MK: Our next brilliant speaker is Mrs. Chrystyna Freeland. She is the US Managing Editor of the Financial Times. She is leading the editorial development of news globally. And she has been with Financial Times since very-very long ago.

She used to serve as Deputy Editor in London. Other notable positions Freeland has held at the FT include: Editor of FT Electronic Services, Editor of the FT’s Weekend edition, Editor of FT.com, UK News Editor, Moscow bureau chief and Eastern Europe correspondent. Freeland began her career working as a stringer in Ukraine, writing for the FT, The Washington Post and The Economist, before working as deputy editor of The Globe & Mail, Toronto, Canada.

Freeland is the author of Sale of a Century: the inside story of the second Russian revolution (2000), which details Russia’s journey from communism to capitalism. Her piece on Mikhail Khodorkovsky, which appeared in the FT Magazine, won ‘Best Energy Submission’ at the Business Journalist of the Year Awards in 2004.

Recently, she has been honored as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.

So please join me in welcoming Chrystia Freeland.

CF: Дуже дякую! Thank you very much for that introduction and thank you also for the invitation! This morning, as I was preparing to leave New York to catch my train to come here, I first had breakfast with my daughters Natalka and Halynka and made them their lunch for рідна школа (ridna shkola – here, Ukrainian school). And I had my usual Saturday morning argument with Natalka who is 7 and who said to me: «Мамо, чому я мушу ходити до школи в суботу? Інші діти не ходять». We talk about that every Friday night and every Saturday morning. And I said to her: «Well, Natalochko, I know that it is hard, and when I was small, I also found it very difficult and I complained about that a lot. But you may surprise yourself, because as you get older, you may voluntarily devote your Saturday mornings to Ukrainian activities, as I am planning to do this morning by going to Philadelphia». So she said that she was glad to hear that story. And I told her also that there would be some wonderful young Ukrainian students, who were no longer forced by their mothers to go to ridna shkola. But we are engaging in Ukrainian activities voluntarily.

I must say that it’s incredibly inspiring and encouraging for me, first of all, to receive e-mails from Igor (here - Igor Makar) asking me to come. And he was so persistent that actually he got two of your professors at Wharton – Betsy Stevenson and Justin Wolfers – they sent me an independent note saying that Igor has asked us to please also ask you to come to this conference, it’s important. They didn’t threaten to no longer give me interviews, but I sort of felt that it was a risk.

Anyway, it is really great to be here, and I am so delighted to see your activism. It is great to see so many of you here, it’s great that you’re coming together and organizing. And also, you know, you’re making such an intellectual contribution. I do feel that this is a wonderful moment for Ukraine. And if Ukraine is to live up to its full potential, it will be because of you and your generation. You are a very promising generation in the diaspora and in Ukraine itself, and I am very excited to meet you. So really I wish that you were talking and I were listening.

I also love the idea which Igor expressed about also Ukrainianizing your non-Ukrainian friends. This can be done. I had one notable success as an undergraduate, at Harvard actually. I am happy to say that one of my classmates when I was an undergraduate is now a professor of political science at University of Toronto and his specialty is Ukraine. He is not Ukrainian at all. So I encourage you all – you have to widen the circle.

So the subject is Ukraine in Europe. I wanted to talk about three things. First, a little bit about where I see Ukraine today. Secondly, what I think the western, in particularly European, but western more generally, perception of Ukraine is. And then finally, maybe draw a few quick conclusions.

On Ukraine today, I thought pan Myroslav gave us a very good overall assessment and divided things up really nicely. I’ll just add to that maybe a few quick points.

The democratic point was made by pan Myroslav and was really well made. And I do think that right now more generally Ukraine doesn’t get full credit for having established democracy in the post-Soviet space. As we’ve seen from the examples of other post-Soviet countries (and I think the Baltic states don’t entirely count because their Soviet experience was shorter), it is something that’s very-very hard to do. And Ukraine has managed it and has now gone through a couple of elections. We’ve had peaceful democratic transfers of power really since the collapse of the Soviet Union. That is really significant.

And the other significant point about the transfer of power in Ukraine is – and I think there is a way that political scientists like to talk about democracies – is to say that if you have two transfers of power through a democratic process, you can start calling a country a democracy. I think for the former Soviet states we need to add another category which is: when those transfers of power occur, do the people who hold property get to keep their property even if they backed the losing candidate? This is a really important additional criterion. I don’t think that Russia has passed that test, and that’s something which creates a real anxiety among the business elites. And that’s something which has happened in Ukraine, which is really remarkable. It was remarkable for me, as I was at Davos in January. It was remarkable to see Pinchuk still being Pinchuk and actually hosting a lunch for Yuschenko. That hasn’t happened in other post-Soviet countries and I think says a lot about the effectiveness of the democracy.

Second point – and again I really find myself elaborating on pan Myroslav’s points – is this notion of Ukraine and whether it is united or divided. I think Ukraine is actually a lot more united than people think. And I will defer to the Ukrainians who are here. But I think that the East-West divide is less deep than it is widely perceived to be. I think we in the diaspora sometimes actually perceive it to be deeper because of language issues than it really is. For me, what was very revelatory in my own experience was working in Moscow and becoming Moscow correspondent for the FT. Because it meant I had to learn Russian. And as someone who now speaks Ukrainian and Russian, I find the linguistic divisions seem much less profound than they had seemed to me when I used to visit Ukraine as someone who spoke only Ukrainian. Because so many Ukrainians speak both Ukrainian and Russian, and even Russian-speaking Ukrainians understand Ukrainian, I think we need to be careful not to place too much emphasis on those linguistic criteria.

