Dear Editors of The Day,
The ongoing controversial election campaign leads one to believe that the atavisms of the Soviet regime prevent the society from making further progress. We are witnessing provocations, manipulations of public conscience, Goebels-style propaganda, voter intimidation and blackmail. A regime has come alive, which is using dirty technologies in an attempt to portray the opposition as terrorists. Over a brief period of time, the “Ya” regime has generated waves of hate for its opponent, whom it has branded a “fascist,” incited long-forgotten anti-American sentiment among the population, caused a psychological rift between the country’s east and west, and divided the Ukrainian people into eastern Donbasivtsi and western Banderivtsi and the country’s regions into “donors” and “bloodsuckers.” On the other hand, this regime has become the butt of the joke in the eyes of the world. Countless witticisms about an egg-throwing incident involving one of the presidential hopefuls cause bellowing laughter. All joking aside, the mere thought that a person who faints from fright caused by an egg can command the army of your country might drive you insane. Recently our presidential hopeful got himself involved in another embarrassing situation, this time with candy. In a brotherly expression of affection he offered candy to Russia’s President Putin, who declined with a smile. So he just stood there chewing on his candy with a foolish look on his face. Paradoxically, this expression of brotherly affection is the reverse side of a chronic disease of stooping to the Russian tsar, when the person who is kowtowing to the “big brother” thinks he stands as tall as the former. Of course, the unit of measurement here is no banal centimeters. There is a threat of the disease of “bent backs” developing into an epidemic in the state policy and a norm of social behavior. The pyramid of a “stable” and “strong” state will look as follows: at the top “Ya” is stooping to the Kremlin, officials are stooping to “Ya,” the local authorities to officials, and the common folk to the local authorities. Incidentally, the big chiefs of the country’s east and south have formed the so-called Industrial League and busied themselves with threatening people with a return to the days of perestroika, an economic crisis, shutdowns of enterprises, mass unemployment, political instability, and chaos. Allegedly, all of this will happen unless a majority of the people votes for “Ya.” In threatening voters with shutdowns of enterprises and mass unemployment, and scaring them with a return to perestroika, the big chiefs look like the infamous State Emergency Committee of the early nineties. Perhaps even more so the Industrial Leaguer reminds of the Ku Klux Klan with its statement that Ukraine is only East, East, and East once more. Call it a brand of regional racism with respect to non-eastern Ukraine. Shall I remind that the big chiefs of enterprises are in no position to make independent decisions? Unlike during the 1994 rebellion of the so-called Red Directors against then Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk, today’s industrialists of the League are a mere front for the pro-Russian oligarchs who own these enterprises. Meanwhile, for oligarchs to go on strike is unheard of in the history of the labor movement. The warning sirens of the plants eerily remind of the ritual with which the Bolsheviks paid their last respects to their deceased chiefs. Who knows, maybe with these same sirens we will finally bury our totalitarian past? At least I want to believe this so much.
