RE: My Wartime Diary. Kyiv, day 79th. The cost of living
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They have not yet learned to trust the state (we have reasons for this) as institutions, but to literally give their lives for their own state and identity.
The Ukrainian state is not (yet) to be trusted, but the alternative is so much worse? Reminds me a bit of one of the quotes from Churchill, "democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried.”
Distrust for the state institutions goes a bit hand in hand with corruption. Ukraine used to be famous for corruption. I regret not having visited Ukraine the last twenty years - but things were pretty terrible on my last visits, some time around year 2000. I was held up at the border crossing between Russia and Ukraine for 12 hours, the border guards insisted Norwegian passports should be blue (or, perhaps they rather meant filled with paper money upon delivery for inspection). The road police was just dissolved more than a decade later due to the problems with corruption, I for sure had some troubles with them. Like, on a nice, straight road with high speed limit they would put up a speed limit sign 30 and subtext "2 km", with no other purpose than that they could sit ready with the laser equipment and issue fines 1.9 km further down the road. Etc. I was so disappointed to learn that there even in those times are still big problems on the border crossings, border guards pillaging from aid shipments passing and allowing people willing to pay the right price to skip the queues (or, in the case of men, getting out at all).
I'd say we have the opposite problem here in Norway - too much trust in the state and state institutions. with regard of corruption, many Norwegians seem to believe there is no such thing as corruption in Norway. That's a big problem, I think it's quite easy to get away with it in Norway because people simply aren't looking for it.
Churchill is a wise politician and an excellent orator :)
Ukrainians have been fighting for their own state for centuries. To survive the years of the Soviet regime, Ukrainians learned that the state is the enemy and can't be trusted. On those days KGB and state were synonyms. We finally gained independence only 30 years ago, but Russia's attempts to return, assimilate, and steal Ukrainian history and capture territory have never stopped. It has invested a lot of money in sponsoring the "proper" politicians, a lot of politicians.
It's a shame what you write about, but it's true. It is very difficult for us to get rid of the past, it is extremely difficult. This traumatic experience, thanks to which we managed to survive and save our nation, caution, fear, insecurity, has played against us. If we had been more determined in our decision to secede from Russia, this war might not have happened. But we see that even Europe has not been able to resist Russian money and propaganda.
Concerning corruption, I believe there are bad people everywhere. Somewhere they are outvoted. People don't believe that there's a corruption because they aren't a part of it. And this is awesome.
Appreciate your comment!