The Day continues the debate on Ukrainian-Russian relations. The article we publish today is interesting for the author’s perspective on the sources of Ukrainian-Russian political conflicts and our almost pathological dependence on Russian energy resources. Incidentally, this is all the more important now, because Kyiv and Moscow have still failed to set in motion any mechanism of bilateral negotiations on natural gas problems and simultaneously Moscow is attempting to accuse Ukrainian pipe producers of dumping on the Russian market ( the governments have already begun talks on this issue). According to the author, the root of all evil lies primarily in Ukraine itself, in the relationships between the state and the common people, and, finally, in the self-awareness of citizens and officials. Draw your own conclusions. We await your letters.
At first glance, the conflicts in Russo-Ukrainian relations are rooted in the energy and language problems. But only at first glance. On closer examination one can see that these relationships reflect the processes of Ukrainian reform.
Once Russia was the flagship of a democratic revolution, fast proceeding down the road of transformation. Ukraine did not manage to keep up, but copied whatever it could in the areas of taxation, regional policy, and in fact everything. But, judging by the way the reforms were proceeding, it was becoming clear that Ukraine was precisely the human resource and intellectual cradle of communism and socialism in the post-Soviet space. Nothing truly revolutionary was ever implemented in this country. The abandoned judicial reform, the nonviable local government, the ever-growing administrative apparatus — all this is what the Ukrainian political elite’s efforts have led to. Whatever could really change the political system and make democratic transformations irreversible remains only a dream in Ukraine. Russia has already seen the first sprouts of such irreversible transformations, that is, the media really is independent of the state. But we have not achieved this here. In Ukraine, there is not a single oligarch, not a single really rich man, whose financial and social position, business, and property do not depend on his relationship with official structures.
Ukraine has never had any global great power ambitions. In the USSR, it was content with the role of a manpower source and gray cardinal. During perestroika it was just coasting down the road, laying no claims to any geopolitical position in the region, and when the Soviet Union disintegrated, it did not try to impose any behavioral rules of its own. By filtering the reforms it has been copying from Russia, Ukraine seemed to recognize Russia’s rights to geopolitical majesty and its special, great, strategic interests, ignoring its own such rights.
The Soviet mentality could not possibly have given birth to anything else, when in one’s heart one imagines oneself a god but remains a slave on the outside. It is easier to live this way, for you aim all your efforts at changing the world around you, ignoring the development of your own potential. As a result, we now hear that Ukraine has squandered the potential it had, so we must now moor to one shore or another. In so doing, the ideologists of our political seafaring ignore the fact that a great many countries do no have any energy and raw-material bases of their own. Yet, these countries have left Ukraine far behind in terms of economic development and search actively for their own sense of unification or disunity.
What we do not understand pathologically is that the human being was, is, and always will be the main resource of any state. What Ukraine got after the USSR collapsed allows us to say in this context that we have created a greater potential than we had ten years ago, a potential for independent thinking and action. This can be proven by the fact that not only the non-governmental milieu but also the bureaucrats, who continue to cling to the receding administrative command system of economic management, are becoming increasingly aware that the state should develop at the expense of its own domestic resources and means. Ukraine’s requirement of precisely this kind of approach is difficult to overstate. As never before, this country needs this kind of political ideology.
It is not by accident that the energy sector has become a litmus test for the ongoing political processes and indicator of Ukraine’s relations with Russia. The point is not in that we want to buy for a song or can purloin Russian energy resources. Yes, we can, want, and continue to follow the path of easy commercial options. This allows the state and the energy oligarchy to skim the cream off trade operations and attribute their inadequate reform management down to the Russian-Ukrainian confrontation. This is why our politicians are deliberately transforming the problems of Ukraine’s economic development in general and energy supplies in particular into problems of bilateral relations. But in reality these are entirely different problems. Ukraine continues to use Russian gas to heat residential buildings and sidewalks paved over thermal mainlines — it has not moved even one step forward to optimize its power and heat- supply schemes, build wind or solar power plants, or develop local power-supply systems based on small hydroelectric stations. Thermal power plants are being re-equipped with more powerful generators at a snail’s pace. Moreover, all attempts to stop the destruction of energy-sector fixed assets have thus far failed. Massive theft of non-ferrous metals from power-supply lines is assuming the nature of a natural catastrophe.
From this angle, it is today in Russia’s interests to continue to show indignation over Ukrainian guile and condescendingly come to our aid. This encourages extensive, not intensive, development of Ukraine’s energy industry because it puts the state into continuous dependence on cheap energy. It is like drug addiction. This compels us to seriously ponder what lies behind Russian charity and high-profile projects to construct gas pipelines bypassing Ukraine.
The relationship between Russia and Ukraine is unstable because Ukraine’s foreign policy in this realm lacks any clear concept of development and has not been coordinated with domestic policy. In order to stabilize the process, we must first identify the essence of our own geopolitical interests both in this region and in the world. We should not just make them up. It is enough to admit that rapid and very sizable growth of the Ukrainian citizens’ personal well-being is our state’s main task. The point is to increase our citizens’ share of the world’s capital, energy resources, and means of production. I especially stress that I mean capital, property, and means belonging to the citizens of Ukraine, not to the state and its structures! If this task is in the process of being fulfilled, our geopolitical interests will assume quite a discernible shape and lay the groundwork for a rational and effective foreign policy. Secondly, relationships with Russia should not be built on any pathological faith in its greatness. Yes, it is big, with great fields, forests, latitudes, oil, and gold. Japan does not have even a hundredth part as much. But what actually determines the greatness of a state are the qualitative characteristics of its people — its main resource — its spiritual, moral, intellectual, inventive, organizational, and physical potential. This people is indisputably great. But never in the history of our state has this potential been utilized even to one hundredth of one percent. Readiness to be sacrificed and unpretentiousness are good in the times of barbarians, when all problems are solved by brute force and amount of blood shed. In this respect, nobody could challenge Russia, and it was truly great then. But the times of barbarians have passed. In an epoch of information technologies, people’s readiness to be sacrificed can only bring them to the garbage dump of civilization. And since our country’s main resource is at the same minimal level of self-realization as are our neighbors, we can say with confidence we are on a par with Russia as never before.
And it is not worthwhile to assess Ukraine’s own global interests by means of the geographical size of its territory. There is no sense in competing with our neighbor in terms of mineral resource extraction or something else measurable quantitatively. In the new millennium, economic growth will only benefit a state capable of creating the most favorable conditions for the development of the qualitative characteristics of its main resource, its citizens.
The problems of reconciling domestic and foreign policies have always exerted and will continue to exert tremendous influence not only on the development of the bilateral relations between Russia and Ukraine. These problems will determine to a growing extent the basis on which Ukraine will be developing its relationships with the world’s leading states. Foreign policy agencies are an integral part of state administrative structures, so their performance is bound to reflect the essence of domestic policy. If our citizens are now hostages and slaves of an ineffective state system reluctant to serve its original purpose, then it is only natural that this system in its foreign relations cannot place the interests of citizens above those in power. In order to have a legitimate right to pursue its own geopolitical and global economic interests, Ukraine has to change the functions and powers of the state with respect to its own citizens as well as substantiate its democratic declarations with specific actions in the public interest. Until this happens, all the efforts of the nation’s leaders to solve our foreign economic and political problems will look like efforts to serve the ruling oligarchy’s commercial interests. In any case, this is the current picture of the problems Ukraine and Russia have in the settlement of energy-related differences. This is why Ukraine is pursuing such a lackluster foreign policy toward the states that hold no interest for our quasi-governmental commercial structures. Ukraine simply has nothing to advertise there. And who will ever take interest in the cultural values of a people unable to create adequate conditions for its own life and development? Perhaps folklore collectors and seekers of exotica.
