There are certain things that cannot be passed over in silence. The Single Economic Space is one of those things. Let us for the moment analyze what this is all about.
Once upon a time, one Comrade Stalin hoped to create socialism in one country with fixed prices such that nobody knew what anything really cost (it did not really matter: it cost what the government said it cost, no more and no less), then a quarter or so century after his death this invented country created what was called real socialism. Then the captains of the industries were thus created with the idea of putting whatever they had in (the mentality was that they had plenty of people and resources) to get whatever they wanted out the other end. Now those who are in charge of these economic white elephants want to get together in order to keep from selling their plants for scrap and themselves for hamburger, so they have come up with a scheme to keep the whole Rube Goldberg machine together.
Things created under the Stalinist system continue to crowd out things that could be done more efficiently and, more importantly, pay people to do the things that need be done. They might actually be able to buy things after doing their jobs and thus create the basis for further demand and wealth. Putting them together in order to create something that is doomed to go in precisely the opposite direction from what rest of the developed world is trying to do more efficiently is exactly the wrong thing to do. It would be far more effective to bring in the bulldozers, plow these things over, and put out to pasture the managers who have already sucked enough out of their workers to keep everybody in a more than respectable retirement. Pay them off, and let them go. They do no good for anybody, and they only block the nation from tapping its wealth, which is great.
This is the time for the people of Ukraine (and the other former Soviet republics, for that matter) to ask themselves some fundamental questions. Is this simply the Ukrainian SSR that became independent or is it a country of free people, some of whom might speak Ukrainian, Russian, or Chinese at home? Do we want to be European or something else that has never been defined? Or shall we allow those who want to make money do in such a way that the people of this land can share fairly in its wealth? Shall we be European or something that even our friends in Africa will look down upon? They are no less than we, and we no less than they. Let us all hold hands as we tap the wealth that has been given us. Here that wealth is great, and we can only dream of helping others. But the dream will come true.
