“The situation is critical. A boiler has burst. A carload of nails is rotting under elevator. The underpants workshop is stranded without cement.” Volodymyr Dibrova’s words can be used to review the main points of the draft Program in Support of Ukrainian Books and Reading, the brainchild of Derzhteleradio, the state committee that is allegedly taking care of books.
This document, produced by “a highly artistic amateur performing group” (M. Mednikova) under the guidance of Ivan Chyzh, states “the main reasons determining the current unsatisfactory situation of the printing and publishing industry.” The main reason for Ukrainian book problems appears to be “obsolete printing equipment.”
You don’t say! Now the only thing to do is to persuade the electorate that the top-quality printed matter that was issued during the campaign was produced outside Ukraine, just like the winners of the 2005 Book of the Year competition (including the winner of the Grand Prix). The only theoretically inexplicable fact is why the trendsetter of the book pret-а-porter, Ivan Malkovych, is printing his stuff here, on all that “obsolete equipment.”
Despite Chyzh’s verbiage, Malkovych’s works are printed on modern equipment, in private printing houses. As for state-and communally owned ones, the state has proved its complete inability to establish effective management, unless one regards as management the “adoption and introduction of normative documentation that is vitally important to the industry — planning and accounting instructions, as well those relating to the replication of printed products’ prime cost and cost standards of printing materials.” This quote is from the Derzhteleradio’s annual financial report; what every manager does as a matter of course is referred to as a state program by these bureaucrats, and they demand budget appropriations for it.
The report dwells on arrangements for the production of process colors and other chemicals, but not a word about the economic effect of these investments: whether they are less expensive than imported samples or of better quality; and whether they have become acclimatized to production. Will the state keep giving money to Chyzh without asking about profits?
Actually, they seem to be counting on this. The draft program contains an enigmatic statement about “creating preconditions for attracting investments.” These preconditions are anyone’s guess, but they know how to divide up the bearskin before the bear is shot: “The lion’s share of the funds thus enlisted must be channeled into re-equipping domestic typographic enterprises under both state and municipal ownership.” It is impossible to picture an investor contributing his money under Chyzh’s “management,” least of all foreign investors. They have a very keen nose for “the incredibly rich scent of an idiot’s dream.” (S. Povaliaeva)
Let us wait for the budget appropriations on whose capitalization no one requires a report. If they manage to get control of the state joint stock company Ukrvydavpolihrafia with its largest print shops, they will have everything they could dream of. Two months ago, Chyzh sent a memo to the humanitarian policy minister, requesting the “resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers...”On the Transfer to the State Television and Radio Committee of Authority to Manage the State Corporate Rights of the State Joint Stock Company ‘Ukrainian Publishing and Printing Association.’” The draft program goes even further: “Draw up a draft Edict of the President concerning the creation of a specialized agency (body of central executive authority) empowering it to secure state management of the country’s publishing and printing complex.”
Speaking of printing and books, the latter constitute some 10 percent in the structure of the former. Print shops for publishing companies are no more than an ordinary service. So this whole “Program in Support of Ukrainian Books and Reading” is sheer camouflage for a construction site with gold typographic scaffolding.
Incidentally, this camouflage has the same oligophrenic quality as all of Derzhteleradio’s fuss about books. For example, what should this “specialized agency” be responsible for? The program reads: “Functional regulation of activities in the publishing sphere.” Hmm...Stanislaw Jerzy Lec would say something like, “Put so intelligently that my mind shuddered from the realization.”
Unable to understand what to expect from the future, our bureaucratic “trogloerudites” (Lec) seek salvation in the past. One of their arguments is that “earlier, control over the country’s publishing and printing complex was exercised by a central executive authority, which permitted [us] to constantly analyze the book market.” Is this an allusion to the press ministry circa 1995, thanks to which Ukraine failed to notice the Russian breakthrough on the book market? What kind of analysis is it if Minpresinform did not even subscribe to special publishing periodicals (at least from Russia)?
I suspect that the Derzhteleradio people are still unfamiliar with such professional periodicals. Otherwise, how can you explain the following nonsense in the draft program: “In the Russian Federation book publishing is exempted from all taxes”? Ivan Chyzh, Chairman of the State Committee of Ukraine, might want to know that publishers in Russia have been paying 10% VAT for the past two years, compared to 20 percent for almost the whole previous year.
Lies about the “Russian hothouse” have repeatedly surfaced in Derzhteleradio documents that have been sent to the cabinet. “Repeated mistakes are not mistakes but a tactic” (Oleg Keller) — the tactic of preventive falsehood.
What is this for? To persuade the Ukrainian political leadership that the obvious success of the Russian book publishing business is the result of implementing “concepts,” like the ones laid down in the draft program a la Chyzh. In reality, Russian business owes its prosperity to the absence of characters like Chyzh among the bureaucrats concerned. In fact, Russian publishers ought to thank Chyzh for the past five years of his complete ignorance of book publishing, which has placed no obstacles on the road to their expansion in Ukraine.
A Chekhov character, observing the indestructibility of bureaucracy, sighs: “They write about a cholera epidemic in Arabia. Maybe it will reach Russia; then there will be a lot of vacancies.” One is also reminded of the bird flu. [“chyzh” means a bird called the siskin — Trans.]
Co-authors:
Volodymyr Dibrova. Dovkola stolu, Fakt: Kyiv, 2005
Marina Mednikova. Krutaya plyus, Kalvaria: Lviv, 2005
Svitlana Povaliayeva. Zamist krovi, Kalvaria: Lviv, 2004
Stanislaw Jerzy Lec. Nezachesani dumky [Mysle nieuczesane], Dukh i Litera: Kyiv, 2006
Oleg Keller. Myslizmy, Dyke Pole: Zaporizhia, 2005
Anton P. Chekhov, Collected Works, vol. 2, Gosizdat: Moscow-Leningrad, 1929
