We spoke to Vadim Dubnov about the results of Ukraine’s 20-year indepen ce in Moscow, where he is well known as a foreign-affairs journalist, analyst, and the author of books on the problem of hot spots inside and outside the former Soviet Union. The Kyiv-born Dubnov is now working on an expert appraisal of the situation in post-Soviet countries for international analytical centers.
What do the 20 years of indepen t Ukrainian state mean?
“A new generation has grown up over the past 20 years. Only this can make us clearly see what would otherwise have looked abstract – the frame of reference has changed.
“Essentially, the answer about the changes that have occurred sounds for Ukraine almost the same as for the other former ‘fraternal’ republics, except perhaps for the Baltic ones, where their own legal personality has left a specific imprint. This gave birth to a new state which at first was even somewhat surprised to see its national flag in front of the UN headquarters or the uniform of its soccer team. This brought along the problems which nobody had anticipated before, such as customs offices on the border – they were accepted absolutely seriously, even though looked rather funny. It seems now, perhaps wrongly, that we are in an era of nostalgic myths whose anthology would have taken a bulky folio.
“The changes that Ukraine has undergone are not the clicking of a switch; they rather look like a circle that the hour hand makes. Over the past 20 years – a segment of this circle – the Ukrainians have gone through a stage of nostalgia for the USSR, which has almost been exhausted now – at least to the extent in which it could be even a little effective. This longing may have remained in the minds of those who have things to remember, but biological processes are gradually relegating this topic to history.
“Ukraine and Ukrainians have learned little by little to feel they are a state and a nation. But the very fact that they seem to have greatly outstripped the Russians in this field should not mislead anyone. It is only the beginning of a path on which one will have to eradicate a lot of complexes and dispel a lot of myths – first of all, the myth of a split country.
“Twenty years on, Ukraine is still to learn to treat itself as befits Europe’s largest state. A certain idea of your own importance is being spelled out with a somewhat childish challenge, and the feeling that you can measure yourself against Germany and France easily gives way to the readiness to stand in the same line with Moldova, jealously imitate Poland, and gradually catch up with the Czechs and Hungarians. Quite a justifiable desire to feel themselves part of Europe is being quenched by the habit of being the East in its saddest manifestations. This must be the main, albeit intermediate, result of the past 20 years.”
Historically, Ukraine is doomed to being a neighbor of Russia which, objectively, was and still is the source of a far-reaching influence on Ukrainian statehood and Kyiv’s foreign and domestic policies. What do you think is the situation in this field?
“Russia-Ukraine relations have also begun to get rid of myths on the eve of the 20th anniversary of Ukrainian independence. These myths were and, in many respects, still are based on outdated complexes, which can explain their tenacity. The authorities obviously believed them, too.
“At the Belovezhskaya Pushcha meeting, Ukraine was represented on a par with Belarus, but Minsk has never been taken to task for destroying the USSR as much as Kyiv has. And the point is not only in the personalities of these countries’ leaders, although this fact should not be ignored, either. I think a different thing was more important: Ukraine – with its contradictory Soviet history, when it had the Holodomor but was also the ‘supplier of leaders,’ – was looked upon as ‘second among equals.’ The repercussions of this perception could be heard in Moscow’s complaints as well as in Kyiv’s impetuous challenges. And, as nobody else was laying claim to this kind of equality, it began to seem that Russia and Ukraine were vying together for a great legacy. As if playing up to this perception, Ukraine opposed the CIS decision to grant Russia the status of USSR legal successor, which entitled it to be responsible for all Soviet debts, and reserved for quite a long time the right to a part of Soviet realty estate abroad. But Ukraine still remained second – this means it could in any case count on preferences and likings which public perception assigns to the one who is not afraid to fight even though he knows full well that he is weaker.
“While, for Ukraine, there was an element of a game in all this (in this sense, both the West and the East seemed to be just playing their roles), Russia treated it very seriously – on both the governmental and the grassroots levels – which was enough for Ukraine to become an enemy. With every passing year, Ukraine was traditionally among the Top 5 adversaries in public opinion polls, and sometimes it even topped the list, upstaging not only the Americans but also the Latvians. The Russians could not possibly get the idea that the closer a fraternal republic was in the Soviet era, the stiffer resistance it will offer: this is perhaps why the relations with Georgia and Ukraine were developing so roughly. Their attitude to Russia – to be more exact, what Russia considered, with sadomasochistic delight, as attitude – was nothing but betrayal for the Russians: OK, let the Baltics behave so, both brothers…
“And this might have been dragging on for decades on end if the Orange Revolutions had not begun to bring the outcome closer. One of the not so talented but extremely influential Russian political scientists, who belonged to the United Russia party, bitterly pronounced a sacramental formula in those days: ‘We have made two mistakes. Firstly, we should have taken a more serious approach to the people’s choice. Secondly, we should have taken a tougher stand towards the choice of our candidature.’ Given these ideas of representative democracy and independence of Ukraine, Moscow took the Orange triumph as a slap in the face.
“The Kremlin tried to handle the latest presidential elections in such a way that any outcome would not be a new fiasco for it and any winner would suit it, all the more so that there were no as odd personalities as the then leader of Ukraine among the candidates. By that time the political conventionality of a color-based split of Ukraine had been clear to both the Ukrainian and the Russian elites, with the Orange Revolution no longer being a nightmare for the Kremlin. Tymoshenko was a friend, while Yanukovych could not cease to be one by definition – so Moscow was this time not afraid of the elections, and this has almost become a new formula of the attitude to Ukraine. But, to have this attitude turn, more or less, into a vector, it was necessary to wait for Yanukovych’s victory.
