In the first part of his interview (see No. 64, November 1, 2016), Yosyf ZISELS, a well-known public activist and dissident, co-president of the Association of Jewish Organizations and Communities (VAAD) of Ukraine, reflects on the topicality of the dissident movement’s intellectual heritage, the crisis of values in the West, and the consolidation of Ukrainian national identity as a precondition for integration into Europe. The second part deals with differences between the European and the Eurasian civilizations, the origin of the myth about Ukrainian anti-Semitism, as well as the forgotten category of repentance.
Mr. Zisels, you said in an interview about the necessity of a tribunal for communism, sort of Nuremberg 2 – unless we pass this stage, we won’t be able to further develop. Why has this kind of trial not been held?
“For the same reasons why dissidents failed to lead the state development in 1991. We dreamed of this but were not strong enough. There must also be laws to this effect because we cannot be guided by ‘revolutionary expediency.’ I am not a blood-thirsty radical, and I know that a lot of people were just cogs in the machine. But I am convinced that we must condemn the theory and practice of communism, which resulted in such an enormous death toll in Europe. We can see left-wing, socialist, countries in Northern Europe, which have avoided this path. It is European social democracy. But in Russia socialism assumed an ugly form, for there were different grounds and different civilizational identities. The same seeds that fell into different soils produced opposite results. If we do not condemn communism formally, we will be always doomed to being misled. Especially vulnerable to this are young people who are always inclined to seek justice and critically assess the surrounding society. The younger generation is trying to find its place in this society, but adults have ‘grouped together’ and prevent them from doing so. We are lucky because youth understood at the Maidans that they are capable of changing something. They have also developed an illusion that they can change everything. They are wrong, but they can still really do something. The Maidans made in possible to avoid a deadlock and retake the path to integration into Europe.
“It is Ukrainian youth, not the political opposition, that were the motive force of these changes. These people were brought up under independence. They had never been communists, Komsomol members, Young Pioneers, or even October Children. These young people are Ukraine’s future. They differ from our generation, even dissidents. Only they can develop Ukraine. We cannot invite leaders from other countries or even the diaspora – we tried and failed. When young people come to power, they will launch this development but not finish it because there is no end to development – there is only an everlasting process.”
“IT IS NOT PUTIN WHO MADE RUSSIA THE WAY IT IS. RATHER, IT IS RUSSIA THAT MADE PUTIN”
You often speak of “Eurasian identity” and “Eurasian civilization” as one of equal worth with the European one. But, maybe, it is a distortion of the latter, a “distorting mirror” of sorts? For example, we can see the Russian authorities try to copycat European rhetoric and some outer shapes…
Photo by Ruslan KANIUKA, The Day
“They are different models that exist in order to explain something better. It is difficult to explain complicated processes if you begin to dig deep at once. There should be some simplified patterns that allow explaining what is going on. If they work with respect to the past and the present, they will perhaps also explain something about the future.
“You say Putin is trying to do something, but who does he think he is to try to tamper with identity? I am convinces it is not Putin who made Russia the way it is. Rather, it is Russia and Russian Eurasian identity that made Putin and placed him at the head of the country. It is imperialness, authoritarianism, and an attempt to delegate one’s responsibility to the national leader. Eurasian identity holds a podium for the idol, which is violation of one of the basic commandments – ‘Thou shalt not make thee any graven image.’ By contrast, European identity is based on these commandments. Their distortion leads to a Eurasian identity. You are saying that Eurasian identity is a distorted European one? But one can also say the other way round. I don’t want to pronounce value judgments or say what’s good and what’s bad. All I am saying is that they are different.
“There are also Eurasian-identity people in Europe. We know what happened in Germany in the 1930s and how it followed the path of an authoritarian and totalitarian state. It is no accident that some philosophers and politicians said then that Germany was the most eastern European nation. They saw that others did not. These are very complicated processes that need to be studied.”
But the current Russian identity holds an important place for lies, self-contradictions, and aspiration to be what you are not from the angle of history. Is thus perhaps a crisis of identity?
