Time of Troubles
Karatnycky, Adrian
R ussia's "centrist" forces are not go-slow-reformers but proponents of a statist economy, who regard the disintegration of the USSR as a regrettable and reversible event. An extremist majority in...
...While Yeltsin has taken on the neoCommunists, he has tried to dampen the appeal of ultranationalists by adopting an assertive Russian foreign policy...
...As prime minister he quickly entrusted key ministries to democrats, and Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Penzenyk has sought to make reform "irreversible" by drafting plans for widespread privatization...
...Monthly inflation exceeded 30 percent and the budget deficit was 44 percent of GDP...
...Instigated by lumpenized shirts from the Working Russia movement, the protests were backed by the National Salvation Front, whose leaders also head Russia's largest parliamentary bloc, Russian Unity...
...As the director of the Pivdenmash machine-building complex—which produced ICBMsKuchma was not an apparatchik but a design engineer...
...But whereas in Russia the USSR's collapse divided democrats (into those favoring Russian hegemony and those backing the newly independent states), in Ukraine it divided the Communists (into pro- and anti-independence groups...
...of blocking the START I and START II agreements...
...An extremist majority in Russia's parliament—consisting of two-thirds of deputies—poses a constant threat to President Yeltsin and Russian democracy...
...An alliance of Russian ultranationalists and the main currents of the Civic Union would be dangerously similar to the balance of political forces that dominates Serbia...
...President Lech Walesa and Hungary's President Arpad Goncz and Prime Minister Jozsef Antall have underscored the need for closer Western relations with a country that still has 52 million people, nuclear weapons, and Europe's second-largest standing army...
...And with the virtual collapse of CIS authority, it would be folly for Ukraine to deliver its soldiers and weapons to a foreign power—a foreign power whose parliament has made territorial claims against Ukraine...
...Under the government of Communist holdover Vitold Fokin, the first nine months of 1992 saw Ukraine's gross national product fall by 12 percent, gross social product (spending on pensions and other social services) by 18 percent, industrial production by 19.7 percent, production of consumer goods by 12 percent, and the production of foodstuffs by 17.5 percent...
...With long-term prospects for Russia unclear, Ukraine may emerge as a critical buffer between Europe and a potentially unstable Russia...
...While the Clinton administration has failed to develop a comprehensive Ukraine policy and Western Europe ignores the security vacuum in East and Central Europe, the leaders of the former Soviet bloc states are increasingly pointing to Ukraine's strategic significance...
...Under intense nationalist pressure, Yeltsin has reluctantly permitted Russian troops to be engaged in combat in Tajikistan, Georgia, and Moldova...
...Ukraine agreed to turn these weapons over to the joint CIS—not Russian—strategic forces...
...Ukraine has seen few Russian-style mass protests by hard-liners...
...sin Russia, the military has stayed out of the fray...
...Moreover, Defense Minister Konstantin Morozov relied on the help of the nationalist Union of Ukrainian Officers in his early efforts...
...S ince the failed August coup of 1991, Ukraine's politics has evolved almost as a photographic negative of Russia's...
...This policy would require a shift of focus from nuclear non-proliferation to a broader agenda that responds to Ukraine's legitimate fears about its national and economic security...
...In October 1992, economic crisis loosened the grip of the nomenklatura and led to Fokin's ouster at the hands of Prime Minister Leonid Kuchma and his reform coalition...
...But despite Kuchma's efforts at budget and money-supply cuts, Ukraine's dependence on Russian fuel is certain to plague its efforts at economic stability...
...Ukraine's leaders also seek security guarantees that would protect a nonnuclear Ukraine from nuclear blackmail...
...Yet Western policy foolishly continues to focus on Russia...
...While the desire to help President Yeltsin in his current struggle is understandable, stabilizing Russia while Ukraine languishes could destabilize Russia's Western flank and inspire separatist movements in Ukraine's Russian-speaking Southeast, a hotbed of efforts to revive the Communist Party...
