George
Soros buys Ukraine
By Connie Bruck
The New Yorker,
23-Jan-1995
Soros makes no
bones about the interventionist nature of his role in Ukraine.
At one point, he remarked, jocularly, "If this isn't meddling in the
affairs of a foreign nation, I don't know what is!" — Connie
Bruck
I quote from two
sources. Below, I present excerpts, in the order in which
they appear, with my own green headings, from Connie Bruck's The
World According to Soros, The New Yorker,
23-Jan-1995. Below that, I present two excerpts from a Bohdan
Hawrylyshyn article in the Ukrainian Weekly of 28-Feb-1999
which throw additional light on the phenomenon of George Soros.
Ukraine's own Mother Theresa. Of course it is always a
bit of mystery to see someone like George Soros behaving
philanthropically, giving away vast sums of money merely to do good
to others. To Ukraine, George Soros appears in the guise of a
selfless Mother Theresa — and yet selflessness is such a rare
trait that when it makes its appearance, some observers can only
stand and stare at it in wonder, and sometimes even in disbelief.
Part time philanthropist, part time plunderer? How to
avoid noticing that this particular philanthropist's career consists
in getting rich by taking money away from others in a vast,
international poker game, in which no goods or services trade hands,
and in which the only goal is to pauperize all opponents by
outwitting them? How does a poker player who thrives under the
guidance of this motivation find room in his personality for selfless
philanthropy? How can such a philanthropist manage to avoid
viewing the very people that he is giving money to as sheep that he
will be able to shear tomorrow just like the sheep that he sheared
yesterday? Had it been the case that subsequent to George
Soros's intervention in Ukraine, the nation had prospered, then we
would be obligated to consider thanking him. But as, instead,
Ukraine has instead been plundered,
what thanks are owed George Soros? — Perhaps that without his
intervention, Ukraine would have been plundered even worse?
Or full time plunderer? More cynical observers might
tend to quite a different view — that George Soros disburses his
funds primarily to buy a controlling interest in the government of
the nation that he purports to help, even while scattering beads and
mirrors to the natives in the streets. Their turn to top up
George Soros's coffers will not be long in arriving.
Or maybe just a Zionist? The most cynical of all
observers might note that George Soros is a member of a group that
has demonstrated itself to be hostile
to the success of the Ukrainian state,
and that in fact has an overriding interest
in a Ukrainian economic collapse.
Any harm in George Soros? Is there evidence that George
Soros works to injure Ukraine? The Ukrainian Archive lacks the
resources to systematically gather such evidence. This is a job
for the Ukrainian press, which, however, Leonid Kuchma has made giant
strides toward intimidating and suppressing what he has been unable
to buy up. Not likely, therefore, that the Ukrainian press will
ever discover that Leonid Kuchma first strode upon the world stage as
a George Soros flunkey. Curious that George "Mother Theresa"
Soros is unable to prevail upon his protégé, Leonid
Kuchma, to allow a free
press — one might have
imagined that in his selfless efforts to modernize Ukraine, a free
press would have been among Soros's most urgent goals. But
instead, despite all of George Soros's efforts, somehow Ukraine has
ended up with the press of a police state, in which journalists are
sued, harassed, beaten, and assassinated. Despite such daunting
obstacles to arriving at a clear view of what is happening,
suggestive clues that George Soros works to injure Ukraine do
emerge.
Don't invest in terminal cases. For example, George
Soros does invest in Russia, but does not invest in Ukraine — a
discrepancy whose explanation might be that Soros is aware that the
plan for Ukraine, but not for Russia, is economic collapse. If
anyone can think of any other explanation for the combination of
George Soros holding particular sway over Ukraine, and yet for George
Soros designating Ukraine as the only country that is nurtured by his
philanthropy and yet that he refuses to invest in, I would like to
hear what that alternative explanation is. As investment may be
considered to be one of the most efficient forms of philanthropy, we
are faced here with a major incongruity.
