After finishing the small talk, we parted and I moved along the street, but found myself wondering how this individual landed such a job, and why I would be so surprised. I asked myself: “What is so cool about working for the Main Control and Revision Department?”
It’s certainly not the “money.” The official salary for senior management positions in government agencies rarely exceeds Hr 3,000 per month. Obviously, that is not enough to survive on in Kyiv, unless you live with parents or own an apartment already. If you have a family, you simply can’t survive on such a salary.
Maybe the prospect of holding an exciting job, on exciting tasks and projects, is enough to work for such a state agency. I said to myself: “Maybe, but maybe not.”
Then I thought to myself: “Perhaps one is rewarded with a sense of self-sacrifice for the sake of Ukrainian society.” But after thinking about this for a few seconds, it becomes clear that that can’t be the case. Rather, an average Ukrainian (myself included) perceives someone working for the Main Control and Revision Office not as someone doing something moral and responsible for the sake of the society, but quite the opposite. Instead of controlling how the taxpayers’ money is spent, it means “having access to the trough,” and personally profiting by stealing it, or taking bribes for decisions.
“The trough” is the word Ukrainians often use to describe the cash in state coffers. They rarely refer to it as “the taxpayers’ money.”
One of the worst things you can ever wish upon someone in Ukraine is to live on their official salary, or as the common phrase goes: “to only have a salary to live on.” This phrase has filtered into everyday language from an old Soviet movie, and the wish does not imply extra occupations or part-time jobs.
The current generation of Ukrainians dream not of working hard and dying rich, but of getting into power fast and dying rich. This, of course, is partly to do with the fact that the younger generation (those who went to schools in 1990s and started making a living in the early 2000s) have seen more success stories of the people who got their fortunes from being in power, rather than establishing good businesses from scratch.
In fact, those who did manage to succeed in business often started off by somehow getting a hold of former Soviet assets. Inevitably, those businessmen also had ties with power.
So, when you’re living in this reality, what are your choices? You can try to leave the country in the hope of finding greener pastures. You can live with a hope for a better tomorrow, while accepting the idea that you might never be able to buy an apartment. You can hope for the unexpected miracle. Or, you can start a business, an option which might leave you making less money, while fighting everyone and everything to keep the business itself operating amidst a sea of bureaucracy and corruption.
Lastly, you can sell out your values, stop resisting the trend and captain it. If you choose the latter, you might find yourself squeezing your family for connections and cash to make your way into power to “safeguard your future.”
When I was entering a university in 2002, few of them were free of charge. If you had no cash to pay, you could choose independent universities, or from the list of specialties perceived as “non-profitable,” for example, the humanities. In any other case, you had to pay for your studies.
The professions considered “prestigious” and “profitable” were medicine, law, economics, accounting and international relations. To get there, you had to be truly well-connected and pay lots – especially if you aimed for the “state quota,” which supposedly gives free education to talented aspirants.
Many caring parents don’t hesitate to invest into the future of their kids. But when the kid is out of a good school with a law degree, for example, isn’t it obvious that he or she will reclaim their cash in a similar way in the job of state prosecutor?
Medical students bribe tutors to get good grades to be able to pursue a career in the city rather than a village. They are compelled to do a stint in a state hospital they’re sent to by the authorities if they got into the “state quota.”
Roughly, it takes $5,000 to get a kid through high school. Studying in special universities like the National University of Internal Affairs or the National Academy of State Security Service is considered to be akin to striking the jackpot, and therefore costs more.
The next step is getting a “good” job at the right place. The list of places includes the state tax administration and police, customs, prosecutor’s office, courts, traffic police, local administrations and councils, fire inspections, public health services and – to a smaller extent – hospitals or, of course, the Main Control and Revision Office.
Don’t forget that to qualify for a promising position at any of those offices you need strong (ideally family) ties, or thousands of U.S. dollars in cash.
I was told that it only costs $10,000 to get a lucrative position within the traffic police service of Kyiv ever since the fines and penalties for violations grew in late 2008 from an average of Hr 17 to Hr 400.
Basically there are two kinds of 20-something youngsters at the start of their careers: those who work in business, non-governmental jobs, in local or international companies, mostly getting market-defined wages; and those who work in state jobs, and somehow spend more than their meager state wages.
The first type tolerates the corruption and accepts it as the natural Ukrainian state of things, but basically understand that it’s immoral. Some of them are repulsed by it, while others envy those in power who have secured their futures and fortunes.
The latter find excuses for their actions in receiving ridiculously low salaries and following ancient traditions. But they basically consider themselves lucky to have access to the almost-unlimited state financial resources.
I hope that they at least suspect that their affluence is not based on moral grounds, not only because I care about them, but because they could in the not too distant future be running this country.
Kyiv Post staff reporter Olga Gnativ can be reached at [email protected]
