On June 15, Ivan Franko theatre housed the public debate on the motion “Free market capitalism has failed the former Soviet states”. The event was organized by the Foundation for Effective Governance in partnership with Britain-based Intelligence Squared and BBC World.

In fact, this event was nothing else but a talk show produced for BBC World News. Before the debate, the audience was asked not to use mobile phones or cameras with flashes. So what was the difference between the BBC debate and our regular political talk shows?

Motion

For Ukrainian talk shows, the motion seemed far-fetched. It did not leave space for the guests to conduct notorious verbal duels or plug themselves, or make promises to the audience, or accuse their opponents – in other words, to carry out a discussion in the notorious “You’re yourself a liar!” style. The subject did not let a scandal or provocation burst out – either by the moderator or participants. The only things that the debate participants could present were their personal thoughts and opinions, knowledge of the subject and the ability to make forecasts and conclusions – in other words, the virtues that our politicians tend to hide rather than to reveal.

No one could say that the subject was not interesting or topical. However, our television has long taught us: if we discuss some general, universal issues, it is nothing else than problems with state languages or Russia vs. NATO – in other words, the subjects that you can do nothing about rather than beat the wind, all the more so because all pros and contras are already well known, in addition to the fact that it is impossible to resolve these issues during a talk show, i.e. the subjects where “how to say” is more important than “what to say”.

Isn’t it unbelievable it was the BBC rather than Inter or Ukraine, or even The First National – and continuing the list, not Zerkalo Nedeli or Ukrainska Pravda – that decided to sum up the results of nineteen years of Ukraine’s independence? “No time for anything but routine” or “Can’t see the wood for the trees” – these diagnoses for Ukrainian political journalism were confirmed repeatedly. “Politics is for mongrels” was another diagnosis – this time specifically for television journalism. As for our political talk show hosts, sadly, “petty stuff” is the most appropriate word to describe their concerns.

It is worth noting that the debate participants presented their views and did just this. Nobody claimed monopoly on the truth or pretended that the universal solution can be pulled out as a rabbit out of the hat. It was nothing more than exchange of opinions or food for reflection – no imitation of parliament, which has become a characteristic feature of our popular talk shows.

Participants

During the debate, British journalist David Aaranovitch and former politician and current public figure Irina Khakamada spoke for the motion, Kateryna Yushchenko and Andriy Shevchenko – against it. The latter was introduced as a journalist turned MP.

Can anyone imagine this list of main guests on any of Ukrainian political talk shows on any channel? No, it isn’t true because it can’t be true. Of the quartet, only Andriy Shevchenko (without mentioning his journalist past) and perhaps Irina Khakamada (as “a guest from Moscow” aka “the highest authority”) may have appeared on our native talk shows.

The last thing worth mentioning is that the debate was moderated by Zeinab Badawi, a BBC World News broadcaster, graduate of Oxford and London universities and expert on the Middle East.

Time limit

The audience was not familiarized with the procedural rules, but all four panelists were surprisingly brief – at least, compared to our talk shows. Yet they succeeded in delivering their message and elaborating on every point they tried to make. Unbelievable! You did not want to miss a word of any speech, nap through it or get out for a cup of coffee. Dynamic, emotional and sometimes informal presentations were by no means boring or moralizing, and at the same time, they did not sound like baby talk or dalliance with the public either. A friendly talk of intellectuals – that is what it looked like.

When the panelists finished their presentations, the audience began to ask questions. Questions and answers (several at a time) took longer than speeches, but all in all, together with a welcome speech of the organizers, the entire event lasted exactly two hours.

Stage

According to our standards, the stage was too modest – by no means fitting such super-ultra-extra channels as Inter or Ukraine, or ICTV and perhaps only suitable for the BBC. The economic crisis must have hit these Europeans pretty badly! Of course, the tables or the chairs were not borrowed from the neighborhood municipal office, but they were not museum objects either. The setting was modern, functional, comfortable and – behold! – had no redundancies. Nothing flickered before your eyes, nothing reminded of a disco hall, no glamour, no showing off. The venue was the Franko Theatre hall without special spruce-up – a solid, presentable location, but nothing more.

