Recently, The Day’s office held the fifth roundtable dedicated to Revolution of Dignity. The first, entitled “An Attempt at Adult Conversation” saw fierce discussions in December 2013 (see Den’s No. 234, December 20, 2013). The second – after the killings and Yanukovych’s escape – “Alternative Dialog” (see Den’s No. 11, January 23, 2014). The third one took place in early March 2014, on the topic “Maidan as Means of Cleansing Is Still Ongoing” (see Den’s No. 42, March 7, 2014). And the fourth one was held on the eve of the parliamentary elections – September 26, 2014, entitled “A chance. For Evolution or Conservation?” (see Den’s No. 179, September 26, 2014).
Yesterday’s events prove again that we must constantly reconsider the events that occurred at the Euromaidan, 20 years before that, and are occurring now.
We invited the uncommonly-thinking people – Viktoria Podhorna, executive director of the NGO Smart City Consultative Board; Hennadii Druzenko, president of the First Nikolai Pirogov Volunteer Mobile Hospital; Oleksandr Solontai, expert at the Institute of Political Education; Viktor Andrusiv, executive director of the Ukrainian Institute for the Future – to discuss the causes of the defeat of Maidan people and the victory of “Maidan stage people,” the probability of early elections and the risk of a comeback of the old system and pro-Russian forces, and the possibility of a viable alternative to them.
Larysa IVSHYNA: “Let us share, on the eve of the Maidan’s third anniversary, our frank reflections on what the Euromaidan was.”
Hennadii DRUZENKO: “Ukraine was one of the first points of the global turbulence into which old and new democracies get one by one. What is more, the ruling elites have a noticeable tendency today to lose the sense of history. And people have begun to vote against them. Clearly, the only thing that kept all participants in the Revolution of Dignity together was the slogan ‘Ukraine without Yanukovych!’ Some wanted just to take Yanukovych’s place, while others wished that what was under Yanukovych should never happen again. The range of this slogan’s ‘shades’ was very broad. This is why we can see that even those who stood together on the Maidan stage are slinging mud at each other.
“Then the Netherlands saw a public vote against the elite’s decision – Ukraine found itself at the receiving end. But, in reality, most of the Dutch did not even know where Ukraine is located. Then there was an election in Britain. And the latest thing that shook the world was presidential elections in the US.
“The trend towards voting against the establishment, which was very noticeable on the Maidan, has now frozen. Even the new and young, who were going to be a ‘Trojan horse’ in the government (refer to Svitlana Zalishchuk’s quotation from Den’s fourth roundtable ‘A Chance for Evolution or for a Freeze,’ September 24, 2014), became ‘cucumbers,’ to quote Lytvyn. For you can’t be part of a system unless you accept its rules.”
L.I.: “A freeze?”
H.D.: “Obviously, a temporary freeze. The paradigm is the same. Reforms are just a showcase. It’s like our House of Trade Unions. It has been curtained with some canvas for almost three years. Drawing change on it, but nothing changes inside.”
L.I.: “I like your point of view very much because in reality we would be very pleased to imagine ourselves the first part of this global shockwave. But there is also another viewpoint on the same process, which can assign no less important, albeit less honorary, roles to us. This may be the continuation of a series of 18th-, 19th-, and 20th-century uprisings that failed to result in the formation of a state.”
H.D.: “But this viewpoint does not run counter to mine. In the early 1910s, we also got into a global wave of turbulence and failed to use the chance of winning statehood.”
L.I.: “As a matter of fact, we would like to discuss it at this roundtable. The Maidan comprised a lot of tendencies and techniques. For the impression is that people are terribly afraid of analyzing them. For if we admit that there were some techniques, then those who were on the Maidan will think they are supposed to feel very bad in this case because they were only used to smash a hole in the wall. Oleksandr, you didn’t get into the lens of our photographer during the Bankova Street events on December 1, 2013, but you stand a chance to go down in history now if you frankly say what it was.”
Oleksandr SOLONTAI: “Hennadii and I simply had different roles to play on that day.”
L.I.: “Are you a technique, too?”
O.S.: “The tractor incident was impromptu, but a number of other actions were planned, which let us all get there earlier than all the others. And it is good, for, otherwise, Poroshenko wouldn’t have been on the tractor and no one knows what this would have resulted in. We invited all the Maidan politicians, but not all of them dared to come.”
