OP-ED By Taras Kuzio
Kyiv Post, Kyiv, Ukraine, March 25, 2004

We should not be surprised to learn this. After all, Leonid Kravchuk used to regularly attack the Diaspora when he was the ideological secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine in the 1980s. Meanwhile, both Kravchuk and Leonid Kuchma rose up the Communist Party ladder during Volodymyr Shcherbytsky's era in the 1970s, which saw the most vicious attacks on the Ukrainian language and dissidents.

A worrying sign is the return to Soviet-era ideological views of the Diaspora, a return that has manifested itself in two ways.

First, as in the Soviet era, the center-right opposition are increasingly attacked as "nationalists" and "Nazis." This is especially prevalent in media affiliated with the Social Democratic Party of Ukraine (united) and directed predominantly against the "Nashists" (a play on "Nasha Ukraina", the Ukrainian name for Our Ukraine), a word which resembles "Nazis." As in the Soviet era, "Nashists" are labelled "anti-semitic," "anti-Russian" rabid western Ukrainian nationalists who will seek to incite inter-ethnic conflict if they come to power. As Kravchuk is the head of the SDPU(u) faction in parliament, he cannot escape some responsibility for this trend.

The irony is, of course, that Viktor Medvedchuk is from Zhytomyr oblast in central Ukraine, and that his family was deported to Siberia in 1944 because his father was allegedly a member of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (a recently published biography gave his father a different occupation during World War II). Viktor Yushchenko is from eastern Ukraine. His father was in the Soviet army and, after being captured, was incarcerated in Auschwitz. As in the Soviet era, Ukraine's "virtual reality" is usually different from what is publicly stated.

Another tactic was introduced a year ago and comes straight out of George Orwell. The information department of the Presidential Administration, whose head Serhy Vasylyev should be given the highest state order for single handedly ruining what little was left of Ukraine's international reputation, began sending to Diaspora newspapers missives entitled "Dobri Novyny z Ukrainy" (Good News From Ukraine).

The editors I have spoken to found the texts so amusing they ignored them.

Impatience with the Diaspora

Slivka is impatient with the Ukrainian Diaspora's view of certain developments in Ukraine.

To some extent, he has a point. Ukraine has not turned out the way most members of the Diaspora expected. One increasingly hears the view that Ukrainians living in Ukraine are not the same as those born in the West. I would tend to agree, as our political cultures are different: one is neo-Soviet and the other Western.

There were already problems evident in this area in the late Soviet era. Visits by family members to Ukraine from 1989 onwards usually ended up being unpleasant. Fifty years of Soviet rule created a huge gulf between the groups. I witnessed that myself when my father met his brother and sister for the first time in 1989, after nearly half a century apart.

Slivka, though, is wrong in one important respect. Diaspora negativity about Ukraine is not unique to it. Regular surveys of native Ukrainians show that three quarters of them feel there is a need for a "change in the country's course," and the authorities are rated negatively in a whole range of areas by 60 to 80 percent of those polled.

Ukrainian Diaspora disillusionment with Ukraine under Kuchma is not only a reflection of romantic nostalgia; it also reflects the prevalent view held by the Western world. Kuchma's international (i.e. Western) image is so low that it will be impossible to improve before he leaves office. Western government leaders and international organizations no longer believe statements by Kuchma and his allies. The outcome of this is that Ukraine is not treated as a serious country.

This lack of trust in Kuchma and his allies is reflected in "Ukraine fatigue" in the West. President Kuchma and his allies are seen as embodying a neo-Soviet political culture. This confirms the already deeply held stereotypes in the EU and elsewhere that Ukraine is not a "European" country (the fact that it is geographically inside Europe, as Ukrainians point out, is irrelevant).