Every year thousands of the most prominent and promising young people leave Ukraine with the intention of never coming back. No wonder the nation always seems to be on the brink of insolvency.
The stars are out, the fools are in? I hope not.
The gene pool of Ukraine is fatigued. World War I, the Bolshevik Revolution, the Holodomor, World War II and Josef Stalin’s post-World War II purges left Ukraine with fewer talented and well-bred people to build the nation. Stalin also expropriated much of the surviving intellectual talent for his own twisted ends.
That was then. This is now. Thankfully the mass murders ended long ago. But, unfortunately, the results are the same in this sense: Many of the best are gone, depriving the nation of their contributions. The difference, of course, is today’s situation is mercifully less tragic than during the 20th century.
Has this human exodus created a thief, sycophant and coward mentality at home? Is this why we acquiesce to the West or to Russia or to both? Or steal billions from the government budget and continually embarrass ourselves by our inability to protect our citizens overseas (see multiple news stories about Somali pirates holding Ukrainian sailors hostage)?
“A cook can rule the country,” one Soviet-era axiom proclaimed. Now we know that this isn’t so. A cook cannot rule.
And so, those who can are leaving or have already left or are thinking about doing so.
The reason is that choices remain few or unpleasant at home for the young and talented, the educated and professional, those with experience abroad and those who are liberated from the corrupt notions of the past.
What are they supposed to do?
Next year, I will graduate from one of the most prestigious universities in Ukraine. I work as a journalist for the leading English-language publication. I speak four languages. I have studied and worked abroad. Not bad for a 20 year-old Ukrainian. But will all my experience give me a life in Ukraine similar in opportunities and comfort to what I can have in the United States? Certainly not.
Today there are more opportunities and ways to leave Ukraine than existed in Soviet times. But what if I don’t want to leave? What if thousands of others, facing the same dilemma, don’t want to leave either? To stay, many of us are forced into making compromises that we are less willing to make now that we have a taste of what life is like abroad.
Should we leave? Or should we stay and try to claw our way to the top? How many of us actually will? Those who are lucky enough to live in Kyiv, to get a good education and to land a professional job can eke out a reasonable existence. But Kyiv is not Ukraine. Hundreds of thousands of young and brilliant students are out there, in the provinces, in the villages and in the rural areas, asking the same question.
Even for aspiring Kyiv urban professionals, being able to buy an apartment is a serious challenge.
At current wages, the prospect of trying to buy a one-room apartment in Borshchahivka, far from the prestigious center, is unappealing. A 30-year bank loan with a ridiculously high interest rate won’t be repaid until I’m in my 50s. And that’s if I start now. There are other headaches, with or without a home mortgage loan. Don’t Ukrainians deserve the luxury of sleeping without having nightmares that the hryvnia will be 12 to the dollar when we wake up?
Maybe we should all aspire to get rich spouses. Or maybe we should just succumb to what “everyone” does, from the ruling elite to the street thug: steal. Or maybe we should just stop thinking about morality and adopt a jungle, survival-of-the-fittest attitude.
Many of my smartest Ukrainian friends have fled the homeland for good. Harvard, Yale and Cambridge are among the world’s best universities who were happy to accept them. The biggest companies also financed, hired and embraced them. Next year, I am leaving to pursue a master’s degree in public administration in the United States. I very much want to return to my nation and contribute to its progress and development, at least so that future generations don’t face the “should-I-stay-or-should-I-go?” dilemma as starkly as my generation does.
I think most people would like to fulfill their potential without leaving their homeland. Many who left Ukraine for better job opportunities elsewhere became bored and disenchanted by living in another nation, despite their improved material prosperity.
Yet a market economy and opportunity for career growth at home still eludes most Ukrainians.
Given the long experience of this part of the world (under czarist, Soviet and now independent rule) with economic activity based on theft, there is only enough money or wealth to go around for a happy few.
My Ukrainian friend, Michael Lemesh, currently a student at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, once told me: “It seems like a perfect plan to be raised in the rough environment of post-Soviet Ukraine, then enroll in one of the world’s most prominent world universities and never come back.”
Unfortunately, that is the plan for too many Ukrainians – including the more than four million of our fellow citizens who live abroad and who most likely will stay abroad while their homeland keeps shrinking. They are bolstering the economies and the prosperity of other nations. They are embraced by other nations and some have even become a part of the elite of other nations.
And here we are, in Ukraine, with cooks ruling the country, stuck with our thief, sycophant and victim mentality.
Nataliya Bugayova is a staff writer at the Kyiv Post. She can be reached at [email protected].