“It turned out that the world had not upset and, in general, nothing had changed in fact, while the scale of corruption was of no surprise to Moscow. So whenever the Ukrainians complain that the new authorities can come to any enterprise and demand to be given a third of profits, the Russians smile again – these Ukrainians are indeed like children…”
Many experts and politicians are convinced that the further democratization of Ukraine will be a catalyst for further democratization in Russia. But, at the same time, it is obvious that the current political regime has made little, if any, progress in this direction and feels ill at ease both in and out of Ukraine.
“As practice shows, history is extremely indiscriminate in the choice of the people to whom it entrusts something revolutionary indeed. The Orange did their best to make fresher political winds at our shared latitudes an object of spiteful and, deep in the heart, a bit envious derision. The hopes of some idealists on both sides of the border for the export of ‘Orange illusions’ have been dashed – and predictably so. Even if the ‘Orange process’ unfolds in the rose-tinted Georgian or even jasmine-colored Kyrgyz style, it still remains a variety of the 21st-century bourgeois revolution. Therefore, it is a process inside the elite, even if it looks like a nationwide affair. Like any other bourgeois revolution, this one also needs the old guard of bureaucrats who have rejected or keep some political youth away from power, while this youth stakes on a mass-scale popular idea in order to gain this power. ‘The Orange’ was attractive because one of the central ideas the Maidan endorsed was the aspiration of candidates for a new nomenklatura to do things ‘not like in Russia.’ Westernization plus an attempt to move away from Russia confirmed the old suspicion that any, even the smallest, progress is only possible when there is an attempt to escape from East to West. In reality, it is a broader question, a question of escaping from everything with which we once had to live. But, as there is only one country in the world whose problems only consist in having no place to escape to, except for perhaps escaping from itself, one must run away from that country because nothing good will emerge in its gravitation zone.
“This observation may suggest answers to two questions at once. The first: why is anything ‘orange’ not possible in Russia? The second: why can Ukraine not help Russia to democratize?
“But all that is being said about differences between Russia and Ukraine or, as Leonid Kuchma wrote, why Ukraine is not Russia, is about the people who reside in the two countries – with their habits, likings, and persuasions. Kyiv is something that does not exist in Russia. For this reason, new mass-scale awareness is slowly emerging in Kyiv, while it is in dire straits in Russia. Moscow is, naturally, a modern city, but, in spite of its architecture, it is a symbol of not modernization and Westernization but of uninhibited and free-handed enrichment, elitist snobbism, and the inexorable spirit with which the country is resolutely marching down this road.
“But, as for the elites, Kuchma is only right when he says that they depend on the masses. But when it comes to an ideal model, the Russian model is a dream for the Ukrainian political nobility, and only the laws of the genre and the text of the assigned role make them imitate belonging to a different reality. They are people of the same blood group, and the biological processes of political blood rejuvenation do not lead to evolutionary leaps forward – why do we need any kind of political modernization if it is quite enough to bargain about the Odesa Port Plant, to say nothing about oil refineries or gas kickbacks to RosUkrEnerho or something else that is sure to come in lieu.”
What is your vision of Ukrainian developments in the nearest future?
“Speaking of any likely reciprocal influence in the next few years, it can only be the fact that Ukraine may achieve the Russian magnitude of embezzlements. One can only guess what has caused the suggestion that Russia will increase pressure on Ukraine after Euro-2012. Maybe, it is an eschatological forecast of the enormous and shameful failure of this country to get prepared for the championship. If it is so, Russia is also to host the Olympics shortly, and the degree of preparedness for it does not impress very much so far. The hopes that Ukraine will, for some reason, end up in the Belarus situation, when Kyiv will have nobody but Moscow to turn to, do not look very convincing, either. Firstly, no difficulties are so far forcing President Lukashenko to go to the Kremlin Canossa. Secondly, Ukraine is not only not Russia but also not Belarus, and, whatever the case, it is rather difficult to imagine a Ukrainian default that will bring down all the Ukrainian foreign political positions without exception.
“But, in reality, it is a broader question: is Russia’s pressure on Ukraine possible at all? Experience shows that any Russian pressure will either be counterproductive or, what is more, it will be just a variation of some new shady business scheme of the RosUkrEnerho type, which has clearly nothing to do with political pressure.
“And, in general, neither Russia nor Ukraine has reached a stage, when somebody is thinking over and strictly following the country’s political line.
“The Orange Revolution had one indisputable achievement. What I am talking about would have occurred in any case, but a catalyst may play an invaluable role in history: the Ukrainians have learned to live in quite a European style in spite of their government. At the same time, they also despise their government far more sincerely than the Europeans do, and nothing shows so far that this attitude may radically change.
“This is, in fact, the bottom line of the positive and negative things that have accumulated and strengthened in the 20 years of independence. People are more and more aware of the place the state occupies in their life, and this place is rather comic, which is no laughing matter, unless, of course, the prime minister says something in the official language or the president himself cracks a new joke. From this angle, the government is also absolutely organic to the voter who is laughing at it: he believes, for good reason, that after the Orange Revolution the authorities depend on him, even though they may do it just at times and in a somewhat queer way.
“In reality, it is laissez-faire rather than freedom. This will be freedom on The Day the government will choose to really tackle politics, even if for its own benefit, and then one will be able to forecast and ponder over its actions, make a sound decision on whether or not to vote for it. And, no matter how much the president may be amusing the world, even he understands that the direction has been chosen irrespective of gas prices and sale schemes. In this field, Ukraine is right between Russia and the civilized world. The majority of the Russians are so far inclined to believe that the direction in which their country is marching first is the right one.”
