Starry Aspirant

I thought I saw Luke Skywalker check into our beach hotel for a winter break. Older now, but still with poise and assurance, he strides through the automatic doors, wheeling a squeaky travel case in his wake. At the reception, he dashes off his signature with a flourish as if to please the concierge, then turns gracefully towards the lift, swishing behind him his coco-powder cape. And I thought I saw him out on the bluffs next morning early, muttering incantations under his breath. Who set fire to the natural log? What is East Grinstead? Why is the sun? The cold rain drizzles, but his cape is good for all weathers. In the bay, a shark is doing backstroke, pretending to be a surfboard. The sparrow-hawk stuck on the air current above one shoulder is Luke’s mind: it's just one more Jedi party trick. His girl, who is too young for him, is dressed in a silky lilac two piece and she wears pristine lilac boots. At nights they sing like crickets on the dancefloor. The disco ball accentuate...

A review of Marko Bojcun’s Towards a Political Economy of Ukraine: Selected Essays, 1990-2015; Ukrainian Voices, vol 3; Ibidem-Press, Stuttgart. A. The history of post-Soviet Ukraine could be written as that of a succession of self-serving political leaderships, and of inspiring but failed popular protests, resulting in chronic economic underperformance that has left the country’s dwindling population among the poorest in Europe. A glance at IMF data, for example, shows the country vying for bottom place in the European income rankings with Moldova. In these essays, written close on the events they analyse, Marko Bojcun reminds us that this need not have been the case, and that other trajectories at times seemed possible. One example is to be found in an article from 2001, in which the prospect of Russia’s European integration is still in the air, just about, whereas from the vantage point of today, this is almost unthinkable. B. The collection covers key waypoints in the politic...

In her book, Margarita Balmaceda offers a detailed comparative account of how post-Soviet political elites dealt with the political consequences of their dependence on energy imports from Russia in the first decades after the Soviet collapse, focusing on the cases of Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania. Although described as “energy poor”, Ukraine’s reliance on Russia for a large share of its energy deliveries (excluding nuclear fuel) was considerably lower than for Belarus or Lithuania (Balmaceda, 2013, pp. 93, 317). Nevertheless, the relationship led periodically to serious bilateral strains, especially over issues around natural gas. Rather than straightforward energy dependence, however, Ukraine’s basic energy relation with Russia is better understood as one of “asymmetric interdependence”, Balmaceda contends. By this she means that post-Soviet Ukraine had significant energy assets with which it could have mitigated the effects of its reliance on energy supplies from Russia. Chief among...