A once-popular thesis among Ukrainian liberals held that a state could be “objectively” forced to reform by the circumstances in which it operates. This thesis emerged back in the Kuchma era and remained quite popular, it seems to me, until the present day.
In truth, “being doomed to reforms” is the product of a particular historical analysis. There was Germany, lying in ruins after World War II—and then Erhard appeared, who carried out successful reforms. There was Poland with its Balcerowicz, and there was Thatcher in Britain, Reagan in the United States. In general, a picture emerged: if a state’s affairs are going badly, then once it crosses a certain threshold, an objective need for reforms arises, usually embodied in the figure of a heroic reformer. Saakashvili became the benchmark example in this respect.
So, from the Kuchma era onward—and especially during his “second term”—liberals constantly asked themselves and each other: has that threshold been crossed yet? Has the state become “objectively doomed” to reforms? After all, even “the second Kuchma” seemed impossible, an unthinkable rollback to the past, yet things only got worse from there. Yushchenko, by general consensus, accomplished nothing; worse, he even allowed Yanukovych and Tymoshenko (twice) to serve as prime ministers, each happily regulating everything that came into their field of vision. Then came the turn of You-Know-Who and his faithful Azarov, whose policies as chief tax collector under Kuchma had already earned the name of “Azarovshchina.”
And every time, with each new disappointing macroeconomic report, liberals thought: now it’s imminent. Now “they” will simply be forced to carry out reforms, because there is nowhere else to go. And it always turned out that there was somewhere else to go.
Well, Petro Alexeyevich has confirmed this conclusion with his decree creating a special body to carry out reforms. The conditions, as we understand, could not be more suitable: war, devastation, and so on. Surely there’s nothing left to postpone to now. But Petro Alexeyevich’s decree clearly tells us that there is always somewhere to postpone to. And they will postpone, no matter what.
For anyone even slightly familiar with how bureaucracy operates, it suffices to look at the text of the decree to immediately agree with me. No special body is needed for “reforms”—especially one that includes all state leadership. No, of course, once they write all the regulations and rules prescribed by this decree and coordinate the candidates, the new state body will certainly adopt something. It just won’t have anything to do with “reforms.”
Why does this happen? After all, one might think “they” should have a survival instinct, “they” should understand that reforms are beneficial and useful to them, and that without reforms “they” are finished. What was that about the goose that laid the golden eggs? I assure you, the system’s survival instinct is perfectly fine. The threats that trigger this instinct simply are not where we are used to placing them. Wars and revolutions do not harm the system; on the contrary, they only strengthen it. The threat lies in the self-activity of citizens, in their economic and political independence from the state. And our state copes perfectly with these threats. The most vivid examples here are the numerous stories related to opposing volunteer units and citizens who supply the army. The wonderful idea to tax the activities of civic activists who purchase equipment with their own money—this, as they say now, is simply the cherry on the cake.
And of course, historical analysis is an unsuitable tool for any rigorous conclusions. Because when you start looking into the matter, you find that cases in which states, having safely crossed every possible “red line,” fell into decay and collapse are far more numerous than cases of successful reform. Reforms carried out by the state are rather a coincidence than a regularity.
After all, what are “reforms”? Always and everywhere, when you hear about “successful reforms,” their content consists in reducing the state’s influence on your life, freeing human energy—which alone creates what economists call “wealth.” Is state will needed for this activity? Our experience clearly shows that it is not. I assert that Ukraine experienced “successful reforms” de facto at the beginning of the 1990s. De facto meant that people and enterprises interacted with each other without waiting for orders from superiors, ignoring legislation that could be safely ignored. And it was these reforms that allowed us to survive. Approximately by ‘96 the situation had stabilized, and somewhere around ‘98 growth began. This growth occurred in the “shadow” sector; this is easy to understand if you look at the statistics of that time and are amazed by the number of successfully functioning “unprofitable” enterprises.
When the state recovered, it began to take more and more interest in people’s activities, and the peak of these efforts fell under Yanukovych. Now everyone is waiting for concessions from the state, but it has no reason to make concessions—and what the “new” authorities are doing clearly confirms this. The policy of Yanukovych and Azarov continues, and no war will stand in its way.
But the most interesting thing is that “being doomed to reforms” does exist. In bombed Kyiv, people will not register enterprises simply to exchange food for water. They will not pay any taxes. They will be “de facto reformers,” because otherwise they cannot survive.
The whole problem of “reforms” exists only in people’s heads. And not in Poroshenko’s head, but in the head of the ordinary Ukrainian. The sooner Ukrainians stop expecting “correct” laws from the state, the sooner they stop grieving about the budget being distributed “the wrong way,” the sooner they learn to act on their own, without orders, and the sooner they understand that any voluntary transaction is legal—the sooner we will be “doomed to reforms.” Otherwise, there’s no way.