The following is a sharply-worded polemic by Liubov Kovalevska on the mentality inherent in Ukrainians. This woman journalist is well known in Ukraine and was the first to foretell the Chornobyl tragedy. This time Kovalevska broaches national traits formed over centuries, which have helped the Ukrainians survive, while, dialectically, serving as factors which the author believes have slowed down this nation’s progress as a competitive operator on the world civilization market. An article such as this would cause a most active response, any time, from both exponents and opponents. Under the present circumstances, this feature is sure to have a special impact, considering what is happening in Ukraine’s information space, the language, cultural, and countless other problems that are being politicized. The Editors decided to carry this article, so the reader could view the problem of Ukraine’s self-identification, particularly this country entering the European community of nations, from every angle and in every context; so the reader might be prompted to take part in a process of reasoning together. Yes, reasoning together, because Liubov Kovalevska, in the Editors’ opinion, is driven primarily by a painful awareness of her nation suffering through an extremely trying period, so she feels within her right to address bitter, highly controversial aspects — not to rub it in but to try to find a remedy.
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“I ask myself a terrifying question: Are we so miserable we cannot even impress those Germans bastards and allow anyone’s hand to be lifted against us, destroy us so ruthlessly, and not go insane ourselves? Why are they acting anything like nowhere in Western Europe? Because they feel they have no right? And most horrifying of all, I find myself thinking that we may have lost something that would have prevented the Germans from treating us that way,” Oleksandr Dovzhenko wrote in his diary in 1944.
The following is a sharply-worded polemic by Liubov Kovalevska on the mentality inherent in Ukrainians. This woman journalist is well known in Ukraine and was the first to foretell the Chornobyl tragedy. This time Kovalevska broaches national traits formed over centuries, which have helped the Ukrainians survive, while, dialectically, serving as factors which the author believes have slowed down this nation’s progress as a competitive operator on the world civilization market. An article such as this would cause a most active response, any time, from both exponents and opponents. Under the present circumstances, this feature is sure to have a special impact, considering what is happening in Ukraine’s information space, the language, cultural, and countless other problems that are being politicized. The Editors decided to carry this article, so the reader could view the problem of Ukraine’s self-identification, particularly this country entering the European community of nations, from every angle and in every context; so the reader might be prompted to take part in a process of reasoning together. Yes, reasoning together, because Liubov Kovalevska, in the Editors’ opinion, is driven primarily by a painful awareness of her nation suffering through an extremely trying period, so she feels within her right to address bitter, highly controversial aspects — not to rub it in but to try to find a remedy.
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“I ask myself a terrifying question: Are we so miserable we cannot even impress those Germans bastards and allow anyone’s hand to be lifted against us, destroy us so ruthlessly, and not go insane ourselves? Why are they acting anything like nowhere in Western Europe? Because they feel they have no right? And most horrifying of all, I find myself thinking that we may have lost something that would have prevented the Germans from treating us that way,” Oleksandr Dovzhenko wrote in his diary in 1944.
Today, many of us ask ourselves the same terrifying question and are afraid to answer it. Why has Ukraine failed to set itself up as a state? Just because of its aggressive and valiant neighbors? The dominant myth about Ukrainian kindheartedness and peacefulness is refuted by Ukrainian Cossack history (which is also largely mythicized).
Our so-called defenders of the people are fond of referring to the early twentieth century and that period of independence, comparing the start of the century to its end and the kind of independence we have today, and marveling at the similarity.
Suppose we go back to the turn of the century and look at ourselves through the eyes of political intelligence analysts at Kaiser Germany’s Foreign Ministry (courtesy of Rehion [Region], No.12, 2000). Maybe we will get close to an answer to Dovzhenko’s agonizing question, “Are we so miserable we... allow anyone’s hand to be lifted against us...?”
The article in this publication is preceded by a commentary written by V.Voronin, candidate of science in history: “Ukraine was occupied by German and Austro-Hungarian troops; revolutionary cataclysms and socialist experimentation had completely devastated the economy... Analysts in the clandestine agencies clearly saw the great damage being inflicted on the young independent state by the unprincipled politicking that had enveloped all spheres of state life, replacing measures to protect the national interests.”
It was in March 1918. “What they saw was sheer chaos. When the Bolshevik forces entered Ukraine most national troops declared neutrality. The Central Rada and ministers fled to Zhytomyr but were shown the door, so each just went his own way.
“By the time of signing the peace treaty, the Rada was actually powerless, without any support in Ukraine. Power in the provinces belonged to various political parties and individual political adventurers, warlords, and dictators. One could find villages surrounded by trenches and warring each other over the former landlord’s property. Individual otamans [warlords] ruled various provinces with the aid of supporters and mercenaries.
“The Bolsheviks had a lot of support... All the workers were Bolshevik-minded and the same is true of a considerable part of demobilized soldiers.
