Unsubdued Luhansk

Den hosted a roundtable devoted to understanding the tragedy now facing residents of the Donbas and the entire Ukraine. Why has it happened and what our way out of this situation should be? To find it out, it is important to hear the views of Luhansk residents themselves, who were invited to the meeting at the editorial office and represented various groups    – from show business managers to politicians, from businesspeople to civic volunteers.

History does not go on another turn of the spiral unless appropriate conclusions are drawn. It is forced to rotate in a circle then. For instance, participant of the roundtable, volunteer, information coordinator for the “Donbas-SOS” NGO Maryna Liuta cited a historical analogy: “We thought last year that history was repeating itself. It felt just like it was when Mikhail Muravyov’s army advanced on Kyiv in 1918, and the capital had no sense of impending danger. The same thing happened here in February and March 2014. When it all could have been stopped, when we informed the Security Service of Ukraine, officials in Luhansk and Kyiv, we were ignored.”

Placard by Dmytro KRYSHOVSKY. Photo replica by Artem SLIPACHUK, The Day

The roundtable was also attended by social activist Dmytro Sniehyriov, Ukrainian historian and civic activist Volodymyr Semystiaha, director of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food of Ukraine’s legal and legislative work department Ihor Chukovsky, director of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Ukraine’s international economic cooperation department Hennadii Boldyr, music producer of Euromedia, organizer of “Let Us Support Our Own” charity tour Vitalii Pastukh and therapist Oleksandr Zelenko.

 Larysa IVSHYNA:

“Ukraine has to deal with a lot of issues that she has inherited from the Soviet Union. Each area of the country had its own peculiarities. Nobody actually worked on integrating Ukraine. We had a complex history of formation of these regions and had to contend with the legacy of resettlement, particularly after the tragic years 1932-33.

“Western and Eastern Ukraine had different perspectives on these issues, just like every region had its own take on our Soviet period. Just three years after independence, a counter-revolution began. A clan oligarchy was emerging since 1994 which simulated the state, but actually plundered it a lot.”

Maryna LIUTA, volunteer; coordinator, information section, NGO “Donbas-SOS”:

“Last year during the offensive, when the first roadblocks were set up, we were organizing pro-Ukrainian rallies, so the majority had to move because it was dangerous to come back. So, we are refugees of sorts. After moving to Kyiv, I found ways to help our side. It would be wrong to say that this land has been lost. There are patriots in the Donbas. They know each other, but they seem to be living in a reservation. Unfortunately, not all the old patriots paid due attention to us, the young. At the time, we were doing ethnographic research, organizing pro-Ukrainian campaigns, opening libraries, and visiting Artemivsk. We were doing our best to draw attention. But, unfortunately, we did not feel that the general public was paying attention to us. But we withstood all this. And nothing will erase Ukraine from our minds. Indeed, Ukraine is above all for us. Now, too, we can hear the Donbas’ voice every day. Regretfully, nothing is being changed there. Many of them are criticizing Ukraine but, at the same time, are ready to receive help from us, from Akhmetov, and from anyone else. I must say that Sloboda Ukraine is an extremely beautiful area which used to be mostly populated by people from Central Ukraine and Cossacks. But, unfortunately, we have lost people, not a territory. That land has absorbed very much of Ukraine.”

Dmytro SNIEHYRIOV, public activist:

“Some people think that Luhansk oblast is an area that encourages pro-Kremlin sentiments. This opinion has been foisted on us for 23 years in an attempt to show that there is no Ukrainian life in the Donbas – or if there is some, it is maintained owing to governmental subsidies or Canada’s support. Of course, we must also say the government pursued no clear-cut policy towards the eastern regions. In general, I am inclined to think that there was a plan – from the very outset – to pump as much as possible out of Ukraine and then take it back into the fold of the so-called USSR. There are signs in the whole post-Soviet space, including the Donbas and Crimea, that post-communist nomenklatura clans have not been eliminated even when new democratic leaders emerged. Nor did the powers that be have a clear vision of the development of Ukraine as an independent state. We sailed in a strange channel, hesitating about siding with Brussels or Moscow and forgetting that we had our own way of development. In my personal opinion, if our goal is to Ukrainize some areas, we should take an imperial stand of our own, also with respect to the neighboring lands now under jurisdiction of another state. In other words, we should have been aware that Luhansk and Donetsk are not Ukraine’s frontier. Our borders end where the Ukrainian-speaking population ends. Therefore, we should have been propagating the idea of a ‘Ukrainian World’ in contrast to that of the so-called ‘Russian World.’ This would have been an adequate answer to the claim that Russia ends where the Russian language ends.”

