good reasons to be proud of Ukraine

by Martin Nunn

Before you read this article try a little test. Take a clean sheet of paper, on one side write a list of ten negative aspects of your life here in Ukraine, now turn the sheet over and write down 10 positives. I'll bet you had no problems listing the negatives... but the positives… how many of you had trouble with more than five or six?

Why you may ask? Well you can blame our indoctrination by the media. We are conditioned into remembering the negative aspects of our fives by the constant barrage of problems and difficulties experi­enced every single day. Watch CNN or the BBC today and you’ll see 24 hour coverage of the New York terrorism and the allied response in Afghanistan. How many of you followed the Gulf War or the Gongadze case or the Melnichenko tapes fiasco. Admit it, if a leading politician is caught with his trousers down we all want to know with whom he was caught. But do we really love negative stories or are we just conditioned into accepting the negative. I fundamentally believe the latter. Bad news, disasters and other people's indiscretions make great head­lines and headlines sell newspapers. Ask yourself when did you last read a really positive story in the press or see one on television?

Psychologists say that you can't change the problem only your attitude to it. So here goes, my personal attempt to change your attitude to life in Ukraine today. Ten good reasons to be proud of Ukraine. First, let's do away with the obvious… yes the ladies are some of the most beautiful and most elegant I have ever seen and yes they are rightly proud of their fem­ininity. But what else?

How do you judge what is positive? Pretty girls may enlighten the lives of the male population but they don't exactly qualify as a universal benefit. The basis of "positive" must be a positive impact on the whole population not just the few.

When I first came to Ukraine the average monthly salary was less than I would spend in London in an hour. So what has changed? Private enterprise has established market rates for specialised labour, new industries have generated new demands and from these have developed new standards for those that want to push themselves.

Thus my fist positive is that today many Ukrainians, in particular the young, have taken control of their lives. What could be a greater positive than this particularly when their forefathers had to live under such tyranny? Yes it has resulted in what some might describe as the iniquitous position of children earning 10 times their fathers salary but whilst this may cause temporary embarrassment within the family it can hardly be described as negative. The people now have the right to choose and the result is general upgrading of economic activity.

Ukraine is on the move. Industrial output is growing at 17% a year. The cynics would say when you're starting at the bottom what more do you expect. I disagree, as Ukraine has never been at the bottom, even when the official economy appeared to be in terminal decline many Ukrainians simply did what was necessary. Officially it was called the “Black Economy”; another view however is that it was man’s basic instinct of survival coming to the fore. For many it was the black economy or nothing and when you have mouths to feed you take what you can. But eyen the black economy had a positive side thus my second positive is that through the black economy many learned the basics of trade and entrepreneurial business. In fact the black economy may well be the root of today's growth as these spectacular figures are not the result of international investment or foreign enter­prise but of successful Ukrainian enterprise. Some of the methods and practices may have been a bit wacky in the beginning but we all have to team.

If we compare the growth in Ukraine with the US or the UK you get a very surprising result. The Ukrainian econ­omy is growing 45 times faster than the US economy and 20 times faster than the UK despite the world recession. In fact Ukraine has one of the fastest growing economies in Europe. So here's my third positive. Ukrainian industry has proved that it can be successful despite all the bureaucratic difficulties.

So what's the basis of all this new-found enterprise, Ukraine can’t have just woken up one morning and decided to be different. I believe that the root of the success comes from a combination of opportunity, necessi­ty and ability. The opportunity was born out of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the necessity out of the need to survive but the ability has always been there. It was simply being used in a different direction. I have worked in many parts of the world but in all my time I have never know such a well educated people.

I came to Kyiv in 1992 to set up a national pubic education programme. Out of a staff of 80 we had 22 PhD's, our lawyer was one of the few lawyers in the Former Soviet Union with a double PhD and amazingly she was only 32. Academic excellence is not the exception it is in the west, it's a way of life here. One young lady joined our company at 18 as a trilingual receptionist, today, six years later she is the marketing manager of a major international investor and she did it all through sheer hard work, ability and determination. Thus my number four is the way in which many Ukrainians have turned their academic prowess into entrepreneurial ability.

I learnt most of my Russian and Ukrainian from long conversations I enjoyed at many a roadside with DAI officers who seemed to think that a yellow number plate was a licence to print money. Thus the number five has to go to the big chiefs of DAI for taking away on the spot fines. Well done guys, driving is now fun again.

