Is Development Not

III

Self-organization, rather than organization resulting from coercion or propaganda, is the right model for any community. The countryside is a self-sufficient formation, whose self- organization occurred and now rests on a political-cultural system of unwritten laws. The latter, in turn, keep this community balanced and conservative.

1. Absolute legal ignorance, even rejection of the law. The main thing is what people will say. Relationships and problems are dealt with in the traditional way: quarrels, gossip, giving and taking offense, and less often fisticuffs. And almost never is anything brought to a court of law, because calling the law will be condemned by the entire community, for this means having relations with the authorities.

2. Traditionally negative attitude toward the state as a machine that takes things away from you, things that you have earned by the sweat of your brow. Also, traditional tolerance for any type of the political system as a necessary evil which is simultaneously a mechanism required to maintain law and order.

3. Order, as understood by the peasantry, means protection from theft. Joint property is commonly regarded as something nobody owns, meaning that whoever can get it first becomes its rightful owner. Some even steal fruit and vegetables from fellow villagers’ plots. However, these characters are treated condescendingly, like local drunks. Village children traditionally raid neighbors’ gardens, even though they have plenty of fruit and vegetables of their own. The newly appeared farmers broke the tradition; now they call the militia and bring the case to court.

4. Being traditionally wary of the authorities is combined with trying to curry favor with them. Rubbing shoulders with those in high offices means access to privileges and well- being, in contrast with the peasant’s well-being that has to be earned the hard way. Moreover, being on a first- name basis with those in power inflates oneself in other peoples’ eyes.

5. There is little love between the countryside and the city. People in the village treat Kyiv the way Kyiv used to treat Moscow [under the Soviets]. They enjoy poking fun at Kyiv residents, regarding them as all-thumbs, so gypping them is a matter of honor.

6. Receiving an education is considered important only as an opportunity to get a good job. The countryside lifestyle makes education really unimportant, yet practically every peasant knows his arithmetic well. They care little for professors, doctors, or scientists if they hold no posts that can be of any use to the peasantry. One’s job or rank is held in greater esteem than one’s personal qualities; it is regarded as a value in itself. No one will challenge whether a person holding an important post actually deserves it. He was lucky to get it.

7. Superstition is so deep-rooted and Christian beliefs so superficial that one is tempted to talk about pagan rather than Orthodox rites. Few have the Bible or know anything in or about it. Laymen learned in the Word are treated suspiciously; they could be Stundists [adherents of Stundism, an evangelical movement in Ukraine], after all. They seldom go to church and few take Communion or go to confession. Holidays are regarded as compulsory days off in the field, an opportunity to rest or go about a multitude of household chores (out of neighbors’ sight). There is no profound knowledge of God, meaning that there is no firm religion.

8. They distrust new things, which they do not know or cannot understand. They distrust newcomers; there is a clear line between the locals and outsiders. Older people are automatically considered wiser. Even when utterly ignorant, they consider themselves wise, because they know how to plow, can foretell changes in the weather, and know other useful things.

9. The family in the rural community is perfectly autonomous (independent, self-organized, and self-sufficient), having secured this status by the ownership of a plot. In other words, these people can survive unaided as a family or clan. This is a way to safeguard one’s life in general and protect oneself from the rest of the community in particular, washing one’s dirty linen at home. This lifestyle relies on nepotism and covering up for each other. All problems are solved and decisions made through personal contacts.

Here one can always ask for help and almost always count on it. Others will put off whatever they might be doing at the time and come and work for one, sparing neither time nor energy. However, every such request implies reciprocity. They will not expect to be paid (at least they never did), but will, of course, expect a festive table with plenty of food and vodka. Liquor remains the most popular type of remuneration, just as decades and centuries ago.

10. The almost proverbial Ukrainian slyness rules out straightforwardness or sincerity in relations with others, fostering duplicity and hypocrisy. However, it was born not of what is alleged as the “innate Ukrainian depravity,” but from the living conditions as a way to survive. As those conditions changed, the habit remained, becoming so firmly imbedded that it has made the peasantry suffer. The most popular epithets used with regard to each other are sly and mean. The safest way to communicate/coexist is never to say anything bad or good about anyone else.

