a decade

first, some of the decade’s high points:

democracy triumphed, but only briefly . . .

millions of ukrainians are living better than a decade ago. many are eating better. consumer goods are in abundance and many more people can afford them. more cars clog the city streets. almost every child has a mobile phone, even if he or she has no money to use it.

today, in fact, it is possible to purchase almost anything, including power, political patronage and university degrees, just like 10 years ago. and herein lies some of the nation’s intractable problems.

for all the signs of progress, ukraine’s achievements don’t decisively add up to a nation that is starting 2010 in better shape than it started 2000. instead, the nation starts the new decade hobbled by many of the same old problems: distrust, corruption, instability, billionaires who stifle both democracy and the economy, a judicial system incapable of dispensing justice, a demographic crisis, and dire poverty for as many as a quarter of its 46 million people. and on and on.

taking into account decades and even centuries of misery, ukrainians may have never had it so good. but millions – perhaps four million ukrainians – have left the nation in frustration for better lives and jobs abroad, while many of those who remain in the homeland are quick to say that their lives are hard and should be better.

here is a look back:

heroes to zeroes

the 2004 orange revolution is the decade’s highlight. it briefly enhanced national self-esteem and raised hopes, but the subsequent political break-up of heroes president victor yushchenko and prime minister yulia tymoshenko led the nation on its current path of stagnation and economic recession.

the decade started with former president leonid kuchma grabbing power after his 1999 re-election. when hundreds of hours of his taped conversations and the sept. 16, 2000, murder of journalist georgiy gongadze showed that kuchma may have grabbed too much power, people started to revolt. the disobedience of the ukraine without kuchma rallies in the early 2000s paved the way for the 2002 parliamentary election triumph of yushchenko’s our ukraine and tymoshenko’s eponymous bloc. this national assertiveness culminated in the successful street protests of the orange revolution, which overturned the nov. 21, 2004, presidential election rigged for victor yanukovych. yushchenko was swept into office with high popularity and international adulation. he is ending his five-year term with almost no public support, in no small part because of his administration’s inability to solve crimes and reign in the nation’s high-flying oligarchs.

boom goes bust

fueled largely by raw material exports and a credit boom, ukraine’s decade of robust economic growth came to a screeching halt in the fall of 2008, and then slipped into reverse. the ongoing recession translated into extended furloughs, mass layoffs, a credit drought and a nation edging closer to default and bankruptcy. the central bank spent billions of dollars to prop up the hryvnia, but failed to arrest its slide from hr 5 to the dollar to hr 8. the international monetary fund rode to the rescue with a $16.4 billion line of credit, but abruptly stopped its lending at $11 billion after it blanched at the fiscal irresponsibility of the nation’s leaders. in rescuing the nation’s commercial banks, perhaps billions of dollars were misspent or stolen. the ex-chief executive officer of nadra bank, igor gilenko, was among the many accused criminals on the lam by year’s end.

lawlessness reigns

the birth of new media and death of internet journalist gongadze, co-founder of one of the country’s first news websites, ukrainska pravda, started the decade. the murder triggered civil disobedience and nationwide protests. digital recordings implicated kuchma in the crime and so many more: rigging court rulings and elections, illegal surveillance and blackmail. but the authorities spent the rest of the decade squelching any meaningful criminal investigation into the tapes revealed by mykola melnychenko, a former kuchma bodyguard. law enforcement -- from police to prosecutors and judges -- remains impotent, corrupt or unwilling to solve the nation’s major crimes.

information age

in other areas, ukraine joined the world in logging on to the internet, blogging and connecting with each other on social networks, on you tube and by texting. but traditional media – including tv stations with national reach – remained under the ownership of competing groups of influential businesspeople. while censorship is gone, few would argue that ukraine’s public and media are truly free, at least in the information sphere.

constitutional gridlock

the nation ends the decade still trying to find a constitution that works. kuchma sought stronger presidential powers in 2000, but was rebuffed. yushchenko wants changes to the constitution he agreed to amend in 2005 to end the orange revolution. the guiding document today muddles executive authority, diluting presidential powers and giving the prime minister dual roles.

economy

the hryvnia is worth half of what it was in 2000 against the dollar and inflation has worsened its buying power. yushchenko, widely credited with helping mitigate the effects of russia’s 1998 economic collapse on ukraine’s economy, was appointed prime minister in late 1999. he and his assistant, tymoshenko, began the decade by squeezing corruption out of the electricity sector and started paying wages and pensions on time. but the pair did nothing to break kuchma’s grip over law enforcement or the doling out of state assets to favored insiders in rigged privatizations. government stakes in chemical factories and regional energy generating companies were put on the auction block and sold like fattened calves to oligarchs within the president's close circle. as the 2004 election neared, kuchma undertook the mother of all scams by selling the country's largest steel producer kryvorizhstal to his son-in-law, victor pinchuk, and donetsk billionaire rinat akhmetov for $800 million, a small fraction of its worth. re-privatization became the mantra of the orange team of yushchenko and tymoshenko. they re-sold kryvorizhstal to arcelormittal in late 2005 for $4.8 billion – six times the akhmetov-pinchuk price of a year ago – in a fair, open, transparent, competitive, televised auction. the success was never repeated, before or since, in the nation’s history.

russia and international affairs

relations between kyiv and moscow deteriorated significantly after the 2004 orange revolution, following the defeat of kremlin-favored presidential candidate yanukovych. yushchenko embarked on an agenda to bring ukraine closer to nato and the european union, irritating moscow. in the end, ukraine came no closer to either. yushchenko further alienated ukraine’s big neighbor by seeking to win international recognition of the holodomor famine of 1932-1933 as soviet genocide of millions of ukrainians who starved to death. ukraine and russia sparred over the russian black sea fleet in crimea and the 2008 russia-georgia war. disputes over natural gas pricing prompted moscow to cut off supplies twice, in 2006 and again in 2009. at decade’s end, russian prime minister vladimir putin was flirting with his counterpart, tymoshenko, keeping his distance from yanukovych and doing nothing to conceal his contempt for yushchenko.

ukraine’s reputation suffered in many parts of the world as unending tragedies, disasters and political infighting gave rise to questions about whether the nation can govern itself. “ukraine fatigue” arose in europe. the sept. 11, 2001, attacks on america shifted the attention of one of ukraine’s friendlier international patrons. the united states remained bogged down in wars in afghanistan and iraq through much of the decade, and is now beset by its own economic troubles and spiraling debt.

death, disease, despair

from an estimated 54 million persons living in ukraine in 1991, the decade closed with just under 46 million people estimated to be living in the nation today. there are 3.5 million less ukrainians than 10 years ago. the nation has yet to find the key to reversing its demographic slide and public health crisis. with one of the highest death and suicides rates in europe, ukraine is the european leader in hiv/aids prevalence and tuberculosis. it is a world leader in smoking and child alcoholism. the number of ukrainian drug addicts increased exponentially over the last decade. officially, ukraine has more than 500,000 hard-drug users but, unofficially, it is believed to have many more.

poverty may be at the root of much of this social breakdown. some 26 million ukrainians earn less than hr 1,567 ($200) monthly, according to myroslav yakibchuk, the head of the national forum of labor unions in ukraine. no one knows for sure, because so much of the economy remains in the shadows. some experts say that real disposable income increased by 178 percent in the last 10 years. but debts also grew, reaching $19 billion (about 30 percent of gross domestic product) in sovereign debt and more than $100 billion overall, in private and public debt.

and simply changing the calendar doesn’t wipe the slate clean.