H.D.: “You’re dead right” (laughs).
O.S.: “To say it more glibly, almost nobody dared. Therefore, what we have now is just a caretaker government.
“I do not view the Euromaidan as an accomplished revolution. I always remember that the Orange Revolution would have been impossible without ‘Ukraine without Kuchma’ and the Euromaidan without the Orange Revolution. The next ones will be linked to what is going on now.”
“THE GOAL OF THE RUSSIAN AGGRESSION IS: THE MAIDAN’S ENERGY SHOULD BE USED FOR A WAR EFFORT, NOT FOR CLEANSING THE POLITICAL ESTABLISHMENT”
Larysa IVSHYNA: “You are playing the role of a well-known political figure who said: ‘Movement is everything, goal is nothing.’ In other words, revolutions are a way of life for us, and we cannot absolutely imagine that it was possible to go down this road from the Orange Revolution to the Euromaidan differently.”
O.S.: “It was. But there was a reason why society defocused its attention. The revolution was organized to change this country. Energy emanated from a large number of disgruntled people, not from politicians. These masses defocused immediately after the beginning of military actions. That was the goal of the Russian aggression: the Maidan’s energy should be used for a war effort, not for changes, reforms, and cleansing the political establishment.
“In my opinion, the fact that all the new progressive things were not stifled on the frontline is a dazzling achievement of Ukraine. And we had enough energy to defend most of the state borders and carry out some reforms to boot. And changes are noticeable.
“According to various surveys, in the 23 years of independence – until the Euromaidan, – Ukrainians trusted the church only. Today, the church as a civil society institution and a symbol of the country’s renaissance and independence has not lost its level of trust, but it shares this privilege with nongovernmental organizations, volunteers, and the military. Incidentally, people began to place more of their confidence in the armed forces rather than in such institutions as police and the National Guard. This is the first time in 25 years that society trusts a state institution, for the army is not just individuals, not a civil society. It is the first swallow.”
L.I.: “This country has already seen two major waves of enthusiasm. The first wave of the Orange Maidan was colossal. I can remember telling people of that generation that this wave will rise and run into the sand. The people’s hearts literally ached over what I was saying to them. But there is also another rational look at our processes. We should also try to single it out and show where this has already struck root and where it is still superficial and has no impact on the mainstream.”
O.S.: “As an active participant in ‘Ukraine without Kuchma’ and the Orange Revolution, I can remember well people saying for the first time that there was civil society in Ukraine and that not only politicians were competing among themselves, but also the grassroots could say their word. It was very naive. It was too late to say so. To draw this kind of conclusions, one must see the structure and the origin of all elements. It’s not a fact that the people who gathered once for a protest action will not go home tomorrow and do what they have been doing before – without establishing any public movements, organizations, etc.”
L.I.: “It is an absolutely correct remark. I can only add that when the newspaper Den emerged in 1996, it was supposed to become a civil society publication – to be a mouthpiece and to create a milieu. We worked hard on this, while all the others around remained absolutely indifferent. To start with, we tried to hold back all the Soviet era’s best – we did not reject it flatly, for we saw a lot of valuable things sprout there. For example, we took the best Ukrainian philosophers from there, who can be teachers for Ukrainian society today – they were grandees. We ‘relied’ on the Kyiv of Viktor Glushkov and the brothers Strugatsky who lived here, worked as physicists, and wrote their utopias. However, society saw an ever-growing wave of the young who rejected all this. And today we have a feeling that we are at square one – we are new and first everywhere. We may be lagging too much in something, but still we need to restore a link with the societal capital which contemporary history has ripped off. For we have no intellectual trend in the media. Many people are unaware of the figures I’m talking about. But the Americans recently published, incidentally, a book on the Kyiv-based First School of Cybernetics. Glushkov is a computer guru for the entire world. But endless uprisings struck all this knowledge off the agenda. The Revolution on Granite was remarkable, but it only brought down a more or less conservative Masol, who was a good technocrat, and paved the way for Kuchma. And Kuchma is still alive and kicking. And we, enraptured with our exploits in uprisings, cannot understand where the line of a totally different type of behavior in politics and public life is and how we should follow it to become stronger. For the question of whether or not it is a revolution still remains open for many. I am saying it’s not a revolution because fundamental relations in society have not changed. The first Maidan was against Kuchma, while the second reincarnated what the first one fought against and resulted in a ‘gem in the crown’: Kuchma at the Minsk negotiations. An honest look and the knowledge of contemporary history is, in my opinion, what our civil society lacks.”
