21
" The Ukrainian scene remained as pluralistic at the turn of the twenty-first century as it had been after the declaration of independence. If anything, it became even more diverse. Eventually, all political forces had to accept the reality that Russian political solutions generally did not work in Ukraine. President Kuchma explained why in a book published in 2003, close to the end of his second term in office. The title was telling indeed: Ukraine Is Not Russia. THE MAJOR CHALLENGE to the democratic nature of the Ukrainian political process was the catastrophic economic decline that followed the declaration of independence and was often blamed on it, making not only the Leonid Brezhnev era but also the period of Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms look like a paradise lost. In six years, between 1991 and 1997, Ukrainian industrial production fell by 48 percent, while the gross domestic product (GDP) lost a staggering 60 percent. The biggest loss (23 percent of the previous year’s GDP) occurred in 1994, the year of presidential elections and the signing of the first cooperation agreement with the European Union. These were figures comparable to but more significant than American economic losses during the Great Depression, when industrial production fell by 45 percent and GDP by 30 percent. "
― Serhii Plokhy , The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine
22
" Bush took Gorbachev’s side in his address to the Ukrainian parliament, dubbed by the American media his “Chicken Kiev speech” because of the American president’s reluctance to endorse the independence aspirations of the national democratic deputies. Bush favored setting the Baltic republics free but keeping Ukraine and the rest together. He did not want to lose a reliable partner on the world stage—Gorbachev and the Soviet Union that he represented. Moreover, Bush and his advisers were concerned about the possibility of an uncontrolled disintegration of the union, which could lead to wars between republics with nuclear arms on their territory. Apart from Russia, these included Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. In his speech to the Ukrainian parliament, President Bush appealed to his audience to renounce “suicidal nationalism” and avoid confusing freedom with independence. The communist majority applauded him with enthusiasm. The democratic minority was disappointed: the alliance of Washington with Moscow and the communist deputies in the Ukrainian parliament presented a major obstacle to Ukrainian independence. It was hard to imagine that before the month was out, parliament would vote almost unanimously for the independence of Ukraine and that by the end of November, the White House, initially concerned about the possibility of chaos and nuclear war in the post-Soviet state, would endorse that vote. "
― Serhii Plokhy , The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine
26
" Once again, Ukraine became a source of emigration. Many left for a few months or even years to make the kind of money they could not make at home. They headed mainly to Russia, with its oil and gas wealth, and the countries of east-central Europe and the European Union. Others left forever. Ukrainian Jews led the way. Many of them had not been allowed to leave the Soviet Union in the 1980s, becoming “refuseniks” whom the Soviet authorities denied exit visas and turned into second-class citizens by firing them from the universities and barring them from government jobs. Now they could leave and did so in astonishing numbers. Between 1989 and 2006, more than 1.5 million Soviet Jews left their countries of residence, including a good many Jews of Ukraine. Whereas the Ukrainian population as a whole fell by roughly 5 percent between 1989 and 2001, the Jewish population fell by a staggering 78 percent, decreasing from 487,300 to 105,500. Among those who left were the families of the cofounders of Paypal (Max Levchin) and WhatsApp (Jan Koum). But not only Jews wanted to leave. Many of the emigrants were Ukrainians, Russians, and members of other ethnic groups. Ukraine also became a transit point for illegal immigrants from the rest of the commonwealth and countries such as Afghanistan and Pakistan. "
― Serhii Plokhy , The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine
28
" During the first years of independence, the government was reluctant to give up ownership and thus control over Soviet-era industrial and agricultural enterprises that required more and more state subsidies. Once it finally decided to do so, it faced opposition in parliament, largely from the “red directors” who managed the large enterprises. In 1995, parliament exempted 6,300 state-owned enterprises from privatization. By that time, fewer than one-third of industrial enterprises had been transferred to private ownership. The first stage of privatization was carried out with vouchers issued to the entire population of the country. It benefited largely the “red directors,” who now had assets but few incentives to change anything. But privatization without new approaches and restructuring could not revive the Ukrainian economy. By 1999, when close to 85 percent of all enterprises were privately owned, they accounted for less than 65 percent of all industrial output. Half the industrial enterprises in the country were in deficit. Most of the large enterprises remained in the hands of Soviet-era managers and people close to the government. They maintained monopolies, restrained competition, and deepened the economic crisis. "
― Serhii Plokhy , The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine
29