“Call it the way you want to – everybody chooses the pattern they think is easier to use. I can see lies and propaganda. But there are a lot of lies here, too. The problem is not in this. The problem is that most people want to shift their responsibility to someone else. A free country is one where free people live. A free person will not shift their responsibility for their own life, homeland, and people to somebody else. They assume it themselves. It is a hard choice. It is easier to be authoritarian. An authoritarian society has some temporary advantages.
“But we saw that Ukrainians do not want to live in it – they didn’t want it too much in the Soviet era either. Ukrainian identity is of a fragmentary and peasant-type nature. You can’t line up Ukrainians like Russians. We are not striving to be ‘a great nation which everyone is afraid of.’ Ukraine wants to be a normal country like, for example, Bulgaria. Bulgaria had a colonial experience in both Turkish and communist empires. It is a Slavic, Orthodox country. These factors show us where to look for proper examples. This is why Den’s Library book My Sister Sofia... is very topical. Bulgaria is now following hard its European path. I think Ukraine is even a more European country than Bulgaria in many aspects.”
“ALL CHRISTIAN COUNTRIES HAVE A CULTURAL CODE OF ANTI-SEMITISM”
The recent statement of the Israeli president about the OUN’s involvement in exterminating Jews during World War Two aroused burning indignation in Ukrainian society. You immediately announced in clear-cut terms your position in this matter, and there is perhaps no need to ask you to repeat it. But this raises another question. What do you think is the source of the myth about special Ukrainian anti-Semitism, and how can we deny this? Unfortunately, the people we deal with confirm that this myth really exists in the West.
“It is a ticklish historical question which is not easy to answer within this interview. Firstly, Ukraine is predominantly a Christian, Orthodox, country. All Christian countries have this cultural code. One of those who say so is Yehuda Bauer, a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Anti-Semitism is a cultural code of Christian civilization. We know about crusades accompanied by mass-scale Jewish pogroms in Europe. We also know about Bohdan Khmelnytsky’s uprising and Koliivshchina which were aimed against Polish enslavement but also resulted in a heavy toll of Jewish lives. It is the effect of this cultural (or counter-cultural?) code. During the Civil War, the Petliura government failed to take control of the situation, and roving bands were also killing Jews. All this tended to perpetuate the stereotype of anti-Semitic Ukrainians. The books about these pogroms were translated into other languages and traveled around Europe. I will remind you that a French court acquitted the killer of Petliura – the jury alleged that he had done so in revenge for the death of his relatives during Petliura’s rule.
“In the course of history, society has been trying to work with itself. Culture is a multilayered ‘varnish coating’ that neutralizes codes and instincts, driving them into collective unconsciousness. We can see that this ‘varnish coating’ has been partially ripped off in Western Europe. The economic crisis, a threat from the East, and flows of refugees have resulted in, among other things, the awakening of European anti-Semitism. The latter had not vanished – it was just hidden behind culture, behind reflections on the Holocaust. Today, there are far more anti-Semitic incidents in Western than in Eastern Europe. What we have is grassroots anti-Semitism. Naturally, there is no state-supported anti-Semitism in Ukraine. In comparison with other European countries, there are very few anti-Semitic incidents in Ukraine, although it is one of the largest on the continent. Last year we recorded 24 incidents of this kind, while there were 221 of them in the Czech Republic and about 1,400 in Germany. I concede that some of these incidents are provocations of the pro-Russian forces which want to show that there is anti-Semitism in Ukraine. At the same time, the governments of European countries combat this phenomenon, whereas ours does not pay proper attention to it.
