Meanwhile, the property rights of thousands of enterprises are in limbo. In Kiev, rumors abound that oligarchs connected to the old regime are trying to sell their enterprises to Russian business executives and are preparing to escape the country. Naturally, executives are cutting off investment, and economic growth is screeching to a halt.

To make matters worse, a new socialist minister of privatization has been appointed who opposes privatization in principle. She asked recently: “What is so bad about re-nationalization?” Tymoshenko concurred in a recent newspaper interview: “The biggest enterprises, which can easily be efficiently managed, must not be privatized, and they can give the state as an owner wonderful profits.” This sounds like state capitalism.

The old regime doubled pensions, saddling Ukraine with the highest pension costs in the world as a share of national income. The new Ukrainian government has added to this excessive burden by raising state wages no less than 57 percent.

To finance these and other huge social expenditures, the government is scrambling to find more revenue. A lot of discretionary tax exemptions have, sensibly, been abolished, but the overall tax pressure has risen dramatically. Meanwhile, Yushchenko continues to talk about his plans for sharp tax cuts.

Incredibly, this new regime brought to power by the middle class and small entrepreneurs has abolished the simplified taxation that served those segments of society so well. The result has been that tens of thousands of small entrepreneurs have been forced to close their businesses, while others have fled into the underground economy.

Reformers have long demanded that the lawless tax police be abolished and that the tax administration be forced to obey the law. But Tymoshenko is cheering the tax police on and has declared that the performance of the regional governors will be judged by their ability to collect taxes.

Inflation is skyrocketing with increasing public expenditures. The predominantly Russian oil companies have increased their prices as world market prices have risen. Tymoshenko has imposed strict price controls on gasoline and forced the remaining state oil companies to deliver it at prices below market levels. Not surprisingly, oil supplies have declined, and gasoline shortages have erupted. She has also started controlling the price of meat, which has begun to disappear from markets. The price controls are accompanied by abuse of private producers and praise of state companies.

Tymoshenko does not talk about reform of state monopolies but instead about their reinforcement. In an additional effort to squeeze business profits and boost state re venue, she wanted to boost railway tariffs for metals by 100 percent, but settled magnanimously for a hike of only 50 percent.

The contrast between the declarations of the Orange Revolution and current government policy could hardly be greater. Curiously, this discrepancy continues. In an editorial on Yushchenko’s first 100 days, the Kiev Post points out that “while Yushchenko is making grand statements abroad, the rest of the government does not seem to follow his lead.”

The official justification for these populist policies is that they are meant to boost Tymoshenko’s popularity for the parliamentary elections next March. Both Ukrainians and Ukraine’s foreign friends need an explanation of what is going on. ~Anders Aslund

Only the credulous admirers of democracy and of that unique oligarchic democratism favoured by interventionist Americans and Europeans can feel “betrayed” by Tymoshenko and the others or believe that the “Orange Revolution” has been “betrayed” by its leaders. This is ignorance, pure and simple, or else it is ideological nonsense. Everyone who could be bothered to read a shortest background piece on the criminal Tymoshenko knew where she stood on state control of industry (having gotten rich off of defrauding privatisation, I suspect she hopes to get richer off of re-nationalisation), and everyone who was not hypnotised by the ugly orange rags of the Kiev mob knew that Yushchenko was about as liberal as Petlyura and as good of an economic manager as Jimmy Carter. Only fools can be disillusioned with such a fraudulent gang of crooks, who made their fortunes robbing the Ukrainian people going and now look to rob them coming as well.

But let me speak up for this sorry lot on one point: the government of Ukraine is and ought to be the sovereign government of the Ukraine, and it does not owe “explanations” to think tank intellectuals, American politicians or anyone else except the Ukrainian people whom it has hoodwinked so terribly. Perhaps the Ukrainians don’t mind the statism–this is, after all, supposedly the government for which most Ukrainians voted (even though the election occurred under unprecedented foreign pressure, in contravention of the Ukrainian constitution and in the wake of a concerted, dishonest media campaign that could have made even the neocons blush). Regardless, it is their country, and I for one am sick of internationalists telling anyone what to do in his own country. Perhaps the internationalists will give Yushchenko and his lot such a hard time over domestic economic policy that his nationalist supporters will finally push him to adopt a less slavishly pro-Western approach, and the fruits of hegemonist support for this criminal will disappear. Probably not, though. Never underestimate the sheer, pointless, stubborn hatred for Russia that will always push Ukrainian nationalists into the arms of people who want nothing but to exploit them and use them as cannon fodder, figuratively or literally.

If Yushchenko’s crowd gives in to its worst nationalist and populist urges, I can only say that I and others in agreement with me warned that this would come to pass. One had to blind oneself willingly to what Yushchenko was and what he represented. This is not to pretend that Mr. Yanukovych, Yushchenko’s now-forgotten opponent, was as pure as the driven snow–he was corrupt, but in that rather matter-of-fact, unobtrusive way that most leaders of such countries are corrupt because personal relations still matter more than institutions (and sometimes I have to wonder why we prefer our way). In contrast, Yushchenko and his crowd stink to high heaven with the extent of their corruption. The fact is that the Orange Revolution was always as rotten as the crook who led it, and anyone who says differently is trying to sell something equally rotten to the unfortunate Ukrainians and to our own ignorant public.