In August, Ukraine commemorated the 19th anniversary of its independence. According to the article 5 of the Constitution, "Ukraine is a republic. People are holders of sovereignty and only source of power in Ukraine. People exercise authority directly and though government agencies and organs of local self-government."

For over 200 years an idea of inevitability of fight between labor and capital determined the strategy of companies and corporations, philosophy of management and labor relations, policy and culture of capitalism. Today we witness the end of successor epoch in economic history of mankind. The post-war "social pact" between labor and capital based on their peaceful coexistence has been broken. In fact, the capital has pulled out of the social agreement and pursues more aggressive policy against the organized labor. With the emergence of global economic crisis the identical processes set off in Greece, Spain, and Ukraine.

Plato said: "Ideas rule the world. Getting control the minds of people, ideas gave rise to civilizations, created and destroyed great empires. The progress (as well as reforms and revolutions) is possible only when people believe in the fundamental principles of its realization. Thus, the ideas are the basis for any change in the community of people, and our society is no exception.

The elections are over, and now it is time to fulfill campaign promises. However, the new President has a narrow range of choice: decision-making deadline, lack of resources, burden of external and internal debts, promises, and agreements; nevertheless it is for him to decide. Ukraine is eager to change and afraid of it at the same time; this is an inevitable paradox of new times and the new president’s agenda. Together with our authors and experts, the "Dialog.UA" is trying to assess the short- and long-term challenges facing the country.

Democracy and dictatorship are two sides of one coin. Return of unripe democracy to dictatorship or tyranny is a regularity caused by excesses of formation of the democratic processes and relevant changes of consciousness and habits of people. From the historical point of view, a sharp transition from democracy to dictatorship can have many forms, including coup d’état, civil war, fraudulent elections or creation of emergencies demanding intervention of special forces.

The state of medicine and politics is the best social maturity test. The recent events have shown that policos in Ukraine go on with internecine feud even in the face of pandemic, and people have finally realized that when they begin politicizing health policy, it indicates that this country has neither policy, nor health care––

The elections in modern democracies make an element of development periodically introducing necessary changes to deadened socio-political system. As a result, the national strategy may be amended, or, as a last resort, renovated. Meanwhile, Ukraine triggers a backlash every time instead of answering simple questions, like What are the prerequisites for development? How to reverse the persisting downtrend?

Under economic crisis the society zeroes in on exchange rate, rising unemployment or production slump; however, there is also such thorny issue as anthropogenic impact control in Ukraine. One should not forget that the repair of national infrastructure is a “national economy fine tuning problem.”

Once again Ukraine approaches a crux of its history; and this time it is a crucial point indeed: the extent of potential ruin outweighs moral taboos and common sense priorities. The social contract kept changing during the short history of independent Ukraine; and we will but experience it again. And improved legal framework is not the way out. We should revise relations between government and people and promote mutual responsibility. But who will be the impeccable arbiter today will undertake the role of severe, impartial and incorruptible arbiter in this boring controversy Power vs. People?

It is a stereotyped view today that anyone can sentence Ukraine: the state has failed and bankruptcy and default are here on our doorstep... The state is helpless. Ukraine is among top twenty most unstable countries in the world, and so on and so forth. Is it that bad?

The optimism is rather delusive. The state is on the verge of disaster. The government is not qualified and strong-willed enough to use domestic and foreign resources to ensure security of the country and citizens, their material and social welfare, economic growth and prosperity. Maybe it does not puzzle itself with the question. Does the nation need such administration?

The global economy has run into a very serious recession. The duration and depth of this crisis depends on the timely and precise actions of the governments. The world still needs a consistent macroeconomic policy to restore economic growth after the Collapse of 2008.

The crisis has become a keyword since the early 2009. It is a catchword on the planet now; however, Ukraine has come to love extremes in the recent years; therefore we have a systemic crisis and many a man doubts if the patient survives. In fact, people expect more hardships to come. Ukrainians expect the worst and avoid long-term planning. It is a social response to economic crisis, and everybody understands that after the crisis there will be no radical improvements in sight. What kind of changes awaits us? How do we tell it from the latest domestic instability?

The “Treaty about friendship, collaboration, and partnership between Russian Federation and Ukraine”––the so-called “Basic Accord”––has been essayed once and again. The accord terminates on April, 1, 2009; however, there is a clause that it renews automatically, if none of the parties denounces it, having informed the other party at least six months in advance. Therefore, on October 1 the „Agreement about friendship, collaboration and strategic partnership between Russia and Ukraine” signed in 1997 renewed automatically.

There is a yet unsolved problem in the public eye year in and year out: attitude of Ukrainian society, citizens to the state and state power, their estimation, level of understanding, priorities, necessary qualities, and stereotypes.

