In this article, we will have three important questions. The first question is next: what does the word 'globalization' mean for us? PIIE's (Peterson Institute For International Economics) website reads that “globalization is the word used to describe the growing interdependence of the world’s economies, cultures, and populations, brought about by cross-border trade in goods and services, technology, and flows of investment, people, and information.” Now we have a second question: what does globalization mean for Ukraine? This one is not easy to answer, but we will try.
We must admit that Ukraine wasn't a part of free Europe or, in a broader sense, of the free world until its first independent steps in the early 1990s. In other words, Ukraine wasn't able to interact with other countries at its discretion. Falling of the Iron Curtain brought our people not just new possibilities, but new challenges. Grown in the infamous Prison of Nations, Ukrainians had to get used to the new rules: market economy, freedom of movement, multi-party system, high inflation, black economy, to name a few. It was the time when every Ukrainian tried to find out how to live from the scratch.
As it always happens, people live their lives in accordance with Maslow's hierarchy of needs. In the early 1990s, people were suffering from poverty and were focusing on food, including western novelties like hamburger or hot-dog. Without 'parental control' from Russia, Ukraine tasted some of the European or American meals for the very first time.
From the 1990s until our days, Ukrainian people tried to get the best food and goods for their families. Two of the most popular ways to earn money were labour migration to the western countries and black-market dealings (inside and outside the country). The most popular western destination for our people was Poland. Now, our neighbours can't imagine their country without Ukrainian workers.
In the 2000s, Ukrainian economy started its growth, which caused a new chapter in trading between Ukraine and other countries. Moreover, Ukraine, famously known as an agricultural country, started to develop new for our reality industries, like information technology.
For me, the most interesting object of globalization in Ukraine is culture. Before the 1990s, so-called 'cultural links' between socialist republics weren't looking like proper exchange of values between different nations. Starting with a 'Perestroika', Ukrainians felt that spirit of the free world (at least some part of it). My father still recalls his first experience of watching MTV music videos. Of course, this pop-culture, or lower culture at all, couldn't give our people a realistic view from the West, but it was the first step towards new life. 1990s brought Ukraine our first pop singers, who, sometimes, tried to copy western stars or music genres, like Eurodance. Then, Ukrainian TV started to copy western TV shows, which was something completely new for our culture. It must be said, a lot of Ukrainians stayed in the paradigm of so-called 'lower culture'. In this sense, the western world brought us a lot of novelty, like watching of the 'X Factor' on Saturday or listening to the newest pop music. Our interaction with elite culture is somewhat rarer. For example, it is impossible to find the world's best newspapers in our local newsagents; some of the famous books were translated into Russian instead of Ukrainian (of course, in the last few years the situation got much better, but there is still a long way to success of Ukrainian publishing).
Well, it isn't easy to explain how exactly globalization affected Ukraine. We have students and workers from different countries. We can buy foreign goods in our shops. We are trying to build strong democracy in our country. But, still, globalization came to our home in a chaotic way. We are still somewhere between our Soviet past and our European future. We, sometimes, think that globalization is when we can buy new iPhone, eat sushi or buy Chinese goods from eBay... But there comes the last question of our article: what can we offer the world to say that we are a real part of globalization?
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