Stealing Ukrainian brains for Russia? For another
example, Net-Moscow Times-14Oct97 reports that George Soros donated
$100 million to promote Internet access in Russian universities, but
mentions no corresponding figure for Ukraine. If the figure for
Ukraine is zero, or disproportionately less than for Russia, then the
effect will be to draw Ukrainian brains to Russia, than which there
could be no more devastating injury to Ukraine.
Saving a country by giving travel grants to its
scientists. On top of that, evidence bearing on the
possibility of a long-standing Soros policy to drain
Ukraine of its brains may be
found in the UKAR discussion — What's
George Soros up to? —
that travel grants may have as their chief goal the emigration or
Ukrainian brains out of Ukraine.
He who pays the piper calls the tune. Another thought
that the following quotations are capable of eliciting in some
restless minds. That one way of guessing the likelihood that an
individual will work toward the success of the Ukrainian State is to
count the number of internal y's in his surname, or to see if
it has some such ending as iuk or iak or yshyn
or enko. Quite a different way, which does not always
give the same answer as the first way, is to notice whose payroll he
is on.
The
World According to George Soros
George Soros is
offended by insufficient subservience:
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He [Soros]
is portrayed as someone ... who can be offended if a leader
of a country where he is involved philanthropically is
insufficiently subservient; who will consort with an
autocratic regime in order to see his programs carried out;
and who is intent on imposing his influence generally on an
ever-expanding area of the world.
Connie Bruck, The World According to Soros, The New
Yorker, 23-Jan-1995, p. 57.
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George Soros is
George Schwartz:
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He [Soros]
confirmed what someone had told me — that his family
name had long ago been changed from Schwartz.
Connie Bruck, The World According to Soros, The New
Yorker, 23-Jan-1995, p. 58.
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George Soros buys
Bohdan Hawrylyshyn:
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Of all the countries where
Soros has placed his philanthropic bets since the fall of
the Berlin Wall, Ukraine seems on the verge of producing the
greatest payoff. There, more than anywhere else, Soros
has been able to exert influence at the highest levels of
the government to see his ideas implemented. Indeed,
if President Leonid Kuchma succeeds in bringing about the
economic reforms he has recently promised, that over-all
scenario will have been scripted, to a notable degree, by
Soros.
It began back in the fall of 1991, when Ukraine declared its
independence, and Soros had what he calls a "seminal
meeting" with Dr. Bohdan Hawrylyshyn, and internationally
known Ukrainian economist, who, after living abroad for many
years, had decided to return to Ukraine in 1988, to help
steer its course, and in 1990 had become chairman of the new
Soros foundation there.
Connie Bruck, The World According to Soros, The New
Yorker, 23-Jan-1995, p. 67.
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George Soros buys
Bohdan Krawchenko:
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Bohdan Krawchenko, a
Ukrainian-Canadian historian ... returned to Ukraine in 1991
and was recruited by Hawrylyshyn and Soros to work for the
foundation....
Connie Bruck, The World According to Soros, The New
Yorker, 23-Jan-1995, p. 68.
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George Soros buys
Olech Havrylyshyn and George Yurchyshyn:
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Contrasting the Soros
foundation in Ukraine with its counterparts in other
countries, Krawchenko told me, "There is no other place
where the Soros foundation is so plugged in at the
top. We were here when there was
nothing.... The deputy minister of finance sat
with George and me in a basement almost four years ago and
we tried to figure out what to do about monetary
reform." That deputy minister of finance, Olech
Havrylyshyn (a nephew of Bohdan), was on the payroll of the
Soros foundation — as was the deputy governor of the
National Bank (George Yurchyshyn, a Ukrainian-American who
had previously been a vice-president at the Bank of
Boston).
Despite the fact that Soros had placed his own agents in key
positions, he was still not able to move Ukraine according
to his own design.
Connie Bruck, The World According to Soros, The New
Yorker, 23-Jan-1995, p. 68.
