Dear Mr. Tabachnyk:
We have never met, so I don’t think you have any idea about who I am or what I do. I, on the contrary, have closely followed your career for quite some time.
Frankly, back in the 1990s I wished I were in your shoes.
I wanted to make a president of Ukraine from nothing, from low-quality human material (maybe from a dog), like Dr. Frankenstein or Dr. Preobrazhensky, so people would later say, “Who is Kuchma (Yushchenko, Tymoshenko, Yatseniuk, Tihipko, etc.)? He is just a president in Andrii’s administration.
I wish I could have Ph.D. in newspaper articles.
I wish I could be promoted to colonel skipping lieutenant colonel.
I wish I wrote a book about Stolypin’s assassination.
Finally, I wish I married a well-known actress.
Practically everybody hates you, and each person for a different reason.
Among my Ukrainian acquaintances, you are somehow being hated even by the supporters of Triune Rus’, Russian World, and regular readers of the newspaper 2000. There are only two exceptions: a married couple in a provincial town (he is 20 years her senior and both are, surprisingly, activists of the local organization of the Communist Party of Ukraine). They are fond of Mykhailo Pohrebinsky and Vladimir Kornilov, and they claim to be fond of yours truly — although most likely they aren’t sincere.
Somehow, apart from the recent statement by university rectors, among the public intellectuals and men of letters only a couple dozen freaks rubbing elbows with politics and newspaper hacks have come out in your support. Correction: there must be two or three decent individuals among your supporters. As for the rectors’ statement, you know better than anyone else that this means struggling not for you but for themselves (they listened very carefully when you declared you wouldn’t resign).
I am not going to try to talk you into making a noble gesture and resigning from your post (you may have watched the “Little Russian” operetta Natalka Poltavka; the cast includes the Government Official who acts like you in a similar situation). The way I see it, you have four functions in the governmental structure:
1. To serve as a lightning rod and smoke screen, as a target of all negative information and bad image attacks. While fighting you, as though you were a three-headed dragon, they will have neither the energy nor time left for monitoring other ministers and deputy prime ministers.
2. To serve as a filter for all money flows in the spheres of education and science. The fourth-world countries, among them Ukraine, are the world’s leaders in trading in college/university diplomas and Ph.D.s.
3. To manipulate public sentiments, depending on the circumstances, and distract public opinion in case of social collapse by raising misleading issues and staging debates on the language, the Holodomor, Bandera, Mazepa, Russia, NATO, and so on.
4. Russia’s experience shows that the Russian Academy of Sciences owns especially attractive real estate in downtown Moscow and St. Petersburg. I guess getting the Ukrainian National Academy’s realty under control would make a good resource, too.
5. I am ready to believe that your functions do not include a struggle against Ukrainian ethnic cultural identity, the destruction of Ukrainian culture, de-Ukrainization in the sphere of education, and manipulation of such issues as the Holodomor and Bandera. On the other hand, your ministerial post could be a tangible argument for Russia’s leadership: Look, here is a non-Orange, anti-Bandera member of government!
Your views on the genesis of Ukrainian ethnic cultural identity are a matter to be considered on a wide scope; it does not boil down to you only. I will certainly write an article about the competition between the Ukrainian and Triune-Russia nation-building projects. I will do so before long, considering that this problem is getting to be the highest priority in the humanitarian domain.
From the image-making standpoint, I can tell you that your public image is absolutely unique, with a very broad range of interpretations. On the one hand, my acquaintances (I mean that married couple with him being 20 years older than his wife) regard you as a decent man, one of the leading Ukrainian intellectuals, a valiant opponent to the Orange plague and Bandera, as well as a champion of Russia-Ukraine unity.
With your permission I will refrain from recounting views to the contrary. Compared to them, even Boris Kolesnikov’s well-known statements sound like toadyish compliments.
I can’t think of another person as a target of such varying opinions expressed at the same time.
I remember being fond of quoting you in my geopolitical articles in the early 2000s, a statement of yours which was characteristic of the Ukrainian political class in the second term of Kuchma’s presidency, which demonstrated that Ukraine did not exist as a geopolitical entity, and which revealed its elite’s pro-NATO parasitism: “Ukraine has only one road to follow and advance toward Europe with seven-league strides. Shedding the veil of heightened political chastity, [Ukraine] has to yield to Europe or G-7.” (Den, April 19, 2000.)
I would like you to answer my questions which I believe are first-priority ones for you as the minister of science and education:
1. What is the conception for developing Ukrainian secondary and higher education? A conception is actually not about ideological assessments of complicated historical events and periods; it is about answering the question about the kind of individuals the Ukrainian schools are supposed to produce. Future scientists, engineers, and top-notch researchers capable of developing original technologies? Or people capable of adjusting borrowed original technologies to the conditions of advancing re-industrialization? Or people prepared to use the achievements of industries and technologies in other countries in conditions of utter deindustrialization and archaization of Ukrainian society, the process we are witnessing?
2. Does Ukraine have any original teaching technologies and systems of its own, or is it necessary to borrow Western progressive technologies? What is the Ukrainian concept of the Bologna Process? How justifiable is the switch of Ukrainian secondary schools to 12 grades? Is the revival of vocational training substantiated?
3. Does Ukraine need academic science? Would it be more efficient to disband the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and make it part of university science? Or maybe science as such is a luxury Ukraine can ill afford? Given Ukrainian conditions, where should financing be sought for fundamental science? How can applied research be made more effective? How can the brain drain be stopped in Ukraine? How can the scientist’s profession be made socially prestigious? What kind of innovative development strategy should Ukraine adopt? Don’t you think that “innovative development” is just fine words?
As you well know, I could ask a dozen more conceptual questions concerning science and education.
However, I would be happy to receive your answers to at least the above three.
Incidentally, this could serve as a good test of your true identity: Are you really a reformist minister, money filter, or lightning rod?
