The data presented in this paper suggest that this troubling lack of stability could erode popular support for democracy in Ukraine, opening the way for a Putin-like figure promising the safety and security of a firm hand at the helm. Ukraine can reverting to its competitive authoritarian equilibrium, something that would be met with support from a sizeable portion of the population.

Though it might be a banal historical reminder, but the local authorities should be prompted time and again that the first successful Ukrainian dictator and desperate provincial Bohdan Khmelnytsky launched a career of a dictator trying to take vengeance on top local administrator for his bullyboy tactics. The emergence of new dictatorship in the geographical center of Europe looks impossible. But the pugnacious History likes springing surprises. The more so when last European dictator Alexandr Lukashenko is up and going; therefore the appearance of his Ukrainian colleague is not that improbable. But the tricksy seizure of power is the most interesting stratagem.

From the western point of view, Ukraine is already an authoritarian state; the permanent crisis here is a normal condition, and it will last for quite a time. One needs to keep an eye on such a country, but there is no sense to expect it to become democratic. No dictatorship threatens Ukraine by reason of the fact that we already have a bitter cataclysm and we make do without strict laws; the top authorities got in the way of bowing to our wishes, even to the most low-pitched desires. It is not the excess power that is the most dangerous, and not emerging authoritarianism, but the decomposition of the state, incompetency, and irresponsibility of the rulers, as well as their inability to protect us from real, natural and uninvented political threats.

In one state we have several dictatorships which create their own landscape which water down or break the state into spheres of specific influence. This activity in Ukraine is triggered with the help of political gimmicks, while politics is being sanctified and turned into a kind of temple with its own entrances and exits, gates and altar or altars. And now we have a reinterpretation of paganism in the environment of new codes of ethnic progress.

Dictatorship may be more effective in unriddling than democratic regimes; however, it needs certain prerequisites, which are unlikely in Ukraine today. Besides, not all tyrants die from natural causes in extreme old age…

Today Ukraine is in a real need of salvation from chaos and anarchy with future development of rightful state. Ironically, nothing but dictatorship and voluntarism can lead to it now. Current Ukrainian concept of dictatorship suggests replacing basic human rights by wellbeing, making of a state, powerful state, protection from oligarchs etc. However, it by definition negates the real freedom of man. But the resources of dictatorship in Ukraine are limited today. Dictatorship means one-party rule, precedence of state over personality and individuals, state control of all aspects of life. There are no strong necessary prerequisites for it in Ukraine today. The return to one-party system is unlikely; in the last resort we will make do with the two-party scheme.

Neither authoritarianism, nor dictatorship can manage crisis without tougher policing role of the state, corruption control (real and not sham), and stronger punishment for abuse of authority.

The present political realities in Ukraine do not signal fast transition of parliamentary-presidential republic to personal dictatorship of one politico. S/he would need move mountains in the field of legislation within the limits of constitutional process; s/he would need tackling a gamut of personnel and administrative problems to secure omnipotence and invulnerability from opponents. This standard set of traits of faulty Ukrainian administration suggests that no presidential candidate can have an upper hand. And it means that forthcoming strife for dictatorial powers under conditions of strong political competition and consolidated opposition will demand such exertion on the side of the boss that all hifalutin plans are nothing but one more mirage in reality.

Тhe West entered a post-democratic era, ready for our own Ahmadinejads. Italians already know his name: Berlusconi. Others are waiting in line. Berlusconi is a significant figure, and Italy an experimental laboratory where our future is being worked out: the authoritarian capitalism, «barbarism with a human face», whose tentacles are coming closer and closer to the West.

Dictatorship has been, with few exceptions, performed in the service of a minority; these dictatorships have always represented the interests of the financial elite. A dictatorship is thus the necessary evil born out of the natural processes of capitalism.

Can a free people willingly choose servitude? Is it possible for democracies to become tyrannies? Those of us who are incapable of self-mastery will always prostrate ourselves before messianic political leaders. Freedom without limits paves the way to tyranny by undermining respect for the law.

All Western democracies are now Socialist states in varying degrees. The current system cannot sustain itself. We’re facing the unavoidable endgame of democracy. But the demise of democracy does not necessarily mean the demise of Western civilization.

What is drowning any society in any historical retrospective is not an economic poverty and not even macroeconomic inefficiency, but exactly the inefficiency in utilization of available resources. Most essential problem with elevated social parasitism is not that it is immoral or economically inefficient or unfair, but that it cannot be maintained for too long. No any known to us society built on excessive levels of social parasitism (either of the “wolves” or of the “sheep”) was able to subsist and no such society dissolved peacefully.

Тhe spread of democracy is encountering increasingly strong headwinds. The strategy to use market forces to open up tightly centralised political systems hasn’t worked in multiple cases in Asia — the pivot of global strategic change. Where authoritarianism is deeply entrenched, a marketplace of goods and services simply does not allow a marketplace of political ideas.