“This is a struggle for the minds of the citizens”

Today student of Lviv University Kateryna Sadlovska and producer of the TV channel Espreso TV Leonid Kniazhytsky share their impressions and opinions about the new books published by Den/The Day. Kateryna is a graduate of Den’s Summer School of Journalism, where she had an opportunity to listen to the lectures of the many-year fighter against Kuchma regime, Oleksandr Yeliashkevych. She calls Gongadze-Podolsky case an indicator for the Ukrainian society. Leonid read the book I, an Eyewitness on the road, after which he went to sleep and saw a dream. He says: “In the book the author gives an exhaustive characteristic of the consequences of indifference and war.” Below you can read the reviews of our readers.

IMPRESSIONS

Kateryna SADLOVSKA, Lviv-based Ivan Franko National University:

“I have been told by a historian that learning history by dates doesn’t give anything except for the consequence and figures you easily forget. The best approach to learning it is the understanding of the cause and effects of the process and the connections between the events, for which you need to put some intellectual efforts. This became a kind of a discovery for me. The second discovery was the publicist trilogy of the newspaper Den, ‘Contemporary History for Dummies.’

“As I was rereading the first book from this collection, ‘The Trap,’ or A Case without a Statute of Limitations, I got convinced how wise the historian’s words were. It took me an evening and a part of a night to read the book for the first time. This book was a kind of a puzzle for me, owing to which I shaped a certain view on modern history. Every interview from the book became for me a continuation of the previous one. I think it’s a good style for a journalist who selected the materials by the topic (not only from the newspaper Den). On the other hand, my interest was fuelled by our last year’s meeting with Oleksandr Yeliashkevych, the oppositionist of Kuchma’s regime, which took place as part of Den’s Summer School of Journalism and the preface to the book from its compiler Ivan Kapsamun, who admitted, ‘I saw a lot of injustice around. So, I understood as early as then that a grisly murder like this was not the first or the last in a society where, unfortunately, killings, violence, banditry, corruption, and amorality are a common occurrence.’

“Even earlier the story of Georgy Gongadze had given me an impetus to enter the journalism department, because for me this name became a symbol of human self-sacrifice and civil faithfulness. To the people, to the state, to journalism. It was terrifying that everyone knew everything, but in spite of that people have kept silent for many years. I didn’t understand why Gongadze’s brainchild Ukrainska Pravda wasn’t taking an active stand in the process and why the people were indifferent. In a complex this would have led to oblivion, wiping of the recent memory, and turning amoral things into a norm.

“Today our shortsightedness helps to bring people who play according to their own rules, where other people’s lives and the state’s reputation do not matter, back into the policy. The compiler of the book ‘The Trap’ Ivan Kapsamun, who has been in charge of the Gongadze-Podolsky case topic for the past seven years, notes rightly that actually nothing has changed, because Kuchma’s hand is still present in Ukrainian politics. Ukraine gathered for the first Maidan against Kuchma, later Yanukovych came to power (again, thanks to Kuchma) and was turned out by the second Maidan. But Kuchma is still Ukraine’s representative in Minsk negotiations and is a member of the Constitutional Commission.

“It is hard to disagree with the words of Serhii Odarych that ‘Regimes emerge because of our indifference. By electing the power, the entire nation gives these people an opportunity to abuse it, and often people choose indecent candidates. When we speak about two Maidans, people describe this as a manifestation of the civil society. I think it’s vice versa. If there were a civil society in Ukraine, these Maidans would have never happened.’ Therefore we should understand that every day is a mini-Maidan, where you need to show your best features of a citizen, and the power, no matter how strong it is, belongs to the people.

“So it will be fair to note that the Gongadze-Podolsky case is not a usual story, where journalist X and president Y are the main characters, but in fact it is a case without a statute of limitations, where the number of the key persons is considerably higher. And owing to this book we hear again about the sensational cases which took place during Kuchma’s presidency: the disappearance of the journalist Georgy Gongadze, public person Mykhailo Boichyshyn, the murders of MPs Yevhen Shcherban and Vadym Hetman, the assaults on MPs Vasyl Khara, Oleksandr Yeliashkevych, and journalist Oleksii Podolsky. Maybe there would have been more names on the list, if they had been well known.