Volodymyr SEMYSTIAHA, Ukrainian historian and civic activist:

“The level of Russification in Ukraine exceeds every limit. What can unite us all? The democratic civilized Europe has only one remedy for this malady – the knowledge of your official language, of your national history, and of the national law. For some reason, the Russians are not told to switch to the Ukrainian language, but, at the same time, the Ukrainians are required to use Russian. When I was peaking at the Verkhovna Rada during the official language hearings, I asked a question: will those who speak the language of a neighboring state, including army and police officers who issue commands in Russian, be defending us and our state? The time eventually came, and all this came out. Incredibly, the Luhansk public had to struggle for every Ukrainian letter on notice boards.

“Whenever we took legal action for our rights, we faced a problem: can the public carry on a full-fledged struggle against the state apparatus staffed with high-skilled lawyers? I happened to deliver lectures to policemen, public prosecutors, judges, and Security Service (SBU) officers. When I told the story of Mikhnovsky’s portrait on a wall, SBU officers almost burst into applause: ‘The Cheka men did a nice job!’ Of course, this kind of people could not defend our state, which history has proved. The Luhansk region once saw the following policy: the territory was being populated with the Russians, while the Ukrainians were moved to Siberia, the Urals, and the Far East. I saw a shocking fact. As a Russian armored column was entering Luhansk, some women came running to give the tank men sheets of paper with a list of the Ukrainians to be ‘taken care of.’”

Ihor CHUDOVSKY, Director, Department of Legal and Legislative Work, Ministry for Agrarian Policies and Food, Ukraine:

“Our modern history can be written on the basis of criminal cases. Suffice it to trace the names of the persons involved in some of the cases. Many of them figure in these cases as witnesses, though it would be more correct to consider them the accused. But let me get back to the question of what we could have done to forestall the current woe. First I thought that a couple of helicopters should have perhaps destroyed the seized SBU building. But then I saw it was wrong thing to do. Why? Because Russian secret services also foresaw this development of events. The problem is deeper. We should not forget that the region was in fact controlled by certain omnipotent individuals. No mayor in the oblast was appointed without Yefremov’s sanction. All, including police chiefs, were appointed on the instructions of Yefremov. It took one telephone call for district mayors to send two or three busloads of ‘tourists’ to Luhansk – we saw them at the so-called ‘anti-Maidans,’ i.e., pro-Party-of-Regions rallies. But we must admit that now, thanks to Yanukovych and Putin, we have a powerful patriotic movement. They began to use force for Ukraine to join Russia. If they had given us fair-priced gas, brought financial capital into play, and created jobs, Ukraine could have a different future. Had Yanukovych thought not only about his own pocket, but also about the social sector, he would have had a fair chance to be reelected as president in 2015. Then Ukraine could have joined the Customs Union. But Putin is a KGB man by nature. He needs to break something. So, they kept breaking this country and, as a result, it is now aspiring to Europe by all means. Ukraine has a civil society now, of which we, Luhansk residents, are a part.”

“WE HAVE MOVED TO GREATER UKRAINE, BUT WE WILL COME BACK,” PUBLIC ACTIVIST DMYTRO SNIEHYRIOV EMPHASIZED DURING THE ROUNDTABLE / Photo by Artem SLIPACHUK, The Day

Hennadii BOLDYR, Director, Department of International Economic Cooperation, Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Ukraine:

“I look at this situation from a human angle. When all this began, I was outside Ukraine as a diplomat in Austria. Whenever I was in touch with my acquaintances in Luhansk, I warned them there might be irreparable consequences that will destroy this region. But this was not taken in seriously last spring. There was only talk about some ambitions with respect to Kyiv. Before I went abroad, I     had worked for 10 years with entrepreneurs within the framework of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry. We stayed in touch with our partners in such frontier cities as Rostov, Voronezh, and Belgorod. We communicated every day. Entrepreneurs are apolitical people. Many of us were mentally unprepared for this situation, i.e., to this turn of events and this perception of Russia and Russians – especially as far as business is concerned. You know the saying ‘the best is the enemy of the good’ – it is an exclusively Russian saying which relates to the Russians only.

