Recently, there has been so much talk and so much logomachy about the Ukrainian elite that at times,
“the forest is not seen for the trees”. First of all, there is no sight of society, the social classes of this society with their real problems and contradictions. Usually, the mass media speak about the half-mythical parliamentary majority, obviously, quite often consisting of representatives of the “elite”, or about separate politicians supporting and making up the authorities, who now are not simply the “elite” but something like its cream. Therefore, the problem really needs to be cleared up.

Elite and “elite”
Previously, the people knew well the outstanding figures of science and culture; the true masters; the best state, [Communist] Party and economic leaders. All those who contributed the lion’s share of their scientific and spiritual values to the public domain could measure the “weather” in society with the barometer of their creative work and did their best for the country and society to move the path of social progress.
Those people could rightfully be considered the elite of Soviet society. It may be justly said that the Soviet elite consisted of the most authoritative, respected people who took a lead (and in no way formal) position in the formation of the norms and values that determined the functioning and progress of the social system.
They were the representatives of the public whose values were considered exemplary and who served as the reference point for all of society: bearers of new traditions; heroes of labour and the Great Patriotic War; space researchers and pioneers.
Society not only strained its ears to hear every word of the state and party leaders but also welcomed new works by Oles Honchar and Lina Kostenko, films by Oleksandr Dovzhenko and Kira Muratova, paintings by Tetyana Yablonska and Vasyl Kasyan.
But after the counter-revolutionary overturn of 1991, the situation changed fundamentally. Today, among what political scientists used to call the elite, one will not see a labour team leader or a miner, an honest writer or journalist. For a definite fee, those who hold managerial and economic levers are admitted to the elite. Possession of political and, first of all, economic capital became a mandatory “pass” to the “elite”. The public is consistently made to believe in the equation of capital (in any form) and elite status. The personal property of the capitalists is not to be taken into account. So, even if one relies on a traditional definition like “a gentleman is a generous man”, it is next to impossible to find a “gentleman” among the newly-fledged “elite” in this country.
Criteria and traits of the “elite”
But why do we have such a pared-down and vulgar idea of the elite and elite status?
There is a temptation to give a simple answer: he who pays the piper calls the tune. But at the same time, one cannot but notice that ideologists of the new regime adopted many ideas of bourgeois scholars. For instance, the so-called sociological approach to the identification of the elite proposed by the economist and sociologist V.Pareto. He picked up people who achieved success in various spheres of life, gave them the mark “10” and then went down to zero. But what were the criteria? The personal wealth of Henry Ford Jr., or the influence of the motorisation of the USA on public morality (the incidence of horse-stealing decreased)? The price of a Rembrandt painting at Sotheby’s, or the influence of that master on the further development of painting and spirituality of humanity in general? And what to do with van Gogh, not recognised during his life?
It appears that to be in the elite, one needn’t do anything for the people — ownership alone is enough. And the more capital and power you have the more elite you are.
The influence of the elitist concepts in the spirit of F.Nietzsche and J.Ortega y Gasset, whose essence is confined to the perpetuation of the division of society into the “higher” and “lower”, is also felt. Kind of a new edition of the old Indian castes.
It is noteworthy that if this conception of social structure is introduced into public awareness, the need for political parties, Parliament and fixed human rights and freedoms fades away, and the very term “democracy” becomes unnecessary. What democracy, if there is the all-mighty and omnipotent, omniscient and ever-present elite? Or, if we speak frankly, not the elite but a club or a council of oligarchs. All issues of state and public life are decided by that council, privately and secretly, for the benefit not of society as a whole but solely for the benefit of the council members. There,
the President is only one of the council members,
one of the oligarchs who can at any time be replaced with another one should he suddenly do something “wrong”, for instance, dare to take more than others.
