By Walter Kish

My recent trip to Ukraine after an absence of some seven years brought into focus some of the changes that have transpired in the country since it achieved independence just over a decade ago. Of late, many people both inside and outside of Ukraine have been expressing a fair amount of frustration and disillusionment over the fact that Ukraine is not further down the road of progress towards a democratic, free enterprise nation state such as we find in the “Western” world. When the “Cold War” ended and the Soviet empire disintegrated, many had hoped that freedom and prosperity would soon flourish and that as one misguided historian claimed, history had, in effect, arrived at an end state. The grand historical clash of ideologies, both political and economic, was over.

As we have now come to realize, history makes a mockery of our fallible human desires and predictions. History may have rendered its judgement on the vision of Marxist and Communist utopia, but it has not provided the instant solutions many would have wished to Ukrainians’ centuries old struggles to be masters of their own lands and their own future. In retrospect, for those that take the trouble to study and understand the lessons of history, we should have known that it was never going to be that easy.

For those of us that were born, grew up, and live in the “West”, it is easy to take for granted that complex system that makes up the political, economic, cultural and social environment that we live in, and to which so much of the rest of the world aspires. What we tend to overlook is that it literally took centuries of evolution to develop the governmental and legal structures, the values and principles, the social “contract”, and the balance of powers, rights and responsibilities that make our country the success that it is.

There is no easy recipe for the creation of a country such as Canada or the United States. A nation such as ours is the end result of a long historical process of conflict, competition, negotiation, adjustment, dialogue, trial and error, co-operation and agreement in all the spheres and dimensions of our existence. Its ultimate success and effectiveness as a framework for our daily lives is based on a commonly shared and accepted set of values and principles whose roots go deep into our history and our psychological and cultural mind-set. It works because collectively we believe in it and make it work.

Ukraine is finally independent and theoretically democratic. As a country or nation state however, it doesn’t quite yet work, because its people have not yet come together around a common set of values and principles that they can all believe in and use as a foundation for building the workable infrastructures for managing their daily lives. The desire is there. The vision and basic ideology is certainly not lacking. What will take time is the development of the processes and the social consensus that will translate hope and vision into pragmatic reality.

The reality is that this requires a long-term commitment, and there is no way around it. To be successful, a country’s citizens must strongly share its basic ethos and be willing to commit their time, energy and sometimes their lives towards its well-being. The self-destruction of the Soviet way of life left behind a psychological, cultural and spiritual vacuum in its subjugated peoples. This has been exploited by the opportunists, by the greedy and the self-serving, to the detriment of the common people. Before those countries that rose in the wake of the downfall of Communism can become successful, lasting and viable nations, their people must first rebuild and agree to a common set of values, a “social contract”. This must evolve from within, and will require a great deal of patience as well as the discipline to put aside narrow, parochial political considerations, in favour of broader, consensus-based principles.

We, in the West can encourage, advise and help lubricate this evolutionary process, but the effort must come from the Ukrainians themselves. The process has started and has made some fitful progress, yet we should not underestimate the fact that it will take a long time for Ukraine to evolve into the kind of state that we are fortunate enough to live in over here.