Publications in The Day s column What Kind of Russia Do We Love? were a successful break through in the assessment of Uk rainian-Russian relations. Natu rally, this triggered an immediate reaction.
It all started from a set of publications in Vladislav Fronin s Rossiyskaya gazeta, including a reprint of The Day s column What Kind of Ukraine Do We Love? which also comprised readers letters. Among the contributors were people from different walks of life, including a well-known spin master, a political scientist, cultural figures, and a practicing education professional.
It is gratifying that most of the responses express a positive opinion about the necessity of such a dialogue, which is supposed to promote unity in place of distrust between the two fraternal peoples. One of the friendliest and most upbeat messages, especially set against the background of rather biting criticism of current sociopolitical life in Ukraine, came from Sergei Ivanov, a history teacher in Kostroma. He thinks that the greatest values of the self-sufficient Ukrainian people are pride derived from their national identity and a reverent attitude to the native language ( Our language is like a nightingale s song, Ukrainians say).
I will take the liberty of quoting his words: I love Ukraine because in almost every country house you can see, next to an icon, the portrait of Taras Shevchenko. He was a poet and citizen who managed to awaken the Ukrainian spirit in the difficult 19th century, and show that we are people who have the right to an independent national life and happiness in our native land. Bravo! This naturally brings to mind Ilya Repin s picture They Did Not Expect Him, which depicts Nikolai Nekrasov and Taras Shevchenko, two luminaries of the spiritual world, next to one another. The same contributor justly notes that relations between Ukraine and Russia leave much to be desired.
This is true. Numerous jibes in the comments of many readers give rise to serious objections. I would divide them into several groups: objections of a philosophical nature, objections that show complete ignorance of sociopolitical and cultural realities of today s Ukraine, and some comments which are superficial, farfetched, and even arrogant. I would award the grand prix to Gleb Pavlovsky, quite an odious figure from a Ukrainian point of view. His comment consists of a collection of irrelevant statements, to put it mildly. It turns out that Ukraine humiliates Russian-speaking people, forcing them to speak a broken Galician dialect. This destroys the Ukrainian language, which has always been the object of various influences, and slows down its deve lopment. Just fancy that! We, Ukrainians, keep lamenting that the government does not support the Ukrainian language and fails to obey the official language law passed as long ago as 1988, the Ukrainian book market is snowed under with Russian-language publications and Russian glossy magazines ( glamour is now a buzz word in Ukrainian), but Russia calls this humiliation of Russian speakers! Mind-boggling, isn t it?
Obviously, the imperial virus is so deeply embedded in Russian minds that it will take a long time to get rid of it. One can see it, for example, in Aleksandr Tsipko s claims that the peoples that were part of the Russian Empire only derived benefit from this. (Den, #16) So such things as closing all windows to Europe (Ivan Franko s phrase), the liquidation of the remnants of autonomy in 1764, the destruction of the Zaporozhian Sich in 1775, the introduction of serfdom by Catherine II in 1783, the physical destruction of the best Ukrainian figures, and the trampling of Ukrainian rights and mother ton gue, etc., were a benefit for Uk rai ne Today s Russia must have for gotten the Valuev Circular (1863), the Ems Ukase (1876), censorship (1880), etc. This list can be continued ad infinitum. I refer all those interested in this matter to the book Let Us Create Ukraine Together by the well-known cultural researcher Vasyl Lyzanchuk (Lviv, 2009).
It is not only unscholarly but even, in my opinion, unfair to hush up Russia s imperial cruelty towards Ukraine. Perhaps not all Russians know the words that mature Shevchenko wrote shortly before his arrest in 1847: Do not look back on Muscovites. Let them write in their own way, and we will do it in our own way. They have the people and the word, and we have the people and the word. And let the people judge whose is better. I believe that it is quite clear.
Nostalgia for the Soviet Union, the modern empire of which Ukraine was part, is also a variety of Russian imperialism. We read that everybody felt comfortable in Soviet Ukraine and now it has split into implacably hostile parts (V. Loshak, editor-in-chief of Ogoniok magazine). When did Ukraine split? Ukraine is a unitary state: it has one Constitution, one leader the president and one set of symbols: the state emblem, flag, and anthem. Why does Moscow consider us divided? No idea. The same applies to Tsipko s claim that the collapse of the USSR was a tragedy.
I can remember that at some moment in the late 1990s some people toyed with the idea of setting up a joint Russian-Ukrainian commission, aimed at publishing the same history manuals for Ukraine and Russia. Naturally, this produced no results, for we are two different peoples, each having a history of their own. Ukraine can only accept its own history, without any imposed cliches and stereotypes.
