Since the Soviet Union collapsed, Ukraine has had two chances to find a road to find a road to freedom, stability, and prosperity. It failed after it became independent in 1991; it failed again after the Orange Revolution in 2004, a decade ago. It desperately needs to succeed this time, despite losing the Crimea and large chunks of the east.
There are new faces in the government that give grounds for hope, as a recent article in the New York Times pointed out. Yet the odds remain steep. Through most of the former Soviet Union, old habits die hard. More often than not, corruption rules. The social underpinnings required by democracy are weak. In Ukraine, desperation has led to the strengthening of reactionary forces.
But desperation may yet produce a new outcome. There are forces at play that are not new. They existed before 2004. They surprised me when I saw them first hand in 1989. Until recently, I had forgotten about that time, when the Soviet Union was opening up after 70 years of Communist dictatorship.
The spring of 1989 was the heyday of the Gorbachev era, a time of Perestroika, of restructuring. In March of that year, for the first time since 1917, the Soviet Union held elections that were open, contested. They produced the Congress of People's Deputies, a new legislative body.
I came to the country for a conference two months later, a member of a delegation from the Forum for U.S.-Soviet Dialogue, an organization dedicated to the proposition that dialogue between the two superpowers had value. The American delegation included scholars and students, executives, journalists, military officers, and even a jazz singer. The Soviet delegation was of similar status, but less varied. Two members came from a institute attached to the International Department of the Communist Party that had entertained no Western visitors until we entered its gates in Moscow.
Two incidents on that trip showed me that Ukrainians and Russians were eager to have a government more effective and more democratic than the authoritarian Soviet government they had known.
The conference itself took place on a hydrofoil that skimmed the Dnepr River from Kyiv to the Black Sea and Odessa. It was a floating testament to dialogue and optimism, cordial and serious, despite wide differences in outlook between the two sides.
The first incident took place when we stopped in Zaporozhye, a city in the center of Ukraine, only 120 miles from Donetsk. Our delegation was greeted warmly and divided into two groups to be addressed by local officials.
Those of us who were there to discuss political, legal, or cultural issues, were led to an auditorium. Filled with more than a hundred local citizens.
What happened then left me astonished. Several senior party officials spoke to us about the state of affairs in Zaporozhe and the country at large. They were laughed at. Not by us, but by the locals. The officials were not used to this and did not expect it. A lawyer from Moscow--a member of the Soviet delegation to our conference--asked a question about irregularities in the election that had just taken place. The official responded by complimenting him on his Russian. Clearly, he believed that no Russian would ask such a question.
The laughter showed that the audience was not prepared to accept falsehood and pablum. By their reactions, the officials showed that they were not prepared to be taken to task. This in a country that had sent people to die in the Gulag for less only a generation before and still found dissent difficult to deal with, as the next two years would show.
After we left the hydrofoil in Odessa, at the base of the Potemkin steps, we flew to the Crimea, where the second incident took place. During our stay in Yalta, the Congress of People's Deputies held its first session. it was extraordinary, and televised in the lobby of our hotel. A crowd that included some of our delegates and a number of hotel workers stood around watching it.
I remember one maid in particular. She was blond and dressed in her hotel uniform. Her eyes were focused intently on the screen.
The session at the Congress had been going on for some time. It had reached the point of electing a president. Everyone knew it would be Gorbachev, General Secretary of the Communist Party. But we watched as Alexander Obolensky, an unknown delegate from Leningrad--and not a member of the party, complained about the privileges that senior officials enjoyed. He then nominated himself for president, wanting to set a precedent of competition for office.
When he finished, the maid--like others around us--said quietly: 'Molodets!' 'Good lad!' 'Well done!'
The odds against democracy are steep in both countries--more in Russia than Ukraine, where the unsettled state of things may make change possible. But when we read about the efforts to make Ukraine democratic; when we hear of the strong support that Putin gets for Slavophilic, Russo-centric aggrandizement, we should keep that 'Molodets!' in mind. There is more going on in both countries than we know. The road not yet taken remains open.
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