Audience polls

Before entering the hall, everyone was given a bag with counters – green, red and yellow standing consequently for “for the motion”, “against the motion” and “don’t know”. Immediately you were asked to throw one of them – according to your standing on the motion – into a transparent box. I decided to probe the hosts and threw all of them at once. “You’re mistaken, you should have thrown only one of them”, a girl told me very politely. “I cast extra bulletins”, I said. We smiled at each other; there was no outrage on the girl’s behalf. At the end of the debate, the boxes were sent round again. I continued my experiment and passed forward the box without throwing anything – no reaction. It is interesting how this voting mechanism could have worked with Shuster’s common: “The 139th post didn’t vote! It didn’t vote! We’re all waiting!” When I hear this every time off the screen, I want to offer the hosts introduce another voting stance: “Please leave me alone!” Here everything was nonintrusive: the boxes were collected and tokens counted, compared and taken notice of – without pretentious claims of “popular opinion” accompanied by meaningful intonations.

After the debate

After the debate, the audience was invited for a modest reception with no extravagancies. Dry wine, juice, some canapés, cheese and fruit were offered. Nothing was supposed to strike your imagination, nothing of what the nouveau riche like, but everything was very decent. And this modest reception catered for several hundreds of people – the stalls were full and many people sit in the dress and upper circles. Everyone was invited (of course, the hosts and panelists had a separate reception).

So everything was different from our format! I wish I could say something wrong was with the BBC. Nothing was as it should be – according to Inter or Ukraine standards!

By the way, the debate was entirely English-speaking. The audience, too, had to ask questions in English. The audience could get help from simultaneous interpreters – Ukrainian (by a woman with playful intonations, as if the debate was on “10 easy steps to get married”) and Russian (by a man with a monotonous voice). The audience was handed out some printed material, and I was surprised by a difference between the English and the Ukrainian variants of the motion. There was no “free market” in the Ukrainian title. To my mind, this difference could have been a subject of a separate discussion because it was significant. We tend to believe (and mass media has played a great role in diffusing this opinion) that “we have exactly what the developed countries have, and capitalism is the same all over”. Consequently, our society has arrived at the conclusion: “We have built Western-type capitalism, but we live bad and they live good, so they must be stealing from us”. By the way, if our media had not been in this permanent “no time for anything but routine” position, the adherents of this opinion could have been fewer.

The outline of the subject could be briefed as “when it comes to the choice of the optimal economic model for a country, one-size-fits-all approach is inapplicable” and other variations on “what Taurus can do, the bull can’t”. The discussion, however, placed everything in context.

The show began (prior to the recording) with the welcome speech from the organizers. I was displeased by the words of Natalya Izosimova, Director of the Foundation for Effective Governance: “The world will be surprised that English-speaking debate is held here, in Kyiv”. It sounded like “our aborigines can use the fork too”. It felt as if these words of the Ukrainian host could be an epigraph to the discussion whether capitalism has failed our expectations or not.

The first panelist – David Aaranovitch – began his presentation in an unorthodox way. While saying: “I took the liberty of putting into Google the words “Ukrainian” and “debate”, which is why I brought this…”, he pulled out an umbrella, bringing to mind the recent brawl in the Ukrainian parliament.

Basically the dispute “two against two” did not turn out quite well. Aaranovitch, Khakamada and Yushchenko all emphasized that what we have in the former Soviet countries, including Ukraine, is not capitalism, let alone free market. Continuing to play their parts, Aaranovitch and Khakamada argued: capitalism has failed expectations because we don’t have it; Yushchenko claimed: capitalism wouldn’t have failed expectations if we had it. Only Shevchenko took a different attitude: in his opinion, we have underdeveloped capitalism, which hasn’t matured yet, so we should wait patiently, without placing overrated hopes; when it develops, its huge achievements will be obvious, particularly in delivering higher standards of living.

Aaranovitch told us that Elena Franchuk had bought the most expensive of London’s real estate. “Maybe you have business geniuses such as Shakespeare in drama or Andriy Shevchenko in football, and they have reached the skies in Ukraine and moved to Britain for the further progress”, he asked rhetorically and continued: “Yet when the British see how ostentatiously post-Soviet oligarchs spend money, we have a feeling that there is no way for raising this kind of money other than stealing from their own people”.

