From an Email on Moroz, the Left, Lutsenko, Ty and Ljubi Druzi

Trust me that I understand 100% the predicament of a disaffected Leftist--plenty about the Left in the US and the West in general is far from satisfactory, and the history of Western European social democrats (stooges of colonialism) and communists (stooges of the USSR) leaves much to be desired. The only respectable ones have been fringes of the fringe, such as the autonomia in Italy, etc. When it comes to Ukraine, well. . .Oleskandr Moroz and the rest of the Socialists who went with him just obliterated my hope that there was emerging a mainstream, left-wing party in Ukraine worthy of respect and support--and I think some long-time observers of Ukraine might consider me foolish to have even considered this Moroz-led Socialist Party as having such potential. Also, Yuri Lutsenko, now a former member of the Socialist Party, is troubling me. Quick background: Lutsenko was an OR leader-turned-pretty-good-Minister of the Interior (by Ukrainian standards) who was brought into government by Ty, and who was left in his position when Yu fired Ty. Which Yu did, if I may digress, like a little boy fighting with a little girl on a playground because the little girl had "bigger balls" than the little boy, who then felt he had to prove that he was more powerful just by virtue of having balls that he nonetheless didn't know how to use effectively. This is a crude way to put it, of course, but. . .I suggested, at about this time last year, that many "analysts" of Ukraine were producing post-lapsarian narratives in which Ty was the Eve in the Garden of the Orange Revolution. To my mind, her treatment by Yu and the Our Ukraine good ol' boys since her sacking vindicate the observation--for Yu i joho ljubi druzi, Ty has been something of an Eve they have been desperate to keep out of their garden.

Btw, the above statements are based on some recent observations of real playground dynamics. In our neighborhood park, Julija and I often encounter Nastja, one tough little 5 yr old girl who is always doing, and proudly saying that she can do, whatever the boys do. Yesterday she asked her grandmother for her cane because one of the boys in the playground had hit her and taken something from her; babushka smiled as she let Nastja run off with the cane and proceeded to chase the boy all over the playground! Later, recalling the event to my Julija's mama, I thought out-loud that Ty should have been given such a stick in the Ukrainian playground. Ty's trouble, however, was that she had Yu to look to for assistance instead of the backing of granny-grandaughter solidarity. I hope that my Julija grows to be a bit like Nastja, and that she takes on some of the fighting spirit with which her namesake is karmically endowed. But I do digress.

My trouble with Yuri Lutsenko is that he pledged he would not, under any circumstance, work in a Ya cabinet but has now decided to stay in his post with Ya as his boss. Perhaps his mouth ran ahead of his mind a few times (he made this claim more than once), but in the context of Ukraine's politics, this does not look good--he looks like all the rest of the bad politicians who do things for power rather than principle and who therefore consistently make contradictory statements and acts. I do, however, appreciate that he resigned from the Socialist Party after Moroz's perfidy--I am now, btw, certain that Moroz is a svoloch. So no conclusions, yet, about Lutsenko: I will give him a chance. Is he being pragmatic, trying to have a positive impact? It is, indeed, very important that a pro-OR (i.e., a pro-democratization) person remain Interior Minister (to my mind it is already clear that the Regions have made no conversions). However, is it perhaps it is the fact because he, allegedly, was good at getting-nothing-much-done under Yu (if that is true) that makes him trustworthy to Ya [corrections inspired by comment]? The to my mind rather cynical Maksymiuk (cheif of RFE's Ukraine desk) suggested so in the article I posted earlier to my blog. So. . .is Lutsenko, or is Yu, responsible for the failure to bring a single high-profile case to court since the OR? Is Lutsenko a stonewalling Interior Minister, an outsider to the ideals of the OR who pretended to be an insider and who is secretly working for his own agenda, whatever that may be, a la Oleksandr Moroz? Or is he simply hungry to keep power after having gotten a taste of it? I don't know. I don't want to expect the worst of most or all Ukraine's politicians, but recent events pretty much demand that one should.

Come to think of it, I had a similar crisis of uncertainty when the semi-progressive Senator Paul Wellstone (from the state of Minnesota) declared that he would run for a second term. Wellstone had pledged he would not run for a second term while campaigning for his first; the pledge was part of his populist attack on "career politicians." I was happy when he said he was going to run again--I agreed with him that he was needed in the Senate as the most progressive senator in the time of the GW onslaught. So maybe Lutsenko is taking a similar position. I want to believe him. But I will have to let his further actions speak. (Wellstone, btw, in the context of the US Congress, was almost a Communist--or, um, that's what his detractors said, conditioned as they were by the fact that the US consensus is so far to the right that anyone with a left toe is a Communist, but now I preach to the choir. Two great books from which to derive talking points to counter the BS about a contemporary liberal, let alone left, bias/consensus in the US are this and this. The first book is excellent in its analysis of how, even in more domestically liberal times, the US consensus has usually been much to the Right of the European, continental consensus. The title of the second book has inspired me to ruminate on taking its title and rewriting its theme as What's the Matter with Donbas?--a book to explain the similar dynamic in Ukraine as in the US whereby people vote for and/or support politicians and businessmen who ultimately stand against the common interest.)