Ukraine
Innovations and elections: a 25-year perspective
The city square that was part of my commute over 20 years ago is now known around the world as ‘the Maidan.’ I used to walk through it each day on the way to the media start-up I’d co-founded. The millions of people who made the Maidan a household name in 2014 proved that the goals we set for our venture back in 1991 were not insane.
Back then, the Soviet Union had just collapsed, I graduated from Princeton, and found the Ukrainian journalists who had the guts to quit the only game in town (aka the State Television Company) and strike out to build something new. These guys (and a few women) became my friends as well as colleagues. I was the only American on the ground full-time. Like at every successful start-up, I worked 24/7 side-by-side with smart and motivated people.
Within two years we raised over $7 million and launched several companies. I headed back home to the United States and my friends stayed in Ukraine and kept building: slogging through the hard work of running companies, working at new ones and building a new country. Almost two decades later, they were all involved in the mass protest movement that led to the ouster of the corrupt president of the country and his cronies in February 2014. (You probably read about it as Euromaidan or Maidan.)
Last week, I caught a direct flight from JFK and traveled from New York City to Kyiv to spend some time with my co-founders. I wanted to see how they were doing to try to understand the news I’d been reading.
My friends are tired (physically, mentally and emotionally). They have gone through an intense six months of protests on the Maidan and now face war. Much business is paralyzed until after the presidential elections, but the overall atmosphere is not sad. I got the sense that the blinders are off: my friends realize things that they’ve been ignoring. People grasp that the hard work of building a pluralistic, diverse and stable democracy is ‘up to us. We have to do it ourselves. We can’t wait for Europe or the US to do this for us.’
The corruption and kleptocracy of the last president brought out hundreds of thousands of people who stood on the square in the cold for months. They succeeded and saw that they had the power to kick out the president. Now they’re skeptical of all politicians and want to make certain they have a responsible government. The election for a new president on Sunday 25 May 2014 will be a key point in seeing if the People, the Maidan, can convert that effort into building stable organizations and structures that go about the mundane work of running a country, from foreign policy to making sure the garbage is picked up on time.
My friends have been doing much of that work. They run media companies, trade groups, and even Ukrainian Fashion Week. Some of them started public broadcasting companies. The group of ‘avanturisty’ that we collected in the early 90’s, continue to be innovators. I’ve kept up with them through these two decades. What they told me about the Maidan and about the post-Maidan is worth understanding.
First, bear in mind that the dramatic photographs we saw on our newsfeeds last winter did not burst forth out of nowhere. The hundreds of thousands of cellphones pointing at the sky at the rock concert in December and the burning tires and flaming Molotov cocktails on Hrushevskoho Street are all on a continuum of activities across decades and even across centuries. Most of the time, you hear about all these events presented through a filter that’s in Moscow, Russia. I think that it’s important to understand it directly from the people who live in Ukraine.
When I spoke with my friends and family in Kyiv and Lviv last week, I heard several of the same ideas.
Five themes were woven through all my conversations in Ukraine:
(1) Putin is pushing to control his (practical) monopoly on delivering energy to Western Europe. He has physically invaded Ukraine and wants to take several regions. Right now he has destabilized Donetsk and Luhansk. He backed off Odessa and has taken Crimea.
(2) The information war that Putin has been raging for years is now in high-gear. Governmental, private, and public organizations are ill-equipped to deal with it. Putin’s KGB training combined with his hiring of top Western PR firms is a deadly combination.
(3) Part of the kleptocracy that ran the country for the past 5 years is gone, but much still remains. People are skeptical of all politicians.
(4) Nobody will fix it except for Ukrainian citizens.
(5) The millennial effect is in hyperdrive in Ukraine. Throughout my conversations, I heard a significant generational shift. People in their 20’s, born after independence, grew up with the internet. Many things are simply obvious to them, that people in their 40s had to learn as adults. (That dynamic is always the case but here it takes on a particular political significance.)
If this cohort can get it together and take charge, then Ukraine will be able to remain an independent country with a huge neighbor to the north. A historian I know says that you need two generations of well-educated, sane people to build a country. Ukraine has not had two consecutive generations in a long time. Someone always came along and slaughtered the smart people (and the not-so-smart people). The result was a leadership vacuum.
The biggest threat now is that the slaughter will happen with brain cells and information. Instead of tanks on streets, there are trolls on Twitter. Putin’s KGB-training crossed with the world’s biggest PR agencies who have Putin and Gazprom as clients has created a war like we’ve never seen.
So this is a great time to go visit Ukraine. (Seriously.) There are even direct flights from NYC. Get this story directly from the source: from the people who are citizens of Ukraine. They are from various ethnic and religious groups, they speak many different languages, they’re all quite diverse and they are all citizens of Ukraine.
The cafes in Kyiv have great tables outdoors under leafy trees. Lviv is full of excellent coffee, beer and chocolate. There is a Gap store and several McDonald’s, but it is not overrun with big box stores. Even during the violent clashes in Kyiv, there were no riots and no looting. Things have been rebuilt. Putin continues to hover on the airwaves and in several towns in the east, but the vast majority of the country is safe and stable and solidly aware of their citizenship as Ukrainian.
More people than ever are wearing the official licensed gear of the Olympic team of Ukraine: bright yellow on blue. During the Soviet period if you paired a yellow top with a blue bottom, you’d have problems at work. You’d be reported to the Party organs for not being a participating member of the Communist Party and you might not get that raise. Now I’m told that in Luhansk and Donetsk people get beat up for wearing those colors.
The uniforms of the cabin crew on my Air Ukraine International flight (flyUIA.com) are blue and yellow. The flight is full with a mix of ages, lots of babies and toddlers. The tearful ‘goodbyes forever’ that you used to see at the airport are gone. You see people coming and going like at pretty much any airport in Europe. The terminal that was built when Ukraine and Poland co-hosted a European soccer championship in 2012 is sleek and clean and well-organized and has free wi-fi.
So go online, buy a ticket and check it out for yourself. There are interesting people to meet. You can speak in Ukrainian, English and even Russian. (Just like the cabin instructions on this flight.)
—- Dora Chomiak New York City 23 May 2014
