Is Poverty No Crime?
One of the darkest indices of our society is that people in Ukraine are divided into groups, each seeming to exist under different political regimes, in different countries, even in different civilizations. This is explained by the glaring contrasts in our living standards, causing people to lead altogether different lives even though they might live next door. There is no need to carry out social studies. All one has to do is spend some time in front of a tall Soviet-built monstrosity of an apartment block, examine its dirty windows, peeling balconies packed with garbage, and doorways greeting one with odors and sights defying description. Then turn away and look at the spilling garbage cans a dozen feet from those doorways. There are always people poking through the filthy contents. Passersby quickly avert their eyes. (Not so long ago I ventured to approach one such creature, an old man dressed in rags. I offered him a little money for bread. He straightened up slowly, looked me over carefully, then bowed with an old-fashioned courtesy, took the money and thanked me. I was so ashamed I almost cried). We have glaring misery and hopeless despair on the one end of society and practically unlimited opportunities on the other. I am not going to discuss the modest lifestyle of the Ukrainian bourgeoisie (among other reasons because I lack sufficient information).
The overwhelming majority of our wealthy fellow citizens are, of course, the founders and collectors of initial capital for their families. Only several years ago they were no different from the rest of us. Yet they are at best completely indifferent about the poor and downtrodden. Many scorn them as hopeless bunglers who missed their historic chance. Our nouveaux riches are unable to understand the simple truth that one helps one’s fellow people in need just because they are miserable and need help, no matter how they got that way.
The impoverished stratum is quite heterogeneous (former workers, intelligentsia, lumpens, aging and ailing, young and carefree individuals, etc.). The Soviets taught us to attribute all possible virtues to the poor; poverty was considered as almost a conscious choice made out of scorn for worldly riches. Such people have always been present in all Ukrainian strata. In fact, I personally know several such individuals. They are really capable of shrugging off any Golden Calf temptation just so they can remain independent and do what they really feel like doing; after all, it’s a matter of self-respect to them. It is also true, however, that in all societies such people constitute a minority of the poor. What about the majority?
Soviet propaganda developed the formula: Being poor means being honest and kind-hearted. Apparently the decency percentage among the poor cannot be much higher than among the better-off strata. Today, as in Soviet times, the difference between many (not all!) “honest and kind-hearted” poor and the dishonest rich consists in the fact that the former could not lay their hands on public property or somebody else’s money. A significant segment of this society (not only the rich) live by the principle of grab whatever you can. Some do it at work, stealing nails, bulbs, or cheating at the street market. Others steal carloads or millions of dollars. It is all the same thing morally. Dangerous convicts start as street muggers, not as decent law-abiding individuals. The corrupt Ukrainian political elite grew on our home turf, otherwise everything would have been different; as it is, a lot of things are deeply rotten in the state of Ukraine.
I thought of this and other sad things after witnessing a disgusting scene in a streetcar. An old woman had an old stool with her and she tried her best to keep out of other passengers’ way, but could not. The stool seemed to bother everybody. For some reason many of the passengers (ordinary people, of course, for the “new Ukrainians” never use streetcars) were outraged by the old hag lugging around her stool. Even those at the opposite end of the car! The atmosphere was suddenly thick with hatred, as though a hundred venomous snakes were hissing and ready to pounce out of scorn for someone’s poverty and old age. The impression was that everybody looking at the old woman suddenly felt better off, standing on a higher rung of the ladder.
“So where did you buy this cute little stool?”
“She must be moving to a new apartment, a furnished one.”
“She must’ve picked it on a garbage heap and now she’s taking it to her mansion.”
“Wrong. It’s a gift from her prosperous children, see, they just threw it off the balcony.” Almost everybody tried to add a line to the ugly farce. The rest just kept silent.
Historians and sociologists claim that money can make their owners dignified, but only in the fourth or fifth generation, that money and time polish one’s taste, teach modesty and an aversion for ostentation. Moreover, inheritors of big fortunes develop a sincere desire for charity, sharing ancestral wealth with those in need (especially when suspecting that their fortune did not come their way in a strictly clean fashion). I believe that poverty in this sense is absolutely fruitless, no matter how many generations are haunted by it.