“I had a feeling that we were brothers just until a certain moment – not during but well before the Crimea crisis. I understood that they were being trained to kill us when they killed some fishermen in the Sea of Azov. This was an eye-opener for me, and I began to watch more closely what was going on. A month before Yanukovych was supposed to sign the EU Association Agreement, we worked rather actively in Austria, for Vienna is an international platform. We reported almost hourly on the extent to which Ukraine was prepared to take this momentous step. Then we saw the first signs of an upcoming ‘rollback.’ And when Ukrainian businesses came under criticism, it became clear that a ‘hot phase’ was unavoidable. We saw that something was going to happen, and the only question was when. Now our task is to survive – not only at the cost of our soldiers’ life, but also economically. It is important to help our businesses re-orientate to other markets.”

Vitalii PASTUKH, musical producer, Euromedia company; organizer, charity tour “Let Us Support Our Own”:

“It is not important today what language a patriot speaks. For example, the Boryspil-born rapper Yarmak reads rap in both Russian and Ukrainian, and 14-year-olds in the Donbas treat him as one of their own. And when they listen to his patriotic soundtracks, such as ‘My Country Will Never Fall Down to its Knees,’ they become patriots of Ukraine – automatically, without being fully aware of this. There is a great deal of Ukrainian music today. But there is only one Ukrainian radio station, Radio Yes, bought by the Poles, which has a 100-percent Ukrainian play list, irrespective of the language. Besides, there is an ample reserve of Ukrainian music which simply cannot fill program slots. So, we draw a conclusion that we are barred from popularizing Ukrainian music.

“Of course, the governmental policy is also to blame for this to a large extent – they have forgotten about cinema and Ukrainian culture as a whole. The present-day 30-year-old Donbas guys are the generation of Brother 2. And Okean Elzy band is popular in the Donbas only because its song is this film’s soundtrack. The musicians could only become popular in the Donbas after being appreciated in Russia.”

Oleksandr ZELENKO, psychotherapist:

“If some of the Donbas people were sent to the Russian hinterland, where alcoholism flourishes and there are no jobs, they would say this place is familiar to them. It is unnatural in many Donbas cities to come home sober.

“Here are a few quips from the Luhansk National University faculty. ‘We don’t need your civilization, we need our culture,’ a professor of sociology says. “All evils come from wealth,’ says a department head at the Institute of Economics and Management. This is the so-called Luhansk intelligentsia. These universities have relocated somewhere, but the vast majority of their faculty and staff members gave a hearty welcome to the terrorists, who seized the SBU office, and still support them, saying they are ‘our boys.’ A doped gun-wielding teenager is ‘our boy’ for Luhansk and Donetsk, while a Kyiv intellectual is an ‘enemy’ for them. It is an absolutely deliberate attitude, and they have never switched on, quite purposefully, a Ukrainian channel or radio station or taken a Ukrainian book in hand. Kyiv has created a myth that Putin’s propaganda has deceived somebody there. No, they have been waiting for Putin over decades, and they have achieved their dreams. In October 2013 the then governor Prystiuk placed an order for a batch of tricolors and St. George’s Ribbons at a knitting factory – there was not a hint of the Maidan at that moment.”

Larysa IVSHYNA, Editor-in-Chief, newspaper Den:

“We held a roundtable and a photo exhibit recently in Cherkasy. A gentleman asked me in the course of a discussion whether Ukraine should be interested in the disintegration of Russia and what this will result in. It is good to look over the horizon. It is a very good habit. I said Ukraine had been holding its territory, as it is holding the Donetsk airport now, for centuries. If Russia begins to break up, we will be unable to change geographically. So, we must not remain unconcerned. For this reason, we must scale another height. This is the recipe which everybody – practitioners, theoreticians, and strategists – should mull over. It is the question of the level of relationship between people, business, and the state in this country.

“Den has also made a contribution to supporting the Ukrainians. We have been asked many times why our book series is titled ‘Armor-Piercing Political Writing.’ Why this militaristic way of thinking? But I have just taken many things from Ukrainian history. We should maintain this civilizational link. It must not be cut off. We must not forget our GULAG prisoners who used to rise up. A film is now being shown on TV about the Kengir uprising. My favorite leader is not Gandhi but Yevhen Hrytsiak who led the Norilsk prison camp uprising. These prisoners used to say to their children: remember that the Soviet Union is our most avowed enemy. But the children were being brought up on the stories that ‘we are all brothers’ and ‘peace, labor, May,’ and they thought these old people had gone crazy as a result of sufferings. And the point is not in the UPA. Stalinism broke the life of so many people all over Ukraine, including its eastern part. So, these books contain recipes from all: Jerzy Giedroyc, Andrei Sheptytsky, Dmytro Dontsov, Stepan Bandera, Andrei Sakharov, Lina Kostenko, and Vasyl Stus. Why the latter? Because Stus was not a nationalist bugbear.”