Identity crisis,

Not so long ago, last year in fact, the Verkhovna Rada adopted a resolution on celebrating the 90th anniversary of establishing the Lenin Young Communist League of Ukraine. From the very beginning the resolution looked a bit odd. First, there is a presidential resolution regarding jubilees: the 25th, 50th, 75th and 100th anniversaries are considered proper celebrations. That is the 90th anniversary is not quite a jubilee. Second, even in the Soviet times such activities were not observed. No one seriously believed that there was the Communist Party of Ukraine or its Komsomol. Nor did anyone suppose there was some sovereign “our Soviet Ukraine.” There was only the USSR and, consequently, all-Union structures. An emphasis on some Ukrainian dates or historical facts was not welcome. Even if these dates or facts concerned the Soviet history.

At present, as we see, the situation has changed. One can observe conscious or unconscious elevation and hunting for Soviet symbolic events of “Ukrainian variety.” They offer celebrating the jubilee of Volodymyr Shcherbytsky, or different events connected with the “Great Patriotic War,” or something else Soviet. Celebrating the 90th anniversary of the Lenin Young Communist League of Ukraine fits this tendency well.

Honestly, I was even a bit surprised how widely this Komsomol jubilee was celebrated. Of course, western Ukraine, which until 1939 was not under the Soviets, and then in an “accelerated” way tasted all forms of Sovietization, mainly ignored this jubilee. One cannot say the same about the rest of Ukrainian regions. For example, I happened to read a luxuriously booklet (printed on coated paper, with color photos) telling about the celebration of this “memorable date” in the Slavuta raion of the Khmelnytsky oblast. It turns out one can find money for an “expensive treat” like this. I was especially impressed by one photo of a modern capitalist (one can say — a local oligarch), an owner of a profitable enterprise, giving Budenny caps (!) sewn for his workers to “veterans of the Komsomol movement.” This is like a theater of the absurd: a bourgeois (in the past a Komsomol activist, that is an irreconcilable opponent of the bourgeois order) honors former (or perhaps current) opponents of the capitalist system.

However, this absurd (and, actually, not only this) has become normality. We are not surprised that former party and Komsomol leaders became “successful businessmen” and “high-performers” of the initial capital accumulation. These businessmen, who even pretend to be “young reformers,” support and finance different projects honoring the Soviet past and Soviet “memorial places”: museums, monuments and so on. For example, until now in Shepetivka there is a huge museum of Mykola Ostrovsky, where visitors listen to tales about how this “Komsomol hero” heroically struggled during the Civil War and performed other “exploits.” Though there is no trustworthy evidence about these “heroic exploits.” The myth about Mykola Ostrovsky is one of the most colossal and most cynical myths of the Stalin’s propaganda. However, one finds funds, including state grants, to support this museum, and for other, similar museums. For example, in Dnipropetrovsk, in one of the most considerable “cradles” of modern Ukrainian capitalism, there is a functioning museum of the Komsomol history, which initiated collecting money for building a monument to Komsomol activists. Local businessmen were generous. Certainly, the monument to Komsomol activists in Dnipropetrovsk is not the monument to the “great” Joseph Stalin, which recently appeared in Zaporizhia, and which was financed, of course, by others than “ordinary workers.” However, if one thinks about it, on a large scale these are phenomena of the same character.