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George Soros buys
Leonid Kuchma the presidency:
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Last May [1994],
Leonid Kuchma came to the United States and paid Soros a
visit. He was at that time a candidate for
President. Soros was so excited by his conversation
with Kuchma that he called Hawrylyshyn, in Bucharest, and
put Kuchma on the phone to relay the outcome of their
meeting. Kuchma was rated an outsider in a large field
of candidates, but in early July he won an upset
victory. Soros says that he had nothing to do with
it. However, Evelyn Herfkens, of the World Bank, says,
"The Bank cannot support election campaigns of reformers; in
the Ukraine, Soros did." There was, at the least, a
massive effort to level the playing field: the April, 1994,
bulletin of the Soros foundation lists twelve grants, in the
areas of civil society, education, economics, and mass
media, eleven of them for amounts ranging from five thousand
dollars to thirty-one thousand eight hundred dollars, with
most in the lower range. But the twelfth — to
support independent television stations' coverage of the
Ukrainian elections — was for $363,100, an
extraordinary infusion of capital in Ukraine, and one that
would be spent in a three month period.
Connie Bruck, The World According to Soros, The New
Yorker, 23-Jan-1995, p. 68.
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Leonid Kuchma relies
on George Soros memos:
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That he, a foreigner, has
been able to stride so purposefully across the political
landscape of this country [Ukraine]
is probably due to a number of factors, among them his
having arrived so early in its independence, and stayed; his
partnership with Hawrylyshyn, who is widely admired, and
trusted for his patriotism.... Still, it was not until
his man became President that Soros was able to begin
effectively mobilizing for the kind of change that he and
others in the West had long envisioned. ... But
Kuchma respects Soros, and Kuchma needs to be convinced by
memos prepared by Soros."
Soros makes no bones about the interventionist nature of his
role in Ukraine. At one point, he remarked, jocularly,
"If this isn't meddling in the affairs of a foreign nation,
I don't know what is!" ... Soros commented, "I
look at Ukraine with the same frame of mind as I look at
REITs.... By my intervention, I make it happen!"
Connie Bruck, The World According to Soros, The New
Yorker, 23-Jan-1995, p. 70.
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George Soros runs
Ukraine:
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That he has installed his
own paid representatives in the government of Ukraine —
and, in the words of a longtime associate, believes that you
"buy" governments to get things done — might also,
conceivably, be viewed as a minor indiscretion of an
idiosyncratic but beneficent individual.
Connie Bruck, The World According to Soros, The New
Yorker, 23-Jan-1995, p. 73.
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The chauffeur takes
charge:
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As for the political role
that Soros has created for himself in countries like
Ukraine, de Botton continued, "There is such a vacuum, isn't
there? And in a time of crisis someone can
emerge. As when a family is in crisis, and suddenly
the chauffeur takes charge!"
Connie Bruck, The World According to Soros, The New
Yorker, 23-Jan-1995, p. 75.
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The chauffeur keeps
a low profile:
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Certainly in a country like
Ukraine, his foundation is engaging in plainly political
activities, although a reading of the foundation's annual
report — which lists, as its major areas of support,
education and research; civil-society programs; and culture,
environment, and health — gives no such suggestion.
Connie Bruck, The World According to Soros, The New
Yorker, 23-Jan-1995, p. 76.
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George Soros makes
all the decisions:
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Some of Soros's offshore
foundations therefore — such as the one in Ukraine
— are constituted as legally non-controlled entities,
each with its own board of directors. But the idea
that it is these local boards which have control — and
not Soros — is as much a chimera as any notion that the
Quantum board has control. Doubtless, the foundation
boards have made decisions; but, as many people within the
organization told me, there was no decision that Soros could
not overturn, and in many instances the decisions emanated
solely from him. Soros himself had told me, "I made
all the decisions."
Connie Bruck, The World According to Soros, The New
Yorker, 23-Jan-1995, p. 76.
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George Soros
overstaffs with Jews:
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"So I asked for
recommendations [for
people to staff his Moscow foundation, says
Soros], and I
invited people, took them on a trip, and it turned out that
they were all too old and too Jewish!" He
chuckled. "And not acceptable. I mean, you can't
be that Jewish in Russia. So I told them, 'You can't
have more than one-third Jews on board.'"
