It is interesting to think whether anybody would have thought of putting up tents in Ukraine as a way of protesting only three months ago. We all knew about rallies, demonstrations, picketing, blocking highways and railroads, and going on strike, of course. All this, however, proved ineffective ways of trying to pressure the authorities. People no longer wanted to participate in demonstrations, and rallies bored them, inspiring only a thirst for beer. Picketing interested only the organizers, blocking highways was risky, and going on strike in times of mounting unemployment simply does not pay. Several years of experience with banging coal miners’ helmets on the asphalt was not terribly popular because of the noise and tired hands.
Now tent towns proved a godsend. They were easy to build and attracted everyone’s attention. Moreover, tents obstructed traffic and were an irritant to those who sell advertising and the local homeless. Naturally, it was best to put up tents in a public place. If one tried to use a tent to sell, say, hot-dogs one immediately found oneself exposed to legal consequences; all sorts of inspectors would promptly appear, considering that every square foot of downtown has a considerable market value and various commercial structures fight for it literally to the last man to use it to do business.
And so tents started being used by protesters. The authorities were at a loss. They had no idea what to do; there was no law providing for such a contingency. But of course, practice makes perfect. Kharkiv’s chief of the militia told the press he did not previously realize that it was every citizen’s sacred right to put up a tent wherever he wanted. Now he did. Why didn’t he previously and why didn’t he tell people so? If I had known I had this sacred right I would bring my friends and spend nights on Khreshchatyk St. in the summertime.
As it is, Kyiv’s main thoroughfare may well turn into camping grounds or a gypsy camp. But the fathers of the city put their heads together and came up with a convincing argument; granting that anyone can put up a tent anywhere, the municipal authorities are likewise entitled to start repairs where and whenever necessary. Of course, the site has to be fenced off.
The law says nothing about when this fence must be dismantled. Take the fence at Besarabka. It has been there for several years and nothing has happened. And so the City Council proceeded to fence off the site of the protesters’ tent city, the more so that there was the good excuse of erecting the grandiose Monument to Independence on Independence Square.
In fact, the construction work is a sequel to the saga of the contest for the best Independence Memorial design. The statue of the pretty woman to be mounted atop the forty meter column is already popularly known as Yuliya Impaled. Perhaps this popular appellation will force the memorial’s authors to make some quick design changes, the more so that no one actually knows anything about it.
Be that as it may, the city administration announced that the memorial construction documents are being drawn up simultaneously with the construction work. It is anyone’s guess what kind of statue will top the column. Perhaps by the date of unveiling the symbol of Ukraine will not be the woman whom everybody wants to call Yuliya, but, say, a tent from which a rejuvenated Ukrainian democracy will be born — or so a number of lawmakers believe. The thing is that the tents on Independence Square are put up not by ordinary citizens, but by deputies, although there are no known mountaineers among them. And who would think of forbidding the people’s choices from erecting tents wherever they want? Or make them live in such tents. Why should they live there? They have comfortable apartments offered by that anti-people regime and accepted with gratitude.
Indeed, one can only feel sorry about all those thousands of capital residents and guests now denied direct entry to and exit from the Metro station and access to trolley and fixed-route taxi (actually commercial minibus —Ed.) stops. They walk by the fence not knowing that no one is going to build anything inside, not now at any rate. An attempt to receive an explanation about the fence by the main post office from the mayor’s press service was an exercise in futility; they said those behind the fence would know how long the fence would be kept and what would happen then. Experts, aren’t they?
As for the promised renovation of the section of Khreshchatyk surrounding Independence Square, one should not gloat over the fact that the last time they renovated there was just two years ago. One ought to know better. Take New York or Tokyo where buildings are torn down and built almost every year. Now that’s progress. True, people put up tents and hold rallies nevertheless, except that they do so in specially allocated places, because this is what Western democracy is all about. Not in Ukraine. There are no legally established procedures, and so protesters move their tents from one place to the next, followed by construction teams erecting fences. Fortunately, the process is effectively covered by journalists with cameras and microphones, because everything happens downtown, within easy reach. Not so with their colleagues having to ride halfway between Kyiv and Zhytomyr where other protesters with tents are reportedly marching on Kyiv, meaning additional problems for Kyiv city fathers.
In keeping with the organizers’ style, this march is as symbolic as the tents on city squares, except that no one spends their nights there, unlike the students back in the early nineties. Instead, the protesters spend time in the tents on shifts. This is obviously an innovation in the protest movement. In this case we do not try to consider which method will be more effective, putting up tents or fencing off the tent town. The objective is not the point. The point is the method used to achieve it. Will tenants put up tents by local housing authorities to protest shutoffs of running water? Or perhaps the man next door will put up a tent to protest your dog doing its business in children’s sandbox?
Think it won’t go that far, that the campaign of pitching tents will be reduced to a specific action staged by specific persons acting toward a specific end? A market expert friend of mine asked me whether he could use some of the tents for advertising and how much they would charge him. Seriously. I saw them paste some posters or notices or something to the new fence. I really did.
INCIDENTALLY...
People’s Deputy Serhiy Holovaty said on January 30 that he had met with President Kuchma and that they had discussed a broad range of issues, adding that the meeting had been scheduled in December, but then had been postponed and become possible only on January 30. Considering Mr. Holovaty’s previously much-advertised statement about his intent to emigrate and that he did not want to live in the same country with Leonid Kuchma, their meeting is quite interesting. One is left wondering whether his colleagues who had questioned Major Melnychenko knew about the former justice minister’s desire to meet with the chief executive. Perhaps other participants in the cassette scandal would like to follow suit. Or maybe either of the parties made an offer that could not be refused? Since there is no information about the meeting between Messrs. Kuchma and Holovaty from the Presidential Administration and Volodymyr Lytvyn does not seem aware of it, one can only hope to hear from independent sources. After all, there are quite enough majors among the President’s bodyguards.
