Newspaper publications inevitably draw a wide circle of readers, even those with openly declared or purposefully concealed social denial. A typical example could be the article “Huckersterish Circumlocutions of the OUN-UPA Apologists” by Ivan Khmil (The Day, No. 27, October 9, 2001). The author’s genuine intentions is a matter for his conscience, but readers are entitled to their own opinions.
The gist of the article is not easy to grasp. If Mr. Khmil is still indignant about the past cooperation of some OUN-UPA leaders with the Nazi Germany’s secret services, those found guilty under the Soviet law have already done their prison terms in full, with many killed without trial or dying in exile. The enemy state, Germany, is past history, as is the so-called Land of the Soviets against which the OUN- UPA combatants rose in arms.
The historical landscape has changed absolutely and the Communist Party has been reduced to an anachronistic and moribund structure that survived its own historical life span, although still attached to its former trademark feature, political militancy, when the party’s motto Those Not With Us Are Against Us meant life or death to most people. These memories seem to underlie Mr. Khmil’s absolute political denial not only of any contradictory opinion, but also of the OUN-UPA combatants as well, with little thought given either to his opponents’ peaceful intentions or to the fact that the trident and the yellow-blue flag under which the combatants waged their death struggle are now the symbols of independent Ukraine.
We can’t help noticing the author’s poor logic in presenting his supposedly revealing facts and the lack of a clear vision of the causes and consequences of the whole issue, something central in writing a comprehensive and logical story. Enemies from the past, if they continue to belong to the past, become life-long foes. One can explain this rule by primitive perception, when a craving for the ordinary (and more understandable) brings forth a perspective contradictory to reality.
Even fierce competition becomes a unifying factor in a modern civilized society, making it possible to live without irreconcilable political confrontations. In Spain, monuments to all who perished in the Civil War of 1936-1939 have been erected. In Germany, Wehrmacht officers, (incidentally, the same as Abwehr ones) are entitled to pensions. In Spain, Caudillo Franco was the first to begin paying pensions to his Civil War adversaries. Perhaps, thanks to this approach in solving the problems of social relationships, living standards in Germany are so high, and Spain is far from an economic failure.
Unfortunately, Ukrainians are poor learners when it comes to the lessons of their own history. We are slow in capitalizing on the failures of the leaders of the short-lived Ukrainian National Republic (1918), who put their socialist interests ahead of the national unity ones. Volodymyr Vynnychenko, an avid proponent of the communist doctrine, became a life-long enemy of the Soviet regime for merely having tried to combine the ideas of socialism and national unity, nor did his views win him the adequate backing among Ukrainians.
The ability to view things realistically is impossible unless it is based on appropriate conditions. The perception of life should not be burdened with illusions, when one tends to interpret one’s own wishful thinking as realities. Suffice it to mention the idea to build a happy society based on universal equality. In the wake of this, neither the consequences of the forced implementation of such ideas nor further theoretical research in the field seem to have any meaning. When one’s own wishful thinking gets the upper hand, the intention of perception, that is the orientation of conscience and thinking at some specific object, typically leads a person to lose his bearings in the outside world. Faced with barriers to reach one’s own illusory goals, one becomes the captive of frustration, an oppressive feeling of anxiety and anger. Aggressiveness should be viewed as a natural reaction when one wants to distance himself from a controversial situation, with behavior patterns simplified, subtle and complex regulatory processes braked, and they give way to primitive perception and thinking. Someone is to be held accountable for the collapse of the Soviet Union, for the loss by the Communist Party of its dominance and for armed opposition to that Party.
Given such a specific mindset, the subconscious desire to hold someone accountable easily becomes a motive for activities harmful to society. The author of such an expos О is precisely this kind of person who, burdened with his political affiliations, wants to set fire to his neighbor’s house regardless of which way the wind is blowing. Seeing one’s neighbor’s home on fire gives one pleasure only at the beginning, for later on both domiciles will burn down
I do not call for a ban on selling matches to members of the Communist Party but it is about time to set the principles for establishing a harmonious society. Incidentally, these same principles are reinvented by political parties in their election campaigns.
Life should keep people united but our history shows few such examples. It is so sad that only death could bring together in Babyn Yar the nationalist combatants of the UPA Bukovyna Regiment, Jews, and Kyiv guerrilla fighters headed by the Soviet spy Ivan Kudria.
With almost sixty years passed since that time, we continue to denounce each other for the past.