The elite established in such a manner is alien to the national interest. Their money and children are outside the country’s borders. The riches taken from the people work for the development of foreign economies. Their children, graduating from prestigious U.S., British and German universities, prepare for the role of agents of influence of the ruling circles of those countries on Ukraine. Their fathers keep piles of foreign passports in their safes and personal aeroplanes on airfields — just in case.
The comprador nature and anti-popular character of such elite become obvious. Only a very naive person can believe that such people would build a prosperous Ukraine where every citizen finds a use for his powers and talents, where a working man is held in respect, where all children learn and elderly people feel confident.
The Communists are in opposition to this “elite”
The admission of all the sad circumstances related with the state of the present national “elite” is not a pretext to “close” the subject. After all, any person more or less interested in social problems cannot disregard the issues of power and politics, their content and goals. The elite is the face of society, not only for domestic but also for external “consumption”.
Hence, while admitting the highly unattractive, to a large extent criminal and tribal face of the national “elitist” stratum, everything should be done to promote the accomplishment of the programme goals of the Communist Party of Ukraine — for only a society of social justice can form a truly popular (labour, rural, political, managerial, etc.) elite enjoying authority and respect among the working masses.
We go that way, working in the masses and being in strong opposition to the ruling elite.
Today, the best representatives of the intellectual, artistic and industrial elite of the Soviet times are among those who fight for social justice. The young intellectuals confessing humanistic ideals and suggesting that capitalist restoration in the 21st century is something absurd, going far beyond the limits of the laws of social progress, come to us as well. It is like night frost in July —
it happens but the summer prevails anyway.
I would like to stress once again: it is the inhumane essence and aspirations of the oligarchic elite, not the position of the communists, that make the achievement of any compromises, let alone consensus, impossible. Let me cite just a few examples.
It is no secret that the working people bear the main burden of tax pressure. At the same time, oligarchs are permanently fed up from the budget filled by the workers. Hiding their capital abroad, they simultaneously receive from the state hundreds of millions worth of compensation of VAT for fictitious exports. Meanwhile, the process of decommissioning and ruination of fixed assets in the country continues. We are increasingly lagging in labour productivity and innovation; investment does not come here. I am sure that the resolution of those problems might be the basis for a compromise. But the thing is that the other side does not want to solve them. It does not want to pay taxes, to invest into industry. In short, it does not want to part with what it robbed.
In recent years, serious scholars have been raising the alarm not only in connection with the brain drain but also because of the disqualification of engineers, technicians and workers. The problem lies not only in the prolonged forced unemployment of many millions of people but also in the miserable wages of those who still have a job. Those so-called wages are not enough even for normal restoration of the physical conditions of the labour force, let alone intellectual and spiritual growth, or adequate upbringing and education of children,
i.e., extended reproduction of the labour force.
Fundamental wage reform is needed. But the oligarchs do not even want to hear about it, for monstrous exploitation of workers brings them huge profits without dealing with technical and technological renovation of production facilities.
Where does the present “elite”
lead the country?
Instead of meeting the interests of the vast majority of society, the ruling regime stubbornly imposes on us so-called “Euro-Atlantic” integration.
What does it mean? Every schoolchild in Ukraine knows that for us, the prospects of joining the EU are no more realistic than a flight to the stars. So, where do we integrate? It appears, into NATO. The situation in NATO is known: Germany, France and a number of other member states of that bloc have long been unwilling to pull chestnuts out of the fire for the Americans. Moreover, the Germans, French, Belgians and Luxembourgers made a decision at the end of April 2003 to set up their own defensive alliance within the EU.
So, it turns out that, when speaking about “Euro-Atlantic” integration, Ukraine in reality is approaching not Europe but the USA. Moreover, in the unenviable role of an errand boy and a whipping boy at the same time. Foreseeing its forthcoming collapse, the biggest imperialist predator wants to swallow as much as it can. The USA needs the Ukrainian “cannon fodder” for the realisation of its hegemonic goals. Some of the oligarchs believe that if they gratify all the whims of the USA, it will shut its eyes to their former and future sins, and defend them, if need be, from righteous popular anger. For the USA has such experience: over the period from 1890 till 2001, the United States resorted to armed interference into the affairs of other countries 134 times, defending the interests of its money-bags and local lackeys.