“WE ARE PART OF THE CRISIS OF GLOBAL DEMOCRACY”
Viktoria PODHORNA: “If looked at from a high point, we are part of the crisis of global democracy caused by the quality of political elites. We can see a crisis of leadership in the world. What we see is moral revisionism, when you can justify anything you like. A false legitimacy of everything…We can see this on the example of the scandals that erupt around the people who assume offices.”
L.I.: “For example?”
V.P.: “The scandal about the appointment of a 24-year-old girl as deputy minister of the interior. We can’t be surprised at what the old political elite is doing, for they have also behaved so before. But now those who wanted to be new are showing their choice. We told them in 2014 not to join the lists of the ‘old elites,’ not to make this mistake. They didn’t heed us. Personal interest stood in their way.
“But the new ones must differ from the old ones by putting public good above personal interest.”
L.I.: “They said they wanted to be new but showed no proof of this.”
V.P.: “The proof of being able to hold the linchpin. And it’s not a question of age. Some may be intellectually and morally mature at 25, and some are still immature at 40.
“Our old political elite deliberately corrupt the Maidan generation, public activists, to prevent the new elite from forming. And the young who formed during Kuchma’s presidency consider moral revisionism normal.
“Nobody has ever banned moral and political ostracism in society. Political means not to vote at all. If we had a movement called National Act on Political Responsibility, this would draw a dividing line between the values of the old system and the birth of a new one.”
L.I.: “Oleksandr, do you think what Viktoria says is realistic?”
O.S.: “Only in combination with what you are saying. If the leaders who showed their worth on the Maidan hadn’t made a compromise with the system for the sake of personal benefits, such as a place in the Petro Poroshenko Bloc’s parliamentary faction, but, instead, had contributed to the implementation of the program the people brought to the Euromaidan, we wouldn’t be in the situation we are in now.”
L.I.: “There were temptations. But there were people, including you, Oleksandr, who saw that it was an easy way, but still they did not follow it. Viktoria was right to say that the generation that received everything from the second president – sort of Kuchma-era ‘Komsomols’ – is now defending him, the system, and themselves. Of course, they are interested in corrupting, silencing, or marginalizing those who are a likely alternative. A good illustration to this is the story of Hanna Hopko, a participant in our roundtables. Do you remember a public duel between Hanna and Yulia Tymoshenko? It was an absolute feeling of the public mood. Then, when she was elected to parliament by a colossal margin, unexpected even to Samopomich itself, the party leader Andrii Sadovyi appointed ‘his man’ Oleh Bereziuk, not Hanna, as head of the faction. Hanna did not give up: she worked, reported… There was again a choice to make: to go or not to go to Pinchuk’s forum YES. All the Euro-optimists were there. But Hanna did not go and wrote an open letter to Kwasniewski who had presided over the roundtable on the transfer of power from Kuchma to Yushchenko, as a result of which Yushchenko became a weak president and Kuchma faced nothing. This letter was a sensation for the diplomatic corps. I know this from a frank conversation with a foreign diplomat. He said they had been shocked, for they thought we ‘got everything covered.’ How come? Are we so revolutionary? Do we have such a beautiful civil society? We have a host of nice passionate people, but diplomats think, for some reason, that we ‘got everything covered.’ One more touch to this story – the Georgian factor in our politics. The story of its emergence here is vague. There are some guesses, but… It is noteworthy that in his first post-resignation ‘revolutionary’ interview Saakashvili focused on what I call ‘Hopko media directive.’ After Hanna had written a letter to Kwasniewski, she was warned that if she continued this line of behavior, she would be denied trips to the West. But the girl was not afraid – she gathered the G7 ambassadors and explained her line to them. Without talking about local squabbles, she managed to avoid the isolation that was being prepared for her. But it is the country that fell into isolation. So let us discuss the foreign policy monopolization which caused the president to be unable to make the right stakes, particularly in the US elections.”
“WE DID NOT KNOW OUR RIVAL ON THE MAIDAN”
L.I.: “Viktor, what was the Euromaidan for you? What are its results? What challenges are there now, on the eve of its third anniversary?”
Viktor ANDRUSIV: “I was asked the other day: if you had known that there would be a war and things would go this way, would you have gone to the Maidan?
