I think you misunderstood me. My argument was simply that there are many people who support Yanukovich and unsurprisingly feel disdain towards those trying to overthrow the president they've elected.
Thanks for clarifying. I understand people in his core regions and pro Russia Russians supporting him. I cannot understand the fairly progressive and very intelligent community here on HN supporting this wanna-be dictator.
No not at all. IMO that has nothing to do with intelligence/education. The issue is twofold. First, most voters in Ukraine have known the USSR and it does skew their views. The "good old times" seem too good to let go. The propaganda machine was strong back then and the idea that Russia could lead the entire region into its former glory does have some appeal.
Second, the people with ties to both Russia and Ukraine might actually believe that Ukraine is just a part of Russia and that its independence is a temporary thing. The two countries have a very long history that is full of intertwined interests, population mixing, etc. Remember that Kiev was a prospering city from where the ruling class moved to a tiny fortress up north called Moscow.
I do not buy "Ukraine is a Russian territory" mostly based on the treatment that the Ukrainian nationals in the USSR received: artificial feminine, oppression, active suppression of Ukrainian culture and language, etc. The biggest hurdle here IMO is that Ukraine has not been independent for very much of its existence and has only known democracy in the last 23 years. The people have no sense of how a democracy is supposed to look, feel, and work. I think that once people who lived in the USSR are replaced with the generations to follow things might improve slightly. For now this is all really a struggle to find the Ukrainian identity. To put this into perspective think of the US in 1800. Not exactly a stable or peaceful time, is it?
Ok. So they are rather brainwashed than stupid. In other words they strive for such irrational things like glory rather than better life conditions. Is the actual situation any better than it used to be in soviet times regarding unemployment, affordable healthcare, education?
To clarify, by "glory" really I mean both pride in the country and quality of life combined. Brainwashed might be a strong word. Mislead and misremembering is probably more accurate. This is as far as I'm concerned the same thing that happens in the US where Tea partiers talk about how great America was 50 years ago (it wasn't, unless you were a white male). This is the same nostalgia for things that weren't really there but seemed like they were.
As far as actual conditions, I cannot judge this well. I left Ukraine for the US about 14 years ago. I have family and friends there, but I cannot tell exactly if things are better or worse than pre-1990. I can say that they are definitely not good currently. Median income is low, prices are high, good jobs are scarce. Education is something I don't know much about.
The healthcare system there is technically state run but practically is what I would call "microcapitalism": you have to pay effectively a bribe to your physician and you have to buy all of his/her supplies for whatever procedure you need. It's almost a libertarian heaven: you negotiate what you need done and can shop around for any medication and supplies needed. If anything it's a case study for how a market solution like this means no quality control on the care you receive. If you cannot afford the "premium" care where you pay the doctor directly, you will just end up waiting weeks, months, or years for the government to pay for your treatment, by which point your condition is likely to get worse. There are no charities, etc. to step up and pay for you: the market does not want those. Even if it did, my gut feeling would be that the charities would simply fall prey to corruption and would become money laundering machines.
An example of this is my grandfather that about a year ago went for his physical and needed to have blood drawn and to get vaccinations. The doctor told him to go across the street to a pharmacy to buy needles and vaccines. My grandfather spent the next two hours waiting in line for service, and ended up paying a few pennies for all of this. The doctors cannot hold onto this stuff themselves since they or their staff will just sell it for cash out of the back door.
Another example is my other grandfather who passed away a few years ago of colon cancer. He could have been saved with a colonoscopy, except he had one about 10 years prior to that and the hospital did not have any anesthetic. Naturally he did not want to experience the same pain again, so he never went back, developed colon cancer and died in horrible pain. His nephew ended up going to a hospital, grabbing a random doctor off his shift, paying him about $1000 in cash to drive 50 miles away to help my grandfather with his pain in his last few days.
