Intellectual journalism as bulwark against post-Soviet barbarity

The never-ending crises that are rocking Ukraine in the 21st century — crises of identity, politics, economy, and de­mo­graphics — have so far been mostly analyzed in sociopolitical categories. But even here, no sooner had we achieved at least some minimal progress in studying the history of Ukraine and drawn a map of the Ukrainian hecatomb — the Ho­lo­do­mor, repressions, and exter­mination of all living things — than ugly dinosaurs dressed in the suits of ministers and MPs suddenly crawled out of the Soviet caves into the light of day, filling this country with the stench of the Soviet empire’s decomposing body. This means that, on the one hand, intellectual efforts to put the country onto the path of a normal life and civilized re­con­stru­ction lack a systemic ap­proach, con­sis­ten­cy, resolution, and willpower. On the other hand, it is also a sign of an unexpectedly profound deg­ra­da­tion of society as a result of the criminal experiment performed on it by the Soviet regime. As is known, when women experience pregnancy in the conditions of war, famine, and food shortages, this sharply in­creases the percentage of schi­zoph­re­nic children born. It is a proven fact that in the 20th century alone (let us leave aside the previous centuries) Ukrainian society lived in the conditions of a continuous war of the Government against the People. Therefore, this society is suffering from a multitude of very deep pathologies, and it will take more than one decade to assess the mag­ni­tude of this degradation.

For this reason, sociopolitical ca­te­gories are not sufficient for understanding these processes. We need philosophical, moral, and ethical ca­tegories, too. Actually, one of the factors that caused Ukraine’s catastrophic situation is the lengthy alienation of Ukraine from European humanistic thought and, above all, from the humanistic development of the 20th-century Western world. The categories of liberal arts in a democratic society were rarities here, and those study programs which complied to international norms lacked the mechanisms for transferring this cultural content to the broader public. Given the ongoing vivisection of education, society is running the risk of standing on all fours and running to the woods in a few years’ time. Today’s average cultural level is still too low to allow any progress or modernization, to say nothing of politicians: none of the political or cultural categories they use has anything to do with today’s realities. In these conditions, Ukraine can only be a clone of the Russian blind alley, where a few clans have occupied the country and are devouring its resources. The Russian historian Yuri Afanasyev calls the Russian authorities an occupational force, for they “treat the country’s populace as a conquered and enslaved entity” (Den, August 10, 2010). Therefore, in Ukraine, there is a double occupation.

And here, in this seemingly desperate situation, comes the newspaper Den/The Day which outlines, step by step, year by year, the new coordinates of Ukraine’s daily life. What is the puzzle of Den? It is intellectual journalism as a systemic phenomenon, aimed at culturally and civically conscious readers. In other words, Den is in fact setting a new standard: the freedom of speech, and is always filled with sophisticated cultural content. This is a bridge between the modern humanities and the citizen. It is Den that helped reveal the unique person of James Mace. Thanks to Den, the Holodomor problem was addressed in terms of not only history but also morality, culture, and civilization in general. Or take such a stupendous phenomenon as the philosopher Serhii Krymsky: it is thanks to Den publications that Krymsky’s ethics and futurology became accessible to ordinary people. Den is also a “podium” for the extremely sharp-tongued political scientist Ihor Losiev. From the Holodomor to Losiev’s “postmortems” of dead television, from Ivan Dziuba (who, after consulting Montesquieu, has to waste his precious time on the minister of pseudo-education) to Western political scientists, from the high-profile political science of Yurii Shcherbak to the original literary and geographical studies of Panchenko, from historical excursions to psychologically keen sketches — all this is the living tissue of a dialog between new journalism and the new reader. And there is Den’s relationship with young people: the Ostroh Club, the school of journalism, the never-ending book launches, and debates at Ukrainian universities. It is indeed the creation of a new reality, where the priority of Freedom and Knowledge opposes the latter-day post-Soviet Barbarian and his neo-regime paroxysms and narcissistic ignorance.

But, obviously, even this is not enough. One can always say: I’ve read this article but not that one, I forgot to buy the newspaper, I had more important things to do. Or even this: we have nothing to read, neither a Gazeta Wyborcza nor a New York Times of our own. In other words, it is odd that pears do not grow on Mars… And here comes Extract: first Extract 150 and then Extract+200 in two volumes. An unprecedented phenomenon: a sizable two-volume scholarly book accompanies a daily newspaper! In Europe, a newspaper often spins off a certain “cultural product”: a series of films, music CDs, whodunits, or even an encyclopedia. But this kind of a publication is considered impossible because a newspaper lives, one way or another, just one day. But Den does not see itself so. In other words, the publication of these books means that short-time information does not sink into the past or look into the future. Information can only carry the energy of transformation if it embraces more than one dimension of societal life.

Den’s Library is an amazing intellectual parabola, where “the stratosphere of historical memory,” to quote Larysa Ivshyna, opens the door to the future and which will not allow somebody to say: I was not here, this took place without me. Yes, all that occurs is a tragic or victorious result of our efforts and an indicator of our willpower or of its absence. After all, even the size of the publication is an indicator of the unbelievable work of the whole staff, i.e., all the links of this grand project. By applying the concept of memory, this project joins Ukraine to the mainland of modern Europe’s humanitarian culture, which she was once robbed of. And by applying a rational and well-balanced dialectic style, it shapes a new generation of youth who, let us hope, will at last finally break free from the post-Soviet cave, have a breath of fresh air and continue to create new cultural meanings, to which Den/The Day is giving a powerful impulse today at all the levels of public life.