Deja vu
Let me correct some mistakes in the previous column: the cross that FEMEN sawed down is not a memorial one in honor of the victims of repressions – it is worship cross in honor of the Orange Revolution; FEMEN’s Oleksandra and Inna Shevchenko are not sisters.
Journalist can err, and I am no exception. If a journalist wants to stay on in the profession, s/he must have enough courage to admit their mistakes. Using wrong words due to inattentiveness is one thing. One must answer for mistakes. Sometimes they can be corrected, for example, on a newspaper page. One must also bear responsibility for their actions, but it is more difficult to correct a deliberate stupidity.
Why again about FEMEN?
Last weekend some unknown people tore down four worship crosses in Russia: one in Arkhangelsk and three in Chelyabinsk oblast. FEMEN have already said they are in rapture over this. In their Live Journal blog, the girls promise to make a tour of Russia’s wooden churches, with a chainsaw in hand, and to punish “the scum responsible for the sufferings of innocent women” if some of the activists end up behind bars.
This may be a joke, but tearing down the cross on Independence Square was not a joke. Let me say it again: you must answer for the words you say. It is so good that we do not have so far the obscurantism that holds sway north of Khutor Mikhailovsk – otherwise Inna Shevchenko would have also gone down and promises would have had to be kept: to take a chainsaw, go to Russia, find out the itineraries of motorcades, and cut up not the photo of but the real-life Putin or, for that matter, a real-life judge here in Kyiv – with blood and entrails. But they know they will not go down. They know they will never go to Russia to saw anything off.
It is easy to talk rot and do stupidities, knowing that nobody will hold you responsible for either the former or the latter. The difference between Pussy Riot and FEMEN is like one between a surgeon and a street bully. The former worked with scalpel-style accuracy and exposed a cluster of burning problems, while the latter are just kicking in the air all around, usually simulating a strike but still hoping to hit some vulnerable spot. I insist that, having committed a totally stupid offense (already condemned by the imprisoned Maria Aliokhina), FEMEN have done an excellent favor to Orthodox extremists. Responsibility for cutting down the crosses has been claimed by the “People’s Will movement.” It does not matter whether they are flaming idiots or pro-governmental paid provocateurs: to assume the name of a 19th-century terrorist organization is not just a stupidity but a stupidity squared.
Meanwhile, far right extremism is on the rise in Russia: the squads of the Union of Orthodox Gonfalon Bearers (read: Black Hundred thugs) are ready to take to the streets, Orthodox fascists tore a pro-Pussy Riot T-shirt off a passer-by at Moscow’s Paveletsky Railway Station, a group of barbarians gate-crashed to a Theater.doc performance devoted to the trial of Tolokonnikova, Aliokhina, and Samutsevich, but the audience gave them a rebuff. The sad truth that became clear after Pussy Riot’s actions is that there is not a single institution in Russia that could serve as a moral balancer and be able to reconcile, instead of splitting, society. The Russian Orthodox Church, which is closely intertwined with the authorities, corrupt, and up to its ears in numerous scandals, only aggravates the discord (in Ukraine, too). This church needs a broad-based debate, openness, self-purification, and urgent healing. Of course, there is a far easier way which is already discernible and will not bypass Ukraine: the army of “gonfalon bearers” against the army of “People’s Will.” A familiar picture, isn’t it?