Connie Bruck, The World According to Soros, The New
Yorker, 23-Jan-1995, p. 77.
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Details of How
George Soros Bought Bohdan Hawrylyshyn Before
Breakfast
Bohdon Hawrylyshyn bares
all. The following two excerpts are from an article by
Bohdan Hawrylyshyn in The Ukrainian Weekly of 28 Feb
1999. The first excerpt describes a meeting between Bohdan
Hawrylyshyn and George Soros in the course of a November 1990
convention in Washington, DC.
Winning a grant, or selling out? Readers acquainted with
the laborious and cumbersome process of a typical grant application,
and acquainted with the stringent review that is likely to be
required so as to ensure that the grant will be used efficiently and
for worthwhile purposes, and acquainted with how niggardly available
grants tend to be, must be struck by the generosity of the grant
offered to Bohdan Hawrylyshyn, and by the brevity and casualness of
the review. In fact, so generous is the sum dangled before
Bohdan Hawrylyshyn's eyes, and so irregular is the manner in which
the money is handed over, that one cannot help wondering whether the
event would not be most accurately described as George Soros
retaining Bohdan Hawrylyshyn to act as his front man in Ukraine.
The spigot-opening concept paper. It would be
instructive to read Bohdan Hawrylyshyn's "concept paper" which served
in lieu of a grant application — was its writing meritorious
enough to plausibly win the handing over of millions of dollars, or
did it consist of vague platitudes which would have been laughed at
by any real granting agency? As this concept paper of
Hawrylyshyn's is today a historical document of some interest,
perhaps Bohdan Hawrylyshyn, or the Karl Popper Foundation, might
someday publish it. Or perhaps the Ukrainian Weekly, which
published the Hawrylyshyn account quoted from below, might think to
ask Hawrylyshyn for a copy of this concept paper, and for permission
to publish it. And it would be instructive to learn also exactly
how many millions of dollars did end up flowing through Bohdan
Hawrylyshyn's hands over the years, and exactly what this money was
used for.
How well does George Soros pay? Also useful to
understanding these events would be to learn precisely what increment
or decrement in Bohdan Hawrylyshyn's standard of living was produced
by his teaming up with George Soros. Bohdan Hawrylyshyn's title
for his Ukrainian Weekly article, Ten years of work on
behalf of Ukraine, makes it sound like his labors in the pay of
George Soros entailed privation. But was the office that Soros
enabled Hawrylyshyn to set up in Geneva humbler than the one
Hawrylyshyn had occupied previously, or more posh, and by how
much? Did Hawrylyshyn's pay go up or down, and by how
much? I know, to consider a related case, that Bohdan
Krawchenko, also a George Soros employee as mentioned above, drives a
Mercedes in Kyiv — and wonder whether it is likely that he would
have been able to drive a car of the same quality if he had remained
in Canada as a history professor instead of joining the George Soros
philanthropy team.
A George Soros democracy comes with a police state
press. Was George Soros's goal really as stated below, "to
help firm up democratic processes in Ukraine"? Anyone who
believes that a free press is a cornerstone without which democracy
is impossible, and who notices that Ukraine from independence in 1991
until today has had the harassed and suppressed press of a police
state, a press increasingly beleaguered under the presidency of Soros
protégé Leonid Kuchma, would have to say that either
Soros has little understanding of what democracy is and how it should
be implemented, or else that his talk of democracy is merely the
cover story he uses to hide his real work, which is taking money away
from whomever he can, and wherever and whenever he can, dispensing no
goods or services in return.
The Swiss again. The suggestion that the
Swiss
Karl Popper foundation is merely a George Soros front, or at least is
under his influence, does not help to quell twinges of paranoia that
the following account might elicit:
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The next morning before
breakfast, Mr. Soros came to see me at my hotel. He
said that if what I had described the previous evening was
possible, I could have a few million dollars to try and help
firm up the democratic processes in Ukraine. The funds
would be forthcoming from the Karl Popper Foundation in
Switzerland, financed by a relative of Mr. Soros.
