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6456 A QUARTER-CENTURY OF INDEPENDENT UKRAINE DIMENSIONS OF TRANSFORMATION Tadeusz A. Olszański NUMBER 64 WARSAW NOVEMBER 2017 A QUARTER-CENTURY OF INDEPENDENT UKRAINE DIMENSIONS OF TRANSFORMATION Tadeusz A. Olszański © Copyright by Ośrodek Studiów Wschodnich im. Marka Karpia / Centre for Eastern Studies CONTENT EDITOR Adam Eberhardt, Wojciech Konończuk EDITOR Anna Łabuszewska CO-OPERATION Nicholas Furnival, Katarzyna Kazimierska TRANSLATION OSW CO-OPERATION Jim Todd GRAPHIC DESIGN PARA-bucH PHOTOGRAPH ON COVER Orest Lyzhechka, shutterstock.com DTP GroupMedia CHARTS Wojciech Mańkowski PubLISHER Ośrodek Studiów Wschodnich im. Marka Karpia Centre for Eastern Studies ul. Koszykowa 6a, Warsaw, Poland Phone: + 48 /22/ 525 80 00 Fax: + 48 /22/ 525 80 40 osw.waw.pl ISBN 978-83-65827-15-9 Contents THESES /5 INTRODUctiON /8 I. PRELIMINARIES OF INDEPENDENCE /11 1. Perestroika and sovereignisation /11 2. The path to independence /15 II. FROM SOVIET REPUBLic TO ELEctORAL DEMOCRACY /20 1. The nature of Soviet state and law /20 2. The path towards constitutional separation of powers /22 3. The constitution and politics /24 4. The shape of Ukraine’s democracy /27 III. THE ECONOMY: AWAY FROM ONE SYSTEM AND TOWARDS ANOTHER /30 1. Spontaneous transformation /32 2. Kuchma and the oligarchs /37 3. The stabilisation of the oligarchic-bureaucratic system /43 4. Europe’s granary? /46 IV. NAtiON BUILDING /52 1. A nation à la soviétique /53 2. Between ethnicities and nation /57 V. SHEVCHENKO VERSUS LENIN: A NEW POLicY OF SYMBOLS /64 1. New symbols /65 2. Names and monuments /69 VI. DE-STAtiSING THE SOVIET MAN /72 1. Coping without the state /72 2. The generation of independence /76 3. Post-atheist Orthodoxy /78 VII. DEMOGRAPHic COLLAPSE /85 VIII. KYIV VERSUS MOSCOW /93 IX. ONE UkRAINE AND MANY UkRAINES /97 X. NEitHER WAR NOR PEACE /102 1. The war for the Donbas /103 2. The wartime state /105 3. Faltering internal security /108 4. A wartime society /111 CONCLUSION: THE SUccESSES AND FAILURES OF INDEPENDENT UKRAINE /116 1. ‘Assets’ /117 2. ‘Liabilities’ /119 TIMELINE: UkRAINE, 1986–2016 /124 THESES 1. As a result of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Ukraine became an indepen­ dent state in an evolutionary, not a revolutionary way. Initially, the Ukrain­ ian state was a continuation of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, not only in terms of territory and population, but also of its structures and the functioning of the state. Independence came as a surprise; the country was not prepared for it in any area; nor did it succeed in making any radical break­ throughs in any field (apart from the symbolism of the state) during the 1990s. The new state was created by the transformation of existing structures and procedures; the way in which the state was created meant that there was no alternative to such a path. The process of change, however, proceeded much more slowly and was implemented with less determination than would oth­ erwise have been possible if there had been consent from the elites and the public on the need for a radical break with Communism. Such consent, how­ ever, was absent: and until the year 2000 at least, the predominant trend was to make changes which were as small, incremental and cautious as possible. 2. The Ukrainian state faced a triple challenge. It had to change from being an autonomous territory with numerous characteristics of a state which was dependent and ruled by the parent structure of the Communist Party, into a sovereign, full­sized state with institutions which conformed to the international standards of democratic regimes. It also had to establish new economic policies, by introducing the standards and procedures of a market economy in place of the chaos (a system­less state) which prevailed after the collapse of the command­and­control economy panel of the final years of the Soviet Union. Finally, it had to adapt to those changes in the outside world which were largely the consequence of the end of the global confrontation between the Soviet bloc and the West. 3. The main challenges for independent Ukraine were constant pressure from Russia and the impossibility, and in many ways also the inexpedience, of breaking the bonds which were the inheritance of having been in one state organism. The interest of the West (be it the EU or the USA) in the Ukrainian state has never been active and determined enough to allow Kyiv 11/2017 to make a radical break with Moscow. In this light, Ukraine has since its independence adopted a ‘multi­vector’ policy, that is, of balance between Russia and the West, allowing it to gain short­term benefits from both sides. In 2014, Russia put an end to this policy by annexing Crimea and starting the war in the Donbas. OSW STUDIES 5 4. Ukraine has built up the basic institutions and procedures of a democratic system, although the party system is still underdeveloped and remote from European standards (as in other countries of the former Soviet Union). Attempts to introduce authoritarian rule have failed largely due to the opposition of the public, which has turned out to be much more democratic than the structures of the state and the parties. The Ukrainian democratic system is in many ways far from the standards characteristic of democracy in Western Europe or the United States, although it has come the closest of all the successor states to meeting those standards. 