The first one is called This Is Too Much. The photo was taken during the notorious events near the Verkhovna Rada on August 31. It shows an elderly woman standing in front of the ranks of the National Guard servicemen who are protecting themselves with shields. She is wiping from a shield a swastika symbol painted by some of the protesters.
The second photo, entitled A Good Policeman, shows the introduction of the new patrol police at St. Sophia Square in July 2015. In the center there stands tall smiling Klitschko, who is looking good in the police uniform cap. Avakov and Yatseniuk, considerably shorter than he, are standing next to him.
Why namely these two works?
Because they show the monopoly on use of force delegated to the state. This topic has been a burning issue in Ukraine, especially in the past two years.
The first one shows what happens when a citizen or a group of citizens decide that they have the right to commit violence for the sake of their personal goals. As a reminder, at that time several ultra right organizations, with the Freedom Party outnumbering the rest, in their attempts to win the attention of the voters and the press at any cost organized a riot near the Verkhovna Rada. As a result three people were killed in an explosion of a grenade thrown by one of Freedom Party members, and over 100 civilians and National Guard servicemen were seriously injured.
The cynicism is that a swastika symbol on the shield was painted by those who profess the views that in many components are close to the views of the Nazi. For it is no secret to anyone that in their programs and party publications of both Freedom and the Right Sector curse the European multiculturalism and liberalism, whereas the active members and leadership of these movements are totally racist and homophobic. Real EU integration is not on the list of their priorities, whereas they find considerable limitation of civic freedoms, division of Ukraine by lingual and ethnic attributes quite admissible. Yes, this is too much. It is too much to mark your former brothers-in-arms in Maidan and ATO veterans who are now serving in the National Guard with swastika symbols. It is too much to mutilate those who are defending the parliament, which was elected legally. It is too much to throw ball grenades in the center of a peaceful city. And it is too much to vote for the parties whose ideology makes all things mentioned above possible.
A GOOD POLICEMAN / Photo by Vladyslav MUSIIENKO
In the second photo Klitschko looks like Uncle Stepa from the famous Soviet poem. This connotation has its effect in my culture memory, whether I want it or not, because it was inserted there back in my childhood, in the Brezhnev 1970s. Young people will never have such associations.
The communist power was good at working with the language, very aptly evaluating the possibilities of a bright artistic representation, which is why it hired such talented scoundrel as Sergey Mikhalkov to create attractive, even perfect images of their guardsmen.
Uncle Stepa adds to the photo a smiling, yet even more ominous ghost of the past, which this photo denies with its content. A democratically elected mayor of the capital wears a cap of the uniform of the new police trusted by the majority of the population – this is a new field of meanings. It’s new and exciting, and I believe that neither Red, nor Brown chimeras will appear in this field.
