Maidan

As a westerner living in Ukraine, I suppose I need to preface my remarks about Ukraine with the standard disclaimer in order to avoid the usual vile attacks of being �moscali�, arrogant, and so forth. My observations are based on direct experience which are the results of two years living in Ukraine with my Ukrainian wife and American born daughter, and 10 years experience as a frequent traveler to Ukraine. I also operate a business here, built my own home here, as well as several other properties for business and family needs. I have assisted my wife's family in starting small businesses and have sponsored a school for teaching English to young children, and am actively involved with my daughter's school. By profession I am an electrical engineer, and formally owned a small company in Silicon valley before coming to Ukraine to create a small �start-up� here. I also have a strong interest in European history, and devote some time to the study of the subject.

I am of course acutely aware of the huge misfortunes of Ukraine's past history, just in the 20the century there was Tsarist despotism, WWI, Bolshevik revolution, civil war, pogroms, genocidal famine, Stalinist purges, WWII, more genocide, and more spirit crushing Soviet rule. It takes a long time to build a 'civil society' and all of the above had the effect of repeatedly tearing down what little civil society there was.

I have noticed a trend in the media and in individuals in blaming Yushenko and other political elites for the failure of the Orange revolution as well as for the failure to make any significant progress in tackling the enormous, enormous problems that face Ukraine. However, my experiences here have shown me that this belief is not the �deepest truth�. There are not just 10 enemies of progress in Ukraine, or even 100, or 1,000. Instead, by latest count there are about 46.83 million ones.

By this, I mean to say, that the real enemy of progress in Ukraine, is the 'normal' social behavior of Ukrainian society. What is 'normal' in Ukraine, and how did it come about? I think dissident author Alexandr Zinoviev (who later became a Soviet apologist) summed it up quite well in his satiric novel �Homo Sovieticus�. During the Soviet period, the government through strong, overt coercion tried to brainwash it's citizens into being a 'New Soviet Man', a kind of selfless embodiment of Marxist-Leninist values. Instead, not surprisingly, they created something else. The cynical slang word for the new soviet man, not to be confused with 'new Russian', is 'sovok', which is derived from Soviet, but interestingly also means 'to scoop'!

The type of New Soviet Man the Soviets really created was in reality, a person who by modern Western standards would be considered socially dysfunctional, as in a person, who became totally indifferent to the results of their labor, since a laborer attained nearly the same salary (or even more!) as someone who spent long years studying in a University, taking risks to start a business or other form of enterprise, of course was not even permitted. In general human beings in almost any measure were greatly devalued, which eroded the family and trust in any institution (there was really only one institution anyway). There was great indifference to common property, and petty theft was a normal occurrence, hardly immoral, after all, all property is really communal property. The people lived in almost total international isolation, while their leaders poured the most banal, useless propaganda into their heads, and this is all they heard or understood.

When Ukraine attained it's independence through the dissolution of the Soviet Union, it did so merely by the decision of the Rada, which was later ratified by popular vote (it would be interesting to see the results if they were to re-cast that vote today!). So Ukraine did not achieve it's independence as the result of a social transformation, nor was the society totally transformed by independence. Instead there is today, a great deal of Sovok in the behavior of the people, whether expressed in corruption at all social and political levels, or a lack of accountability, or a lack of the desire to work or have any interests outside of one's self.