“Sociological surveys show that Ukrainian citizens are taking a better attitude to Jews today than they did three years ago. A lot of parliament members have Jewish roots, although not only Jews voted for them. In 2013-14, Yanukovych’s propagandists and the Russians claimed that, on the one hand, the Maidan was fascism and, on the other, it was a Jewish project. They hoped this propaganda would influence various strata of the population. Its influence was also noticeable in the West. We visited a number of countries to issue denials. We recorded ‘one and a half’ anti-Semitic incidents in the three months of the Maidan. The far right wielded no clout in the country’s political life at the time, nor do they wield it today. Somebody would like to demonstrate that they are the mainstream in Ukraine, but our analysts debunk this myth. And the world gradually begins to understand this, for it can see that Russian propaganda is finding no confirmations in real life.”
“‘UKRAINIAN COLLABORATIONISTS’ SAVED MY MOTHER FROM BEING SHOT BY GERMANS”
There are some stereotypes that have been perpetuated for centuries. In the Russian Empire, Ukrainians and Jews rivaled for a place near the imperial throne. Historical conflicts were also manifestations of this rivalry. But we’ve been living in a different country for 25 years. The majority of Ukrainians have embraced a changed pattern of the future. It is the pattern of an independent European country. There is state-sponsored anti-Semitism in Europe. It exists in the radical part of the Islamic diaspora (for the entire Islam is not anti-Semitic!). Besides, it is a vogue among left-wing intellectuals to exaggerate human rights violations in the Middle East, which indirectly results in the proliferation of anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic views (for me, an anti-Israeli and an anti-Semitic attitude is the same). These phenomena do not exist in Eastern Europe.
“Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin was born and raised in the 20th century. He matured at a time when there were certain stereotypes about Ukrainians. He should have taken a critical look at what his speechwriters, who are also under the influence of stereotypes, had written. For the Knesset has never passed any resolutions on this issue. No court has ever condemned the OUN or the UPA the way the Nuremberg Tribunal condemned the Nazi party or SS. What did the president of Israel rely upon then? The president of a country must be civil.
“In December past year I heard the speech of President Poroshenko at the Knesset, in which he apologized for the participation of some local residents in Ukraine in the Holocaust. Kravchuk has also done so. What else is a state leader supposed to do? But just imagine Poroshenko coming to Israel and saying in Rivlin’s style that Jews have behaved in different ways in Ukraine – some of them enriched Ukrainian culture and others killed Ukrainians. What attitude would Israel take to this? I can imagine what scandal this would cause! Rivlin’s speech in Ukraine did not cause a scandal because Ukrainians are moderate people. Parliament did not react to this even the way it reacted, for example, to the latest Polish initiative.
“Every nation must sooner or later become aware of its role in history, including the negative aspects of this history. There is no such thing as collective guilt or collective responsibility. But representatives of our nations sometimes resisted the national liberation or social struggle of other nations. This must be remembered. Today, we are standing face to face and swinging the lists of accusations, but we do not see that it is a deadlock on the way to mutual understanding and reconciliation. We must break this vicious circle and look at ourselves. Maybe, this awareness and the ensuing catharsis will result in repentance. This is a now forgotten category. Everybody must go through the process of repentance.
“One of my uncles was a Cheka man, a butcher. The other uncle was shot by Cheka people – he was a victim. What should I think of this? ‘Ukrainian collaborationists’ saved my mother from being shot by Germans. Every destiny is individual. A crime is always concrete – it is a juridical, rather than historical, notion. Of course, historians should do their work properly, not to mention politicians and journalists who are unable to find their way in these uncleaned Aegean stables and often hinder development instead of promoting it.”
“ISRAEL SHOULD RECOGNIZE THE HOLODOMOR AS A UNIVERSAL TRAGEDY”
Asked about the Holocaust in an interview, you emphasized that one must not agonize over a tragedy inside oneself – one should consider other peoples’ tragedies as being of the same value, for they are such from the moral angle irrespective of the number of victims. Why do you think Israel has not yet officially recognized the Holodomor as genocide?
“I am not an Israeli citizen. I am a Jewish citizen of Ukraine and recognize the Holodomor as genocide of Ukrainians. I know that many Jews in both Ukraine and Israel share my point of view. But the State of Israel is an altogether different topic. Israel is forced to constantly fight for survival. They always take a very cautious attitude to the issues that run counter to Russian interests. Secondly, there is an important psychological point. Israel and the Jewish Diaspora insist that the Holocaust is a unique phenomenon. The Holocaust is really a terrible and extremely enormous manifestation of xenophobia and genocide, but, as I said above, it is not the first in history.
