Ukraine and the Culture of Corruption

The NPR report  about Ukraine the other day focused on "Dr. Ironfist," the Ukrainian boxer Vitali Klitschko.

This leader of the political party UDAR is inherently more trustworthy than most politicians, the journalist claimed, because the boxing champ made his money in sport, not business.

I've been watching the events in Ukraine as closely as I can, and I am sending good wishes and energy in the direction of Euromaidan. (I wish I could send hot soup and blankets -- what a time of year to make a revolution!) If we really are watching the birth of a nation, I'll be the first to applaud.

But what worries me is precisely the question of corruption, and this is where my experience of Ukraine becomes relevant.

My Fulbright "minder" at the Studium Europy Wschodniej in Poland when I arrived January 30 was a young Ukrainian PhD student. In many ways Sasha made my transition to life in Poland easier than it might have been; there is a greater culture gap for me with Poles than with Ukrainians, and he and I understood each other with ease.

When I asked him why he left Ukraine, Sasha told me a little story.

After graduation, he was working at a university (and, I think, pursuing a graduate degree). He completed his first exam period and posted his grades. Then the call came from the associate dean. "Where is it?" he asked. Sasha was confused. "You know what I mean," the administrator said, "my cut of what you took in. I have to pass a portion of that on to the dean, you know."

It was expected that Sasha would have collected a pile of hryvni (Ukrainian: гривні) from his students at exam time, and that he would share the wealth. 

When I worked as a waitress that was called "tipping out," and we all had to dig into the stash of quarters and dollar bills in our apron pockets to share with the bus staff. But in academia? Sasha was disgusted, and he up and quit, and moved to Poland. He wanted to live in a country where the corruption was less rampant and where he could interact with students as an intellectual mentor, not a money-grubbing bribe-taker. 

Sasha's story rang true. 

After all, when at a conference a few years ago in Crimea, I had a bizarre encounter with a recent PhD, who approached me on the second day of the conference and very kindly handed me a copy of his book about Griboedov and the Crimea. I was flattered, but did not reciprocate. (My books tend to be pricey on my income, and I had brought only two or three along with me, for colleagues I knew were interested and as a gift for the conference organizer.)

The next day, this young man approached me. "Where is my book?" he asked in heavily accented English (though we had so far communicated in Russian). I explained that I didn't have a copy with me, but asked for his address to send it. I also explained the North American publishing situation: you get five author's copies and after that you buy your own books, at a discount, but still ... 

"Why don't your students buy your books?" he asked. I was genuinely confused, and now I'm almost embarrassed to admit it. "I sometimes give a PhD student a book as a gift, but their income is limited, and my books are expensive..." "No, for you," he insisted.

My "minder" for this conference eventually explained. In Ukraine, she said, graduate students pay their professors. Sometimes on a monthly basis in exchange for taking them on as students, and always at important junctures. A PhD dissertation "costs" about 3USD/page, she told me, so as the student completes, say, a 300 page dissertation, s/he offers a gift, or cash, in the sum of $900. "It could be a washing machine, or a trip to Germany, or a computer," she explained. Or just cash. So the young man's assumption that I might ask students to buy me things wasn't as weird as it sounded to me. Instead, it represented a culture gap I had simply not anticipated.

I watched some of the professors and their students at this conference, and I could see that many of them had terrific relationships; these were often true intellectual mentors, and they cared for each other as human beings. But the students and the professors all understood the drill; life is expensive, and academic life is not well-remunerated. Not in the U.S., of course, in comparison to some other professions, but certainly not in post-Soviet Ukraine. 

There is plenty of pain associated with giving birth. That I remember. But at this particular "birth of a nation," Ukraine will have a difficult Soviet and post-Soviet set of hurdles to leap over. One very serious hurdle is Ukraine's culture of corruption.