Another ambiguous statement was Pavlovsky s allegation that the civil war in Ukraine was very cruel and the Ukrainian KGB was much crueler to dissidents and oppositionists than its Moscow counterpart. An adequate explanation can be found in the recently unclassified SBU archival documents. They were widely used by the well-known Ukrainian writer Vasyl Shkliar in his latest novel Black Raven (Kharkiv, 2009). The book deals with the fierce resistance of Ukrainian insurgents to Russian occupation in the UNR times (1921 25), known as Kholodny Yar Republic. Those who spearheaded the struggle against the fighters for Ukraine s freedom (their flags read: Freedom of Ukraine or Death ) were from Bolshevik Russia: Dyakonov, Antropov, Ptitsyn, Yevdokimov et al. But the point is in the essence, not in names. Present-day Ukrainian historiography in fact interprets the Civil War as invasion or occupation rather than a fight of Ukrainians against other Ukrainians.
A further strange idea is found in the defense of the criminal Soviet regime in the comment of Serhii Ochkivsky. It turns out that the tragic pages of history, mass-scale murders and torments are part of the evolution of contemporary democratic nation states (according to the book The Secret Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing by the US sociologist Michael Mann). Thus, one finds the ground for justifying fascism.
A number of comments show complete ignorance of the realities of present-day Ukrainian political life. The letters repeatedly mention Russophobia in today s Ukraine, the proof of which is, among other things, recognition of the Holodomor as genocide on the part of the Russian people. I wonder how the authors came up with this interpretation.
Most Ukrainians know that the scientific research on the topic of the genocide typically blames the Stalinist regime, the Kremlin, the Bolshevik government, rather than the Russian people. Who has ever heard President Viktor Yushchenko say anything different? Be honest, gentlemen, do not lie!
It is sad that the boogeyman of Ukrainization still scares the Russians, resulting in the scornful attitude to the Ukrainian language (Pavlovsky). In his commentary to this publication, Ivan Yushchuk said, quite to the point: The Ukrainian language is not at all poorer than Russian or any other language. All you have to do is know it well. Learn Ukrainian, friends, and you will no longer call it a broken Galician dialect.
One can also challenge the statement We were one nation when we were adopting Byzantine-style Orthodoxy, and today we are also people of the same faith and culture. As far as I know, Prince Volodymyr introduced Christianity in 988 without Moscow s help. The Russian state was shaped as late as 1547, when Ivan IV the Terrible was for the first time crowned as Tsar of Muscovy (See: V. Bilinsky, The Moksel Country, or Muscovy. a Documentary Novel. Book 1. Kyiv, 2009). In 1561 Muscovy received a letter of privilege from the Patriarch of Constantinople, in which Ivan IV was pronounced a direct descendant of Byzantine emperors. We did not adopt Christianity together. Besides, from the very beginning, the Muscovite church was a closed, impenetrable, and poorly educated or enlightened world. There was not even the faintest trace of schools in Muscovy churches at the time, while they were a common occurrence in Kyivan and Galician lands, which has been confirmed by many sources and raises no doubts (See the book of Bilinsky). Even Nikolai Karamzin had to admit: Undoubtedly, ancient Kyiv, adorned with monuments of Byzantine. Greek, German, and Italian arts, surpassed Moscow in many respects in the 15th century (A History of the Russian State. Vol. 5, p. 209).
All the above-mentioned reflections may be biased to some extent, but they prove that the dialogue initiated by Larysa Ivshyna and Vladislav Fronin should be continued. One should know how to speak, listen to and hear one another and not to be in the situation of a dialogue between deaf and dumb, as was the case throughout the 70 years of Soviet power. What inspires hope are the following words of Tsipko: In general, Ukrainian national identity is a reflection of the hard destiny of a serf. And, undoubtedly, Ukrainians will be assessing their heroes, who fought for an independent Ukraine, from this viewpoint. It is painful, but this should be taken into account. Russians do not understand this and strictly demand that there should be no reminiscences about the serf girl Kateryna and about Konotop. The two peoples are closely tied, but still they are different peoples.
This cannot be denied. Let us be friends and self-sufficient partners, let us get rid of the big and little brother complex. As the sincere friend of Ukraine Aleksei Ivanov (God protect him!) justly notes, the blame for worsened relations between the two counties should be put on both countries political structures. It is they who must care about strengthening what unites the peoples instead of developing what disunites them.
If one believes that all power comes from the people, the people also play a major role. We are the people, so it is very important to hear the voice of every Ukrainian and Russian.
I am convinced that the debate will reach an elated, tolerant, and profoundly scientific level, and yield positive development.
EDITOR S NOTE
The publication What Kind of Ukraine Do We Love? is the response of Rossiyskaya Gazeta readers to Den/The Day s reprint of the material What Kind of Russia Do We Love? dated March 25, 2009, which our Moscow colleagues claim caused quite a stir. We decided to continue this debate by correspondence. We invited such authors as Yevhenia Sokhatska to contribute to the collective publication in Den/The Day which in fact set the ball rolling. We are sure this will allow us to continue this difficult but necessary dialogue on Ukrainian-Russian relations. We hope that you, dear readers, will also take an active part in this.
We are looking forward to receiving your messages at chedit@day.kiev.ua.
