It happens in history that events that seem to be divided both by the time, and essential attributes all over sudden (when you change the angle) reveal a clear cause-effect relationship. Here is a visible and concrete example. Three “dry” facts:
1. On October 30 the democratic and human rights community of the CIS marks the anniversary of establishing a Mourning Cross in Lubianka Square in commemoration of the victims of political repressions of Stalin’s time, above all in Solovky (the action took place in 1990).
2. November 3-4 marks the 75th anniversary of the execution of the flower of Ukrainian intelligentsia in Solovky – Kulish, Zerov, Kurbas, Pidmohylny, Krushelnytsky, Yavorsky. Of course, Ukrainians had been executed there on mass before and were shot after that, but that was a real apotheosis of killings and tortures.
3. In the elections to Verkhovna Rada, the Communists, whose ideology (mildly speaking) includes separate elements of Stalin’s world outlook and imperial mythologems (suffice it to read the newspaper Communist which is quite open, as it addresses its “own” people), have almost tripled the number of received votes.
What does the comparison of these three facts indicate? Above all, apparently, the fact that the Ukrainian society is gravely ill (first and foremost, in its world outlook), and this dangerous disease does not go away, rather, vice versa, it has a tendency of becoming more acute, with all consequences that follow (the threat to lose our sovereignty, crushing of even a formal democracy, destruction of any European prospects of Ukraine’s development). Those who have not learned the terrible lessons of history are being birched like negligent pupils in old-time schools, but in a much crueler way, sometimes with bloodshed. All of this proves that in spite of numerous everyday talks about de-Stalinization (deintoxication), in fact very little has been done in Ukraine, to much disgrace. The lack of historical memory, stupid “mankurtism,” the hopes for a strong chief who will save the country, which stay actual. (Which does not cancel the fact that voting for the Communists is above all an action of protest, an act of despair in the conditions of cynical disrespect to human dignity, health, and life actually, which is demonstrated by the current power. But what has the Ukrainian opposition offered in the conditions of our “cave,” purely feudal “market”?)
What to do? Above all, one should recognize the bitter truth: we have not created the civil society (it would be more precise to say “the society of civil initiative”), it is at an embryonic stage, and we should understand that cherishing it is a systemic thing. It goes about political preconditions, which is an extremely important, necessary, but still insufficient condition, and educational work, first and foremost among the youth, which should be done without any abstract phrases, on the grounds of humanization of history, and, what is no less important, a hard work on assertion of the society of social justice – for the outrageous social inequality is an ideal food for propaganda of Stalinists to be rooted in the mass conscience.
