In Russian-speaking Kharkiv, the IT
industry is one of the few things that is thriving
MYKOLA RIDNIY is
a young video artist in Kharkiv, the second-largest city in Ukraine, just forty
kilometres from the Russian border. His latest video, featuring peaceful street
scenes set to a soundtrack of riots, recalls the events of two years ago, when
the city nearly fell to the Russian-backed separatists who now control other
cities in the south-east, Donetsk and Luhansk. Today, Kharkiv remains a litmus
test for whether Ukraine can satisfy its Russian-speaking people and turn
itself into a functional country.
Opinions differ
on how close Kharkiv came to become another breakaway “people’s republic”. Most
residents like to think the violence was imposed from outside, by whoever paid
for the thugs who arrived in buses from over the Russian border to attack
supporters of the pro-European Maidan. Others, like Mr Rydniy, point out that
plenty of locals backed Russia too. “People know that their neighbours were
supporting the Russian side,” he says.
Kharkiv has always been a bit grander than its
coal-dusted neighbours. In the late 1800s, local coal magnates built flamboyant
mansions here. Under the Soviet Union the city became a centre for advanced
engineering. A proud little museum within the Kharkiv Aviation Institute shows
photographs of the KhAI-1, the first European passenger plane with retractable
landing gear, and of Valentina Grizodubeva, a pioneer aviatrix who broke world
records in the 1930s, and led an all-women Red Air Force squadron during the war.
Today, though
the Institute’s well-kept campus bustles with students (a quarter of them from
overseas), the attached aircraft factory stands silent. Production halted
several years ago. The loss of the Russian market has dealt a near death-blow
to state-owned monoliths that were in need of modernisation anyway.
The Kharkiv
Tractor Plant has virtually ceased production; Turboatom, a maker of turbines
for nuclear power stations, has lost the bulk of its sales, as has Malyshev, a
tank manufacturer. It is hard to see where new investment might come from.
Foreigners are frightened off by Kharkiv’s proximity to the front line, and the
Ukrainian new rich prefer to make quicker bucks in property or commodities.
For the young
engineers still pouring out of the city’s institutes, the big new industry is
information technology. More than 200 IT firms employ some 14,000 software
developers, and boast a roster of big-name American and European clients. A
co-working space for start-ups in the dilapidated town centre ticks all the
boxes: exposed brickwork, board games, a man with pink hair strumming a
ukulele. Pavel Naumenko, former director of the aviation plant who now produces
electronics for drones, sees Kharkiv as a technological magnet city for the
whole country, promising Ukraine “a bright future”.
The main
roadblock is bad government, and the mayor, Gennady Kernes, is a prime example.
Convicted of fraud in the early 1990s, Mr Kernes now commands a murky fortune
in television, telecoms and real estate. He enjoys putting photos of himself
cuddling puppies and blondes on social media, and he has local politics sewn
up. Thanks in part to splashy spending—a glittering new Orthodox cathedral and
a lavish children’s amusement park—he won 66% of the vote at last October’s local
elections. His rivals, opposition activist Dmitri Drobot says, were “technical
candidates” put up to divide the vote, apart from one genuine but little-known
opponent who took just 12%.
The real
politics takes place behind the scenes, and becomes visible only when it leads
to violence. During the crisis two years ago Mr Kernes initially backed the
Russians before switching sides. Soon after, he was shot while jogging. He now
uses a wheelchair. In February of this year one of his oldest friends, reputedly
his money manager, was shot dead in a local cemetery.
As throughout
the country, reform initiatives are hampered by corruption. Staff at the
Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, an NGO that provides legal aid, says
that at least half of all judges should be replaced, and even more prosecutors.
The director of a German-funded programme for refugees (there are 111,000 in
the city) says her elderly clients are preyed upon by bribe-taking doctors, and
there is little she can do: if she exposes corruption, “maybe our client won’t
get treatment in the future.” A Western-funded anti-corruption watchdog says it
is playing a constant game of catch-up: “We expose one scheme, and they think
up a new, more elaborate one.”
Nobody thinks a
Kharkiv “people’s republic” is in the offing. The separatists’ war has
destroyed the economies of Donetsk and Lugansk; as Mr Drobot says, “People know
there’s no future there.” On the other hand, Kharkiv has never been as
idealistic as Kiev about the bold promises of the Maidan revolution. It now
sees its scepticism vindicated. Disillusioned, full of potential but held back
by bad leaders, Kharkiv is in many ways Ukraine in miniature. In 2014, cheering
crowds used a crane to pull down its giant central Lenin statue, leaving only
his broken-off feet. Kiev’s new revolutionaries will need to do better if they
want to escape the same sort of contempt.
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