I met with Mr. Vydrin on November 7, the day of the “Great October Socialist Revolution,” as the communists call these 94-year-old events. On that day, they, as usual, walked down Kyiv’s main street Khreshchatyk, cheering up adherents to the idea of the “radiant past,” whose number is small but sufficient to keep Communist MPs afloat. We did not talk about Vydrin’s recent book On Politics Unquestionably. Some other time… Instead, we used the political-themed pictures from the author’s book, drawn by the wonderful Ukrainian artist Svitlana Kondratenko.
“AS LONG AS THERE ARE NO WINNERS, NEGATIVE PASIONARIAS WILL BE IN DEMAND”
Mr. Vydrin, the Communists are again out on the street. What is this – sheer inertia, speculation, or genuine discontent?
“All little by little. But, first of all, it is sheer inertia. The point is the Communists are defending the paternalistic model of a state that is responsible for everything – your employment, a subsidized vacation tour, your wife, your son’s school lunch, your granddaughter’s place at a creche. We have already lived in a state like this, but it collapsed due to insoluble contradictions, leaving behind a myth in people’s minds. And the longer is the distance to any myth – in the past or in the future – the more this myth is idealized. Hence is such a sweet myth about communism and socialism. Besides, 20 years is a time span long enough for one to forget the price of realizing this myth. For example, the state could peek into your private life to give you a free health resort accommodation. Trade union or Communist Party meetings would discuss not only production targets but also husbands’ infidelities, wives’ shenanigans, and the like. This is the way people behave: they forget the bad faster and remember the good longer. Many, including myself, remember a somewhat ideologized Soviet era. This is why the politicians who have monopolized the right to stand up for the values of that era have rather a large number of followers and sympathizers. They are saying: we do not want to bring back the old horrible political time, we want to bring back the good old social security. And this works!
“So the first cause is worshiping or idealizing the myth of the old times. And myths often produce a greater effect than some real-life events. My teacher, the famous philosopher Losiev, once proved that a myth is a stronger motive force in social history than the real truth.
“The second real cause is that Ukraine has the proportionally largest number of old people in Europe. We have the same number of the gainfully employed and pensioners. The people who are approaching the retirement age are facing the question of how to live on. For many of them were employed in the black sector. We have never had a sound and viable economy. And even if somebody earned very much, they were paid in black money. As a result, people failed to amass sufficient assets to be well-off in the old age. Pensions are negligible. By contrast, the West offers people not only high official wages and high taxes but also, accordingly, a ‘fat’ pension package. This is the case of, for example, German pensioners. I was once surprised to notice on Mount Kilimanjaro that a half of those who were climbing this mountain were German pensioners. So when these pensioners relish the sunset over Kilimanjaro, they are unlikely to be thinking about any, even left-wing, ideology.
“In other words, our communists have a social, economic, mythological, and demographic groundwork for all these protests.”
A monument to Stalin has again been put up in Zaporizhia, minibus taxis with Uncle Joe’s pictures on windscreens are rushing by on the streets of Sevastopol. Ukraine is unable to get rid of this disease.
“If we try to get rid of something by force, this will take too much time and effort. Any coercion will trigger the boomerang effect. You can’t possibly ban monuments by force. They need to be replaced by other monuments to more deserving people who will outshine the negative figures.”
For example?
“For example, let us erect a monument to some great Ukrainian reformer who designed an economic model for Ukraine – of course, if one ever comes up here. We don’t need to fight monuments. We need to fight for the people to whom we will be able to proudly put up monuments some time later. We must fight for the new Ukrainian heroes and winners. Negative pasionarias will be much in demand until such winners are found.”
It often happens in Ukraine that heroes and winners in one part of the country may not be such in another part.
“I don’t think we are an exception. When I first visited Spain in 1990, I was stunned: the same city may have monuments to the people who once fought against each other or the people who were once considered almost devils incarnate in our country – for example, monuments to General Franco. I thought it was encouragement for fascism, but turned out that for many Spaniards it is personification of a part of their history. When I asked the Spaniards why they were not pulling down the monuments to such persons, they said: we are not fighting monuments, we are striving to fight for a decent life of people today and create the conditions under which new heroes may emerge tomorrow.”
“THERE IS NO WAY OUT OF THE TYMOSHENKO CASE UNLESS THE COUNTRY IS MODERNIZED”
You said you had felt a double shock when you heard about the sentence to Yulia Tymoshenko – as a man because a woman was being imprisoned and as a political scientist because our society kept silent. Did you underestimate the Ukrainian reality?
