There are two Europes. One is the historical Europe of ideas, principles, protection of the personality and entire nations, and the years-long struggle for implementing these ideals. The other one is a bureaucratic entity that ensures a more or less unperturbed existence of a newest united Europe, which was born out of this struggle for freedom. But the main thing is that the latter, bureaucratic, Europe is very little interested in the above-mentioned ideals. Anyway, this is its job.
Prof. Myroslav Marynovych, Vice Rector of the Ukrainian Catholic University, Lviv, has written an open letter in protest against the erection of a new Berlin Wall – the Schengen Wall. The point is that he was issued, at the Polish side’s request, a yearly Schengen visa in which the year was cut down to one month and 13 days. The question is why it is 13, not 12 or 14, days.
And I heard recently about a 38-year-old Ukrainian woman who was “allowed,” due to some very banal problem with documents, to visit the US again in approximately… 89 years and several surreal months. It has also repeatedly occurred in my experience that I awaited with alarm and never-ending bureaucratic inquiries the arrival of my Ukrainian colleagues at Ukrainianist and other conferences because they had to wait for the visa until the last moment. There are still more examples.
Being a civilized country, Poland immediately responded to correct the situation. Gazeta Wyborcza printed an abridged version of Prof. Marynovych’s letter. The same newspaper published on December 7 an apology to Prof. Marynovych by Mr. Pawel Kowal, MEP and Chairman of the Delegation to the EU-Ukraine Parliamentary Cooperation Committee, who complemented this apology with an in-depth comment on the necessity of a trouble-free movement of Ukrainian citizens in the European space.
But in reality the situation goes far beyond this concrete case, for it touches upon the problem of dramatic incommunicability between Europe and Ukraine – in spite of all high-sounding declarations, summits, and real and hypothetical agreements between the bureaucrats on both sides.
On the one hand, Ukraine does not understand Europe (which concerns, incidentally, many post-communist and, first of all, post-Soviet countries). Almost all politicians, except perhaps for the last dregs of the totalitarian system, are talking about “Euro-integration,” without knowing at all – with rare exceptions – the cultural identity of Europe and the evolutionary paradigm of democracy – from the time of Greek poleis to this day.
These politicians conceptualize Europe in a pragmatic, if not cynical, manner: they are expecting funds, aid, and all kinds of interventions from Europe, without honoring their own pledges to carry out reforms and make progress on the way of democratic governance. Moreover, these politicians say one thing in Moscow, another in Brussels, and still another in Washington. It is they who are projecting in Europe the image of an inadequate and inconsistent country that has neither an identity nor any consolidated knowledge of contemporary world problems but, instead, is only living – spasmodically and voraciously – for The Day and is utterly unable to make any plans for the future.
On the other hand, Europe does not understand Ukraine. But here are different mechanisms. The formidable “East” is continuously sweeping over Europe. This boundless “East” has three faces. The first face is millions of job-seeking migrants. EU bureaucracy is trying to settle (unsuccessfully at times) this problem.
The second face is “multi-vectored” mafia-style trafficking of people and “things” from post-communist countries. The range is really broad: from ragged tramps to slick nouveaux riches with their “off-shores” and “off-laws.” The European law is trying, naturally, to provide bureaucratic safeguards against migrants and traffickers, but these safeguards are not always diversified enough. So, more often than not, decent people, who were hounded out of their homeland, end up as “lawbreakers” because of a mistaken comma or full stop, while new-time slave traders are on the loose in the West and mafia oligarchs keep buying up villas and cars and thus become millionaires and billionaires at the expense of entire countries.
The third face is a numerically small social category: intellectuals, young people, and professionals who establish a new level of relations between Europe and Ukraine. But, paradoxically, this very category falls hostage to Europe’s suspicious attitude to Ukraine. It is not just insulting. It is extremely counterproductive for both sides, especially when this category is represented by people who, to quote Milan Kundera, were dying on barricades for freedom and Europe.
This is, incidentally, the case of Myroslav Marynovych. But while Kundera believed this was only possible in Warsaw, Prague, and Budapest, it also applies to Kyiv, for Ukrainian intellectuals fought for freedom and for Europe in the 1920s, 1960s, 1980s, as well as in 2004, but this time it was not a group of intellectuals but a huge part of society that came out, also under EU flags, against the neo-totalitarian government.
So what? By all accounts, those were by no means the last barricades. For the political class that came to power has proved to be equally incapable of conducting a real, not rhetorical, European discourse and sunk the society again into the quagmire of cheerless expectations for new elections, new mudslinging, and new absence of any concrete political project.
European bureaucrats and their “13 days” are also, to a large extent, the product of the post-totalitarian past which stubbornly resists dying. This is also the continuation of the postcolonial Europe. It is the same Europe of Schroeder and Berlusconi, which is currying favor with Russia for a simple and pragmatic reason: they regard Russia, as well as the rest of “these” countries, as the EU’s raw-material base. No less and no more. Thus a bureaucratic and cynical Europe is allying itself with a bureaucratic and cynical post-totalitarian world. In both the former and the latter case, freedom turns from a universal value into a prerogative for “the elect” (in the true sense of the word). Adam Michnik aptly said recently that this new Europe is facing a double threat: “Berlusconism,” on the one hand, and “Putinism,” on the other. Once the bureaucratic Europe gets the upper hand over the Europe of ideals, Europe as a cultural project runs the risk of losing its civilization-related appeal.
In the fall of 2006, after the assassination of Anna Politkovskaya, the French philosopher Andre Glucksmann asked: What would Europe be like today had it not been for the Orange Revolution today and the uprisings in Budapest, Prague, and Warsaw yesterday? This Europe would be a restricted “elitist” club surrounded by dangerous totalitarian countries – a Europe of the euro, not a Europe of ideas. The philosopher believes that the countries that carry the tragic experience of two totalitarianism regimes are giving Europe, now absorbed in its economic problems, an ethical dimension, which is an integral part of the democratic system.
From this angle, Ukraine is a living and active co-creator of this Europe of ideas. The sooner the Ukrainian society itself becomes aware of this and helps the Western society to understand this, the faster and more radically Ukraine’s Euro-integration prospects and, hence, visa policies will change. This will cause the space of a bureaucratic Europe to shrink and that of a Europe of solidarity and mutual cultural knowledge to expand.
But, in any case, one should begin from oneself – by denying a “visa” to politicians who are leading society up a blind alley.
EDITOR’S NOTE
The National Prize Committee of Ukraine has shortlisted candidates for the 2010 Shevchenko Prize. We are pleased to announce that one of them is Oxana Pachlovska for the book Ave, Europa! The Day was the first to publish some of its chapters and the first comments of readers, which is the best review of this brilliant work. We are welcoming the nomination of this book for the National Prize.
Oxana PACHLOVSKA, holds the Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the Department of Slavonic Studies, La Sapienza University of Rome, and is on the staff of the Department of Ancient Ukrainian Literature at the Institute of Literature (Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences, Kyiv)
