Ukraine's Cabinet Strips Kuchma's Perks

I beg to differ most strongly and vigorously, sir.

The Ukrainians have plenty of resources--their brainpower, their talents, are massive.

What I observed--and I was a year in Ukraine, seeing the place upclose and firsthand, from Lviv to Lugansk, from Chernigiv to the Crimea--was that their industrial "resources" were scrap anyway, and not worth any more than scrap.

This was something I did on my own; I just went there and wandered around (I favored the out-of-the-way places, the boondocks, the edges, the fringes, the faraway isolated villages), to see what was there. No one "sent" me, I was not sponsored by anyone, and I paid my own way.

The greatest asset--and it is a vast asset, a very large asset--the Ukrainians have is their intelligence.....although their intelligence has one major character flaw, their apathetic acceptance of corruption.

It was while I was in Ukraine, sir, that I figured the whole Cold War had been "fought" on a false premise--that the Soviets could possibly maybe destroy the west because of its nuclear weapons.

The Soviets could have never done that, sir.

I am not a nuclear physicist, but anyway, say a nuclear bomb requires 1,000 parts. Say a nuclear bomb requires 1,000 parts that all must be present, and in working order, for the bomb to work. If one single part out of those 1,000 parts is absent, or not working correctly, the nuclear bomb is a dud; it will not blow up.

From my observations of Ukrainian (and Russian, too) habits, it is reasonable to conclude that when the Soviets manufactured their bombs, stealing was so pervasive, that probably one part, one component, of each bomb was absent, because someone had stole it to sell it somewhere, for some other thing.

Maybe it was something as small as a paper-clip, or as ordinary as plastic, but it was one of those 1,000 parts necessary, to make a nuclear bomb work; without it, the bomb would not go off, despite the other 999 parts.

This feeling (of mine) was confirmed later, when I came across an old book, a biography of Yuri Andropov, written by two very witty and perceptive Soviet dissidents (a man and a woman); crime and stealing were so common that while the Soviets could arrange impressive "experiments" of nuclear blasts, "mass production" of bombs that worked, was impossible.

It was in this same book where it was explained why a Soviet invasion of Poland in any time between 1980 and 1982 was impossible. The Soviet apparatus demanded such an invasion, so as to put down the rebellious Poles; the Soviet army demurred, saying it would not be such a good idea, to invade and occupy Poland.

Why?

Because the Poles would have wiped the Red Army off the face of the earth, in civil insurrections, street-by-street fighting, and one-on-one confrontations.

Why?

Because despite its massive size, the Red Army was so riddled, so weakened, with corruption and stealing, that its own leaders determined it could not fight, and win, against small Poland.

I had ample opportunity to observe that too, sir; when I returned to the United States, and a Russian kid showed up on the doorstep, seeking asylum here in this country, I was able to write a 40,000-word description of conditions in both the Ukrainian and Russian armies (the kid was Ukrainian-Russian, and Jewish), in support of his petition for asylum.

(All this stuff was in the Nebraska newspapers during the late 1990s; both my travels and that particular asylum case--from the age of 3 years, I have known how to get "press"--the submerged "salesman" within myself, I guess.)

There are advantages, sir, to being a person generally ignored by, and invisible to, others (of course, there are disadvantages too); one has more time to see things, and in more detail.

Before I went to Ukraine, I had this idea that the Soviet statistics had at least some basis in fact (please notice the "at least some")--such as that, while "only" 99.95% of American homes had indoor plumbing, well, 99.99% of Soviet homes had indoor plumbing.

I was not aware the lies were so blatant.

In many villages, during the 1960s and 1970s apparently, the Soviet government had made a big push to indoor-plumb the cottages--a move which met with considerable resistence from the peasants, because it involved taking up more room in their already-small habitants.

So.....I go and look.

There was, about two-thirds of the time, yes, a porcelain commode, a lilliputian sink, and a bathtub, in these cottages.

However, while the fixtures had been in fact installed, no one had ever gotten around to piping them, and connecting them to water-lines and sewers.

So they were utterly unusable.

I found that most peasants used the tank of the commode for storing onions, the bowl of the commode for storing potatoes, the sink for storing carrots, and the bathtub for storing either potatoes or beets.....and of course everyone used the outdoor facilities for, well, for what they had been using them for hundreds of years.

Your homepage, or "profile," is much better than mine, sir.

Any fool can write something using 10,000 words to explain it all; a true genius can write something using 500 words to explain it all, which you did, and so well.

As for this other thing, I have mixed feelings.

About 51% of the time, I feel life would have been better, if I had just hung around the Sandhills of Nebraska, trucking horses here and there, rather than always dashing out into the wider world to see this or to do that.

The problem is, sir, I came from a large family (I was a late child, a very late child), full of remarkable people, and so there is that urge to prove oneself just as good as they are (in my case, doing things deaf people are "not supposed to do").

It is six of one thing, and half a dozen of another thing.

It is an erratic sort of life; one spends two or three years burning a candle at both ends, and so intensely, seeing and doing all sorts of things.....and then abruptly burns out, which requires one return to the tranquil calm of the prairies and the bison, for another two or three years, so as to restore the vigor and enthusiasm, after which he is off again.....

Two things help, sir; (a) that God is more magnanimous than just, and (b) that most things in life are ridiculous anyway, so there is no point in worrying about it.

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