Number six goes to mother-nature and the farming community. Here I have to take a little divergence to explain one of my pet hates about life in the UK. The British food chain is based on bringing produce from all over the world to meet demand. Today you can have strawberries, raspberries, peaches, pineapples and just about every other fruit and vegetable on the planet every day of the year and they are mostly tasteless. Until I came to Ukraine I had almost forgotten how a fresh strawberry should taste. I love the seasonality of home grown foods. It may not come sorted, graded, washed and packed in plastic but who cares when the taste is so real and most of it's fully organic. Last time I was in London I compared prices, 300 grams of organic Israeli strawberries cost $11.00. They may have been picked the day before and flown half way round the world and then trucked to the store just in time to meet all those eager shoppers but who in their right mind would pay that price for a straw­berry let alone a tasteless one. No. Ukraine is a haven for those who love the taste of real food.

Number seven has to go to the Ukrainian brewers who have changed one of my pet hates into a real plea­sure. My family used to keep an English pub serving real English beer. We used to win awards for the best kept beer in the region. These weren’t the modern steel kegs, this was real ale in real wooden barrels, thus you can imagine my horror when I tasted my first Russian beer at the “Intourist” hotel in Moscow back in 1986. It was foul, if was old, it was state and it tasted of vinegar. Just how long it had been on the shelf defied description and it must have been five years before I risked another local brew. Today I drink nothing else. Why? Because Ukrainian brewers have woken up to the idea that quality and consistency are a good idea. Now I can go to a bar and enjoy a pint. OK a half litre.

For number eight we have to return to the serious. If you take a look at the recent history of the former Soviet Union it's not a pretty picture. Civil unrest in Caucasus, full-pitched war in Chechniya, tanks on the streets of Moscow shelling the parliament building, dictatorship in Belarus and religious con­flicts in the ‘stan countries. Yet through all this Ukraine has moved though the transi­tion in relative peace and order. I once asked the then Vice Prime Minister if he expected civil unrest in the Donbass fol­lowing a dispute with the miners. His response was a deep insight into the Ukrainian psychology. He told me that Ukrainians had learned a long time ago that civil unrest was a waste of time and in times of strife it was better to go home and pickle vegetables as these would be much more useful than hot air. I was surprised by his condescension.

In the years that I have enjoyed as a guest in Ukraine I have come to realise that the lessons of descent from the past have left scars that can never be erased but that may have changed a people for the better. The 22 million that died in the 28 years from 1917 to 1945 almost pail into insignif­icance those killed in the holocaust. But where is the international understanding, if Ukraine received today anything like the support Israel receives then life in this lane would be very different. Thus my eighth positive is to the people of the country who have teamed by the hardest methods known to man how to live in the face of adversity. At the time it was a terrible neg­ative but today it has resulted in Ukraine being one of the most stable countries of the former Soviet Union and that is indeed a tribute to its people.

I'll probably be deported for my next point as I think one of the most important developments of the past couple of years is the rise to power of professional politicians. I once heard the government derided as a small town council with ideas bigger than their abili­ty. In the early years this may have been realistic as there were few politicians of real ability and social purpose. This vacuum gave rise to money politics where a wealthy few bought power and then used their wealth to hold it firmly within their grasp. Sadly this remains the case today and it is a damming indictment that in the second largest country in Europe, democracy is so abused. However today there are rising politicians of principle who are prepared to use their expertise for the benefit of the nation. Thus my number nine is a step into the future in the hope that the Ukrainian voter will take a lead from those who seek to lead the nation rather than those who seek to profit from it.

Number ten is the city of Kyiv, voted by the ex-patriot community of the region as the most desirable city in CIS in which to live. Kyivites, you don’t knew how lucky you are, as the average speed of a car in London today is 6 km per hour, in Kyiv a fine of ten cars is considered to be a traffic jam. This is one beautiful city.

When I finally moved to Kyiv a young customs officer at the border asked me how long I intended to stay in Ukraine. I looked up to the heavens and said “It doesn't depend on me.” Aghast she said “you mean your mov­ing to Ukraine permanently?” “Yes” I responded. “Why?” she asked.

Well here are ten of my good reasons but I could easily write twenty. Yes I am an optimist and proud of it for believe in Ukraine and most of all I believe in the ability of this great people to overcome the difficulties of today and to grasp the wealth opportunities that lie within the reach. It's all a matter of attitude.

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 524