Let’s compare this Briton’s point of view with our own bubbling on TV screens or newspaper pages: “Europe doesn’t want our beautiful European country into the EU”. Do you want to know the difference between information and propaganda, particularly regarding foreign policy? Propaganda lifts hurrah-patriotic spirit, while information points to the mistakes and says what to do. Now can you tell me what dominates Ukraine, at least during the talks about our relations with the EU?

Yushchenko repeatedly emphasized one subject: in 2000-2001 we witnessed rapid reforms which had an immediate bearing on our standards of living (and we remember well who was prime minister at that time), but “strong interests removed the people that were trying to make changes”, etc. To a great extent Ms. Yushchenko is right. Only why did her reform-oriented husband reject the society as his ally? Why did he neglect transparency and openness? Why did he choose the role of an abandoned and suffering ruler, betrayed by his entourage?

Some of Khakamada’s words could be interpreted as part of an “expropriation of expropriators” program: “We need new people who will take the place of the current elite of Russian and Ukrainian nouveau riches. Step by step we should curb the authority of the current elite and build capitalism without the oligarchs’ capitals”.

Following are several theses worth mentioning: “Public wellbeing is not the merit of philanthropy of the rich but the result of state regulatory policy” (Aaranovitch); “Communists, bureaucrats, and the newly rich planted together and assured the population that they did not need capitalism. They created a state for the rich and the privileged” (Yushchenko); “In the years to come we’ll see more privatization, more business opportunities, and more success” (Shevchenko); “This is like a football match when the referee scores the ball and announces the result of the game. This isn’t capitalism” (Yushchenko); “Liberalism is not capitalism that could be rapidly built without considering people’s interests. People expected freedom and parity in wealth” (Khakamada); “Wherever the authorities stepped away, we had success” (Shevchenko); “Being the rich doesn’t make you better. We are past this in the developed countries already” (Aaranovitch); “We speak about the institutional collapse of the former Soviet Union, but the next stage would have been the physical collapse. Capitalism saved us from living in another North Korea” (Shevchenko); “In Azerbaijan or Kazakhstan market has integrated into semi feudal, clannish money that’s why capitalism looks more balanced there” (Khakamada); “The Communist Party money was stolen and used as primary capital by the people who still continue to pull the strings. It’s our fault: we chose a slow, gradual model. Our Western neighbors who had chosen rapid reforms achieved an immediate success” (Yushchenko); “Free market economy is good if it’s indeed free market economy” (Aaranovitch).

Questions from the audience were indicators of popular perceptions and stereotypes – despite the fact that the audience mainly consisted of educated and generally successful people. Having used to the format of our talk shows, they could not get away from asking very specific questions such as “How do you see the relations of capitalism and education?” or “Do oligarchs influence politics in Britain?”. Aaranovitch answered that the state is particularly concerned with minimizing the influence of the money on state decision-making.

Isn’t this certainty of many Ukrainians that oligarchs are influential in the developed countries “the merit” of our mass media, primarily television – TV series and popular shows, whose “stars” always dream of marrying oligarchs? Isn’t it through the mass media that the word “oligarch” almost began to assume the sense of respect?

Another question was: “Kazakhstan and Belorussia are the wealthiest post-Soviet countries, and Georgia is the poorest. Why does lack of democracy result in prosperity?” Isn’t it again through the media that people get this perception of wellbeing?

During the debate, David Aaranovitch now and again spoke about the openness of the power authority and freedom of speech and mass media. I should probably quote him: “Glasnost is the key word. You have the right to know everything about the rich and the powerful.” “Without glasnost, it isn’t free market capitalism, it’s something else.” “Glasnost, transparency and openness come first, and the rest next”. “Everything is based on free and independent mass media. Mass media shouldn’t belong to oligarchs. It’s one of the mechanisms keeping the influence of the rich on the government under control.”

And here is another Aaranovitch’s quotation: “I would choose to live in Georgia rather than Belorussia. Journalists work freely in Georgia hence sooner or later the Georgians will live better than the Belarusians because they check and balance the power authorities”.

At this point I had a treacherous thought: maybe the difference between what took place in Franko Theatre and what we see on our television is the same that exists between capitalism and its Ukrainian variation