...Russia's 1993 oil production may fall 20 percent compared to 1991—and Russia plans to make neighboring Ukraine bear the brunt of this decline...
...Ukraine objects to Russia's imposition of new rules in the nuclear game, including the insistence that Ukraine's nuclear arsenal be transferred to Russian jurisdiction...
...Today, with 176 nuclear missiles on its soil, Ukraine is being urged by the West to complete its nuclear disarmament, and stands accused by Russia and the U.S...
...A strike of railway, airline, and mine workers paralyzed the country in September 1992 and was the first sign of social unrest...
...The Ukrainian Defense Ministry was started from scratch in October 1991, before Ukrainian independence was proclaimed by referendum, and so was staffed by officers ready to take risks— unlike Russia's, which inherited functionaries from the old order and used the structure of the old Soviet Defense Ministry and Red Army...
...Ukraine should be the focus of Western strategic thinking—and aid...
...A Ukraine riven by secession would be an inviting target for Russian imperialists...
...Russia's erratic parliamentary speaker Ruslan Khasbulatov added to tensions by declaring that Yeltsin had lost the referendum and had succeeded in splitting the country...
...it would signal a policy that hedges the West's bets...
...Parliamentary Speaker Ivan Plyushch has tried to pack the Supreme Court with ex-Communist cronies, who could overturn the ban...
...But as Ukraine's president and prime minister plunged the nation into deep economic crisis, opposition voices gained a foothold in a coalition government, just as President Yeltsin was surrendering key democratic ministers to the anti-reform axe...
...In January, Russia and Kazakhstan created an energy exporters' group within the CIS to pressure energy-dependent republics into greater political, economic, and military integration...
...And on March 29, Russia stopped its agreed withdrawal of forces in the Baltic states...
...Kiev has been told it will receive 15-20 million metric tons of oil this year—around 50 percent of the 1992 allotment—at twice the price Russia will charge Belarus and other, more accommodating states...
...In both .countries, parliaments were elected in the Soviet period and remain a redoubt of the Communist nomenklatura...
...Forces opposed to economic reform and statehood have allied in a Labor Party that derives support from industrial directors...
...Like the Serbian political majority, anti-Yeltsin forces want to revise borders, challenge the West, protect a state economy, and restore a multinational federal state...
...Although the Russian people—including the Russian military—gave President Yeltsin their backing in the April 26 referendum, the Civic Union's "Great Russian" ideas have the potential to win the support of large segments of Russia's electorate in this autumn's likely elections...
...Outside of the Crimea, Ukraine has no fractious ethnic conflicts, nor does it face the centrifugal regionalism tearing at the Russian Federation...
...And a May Day celebration by the "Working Ukraine" coalition brought 5,000 pro-Communists onto the streets of Kiev...
...Kiev's stance needs to be better understood...
...With Yeltsin's disloyal Vice President Aleksandr Rutskoy a heartbeat away from power, Russia's political scene remains unpredictable...
...Russia's May Day celebrations were marred by extremist neo-Communist violence in which a policeman was killed by a mob...
...Such foreign bullying dovetails ominously with developments in Ukraine itself, where 242 of the parliament's 450 deputies have called for a motion to relegalize the banned Communist Party to be put on the legislative calendar...
...A pro-Ukrainian orientation would not mean abandoning Russia's democrats...
...Polls reveal far lower public support for authoritarian power than in Russia...
...While Yeltsin's democratic reformers took power in Russia's government early on, in Ukraine ex-Communists clung to power by embracing the patriotic slogans and nation-building agenda of the democratic nationalist Rukh party...
...Ukraine's long-term prospects for democratization and market reform are better than Russia's...
...Whatever the political differences, Ukraine's economic balance sheet much resembles Russia's...
...A campaign by Rukh and other democratic parties to force new elections exerted pressure on ex-Communist legislators, who feared losing office for supporting a corrupt, ineffectual government...
Vol. 26 • July 1993 • No. 7