“Peasants were mostly interested in land allocation; they would follow the Rada if it does not abandon the idea of distributing the land among the peasantry. And they would follow the Bolsheviks if they take the land away [from the landlords] and give it to the peasants.
“The idea of Ukrainian independence, on which the Rada relies, has markedly weak roots in Ukraine. It is mostly cherished by a small group of political idealists.
“One often noticed that people were completely disinterested in their national identity...
“The Ukrainians were not a solid political group but are divided by different socialist trends.
“The Rada relied on German bayonets... all social strata crave law and order. The propertied strata, intellectuals, and army officers care little about changes in the government... Any government... relying on a majority of the people and capable of maintaining law and order will be able to take a firm foothold.
“The Ukrainian troops are made up of mercenaries, former soldiers and officers, the unemployed, and adventurers... The commanders’ authority and prestige were markedly low... Petliura was an adventurer but very popular... A backstage power play is going on at full blast... One cannot count on any tangible support from the Ukrainian troops, but the latter were important as political stage props... Their combat potential was extremely low...
“The peasants were quite well- off... A peasant in possession of considerable grain and monetary reserves did not want to sell anything. The number of banknotes, due to the uncontrolled printing of money, was so large and their value had dropped so low that ... the peasants were not interested in this money at all... An important role played the antagonism between the city and the countryside... A peasant willingly exchanged food... for commodities... kitchenware, clothes and boots... All the peasants used grain to make vodka.
“The Rada... wanted to make them [i.e., the peasantry] surrender food reserves with the aid of German troops.
“Ukraine’s financial condition was utterly chaotic.”
In other words, clandestine agencies in the Kaiser’s Germany saw an abyss between the authorities and the people in Ukraine, complete discord, and a mentality — Ukraine, not being a solid political and cultural system, was prepared to accept the Communist idea.
“We have no unity. We are miserable, downtrodden, and provincial. When we get together I feel so very perplexed and depressed; I mourn something so much, even the memories are painful,” Oleksandr Dovzhenko wrote in his diary in 1942, in the heat of World War II.
In 1944, he penned a blood-curdling secret: “...I talked to many people and discovered that the Germans had not destroyed the center of our pillaged capital. We had! Those fools had once again overfulfilled the plan, true to their gung-ho style. We scared the Germans, blowing up several dozen Nazi officers with our city residents (the latter were not to be taken into account anyway). I will never share this knowledge with anyone, not on my lifetime, because we have to say that our beautiful beloved Kyiv was destroyed by the Nazi monsters. And that the Lavra [Monastery of the Caves], this most sacred relic of all Rus’, was also demolished by them.” (“Those fools” is a reference to Ukrainian, not Russian or Soviet fools...)
II.
In an interview with The Day (Nos. 31 and 32, November 7 and 13), sociologist Yevhen Holovakha referred to the end of the century (1990-91) as a period of romanticism in regard to values. This insightful interview prompted me to look for painful answers. True, it was a period when literally everything was topsy-turvy and no one seemed to suffer from or regret it, because it was all being done in order to destroy a single political- cultural system as the foundation upon which rested Soviet society (Ukrainian society included, of course). However, I would further describe that period as one of political gluttony and forcing up prices. The ground had been prepared by the Chornobyl disaster and now the instinct of self-preservation, honed by merciless historical realities, took over. People were afraid to lose the most precious thing they had: life. This spurred the process of self- organization, rallying of society as a whole on an entirely different basis. It was truly a unique historical chance, a real opportunity for this society to evolve along the lines of genuine self-organization and freely established social institutions and associations. Mr. Holovakha considers this the correct model of self- organization.
That fragile spontaneous unity of citizens with initiative required an elite leadership and support from the elite, especially against the traumatic psychological background of Soviet collapse and rethinking of values. Just as the indiscriminately rebellious populace required clear guidelines. The elite, however, was too busy forcing up its own prices, and it opted for the tried and true method of playing big while making everybody else feel like Pygmies. And the elite split, begetting a multitude of Lilliputian political parties with Brobdingnagian ambitions, exposing society to “shock therapy,” making this society disintegrate, commencing the process of atomization, its breakup into separate alienated individuals.
It was after the USSR’s collapse and after taking possession of an independent state (doing so effortlessly and free of charge) and being unable to put up with what Mr. Holovakha describes as humiliation, that the Ukrainian elite proceeded to humiliate the “undemocratic and slaves” that remembered neither kin, nor the occupiers. In other words, a selection method was applied, one strongly reminiscent of Nazi techniques. The end, national rebirth, seemed to justify the means. Yet it was not national development but an attempt to revive the past and some special national roots long since lost, which had to be reanimated. To do so, one had to be born again and pretend the centuries that had elapsed were of no importance. This uncritical and conceptually indiscriminate approach by the elite, while actually sanctifying a regime of stagnation, has at all times constituted an insurmountable barrier to European elite intellect. Figuratively speaking, it was a gap between the city and countryside, and, consequently, antagonism between them.