As is generally known, the modern times are closely related to creation and strengthening of the nation-state which grows into the basic element of the system of international relations (see Giddens 1991; Habermas 1987; Wagner 2001). Even today nation remains the most important element of international system despite its blurring role. However, we can but recognize that the attempts to transfer a European model of the nation and apply it to the new emerging states may bring about unsatisfactory results. The suggested Ukrainian national project is neither rejected, nor accepted. Why? What’s the snag? What is the main problem to be tackled?

This new discussion is intended to trace the evolution of social capital in Ukraine for the last 20-30 years and bring out those types of resources which people obtain due to social connections. We tried to find out, how social capital functions in Ukraine, how it rearranges the elements of market mechanism, in which way does it influence the accumulation of human capital. Why is social capital important for eradication of poverty? Is it instrumental in income inequality control and strengthening of social unity? There is certain evidence that communities with high social capital suffer less from criminality, enjoy better health, and are better educated and prosperous. Ukraine could adopt these practices as well, or couldn’t it?

The reconstruction of social identity is an unavoidable side result of any rapid social changes. Therefore the transforming countries constantly need beliefs explaining changes in ideology or religion. Thence the demand for new myths.

The game of democracy enjoyed by current and past administrations endangers the very democracy. The Ukrainian leaders feel it more difficult to declare democratic values and show their intent to take into consideration the interests of the majority of population and opposition while going ahead with their policy. Will they end up with a mature democracy or we are doomed to make do with a kind of authoritarianism which is a mean joke?

Everybody knows that culture tends to modernize from time to time. The cultural evolution is inevitable. The world passes through the unprecedented explosion of generation of knowledge, technologies and now-how in every society. And we may venture an idea that the traditional Ukrainian cultural space is lagging behind the growing spiritual demands of contemporaneity. Maybe that is why the rating of Ukrainian culture and prestige of Ukrainesque realities stumbles down?

The political reform, the fruits of which our country is reaping now, has moved the problems of regions aside. Only a few people recall the 2nd stage touching on local administrations. This political reform has both intensified the existing problems and generated new ones.

On the seventeenth year of independence we can conclude that our society remains dissociated both culturally and politically: Halychyna and Donbas, Crimea and Volyn, dozens of cultures and traditions; all of them must legally participate in making Ukraine a new national project. However, there is no uniform concept of effective instruments and ideological tenets for common national idea yet. We go on dismantling the infrastructure of the FSU in a sloppy way. The situation is aggravated by simultaneous transition from state Socialism to a market economy and from authoritarianism to democracy. It brings about theoretical and practical complications. There is no vision of common goal and future, i.e. of the national idea.

Recently they have been making words that elections 2007 would stir political instability. Nonetheless it’s clear that the pre-term elections (or their results) must answer the question, whether the present political elite will be able, after all, to build the Ukrainian independent democratic state by mutual consent, or cease to exist having failed to carry out its mission.

Usually the social values survive from 20 to 50 years and even Sumerians pondered over the problem of generations’ gap. In our dynamic age the frequency of reappraisal of ethical values increases even during the lifespan of one generation. We constantly experience volte-faces. But what really matters is the depth and delicacy of the conflicts.

Both in Ukrainian printed media, and in the statements of officials the substitution of notions in different spheres of human activity is a commonplace; economics is no exception. For example, the GDP, industrial output, social transfers, reduction of inflation etc. are used as criteria of soundness of economic reforms. However, a very important factor remains unaccounted for. There are countries in the world, where these indicators truly reflect the interests of people; meanwhile in Ukraine they reflect nothing but the visions of rulers and political elite. It is a truism that these indexes should be based on the supposition that the relations between the state and citizens should be determined by free market competitive exchange of services. While the macroeconomic models reducing the operation of economy to several simplified equations connected with industrial output and production output cannot predict real developments, be they catastrophic or positive.

We are used to such terms as the information space of Ukraine and Ukrainian media; however, we fail to be more precise about their meaning and fundamental differences, as well as their future trends.

Suggesting the new topic for a discussion, the Dialog.UA left aside the criteria of age: should a young person below 24 or 28 years of age, or, according to the new legislation, below 35? Instead, we made a try to understand the quality changes in the world view, values and preferences of the young generation—the post-soviet generation.

We have but one Ukraine. But every ethnos, every ethnic group residing on its territory considers the future of this country, and his/her own as actual realization of national, cultural, and social preferences.

The International Fund “Vidrodzhennia” sponsored the elaboration on the “Ukrainian strategy of eurointegration: Southern Vector” The eurointegration strategy is a key foreign-policy priority of Ukraine. The majority of political groups in the new Ukrainian parliament recognize the importance of European integration. However, de facto, eurointegration strategy still stays within the limits of Kyiv as a kind of political and diplomatic top-down design. In other words, the eurointegration strategy needs to become a regional reality in order to be a success.