How can one interpret the love of the current Ukrainian bourgeoisie for the Soviet past? Of course, one can explain it by nostalgia for one’s youth. That is one remembers one’s youth with a cheerful elevation — one was full of vigor, energy, and viewed the world optimistically back then. And the youth of most of our businessmen was the Komsomol youth. Obviously, longing for one’s youth emerged in this specific way in the preamble to the abovementioned resolution of the Verkhovna Rada “On Celebrating the 90th Anniversary of Establishing the Komsomol of Ukraine.” There we can read the inspired words, saying that the Komsomol of Ukraine “became a unique school of bravery, ideology and moral training, education based on the best fighting and labor traditions of our people, for dozens millions of our compatriots, where a pleiad of statesmen, politicians, scholars, specialists in all fields, and also activists of art and culture, masters of sports, and servicemen were formed. The history of the Komsomol movement is marked by eternal feats of those who built their native country, defended it from the fascist aggressors during the Great Patriotic War, restored from ruins cities and villages, plants and factories, collective farms, hospitals, theaters, houses of culture, who assisted in overcoming illiteracy, raised domestic science to world heights, made a considerable contribution to the development of the level of life, devotion to Motherland, readiness to defend its independence, human and citizen’s rights and freedoms, and high moral qualities.” It is even difficult to say which aspect prevails — the wish to pass the desirable for reality, an explosive mixture of truth and lies, cynicism or complacency and self-praise. As they say, a little bit of everything.

However, the appeal to the Soviet nature of our Ukrainian businessmen is not only and not so much “longing for youth.” Unfortunately, there are much more serious things behind it. In this one can see, on the one hand, the identity crisis, and on the other hand — the search for this identity. On a large scale, for the majority of today’s Ukrainian capitalists relying on the Ukrainian symbolic world is something extraneous, unnatural. Actually, it should be so. Since these people passed the school of Soviet, nationless education. For them Ukraine and everything Ukrainian is a kind of fable of “nationally anxious patriots.” For them the Soviet (in fact, imperial-Russian) symbolic world is more understandable and tangible. Hence the conscious or unconscious support of this world, as we see it on different levels.

Though, on the other hand, these businessmen (in fact, they are the authorities as well) must take into account the fact that they live in “some” Ukrainian state. Another question is how seriously they take this state. This need to take the factor of the Ukrainian statehood into consideration makes them try to at least partially Ukrainize the Soviet symbolic world, which they admire so much. However, there is a question to what extent this “Ukrainization” is natural. Isn’t it a sham?

At present, one can hear more often that the Ukrainian history taught at schools is too nationalistic. One should make it more “objective,” so that heroes of the national movement are not on par to Soviet heroes. After all, the Soviet history is also “our history.” In fact, we really do have such an eclectic history. The author of this article in spring this year managed to survey senior high school students from different regions of Ukraine concerning the issues of historical memory (events and heroes). So, though Ukrainian symbols somewhat dominated in their consciousness, however, a considerable segment of Soviet symbols is also present. It is clear that all these conversations about the necessity to make our history “objective” signify an attempt to Sovietize it.

Let us call things by their proper names. Since independence we never established Ukrainian cultural hegemony in our country; actually, we never created our own powerful Ukrainian symbolic world and information space. I’ll try to explain what the theory of “cultural hegemony” is. It was suggested by a Marxist (exactly a Marxist!) Antonio Gramsci, although from the viewpoint of official orthodox Marxism the given theory looks somewhat heretical.

No wonder this theory was openly used not so much by Marxists as by Western “bourgeois” theoreticians. Though unofficially “real” Marxists, particularly, Bolsheviks, who staked a lot on propaganda, applied it in practice. The essence of this theory lies in the idea that social and political changes are caused by the symbolic world and culture. Those who manage to assert their symbolic world, impose their ideas about the environment, become the “master of thoughts,” they will get and keep the political power. Gramsci tried to apply his theory to class relations. However, it functioned in international relations quite good as well. No wonder the current Russian government in different ways (ideological, information, or cultural) tries to establish the “Russian world,” even the Russian worldview and outlook, on the post-Soviet territory and beyond. For this any means are good — Russian books, Russian pop-music, different series and even the “canonic” church.

Unfortunately, Ukrainian state officials and businessmen poorly realize such things — unlike our “foes.” Actually, they do not understand that a full-fledged Ukrainian symbolic world and Ukrainian “cultural hegemony” on our own territory should be one of the foundations for the existence of the Ukrainian state. Building this world based on Soviet symbols and stereotypes means building it on sand. Or maybe someone does it on purpose?