Olexiy Haran’s commentary on an interview with political scientist Mykhailo Pohrebinsky that appeared on the Russian Web site strana.ru on May 15 was published on the editorial pages of the Kyiv Post on May 24. Here is Pohrebinsky’s response to some of the points made in Haran’s commentary.
I can understand the outrage with which Olexiy Haran reacted to the text of my interview. I was outraged myself at how my words were “interpreted” in two paragraphs of the interview. I therefore demanded that corrections should be made to the published text and that words I never said should not be attributed to me. And this was done with the appropriate apologies.
It would seem that Haran, who at the time of writing his response was already aware of the corrected text of my interview, should have argued with me in public on the basis of the words I really said – words which I today do not take back. But, clearly, it would have been harder to argue in that case. Therefore, Haran chose to argue with a shadow.
Actually, a colleague who has known me for a long time could not have seriously believed that I would put in a single list separated by commas the parties Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists, People’s Movement of Ukraine (Rukh) and Reforms and Order and describe them as “existing solely thanks to Western support.” These words concerned only the first of these parties, and this should be clear from the context to any literate and unbiased reader of even the uncorrected interview. Otherwise, why mention the “new lease on life” these parties are having? The situation with the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists is clear – for many years this organization was kept alive abroad on American money, and it could hardly have gained a new lease on life in Ukraine without this help. As for Rukh and Reforms and Order, these parties clearly can exist without Western financial aid. Therefore, there’s nothing to argue about.
In 10 years of working with Western funds (I received my first grant from the Moscow branch of the Soros Fund in 1990), I have come to the firm conviction that it is much easier for those “third sector” organizations whose leaders are ideologically close to national democratic parties to obtain grants from American funds and movements than for others. I should point out that this refers to U.S. funds operating in Ukraine and not, for example, to German ones, which do not demonstrate political preferences. Of course, this refers to projects that are in one way or another connected with politics and not, for example, with the economy or ecology. The fact is that in the 10 years our organization has existed, we have been lucky enough to receive American grants on a couple of occasions (for this, special thanks to Freedom House). This is the exception that proves the rule.
I do not believe I have made any discoveries here. It just so happens that most of the members of the boards of these [U.S.] funds have political views that tend toward the national‑democratic. Other funds whose boards are made up according to the principle of equal representation of different democratic tendencies (like, for example, the Ford, Carnegie, and MacCarthur funds and some others) do not operate in Ukraine, unfortunately.
As for the “independent research” carried out on Western money that Haran mentions, in my opinion there is no such thing as “biased” research. Investigations are done either professionally or unprofessionally, independently of who finances them. It is possible to present the results of any research, including very good work, in a biased way. But what has that to do with research? This is called by a different name – like PR.
As for our differences over the role of Zbigniew Brzezinski, it seems to me that, firstly, the master of geopolitics does not really need to be defended by a Ukrainian doctor of political science, and secondly, his views are well enough known, and they speak for themselves. So there is nothing to argue about here either.
As for the activity of Freedom House in Ukraine, this is a subject for separate investigation. I’m not convinced by claims that this organization is engaged in “monitoring human rights.” There may be some people for whom the role of Freedom House in the Gongadze affair and the tape scandal falls under the category “protection of human rights,” but I’m not one of them.
It may also be claimed that the Americans have no interest in destabilizing the situation in Ukraine. After all, they already have plenty of problems elsewhere. This is true, of course. But then you could equally ask: why did the Americans build the Kosovo Liberation Army up into the strongest force in its region? Was that really advantageous for them – not to speak of Western Europe, which was left with a permanent source of tension and a problem with a giant drug cartel? I doubt it. All the same, they drove the Yugoslav army out of Kosovo – and now they are being forced to let them back in – but under much worse circumstances.
Kosovo was a mistake of U.S. foreign policy. But the activity in Ukraine of a small but influential group of U.S. politicians inspired by Brzezinski’s ideas does not, in my view, represent the official policy of the U.S. administration, which apparently has not yet been elaborated. This I stated in my interview. There are serious grounds to hope that the process of developing an appropriate official U.S. policy towards Ukraine is gaining momentum. The attention attracted by my interview on the Russian site was evidence of this.
