This week, I was initially going to table our predictions for 2012 from the Strategic Foresight Institute, but that can wait. More significant events have appeared recently, that need wider media coverage. Many people were concerned that Ukraine would fall off of the EU spotlight with the election of a new President of the Parliamentary Assembly Council of Europe (PACE) on January 23. That’s not the case. Jean-Claude Mignon said at a press conference right after his election that he is concerned about the case of former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, and believes that Ukraine should follow European standards of democracy and...

Оn January 23 the prime minister and presidential candidate Vladimir Putin published in Nezavisimaya Gazeta another policy article called ‘Russia: the national question. Self-determination of the Russian nation: a multi-ethnical civilization sealed with the Russian cultural core.’ It seems that Putin covets Lenin and Stalin’s laurels, known in the post-Soviet space as “experts” in solving national questions. It is known that Lenin wrote the article called ‘Working Class and the National Question’ and Stalin wrote the article ‘The National Question and Social Democracy.’ Everyone remembers well the results of this national policy whose consequences are still felt by all the countries put into the “prison of nations.” Just like his predecessors Putin thinks that the national question “is fundamental for the country.” He admits that the national question in Russia is a burning issue, first of all, because of the “expenditures caused by the mass migration.” In his characteristic style

Occasionally one may find an engaging theme in Svoboda newspaper, published by the Ukrainian National Association in New Jersey, besides its all-important obituary page. This time (Jan. 13) it was an article about scholarly research on the subject of the Ukrainian language. My attention was drawn by its sweeping title: “Halychyna will always be Ukraine’s Piedmont,” which may invite all kinds of commentary, wisecracks included. Actually, it is difficult to disagree with that claim. Having lived most of the first five years of life in the Tomsk area of Siberia, the awareness of the geographic distance lingers on and imparts some objectivity concerning Ukraine’s regional mindsets. A cogent argument can be...

“There, but for an accident of geography, stands a corpse!” thundered Max Shachtman—once known as Leon Trotsky’s “foreign minister”—in New York City in 1950. By popular account, the line had been cooked up that night by a young Shachtmanite named Irving Howe; it ended the debate between the anti-Stalinist socialist Schachtman and his opponent, Earl Browder, former head of the Communist Party USA, who had been expelled from the party in 1946 at the behest of Moscow Central after suggesting that Soviet Communism and American capitalism might coexist after all. Browder’s grandson Bill...

My appointment as director of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies ends as of June 30, 2012, and currently the University of Alberta is conducting an international search for a successor. I have served as director for almost two decades (eighteen years as director and one as acting director). As my term is coming to an end, I would like to look back and note some of the transformations, accomplishments, and difficulties of the past two decades. When I arrived in March 1992, everyone at CIUS was working at fever pitch. As Ukraine gained its independence, CIUS became a clearing house of information for the Canadian government and for Western academic, political, and business elites. New opportunities presented themselves for undertaking academic projects in Ukraine. At the same time...

The Russian economy generates no drivers for a political crisis – this elementary proposition underpins Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s steady march to the presidential elections that are just six weeks away. He returns to the good economic news in every speech and article arguing that Russia with its 4 percent GDP growth in 2011 was behind only China and India, while economists point out that Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan and Ukraine also performed better (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Vedomosti, January 18). Putin also...

Paying Taxes 2012, the annual study from PricewaterhouseCoopers, the World Bank, and the International Finance Corporation, was released a few weeks ago. The study “measures the ease of paying taxes across 183 economies worldwide, covering both the cost of taxes and the administrative burden of tax compliance.” It contains grim news for Ukraine. The study ranks countries along four measures: ease of paying taxes, the number of tax payments, the time to comply, and the total tax rate (which measures the “amount of taxes and mandatory contributions borne by the business in the second year of operation, expressed as a...

During National Holodomor Awareness Week (November 21-27, 2011) the Waterloo Ukrainian Students’ Association (WUSA) held commemorative events to raise awareness of the Holodomor, the 1932-33 artificial famine that claimed millions of lives in Ukraine. During the week, WUSA members from the University of Waterloo and Sir Wilfrid Laurier University displayed information booths in campus student centers. The exhibit “Famine by Genocide”, produced by the League of Ukrainian Canadians, captured the attention of other students and faculty members at both universities. WUSA members distributed small cards and bookmarks with information about the Holodomor and spread awareness of this tragedy...

Yuriy Boyko, Ukraine’s current and past energy minister, has long been at the center of Ukraine’s energy sector -- including troublesome talks with Russia on natural gas. If the reported words in 2006-07 of then-US Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor and other experts are to be believed , Boyko helped to create RosUkrEnergo, the controversial Swiss-registered energy trader that has made some individuals close to him spectacularly wealthy. These are among the findings in the treasure trove of WikiLeaks documents now made public. The disclosures opened up previously classified or confidential U.S. government communications, mainly from embassies abroad. “Fuel and Energy Minister Boyko … has repeatedly stressed the...

Latvian political scientist and researcher Edvins Snore (Edvīns Šnore), director of the documentary film, The Soviet Story, gave a talk on the phenomenon of Soviet Communism at an event organised by the Finnish organisation, Pro Karelia, in Helsinki on 6 June 2011. Below, the full text of Mr Snore's talk: I want to thank the organisers of this event for inviting me to take part. I am delighted to be here in Finland and to speak about a subject, which is important to the Baltic people, which is known in Finland also, but which is less known in the rest of Western Europe. That subject is Soviet Communism and its legacy today. For decades, Soviet crimes were taboo. No research of this issue was permitted behind the Iron Curtain, and rather limited research was done in the West. I am often asked, why did I make this film, The Soviet Story? Because I wanted to show to the Western world the history of those nations who lived behind the Iron Curtain. The Soviet Story was filmed over two years using materials that I had been collecting for about ten years. Most of the material...