What has been particularly interesting for me – and I think it is a development of the past three or four years – is seeing the largely Russian-speaking, largely ethnically non-Ukrainian oligarchic business elite really begin to rally around the idea of the Ukrainian state. I think there are really sound personal material reasons that those people are rallying around the idea of Ukrainian statehood having to do with these issues of democracy and of stability of property rights which Ukraine is starting to establish. But that is really significant. When you have, as I saw at Davos, Pinchuk and Akhmetov at a lunch for Ukraine, at which the keynote speaker is Victor Yuschenko, and they are all speaking in Ukrainian, this is a really important moment.  And I will tell you that I’ve had lunch with a person who I sat next to (and I promised I wouldn’t name him) – a leading Russian businessman, a very long-standing, someone who is Russian, lives in Moscow, was one of the pioneers of Russian capitalism. And at the end of the lunch he went up to president Yuschenko and he said: «Ну Вы знаете, есть многие в Москве, которые завидуют Украине. Мы не любим жить в диктатуре». And that’s significant; it’s significant that you would have leading, absolutely Russian business people, the sort of “damned” oligarch, who would say to the Ukrainian president: “I am jealous of you.” And for those of us who have been covering the former Soviet space – I am embarrassed to say I’ve been doing that for the long time now – the idea that Moscow intelligentsia would be jealous of the political culture of Kyiv is really amazing. But it’s true.

And then the final point I wanted to make about Ukraine and Europe today is just to say that actually I think Ukraine has a secret weapon in its relationships with Europe. And I see that weapon right here. I think that young Ukrainians are really important and powerful force. There are the young Ukrainians who are leaving Ukraine to study in western universities; there are the young Ukrainians who are doing less glamorous things than you are doing, who are working in London restaurants, who are in New York doing maybe not such glamorous work, doing construction, my nanny, all these things. And these people come back to Ukraine I think with a very altered world view and with money. This Ukrainian generation to me is quite analogous to Polish “Solidarity” generation. The Poles in the 1980s went out into Western Europe, made money, learned new things. And my real hope for you is that at least some of you will take that back to Ukraine. I think it’s already having a huge impact, and you can’t really underestimate how great your impact will be.

In conclusion – because I think my time is running out – I do want to say that despite these positive developments, I think that Ukraine’s path to Europe is pretty rocky, for some external reasons. And I will name three. From the point of view of Europeans, Western Europeans, I think that there is a little bit of Eastern European fatigue right now. If you read the headlines, particularly, say, in British popular press, the Polish plumber or the Romanian construction worker is someone who is now feared. And the idea of adding 47 million Ukrainians to that group is starting to be scary. So that’s not good for Ukraine. A second important issue is fear of Russia. Russia, I think, is emerging into the political space as, I would say, quite a dangerous actor, authoritarian – I think there is no way to characterize the political state as anything other than authoritarian right now – and becoming more so actually, but armed with petrodollars. And the European reaction may well be to accommodate that in ways which are difficult for Ukraine. Third sort of point of rockiness comes from the United States. I think that there is something that I would call “democracy fatigue”, inspired by Iraq. The notion is that at the moment of the collapse of communism – that was a really exciting moment for the world and also for America – and I think it was possible and quite right for Americans to feel that the Cold War struggle, the Cold War defensive of liberty and democracy had been successful. And that had a great influence on foreign policy. The lesson that many people draw from Iraq is the opposite one: that we cannot export democracy, that in some countries maybe… democracy just doesn’t work there. And I think that people who care about Ukraine need to bear that in mind when thinking about American public opinion.

Two closing thoughts, directed in part to our diplomats who are here. I think Ukraine has a great story to tell, and I think you have to tell it better and better to the world. There are lots of tremendous accomplishments and I feel certain when I speak to my colleagues in the media – they are not fully appreciated. So please work even harder than you are already – there are great students here to help you. It is a powerful story to tell, but I think that Ukraine can’t assume that it is one which is understood. I certainly don’t feel that it is.

Second thing is that I do think that Ukraine needs to have a sense of urgency. I don’t think that Ukraine’s accomplishments which are very significant are absolutely secure. I think there is a lot of instability in Europe, there is a lot of instability in Russia. And Ukrainians need to be conscious of that. This is probably Ukraine’s best historical chance in a millennium, and it would be real tragedy to lose it.

And then final thing, which may be part of this story that Ukraine needs to tell to the world, is a reason why – those of us who are Ukrainian have a personal reason to be interested in Ukraine, but… – a reason why people who aren’t Ukrainian should be as well (apart from the fact that you can make a lot of money in Ukraine right now). Ukraine and Ukrainian democracy is incredibly important for Europe and for the former Soviet Union. The success or failure of Ukrainian democratic experiment – I am absolutely convinced – is absolutely crucial in determining Russia’s future path. If Ukraine succeeds as a prosperous democratic state, then I think the chances that Russia travels down that road at some point are pretty good. If Ukraine fails and reverts to authoritarianism, then it is very much less clear what happens with Russia and the whole former Soviet Union. That’s a lot of people to live really badly. So I am sorry to end on such a somber note, but – thank you very much for your invitation and we are counting especially on you, on students here!