Born amid confusion and uncertainty in December 1991, the independent Ukraine has faced a difficult first year of life, and it seems there is more of the same to come, writes POUL FUNDER LARSEN.
The Ukraine's December 1991 referendum on independence, in which 90% voted yes, was an important watershed in eastern and central Europe, launching a new state of more than 50 million people almost overnight. This sounded the death knell of the USSR, which was liquidated within a month.
The new state was born amid considerable uncertainty. A mere nine months earlier, in March 1991, 70% of voters had endorsed the concept of a renewed Soviet Union in an all-union referendum initiated by Gorbachev. Adding to the uncertainty was the fact that while a president was elected, with former nomenklatura stalwart Leonid Kravchuk scoring a resounding victory, no new elections were called for the Supreme Soviet.
Relations with the rest of the former USSR have been patchy. The Ukraine became one of the three founders of the Commonwealth of Independent States, but then signed only five of 15 documents endorsed by the CIS summit in October. Moreover, the Ukraine has refused to sign the charter that defines the commonwealth's role.
Parts of the Ukrainian opposition are particularly critical of the CIS and the dangers of Russian domination. The independent Ukraine's relations with Russia have been fraught with territorial and security tensions, including the division of the Black Sea fleet, control over strategic nuclear forces based in the Ukraine and the future of the Crimea — a part of Russia until 1954 and with a two-thirds Russian population and a large Tatar minority which revolted over local grievances in October.
Gloom hangs just as thickly over the economy of the new state. The Kravchuk leadership stopped short of the "shock therapy" employed in Russia, approaching privatisation far more cautiously. However, the freeing of food prices, completed last July, together with runaway inflation, started a calamitous drop in living standards which shows no sign of ending.
Addressing the Supreme Soviet in November, Prime Minister Leonid Kuchma drew a picture of an economy in disintegration: "Within the first nine months of this year the GNP of the Ukraine has dropped by 18%, the national income by 11.5%, the volume of industrial production by 19.7%, and the output of consumer goods by 12%. Particularly disturbing is the reduction in the production of food: the production of meat has dropped by 24% ... The living standard of people is declining in a disastrous manner. In the first half of this year, wholesale prices rose 15.6 times in Belorussia, 14.6 times in Russia, but 22.3 times in the Ukraine."
In addition, the Ukrainian economy is extremely exposed as trade relations within the former USSR shift to hard currency. Many e heavily reliant on imports of raw materials, particularly from Russia.
This is not the only source of economic tension with Russia. A looser credit policy in the Ukraine led to a Russian decision last September to suspend all credit to Ukrainian enterprises.
This was an important factor in the Ukraine's decision to break its ties with the rouble zone. From November the karbovanets, an interim parallel currency introduced earlier in the year, became the only legal tender. However, it enjoys the dubious distinction of floating even lower than the rouble. While the rouble exchanges at a miserable 450 to the US dollar, the karbovanets wallows around 650.
Most Western financial institutions have adopted a wait and see attitude to the Ukraine, and the IMF has complained about the government's "hesitant" and "contradictory" approach to economic reform. This prompted Kravchuk to warn recently that the Ukraine might not ratify the START treaty on strategic nuclear arms if no Western military and economic aid is forthcoming.
The stakes are rising as Premier Kuchma, a former director of the huge Yuzhmash armaments company, demands far-reaching powers to carry through a drastic economic program. The Russian Izvestia described the Supreme Soviet's decision to grant these powers under the headline: "The Ukrainian government receives powers to impose dictatorship over the economy".
The government will be able to decide on "the legal regulation of property relations, business affairs, social and cultural development, state customs, scientific and technological policies, the financial system, taxation and the state policy on wages and prices".
"We have to understand that people have been driven to a point where slogans of privatisation, social demagogy and political speculation could spark a spontaneous mass uprising", said Kuchma, explaining his demand for such powers.
But Kuchma's demand was not accompanied by any program of action, and it seems his medicine will be a mix of free market mechanisms, including stepped-up privatisation, and some support for state industry.
Kuchma reflects a trend towards increasingly authoritarian policies, not only in the Ukraine but in many of the post-Soviet states.
President Kravchuk, who chose Kuchma, tries to hover above all the parties, though even this "father of the country" is coming in for rising criticism as conditions deteriorate.
The opposition forces are heterogeneous and divided. The Rukh has divided after arising in 1989 as a broad national-democratic front. One wing in Kiev has linked up with the Kravchuk section of the former nomenklatura, while a more nationalist wing in the western Ukraine maintains a slightly more independent position. Several small groups claim to be successors to the Ukrainian Communist Party dissolved by Kravchuk in August 1991, but the largest group originating from the old ruling party is the Ukrainian Socialist Party, with up to 30,000 members. Most of this party's leaders are former middle level apparatchiks, and its ranks are diverse, drawing on a mix of political traditions including Social Democracy, "Soviet Communism" and Western Marxism. Anarchist and left socialist groups have declined after surging briefly in the perestroika period.
An emergent trade union movement organised a strike by transportation workers in early September, with some miners also joining in. In mid-November miners in the Donetsk region struck for 24 hours over a law on labour disputes.
While these are modest signs of popular resistance, the Kravchuk-Kuchma coalition could soon face growing opposition from large numbers of people tired of misery and empty promises.