" Ukraine needed new owners and a new class of managers to revive its economy. The country got both in a group of young, ambitious, and ruthless businessmen who had no roots in the old planned economy of Soviet times and had made their way up from the economic chaos of the perestroika years and mafia wars of the 1990s. Known in Ukraine, as in Russia, as oligarchs, they emerged as the main beneficiaries of the second stage of privatization, which amounted to the sale of government assets at a fraction of their actual value. The oligarchs made their fortunes by being innovative and opportunistic, but also by ingratiating, bribing, and shooting their way into the offices of the “red directors.” With the military-industrial complex in steep decline, the Ukrainian metallurgical industry became the richest prize in the 1990s and early 2000s. At that time, more than half the country’s industrial output came from four eastern oblasts—Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhia, Donetsk, and Luhansk—that were rich in iron ore and coal and produced Ukraine’s primary export product: steel. "
― Serhii Plokhy , The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine
30
" The new “men of steel” included the leader of the Donetsk group, Rinat Akhmetov, who in the early 1990s took over leadership of a company called Lux, known to the Ukrainian authorities for its criminal origins and connections. In the Dnipropetrovsk region, two local businessmen divided major metallurgical assets: Viktor Pinchuk, who married into President Kuchma’s family, and Igor Kolomoisky, who established one of the first major private banks in Ukraine. Others also shared the loot of post-Soviet Ukrainian privatization. Still, the corrupt and often criminal nature of the privatization process aside, the “oligarchization” of the Ukrainian economy coincided with the end of economic decline. Ukraine began the new millennium with a rapid economic recovery, and, for better or worse, the oligarchs were important figures in that new success story. "
― Serhii Plokhy , The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine
33
" The Battle of Konotop, fought near the present-day Russo-Ukrainian border in June 1659, ended in a spectacular victory for Vyhovsky. The Muscovite army, approximately 70,000 strong, was defeated, up to 15,000 soldiers were killed, and the flower of the Muscovite cavalry was annihilated. The Tatars moved on, pillaging the southern borderlands of Muscovy. Rumors filled Moscow that the tsar was about to leave the capital. "
― Serhii Plokhy , The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine
35
" In Vinnytsia, in central Ukraine, 95 percent voted for independence; in Odesa, in the south, 85 percent; and in the Donetsk region, in the east, 83 percent. Even in the Crimea, more than half the voters supported independence: 57 percent in Sevastopol and 54 percent in the peninsula as a whole. (At that time, Russians constituted 66 percent of the Crimean population, Ukrainians 25 percent, and the Crimean Tatars, who had just begun to return to their ancestral homeland, only 1.5 percent.) "
― Serhii Plokhy , The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine
37
" HISTORY HAS BEEN used and abused more than once in the Ukraine Crisis, informing and inspiring its participants but also justifying violations of international law, human rights, and the right to life itself. The Russo-Ukrainian conflict, while arising unexpectedly and taking many of those involved by surprise, has deep historical roots and is replete with historical references and allusions. Leaving aside the propagandistic use of historical arguments, at least three parallel processes rooted in the past are now going on in Ukraine: Russia’s attempts to reestablish political, economic, and military control in the former imperial space acquired by Moscow since the mid-seventeenth century; the formation of modern national identities, which concerns both Russians and Ukrainians (the latter often divided along regional lines); and the struggle over historical and cultural fault lines that allow the participants in the conflict to imagine it as a contest between East and West, Europe and the Russian World. "
― Serhii Plokhy , The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine
39
" Lukianenko’s declaration referred to the thousand-year history of Ukrainian statehood, meaning the tradition established by Kyivan Rus’. His declaration was in fact the fourth attempt to proclaim Ukrainian independence in the twentieth century: the first occurred in 1918 in Kyiv and then in Lviv, the second in 1939 in Transcarpathia, and the third in 1941 in Lviv. All those attempts had been made in wartime, and all had come to grief. Would this one be different? The next three months would tell. A popular referendum scheduled for December 1, 1991, the same day as the previously scheduled election of Ukraine’s first president, would confirm or reject the parliamentary vote for independence. The referendum provision was important for more than one reason. On August 24, it helped those members of the communist majority who had doubts about independence to vote in favor of it—theirs, after all, was not the final decision and could be reversed in the future. The referendum also gave Ukraine a chance to leave the union without open conflict with the center. In the previous referendum organized by Gorbachev in March 1991, about 70 percent of Ukrainians had voted to stay in a reformed union. Now another referendum would enable it to make a clean break. "
― Serhii Plokhy , The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine