First of all, I would like to congratulate Natalia Dziubenko, who has been awarded the Oles Honchar State Prize for the best Ukrainian novel of 1999. Her Apostle Andrew has been reviewed in over 30 publications, but getting it to the public is far from easy. I know. This outstanding contemporary Ukrainian writer also happens to be my wife, and we are living with literally thousands of copies of the book.
I would also like to congratulate Zerkalo nedeli (Weekly Mirror), which is serializing another masterpiece, “Is Stable Economic Growth in Ukraine Possible?” by Viktor Pynzenyk. I wrote a couple of weeks ago that all the answers are basically known about what is strangling this country economically. Now the former Deputy Prime Minister for the Economy, whose views are basically similar to those of incumbent Premier Yushchenko, is spelling it out in excruciating detail. In his first installment, for example, he points out precisely why investment is impossible in Ukraine. In the second, that nowhere else in the world does the state do so much to actually hamper its own economy. For example, Ukraine’s twenty or so free economic zones create tax loopholes that actually favor foreign importers over domestic producers because imports to the zones are duty free and those who make similar goods here have to pay the VAT, other taxes, and cope with Ukraine’s mind-boggling maze of bureaucracy.
What Pynzenyk is saying is not new. When in office he was saying most of the same things and tried to do something about it, only to be thwarted at every turn. The same forces that stopped him are now gunning for Viktor Yushchenko. Yes, the reforms mandated by the West are being carried out, but in such a way that as little as possible is changed. Take Vitaly Kniazhansky’s material on agriculture as a case in point. We simply have to wait and see how much Western insistence will allow Ukraine’s head of government to do what has to be done. Will the same forces that neutered Pynzenyk politically be able to do the same this time? They will, if the West does not literally micromanage Ukraine’s steps toward being able to pay off its debts and start to grow economically. Given Ukraine’s financial situation, such a policy might be likened to a receivership.
In short, Viktor Pynzenyk has given the international financial institutions and foreign governments keeping Ukraine afloat and Premier Yushchenko in power something they had better study. I suspect there are already some busy translators in Washington and elsewhere.
