Will the nerve of statehood curb the “swashbuckling liberators”?

History teaches nothing to those who do not want to learn. This maxim is very symptomatic for Ukrainian politicians, for, otherwise, why are they repeating, perhaps involuntarily, some extremely dangerous slogans? During the latest Freedom of Speech TV talk show, the Civil Position leader, Anatolii Hrytsenko, said in a debate with the host Andrii Kulykov that he was not concerned about the price at which Ukrainian oligarchs will be buying gas. “It is their private problem. I object to the state building a liquefied gas terminal at its own cost under the aegis of Kaskiv’s national agency. The populace does not need this terminal, as far as public utility charges are concerned. We have enough gas of our own. If they [oligarchs. – Ed.] need it, let them buy it for their own money,” he pointed out. It seems to The Day, which has the habit of drawing historical parallels, that these words are rather symptomatic.

A century ago, when the question was whether an independent Ukrainian state could exist, our society also split, so to speak, along class lines. Peasants and factory workers dissociated themselves from the “bourgeois intelligentsia.” But this resulted in a national tragedy that lasted for almost a century. The intelligentsia, which failed to timely find an approach to the peasantry and the working class and enlist their support, lost the long-awaited chance of statehood and was physically destroyed later, while peasants in turn fell into communist slavery for decades and never gained the coveted social justice. Needless to say, it is the Bolsheviks who most of all manipulated the slogans of fighting class inequality. But when they came to power, they established a social hierarchy no less rigid than the one in the tsarist era. The difference is that, while in imperial Russia the nobility were usually well-educated people, in a no less imperial USSR the top strata of society consisted of far from the best of its representatives, the results of which we still cannot overcome.

Today, the Ukrainian grassroots also often blame the mess, poverty, and backwardness in this country on the present-day oligarchs, as their ancestors did on the “bourgeois element.” We are far from trying to remove responsibility from those who are laying claim to being called this country’s elite, but, at the same time, we are far from trying to simplify the situation which always arises as a result of hurling – involuntarily or deliberately – the slogans of “class inequality.” Ukrainian politicians ought to know that the oligarchs’ factories employ thousands of rank-and-file workers, and, accordingly, the losses of factory owners will be their losses, too. And, while the claim of a farmer or a miner that “oligarchs are to blame for everything” can be put down to their sociopolitical incompetence, the latter is just unforgivable for politicians.

At the same time, the symptomatic nature of the situation is a warning for all, rich and poor alike: to prevent this country from reaching the point of no return, society should rally together and work out the common rules of the game. Yet the initiative should come from those who possess the required means and resources. After all, the Polish managed to put this into practice a century ago, for they chose statehood as the strategic goal of their struggle. The results of their choice are well in sight today.

We asked The Day experts about how to respond to dangerous warnings.

COMMENTARIES

Oleh SANZHAREVSKY, Candidate of Sciences (History); Associate Professor; director, Center for Euro-Atlantic Integration, Rivne:

“It is obvious that class issues are being whipped up in today’s Ukraine. The main symptom is searching for the enemy, the one to be blamed for all the current troubles. This search is being done not on the basis of somebody’s concrete deeds but on ethnic or class lines or, as it often occurs in Ukraine, by combining the former and the latter. Class issues are being stirred up today in Ukraine, which noticeably weakens our positions because this hinders rallying this country together for solving more urgent problems. What we have now is the same that was in the UNR times. Incidentally, the foreign factor is now playing as big a role in these matters as it did in the past. Why are we still unable to resist the imposition of class stereotypes? It is difficult for a society that experiences depopulation, deindustrialization, degradation, and marginalization to put up valiant resistance. Ukrainian society lacks a proper educational level, which, incidentally, is being done on purpose. It is necessary, above all, to raise the level of education and boost the economy. This problem of societal maturity can only be solved by way of intellectual development.”

Kyrylo HALUSHKO, Candidate of Sciences (History), head of the Lypynsky Center for Social and Liberal Arts Studies:

“One of the linchpins of the TV studio dispute was to what extent common (or, to be more exact, different) are the interests of Ukraine’s populace and the political class and what role they play in the choice of all kinds of ‘integrations’ and gas prices. To what extent are our oligarchs, who steer politics, capable of representing the interests of the state, for they mix up the latter with their own business? In this context, the host said what I think is interesting: ‘Russia claims that the [gas] war is being imposed on it by the Ukrainian oligarchs who don’t want to cooperate with Russian business.’ In my view, this is a very eloquent change of emphasis in our neighbor’s media arguments about ‘who is bad in Ukraine.’ While earlier one could say that it is a ‘pro-Western’ or a ‘nationalist’ government, now it is not so simple because we still remember 2010, the year of a Russian-Ukrainian ‘soul kiss’ and ‘love till death do us part,’ and the Kyiv leadership consists now of the same people whose clout has even risen. And disputes with the Russian leadership even over such a trivial thing as gas price are considered a show of disobedience – the gravest sin in the CIS. The Ukrainian leadership is taking an unusually united stand today: as too high an amount of money is at stake, our neighbors would like to see the obvious social stratification in Ukraine in an interpretation that pleases them, drawing public attention to the topic of class struggle which is a bit forgotten in Russia itself, as if the latter were a model of social harmony.

“There was a time when swashbuckling [Red Army] horsemen helped the fraternal proletariats and peoples of other countries, including Ukraine, the Baltic countries, Finland, Poland, etc, to get rid of their exploiters. And when the Ukrainians were enthusiastically burning down the manors of their landlords, they received the new powers-that-be – the Kremlin leaders. Therefore, despite my ardent and sincere aspiration for social justice, I am not in a hurry to stab our oligarchic clans – let’s do it later. Or can it be that somebody outside our Motherland chose to ‘spearhead’ our ‘people’s wrath’? Maybe, somebody will want again to ‘relieve us of oppression’? We haven’t seen any ‘liberators’ for quite a long time, you know… I like in this connection something from Lesia Ukrainka: ‘If you liberate yourself, you’ll be free, if you are liberated, you’ll be a slave.’ So I reflect: if our state is really a business project (as is present-day Russia), the business circles of Kyiv and Moscow, now vying for the money that we will never see, will perhaps somewhat guarantee our sovereignty? When private property interests will suddenly coincide with national ones? No matter how hard you rack your brains, the Ukrainian state is the key capital of our irresponsible and egoistic oligarchs – should this state get lost, they will get into the ‘Customs Union’ as easily as they come. But they are so unwilling to do so… And we will perhaps cope with them by ourselves?