I was sitting in a restaurant in Kharkiv, Ukraine, chatting to the owner. He was trying to decide which country to move to. His restaurant was doing well, he said. In fact, that was the problem. Increasingly, local officials were coming round demanding payoffs. Several Ukrainian business people told me that these shakedowns were becoming more common. If you didn't pay, the officials suddenly began to inspect your tax payments, or your sanitation. No wonder someone here has set up an Italian-Japanese restaurant chain called Mafia.
Westerners may shrug and say, “Yup, that sounds like Ukraine.” There is a grotesque foreign stereotype that sees this as the land of mafiosi, prostitutes and peasants. And yet, even as Ukraine under President Viktor Yanukovych experiences its so-called “Great Leap Backwards”, I didn't find a bleak country. Everywhere I went, I met educated people who have not forgotten the promise of the “Orange Revolution” in 2004/2005, even if their politicians have. To quote the national anthem sung in the football stadiums here: “Ukraine's glory has not yet perished.”
True, it's easy to get despondent. It's not only the imprisoned opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko who says she was beaten in jail. A travelling exhibition here - which police in Kharkiv spent the other afternoon harassing - says Ukrainian human- rights groups estimate there were 980,000 cases of unlawful violence by police last year. A passerby came up to the exhibition, displayed his broken fingers, and said, “I was in custody, too.” It feels appropriate that a huge Lenin still glares down over Kharkiv's central square.