2013 in review
Analysis published during 2013.
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The last year of the old model: a review written at the end of one era
The economic model in place since the early 2000s reached the end of what it could deliver. Reviewing the year makes the exhaustion visible: every component of the…
Economy & Macro -
St Nicholas Day, 19 December 2013
A greeting for the day the winter holidays begin.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Vilnius 2013: the suspension, and the arithmetic behind it
Eight days before the summit, the government suspended preparations to sign the Association Agreement. The stated reason was economic. The economics were real — and were also the…
EU & Euro-Atlantic Integration -
Holodomor: the famine of 1932–33 and why grain carries weight here
On the fourth Saturday of November the country stops for a minute and puts candles in windows. Understanding what is being remembered explains a great deal about how…
National Days & Anniversaries -
Holodomor Remembrance Day, 23 November 2013
A remembrance message, and a note on the eightieth anniversary and the people who were still alive to speak.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Why the trade choice was framed as a choice, and what the economics actually said
The question was presented as Europe or the customs union, as if the two were symmetric alternatives. They were not, and the asymmetry explains almost everything about how…
EU & Euro-Atlantic Integration -
Ukrainian Language Day, 9 November 2013
A language day greeting, and a note on the word that has no comfortable translation.
National Days & Anniversaries -
An economy that stopped growing, and the three reasons why
By 2013 Ukrainian output had stalled without any single dramatic event to explain it. The causes were structural, they had been visible for years, and they are the…
Economy & Macro -
Ukraine Market Report — Q3 2013
A record grain harvest, a contracting industrial base, and a decision approaching in November on which trade regime the country would adopt. Business planning stopped until the answer…
Quarterly & Annual Reports -
Knowledge Day, 1 September 2013
A word for the teachers, on the day the flowers arrive.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Independence Day 2013: a trade war already under way
Ten days before this anniversary, russian customs placed every Ukrainian exporter under enhanced inspection. It lasted a week, cost hundreds of millions, and was a demonstration rather than…
National Days & Anniversaries -
When the growth number is worse than it looks: reading the composition instead
A headline output figure close to zero can describe several very different situations. Breaking it into its components showed an economy in worse condition than the number itself…
Economy & Macro -
Khreshchatyk: a street rebuilt three times
Kyiv's main avenue was destroyed in 1941, rebuilt in the 1950s in a single architectural gesture, and has since become the place where the country's political arguments are…
Society & Regions -
Ukraine Market Report — Q2 2013
A very large harvest in prospect and an industrial sector still contracting. The gap between Ukraine's two economies widened further, and the currency position deteriorated in every month…
Quarterly & Annual Reports -
Ivana Kupala 2013
The wreath on the water, and what it was actually for before it became a photograph.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Constitution Day, 28 June 2013
A greeting for Constitution Day, from someone who reads it as a guest.
National Days & Anniversaries -
From Mendeleev to the first Soviet computer: Kyiv's technical inheritance
The Kyiv Polytechnic and the Institute of Cybernetics are the reason a software industry appeared here in the 2000s with no policy support. Institutions outlive the states that…
Society & Regions -
Vyshyvanka Day, 16 May 2013
A greeting for the day, and a note on the shirt as a piece of engineering rather than decoration.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Easter in Ukraine: the basket, the bread and the layer underneath
The most widely observed religious occasion in the country, including among people who attend church at no other point in the year. What is in the basket, and…
Folklore & Esoterica -
Easter 2013
A spring Easter, a full table, and a year that felt ordinary at the time.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Ukraine Market Report — Q1 2013
Industry contracting, reserves falling for a third consecutive year, and an exchange rate held by rationing rather than by the balance of payments. The position was arithmetically unsustainable…
Quarterly & Annual Reports -
International Women's Day, 8 March 2013
A greeting on the day, and an observation about who is expected to organise the celebration of themselves.
National Days & Anniversaries -
An old balance-of-payments problem, and why it kept coming back
Every Ukrainian government of the period inherited the same external accounts problem and treated it as an inherited misfortune. It was structural, it was predictable, and the arithmetic…
Economy & Macro -
Organised retail: the shift from bazaar to mall, and what it revealed
In 2000 most consumer goods in Ukraine were sold from open markets. Two decades later organised retail dominates the cities and the bazaar survives in a specific and…
Society & Regions -
Ukraine Annual Review 2012: stagnation with one door opened
Growth near zero, reserves falling, a fixed exchange rate defended by rationing — and a small first delivery of gas from the European direction that changed what was…
Quarterly & Annual Reports -
Day of Unity 2013
A cold January, a chain of hands, and a country I had by then lived in for nine years.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Ukraine Market Report — Q4 2012
A year of near-zero growth ended with the first physical reverse-flow gas deliveries from Europe — small in volume and large in what it proved possible.
Quarterly & Annual Reports -
Christmas, 7 January 2013
A Christmas greeting on the January date, and a note about the sheaf in the corner.
National Days & Anniversaries -
New Year 2013
A New Year message from the middle of a decade, before anyone knew which parts of it would matter.
National Days & Anniversaries
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