vI de-sTaTIsIng The sovIeT man
1. coping without the state
People’s awareness changed at a slower pace than their social status, especially as the privatisation of the large industrial undertakings initially changed little for their workers. The first changes which concerned everyone came with the scarcity of goods, hyperinflation, and (a little later) the coupon privatisation which turned out to be a great scam through which the managers of stateowned enterprises appropriated their assets136; and finally, the mass withholding of pay by employ ers. As a consequence, the very idea of a market economy became compromised, especially since the people had approached it with distrust from the very start, understanding little of the economic novelties because they had not been provided with adequate information. People turned their backs on prykhvatyzatsya and
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dermokratiya137 and politics in general. Instead, they undertook massive, dispersed economic activity, in most cases hoping just to make ends meet rather than get rich. Initially, that activity consisted mainly in cultivating allotment gardens, which the Soviet authorities generously allocated to city dwellers in their final years (although the gardens were often located 100 km or further from the city), small crossborder retail (often amounting to contraband) and domestic retail, and later, also work abroad. Gardening and small agriculture were mostly subsistenceoriented, but the commerce did stimulate the development of business relations and educated people about the market economy. However, it was also marred by corruption and crime from the start, as organised criminal groups preyed on small trade, services, and on people working abroad. Over time, the proceeds from that activity started to stimulate internal demand, including for construction and renovation services and the related materials. On the other hand, small retail started to organise into networks in the form of semiwholesale bazaars. Private capital was accumulated in substantial, or even very substantial, albeit fragmented amounts.138 Under dif ferent conditions, that could have led to an investment boom. What was missing in Ukraine, however, was confidence in the state, which could provide neither regu latory stability, nor protection against crime. People still felt more like subjects than citizens, and subjects do not invest because nothing is really theirs.
The processes outlined here occurred against the backdrop of emerging ine qualities of shocking proportions. The Soviet society had been egalitarian, and extreme wealth and poverty were hidden from the public view. After 1988, opportunities to get rich emerged, and contact with the Western world (includ ing via popular culture) exposed people to patterns of ostentatious consump tion, while on the other hand the social safety net disintegrated. The number of wage workers with medium incomes, and especially whitecollar workers, decreased dramatically. Extreme poverty, which had been unthinkable in the Soviet times, at least in Ukraine, began to appear.
Today most of the city dwellers in Ukraine continue to be wage workers. The mid dle class has been developing slowly, but it is growing in numbers, especially in the western oblasts and in Kyiv, largely thanks to the revenues from work abroad. It is also starting to be aware of its interests. When those interests came under threat
137 The terms could be translated as ‘grabisation’ and ‘crapocracy’.
138 According to some estimates, around the year 2010 Ukrainian citizens held around US$ 100 bil
lion in cash. А. Ермолаев, Четвертое измерение, http://gazeta.zn.ua/POLITICS/chetver toe_izmerenie.html, accessed on 23 September 2016.
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from the new tax code in 2010, more than 50,000 people protested in the Maidan.139 Later it was those people, as well as the creative class and new technology special ists, often working for foreign companies, who supported the Revolution of Dignity and the Ukrainian armed forces with their money and organisational skills. The rising inequalities were accompanied, especially in the initial period, by a col lapse of the state’s healthcare, education and culture systems, which affected rural areas and small towns particularly heavily. The number of hospitals decreased from 3,900 to 2,200 in the years 1990–2013 and the number of hospital beds per 10,000 inhabitants – fell from 135 to 88. The number of public libraries decreased from 25,600 to 19,100, and their collections shrank from 419 million to 311 million books. Participation in culture decreased dramatically: the number of theatre goers went down dropped from 17.6 million to 6.9 million, and the number of museum visitors – fell from 31 million to 22 million (even though the number of theatres and museums increased, by a factor of three in the case of the latter). The number of new book titles published increased from 76,000 in 1990 to 263,000 in 2013, but their total impressions numbers dropped from 170 million to 70 million, which meant that the accessibility of books (other than textbooks) declined dramatically, while the importation of books printed in the Russian Federation could not make up for the decline, and simultaneously increased the advantage of Russianlanguage books over Ukrainianlanguage books. Large swathes of provincial Ukraine became deprived of access to healthcare and culture.
In another situation and in another country, such a deep degradation of a major ity of the people could have triggered protests on a revolutionary scale. If no ‘hunger riots’ broke out in Ukraine (of which the Communists like to warn, but which they never tried to organise), it was only because of the proverbial patience140 of the Ukrainians, and the sense that there was no alternative. The powerful, stable state to which they had become accustomed had disinte grated for reasons they could not comprehend, and Russia was suffering similar, disastrous consequences of that collapse. People did not understand what had happened, and trusted neither the government nor one another.
There were no forces capable of organising and coordinating economic protests (in contrast to political protests). The miners of the Donbas, who had known how
139 Kuzio, op. cit., pp. 87–89. According to the author, the amendment risked pushing as many
as one million entrepreneurs into the grey economy.
140 Almost all participants in Ukrainian political discourse draw upon this (appraising it either
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to organise mass strikes in defence of their economic interests back in the Soviet times, in independent Ukraine were only able to strike in the interest of the mine owners, at the owners’ initiative and for their money. The old, Communist trade unions could not and did not want to adapt to the conditions of the market economy conditions, and the new unions failed to build a significant position for themselves.141 That patience still prevails, mainly because people have little faith that any change is possible which would benefit the wide masses, and not just the elites. The Ukrain ians are prepared to stage determined, mass protests for political reasons, but not for economic reasons (when any such protests happen, they are organised by entre preneurs, and not workers, public sector employees or kolkhozniks). If people hope to carve better lives for themselves, they look to work abroad (either for themselves or for younger family members) or to conduct various kinds of business activity for themselves, and do not think about forcing the state to ensure a legal order that would promote entrepreneurship or provide adequate welfare. Only the young generation is starting to raise such demands, but it is at the same time these are the very people who are increasingly inclined to emigrate.
Chart 3. Dynamics of the Human Development Index (HDI) of Ukraine