A year after the flight of President Yanukovych of Ukraine to Russia, the country is in a desperate situation. It was, after the preliminary victory of Maidan emphasis on peace and the time needed to finally come 23 years after the attainment of independence to a stable state and public figure.
TRANSLATION – DIE WELT
It could rest and time needed to the ideas and motives which drives the Maidan movement in real reform policies to translate. This is mainly for Vladimir Putin prevented – we may assume deliberately.
With the annexation of the Crimea and then by unleashing an undeclared war in eastern Ukraine, he has forced the country to focus almost entirely on the exterior views and self-defense. Ukraine has neglected their internal rules. The fact that she did that and still does, but has to do not only with Putin and Russia.It is also owed its own inability.
Ukraine has, if you will, missed a historic opportunity: the chance of 1989. Already existing states such as Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, but also states that did not exist back as the Baltic, occurred in 1989 in no way unceremoniously through the Goal of freedom.
The work of the old elites
They experienced years, some decades of turmoil, the impositions, setbacks and hardships. There was a sense of change. And in the end more or less stable societies emerged whose citizens were also more or less aware of this and are, what they have in the rule of law, democracy and market economy. You can – this is even true for Hungary – look back on success stories.
Not so the Ukraine. 1989 or entirely integrated into the Soviet empire, she could hardly use the momentum of the year. Although it had already long been national independence movement, especially in the west of the country’s independence in 1991, was the work of the old elites. The country slipped into the post-communist era.
In almost all other countries of the Warsaw Pact were on the one hand, a stronger or weaker anti-communist popular movement and on the other hand, the reform-minded parts of the old apparatus. The new political model mendelte in the discussion of both sides out: Neither the grassroots civil rights nor the wily apparatchiks sat all the way through. This supported both: change and continuity.
In Ukraine, however, outweighed the continuity. Break all the rhetoric, despite remaining in the larger neighbor Russia much the same. All attempts to make the judiciary a reliable beacon of law, failed on more than delaying tactics of those who had the judiciary in hand.
Parties are not for political ideas
Likewise, it is never successfully reduced the system of bribery and corruption.What was true in Soviet times, was now again, he wants to have a job, a concession or a piece of land can not rely on the official way, he has to pay bribes. Was on the institutions and can not be trusted, state power comes to ordinary citizens as personal power. And finally, in the Ukraine parties never emerged that resemble even remotely western parties.
They are grouped around people, preferably oligarchs – tellingly called the party of the current President block Petro Poroshenko. Also in this are closely intertwined political and private economic interests. But above all, you do not stand for political ideas, goals and concepts. They therefore do not contribute to give the political sphere was a really political figure. Everything has something formless.
Is no coincidence that in Ukraine all officials – government authorities, the judiciary, security forces – “the power” is the collective term. Because it was so, Ukraine was the only country in the former Soviet bloc, where it came to popular revolts, indeed a revolution after 1989. The Orange Revolution was a tremendous departure, in which the great desire further broke parts of the population according to real change, after entry of the country into the modern web.
But was it possible not the rebellious and idealistic impulse in institutions changing policy definition. This was a huge disappointment. While it was heading elsewhere, changed in Ukraine nothing. The people knew that the clock is ticking: 15 years they had lost after the break 1989, irrevocably lost time. Then a rebellion – and the same old misery.
The language of existential revolt
Only the monstrous anger about it may declare that the Maidan uprising in winter 2013/14 adopted often so dark, so menacing trains: The hope was long adjoined to despair. All the more remarkable that it was the first (and maybe last) revolution, which took place under the flag of the European Union. The Maidan uprising resulted in a change of power.
The new government and the new president are turning to the West and promise to work on a retread of Ukraine. Many Maidan activists observe the skeptical. But their criticism is usually in the wrong direction: Full arrested the old model revolution versus reform, they complain that the “spirit of the Maidan” do not come into play. But he is an extremely volatile nature, very idealistic, very lofty.
It then falls helplessly solubilizing sentences like this: “The totality of the Maidan, be going beyond the boundaries of the three-dimensional space, leaving no way to call it somehow wholesome” (Kateryna Mischenko). This is the language of existential revolt. Again, it reflects an enormous, long pent-up desire for change and self-realization, but also despair and a retreat into a politikverachtende inwardness.
But in a skeptical Maidan activists have certainly right: The new political leadership – which is estimated in the west reasons of foreign policy – is not the expectations placed on them justice. It focuses almost entirely on the fight with Russia and to requests for assistance to the West, but neglected according to all that is heard, the inner repair Ukraine.
No Freedom dividend
While some former Maidan activists are now MPs or government officials. But they complain about almost all that – as the fight against corruption – have no real power, but can only act symbolically. It is interesting especially the actions of President Poroshenko. It might be wise and prudent, that he does not make too much democracy promises.
Concern is, of course, that he is – is primarily a patriot, but not as a reformer – not only because of its self-expression in rapidly changing uniforms. In all the articles he wrote for foreign newspapers, in all the interviews he gives foreign newspapers, the necessary internal reforms always come before only at the end.Poroshenko she checks off like a chore – you can feel that his true passion is not here.
During the idealistic part of the Maidan activists seem to be not really interested in the translation of its momentum in reform politics, Poroshenko and a large part of the government team seem to have no sense of the enormous pressure for reform, which is expected from the Maidan. Now the transition year, a quarter of a century in 1989 already over.
Those who were then in their prime, have their active lifetime almost behind and need to record that has fallen to them no freedom dividend. More urgently, however, is the problem that the young Ukrainians today. You can see two revolutions back, the first is lost and the second again threatens to get lost.Revolutions do you not just like that, two are in an age very much.
There is some evidence that the Revolution energy of Ukrainians is gradually depleted. At the end of a full resignation could be. The active citizenship, without which Ukraine can not get to his feet, would have little future more. Ukraine needs an internal shock treatment. Poroshenko would be a bad, his compatriots duped Executive President, if he would not say.
Putin’s persistent attack duration
In fact, he talks so far above all of the necessary support from the West. And what he says sounds a bit like it was the West possible to provide Ukraine with a turnkey, ready-functioning market economy free. Poroshenko know of course that’s impossible – but he does not mind to give this impression among Ukrainians. He is to hold up through and through an oligarch and a man who got on well after, under all configurations of power.
It is easy said than done, but necessary: the Ukraine desperately needs something like a manageable Marshall Plan. A Marshall Plan, which is generous – but in return, Ukraine and Ukrainians demanded enormous own efforts. And he is adamant on one point: Ukraine needs to do from now on everything to become a violent piece of law worthy of the name.
In every conceivable way the EU states with know-how, with a true partnership for modernization should come to the assistance. The approaches. For the permanent wound that Putin Ukraine has inflicted in the East is not as fast heal.
Ukraine has probably only have a chance, Putin withstand malicious neo-imperial policy, if it is institutional and government on solid legs and of itself is aware of this. Not fail to do this, there would be a real risk that it becomes something under Putin’s persistent attack duration, which in Europe nobody wants: a failed state.
Millennial Monitor, Washington, DC Copyright 2015 MillennialMonitor.com. All rights reserved.