5. Ukraine managed to emerge from its deep economic downturn, lasting from the early 1990s until about the year 2000, after it established the basic institutions and procedures of a market economy. In shaping the new rules of the country’s economic life, Kyiv worked without any predetermined plan, and thus in a frequently inconsistent manner, committing numerous errors. As a result, the economic policies adopted, as well as the domination of the massive industrial complexes inherited from the Soviet Union, led to the for­ mation of a group of oligarchs, a ‘grande bourgeoisie’, which exerted a direct influence on the political institutions. The consequence of this was the monop­ olisation of many sectors of the Ukrainian economy, as well as a lack of oppor­ tunities for the development of small and medium­sized companies. 6. Kyiv’s policy of caution, avoiding firm policy decisions, in socio­cultural matters has facilitated the creation of a supra­ethnic Ukrainian political nation. The deep linguistic­cultural divides resulting from old geopolitical divisions and the dominance of the Russian language in the Soviet period decreased with the rise in the percentage of citizens educated in the schools of the independent state, and the link between this differentiation and the state’s historical regionalisation was weakened as a consequence of internal migration processes which had been taking place even before 1991. The war ultimately proved that the use of the Russian language does not preclude Ukrainian patriotism. The events of 2014, however, confirmed that Kyiv had failed to develop the instruments to bind the inhabitants of Crimea and the Donets Basin into the Ukrainian state. 11/2017 7. One of the most important social changes that have taken place in Ukraine is that the majority of its citizens have become materially independent of the state, thanks both to the privatisation of the workplace and to the develop­ ment of new, private enterprise. At the same time, civic behaviour as under­ OSW STUDIES stood in the West has begun to develop, including structures of civil society, 6 although these are still limited mainly to the urban elites. The ‘revolution of dignity’ and the war have brought about a massive expansion of social ini­ tiatives (including among inhabitants of the provinces), which have revealed great potential for the self­organisation of Ukrainian society. 8. The young generation of Ukrainian citizens, people for whom the Soviet period and Communism are already ‘textbook’ history and not a matter of personal experience, today constitute a third of the adult population, and their proportion is rising each year. They have a new consciousness and a new kind of bond with the state as a present reality (and not, as their parents do, as a novelty). 9. Like the other post­Communist countries (apart from those with a Muslim tradition), Ukraine is experiencing a profound demographic collapse: in the years 1990–2013 its population fell by nearly 7 million. Although recent years have seen a rise in the number of births, the consequences of the decline in the 1990s cannot be made up. The situation is being aggravated by grow­ ing economic emigration on a massive scale. 10. The war imposed by Russia has demonstrated that the Ukrainian state, with all of its weaknesses, is capable of surviving and defending itself. The attempt to destabilise the entire state, and consequently to deprive it of real inde­ pendence, has failed. The armed forces, which for a quarter of a century were neglected and even effectively dismantled between 2010 and 2013, have recovered surprisingly effectively. Although the war has shaken the economy, its complete collapse (as expected in Moscow) has been avoided. Ukraine has not become a ‘failed state’, and there is nothing like a ‘total col­ lapse’ on the horizon. However, the state remains poor and ill­governed, and is failing to exploit its potential to the full. 11. The ‘revolution of dignity’ and the war that followed opened a new chapter in the history of Ukraine. Today, its future depends above all on the time and manner in which the war is ended, as well as on changes in the international environment (principally the policy of Moscow, Russian­American relations, and the impact of the new US administration on the development of world 11/2017 trade).

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