Photo by Mykola TYMCHENKO, The Day

“However, summing up everything that I had read, I understand that namely the Gongadze-Podolsky case is an indicator revealing again the flaws of our society, which was defined in an interview by Judge Yurii Vasylenko, the first person who in 2002 launched a criminal case against the then incumbent president of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma: ‘You should get rid of the slave psychology, the psychology of constant terror. People must defend their co-citizens without fear. Yes, we are all stopped by poverty, because everyone thinks that if they oppose the power, I will lose my job and bonuses tomorrow. But we need to understand, by protecting others we are protecting ourselves.’

“The Gongadze-Podolsky case became an indicator for Ukrainian journalism too. Concerning the present state of Ukrainian journalism Larysa Ivshyna noted in an interview to Telekrytyka: ‘Yet we must create conditions for the emergence of influential columnists and politicians who would be trusted. We desperately need them. They will emerge from a bona fide competition. They will not be products of political expediency.’

“Fortunately, Den hasn’t left this case and every day makes its various aspects actual by publishing materials rich in content and reminds us again that the guilty parties must be punished, if we analyze how the Kuchma system has influenced our history and the situation where we have found ourselves today. The book ‘The Trap’ without doubt has added its share to the struggle in the minds of people.”

Leonid KNIAZHYTSKY, producer of TV Channel “Espreso TV”:

“I started to read Valentyn Torba’s book I, an Eyewitness. Notes from the Occupied Luhansk on my way from Kyiv to Kryvorivnia village, Ivano-Frankivsk oblast. The road was long and exhausting.

“After I reached the village, I immediately went to sleep. I had a dream based on my impressions from the book.

“I had a dream about getting into occupied Luhansk as a different person. The architecture seemed quite apocalyptic (but, in one of our conversations with Valentyn Torba he said he had similar impressions even before the war).

“I went to the church. It had a sharp gothic shape. It was high and dark. I was looking for an important icon. It was in the attic of the church, hanging on the linen threads, woven as web, which stretched for the entire attic. In the center of this handmade web an icon with the image of Godmother hung. It hung humbly in the center of the ornament as if it were imprisoned.

“After I woke up, I started to leaf through the book I, an Eyewitness. I understood that the scene with the icon resembles very much one of the hundreds of episodes of Luhansk occupation described by the author.

“Before starting to read this book, I had imagined that it is a report novel about all the horrors of the Russian occupation and propaganda, which the author Valentyn Torba witnessed in Luhansk. That is what its title says.

“But this book is just a chronicle of the occupation and the beginning of the war. Valentyn Torba testifies to the pain and delayed-action bomb, which were the prerequisites of the explosion of the war with the aggressor, as well as the game of invisible traps Ukraine had to lead with Russia during the Minsk accords in the attempts to finish this war. In a professional reporter’s style, with all small, but essential details, as well as reference and archival materials, the logical consistent connection with all the aspects, which made Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts vulnerable to the Kremlin plague, are revealed.

“These are the bandit clans of Luhansk in the 1990s, which were part of the Ukrainian politics of Kuchma period. These are the law-enforcement bodies, rotten with corruption.

“This is the mental background of the deceived and impoverished proletarian of Donbas, whose political views were base on the identification of the party colors of the ‘feeding hand,’ in the person of local pro-Kremlin ‘feudal lords’ like Oleksandr Yefremov.

“These are political ‘Gastarbeiter’ and an excuse for creative intellectuals, whose values could be measured by honoraria paid to them by the clients from the surrounding of the ‘feudal lords,’ freeloading on this mental background.

“As well as open rascals and asocial elements, which became, together with the contractors from different regions of Russia, one of the strongholds of the occupation power in Luhansk and Donetsk after the Russian aggressor invaded it.

“Not only Valentyn Torba’s words about injustice and suffering where he writes about the crimes committed by the occupants and their adepts make you feel terrified, but also the understanding that this pain is a result of political shortsightedness and indifference of nearly all generations of Ukrainians. Indifference which became a mine detonator in the hands of the enemy. It still remains a question, how to get rid of this indifference, and the book I, an Eyewitness gives an impetus for us to look for the answers to this question. Valentyn Torba in his publicist work gives an exhaustive characteristic of the consequences of indifference and war. This, in particular, gives a better understanding of the essence of the political game led with the enemy in the way of the Minsk Agreements. This book about the understanding of the essence of present-day tragedies must be recommended not only to journalists, but also those who care about the future of our country.”