Tough Times

By Volodymyr Kish

Ukraine is going through some tough times right now.  Despite being blessed with abundant natural resources, its economy is a shambles.  Its political system is dysfunctional with power resting in a well organized, wealthy and Russified elite whose programs and policies make a mockery of the wishes of its Ukrainian nationalist majority who are struggling to preserve their language, history and identity.  

Of course, there is no shortage of people who have little trouble in affixing the blame for this state of affairs.  Likely targets are many - the ever scheming, imperialistic Russians; the current crop of oligarchs in Ukraine who have amassed enormous wealth and power at the expense of the long suffering Ukrainian population; former President Viktor Yushchenko, whom many feel betrayed his country and people by squandering the gains of the Orange Revolution and handing power back to the Donetsk political Mafia; President Viktor Yanukovich, whom many feel is but a stalking horse bent on converting Ukraine once again into a vassal colony of the Russian state; and countless combinations and variations of the above.

There may be some truth to any or all of the above, yet most such theories miss the essential causal point which is that Ukraine and Ukrainians, like virtually all former Iron Curtain countries and their people, did not understand and were not prepared for democracy and all that it entails. What is happening in Ukraine is not far different than what has happened in Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania or any other former Soviet dominated states to a greater or lesser degree.

In the West, we tend to take democratic ideals, principles and practices for granted, forgetting that it often took centuries of painful struggle and political evolution to build a political system that recognizes and practices essential human rights.  Understanding the implications of those rights is, in a matter of speaking, built into the ideological genetic material of our culture and values.  As history has proven on countless occasions, it is relatively easy to make revolutions, but exceedingly difficult to build a real democracy and the civil society that goes with it.

Having ideals and principled intentions is not enough.  One must have a plan and a system for putting them into practice.  In Canada, the U.S. and most of the nation states of Western Europe, it took much trial and error, and sometimes painful conflicts and civil wars before a workable system of checks and balances was built that provided the political and governmental infrastructure that could guaranty relative freedom and human rights within a successful economic state.

The mistake that Ukraine and virtually all other countries in the failed Soviet empire made, was that upon gaining freedom, they did not adopt a proven political model from the Western world but instead chose to implement bastardised hybrid models of democracy and free enterprise mixed with failed socialistic and authoritarian practices from their past.  Each country claimed that it had “special” circumstances or needs that required customized “made at home” political systems and structures.  Of course, much of this was driven by shrewd political manipulators from the failed Communist system who stacked the rules of the game so that they could continue to maintain a monopoly on power and wealth.  As we can see, they proved successful in this endeavour.

Ukraine and most countries of Central and Eastern Europe would have been far better off if they had wiped the slate clean on their existing political and administrative structures and implemented an exact copy of the Canadian political/governmental model, or the American, or the French, or any of the stable Western democracies.  They would have received all the help necessary to make it work, and undoubtedly after a difficult period of adjustment, they would have been way further ahead than they are now.  The essential core values of freedom, democracy and equal opportunity do not vary depending on race, creed, colour or geography.  

In a sense, the Ukrainian people are themselves to blame for what they have now.  They should have done what Volodymyr the Great did when he came into power and was looking for a structure on which to build a nation state.  He decided that a proper national religion would be a powerful way of achieving his goals.  He did some comprehensive research, sent emissaries around the known world and “auditioned” the main religions of his time, finally settling on Byzantine Christianity as the most effective choice.  On that base he built a successful nation state that thrived for centuries.

When Ukraine became independent, instead of building a customized political structure with little experience or knowledge in doing something of that nature, they should have researched the government models of the most successful countries of the Western world, selected one that they considered the most effective and then implemented it lock, stock and barrel.  They would have saved themselves a lot of grief.