World Affairs Journal: Ukraine’s new elite

 Leonid Brezhnev would have smiled when President Viktor Yanukovych made public his list [1] of “The New Elite of the Nation” on Dec. 29, 2012.

The 60 lucky individuals who made the list of the “presidential reserve cadres” are overwhelmingly local apparatchiks: directors, secretaries, heads, and deputy heads of the many bureaucratic agencies that misrule Ukraine. There are also two businessmen, one doctor, and one professor, although just what they’re doing there is anybody’s guess.

Each of Ukraine’s 24 provinces is represented, as are the Crimea and Kyiv City. Interestingly, 25 members of the “new elite” hail from provinces that voted for Yanukovych’s Party of Regions in the 2012 parliamentary elections, and 35 hail from provinces that voted for the opposition. The president obviously wants to signal his evenhandedness, but the more persuasive interpretation is that Yanukovych is telling the country that his Regionnaires are everywhere, even in opposition strongholds. Equally interesting is that 11 of the new elite are women and 49 are men. Nothing to crow about, you’ll say, but a bit of progress, considering the Yanukovych regime’s Neanderthal attitudes toward women.