“I expected the leadership to heed the European public opinion and the grassroots to show more mercy. I have no doubts about the guilt of some Ukrainian political figures or, to be more exact, I have no doubts about the guilt of all Ukrainian political figures. It is indecent in the US to ask how you earned your first million, and in Ukraine – to ask how you became an MP for the fist time. If we knew how one usually becomes an MP for the first time, we would recoil with terror because all this is based on money, intrigues, human destinies and even lives. If you have become a well-known politician, this means your history is already ‘rich’ and there are grounds to put you inside.
“I expected our people to stand up more actively for the guilty. I think Angela Davis was guilty on many counts, but thousands of people came out to defend her. In all probability, this shows not so much the sense of justice as the mercifulness of society. Frankly speaking, I feel pity for any individual being put in prison even if they are guilty. The conditions in our jails are terrible if, of course, it is not a VIP cell. Ukraine is an amazing country. I remember bringing my child to a water park in the Crimea, when I was asked if I needed an ordinary ticket or one to the VIP zone. I was stunned because I had never seen this kind of things in many water parks of America and Europe. In this country, they contrived to set up a VIP zone even in the water park. So I will not be surprised if there are VIP cells in prisons. But the point is not in this.
“I consider Tymoshenko my political opponent. Of course, I am a small-size opponent for her – in both financial and status-wielding terms. But she is my opponent from the intellectual angle. I detest her philosophy, political position, boundless lying, theatrical bombast, and civil mannerism. But, whatever the case, I feel sorry for her. For example, I was once an opponent to the late Yevhen Kushnariov. We were at first comrades, but we found ourselves later in different political camps. When he died, I felt pity for him, for he was a person to mourn over. Yes, he personified a considerable part of Ukraine with which the other part did not agree. But he had as many human and manly qualities, such as courage, pride, and valiance, as ten run-of-the-mill Ukrainian politicians might have. I am now very gratefully cooperating with the Yevhen Kushnariov Foundation. It is a pity for me when outstanding people, even from other camps, die or suffer, and I feel awkward when women languish in jail, even if they are my opponents.”
Whatever the case, if we want to go to Europe, we must come out of this situation. Is there any way to do so?
“We cannot come out of the Tymoshenko case if we care about this case only. This problem can only be solved if the country is totally modernized. All the components of this modernization must be gathered in a systemic way – I mean real, not imitational, economic, social, and judicial reforms. Besides, we must learn to pursue real geopolitics and at last transform Ukraine from the object to the subject of geopolitical manipulations or at least to a participant in powerful intrigues in the foreign-policy space.”
“IF THE ADVISOR IS BOLD, HE CAN ARGUE, IF NOT, HE WILL ‘REACT WITH HIS FACIAL MUSCLES’“
You write in one of your latest materials that “in Ukraine one goes to politics in order to fight, not to work.” Why?
“It is Yulia Tymoshenko who once taught me this. For her, politics is war. A law-enforcer said in the movie Antikiller 2: why do they (terrorists) always beat us? He is told: because we are working and they are fighting. Our politicians have understood the simple truth: if you want to defeat the one who works, you must fight. If you are standing by a machine-tool and making a certain component part, it is difficult to defeat you by operating another machine-tool in an attempt to make a similar part quicker. But it will be easy to beat you, if one approaches you from behind and strikes you on the head with a ready-made component. This is why, in order to stand on top of the food chain, our politicians are trying to apply the methods of military actions, not the methods of work, against any working person. Their strength lies here.”
You were Deputy Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council until recently. Could you comment on President Yanukovych’s claim that “there is a wide-scale purchase of weapons in this country and armed attacks on governmental bodies are being planned”?
“To make a statement like this, one must have sufficient information derived form veritable and, if possible, alternative sources. One should exercise caution in this kind of statements. I do not have this kind of information. But, maybe, the president does.”
Having ample experience of working at governmental bodies (since the times of Kravchuk), could you say to what extent politicians are heeding experts? Or do they invite you to politics just to create a background?
“An expert and an advisor is not only the one who says or advises something to a politician but also the one who listens to a politician. Our politicians need advisors and experts in order to try out and discuss ideas with them. Therefore, a typical work pattern of the advisor and the politician is when the latter is saying something to the former, checking up on his reaction: if the advisor is bold, he can argue, if not, he will ‘react with his facial muscles.’ We have not yet reached the level when experts can convincingly say something to politicians, but we are at the level when politicians are saying something to experts in interrogative terms. Anyway, it is good!”
