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Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty
Henry M. Robert

Changing Image

12 October, 1999 - 00:00

I remember quite well how the romantic image of democratic Russia started to change before our eyes after August 1991, how its nationwide-elected President found pronouncing words increasingly difficult, the same man who read his decrees from a tank turret in August 1991. How its troops that refused to open fire on civilian crowds made themselves infamous with all those clean-ups. How its politicians that first championed reforms turned out corrupt. How its ambitious businessmen personifying Russia's new people, its best hopes, order journalists' mouths shut when they tried to glorify the free market. I remember all this and more.

And what do they have now? A country where they failed to build even state capitalism, a country ruled by a “family” and totally exposed to contract killings, a country whose army has for the past few years been hanging out in the North Caucasus, and this in conditions of chronic monetary shortage, back pay, and pensions, with the main problem remaining, for some inexplicable reason, that of a small “seditious republic.” A country whose press takes orders from the regime or from oligarchs playing along with it. A country where people die in apartment houses blown up by terrorists and where “aliens” are “reregistered” by the militia, after which more than one officer buys himself a foreign car. A country with a hard past and grossly uncertain future, with its first ten fateful years wasted, the way it happened at the time of Khrushchev's thaw.

And now we are all witness to the changing image of Ukraine, that same romantic image of a state, which decided to be free, independent, open to the rest of the world, and democratic — all this also in August 1991. All those state-builders ending up as ordinary thieves, except on a much broader scale, now awaiting political asylum. And the press. It has not become free, with most publications living from one president to the next; lauding Kravchuk yesterday and singing the glories of Kuchma today, waiting for the next to step into the limelight to meet him with the appropriate fanfare, all this to continue until the economic foundations of society are replaced. In fact, this applies not only to the press. It is hard for a beggar to be free, especially having to jump out of the way of limousines carrying their national leaders. Ukrainian television? You watch its programs, and you know how humiliated you feel watching them, knowing that the mere handful of truly talented people in the audience will not be able to change the situation. The current regime looks forward to adopting the Russian standard, with an omnipotent President (read presidential entourage), powerless Parliament, servile intelligentsia, and indifferent populace. Most interestingly, it works.

At any rate, it is starting to work.

Except that no one has thought of hurling grenades at any of the presidential candidates in Russia. They tried to blow up Berezovsky, blew up apartment houses, and others died in gang wars. But no presidential candidates have suffered.

At long last we came up with something totally our own. Our own visage.

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