11. Friendship in the truest sense of the word is nonexistent. There is hidden animosity between families, with outward tolerance, serving as a substitute for competition that requires ability, initiative, education, and responsibility (self-development) — things that simply do not work at the level of the rural community and are even punishable. In contrast, at the family level these things are perfectly acceptable, even necessary, serving the family’s good.

12. Phenomenal evolution of the instinct for adapting, based on the key instinct of self-preservation, as well as on self-sufficiency and self-organization to secure elementary subsistence (survival), but not development. Consumer demand is extremely low, caused by limited buying power and the meager assortment of consumer goods resulting from the specifics of the rural lifestyle. Yet the mentality is utterly consumerist, with the unsatisfied demand traditionally begetting pathological envy of all other better-off consumers. It should be stressed that such unsatisfied demand was one of the reasons for the USSR’s collapse, when staggering sums were spent to sustain communist parties in various parts of the world, to the detriment of Soviet citizens. Cultural wants are something belonging to one’s inner world, very personal, largely not requiring any outward amenities to be satisfied. Thus no such problem emerged in mass consciousness with its low spiritual needs. Rather, it was a problem of the elite mentality. The market economy is aimed at supplying precisely these consumer needs, providing conditions for unlimited consumption, spurring the desire to consume. A society with a market economy is called a consumer society.

However, for our peasantry food is the main thing. The way a family can lay a table is the criterion of its well-being, industriousness, and manual skills, rather than the personal qualities of the spouses.

13. Oxlike industriousness is caused by the determination to survive and is aimed at survival. They work like slaves, from early morning to late evening, year in and year out, following the same schedule leaving neither time nor strength for anything else. Their thirst for the fruit of such backbreaking labor has long killed all the other aspirations like living a full life or cultural advancement.

This industriousness ought to inspire pity and sympathy, rather than admiration. It exhausts man, making him an appendix of the land, a voluntary slave. A peasant’s home is secondary to his plot; this home may be ill-kept, but the land cannot. Never! Otherwise the tiller will be condemned as immoral. Yet there are enough lazybones and drunks in every village.

14. Inequality between men and women (mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law) is confirmed even by the form of address; men are addressed using the first name and patronymic, while only the woman’s first name is used, more often than not in the trivially diminutive form. The morally best wife is an obedient one, doing her household chores well (that is, kitchen, barn, and bed). If there is equality, it is manifested in toiling in the fields with the man. Women in the countryside are very much down to earth. Yet this earthiness is made up for by the woman’s right to serve as a standard of morality and a key medium with all the attendant consequences. In a word, women in the countryside keep the grapevine active, and the men remain masters doing serious business.

All the above specifics of our mentality are components of mass consciousness and stereotypes of conduct.

POSTSCRIPT

Dr. Holovakha notes that there has been regression during the ten years of Ukraine’s independence from democracy and the market economy and to the jungle of mass consciousness.

Indeed, most people consider that discarding the idea of free enterprise and private initiative would be disastrous for this country. Yet the general attitude toward privatization as the key vehicle developing free enterprise has noticeably worsened. But still, it is true that there are many people in Ukraine wishing to become private owners, especially in terms of small business.

The Ukrainians have always been owners of the land (rather than periodically repartitioned plots as in Russia), and they have worked for themselves, among other things, thus securing a degree of independence. Once again, the specifics of mass consciousness in this country have been formed based on its provincial village lifestyle.

Suppose we make another attempt to penetrate that jungle of mass consciousness and single out the following principal aspects:

1. After gaining independence, the Ukrainian state grown to the point where it has turned into an independent political player that does not society as another independent player. In other words, this state machine does not need any participation by the people (except for elections).

This situation fully coincides with the Ukrainian people’s aspirations. Now they have their own nation-state (on the basis of us/them) and are proud about it. They agree in advance to the official point of view with regard to absolutely everything (they identify the state with the President). And hence there is no need for the people to take part in the process (especially considering our political apathy and determination to mind our own business); no need to address the problem of citizenship and building a civil society. All they want from the state is to keep order and look out for them.