UKRAINE IS A NEOFEUDAL COUNTRY… THERE WILL BE A REVOLUTION SOONER OR LATER
According to your colleague, political scientist Vadym Karasiov, the post-Soviet space is today on the threshold of bourgeois revolutions. The reason is that “we once made a jump into Stalinist-type socialism, but we must now come back to the path.” He thinks that the century-old Ukrainian crisis, which still shows the signs of post-feudal relations after the breakup of the Soviet Union, is drawing to a close. What do you think of this?
“I’ve been saying this for about ten years on end. Ukraine is a neofeudal country, and any neofeudal country will see, sooner or later, a revolution. This may be a bourgeois or a socialist, but always a neofeudal, revolution. The neofeudal system is a totally unstable formation. The point is there are no other neofeudal states around Ukraine. To the south of us is the Muslim bourgeois state of Turkey which is gaining strength. To the west of us are the social bourgeois states of Europe, where the mutating capitalism is already turning into socialism. Oddly enough, Scandinavian countries are managing to do now what the Soviet Union failed to achieve. To the north and east of Ukraine are the particularly socialist state of Belarus and the bourgeois bureaucratic Russia, respectively. In other words, there is not a single state similar to Ukraine. Even hypothetically, we have no allies in terms of politico-economic setup.”
Many believe that Ukraine is now following the Russian scenario.
“We are absolutely different formations and types of elites. Figuratively speaking, the ‘commandos-type’ elite came to power in Russia. If you take, for example, the top 1,000 corporations of Russia, you will see that their vice-presidents are special forces retired generals and colonels. In our case, the elite that won is, incidentally, practically devoid of the commando element. What was formed in Ukraine is a mixture of former Communist Party, Young Communist League, criminal, and industrial elites. Russia and Ukraine also have different economic patterns. Those who rule the roost in Ukraine are financial-industrial associations, the so-called oligarchs. In Russia, it is the absolute rule of bureaucrats who took up the function of controlling the distribution of the economic product.”
IF WE DO NOT INVESTIGATE THE GONGADZE CASE, WE WILL KILL THE ETHIC PRINCIPLE IN SOCIETY
Do you think it will take us much time to come out of this condition? Where shall we find strength?
“When the Chornobyl nuclear power plant was being shut down, one of the operators remained in the epicenter too long and received a fatal dose of radiation. When asked (he was still alive) why he had stayed behind near the devices, he said: ‘The curves of the reactor’s warm-up and cool-down are the same.’ The same applies to socioeconomic processes. Entering and leaving certain processes takes the same time. If it takes a state 20 years to enter the process of neofeudal relations, it will also take it 20 years to go out of this process. There may be some shifts and lags in one direction or another owing to political will, but, as a rule, the incoming and outgoing processes take the same time. I think we will need 10 to 20 years to ride out this situation.”
Only true personalities can implement the political will.
“Any strong-willed person who wields broad powers, as the current president of Ukraine does, can reform the country if he ‘clings’ to the idea of true reforms. Yanukovych has a lot of powers, so the main job of his advisors is to try to make sure that his powers be supplemented (on their advice) with the tools to make full use of the powers. You cannot retain power just by retaining power. So the mission of experts and journalists is to educate the key representatives of the elites, who wield a lot of powers, on what a true reform is. The Americans say that war is too serious a matter to entrust to military men. The problem of economic reforms in Ukraine is that they are dealt with by economists. In all counties, the reformers were always philosophers, not economists. The former know only too well that the objective of reforms is to reform the human being, not the pipe-rolling plant. Any factory manufactures two products – the output as such and the human being. If somebody could explain to the ruling elite that it is much more profitable in the course of reforms to stake on the individuals, their motivation and essential qualities, rather than on the products and their quantity, the reforms would be irreversible.”
Another factor that hinders Ukraine’s development is the incompletely investigated case of the murdered journalist Gongadze.
“The Gongadze case is the nation’s question of honor. It should be solved to the end not only for the sake of Gongadze’s long-suffering relatives but also for the sake of us all. Failure to solve this case will not heal the soul of any Ukrainian person, any politician, be it the president, the premier, etc. If we fail to investigate the Gongadze case, we will kill the ethic principle of society because this case has become part of the nationwide soul. It depends on us all whether we will live with dead souls or, maybe, rough and twisted souls which still have a chance to revive and live on. So if we want to be a nation with a soul, the Gongadze case should be investigated, but if we want to be a heartless nation, then everything will remain as it is. In this case we have no prospects.”