“Israel is ‘ripening’ gradually. We can see this on the example of the Armenian genocide which has not yet been recognized either, but Israel is on the way to this. I think every country must follow its path. Ukraine should understand that the Holocaust was the tragedy of not only Ukrainian Jews, but also of the entire Ukraine, while Israel should recognize the Holodomor as a universal tragedy. These processes are interconnected. If Ukraine follows this path, Europe will also recognize the Holodomor as its tragedy, as it mostly recognizes the Holocaust this way today. These processes unfold irrespective of the awareness of many people and the will of political figures. For example, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia have not yet followed their path with respect to the Holocaust – a wide-scale discourse is being unfurled there about recognizing it as their tragedy. It is also part of the development of identity. As Ukraine is a huge country with considerable inertia, all this is going on more difficultly here.”
You deal with such thing as tolerance – you organize seminars and children’s camps… As is known, the modern concept of tolerance emerged, to a large extent, as response to the awful challenges Europe faced in the 20th century, such as totalitarianism, genocides, discrimination, etc. Some people think that tolerance is sort of a substitute for and secular analogue to the Christian concept of love that used to form the basis of Europe’s moral matrix. At the same time, in my opinion, the concept of tolerance also has weak sides. Tolerance is neutral from the angle of positive values – it is aimed, above all, at rejecting hatred, but is does not envision the formation of certain common good around which people with different identities could rally. This distinguishes it from Christian love. Secondly, it turns out that the discourse of tolerance attaches too much importance to legal aspects. We can see that campaigns to protect various discriminated groups (no matter if they are ethnic, sexual, or other) usually appeal to the government and parliament, demanding certain changes in standard-setting documents. At the same time, these activists not always aspire and even are not prepared at all for a direct dialog with society which often cannot accept what they suggest. Do you agree that the concept of tolerance is problematic and what approaches do you think it needs?
“As for our organization, we work mainly with society, particularly children. Secondly, I have never maintained that tolerance must not have limits. The enemy deserves to be hated. You defend your country, your relatives, and all that is important to you. We cannot tolerate someone else’s intolerance. But you should be a priori tolerant towards a different culture. Tolerance is not just the ability to tolerate. Tolerance means a positive perception of and readiness to accept a different culture. It helps develop positive attitudes to the different in human psyche. Bur hostility towards us is a case of intolerance, and we must not tolerate it. Instead, we must be prepared to give an adequate response to it by all the possible – ideological, media-related, propagandistic, and military – means. We cannot be tolerant towards the war Russia unleashed against Ukraine. It is erroneous to assume that tolerance has no bounds. Our projects are designed for a broad, albeit somewhat limited, interpretation of tolerance.
“At the same time, we try to avoid abstractness and take into account the current reality. For example, Ukraine received some refugees from Africa and the East a few years ago. We invite their children to our camps. We try to explain to Ukrainian children who these outcasts, which had to abandon everything and flee from their fatherland, are. But nobody demands that the crimes some non-Ukrainians commit in Ukraine be tolerated.
“Tolerance education methods are the humanitarian experience we export to other countries, such as Belarus and Moldova. Our teams carry out similar projects in the Caucasus, and we held recently a seminar in Kyrgyzstan. Unfortunately, the state does not pay enough attention to this.
“We invite the displaced families from the Donbas and Crimea to our camps so they can learn about the way Ukrainian civil society is developing. It is, to a large extent, civil society, not the state, that helps these people to adapt and shows them a true, tolerant, Ukraine. They were brought up in other conditions and often have different views. In some cases, they are not yet fully aware of their own identity. We are trying to show them positive moments in Ukrainian life.
“Isn’t it a positive aim to perceive a different culture as a positive phenomenon and other people as morally equal to you?”
