Today I was at a lecture at Kyiv-Mohyla academy about the state of the Ukrainian democracy. The speaker, Martin Nunn, opheld the statement that currently Ukraine is not a democracy according to many points. A striking example was a research done in the country that 22% declared to have a good understanding of what a ‘democracy’ is, while tested with other questions it turned out that only 4% have a really good understanding.
But besides that, since you may be wondering what the title of the post is about. He made an interesting remark on the privatization he oversaw in Russia during the 90’s, which most will know didn’t exactly had the outcome to build a strong economy.
I’ll try to quote as true as possible, I couldn’t write it down at the time though and it has been a few hours;
When I was working for the firm doing the privatization for a cement factory in Novosibirsk. All workers walking in through the first door to get their $76 voucher part of the company. They gave the passport, all was stamped and they walked out. Directly left through the next door was the boss sitting who gave 10 bucks for the voucher and a bottle of wodka to the worker.
I remarked to my boss: ” Why are we allowing this one guy to become enormously rich? ” He then said with a big Texan accent: ” Why should we care, we are just here to destroy Communism…”
I thought it was pretty telling.