The Ukrainian elite is responsible for the idea of deserved privileges, not deserved progress, for members of the elite consider themselves the elect, requiring no self- development. Moreover, the countryside was clearly defined as the cultural cradle of the nation, thus asserting the ethnic character of the elite’s national consciousness and its affinity to mass consciousness.
In fact, Mr. Holovakha points out that we lived through urbanization only recently and the family and clan ties existing in the countryside were transferred to the city, reaching the highest levels of our hierarchical system.
In other words, our current “leaders of the nation” are an archaic plaster cast of all those idealistic champions of Ukrainian independence who talked so much and did so little earlier this century, wasting their chance and losing their independence. The inability to create a qualitatively new, single political- cultural (democratic) system capable of uniting people not in a mythical Ukrainian society (as those in power and the elite scorn the real Ukrainian in the street), but in a civil society, is disguised by philosophizing on ethnic Ukrainian grandeur, something beyond any criticism, even that addressing its negative aspects or distorted concepts. Meaning that there is no truthful unbiased assessment of the nation’s reality. Such mythical grandeur is required above all by all those “leaders,” for it serves their self-aggrandizement. The more so that they did not pass up their own “historic” opportunity, gaining access to power and its attendant benefits, so that now they can allow or forbid, restrict, or rescind as they please, thereby doing everything that negates progress. Developing use or expanding the sphere of application of the Ukrainian language is a task that only someone like Lomonosov or Pushkin could cope with. Two reforms carried out in the Russian language made it fit to be used in any sphere: colloquial, literary, and scientific. This, in turn, gave impetus to the understanding and development of the language, making it an inexhaustible modern source at all times. However, our ethnocentrism, our ethnic mentality, upsets our cognizance, blocking the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. Sigmund Freud considered ethnocentrism a reoriented manifestation of individual narcissism.
Ethnocentrism is a quality of ethnic self-consciousness when life phenomena are perceived through the perspective of tradition and values peculiar to a given [ethnic] group regarded as a universally accepted standard or optimum (even if it be bad, it still is mine, nobody else’s!). The selection of people is another consequence of ethnocentrism; it helps release primordial group instincts such as aggressiveness, intolerance, animosity, etc. Russia’s humiliation (the collapse of its imperial mentality), Ukraine’s attempts to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds, scornful attitude toward Asia, and forced gestures of respect for all those bashaws are above all distortions of our mentality by forming stereotypes (zigzags) to guide our conduct. Especially within the context of history and our ethnic socioeconomic condition.
Then what mythical Europe are our pedigreed politicians trying to lead us to? In real Europe, ethnic importance has long been placed in the middle distance, with the individual brought to the fore. Hence the emphasis on human rights, rather than the right of an ethnic group to vent its instincts. In other words, an assessment of man (human value) does not stipulate taking into account the man’s racial, national, or cultural status. Such is a rule by which the civilized world lives. Assuming that Ukraine is determined to “return” to Europe, it will have to accept Europe’s rules and live according to them, the more so that these rules do not inhibit the development of the individual, society, and state. On the contrary, they are meant to stimulate all kinds of progress, because progress makes sense only in conjunction with man and his well-being. They teach one to reckon with his fellow people and their rights. And we have always reckoned only with our own ego, to the detriment of others, tramping the ground around us, digging trenches or fighting to get some of our neighbor’s plot, considering it the greatest value.
Prof. Les Taniuk explains Ukraine’s “specifics” in his article “Lack of Culture or Just Mentality?” (Vlast i politika [Power and Politics], March 21-27, 2000). In his opinion, the Ukrainian mentality consists precisely in placing things like the cultural, spiritual, and national in the forefront. Mentally, Ukraine is considerably closer to Mediterranean countries such as Turkey, Greece, and Italy than pragmatic Central Europe or the self-absorbed Orient. “In the civilizations of this type (e.g., Mediterranean countries — Auth.), the economy has always played a minor role compared to ideology, religion, and culture.” The visage of the [Ukrainian] nation during Soviet times was determined by personalities like Kurbas, Kulish, Khvyliovy, not by Mykola Skrypnyk, the then party leader (in culture). “So when the Kremlin found this visage unattractive, manmade famines started, along with the Solovki prison camps. They did not merely destroy the economy and countryside, but also annihilated the spirit of the nation, its uniqueness, its belief in God, Truth, and History.”
Nicely put — I mean the passage about selection. There is no use trying to prove that the visage of this nation is not Kholod, Taniuk, Drach, Movchan, et al., and that it is made up of 50 million faces, each with its own expression... Or that the Kremlin is personified by Pavlo Lazarenko in today’s Ukraine, the man who single-handedly robbed the entire nation, causing another manmade famine dealing the final blow to the spirit of the nation.
Perhaps you should re-read this part of the article before we proceed to the countryside, this “spiritual cradle.”