The amount of publications on corruption has heaped up during 2 to 3 decades; however the phenomenon of corruption remains obscure. Even the well documented connection between the level of corruption and faulty economic and political system was never thoroughly examined: nobody established the cause-and-effect relation.

Unfortunately, the anniversary of Constitution is not perceived in Ukraine as celebration democracy. Adopted a decade ago the Constitution has never become a full-fledged social agreement which regulates legal relationship between society and power and is mandatory for all high contracting parties.

Ukraine goes on searching in its foreign policy domain. The transition from the notorious multiple-choice to single-choice alternative (tighter integration with the European Union) does not exclude the pending scheduled revision of the “Priority directions in foreign policy” and rejection of mythologem connected with the forced admission to the European Union and NATO. The development of new relations with the RF meeting national requirements of both countries is also on the agenda of Ukrainian diplomacy. Offering this topic for discussion, we would like to concentrate attention on the estimations of future trends in the foreign policy of Ukraine taking into account the available foreign-policy-doctrine resources in our country.

Attention of people is riveted to media and political parties in connection with proportional parliamentary elections in 2006. Unfortunately, the electoral campaign of 2006 is highly personified. Electors, as during presidential elections, direct their attention not to parties and their programs, but to their attractiveness and eloquence of political leaders.

The preparation and implementation of parliamentarian-presidential model is executed in accordance with the well-known slogan: a step forward—two steps backward. Again and again different branches of power try win over the situation concealing real processes and motives. In the current session of the Dialog.UA we suggest to discuss the advantages of political inoculation of the vertically integrated power of Ukraine with the parliamentary model.

A year after the presidential elections in Ukraine, after confrontation on the Square and “orange revolution”, after the euphoria following the reshuffle and disappointment from the new authority we can cast a glance at the happenings from the heights of our new experience and knowledge.

The character of interrelationship of Ukraine with the globalizing world is one of the most complicated and major issues of current development. Global challenges “format” the internal space of Ukraine despite our wishes. Therefore we need strategic understanding of today's and future global challenges, risks, problems, and possibilities.

In modern role-plays and trainings social and psycho-dramatic techniques are intended to improve effective behavior of individuals or groups under stress and help them to gain experience otherwise unobtainable.

Still before the elections there were statements that these presidential elections would mean the civilization choice for Ukraine. Before the second round of elections it was not clear, whether Ukraine would follow western Slavs and prefer European choice to Eurasian one. In fact, if in the nearest future Ukraine fails to produce and protect its own social and cultural strategy of a competent subject of European integration, it will be pressed to make another choice. This choice may well look like a kind of Pan-Slavism, which has been helping Russian empire to mask its aspirations to dominate Slavs for three centuries now.

In November we will know the names of the winner and looser of the presidential elections in Ukraine. Therefore, suggesting to discuss such topic as “The agenda for the president-to-come” on the site Dialog.UA, we purposefully skipped the question of the winner of the present electioneering. We will specify the concrete winner; we’d simple like to cast a glance at the events of the coming December and conjecture real presidential plans and their viability.

The theme of our dialog is the new Ukrainian education in the broad sense of the word. At some time in the past the education was intended to promote knowledge; now educators want to “show=instruct=give a chance” to use this knowledge. Only a century ago the greater part of population could not read. Now there is another problem: the new generation knows three Rs but don’t need it. Therefore the new Ukrainian education answers the question “How?”: how to apply knowledge.

Ever since the proclamation of independence the endless and not too effective discussions in relation to the optimization of relations between a center and regions, between the capital and province, between a city and region, etc are under way in Ukraine. However, the meaty public discussion is still ahead.

No country has managed yet to avoid integration processes, which today engulf the whole planet. Like it or not, but besides the rhythms of domestic policy, our life follows globalizing rhythms more and more, waves of internationalization and integration. Not only competitive strength of the economy, but also the terms of maintaining domestic political consensus and preservation of national identity will depend on Ukraine's ability to synchronize itself with the processes, which are related to the global and regional orientations, and its ability to build its internal political plans and projects into global geostrategical contexts.

Quiet sabotage of officials and opened counteraction to democratization of society from the side of strengthening authorities played a spiteful joke on the romantic moods of Ukrainians of the early 90s of the last century. Creating the state of their dream the Ukrainian bureaucracy took in both poets and democrats. At first under the slogan of division and independence of authority judicial, executive and legislative power were removed from under public control, and then leased to oligarchic clans. Maybe, that is why the statements that Ukraine is still far away from true democracy go without demur. Though everybody has his/her own idea of true democracy.