Upon my return to Geneva, I wrote a concept paper, a plan,
prepared a budget and discussed it with the board of the
Karl Popper Foundation. It was approved without any
changes. I set up an office in Geneva to manage the
Karl Popper Program for
Ukraine.
Bohdan Hawrylyshyn,
Ten years of work on behalf of Ukraine: notable
highlights, Part II, A Washington dinner, The Ukrainian
Weekly, 28-Feb-1999, pp. 10-11, p. 10.
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Leonid Kravchuk
Smells the Cooking, But Finds the George Soros Kitchen Door
Locked
Kingmaker Bohdan Hawrylyshyn
snubs Leonid Kravchuk. The further excerpt below from the
Hawrylyshyn Ukrainian Weekly article paints a picture of
Bohdan Hawrylyshyn set up in his new Geneva office, with millions of
dollars to dispense, and thus able to play the role of kingmaker
— but when Leonid Kravchuk comes calling in January 1991,
Hawrylyshyn judges him to not meet employer George Soros's criteria
of viable claimant to the throne, and brushes him off.
Kingbreaker Bohdan Hawrylyshyn deposes Leonid Kravchuk.
Upon Ukraine's declaration of independence later in 1991, Leonid
Kravchuk did become president of Ukraine, but in the presidential
elections of 1994, was narrowly defeated by Leonid Kuchma through
George Soros intervention. Thus, George Soros appeared not to
like Leonid Kravchuk when Kravchuk asked Soros employee Bohdan
Hawrylyshyn for support in 1991, and continued disliking him enough
to have him defeated in 1994. Why this Soros dislike for
Kravchuk?
One wonders why. Perhaps because Leonid Kravchuk spoke
fluent Ukrainian, whereas George Soros protégé Leonid
Kuchma spoke only Russian. Perhaps because Kravchuk was highly
intelligent, and a mesmerizing public speaker, with Kuchma unable to
reach the same level in either category. Perhaps, by 1994,
because under Kravchuk's effective leadership, Ukraine had been saved
from following the path of ethnic strife and disintegration, to which
Eastern Europe is so prone. Perhaps because Kravchuk did not
spend his years as president transforming Ukraine into the Sicily of
Europe (with apologies to Sicily for the invidious comparison) —
which oversight Kuchma has demonstrated himself ready and able to
remedy. Perhaps because Kravchuk fought for a strong Ukraine,
which was not in George Soros's interests, or in the interests of
those whom George Soros represents:
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Leonid Kravchuk, then
chairman of the Verkhovna Rada, attended the World Economic
Forum in Davos in January 1991. [...]
After attending the symposium, Mr. Kravchuk came to our home
in Geneva for dinner. After dinner he took me aside and
asked if I would become his advisor. I reflected for a
minute and told him that I did not think this was a good
idea. He asked if this was because I did not want to be
an advisor to a Communist, if I was afraid of what people
would say about that. I replied that it might be more
awkward for him vis-à-vis the Central Committee of
the Communist Party to have a person known as a Ukrainian
patriot as his advisor. Instead I suggested to create a
group of advisors, to be called the Council of Advisors,
consisting of well-known personalities from different
countries, who would advise the Presidium of the Parliament,
in which different political currents were represented,
rather than just the chairman. Mr. Kravchuk immediately
agreed.
Bohdan Hawrylyshyn,
Ten years of work on behalf of Ukraine: notable
highlights, Part II, A Washington dinner, The Ukrainian
Weekly, 28-Feb-1999, pp. 10-11, p. 10
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This photograph is one of two
that appeared in the Bohdan Hawrylyshyn article in the Ukrainian
Weekly. The caption was: President Leonid Kravchuk
consults with his adviser Bohdan Hawrylyshyn in May 1994. A
more apt caption might have been: Et tu brute? Bohdan
Hawrylyshyn (left) chats with Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk,
without informing him that Hawrylyshyn employer George Soros has
already set the wheels in motion for Kravchuk's defeat in the
upcoming presidential elections.