2. Our elite never has come up with any uniting ideas, and what I am inclined to describe as the energy of disintegration is all but exhausted, so any either/or extremist calls find little response from the masses. Nor did the elite put forth a single evolutionary idea; it was too busy enjoying its right to forbid (how sweet dictatorship!), subconsciously aware that any evolutionary ideas would be conflict with things labeled traditionally national. There is no such controversy in Russia, for its imperial mentality is at play; Russia can reach grandeur as a result of qualitative changes, meaning evolution. Here lies the only real link between the elite and the common folk. A great power (not just their country) is the highest value for Russians, which is explained by the vastness of its territory.

3. For Ukrainians, the greatest value is their independent existence, an opportunity to set their own course. Ukrainians’ notorious individualism (I am the naval of the world) is an explosive mix of conformism (appeasement, adjustment to the powers that be), hatred of the regime as being over and above the people, yet craving power for oneself, being self-centered, also self-identification, rather than civic belonging (meaning nonparticipation), identifying the notions of state, society, country, and fatherland, perceiving things different as things the same.

In other words, a Ukrainian will not resist but will try to adapt himself to the situation (hence our emphasis on small business), relying on the survival model, rather than that of effective adaptation due to evolution, which requires the skill of conscious involvement.

4. People avoid interrelationships not only with official institutions but also with volunteer organizations. This is largely caused by the legal nihilism formed in the countryside and traditional legal nihilism displayed by the regime; officeholders openly disregard the laws and constitutional norms, more often than not relying on their powers of office (arbitrariness). In other words, there is a large gap between the norm and the fact; we hear one thing and see something altogether different. However, observance of the law (equality before the law) serves primarily to prevent discord and secondarily maintains security and order.

5. The factors and circumstances mentioned have resulted in Ukrainians being unaware of the notions of human rights and freedom of expression, just as they do not realize the importance of defending their rights and implementing them. This is why the pay arrears due almost half the population are not seen as a violation of human rights. Or as a gross transgression (the state has no money!). There is traditionally no linkage between work and pecuniary remuneration (in the countryside). Physicians, teachers, and government clerks are paid not for their work, but for their rank.

Conformity, toleration of the regime, and patience ensuing from years of struggle to survive must by any and all means be compensated by something precisely the opposite: a person has to find a way to let off steam, lest he break down morally or even mentally. This “relaxation of personal tension” is invariably aimed against one’s fellows; one vents one’s frustration by humiliating somebody else, violating that person’s rights. Our notorious mutual unfriendliness is the outcome of our reciprocal dissatisfaction and demoralization.

6. Ukrainians are geared to perceive the outer (image rather than authority; caring about what people will say, rather than any sense of honor), not the inner. So they tend to reveal themselves mainly outwardly. Hence the high level of control over one’s conduct and — as a way to let off steam — our low emotional level, our desire “just to talk,” our penchant for pie-in-the-sky, and, as a consequence, our social lack of discrimination and loss of the critical judgment that normally makes it possible to distinguish between priorities and secondary issues, between what has substance and what simply looks good. The richness and vividness of our emotions are weighed down by our rudeness, superficiality, and earthiness. Yet the latter was what formed and tempered our ability to endure emotional stress for quite some time.

The high level of self-control explains our traits such as caution and cowardice, resolution and being demonstrative. However, the flexibility of our conduct (adaptability) is not complemented with flexibility of thinking. The masses think in rigid and backward categories.

Our conviction that we are unable to influence the government machine in any way, our inner mutual unfriendliness with outward tolerance have broken the chain of feeling, word, and deed. In other words, we think one thing, say another, and feel, say, and do a third (duplicity). Also, we easily push the sense of guilt out of our minds (they are to blame, not me; they all owe me something), shift the blame to others (not me!). We are uncritical of ourselves and venomous toward others.

All these special features make us worlds apart from Europeans, obstructing our relationships with the surrounding world (integration vacuum), resulting in the mutual misunderstanding of our business elite (feeling-word-deed) and that of the West. They rule out radicalism as well as radical change in society and the state, the creation of a civil society and democratic polity. They make the evolutionary idea an abstraction against the background of expected prosperity, which is supposed to be bestowed on us by others (the US and Europe). Evolution and stability can be combined only in Ukraine (let us hope things will get no worse, for we know they will never get any better).

But, still, “everything is not all that bad in our house” (title of a television program on the government’s UT-1 channel — Ed.). The main thing is to have something to compare them with.