rightly made the Tymoshenko trial a red line.
Regardless of any accusation of contempt, imprisonment, to my recollection, normally takes place after a guilty verdict at the end of a trial, not halfway through. A steady stream of prejudicial comments from the powers-that-be has broken principles of judicial deliberation.
The idea that the trial is only one of a broad spectrum of prosecutions, including ex-President Leonid Kuchma (charged in connection with the Sept. 16, 2000, murder of journalist Georgiy Gongadze) and the odd Party of Regions bureaucrat, is just PR.
So are birthday celebrations in order? What will Ukraine be remembered for in August 2011? For taking another wrong step? Or for growing beyond political adolescence and grasping the opportunities within reach?
Andrew Wilson is reader in Ukrainian Studies at University College in London. His latest book, Belarus: The Last European Dictatorship, will be published by Yale University Press in October.
