By Connie Bruck, The New Yorker, 23-Jan-1995
By Connie Bruck, The New Yorker, 23-Jan-1995
George Soros buys Ukraine
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:
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.
George Soros is George Schwartz:
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.
George Soros buys Bohdan Hawrylyshyn:
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.
George Soros buys Bohdan Krawchenko:
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.
George Soros buys Olech Havrylyshyn and George Yurchyshyn:
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.
George Soros buys Leonid Kuchma the presidency:
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.
Leonid Kuchma relies on George Soros memos:
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.
George Soros runs Ukraine:
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.
The chauffeur takes charge:
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.
The chauffeur keeps a low profile:
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.
George Soros makes all the decisions:
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.
George Soros overstaffs with Jews:
"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.
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 28Feb99. 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:
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. /td>
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:
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
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.