Maybe they will forgive someone for something. But the people should not suffer. Citizens of Ukraine should not be at war all over the world for the benefit of American capital and for the sake of forgiveness of domestic oligarchs, moreover they should not suffer foreign intervention. Neither do they want a march to the banks of the Potomac at the expense of breaking links with Russia. So, for us [Communists] there can be no compromise in the issues dealing with the pro-American engagement of the oligarchs, representatives of the ruling regime, right nationalist circles and all others who fear responsibility before the people for their acts.
Tomorrow is with the new popular elite
Society and the country need a fundamental revival of all echelons of power and a return to popular rule. To this end, the party (proportional) parliamentary election system can play an important role, since the enhancement of the role of political parties would open the way to politics and the corridors of power for a great many new people not associated with the affairs of the oligarchs and their cohort. As a result, one could hope not only for socio-economic transformations in the interests of the majority of people but also for the democratisation of public life and greater transparency in politics. In other words, such a breakthrough would mean the end of monopoly of the present “elite” in politics.
Many millions of people cherish the idea of changing the order of things existing in the country. But the oligarchic elite is trying to hamper the process of progressive changes in society, making utmost use of all the levers of power and mass media that allow them, from time to time, to pass black off as white, a lie as the truth, and so on. Hence, it is not only important to widen the circle of those involved in politics.
The emerging trend of transformation of the present defective elite into a caste elite should be terminated. This requires the social mobility of the population.
It will be possible, at least in the initial form, only if society rejects the domination of private ownership and adopts the multiform economy widely practised in the present world, which by itself begins to change the nature of a state. Undisguised class antagonism would evolve in the direction of a kind of social accord making it possible to take into account and unite the interests of workers and businessmen on the national scale.
To be sure, a special role in such a change can be played by the new elite that is still to be formed in the conditions of democratic transformation of the political system and involvement of broad strata of the population in state governance.
The new elite must represent the entire social and (with some reservations) professional structure of society. Only in this case will it be possible to speak about a national elite of all the people in Ukraine and, in fact, about the accord within the elite as a serious factor of social consolidation for the attainment of high socio-economic and spiritual goals. Furthermore, the would-be elite should not be closed and isolated. It should be open for every gifted, talented person who decides to devote his life to society.
The term “elite” is often used by political scientists who almost exclusively confine it to the political-administrative and managerial elite. However, in reducing all the problems of the elite mainly to the properties of its political-administrative and managerial element, we seriously impoverish the meaning of the very notion of the “elite”. The world of labour, arts, culture, science and many other sectors of human activity remain outside. The removal of this limitation will not only deepen our comprehension of the supreme value of talents in all spheres of human life but also help get rid of the obtrusive and, unfortunately, to some extent introduced into the public understanding, thesis which equates the big oligarchic bourgeoisie and elite characteristics. Otherwise, we will have to admit that O.Shevchenko and V.Drahomanov never belonged to the elite of the Ukrainian people. And vice versa, that the present owners of pipes, aluminium and chocolate are its essence.
If we speak about the hierarchy of the elites, the wide approach to the problem enables prioritising the creative elite. That is, the top place in the hierarchy of the elites and leaders of mankind should be given not to pharaohs and emperors, not to the Rotschilds or Soroses, but to Confucius and Socrates, Kant and Einstein, Marx and Lenin, Pheidias and Rodin, Rolland and Honchar. The people who did not suppress millions of other people or rob their compatriots and other nations, but paved the way to the development of human nature, to the heights of social and spiritual progress.
I believe that the same criterion should be applied to the assessment of the present and the chances for a better future for the country and the people.