“My friends and I went to the Maidan without looking back, when Mustafa posted his message. We kept in our backpacks things intended for two situations: we do or do not go down. We were not going to return home without winning. And it is not true that the Euromaidan was for association with the EU. It is a factor. What prompted people like me go to the Maidan was a feeling of humiliation. Therefore, I am dissatisfied rather than disappointed today.
“Fate decreed that I would be on both sides. I was in the ‘system.’ So, naturally, I am not satisfied with the Maidan’s results, but when I saw the situation from inside the system, I understood that it could not have been otherwise. We did not know our rival. We only saw his outer interface.”
L.I.: “Do you mean the domestic rival or the Kremlin?”
V.A.: “Domestic. Yanukovych was just the interface of a certain program – sort of a pictogram on the phone. We saw it and fought against it, but we did not know the ‘program code’ behind him.”
L.I.: “We are planning one more roundtable with the media. And we will get back to the responsibility of journalists for a warped country.”
V.A.: “So I agree that we were unable to defeat the system. We destroyed its interface, but we were totally incapable of breaking the system itself. And, finally, our Maidan launched a cycle of worldwide transformations. We in fact blew the lid off all those revolutionary sentiments.”
ON A MONOPOLIZED FOREIGN POLICY AND DEVALUATION OF STATEHOOD INSTITUTIONS
L.I.: “We blew it off, but it is perhaps worthwhile to take a broader look at the challenges: who can cash in on these processes? Why did we have an impression that Ukrainian foreign policy was fully oriented to the victory of Democrats in the US? Then Yanukovych’s ‘stock book’ was pulled out, which caused an attack on a participant in the election race…”
H.D.: “Because somebody is a friend of the Clinton family.”
L.I.: “This is why a blogger wrote recently that this country had fallen hostage to this friendship. And it is demanded that the president immediately drop the monopoly on the other foreign policy clan in this country. For it is very dangerous. We need a real ‘cadre revolution’ because there is a serious threat. You can see how persistently our enemy is establishing a relationship with Trump – things went so far that ‘Cossacks’ named him an ‘Honorary Cossack.’
“Incidentally, there’s one more factor: very many institutions of statehood have been ruined and some have been devalued. For example, we have the Institute for Strategic Studies that employs about 300 people. Has the president derived any benefit from them now that our foreign policy, particularly towards the US, has suffered a defeat? Is it known what information and advice they gave him? Or did they not see those dangers?”
O.S.: “You are again raising the question that some institutions can be closed without any trouble, for we, taxpayers, spend money on them.”
L.I.: “On the contrary, I think these institutions should be not only used, but also provided with the most valuable. Besides, this institute may have given some recommendations, but the president did not heed them. Maybe, he believes that he is a diplomat and needs neither the Diplomatic Academy nor a strong minister of foreign affairs. This is also a factor of dependence on a short substitutes’ bench. Frankly speaking, I sympathize with all, especially our, presidents because we have an ‘acidic medium’ of sorts. We must try to make a partner out of the latter. But this requires the president to show the attitude of a leader, for he must restore confidence in these institutions. Have you heard in the last while that some of the best graduates of the Public Administration Academy under the President were invited to assume an office?”
O.S.: “This means a totally different style of managing – contract-based relations. But we still have feudal-style ones.”
L.I.: “But still there must be respect for institutions. As far as I know, some good people have worked at the Public Administration Academy. Vira Nanivska worked there for many years. It’s wrong to destroy and throw everything away and employ just the people you like, for this will lead to the formation of these feudal courts. A powerful machine is working against us. Yes, it is ‘homemade,’ it shows the Kuznetsov aircraft-carrier smoking and makes people laugh, but still it is a machine. And it will pose a threat to us for a long time.”
“EVERYBODY WANTS TO BE AT THE HEAD OF SOMETHING BUT CANNOT GAUGE THE SCOPE OF THEIR CAPABILITY”
V.A.: “I have a strategy of my own, but I will still make some remarks. Infantilism shows not only in that somebody decided to support Clinton or Trump, but also in that young people believe that they will come to power and show everybody how to manage. This is very far from reality. This kind of talk means that we do not know our adversary. If a party has 1,000 members, it is ‘nothing.’ People do not always have the idea of what the health care system is and how everything is intertwined there. You can have been a minister for several years but still know nothing perfectly. For example, Ukrinform occupies several stories in downtown Kyiv, but its level has always been poor. Whoever chose to head this institution, they failed to do a good job. It’s a great illusion to think that once we take one chair or another, we will change everything. For example, I sat in a chair and was honest, but I had no scope. I think Poroshenko, too, has no scope in this country. I know from the experience of my service that the state is not run by specific individuals but is living on its own. Believe me: Rozenko doesn’t know how social security works at the grassroots level.”
V.P.: “Maybe, it is his unprofessionalism?”
V.A.: “No, it is incapability, not unprofessionalism. Everybody wants to be at the head of something but cannot gauge the scope of their capability. My strategy is: possibility – capability – result. To have wise people, our country needs universities and analytical centers. All these possibilities produce the result.
“For example, as an official, I lacked elementary opinion polls and thus didn’t know what the migrants’ life was like.
“The Party of Regions was capable enough of steering the country. They established control over all the economic and political sectors because they had a vertical-subordination system of mobilization and a system of control and mutual protection which formed the professional community. Akhmetov funded the Donetsk School of Management and local universities not just to be with it. He was thus forming and mobilizing the skilled personnel. Moreover, this human resource was competent and easy to control.
“Conversely, Yulia Tymoshenko is no longer capable of this. She cannot even make 10,000 people come out on the streets. Why? Because everybody works in the ‘take the chair’ format.”
L.I.: “Viktor, why did you withdraw from Democratic Alliance?”
V.A.: “Because the young parties suffer from the same leader-related maladies as the old ones do. Unfortunately, politics is not an instrument of changes in this country. For instance, what Hennadii Druzenko is doing is a change because his hospital is an added value. We’ve bought 200 ambulances on Donetsk oblast, but it is not a change. It is mechanistic mandatory work which makes no effective changes.”
L.I.: “But, to work successfully, Hennadii needs an instrumental policy.”
H.D.: “We overestimate politics.”
L.I.: “We have not yet created a state. So we cannot help but overestimate the politics by whose methods the state is being made. The old state has been dissolved – it was smashed, bitten to pieces, and pocketed. It doesn’t exist. There is only a phantom. So, at this stage, we will end up in anarchy unless there are instruments of politics.”
H.D.: “We overestimate the capacities of political classes. For example, we have our like-minded people at the Ministry of Public Health who can do nothing.”
L.I.: “Because they are fine as like-minded people but they are nonentities as politicians.”
H.D.: “It is the question of instruments, not of politics. You may be a medical genius, but you won’t perform an operation without a scalpel.
O.S.: “To come to power by way of elections and to form a network of those you represent is one thing, but to come to power and represent the interests of oligarchs and carry out medical reforms, while the oligarchs who brought you power are not interested in this, is a totally different thing.”
“OUR SAFETY MARGIN IS SLIM”
Ivan KAPSAMUN: “It was said today that there had been “Ukraine without Kuchma” campaign, the Orange Maidan, the Euromaidan, etc., and that these processes are going on. But, at the same time, we are losing territories and sovereignty. What safety margin do we still have?”
H.D.: “To tell the truth, our safety margin is slim. Although our shortsighted experts shouted that Russia would fall if not today then tomorrow, it is not falling. It will be a constant factor. This factor has begun to overcome the West, too, – also due to the low moral standards of pro-European politicians.
“Moldova is a dire warning to Ukraine. European rhetoric cannot replace the true European values, especially in Europe’s poorest country.
“We have a hunch that 2017 will be a decisive year. Either we will slide again to governor-generalship (not necessarily de jure), or we will manage to consolidate and at last achieve subjectness, the only thing that can push us forward.”
V.P.: “With the existing system intact, we may lose independence. There is a societal demand for a Western-type state in Ukraine. But there are no relevant reforms. Should Trump agree to let Ukraine come under Russia’s strong influence (and I cannot, unfortunately, rule it out), we may formally remain independent, but Russia will stake on certain domestic political forces in order to build a new fifth column.”
L.I.: “I once said that Russia wanted to have a ‘fifth column’ in Ukraine, but it then decided that all our columns must be fifth, and they are now building ‘new-generation fifth columns.’”
V.P.: “Russia will be intervening into all conflicts until it rebuilds the system of international relations. This follows from the official statement Lukyanov, a Russian security advisor, made in 2014.”
